Punch the words “Fife Symington” and “tax cuts” into a popular-newspaper database, and more than 1,000 articles will be cited. The articles, most of them from the Arizona Republic, invariably attribute Arizona’s robust economy to Symington’s strong support of personal income tax cuts during his six-year tenure as governor. “Governor…
One year after taking over as president of Glendale Community College, Tessa Martinez Pollack is under fire from faculty senate members who question a proposed policy that cost her her previous job in Miami, Florida. Her economic-development proposal for the west Valley has also raised questions about what role her…
Anne Does AZ The Flash hung with Princess Anne during her visit to the Valley last week. (Don’t believe the pictures: It really wasn’t Prince Charles in drag.) At the Herberger Theater Center for the Royal National Theatre’s Othello, the Flash sat within whispering range of the Royal Anne and…
A few days before Christmas 1955, Artie Martinez took off his clothes and went for a stroll. Sheriff’s deputies found Martinez–a 27-year-old deaf man–wandering incoherently near 52nd Street and McDowell. Not surprisingly, he wound up at the Arizona State Hospital. Martinez wasn’t charged with a crime, never has been. Nonetheless,…
Bestiality! Incest! Torture! Golden showers! All things considered, the job just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “As if that were not enough, the money sucks!” gripes the ex-phone-sex operator, a woman whose daily workload resembled a verbal version of Marv Albert’s datebook. While her complaints are reminiscent…
If Scottsdale Waterfront South Associates wins the right to rebuild 23 prime acres of the city, it’s because of the group’s qualifications, not its connections, city officials say. The fact that Ken Allen, the group’s principal architect, is on the city board which will award the contract doesn’t matter, Allen…
Imagine this: The person you love has AIDS. He’s also in prison for theft. They’re not going to let him out, even though the person he stole from didn’t want him to go to prison. Even though the person he stole from married him after he went to prison. Imagine…
Looking for Mr. Good Bar Unhappy with the service at his present haunt, The Flash is putting out a Request for Proposal to gin-mill owners. Please respond if your saloon meets the following criteria: Your dive is so slow, you’d be grateful to have groupings of besotted New Times writers…
Stars in Their Eyes As an amateur astronomer with a dog-eared copy of the Celestial Handbook, I found Tony Ortega’s article about Robert Burnham Jr. extremely poignant (“Sky Writer,” September 25). Many amateur astronomers would be interested in reading about a man who contributed so much to our enjoyment. Bill…
The old man who sold paintings of cats in Balboa Park entered San Diego’s Mercy Hospital on March 9, 1993. He was dying of congestive heart failure, the result of a heart attack that he’d suffered weeks earlier. Although he was only 61, his years in the park had prematurely…
He’s guilty, he’s out of office, and he’s out of the country. The mainstream press last saw our fraudulent former governor getting off a plane in Miami. Speculation about his whereabouts is rampant. New Times has learned that Fife employed a series of ingenious disguises to give the slip to…
So That’s How She Got Her Job! A reader grateful that the Flash featured KPNX-TV Channel 12 anchor Jineane Ford’s role as a scantily clad, stuttering bimbo in 1983’s Chattanooga Choo Choo recently volunteered videotape of another local TV journalist doing her all for the sake of entertainment. The tape…
In April, the state auditor general released a report saying that the State Land Department was asleep on the job, allowing ranchers to renew grazing leases without putting them out to competitive bid, and virtually giving away northeast Phoenix and north Scottsdale to developers. Then, in late July, Superior Court…
Early Sunday afternoon, Phoenix. The real world is the same as ever. On the west side, a woman I know comes home from work and finds that someone has tried to break into her house. The two deadbolts on her door stopped the would-be intruder. The gun she keeps in…
Guilt Trip I really was impressed with Michael Lacey’s editorial on Fife Symington (“Long May He Serve,” September 11). He laid it out the way my friends and co-workers have been discussing it on a day-to-day basis. The saddest part is Eddie Basha and our new governor’s remarks that Symington…
Los Portones doesn’t look that different from all the other beige subdivisions sprouting from the desert of northeast Scottsdale. Lying just north of Pinnacle Peak Road, homes in the 100-unit complex are priced from the low- to mid-$100,000s. Mesquite trees and cactuses flourish in small, neatly landscaped front yards. In…
Maricopa County continued pumping cancer-causing toxins into the ground for four years after the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality warned it to stop. The county Board of Supervisors and top administrators were aware that an oil/water separator at a fuel-storage site discharged–probably illegally–pollutants into a dry well on the property,…
Jean Morrell is finally getting an investigation into Browning-Ferris Industries’ medical-waste incinerator. It only took years of asking, a car chase involving her nephew, and two New Times staffers’ being detained by Maricopa County security guards. Morrell has been trying to get regulators’ attention about the BFI incinerator at the…
Sticking By His Guns The following messages were left in rapid succession for the editor of this rag. The caller complains about columnist Barry Graham’s August 21 piece “Assailing,” about the shooting of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, and Graham’s September 4 piece “Absence of Palace,” about Princess Di’s…
For more than 20 years, people around the world have participated in Amnesty International’s letter-writing campaigns to protest mistreatment of prisoners by repressive foreign governments. Following investigations into allegations of prisoner abuse, the organization calls upon its volunteers to send mountains of mail to petty dictators and sadistic jailers. Sheriff…
The story of the recent murder of a young west Phoenix couple has become an Elmore Leonard novel, with its bounty hunters and police snitches and thieves and aspiring ninjas and murderers and strippers. On September 13, in the latest chapter, Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley made a jolting announcement:…
Ma Teresa’s joined the mob Unhappy with her full-time job. –Primitive Radio Gods Two weeks ago, this column examined the mass hysteria surrounding the death of Princess Diana. I suggested that her death was no more relevant or tragic than anyone else’s. The response to that column was like nothing…
