Today's Stories

December 23, 2008

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 23, 2008

Adios, Amigos!

The Tombstone Economy

By MICHAEL YATES

My father took me to one movie, in 1957, when I was eleven years old. Our small town had two movie theaters then, the Roxy and the Ford, but we went to the State, in the larger town three miles north. This might seem not worth noting, but back then a trip to Kittanning, with its riverside park, big courthouse, and shop-filled streets, was an adventure. The movie was Gunfight at the OK Corral, starring Burt Lancaster as Marshall Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as “Doc” Holliday. I still have a vague memory of the famous shootout. Great stuff. The good guys bring the outlaws to justice. Holiday, the sickly notorious gambler, comes to the aid of the Earp brothers, doing one good deed before he goes to Colorado to die.

The actual gunfight took place in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881. Tombstone is in southeastern Arizona, seventy miles from Tucson. It was founded in 1879 by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who had hit a rich vein of silver in a plateau near the present-day location of the town. He named his claim “Tombstone” after a soldier he met told him that the only rock he was likely to collect in these dry and dangerous hills (the Apache were a threatening presence for whites) was his own tombstone. Soon Tombstone, which took its name from the prospector’s claim, was a mining boom town, with as many as 15,000 residents within a few years. Eastern capital soon dominated the economy, while Irishmen and Germans did the mining and Chinese and other immigrants provided the services (there is a forgotten and sordid history of Chinese settlement, persecution, and dispossession throughout the west, even in small towns in sparsely populated states like Arizona, Wyoming, and Idaho. We learned about this in 2006 at an interesting exhibit we saw at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie). Poor Shieffelin sold his claim for $10,000, missing out on the millions of dollars of silver the mine produced. Silver was big business in southern Arizona, with many mines and silver mills. By 1881, 490 million troy ounces had been mined. Several mills operated along the San Pedro river a few miles west of town. When the silver mines petered out and the demand for silver fell when the United States demonetized the metal, a boom in copper began, setting the stage fro epic battles between mine owners and miners, the latter represented by radical unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World. In the summer of 1917, when striking miners in nearby Bisbee threatened the war effort, 2,000 armed vigilantes shipped more than 1,000 men to a New Mexican desert here they were abandoned.

Tombstone quickly won a reputation as a wide open, semi-lawless town. If you have ever watched the HBO series Deadwood, you’ll know what this means. Too many men, with money from the mines, with too little to do outside work except drink and gamble. There were loosely knit gangs called “cow-boys,” some of them Confederate Army veterans who had drifted west after the war, and who worked the nearby ranches and engaged in various illegal activities such as cattle rustling and robbery. There was a tension between the rougher elements inside and outside town and the mine owners and businessmen. Interestingly, the Earp brothers were Yankees; Wyatt’s older brothers joined the Union Army. Wyatt himself was only thirteen when the war began, but he ran away from home and tried to join. The main adversaries of the Earps and Holliday in the shootout were the Clantons, southerners, some of whom served in the Confederate Army. There was considerable pro-slavery sentiment in the Arizona Territory (a number of Civil War skirmishes took place in Arizona; the best-known took place near the famous landmark, Picacho Peak, which is between Tucson and Phoenix), and many former Confederates drifted west, where criminal activity was often mixed with legal enterprises such as ranching and farming. The “cow-boys” were probably similar to the characters associated with the James Gang, who farmed and robbed from their bases in southwest Missouri and who were also Confederates.

Tombstone began a long period of decline when the silver mines played out, and by 1900 the population was below 1,000. A railroad connection in 1903 and the fact that Tombstone was the seat of Cochise County saved the town from extinction. The town center had been rebuilt after devastating fires, and fortunately for its future many of the buildings remained intact, laying the basis for the tourism that ultimately kept Tombstone alive. The downtown was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1961, and today thousands of visitors come to see what an old west town looked like and to inspect the site of the gunfight. A major attraction is the cemetery, Boot Hill, where many of Tombstone’s most colorful characters are buried, though not the Earps or “Doc” Holliday. Wyatt Earp is buried in California, and Holliday in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. I have seen “Doc’s” grave. The headstone says “He died in bed.”

Karen and I visited Tombstone in early December. We had been planning to visit for two years, urged to do so by the couple who ran the bed and breakfast where we had stayed for several months (bunking in the husband’s artist studio at a reasonable monthly rate). Val, the artist, is an aficionado of the west; he knows most of the old cowboy actors still living. So we figured that if he and his wife liked Tombstone, it must be worth seeing. They had taken us to see the Amerind Museum in the amazing Texas Canyon (Don’t miss the Geronimo exhibits; they’ll break your heart) and the Chiricahua National Monument not far away. We enjoyed these immensely, so we figured Tombstone was a sure bet.

Let me say now that the best part of our visit was the drive. From Tucson you take Interstate 10 east toward El Paso, turning south at Benson, Exit 303, on Highway 90, toward Fort Huachuca (another massive military base in the desert). Then go east on Highway 82 to Tombstone. After the exit, the land widens into a large valley with ground cover of tall grasses instead of desert plants. (We took a different route home, staying on 82 west of 90 and then turning north along Highway 83, through Sonoita and up down steep and beautiful hills back to Interstate 10.). RV parks abound along Highway 82. Snow birds park their Winnebagos and Airstreams for rhe winter, sometimes setting up temporary towns, sometimes complete with flea market shopping centers, where they renew old acquaintances and make new friends. We always wonder when we see such things---what kind of people do this. What do you do all day long in the middle of nowhere? The desert has abundant charms, but living in an RV, here? Not our cup of tea.

We drove through Tombstone—82 is four lanes from one end of town to the other—and turned around to park. The old town is along Allen Street—several blocks of one and two story wooden buildings, many with historical markers. There are a few admirable private homes and around one corner the fine old courthouse, which is now a museum. We were immediately accosted by barkers urging us to take a stagecoach ride or catch the next Tombstone Trolley. “The next shootout is at two-o’clock,” intoned a man dressed in old time western gear. “Margaritas two dollars.” A women yelled from across a street, “Next mine tour at 1:15.” We stopped at the visitors’ center. Karen asked the attendant a question, and this slightly addled individual started to shout at her. We looked for a brochure that would tell us about Tombstone’s history, but all we saw were ads for the tourist “attractions,” mainly shops and restaurants. The courthouse turned museum reeked of must and mold but charged a fee nonetheless. The “Bird Cage Theater,” where “Doc” Holliday dealt Faro, describes itself this way:

The world famous Bird Cage Theatre, also referred to as The Bird Cage Opera House Saloon. This was a fancy way in the 1880's of describing a combination saloon, gambling hall and a house of ill repute. Well, that was the Bird Cage Theatre and it was known across America by its unreputable reputation. In 1882, the New York Times referred to the Bird Cage as, "the Roughest, Bawdiest, and most Wicked night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast. For nine years it never closed its doors, operating 24 hours a day. During this period, 16 gun and knife fights took some 26 lives. There are still 140 bullet holes through-out the building, marking the ceilings, walls, and floors.

You can tour the Bird Cage for $10 a person. Why you’d want to, I don’t know.

Cheap souvenir and “antique” shops abound on Allen Street, as do restaurants, which charge fairly high prices for mundane food. An elderly woman, presumably the owner of the restaurant whose menu we were perusing, told us as she passed by us on the sidewalk assured is that “everything is homemade, even the desserts.” Sure. We walked away from Allen Street to see what was on the outskirts of town. Long in the tooth bed and breakfasts, some cheap motels, a few cute cottages, and a generally ramshackle and rundown appearance. The library used to be the train station, and since like many such stations, it is attractive, we went inside. The librarian wasn’t in the mood to talk. Perhaps she thought that strangers should be out and about spending money.

Everything about Tombstone screams tourist trap, nothing more so than Boot Hill. The old cemetery is at the western edge of town and is the most famous “Boot Hill” In the United States. This is a public cemetery, so we were suspicious when we saw that it was surrounded by a large and gated wall. You have to go inside a building, where you can purchase memorabilia and snacks, to get to the graves. There is no fee, but you have to pay $2 to get a grave guide. I foolishly paid and we went to see the resting places of the most notorious denizens of this southwestern sin city. What we saw outside has to be one of the biggest tourist scams I’ve seen. Each grave consists of a uniform pile of rocks, laid about a foot high above the presumable remains of assorted murderers, murder victims, thieves, those wh succumbed to dread diseases, an prostitutes. A cheap wooden cross identifies the deceased. Not one headstone, just one inscription. We went back inside and asked an oversized man who was intently counting the day’s take, why there were no headstones and why no ordinary people were buried here. He said that the wooden head markers had all rotted. And most of the good folks in the graveyard had been moved across the highway to a new cemetery. Some might still be buried underneath the parking lot, he told us. Only those of ill repute were left behind, and we are to believe that exhaustive research has identified the man who was found dead at the bottom of a mine shaft, stabbed, and who is now buried in one of numbered plots identified in the $2 brochure. This is a real P.T. Barnum enterprise. As is Allen Street. Its designation as a National Historic Landmark District has been compromised by all the hucksterism. The Wikipedia entry cited in the references below points out the following:

Placing "historic" dates on new buildings

Failing to distinguish new construction from historic structures

Covering authentic historic elevations with inappropriate materials

Replacing historic features instead of repairing them

Replacing missing historic features with conjectural and unsubstantiated materials

Building incompatible additions to existing historic structures and new incompatible buildings within the historic district

Using illuminated signage, including blinking lights surrounding historic signs

Installing hitching rails and Spanish tile-covered store porches when such architectural features never existed within Tombstone

The truth of Tombstone can be seen in its demographic and economic data. 1,562 residents; household income 30 percent below the state average; housing prices low and falling; percent of people with higher education “significantly below” the state average; median age “significantly above” the state average’ over 40 percent of men working in construction (mostly nonunion), accommodations/food service, and arts/entertainment/recreation (read stage coach drivers and fake cowboys for the daily shootouts); 25 percent of women working in accommodations/food service. A town of middle-income retirees come to enjoy the warm weather, living with low wage workers and proprietors “servicing” the tourists. We noticed that the barkers and hucksters had a look of desperation on their faces. Will the downturn in the economy spell our doom? A hard-looking women sitting on a bench told a friend that she was going back to Minnesota. No doubt the stage coach drivers, shootout actors, cooks, dishwashers, bed and breakfast owners, motel room attendants, and trailer park attendants face a tough winter.

To get the taste of Tombstone out of our mouths, we stopped at the ghost town of Fairbank on our way back to Tucson. Fairbank was another boom town, blessed with a water supply from the San Pedro river. It was stagecoach stop for those going to Tombstone, and with the advent of silver mining, it became a railroad entrepot, with a silver mill, a school, a hotel, saloons, restaurants, a Wells Fargo office, and other assorted signs of civilization. After the silver boom ended, the heirs to the cattle company that was the original land grant designee for the region asserted claim to the town and forced many residents to leave. The homeowners destroyed their houses rather than leave them to the company. A few people remained, however, and Fairbank survived into the 1970s. In 1987 the Bureau of Land Management acquired the land, and it is now part of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. We looked around the ruins and took a short hike to the town’s cemetery, which sits on a small hill. What vandals haven’t destroyed, time and the weather have. Some of the graves had been protected by wire fences but none of these were intact. We found some faded markers amidst the mess, but it was impossible to read them fully. Inside one of the grave sites I saw a small metal container. I put a dollar bill inside it, for luck and in memory of the dead long forgotten there. Adios, amigo, whoever you were.

Michael D. Yates is Associate Editor of Monthly review magazine.He is the author of Cheap Motels and Hot Plates: an Economist's Travelogue and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. Yates can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com

References

For an overview of Tombstone, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone,_Arizona. For contemporary economic data, see http://www.city-data.com/city/Tombstone-Arizona.html. Notes on the Exhibit at the University of Wyoming, go to http://www.uwyo.edu/artmuseumimages/docs/vanishingredo.pdf). The Amerind Museum site is (see www.amerind.org. If you are planning a trip to the remarkable rock formations of the Chiricahua National Monument, check out (http://www.nps.gov/chir/). Don’t miss the bizarre formations in the Texas Canyon, right along Interstate 10, west of Willcox and north of the Chiricahuas. On the gunfight, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral. On the Civil War in Arizona, try http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/Civil_War.html. Louis Proyect has written an interesting essay on Jesse James and his times at http://www.swans.com/library/art14/lproy47.html. Some interesting information on Fairbank is at http://www.legendsofamerica.com/AZ-Fairbank.html.

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