Nothing.



But.



Crickets.

So much to unpack about Trump University. Never a university. No longer in existence, like so many other Trump ventures. Huge promises from Trump to people desperate for good news, but the most reliable result was people spending $35,000 to $60,000 with little or nothing to show for it. Lawsuit by scammed "students," which Trump says is groundless. Release of Trump U documents ordered by the judge, who Trump vilifies in a 12 minute tirade.

Bottom line: Trump is a showman, a pitch man, a carnival barker, a con man. Whether he's selling Trump steaks, Trump wine, Trump University or President Trump, the product may change, but the pitch remains the same, as do the insults hurled at anyone who dares to stand in his way.

Let's start with the most recent development. A judge ordered that documents about Trump University pertaining to the lawsuit should be unsealed. (Monday morning, the judge made them public.) Last Friday during a rally in San Diego, Trump devoted 12 substance-free minutes of his 58 minute address to how awful the judge is.

“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd of several thousand booed. “He is not doing the right thing.”

Not much there. Here's a tad more information.

“We’re in front of a very hostile judge,” Mr. Trump said. “The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he’s given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.”

So. The judge should recuse himself because he was appointed by Obama and he's ruled against Trump. What's more, the judge, according to Trump, is "Mexican." In fact, Curiel was born in Indiana.

"Trump University" was never a university. It was one of those get-rich-quick cons that begin with free promotional seminars about how to make millions in real estate designed to convince people to buy increasingly more expensive coursework. The first three day seminar costs $1,495. The "Gold Elite" programs cost $35,000.

Keeping all those colored people as slaves simply makes sense. They're not equipped to deal with the responsibility of being free citizens. And then letting them vote on top of giving them their freedom? God no! It's Just Wrong.

Women are fine in their place, but it's the men folks who should be making important decisions. Give women the vote? God no! It's Just Wrong.

They have their schools, we have our schools, and it's working just fine. Integrate the schools? God no! It'll cause chaos. Everyone will suffer. It's Just Wrong.

Interracial marriage? Gay rights? Gay marriage? God no! Wrong, wrong, wrong. It'll destroy the fabric of society.

And so it goes. Now the issue is transgender people using the bathroom of their choice. Somehow we managed to survive all those other changes which granted rights where rights were previously denied—and we've become a better society for it—but this time, apparently, this change is a bridge too far. It's. Just. Wrong.

Arizona has joined with 10 other states to oppose the Obama administration's recent guidance on the way schools should treat their transgender students. It's Attorney General Mark Brnovich's ball game, but Superintendent of Public Instruction has picked up a bat and stepped to the plate as well.

Historians, skeptics and believers in the paranormal can all find something to love about the downtown Tucson ghost tours put on by Specter Tours.

The small Tucson-based tour company leads walking tours around downtown Tucson. 

Tour guide and business owner Robert Owens is a dedicated historian and entertainer. Tour goers are taken around many Tucson landmarks such as the Rialto Theater, the Fox Theater and the Pioneer Hotel.

The Pioneer Hotel, the site of Arizona’s most deadly fire, has a rich history and spooky ghost stories to compliment it.

The tour also stops by 101 E. Pennington Street, an old mortuary that is now the home of Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink and Tough Luck Club. Owens recommends it as a place to relax with a drink while looking for apparitions after the tour.

Specter Tours is in the process of adding a new route, which is expected to open in early July. The new route will take tour guests around Fort Lowell Park with ghost hunting equipment similar to what you might see on television, like thermal imaging scanners.

Tickets can be purchased through Groupon for the Friday and Saturday tours. Tours start in front of the Rialto, loop around downtown, and end at Hotel Congress. 

This, I think, is a brand new acronym: NIMB: Not In My Budget. It's when politicians admit, yes, we may need to spend money to fund necessary government services, but it's not coming from our coffers. "Not In My Budget. You'll have to find the money somewhere else." It explains so much about what's going on in Phoenix these days.

The original acronym, of course, is NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard. It's when people agree that, sure, we may need a homeless women's shelter or a nursing home or a landfill or a chemical plant, just not anywhere near where I live. Put it in someone else's neighborhood, not mine.

I remember a moment in the presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter back in 1980. Reagan had just finished a stump speech and was taking questions from the press. A journalist asked Reagan, who was campaigning on lower taxes and smaller government, about his plan to lump federal funding to states into block grants which he said would give states the freedom to spend the money as they saw fit rather than having to comply with all kinds of federal rules and regulations. The journalist pointed out that the block grants Reagan proposed were smaller than the total funding they replaced. With a "Gotcha!" glint in his eye, the journalist asked how Reagan expected the states to fund the existing programs with less money.

Reagan answered simply, "They can raise taxes."

I was dumbfounded, amazed, awe struck. It was so simple. Reagan planned to make government smaller and lower taxes at the federal level, which is where he planned to live when he was elected. If that meant more money was needed at the state or local levels, well, that's their problem, not his. Let them raise taxes. It was classic NIMB. Not In My Budget.

Today's Star has a story about a judicial ruling that the state of Arizona illegally shifted $7.4 million [according to Pima County, the figure should be $15.8 million. I regret the error.] worth of funding obligations to Pima County. The state has to pick up the cost, according to the judge. In 1980 voters passed a measure which said, if property taxes are higher than one percent of the property's value, the state has to make up the difference. Last year, the legislative majority decided it didn't want to follow the voter mandate. "NIMB!" they shouted. "Not In My Budget!" So they passed SB 1476 which said the state is only responsible for a million dollars per county. That shifted $7.4 million $15.8 million from the state to Pima County. Voila! The state cuts its budget and someone else picks up the tab.

Arizona has joined 10 other states in a federal lawsuit against President Barack Obama's mandate asking public K-12 schools and post-secondary schools to allow transgender children and youth use the locker room and bathroom of the gender they identify with.

The lawsuit calls Obama's mandate "federal overreach," and focuses on setting rules about who should enact these guidelines.

The lawsuit—which includes Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin—was presented by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas on behalf of the state's Department of Education. The Heber-Overgaard Unified School District is a plaintiff as well, according to a press release from the superintendent's office. The suit comes after Obama and the Departments of Justice and Education said schools have to protect the rights of transgender students. Schools that discriminate transgender students could face losing federal funding.

North Carolina recently issued an anti-LGBT law, House Bill 2, which forces transgender individuals into bathrooms that differ from their preferred gender and prohibits cities from creating laws protecting LGBT people. The law, which the DOJ says discriminates and violates civil rights, has fueled national debate about protection of transgender rights and alleged concerns from conservatives about people using the bathroom that doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth.

The press release says,

It's Day 5 of the Ducey "Next Step" Watch, which began Friday when the governor declared that Prop 123 passed. Lots has happened on the school funding front since then, but not much of it has come from Ducey.

If you remember, when he was asked what he plans as a next step after the passage of Prop 123, Ducey dodged the question, saying, “We’re going to take the rest of the day off. We’re going to celebrate a little bit.” Now we have another quote from Ducey which gives us a bit more to go on.

"We're going to keep this coalition together, from the education community to the business community to the elected leadership in our state, and we're going to talk about how we continue to improve K-12 education."

Interesting. Let's start with what's not in Ducey's statement: the words "funding" or "money." People can read whatever we want into his assertion that we should "continue to improve K-12 education," but Ducey has made it clear from his first day as governor, he doesn't want to spend a penny more from the general fund if he can help it. He's pushed to lower school funding in the two state budgets since he was elected.

As for Ducey's "coalition," it was always more of a temporary, uneasy alliance than a genuine coalition. On one side of the alliance, Ducey and his Republican cronies think Prop 123 is great. It gives a little money to schools to deflect the growing voter consensus that we need to increase funding even if it means raising taxes, and most of the money comes from the children's state land trust fund rather than the state coffers. "Maybe that'll satisfy 'em so we can get back to budget cuts and tax breaks for our rich supporters." On the other side of the alliance, some supporters of public education reluctantly joined with Ducey to get a little money for our schools sooner rather than later, knowing it's unlikely Republicans will follow the court order to replace the school funding which was taken away illegally. They hate the fact that the money comes from the state land trust fund, but they held their nose and supported Prop 123 anyway.

On Day 5, it looks like Ducey's fraying coalition has been replaced by another coalition calling itself AZ Schools Now!, and it doesn't include Ducey and his buddies.

Mark the date, May 20, 2016. That's the day Governor Ducey declared that Prop 123, his "first step" to improve Arizona education, passed. The count isn't official yet, but Ducey believes it's a done deal. So now it's time to find out what he has in mind for the next step.

When Howard Fischer asked Ducey outright what comes next, the governor got cute.

“We’re going to take the rest of the day off,” he said. “We’re going to celebrate a little bit.”

Fine. But unless he's planning to go on a serious bender, the celebrations should be over soon and it'll be time for him to state his plans. The "Next Step" Watch has begun. Today is Day 1. Weekends count, since being governor is a 24/7 job. I'm sure Ducey has been thinking about what he wants to do next, he just hasn't told the rest of us. It's time.

Let me offer a suggestion. Ducey should get together with the leaders of the House and Senate and propose a $300 million K-12 education package to match the $300 million Prop 123 is supposed to bring in. The first $90 million of that will take us from 70 percent to 100 percent of what the courts say the state owes our schools. The remaining $210 million will be new funding.

I would have preferred a cleaner, clearer outcome, a two or three point spread on Prop 123 no matter whether it went up or down, but here we are, stuck in the middle. We'll know, maybe by Friday, maybe next week, if it squeaked by or just fell short.

Meanwhile . . .

The next step begins. As the twitter hashtag says, #nowitstarts. The vote counting and the court battles which will inevitably follow mustn't obscure the fact that Prop 123 is only about giving back the money for our children's educations which voters demanded in 2000 and the Republican leadership took away illegally in 2009. It's about trying to get back to Arizona's previously lousy per student funding before the majority leadership used the recession as an excuse to make it even lousier. And if Prop 123 passes, then manages to jump over whatever legal hurdles are put in front of it, that won't get us all the way back. That will only get us 70 percent of the way there. If it goes down, we're back to the earlier unresolved court battles which, if they're resolved in the schools' favor, will bring us 100 percent of our previously lousy per student funding.

Either way, it's not enough. Not nearly. We're thousands of dollars per student below the national average. States lower than us on the economic ladder spend more than we do.

The next important step for us regular folks isn't watching the vote counts ebb and flow or following the court fights. Those are spectator sports. Most of us can only watch passively, there's not much we can do. The next important step is at the ballot box. Vote out the candidates who don't support significant new funding for our children's educations. Vote in candidates who do.

This is one of those times when a one issue state election makes sense. "Will you do everything you can to provide substantially more money for our children's educations? If so, you've got my vote. If not, see ya' later." Because this one issue speaks volumes, not just about where the candidates stand on the improving the present and future of our children but where they stand on the general well being of all Arizona residents regardless of racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds. It tells us what the candidates think is more important: starving the budget and giving tax cuts to the wealthiest among us or making Arizona a better place for all of us to live.

Apropos of nothing—no social or educational import whatever—I have to say I hate the word "impactful." Even when it sits silently on paper, it hurts my ears. Impactful. Ugh.

This isn't a case of word snobbery. I'm not a card carrying member of the word police. I agree with the statement I first read as a high school senior that the dictionary is a historian (an historian?), not a lawgiver. New words are great. Inspired slang is wonderful. "Ain't" is a word, and a good word at that. "I ain't got no pencil" doesn't mean I have a pencil (Language is communication, not math. Two negatives don't automatically make a positive. Everyone knows the speaker doesn't have a pencil—everyone, that is, except that persnickety English teacher who pretends not to understand). It's cute to answer a student's question, "Can I go to the bathroom?" by saying, "Yes you can, but you may not." It may be one of those teachable moments, though if the poor kid pees his/her pants, the only lesson will be that the teacher is a sadist. But in real life, everyone knows the sentence, "Can I go to the bathroom?" is a request to leave the room to relieve oneself.

This morning I read a short note in the Star about the death of actress Madeleine LeBeau at 92. I learned she had a "small but impactful role in 'Casablanca.'" Ironically, that ugly word, virtually devoid of emotion, is supposed to describe the visual and emotional impact (ah, much better!) of a closeup on LeBeau's face as she stands, tears in her eyes, during the spontaneous singing of "La Marseillaise" by the patrons in Rick's (Humphrey Bogart's) cafe to drown out some German soldiers.

Impactful. Who made that a word? To find out, I googled it. ("To google," by the way, is an example of "verbing," where nouns are turned into verbs. The trend surged in business circles a few decades back ["We need to dialogue about this"; "Let's calendar our next meeting"] and has become a vital part of our online world ["Bookmark that website"; "Email me"; "Text Me"; "I'm gonna blog about that"]). "Impactful" has been around at least since the 1950s, most probably created by academic writers, who love to invent clunky jargon to distinguish themselves from normal English speakers. Later it was picked up by business people who use newly coined words to make themselves feel like they're ahead of the curve, as if a new term is the same thing as a clever new idea. Gradually, it worked its way into art, dance and film criticism which, I guess, is why it was in the LeBeau obituary and turns up so often in movie reviews.

If blogging on this topic plays an impactful role in limiting the use of that awful word, my work here is done.