In January I wrote about Rodney, a junior in one of my English classes in the 1980, who walked into my class one day wearing an "Ozzy for President!" T-shirt. "Ozzy for President!" he proclaimed proudly as he bounced past my desk. Rodney was a nice kid, though not the brightest I had, and something of a head banger wannabe. In the post, I imagined I asked him, "If Ozzy Osbourne was really running for president, if there was really a chance he'd be leading the United States of America, would you vote for him?" And I imagined Rodney replying, "Well, no, probably not . . . But wouldn't it be cool if Ozzy was president?"

I went on to postulate that Rodney was like a lot of Trump supporters, that they loved thinking about Trump as president, but when they were confronted by the possibility of him actually sitting in the Oval Office, they'd realize what a ridiculous idea it was. And I wrote that somewhere down the line, maybe not in the early primaries but later on, "Trump's support will start to crumble, and once that starts, there will be no stopping his downward slide."

I began the last paragraph of that post by writing, "But what do I know? I could be completely wrong." It's looking more and more like I was wrong, completely wrong, ridiculously wrong. Unless some of the recent anti-Trump advertising takes hold or people wake up from their reality show revery on their own, Trump will steamroll his way to the Republican nomination. I haven't completely lost faith, but I'm beginning to think Rodney, now in his late 40s, is one of those guys at a Black Sabbath concert Trump rally taking the pledge.

The Ku Klux Klan began in 1866, founded by former officers of the Confederate army, and remained active in one form or another until 1871. It was revived in 1915, mostly due to the very popular film, The Birth of a Nation, by D.W. Griffith. The film rewrote post-Civil War history, and as it was shown across the country to large audiences, it helped validate and legitimize racism and discrimination which were already prevalent in the U.S.

The Birth of a Nation is a cinematic masterpiece, the finest film made in the U.S. to that point. It took the various cinematic techniques available at the time and used them to enhance the visual and emotional impact in a way no one had seen before. I watched it years ago in a film history class. Though it's a silent film, its power is unmistakeable.

The film, based on a 1905 book, The Clansman, begins with the Civil War, then portrays a defeated south where the freed slaves have taken over. Black legislators are seen sitting in the state house drinking liquor and eating fried chicken with their bare feet up on their tables, ogling white women. Black soldiers push white citizens aside on the sidewalks, and whites are kept from voting while black officials stuff the ballot boxes. The film's shocked and dismayed white hero sees black children being frightened by white children pretending to be ghosts, and the idea for the white-robed Klan is born. The KKK rides to the rescue and saves the day.

Inspired by the film, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan in 1915.

In its second incarnation, the Klan moved beyond just targeting blacks, and broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews and foreigners. The Klan promoted fundamentalism and devout patriotism along with advocating white supremacy. They blasted bootleggers, motion pictures and espoused a return to "clean" living. Appealing to folks uncomfortable with the shifting nature of America from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation, the Klan attacked the elite, urbanites and intellectuals.

Their message struck a cord, and membership in the Klan ballooned in the 1920s. By the middle of the decade, estimates for national membership in this secret organization ranged from three million to as high as eight million Klansmen. And membership was not limited to the poor and uneducated on society's fringes. Mainstream, middle-class Americans donned the white robes of the Klan too. Doctors, lawyers and ministers became loyal supporters of the KKK. In Ohio alone their ranks surged to 300,000. Even northeastern states were not immune. In Pennsylvania, membership reached 200,000. The Klan remained a clandestine society, but it was by no means isolated or marginalized.

"Donald Trump is America's back mole—it may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it has gotten frighteningly bigger, it is no longer wise to ignore it."

It's Super Tuesday, and as John Oliver points out at the beginning of the video below, that's a big deal—In every election since 1998, the candidate who has won the most states on Super Tuesday has gone on to be picked as their party's nominee.

Well, Super Tuesday is here and reality TV star, human piñata and recipient of one small million dollar loan is our Republican frontrunner. 

In a segment from Sunday's show, Oliver takes a look at four things Trump supporters name as his assets: he tells it like it is, he's funding his own campaign and is not beholden to anyone, he's tough and he's successful.


Super Tuesday may be a big indicator in the upcoming election, but Arizona voters still have some waiting to do—Our primary takes place on March 22, three weeks from today.

Even months after the official release of the documentary "Rape on the Night Shift"—an investigative piece that truly gave a platform to the voices of immigrant women who have been victims of sexual assault while working late-night janitorial jobs—the creators of the doc continue to feel the ramifications of putting an ignored issue of this caliber under a gigantic magnifying lens. 

To award-winning doc-maker and journalist Andrés Cediel, one of the producers of the film, it's rewarding to know that janitorial corporations like ABM, which was featured in the documentary, agreed to change some of their internal policies to ensure sexual assault allegations are handled with transparency and dignity. "In other words, they are pledging to take this issue more seriously. [It's] a big deal because they are the industry leader," Cediel says. "The fact that we have that response should have effects throughout the industry as well."

He also refers to the more-than-a-handful of times other news outlets have referenced the documentary, as well as janitorial startups that have pledged to protect their workers—again, citing "Rape on the Night Shift" as the foundation.

Last week I wrote about a new report which concludes that charter schools spend far more on administration per student than school districts. According to the report, charters average $1,403 on administrative costs per student and school districts average $628. The higher costs at charters add up to $128 million a year.

To create the report, the authors went through the Annual Financial Reports submitted to the state by all charters and school districts. They put the data on administrative costs per student for all charters and districts into a long table (It begins on page 26 if you want to look at it). I went through the table to find how much each Tucson-area school district spends on administration per student. As I wrote above, the state average for districts is $628. Here's the local district breakdown, from low to high.

Sunnyside: $548
Amphitheater: $610
TUSD: $614
Vail: $666
Marana: $679
Flowing Wells: $684
Catalina Foothills: $807

Interestingly, TUSD, which is regularly accused of having a bloated administration, is the third lowest on the list, just below the state district average.

The report shows that many of the larger charter districts, which should benefit from economies of scale, actually have some of the highest administrative costs (Costs at some of the smaller charters are below the school districts' average cost). BASIS, for instance, spends an average of $2,275 per student on administration, more than 50 percent higher than the charter average. Here are the numbers for the Tucson-area BASIS schools, from low to high.

Oro Valley Primary: $1,952
Tucson North: $1,976
Tucson: $2,075
Oro Valley: $2,456

One final stat from the study: the amount spent on administration relative to classroom spending. School districts spend an average of 22 percent as much on administration as on the classroom. Charters spend 48 percent.

The latest news on the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts [aka Vouchers on Steroids] vouchers-for-everyone bill is that it's stuck in the House, temporarily at least. Republican leadership postponed debate on HB 2482. They know the Democrats are against it, but the problem is, some Republicans are concerned about it as well. So until they can scare up the needed votes—and I use the term "scare up" advisedly—the bill is on hold.

But I want to bring up one more thought on the ramifications of offering vouchers for all Arizona children, using a post by Richard Gilman from his Bringing Up Arizona website, an excellent place to go for information and ideas about the state of Arizona education.

I mentioned earlier that the greatest beneficiaries of the vouchers-for-all bill are people of means. The ESA voucher for an average student is between $3,500 and $5,000 a year, not enough to pay tuition and expenses at most of the better quality private schools but plenty to give upper middle class and wealthy parents a way to lower their tuition costs on the taxpayer dime. In his post, Gilman covers another aspect of the bill: that it will encourage shady operators to create private schools on the cheap, lure in the children of unsuspecting parents, then pocket as much voucher money as they can. That's what happened, by the way, when Washington, D.C., offered private school vouchers. A similar problem arises whenever there's a rapid expansion of charter schools. A few years back, for example, horror stories were coming out of Florida about the unsafe conditions and nearly complete lack of education at a number of charters.
Here's Richard Gilman's take.

THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

Psst, want to make a quick killing? Go into the school business with me. The state’s making it just too good to pass up.

They’re going to put well over $3,000 of taxpayer money in every kid’s backpack, tell his parents nothing more than he needs to get instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, social sciences and science, and send him out to spend the money on whatever “education” provider he chooses.

Here’s the best part. All you and I have to do to collect this kid’s check is call ourselves a “school,” set up an Arizona address, and accept every child who walks through the door regardless of his race, color, or national origin. And believe me, we’re going to want to lift the money off of any and every of the little snot noses even if they come from New Zealand.

That’s all we have to do. No, really. That’s all there is. We don’t need accreditation or certification or any of that other education crap. You’re no educator, and neither am I. But what difference does that make? The state couldn’t care.

All we need right now is for our buddies in the Legislature to pass this bill they’ve got making tax money available to every kid.

About a week ago, the Internet unearthed its latest meme—the ever-popular, always annoying "Damn Daniel" Vine. 

Most viral videos are at least a little funny, but "Damn Daniel" is not. Daniel Lara, the Vine's namesake, wears white Vans, but that's about all he does. The line, "Damn, Daniel, back at it again in the white Vans," spoken by Lara's friend, Joshua Holz—the guy behind the camera—is the alleged "humor" behind the Vine.

The Vine isn't really that funny, IMO, but I guess Ellen saw promise in the 14-year-olds behind it because she invited Lara and Holz to her show, giving them free "Damn Daniel" merch and Ellen-brand fame. 

"Damn Daniel" was pretty dumb. It made me wonder why the "Lebron James" kid or the "What Are Those" guy weren't invited to Ellen—those Vines were actually funny, after all. 

If the question is, "How do we give parents greater flexibility in selecting schools for their children?" there's one clear answer: School Choice. But if the question is, "How can we improve the quality of education in America?" we probably need to look elsewhere. School choice doesn't seem to lead to increased school achievement, based on nearly every credible study.

Here's a new study about school choice in Louisiana. A few years back, the state instituted a lottery to decide which students get vouchers to attend private schools. That's a golden opportunity for an educational researcher ever there was one. You have a significant number of students who receive vouchers to attend private schools, and you have the same number in a nearly perfect control group: students whose parents wanted them to get the vouchers for their children but lost out in a random lottery. Here's what happened, according to a study by three economists.

In 2014 12,000 students from low-income families applied for more than 6,000 vouchers to attend 126 private schools. . . . The three economists found that those who received vouchers and moved to private schools had worse test scores in maths, reading, science and social studies than those who missed out.

The study is far from conclusive. It only covers a one year period, and all kinds of other factors could have contributed to the voucher students' lower test scores. But this is only one of a string of similar studies which have been conducted in recent years.

Washington, D.C., has a significant voucher program, courtesy of the Republican-majority Congress which makes the rules for the city. Conservatives have studied the academic impact of vouchers in D.C. and haven't been able to point to a significant difference in achievement between voucher and non-voucher students. One analysis of the data was so desperate to find something positive to say about the vouchers that it praised the fact that parents of voucher students felt their children were safer at the private schools than in the public schools they left. The students, by the way, saw no difference.

The results were similar in an in-depth study of the effect of vouchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where vouchers have been in force for over twenty years. Try as they might, a group of conservative researchers couldn't find a significant difference between the achievement of voucher students and similar students in public schools. They went over the data a second time and discovered that the high school graduation rate was higher among the voucher students, which they used as evidence that vouchers work. That's not nothing, but it doesn't say the private school students got a better education. It only says that something about the private schools made students stick it out to the end.

Longtime radio talk-show host John C. Scott's latest gig came to an end with the collapse of PowerTalk 1210's on-air experiment in local programming. 

We miss having Scott telling us not only what's going on, but what's coming off over our backyard fence.

But it didn't talk long for Scott to land on his feet: He's now managing the reelection campaign of Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall.

LaWall, who first won the post in 1996, is facing a challenge in this year's Democratic primary from Joel Feinman, who left his job at the Pima County Public Defender's Office to focus on his campaign.

Feinman, who raised just over $100,000 before the end of 2015, has outdone LaWall, who has raised just $63,000 for her race as of Dec. 31. She had about $56,000 in the bank, compared to Feinman's $71,000.

To prepare for my visit to the Bill Buckmaster Show Wednesday, I listened to Gov. Ducey talking with Buckmaster Tuesday, then listened a second time on the show's website, taking notes. Here are some of the things Ducey said, along with what lies hidden an inch behind his words.

Buckmaster asked Ducey about the upcoming vote to restore most of the JTED funding. Ducey said he was ready to sign the finished bill because "I'm supportive of JTED." In fact, Ducey pushed for the $30 million cut to JTED in the last budget, which doesn't sound very supportive. He explained the cut to Buckmaster by saying he faced a billion dollar deficit and had to make difficult decisions, but added in a classic moment of political doublespeak that he protected K-12 education in the budget. You're not protecting K-12 education when you make cuts to JTED which would have decimated the program if they weren't reversed.

As for being "supportive of JTED," in fact, Ducey proposed $30 million for JTED spread over three years, $10 million a year, for this year's budget. The money would have been used as matching funds to grants from businesses for programs they thought would help train future employees. By most accounts, his proposal would have effectively ended JTED. It was only when Republicans joined with Democrats and created a veto-proof majority for a bill reinstating JTED funds that Ducey discovered how much he supported the program.

In another statement emphasizing his support for education, Ducey said, "We're putting $106 million additional into K-12 education." In fact, half of what Ducey is taking credit for is mandatory funding based on inflation and an increase in student population. That's stay-even money, not an increase.

Next, Ducey moved on to more of his ritual back patting, praising himself for the money that will flow to schools if voters approve Proposition 123—money that's 70 percent of what the state owes the schools based on a proposition approved by voters in 2000 along with a current court order. He went all soft and squishy about school leadership as he talked about those wonderful principals and superintendents who will decide how to spend the Prop 123 money. According to Ducey, they should "have the flexibility to use the additional dollars . . . to make the decisions that are best for that school." Let it go into technology or salaries or classroom supplies or ELL, Ducey said. It's all fine with him.