Sen. John McCain, who is still battling brain cancer at his home in Arizona, blasted President Donald Trump's press conference with Vladimir Putin. McCain's full statement:

Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.

President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.

It is tempting to describe the press conference as a pathetic rout – as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.

Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency. That the president was attended in Helsinki by a team of competent and patriotic advisors makes his blunders and capitulations all the more painful and inexplicable.

No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.

Retiring Sen. Jeff Flake was more succinct on Twitter:

I never thought I would see the day when our American President would stand on the stage with the Russian President and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression. This is shameful.

— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) July 16, 2018

But will either McCain or Flake do anything about it?

It’s been half a century since Clyde Bellecourt founded the American Indian Movement, which has worked to protect the rights of Native Americans across the country and make sure the United States fulfills its treaties with Native American nations. Now, Bellecourt is coming to Tucson to celebrate this milestone with a talk and book signing.

During the talk, Bellecourt, who is also the national director of AIM, will discuss the movement’s past and future. He’ll also speak about cultural stereotypes and share insight into his experiences with other AIM leaders and activists. After the talk, he will sign copies of his autobiography, Thunder Before the Storm. The 2016 biography chronicles Bellecourt’s childhood on a Minnesota reservation as well as his history of activism and advocacy.

Bellecourt, whose Native American name is Nee Gon Nway Wee Dung, was born on White Earth Chippewa Reservation in the Ojibwe tribe in 1936. Bellecourt was one of the founders of AIM during its rise in the late 1960s, when indigenous people began to organize to advocate for their rights.

Bellecourt has also founded or co-founded other organizations that further his work as an activist in the United States: The Heart of the Earth Survival School, the first culturally-based education program under parent control in the country; the Legal Rights Center, which provides criminal
defense and restorative justice services to people with low income; and the Minneapolis Indian Health Board, the country’s first urban Indian program. Bellecourt also works on changing racist mascot names and school names throughout the country as a current coordinator of the National Coalition Against Racism in Sports and Media.

“Clyde Bellecourt Speaks – American Indian Movement: Past, Present and Future” will take place 3 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3 at the Sea of Glass Center for the Arts, 330 E. 7th St. Tickets are $25 in advance of $35 the day of the event. For tickets, call (520) 398-2542. Proceeds from the event support AIM and local nonprofit service programs. Content appropriate for ages 14 and up.

Teachers, here's a pop quiz. How will you receive information trying to convince you to drop ties with the teachers union? (a) Email. (b) Snail mail. (c) Phone call. (d) Knock on your door. The correct answer is (e) Any or all of the above.

The Public School Wrecking Crew scored a huge win when the Supreme Court decided public-employee unions cannot make nonmembers contribute to collective bargaining in its recent Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees decision. The ink was barely dry on the written arguments when right wing money began pouring into campaigns to persuade teachers to walk away from their unions.

Right-leaning think tanks and advocacy organizations have placed anti-union ads on Google and social media and sent targeted emails to teachers across the country. Some plan to go door to door to reach educators during the summer.

One group is trying to uses states' open records laws to get the email addresses of union members to make targeting even easier.

Two groups spearheading the campaign are The Mackinac Center and The Freedom Foundation. Both have strong libertarian, "free market" leanings. That puts them in the same ideological camp, and funding stream, as UA's "Freedom Center," which created the high school course, Philosophy 101: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship, currently on hold in TUSD, though it's still being taught in other local school districts as well as charter and private schools. (To give you the complete buzz word, dog whistle experience, the center's full name is the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. It is housed in the recently created Department of Political Economy & Moral Science.)

Let's look at the two groups funding the anti-union push.

The TUSD Governing Board decided to table a vote on reinstating the course, Phil 101: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship. The course was created by UA's Koch Brothers-infused Freedom Center and has met with controversy and skepticism since people found out about it.

It looks like the main reason for delaying the vote is the textbook. New textbooks are supposed go through a review process and be on display in the district office for 60 days before the board votes on adoption, which hasn't happened. Up to this point, the district has played fast and loose with the course. The board wasn't even involved in approving it. It would have been difficult to justify fast tracking the textbook after all the prior shenanigans.

So, no Phil 101 course at TUSD. For now. The issue will almost certainly come to a board vote sometime during this school year after the textbook has gone through the 60 day review process, which means the board could decide to reinstate the course.

That's the end of the news. Now, for your amusement...

At 3:15 p.m., Tuesday, July 10 a Union Pacific train derailed between Twin Peaks Road and Avra Valley. Roughly 20 rails cars fell off and scattered across the train tracks and adjacent areas.

The derailment caused no injuries, according to Jeff DeGraff, Arizona Director of Media Relations at Union Pacific. Two crew members were on board, however they were at the front of the train whereas the derailment occurred toward the middle.

The cause of the derailment is still under investigation, although heavy rainfall and flooding likely played a role. Union Pacific will release an official announcement once a full examination of the tracks can be completed.

Northwest Fire District were the first responders to the scene, originally on the way to the area on a stranded motorist call, right around the time the train derailed.

“There was a bit of irony that we were already on our way,” said Brian Keeley, Captain and Public Information Officer for Northwest Fire District. “So it was lucky, we were right on it.”

The fire department’s role was mainly for hazardous materials management. Although haz mat crews were dispatched, no hazardous materials were found on scene, according to the Northwest Fire District.

The derailment obstructed two sets of tracks. The first set of tracks is now cleared and already has some trains passing through, in an attempt to prevent any further delays. Workers are still clearing equipment and containers from the second pair of tracks.

Because of the intensely busy day for emergency calls caused by monsoon rains, local agencies assisted Northwest Fire due to mutual aid agreements. The Marana Police Department, Tucson Fire Department, Golder Ranch Fire District, Town of Marana, Pima County Sheriff, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety all joined the effort.

“Public safety is a team effort,” Keeley said. “No one person could take care of all of this, it requires a network.”

Around 7 p.m. Tuesday evening, once the haz mat units okayed the area, the project was turned over from the fire departments to Union Pacific.

Union Pacific has no firm time of completion, and plan on continuing to work through the day.

The charter school movement owes its current level of success to its friends in high tax brackets. Lots of friends. We wouldn't have as many charters as we have now, by a long shot, if deep-pocketed donors hadn't contributed billions to get them started and prop them up. And they'd get far less press without all the privatization/"education reform" groups funded by the same rich folks who help them make it into the news.

Take the private donors out of the charter school biz, and we'd have a backwater education movement with significant outposts around the country, a band of ardent supporters and occasional articles in the media, including thought pieces like "Will charter schools ever catch on?"

A number of the deep-pocketed charter supporters are men who made their money in high tech and hedge funds. Their allegiance has less to do with an objective analysis of charters than their dislike of government regulations and their oversized, self-made-man egos. Other donors are billionaires who made their money the old fashioned way, they inherited it. Together, they've plowed billions into charter schools. That's on top of taxpayer funding, of course. Charters get per student dollars from state budgets, just like district schools.

I used "billions" to describe the money going to charters. Did I add a zero to the total to exaggerate the contributions to charter schools? The answer is, no. Billions it is, no exaggeration necessary. To get a sense of the kind of money that flows to charters from private sources, let's push aside all the donors except one, not because the others' contributions are insignificant, but because this one money machine cranks out cash for charters at an amazing rate. I'm talking about the Walton Foundation.

Organizers of the Invest in Education campaign turned in about 270,000 signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State's office on Thursday, meeting the deadline to get their "tax the rich" initiative on November's ballot.

The Invest in Education Act proposes a 3.46 percent income tax increase for individuals earning over $250,000 and households earning over $500,000, as well as a 4.46 percent increase for individuals earning over $500,000 and households earning $1 million or more.

If 150,642 of those signatures are deemed valid, and Arizona voters approve the measure, then 60 percent of the expected $690 million in tax revenues will go toward raising teacher salaries and the remaining 40 percent will go toward improving public school and educational operations.

According to the Invest in Education campaign website, if this measure is passed by voters, the $1 billion that has been lost in public school funding since fiscal year 2008 will be restored by adding together the Invest in Education Act's $690 million with the additional $400 million that was granted in Gov. Ducey's "20x2020" plan, after Arizona K-12 teachers held a strike at the state capitol in April.

These combined funds would equal $1.1 billion for the advancement of Arizona’s public schools starting in 2019.

Tuesday, July 10, the TUSD school board will vote on bringing back a course created by the University of Arizona's Freedom Center — Philosophy 101: Ethics, Economy and Entrepreneurship.
I expect we'll see some post-July 4 fireworks during the meeting's Call to the Audience. How will the board vote? I don't have a clue, though I expect it'll go 3-2 either way.

Last October I wrote a column in the Weekly print edition about the Phil 101 course. Some of what I wrote was news to members of the school board who didn't know the course existed (it never went to the board for approval), much less that it was created and sponsored by the Koch Brothers-backed Freedom Center at University of Arizona. It was also news to most of Tucson.

In December, the board voted 4-1 to cancel the course at the end of the 2017-18 school year. Tuesday they're taking a second look. If the item passes, the course will no longer fulfill the state economics requirement as it did before. It will be an elective. However, it will still be a dual credit course, meaning students can take it for both UA and high school credit.

Some UA profs who know more about economics than I do say Phil 101 is a shoddy course using a shoddy textbook (Course and textbook were created by the same people at the Freedom Center).

What I know is, the course was designed to promote a libertarian agenda, and it's no more than two degrees of separation from the billionaire Koch Brothers' decades-long campaign to push their agenda in Congress, state legislatures, colleges and high schools around the country. UA's Freedom Center and the Phil 101 course are among the campaign's recent success stories.

The course was created and promoted using a $2.9 million grant from a private foundation. The price tag alone is a warning sign that some folks with deep pockets really, really want this to happen. I can't think of another instance where someone put that kind of money behind the creation of a single high school course.

Another warning sign. The foundation's website said it hopes by 2025, the course "will reach some 25,000 high school students — roughly 25 percent of Arizona's high school student population."

They're looking to see some serious libertarian-infused bang for their bucks. It's likely the vote isn't a done deal. If you want to make your opinions known to board members before the Tuesday meeting, here are the emails they list on the TUSD website:

Michael Hicks: [email protected]
Kristel Foster: [email protected]
Adelita Grijalva: [email protected]
Rachael Sedgwick: [email protected]
Mark Stegeman: [email protected]

Stay tuned.

County sources tell The Weekly that Lori Hunnicutt, the woman behind the online Arizona Daily Independent, is going to work for Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller.

Hunnicutt, who regularly publishes glowing articles about Miller and attacks on Miller's political enemies, filled out paperwork this week for the new job.

Hunnicutt did not respond to an email asking if she would continue in her role as as an editor and publisher of ADI (which has been called the "Ally Defense Initiative" around county offices for some time) while drawing a county paycheck.

A collection of emails from former staffers unearthed by the Tucson Sentinel showed that Hunnicutt would run stories by Miller's office before publishing them.

Miller has employed dozens of staffers in her six years in office, as her management style often drives away workers. As one of them told us after leaving the office: “She’s a horrible manager. She doesn’t know how to ask people to do things in a professional manner. It’s just kind of bark, bark, bark.”

My last post was all about how wrong-headed and destructive high stakes tests are to schools, teachers and students. We need to get rid of the yearly tests. Not jigger with them. Not improve them. Not replace them with complex, multi-faceted rubrics to rank schools' effectiveness. Get rid of them. Repeal and don't replace.

There's only so much we can know about education, and it's far less than the tests pretend to tell us. Learn to live with uncertainty. It beats being certain and wrong.

We lived with uncertainty before No Child Left Behind came along fifteen years ago and created our yearly high stakes testing ritual. We've always argued about schools. The difference is, before NCLB, we didn't have yearly test scores from students around the country to "prove" our point. The scores didn't prove anything. All we learned from running those millions of data points through sophisticated computer analyses is that we can arrive at mathematically precise conclusions that are wrong four places to the right of the decimal point.

We can live with uncertainty again. We can continue to disagree about our schools on educational, political and financial grounds, using whatever arguments and data we can pull together to make our cases. But let's not back up our claims with bad data which has been passed off by politicians as educational gospel. It cheapens and distorts the conversation, and it hurts the students.