Now they want to take my house

July 2nd, 2009

I just mowed my back yard in record time. I was thinking about the stupidity of the School District’s attorneys as I pulled the cord to start my mower. As the engine sputtered to life it occurred to me that we decided to avoid a bond because that would have required one of the taxpayers to his house of as collateral for a Bond Company. How damn selfish of us to want to keep our homes. Taking people’s home is something the Duluth School Board is very good at. No wonder I tore through my backyard so fast.

This group of (Golly PG, what should I call them that meets your standards of civility?) Board members is damn good at threatening people out of their houses without the public mandate a referendum would have given them. Now, they don’t think our money is good enough. The want a pound of flesh. They want one of the tax payers challenging this infamous contract to risk the loss of his home.

There is a phrase I keep hearing more often at Let Duluth Vote meetings. Its “pardon my French.”

Well pardon me!

On tenterhooks yet again

July 2nd, 2009

We will learn on July 7th whether cash is good enough for the Sixth District Court.

Judge Hylden’s vacation was interrupted this afternoon to decide whether Let Duluth Vote should have spent an extra $3,000 for a surety bond to provide $100,000, if needed, instead of just handing over $100,000.

The School District’s attorneys maintain that a spouse might contest this money in court if they didn’t know it was withdrawn from their account. Oh, and a spouse would never complain that money was unknowingly withdrawn from a personal account if it was used to buy a surety bond.

Its a good thing bonds are so reliable unlike Federal Reserve Bank notes. And, come to think of it, the FDIC will insure our $100,000 while it lies in a bank account for the Court.

The Red Plan Strikes Back

July 2nd, 2009

From the Advertising Company paid by the taxpayers to make them feel better about being swindled; here’s a video debunking Let Duluth Vote’s Plan B.

Let Duluth Vote’s “Plan B” presentation to the Duluth School Board from Greenfield Communications on Vimeo.

Notice how for the first time in history incumbent school board members actually ask questions. (Also note that they were given questions on pieces of paper to ask so that this contrivance could be properly staged.)

Notice that unlike their Red Plan which they never looked at before sending it to the Minnesota Dept. of Education for Review, they actually have copies of Let Duluth Vote’s Plan B to look at.

Notice that the video shows them asking many, many, many, many questions.

Notice that the video does not show any, any, any, any replies to these questions.

Notice the amazing similarity between this Video Advertisement’s insinuations and the information provided by the Duluth News Tribune the day after this video was shot.

I spent half an hour trying to buy this story on the Trib’s website. Its probably just another sinister booby trap engineered by JCI.

An embarassment of riches

July 2nd, 2009

I’ve been copying my posts month by month to organize them for the book. They will provide me with text, context and a time frame. I can do a search on topics like, the chamber of Commerce or School Board meetings to give me instant time lines.

I was about to turn in when I decided to do a word check to see how many words I’d posted in the recently completed month of June. Turns out its over 30,000.

Then I checked May and it was 29,400 words. In the past two years I’ve taken breaks from blogging to write in other venues about the Red Plan controversy. This, of course, doesn’t even take into consideration the emails I’ve sent out. If I had simply written 30,000 words a month for two years on the Red Plan I’d have cranked out three quarters of a million words about it by now.

That got me curious. I’ve figured the most reasonable size for a book would be about 200 pages. Not too big. Not too small. So how many words would that be?

I found this page which gives some idea of the number of words in a paperback book.

Every publisher has their own guidelines as to word counts and what’s what, but here is a general idea according to what I’ve heard over the years…

Short… 7,000 to 20,000
Novella… 20,000 to 40,000
Catagory… 40,000 to 65,000
Novel… 65,000 to 90,000
Novel Plus… 90,000 to 120,000
Super Novel… 120,000+

But wikipedia says differently…

Flash Fiction… 1,000 to 3,000
Short… 3,000 to 15,000
Novelette… 7,500 to 17,500
Novella… 17,500 to 40,000
Novel… 40,000 to 75,000
Epic… 75,000+

I won’t have to write this book so much as edit it.

The Difference between us

July 2nd, 2009

This story caught my eye because I listed the same Minnesota communities on a similar graph.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/media/full/png/2009/07/01/population.png

What’s the difference between Duluth and all these other Minnesota Cities?

Give up?

Duluth is the only one with a school board that has the power or has excercised the power to build anything approaching the size of Red Plan without a public vote.

If they shoot you in the street by day

July 1st, 2009

You can praise God at night in the dark from your rooftop. Tehran at night.

A few years after the Iranian Revolution Salman Rushdie wrote the book that led to the Ayatolahs of Iran issuing a death sentence on him. Any Moslem was given permission to hunt him down and kill him anywhere they could find him. He spent the next decade in hiding.

I was so incensed I wrote a letter to the student governments of the 100 largest colleges and universities in the US urging them to pass resolutions condemning this threat to freedom of speech. No one ever wrote back.

The disaster’s first wave

July 1st, 2009

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/media/full/png/2009/07/01/scores.png

Don’t worry. Pretty soon Duluth will have brand new buildings to bring our test scores back up.

Please DNT. Don’t write that story about the exodus of children from the Duluth Schools. It would be so out of character for a Chamber of Commerce newsletter.

Winking at Sarah

July 1st, 2009

As today’s story on the descent of Duluth test scores shows, no amount of schmoozing will win over a reporter in the end. A good reporter can only let so much soft soap pass before they wake up and remember their professional obligation to tell the truth.

While I was in California sketching out things I wanted to include in the book I hope to finish by October I just about filled out a page of what I consider to have been front page news stories that were overlooked since I began fighting the Red Plan. For each individual story I can justify its exclusion or its downplaying but the totality is alarming.

Critics of the Red Plan have had to rely on this blog - and blogs are always a dodgy and dubious source of info - and letters to the editor or the rare Let Duluth Vote ads or mailing. And of course, there is the rumor mill with lots of word of mouth complaints. Good news coverage dampens this but in its absence public doubt inflates. That’s the situation in Duluth.

Both the LDV and Dixon loyalists spin the press. The most recent example is the laughable complaint by the District’s attorneys that genuine cash is a poor substitute for a bond. Maybe the District’s attorneys are unaware of all the bond holders who lost money last year when the world teetered on Depression. I’d prefer cold cash any day. I’m sure JCI feels the same way.

Until the last few months I worked hard to stay on Sarah Horner’s good side. I learned from her first call to me that she could be a formidable reporter and I had to earn her trust after joking around with her in that first call. Since then I’ve had her chuckling on many occasions because I can be quite a cut up. So far I have no complaints about my personal portrayal in any of her stories. I spend my time to explain myself which is how I’ve always operated and that’s my best guarantee of fair treatment. A couple of times an Editor has put an unflattering headline over a story Sarah has written and last week the story of my fundraising activities was surrounded by an asinine story comparing LDV’s Plan B unfavorably with the Red Plan. It looked like the Trib was saying: “look at Harry - He’s trying to raise money to saddle Duluth with a crappy school system”. But in all these cases it was an editor not Sarah that burned me.

My entente however has gotten more testy of late as regular readers can appreciate. Its the constant rah rah in Red Plan stories that has begun to grate - that and the absence of serious stories casting some skepticism at the Red Plan.

That first phone call from Sarah was a wake up call. I had just started complaining about the absence of a referendum when she called and, as is my want, began joking around. After a stony silence from the other end I quickly realized Sarah was not amused. I sobered up and gave her the best most rational explanation I could of my objections. Later that day I had to bring something to the Trib and as I walked in asked to have Sarah pointed out. I walked over and introduce myself. I told Sarah that she gave me the toughest interview I’d ever had (something many Red Plan opponents have endured) and told her that I appreciated her journalistic skepticism. I then asked only that she apply that skepticism equally to proponents of the Red Plan. I’ve seen little evidence of this over the past two years. That may explain my growing testiness toward the Trib in my blog posts because all Sarah’s superiors rush to her defense whenever LDV complains about the lack of a level playing field.

I’m not much of a charmer outside of the spin I put on reporters. I had dotty old aunts that fawned all over a couple shirt tail male cousins who excelled at the gentlemanly art of flattering women. That’s not me. Dr. Dixon however is a pro at such enchantment and I found this anecdote from our last LDV meeting interesting.

LDVers at the last week’s Committee of the Whole watched Dr. Dixon closely as he staged the bad mouthing of Plan B. At one point in the proceedings Dr. Dixon turned toward Sarah and gave her a knowing wink along with his triumphant grin. My personal reaction to hearing this was, “ick.”

When I started running for the School Board Anne Bretts was the Trib’s education reporter. The School Board hated her because she regularly wrote tough and unflattering stories. Anne did me no favors either but she was honest. A whole succession of ed reporters followed Anne while I served on the Board for eight years. I believe they appreciated my candor even while most of them would probably tell you I wasn’t your typical politician. That would be a little like a person telling an artist that his painting was “interesting.”

Dr. Dixon knows what he’s doing. He knows people are watching him at Board meetings and he’s far too calculated to think no one would notice that wink. That wink said, “OK LDV, I’ve got Sarah in the palm of my hands and see how she’s smiling back at me? You’re going to get your butt whipped in the Trib tomorrow.”

For those of you who think my analysis is a little fevered - its not. Ask yourself if Brandon Stahl would appreciate having the Mayor wink at him at a City Council meeting or if John Myers would appreciate it if Rep. Reinhart winked at him during a hot and heavy debate at the State Capitol with lots of witnesses. That wink may not have made a whit of a difference to Sarah the reporter. It was meant to assure the audience, both supporters and critics, that Dixon had a fix in at the Trib. In short Dr. Dixon’s wink was meant to cast doubt on the Trib’s integrity.

I would never wink at an reporter with my opponents watching me. It would imply that the reporter was biased. Well, frankly, maybe its true.

376 visitors

July 1st, 2009

I remembered to take a quick look at the latest stats for this site before shutting the computer down. I finished June with new records for old Abe. Today there were 376 “unique” visitors. Once again that creamed that old record. Stay tuned friends, you are all unique to me, and I’ll do my best to keep this interesting until the fight is over.

And its got a few more chapters to go. I haven’t read it yet but along side the improved story about our bond raising is another one about the District’s tumbling test scores. Well, what the hell else would you expect from a bunch of starry eyed Kool Aid drinkers that are killing programs and laying off teachers to build shiny new buildings?????????

These kinds of trends are like a big ship in the water. They take a long time to change. The test scores kept improving for the years after my program oriented school board was history. I expect the downward trend to continue in Duluth for years after the Red Plan disaster.

I can’t wait for this school board’s incumbents to face the voters. I’ll read the story tomorrow. I hope to fall asleep and start smiling again. I won’t be able to do that if start reading more about Dr. Dixon’s nightmare.

After two hours of sleep here’s a recap of a hectic day

July 1st, 2009

At ten pm I wondered if I had suffered from a stroke. I sat down at the computer to send a two line email and couldn’t type a simple sentence. A few minutes before I had just gotten a call from my daughter asking me to do a simple google search and couldn’t manage it. My month long anxiety about whether we would raise enough to cover the bond had begun to dissolve earlier in the day when one of our angels made it clear that a $5,000 donation could be boosted higher. Like others he/she was a little coy about how much would be contributed but then mentioned that $25,000 had recently been transferred to make a big donation possible. This was not our only last minute angel. After I took out my own $10,000 cashiers check I collected two more from this particular angel. We had an understanding that if the entire amount was not needed one of the cashiers checks would be returned. I think it will be returned.

There were other angels whose identities I do not know and I do not care to know. Just how many I don’t know but it appears that we could have raised far more than the $100,000 we handed over to the St. Louis County Court Administrator. This info is being withheld from me because my blog is so candid that I make my own LDV allies nervous. Will I be sued for libel, Will I reveal a secret that our deep pocketed opponents (whose pockets are lined with our tax money) will exploit to thwart us. There are people in this town who could be punished economically by people who are threatened by our suit. I don’t care to expose them. I’m just grateful they exist.

At our press conference the Trib’s reporter questioned Larry Burda closely about these angels and his questions implied that in getting a few large donations only a handful of people had turned the trick. I could have been irritated but I was mostly amused. To date we’ve had thousands of contributors. It was my decision not to send out another fundraising letter for the bond but those thousands of previous contributors gave us money for a legal challenge. You can be sure they were just as anxious about this bond as I was.

I was pretty unimpressed with the Trib’s first summary of our triumph. I linked to it in the previous post. Perhaps my caustic comment online in regards to it caused the Trib to rethink their initial cold blanket take on the story. I just read their subsequent story that actually committed some serious journalism. Mark Stodghill is a pro and can do justice to his craft although he did hang us out to dry on one previous dumb ass story. When I read the follow-up I thought to myself “Well that’s better.”

Its three AM and I’ve been up for an hour. I went to bed worrying that I’d have a heart attack in my sleep but woke up with the curious realization that I had been smiling in my sleep. I had been dreaming about donors coming out of the woodwork to help.

Indeed, just before I collected the cashiers checks I got a call from a woman who’s 85 year old father had asked if it was too late to contribute because he wanted to write us a thousand dollar check. She told me she wanted to add a small donation of her own. I told her that by all means we could use it and to drop it off at our house. I turned their donations over to our treasurer just before she went to the bank to collect the last of the cashiers checks to hand to the taxpayer’s attorney Craig Hunter. He in turn walked them over to the St. Louis County Court Administrator.

We gave a press conference on the steps of the Court House. I stood in the background and one of our group playfully put an LDV lawnsign in front of my face so I wouldn’t say anything inappropriate. I couldn’t help myself when one of the reporters asked how we were going to tell our supporters about our success. “That’s your job.” I shouted.

As I drove away from the conference the reporter gave me a call to tell me that the District’s lawyers were explaining we hadn’t done what the court told us to do and wanted the court to dismiss the case. I laughed and told her that the District always wanted to win on technicalities. I told her to call Craig Hunter.

Its been many weeks since I woke up in the middle of the night. I got out of bed to put another load of dirty cloths in the laundry. I had managed to run a virus check on my computer before bed so I found the computer on after I folded a load of cloths I’d taken out of the dryer. It appears I can still type simple sentences. That’s good because, as Gary Glass told me with a steely look in his eyes this afternoon, I’ve got a book to write. I can’t wait to get started.

Well, yes I can. I could use a couple more hours of sleep.

Get your umbrellas

June 30th, 2009

Gee Whiz, the School District doesn’t want the Sixth District Court to accept cash on the barrel head instead of a surety bond. No, No, No, The District wants a bond that could be turned in for $100,000 in cash. Because the taxpayers actually gave the court cash the School District wants the case dismissed.

This is Let Duluth Vote’s Ta Da moment and the District is raining on our parade. Let me rephrase that because we all need umbrellas. The District is wetting its pants.

Press Confernce at 3PM

June 30th, 2009

Let Duluth Vote will hold a press conference at 3PM today on the St. Louis County Court House steps.

Progress

June 30th, 2009

As I was pulling into our Treasurer’s driveway to hand over $20,000 worth of cashier’s checks I got a call on my cell phone. A woman on the other end told me her Father who was 85 and frail wanted to help us out with a thousand dollar donation. She wanted to know if it was too late. I assured her it wasn’t and she will be dropping it off shortly along with her own less substantial contribution. My heart is still pounding.

Judicial politics

June 30th, 2009

Brandon Stahl’s reliable BuzzDuluth.blog. which describes itself as: “A running conversation on city government and politics” has an interesting post on judicial politics. Its something I could discuss regarding the taxpayer’s case but which I ought not to speculate about just in case we raise our bond and the case proceeds. The post is titled. Spin the BUZZ: Retiree lawsuit edition

Things seem to be falling into place

June 30th, 2009

Maybe that optimisim at last Night’s Let Duluth Vote meeting was warranted. I’m still taking donations. Drop them in my mail box before the day is over or donate online.

The Bond is just the latest hurdle. There will be more only they are likely to be far less expensive.

TUNNEL!

June 30th, 2009

I just heard the Tan Man yell “Tunnel” from my daughter’s old room. He wants her to crawl under the covers of her bed and lift up the sheets to play under. That’s one of the things I missed in California. I’ve gotten spoiled by seeing him regularly. This morning he was talking to himself in his crib when I peaked in at him. He rolled his head over to look at the door and smiled when he saw me. He stood up with his hands outstretched and called “Moloch!”

That’s our yellow short hair cat with the short helicopter tail. “So what am I? Chopped liver,” I asked. When I turned around with the boy in my arms Claudia, who had followed a short distance behind me, turned around to scamper with exaggerated tippy toe racing steps back to our bed. “Grandma,” “Tunnel!” he shouted.

I tossed Tanner on the bed, Claudia lifted up the covers and we all crawled under them with Grandma and Papaw lifting up the covers into a “tunnel.” Moloch usually joins us to make it a foursome but this time he only skittered around outside despite the Tan Man’s efforts to entice him under the covers with us. I hadn’t fed the cats yet and I’m sure Moloch was more interested in luring me downstairs to prepare his breakfast.

Tunnels are one of the Tan Man’s favorite things. I think an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine helped inspire his enthusiasm for them. Its great fun to seclude yourself with your friends in the dark of a tunnel. I rather imagine Dr. Dixon’s school board doing the same thing for the past three years knowing, or thinking, that no one would interrupt their Red Plan reverie. What an annoyance it must have been for them when Gary Glass got elected with 60% of the vote. Gary’s no fun in a tunnel and they kept him prowling outside of it like our hungry Manx waited for us to come out.

Now I read that three and perhaps four of the incumbent school board members have decided to run for reelection to finish their Red Plan fun because, as Dr. Dixon says, it would be a challenge for a new board to figure out how to untie his Gordian Knot. He said much the same thing two years ago before he had pulled it quite so tight.

Anonymous

June 30th, 2009

Do you have friends and business associates who have been sold a bill of goods and think the Red Plan will be a great new day for the Duluth Schools so that you have to bite your lips when they say as much? Are you a teacher fearful of being punished for taking a stand against it. If so I want you to understand that the money being put at risk in the bond will be kept anonymous. This is not being used for political ends.

If you step forward to post a cashier’s check or if you send a check our way we will keep its donor’s name to ourselves. Years from now after the lies and fraud behind the Red Plan are finally clear you can reveal yourself to have been one of the prescient few willing to oppose it. Until then your help will be our little secret. In fact, I’m not being told who a couple of you are. Even my Let Duluth Vote crowd is afraid of what I will put in this blog.

Another record month

June 30th, 2009

To read this blog one has to be very interested in the Red Plan because for the past two years I’ve excluded commenting on just about everything else. That’s been a challenge for an ecclectic like me.

Yesterday I had more visitors than ever before in a single day, 320, up 70 from the previous record. By the end of today I’ll almost certainly reach an average of 200 visitors a day which would be a first. I expect a fair number of folks to check in to day to see if we make our bond. Since I’ve got so many of you here today I’ll apologize again for the fitful blogging from my laptop while I was in California and the absence of my spell checker. Hey, I’m only the pronouncer at the local spelling bees not one of the contestants.

As I begin putting a slate of school board candidates together I’ll attract a new set of readers and when the court date (should we raise the bond to proceed with it) nears in October even more people will join the crowd.

Whether we raise the bond or not I will put my attention into writing my book. My goal is to put it together in two months time which I should be able to manage with a judicious culling and editing of this blog’s posts. It will be like whittling a Sequoia down to a maple tree. The challenge will be to keep it fresh and find new material while keeping it to two-hundred pages. I like a good challenge.

I hope some of you buy it.

Babysitting money

June 29th, 2009

Just before I left for the LDV meeting I got another email announcement of another $50 donation to paypal. After I returned a father drove up with an envelope from his children with a note for me. Its too big to fit here but you can see it atop the LDV website.

It contained babysitting money. $35.00 of it.

Id could sure use a little more of that spirit and cash. Yes cash. Checks take a couple days to clear and we’re down to the wire - 3PM Tuesday.

Picking up my slack

June 29th, 2009

I went to the LDV meeting tonight drained of all energy. The $100,000 I kept insisting to all the skeptics in the group we could raise seemed pretty far out of reach by the time I headed to the meeting. Some of the folks I’ve been trying to track down are making themselves scarce. Maybe its that farce of a story about how expensive and unproductive Plan B is compared to the Red Plan.

Its Dixon’s blue light special. Tell the customers to spend twice as much by telling them it will only cost half as much. That’s the kind of economics which led to 2008’s recession. Keep the economy healthy by spending money you borrowed.

Well, the LDV folks would have none of my defeatism tonight. They have become the believers. We won’t be standing corners holding out tin cups so I can only hope their confidence is borne out. We had $6,500 a few days before I left for San Francisco. Now nine days later we have almost $25,000. It would be a shame to fall short.