Yesterday, as I was rushing to put on my tux and blue jeans for the Symphony Ball, Move Forward Duluth’s spokeman emailed me. Her message suggested that I had defamed the corporations who are generously building Duluth’s wonderful new schools. I told her to check the laws on corporate giving. I didn’t bother to check on themselves but just did it to give her something to stew about.
I woke up at 5AM this Saturday morning to read them over myself. Corporate giving to legislators is pretty strictly forbidden but since I’ve been dabbling in local elections the laws get changed every two years mostly to insulate legislators from serious legal problems. The campaign finance laws are pretty toothless where the rich are concerned meteing out the occasional wrist slap fine say a couple thousand grand. For any of the Vote Yes contractor contributors that’s less than piffle compared to the profits they stand to earn.
Well, Geez, I hate to admit that Mimi may be right again. Sure the laws are designed to protect voters by exposing the pecuniary interests of people contributing to campaigns so once again the spirit of the law is on my side but the lousy letter of the law seems to side with the scoflaws.
The dwindling MFD folks just want to do to Let Duluth Vote what the Chamber did to Carinda Horton. Shut us up.
After an hour of reading through the statutes I got this sympathetic email.
Here is a page that mentions the Chamber “hired” UMD for the study, but the price tag is missing. Odd how some storied get buried so quickly yet your smiling picture and the dropped lawsuit is still on the Education website.
And here’s the smiling picture the Trib has had on its news page for the past four days which helpfully reveals that in one attorney’s opinion I’m just a publicity seeker.
“[Welty] is an irresponsible publicity seeker and he should check his facts before he does his usual grand standing,†Merrit said. “We spent considerable time on this case for which we were never paid.â€
I know ink is expensive and the Trib can’t afford to waste it exposing the District’s and JCI’s shennanigans, or even put the Merritt story in context like I have, but honestly its too bad the days of salty old reporters rooting out the truth is as out of fashion as Deep Throat. At least they can honor their long lost memory like the Trib’s encomium today to “Scoop” Pomeroy.
