lawnsigns or blogging?

It will be both. I did start late today by visiting my Mother to sing to her down at her “residence” at Park Point. I’ve got five weeks to put up about 450 more lawnsigns. If I did nothing else I could probably do it solo in two weeks. It likely will be solo. My only volunteer Liam is about to flee Duluth in the face of the cruel Winter. He’s kept me in touch with my “base” Let Duluth Vote constituency by calling from our old list. Not everyone is happy with me for supporting the levy and I understand. More on that in the next post.

I sat down next to a former board member at yesterday afternoon’s oddly timed School Board meeting. Rich let me know he was disappointed that I was supporting the levies. We joked off and on about the deficiencies of the the District’s finances.

Near the end of the meeting there was an embarassing exchange between Art and everyone else. Art had questions about the levies and the funding of the District. He restated his question about four times and got the same response from Bill Hanson. Both men talked past each other and frankly I barely had a clue what either man was explaining to the other. Minnesota School finance is godawful complicated but it shouldn’t be incomprehensible. I suspect Bill Hanson prefers to keep it opaque and have no faith that Art has the ability to fight through the fog.

At the end of the inconclusive questioning Ann Wasson, who prefaced her criticism of Art by saying she was leaving the Board and had no reason not to be candid, let loose with a battle cry defending the Administration. She said she hoped the public understood that we employ people who know this finance stuff. Coming from someone who clearly understands so little I could imagine the parentheses in her defense (because I sure don’t) She then complained that Art was simply muddying the water.

Ann has made the mistake of deferring to her betters ever since she got on the Board. Her comment reminded me of the woman who made me cringe when I was busy campaigning for Republicans in 1972. That woman dismissed protests against the Vietnam War by saying that “the President knows more than we do so we should trust him.” Yeah sure!

If our school administrators know so much I have a simple question. How is it that they could tell then Board chair and self proclaimed finance expert, Nancy Nilsen, that the Red Plan would save us $5 million a year which we could pour into our classrooms? Instead we now have 44 kids in High School English classes. Perhaps Nancy, like Ann Wasson, put too much faith in the proposition that our administrators knew what they were talking about.

If I’m elected I expect to figure out the finances. I’m not very smart so I’ll have to work real hard to do this. But once I learn something I think I’ll be able to explain it to other people like me who aren’t bright enough to see the beautiful new robes on the King because he just looks naked to us. This is despite our Duluth betters telling us over and over that he’s really wearing beautiful new robes woven by Johnson Controls.

For another attempt to explain the levy questions check out the DNT,s story today.

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