{"id":2121,"date":"2009-05-18T15:05:25","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T20:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2009-05-18T15:17:49","modified_gmt":"2009-05-18T20:17:49","slug":"a-good-laugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2121","title":{"rendered":"A good laugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still laughing. I just got a call from Joel Runck a reporter from KBJR TV. It seems Move Forward Duluth <\/strong>which spent untold and anonymous amounts of money to discredit Let Duluth Vote <\/strong>has just asked the St. Louis County Attorney to investigate LDV<\/strong> for failing to disclose its spending and contributions. I was so amused that I just laughed at the call and told Joel that I’d be happy to talk with him. <\/p>\n

Then I thought better of it and asked if he would be so good as to send me the press release because without knowing the exact charge I should check it out. <\/p>\n

I spent a furious ten minutes looking at the state statutes <\/a>cited by Move Forward Duluth<\/strong>. By golly, it looks to me as though we might have been required to submit a finance report. If so, the fault has been all mine because I understood the law to require reports only for the promotion of an existing ballot question not for trying to get a ballot question on the ballot through petitions. Well, my bad. Both, seem to require state reports if you look at the statute’s definition of “committees.”<\/p>\n

Subd. 4.Committee.<\/p>\n

“Committee” means a corporation or association or persons acting together to influence the nomination, election, or defeat of a candidate or to promote or defeat a ballot question. Promoting or defeating a ballot question includes efforts to qualify or prevent a proposition from qualifying for placement on the ballot.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is very funny because its not just LDV<\/strong> that should have been submitting reports but Move Forward Duluth<\/strong>. Their long winded efforts to discredit Let Duluth Vote <\/strong>were all intended to encourage the School Board to prevent a referendum. <\/p>\n

But unlike Let Duluth Vote <\/strong>which has been pretty transparent from the beginning Move Forward Duluth’s <\/strong> financing has been shrouded in secrecy. Where it got tens of thousands of dollars for newspaper ads and its website bad mouthing the idea of a referendum is any body’s guess. I’ll bet it got a lot of checks in excess of $100 which should have been reported. In fact, anyone contributing over $100 would have to be named and the limit for such contributions would be, if memory serves, $300. No corporate money could legally be donated to discourage the ballot question. I’ll bet quite a few construction companies would be fined for their contributions to the MFD<\/strong> campaign to discredit Let Duluth Vote<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It looks like Move Forward Duluth <\/strong>is doing it best to cover its tracks. I just checked out its website: http:\/\/www.moveforwardduluth.net<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems to have disappeared.<\/p>\n

By the way. The infraction is a misdemeanor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still laughing. I just got a call from Joel Runck a reporter from KBJR TV. It seems Move Forward Duluth which spent untold…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}