{"id":2333,"date":"2009-07-04T10:02:39","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T15:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2333"},"modified":"2009-07-04T10:05:15","modified_gmt":"2009-07-04T15:05:15","slug":"the-man-behind-the-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2333","title":{"rendered":"The man behind the curtain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My wife and I watched the last half of the Wizard of Oz Thursday night. I&#8217;ve loved the movie since I first started watching its annual showing on network television as a kid. Now its on cable.<\/p>\n<p>My Mother and her sister had fallen in love with all the Oz books as kids growing up in Salina, Kansas. (J K Rowling has a way to go to catch up with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/L._Frank_Baum\">Frank L Baum<\/a>.) Dorothy Gayle was a Kansas girl living in tornado ally just like my Mom. When I was young she read most of the books to me.<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, I&#8217;m always a little pained to hear David Ross, the CEO of our Chamber of Commerce describe Duluth as &#8220;our beloved Emerald City on the Hill .&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/event\/article\/id\/124268\/group\/Budgeteer\/\"> He used the phrase again today <\/a> to hint, unsubtly, that the public dollars being levied for the Red Plan will be a great boon to our economy.<\/p>\n<p>I hate to see the Oz books being used to shill for JCI&#8217;s unconscionable business practices; the exorbitant public borrowing feeding their greed and the dubious &#8220;legal&#8221; avoidance of a public referendum. Building McMansions for people who can&#8217;t afford their mortgage has only unbalanced America&#8217;s economy and plunged the world&#8217;s economy into crisis. I&#8217;ve seen little in the Red Plan that suggests its fruits will be any less bitter.<\/p>\n<p>One line from the Wizard of Oz keeps haunts me every time I hear Mr. Ross opine on the Red Plan: &#8220;Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My wife and I watched the last half of the Wizard of Oz Thursday night. I&#8217;ve loved the movie since I first started watching&#8230;<\/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-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","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=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}