{"id":28596,"date":"2019-09-15T16:55:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T21:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=28596"},"modified":"2019-09-15T21:35:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T02:35:31","slug":"taking-it-on-the-chin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=28596","title":{"rendered":"Taking it on the chin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I will make one point about all the negative publicity the School Board has recently attracted in a busy week of editorials, op eds and letters-to-the-editor. Its no fun to take it on the chin. Most of us don&#8217;t have armadillo like armor just the Armadillo&#8217;s reflex to curl up into a ball. <\/p>\n<p>I caught a lot of grief for disclosing the sale price of a since scuttled sale of Central High.  I was a bone head to do it but when I did it I was under the honest, if mistaken, impression that the $10 million dollar sales figure had already been made public. That gave the censurers an excuse to embarrass me but my real &#8220;crime&#8221; was speaking my mind on this blog. And I got off easy like President Andrew Jackson when he was censured by Congress. However, what my Board colleagues did to Art Johnston, by attacking him through his partner, accusing him <em>an NAACP board member<\/em> of racism, and violence when the target of his &#8220;attack&#8221; denied that there was one; was far more vile. <\/p>\n<p>So, please pardon me for an un-gallant moment of small mindness. I am gratified to have <a href=\"https:\/\/dictionary.law.com\/Default.aspx?selected=1598\">prima facie evidence<\/a> that I was not the cause of all the school board&#8217;s dysfunction when I served on it between 2013 and 2017. Josh Gorham, who defeated me in 2017, has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/opinion\/columns\/4658636-Josh-Gorham-Column-Demand-a-refresh-for-Duluths-public-schools\">made it clear<\/a> that, like me, he was appalled at the District&#8217;s hush hush attitude about public data. If there was ever any doubt that we are in the right, the $55,000 penalty Minnesota Courts forced the School Board to hand over to another &#8220;renegade&#8221; board member, Art Johnston, simply demonstrated that State law is on the side of transparency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I will make one point about all the negative publicity the School Board has recently attracted in a busy week of editorials, op eds&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28596"}],"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=28596"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28613,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28596\/revisions\/28613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}