{"id":45,"date":"2006-03-24T10:50:02","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T15:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2017-03-17T09:15:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T14:15:41","slug":"on-2nd-thought-only-prettner-solon-is-embarassed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"On 2nd Thought – Only Prettner Solon is Embarassed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plato described the metaphor of the cave with a campfire casting people’s\u00a0shadows on it. He said that people watching the shadows from the other side of the fire couldn’t\u00a0really be sure what the people casting the shadows were doing. So it is with politics. That’s why I wrote my own on-line political diary<\/a> a few years ago; to move people past the fire and shadows closer to the behind-the-scenes action on the Duluth School Board.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today’s story in the DNT suggests to me that the DECC’s omission\u00a0from the\u00a0Senate bonding bill\u00a0has Tom Bakk’s fingerprints all over it. <\/strong>Bakk\u00a0tells us\u00a0that the 11 percent of bonding that the Senate plan directs to the Arrowhead is such a big deal that losing the DECC expansion<\/a><\/strong> isn’t all that important.<\/a> Duluth’s most important\u00a0proposal on its bonding wish list, is not that\u00a0big of a deal! The proposal which has our voter’s seal of approval! Whoa! <\/strong><\/p>\n

Where is Bakk coming from? Well, getting the DECC in the bonding bill could squeeze out funding for other projects on Bakk’s wish list. The last\u00a0two reaportionments\u00a0both used Duluth precincts to pad northeastern\u00a0Minnesota’s legislative districts with their shrinking populations.\u00a0<\/strong>The vast majority of\u00a0Bakk’s Senate District\u00a06 lies north of Duluth<\/strong><\/a>. He’s in an awkward position to push for the DECC if he doesn’t want to lose these other projects. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0also entirely possible that the ambitious Bakk has other objectives which the DECC interferes with. I’m sure he’s paying close attention to the troubles of his caucus leader, Senator Dean Johnson. The Republicans have beaten\u00a0Johnson up for “sanding over the truth.”<\/strong> (see previous entries) The Republican’s\u00a0ethic’s investigation could weaken\u00a0Johnson enough so that the DFL Caucus might consider replacing him. That someone could be Tom Bakk. If so, Bakk doesn’t dare get too greedy in the bonding bill. By doing so he would antagonize his potential supporters. If Duluth’s losing the DECC helped Bakk move into the majority leader’s office, well, it would be a small sacrifice – for Bakk.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This at least is what the shadows on the cave wall suggest to me. But like Plato warned. I could be completely wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plato described the metaphor of the cave with a campfire casting people’s\u00a0shadows on it. He said that people watching the shadows from the other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duluth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","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=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21195,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/21195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}