[Mpls] Strib park board editorial

[Chris Johnson]

List Manager wrote:
> Only two incumbents endorsed (Dziedzic and Olson), but no endorsement in the
> Fine-Bernstein race. Vreeland in 3, Nordstrom in 4, Stone in 5, and Forney,
> Nordyke and Anderson at-large.
> 
> Read it all here:
> http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5702545.html

What a mishmash of ill-informed, wrong-headed arguments and beliefs, mixed 
with some accurate and reasonable statements.  It's clear the Star Tribune has 
no real clue what is going on at the Park Board, and neither do its editorial 
writers, who seem to try to be everything to every voter in this editorial.

Maybe if they did a little investigate journalism, instead of listening to the 
spin that Walt Dziedzic regularly delivers to them via telephone calls and 
in-person visits, they might have a clue.  But when was the last time anyone 
saw any investigate journalism in the Star Tribune -- was it 15, 20 or 25 
years ago?  I don't recall.  Their story editors are gutless, keeping the good 
writers from actually acting on the crucial role that the press has in this 
country.  It's a shame.

Meanwhile, the editorialists contradict themselves in the same article, on the 
one hand extolling Theodore Wirth's vision and strongly criticizing terrible 
Park Board decisions like the purchase of the new headquarters building -- and 
on the other hand, endorsing the very cronies who work to stamp out everything 
Wirth did at every turn and rammed the purchase of the HQ through!  Hello? 
Does anyone have a Clue to donate to these writers?

How about fact checking?  That seems to be another foreign activity to these 
editorial writers -- something that I thought was part and parcel to running a 
newspaper, or at least, once upon a time.  They claim the Minneapolis Citizens 
for Park Board Reform have invented blunders on the part of the Controlling 
Faction.  They clearly didn't bother to check the validity of this remark, or 
they would have found that Park Board Reform's statements are all grounded in 
fact.  I know; I did check them -- all of them, several times.

To all of you out there who support fixing the mess at the Park Board:  now is 
the time to contact all Minneapolis voters you know and persuade them to vote 
for Reform.  Otherwise, come next Wednesday morning, we will just have more of 
the same old corruption, cronyism and nepotism until another election, or some 
county attorney or state auditor gets the spine necessary to clean house in 
another way.  Over $50 million in your tax dollars hangs in the balance, along 
with the quality of our parks and hence, the quality of life in Minneapolis.


http://www.MplsParkWatch.org/
--
Chris Johnson
Fulton