Mitch Berg, gave me a nice hat tip the other week on a blog post, so I'll return the favor.  (Not that he needs it.)

Mitch posted a great piece last week on how the Dayton family money is funding the PACs that are relentlessly attacking GOP candidate Tom Emmer.  (Oh how I love playing "connect the dots.")  Mitch finds that Alida Messinger (heir to the $8.5 Billion Rockefeller family fortune and Mark Dayton's ex-wife) and other Dayton family members and friends are funnelling big money into winning DFL races here in Minnesota.  Alida alone contributing nearly $1.5 Million in four years!  Longtime Dayton friend (and former Strib publisher) John Cowles has donated $25,000 in this campaign cycle alone to "Win Minnesota" which funds "Alliance for a Better Minnesota" which funds the ads now running against Emmer (as well as it's own Facebook site!)  The race they want to win now?  The race for governor.

To continue with Mitch's train of thought, there's another VERY IMPORTANT link in the quest to buy the Governor's mansion.  In addition to funding multiple political-attack-machines, the Daytons and the Cowles also fund....MinnPost!  Yes, of course John Cowles founded MinnPost (because two left-leaning online media organizations with professional journalists are better than one!) On MinnPost's home page he is listed as one of a handful of major donors along with...wait for it...Toby and Mae Dayton!!  That's Mark's cousin.  Bruce Dayton (Mark's dad) is a donor, as well as two of his aunts and other members of the Dayton family.  The Cowles and the Daytons go waaay back you see.

Now, shouldn't MinnPost put a disclaimer on everything they write during this race that they are founded and funded by the same people who are funding attack ads against Tom Emmer?  They are a completely non-credible "news" source as far as this race goes.  If Margaret Anderson-Kelliher's family and friends were funding an online news organization, wouldn't somebody in the mainstream media be at least a little bit curious and report on it?  MinnPost has ads up on all of our Hennepin County library computers...they pitch themselves as "legitimate" free press...the only free press they provide is for Mark Dayton.

I'll be blogging more about the Dayton family fortune....ten bucks to anyone who can tell me the current value of the Dayton family trust fund.  It's pretty much impossible to determine, the latest figure I could find was $1.5 Billion in 2002.  Wouldn't you think our major dailies might ask the premiere DFL candidate that easy question?  Nah!!  They let him get away with-- and even go so far as to help him spin positively-- his grand gesture of releasing his 2009 tax returns where he made $170,000!  Now, how do you figure a man makes $170,000 worth of income (conveniently just over the $130,000 for singles mark that he want to raise rates on,) when the same man funded a Senate race in 1982 with some $7 Million of his own dough? 

Just like liberal benefactor Warren Buffett, Mark Dayton purposely avoids paying income taxes by drawing small amounts of income.  You don't need income when your trust buys everything for you!  Mark Dayton could take ZERO income and he'd live exactly the same exact lifestyle he lives today.  I explain this concept to people all of the time:  You will NEVER get the uber rich.  Never.  The Dayton family trust sits with Okabena in the IDS tower.....there is an entire company dedicated to managing that fortune.  There is NOTHING to stop Mark Dayton from drawing $2 Million in income and paying the state his "fair share"...but he doesn't want to because he's a hypocrite.

Speaking of "tax the rich" and Mark Dayton's tax plan which includes raising property taxes, I was told just last week by Mark Dayton's office that Mark RENTS a town home!  How do you like that?  Doesn't even pay a property tax bill!  I wonder who owns the place.  Maybe the Star Tribune will ask?  Oh, silly me!  They only ask Republicans like Norm Coleman about their rental arrangements!  We'll never know I guess!  Oh and the very nice young man at the Dayton office also was completely clueless on basic tax facts, I had to explain how property taxes work (he insisted that renters DO get property tax bills,) and was also unaware that a married person pays at the same state tax rate as their spouse.  When your boss is an unmarried renter, I can understand where they may be some confusion.

So, I'm doing what I can to try to cover this race, because the paid journalists won't do their job and the other journalists are simply bought and paid for.  I called Dayton's scheduler last week, she was supposed to call me back with the schedule for a White Bear Lake "meet and greet", of course she never did.  Where's Mark?  Where's he going to be?  Is he EVER going to hold an openly publicized town hall meeting like Tom Emmer did?  Can you imagine what Mark Dayton would have done if a loony-hack had dumped a bag of change on him??  You can't close down the office Mr. Dayton, you can't run in this election.  But, apparently, you can try to buy it.