The Plutocrat

Over the weekend, Baird Helgeson at the Strib did a piece – the first I’ve personally found – on Alita Messinger, the largest non-union bankroller of the various “progressive” pressure groups that have been doing all the DFL’s actual work for it this past couple of years.  As I’ve been reporting for the past year or so, Messinger – an heir to the Rockefeller fortune – was the main funder of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”‘s epic, toxic sleaze campaign that was the dominant – indeed, only – substantive output of the Dayton for Governor campaign last year (because, as this blog and the entire 2011 legislative session showed, he really had no other proposals).

Alida Messinger, an heir to the fabled Rockefeller fortune, has quietly given at least $10 million to candidates and causes over the past decade. Some recent gifts have been extraordinary: $500,000 to a group that last year backed her former husband, Mark Dayton, for governor. And before that, $1 million to help bankroll the ballot campaign for the Legacy amendment, which raised the state sales tax to create 25 years of new funding for conservation and cultural projects.

Once upon a time, the rich paid to improve life.  Alida Messinger pays to get government to get the improvements out of the taxpayer.

Now, Messinger is preparing for a new showdown that will be expensive, contentious and, for the first time, public.

She is vowing to do all she can to help the DFL regain control of the Legislature and get President Obama re-elected.

And I’m wondering if all those libs who’ve been wetting their pants over the Koch Brothers and ALEC will get the, um, juxtaposition?

Her millions could also become a force in the fight over the constitutional amendment on the ballot next year to define marriage as a union of man and woman — not gay couples. Messinger, 62, contends GOP politicians are harming Minnesota. “We are not a quality-of-life state anymore,” she said. “Citizens need to get involved and say we don’t like what you are doing to our state.”

She’s got a point.

Citizens; it’s time to get involved to blunt the influence of ofay, arrogant plutocrat dilettantes like Messinger.

Read Helgeson’s entire piece.  And then get pissed off.

They’ve got the dirty money – from plutocrats and the unions.  All we have is the desire to save this state.

7 thoughts on “The Plutocrat

  1. Pingback: Hope For Change | Shot in the Dark

  2. She contributed a million dollars to make sure Minnesotans would waste state budget money year in and year out, and Minnesotans, ignorant about what should be in a state constitution, bought it. We should probably start to work on that ignorance, and see if we can make it a little less “invincible” next time. How about informing Republican Minnesotans about what should be in a state party platform?

  3. “heir to the Rockefeller family fortune”
    How’d the Rockefellers make their fortune? Manufacturing unicorn plush toys or those big state fair lolly pops? No, they made theirs the old-fashioned way, exploiting Mother Earth for oil (and monopolizing the oil distribution business).
    What’s with these wealthy Liberals? Always with the guilt over the gains made by their ancestors through hard work, persevereance and a friendly environment for monopolizing entire industries. One would think a truly compassionate Liberal would simply give all their money away to charity and live like a pauper to cover for the sins of the great-grandfather. But todays modern Liberal keeps their inherited wealth in a tax free haven like Bermuda or South Dakota and uses the dividends to fund OccupyWallStreet and other anti-capitalist movements to prevent a new generation of hard working folks from achieving the same status.

  4. Ah, such astute observations from a transplant that we didn’t ask to come here anyway!

    And SE, that’s what liberat trust funders like her do! They usually don’t do the work for it, they had the money handed to them. Just like the kid that trashes the car that mom and dad gave him/her to use, they don’t care. But, take it away because of it, some ultimately end up learning the lesson.

  5. Seflores said:

    “But todays modern Liberal keeps their inherited wealth in a tax free haven like Bermuda or South Dakota and uses the dividends to fund OccupyWallStreet and other anti-capitalist movements to prevent a new generation of hard working folks from achieving the same status.”

    Seems like a personal facet of a merchantilist predilection.

  6. Once upon a time, the rich paid to improve life. Alida Messinger pays to get government to get the improvements out of the taxpayer.

    That’s a very astute statement, Mitch.

    “We are not a quality-of-life state anymore,”

    I was unaware that she is a resident of MN.

  7. Who says you cannot learn anything from a blog? I had to use a dictionary to look up “ofay”.

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