Come For The MNSure; Stay For The Corruption

As the MNGOP rode back into a legislative majority on the collapse of MNSure, Donald Trump rode to office in DC promising to “drain the swamp”.

I’m not sure if the next GOP candidate for governor will make a similar promise.

But they sure could.  As Jeff Johnson points out in an op-ed in the Strib, the swamp – the cronyism, the incestuous DFL racket – is no less present.

In 2015, Dayton appointed the husband of his chief of staff to be the new chairman of the Metropolitan Council. Previously, the Met Council chairman position was part time and paid just over $61,000 per year. With this new appointment, however, the position was made full time and the annual salary was increased to $145,000.

Later in 2015, Dayton provided significant pay increases to his entire cabinet, most in the range of 25 percent to 30 percent. A salary increase from $120,000 to $155,000 per year was the most common increase granted by the governor. When both Republican and DFL leaders complained of these increases, Dayton called such concerns “beyond the theater of the absurd.”

Earlier this year, we learned that Dayton had quietly provided taxpayer-funded severance payments to several of his commissioners when they resigned from his cabinet. He provided more than $33,000 in severance to one commissioner when she resigned to pursue “a new opportunity,” $27,000 to another (whom Dayton appointed a couple of years later to another executive government position) and more than $18,000 to a third who had served in her position for only eight months before resigning.

Most recently, Dayton removed from the U.S. Bank Stadium board a member who has been critical of the chairwoman of that board (a Dayton appointee and his former deputy chief of staff) and the executive director of that board (a longtime DFL operative) both being paid by the taxpayers to do essentially the same job. Together, the two make nearly $300,000 per year.

The DFL has turned state government into a jobs program for useless apparatchiks.

14 thoughts on “Come For The MNSure; Stay For The Corruption

  1. Isn’t there some state law about malfeasance that can be used to charge Dayton? What about the recipients of the illegal severance payments?

    Second question. Is tar and feather illegal?

  2. DG,

    Much as I would love to let the people in my comment section – an MD, a couple of engineers, a scientist or two, some lawyers and accountants and other people who actually know what they’re talking about – loose on the low comedy that is your attempt at condescension, rules are rules.

    You were told to respond to the responses to this post before I’d let your comments out of moderation.

    Go there and respond. Because you’re wrong. And anyone wants to condescend to me, they’d damn well better pack the gear.

    You do not.

    Answer my questions at the link above, or find another playground.

    There is no “c”.

  3. And I kinda wish I COULD post your little screed, DG, because I”d love to find out whether you really believe that *some* Republicans might be corrupt (and if you say they are, I am inclined to believe they are not) excuses the specific acts of corruption detailed in the article.

  4. It’s worth noting that severance payments are generally given in exchange for the promise not to talk about certain things. If the separation is voluntary, as appears to be the case with former cabinet members, this is especially significant. My step-brother voluntarily resigned from a company and told my step-father that his severance was “hush money” because the company’s drug development wasn’t going well.

    OK, what did the former cabinet members know that Dayton didn’t want in the papers? Inquiring minds want to know.

  5. Sounds like you need to clean house in MN.
    How much support does Dayton have in the ‘burbs and outstate?

  6. Dayton doesn’t matter since he’s not running again; the question is whether the answers to the questions we’re asking can be pinned on other DFLers who might run for governor. Easier to make that case outstate, and probably easier to make it in the suburbs.

  7. RE: DG – Just for S & G’s I went over to the DG/Penny blog via the link MBerg provides assuming that SitD Comment Section’s resident K.O.O.K. has posted lengthy diatribes regarding whatever injustice our benevolent overlord of a host has visited upon her with his restriction of her comments here. Or I’d find numerous lengthy posts per day on this or that topic speaking truth to power to the many villains DG has floating about in her conscience.
    Instead? One post so far in December. One. Uno. Ein.
    21 in November and some of those are nothing more than cartoons & stuff copied and pasted from some other K.O.O.K.S. web screed. And Penny contributed just two posts all month. Total number of comments in the 21 posts: 1 (by Doggone on a Penny post). This election of Trump has layed DG low. (Penny was already lazy… his former boss Alan Blinder told me so).
    I think the proprietor of this small yet regionally prominent blog has a point – you got to pack the gear and for that, MBerg, I’m grateful you do.

  8. I think a Governor would get strung up down here for playing fast and loose with tax loot down here. We’ll put up with plenty of philandering, and even some really lame excuses for it, but fuck with our cash at your peril.

    Is there ever any good news up there?

  9. Chuck, I read that, and I came away thinking that rent seeking Somali wretch is lying through her teeth. From her account, it sounds like she feared physical violence; she was shaken, too shaken to make a complaint when she got back to the safety of her hotel room. But notice, it’s been what, 4 days now and she hasn’t named the driver, the cab # or even the cab company yet.

    She has obviously learned her lessons well from the reprobates among our home grown negro population…when you need some cover (or is it attention?), pull out your victim flag and wave it.

    Seems like a good time to start the overdue ICE investigation into her immigration fraud.

  10. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 12.08.16 : The Other McCain

  11. Well, it’s time for Dayton to resign and put Smith in the top spot. Plus I would maybe win the pool!

  12. QUOTE: any thoughts on the DC cab/Omar thing? *** Unless there is a ton of cab companies, I would think that guy would be easy to track down.

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