Ben Golnik’s refrain: “I was not a check-signer, I was not a check-signer”. Yeah, you were just the frigging Executive Director, with power enough to help Ron Carey end Tostenson’s career in the Republican Party of Minnesota.

Lost in all the hubbub of the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Republican Party of Minnesota has been any evidence that anyone in charge is at all interested in getting to the root of its longstanding problems, and not just with money. Instead, the scandals are buried, the whistleblowers attacked, and the people who were in charge when the problems were created are allowed to go on doing what they’d been doing without any major hitches in their giddy-up.

By now most of you all have heard about the metastasizing set of scandals that has enveloped the Minnesota Republican Party.

The simple fact is that it was the persistence of the non-establishment media — the blogs both local and national, and the alt-weekly City Pages — that shed the most light on Tony Sutton’s actions. It is because of them that he has resigned in disgrace, leaving behind over $500,000 in debt and a deeply divided party. If not for them, he’d likely still be party chair today.

I’ve been writing for some time now about Republican Party of Minnesota Chair, former Republican Party of Minnesota Treasurer and failed Baja Sol taco baron Tony Sutton and his foibles (most recently those involving money intended for the 2010 gubernatorial recount). If you’re familiar with those pieces, then what I’m about to show you won’t be surprising in the least.

As regular readers of both FDL and Mercury Rising know, I’ve been following the ups and downs of Minnesota Republican Party chair Tony Sutton , and his money-handling difficulties, for some time now. And guess what? He’s in the news again — and as always, it’s about money, or the difficulties pertaining thereto. Bluestem Prairie’s Sally Jo Sorensen has the deets concerning possible Republican dissatisfaction with Sutton’s ham-fisted leadership and subpar money-handling.

Trying to decide what to talk about this fine morning, preferably something that hasn’t already been covered here on this website. Should it be Jerry Brown’s advocacy for high-speed rail, which may be a big part of what saves the state and the nation?

Should it be the looming scandal hinted at by the Rick Perry sex ad?

But then I decided that I’d stick closer to my home state of Minnesota, and talk about failed burrito baron Tony Sutton.

Minnesota governor Mark Dayton this morning offered the Republicans controlling the Minnesota Legislature a choice: He’d accept their June 30 proposal, which delays school payments and doesn’t tax the rich, on these three conditions …

The respective models of Ian’s Pizza and Baja Sol show how to grow — and how not to grow — a food franchise operation. Ian’s does it well. Baja Sol? Not so much.

There seems to have been twin outbreaks of bullshittery and dipshittery in the North Star State last week. The first involves a dumbass James O’Keefe wannabee named Pierre “Pete” Arnold III, also known as “The Pete” and “Zeeboid”. The second involves a dumbass faux-Mexican restaurant mogul wannabee and Republican Party of Minnesota Chair named Tony Sutton and a dumbass Republican consultant named Diana Bratlie, the person Sutton thought would make a good witness for his latest nuisance lawsuit in the Dayton-Emmer governor’s race recount.