this is the scenario:
site A has a good Google page rank…
site B has no Google page rank because site B has just been submitted…
if site A were to link to site B, BUT use “display: none” in the .css file, would site B still benefit from site A linking to it?
I’ve not seen anything definitive on how Google treats elements that are set to display:none; - why don’t you do an experiment and report back to us? 
WOW!! for months i have been nothing but a leach on this site… contributing nothing!
gladly i will… it would be an HONOR to give back to sitepoint… although I have a few of their books… but i do want to give back to the community
Bottom line: Stick to Google’s guidelines. Don’t try to fool them. The logic is, you don’t want that link shown visibly on the site, why should they give any credit to it? They may or may not be able to detect stuff like this (I think they can), but one day they can, so why mess with it? It’s just one link.
true that… true that…
If you’re talking just about the benefit of PR being passed then site B would still benefit from the link from site A.
Is there a reason for using CSS to try and hide the link on site A?
not as of yet… but i can imagine non profit organization work would never want links of any sort
just asking in theory for now…