#Peter Uihlein

[vague-humanoid]

A far-right activist group that is doxxing college students who engage in pro-Palestinian protests revealed that it is funded by top Republican political donors and nonprofits backed by wealthy business leaders, a tax return reviewed by CNBC shows.

The group, Accuracy in Media, publicly disclosed on its federal tax return a list of donors who combined to contribute nearly $1.9 million to the tax-exempt nonprofit between May 2022 and April of last year.

The contributors listed on the tax return include billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who Accuracy in Media said gave it $1 million.

The family foundation of shipping supply magnate Richard Uihlein is also identified on the tax return, which says the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave $10,000. The Milstein Family Foundation, which is run by real estate executive and Republican donor Adam Milstein, gave another $10,000, the group reported to the IRS.

According to its tax return, Accuracy in Media said it received $15,000 from the Coors brewing family’s charitable foundation. The Adolph Coors Foundation is chaired by former Molson Coors executive Peter H. Coors, according to the foundation’s latest tax records.

Yass, Uihlein, Milstein and Coors have all donated regularly to Republican campaigns over the past decade.

But Yass stands apart from the others. The co-founder of options trading powerhouse Susquehanna International Group and his wife Janine are the biggest political donors of the 2024 election. So far, Yass and his wife have contributed $70 million to dozens of Republican candidates and committees, according to the nonpartisan campaign finance database OpenSecrets.

Much of the cardboard and paper goods strewn about our homes — the mail-order boxes and grocery store bags — are sold by a single private company, with its name, Uline, stamped on the bottom. Few Americans know that a multibillion-dollar fortune made on those ubiquitous products is now fueling election deniers and other far-right candidates across the country.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of Illinois are the largest contributors to Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6 rally and was linked to a prominent antisemite, and have given to Jim Marchant, the Nevada Secretary of State nominee who says he opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. They are major funders to groups spreading election falsehoods, including Restoration of America, which, according to an internal document obtained by ProPublica, aims to “get on God’s side of the issues and stay there” and “punish leftists.”

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Ira Stoll

“Who Are the Biggest Donors to Trump and Harris?” a New York Times headline asks, over an article about “the billionaires that are powering the campaigns.”

The first two donors mentioned in the article are Tim Mellon and Elon Musk. Neither one is Jewish. Also mentioned is Linda McMahon. She’s not Jewish either. The article further mentions Reid Hoffman, who describes himself as a “mystical atheist,” and Dick and Liz Uihlein, who aren’t Jewish, either.

So what in the world was the New York Times thinking when the newspaper chose to illustrate its story about “the most influential givers” with a photograph of six Israeli flags, former President Trump, Dr. Miriam Adelson, and an unidentified bearded man wearing a kippa?

Screenshot of headline and photo of New York Times article from Sept. 1, 2024 headlined ‘Who Are the Biggest Donors to Trump and Harris?’

Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College, wrote in a Facebook post that the photo selection was “egregious.”

Dreier wrote, “The Times story was not about religion or ethnicity. It was about the ‘biggest donors.’’By using that photo, the Times played into ugly antisemitic stereotypes. You’d think that some editor up the chain of command would have noticed this and replaced the photo. But there it is, in blue and white.”

At a moment when Columbia University’s Antisemitism Task Force is trying to educate students about “antisemitic tropes about Jewish wealth and hidden power,” for the Times to come out with a picture choice like this one is pretty clumsy.

The newspaper already ran a front-page profile of Adelson describing her as “rabidly partisan,” prompting a formal complaint to the paper from Eric Goldstein, the CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, a longtime partner of the New York Times in its Neediest Cases Fund.

Goldstein also complained about a Times online headline that said US Rep. Jamaal Bowman had been “Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money,” which Goldstein said fed “a dreadful antisemitic stereotype.”

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.29

Beer Birthdays

Herman Uihlein Jr. (1917)

Darron Welch (1967)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Don Cheadle; actor (1964)

Chuck Mangione; jazz trumpeter, songwriter (1940)

Andrew McCarthy; actor (1962)

Gary Shandling; comedian, actor (1949)

Fuzzy Thurston; Green Bay Packers G (1933)

Famous Birthdays

Louisa May Alcott; writer (1832)

Peter Bergman; comedian, actor (1939)

Busby Berkeley; choreographer, film director (1895)

Ed Bickert; jazz guitarist (1932)

Suzy Chaffee; skier (1947)

Joel Coen; film director (1954)

Kim Delaney; actor (1961)

Jeff Fahey; actor (1952)

Anna Faris; actor (1976)

Ambrose Fleming; diode inventor (1849)

Barry Goudreau; rock guitarist, songwriter (1951)

Lew Hewson; Australian actress (1995)

Diane Ladd; actor (1942)

Madeleine L'Engle; writer (1918)

C.S. Lewis; Irish writer (1898)

Howie Mandell; comedian, actor (1955)

John Mayall; blues singer, musician (1933)

Meco; pop musician (1939)

Gena Lee Nolin; actor (1971)

John Ray; English naturalist (1627)

Mariano Rivera; New York Yankees P (1969)

Tom Sizemore; actor (1964)

Krystal Steal; adult actress (1982)

Howard Stern; radio show host (1968)

Billy Strayhorn; jazz pianist. composer (1915)

Merle Travis; country singer (1917)

[terralinkresearch]

LIV Golf’s Peter Uihlein, Surprises in Round One of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

Republished with full copyrights permissions obtained from the Sports Today Magazine. A surprising name has emerged as the leader in the first round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. American golfer Peter Uihlein, representing LIV Golf, showcased an exceptional performance on Thursday at St. Andrews, carding an impressive 8-under 64. Uihlein shares the top spot on the golf leaderboard…

[thebusinesspress]

LIV Golf’s Peter Uihlein, Surprises in Round One of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

A surprising name has emerged as the leader in the first round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. American golfer Peter Uihlein, representing LIV Golf, showcased an exceptional performance on Thursday at St. Andrews, carding an impressive 8-under 64. Uihlein shares the top spot on the golf leaderboard with Sebastian Söderberg of Sweden and Adri Arnaus of Spain. What makes Uihlein’s…

[golfgirlworld]

Sometimes you watch golf because you are attracted to the golfers.

[just-tee-times]

Top 5 Shots of the Week | CIMB

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America's 400 top earners pay less tax than you

Last June, Propublica announced that it was in possession of leaked IRS files detailing the tax affairs of America’s richest people, and that the IRS Files showed that taxes are — as Leona Helmsley famously quipped — for the little people:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The initial reporting described how, for example, private equity raiders were able to debt-finance acquisitions of productive businesses, run them into the ground, pocket hundreds of millions of dollars, and avoid tax as they sprinted away from the wreckage.

A key scam that enables this looting is the “carried interest” loophole, which most normies assume has something to do with not paying tax on the interest you earn from a loan or something. That’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s dead wrong. “Carried interest” is a doctrine invented to make things fairer for 16th century sea-captains, and it has nothing to do with interest on loans.

How does a scam like that persist in the tax code for 500 years? Well, one thing the IRS Files showed is that lobbying for tax-breaks is an incredibly productive investment. Trump’s “big, beautiful tax-cut” underwent a flurry of last-minute revisions that carved out the tax-evasion strategies of individual billionaires and their dynastic offspring.

These can be directly linked to campaign contributions to the GOP lawmakers who introduced them. Like Senator Ron Johnson, who threatened to block the tax cuts unless it was amended to favor three of his major campaign donors: Dick and Liz Uihlein (owners of Uline), and Diane Hendricks (roofing heiress), who gave $20m to Johnson’s campaign and reaped $215m in the first year of the cuts (they’re still getting hundreds of millions on that investment).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

You may have noticed the presence of an heiress among the Senator Johnson’s owners: dynastic wealth plays an enormous role in shaping the US tax code and its policies. The American myth of the meritocracy has been extended to people whose “merit” consists of emerging from an extremely lucky orifice.

Dynastic fortunes are normally shrouded in secrecy. But thanks to honorable heirs, like Abigail Disney, we are starting to learn more about the dirty business of “family offices” and the ways they ensure that no matter how feckless and idiotic an heir may be, they will continue to be able to influence the lives of millions of people who work for living:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

The tax code is a gnarly hairball of carve-outs and special programs, many of them designed to benefit middle-class earners, like the ROTH IRA. The ultra rich have turned these into piggy-banks they can stuff with hundreds of millions in tax-free loot. Peter Theil’s ROTH is worth $5 billion.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/26/wax-rothful/#thiels-gambit

And REITs — which are supposed to benefit mom-and-pop landlords who rent out an apartment in their retirement — have been transformed into a vehicle for offshore oligarchs to acquire hotels, smash their unions, and siphon off money needed for the local tax coffers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#reit-makes-might

Now, all work and no play make Steve a dull oligarch. The ultra-rich have figured out how to turn their hobbies and follies into tax-free money-pits, like Steve Ballmer’s beloved LA Clippers. He evaded tax on $140m by buying the team — while his athletes (whose labor provides him with a handsome income) pay 30–40% income tax:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

“Find a tax-sheltered hobby you love and you’ll never work a day.” That’s the principle behind the hundreds of millions in tax-evasion practiced by the horsey set ($189m for tobacco billionaire Brad Kelley, $173m for soup heiress Charlotte Weber, $138m for hedge-fund looter Seth Klarman).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#hobby-lobby-ists

But if you just haven’t found your passion yet, you can still trouser hundreds of millions, through the simple and effective tactic of cheating on your taxes.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity

Don’t worry, the IRS has slashed its budget for auditing wealthy people and focuses its firepower on families with annual incomes of $35k and under:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/democrats-ask-irs-why-tax-audits-for-poor-have-doubled

The IRS Leaks are a couple of years out of date now, and it’s hard to know exactly how much worse it’s gotten. One bellwether is the amount of debt assumed by the ultra-wealthy — when plutes borrow, it’s not like you or I going into debt, rather, it’s part of a “buy-borrow-die” strategy through which unrealized, tax-free capital gains are used as collateral for cheap-as-dirt loans. The super-rich are levered up to their hairlines:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/03/fitzgerald-was-an-optimist/#debt

Meanwhile, President Biden has proposed a billionaire wealth tax, designed to get around the various tax-evasion strategies used by American oligarchs. Unsurprisingly, the wealthy are fighting back, insisting that they do pay tax, and lots of it:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/11/billionaire-tax-biden-unrealized-gains-assets/9503953002

Today, Propublica’s Paul Kiel, Ash Ngu, Jesse Eisinger and Jeff Ernsthausen offer a reality check on those claims, with an in-depth analysis of America’s 400 top earners:

https://projects.propublica.org/americas-highest-incomes-and-taxes-revealed/

The team start by observing that your effective rate of income tax does climb as your income does, but once you reach $29m, it plateaus — and then, it goes down, as extreme wealth unlocks access to tax evasion strategies that are beyond the reach of the merely rich.

The main way that the super-rich avoid tax is by arranging their payouts so they come as capital gains and not salaries, which are taxed at 20% rather than the 37% top rate for income derived from doing stuff, rather than owning stuff. Note that the 20% rate is only for long-term capital gains, and that means that nominally flippers who buy and sell assets quickly can’t get it — but have no fear, private equity barons can pretend to be 16th century sea-captains and avail themselves of the carried interest loophole.

The US tax code has had special treatment for capital gains for about a century, but GW Bush’s tax cuts in 2003 supercharged these breaks for the owning class. America’s richest 400 people save an average of $1.9b/year thanks to ole GW.

The American tax-code is especially kind to people who emerge from lucky orifices. If you’re in the DeVos or Walton family, tax giveaways are the key to your ability to shower candidates, PACs and think-tanks with money. 11 Walton orifice-emergers pocket $371m/year thanks to preferential treatment for dynastic fortunes.

But the real winners are tech billionaires, those rapacious, mediocre monopolists who have denuded the internet into five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four. Their “charitable contributions” of stock (which can simply be donations to their own family foundations) let them deduct the full value of the stock without any capital gains tax.

The top 400 American earners make at least $110m/year. That’s 2,750 times the average American annual wage. The richest 11 US earners make more than $1b/year. A typical American would have to work for 25,000 years to make that much.

During those 25,000 years, you’ll pay more of your income as tax than billionaires. While they nominally pay a higher rate than you, you’re paying a much larger share of your income into Social Security and Medicare, goosing your tax rate over theirs.

Now all of this is a little misleading. The rich are actually richer than this analysis suggests. As the authors describe, “the richest avoid income when they can.” By using the buy-borrow-die method, the wealthy actually pay a true tax rate of 3.4%.

That number shrinks even further when you consider America’s top 15 earners who are singled out by name in a companion feature:

https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-and-what-they-reveal-about-the-us-tax-system

Despite what you may have guessed, there are no celebs on that list. Even LeBron James and Taylor Swift don’t approach the fortunes of the tech billionaires, hedge fund looters, and profession orifice-emergers atop the steep slopes of the American wealth-pyramid.

[architectnews]

Herman Uihlein House For Sale, Milwaukee

Beer Mansion For Sale, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Luxury Real Estate Development, US Building Photos

Herman Uihlein House in Milwaukee

May 3, 2021

Beer Mansion

Herman Uihlein House in Milwaukee for sale priced at $6.95 million

Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States

Source: www.toptenrealestatedeals.com

Milwaukee is known as the Beer Capital of the World, but the quality of the beer wasn’t the only reason. Instead, its reputation was achieved through its proximity to beer-drinking Chicago, cheap lake-shipping transportation, and the aggressive business styles of its brewers.

The success of the beer tycoons was apparent in the mansions built from their fortunes such as the Herman Uihlein House on Lake Michigan’s Whitefish Bay built in 1917 for the son of the president of Schlitz Brewery. Before the home was built, the property was the site of the Pabst (Beer) Whitefish Bay Resort with a restaurant, round beer bar with lake views, and a Ferris wheel. The Herman Uihlein House is now for sale at $6.95 million.

In 1849, Welsh settlers opened Milwaukee’s first brewery and named it Milwaukee Brewery. A German competitor opened a second brewery and more followed. It became home to some of the country’s largest brewers such as Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz. Schlitz became known as Milwaukee’s namesake beer and was known as “The beer that made Milwaukee famous.” It was advertised with the slogan “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”

The Herman Uihlein House was built on three acres on a low bluff at the edge of Lake Michigan, a couple miles north of Downtown Milwaukee; a combination of Italian Renaissance and Beaux Arts architectural styles.

Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, the 13,717-square-foot, two-story house has nine bedrooms and eight baths. Many upgrades have been undertaken since 2018, including a new kitchen, new boiler, new air conditioning system, and elegant new surface materials.

Rooms include public formal rooms, a library, billiards room, fitness center, home theater, staff quarters and wine cellar. There are also four fireplaces, a wet bar and underfloor heating. Floors are hardwood and marble.

The estate’s landscape design is symmetrical in form and sits in the middle of the property with a long reflecting pool in the front. The rear landscaping focuses on the big Lake Michigan water views. There are terraced walkways and steps leading to the water’s edge and more steps going into the water.

The mansion is designed with entertaining in mind, whether intimate or hosting a large group. One of the home’s owners in the 1990s was Warren Buffet’s Emmy-award-winning son, Peter Buffet, who composed music for Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves in a recording studio he had installed in the home.

Beer is still a big deal in Milwaukee with Miller Beer, now officially Molson Coors, employing about 1,500 cheeseheads and pumping out over 7 million barrels of beer a year.

Although the city’s other two big beer kingpins, Schlitz and Pabst, have left Milwaukee for L.A., both beers reigned at different times as America’s most popular brand.

The names are still seen everywhere in Milwaukee, including the popular Pabst Mansion Museum in Downtown Milwaukee and the Brewhouse Inn which is now a boutique hotel located in the former Pabst brewery building, just west of Downtown. Not too far from Schlitz Park where the “The beer that made Milwaukee famous” was once made. And, of course, the Milwaukee Brewers MLB baseball team plays nearby at their field, formerly known as Miller Park.

YouTube Credit: Sean Evans, @evvo1991 backtothemovies.com/

The Herman Uihlein House, built for the son of the president of Schlitz Beer, is now on the market at $6.95 million. Listing agents are Peter Mahler and Paul Handle of Mahler Sotheby’s International Realty, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Photo credit: VRX Media Group and Rangeline Photography

Source: www.sothebysrealty.com

Herman Uihlein House For Sale, Milwaukee images / information received 030521

Wisconsin Buildings

Wisconsin Architecture

Wisconsin Architectural Designs

SC Johnson Headquarters, Racine, Milwaukee County Design: Frank Lloyd Wright Architect photo : Iwan Baan, Courtesy the Chicago Architecture Biennial SC Johnson Headquarters Racine by Frank Lloyd Wright

Fox Point House, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States Design: Johnsen Schmaling Architects photograph : John J. Macaulay New house at Fox Point

Fortaleza Hall, Racine Design: Foster + Partners photo : James Steinkamp_Steinkamp Photography S C Johnson Headquarters Wisconsin : S C Johnson Headquarters campus

The Usonian Inn, Wisconsin River Valley, WI Design: J C Caraway architect photo from The Usonian Inn The Usonian Inn Wisconsin

Brittlebush, Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture Design: Simón De Agüero picture from architect Brittlebush

Arado WeeHouse Design: Alchemy Architects image from architects Prefabricated House – Prefabricated Modular Vacation Retreat

Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research Building Design by HOK with Zimmerman Architectural Studios, Inc. photo from architects Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research Building

Wisconsin Architecture by architect Frank Lloyd Wright

S. C. Johnson Administration Building, Racine 1936

S. C. Johnson Research Tower, Racine – aka Johnson Wax Research Tower 1944/47

Taliesin III, Spring Green 1911-25/38

Unitarian Church, Shorewood Hills 1947

Illinois Architecture

Ohio Architecture

Michigan Architecture

Comments / photos for the Herman Uihlein House, Milwaukee page welcome

Website: Wisconsin

The post Herman Uihlein House For Sale, Milwaukee appeared first on e-architect.

[casorasi]

Bryson DeChambeau, Peter Uihlein share Las Vegas lead

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Bryson DeChambeau birdied four of the last six holes Saturday for a share of the lead with Peter Uihlein in the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open. Bryson DeChambeau, Peter Uihlein share Las Vegas lead

[whitedragongolf]

The RSM Classic.

Charles Howell 111 leads the RSM Classic in tough conditions on Sea Island in Georgia, at the  Seaside and Plantation courses.

Charles / getty

Charles carded a first round -8 under par 64 on the Plantation Course to lead The RSM Classic, a two course tournament, in very tough conditions in Georgia;

“I think sometimes playing these difficult conditions it forces you to stay a bit more present, it…

[thesportsfamily-blog]

Scottish Open - Betting Preview

Scottish Open – Betting Preview

Following on from an absolutely fantastic host course for the Irish Open we have another out-and-out links test ahead of next week’s Open Championship. With the European Tour now having seemingly settled into having 3 weeks in a row of links golf we are really getting spoilt at this time of year. While the composite course at Gullane isn’t quite at the same level as Ballyliffin, it’s still…

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 2.3

Beer Birthdays

Julius Stroh (1856)

Henry Uihlein II (1896)

Peter Catizone (1959)

Chad Mosher (1961)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Isla Fisher; actor (1976)

Felix Mendelssohn; composer (1809)

Jean-Pierre Rampal; flutist (1922)

Norman Rockwell; artist (1894)

Gertrude Stein; writer (1874)

Famous Birthdays

Alvar Aalto; architect, furniture designed (1898)

Paul Auster; writer (1947)

Walter Bagehot; English economist (1826)

Shelley Berman; comedian, actor (1926)

Joey Bishop; comedian, actor (1918)

Elizabeth Blackwell; 1st female doctor (1821)

Victor Buono; actor (1938)

Robert Cecil; British PM (1830)

Blythe Danner; actor (1943)

Dave Davies; rock guitarist, "Kinks" (1947)

Warwick Davis; actor (1970)

Morgan Fairchild; actor (1950)

Gale Gillingham; Green Bay Packers G (1944)

Retief Goosen; golfer (1969)

Horace Greeley; writer (1811)

Bob Griese; Miami Dolphins QB (1945)

Henry Heimlich; doctor, invented Heimlich Maneuver (1920)

Nathan Lane; actor (1956)

Julie Meadows; porn actress (1974)

Melanie; pop singer (1947)

James A. Michener; writer (1907)

Elijah Pitts; Green Bay Packers RB (1938)

Fran Tarkenton; Minnesota Vikings QB (1940)

Maura Tierney; actor (1965)

Frankie Vaughn; singer (1928)

Simone Weil; French mystic (1909)

[mariacallous]

With the power balance in Congress at stake in this year’s midterm elections, the GOP money machine kicked into high gear. Spending on advertisements and drumming up votes was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars from the party’s mega-donors and Super Pacs. Many donors’ spending figures marked new records.

Their return on investment, however, is probably not what they had hoped: some donors who spent eight figures notched zero wins in the Senate, while others spent far more money on losing candidates than winners. In the midterms, some of the biggest losers were Republican donors.

Among the clearest of those losers is Mehmet Oz, who self-funded much of his own failed run for office – loaning his Pennsylvania US Senate campaign about $22m, or about 55% of the roughly $40m he raised.

Meanwhile, candidates backed by Peter Thiel, the rightwing tech investor hyped pre-election as a new GOP “kingmaker”, lost in Arizona and Washington, calling into question his judgment and contributions’ value.

Other mega-donors and Pacs came out behind despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars collectively on multiple candidates who lost, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog, and federal campaign records. Among those is Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund Super Pac, which spent $239m; the billionaire financier Jeff Yass, who spent $47m; the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who spent $67m; the packaging giants Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, who spent $77m; and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who spent $34m.

By contrast, Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races generally had a larger share of small donations. GOP mega-donor and Super Pac money couldn’t overcome weak candidates that many swing voters viewed as extreme.

The results highlight that “candidate strength matters”, said Gunner Ramer, political director at Longwell Associates, a conservative communication firm. “Voters have real concerns over crime, inflation, gas prices and the economy … but all these really poor candidates – these crazy, extreme Republicans – got beat up hard.”

In Pennsylvania, Oz’s self-funding functioned as a double-edged sword that benefited him in the primaries and made him attractive to GOP base voters “who still think that you can buy a race”, said Sam Chen, a political strategist in Allentown. But once in the general election, Chen said, it meant that Oz received relatively few small donors in part because he was viewed as a self-funder.

Still, he wasn’t alone: McConnell’s Pac put up $47m. That combined with Oz’s personal spending accounted for nearly half of the stunning $140m Oz forces spent in the campaign. Two largely billionaire-funded single-candidate Pacs also went all in on Oz: Honor Pennsylvania spent about $15m, and its largest donor was Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, who gave it at least $8.8m; and American Leadership Action Pac, funded by Wall Street tycoons or mega-donors like Susquehanna International Group CEO Jeff Yass, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Actua CEO Walter Buckley, dropped another $15m.

Though the outside spending in Pennsylvania set a new record, Oz was a “uniquely weak candidate”, Chen noted, and his failure highlights how wealth and Super PAC money “is not the end all be all”.

“Small dollar donations, the grandma who writes you a $5 check, they are locked in and voting for you … and they are probably the type of person who tells their neighborhood, their soccer mom group, their bible study that they gave you contributions,” Chen said. “Those contributions mean a lot more.”

In Arizona, Thiel spent at least $17.5m backing Blake Masters’ failed US Senate bid, while Thiel’s Pac, Saving Arizona, which received significant funding from mega-donor Richard Uihlein, spent at least $21.5m.

Thiel’s potential to become a powerbroker was the subject of intense media attention in part because he funded a breed of rightwing populist GOP candidate that broke with the party establishment. Voters, however, were “completely repelled” by Masters, Ramer said, and though Thiel had success in primary races across the country, his money couldn’t overcome swing voter skepticism in the Arizona general election.

McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund ended with a mixed record, but spent far more on losing races. Data released just ahead of the election by a marketing industry analyst found McConnell had shelled out $178m for advertising in five states – New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Ohio.

Campaign finance records show the Senate Leadership Fund spent nearly $140m in four of those five states in which GOP candidates did not win, though Georgia is yet to be decided.

The Club For Growth Super Pac, one of the nation’s most prolific outside spenders, also fared poorly. Its primary funders were Uihlein and Yass, who put at least $46m into the Pac. It backed Masters with over $7m and spent $15m in Nevada attempting to unseat Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto. It also spent $12m total on winning campaigns in Ohio and North Carolina.

Meanwhile, the Sentinel Action Fund spent over $10m in Nevada and New Hampshire, and didn’t put any money in winning Senate races. Its primary funder is Tim Mellon, grandson of banking tycoon Andrew Mellon, who spent about $40m during the election cycle.

Focus groups run by Longwell Associates found Pacs’ ads were probably ineffective because voters didn’t like the Trump-backed, extreme GOP candidates that the Pacs supported – such as Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Don Buldoc in New Hampshire or Masters.

“You can hit Catherine Cortez Masto on gas prices and tie it to Joe Biden, but at least a meaningful slice of voters just were not buying it,” Ramer said. “At the end of the day, if they don’t like the Republican candidate, and it becomes a lesser-of-two-evils thing, then it may not move the votes the way that Club for Growth was hoping, and that is a reflection on Adam Laxalt.”

Many of the mega-donors’ spending totals come with a caveat. They may not include all the donors’ contributions, and Pac records may omit spending by some individuals altogether. Pacs are required by law to disclose their donors, but more are shielding their contributors’ identities by exploiting a loophole that allows donors to give to a Pac’s affiliated dark money nonprofit, which does not have to disclose its donors. The nonprofit then gives those donations to the Pac, circumventing disclosure laws.

Pacs only “have the facade of being transparent”, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Open Secrets, adding that the loophole adds another layer of uncertainty to the nation’s already murky campaign finance disclosure laws.

Regardless, the money means little to the GOP if the party continues nominating extremist and Trump-backed candidates in swing states, Ramer said. “The gap between what it takes to win in a Republican primary and what it takes to win in November is continuing to grow, and that is a difficulty the party will be dealing with in future elections.”

Whether the funders will have a change of heart is another matter. Republican mega-donors “clearly have money to burn and they may lose, and they may be dissatisfied with their return on investment, but they are also clearly risk takers – and it’s a low risk to them because of how much money they have”, said Krumholz. “It shows the limits of their money.”

[muhammaddahab]

Peter Uihlein ist seit seinem Beitritt "freier, glücklicher" und reicher

Peter Uihlein ist seit seinem Beitritt “freier, glücklicher” und reicher

DORALL, FL – Peter Oehlen knirscht seit über einem Jahrzehnt auf der PGA Tour, als er beschloss, sich mit Greg Norman zusammenzutun. Obwohl er nicht gewann, lebte Uihlein sehr bequem. Doch bei dem hart umkämpften Profisportler hat der Frust eingesetzt. „Eigentlich wünschte ich, ich könnte besser spielen“, sagte Oehlen über die vergangenen vier Jahre. “Ich bestreite es nicht.” Dann kam das…

[scottbcrowley2]

Peter Uihlein grabs first-round lead at Shriners Open - Thu, 01 Nov 2018 PST

Peter Uihlein topped the leaderboard at 8-under 63 on Thursday in the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open, with Jordan Spieth three strokes back in his season debut. Peter Uihlein grabs first-round lead at Shriners Open - Thu, 01 Nov 2018 PST