A California billionaire helped fuel Hawley's political rise and has invested Kobach's political future. A deep dive on Peter Thiel's interest in Midwest politics with details on previously undisclosed spending for pro-Kobach group https://t.co/bDpi3gcGoO #ksleg #moleg
— Bryan Lowry (@BryanLowry3) September 29, 2019
I’d seen rumors on multiple sites that the Permanent GOP Party was ‘encouraging’, or at least hoping, Mike Pompeo to run for the Senate in Kansas. Suddenly, a powerful counterinterest emerges… just as Mike Pompeo finds himself under the spotlight in DC. Brian Lowry, at the Kansas City Star:
Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who believes Google should be investigated for treason and once wrote that American democracy has been in decline since women won the right to vote, is investing heavily in two of the Kansas City region’s most ambitious political startups.
Thiel steered six figures into a dark money group that backed Republican Kris Kobach’s failed campaign for Kansas governor, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
And now that Kobach is running for U.S. Senate, the PayPal co-founder is upfront about his financial support. Last week at his New York City apartment, Thiel and conservative pundit Ann Coulter co-hosted a fundraiser for the former Kansas secretary of state…
One of Thiel’s companies, the data mining firm Palantir, has provided software supporting ICE’s case management system since 2014. The company has faced criticism from immigration activists because of the software’s reported use in deportations.
Two sources familiar with the inner workings of Kobach’s 2018 campaign said Thiel gave a contribution worth six figures to Per Aspera Policy, a 501(c)4 organization that paid for digital and television ads.
Both of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thiel’s previously undisclosed contributions to the dark money group occurred after Kobach and Thiel discussed the race on the phone. One source said Kobach was giddy when Thiel agreed to spend money in the race.
Kobach did not consent to an interview about his relationship with Thiel. His campaign declined to answer any questions, including about whether Thiel and Kobach had discussed the race for governor.
Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, said at a minimum the situation “sounds like an illustration of the problems with dark money. Dark money is often only dark when it comes to the public’s knowledge—the candidates who benefit often know where the money is coming from.”…
It’s impossible to have any sympathy for Pompeo, who’s done his best to earn all the opprobrium now being aimed his way. Another interesting data point, however, that the other rightwing authoritarians see an opening to exploit in the flailing Trump 2020 campaign…
TomatoQueen
Ugh.
Origuy
Anne Laurie, two of the paragraphs in your excerpt are repeated, beginning with “One of Thiel’s companies”.
Thiel is a loose cannon. We need campaign finance reform.
jl
Is this the guy who wanted to build his own portable floating libertarian fantasy island, and drain millennials of their blood to rejuvenate and generally spruce up oldsters?
To many toxic and insane billionaires buying our political system to keep track.
Dev Null
er, any idea as to Thiel’s motives?
Kobach is a stone-cold racist, isn’t he? Thiel is many things, few if any of which are good, but …
… racist?
I hadn’t heard that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.” –Voltaire
Dev Null
@jl: yes. And NZ citizenship into the bargain, so that when the Apocalypse comes, he will live on as an Eldritch Horror in NZ.
trollhattan
@jl:
Where Trump failed he will succeed, buying Greenland!
Humdog
@Dev Null: Thiel believes only rich white men make the rules and are the only ones who should rule. His racism is as clear as his sexism.
trollhattan
@Dev Null:
Doesn’t it kind of come with the package–like getting Apple Play in your new car whether you like it or not?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dev Null: e
Gliberatian so Thel wants make the paradise that is the Matrix Movie series happen in real life.
Yutsano
*sigh*
Thiel makes me ashamed to be a gay man.
Seriously. He could have all the boy toys and groupies for pool/orgy parties he wanted. Instead he feels compelled to dicker with Republicans. He needs to have a really juicy sex scandal pop up.
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: Speaking of which, wasn’t douchebag Wohl going to present something today?
Anne Laurie
@Origuy: Thanks, fixt!
randal m sexton
SuperVillian AND VAMPIRE ! vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes. He was going to reveal that Elizabeth Warren has been having an affair with a 24 y/o “highly-decorated Marine”. My bet is that the dude is a “stolen valor” fake
Yutsano
@Gin & Tonic: @ Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) : I’m busy as all get out at work, but what was the timing on that?
Gravenstone
@jl: That would be the whackjob in question, yes.
Gravenstone
@Yutsano: Per their press release, 1430 ET today. (Adam’s fp post on the matter popped up in Cole’s Twitter sidebar and I refreshed my memory of the coming debacle).
Taiko
Great. One Koch dies and a new one jumps up to take his place.
Ladyraxterinok
@Origuy: Thiel was a student of Rene Girad at Stanford . See Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook, article found on google.
IIRC, sometime ago Adam had a long article on Girard’s philosophy.
Mayur
@randal m sexton: I was going to ask about where Van Helsing might be.
Bobby Thomson
Crisco Box is so oily that even Kansas Republicans dislike him. He failed where Brownback (!) succeeded, and people haaaaated Brownback.
oldster
Wow. To judge from that side-by-side photo, Thiel is already sucking out some of Kobach’s blood.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer vote-suppressor. And with any luck, Kobach’s blood will kill Thiel, too.
Thiel is on record saying that he is ideologically opposed to democracy. He’s not kidding: he is an anti-democrat, who is willing to destroy democracies so that he has no accountability of any kind. That’s what the nexus of plutocracy and glibertarian ideology aims for: global impunity, to go everywhere they want, do anything they want to anyone they want, and pay no costs of any kind.
Horrible, horrible people. They will still be horrible after an equitable taxation regime makes them less mega-rich. But they will be less capable of committing evil, and their money will be put to genuinely good uses.
Go Liz!
Bobby Thomson
@Dev Null: dude, he’s a REPUBLICAN.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok: Girard—sorry!
rikyrah
Open Thread:
This was posted to me this morning, and I just saw it:
It’s dramatic and ‘ revolutionary’, and Black people are not ‘revolutionaries’.
‘Revolution’ has never worked out for us. We’re always on the short end of the stick of ‘revolution’. We’re the incremental change in a positive direction kind of folks. We are the moderates of the party.
It’s the way she was goated into the test by Dolt45.
She handled it poorly. She didn’t think it out. And, the fact that she didn’t think that she had to think it out and plan it out -is bothersome and says something about her.
She still doesn’t have an answer, BTW.
Dolt45 is punching, bully of a clown. You have to be able to punch back and shut his shyt down. You have to be able to play a version of the ‘Dozens’ and clown him. Do it in a pleasant way, as a woman or a non-White, because only a White male can be as mean and nasty back to him. Barack Obama, for all his education, knew how to play the ‘Dozens’ in his own way.
I always begin any discussion that I have about Affirmative Action with
” if you aren’t going to say that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are White Women, then you’re just trying to clown.”
I mean that. So, for her to even BE in this Native American circumstance, it’s not that I can articulate it. It’s a feeling. It’s a spidey sense thing. And, it rubs the wrong way. And, the dismissiveness of some towards us who bring it up…like if you keep on saying that it shouldn’t be an issue, when there’s more there. YOU don’t have a response for the GOP ready ads on this topic. You better get one.
Everybody Black knows somebody Black that will tell you in a second:
” I got Indian in my family. ”
Would swear up and down. Don’t know any of them who would actually put on ANY kind of document, or allow anyone else to qualify them (As Harvard did her), as Indian/Native American. Would never even occur to them, and they’d swear to you everyday, all day, that they had Indian in their family.
rikyrah
I thought Thiel was on his way to abandoning America for New Zealand,…..didn’t he purchase citizenship there?
Doesn’t he have blood to go take from young people?
JoeyJoeJoe
Congressman Roger Marshall is running in the Senate primary as well. He’s got a pretty good chance of winning
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Thank you, rikyrah. I wanted to hear in your own words what you really thought, and you raise some excellent points.
I was just skimming this thread (not interested in Peter Thiel, fuck him very much) and glad to find your response. Cheers.
rikyrah
@rikyrah: ‘
sorry..
goaded into it by Dolt45
Ladyraxterinok
@rikyrah: First heard of ‘doing the dozens’ while auditing folklore courses at Memorial U in StJohn’s Nfld 76-77. Fascinating!
Citizen Alan
@Yutsano:
Creatures like Thiel are why I support confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy. Beyond a certain point, I genuinely believe that excessive wealth makes people evil.
Sab
@rikyrah: Also too thank you for answering.
Dev Null
@trollhattan: stepped away.
I dunno. Doesn’t the package you get depend on the price you pay?
Maybe Thiel is a stone-cold racist like Kobach… but I don’t know of any other evidence for Thiel’s racism, and I’ve been known about Thiel for years.
I was wondering if Palantir profits might have something to do with Thiel’s endorsement of Kobach, but perhaps it’s the other way around … perhaps Palantir because Thiel is a racist.
Dev Null
@Bobby Thomson:
Good snark. [amused]
Dev Null
@Citizen Alan:
Pretty sure I’ve read sociology abstracts that claim to provide evidence for this … but I don’t know the quality of the research.
artem1s
@Taiko:
Hail Hydra!
TheOtherHank
Are there any PayPal founders that aren’t shitheads?
Dan B
Kobach is anti-LGBT. He opposes same sex marriage and adoption, has compared LGBT to polygamy and pedophilia, and supports the riggt for businesses to discriminate. He then is enthused by Thiel’s gay money.
Thiel will be the last one eaten on his island in New Zealand. Small comfort.
Jay
@Dan B:
Thiel won’t be eaten, but he will be the first one shot,
By his Head of Security, who will take over.
Lord of the Flies style.
philpm
Kobach, even with Thiel’s support, has zero chance at the senate seat. His name is nearly a curse word around here, even amongst Republicans, who are working hard to keep him as far away from it as he can. Thiel might as well flush his money down the toilet.
Anne Laurie
From what I understand from medical reporters, he’s doing that already (quite literally) with his Bathory-style “youthful blood” infusions.
philpm
@Anne Laurie:
Sounds like it might be better for him than backing Kobach at least.