#uihlein — Public Fediverse posts

Rich People make terrible neighbours. Tax the fuck out of them so they fuck off like they keep threatening to.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/13/uihlein-republican-donors-illinois-battle-00106087

#EatTheRich #NoBillionaires #Uihlein #Illinois

[The Guardian]: Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally, sources allege

Exclusive: Experts believe the alleged ‘shuttle support’ program used by Uline – a company owned by billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein – is likely illegal and exploitative of workers By Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Alice Herman in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin
Fri 20 Dec 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/20/uline-mexican-workers-trump?CMP=share_btn_url

#immigration #uihlein #wisconsin

Part of the Reprehesible American #Plutocracy

The secretive billionaires network funding “Stop the Steal” 2.0

“A secretive network of #GOP donors and #conservative #Billionaires have fueled the effort, giving more than $140 million to nearly 50 loosely connected groups that work on what they call #Electionintegrity, according to a #WallStreetJournal review of Federal Election Commission filings, tax filings and other records. Among the donors are organizations linked to #Wisconsin billionaires Richard and Elizabeth #Uihlein and #HobbyLobby founder #DavidGreen.”

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/donald-trump-contest-election-outcome-4521f4f7

With a classic typeface and traditional newspaper design,
the mass-mailed "Catholic Tribune"
newspapers carry signposts of legitimacy.

But most of the articles in the papers are inflammatory
and overtly partisan,
focusing on culture-war issues that resonate with conservative voters.

A headline in the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune, and repurposed in other states’ versions,
provocatively asks,
“How many ‘sex change’ mutilation surgeries occurred on Wisconsin kids?”

Another: “Haitian illegal aliens in America: What are Harris supporters saying?”

At the same time, they undermine Vice President Kamala Harris and prop up former President Donald Trump.

The papers, which have also appeared in Arizona and Pennsylvania,
are what academics call “pink slime.”

The name comes from a filler in processed meat
— or a product that is not entirely what it seems.

Using tax documents and business filings,
ProPublica traced the papers to a Chicago-based publishing network led by former TV reporter #Brian #Timpone.

His enterprises, including "Metric Media", are known among researchers for peddling misinformation and slanted coverage.

The network has received money from right-wing super PACs funded by conservative billionaire #Richard #Uihlein,
founder of the mammoth shipping supply company Uline.

The Catholic Church does not endorse candidates or call for their defeat
but does speak out on moral issues and participates in debates over public policies.
Many dioceses publish newspapers, but they are not partisan.

In distancing itself from the Michigan Catholic Tribune,
the Archdiocese of Detroit noted that tax-exempt churches are not permitted under the Internal Revenue Code to be involved in partisan politics.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee directed Catholics to a Wisconsin Catholic Conference document setting out guidelines for church involvement in electoral politics.

In an era of prolific “pink slime” sites, sophisticated, AI-concocted fakes and outlandish conspiracy theories engulfing social media, the papers are a throwback to a low-tech disinformation tactic.

But they are not unusual in the Metric Media universe.

ProPublica, in collaboration with the nonprofit news organization Floodlight and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, recently reported on a
misinformation campaign against solar energy in Ohio aided by Metric Media
that included distribution of a similar unfamiliar newspaper,
the Ohio Energy Reporter.

It has the same mailing address as the Catholic Tribune papers.

Metric Media and its sister companies operate more than 1,100 local news websites across the country.

The return address for the Michigan and Wisconsin Catholic Tribunes matches the business mailing address of companies within the Metric Media network, ProPublica found.

Timpone, who lives in Illinois and has contributed to conservative campaigns and causes, leads Metric Media.

His brother, Michael Timpone, also leads a media company at the address listed on the Catholic Tribune papers,
and he led the Metric Media affiliate that published similar papers in previous election cycles.

Michael Timpone also did not respond to a request for comment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/church-no-affiliation-catholic-tribune-metric-media

For a primer on the Uihleins and their election influence, read our previous reporting:
https://propub.li/3YeNOOV

#News #Election #Republican #Billionaire #Uihlein #Shipping

Who’s Mailing the #Catholic Tribune? It’s Not the Church, It’s Partisan Media.
—

ProPublica has traced these mass-mailed newspapers to a “pink slime” news network known for #misinformation and its ties to right-wing super PACs funded by the #billionaire founder of shipping supply giant #Uline.

https://propub.li/4hbqtXe

#News #Rightwing #Media #Journalism #Uihlein #Election #Propaganda

#Charles #Koch, perhaps the most legendary Republican financier of recent decades,
has never backed Trump, either.

The political network affiliated with him and his late brother #David remained officially neutral in the Presidential races of 2016 and 2020,
and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Trump in this year’s Republican primaries,
-- much of it supporting Haley.

When she dropped out, the Koch network concentrated on down-ballot races.

But Kochworld, like the Republican Party more broadly, remains divided.

“There are a lot of donors in that network lobbying Charles from the perspective of,
I know you don’t like him,
but he’s better than the alternative,”
Marc Short, who worked for a Koch-affiliated group
and later served as Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said.

Nevertheless, neither Koch nor Pence is supporting Trump this fall
—a remarkable rift, given the role that each of them has played in Republican politics.

At the same time, Trump has cultivated a new group of what might be called #maga #megadonors.

A study conducted for The New Yorker by the campaign-finance expert Robert Maguire,
of the nonprofit good-government group #crew,
found that, as of this summer,
more than forty of the G.O.P.’s biggest super-pac donors during Romney’s 2012 campaign had never given to a pro-Trump super pac,
including Oracle’s co-founder #Larry #Ellison,
the Dallas real-estate tycoon #Harlan #Crow,
and the hotel magnate J. W. #Marriott, Jr.

Meanwhile, nearly sixty pro-Trump donors in the study,
including #Lutnick, #Mellon, #Perlmutter, and the Wisconsin shipping magnates #Richard and #Elizabeth #Uihlein, had given nothing to the pro-Romney super pac.

Others have significantly increased their giving.

The #Adelsons, for example, donated $53 million to the pro-Romney super pac in 2012 and $90 million to support Trump in 2020,
when they were the largest individual donors of the cycle.

By the end of September, Miriam Adelson had given $100 million to back Trump in 2024.

With such sums at stake, Trump has pursued what the former Bush Pioneer called a “high touch” approach to the Republican billionaire class.

🔥The ex-President has all but invited donors to view their contributions as business investments,
telling oil-and-gas executives who went to see him in April at Mar-a-Lago, for example, that,
💥because he would allow unrestricted drilling,
🧨they should raise $1 billion for his campaign
—a statement redolent of Sondland’s “quid pro quo” that soon leaked to the Washington Post.

The campaign’s strategy, another longtime fund-raiser told me,
was essentially to let Trump be Trump:

“He talks the same book to everybody.”

Oliver, the former Bush finance director, observed that the difference between the model of the Bush campaigns and Trump’s is the difference between having a large pool of “institutional investors” which had been built up in the course of years, and a series of ad-hoc “transactional” dealings with a relatively small group of the ultra-rich.

Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton University, offered another key distinction. Trump’s billionaires—many of whom have made their fortunes as hedge-fund managers, activist investors, and corporate raiders—tend to be highly motivated ideologues and individual operators. “It’s transactional, but their end of the bargain is a lot different than just having access to the President of the United States,” Wilentz told me. “They see Trump as their instrument. This is an investment for them to take power.” Wilentz noted that, unlike the “traditional corporate conservative élite” dating back to the Gilded Age, this new “class of the super-rich” appears both more numerous and less civic-minded. “The other guys might have been robber barons,” Wilentz said. “These guys are oligarchs.”

♦️Edgar Uihlein Jr.’s second child, #Dick, born in 1945, grew up in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Lake Bluff and got the same sort of blue-blood education
(Phillips Andover, Stanford)
as his father (Hotchkiss, Princeton).

Amid the social upheavals of the ’60s, #Dick #Uihlein didn’t waver:
He married Liz before graduating from college in 1967,
joined the family business and immersed himself in conservative politics.

He worked on the 1969 Illinois congressional campaign of Phil Crane, who won a crowded Republican primary in an upset on a hardline anti-tax and anti-communist platform.

In one of the only interviews he’s ever given, Dick Uihlein told National Review in 2018 that he got his politics from his father,
who often went by Ed.

At the family breakfast table growing up, Uihlein recalled,
“My father would talk about the importance of capitalism and the evils of socialism.”

Dick said that same year that
“my father shared many of the same values that I have, conservative values.”

Dick and Liz Uihlein continue to revere Edgar Jr., who died in 2005.

Dick Uihlein named the family foundation after his father, and it now sends♦️ tens of millions of dollars to right-wing institutions.

Among the recipients of the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation’s grants are the
♦️ #Federalist #Society and think tanks that have pushed misleading claims about the 2020 election, such as the #Conservative #Partnership #Institute
and the
#Foundation #for #Government #Accountability,
as the Daily Beast reported.

Tucked in toward the back of the Uline catalog released this summer,
sent out to millions of homes and businesses,
was a long tribute to the “wise” Edgar Uihlein Jr.

“Father Uihlein, the head of the family, had a towering presence, and we respected his values,” wrote Liz Uihlein under a picture of her husband and father-in-law,
recalling “frequent dinners at his house, where business, issues of the day, fishing muskies and, always, politics were discussed.”

She ended on a note of nostalgia tinged with bitterness:

“Living your life and raising your kids were easier in an easier time.
There was no legalized marijuana, defund the police or social media.

We, like so many families, were raised with a sharp moral compass.

The rules were the rules, but it was OK.”

The Uihleins’ political giving reflects these longings for a bygone era.

Dick Uihlein is a major funder of the #American #Principles #Project,
which runs ads attacking what it calls “#transgender #ideology,” #abortion and the teaching of “#critical #race #theory.”

Last year, Uihlein weighed in on ♦️recalling four school board members in a small town north of Milwaukee because of their support for COVID-19 #safety #protocols and “#equity” training for teachers.

More recently, in his home state of Illinois, Uihlein has spent more than♦️ $50 million to back the Republican gubernatorial candidate #Darren #Bailey, who has drawn criticism for saying the #Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to the toll of abortions and for accusing Democrats of “putting #perversion into our schools” for adopting a sex ed bill that includes information about gender identity and same-sex couples.

The Uihleins were huge beneficiaries of a tax provision promoted by Sen. #Ron #Johnson, R-Wisc., that was included in the Trump tax overhaul and are continuing to support the Wisconsin senator and fund attack ads against his opponent.

For all the Uihleins’ dismay at the disorder they see consuming the country, there is one domain where they can exert near total control.

Former employees of Uline told ProPublica the couple’s traditionalist politics govern the smallest details of how the company is run.

For new staffers, it begins with the #dress #code in the employee handbook:
Women are not permitted to wear pants except as part of a pantsuit or on Fridays;
hose or stockings must be worn except during the warmer months;
dresses “that are too short” and corduroy of any kind are strictly prohibited.

The handbook defines “tardy” as one minute past an employee’s scheduled start time.

Just four personal items are allowed on employees’ desks,
with maximum dimensions of 5 inches by 7 inches.

One former staffer at Uline’s headquarters recalled a coworker who was forced to remove several drawings done by his young child.

“Liz would walk up and down the aisles, and if your desk looked off, you’d be written up,” he recalled.
#Uline #Dick #Liz #Uihlein #Doug #Mastriano #Jim #Marchant #election #falsehoods #antisemitic #speech #Edgar #John #Birch #Society #fluoridation #segregation #Edwin #Walker #George #Wallace

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.”

Flush with profits from their shipping supply company, the Uihleins have emerged as
⭐️the No. 1 federal campaign donors for Republicans ahead of the November elections, and
⭐️the No. 2 donors overall behind liberal financier George Soros.

The couple has spent at least $121 million on state and federal politics in the last two years alone,
🔥fighting taxes, unions, abortion rights and marijuana legalization.

The German-American clan made their original fortune in the 19th century as owners of the Milwaukee brewery Schlitz.

Family members were staples of the Chicago Tribune society pages.

In 1917, Dick’s grandfather was identified as a millionaire in a Chicago Tribune humor item about how the wealthy man had fired an unqualified chauffeur.

When Dick and Liz Uihlein donated millions in recent years to the pro-Trump super PAC "America First Action", they were following in a family tradition.

Edgar J. Uihlein of Chicago was among the handful of largest donors to the original "America First Committee", the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s group that opposed the United States’ entry into World War II.
(It’s unclear whether that was Edgar Sr., Dick’s grandfather, or Edgar Jr., his father, who had just graduated from college.)

While "America First" drew supporters from across the political spectrum, it was most associated with rightists.

Uihlein’s donation was disclosed in 1941.

Later that year, Lindbergh gave an openly #antisemitic #speech assailing Jewish influence.

When Edgar Uihlein Sr. died in 1956, his estate was valued at $4.8 million
— more than $50 million in today’s dollars
— and the money was left in a trust for his heirs, newspapers reported at the time.

Dick’s father, #Edgar Uihlein Jr., who had started a plastics company after serving in the Navy during World War II, established himself as 💥an important funder of far-right political groups in the 1960s.

A document from 1963 identifies Edgar Uihlein Jr. as on the ⚠️National Finance Committee of the #John #Birch #Society.

Founded a few years earlier, the group quickly became a significant force to the right of the Republican Party, known for its obsessively anti-communist politics.

The Birchers combined hostility to New Deal social programs with lurid conspiracies, famously campaigning against “the horrors of #fluoridation,” a supposed Red plot.

The group fiercely opposed civil rights.

An entry in one 1963 Birch newsletter railed against the upcoming March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King would give his
“I Have a Dream” speech:
“the only good Americans who should have anything to do with this Communist-instigated mob in any way, or pay any attention to it in Washington, are the police required to maintain law and order.”

Edgar Uihlein Jr. supported politicians who embraced #segregation.

In early 1962, he sponsored a speech that brought to Chicago a former U.S. Army general named #Edwin #Walker.

Walker toured the country attacking supposed communist conspiracies and civil rights, while celebrating the Southern defeat of Reconstruction, which he labeled “the tyranny within our own white race.”

The Anti-Defamation League,
which tracked far-right figures in the period,
has archives showing Edgar Uihlein Jr.’s involvement with several other groups and campaigns,
including a $1,000 contribution to the presidential campaign of segregationist #George #Wallace in 1968.

It’s not clear when, if ever, Uihlein’s association with the John Birch Society ended.

As late as 1977, the founder of the group wrote a long letter to him asking for money.

https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial?utm_campaign=propublica-sprout&utm_content=1724992559&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook,threads,twitter

During a commercial break came…an ad from #RightWing billionaire Richard #Uihlein’s super-#PAC blaming #Harris for “murders, rapes, attacks on children” & for being “a complete failure.” It was difficult to distinguish the news coverage from the attack ad.

If #FoxNews viewers were listening carefully, they could have heard snippets of reality. #BritHume acknowledged that “#Trump had a bad night”

#idiocracy #Trumpaganda #propaganda #disinformation #FauxNews #lies #debate #MAGA

All told, he has given $227M in contributions to federal candidates & political committees since 2020, nearly all to #Republicans — a sum that puts him in the top echelon of the party’s donors, alongside far better-known megadonors like #MiriamAdelson & her husband, Sheldon, who died in 2021, & Liz & Dick #Uihlein.

Yet for all his financial #influence, #Mellon & his interests — & what exactly is motivating his largess — have remained largely a mystery.

#DarkMoney #USPol #criminal #law

@skykiss

Mark Paoletta: Flacking for the Thomases

#Mark #Paoletta is one of the most aggressive defenders of U.S. Supreme Court Justice #Clarence #Thomas

He has assailed Senators and reporters who raise concerns about the serious ethical issues raised by the actions of Thomas and his wife, Ginni. 

When Paoletta worked in the George H.W. Bush administration he worked on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

#Leonard #Leo also worked on that confirmation battle. 

In 1991, Anita Hill testified under oath that Thomas had engaged in gross sexual overtures toward her when she worked with him in the Reagan administration.

Thomas denied her claims, and his GOP allies attacked her character. 

Since then, Paoletta has repeatedly defended Thomas, and since at least 2016 he has been part of the PR effort to buttress Thomas.   

In 2022, for example, the Federalist, a far right-wing blog site funded by #Dick #Uihlein, published a piece by Mark Paoletta attacking an investigation by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker about #Ginni Thomas’ close ties to right-wing groups, including some that file briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The Federalist’s piece resulted in a correction of how it tried to defend the Thomases with a comparison that effectively mischaracterized the recusal practices of another federal judge and her spouse. 

Paoletta has penned other pieces defending Thomas in that blog, such as
💥calling Anita Hill a liar.💥

This past July the Washington Post revealedthat Leo steered at least $1.8M into a PR and online astroturf campaign to attack a 2016 HBO film about the Clarence Thomas’ nomination.

Paoletta was the face of the campaign and, it turns out, was paid $300,000 by Leo’s Judicial Education Project, according to other disclosures. 

When asked by the Post, Paoletta confirmed, “my good friend Leonard Leo’s group provided funding for this work,” including the Thomas film.

Paoletta also represented Ginni Thomas before the January 6th committee after the Washington Post reported that she repeatedly texted Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, to stop the Electoral College votes from being counted after the 2020 election and urged numerous state legislators to overturn Biden’s election too. 

Paoletta also provided a statement to the Washington Post on Ginni’s behalf, after it was revealed that her group,
🌟“Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty,” 🌟received $600,000 in anonymous contributions funneled through ♦️Capital Research Center♦️ (CRC) to engage in culture war battles.

Around the time of this contribution, CRC signed onto a brief petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case on emission regulations.

In 2021, during the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation Paoletta was also listed as the contact, along with Judicial Crisis Network’s (JCN) #Carrie #Severino, on a memoir about Thomas.

JCN spent $1.5 million on an ad buy ostensibly about KBJ but that was mostly a promo of a vanity biopic about Thomas.

The ad buy was tied to Leo’s for-profit PR firm CRC Advisors.

That ad campaign touting Thomas came as news was breaking about Ginni’s role in repeatedly texting Meadows to try to stop Americans’ votes for Biden from being counted.   

That JCN ad led True North to examine all the funders of that video where Thomas claimed to love hanging out in his RV at Walmart more than going to the beach,
and one of those funders was the long-time benefactors of the Thomases’ luxury lifestyle: #Harlan #Crow.

That painting,
which was called just five guys discussing the law by the artist,
includes Paoletta with Crow, Leonard Leo, Clarence Thomas, and another litigator, #Bo #Rutledge.

Paoletta is the one sitting between Leo and Thomas.

Ansev Demirhan, a researcher with True North, is the one who found that painting that has now been seen around the world.

https://truenorthresearch.org/2023/11/who-is-mark-paoletta-he-is-one-of-the-biggest-defenders-of-clarence-and-ginni-thomas-in-the-scandals-their-actions-have-created/

An anti-Trump group backed by billionaires Reid Hoffman, Seth Klarman and John Pritzker is launching a $50 million ad campaign featuring disaffected Trump voters—while some conservative billionaires coalesce behind the former president as it’s become clear he’ll secure the GOP nomination.

🔸Republican Voters Against Trump🔸, which is funded by the 🔹Republican Accountability PAC, 🔹aims to raise $30 million, in addition to the $20 million it’s already raised, for an advertising campaign featuring 👉videos of former Trump voters explaining why they won’t cast their ballots for him again this year, its founder #Sarah #Longwell told the New York Times.

#Reid #Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a prolific Democratic donor, is one of the Republican Accountability PAC’s biggest backers, donating $2 million in both January and June last year, according to Federal Election Commission filings that show his $4 million accounts for half of what the group raised last year.

#Seth #Klarman, who runs the Boston-based Baupost hedge fund and is a vocal Trump critic who has donated to both parties, gave $1 million to the group in May last year.

#John #Pritzker, of the billionaire family that founded Hyatt hotels, gave a total of $1 million to the group through two $500,000 donations in June and November last year.

Founded during the 2020 campaign, Republican Voters Against Trump is ramping up its anti-Trump efforts as the former president is now the de facto Republican nominee.

♦️Meanwhile, conservative billionaires are lining up behind Trump ♦️, including shipping and packing company founders #Liz and #Dick #Uihlein, the Financial Times reported this weekend,
and aerospace billionaire #Robert #Bigelow, according to Politico—all previous donors to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential campaign.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/03/12/here-are-the-billionaires-backing-this-anti-trump-republican-campaign/?sh=5122dc3e2c59