It is not a malicious site. It is timely. It is opportune. If you think Mayor Pete should be back running South Bend and not hob-nobbing with ultra wealthy individuals gathered to buy influence, if so, then you might find an insight at the peteswinecave.com website suggesting you do something positive toward a good end.
The Hill explains. Daily Beast coverage includes an image:
Additional coverage: The Atlantic, "Social Media Made America Tired of Rich People -- It used to be easier to hide your wine cave."
Vox, "Pete Buttigieg is raising money from Silicon Valley’s billionaires — even as Elizabeth Warren attacks him for it -- The families of Eric Schmidt, Reed Hastings, and Sergey Brin are hosting a fundraiser for Buttigieg on Monday." The item expands:
A host list circulated to prospective donors for an event on Monday morning in Palo Alto, California, features individuals with family ties to some of the most prominent people in Big Tech. Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings is listed as a co-host of the event, as is Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin; Wendy Schmidt, the wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; and Michelle Sandberg, the sister of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, sources say.
The inclusion of these people on the list says nothing definitive about who Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg, or Eric Schmidt themselves will support in the 2020 race, of course. But the event’s host list is a reminder of Buttigieg’s ties to Silicon Valley, which are increasingly becoming front-and-center in the presidential campaign thanks to Elizabeth Warren, who is raising questions about Buttigieg’s relationships with major contributors.
At a time when Big Tech and elite donors are on the ropes in Democratic politics, Buttigieg is embracing both more than his rivals. How voters respond will be an indication of how much they care about candidates’ connections to Silicon Valley titans.
[...] The Palo Alto event is one of four Buttigieg fundraisers being hosted in the Bay Area beginning on Sunday evening. In Napa Valley, Buttigieg will be hosted by Kathryn Hall for “An Evening in the Vineyards with Mayor Pete,” according to an invitation seen by Recode.
[...] To close out the trip in San Francisco, Buttigieg will be hosted by art gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel and Sabrina Buell, who belongs to a family famous for its political fundraising. In a sign of Buttigieg’s appeal, that event — which has only one asking price, the maximum individual contribution limit of $2,800 — is sold out, a rarity in presidential fundraising.
But it is the Palo Alto event that is likely to turn heads. The Brin, Schmidt, Hastings, and Sandberg families have a combined net worth of about $80 billion, according to estimates. These co-hosts are promised an “intimate meeting with Mayor Pete” at the coffee fundraiser in exchange for donating $2,800 apiece to his campaign, according to the invitation.
[links in original, italics added], The Hall-Napa Valley shindig is the "wine cave" special.
Mayor Pete event entry fees set at $2800, are that low because by law event fees could be no bigger (no individual can contribute more to a federal candidate's committee than that $2800 amount in any election cycle, these funding events being for the Democratic primary).
Of note, the mentioned $80 billion hosting net worth hitters, include "Big Data" titan families which oversee Google, a firm Warren would break up on antitrust reasoning, given their stranglehold over our private information, how they harvest it when we use the internet and how they make their fortunes grow even more by selling your web history information for money. If you Google "herpes" or "cancer" Google knows it, and can sell such info to health insurers. Google profiles you, and targeting advertisers do pay well.
These families like Mayor Pete, who presumably differs on antitrust policy with Warren.
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FINALLY: So that you know - the peteswinecave.com site offers no abiding chance of anyone buying influence. But if you like it, respond.
__________UPDATE___________
Strib, a day after this post went online, published an op-ed feed from WaPo saying the winecave SNAFU is overblown, and it was not a convention of scheming billionaires. Which might be true. This is why among several reports of midwest mayor in Golden State, the quoted story, above, was chosen. The high entry priced event with the Google billionaires and the Netflix billionaire likely was the bigger cash play event on the Indiana small town Mayor's money tree shaking adventure to Californialand. The image of the elite wine cave does have more resonance, judging from press coverage, but
Google Billionaires for Pete
is the story with an arguably greater gravitas. The heavy hitters with much at stake event. Wineries will do okay, Warren or the little Mayor as President; but Liz projects the greater interest in reforming monopoly powers holding sway over your private data and mine, a gravitas that Hall wines lacks. Hall wines sells cachet and high Wine Spectator ratings; not your medical web searches, your IRS site access history, or whether, when, and how you've used Craig's List.
"HALL Wine Club Membership offers VIP treatment, exclusive wines, discounts and more."
"Looking for a little more TLC?
"Membership at HALL offers quarterly wine selections, VIP access, preferred pricing, tenured benefits, complimentary tastings, annual member only events and preferred access to St. Helena and Rutherford experiences."
"VIP treatment" and "more TLC" as goals seem to entail less quid pro quo than wanting to dodge the sting of antitrust enforcement aimed to allow greater competitive participation in high tech scrutiny of our web habits. Flat out truth is that Liz Warren's views of regulatory effort on behalf of the citizenry will not impact a winery's bottom line. Google has more meat in the fire. It is unfortunate for us that mainstream media seized on winecave opulence, rather than weighing relative incentive to want future access for core corporate benefit and risk, Google as opposed to Hall Wines, where weather poses more of a risk for the one, and government more of a potential risk for the other..
And then Amazon shipping and paying no state sales taxes is owned by Bezos who coincidently owns WaPo where the editorial choice was to go winecave on Mayor Pete, and not look at the Mayor's love of high tech adventurism and success, of the type Bezos, himself, has enjoyed and wishes to see continue.