
How a reclusive computer programmer became a GOP money powerhouse - fahimulhaq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-a-reclusive-computer-programmer-became-a-gop-money-powerhouse/2015/10/05/1af0c1bc-50b7-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html
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fweespeech
> The payments — to support both Cruz and Fiorina — have added to the air of
> mystery around Mercer. Is he motivated purely by conservative ideology? Or
> is there something more, such as translating his big-data expertise into
> campaigning? Cruz is building an aggressive voter targeting operation,
> bringing in a pro-Republican company specializing in personality profiling
> that has been paid millions by Mercer-backed political committees.

He supports the Club for Growth, NRA, American Crossroads, and GOP
Congressional candidates and has since he became wealthy.

Its pretty clear its purely ideological.

I'm not sure why he is considered a "mysterious reclusive" type figure given
he has been doing so for nearly a decade.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/he...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/heres-
who-pays-the-bills-for-ted-cruzs-crusade/)

[http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2010/10/wealthy_f...](http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2010/10/wealthy_financier_is_mysteriou.html)

He might have been "mysterious" 5-6 years ago when he had only done a couple
of things but at this point? Really?

~~~
protomyth
The article is also odd that it says "The role of a multimillionaire
bolstering Cruz’s candidacy stands out in part because of an apparent
contradiction." There are plenty anti-establishment donors in the party, plus
it ignores an important part of Republican party history (Goldwater for
example) and how patron-style donors effect change in the party.

I would say the article uses a lot of loaded words to try to create
controversy and contradiction where none exists.

~~~
fweespeech
> I would say the article uses a lot of loaded words to try to create
> controversy and contradiction where none exists.

Yeah. They are trying to be clickbait-y and ignore the substance that actually
exists. [e.g. The influence of patron-style donations]

~~~
protomyth
Patron-style donations have a very interesting history in American politics
and its a true shame that a journalist didn't take the time to recount some of
that history instead of going for clickbait. I guess I can understand some of
it, since patron-style donations are often done as a counter to the power and
money of newspapers and later TV.

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andrewtbham
The title makes it out like he is a reclusive lone wolf programmer. He is the
CEO of renaissance technologies, a hedge fund with 275 employees. I really
feel misled and like they trying to portray him as a mysterious, dangerous
loner. As a computer programmer, I take offense.

Here is an interview with James Simmons, the founder of Renaissance,
fascinating guy.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0)

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Apocryphon
From a 'tech culture' standpoint, if anything this is a reminder that there
are many more computer programmers and companies (wealthy and profitable ones,
even) who operate outside of Silicon Valley bubble and the 'tech industry.'
Though it sounds like Mercer and Renaissance Technologies operate in the Wall
Street bubble.

(Bubble meaning enclosed monocultural environment, not necessarily economic
bubble.)

~~~
TDL
RenTec is pretty well known for it's aversion to the Street & that culture.

~~~
Ologn
Yes. The type of person RenTec hires are people like Peter Weinberger or
Leonard E. Baum, names I'm sure people here know. Mercer has a doctorate in
computer science and is an expert in speech recognition and machine
translation. Aside from CS types, it hires a lot of mathematicians, as well as
scientists with the normal scientific experience of drawing conclusions from
data.

Wall Street is very different. IT is considered to be barely a step up from
the people who clear out the garbage pails, even if you are a Java programmer
that is making $175k a year (which is considered nothing). There are many
signs of this. One is that in IT, a managing director might have hundreds of
IT personnel working for him (on Wall Street, titles like partner, managing
director etc. have some importance). In an important, major profit center
division or group, it seems like every other person is a managing director.

Hedge funds like RenTec, DE Shaw, Two Sigma, PDT should not have to exist.
Investment banks should have been able to spin out groups that do what they do
and keep those tens of billions under management. The Wall Street culture and
corporate politicsmis such that this can't happen, so these quant/ML hedge
funds pop up and get tens of billions of dollars to manage. Which then pay
their top quants hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. This can not
happen in investment banks. Investment banks have seen these tens and,
collectively hundreds, of billions go out the door, but they are big
bureaucracies with office politics and inertia, they're taking steps to try to
reclaim some of it, but the genie has already left the bottle to some extent.

~~~
elliptic
That is precisely what happened with PDT, correct? It was spin out from MS

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matt_morgan
OK, in the 90's I interviewed at this company, and had not thought of them
since. Basically (according to a guy I interviewed with) they looked for
patterns in stock prices and then tried to predict when to buy based on
similarity to past patterns, independent of knowledge of world events etc. I
don't know if that was all they did at the time, or just a part of it. Anyway,
I had been a SCO Unix and Linux admin and they were looking for someone to
manage their laptops, which they had Solaris on at the time (but were unhappy
with). I had done some fractal analysis in my grad work and they were at least
passingly interested in that ... I'm really happy I didn't go that route.

~~~
niels_olson
Yeah, I seriously doubt they were looking to hire you for your ability to
manage laptops...

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vezzy-fnord
Seems to have a reasonably prolific history of academic publications, but
suddenly ceased in 1995: [http://dblp.uni-
trier.de/pers/hd/m/Mercer:Robert_L=](http://dblp.uni-
trier.de/pers/hd/m/Mercer:Robert_L=)

~~~
fweespeech
Yeah, he seemed to have stopped around the time he started working at the
hedge fund and what little was published after 1993 might have been started
before he worked there.

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sjg007
People don't like change.

Wealthy liberals in coastal communities are NIMBYs. The only time you get
change is when the number of renters (and voters) greatly outnumbers the home
owners.

Wealthy conservatives do not want regulations because changing the rules force
them to reconsider their business.

------
n0us
Interesting that he chose to donate to two candidates with almost no chance of
winning the election. Makes me wonder where his real allegiances are.

~~~
danielweber
Most political donations are consumption spending, not investment spending.
Lots of people enjoy donating to a political race. (I'm not one of them, but I
have my own consumption spending that would bewilder others.)

------
niels_olson
> they fed reams of parallel French and English texts from Canadian
> parliamentary records into a computer.

Wait a minute, where did I hear about this recently?

------
ised
Rennaisance Technologies as in mrsync? Good software.

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curiousjorge
I want to be like him.

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angdis
Oh what a shocking surprise: a hedge fund guy is pouring money into the GOP.

~~~
refurb
Hmmmm.... it looks like the rich are supporting Democrats more than
Republicans....

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/democrats-
wealth_n_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/democrats-
wealth_n_5062088.html)

~~~
somebehemoth
I'm not sure your link supports your claim. The article focuses on wealthy
congress people. It does mention Democratic leaning districts having a higher
average income:

"Across the country, Democratic House districts have an average per capita
income of $27,893. That's about $1,000 higher than the average income in
Republican districts. The difference is relatively small because Democrats
also represent a lot of poor districts, putting the average in the middle."

That income level is not considered "rich". As for presidential races: "In the
election, Romney carried only one income group: people making $100,000 or
more, according to exit polls."

You may also want to look at the money Republicans have raised for the
presidential race including super PACs. Republicans have a much larger war
chest due to large contributions from many very rich people.

~~~
pessimizer
How about this from yesterday:

 _How did the Democrats become favorites of the rich?_

"The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of
the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on
large donors for another quarter."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/how-did-the-
democr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/how-did-the-democrats-
become-favorites-of-the-rich.html)

The NYT ain't exactly Fox news.

~~~
plonh
That article says that the democrats are getting a growing share of their
funding from wealthier donors, while Republicans are getting a larger share of
their funding from obscenely wealthy donors.

