The tech mogul paid $130 million to buy Casa Encantada — the Bel-Air estate that sold at a foreclousre auction over the summer.
Page F3From§Eachthe matinee edition — 30 September 2026
Billionaires clear $3 billion, then $130 million, faster than a tax clears a ballot.
As it ran on the front
That ran August 17. Eight days later, on August 25, the same name turned up again. Two campaign committees — Building a Better California, and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes — opened an advertising campaign against Proposition 40, California's one-time, five percent wealth tax on the state's richest residents, backed in reporting by Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Proposition 40 needs a majority of California's voters in November to become law. Defeating it needs only enough advertising to keep that majority from forming.
That is where the ledger stood this morning, before this edition carried a name from a different part of the same balance sheet: Ken Griffin, the hedge fund founder, who volunteered three billion dollars of his own fortune to build a university campus for Carnegie Mellon in Miami. No vote required. No means test. Decided, and spent, in the same week that a ballot measure asking the state's richest residents for a one-time five percent of fortunes like his was still working toward the majority it needs by November.…
…(cont) Then came the receipt that closes the loop. The New York Post identified the buyer of Casa Encantada, the Bel-Air estate that set the record for the most expensive home sale in Los Angeles history: Peter Thiel, for $130 million.
None of it required a vote. The mansion needed no ballot measure. The ad campaign needed no supermajority, only enough money to keep one from forming on the other side. Proposition 40 asks millions of Californians to do, together, in November, what Thiel and Griffin each did alone, on their own schedule, with a signature: decide where a fortune this size goes. The difference is that one of these decisions is on a ballot. The other one just closed escrow.
“They put a five percent tax on billion-dollar fortunes up for a vote and act like that's just how democracy works — slow, deliberative, needs a majority. Thiel didn't wait on anybody's ballot to drop $130 million on a house; he just signed. That's the whole racket, hon: your vote is a step in a process, his money is the process.”
“Look, nobody forced Peter Thiel to buy a house — that's just a private citizen spending his own money, which is exactly the principle Proposition 40 would — okay, I see where that one's going. The real issue is a one-time wealth tax sets a bad precedent, because once you tax a fortune once, people start thinking you can do it twice, and then where does it stop, and — I should probably wrap this up.”
Earlier in this story
- Ken Griffin gives Carnegie Mellon $3 billion; California's billionaire tax still can't clear a majority. By Ruth · the coffee break edition, 30 September 2026
- Billionaires' ad blitz enters sixth week; their tax polls 52, then 45, then 48 percent By Ruth · the breakfast edition, 30 September 2026
The receipts
· Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
· "The Nerd Reich": Author Gil Durán on Big Tech Fascism, Peter Thiel, JD Vance & the War on Democracy from the morgue, 17 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.