Tom Friedman has an Op-Ed in the NY Times today discussing Sheldon Adelson's impact on Israeli and US politics: It's Sheldon Adelson's World
...when it came to showering that cash on Republican presidential hopefuls and right-wing PACs trying to defeat President Obama (reportedly $150 million in 2012), and on keeping Netanyahu and his Likud party in office, no single billionaire-donor is more influential than Sheldon. No matter what his agenda, it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.
Netanyahu's speech to Congress and the letter to Iran's leaders from 47 Republican senators precipitated all this hand-wringing from Friedman. Friedman doesn't discuss is how Adelson made his billions. So we'll go to Forbes' gambling analyst
Sands Macao: The House That Built Sheldon Adelson:
Ten years ago, Sheldon Adelson was a Las Vegas B-lister who’d stumbled into the casino business, scrambling to pay the interest on junk bonds that financed his only hotel. Then, in May 2004, Adelson opened Sands Macao, Asia’s first American style casino, and he got richer faster than anyone ever. Sands Macao is the house that built Sheldon Adelson.
Bloomberg reports that Adelson may have benefited from some not-so-subtle pressure on government officials in Macau (
Sands China Probes of Macau Officials May End Up in Court):
Sands China Ltd.’s secret investigation of Macau government officials, allegedly ordered by its Chairman Sheldon Adelson, is fair game in the feud between the billionaire and the casino operator’s former top executive.
Steven Jacobs, locked in a four-year battle with Adelson, today won the right to use a report on the probe in his wrongful-termination lawsuit. Jacobs contends he was ousted in 2010 as chief executive officer of the China unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. because he clashed with Adelson over demands he collect information on Macau officials to exert “leverage” on them.
which may be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
And that isn't even the most scandalous thing about Sands Macau. Here's the New Yorker on Sheldon Adelson and Macau
The end of that week brought a less glamorous headline: “Sheldon Adelson Denies Greenlighting A ‘Prostitution Strategy’ At His Macau Casinos.” That was a recap of the latest in a lawsuit working its way through Nevada courts, in which the former head of Adelson’s Macau operation has saddled Adelson with a range of lurid allegations involving Chinese triads, bribery, and criminal activity. (As I described in the magazine in May, those accusations have prompted the S.E.C. and Justice Department to investigate Adelson’s company.)
On June 28th, the former employee making the accusations, Steve Jacobs, dropped a list of new charges into a sworn declaration, including that he wanted to rid the casino of “loan sharks and prostitution” but was stymied when “senior executives informed me that the prior prostitution strategy had been personally approved by Adelson.” That is all it says, so it’s unclear if the plan purportedly “approved by Adelson” was intended to preserve or prevent prostitution. (Local police reportedly arrested more than a hundred prostitutes and twenty-two syndicate leaders in a 2010 operation at Adelson’s Venetian Macau.)
and here's the Atlantic on Adelson and unions in:
Who Is Sheldon Adelson, the Gingrich Super PAC's Billionaire Backer?:
3. He's a union-buster. Some of Adelson's bitterest political battles have been fought in his adopted home state against the forces of organized labor, which has a strong foothold in the casino industry. The Venetian opened in 1999 as the only non-union casino on the Strip and has been the target of protest from the hotel workers union, Culinary 226, ever since. Many Democratic politicians in the state continue to observe the union's boycott of Adelson's properties. Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat now running for Senate in what's likely to be one of 2012's highest-profile races, was once Adelson's top political lieutenant, but the two parted ways over labor issues. Adelson and Berkley have regarded each other as mortal enemies ever since -- even though Berkley, like Adelson, is a hawkish, socially liberal Jew.
A lot of this has been covered on DKos before:
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Adelson personally approved Hookers in
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Around The World with Sheldon Adelson
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Feds Probe Adelson’s Casino for Money Laundering Activities
Back to Friedman:
Israel has much stricter laws on individuals donating to political campaigns, so Adelson got around that in 2007 by founding a free, giveaway newspaper in Israel — Israel Hayom — whose sole purpose is to back Netanyahu, attack his enemies in politics and the media, and enforce a far-right political agenda to prevent any Israeli territorial compromise on the West Bank (which, in time, could undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy). Graphically attractive, Israel Hayom is now the biggest-circulation daily in Israel. Precisely because it is free, it is putting a heavy strain on competitors, like Yediot and Haaretz, which both charge and are not pro-Netanyahu.
There's a bigger story in this paragraph, about media influence but who has time to worry about meta-issues like that when...
The Washington Post said that last November at a conference of the Israel American Council, a lobbying group Adelson has funded, he joked in a public discussion with another wealthy Israeli: “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?” Told it was family owned, Adelson quipped, “There is only one way to fight it: money.” At this same conference Adelson was quoted as saying that Israel would not be able to survive as a democracy: “So Israel won’t be a democratic state,” he added. “So what?”
I wonder how disposable Adelson thinks democracy in the US is?
When money in politics gets this big, when it can make elected officials bow and scrape in two different countries at the same time, it is troubling.
I would make the comparison between such politicians and prostitutes here, but I think that would be demeaning honest sex-workers everywhere just trying to keep body and soul together.