I felt deep disgust when I saw this headline.
Super Donor Sheldon Adelson Made $2.1 Billion In 2 Days Since 'Adelson Primary'
By Dan Alexander
Republican presidential hopefuls may be worried about how many millions casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson will give to their 2016 campaigns, but the money means little to the GOP super donor.
In the two days since he hosted the Republican Jewish Coalition’s meeting with several possible 2016 Republican candidates at his Venetian Resort and Hotel, Adelson personally made $2.1 billion — 21 times the $100 million he reported giving away during the 2012 presidential election.
Shares of his casino company Las Vegas Sands LVS -3.89% climbed Monday and then spiked Tuesday after an overnight report showed strong first quarter gambling revenues in Macau, where Adelson has extensive operations. The 6% stock jump over two days, coupled with a dividend payout on Monday, pushed Adelson’s net worth up $2.1 billion to $40 billion, cementing his position as eighth-richest in the world by Wednesday morning.
Macau Casinos
For a comparison Sheldon Adelson made as much in two days as 139,257 workers earning the federal minimum wage would gross in a year ($15,080).
It would take 322,000 average-earning American families giving an equivalent share of their net worth to match the Adelsons’ $91.8 million in Super PAC contributions.
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Just days ago we witnessed Republican presidential wannabees flock to Las Vegas to genuflect and kiss Sheldon Adelson's ring. And after this tawdry dog and pony show warped up Adelson accumulated another 2.1 billion from his casino holdings in Macau.
What did Adelson want from these four would be Presidents?
MCCUTCHEON MEETS ADELSON: WHAT A DONOR WANTS
BY JONATHAN ALTER
Fortunately for Republicans, social issues are far down Adelson’s list of priorities, below not just Israel but unapologetic union-busting and other initiatives that might help his businesses. His net worth of forty billion dollars is largely tied up in the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which does ninety per cent of its business in casinos in Macao and Singapore. Under current law, Adelson’s company pays low taxes on overseas profits, and rates would skyrocket under a repatriation plan favored by Obama. He is also determined, according to USA Today, to “spend whatever it takes” to defeat efforts to legalize Internet gambling (currently allowed only in Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware), an issue on which his stated moral objections—the ease with which minors can gamble online—happen to coincide with his casino interests.
Adelson is also angry about two pending federal investigations of his company that he believes are unwarranted. After Lockheed and several other U.S. corporations were found to be making questionable payments to foreign officials in the nineteen-seventies, Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. corporations from making such payoffs overseas. In 2010, Steven Jacobs, who formerly ran Las Vegas Sands’ operations in Asia, filed suit against the company, claiming that his resistance to what he said were Adelson’s illegal demands—that he dig up dirt on Chinese officials to use as leverage—resulted in wrongful termination. More recently, an internal audit committee advised the company of “likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA.” (Las Vegas Sands admits possible accounting mistakes, but denies any violations of the F.C.P.A.) It would look bad for a new Republican Administration to shut down S.E.C. and Justice Department probes of a company run by a donor who just spent tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars to elect the President. A settlement is more plausible. In fact, the Obama Department of Justice with which Adelson so strongly disagrees did just that, in a third investigation. Last August, Las Vegas Sands agreed to pay $47.4 million to avoid criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice for money laundering. A Chinese businessman, Zhenli Ye Gon, had transferred forty-five million dollars, suspected by the Mexican government of being tied to drug trafficking, to an account at the Venetian, the same casino where Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and others appeared last weekend.
Reformers like to complain about the malign influence of money in politics. The real problem is big money in politics, and here a gap has opened between the parties. (I wrote about this issue, and about Adelson’s role in the 2012 campaign, in my book “The Center Holds.”) The average donation to Obama’s 2012 campaign was less than a hundred dollars, while the average donation to Mitt Romney was more than a thousand dollars, according to a Romney staffer. Adelson, the Koch brothers, and a few others took the game to a new level after the Citizens United case, in 2010. Currency trader George Soros contributed twenty-seven million dollars to try to elect John Kerry in 2004. Adelson spent more than three times as much in 2012...
Logic that escaped the Supreme Court somehow.
Who says it better then Jon Stewart?
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This make me so sad and disgusted with our winner take all economic scheme I don't know whether to cry or scream!