Conning Mr Moneybags
by digby
Politico did a profile of Mr Moneybags Sheldon Adelson the other day and it’s a real doozy. For the first time, Adelson talked in detail about his top five reasons for spending millions to defeat Obama:
1) Self-defense: Adelson said a second Obama term would bring government “vilification of people that were against him.” He thinks he would be at the top of that list and contends that he already has been targeted for his political activity.
Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. is being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into possible money-laundering in Vegas, and possible violation of bribery laws by the company’s ventures in China, including four casinos in the gambling mecca of Macau. (Amazingly, 90 percent of the corporation’s revenue is now from Asia, including properties in Macau and Singapore.)
The country’s leading megadonor is irritated by the leaks. “When I see what’s happening to me and this company, about accusations that are unfounded, that kind of behavior … has to stop,” he said.
Adelson gave the interview in part to signal that he intends to fight back in increasingly visible ways. Articles about the investigations appeared last month on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He maintains that after his family became heavily involved in the election, the government began leaking information about federal inquiries that involve old events, and with which the company has been cooperating.
The aim of the leaks, he argued, is “making me toxic so that they can make the argument to the Republicans, ‘This guy is toxic. Don’t do business with him. Don’t take his money.’ Not all government employees are leakers, but most of the leakers are government employees.”
Asked to response to Adelson’s comments, the Justice Department said it does not comment on, or confirm, investigations.
So, he’s openly trying to buy himself out of a legal jam. But that’s not the only reason. He loves Israel, of course. We knew that. But he also hates unions:
2) Friends in high places: If Romney were elected, Adelson would have a powerful ally on the two issues he cares most about: the security and prosperity of Israel, and opposition to unions, including the so-called card-check proposal that would make it easier for workers to organize. Adelson runs the only nonunion casino on the Strip – a status he says he has retained by lavishing workers with benefits, including subsidized child care.
Like all other painfully misinformed wingnuts he watches too much Fox News:
3) Loathes Obama: For all his wealth and worldliness (models of each of his personal airplanes hang from his office ceiling), Adelson is driven in part by the concerns of everyday conservatives. He recently read “The Amateur,” the anti-Obama bestseller by Edward Klein. And Adelson complained about Obama’s “czars,” a conservative preoccupation early in Obama’s term.
And he’s very, very sensitive:
Like many other businesspeople who depend on tourism, Adelson holds a grudge from just three weeks after Obama’s inauguration, when the new president said financiers receiving bailouts shouldn’t “go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.”
“From that point on, Vegas started to go down,” Adelson said. “And he’s got the nerve, the chutzpah, to come here and raise money here. He should follow his own advice and not come to Vegas. He hurt me. He hurt 200,000 people working in the hospitality industry in this town.”
If that’s the level of analysis this man uses to understand economic issues, it proves that all you need to become a zillionaire is luck and timing.
He also says he prefers the efficiency of the right because he doesn’t want to see his money wasted. (Says the man who spent over 10 million on Newt Gingrich’s campaign …) And then, for some reason, he’s supposed to care about small business because he started out with nothing.
The portrait of Adelson is of a flinty, myopic, defensive multi-billionaire who spends far too much time listening to the cranks and the clowns of the far right. The only rational reason he has for supporting Romney is the first — he’s trying to buy himself a get out of jail free card.
It’s almost sad that he doesn’t realize that Romney is not going to protect him if he wins. Even sadder that he doesn’t realize that nobody would. When you’re out on a limb as shaky as his is, all politicians will saw it off in a heartbeat rather than go down with it. But it’s not that sad. He’s got more money than God and he could use it to do good. Instead he’s listening to Glenn Beck and fulminating about Obama and his “Czars.”
But hey, Karl Rove and Haley Barbour and all the other right wing con men are getting very, very rich off his money so there’s that.
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