The Man Who Lost $150 Million: Sheldon Adelson

The number is staggering. $15 million to Newt Gingrich, $70 million to official Republican entities, and reportedly $65 million to dark shady political shell organizations. All, being thrown up against the current President, the man who won.

Rumors floated up that this was in support of Netanyahu and the side of Israel that invests in settlements. It appears that Romney’s fervant support of Netanyahu was the result of his ties with this man… Not long after their first $10 million meeting, Romney restated his support for one of Adelson’s top priorities — his fervent backing of Israel’s conservative government and his opposition to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Romney’s first foreign trip after his meeting with Adelson included a late July visit to Israel, which included a Jerusalem fundraiser that Adelson famously attended.

However other fundraisers are now saying differently…

Adelson is reportedly to have said he planned to spend about $100 million or “as much as it takes” to defeat Obama and help Republicans in Congressional races. Adelson’s personal wealth has been pegged at $20.5 billion by Forbes, making him one of the world’s richest men and enabling him to open his checkbook wide without worrying much about his bottom line…..

During the election, Adelson told Politico that the Justice Department investigation, and the way he felt treated by prosecutors, was a primary motivation for his investment in Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other GOP candidates…

In dark money he shelled out:

40 million to Karl Rove’s Crossroads.
15 million to a grassroots foundation run by the Koch Brothers.
5 million to the US Chamber of Commerce.
6.5 million to the Republican Jewish Coalition. (close to 100% of its entire funding.

It was a disappointing election for Adelson. His nemasis whooped him bad.

In SuperPac money Adelson gave $5 million to Boehner, and $5 million to Cantor and his allies. Which is why, he was in Washington today, meeting with Congressional Republicans to devise methods to disrupt any new tax on his estate… The Sands.

The primary reason for the meeting, is he wants these charges dropped. The Justice Department investigation, and the way he felt treated by prosecutors, was a primary motivation for his investment into the campaign of the Republican presidential nominee. Federal officials are looking into potential money laundering by two shady high rollers at his Las Vegas casinos.

The money laundering investigation, led by the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, is probing whether the casino broke the law by failing to report to the government millions of dollars of potentially laundered funds that two gamblers transferred to its casinos. (Tax evasion: the same thing that brought down Al Capone.)

One of the two gamblers, Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, is being probed about over $100 million of his transactions through the casinos. Separately, he was arrested in 2009 and pleaded guilty to accepting illegal kickbacks in his job as an executive with Fry’s Electronics in California. He is now serving a six-year jail term.

The other big gambler in the probe is Zhenil Ye Gon, a Chinese-born Mexican-based businessman, who reportedly transferred $85 million to Sands casinos several years ago. Ye Gon was indicted in 2007 for dealing in illegal drugs, but the charges were dismissed in 2009.

So the largess of Sheldon Adelson’s giving experienced the Republican party, was part of the $185 million in laundered money it got from these two people, leaving a cool $35 million in profit. Seen this way, it didn’t cost Sheldon a thing.

Another inquiry by Justice and the SEC has been under way for about two years. It involves allegations that Adelson’s lucrative casinos on the Chinese island of Macau may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to Chinese officials to expand its operations there.

Bribing the Chinese was a smart deal, if only the SEC and Justice Department hadn’t been so “hung up” on
regulations… (Can anyone else here a Romney campaign line here?) $700,000 went to a local attorney, Leonel Alves, who was hired by the Sands Chinese subsidiary while he was a government legislator in Macau. The lion’s share of Sands’ corporate revenues now come from Macau. That $700,000 bribe now yields a return of $326 million this past quarter…. As a business proposition, it made very good sense. Unfortunately there is one of those ridiculous regulations that hog-tie real business people called Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Republicans would simply look the other way as long as they were on the receiving end of millions. Obama’s Justice Department? Well, not so fast.

Hence the determination to throw money away on the flimsiest chance that doing so could defeat him.

Of the billion dollars spent in this past election, 15% of that came from one man. Now, I believe in America, a man should spend his money how he wishers. Had he chosen to give this to fight Breast Cancer, we would all hold him in high esteem…

And the law is so broad, after Citizen’s United, that it appears he violated no rules, no regulations, and all his giving to Republicans was legal and completely within the law….

Seen from hindsight, obviously his influence impacts candidates. Karl Rove was in his box during his election night meltdown. Some fundraisers are pointing fingers at Karl Rove for advising Sheldon not to invest in “their” dark money organization, simply leaving competing interests for Rove, out in the cold. Newt Gingrich out of nowhere came out with an uncharacteristically backing of Israel during the primary. We now know why. Netanyahu figured prominently in the third debate, far more than his importance warrants. We now know why. Republicans against their parties own self interest, are risking losing any loyality with the American middle class over their intransigence not to raise taxes a teeny bit upon the wealthy. We now know why….

Simply put, if you can’t get elected without the help of one man…. and that one man is in your office telling you what you should be doing, you are going to listen to him…

The losers of this method of campaign financing are the American people. In this battle between the wealthy and everyone else, the Republicans are siding with the wealthy for their own self interest…. and their political survival is a pretty darn big self interest. Which means the rest of us are only getting one option to choose from. One party rule will again dominate America, as long as dark money is allowed into politics and there are no caps on one person’s influence.. And that party… will be the one representing the 98%….. and any party, without being repeatedly challenged, inevitably becomes soft and corrupt.

Until soft money becomes dried up, we will continue to have Sheldon Adelson types dropping into Washington with open checkbooks, and the rest of us will suffer these childish posturing battles between Sheldon Adelson supporters, and the rest of America. More grandstanding is guaranteed to be forthcoming by the Republicans….

I’ll bet you $150 million on it….