22 thoughts on “Adelson Doubles Down on GOP, Will Spend $200-Million in Next Election Cycle – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. This would be about the equivalent of donating $500 for an American with a net worth of $50k. ‘

    It’s really not a whole lot of money for him.

    1. Well, if he believes is some “socialized” medicine, that $100 million might have provided healthcare for a good many Americans without coverage, or very little. And teachers, and schools?? Instead, this money (like the suckers at his casinos) went down the toilet.

      1. The Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation is a private foundation committed to a model of open and highly integrated collaboration among outstanding investigators who participate in goal-directed basic and clinical research to prevent, reduce or eliminate disabling and life-threatening illness.

        http://www.adelsonfoundation.org/amrfphil.html

        Some good has definitely come from some of his money at least.

          1. I didn’t say it was his interest. I just said that some of his money has brought some good. Whatever his motivations, money spent for medical research of this kind is money well spent in my opinion. Do you disagree?

  2. What is so striking about Adelson is that he seems to think it’s OK to buy politicians and do so publicly. That’s chutzpah.

    1. Doesn’t this article reach the opposite conclusion? In spite of his spending, he he was “virtually shut-out politically”.

  3. The only success of Adelson during last election cycle was preventing the election of perfectly Zionist Jewish Democrat for the Senate seat in Nevada because as Congresswoman she supported unions in casinos. So there are non-Zionist issues that Adelson cares about. 200,000,000 dollars is a lot in Israel, but in USA politics it is a pocket change.
    Adelson is the laughingstock for the true Establishment part of the Lobby like Haim Saban.

    The true problem is that the real money comes largely from more suave lobbies which are less visible. And while AIPAC is but one of many such lobbies, it is not in direct conflict with banks, medical-industrial complex, energy companies etc.

  4. “The only saving grace is that we’re still a democracy, while China isn’t. ”

    Thanks Richard for making me laugh. America is still a democracy?!………..

    1. Well, in this world everything is relative (absolutes are only in the Kingdom of Heaven). So if you doubt US`s democracy let`s see how the other guys are doing in that regard?
      China and Russia, never mind. India, it is so by desire only but in reality it is far too chaotic to be considered so. Likewise Brazil or Mexico, democracies by intention but unconquerable crime practically invalidates that. In fact in all Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Arab and Moslem world (Turkey included) – I can`t think now of any serious candidate (apart perhaps Japan – but the change of prime-ministers every year there tells you something in democracy does not fit intrinsically their “national character” that well. So it`s only Europe. But most of post –Communist East Europe is still struggling to be called real democracies (apart from the Czech Republic) so we are left with West-Europe. However, even there let`s see how democracy will fare if the financial crisis deepen and with it fear of immigrants and xenophobia? Past experience does not provide a too optimistic indicator here.
      So we are left with the “New-world” quartet – US, Canada, Aust. & NZ – and in that group the US is the natural leader. Given that it also saved democracy itself by confronting two immensely dangerous dictatorships – it warrants a little more respect than your cynical sarcasm.

      1. Well, I guess if you are satisfied by being a little less stinking than others then good for you since that is how you measure things.

  5. Dr. Soudy,
    So that I may better understand your position more clearly would you be able to name 10 democracies for me?

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Dear Sir,

      I was not making a comparison between the US and OTHER countries. I would be glad if the article said that the political system in the US is better than that of China for example. But to say that the US is still a DEMOCRACY and leave it at that is just not consistent with “Corporations are People and Money is Freespeech”. If you want to know what I mean more please watch the vote during the last political convention of the Democratic Party when they added the issue of “Jerusalem” to the platform! If you still call that a democracy then good luck.

  6. Tibor you seem to harbour all kinds of illusions. First you tell us that American aid to Israel is really an investment in American interests and now you suggest that the American political class maintains itself through a genuinely democratic system. In the process you make of the “New World quartet ” (US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) one single category.

    Well, as far as I am concerned these are four countries “separated by a common language” (Shaw). Especially the difference between New Zealand, in my book easily the most democratic country of the four, and the USA couldn’t be greater. But let us talk about American democracy. Here are a few figures for you:

    “Since 1945 the US has had the lowest voter turnout among twenty established democracies: 53 percent against an average of 78 percent for the other nineteen”

    Even in the first Obama election when, so we are told, a wave of hope swept the country the turnout was only around 60 percent.

    Furthermore the American voting system has ensured that “half the Senate represents 15 percent of the population” with a vote in Nevada having seventeen times the weight of one in California.

    In France and Germany, to take two examples, prisoners and ex-prisoners don’t lose their active voting rights.”In America every state bars prisoners from voting, and thirteen states disenfranchise ex-felons for life. Applied to the largest prtison population in the world, these penalties have produced about 4 million disenfranchised citizens, perhaps 2 percent of the voting age population.” Moreover, the registration of these matters seems to be quite messy so that sometimes citizens who have never seen a prison from the inside find themselves disenfranchised.

    I owe these figures to a most interesting public lecture given a few years ago by Adam Fairclough, Professor of American Culture and History at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. You can find it here:
    http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/dd/events/sackler/Fairclough%20transcript.pdf

    A few more observations. For me the strongest evidence that the American political class does NOT adequately represent the views of the population at large is the slavish adherence to Israel of that class. Polls give a different picture of “public opinion” (backward as it still is) on this matter.

    Furthermore, though some people believe that Australians are Americans who happen to live Down Under in reality these countries seem to me quite different. For one thing: organised religion holds far less sway here than is the case in the US. Australia belongs to the most irreligious countries in the world. There are good historical reasons for that but I will not go into these now.

    Also, Australia has, as many West European countries, a genuine social democratic party, imperfect as it is. The question why this is not the case in the US has engaged many pens, to begin with that of the distinguished economist-sociologist Werner Sombart, more than a century ago (“Why is there no socialism in the United States”). Whatever the reasons the idea that the government owes the population a duty of care seems to be far more deeply rooted in Australia than is the case in the US. Hence we have had here, since a long time now, a universal system of Medicare, decent unemployment and disability relief and a means tested old age pension.

    Australia has, like the US, a winner-takes-all voting system rather than proportional representation but to guard against the low voter turnout that is habitual in the US voting is compulsory here.

    Proportional representation is no panacea though the Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart has argued that countries with genuine proportional representation are generally more democratic than the “winner takes all” category (the same scholar has also argued however that this electoral system fails when it comes to great historical decisions such as, for instance, for the Netherlands giving independence to Indonesia – one could point here to Israel as well say I).

    Obviously folk in New Zealand are of the Lijphart conviction. They changed their “winner takes all” system not all that long ago to one of proportional representation.

  7. RE: “I’m basically a social liberal” ~ Adelson

    MY COMMENT: Right, and I’m basically a monkey’s uncle! ! !

    SEE: “Why GOP Mega-Donor Sheldon Adelson Is Mad, Bad and a Danger to the Republic”, By Rick Perlstein, Rolling Stone, 4/10/12

    [EXCERPTS] . . . Adelson’s anti-union mania (I would argue) is the most important thing to know about him. For it reveals just how crazy, and how unscrupulous, the man is.
    Let’s start at the very beginning. Adelson remembers meeting Gingrich in Washington in 1995, when Gingrich was House Speaker and Adelson was lobbying to get the U.S. embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Other reports have them being introduced in 1996 by a far-right anti-union operative in Nevada who worked for Adelson. Details of the subsequent courtship are murky, although the huge favor Gingrich did for Adelson in 1996 by turning off a federal investigation of the gambling industry probably did a lot to cement their friendship.
    Two years later, Nevada conservatives sponsored a “Paycheck Protection” ballot initiative – the right-wing term for measures weakening unions by banning them from automatically deducting dues from members’ pay. Adelson was gung-ho for it – and “would spend any amount of money,” D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas’s Culinary Workers Union Local 226, told me . . .
    . . . In 1999, Adelson closed one casino, the Sands, and completed work on a new one, the Venetian, stiffing so many contractors that there were at one time 366 liens against the property. Taylor, of the Culinary Workers, said he and his colleagues presumed that “like every other casino that had done that, workers in the [closed] hotel would be given priority when the [new] hotel was built.” Instead, Adelson refused even to talk. All this, in a union town like Vegas, was unprecedented. “Even when you’re having battles, you continue to have talks. Shit, we’re talking to the North Koreans right now!” he told me. “The Israelis talk to the Arabs. Talking doesn’t necessarily solve anything, but at least you understand the other guy’s position.” Adelson, not much interested in understanding the other guy’s position, proceeded to launch a campaign against the Culinary Workers that Taylor calls “beyond aggressive.”
    Right before the grand opening of the Venetian, in 1999, the Culinary Workers staged a demonstration on the public sidewalk out front. Adelson told the cops to start making arrests; the cops refused. Glen Arnodo, an official at the union at the time, relates what happened next: “I was standing on the sidewalk and they had two security guards say I was on private property, and if I didn’t move they’d have to put me under ‘citizen’s arrest.’ I ignored them.” The guards once again told the police to arrest Arnodo and again, he says, they refused. The Civil Rights hero Rep. John Lewis, in town to support the rally, said the whole thing reminded him of living in the South during Jim Crow. . .
    . . . Did I mention Adelson is nuts? But don’t take my word for it – it was George W. Bush who called him “some crazy Jewish billionaire.” . . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-gop-mega-donor-sheldon-adelson-is-mad-bad-and-a-danger-to-the-republic-20120410

  8. OK – I know no one is going to believe this but I think Adelson is going to funnel his money into backing Hillary in 2016.

    Anybody who has seen the Saban Forum 2012 can see why

    Who is going to give Israeli Iran? – of course it is Hillary.

    1. I believe it. It’s a match made in money heaven, actually. Hillary, while having the mentality of a neocon when it comes to foreign policy, is a social liberal just like Adelson, and she has recently been gushing about how much she wants to take a holiday in Israel. Next spring, she will begin speaking publicly about running for POTUS in 2016. Just watch. And of course she will speak at the AIPAC convention and pick up some big donations. You can watch this with your eyes closed 🙂

  9. Given that Adelson’s money went to entirely to losers, he appears to be a one-man stimulus package. Let him double his spending to elect John Birchers, Southern Baptists and allied fundamentalists, anti-science biblical literalists, “birthers”, climate-change deniers, haters of public schools and public libraries: we will beat him again!

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