Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice have been investigating allegations of ties between Sheldon Adelson’s Macau casino and Chinese organized crime rings and prostitution for the past year. ABC News reports a former Sands Casino executive has charged that the Asian business operation relied on the Chinese triads which organized junkets for “high roller” gamblers and prostitution to service their “other” needs. It reports that on the same day Adelson arrived for a major business meeting at the Chinese enclave 100 prostitutes were arrested within the hotel. The charges are being investigated under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which governs crimes like corporate bribery.

Newt Gingrich, not one to observe the highest standards of ” family values” himself with his three wives and history of philandering, might want to explore whether this represents the highest standards of moral values for a Republican presidential candidate. And if it doesn’t trouble Newt, it might trouble some Republican primary voters. They might want to spend a moment thinking how many acts of prostitution or bribery contributed to the $10-million (the largest private gifts ever-given in U.S. campaign history) Adelson has funneled into Gingrich’s campaign, with the likelihood of tens of millions more should his fair-haired goy proceed farther in the primary process.

To see how Adelson has gamed another political system as a model for what he’ll do here in the States, we have to look no farther than his pimping for Bibi Netanyahu over the past decade or more.  It is far cheaper to buy the Israeli political system than America’s.  All Adelson needed to do was bankroll a new, free newspaper, Yisrael HaYom, to the tune of $40-million annually.  The paper was Bibi’s alter ego.  Just imagine the Washington Times with infinite resources, free, and distributed nationally.  That’s what the Israeli paper’s role is inside Israel.  Bibi himself credits it with creating a permanent rightist majority in Israeli politics.  The result is the worst political and media system money can buy.  Is that what we want here in America?

I don’t begrudge Adelson’s his constitution-given right to influence the electoral process with his contributions (though I do begrudge the absurd ruling of the Supreme Court which turned Presidential elections into Las Vegas casino-style politics). Nor do I begrudge Gingrich the right to accept gifts from donors. After all, “money is the mother’s milk of politics” to quote California’s Big Daddy Jess Unruh. But my problem is with WHO he’s taking the money from and how much he’s taking.

If Supreme Court justices, Congress members, and the U.S. voter don’t all understand the perniciousness of a presidential candidate running a successful candidacy through the support of a single fabulously wealthy, and arguably corrupt individual, then they will get the leader they deserve and the country’s stature in the world will decline even faster than it would under otherwise natural processes.

The Newt-Adelson relationship reminds me more and more of Citizen Kane, in which Charles Foster Kane runs for governor on the strength of his fabulous riches, only to be derailed by exposure of his moral failings. The difference for Newt is that his money man has infinitely deep pockets and Americans have shown themselves willing to overlook Newt’s moral peccadilloes (so far).

I live for nights like tonight.  Newt Gingrich earlier today in an appearance in Florida (home of the space industry) promised that if elected president he’d establish a lunar colony by 2020.  But not just any colony, it will, by God, be AMERICAN.  Did you hear that?  And once it gets 13,000 residents (“13,” as in colonies, get it?), it would be allowed to apply for statehood.  But Newt, I hear some of his Jewish fans say, don’t forget us.  Maybe we can even have a Jewish settlement or even a Jewish state up there.

Finally a people without a moon for a moon without a people!

If you’re a fan of the settler movement, this has to send a frisson of delight through your system.  Imagine: after Gingrich, Adelson, Moskowitz and all their pals get done settling Jewish colonists in the West Bank and expelling the indigenous inhabitants, they can move on to bigger and better things.  Imagine Jewish settlements on the moon.  I’m not sure whether they’ve explored the possibility of indigenous men on the moon who they’d of course have to expel in order to establish ethnically pure colonies of earthlings.  We may also need to update the Tanach in order to expand God’s promise to Abraham of all the land from the Euphrates to the Moon.  That would give this lunar settler movement a strong divine precedent.

I haven’t heard whether Newt and Callista will be among the first colonists but it sure would be swell if they would.  Sheldon and Miriam Adelson may want first dibs on a lunar casino with their own luxury condo overlooking Tranquility Base.

The NYPD has gotten itself wound up in knots over all the lies it’s told about its involvement in the anti-Muslim film, Third Jihad. The film was produced by the Clarion Fund, an offshoot of the pro-settler group, Aish HaTorah.

When Arab police officers complained to a Village Voice columnist a few years back after they sat through a screening of the film, the police department denied any connection to it. The Brennan Center for Justice filed a Freedom of Information request which revealed that the film was in fact shown to 1,300 police officers (a significant percentage of those involved in anti-terror assignments).  Now the police flacks claim that while it may’ve been shown to officers, this wasn’t an officially sanctioned program.

Although Commissioner Kelly appeared in the film, his flacks said the film’s producer’s used stock interview footage and didn’t interview him themselves. When the film’s producer presented evidence of the date and time of e actual interview, the flacks all of a sudden recovered from their amnesia and recalled that not only had their been an interview but the flack had recommended the Commissioner participate. Which of course sets things up nicely so Kelly can now say: what a stupid thing for me to have agreed to do. What was my flack-flunkey thinking?

Getting the drift of how these liars operate? Just like Bernie Kerik before him, I think New York may be starting to get tired of the elastic nature of truth at NYPD headquarters and tired of Kelly’s patron, Mayor Bloomberg. The latter, by the way, is outraged that the film was shown to NYPD officers and doesn’t know who did it, but promises to find out. When he finds out it was Kelly himself, what’s he gonna do? Fire him?

The police claim they don’t know who gave them the film, but that they had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was foisted on them by a conveniently unnamed “Homeland Security contractor.” Though this appears another highly dubious claim, it does focus attention on the web of contractors with pro-Israel anti-terror credentials who are riding the gravy train of lucrative contracts which offer them opportunities to train federal, state and local police and military forces in the ways of anti-jihad.

Among these are Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and Aubrey Chernick’s NC4. Gaffney’s general counsel at the Center is the infamous Kahanist, David “Beychok” Yerushalmi, who in the past has bragged about the numerous briefings he’s given to police forces, Homeland Security and other agencies.  No doubt, he’s inculcating in them his own high level of anti-Muslim paranoia.  Chernick, one of the wealthiest and most generous funders of Muslim bashing (David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer are major recipients of his largess), owns NC4, which provides anti-terror  and threat awareness training (likely with a dose of “indoctrination”) for its clients.

It’s no accident that Frank Gaffney joined the advisory board of the Clarion Fund in 2010, just before they released their third film, yet another Islamophobic diatribe directed this time against a Muslim country, Iranium. The two organizations are a match made in anti-jihadi heaven. In some sense, the success of the Obsession and Third Jihad films inspired the anti-Sharia movement, which Gaffney and Yerushalmi have milked for funding and political notoriety.

One aspect of the Times coverage that disappointed was its omission of the name of the donor who, in an elaborate obfuscation, donated $17-million to distribute another Clarion film, Obsession, to 28-million voters in swing states during the last election.  He was right-wing pro-Israel Republican Barre Seid, a major donor to David Horowitz and other far-right pro-Israel groups.  Seid tried to disguise the gift by making it through a Koch-affiliated third-party donor-advised fund which allowed him to plausibly (if you’re terribly gullible) deny any connection to Clarion Fund or the film.

Sheldon Adelson is doubling-down on his fair-haired white boy, Newt Gingrich, with a second $5-million Super PAC gift given through his wife, Miriam.  If God forbid, Newtie wins the nomination I’d bet we can expect gifts in the $50-100 million range from Big Shel.  This gift, and the NY Times article to which I linked, make clear that Newt is largely a creature of Adelson’s money.  Without it, Romney would already be the Republican nominee.  With it, he spent millions tearing down Romney and boosting his own presence and visibility:

The Adelsons’ contributions on Mr. Gingrich’s behalf illustrate how rapidly a new era of unlimited political money is reshaping the rules of presidential politics and empowering individual donors to a degree unseen since before the Watergate scandals.

The wealth of a single couple has now leveled the playing field in two critical primary states for Mr. Gingrich, a candidate who ended September more than $1 million in debt, finished out of the running in Iowa and New Hampshire and, unlike Mr. Romney, has yet to attract the broad network of hard-money donors and bundlers that traditionally propel presidential campaigns.

Remember also, that when Gingrich ran for president in the past he was a lightly-regarded, laughingstock also-ran.  In these days of Supreme Court permitted “free money,” a back-of-the-packer can bring unlimited cash to bear and break through to the mainstream.  This causes a tremendous distortion in the political process.

I have no doubt that Barack Obama will have more than enough cash of his own to offset the Adelson “touch.”  But in other circumstances, otherwise freakish candidates like Gingrich could easily win primaries and even the presidency while have no real grassroots base or large donor pool.  Is this really what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they conceived the American presidency?

In case there is any dissension in the comment thread ranks related to my reference to Newt as a ‘white boy,’ know that I’m referring ironically to the deep ethnic hatreds roiling in Newt’s brain from Muslims to uppity (“food stamp”) Negroes to radical “alien-Alinsky” Jews.  Let’s make clear his clear preference for his white, Christian kind which does make some small allowance for good Not-One-Incher Jews like Reb Adelson.

The Times article notes that John Sununu (of Lebanese Arab descent), issues a direct threat to Adelson, saying that all the Republican financiers backing Romney would take revenge on him the next time he turned to them for backing to build a new casino.  That seems a hollow threat since money men are in the business of making money and if Sheldon can make them money he’ll have no problem finding financial backing.

But it is interesting to note the level of dismay Adelson is provoking in the circle of the Republican elite.  This is exactly where Adelson likes to be.  He’s already upset the Israeli political system by offering Bibi virtual financial carte blanche and hundreds of millions worth of free publicity via his Yisrael HaYom newspaper.  First, Adelson ensured a virtual permanent Likudist majority in Israeli politics.  Now he seeks to install a permanent ultranationalist pro-Israel U.S. government in the form of Newt Gingrich.

Let’s spin this fantasy out a bit farther.  Let’s say Newt gets the nomination along with another, say $100 mil from Adelson to spend against Obama.  Do you think the latter will make Bibi pay a price for this?  Not on your life.  Which is precisely what lies at the heart of the current president’s grave weakness when it comes to Israel.  He simply doesn’t have the stomach for hard-nosed politics that other truly great presidents have had and understood.  It’s why Obama can never be a great president and may end his second term being a somewhat mediocre one.

Adelson's Venetian Macao Sunset casino-tribute to 'predatory capitalism'

As far as I’m concerned, I can die now and go to blogger heaven, satisfied that my sense of political irony can’t be bested by any future headline that would compete with today’s news that global gambling tycoon, Sheldon Adelson is funding a $5-million TV ad campaign on behalf of Newt Gingrich that will target Mitt Romney as a “predatory capitalist.”  If you were Andy Borowitz, Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart, what better comedy could you expect?  You might as well hang up the cleats and retire.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

Adelson, a truly predator capitalist who not only sues the pants off his own contractors, but lifts the life savings of his own gambling clients has the unmitigated gall to call Romney a vulture capitalist.  Adelson’s livelihood is truly ghoulish as it preys on the weakness of human beings who can’t help themselves.  It leaves many of them bankrupt.  Listen to this and think of echoes of Adelson’s own depraved indifference to the fortunes of HIS victims:

The movie [attacking Romney], financed by a Republican operative who wants to stop the party from nominating Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.

“We had to load up the U-Haul because we done lost our home,” one woman says.

In turn, Adelson uses this funding to support the destructive policies of his current political soul mate, Bibi Netanyahu.  In addition, he funds Birthright’s dubious program strengthening Zionist identity among American Jews and the tabloid, Yisrael HaYom, without which even Netanyahu concedes the right could never have come to power and dominated Israeli political life as long as it has.

Sheldon Adelson is one of the single most destructive factors among Diaspora Jews supporting Israel.  Yet he’s going to tell the people of South Carolina that Mitt Romney is a bad man.  Don’t make me laugh.

Don’t get me wrong.  Mitt Romney is an unMITTigated disaster in his own right.  But he’s less of a hypocrite than Newt and his pallie, Shel.

This $5-million expenditure seems to be a down-payment on the $20-million that the media reported Adelson was prepared to spend on behalf of Gingrich in the primaries alone.  If Gingrich’s campaign continues long enough Adelson will have an opportunity to spend the entire sum.  By the way, when the $20-million figure was first floated Adelson’s operative denied there was any truth to it.  Now we see that it was Adelson himself who was truth-challenged.  The NY Times article also notes Adelson was one of the chief backers of Gingrich’s post-Congress career donating $7 million to his group, American Solutions.  Adelson also donated $30 million to another far-right Republican effort in the 2008 campaign, Freedom Watch.

I haven’t seen any photos of Adelson and Gingrich together.  If anyone has, please get in touch.

Abe Foxman

Just as many CEOs of major corporations manage to increase their compensation despite miserable profits and stock performance, so it is with the leaders of the largest and most influential American Jewish organizations. The Forward, earlier this month, reported the compensation  of many of the most prominent among them. Here are some of them (latest salary information is for 2010 unless otherwise noted and in a few cases I have updated information to include full compensation including benefits, if the Forward didn’t):

Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman
$690,000  (2009)

American Jewish Committee’s David Harris
$736,000

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Marvin Hier
$760,000

Aipac’s Howard Kohr
$581,000

Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks
$482,000 (2009)

Conference of Presidents’ Malcolm Hoenlein
$627,000 (2011)

Jewish National Fund
$410,000 (2009)

Zionist Organization of America’s Mort Klein
$363,000

Birthright Israel
$353,000

The Israel Project’s Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
$200,000

Most of the salaries listed above are borderline obscene. They place their recipients squarely among the Jewish 1% and distance themselves from the rest of us. This is yet another reason most of the organizations listed above have long passed their Jewish “sell-by” date.

One measure of this (though not the sole one by any means) is their fundraising. The two of the three highest paid executives on my list, Harris and Foxman, run organizations whose fundraising has dropped dramatically over the past several years. The ADL’s has declined by over 30% between 2006-2010. AJC’s funding levels dropped by a similar amount in the same period. Their executives’ salaries, of course, have not. While we shouldn’t make the mistake of judging a non-profit’s ongoing relevance solely by it’s fundraising prowess, it is one indication of how much excitement there is for the group’s mission among donors and other funders.

I would maintain that these groups have lost their way and their relevance to all but the oldest members of the community. While times have changed, they have not. They continue to attempt to be all things to all Jews, which actually means being nothing to anyone but the alter-kockers.

I also don’t buy the explanation/excuse offered by the groups themselves for the declines registered. They say it’s because donors want more control over their donations and no longer are willing to give unrestricted gifts. The more likely reason is that as Jews become more integrated into American life, with attendant higher income and social status, they are sought after as donors and directors to local, regional and national non-profits outside the Jewish sphere. Jews now give extensively to the colleges and universities they attended, museums, symphonies, operas, political parties, social justice and environmental groups than they ever did in the past. This is money that in previous generations would’ve gone directly to Jewish causes. Now, it’s gone and there is very little money from the younger generation to replace it. All this means that the general interest Jewish groups are in the midst of an inexorable decline. I’d predict that even the single-interest pro-Israel groups mentioned below will be effected by this decline eventually.

All of which means that as these groups lose funding, their missions will also suffer. The good deeds and projects that benefited the Jewish community, plus the positive values they represented (long ago, though less so now) will gradually disappear. I don’t know what, if anything, will take their place. All this could lead to an inexorable decline in the quality of American Jewish life.

The groups that have thrived in this environment have been the single issue, largely pro-Israel ones like Aipac (+30% over past five years), The Israel Project (+30% from 2008-2010), Stand With Us (+40% between 2007-2010), and J Street (its funding increased by 300% from 2007-2008, the J Street Education Fund increased 400% from 2009-2010, and the J Street PAC increased by 200% from 2008 to 2010). These statistics are an expression of the increasing fragmentation of the Jewish community and its realignment largely around a single issue: Israel. There seems little that holds much of the organized community together except the state formally-known as the Homeland of the Jewish People.

Partially, this reflects a certain impoverishment in Jewish identity. Partially, it represents a major error made by American Jews and their leaders of putting all their eggs in Israel’s basket. When Israel crushes these eggs, then what is left for Jews to believe in?

We need an identity that includes Israel, but is not limited to it. We need to jettison the single issue Jewish identity hawked by fat cat ideologues like Michael Steinhardt and Sheldon Adelson. Their Jewishness is a dead-end. Those who are fooled into following these Pied Pipers will discover in the long run that they’ve made a fool’s bargain. They may have fat coffers, but they will stand for nothing, or at least nothing that will nurture the next generation and offer it something substantial and value-based as sustenance.

Politico reports that billionaire uber-Israel gambling tycoon, Sheldon Adelson plans to give independent PACs acting on behalf of Newt Gingrich $20-million as early as this week.  This jibes nicely with the post I wrote a few days ago which predicted precisely this sort of mega donations flowing into the Palestine denier’s campaign.  I predicted this based on the huge subsidy Adelson provides for Yisrael HaYom, which Bibi himself credits for bringing him to power and keeping him there.  Though Adelson doesn’t own a U.S. newspaper or TV station that can offer that sort of support for Gingrich, for now a huge infusion of unregulated cash offers a great substitute.

It should be noted that Adelson is quite prickly and demanding and that he has been reputed to have funded previous far-right organizations with which he became disenchanted and turned off the spigot.  So we’ll have to watch this one to see if the romance with Gingrich maintains its ardor throughout the campaign.  Further, if the romance develops I’d expect that this would be only a downpayment from the pro-Israel hawk, as it will be used almost solely to buy ads for the Iowa caucuses.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see total gifts in the $100-million range for the entire primary and election campaign (if there is one for Gingrich).

Now, the question is what will the Jewish Republican donors do who support Romney.  Will they rise to the occasion and open their pocketbooks or sit back and let Sheldon steal the show?  I’m guessing that no one will want to get into a “mine’s bigger than yours” contest with Sheldon as he has one of the biggest wallets when it comes to supporting his hand-picked candidates.

What does $20-million buy?  It buys a candidate’s Israel policy for sure.  You can be sure that every word out of Newt’s mouth from here on concerning Jews and Israel will be personally pre-approved and scripted by Adelson.  As far as the latter is concerned, Newt is the best candidate money can buy.  If you think denying Palestine was wild, just wait to see what comes next.  Hearing Sheldon Adelson’s views regurgitated by a major American presidential candidate should be a mind-altering experience.

I’m looking for a picture of Newt and Sheldon together.  If anyone has or knows of one please let me know.  It’s gonna be a long campaign and these guys will no doubt be in the news again, repeatedly.  H/t Paul Mutter.

Newt Gingrich on yet another Yisrael Hayom cover.

Sheldon Adelson, in effect, contributes $36 million every year to support the election and rule of Bibi Netanyahu. No, you won’t find that figure in any public donation record because he doesn’t give this money directly to Bibi. This is the amount of his subsidy of Yisrael Hayom, Israel’s most popular daily newspaper.  Bibi himself credits the paper with putting him in office and keeping him there. Yossi Verter wrote in Haaretz a few weeks ago:

The truth comes out. Netanyahu believes that without Yisrael Hayom, his personal journal edited, as it were, night by night in his own office, he would never have been elected and the right-wing bloc would not win a majority.

There is no comparable phenomenon in U.S. journalism. It would be as if Gannett had a billionaire owner for whom money was no object in advancing the specific political career of one far-right American politician. Imagine USA Today as a free paper totally funded by ads and the owner’s largess. Imagine too, that virtually the entire newspaper is given over to promotion of the views of Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich, along with other hot tabloidy subjects. Then you’d approach the impact that Yisrael Hayom is having on Israeli politics and journalism.

With Bibi about to destroy Channel 10 by revoking its broadcast license in revenge for its robust exposes of his vices and those of his patron, Adelson, it would provide a perfect opening for the latter to buy his own TV station as well.  That would further the right-wing revolution in Israeli media which Bibi and Shelly have been crafting for a number of years.

The reason this is all interesting is that Adelson has now closed in on a Republican presidential candidate who he will support in the same way he supported Bibi. The Forward recently profiled his efforts on behalf of Newt Gingrich and noted that Adelson was in a distinct minority among wealthy Jewish Republicans who were largely supporting Mitt Romney as the most electable (because most moderate) Republican in the pack. Sheldon Adelson, like George Bush and Dick Cheney before him, isn’t interested in pragmatism or electability. He’s interested in true believer ideological purity. And he isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth and pocketbook are.

All of this explains this item in Shuki Taussig’s 7th Eye blog about the vast increase in coverage of Gingrich in the pages of Yisrael Hayom:

In the past few weeks, it has devoted an unusual amount of attention to Newt Gingrich…The number of stories the paper devotes to this American politician stands in stark contrast to the paucity of its normal foreign [affairs] coverage…The question is whether this is merely an initiative of the paper’s editors which will have no further influence than inside Israel, or whether it may impact a political campaign an ocean away.

Certainly, in the mind of a megalomaniac like Adelson the impact should carry over from Israel to America. Whether it does or not is another question. Luckily for us in America, while there is great media concentration in the hands of a few companies, it is still not as concentrated as it is in Israel, where there are four major dailies for the whole country. In such an environment, with one of those four in the hands of a right wing oligarch with unlimited resources and a voracious political ambition, he can ride roughshod over the other three which are bound by more conventional matters of profits and losses.

So Adelson’s patronage of Gingrich won’t have as much of an impact as it does inside Israel. Where it will have an impact is on Israeli attitudes toward the U.S. It will encourage precisely the sort of supercilious, rejectionist approach taken by Bibi toward Barack Obama. It will encourage the end-arounds by which Bibi has attempted (successfully due to Obama’s political tumesence) to go over the president’s head and appeal directly to Congress. Which means that with a Democratic president, Adelson and Bibi have a veto and with a Republican president, they have it in the bag. Even if Gingrich doesn’t win the nomination and Romney does, the winner will take notice of the Gingrich-Adelson patronage and seek as close a set of relations as possible with the gambling tycoon. Which means that Israel would have the U.S. in its pocket during any Republican administration.

Finally, if Adelson is willing to sink nearly $40 million to ensure a far right Israeli leader, then he’d certainly be willing to spend even more to get his sort of candidate elected president. If that candidate was Newt Gingrich. I doubt he would do the same for Mitt Romney or almost anyone else. If Newt wins the nomination, follow Shelly’s money. It’ll be everything on Newt to win in the sweepstakes race.