So casino mogul Sheldon Adelson made the news twice yesterday. The first item, from Politico‘s Kenneth Vogel, was a depressing reminder of his role in financing Election 2012 for the GOP, in league with other unsavory billionaires:
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson this week pledged $10 million to the Koch brothers’ 2012 efforts, cementing a potent alliance of two of the biggest spending forces in conservative politics
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The pledge was delivered by Adelson aide Andy Abboud at the Koch brothers’ donor summit early this week in suburban San Diego and was among the biggest of the gathering, multiple sources told POLITICO. Other large pledges came from personal investment tycoon Charles Schwab, who committed to a seven-figure donation, and the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch.
But then there’s also this toxic morsel from Business Insider:
The fired former chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Macau casinos alleges in court documents revealed Thursday that billionaire Sheldon Adelson personally approved of prostitution and knew of other improper activity at his company’s properties in the Chinese enclave….
In documents revealed Thursday — including a sworn seven-page declaration that Jacobs submitted along with a summary from his attorneys of problems obtaining documents from Sands — Jacobs describes an effort he launched after arriving in Macau in May 2009 to rid the casino floor of “loan sharks and prostitution.”
“This project was met with concern as (company) senior executives informed me that the prior prostitution strategy had been personally approved by Adelson,” Jacobs said in the documents.
Adelson’s suits are denying it all, of course, but there’s no question he has a lurid reputation that will be burnished by the claims, as noted in this recent piece on his latest big project, in Spain:
It is only fitting that casino mogul Adelson’s pharaonic EuroVegas (EV) project should be the first to enter post-crisis Spain in a big way. This is exactly the kind of international projects we can expect to see sprouting from the ruins of the Spanish economy: theme parks for the filthy rich to “stimulate the economy and create employment” by gambling, drinking, getting laid and maybe leaving a tip for Manuel, the hapless waiter from Barcelona.
These are vulture enterprises, specialized in creating islands of depravity in places where the economic situation makes for an endless supply of cheap bodies for the use & abuse of the international scumbags that frequent this kind of joint. Think Cuba under Batista, when the entire island was a CIA-sponsored corrupt whorehouse, but without Fidel hiding in the hills.
Perhaps that’s hyperbole, but it’s probably not the sort of thing the good Christian conservative foot soldiers of the Tea Party much want to hear about as they march towards victory in November, bankrolled by Sheldon’s lucre.
