“We are hostage to his fortune”: Sheldon Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and America’s dark money conspiracy

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The gambling tycoon is funneling loads of cash into GOP PACs. He's also controlling Israel's propaganda machine

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

Everything you need to know about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Tuesday was the presence in the visitor’s gallery of one man – Sheldon Adelson.

The gambling tycoon is the Godfather of the Republican Right. The party’s presidential hopefuls line up to kiss his assets, scraping and bowing for his blessing, which when granted is bestowed with his signed checks. Data from both the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity show that in the 2012 election cycle, Adelson and his wife Miriam (whose purse achieved metaphoric glory Tuesday when it fell from the gallery and hit a Democratic congressman) contributed $150 million to the GOP and its friends, including $93 million to such plutocracy-friendly super PACs as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund, Winning Our Future (the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC) and Restore Our Future (the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC).

Yet there’s no knowing for sure about all of the “dark money” contributed by the Adelsons – so called because it doesn’t have to be reported. Like those high-rise, multi-million dollar apartments in New York City purchased by oligarchs whose identity is hidden within perfectly legal shell organizations, dark money lets our politicians conveniently erase fingerprints left by their ink-stained (from signing all those checks) billionaire benefactors.

But Sheldon Adelson was not only sitting in the House gallery on Tuesday because of the strings he pulls here in the United States. He is also the Daddy Warbucks of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu is yet another of his beneficiaries – not to mention an ideological soulmate. Although campaign finance reform laws are much more strict in Israel than here in the United States, Adelson’s wealth has bought him what the historian and journalist Gershom Gorenberg calls “uniquely pernicious” influence.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/we_are_hostage_to_his_fortune_sheldon_anderson_benjamin_netanyahu_and_americas_dark_money_conspiracy_partner/

Article speaks for itself.

Edited March 7, 2015 by I AM NOT THAT GUY

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Flash Back:

Adelson: US should drop atomic bomb on Iran

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Correct link to OP http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/we_are_hostage_to_his_fortune_sheldon_anderson_benjamin_netanyahu_and_americas_dark_money_conspiracy_partner/

(something weird going on here)

[Pooky 3,781]

How strange that Dingy Harry Reid calls him a friend.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/08/harry-reid-s-curious-soft-spot-for-sheldon-adelson.html

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

How strange that Dingy Harry Reid calls him a friend.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/08/harry-reid-s-curious-soft-spot-for-sheldon-adelson.html

Rand Paul too, who everybody thought snubbed Netanyahu by not clapping enthusiastically enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/03/04/with-eye-on-2016-rand-paul-courts-adelson/?_r=0

Edited March 8, 2015 by I AM NOT THAT GUY