easy come, easy go

It’s been pointed out that I never wrote a post about Sheldon Adelson, the man who combines massive Macanese casino interests with insane levels of financial support for the Romney campaign.

Let’s follow some  money. Out in dogdick county, Yunnan, Farmer Zhao is pleased with his sorghum harvest. Despite the rumoured crackdown on official hospitality, the top end baijiu makers are still paying well for the main fuel supply of official banqueting and significant component in the favour economy through which minor officials give little gifts to their superiors, and therefore rise.

Farmer Zhao is especially pleased since he now has the wherewithal to pay the mysterious service charges that have been applied to various necessities of daily life by official Li, who has a budget hole to cover up. Official Li is also pleased: he has amassed a war chest that can pay for various favours for Senior Official Du which enable Du, in over the course of time, to buy a promotion from Boss Wang.

Boss Wang didn’t get where he is today by being dumb enough just to stuff his bank account. He sends the money to an intermediary who converts it into chips for Boss Wang to pick up when he takes his fellow bosses for a jaunt down to Macau. They duly lose their shirts and go home to recoup.

Some of the money lost in his casinos is in due course rebundled into a superpac by Putocrat Adelson, where it is pooled into funds intended to secure the election of Candidate Romney and others of his Party. Candidate Romney promises to name China a ‘currency manipulator’ on ‘Day One’ of his presidency, though he doesn’t mean it in this this sense. The money is duly spent on Strategist Smith, Pollster Jones, and advertising executive Bowtie. Candidate Romney loses, but Plutocrat Adelson is unfazed. One way or another, there will always be other Farmer Zhaos.

Comments

[nick s]

The money is duly spent on Strategist Smith, Pollster Jones, and advertising executive Bowtie.

Which in turn goes in large part to the proprietors of WBUM in Bumfuck, FL and other network affiliates, some of which keep the Washington Post Company solvent.

[Strategist]

Putocrat Adelson

Is a putocracy rule by whores?

[Strategist]

Strategist Smith

I hate that guy.

[Alex]

I think I'll respond to this on the blog at more length, but D^2 and I were discussing this on Twitter in the context of his repeated and expensive failure in US politics. In 2008, Freedom's Watch spent an enormous amount of money trying to stop Obama being elected and failed utterly. More recently, he poured $80 million into a slate of candidates Karl Rove selected for him, and basically he lost on every last one.

What's he up to? One explanation is that he wants Chinese power-brokers to see him as an influential force in US politics. After all, Chinese officials will have a better estimate of their own politics than of American politics.

Another explanation is that he's an irrational gambler, chasing his losses. There are always Farmer Zhaos, but there are also always Boss Wangs throwing their money around. And the difference between Wang and Adelson is that Adelson gambles, but the chip he puts down is a casino.

[Seeds]

Is a putocracy rule by whores?

Notable example: the Dominatrixian Republic

[Richard J]

As fans of late 1st millennium popes will know, the correct term is pornocracy.

[Barry Freed]

the correct term is pornocracy.

Isn't that the one that the one that has voting over the internet?

[johnf]

The Adelson-backed Romney campaign is now blaming Newt Gingrich's anti Bain Capital TV commercials in the primaries for the loss of the presidential campaign.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/09/gingrich-culpability-in-romney-loss/

Newt Gingrich's anti-Bain TV commercials were of course backed by a Super Pac funded by - Mr Sheldon Adelson.

[Cian]

I've wondered ever since 2008 if we're seeing the death of the current Republican elite. It's been pretty obvious for a while that they have no new ideas, or even pseudo-ideas. The propaganda now only really works on the true believers (for whom, admittedly, it's like crack). While the tea party had lots of energy, it was pretty superficial which is why it foundered so quickly. Bush and the great crash have destroyed, at least in many's eyes, the founding myths of modern conservatism.

Meanwhile the bedrock of the right is slowly collapsing. Evangelicals are aging (turns out the European turn against religion is just happening later in the US), whites are becoming a smaller majority, if not outright minority and the young mostly are socially liberal. And in the south Hispanics are becoming an increasingly important minority, and will become even more so if immigration reform ever happens. All that is solid, etc.

[Chris williams]

Datapoint: from 1975 to kind of about now, it's been really hard to find anyone willing to give a flying one ( to the extent of moving from Lisbon to govern it, or slightly later, learning roman law and moving from Beijing to govern it) about Macau. The revolutionary government actually offered to give it back early, but whoever they got on the phone that day turned the offer down.

'One country, two systems. Oh yeah, and this other very small system as well.'