Posted on 03/27/2014 12:25:01 PM PDT by Theoria
A push by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson to outlaw online gambling has ignited a bitter civil war in the gambling industry, dividing one of Washington’s most powerful interest groups and posing a major test of the Republican megadonor’s political clout.
Mr. Adelson’s effort officially kicked off on Wednesday, when lawmakers, including a senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from the businessman and his family, introduced legislation originally drafted with Mr. Adelson’s lobbyist.
The bill would close a three-year-old loophole in federal law, banning online gambling — a growing industry that Mr. Adelson argues is bad for casinos and gamblers — and shutting down online gambling in a handful states that recently legalized it.
The dispute has already largely sidelined the industry’s powerful trade group, the American Gaming Association, after Mr. Aldelson threatened to withdraw from the organization if it continued to back expanded online gambling, according to several industry executives.
Mr. Adelson’s political prominence will be on display today in Las Vegas at the start of the four-day Republican Jewish Committee meeting — an event that has attracted several 2016 presidential prospects, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
Mr. Adelson, whose $38 billion fortune makes him among the richest men in the world, poured roughly $100 million into Republican campaigns in 2012, and he is known for pushing ideological fights in Washington. The battle over online gambling shows how he also lobbies for his business.
In this fight, dueling branches of the casino industry are now entering the fray, employing a half-dozen former elected officials and an a clutch of lobbyists and public relations strategists through a pair of strange-bedfellows coalitions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
NOT GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS.
Translation = Adelson has not figured out how to make money off it.
Shame on South Carolina for sending such an openly-corrupt man back to the Senate again and again.
Funneling money through gambling and other vice interests instead of truly productive interests (see past, manufacturing) is more quickly corrupting our economy. But go ahead. Have fun. Enjoy the slide.
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