Las Vegas has now become the capital of American politics. Everything Adelson does is done openly, proudly, shamelessly. I wonder how ordinary Americans react to this spectacle of one billionaire -- especially a Jewish one -- choosing their next president for them.
We are told that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe and and across the globe. In the crazy mental world of the anti-Semites, Jews control the cosmos. And here we have a Jew, straight out of the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, trying to appoint the ruler of the mightiest country on the planet.
Adelson has failed in the past. Last time, he spent huge sums of money on one hopeless candidate, and then on the winning Republican nominee, who was soundly trounced by Barack Obama, a liberal, black abomination. But nobody can be sure that this will happen again. For Adelson, the slogan could well be: "If money does not work, try more money!"
THE BASIC problem is that the American political process is totally corrupt. There is no other way to put it.
In order to become the nominee of one major party, and then to be elected president, one needs enormous sums of money. Since the major battlefield is TV, and candidates have to pay for it, these sums get bigger and bigger.
It is nice to think that ordinary citizens can raise these sums with their modest donations, but that is an illusion. Donations of these dimensions can only come from the rich, especially from the very, very rich. (Americans don't like this revealing word anymore and speak of "the wealthy." But that is sheer whitewashing.)
The very rich were once called millionaires, then multi-millionaires, and now billionaires. Adelson is a multi-billionaire.
A billionaire does not donate a fortune for a presidential candidate for nothing. That's not how he became a billionaire in the first place. Once he gets his man elected, he demands his pound of flesh, many pounds.
I am told that Adelson wants internet betting to be prohibited, so that ordinary, honest-to-goodness casinos can flourish. But I have no doubt that his right-wing Zionist passions come first. If he succeeds in installing his favorite in the White House, the US will become totally subservient to the extreme right-wing in Israel. He might as well put Netanyahu in the Oval Office. (Now there's an idea! It just needs a small amendment to the constitution. How much can that cost?)
That would have been OK with me, if Adelson really understood anything about the Israeli-Arab conflict. With the typical arrogance of the very rich, he thinks that he does. Yet it seems that he has not the slightest idea about the roots of the conflict, its history and the acute dangers lurking in our future.
If Adelson could dictate our future, it would spell disaster for our country.
OUR OWN political system is not quite as corrupt as the American one, but it is bad enough.
Israeli parties which participate in elections get free TV time according to their size in the last Knesset, with a minimum time reserved for new parties. But that is far from enough for an election campaign.
Parties are limited in the amount of money they may accept from donors and in the amount they are allowed to spend. The state comptroller exercises strict control.
And so we come back to Olmert.
No ambitious politician contents himself with the amounts allowed. Many of them look for tricks to circumvent the comptroller, sometimes reaching the limits of legality, often going beyond. Olmert himself has been suspected several times in the past of using illegal money, but he always succeeded in wriggling out.
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