Sheldon Adelson Gave 70 Mil to Romney Campaign: Shady Super PAC Donor Loses Big

Impact

Sheldon Adelson and his family are most certainly the biggest losers (insert Chris Christie appearing on next season's Biggest Loser joke here) in this year's presidential race. Adelson, donated an absurd amount of money (over $70 million) to pro-Romney super PACs. Now, Adelson can look forward to being investigated by the governments of America and China. His taxes will rightfully be higher, and my prediction, as I wrote months ago on PolicyMic, is that he will ultimately die in prison for his sins. (Alan Dershowitz called me a bunch of names over that one!)

As Tablet Magazine reported on Wednesday, "His first horse in the 2012 race was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose campaign imploded repeatedly before he withdrew for good last May. As a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Adelson doubled down and gave millions to partisan Jewish groups to pay for television ads, robocalls, and print mailers to peel away Jewish support for Obama, apparently with only a negligible yield." 

Will this teach the old man a lesson? Probably not. Will super PACs continue to have an outsize influence in the American political process? Probably yes. However, just as Americans defeated SOPA earlier this year by winning in the court of public opinion, the same feat was accomplished last night when President Obama's victory prevented a plutocracy from ruling America.

There are two types of billionaires in America: progressives who care about the good of society and the future of this country, and regressives who only care about their own self interests, and typically have antiquated views.

Adelson is now a national joke. With so much cash down the toilet that could have been put to philanthropic use, he should have just bought the island nation of Tuvalu and put his surplus $20 million on red at one of his roulette wheels, since he's clearly not one to invest in America's future.