Billionaire casino owner gives Gingrich $5 million

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 11 Comments

Sheldon Adelson orders a round of healthy white babies

The Gingrich campaign is giddy like it’s new staffer day on the news that Sheldon Adelson has given them five million dollars. Of course, Adelson didn’t give it directly to Gingrich; that would violate federal campaign finance laws one thousand times in a row. The billionaire casino magnate and Chinese bribery defendant gave $5 million to the Winning Our Future Super PAC, which is of course not controlled by the Gingrich campaign in compliance with US law. As of yesterday, Winning Our Future had bought $3.4 million worth of advertising time in South Carolina. Presumably, the ads will urge each voter to read about the candidates and make a list of which leadership qualities he or she considers most important. Or they’ll call Mitt Romney a pussy.

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Pleasingly-named billionaire Koch brothers fund Tea Party

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 2 Comments

Charles Koch, photographed here with the things he does not own

Here are just two of the many fun quotes in Jane Meyer’s New Yorker article about David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who founded Americans For Prosperity, support a network of conservative think tanks dedicated to libertarian causes, and have been instrumental in creating and sustaining the Tea Party movement:

They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.

The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.

The first is from a previous advisor to the Kochs and one of the many sources in Meyer’s story that go unnamed. The second is from Bruce Bartlett, formerly of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank the Kochs funded. If you lack the time or patience to read Meyer’s mind-blowing but also 10,000-word story on these men—whose combined income is exceeded in America only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet—you should know two things. One, the Fifth Avenue apartment mentioned in the opening section now belongs to one of my former clients, and I used to tutor there twice a week. Two, you can get the gist of Meyer’s article by reading Frank Rich’s column from Sunday.

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