{"id":1024,"date":"2008-10-22T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/10\/22\/Adelsons-megaphone-muted"},"modified":"2021-02-15T09:31:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T17:31:25","slug":"adelsons-megaphone-muted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/adelsons-megaphone-muted\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelson&apos;s megaphone muted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If Sen. <strong>John McCain<\/strong> pulls off the Nov. 4 comeback he&#8217;s predicting, it won&#8217;t be any thanks to <strong>Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>, who puts his mouth where his money is. (Hence those queasy-making odes to Chinese totalitarianism: &#8220;<em>People seem to be living a good life in China. Look at the incredible progress China has made. How can someone say they&#8217;re doing the wrong thing?<\/em>&#8220;)<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/userfiles\/Image\/ernst_stavros_blofeld.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"206\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Politico<\/strong> reports that, stung by the hornet&#8217;s nest that is present-day Wall Street, Adelson has &#8220;pulled the plug&#8221; on one of his pet projects, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegascitylife.com\/articles\/2007\/09\/13\/news\/local_news\/iq_16626256.txt\">Freedom&#8217;s Watch<\/a><\/strong>.* The latter&#8217;s &#8220;neverending campaign&#8221; has downsized from an artillery barrage ($200 million in planned expenditures this election cycle) to the rattle of small-arms fire ($30 million).<\/p>\n<p>Small wonder, then, that <strong>Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> spokesman <strong>Ron Reese<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/10\/18\/AR2008101801687_2.html\" class=\"broken_link\">airily informed<\/a> the <em>Washington Post<\/em> that &#8220;Mr. Adelson does not comment on his political activity.&#8221; Except when he does, of course.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve long wondered if Adelson&#8217;s high-profile GOP affiliation worked against him in Kentucky, where Sands found the door rudely slammed in its face. Mind you, the object of Gov. <strong>Steve Beshear<\/strong>&#8216;s bromance, <strong>Columbia Sussex<\/strong> CEO <strong>William J. Yung III<\/strong>, has also been a lifetime Republican backer &#8212; until he saw how the chips were falling, so to speak, in the Bluegrass State. Whereupon he strewed Beshear&#8217;s path with greenbacks.<\/p>\n<p>As politically polluted as <strong>Pennsylvania<\/strong>&#8216;s casino-selection process has been (Give Democratic, get a casino!), at least one right call was made: Handed a choice between a Yung-backed <strong>Allentown<\/strong> project and Adelson&#8217;s <strong>Sands Bethelehem<\/strong>, Pennsylvania regulators opted for the GOP-friendly mogul with a track record of impressive projects, not the one who would shortly become a synonym for insolvency.<\/p>\n<p>* &#8212; Back when Adelson&#8217;s wallet was still open, conservative activists used to bitch extravagantly (but always anonymously) about how many strings he would attach to the use of what was, after all, <em>his<\/em> money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Sen. John McCain pulls off the Nov. 4 comeback he&#8217;s predicting, it won&#8217;t be any thanks to Sheldon Adelson, who puts his mouth where his money is. (Hence those queasy-making odes to Chinese totalitarianism: &#8220;People seem to be living &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/adelsons-megaphone-muted\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,26,116,62,95,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29262,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/29262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}