What’s ultra-moral Mitt Romney, who’s even shocked by the use of bad language, doing palling around with Sheldon Adelson: gambling tycoon, partner of tyrants, accused bribe-payer and pimp? Most mainstream political reporters have been too polite to ask such questions, but Tom Edsall goes there.
What’s ultra-moral Mitt Romney, who’s even shocked by the use of bad language, doing palling around with Sheldon Adelson: gambling tycoon, partner of tyrants, accused bribe-payer and pimp? Most mainstream political reporters have been too polite to ask such questions, but Tom Edsall goes there.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
I thought the pimp accusation was withdrawn last week.
Did I miss something?
DCCC apologized. The witness, so far as I know, hasn’t recanted.
To state the obvious, Romney’s whole raison d’etre is about raising money for himself. He clearly wants the jackpot, and there is no reluctance to throw aside, whatever religious principles or integrity he has left. In his column, published on “Why Not in Vegas?”, Friedman Friedman writes that the Republican presidential candidate’s whole trip to Israel was about money.
Friedman wrote: “Why didn’t they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? I mean, it was all about money anyway — how much Romney would abase himself by saying whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return.”
While Romney advisor, John Sununu, ex-Republican New Hampshire governor and White House Chief of Staff, for the elder Bush, scolds Obama “that he should learn to be an American”, presumably like Republican grandees such as himself. Adelson is more specific about where a Republican’s pol loyalties lie. His first major demand of Romney is to urge Romney when and if he becomes president, to publicly demand the release of an Israeli, Jonathan Pollard, convicted of a major Pentagon spying operation in America. Great! There is the faustian bargain for Romney!
Mormons don’t really care about morality if it’s going to get in the way of making money. Don’t forget the hotel family, Marriot. You can watch porn at their hotels and get smashed if you want. Now of course if you were running a small business such as a liquor store you can bet that your bishop would call you in for an “interview” and question your moral choices. But then you’d be the small fry and you really wouldn’t count. As an ex-mormon I think that these people are total dimwits. Anybody who believes what they believe should not be trusted with anything. Period.
I think the real question here is of Mark Kleiman’s character: why does he hate successful job creators like Sheldon Adelson?
(I’ve been working on my Republican impression.)