Adelson has reportedly spent $30 million on anti-online gambling campaign

To most people $20 million is a life-changing amount of cash, but to multi-billionaires like anti-online gambling campaigner Sheldon Adelson this sort of money is simply change to be used in influencing lawmakers to achieve goals… like the resurrection of the Wire Act.

The Washington Post has reported that Adelson has thus far spent $20 million of his $33 billion personal fortune on the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, a so far unsuccessful anti-online gambling piece of legislation that his lobbyists allegedly drafted three years ago (see previous reports).

The money has apparently gone on lobbyists, PR companies and the action group Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, and clearly does not include the reportedly hundreds of millions that Adelson and his family have deployed to mainly Republican politicians seeking election or re-election at levels that go right to the top of the political power tree.

Over the weekend journalist and author Eric Peters wrote a scathing op-ed article in the Washington Enquirer which examined the background and history of RAWA and Adelson’s preparedness to spend “whatever it takes” to kill off online gambling in the United States.

The op-ed suggests that the land casino mogul’s concern about online gambling is his perception that it is a competitive threat to his gambling interests, and that in his desire to kill internet gambling he is prepared to trample on the states’ rights to autonomy regarding in-state laws under the US Constitution.

The article points out that even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives are wary of such a disregard for the Constitution and where that may lead as a dangerous precedent, and comments that the Republicans currently have control of all three branches government and now have an opportunity to achieve positive developments instead of imposing restrictive bans.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/paying-to-prevent-them-from-playing/article/2619443