I'm shocked, shocked to find that bribing is going on in the Macau gambling halls of Sheldon Adelson
The Las Vegas Sands Corporation, an international gambling empire controlled by the billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials. ...
The Sands’ activities in China came under the scrutiny of federal investigators after 2010, when Steven C. Jacobs, the former president of the company’s operations in Macau, filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit in which he charged that he had been pressured to exercise improper leverage against government officials. He also accused the company of turning a blind eye toward Chinese organized crime figures operating in its casinos.
Now the question is whether Republicans like McCain and Rubio will finally get it through their thick heads to stop pandering to Adelson for the campaign contributions. Not only does Adelson push for policies that are bad for most Republican voters but she is also a crook.
ReplyDeleteOff topic:
ReplyDeleteHere is "The Perfect European" poster, highlighting cultural differences.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ekozlov/3638566572/
I wonder if Shelly will sue the NYT.
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't Adelson. The problem is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
ReplyDeleteBut I doubt any of the 'Realists' here will agree.
(And of course they'll wish there was a real Domestic Corrupt Practices Act)
I've always felt the U.S. laws against bribing public officials of other nations were the most idiotic, self-defeating laws in existence. You simply can't do business otherwise in these places, so banning it is deliberately ham-stringing American industry. Ultimately, it's more blank-slateism at work (every nation in the world is just like us!).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Macau, the Venetian Casino there is a very weird scene. It's identical in many ways to the Vegas version, only much bigger. But it's the bizarre crowds of Chinese that make it different. Troops of peasants -- mostly old people -- actually come in on tours, like with a tour-guide holding up a flag, and they trot around the casino, stopping here and there at a table to see how a certain game is played. They go walking around with that dazed look so typical of elderly Chinese (hey, if the Chinks are so smart, why do they always look completely befuddled by any form of transportation they are on?).
Generally, the dress code is exceptionally poor, even compared to slovenly U.S. standards. Most people are wearing some form of dingy, thin parka, even while sitting indoors. But then you'll come across a table full of young tough guys dressed up like 1920s gangsters, in black and white suits with bowler hats and shit! It's pretty obvious who they are.
And whores are everywhere. But be careful, because there is also a big "ladyboy" culture. If you want to just oogle hot girls, go to the Playboy bar at the Venetian. The girls are mostly all American or European, and they range from 8s to 10s. Cover band there is really good as well. No Chinese in it, all whites and blacks.
Adelson sounds like a piece of work. I grew up in the same area of Boston (within walking distance of the Dorchester Lower Mills /Mattapan border) and just a few years later than him. The big juvenile turf wars were between Irish and Jewish kids but otherwise the two ethnic groups lived in amicable segregation. The Jews got screwed royally a few years later when Mattapan was redlined for blacks by the "Vault", a real, honest-to-goodness conspiracy of Boston's business and political elite whose membership was small enough that they could hold their regular, informmal meetings in the unused vault of one of the city's more venerable banking institutions. You couldn't really call them a cabal because their existence and influence was public knowledge. Anyway, within a few years Mattapan went from being Boston a real Jewish ghetto to what is now usually referred to as a black ghetto. Jews were forced to migrate elsewhere. Destinations of choice were Brookline and the inner western suburbs and a few suburban communities south of the city, e.g., Sharon and Randolph. The latter city was already known as one of the few places in Massachusetts where middle-class black families could buy suburban homes even back in the 1950s. I occassionally travel down Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan and can see butcher stores with advertising palimpsests where current signs for Hala have overwritteb ads for BBQ which overwrote the original Yiddish signs advertising Kosher. I can see how the elite-imposed, forced migration of his neighbors and destruction of his neighborhood might have affected Adelson's psyche. As is usually the result, he has since used his power to wreak similar devestation on those weaker than him. There's a moral here somewhere.
ReplyDelete[to komment kontrol]: oh come on steve, you know it was true! LOL
ReplyDeleteOn come on! This is just the Left publicizing which of the the daily three felonies this particular Republican donor has committed. He has backed the wrong team and now needs to be punished.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the Corrupt Practices Act went way too far and hurts American business.
The way you get around the foreign corrupt practices act is to hire a local person as a consultant. He bribes for you, you know nothing about it- he's not breaking the law, and neither are you.
ReplyDeleteSo, is Sheldon J. based on Sheldon G.?
ReplyDeleteAs in Sheldon J. Plankton of Spongebob Squarepants?
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:27, as one who grew up in the Back Bay and remembers going to Mattapan Square with my dad to buy meat at the kosher butcher shops, the Vault can be blamed for a lot of things that went on around Boston 40-50 years ago, but the Jewish penchant for selling to blacks isn't one of them.
ReplyDeleteThe two majority Jewish areas around the city back in the day were Mattapan and Chelsea. Care to comment on the current condition and demographics of these two lovely areas?
The darkening of Sharon is the interesting part of the story. Mattapan and Randolph were lower class Jewish areas, but Sharon has always been fairly affluent.
Those nutty Scots-Irish!
Adelson filed a libel suit against WSJ reporter who did a story on bribery for describing him as "foulmouted."
ReplyDeleteAnon 3/4/13, 1:45 PM. Chelsea actually maintained a sizable Jewish population into the late 1980s despite the difficulty of commuting to other parts of Greater Boston. It was a subsequent influx of Hispanics that finally drove out the remaining vestiges of the Jewish community. Mattapan was effectively a black ghetto by the early 1960s. Not coincidentally the well-known red-lining of Mattapan which was what destroyed the Jewish community there began at roughly the same time as the destruction thropugh "urban renewal" of the West End. This was another example of force majeure by the Vault and is well-documented in Herbert Gans's classic, The Urban Villagers. Jews left Mattapan because they were forced out just as Italians left the West End because they were bulldozed out. Both were part of the Vault's and Mayor Collin's plan for rebuilding the city. Neither mass migration was in any way voluntary. I can remember Jewish acquaintances of my parents, the Roses, bewailing the forces destroying their Mattapan neighborhood. They had no desire to sell out but were forced to by the Arrow tipping process, a phenomenon initiated in Mattapan when Boston banks and insurance companies brazenly red-lined Mattapan in the late 1950s.
ReplyDeleteAdelson filed a libel suit against WSJ reporter who did a story on bribery for describing him as "foulmouted."
ReplyDeleteThat's a frivolous lawsuit. "Foul-mouthed" is an opinion that can't be proven false.
It reminds me of the Wal-Mart bribery scandal in Mexico- while American pundits were tut-tutting about how horrible this corruption on Wal-Mart's part was, Mexicans were scratching their heads wondering how Wal-Mart had gotten away with paying so little in bribe money for so many stores.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Anon, Scots-Irish Jerome Rappaport and his fellow real estate buds destroyed the West End.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Chelsea's "sizable" Jewish population being around through the Eighties, things must have gone to Hell pretty quickly for Boston University to be called in to take over the schools in 1989.