A specter is haunting America, the specter of the Koch-Adelson alliance.
For years, billionaires Charles and David Koch -- the Koch Brothers -- and billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson were happy to go about their separate ways in the world of big money right-wing donors. But now, as
Peter Stone reports over at The Huffington Post, they’ve started working together.
According to Stone, the Koch-Adelson alliance began during the 2012 election cycle, and has only grown stronger since. Almost 30 percent of the money Adelson spent in the 2014 election cycle went to Koch-backed groups, and he’s expected to match or exceed that spending total in 2016.
Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity, the most important Koch-backed group, has returned the favor by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Adelson’s Republican Jewish Coalition.
It’s also attended Adelson’s Las Vegas donor bash for two years in a row.The biggest sign of a new Koch-Adelson axis, though, is the fact that Charles and David Koch have stayed suspiciously silent about Sheldon Adelson’s push to ban online gambling. Normally, this is the kind of thing the “libertarian” Kochs would oppose, but since so much money is on the line, they’re apparently more than willing to throw their “principles” out the window.
And money and the political power it buys, of course, are what the Koch-Adelson alliance is all about.
Even though the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, they both want to make sure that a Republican gets elected president in 2016. That’s because a Republican victory in 2016 will guarantee billionaire control over our political system for decades to come.
