FINEMAN: What the fatcat PAC donors really want

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/29/super-pac-donors-2012_n_1711696.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

[font size=5]What Super PAC Donors Really Want Is A Return On Their Investment [/font]

Howard Fineman

WASHINGTON -– Heed their names for they are the country's new power brokers: Sheldon Adelson, David and Charles Koch, Harold Simmons, and Bob Perry, among others. Along with similarly wealthy individuals and groups, they're pouring unprecedented sums into the 2012 election -- tens, perhaps even hundreds, of millions of dollars. When asked why, they prefer to offer lofty motives. The billionaire Koch brothers speak about libertarianism and the need to save free enterprise. Casino magnate Adelson talks in equally apocalyptic terms about preserving the security and Jewish identity of Israel. Institutions such as the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association tend to stress liberal agenda items such as expanded health care and progressive taxation.

So what do the big boys want? What do they really, really want? The Huffington Post looked behind the rhetoric for the potential policy payoffs -- there's truly no other word for it -- sought by 15 individual and institutional super donors in the 2012 campaign.

With the Koch brothers, for example, the motivation has less to do with libertarian ideology than with the fact that many of their industrial and mining companies are environmentally invasive -- to put it mildly. They expect a Republican administration and Congress, if they can buy one, to abolish laws, regulations and regulatory bureaucracies that interfere with their business.

For Adelson, the real close-to-home issue isn't in the Middle East; it's in the Far East -- and in Washington, D.C. Federal investigators are examining whether Adelson's company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by offering large payments to officials in Macau, where it has a major casino operation. Adelson would like an administration more likely to see his side of that story. ....

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[DearAbby]

1. Of course they expect a return on this investment

Why else would anyone lay down that much without expecting a return...why in hell, do they think we aren't wise to this shit? Blatant corruption.

[grasswire]

2. it makes a person long for the days of Richard Mellon Scaife

At least Scaife was a pure ideologist, pouring his money into propaganda and opinion shaping in order to advance conservatism. It wasn't all about profit/corruption for him. The new breed is harder to fight.