John McCain has claimed that foreign money is slipping into the presidential campaign, mainly through Sheldon Adelson's SuperPAC. McCain's argument is that Adelson owns three casinos in Macau and that profits from these casinos are going into his SuperPAC. See "McCain says foreign money influencing US elections, sneaking in through SuperPACs", Associated Press, 2012-06-15.
Let's see, if I owned thousands of shares of Nokia, the Finnish cell phone maker, and thousands of shares of CTRIP, the Chinese online travel company (don't I wish), and donated to a campaign the equivalent of the dividends from these companies (if they were paying dividends), would that be Finnish or Chinese money influencing the campaign? I don't think so.
Since Adelson's SuperPAC promotes Romney and attacks Obama, I would doubt that the Chinese government is telling Adelson where his Macau profits should go. After all, Romney wants to have the "strongest defense" in the world. Is it in the interest of the Chinese government to enter into an escalating arms race? Maybe the interest of the Chinese military. But does the Chinese military have that much control that it can direct where the profits of a foreign country go?
No, I think it is just a question of the absurdity of the "Citizens United" decision, which McCain doesn't like, and of the wish of Sheldon Adelson to defeat President Obama.
Maybe we should just call Sheldon Adelson the drunken sailor of politics.
