When billionaires spend big on lobbyists in D.C. these days, the prize they seek is more regulation — which will enrich them.
Hedge fund honcho William Ackman and casino king Sheldon Adelson stand above the rich guy crowd as far as lobbying, according to Tess VandenDolder of In The Capital:
If you believed the liberal line about “The 1 percent,” you’d assume these two are lobbying for deregulation and tax cuts. The opposite is true in this case.
As VandenDolder reports “Adelson is spending his fortune on K Street to ban online gambling,” and Ackman “has spent $235,000, mostly to the firm Wexler & Walker Public Policy, to convince the feds to launch a full scale investigation into Herbalife’s business model.”
That is, both billionaires want more federal interference with free and open commerce.
The case is similar on the corporate front. The publicly traded corporation that has spent the most on lobbying so far this year is Dow Chemical, and probably their chief issue is lobbying to keep the export of natural gas illegal.
Not exactly libertarian causes, these.
