US Politics via Singapore

Former House Speaker and Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich. Image via NewsOne.

For anyone who didn't believe the 2012 presidential election in the United States was charging full steam ahead in 2011, votes are now underway in the Republican presidential primary. The next round of voting happens in South Carolina on 21 January, and big money is being spent on behalf of candidates jockeying for the nomination. Some of it comes from Singapore.

The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands, the company behind the Marina Bay Sands "integrated resort" in Singapore, has put $5 million (£3.26m) of support behind Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. The billionaire's company faced dire economic times in 2008, but the company's gambling ventures here and elsewhere in Asia have proven massively profitable.

Adelson has been transparently active in both American and Israeli politics for several years, and he undoubtedly will not cap his political spending at just $5 million this year.

Elections 2010: Don't trust Prefident Thomas Jefferfon

The United States holds its general 2010 election on Tuesday.  Many Americans will be greatly relieved to see the end of the campaign season and the endless string of television advertisements involved. The cacophony makes viewers suspect that even though TV was a twentieth-century invention, attack ads are a permanent fixture of American politics.  ReasonTV suggests such theories are not far off the mark.

Further Troublesome English

I recently laughed at the words chosen in translating from Japanese into English an online booking form for a Tokyo ryokan.  This is rather unfair because the person who undertook the translation did his task fairly successfully, and native English speakers are not much better themselves.  Here is the letter of instruction I received with my absentee ballot for the Missouri 2010 primaries.

Please read your ballot instructions carefull.

The computer's spell-check function could have presented this mistake.

United Homeless Organization Revelations

One of the streetcorner tables where homeless or formerly homeless people ask passersby for donations to the United Homeless Organization. Photo from the New York Times.

On Monday the Attorney General for New York State Andrew M. Cuomo filed a lawsuit against the president and director of the United Homeless Organization alleging that the leaders used the charity's funds for personal expenses while doing little, if anything, to help the homeless in New York City. The organization has long maintained a visible presence in the city. Almost every day people on the Manhattan sidewalks pass by one of the folding tables draped in a distinctive red tablecloth with an empty water-cooler jug to collect money. The lawsuit alleges that the UHO president Stephen Riley and director Myra Walker used the charity's funds largely for personal expenses.

The details suggest a case of small-time crookery. This was not a racket that provided powerful people with the opportunity to unnecessarily fly business class on dubious business or to condemn large swaths of Brooklyn for a sports arena. As reported by the New York Times:

The expenses, the lawsuit said, included premium cable television service at Mr. Riley's apartment, restaurant meals; trips to Cleveland, Mr. Riley's hometown; and shopping purchases from GameStop, the Home Shopping Network, and the web site for Weight Watchers.

But the filing also shines a light on how those ubiquitous donation tables work. Each homeless or formerly homeless person who staffs a table pays the first $15 of donations back to the group for using their name and equipment. The rest is kept by the table's worker. Essentially UHO has been sanctioning begging on the city streets. The arrangement has been known since 2001, but it appears now that all those $15 fees collected by UHO have done little to provide any wider relief to those in need.

Politics explained

For all of you wondering how America's two-party political establishment functions:

Theologically speaking, the two parties have divided the Seven Deadly Sins as follows: Republicans oppose lust, sloth and envy; Democrats scorn gluttony, greed, wrath and pride. Little progress is reported.

Thank you, Gene Lyons.