Since it's New Year's Eve, I thought we should honor those billionaires who had so much money they knew they could afford to step up and toss it away on wingnuts and Mitt Romney.

To their credit, these are the billionaires who put a lot of money up under the Klieg lights, rather than snuffling around the dark money labyrinth, though it is entirely possible they tossed at least as much out on the dark money trail as they did in the light.

To arrive at these numbers, I went through the top 50 Federal SuperPACs, downloaded the data, and captured anyone who gave $100,000 or more to right wing SuperPACs, whether for the primary or general election. These numbers would include only giving to federally disclosed SuperPACs, and not 501(c)(4) organizations or state contributions to specific candidates. While I'm certain we would discover many more dollars flowing through into state elections, that's a job that would take more hands than I have.

You can see the entire list here, but I'll list the top ten for your enjoyment. Some names you will know; others you won't. A couple came as a surprise to me.

1. $43,325,000: Sheldon Adelson. Yes, our favorite Las Vegas billionaire wins the prize for the most generous buyouts in federal politics from primary through the general election. His name appeared at the top of nearly every conservative SuperPAC I reviewed. He was at every damn table in the election. What a guy.
2. $41,825,000: Dr. Miriam Adelson. Sliding in just a couple of million under Sheldon, Mrs. Adelson was equally generous and to the same groups, for the most part. The Adelson daughters also did their part with a million or so each, but since we're looking on a per person, rather than per family basis, the Adelsons capture the Number One and Two spots on the hit parade.
3. $29,200,000: Harold Simmons and Contran. Some checks came from Contran; others from Simmons. Since Simmons is the guy controlling Contran, he got credit for their contributions and his own, bringing him into the number three position. Simmons, you may recall, spent $4 million for the SwiftBoat operation against John Kerry in 2004. Back then, we thought that was an obscene amount of money. Now he doesn't even get the number one or two spot for nearly $30 million. Simmons wins the top Texas donor slot, though he's not the only Texan in our Top Ten.

   Annette Simmons kicked in $1.2 million to Rick Santorum, but doesn't make the top ten list for that, just a mere mention next to her husband's $29.2 million.

4. $22,100,000: Bob Perry. Coming in fourth is our other favorite Texan, Bob Perry, builder, swiftboater and Texas billionaire, who would have you believe he's just a good ole boy who grew up and started building houses one day. Now Bob Perry is well known for his giving largesse to the Republican Governors' Association and state races, too. It's possible that if we were to tally those in, he'd lead the pack. But for this contest, he comes in at number 4.
5. $13,090,000: J. Joe Ricketts. Yes, our favorite bigot, Romney pal, and TD Ameritrade founder takes the number 5 slot. Ricketts, you may recall, thought it would be really cool to revive the Reverend Wright smear in the 2012 elections. There was a proposal written up and everything, but then it came out in public and he abandoned that idea. He did, however, give a lot of money toward Dinesh D'Souza's hate flick. That isn't reflected here, since I'm sure it went through Americans for Prosperity or Citizens United.

   Ricketts is also the last of the eight-figure public billionaires on the list. Beginning with number six, there's a sharp decline in totals. I'm certain if we ever get any sunlight on 501(c)(4) organizations, we'd learn about lots more gifts from the same people to those organizations, but again...we're just looking at SuperPACs with federal disclosure now.

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The U.S. tax code may be difficult to grasp, but understanding the presidential candidates' plans for it doesn't have to be. President Obama wants to raise his own taxes, while Mitt Romney wants to dramatically reduce the already small slice he pays to Uncle Sam.

Of course, that simplification doesn't shed light on just how dramatic President Romney's windfall for his family would actually be. Mitt's plan, which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center forecast would cut taxes for the richest five percent of earners while increasing the tax bill for the other 95 percent of Americans, could slash his own annual IRS payment by almost half. And by eliminating the estate tax, the $250 million man would potentially divert $80 million (and possibly more) from the United States Treasury to his own heirs

On Friday, Governor Romney defended his mystery finances, declaring, "I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes." But when he announced Sunday that he wants "something dramatic" to boost the economy, he must have been speaking about his own.

Here's why.

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You may remember Sheldon Adelson best as Newt Gingrich's political sugar daddy.

I'm sure he wouldn't dream of allowing such a thing. After all, everyone knows the Republicans are the party of family values, right? But on the off chance that it's true, I'm sure the Republican leadership will be happy to return their Chinese prostitution money. (It's fungible!)

LAS VEGAS—The fired former chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp.'s Macau casinos alleges in court documents revealed Thursday that billionaire Sheldon Adelson personally approved of prostitution and knew of other improper activity at his company's properties in the Chinese enclave.

Brad Brian, an attorney representing Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Sands China Ltd., called the allegations false and "scurrilous" and claimed they had been included in the civil lawsuit brought by former Sands executive Steven Jacobs only to sensationalize the case.

Adelson, a billionaire philanthropist and casino mogul who owns the Venetian and Palazzo casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, also is a prominent political donor who gave $10 million to a super PAC backing then-presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and more recently has supported Mitt Romney's bid for the White House.

Jacobs was fired in July 2010 from his role overseeing the Macau properties. He sued the companies and Adelson three months later.

In the lawsuit, he accuses the company and Adelson of breach of contract and of pushing him into illegal activity in Macau, a former Portugese colony near Hong Kong where Sands has established a strong business presence. The company owns the Venetian Macao and Sands Macao casino resorts, the Plaza Macao hotel, restaurant and shopping complex and the newly opened Sands Cotai Central resort with three hotels and two casinos.

In documents revealed Thursday -- including a sworn seven-page declaration that Jacobs submitted along with a summary from his attorneys of problems obtaining documents from Sands -- Jacobs describes an effort he launched after arriving in Macau in May 2009 to rid the casino floor of "loan sharks and prostitution."

"This project was met with concern as (company) senior executives informed me that the prior prostitution strategy had been personally approved by Adelson," Jacobs said in the documents.

In his court filing, Jacobs alleges other documents that haven't been turned over include records of misuse of "blue card' work permits and the hiring of illegal workers in Macau; emails and records of Adelson controlling a "Chairman's Club" allowing favored members, including known or suspected organized crime figures, exclusive access to Sands China's most luxurious accommodations; and email requests from Adelson to a Macau lawmaker who Jacobs said was hired as outside counsel after Jacobs was fired.

"It is more blessed," Jesus said, "to give than to receive." That may be, but the billionaire backers of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and Super PAC plan to do both. As they gather this weekend for a three-day Romney conclave in Park City, Utah and a secret Koch brothers summit in San Diego, the deep-pocketed donors and bullish bundlers ultimately hope to shower $1 billion on the Republican nominee. If the captains of industry and finance succeed, they can expect a golden shower of their own in return. After all, Romney has not merely promised to roll back environmental regulations, open federal lands to energy exploration and undo the Dodd-Frank reforms of Wall Street. Just by eliminating the estate tax, President Romney would divert tens of billions of dollars currently destined for the United States Treasury into the bank accounts of the richest families in America.

Despite record high corporate profits, historically low effective upper income tax rates and a stock market which has risen by over half since January 2009, Barack Obama is not enjoying the usual fundraising advantage of incumbency. Nowhere is this more true than on Wall Street. As Politico documented:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.

Near the front of the pack are 19 Obama donors from 2008 who are giving big to Romney. The 19 have already given $4.8 million to Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it through the end of April, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Four years ago, they gave Obama $213,700. None of them has given a penny to the president's reelection campaign or the super PAC supporting it.

(As the New York Times reported this week, Robert Wolf, one of the few high-profile financiers publicly supporting President Obama, has been "muzzled" by his bosses at UBS.)

The energy industry, too, is proving a gusher for Mitt Romney and his Restore Our Future Super PAC. Hours after being named an oil adviser to the Romney campaign, Harold Hamm of Continental Resources contributed $1 million of his $11 billion net worth to Restore Our Future. Charles and David Koch have pledged $395 million for the 2012 election cycle, which combined with Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Tom Donohue's U.S. Chamber of Commerce could produce a billion-dollar tidal wave of cash to wash Barack Obama out of the White House. (As one Democratic consultant described the operation, "It's just like the Cold War. They're going to force Obama to spend himself into oblivion.")

Others among the usual suspects on the right are opening their vaults as well. Former Newt Gingrich sugar daddy and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has said his donations could be "limitless" and will likely top $100 million. While billionaire investor and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts may have abandoned his Jeremiah Wright smear campaign, his is bankrolling other projects including the ersatz documentary based on Dinesh D'Souza's book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Meanwhile, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has already delivered $18.7 million to Republican political organizations, a sum which will likely double by November.

(It is worth noting, as the New Republic and Huffington Post did recently, that many of Mitt Romney's Super PAC donors are embroiled in corporate bribery scandals. Adelson's casinos, the Walton family's Walmart operation in Mexico, Koch Brothers businesses in the Middle East and Meg Whitman's Hewlett Packard are all entangled with alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

But Mitt Romney's gilded-class allies won't merely win if he slashes taxes and regulations for their businesses. They will reap a huge return on their multi-million dollar investments from the massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy would-be President Romney has in mind for them.

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The latest stories from the front lines of the labor fight across the country...

Hey Newt, don't wanna hurt your feelings or anything, but see that fat lady in the corner? She's singing, buddy. Boy, is she singing.

Sheldon Adelson, the renown hotel and casino billionaire who has kept Newt Gingrich’s campaign alive all these months with donations totaling $15 million dollars, told an informal small group earlier in the week that the former Speaker’s campaign is “at the end of the line.”

This has been a pretty terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for the Newtster. First came news that the press corps had abandoned ship, making the choice to no longer tag along his campaign stops. Then the bank account started looking a little dry, so the decision was made to cut staff, including his campaign manager:

The campaign is cutting one-third of its full-time staff and replacing its manager as part of an effort to sustain itself, campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said. In addition, Gingrich will not travel as frequently to the remaining primary-contest states and will focus instead on communicating with voters via the Internet, videos and social media.

Have no fear, Ellis the Elephant is still going around with them as the Gingriches downshift back to book-signings and 50 dollars a pop photo ops. And now his sugar daddy is telling the media that his campaign is over? Ouch.

Meanwhile, Gingrich is trying to straddle the seemingly impossible line of staying in the race to the convention in order to deny Romney as many delegates as he can while not turning into a laughingstock with his budget basement campaign and his penny-ante profiteering by pimping children's books and photos.

Good luck with that.

As a quick glance at January's presidential fundraising numbers confirms, the unlimited cash flowing into SuperPACs is fundamentally distorting the 2012 election. The millions flowing into conservative SuperPAC coffers are not only far outpacing the GOP candidates' own campaigns, but continuing to overwhelm their Democratic counterparts. But for the likes of Charles and David Koch, the Walton family, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Meg Whitman, the Marriotts and the rest of the SuperPAC-Men, a multimillion dollar contribution isn't an eccentric hobby, but a wise investment. After all, if Republicans win in November, their plan to eliminate the estate and capital gains taxes would divert billions of dollars from the United States Treasury to the accounts of nation's richest families. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported last month, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPACs reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Mitt Romney's Restore the Future, Rick Santorum's Red, White and Blue Fund, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul worth an estimated $25 billion, said, "I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich." And as Amanda Terkel detailed, the Koch brothers and their allies pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here's why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone.

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

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So thanks to the Roberts court's Citizens United decision, the use of attack ads by "outside" groups will be even more egregious. And this is just the Republican primary - imagine how bad it will be for the general election:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist who destroyed jobs and communities, a full-scale Republican assault on Mr. Romney’s business background.

The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.

“We had to load up the U-Haul because we done lost our home,” one woman says.

Democrats have signaled that they intend to make Mr. Romney’s history at Bain a central part of their case against him if he wins the Republican nomination. But Bain has also emerged as an issue in the Republican primary, despite the party’s free market stance and business-friendly policies, reflecting the depth of public anger about the economy. At an appearance here on Sunday, Mr. Gingrich suggested that Bain’s approach was to carry out “clever legal ways to loot a company.”

But the planned advertisements appear to be intended to elevate the subject to a new level as Mr. Gingrich and the other Republican contenders begin to run out of time to slow Mr. Romney’ s progress toward the nomination. They are the latest example of how “super PACs” are carrying out attacks in sync with their preferred candidates and in the process helping to reshape the presidential race. Super PACs can raise unlimited amounts of money but are barred from coordinating with the campaigns they are supporting.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — As candidates spent the weekend trying to catch up to Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, with the primary just two days away, a longtime supporter of Newt Gingrich donated $5 million to a “super PAC” backing his presidential bid, providing a major boost to Mr. Gingrich’s ailing campaign.

The donation by Sheldon Adelson was reported Saturday night by The Washington Post. He has long been a generous patron of Mr. Gingrich’s political career. The super PAC, Winning Our Future, was formed last month by Becky Burkett, who served until earlier last year as chief development officer for American Solutions, a political action committee that Mr. Gingrich founded. The cash infusion from Mr. Adelson instantly catapults Winning Our Future into the top ranks of candidate super PACs, groups that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors and spend it all on advertisements and other efforts to back a specific candidate, so long as they do not coordinate with the campaign.

Ms. Burkett declined to comment on the donation on Saturday.

Sheldon just loves Newt:

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was the biggest funder of American Solutions, contributing $7.65 million and rumored to have committed $20 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, a report denied by an Adelson spokesperson. Whether the report is true or not, the facts increasingly show that the billionaire casino magnate is a central figure in Newt Gingrich’s political career.

Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Gingrich, who characterized Palestinians as “terrorists” during a December 10th GOP debate and told the Jewish Channel that Palestians are an “invented” people, would seem to be mirroring the hardline positions taken by his early, and cash flush, benefactor.

Democrats are taking a lot of pleasure, as they well should, that the tsunami of big money from Wall Street, the Koch brothers and other big oil magnates, Sheldon Adelson, and other big business millionaires did not end up buying the election. (The House, yes, but not everything.) But our delight at seeing Karl Rove's humiliation should not keep us from continuing to focus on the toughest question progressives always have to face: how to beat big money in politics. It sure would be a great thing if our campaign finance system was reformed, public financing was instituted, and Citizens United was overturned, but unfortunately it will probably be a way off before that gets done. In the meantime, our side is usually going to be outspent, and that will always be something we have to figure out how to overcome. This year we won in the Presidential race and most of the competitive Senate races through strong candidates and through winning the message war, but did not survive the big money onslaught in the House where candidates are lesser known and easier to overwhelm with money.

One fact gave me special joy: Elizabeth Warren outraised Scott Brown $39.2 million to $26.2 million. This is a truly remarkable achievement given that Warren didn't decide to run until September of last year, and that Wall Street invested invested very heavily in Brown: the financial industry gave him almost $3.3 million, by far the most of any industry. Insurance, real estate, big oil, the big pharmaceutical companies, corporate law firms and lobbyists all threw multiple hundreds of thousands into the pot as well. The fact that Warren, even while getting a late start, could outraise Brown with his close ties to big corporate money by a lot has some very big implications for the future prospects of progressives beating big money.

How did she do it? Brown outraised her well over 4-1, $2.7 million to about $600,000, in PAC contributions, no surprise there. There are still some labor and progressive PACs that can raise candidates some money, but they will always be swamped by the wealthy corporate PACs. But Warren did remarkably well in raising money from bigger dollar progressive folk, raising money from environmentalists, women's activists, LGBT activists, people in the arts, trial lawyers fighting corporate law firms, progressive high tech folks. She was able to inspire and motivate a wide range of progressive donors to dig deep and support her in a big way, and because of this she actually ended up outraising Brown by a decent amount among bigger individual donors, outraising him in that category with almost $21 million to his $17.5 million. As someone who has been raising money for progressive candidates for over 20 years, I can testify to the fact that Elizabeth was perhaps the easiest sell I have ever had- progressives were fired up by her fighting spirit. So the PAC and individual fundraising about balanced each other out. Where Warren swamped Brown, though, was in small donations: she ended up raising $17.2 million to Brown's $4.1 million- a difference the Wall Street fat cats couldn't make up for because they were too busy giving Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, and the rest of the deregulatory crowd big dough too.

It wasn't just Warren outraising the Republicans in small donations either, in case you haven't checked the Obama campaign's utterly swamping Romney in the small dollar category ($214.3 million to $70.9 million). Romney outraised Obama over 4 to 1 from Wall Street, and of course got far more in IE money helping him, but it didn't matter because so many progressive small donors came through for the President. Now I hear people saying that the Presidential is different from everything else, and that Warren was a unique candidate, both of which are quite true. But in the competitive Senate races the Democrats won, there is a pattern: they were able to hold their own in fundraising to a significant extent because of the wide edge in small donor fundraising: Tammy Baldwin outraised Tommy Thompson $5.1M to $1.1M; Sherrod Brown outraised Josh Mandel $6.2M to $3.1M; even far lower profile Heidi Heitkamp, who had nowhere near the same level of attention or support from the big progressive groups that focus on online fundraising, outraised Rick Berg $1.1M to $280,000. In 7 of the 9 other competitive Senate races, Dems outraised their opponents in small dollar contributions, and in 18 of the most competitive 25 House races as well- and usually by very big margins.

Historically, progressive Democrats have had to rely on a fundraising base of environmentalists, women and pro-choice activists, LGBT activists, Hollywood, trial lawyers, and labor. There's certainly some good money there but nothing to compete with the Mack truckloads of money from Wall Streeet, the health insurers, big oil, Pharma, the Chamber, and the big corporate lawyers and lobbyists. This year, all those big money boys (yes, they still are mostly boys) certainly did their part to make this campaign season obscenely expensive. But individual progressive donors motivated by populist candidates on our side and the terrible values and policies on the other did a remarkable amount to stem the tide.

Here's the other thing worth noting: in the competitive races where progressive groups played, they won a remarkable percentage of the time. The League of Conservation Voters took out 11 of their 12 “Dirty Dozen” targets; J Street won on an astounding 71 out of 72 House and Senate races, a lot of them very competitive; PCCC won 73.3% of their races; Human Rights Campaign won every single top priority race and initiative fight they took on; the labor movement in general kicked ass in their top targeted races and states, and was absolutely central to winning Ohio for Obama.

Democrats won this Presidential election by taking on a populist stance and successfully engaging both their base and working class swing voters. In the competitive Senate and House races they won, they mostly did it with populist candidates who got the progressive community and small donors excited about helping them. The old Mark Penn/DLC/Third Way model of winning elections is in serious danger, because there’s too much right wing and corporate money flooding the airwaves for Republican candidates, and the Third Way style candidates have a very tough time stirring up the desperately needed support from grassroots donors and progressive groups.

The way to beat big corporate money? Elizabeth Warren’s path is the future of our party far more than the Third Way path of making peace with Wall Street. Her kind of message has always worked better. Now, Elizabeth and candidates like her have shown that they can raise better money than the Wall Street Democrats as well.