"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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I have to laugh at the fact that the CEO of the Venetian casino in Las Vegas is, like any compulsive gambler, betting on the long shot that Newt Gingrich can win the Republican nomination. Sheldon, don't you know the house always wins? It appears that the house, in this case, is Karl Rove -- and he's backing Mittens:

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.

A sample video from Restore Our Future.

I wonder how SCOTUS will rule on this so-called "gray area." The Citizens United ruling seems to indicate that when in doubt, rule in favor of corporations expressing themselves through hefty donations:

Reporting from Washington— A "super PAC" that has spent more than $35 million on behalf of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has accepted donations from federal contractors despite a 36-year-old ban against such companies making federal political expenditures.

At least five companies with government contracts gave a combined $890,000 to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, a review of federal contracting records and campaign finance data shows.

Other super PACs, including Republican-allied American Crossroads, and Priorities USA Action, which backs President Obama, have language on their websites warning that federal contractors are not allowed to make donations.

Restore Our Future does not list the prohibition on its website.

Several contributors — including a Florida aerospace company that has contracts with the Defense Department, and a Boston-based construction company that is helping build a Navy base — are taking advantage of a legal gray area created by the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case, which said that independent political expenditures could not be regulated based on who was making them.

Federal courts and the Federal Election Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the federal contractor ban, have yet to decide whether it is still valid. That leaves the legality of such contributions in question, though several election law experts believe the ban will be found unconstitutional.