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The Institute for Policy Studies’ online weekly on excess and inequality, Too Much, has been compiling an annual list of America’s top 10 greedy grabbers since 2008. The greediest of them all this year? That turned out to be a particularly tough call.

But this year’s top-ranking Too Much greedy grabber of 2012, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, more than held his own against this stiff competition.

Just last month, Adelson had the Sands [his casino] declare a special dividend for stockholders. He’ll personally collect $1.2 billion from this distribution — and pay only a 15 percent federal income tax on it. On January 1, with the likely expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, the dividend tax rate will jump from that 15 to 35 percent. The Sands dividend quickie will save Adelson nearly a quarter-billion in taxes.

. . . But the real key to Adelson’s billions has to be his manic hostility to unions. His flagship casino, the Venetian, currently operates as the only nonunion major casino in Las Vegas. Of the 40,000 Sands workers worldwide, not one is working under a union contract. And Adelson aims to keep things that way.