Confirming What We Already Knew

I can honestly say for the first time in a very, very long time I simply don’t have much to post about today. Maybe it is simply a matter of Trump fatigue. But anything that strikes me as worth saying today, I’ve said already, probably in numerous posts.

Bill O’Reilly was finally fired by Fox because of his history of sexual assault and discrimination. But we’ve know about O’Reilly and his “problems” with women for over a decade. We know that the “culture” at Fox was essentially sexually predatory for decades as well, thanks to Roger Ailes. (It always amuses me when corporations get caught in criminality, we say it needs to change its “culture”. No, it needs to stop being either a criminal organization or an co-conspirator in their individual employee’s criminality). And we’ve known for well over a decade that Murdoch’s News Corporation was essentially a criminal enterprise. There really is nothing new here. We already knew it.

When Sean Spicer stands in front of the press and says the administration was not lying about whether the carrier group heading to the Sea of Japan in order to give the President options for dealing with the North Korean threat when it was actually heading in the opposite direction because the administration did not provide a timetable for when the carrier group would arrive, we know that he will say virtually anything to defend the administration’s lies. But we already knew that.

When Erik Prince is finally shown to be an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition and becomes the fifth Trump-related official to have either lied about Russian contacts or the administration lied about their role in the campaign and transition, it is no surprise. Prince becomes, what, the seventh or eighth Trump-related person to have had meetings with Putin, or Russian officials, or representatives of Russian interests before he became President. It is just another example of Trump’s collusion with Russia. But we already knew that.

When Exxon asks for a special waiver from Russian sanctions or Dow wants pesticide research and regulations invalidated by the EPA, it is just another sign of the power of corporate money and the corruption of the Trump administration. But we already knew that.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) admitted yesterday that its regulatory oversight of Wells Fargo was “untimely and ineffective.” Wells Fargo, of course, committed fraud against their customers by opening accounts without permission in order to generate fees and commissions for over a decade. The OCC was well aware of the complaints that the bank had received regarding this practice, from both within and outside the firm, but did nothing about it. Wall Street firms love to go shopping for regulators and the OCC has been a toothless tiger for decades. So its no surprise Wells Fargo had them as their regulator and the OCC did nothing. We already knew that.

The big technology monopolies have built their business by stealing the ideas and products of others. So it’s not surprising that Facebook has basically stolen the best ideas from Snapchat and incorporated them into Facebook. The usual method for these companies is to at least buy the competitor to steal the idea and then destroy the competitor’s product. Facebook at least tried to do it in this instance but Snapchat refused to sell. So Facebook just took the ideas anyway. Look at what Google did to CelebrityNetWorth.com. When Google couldn’t get the net worth data from the company, they stole it. It’s what monopolies do and what they can get away with. But we already knew that.

So, not much news today. Just a lot of stuff we already knew…