So Elon Musk has lost between 180 billion and 200 billion dollars. That is a lot of money. I thought the assumption regarding billionaires is that they are good with money and will spend it wisely so that their money will trickle down to the rest of us. Musk bought Twitter and exploding rockets. The Twitter sale is particularly interesting because almost as soon as he bought it, he decided he didn’t want it and did everything he could to undermine the deal. Unfortunately for Musk, he screwed up and is now stuck with Twitter. Then there is the exploding rocket, another good investment although we are told by Musk supporters that an exploding rocket is actually a good investment because we learned something about what we can and can not do. Maybe but I think NASA has been sending rockets into space for some time without mishaps, so perhaps a little consultation with them NASA before the next experiment is in order.

Given all of these expensive mishaps with their money, you think that I would be used to feckless billionaires by now but Rupert Murdoch’s pay out to Dominion of 787.5 million is another shocking example. Dominion was rightly irritated with Fox News for suggesting their voting machines were fraudulent. Fox News had ample evidence that this was incorrect however management decided that their audience didn’t want to hear the truth and that if they were told the truth they would get so upset that they would stop watching Fox News, so they decided to continue spreading the false news or, as we used to call it back in the good old days, lying. Dominion, especially after proving that Fox News was spreading a lie and knowingly continued to spread the lie, filed suit.

After a brutal onslaught of evidence proved all this malfeasance, Fox decided to settle with Dominion for nearly a cool 800 million dollars. Money, I would say, that was ill spent but OK anybody can make mistakes even a man who was born into a newspaper family and worked in publishing since the 1950’s, I don’t know, I suppose he could be unfamiliar with the idea that you can’t knowingly lie in your publications. Definitely an easy mistake for such a seasoned professional. Completely understandable.

Except this isn’t a one time error, there are future law suits. Murdoch even recently paid off Prince William. The idea, as I understood penalties and pay offs, is that the guilty party pays stiff penalties in order to teach them a lesson. But Murdoch apparently has so much money that he doesn’t have to worry about shelling out all of this money and, so as an extra added bonus, he doesn’t have to learn a lesson either. To make matters worse, these settlements are tax deductible as a business expense so speculation is that after Murdoch takes these deductions, he will recoup some of the 787.5 million. Imagine that, the American tax payer is actually paying part of Murdoch’s settlement.

It irritates me that billionaires get off the hook this way. The conservative press is always quick to point out welfare fraud when some poor wretch buys cigarettes and alcohol instead of using his welfare money on broccoli and carrots. You see, they say, the poor can’t be trusted with more money but nobody raises much of a fuss when a billionaire gets caught rigging the system. Murdoch needs to stop lying. How will he ever learn his lesson if we keep letting get away with it. Personally, I would much rather give 787.5 million to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the most unworthy gin drinking, cigarette smoking, Cadillac driving bums than for Murdoch to go unpunished. At least the poor frauds will pump money into the economy by spreading the money around to local businesses instead of paying off princes, ex-wives and coverup legal settlements.