As the end of November approaches and we can again look forward sitting in the same room for Thanksgiving dinner, I’ve noticed a very interesting trend that seems to be picking up speed: 2022 looks like it is turning out to be the year of reckoning for so many miscreants.
It’s not that I wish anyone ill, but for once, I’d like to see some of the doofuses that have robbed, bungled, and self-righteously stomped through the headlines finally get some type of payback. And I’m delighted to say that time is now.
The reckoning is surging at an increasing pace as 2022 slides to an end.
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced head of Theranos (you remember the book “Bad Blood”) is sentenced to serve eleven years for her malfeasance. I didn’t feel sorry for her very astute investors (Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdock, Larry Ellison) but rather for the employees whose lives she made into a living hell with the legal attacks of David Boies. When a Walgreens consultant told her she could go to jail if someone died due to an incorrect test result, she responded “they don’t put pretty people like me in jail.” Tata Elizabeth. And would it be sexist not to mention her partner in crime (literally) Sunny Balwani who is being sentenced December 7. And we should definitely include…
…Sam Bankman-Fried, lead scammer at FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange who seems to have had quite the crash since being on the dais with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair at the FTX sponsored “Crypto Bahamas” event this past April. Conflating “Crypto” and “Bahamas” should be the first sign something is amiss. The second might be including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Apparently FTX purported to hold crypto currencies for its customers so they could be easily traded in a secure manner. What actually happened was that FTX transferred the crypto to a parent company (Alameda Research) which then paid it out for naming rights (Miami Heat stadium), good deeds (Effective Altruism) and executive houses in the Bahamas. Geez, you just can’t make this stuff up. We turn now to the mouth from the south (Africa)…
…Elon Musk. In one of the endless satellite radio discussions of his implosion at Twitter, several industry pundits counseled that Musk should not be counted out, that he was a unique genius who worked in mysterious ways and might be able to do magical things with Twitter. Talk about drinking the Kool-aid. He’s already done magical things with Twitter, alienating his customers, his employees (ok, his previous employees), and giving Donald J. Trump back his Twitter account. Meanwhile, over at Tesla, stockholders are looking at the billions of dollars and Tesla employees sent to prop up the Twitterscape with a jaundiced eye. And then there’s the FTC probe into the self-driving technology and the unfair labor practices charges filed against SpaceX and…oh never mind.
In other comeuppances...
The Crown, season 5 is streaming on Netflix. No one in the monarchy is looking good in this portrayal.
In the Ukraine, the city of Kherson was reclaimed by the Ukrainian forces after an ignominious retreat by Putin’s army. Putin was busy touring a neurological hospital in Moscow during the announcement of the retreat, perhaps undergoing a brain scan to determine if he still had one.
Election denying candidates lost across the board and the MAGAs managed to turn an assured Red tidal wave into a trickle.
The Donald Trump of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, went down to a rousing defeat
The Donald Trump of the US announced he was entering the 2024 race. Democrats rejoiced, non-MAGA Republicans mumbled and everyone said it was too soon to start thinking about 2024.
Still, there’s work to be done. So much reckoning, so little time.
