Let's start with the latest bombshell in the Russian collusion investigation, namely that Cambridge Analytica (CA) had illegally secured the private information of 50 million Americans obtained from their Facebook profiles. It received that data from a Russian academic who was required to keep the information confidential and it appears CA was aware of that fact. The payment to the Russian academic for that stolen data was apparently signed off on by Steve Bannon who ran CA at the time. In addition, CA then passed that illegally obtained data on to some of its "clients", including the Trump campaign. An ITN undercover report also shows the head of CA boasting about dirty tricks including honey traps and viral propaganda that they had used in elections elsewhere. In addition, there are indications that CA may have passed that illegally obtained information on to the Russian oil company Lukoil, a notorious front for Russian propaganda. That is especially disturbing when we know that Russia successfully hacked into certain states' voter rolls, which would provide the data needed for the Russians to match up the Facebook data with the voter rolls in order to identify targets for its propaganda.
Facebook itself was apparently aware of the breach but made a minimal, less than even half-hearted effort to make sure the stolen data was destroyed, simply requesting that the data be deleted and then taking CA's word that it had without doing a real audit. Worse, Facebook employees worked side by side with Cambridge Analytica during the Trump campaign and surely must have wondered how the company obtained such detailed information on Facebook users, especially since Facebook was well aware that CA had stolen that data and supposedly destroyed it. If they noticed, they certainly did not care.
That lack of concern may cost Facebook dearly because of a 2011 consent decree with the government that required Facebook to obtain explicit permission from each user in order to share data that exceeded their privacy settings, For each subsequent violation of that consent decree, Facebook would pay $40,000, meaning that Facebook's potential exposure in this CA breach is an unimaginable $2,000,000,000,000 (if my math is correct) for the approximately 50 million users who had their privacy violated. Of course, we all know the violation of that consent decree will not be enforced. Instead, as usual, there will be another fine, merely the cost of doing business, and another consent decree that can be violated in another few years. It will probably be the same for CA.
According to a British MP, Facebook's auditors and lawyers were discovered inside Cambridge Analytica's UK offices on Monday night before they were asked to leave by the UK's Information Commissioner who is leading the investigation of the CA breach in Britain. Considering Facebook's obfuscations and denials about how its so-called "platform" is used to influence elections, Facebook's belated audit of CA looks more like a CYA maneuver and investigation into its own exposure, if not something more sinister.
Of course, the backdrop of all this is that Cambridge Analytica is essentially a Robert Mercer controlled enterprise that was run by his crony Steve Bannon. There are indications that CA illegally interfered in the Brexit referendum and UK authorities are currently investigating. In addition, CA was used extensively by the Trump campaign, often hand in hand with Facebook specialists, in its media strategy run by Brad Parscale. Yes, the Trump campaign paid CA over $5 million for its services but the fact that some experts estimate the value of the stolen data to be over $100 million opens up an enormous federal elections violation, which, again, we know will never be pursued and investigated, and only possibly end up with a fine. It does, however, expose Facebook to the wrath of its other customers that pay the company handsomely for the type of information that CA stole, an anger that my take the form of legal action and again illustrating the fact that companies have more to fear from other companies and the elites behind them than from ripping off the public.
Beyond the illegality of CA stealing personal information from 50 million Americans, beyond the fact that Facebook didn't give a damn about protecting the personal data of its users because that data is its product and CA and others like it are their real customers, beyond the fact that sending a letter asking that the data be deleted met the minimal requirement for Facebook's legal protection, beyond all that is really an utter contempt for democracy. CA was willing to use stolen data to help influence an election in the United States may have also violated the law during the Brexit referendum. It was willing to run covert operations, dirty tricks, and voter suppression tactics, creating divisions in any country where a politician was willing to pay for its services (or whom Mercer/Bannon approved). Facebook was willing to accept political ads paid for in rubles and to turn a blind eye to CA's theft as it pocketed a few more dollars from the Trump campaign. And worse, even after the election, both CA and Facebook refused to come clean about what they had done.
But Facebook has never had any interest in protecting or promoting democracy, despite its wonderful slogans over the years. It has modified its platform and procedures in order to satisfy authoritarians in Russia, China, Turkey, and elsewhere in order to facilitate the government's propaganda machine and control over its own citizens.
In the political realm, the corruption in this administration is deep and wide. Every day, Trump himself directly benefits from his violation of the Emoluments Clause. David Fahrenthold reports that over 80% of the money spent by the RNC on catering/ballroom rentals in the last few months was spent on Trump properties. Trump's cabinet is full of people engaging in petty graft and outright self-dealing. From Ryan Zinke's and Steve Mnuchin's fondness for private or military planes to Scott Pruitt's secure phone booth to Ben Carson's dining set and back to Zinke's $140,000 door, the petty graft is both pathetic and outrageous at the same time. The self-dealing by the Trump family on a scale we've never seen, Jared Kushner's multiple attempts to use his position to secure funding for his failing 666 Fifth Avenue venture, Carl Icahn's attempt to change EPA rules to benefit his refinery business as well as his remarkable prescience in dumping his steel interests right before the Trump tariffs were introduced, Tom Price's combined petty graft of private air travel and insider trading, Mike Flynn's treason and corruption, and so many more are indicative of a class of people who have no respect for the rule of law or the office that they hold.
Jeff Session, Steve Mnuchin, Jared Kushner, and others go before Congress and lie under oath, yet they continue in their jobs as though it had never occurred. Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein have sexually harassed and abused women for decades but managed to avoid detection due to payoffs, NDAs, and an infrastructure of complicit enablers that sometimes provided for and always protected them.
Today, even direct orders from the judicial system can be ignored and at least delayed indefinitely. The judiciary really has little capability for enforcement without the consent of the executive branch and is hamstrung by process issues that make it easy to delay justice. In Kansas, Kris Kobach is facing a contempt of court hearing because he has specifically refused to follow the orders from a judge back in 2016. According to the Kansas City Star, "[Judge] Robinson in 2016 ordered Kobach to fully register thousands of Kansas voters who had registered at the DMV but had failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, as required by a Kansas law that Kobach crafted." Koback has continually failed to comply with the full implementation of that court order and it seems like the judge has finally reached the breaking point, saying, "I've had to police this over and over and over again...The real question is why has the secretary of state [Kobach] not complied with it until he's called on it. ... There's been no change of rules. There's been no ambiguity".
In Pennsylvania, the State Supreme Court ruled the 2011 Republican gerrymander as an illegal partisan enterprise on the grounds it violates the state's constitution. The Republican in the Pennsylvania legislature responded to this ruling by trying to impeach the justices who ruled the gerrymander illegal. In North Carolina, certain voters in that state have had to vote in districts that have been ruled by courts as an illegal gerrymander since 2012. When those districts were ruled an illegal racial gerrymander, the state would constantly delay redrawing the maps with appeals up to the Supreme Court. When, after years, they were finally forced to redraw the maps, they drew what a court has ruled an illegal partisan gerrymander. The state again appealed that ruling up to the Supreme Court which stayed the decision to draw new maps again until after the Court makes a decision on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders.
Of course, the actions that Kobach and the Pennsylvania and North Carolina Republicans are trying to protect by defying the courts are in total opposition to the concept of democracy. Kobach is attempting to make it as difficult as possible for certain people who are eligible to vote to actually be able to vote. And the Republicans are defending a partisan gerrymander that, in Pennsylvania, awards 72% of the seats to the party that won around 50% of the actual vote.
The corporate culture only demands accountability to the shareholders and these companies and the executives running them know they will not be held accountable for fear of a redux of the Arthur Andersen collapse. Uber, a serial criminal enterprise that has violated laws in countries all over the world as well as in many states here in this country, still manages to stay in business and its executives, past and present, still have faced no accountability for their actions. Yesterday, one of its autonomous vehicles, perhaps running on stolen technology, ran over and killed a pedestrian in Tempe. Does anyone believe that any Uber executive and not just the emergency backup driver, will be held accountable for this supposed "accident"?
Wall Street firms' illegal and unethical behavior crashed the world economy and not one executive, virtually all of whom understood and at least silently approved of the massive fraud their firms were engaged in, was even accused of a crime. Wells Fargo, another serial corporate criminal, continued to steal from millions of customers even after the financial crisis ended. Again, so far, there have been no criminal charges against the executives in charge. And the Wells case illustrates the truism that ripping off the public is perfectly acceptable but ripping off other members of the elite, such as the investor class, will not be tolerated, as Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos will soon discover.
Purdue Pharmaceuticals falsely marketed its OxyContin drug with fabricated test results created by their marketing department. When discovered, three senior executives pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor and the company continued to market the drug almost exactly the way it had before. The cartel of prescription drug wholesalers then flooded certain markets with millions of opioids with clear knowledge that those drugs were being abused and ignoring federal and state regulations requiring the notification of excessive drug shipments. The result is the current opioid epidemic and a massive public health crisis. Again, none of the executives of any of these companies have been held to account.
Mitt Romney showed his disdain for the electorate with his claim that 47% of the country are freeloaders. You could say a similar thing about Hillary's deplorable comment, but, based on the racism and xenophobia of Trump's alt-right supporters, her point actually contains more truth than many care to admit. Donald Trump half-jokingly talks about becoming president for life and his well-heeled supporter not only laugh but give him an ovation. Trump lies about his discussions with Trudeau and the crowd laughs when he says that America is always stupid. And let's not forget Bush and Cheney who lied to us and the world in order to invade Iraq, creating a disaster in the Mideast that has potentially cost millions of lives and whose terrible consequences we are still living with today. The Bush/Cheney regime illegally tortured and held prisoners in violation of our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
Yesterday, Trump and Sarah Sanders both refused to condemn the fraudulent election in Russia. Sanders said, "We don't get to dictate how other countries operate. What we do know is that Putin has been elected in their country and that's not something that we can dictate to them, how they operate. We can only focus on the freeness and fairness of our elections". In other words, America has thrown away a couple of hundred years of foreign policy based on at least paying lip service to the idea and the ideal of democracy. As of today, we no longer believe in the concept.
Conservative Mike Lofgren has written that our elites are secessionists from their own country. "Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare? Being in the country but not of it is what gives the contemporary American super-rich their quality of being abstracted and clueless". And, like the British in India, they look at their own country as just another place for them to extract wealth.
Peter Thiel has already bought his reclusive farm in New Zealand and has his private jet all warmed up at the ready so he can escape whatever disaster befalls the US. Since Thiel already has his escape plan, there's not much need for him to focus on actually responding to the variety of challenges and threats this country faces. As I've written before, the elites ability to essentially buy "apocalypse insurance" has made them incredibly cynical and lacking in any faith in the future. Thiel himself gave up on democracy a long time ago, writing in 2009, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron". Yes, how dare poor people and women actually be included in democracy! The privilege of class and overt sexism in Thiel's statement, as well as the total disdain for what American democracy actually stands for, is astounding and frightening. But it is also reflective of the elites in this country and elsewhere.
I could go on (and I probably have for too long). But you get the point. For the elites, that certain and select group of economically and powerful people, there is no more accountability. They show their disdain for the rule of law every day, epitomized by Donald Trump and his family. And they certainly have little regard for democracy as it remains one of the only methods where their power and privilege can be challenged and constrained.
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