Fox News has reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in order to avoid the lawsuit levied against the organization: it will pay $787 million to the latter, just under half of the $1.6 billion Dominion originally asked for but a substantial amount all the same. The net worth of Fox News is about $16.44 billion, so it will end up paying nearly 5% of its entire holdings. And the “stolen election” claim of Trump supporters has received some official discredit as well. But the outcome is disappointing all the same. The most egregious of the offenders – Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham – emerge unscathed. In effect, Rupert Murdoch is paying to avoid making any public acknowledgement that some of its biggest stars deliberately lied to their viewers and that the viewers were sadly mistaken in believing them: he is paying in order to avoid any negative impact on the network’s ratings.
This outcome illustrates why suits levelled at Trump and his allies that involve only monetary penalties are ineffective. Their holdings are too great for fines, even substantive ones, to make any impact on them. The only penalty that can make any impression on such people is prison.
Vladimir Putin earns about $125,000 annually from his position as President of Russia and his official residence is an apartment with a large open-plan room that serves both as living room and dining room, a kitchen, an office, a bedroom, and three bathrooms – comfortable, but not especially luxurious and not unduly costly for its size and location in central Moscow (slightly over $2000 per month in rent). It’s so refreshing to see a government leader living a relatively modest lifestyle – that is, assuming you don’t factor in the following other residences in his possession:
- The Grand Kremlin Palace, which admittedly is a working residence; he doesn’t actually live there.
- Novo-Ogaryovo in the elite neighborhood of Rublyovka, aka Russia’s Beverly Hills on the outskirts of Moscow. Putin doesn’t officially own the place but the property was allocated to him in perpetuity after he became Prime Minister in 2008. The compound includes a 19th-century palace built for Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, a huge villa “in modern Russian style,” a six-story reception building, a private hospital, a vast sports and well-being complex, an ice rink, a deluxe log cabin, a private church for Putin and his family, a heliport, and a private bridge. A $15 million sauna was built on the property, but it burned down in 2021, never having been used. One hopes he’ll get around to replacing it soon.
- Bocharov Ruchey in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympic Games were held. This is his official summer residence and has been used to host many visiting government leaders, including George W. Bush and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
- The grandiose Constantine Palace in St Petersburg.
- The Yantar Palace in Kaliningrad.
And now we come to the un-official ones:
- A VIP ski resort in the Caucasus Mountains, a château that has been likened to the Palace of Versailles.
- “Putin’s Palace,” a building on the Black Sea coast (but not to be confused with the official Bocharov Ruchey property listed above) that could easily serve as a good-sized hotel instead of a house for one person, costing about $1.4 billion, about 190,000 square feet (about three times larger than the White House). Its rooms include a deluxe gilded theatre, a lap-dancing room, and a hookah lounge, along with Putin’s magnificent master bedroom. Outdoor amenities include an “aqua disco,” an underground ice hockey rink, a Byzantine-style church, a mammoth restaurant and entertainment complex, and, finally, a winery. (On paper, this property belongs to billionaire oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, but Putin has a habit of concealing his holdings among his network of relatives and close associates.)
- A retreat on Lake Valdai, which is located in the Novgorod region of north-western Russia between Moscow and St Petersburg. This is not a single building but a complex, including a 38,000 square-foot mansion; a 75,000 square-foot spa complete with a pool, hammam, and Jacuzzi; a Chinese-style pavilion; a deluxe log cabin; a mini-casino; a private church; a golf course (to accommodate surprise visits from Donald Trump?); and, for good measure, a private railway station, which is part of a larger network that connects Putin’s properties to his private presidential terminal at Moscow-Kalanchevskaya Station. The mansion’s interior is modeled on that of the Hermitage Museum, and it includes golden and silver living rooms, a music room graced with a $158,000 concert grand piano, and a shimmering “night cellar” with a canopy ceiling covered in petals of gold leaf.
- A mysterious “Property V”, allegedly worth $200 million, in the elite Greenfield development near Moscow. This 91,500 square-foot residence features a helipad, a football field, stables, and its own forest.
- A 40,900 square-foot dwelling is located near the Krasnaya Polyana ski resort in the Krasnodar region, whose furnishings include a Blüthner grand piano ($80,900) and a Frette candle holder ($3,700). It has its own cable car, helipad, and sauna.
Putin is also said to own an estate in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, which houses a nuclear bunker akin to an underground city, as well as a multimillion-euro villa near Marbella in Spain, but since these are only rumors and are not (yet) confirmed by documentation, we won’t count those.
Naturally Putin requires transportation to shuttle to all of those properties, and that he possesses in abundance:
- A fleet of 43 planes, including a jet kitted out with an $18 million cabin designed by a top jewler, as well as a gold toilet that cost $75,000.
- A supplemental fleet of 15 top-end helicopters.
- Several yachts, including: a) The Graceful, a 267-foot long yacht that cost $119 million initially and takes $10 million per year to run; b) the Scheherazade, a 459-foot beauty Scheherazade, worth about $507 million (Putin had a bit of ill luck with this one; it was seized last year by Italian authorities in the port of Marina di Carrara); c) the Olympia, priced at $22 million Olympia; and d) the Chayka, priced at a relatively modest $18 million.
- A collection of 700 automobiles, including an Aurus limo, which cost $1.2 million: a heavily armored, James Bond-style vehicle that is built to resist bomb and chemical attacks and is decked out with a plethora of state-of-the-art security features.
This man makes Donald Trump look like an ascetic in comparison.
Today’s statistics as of 10:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 685,806,155; # of deaths worldwide: 6,843,505; # of cases U.S.: 106,481,967; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,158,347.