Corporate Criminals

The “cost of doing business”

Ted Folkert

September 22, 2015

Her we are – again and again and again reminded of the greed and avarice bestowed upon us by some of the great corporations of the planet.

One of the great corporations of our time, General Motors, has plead guilty of killing people with faulty automobiles, not only prior to being aware of the unintentional deaths, but even after becoming fully aware of the fact. These deaths can only be classified as murders, although the perpetrator of the crimes apparently determined them as “costs of doing business.”

Whose cost? Theirs or those who were murdered? Their cost, as it turns out, will only be monetary. Those who were murdered? Well, we know their cost. It cannot be defined in dollars, however, that is the cost to General Motors, or should they be newly named as General Murderers or General Marauders.

I sat through jury selection for a murder trial last week for three days while the prosecution and the defense arrived at consensus as to which potential jurists should determine the guilt or innocence of a young alleged gang member who was charged with killing two other alleged gang members. These murders, whoever committed them, were apparently premeditated – part of doing business for criminal gangs. At least that was the allegation.

What about the murders committed by General Murderers? It seems that those were also premeditated – part of the cost of doing business. The big difference in this comparison is that General Murderers has to pay a monetary fine, while the young man, if convicted, will be incarcerated for the rest of his life. And, if he is guilty, he should be.

So, why are there no comparable criminal punishments for the General Murderers? To make it fair, the criminal gang that allegedly ordered the murders mentioned above should be able to pay a monetary fine for killing others as a “cost of doing business”, just like General Motors.

We previously had this situation with Toyota for killing people with their automobiles as a cost of doing business. Now we have the same situation with VW, whose executives decided to create programs to cover up violation of air pollution standards, intentionally emitting people-killing contaminants into the air. Now they will apparently be fined a large sum of money – another cost of doing business.

We have another case of a peanut butter manufacturing company whose executives sold peanut butter that they knew was contaminated with salmonella. Caught red-handed, now they admit it and apologize. Unfortunately for the peanut people, this case results in a cost of doing business much greater than monetary fines and compensation. It includes incarceration of the chief executive. Now that isn’t peanuts.

Fines for corporations, including banks that defraud customers, are obviously not deterrents to crimes – they are peanuts. They are simply regarded a cost of doing business. The only way to have a policy that deters criminal behavior is to impose criminal punishment – incarceration, including permanent banishment of those convicted from participating in the business from which the crime was committed.

How about the energy companies contaminating most of our underground water with people-killing waste products from their lucrative activities? Have we seen any criminal punishments there?

Remember what happened to Charles Keating, who went to prison for defrauding investors? (Unfortunately, the senators who aided him, the Keating Five, were not incarcerated). Remember what happened to Michael Milken, the junk bond king, who went to prison for defrauding investors? Remember what happened to Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi scheme perfectionist, who went to prison for defrauding investors?

Whatever happened to those kind of penalties, those punishments? Those were deterrents to future criminal activities. But they don’t seem to exist today.

Is it because the corporations own us lock, stock, and barrel now?

Is it because our fearless leaders are addicted to corporate contributions which are repaid with corporate welfare?

Is it because our leaders’ greatest desires are to be employed by these corporate behemoths as lobbyists and pocket huge sums of wealth?

Is it because our SEC has become toothless by our elected leaders and has little real regulatory or enforcement power?

Is it because the former Republican Party has become an assembly of radicals who have lost all touch with reality and choose to destroy whatever semblance of a democracy to which we still desperately cling?

My guess is that it is all of the above and we need desperately to elect a government to protect us from murderers and fraudsters acting under the protection of the corporate veil. That veil should be penetrable to punish crimes committed by the participants.

Think about it!