Five years after all those bailouts for big banks, major financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America agreed to pay many billions of dollars in fines this year to settle claims involving a range of wrongdoing, from questionable mortgage practices to trading fiascos.
Others corporate titans have paid out, too. Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion to settle claims that the company marketed a drug for unproved uses and paid kickbacks to doctors. Another big drug company, Glaxo SmithKline, agreed to pay $3 billion and pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it illegally marketed drugs.
The list goes on. But amid all the headlines — and there have been many in recent years — the question remains: Do big fines actually prompt corporations to mend their ways? Many ordinary people certainly want companies to be held accountable. But for corporations, fines sometimes seem like the cost of doing business.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/business/video-a-year-of-corporate-fines.html
"But for corporations, fines sometimes seem like the cost of doing business." Gee -- could it possible be that way because the reality is, for corporations anyway, that crime truly does pay?
Which has The Gadfly wondering something else - if indeed, as our purportedly fair and balanced United States Supreme Court has decided, that "corporations are people," where is the fairness and the balance in the sentencing structure where an 18 year old person gets sent up the river with a 20 year prison sentence for having a few marijuana joints in his pocket as opposed to allowing a wealthy, lawyer-rich corporation person to just pay a fine, which typically amounts to an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the profit they made off of that crime, for his/her (if corporations are people btw, what is their gender?) crimes -- crimes, for which it should be noted, often have widespread economic/financial effects that have the potential to ruin millions of people's lives?
The Gadfly's old friend George Carlin had it right when he stated this:
"The same way we made up the death penalty. We made them both up, Sanctity of life and the death penalty. Aren't we versatile? And you know, in this country, now there are alot of people who want to expand the death penalty to include drug dealers. This is really stupid. Drug dealers aren't afraid to die. They're already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they're not afraid to die. Death penalty doesn't mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like... the bankers who launder the drug money. The bankers, who launder, the drug money. Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers."
That video was from about 18 years ago. Carlin was right then, and if were still alive, he would be shouting the same words even louder and with even more urgency and gusto, and it goes without saying he would still be right today.
Unless the American people find the collective will and courage to stand up and voice, not a desire for - but non-negotiable demands for, harsh, equitable punishment for these corporate criminals, then nothing will ever change and the ruinous destiny of this country will have been sealed with the imprimatur of a people's cowed acceptance of an interminably corrupt system of justice.
----TFG
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