-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.mojones.com/fotc/fotc3.html
> Taming the Corporate Criminal in 11 Easy Steps
>
> Bring back the death penalty for corporations, and other good ideas
>
> by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> Sept. 21, 1999
>
>
>
> Can it be any more clear that the national response to the corporate crime wave
> sweeping the country has been an utter and abysmal failure?
>
> This is to take nothing away from the hard-working prosecutors who bust their
> chops working day in and day out, with minimal resources, dodging political
> attacks from the corporate lobbyists whose primary job it is to keep the cops on
> their heels and off their case.
>
> For example, lack of enforcement of federal worker safety laws by Clinton
> administration has resulted in fewer inspections and fewer violations cited
> compared to prior administrations. Whose fault is that? Not the head of the
> Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who claims in his defense that
> for him to do an adequate job, his meager $350 million budget, which is
> constantly under attack by the corporate crime lobby, would have to be bumped up
> to at least $7 billion.
>
> Same with antitrust enforcement. Between 1977 and 1997, the total budgets of the
> two primary antitrust enforcement agencies -- the Federal Trade Commission and
> the Justice Department's Antitrust Division decreased by 7 percent in constant
> dollars while the Gross National Product grew by 112 percent. Mergers have
> increased by 550 percent since 1992.
>
> According to Albert Foer, director of the American Antitrust Institute, the
> failure of antitrust enforcement has resulted in airlines that monopolize hub
> terminals, international cartels that cost consumers dearly, price fixing and
> bid rigging that are a continual abuse of the system, monopolies that can
> control the global flow of information, and agricultural, meatpacking and food
> retailing industries that are unduly concentrated.
>
> Even when the system works, and the prosecutors nail the criminals to the wall,
> what good does it do? The recent criminal convictions of major corporations for
> fixing the prices of vitamins in the United States resulted in two of the
> biggest criminal fines in the history of corporate crime.
>
> Earlier this year, Hoffman LaRoche pled guilty and was fined $500 million and
> BASF pled guilty and was fined $225 million for leading a worldwide conspiracy
> to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in
> the United States and elsewhere.
>
> Hoffman LaRoche and BASF alone control 80 percent of the vitamin market
> worldwide. What impact did the fines have on the behavior of these two
> criminals? It made them more aggressive in their desire to control the remaining
> 20 percent of the market.
>
> That's according to Eugene Reed, the Arkansas broker who first blew the whistle
> on the price fixing conspiracy.
>
> "They have become super aggressive and more committed (since their
> convictions)," Reed told us earlier this month. "They are already at the foot of
> the bridge. They sent signals into the marketplace. They want to drive all other
> vitamin suppliers out of the world market and control it themselves."
>
> The lesson: even the largest criminal fines ever levied in the United States
> were too small to affect giant multinational corporations.
>
> When individuals commit street crimes, on the other hand, they pay the price
> with a loss of freedom. That's why by next year, there will be two million
> inmates in U.S. prisons and jails and the United States will overtake Russia as
> the world leader in the rate of incarceration -- a rate six to ten times the
> rate of other industrialized countries. This rate of incarceration costs the
> nation about $40 billion a year. And it disproportionately affects poor and
> minority populations. One in three young African American men is now under
> supervision of the criminal justice system -- in prison or jail, or on probation
> or parole. A black male born today has a 29 percent chance of spending time in
> prison in his lifetime. (For more on how the United States deals with street
> criminals, check out the recently released Race to Incarcerate by Mark Mauer and
> The Sentencing Project (The New Press, 1999)).
>
> When we released the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, we received a
> message from Robert Waldrop, the director of the Archbishop Oscar Romero
> Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City.
>
> Waldrop's Catholic Worker House feeds the poor, takes in people who are being
> evicted and generally helps those in need.
>
> Having worked with the poor, Waldrop has come to the conclusion that in this
> country "you get all of the justice that you can afford to pay for." That's why
> the prisons aren't overrun with the executives and shareholders of our major
> corporate felons.
>
> Waldrop has concluded that we should begin treating corporate criminals the way
> we treat street criminals.
>
> So, he drew up a list of "Necessary Measures for Curbing the Corporate Crime
> Wave." Waldrop wrote the list "tongue in cheek," but he has gotten such a rave
> response to it that he believes that it might be the basis for a political
> movement to curb corporate crime.
>
> After all, why should a corporate felon, its owners and managers, be allowed to
> influence our elections when an individual is stripped of his or her right to
> vote? It is time to start thinking about how to level the playing field.
>
> With Waldrop's permission, we hereby reprint his "Eleven Necessary Measures for
> Curbing the Corporate Crime Wave."
>
> 1.The stockholders and management of corporations convicted of felonies should
> lose their right to vote and run for public office. 2.A registry should be
> maintained in each area of criminal corporations, and any corporation convicted
> of a felony should be required to register with the local police. A notice
> should be sent to all of their neighbors that a criminal corporation is taking
> up residence in their locality. 3.Criminal corporations should lose all
> corporate welfare benefits and government contracts.
>
> 4.Criminal corporations should be required to make weekly visits to parole
> officers, and their stockholders and management should be subject to random drug
> tests (either urine or hair). 5.Criminal corporations should not be allowed to
> operate within 500 yards of a school, church, or library. 6.Criminal
> corporations should be required to place the phrase "A criminal corporation" on
> all advertising, signs and vehicles as a public warning. 7.If criminal
> corporations violate the terms of their parole, their stockholders and officers
> should go to jail. 8.In addition to the fine on the corporation, the personal
> assets of stockholders should be forfeited for their criminal negligence and
> lack of oversight. 9.The increasing number of lawless corporations calls for
> stricter penalties. Bring back the death penalty for corporations. In this
> context, the 'death penalty' is the closure of the corporation, the forfeiture
> of its assets to its victims and/or the government and the winding up of its
> affairs by a court appointed receiver. 10.Stockholders and management should be
> required to wear monitoring bracelets for the duration of their parole, and may
> not travel outside of their jurisdiction without a written pass from their
> parole officer. 11.The stockholders and management of criminal corporations may
> not associate with the stockholders and management of other corporate felons,
> and are forbidden to keep and bear arms.
>
>
>
> Waldrop believes says that "the original conception of the corporation was
> limited -- there had to be a definite public service."
>
> "Now that whole concept has been stretched and there is no accountability,"
> Waldrop says. He encourages readers to spread his list far and wide. And check
> out his other good works at his web site: http://www.justpeace.org. <Picture>
>
> Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter and Robert
> Weissman is the editor of Washington, D.C. -based Multinational Monitor. Their
> column appears weekly on the MoJo Wire.
>
> E-mail the Editors
>
>
>
>
>
> <Picture: The MoJo Wire><Picture: ~>
>
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A<>E<>R
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