electronic ankle bracelets, anyone?

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

[: hacktivism :]

Electronic Ankle Bracelets, Anyone?
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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 GNP 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. 

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999; http://www.corporatepredators.org)

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

---------------------------------------------------

Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber
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