Let VW Face the Same Penalties as Us — or Let Us
Go Unpunished Too
By Ted Rall
September 25, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
If you did it once, you’d be fired.If you
did it hundreds of times, you’d go to prison.
Why should a corporation worth billions of dollars
be treated more leniently than we individuals?
“Volkswagen has admitted installing software in 11
million vehicles that was used to provide false results about
emissions, though it was not clear if it was used in all countries
where the cars were sold,” The New York Times
reports. The United States, however, accounts for
20% to 25% of the automaker’s sales.
“Those U.S. [diesel] vehicles would have spewed
between 10,392 and 41,571 ton of toxic gas into the air each year,
if they had covered the average annual US mileage. If they had
complied with EPA standards, they would have emitted just 1,039 tons
of NOx each year in total,” according to The Guardian.
That’s “roughly the same as the UK’s combined emissions for all
power stations, vehicles, industry and agriculture.”
VW executives broke federal pollution control
laws. They knew they were breaking those laws. And they did
so on a massive scale.
Now I want you to imagine, if you can, what would
happen to you, if you did the same thing — assuming you were in a
position to do the same thing.
If the feds found out that you’d rigged your car
with a device that fools state vehicle inspectors into thinking that
your pollution-belching piece of crap was as green as a
Leaf,
they’d
take your car off the road, maybe confiscate it. They might slap
you with a stiff fine
($25,000 in Texas,
$295,000 under federal law). Maybe even
a jail term.
Volkswagon will wind up paying hundreds of
millions of dollars, or more, to the U.S. government for this crime.
But that’s far, far less than they — or their top executives —
deserve. We live in a time in which corporations
enjoy
the same benefits as people, and in which some politicians even
claim that
they are people. Shouldn’t corporations face
proportionately equivalent penalties when they commit crimes?
Let’s start with civil penalties.
The average American citizen has a net worth of
$45,000. A $295,000 federal civil fine would wipe him out six
times over. Since VW has assets of $14.4 billion, the equivalent
civil fine should be $94.4 billion.
VW should cease to exist. Alternatively, it could
be nationalized by the U.S. government, with its future profits used
to pay down the deficit.
Anything less tells American citizens that they
are worth less than a corporation. Not even an American corporation
— a German one. A German corporation
founded by Adolf Hitler!
Then there’s the issue of criminal penalties.
The maximum term for fraud under federal
sentencing guidelines is
30 years in prison. Seems fair in this case. Let the company’s
top executives face those terms, as well as the company itself — it
should be placed in a virtual financial “prison” by being banned
from operating for its own financial advantage for 30 years as well.
Of course, the chances of VW being put out of
business, or its execs facing prison for their crimes, are zero.
Corporations are responsible for lawbreaking and
murder on a scale that Jeffrey Dahmer couldn’t have imagined. So why
is it just little old us, private individuals, who get the book
thrown at us?
Look at, if you can stand the stink, British
Petroleum.
Federal and state fines and settlements related to
the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico
will total $18.7 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, but thanks to
quiet leniency by the Obama Administration EPA, that expense
will mostly be tax-deductible.
Not to mention, it’s a drop in the bucket.
BP has $87.3 billion in assets. Which means its
total cost for the Gulf spill is just 21%, barely over a fifth.
BP will be able to pay off its entire Gulf spill
tab with
just over a year of profits. No layoffs. No
salary cuts. No replacing the gold faucets in the bathroom of CEO
Bob Dudley, who “earns”
$5 million a year.
If we’re going to treat corporations like people,
let’s treat people like corporations. Either slash the penalties we
face when we screw up — or ramp up those faced by big companies so
they’re in line with ours.
Ted Rall is the political cartoonist at
ANewDomain.net, editor-in-chief of SkewedNews.net, a graphic
novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an
occasional war correspondent. He is the author of the biography
"Snowden." - http://rall.com/
COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RAL