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CounterPunch
September
19, 2002
In the Public
Interest
How to Fight Corporate Crime
by
Ralph Nader
Can anybody in Washington do what needs to be
done about corporate crime in the eight weeks before the November
elections?
Don't look to the Republicans. Their
"whatever corporations want" subservient stance during
the Nineties reached levels somewhere between unconditional
surrender and unconditional sell out. The former pesticide exterminator,
House Republican Whip, Tom Delay (R-TX) once declared that he
could not think of one regulation to keep on the law books.
De-regulate everything in sight was their fevered mantra --
including taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beats.
Getting rid of corporate law and order, pushing to lock up the
corporate cops and throwing away the keys became the Republicans'
inventory to raise huge piles of cash from the corporate malefactors.
The Democrats, while as a whole not
as obeisant, did not throw the gauntlet down either. Also some
Democrats, like Senators Lieberman and Dodd, locked arms with
the Republicans to take away important rights to sue held by
shareholders until 1995. Yes, there are some politicians who
know full well the stands that they can take and should take.
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is one of
them -- a tough crackdown on U.S. corporations who renounce
their U.S. state charter, reincorporate in  Bermuda or other tax haven, escape gobs
of taxes to Uncle Sam yet retain all the benefits as if they
were still U.S. corporations. Dorgan says he will have hearings
on this subject. One of the lead proposals will be to stop these
companies from receiving government contracts and subsidies.
But who will provide by law more powers
and rights to shareholders to control the corporation that they
own? Shareholders in large public companies must be given the
authority to approve or disapprove executive compensation packages.
It has been executive pay that provided the bosses with the
incentives to cook the books and inflate company profits so
as to make their stock options and other bonuses more lucrative.
Facilities to make it easier for consumers, taxpayers and shareholders
to band together voluntarily into powerful self-help are also
needed.
A more immediate opportunity comes very
soon when the House and Senate votes on the Justice Department
appropriations bill. At least fifty million dollars should
be added to expand the corporate crime prosecution section in
the Department. There is no way that the Justice Department
can go after corporate crooks with its meager staff and, certainly,
no way can it respond to the recommendations for prosecution
by the beefed up Securities and Exchange Commission. More federal
cops on the corporate beat, and the establishment of a corporate
crime database are necessary to make law and order happen and
to help save millions of Americans their investments, savings,
pensions and jobs.
Rolling back the failed de-regulation
of the financial industry which opened the floodgates to reckless,
avaricious crimes and frauds in the Nineties is also necessary.
Derivatives should be brought under regulation as should electricity
(a necessity). It was de-regulation that allowed the Enronitis
disease which gouged Californians and others and which eventually
brought down Enron and cost thousands of workers their jobs.
These and other positions could help
stem the tide of corporate power and benefit consumers, workers,
and shareholders. For more information on these and other reforms
visit http://www.citizenworks.org.
Today's Features
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Hunting Commie Perverts:
The Scarlet Professor
- DC's Best Political
Mind; DC's Most Dangerous Man;
- Dershowitz the Torturer:
Guess Why He Wants Clean Needles;
- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
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September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
September
17, 2002
Adam Federman
All
That Matters is Oil
Linda S.
Heard
Paranoid
Americans
Hussein Ibish
The Incident
at Shoney's
Francis Boyle
Is Bush's
War Illegal?
Let Us Count the Ways
Heidi Lypps
Bush's
Crackdown on
Medical Marijuana
Riad Z. Abdelkarim,
MD
Why
Do They Hate Us?
September
16, 2002
Wayne Madsen
The Shoney's
Snoop
America's Horst Wessel
Tariq Ali
Debating
Daniel Pipes
on Bush's Wars
Ahmad Faruqui
American
Primacy at Bay
Kurt Leege
Voices
for Peace
M. Shahid
Alam
A New Theology
of Power
Robert Fisk
Bush's War
Dossier:
Blindness, Hypocrisy & Lies
Dave Randall
Mad, Mad World:
J. Edgar Hoover's Obsession with Mad Magazine
September
14 / 15, 2002
Ben Tripp
Notes for
Future Historians:
The Bush Administration Explained
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy & US Policy on Cuba
David Vest
Neither-Handed
Behzad Yaghmaian
A Letter
from Istanbul
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fire Next Time:
Nuclear Plants & Terrorism
Anis Shivani
The Warped
World of
Bernard Lewis
Uri Avnery
A Witness from the Past
Robert Fisk
Bush Across
the Rubicon
Josh Frank
Lacking Tenacity
Christini, Alam, & Krieger
Poems
September
12, 2002
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary
of Occupation
James C.
Faris
Riefenstahl
at 100:
The Fascist Aesthetic
Gary Leupp
Presidential
Honesty on Iraq
Tarif Abboushi
A Conversation
with My Arab-American Self
Ron Jacobs
Shelter
from the Storm
Rick Giombetti
Paxil
and Addiction
Krystal Kyer
From NAFTA
to CAFTA
Another Rotten Trade Deal
John Jonik
Overcome
in Philly
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