Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Uneven Justice

Today's New York Times has articles about Blackwater settling a case involving "unauthorized sales of satellite phones in Sudan; unauthorized military training provided to foreign governments, including Canada’s; illegal possession of automatic weapons; and other violations." Their penalty, a fine and probation.

Another article says that despite the fact that "corporations are on track to pay as much as $8 billion this year to resolve charges of defrauding the government," nobody ever gets charged, much less goes to jail.
“A lot of people on the street, they’re wondering how a company can commit serious violations of securities laws and yet no individuals seem to be involved and no individual responsibility was assessed,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of a subcommittee that oversees securities regulation, said at a recent hearing.
When banks can defraud homeowners and then use robosigners to foreclose on them, pharmaceutical companies can defraud medicare, and security companies can ignore the laws and run their own foreign policy but we throw kids in jail for smoking pot something is seriously wrong with our priorities. Seems to me that someone needs to stand up for personal responsibility and accountability.