Crony Capitalism At Its Finest
There is a major difference between the treatment government gives one group of citizens versus another. However, generally speaking, understanding will be provided by knowing what the crony capitalistic relationship is between the government employees and those who have ‘disobeyed’.
A recent article by the Associated Press tells of numerous elected representatives and their associates who received special favors, bribes actually, from the former Countrywide Financial Corp. These were in the form of loan discounts not available except to “Friends of Angelo” and were intended “…to build goodwill on Capital Hill…” What one will notice is that the recipients knew these were bribes – donations to their personal financial situation may be more accurate – intended to sway their decision-making. What one will also notice is that nothing will happen to these people, even though they knowingly and willingly accepted bribes; bribes intended to encourage the recipients to abuse the power of the federal government.
Concurrently another article tells us of a $3 billion fine levied against Glaxo Smith Kline for ‘health care fraud’. How curious. Try as I might I can’t find where any person goes to jail, or is personally held accountable. Those who think corporations are evil entities may be pleased with the fine, but the fact is, the fine only harms the stockholders. But the stockholders had little, if anything to do with the behavior of those who were involved in the improprieties. In this same article we are reminded of a $2 billion fine levied against Pfizer some two years previous. One would guess no individual was held personally responsible in the Pfizer case either.
Both of these remind one of the bank/drug cartel money-laundering opined on in this space. Here, behavior which would be ‘under the jail time’ for the average citizen resulted in a hand slap and money taken from the corporation for the coffers of government.
It almost as if these behaviors are acceptable so long as you have enough money to pay off the government enforcement agencies or, as in the case of the Countrywide briberies, as part of the government.
Those who are actually punished are stockholders, not those who acted wrongly. And it leads one to believe that it is a ‘pay to play’ scheme. The government is going to allow corporations to do whatever they want so long as they can pay, if they get caught. Certainly no one’s going to jail. And the people who do it don’t pay, it’s the stockholders, who had nothing to do with it.
Relate that to your individual experience with government.
Which brings me to a digression: a recent article about protesting etc., in which one of the leaders of Occupy Charlotte, Luis Rodriguez, was headlined; so I wrote him an email by way of the author. The reason is simple: Occupy Wherever is focused on the idea that corporations are ‘the problem’. My belief is one of complicity between big business and government – crony capitalism, a belief in a lack of morality and the abuse of the power of government and big business. Occupy Charlotte and similar groups have activists amongst them who believe, wrongly, that government can cure our problems.
Government is part of the problem and the larger it gets, the worse the problem will be. Notice, no one involved in any of the referenced criminal behaviors is facing jail. The ‘corporations’ are faced with fines, but the fines are actually paid by the stockholders. You may bet upper management continues to get their salaries and bonuses. And government agents get the money they want to keep them paid off.
Crony Capitalism at its finest.
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