Corporate Predators: Enron Case Just the Tip of the Iceberg

 

Most commentary and reporting on the Enron case keep focusing on the alleged connection with the White House and other politicians who have received over $1 million in campaign contributions in recent years.  The news media is having a field day trying to turn this event into another Watergate, with some calling it AEnrongate.@  But in my opinion, a terse comment made by Treasury Secretary Paul O=Neill points to where our analysis of this case should be going.  He is quoted as saying that he was not too surprised at Enron=s downfall, saying that: ACompanies come and go.  It=s...part of the genius of capitalism.@  Senator Joseph Lieberman called O=Neill=s remarks Acold-blooded@ (Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 14, 2002).  Lieberman, however, supports the very system O=Neill is praising, in that his role as a senator essentially is that of a representative of big business and hence the Agenius of capitalism.@  Part of the so-called Agenius@ of capitalism is,  of course, greed, with profits going to a narrow group of individuals being the only goal.  Too bad the workers and most of the stockholders get screwed.  It is corporate predatory behavior at its best, but merely masking what really goes on within corporate America: criminal behavior, pure and simple.

But this case is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Corporate criminality has been part and parcel of the capitalist system since the very beginning.  In fact, we can say that capitalism and corporate crime are synonymous.  After all, how can such huge profits continue to grow without a good deal of deviance?

Most are by now aware of the controversy concerning the recall of thousands of Firestone tires.  At least 103 deaths have been attributed to defects in some of the Firestone tires, particularly those found on Ford Explorers.  Another recent scandal involves our favorite friends, your friendly neighborhood pharmaceutical companies, in this case Abbott Labs.  An investigation into drug prices by the New York Times found that Abbott paid off some competitors for not producing some generic - and hence cheaper - drugs and keeping it away from consumers for an entire year. One drug was Hytrin, used for high blood pressure and prostate enlargement.  This costs patients around $30 per month (a small but significant amount for seniors) and enabled Abbott to reap profits of around $1 million each day it was off the market!  (Abbott paid off the producers of the cheaper drug around $6 million per month.)  Then there is the case of Tyson Foods for allegedly engaged in the recruitment of Aillegal aliens@ from Mexico to work in some of their chicken processing plants (as if this is something new in corporate America).

There have been many warnings throughout the past 200 years.  Starting with Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom warned of the possible concentration of power into the hands of a few corporations and the dire consequences if it happened; this was followed by John Dewey who stated that government (or politics) is but the Ashadow cast upon society by big business.@  More recently, in his book Corporation Nation, Charles Derber argued that corporate power is the Anew problem with no name@ (borrowing Betty Friedan=s words describing women=s secondary status in American).  Ralph Nader has said that: ACorporate decision-making determines many of the key questions that affect our lives.  These decisions are made not through the democratic process but in the private suites of major business corporations here and abroad.@  Such major decisions include, continues Nader,@ how our own natural resources are to be used; where toxic pollution will be released into the air, water and soil; whether jobs will be created, taken away, or moved to other countries; which political parties and candidates will receive the most money; the way crops are grown.@

And it is in the context of corporate decision-making that some of the worst crimes in all of humanity have been and continue to be committed.  When questions like AWho are the >dangerous= people in society?@  or A Who threatens us most with death, serious bodily injury and our money or property?@ the answer is very clear: corporations and their hired thugs!  Call them Acorporate predators@ if you will.  Some of the worst offenders in recent years includes Archer Daniels Midland (price fixing; paid a $100 million fine, the largest in history), Union Carbide (whose pesticide factory in India released 90,000 pounds of the dangerous chemical methyl isocyanate, which in turn killed several thousand people and injured hundreds of thousands), the Savings and Loan bankruptcy case has cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.  Then there is famous Ford Pinto case in the 1970s an internal memo showed that Ford executives knew about the potentially lethal design defect in its fuel system.  The memo showed that it would cost the company $137 million to correct it.  They decided not to correct the problem.  An estimated 500 people died because of the defect.

Statistically speaking, the gravest threats to us are not from robbers, burglars, rapist and the like.  Rather, they are from those who wear a suit and tie to work, or a white medical coat, or who occupy plush offices in corporate headquarters or who occupy powerful positions within the government.  Their weapons are ballpoint pins, scalpels, computers or merely their voices (as when they decide to go to war).

According to FBI figures, around 20,000 people are murdered each year.  However, according to one recent study about 100,000 Americans die from such occupational diseases as black lung, brown lung, asbestosis and various other cancers related to various occupations (about six per hour). The overall work-related death rate is around 115 per 100,000, compared to a homicide rate of around 8 per 100,000.  Add to this the estimated 400,000 who die each year from tobacco-related diseases.

And speaking of tobacco, what should we call this huge industry, other than the largest Adrug trafficker@ in the world.  A recent estimate from the World Health Organization is that by the year 2020 the world-wide deaths from tobacco will go from 3 million to 10 million; more than two-thirds in the developing countries in the world!  In this country reliable estimates put the death toll from tobacco at around 300,000-400,000 per year.  We send thousands of people to lengthy prison terms for possessing small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, drugs that cause at most around 5,000 deaths each year.

Annual costs of property crimes (like burglary and larceny) come to around $5 billion.  In direct contrast, the most recent estimate of the yearly costs of corporate and "white collar" crime is in excess of $900 billion, dwarfing the costs of ordinary crime (with some estimates putting the total above $1 trillion).  The list of specific crimes seems endless: bribery of government officials, defense contract fraud, health care provider fraud, and corporate tax evasion, price-fixing (costing consumers over $100 million each year), price gouging ("systematic overcharging" with mark-ups as high as a phenomenal 7,000 percent), false advertising and product misrepresentation, corporate stealing from employees (e.g., cheating workers out of overtime pay, violations of minimum wage laws, etc.), unfair labor practices, surveillance of employees, theft of trade secrets, monopolistic practices, defrauding investors (e.g., the Equity Funding case, which inflated stock prices by claiming $200 million in nonexistent assets), and many more.  Then there are cases like retail fraud on the part of small businesses, service business fraud (especially prevalent in the car repair industry) and various forms of medical crime, especially Medicaid and Medicare fraud, which is estimated to be as high as $25 billion per year.