This week, it was announced that BP is pleading guilty to having committed 11 felonies in connection with the Horizon Deep Water oil spill in 2010. This criminal negligence resulted in the deaths of 11 rig workers.
The punishment exacted? A fine of $4.5 billion, to be paid in installments over a six-year period. According to their 2011 annual report to shareholders, BP Oil has annual revenues of approximately $400 billion.
That 'punishment' works out to 1.15% or so of ONE YEAR's worth of total revenue, or roughly one QUARTER's worth of profit.
Let's put it this in some context, remembering Mitt Romney's famous quip that "corporations are people, my friend." [Certainly the Citizens United Decision agreed with that notion insofar as it sanctioned corporate "free speech" in the form of essentially unlimited political donations to election campaigns.]
Let's say you earn $40,000 per year to keep the numbers simple. That SEC fine is the equivalent of you having to pay $75/year ($450 over a six-year period)... for pleading guilty to acts of felony negligence that resulted in 11 people dying. Anyone else see a problem with this?
If I run a stop sign, the fine is $250. If I get a speeding ticket, the fine can be as high as $500, AND I can have my driver's license suspended or restricted. If I'm caught with ANY amount of pot, the fines/costs start in the hundreds and easily get into the thousands of dollars - and that's just at the misdemeanor level. Remember, those fines aren't assessed over a six-year period, either. For ordinary people, they are imposed and payable immediately.
See what I'm getting at here? If we're going to treat corporations like people for the purposes of political speech, let's REALLY treat them as people for the purposes of political speech: if a company is found guilty of committing a felony, it should be permanently banned from influencing elections in any way, just like we bar individuals who have committed a felony from voting.
Punishments are supposed to act as deterrents. Maybe if corporations found themselves frozen out of the political process, we might see a slight uptick in corporate responsibility as a result.
BP would be a great company to use by way of setting an example.
One last thought: since such a rule would require Congressional action, while they're at it maybe they can allocate $1 billion of that BP fine to fund the veterans jobs bill which was recently blocked by all 40 Republican senators. Just a thought.
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