Will the law force executives who approved VW's camouflaged emissions cheating to pay for their actions?
David Dayen at
The American Prospect writes—
Why the DOJ Needs to Hold Individuals Responsible for Corporate Crime:
It’s a bad time to be a Volkswagen executive. You’ve just been caught illegally installing software in nearly half a million TDI “clean” diesel cars in the U.S., and 11 million worldwide, designed to fraudulently pass smog emissions tests. Reports reveal that you lied about this, in the face of demonstrable evidence, for more than a year. Fines under the Clean Air Act could hit $18 billion. On Monday your stock lost $20 billion in value in the first two hours of trading, and another $20 billion or so since then. The stock only stopped falling when your CEO, Martin Winterkorn, decided to resign.
But despite the damaging fallout, there’s a path for VW to, improbably, survive their deceptions. After the CEO resignation and a $7.3 billion set-aside to pay any penalties from the scandal, investment analysts rated stock in the company a “buy.” Shares rebounded on Wednesday. A predictable backlash about carmakers habitually manipulating emissions tests and lying to regulators is in full swing. As long as penalties are limited to fines, which are borne by shareholders and can easily be seen as the cost of doing business, Volkswagen and its executives could make it out of this battered but not bruised.
This is why the Justice Department must live up to their promises and actually hold individuals responsible for defrauding the public and polluting the globe. Through a quirk of timing, the public learned of VW’s fraud just days after DoJ vowed to prioritize individual prosecutions of corporate criminals. There is no better test case for whether they mean what they say.
In an internal memo released to the public, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates instructed federal prosecutors that they cannot give “cooperation credit” (in the form of reduced penalties) to any company assisting with a fraud investigation unless they “provide to the Department all relevant facts relating to the individuals responsible for the misconduct.” This includes senior-level management; Yates told The New York Times that companies cannot “just offer up the vice president in charge of going to jail.” [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Bush screws national guardsmen:
Mark Goldberg has the scoop:
All full-time military personnel are eligible for the military's TRICARE health plan, as are reservists called up for active duty. After After reservists are deactivated, however, they generally lose their TRICARE coverage following a short, transitional grace period. Having the option to buy into the military's the military's TRICARE coverage would be attractive to many reservists and their families. as it offers comprehensive policies at very low cost.
In 2002, a General Accounting Office report found that as many as one-fifth of the nation's 1.2 million part-time soldiers lacked health insurance. This startled many lawmakers into action, and, in May 2003, Senators Tom Daschle and Lindsay Graham successfully pushed for an amendment to the Senate's version of the fiscal year 2004 Defense Authorization bill that would protect reservists from going uninsured by allowing them to buy into TRICARE when not on active duty. [...]
Our National Guardsmen are being asked to sacrifice their lives, jobs and families for Bush's War, yet allowing them to buy into the military's health insurance system is a "troubling provision."
May those assholes rot in hell.
Tweet of the Day
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin rounds up the latest polling: Trump isn't winning like he used to. Chainsaw Carly in 3rd, while cementing her reputation as a lying liar who lies. Gop on the wrong side of issues including gun control & Planned Parenthood. Just as with Obamacare & Iran, support increases the more people are informed. Dog catches car: Gop & the next Speaker. The Gimmetarian Constitution: Ben Carson says being Muslim is probable cause for searches; KY Republican claims 1st Amendment right to bribes. VW programmed a computer to lie to you. What other machines are lying to you right now? Good guy with a gun bullseyes carjacking victim.
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