Do the crime, do the time,” goes the old saying. Unless of course, the criminals are corporate executives. In those cases, the culprits are practically always given a “Get out of jail free” card.

Even the corporate crimes that produce horrible injuries, illnesses, death, etc. are routinely settled by fines and payoffs from the corporate treasury, with no punishment of the honchos who oversee what amount to crime-for-profit syndicates. The only bit of justice in these money settlements is that some of them have become quite large, with multibillion-dollar “punitive damages” meant to deter the perpetrators from doing it again. Yet, the same bad corporate actors seem to keep at it.

What’s going on here is a game of winkin’ & noddin’ in which corporate criminals know that those headline-grabbing assessments come with a secret escape hatch. Congress has generously written the law so corporations can deduct much of their punitive payments from their income taxes! As Sen. Pat Leahy points out, “This tax loophole allows corporations to wreak havoc and then write it off as a cost of doing business.”

For example, oil giant BP certainly wreaked havoc with its careless oil rig explosion in 2010, killing 11 workers, deeply contaminating the Gulf of Mexico, and devastating the livelihoods of millions of people along the Gulf coast. So, BP was socked with a punishing payout topping $42 billion. But – shhhh – 80 percent of that is eligible for a tax deduction, a little fact that was effectively covered up by the bosses and politicians.

Sen. Leahy has introduced legislation to lock down this escape hatch for thieves, killers, and executive-suite villains. For more information on the moral outrage of ordinary taxpayers being forced to subsidize corporate criminals, contact U.S. PIRG at www.uspirg.org.

“When Company Is Fined, Taxpayers Often Share Bill,” The New York Times, February 4, 2015.

They’re back, stumbling toward the White House

Ready or not, the race is on! For president, I mean. Yes, Election Day is still a couple of years away, but the candidates are already loose on the land… and goosey as ever.

So far, the goosiest has been Mitt Romney. The GOP’s 2012 loser was asked last year if he would try again, and he said – in these exact words: “Oh, no no no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” That’s 11 uh-uhs, which would seem pretty final, but in January, Romney suddenly back-flipped into the race. Even more stunning, the multimillionaire plutocrat proclaimed that he was running this time as the candidate of the poor and the middle class. That was going to be fun to watch, but only two weeks later, Mitt quit. He said he wanted to give some of the new faces a chance. What a guy.

So Romney’s out – unless he gets back in. Meanwhile, some of those “new faces” have an old and weary look, such as extremist right-wing retread Mike Huckabee. He recently informed us that being gay is a lifestyle choice, like choosing to drink alcohol. Really? How does he know?

And don’t forget Rick “Oops” Perry – he’s back, this time wearing horn-rimmed glasses that are supposed to make him look smarter. You judge. Rick’s latest handicap, however, is not his stupidity, but trying to look presidential while under felony indictment for abuse of his gubernatorial power, plus having his office under scrutiny for awarding handouts of public dollars to campaign donors and political cronies. You know you’ve got image issues when your press conferences keep featuring photo-ops of you flanked by your covey of high-dollar criminal defense lawyers.

Still, the goofiest thing about the 2016 race is that it’s expected to come down to Bush v. Clinton. Haven’t we seen that movie before? And, is all of this the best America can do?

“Perry may be gone, but his government-by-crony isn’t,” Austin American Statesman, January 28, 2015.

“Mitt And The Melee, The New York Times, January 14, 2015.

“Third Chance For Romney? G.O.P. Is Torn,” The New York Times, January 14, 2015.

“Mitt Quits. Again. Probably.” The New York Times, January 31, 2015.

“Support Waning, Romney Decides Against 2016 Bid,” Austin American Statesman, January 31, 2015.

“Presidential hopefuls court factious GOP,” Austin American Statesman, February 2, 2015.

“Perry is clear: He’ll run anyway,” Austin American Statesman, January 29, 2015.

The KBParty of plutocratic rule

Shouldn’t America have at least one major party that isn’t beholden to the corporate elite?

Well look here – just such a party has popped up, raring to roar into the 2016 presidential race. Called the KBParty, it has the funding and political punch to bypass the establishment’s control of the election system. But don’t rush to sign-up: KB stands for Koch Brothers.

Yes, Charlie and David – the multibillionaire, right-wing industrial barons who already own several congress critters, governors, think tanks, astroturf campaign machines, front groups, etc. – now have their very own, private political party. And it’s not beholden to the corporate elite, since it is the elite. The Koch boys have rallied roughly 300 like-minded opponents of democracy to their brotherhood of plutocrats, intent on purchasing a president and congress that will impose their vision of corporate rule over America.

At a secretive retreat in January for KBParty funders, the 300 barons ponied up $900 million for their campaign. That’s nearly $200 million more than the combined expenditures of the Republican and Democratic parties in last year’s elections, and it’s way more than either of those parties will have for 2016.

This means that, in our nation of 350 million people, a cabal of only 300 of the wealthiest will have the wherewithal to narrow the choice of candidates presented to the rest of us, restrict the range of policy ideas that are proposed to voters, imbue the overall campaign with a negative tone, and – most important – shape the governing agenda of those who get elected.

The Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United edict created this mess. To help ban the corporate cash that’s clogging our elections and killing our people’s democratic rights, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.