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The time has come to rein in corporations and make them:
1) Pay their fair share.
2) Abide by the rules the rest of us must follow.
3) Legally punish them with the same harshness that actual PEOPLE face when they act the way corporations do. In fact, I advocate punishing corporations as severely as we punish minorities.
4) These more STRINGENT laws would be for corporations with $10 million or greater in sales. Smaller companies would be overseen under the old laws (which themselves would be strengthened and clarified).
So, without further ado, here is my vision of TRUE reform:
• Fines, penalties, legal fees, legal judgments, punitive and actual damages, are no longer tax deductible. Right now these are all "business expenses", and are thus deductions against profits. This means that the taxpayer is indirectly subsidizing corporate lawbreaking. Corporate profits must not be sheltered from the consequences of lawbreaking and negligence.
• The current system of fines does not realistically deter corporate lawbreaking. Fining a corporation $50,000 for a safety violation that kills 11 people when the corp is making billions a quarter is not punishment. The following fine schedule should be adopted for any violation of law which results in death, incapacitating injury, or greater than $10 million damage to the environment.
First Offense - 1% of the previous years profits
Second Offense - 10% of the previous years profits
Third Offense - 100% of previous years profits
If no profits were reported, the amounts shall be .15%/1.5% and 15% of the previous years sales.
The fine meter may be reset from 100%/15% for future infractions by the complete replacement of the management responsible, senior corporate management and the board of directors, since ALL of these people failed to do their job.
Fines may be appealed, but those that are appealed unsuccessfully will require interest be paid from the date the fine was levied at a rate of APR + 10% per year.
Appeals which are deemed frivolous by the courts will result in a doubling of the fines.
Safety violations which do not meet the criteria above shall invoke a fine equal to .01% of the previous year's profit per violation, or .005% of sales if no profit was reported.
• Fees paid to lobby the local, state or federal government are not tax deductible.
• U.S. Corporations which do not pay U.S. taxes may not be traded on any U.S. stock exchange. A company shall be considered a U.S. company if it derives 33% or more of its sales from the U.S. market. Current tax credits for taxes paid in other countries will be retained, but if the other country engages in any tax dodging scheme (rebates taxes paid for example), then the credit shall be disallowed.
• The actions U.S. corporations shall be bound by U.S. law, no matter where the company operates.
• No trade secret shall be respected if doing so shall endanger life and/or limb, or pose a threat to the environment/economy greater than $10 million.
• Corporations may pay any salary/compensation to their officers that they wish, but any amount greater than 150 times the salary paid to the LOWEST paid EMPLOYEE of the company shall not be tax deductible, as this means the taxpayer would be subsidizing the salary of unreasonably compensated corporate officers.
Salary/compensation shall mean wages, bonuses, pensions, stock options, health benefits, membership fees, in-kind payments, use of vehicles, aircrafts, office space, and residences.
• All oil, natural gas, coal and uranium mining corporations shall be assessed an environmental impact tax of 1% of annual profits. Should the company claim no profits in a given year, they shall pay .2% of annual sales instead.
• Any incidents which results in the injury, and/or death of five or more people, or that causes more than $10 million damage to the environment/economy shall be deemed an "corporate disaster". At such time, the CEO of the corporation shall be the only spokesman for the corporation, and shall provide timely and accurate information to the public and government investigators. The DOE shall dispatch a response team who will take charge of operations to mitigate/clean up the disaster. Until relieved by the government team, the CEO shall command all effort to mitigate/clean up the disaster and be personally responsible for those efforts.
• It shall be illegal for any employee to sign, or for the employer to solicit from employees or members of the public, any waiver of responsibility/liability or non-disclosure agreement.
• Any civil settlement reached by a corporation with an employee or member of the public may not include an non-disclosure agreement.
• Willful deception, omission of relevant or material information, or any conduct which seeks to obscure the scope, cost, or impact of the disaster, shall be a criminal offense.
• The government shall establish on-site safety and compliance teams at any energy production/refining facility where 25, or more, employees are present. Such teams will be from outside the state where the facility is located and shall be rotated every 90 days.
• Suborning a safety/compliance official, by any means, to not enforce the law, shall be a punishable by imprisonment for life, as will be solicitation of a bribe by such an official.
• The U.S. Government shall no longer lease public land to private corporations for exploitation. Instead it shall establish a mining and drilling school under the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which will allow the training of miners/riggers to be used for emergency response teams, inspection teams, and instructors. These academies shall be open to the public and provide certification in the appropriate disciplines. Tax credits will be available to extraction-based companies which use government certified miners/riggers when such employees constitute 51% of their workforce. Certified miners/riggers will be obligated by law to report any safety violations at their job.
Resources obtained from public mines/wells, shall be sold at market rates for use in the United States or its territories. Profits from such sales shall be used to fund these enforcement/education efforts and to research clean alternate energy technologies.
• Willful violations of safety regulations that result in injury of any person shall be charged as premeditated attempted murder. Deaths will be charged as premeditated murder.
• Any employee of a regulatory/enforcement agency of the government may not work in any industry they were responsible for until five years after they left service.
OK, that would do for a start. And yes, I know that wording of these laws would be important, so actual legalese would require work. But, the point is to put corporations back in their proper place. I am sick and tired of Draconian laws that only apply to the poor and powerless.
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