Connecting Corporate Impunity Dots: Wrongful Death, a Call for Felony Convictions, not for Corporations but for Those Persons who Profit Most From Them.

Bringing Light into Darkness


Connecting Corporate Impunity Dots: Wrongful Death, a Call for Felony Convictions, not for Corporations but for Those Persons who Profit Most From Them.

Commentary, Pedro Gatos Broadcast date - May 31, 2010

Good Evening. On April 20th the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the BP oil disaster occurred. The question has been asked, 'What was the emergency response plan for such a potential disaster?' What seems clear is that there were at least three seemingly equal priorities for BP. One of course was to manage and contain the oil spill disaster. A second was to save the lives and limbs of those aboard the rig. A third and perhaps the most valuable lesson we can learn is that this corporation made a concerted effort to sequester the surviving platform oil workers and attempt to get them to sign liability settlements before they had access to legal representation or their worried family members.

Judging by these objective behavioral actions taken by the BP corporation one can see that one of the primary priorities of their Emergency response plan first was to protect their bottom-line. Such is the nature of corporations. Corporations are at their core economic entities, they are by definition inhuman in that they are not human they are instead inanimate entities. But let’s be clear. They are products of human behavior that serve the economic interests of an ever shrinking minority of economic elite interests.

A major theme of today’s show is that corporations and the political-economic system which they are a creation of are at the service and ultimate control of an economic elite.

BP is just one of the dots that we must connect to see ourselves more clearly, as a nation and as a world. As Dr Martin Luther King warned us some 43 years ago, BP is just a behavioral example of the immoral tendencies of our political-economic system that we must transform as well as protect ourselves and humanity from. In Martin Luther King’s Beyond Vietnam speech 4 April 1967 he was referring to exactly that when he said, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.” He was critiquing a system whose inhumanity was expressed in the simple fact that “machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people” and the ecological environment we are blessed to live within.

That the bottom line rather than the welfare of people and the environment is the driving priority of a system and that it is this tendency which is driving our human species to a premature extinction, would be my concern. That is the common thread that seems to best describe the primary motivating factor behind the history of the corporate behavior we will be examining tonight.

In April 2009, a mine explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, W.Va., killed 29 coal miners. The mine was owned by the Massey Energy Corporation. Just last week a congressional panel heard sworn testimony that Massey Energy had as a matter of policy regularly flouted safety regulations and that their workers who complained were threatened with job loss. Detailed stories regarding how inspectors were deceitfully duped by systematic and well planned tactics were shared by a number of workers and federal inspectors that testified before Congress. It was essentially no different than the deceit that Upton Sinclair had described in his famous book ‘The Jungle’ over a hundred years ago in which he described how meat packing industries engaged in calculated behaviors of deceit to avoid inspector regulations back during the first decade of the 1900s.

Fast forward to the 21st century we find essentially the same scenario in which big business acts with impunity and essentially regulates itself at the expense of worker and environmental safety. The Mining Industry, the Oil Industry and the Pharmaceutical Industry are just three examples rather than exceptions of the existing status quo that I want to briefly connect tonight.

Laws together with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the federal regulatory agency responsible for overseeing the Mining industry including Massey Energy, have been largely ineffectual in its regulatory history. Instead the result has been the mining industry corporations essentially being allowed to regulate themselves.

What we have documented in prior shows is how fines are so ridiculously low that they become a minor, a very minor cost of doing business. Despite the Sago mine disaster back on January 2nd of 2006 which killed 12 miners and which was followed later that same month by the Aracoma mine fire (Aracoma mine fire occurred on 1/19/2006) that killed two more workers, Congress failed to act. According to Ken Ward, Jr. of the W. Va. Gazette one of the premier journalistic authorities covering mining, “Congress declined to act until five more miners died in May 2006 in an explosion at the Kentucky Darby Mine.” That the bill that was ultimately passed, namely the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (the MINER Act), signed by President Bush on June 15, 2006, it was a watered down version that was torturously inadequate (see endnote 1) in that, as Ken Ward reported, in order to win support from the coal corporations and the George Bush Administration, this watered down bill focused on responding to explosions and fires, rather than on tougher enforcement and accident prevention.” (see endnote 2) Therefore what followed was working conditions that continued to be chronically dangerous. The new law included new mechanisms that allowed significant fine increases and the option to shut down mines if a ‘pattern of violations’ was established. But it takes years to establish such a pattern because loopholes were included in the legal reforms that were advantageous to the Corporations. So even in this 2006 Act these loopholes were apparent as we will see in a second. The law allowed the companies to appeal every fine even if it was a frivolous appeal, an appeal with no merit, and through and while on appeal it could not be used in the enhancement process which would have triggered a significantly higher economic penalty range.

In other words, the law was written in such a way that the appeal process has created an ‘out’ for corporations. As reported this month on May 15th 2010 by the Washington Spectator, the House Committee on Education and Labor earlier this year formally convened to address that failed inspection process alluded to in this claim. George Miller (D-CA) the Committee’s Chair explained. “In 2006 the Commission had a backlog of 2100 cases. Today the backlog has skyrocketed to 16,000 cases awaiting adjudication”. Senator from Iowa Tom Harkin (D-IA) who is Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions said, according to the Washington Spectator, that Massey had evaded the ‘pattern of violation’ status, and therefore the greater penalty range, by “appealing 97% of its significant and substantial violations (S&S) in 2007.

On April 5th 2010, just 15 days before the BP oil spill, 29 more miners died in the Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine.

And the New York Times reported in an article published May 24, 2010 authored by Ian Urbina (see Endnote 3) , a damning soon to be released audit report of the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Now that is the Federal regulatory Agency that oversees the oil industry. The article was aptly titled, Inspector General’s Inquiry Faults Regulators “ According to the Inspector General’s report to be released this week, staff at the Minerals Management Service, the same federal regulatory group responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, allowed industry officials during the period of from 2005 to 2007 to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to their own agency, the MMS. In other words, the Office of the Inspector General found that the MMS, our federal regulatory inspectors responsible for Gulf of Mexico drilling, allowed oil company officials to fill out their own inspection reports during this 2005-2007 period.

Now, this period of 2005 -2007 may seem like a rather distant past unconnected to the oil spill of today. But here is an important connection. Back in 2005 is when BP had its Texas City Refinery Disaster in which 15 died and another 150 or more were injured. As the Guardian reported, “BP has a recent history of disasters stemming from incomplete maintenance and faulty equipment, including the 2005 blast at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, where 15 workers died after a fuel tower was powered up without following protocol. Then there was the 2006 Alaskan pipeline spill, which occurred four years after BP had been warned about corroded pipelines. The company pleaded guilty to felony counts in the first incident and a misdemeanor charge in the second, tallying fines in excess of $62 million.” (see Endnote 4) Also see , (Endnotes 5, 6, 7)

Now the Aracoma mine fire that resulted in two coal miner deaths also resulted in felony convictions. Just two week ago on our May 17th 2010 Bringing Light Into Darkness show we also reminded listeners of the Purdue Frederick Pharmaceutical corporation whose top three executives pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of misbranding Oxycontin a powerful narcotic implicated in the deaths of hundreds of people during the preceding George Bush Administration period. The executives along with the corporation was fined some 600-700 million dollars which seems significant until you realize, and we did study and found out that the profits they accrued over the misbranding period were several times more than that amount they were fined. There was also a felony conviction involved with this case as well, just as with BP and with Massey Energy there were felony convictions as a result of deaths of innocent workers and consumers. However, a major lesson here is missed if I fail to include that it was the corporations of these three entities and not any person or executive that received a felony conviction. Rather it was the inanimate object, the corporation that received the felony, while it was the (in) human beings that received the profits. No person went to jail on a felony conviction despite the deaths of hundreds of victims. Instead after all the fines have been paid these companies’ executives still took home millions in increased income. So is the nature of corporate impunity. We will be back with our special guest Dr. Riki Ott after this.

endnote 1 - Mine Safety Law Left Out Proposed Reforms, by Ken Ward Jr., West Va. Gazette, April 11, 2010, 2006 “After 14 miners died in January 2006 at the Sago Mine disaster and the Aracoma Mine fire, West Virginia lawmakers passed a reform bill to improve the chances miners would escape from an underground explosion or fire. Members of West Virginia's congressional delegation pushed for a new national law, but Congress declined to act until five more miners died in May 2006 in an explosion at the Kentucky Darby Mine. But the West Virginia delegation's bill was watered down to win support from the coal industry and the Bush administration. The bill that passed focused on responding to explosions and fires, rather than on tougher enforcement and accident prevention.”

Endnote 2- ibid

Endnote 3 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/25mms.html

Endnote 4 - Congressmen raised concerns about BP safety before Gulf oil spill, By Abraham Lustgarten, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 May 2010


Endnote 5 - BP has long record of legal, ethical violations, By RICHARD MAUER AND ANNA M. TINSLEY, McClatchy Newspapers, 5/8/10 “BP ran afoul of federal environmental laws in Alaska after it was discovered that from 1993 to 1995 a BP contractor, Doyon Drilling, had illegally dumped hazardous materials down oil well shafts on the North Slope, the giant Alaska oil production area bordered by the Brooks Range mountains to the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north.
Doyon pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony violation of the Clean Water Act and was fined $3 million. BP was convicted on Feb. 1, 2000, of failing to report the dumping as soon as it learned about it, a felony. BP was fined $500,000, placed on five years' probation and ordered to create a nationwide environmental management program that cost the company at least $40 million.

Endnote 5 - Ibid “It's the 2005 Texas City explosion, however, that drew the harshest accusations against BP - from the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which issued a 341-page report in March 2007, two years after the blast, and from a separate commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker III.
Both groups faulted BP's management at all levels for overlooking problems.
"Warning signs of a possible disaster were present for several years, but company officials did not intervene effectively to prevent it," the Chemical Safety and Hazard probe concluded. "Cost-cutting, failure to invest, and production pressures from BP Group executive managers impaired process safety performance at Texas City."”

Endnote 6- Congressmen raised concerns about BP safety before Gulf oil spill, By Abraham Lustgarten, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 May 2010. “BP has a recent history of disasters stemming from incomplete maintenance and faulty equipment, including the 2005 blast at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, where 15 workers died after a fuel tower was powered up without following protocol. Then there was the 2006 Alaskan pipeline spill, which occurred four years after BP had been warned about corroded pipelines. The company pleaded guilty to felony counts in the first incident and a misdemeanor charge in the second, tallying fines in excess of $62 million”.