VW Joins GM in Having Done Evil for Profit — Will the US Justice Department again Make Itself Immorally Complicit?

22 September 2015

No moral barriers where profit-taking is concerned?

Most recently, this example of the “screw the public” ethos:

[VW] The Wolfsburg, Germany-based company admitted to fitting its U.S. diesel vehicles with software that turns on full pollution controls only when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

During normal driving, the cars with the software -- known as a “defeat device” -- would pollute 10 times to 40 times the legal limits, the EPA estimated. The discrepancy emerged after the International Council on Clean Transportation commissioned real-world emissions tests of diesel vehicles including a Jetta and Passat, then compared them to lab results.

Volkswagen AG lost almost a quarter of its market value after it admitted to cheating on U.S. air pollution tests for years . . . .

The announcement comes just a few days after the Obama Administration let General Motors skate

On pretty close to knowingly killing 124 people:

General Motors Co (GM.N) has agreed to pay $900 million and sign a deferred-prosecution agreement to end a U.S. government investigation into its handling of an ignition-switch defect linked to 124 deaths, two sources told Reuters.

The deal means GM will be charged criminally with hiding the defect from regulators and in the process defrauding consumers, but the case will be put on hold while GM fulfills terms of the deal, one source said.

No individuals would be charged in the criminal case, one of the sources said.

The New York Times posted the long chronology of the ignition switch problem, here.

GM had apparently covered up the defect for 10 or more years

Hence, the moral yuck factor:

From the moment General Motors announced last year that it was recalling defective ignition switches from its cars, it has managed one of the worst auto-safety scandals ever with steely-eyed cynicism. And now the strategy appears to have paid off.

Having rewarded GM's decades of mismanagement with a bailout, the government has now responded to its lethal negligence with an astounding lack of consequences.

Notice how slyly GM and our federal government are putting one over on us

No one goes to jail, despite the equivalent of arguably 124 corporate-inspired homicides.

And the 900 million dollar settlement is, indirectly, paid out of the taxpayer-funded bailout money that the Obama Administration signed off on in 2009.

Ralph Nader had some thoughts about the confluence of wrongs

From his interview with Democracy Now:

Well, it’s an absurd settlement. It doesn’t deter future behavior by General Motors. Nobody went to jail, nobody is indicted. The company wasn’t indicted.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Obama administration have created a new doctrine. It’s called "crimes without criminals."

That’s a double standard between the privileges and immunities that are dedicated to corporations by the U.S. government and the way individuals are treated.

[T]here are motorists who were charged with vehicular manslaughter because they were involved in crashes due to GM’s defect. As the Corporate Crime Reporter pointed out [see here], GM did the crime, the drivers do the time.

And even more absurdly — the feds had been in a position to intervene some years ago

Remember the auto manufacturers bailout?

The U.S. taxpayer bailed out GM $50 billion after they collapsed in 2009 or so, and the government, in return for the bailout, became a 60 percent-plus shareholder.

So the U.S. government owned, in effect, GM. And what did they do for five years under the Obama administration when they owned GM?

They did not restructure GM, requiring compliance officers, requiring independent ombudsmen so conscientious engineers in GM could go and tell the ombudsmen about defects in cars without losing their job. They didn’t do anything . . . .

[T]hey lost a great opportunity to also investigate this ignition switch. I mean, it was not a secret.

GM has covered up this ignition switch problem, which killed at least over 124 people, since 2002. I mean, you have the classic conditions for criminal behavior.

You have a known defect by people inside GM. You have deaths and injuries increasing. You have a cover-up. You don’t tell the U.S. government, the auto safety agency, in five days what you’re supposed to tell them—that’s another violation of the law.

It was a cop-out by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, under orders from the Justice Department and probably the White House.

Not mad yet?

Consider the fact that GM’s fine will be paid with (arguably) your money.

Think of this as a taxpayer-funded fee that retroactively licensed General Motors to negligently kill some of us for profit:

The government gets the $900 million, which is like a drop in the bucket for GM.

By the way, that money really is tax money recycled. GM, from the bailout, still has billions of dollars of taxpayer money in its treasury.

The GM settlement parallels the no criminal prosecution slant the Obama Administration took with the financial sector after the 2008 recession

The fat cats who stole our money walked with the Obama Administration’s fond approval.

In recent decades, American authorities have been afraid — due to the fact that the revolving door of subsequent employment may close on them — of slapping life-extinguishing capitalists around in ways that might put the big ones on the canvas. Better, they reason, to drain some slight lucre from Gilded Coffers and call it even.

This is capitalism’s ritualized greenback-letting. The — “a wrinkled dollar for your lowly life, suckers” — principle of governance.

What is the name for government based on this principle?

Fascism is a blend in which government and corporations trade favors at the public’s expense.

As I have written before:

American fascism can be described as self-serving collusion between (i) essentially bribed government leaders, (ii) corporations, and (iii) the wealthy elite.

This assemblage configures government institutions to do its will(s), which in most instances boil down to extracting loot from everyone else.

Now, there’s VW

Will the Justice Department extort another easily paid fine from Volkswagen, while simultaneously demonstrating that Law and Decency still do not apply to corporate executives?

VW is reported to be looking at 18 billion dollars in fines. Though I doubt the end result will be anywhere close to that — unless some American and Japanese automobile manufacturers have more clout with Congress and the Obama Administration than I think they do.

The moral? — Government’s serial complicity with conniving greed shreds our presumed Social Contract

Unregulated capitalism further breeds corruption’s thievery. Lose its presumed cloak of honorable behavior, and government loses its ethical right to exist.

PeteFree.com

VW Joins GM in Having Done Evil for Profit — Will the US Justice Department again Make Itself Immorally Complicit?