The Supreme Court and Big Business Are Never Held Accountable for their Actions

What is accountability? It’s what the Court, giant corporations, and Donald Trump do not ever need to worry about under the American system of “justice.”

So, a friend of mine literally wrote the book on “accountability” many years ago. It’s a shame that the book is ignored and possibly out of print, because it’s a very good and unique book, and very badly needed today.

The full title is Accountability: It All Depends on What You Mean and the author is Theo Brooks.

What IS Accountability?

Accountability means that a person or organization is held responsible for one’s actions. The actor suffers consequences for actions that cause hardship or suffering for others. IF those consequences are strong enough to 1) erase any net benefit the actor may accrue from bad behavior and 2) discourage any future repeat of that or a similar behavior, then meaningful accountability has taken place.

It’s not enough to suffer consequences. All to often, by doing something wrong a corporation collects millions or billions of dollars in unearned or swindled revenue, and then is “held accountable” by being charged some fraction of that amount in a fine. Often, the corporation does not even need to admit wrongdoing — the fine erases any semblance of accountability. The fine becomes a simple “cost of doing business.”

We have seen that Donald Trump is never held accountable for any of his wrongful actions because no “punishment” he’s received (and he rarely receives ANY) has been sufficient to stop additional and similar wrongful actions. As of this writing, the systems of law in the United States have been insufficient to hold this wrongdoer accountable for any illegal acts. He has had a free pass.

Most powerful people and institutions escape accountability. It seems that accountability is only for the little people. In the rare case when a wealthy, famous or otherwise powerful person or institution IS held truly accountable, it is a notable event.

Some Cases of Failed Accountability

In January of this year, the Trump Organization was found guilty of 17 felonies and fined a humorous $1.7 million dollars. Of course, to the ordinary person that sounds like a lot of money. This was the “penalty” for running a decades-long tax fraud scheme. This amount was the maximum penalty allowed by law.

So, a multi-billion dollar corporation was “held accountable” (NOT) by being forced to pay a $1.6 million fine. The lesson? CRIME PAYS.

After years of pollution violations, Tesla (a corporation with a value approaching $1 trillion) was fined $275,000 by the EPA. This was in February 2022. Again, crime pays if you are wealthy or powerful or famous.

Google repeatedly violates laws and get seemingly huge fines — and finds those fines insufficient to end those practices. Which is why they lose repeatedly for similar infractions and yet continue to break the law. Even billions of dollars can be insufficient to make a company obey the law — because when you are Google, breaking the law has no meaningful consequences.

Even life and death infractions are effectively unpunished. Take GlaxoSmithKline. What were consequences of a $3 billion fine simply paid for the profitable illegal actions of drug safety violations, kickbacks to doctors, and promoting drugs for unapproved uses? The corporation simply wrote a relatively modest check to break the law. And they know that they can repeat as desired.

Goldman Sachs paid $5 billion for it’s role in crashing the United States economy in 2008. It was a bargain for the Wall Street swindlers. Just do a search for “Goldman Sachs fined” and you’ll find a LONG LIST. It’s kind of fun! You use the search engine of the unaccountable Google to find out about the unaccountable Goldman Sachs!

And how about that coup attempt on January 6th? Lots of nobodies went on trial and were convicted. But the wealthy and famous and powerful people? Hell, a high percentage of current members of Congress provided aid and comfort to the insurrectionists. According to the 14th amendment to the Constitution, these people should be barred from holding office. And yet those people ARE CURRENTLY MAKING THE LAWS! These officeholders are unaccountable.

Consequences

While the companies and ultra-wealthy individuals are never held accountable, there ARE consequences for this ongoing protection of swindlers and other wrongdoers. Millions — perhaps hundreds of millions — do not trust American institutions or laws.

There haven’t been consequences yet. But the bill WILL come due.

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