If you steal, STEAL BIG! The more you steal, defraud, swindle, or swipe the smaller the penalty when compared to your crime.

I recently went into ChinaMart, er, I mean "WalMart" and noticed signs posted all over the restroom. The signs were warnings not to shoplift. The penalties listed on the signs were five years in prison and a $2000 fine for anyone caught shoplifting. It went on to say that the criminal record would be on the books as long as you live. Pretty hefty eh? Anyone caught stealing something that cost a few cents could get five years in prison and a whopping $2000 fine.

I am reminded of the petty thief three years ago in California who stole a Snicker's bar from a convenience store. Since it was his third strike under the "three strikes and your out" law he received life in prison for shoplifting a 50 cent candy bar. If the same law was applied to a white collared criminal who stole a billion dollars the sentence would be TWO BILLION LIFETIMES. That my friends, you will never see. Justice is not only blind, it is unfair, and it is definitely for sale to the highest bidders, usually.

Compare the Snicker's thief to the major corporate crimes committed at Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. In each of these cases hundreds of hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars were stolen, swindled, fleeced, ripped off from honest shareholders. There were millions of hardworking people who lost all, or most of their retirements. And even though so many people were harmed so greatly there has only been one person sentenced to prison. Ken Lay, the ex-CEO of Enron, got away without losing a dime. No fines, no prison times, no nothing. He is still living the high life off of other people's stolen money.

GW Bush would be familiar with the bookkeeping schemes at Enron and the rest. After all, he did the same thing while a director in Harken Energy in the early 1990s. Bush broke four federal laws, all felonies, while one of the directors in the company. Bush sold almost all of his shares worth $848,560 without submitting an 'intent to sell' that the Securities and Exchange requires. This law is in place to prevent directors in corporations from being first in line to sell their stocks using insider information and hurting the average investor who has to play by the rules. But that didn't deter Bush from selling out tens of thousands of Harken shareholders. Because of Bush's huge sale of his own shares, the stock plummeted causing a 75% loss to Harken Energy shareholders. I suppose that is where Bush was fine tuning his "compassionate conservatism'.

Bush said that he didn't use insider information to sell his Harken shares but Bush lied. The insider information that Bush used was a bad audit report that would certainly be damning to the price of the stock. Bush said he didn't know anything about the report but he was one of a three member committee in the company who wrote the report. Bush denied knowing about the report even though he had signed it. Bush lied again. Bush made out like a bandit. He used the profits made with his illegal stock sale to buy a small portion of the Texas Rangers baseball team. If Bush hadn't been the son of a president he certainly would not have been given the opportunity to buy into a rigged investment with the Rangers. He was given the opportunity solely because other people wanted to have an inside track to the president.

And let's not forget Neil Bush's part in the Silverado Savings and Loan swindle in the 1980s. Neil Bush was one of seven defendants who stole ONE BILLION dollars from the Silverado Saving and Loan in Denver, Colorado. What punishment did Neil Bush have to face for being part of team of swindlers who stole ONE BILLION? Not much. He only had to pay a $50,000 fine.

After the Silverado Savings and Loan fiasco, Neil Bush started a new oil company called Apex Energy. Neil put up only $3000 of his own money and then received a $2.35 million loan through a Small Business Administration program. It helped to have a woman who headed the SBA who was appointed by Neil's daddy, President GHW Bush to get such a hefty loan. Apex Energy quickly went bankrupt and the SBA gave them 30 months to 'self liquidate". Neil managed to get about $250,000 out of the deal and then left Apex leaving the outstanding debts to be paid for by others. Most of the SBA debt was never repaid. Who says crime doesn't pay? It certainly does for the Bush clan of corporate criminals.

Then take Citigroup's recent shenanigans that led to a relatively 'minuscule' penalty. They were fined only $300 million, which is less than one percent of their revenues. And Credit Suisse First Boston's penalty for their crimes was a mere $150 million. That is pocket change compared to the SEVEN TRILLION that investors lost.

Then there are the countless instances where industrial corporations regularly pollute at will because paying the laughingly small fines are so much less than it would cost to renovate their plants and factories. So what can we do to make white collared criminals accountable for their illegal actions? Not much. As long as republicans are in control over all three branches of our government there is no hope for widespread reform to clean up the rampant corruption in the corporate world.

Laws need to be strengthened to mirror the punishments given to drug dealers. We need to apply the same asset seizure laws that apply to drug dealers to white collared criminals. Shouldn't Ken Lay have to forfeit his five mansions, his domestic and offshore bank accounts, his yachts, expensive automobiles, and any other valuables he has? And the law should go further and strip criminals like Ken Lay of all future possessions. White collared criminals never seem to lose their millions that are stashed away in offshore accounts, or hidden in other family member's hands, and maybe in a 55 gallon size 'coffee can' in their backyards.

The only way to bring justice to these criminals is to not only seize their current assets, but also all of their future assets as well. As an act of charity we could allow them to keep 10 thousand bucks a year and that's it. Let them find out first hand how the "little people" have to survive on poverty wages. And if they exploited slave labor in Southeast Asian countries we could limit the amount they could keep to 15 cents a day, or what oversees slaves are paid for working a 14 hour day.

And all possessions and money seized from corporate criminals should immediately be returned to those who were wronged by these sociopathic white collared criminals, like workers, pensioners, investors and small creditors.

Republicans always clamor for laws to shield and protect corporate criminals by limiting the liability to corporations and their leaders. It is obvious that republicans do not want any corporate leader to be accountable or libel for their criminal acts. Republicans are also notorious for underfunding the SEC which restricts the ability of the SEC to bring corporate criminals to justice. If you remember, Bush said over and over again that "businesses must be allowed to regulate themselves" during the 2000 election. Bush and the GOP would apparently be happy if there was an Enron on every Main Street in America.

People need to remember that one hundred years ago prospective corporations in Texas had to get approval from both houses in the legislature to become incorporated. It was a privilege, not a right, for corporations to exist. Texas government so feared how corporations could end up controlling government that they placed stringent restrictions on them. A lot has changed in a hundred years. Now corporations own Texas' state government, and the US government. Corporations select candidates to run in both major parties, they own tens of thousands of lobbyists on K-Street in Washington, and they write laws that favor themselves and harm the general public. Corporations serve the role as pimps with our 'elected' officials serving as their prostitutes.

It is very odd and extremely hypocritical that republicans who whine about personal responsibility, actually want zero accountability and responsibility for corporate criminals. And the republican party historically have always been opposed to laws protecting whistleblowers, who reveal corruption in their corporations at great personal and financial risk.

The recent conviction of Martha Stewart is just window dressing for the regulatory agencies that are tasked to attack corporate crime. Martha's case is just one of thousands that should be prosecuted. I would be willing to bet that there is not one CEO, CFO, COO and all the other Os in corporations who have not broken at least one federal law. It is so easy for a company executive who is in the corporate loop to use insider information, either by passing that information to their families or friends to profit from key news announcements. Stewart's case is curiously not about using insider information but rather lying about what she did. And the biggest factor in her case is not about the fifty-thousand dollars involved in her case, but about rampant greed. Here you have a woman who is a billionaire, who was so greedy that she broke the law because a billion dollars wasn't enough. She wanted even more, even if it was just a "paltry" fifty-thousand.

CEOs never have to be honest. Remember all of the tobacco CEOs who all lied in unison before a congressional committee. Nothing happened to those CEOs. Not one of them had charges brought against them for committing perjury. And remember the executives at Enron who testified before a senate committee? They kept answering "That is not in my level of expertise," "I was not in the loop," or "I am not required to know that." After listening to these high paid executives it sounded like any ten year old could walk into their jobs and do better. Or perhaps a dart-throwing monkey could do better.

Dick Cheney became CEO of Halliburton without any experience as a CEO, or in the oil industry. The only experience he had with oil was having his driver pull his limo into a full-service gas station and having it filled up. Of course, everyone knows that Cheney was only hired for his contacts with the government and for the billions of dollars in contracts that Cheney could funnel to Halliburton. That is why Cheney was paid a massive 55 million dollars for a mere five years of 'work'. Under Cheney's watch as CEO, Halliburton and its subsidiaries did business with Iraq, an enemy country to the US. Halliburton rebuilt the same oil fields destroyed under GHW Bush and then Secretary of Defense Cheney. It pays big to sell out our government, our country, and our people.

It was said that through the Greek philosopher Diogenes' life that he searched in ancient Athens with a lantern in the daylight for an honest man. Diogenes never found the honest person he was looking for. But in his quest Diogenes did discover the vanity and selfishness in man. I feel confident that if Diogenes wandered from corporate boardroom to boardroom all across America in today's world he would still not find an honest man. The reason, they don't have to be honest.