Corporate law can be confusing. For example, former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen H. Weisselberg was forced to pay two million dollars in back taxes and fines after he was convicted on Tuesday of “a ‘systematic’ scheme to defraud state and federal tax authorities spanning more than 15 years.” Yet, when the Trump Organization itself was sentenced for the same crime on Friday, and received the maximum allowable fine, it only amounted to $1.61 million.
It’s true that Weisselberg also received a five month sentence on Riker’s Island, while the Trump Organization only received the ignominy of being a felon. But that adds to the disparity in the sentences. The scheme obviously benefitted more than one employee as well as the Trump Organization as a whole, so it seems unreasonable that the financial penalty for any single employee would be greater than for the corporation as a whole.
It’s also weird that a corporation can be called a felon. No matter what any judge says, corporations are not people. Proof of this is that Weisselberg can be incarcerated while the Trump Organization cannot.
In this case, the judge agreed with New York prosecutors that although it “may have limited impact on a multibillion corporation, this court should nonetheless impose” the maximum fine. But why is the law set up so the the maximum penalty for a felony will have a limited impact?
It’s shit like this that keeps convincing me that we are just fucking doomed. Without a substantive torches and pitchforks rebellion by all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, who are getting royally screwed over on a daily basis, nothing is going to change. The rich keep getting richer, while breaking the law and gaming the system that they created for their own benefit, while the rest of us are left to just do the best we fucking can, within that same system; one in which we are unable to effect any actual lasting change.
Anyone who studies our history knows the country was created and founded over two centuries ago with a structure that endowed rich white men with almost unfettered power to perpetuate this inequity. Things have really not changed much at all in the intervening years. It has just been tweaked and tinkered with at the margins, mostly to fool the masses into believing that they can actually improve their lot within the system, but the basic foundation has never changed. It’s still running just as the founding fathers intended, with rich white men calling the shots.
If I had done it I am sure it would not be my business got fined but me in jail. Who are they trying to kid?