I know I can sometimes go two or more weeks without posting a column, but sometimes I feel the need to hop up on the soap box from time to time, so please excuse the short time since the last column.
A couple of recent tragic stories in the national news got me to wondering about just how our government operates. No, this is not going to be a slap at one political party or the other, since these things have apparently been happening for a long time now and anyone in power, regardless of political affiliation, deserves to take some of the blame and/or credit.
It was reported that the federal government was going to fine Toyota $16 million for the accelerator fiasco. Apparently the claim is that the company knew about the problem for some time before going public.
We take it for granted that when someone is found guilty of a criminal or sometimes a civil infraction, he or she may face a fine. When corporations make mistakes, the fines are just a lot bigger.
I’ve always wondered where that fine money goes. People were injured or lost their lives due to malfunctions of their Toyota automobiles. But will any of that $16 million go to them? I doubt it. Any compensation due to those folks or their families will probably have to come from settlements of lawsuits. If the fine doesn’t go to the victims, I would hope that it would go to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to help ensure that our products are safe.
When someone is convicted of a crime, especially a violent crime, he or she is generally assessed a hefty fine, along with a long prison sentence. If someone is convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison and also fined $100,000, how will that fine ever be paid? Prisoners who have jobs within the walls of their new home are paid less than $1 a day. So what use is a fine? Besides, especially for those facing a shorter prison term, one of the goals of the prison system is to rehabilitate the inmate. What incentive does the inmate have to be rehabilitated when he knows he will have to pay a big fine once he’s released?
The court system should be allowed to incarcerate those who are judged to be a danger to re-offend and for the other violators, assess the fine, but make sure the money goes for restitution for the victim and for the cost of apprehension and prosecution and place the defendant under closely-monitored probation at least until the fine is paid.
It’s just another one of those things about our government that on the surface seems to make so much sense, it would probably never work for some reason.
This week’s tragic mining accident in West Virginia raised a lot of questions. Only after the explosion did the public learn that federal officials had cited the owners of the mine for more than 500 violations, many of them safety related, in 2009. They were apparently on a course to meet or exceed that number of violations in 2010.
There was a report that the mining company had been fined $168,000, but that was equal to how much the company makes in one hour of mining.
If there was a business in Iowa, such as a restaurant or a nursing home, that was cited 500 times in a year, does anyone think it would still be open?
I also heard a report that the mine was a non-union mine. I know there are plenty of arguments for and against union operations. But most reputable unions, such as the international group that is the main union for miners, puts the safety of its members first. Maybe the union dues would have been well-spent by the miners in this instance.
Several times each day, we have trains loaded with coal roll through our town. It’s unfortunate that it took something like this disaster to make us all stop and think that for every pound of coal that passes by, somebody had to risk his or her life to pull it out of the ground.