Kind of like Madoff. I don’t think that that little gray haired old man is a danger to anyone, but boy, is his long sentence a deterrent.
This should be a wake up call for other scumbags out there…
No we don’t. But we do imprison people who do things that result in the death of 9 people when they could reasonably foresee that outcome. The emails confirm that the executive was notified of and had knowledge of the contamination. He chose to direct shipment anyway. I think it is called criminal negligence.
I wasn’t contending that he shouldn’t be imprisoned. Not at all. I’m simply disagreeing that it should be to punish him.
Oh ok. So rehabilitation? Deterrent?
Why shouldn’t he be punished? His deliberate actions in falsifying lab certifications and in knowingly shipping contaminated peanut butter products ended up killing 9 people and causing serious illnesses for hundreds more across the nation.
Especially considering he knew or should have known as someone responsible for the operations of a food production company that salmonella contamination is deadly enough that there’s a good reason why there’s a ban on shipping food products contaminated with it.
There needs to be serious consequences for what he did, especially considering his conviction clearly showed premeditation in actions which endangered or killed people.
I’m figuring the long sentence serves as a better deterrent here.
Because punishing someone doesn’t help society any, and in fact harms society because it costs money.
“Good business is self regulated. Government regulation just creates more government bureaucracy, if business is not honest, they will find the way to cheat anyway (vw - anybody?).”
Your statement is contradictory, Good business is self regulated, but then you go on to say if a business is not honest they will cheat…which raises a real question, what is it that makes one company ‘good’ and another cheat? Is there something special in the genes of those running the business, or is it that given tempations that exist, all companies will cheat. Anyone remember the scandals back in the early part of the 00’s, where there were massive cooking of the books by public companies? Big companies were caught cooking their books to improve their stock prices, and several public accounting firms went along with it, because they wanted consulting work from the same companies. Stock analysts were promoting stocks they knew were turkeys, because their firm wanted the business of that company if MA’s happened and so forth. With the 2008 financial crisis, supposedly "Good companies’ like AIG engaged in practices that were absolutely stupid, in large party because they left huge swaths of the derivatives markets unregulated, allowed firms to bypass escrow requirements, and the result was the government bailout.
Regulations at one time put a firewall between investment and commercial banks, that was taken away, and that was a major factor in the 2008 meltdown, and Allen Greenspan, in testimony before congress, he of the free markets/business knows best philosophy, said he was flabbergasted about how stupidly businesses behave. Jack Welch, the supposed grand genius of business, admitted after he stepped down at GE that the be first or second in a market, or get out, wasn’t always a great strategy, that it created incentive for managers to lie and deceive, which in the end leads to later problems.
With GM, there is a bit of a difference from the peanut butter guy, in the GE case there was no evidence that senior managers and the CEO knew the extent of the problem, lower level employees knew and kept a lid on it, tried to hide it, so there is a bit of a difference. The CEO in the peanut butter case knew they had a problem, and deliberately ignored it, even knowing Salmonella can be deadly, and in his role as head of the company he has direct liability there, it is basically negligent homicide, because he deliberately ignored a serious issue in order to ship. That doesn’t mean I think that someone at GM should have paid the price, that they should be charged with criminal negligence IMO, but they also are in different industries and the details are different.
And while it is true that regulation leads to people trying to bypass it, with every round of regulations there are those who cheat, it is also true that regulation adapts. Yep, VW cheated on the pollution testing (in part because states, in order to save money, rely on the computer in the car to test emissions, rather than an independent device, of course leaving out that allowing the computer on the car to test emissions is stupid because the systems can be gamed, as we just found out), but they were caught by regulators. When cars are found to be defective, regulators are there to force companies to recall them, and if they violate the regulations, they pay the price. This idea of business operating rationally is something that seems to come out of some philosophy that somehow there is a mystical force that keeps them honest, but the problem with that idea is that the mystical force that keeps them honest often leaves people crippled or dead, and/or the economy in ruins. The 19th century was the laissez faire argument, and the reality was they had crippling economic collapses every couple of years, and people died from quack medicines, tainted meat, and the like, which according to those who argue businesses are good, doesn’t fly. The reality is there is just too much incentive, and greed, for companies to always do the right thing, and regulation keeps them honest if it is real regulation.
Want a perfect example? Take a look at China, where despite the fact there are regulations on the book, we have seen sulfur in sheetrock, melamime in milk, ethylene glycol in food products, buildings collapse because of shoddy construction, and I would bet good money right now, that within the next 5-10 years there is going to be a big scandal with public companies in China, when they find out the books are basically fraudulent.
The death toll could have been far higher at the Boston Marathon. As the bombers chose to attack the finish line, the victims were close to all the tents set up to care for marathon runners at the end of the race. Boston was shut down for the race, there were ambulances and wheelchairs at hand, and many doctors and nurses volunteer to man the tents on Marathon day.
As it was, the toll was not only 3 dead. It was 3 dead, 260 injured, including 16 people who lost limbs.
We also imprison people as a deterrence to others. I’m not suffering in paying the taxes to encourage others to follow the laws regarding maintaining a safe food supply. Look at all the news articles pointing out that the length of the penalty is unprecedented. I could argue that lax sentences for similar offenses in the past led to a greater willingness to gamble on supplying tainted food.
Dying by Salmonella poisoning is not painless. Read the CDC’s pages on Salmonella. By the way, children under 5 are more susceptible to Salmonella. http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/general/technical.html
I would not advocate for 28 years of prison for a food supplier who did not know about a salmonella outbreak. This wasn’t negligence. This was a calculated risk/benefit analysis on his part–the risk to the public was less important than his agreements to supply peanut products to his customers. He miscalculated.
There is another reason for the penalty, something I haven’t heard mentioned. With the cutbacks in the FDA and the USDA in terms of inspections, they are relying a lot more on self inspections by food industry, meat packing plants, etc, and as a result they are relying on the good will of the companies involved, and I suspect that this stiff penalty was in part looking at the situation and making it a lot less attractive to cheat. In some ways,I believe this is a consequence of citizens united, when companies were not people, those running the show were in a sense sheltered from consequences, since ‘the company did it’,…but now that companies are considered people, it is a lot harder to make that argument, and if a company is made up of people, as the court ruled, then those same people have liability in my argument, especially if a senior executive, or in this case the CEO, made the decision that cost people’s lives.
If the guy has money, what’s the harm in hitting him with a fine to cover the cost and more? In fact why don’t we have regs that anyone with money should be made to pay for their stay?
I also don’t understand why punishing someone doesn’t help society - if I get a speeding ticket, it’s a punishment, and it makes me and everyone who becomes aware of it realize that it isn’t a good idea to speed.
As to the 28 years, is it 28 years without a chance of parole, or is it reasonable to expect he’ll be out in 28 months for good behavior?
Well, the function of a speeding ticket is to help fund the police in a way people won’t object to, so that’s kind of a separate issue. Though what you’re describing is a deterrent all the same (and I’m sure as you know, a miserable deterrent) to others, which serves a purpose.
It’s not that prison can’t be a punishment. But imprisoning someone solely for the purpose of punishing them is a waste of money. It’s not that we shouldn’t punish people, but that we shouldn’t imprison someone solely to punish them.
It’s my understanding that in all cases, at least a 1/3 of the prison sentence must be served. I could be wrong, but if I’m not it means he’ll be in prison for a minimum of 9 years and 4 months.
@cobrat: You’re back!!
Awaiting a history lesson on the peanut industry. Does it go back to midieval times?
I am sick and tired of these greedy CEO and their platinum-plated, never-lose compensation packages. When poop hits the fan, they all claim ignorance-- then how the heck do they justify their fat pay checks if they don’t have a clue what’s going on?
I’ll probably get flamed for this one: but if any corporate CEO ever deserved cancer, Goldman Sach’s Jamie Dimon has earned it many times over. It figures he gets the curable kind…
Post 54, it’s not Jamie Dimon, he is Chase CEO. It’s Lloyd Blankfein.
I’m mulling over what is “worse,” deliberately killing people because of some ideology, or killing people because it would cost you money to avoid doing so. I think they’re both pretty bad.
Ok, 28 years to punish and 28 years to deter others, served concurrently. Plus whatever term, not to exceed 28 years, to rehabilitate. Also served concurrently. Seems like a fair sentence.
28 is fair in this case. His incarceration will be a significant cost to taxpayers, though, so I hope his fine will cover the cost of feeding and housing him. Perhaps the company could donate peanut butter to the prison.
“Well, the function of a speeding ticket is to help fund the police in a way people won’t object to, so that’s kind of a separate issue. Though what you’re describing is a deterrent all the same (and I’m sure as you know, a miserable deterrent) to others, which serves a purpose.”
While I would be the last person in the world to claim that this hasn’t been abused (speed traps with the speed going from 50 to 25 MPH, cops ticketing people for 1 mph over the limit), but the purpose of speeding tickets is to stop people from driving too fast (and again,whether the limits make sense is another story). The other deterrent is that you also can loose your license, and end up paying more for insurance.
The reason to put the CEO in jail is that fining someone like that isn’t much of a deterrent, it says basically you can buy your way out of de facto killing people, and to someone in that position that money doesn’t mean much (likely the company would end up paying the fine, anyway). It is assumed that going to jail would be a lot more repugnant than paying a fine. It isn’t perfect, the Chinese when stuff like this happens end up shooting the executives involved, and still that kind of corruption goes on.