According to data released from the US Department of Justice, and republished by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the government is prosecuting fewer and fewer suspects of corporate corruption. The report included hundreds of thousands of individual records developed and collected by the Justice Department in the past ten years, showing a sharp decline in criminal cases against corporations in that time period.

The figures showed a sharp decline in the number of cases filed over the past ten years, resulting in a 29% drop in 2014, from 2004. While the government claims that they are the ones who are here to protect us from corrupt corporations, their very purpose is to protect them.

If people that run corporations are not personally held accountable for the actions they commit at the head of that corporation, then they will take advantage of that and do whatever they want. The same goes for government as well; governments and corporations are both proxies that the ruling class hides behind to avoid punishment for their crimes.

There’s nothing wrong with owning and running a “business” or a “company”, entities which are completely different from a corporation. A corporation is an entity which is legally protected and subsidized by the government, while a company is a privately owned business that depends on its reputation to survive, instead of special privileges and handouts.

Unfortunately, in today’s markets even the most well-intentioned small business owners are forced to become corporate themselves just to contend with all of the licensing and regulation that is required by the government. When the government talks about “regulation” they are typically ignoring the major corporations, but regulating the small fry competition that threatens to disrupt the monopolistic nature of the current industry. This situation is often called “regulatory capture” and is a type of “corporate welfare.” Allowing bankers and corrupt CEO’s to walk away from prison sentences is another form of corporate welfare, that is alive and well today as we can see from these newly released figures.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.

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