Who cares if a bunch of people get cancer? CITGO, and the loathsome U.S. District Judge John D. Rainey do not.
His disHonor issued the gigantic petroleum company a ridiculous $2 million fine for ten years of “not taking the steps necessary to install proper emission control equipment to prevent the emission of volatile organic compounds, including benzene, from the tanks.”
Benzene is a carcinogen.
Prosecutors estimated the profits CITGO amassed from its illegal, cancer-causing operation to be $1 billion. Even after that flea-bite fine and tons of lawyer fees, it doesn’t take Steven Hawkings to math out that those fuckers still made an incredible profit on the whole operation.
Apparently building fines and attorney fees into your bottom line and then wantonly breaking the law is just the way of doing business in this Koch brothers’ wet-dream world of massive, too-big-to-nail corporations.
The Justice Department had also sought damages, requesting CITGO cover people’s moving costs, future medical expenses, a total of $30 million in restitution for victims.
But Judge Rainey decided the victims are entitled to no compensation. Poor CITGO might lose a couple of dollars and we could not abide that.
What incentive is there to stay within the laws when you can laugh off the penalties?
Why are there not several CITGO executives sitting behind bars for knowingly poisoning the air?
This country is officially now The United States of Corporations.
Citgo ridiculous fine – CrabDiving