No Check aand Balance but Cheque and bank balance

This is how far occupants of the Bush White House, past and present, have taken venality: Even efforts to police corporate corruption have become nothing but an opportunity to cash in.
Here's how it works: A company is accused of fraud -- say a medical equipment manufacturer is accused of giving kickbacks to doctors. Instead of bringing it up on criminal charges, the U.S. Justice Department assigns a "monitor" to the company to prevent future misdeeds.
The monitor can make a lot of money -- in this not-so-hypothetical case, former Attorney General John Ashcroft's consulting firm stands to make more than $25 million in a year and a half.
That was a no-bid assignment, by the way, simply handed to Ashcroft by a New Jersey prosecutor with political aspirations.
Courts don't have to approve the arrangements, and there are no real checks on how the money is spent.
The monitors bill the companies directly -- and considering the enormous leverage the monitors have over the companies, the bills are rarely questioned.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/147748

Ex-Officials Benefit From Corporate Cleanup

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402939.html


When a man on the street is caught stealing, the long arm of the law comes down hard. And it should. But when corporate executives defraud thousands or even millions of people, they get a pass. The government grants immunity to corporate offenders before entering them into a loosely defined, secretive federal process that is ripe for impropriety. It is a process that must be reformed.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/perspective/index.ssf?/base/news-1/120089431513250.xml&coll=1