ITT - Once a criminal, always a criminal

Any reader of the classic nineteenth century novels has just gotta be interested in corporate crime. LI is. But man, we are behind the ball on this one – we just discovered Footnoted org, your one stop shop for reading disclosure statements from our friendly corporate giants. It is full of the letter that killeth – in this case, the explanations of expenditures, profits, strategies hidden in quarterly reports that gives the knowing reader an x ray vision - or perhaps I should say Piranesian vision - of various fouls, small illegalities, and the legalized fraud that goes into making our economy tick like a clock.

In corpo world, nothing is as good as dropping straight into the bowels of the state and operating like a big old tape worm, sucking up tax money. For, while nobody wants to pay for the State, everybody wants the State to pay them – this, by the way, is called conservative economics.

Anyway, race on over there and read the tres funny post about ITT, a merchant of death that at one time got all kind of publicity when it coordinated with the Nixon gang to take down this podunk country – Chile – which had got this wild idea in its head that it was sovereign. Fuck that! as we cheerfully say in Gringo city. Anyway, since those wild and woolly days, ITT has calmed down. Nowadays, it only quietly violates U.S. law when it feels like it, and is punished by being awarded more tax money, since you just can't get made at their loveable pranks. As I said, this is Gringo City, where we practice a special brand of Christianity in which the sins of the rich are pre-forgiven. Hey, its been checked out by the theologians of the Southern Baptist church themselves!

“ITT, a major defense contractor, pled guilty back in March to violating U.S. arms trafficking regulations. On “numerous occasions” dating back to the 1980s, it was said to have sent data, services and equipment related to “classified military night vision systems” to parties in foreign countries (including China), and lied to the State Department about it. The firm paid some fines and agreed to an additional $50M penalty which, under this agreement, it can work off by putting the money into new night vision technology for the Army over the next 5 years. (Kind of like some deadbeats allowed to pay their restaurant check by washing dishes, except for the national security part.)
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Meanwhile, in September the firm got a new $37M contract to supply night vision equipment to the Navy and Coast Guard and another big order from the Army. No senior heads at the company have rolled. Indeed, it’s been busy acquiring another defense technology firm, and the stock has been pretty much chugging along.
Ironically, on Friday the Justice Department announced an initiative “to combat the growing national security threat posed by illegal exports of restricted U.S. military and dual-use technology.”