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IN THESE TIMES · APRIL 1. 1996 C O R P O R AT I O N S Underworld, U.S.A. Recent talk of corporate responsibility has overlooked Americas corporate Crime epidemic. By Russell Mokhiber Spurred by Patrick Buchanans presidential campaign, American reporters and political leaders are suddenly abuzz with the formerly taboo subject of corporate power and its abuse. Newsweek (Corporate Killers), the New York Times (Corporations Under Fire), Business Week (The Coming Backlash Against Business), even Bob Dole, have all weighed in on the tragedy of escalating layoffs. Yet all the talk of corporate responsibility, unprecedented as it is, remains numbingly vague. No major political figure or publication has mustered the courage to address the countrys current wave of corporate crime and violence. (Newsweeks headline writers didnt mean killing people; they meant the elimination of jobs.) But corporate crime and violence inflict far more damage on society than all street crime combined. Nevertheless, insidetheBeltway corporate liberals and conservatives alike insist that crime in America is committed primarily by the poor and blacks. Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist and a corporate liberal, believes that young black males commit most of the crimes in Washington, D.C. Charles Krauthammer, a Post columnist and a corporate conservative, has written that crime is generally an occupation of the poor. And James Glassman, a straightout corporatist and Post contributor, writes that the rich dont commit the violent crimes that require billions to be spent on law enforcement. These statements can be considered plausible only if we ignore—as Cohen, Krauthammer, Glassman and their colleagues in the mainstream media regularly ignore—the crimes and violence committed by powerful large American corporations and their primarily wealthy nonyoungblackmale executives. How much damage these corporations inflict is known only by the criminals, their highpowered lobbyists and thei