Indian voters view all political parties as corrupt, but only the B.J.P. as communal. One reason is that the party has traditionally been the beloved of the upper castes, and the prejudices of the strong, historically, have done more harm than those of the weak. This perception of the B.J.P. influences not only Muslims, but every community and caste that feels vulnerable to physical violence by a dominant political or cultural force. And they tend to grow fonder of their own political organizations.
.. In a Facebook post on Saturday, Yogendra Yadav, a political activist, wrote that polls usually overestimate the B.J.P. because of a sampling bias.
“The voters who agree to be interviewed tend to be more from powerful social groups,” he said. “The voters from weaker communities are less likely to speak the truth in public.”
How to Punish Corporate Fraudsters
EDWARD THURLOW, an English lord chancellor in the 18th century, reputedly said that it’s difficult to punish a corporation because there is “no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked.”
But there is, in fact, a way to punish corporations for their misdeeds: Bar their officers from government work. So why don’t we?
.. But instead of using these tools, most federal prosecutors focus solely on bringing criminal charges against corporate executives. And if those are unavailable, they look no further. Sally Q. Yates, the deputy attorney general, recently announced that the Justice Department would try to squeeze the names of bad actors out of corporate defendants as a condition of any settlement negotiation. But Justice Department lawyers concede that in many cases it’s practically impossible to secure criminal convictions.
This single-minded focus on criminal convictions is misguided — too often, corporate fraud goes unpunished. JPMorgan Chase paid $13 billion in 2013 for its role in the mortgage crisis. But what happened to its executives that year? None were adequately punished, the stock price rose 28 percent and its C.E.O., Jamie Dimon, got a 74 percent raise.
Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software
And cheating on crucial standards is more than slight misconduct. In 1999, in the aftermath of a major earthquake in Turkey, I walked on mangled streets lined by a zigzagged skyline: Some buildings had collapsed into twisted heaps while others next to them stood tall. A seasoned earthquake rescuer explained to me how survival could be so random. Some of the builders cheated on the codes for concrete — too much sand, no interconnecting metal rods to keep the columns in place. Just this month, a powerful earthquake in Chile — where strict building regulations are properly enforced — killed about 20 people, while 17,000 perished in Turkey’s 1999 earthquake.
.. For voting machines that do not have an auditable paper trail, that means “parallel testing” — randomly selecting some machines on Election Day, and voting on them under observation to check their tallies. It is otherwise too easy for the voting machine software to behave perfectly well on all days of the year except, say, Nov. 8, 2016.
Volkswagen Test Rigging Follows a Long Auto Industry Pattern
Beyond emissions, the industry has long been contemptuous of regulation. Henry Ford II called airbags “a lot of baloney,” and executives have bristled at rules requiring higher mileage per gallon.
.. General Motors paid $45 million in 1995 and recalled nearly half a million Cadillacs that were equipped with a chip that shut off emissions control systems while the air-conditioner was being used, to improve the car’s performance.
.. “We call it the tip of the iceberg,” said Jos Dings, the director of Transport and Environment. “We don’t think this will be limited to Volkswagen. If you look at the testing numbers for the other manufacturers, they are just as bad.”