If you got caught robbing a bank, chances are excellent that you'd be facing some serious time in the pokey. But what if a bank robs you?

Corporate executives and their lawyers like to claim that a corporation is a "person" with all of the rights of an actual human being. Yet when one of these outfits goes bad and gets caught violating laws, then the lawyers drop the pretense of personhood, insisting that while this entity might be fined, it can't be put in jail or given a death sentence, because ... well, because it's a financial structure, not a human.

Embracing this game of now-you-see-us, now-you-don't, the Bushites have devised a neat way to go soft on corporate criminals. Called "deferred prosecution agreements" — or "DPAs" — this ploy allows corporations and banks that are guilty of everything from robbery to bribery to be given a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Monsanto, Merrill Lynch and some 50 other corporations have recently been allowed to pay a relatively cheap fine and agree to certain internal reforms rather than be prosecuted for their crimes. Under this scheme, even the big mortgage hucksters who have defrauded so many homebuyers and wrecked our housing market could end up writing a check and walking away.

DPAs were originally meant to help real people (usually first offenders) get a second chance, but they've become the favorite wrist-slap of Bush prosecutors and corporate violators. They argue that full prosecution could be "a corporate death sentence" with "catastrophic collateral consequences," so these criminals shouldn't be treated like mere people.

Of course, such judicial favoritism creates an incentive for criminal behavior, since corporations now know that they can likely avoid prosecution if caught. And fines are no deterrent — multibillion dollar corporations can simply absorb them as a necessary cost of doing business.

AL NEEDS A JOB

Poor Al — he's all resume, no job.

Sort of a yuppyfied version of "All hat, no cattle."

And what a resume he has: graduate of Harvard law school; a Republican political prodigy in Texas; state supreme court justice at an early age; chief lawyer for the president of the United States; and then — to put the cherry on the political banana split — he became U.S. attorney general, America's top lawyer. Yet now the guy is reduced to carrying a handwritten cardboard sign at the intersection saying, "Will work for $600 an hour."

Alberto Gonzales can't get a job. While junior staffers from his own department are being snagged for high-paying influence-peddling jobs in Washington, Al can't get a bite. Having been forced to resign as attorney general, the Texan who flowered in the manure of George W's corporate-financed rise to power has been putting out feelers to the very corporate law firms that fueled his rise to the legal heights. But, alas, no takers. As one principal of a powerhouse Washington law firm gently said of Gonzales' failed application: "I wouldn't say rebuffed. I would say not taken up."

Gonzales confused personal loyalty to the Bush regime with public responsibility. Legalize torture? He'd find a way. Use the justice department as a political hit squad? He was OK with that. Go before Congress and play a dummy? Hey, count on Al.

Unfortunately, this tail-wagging, dog-like loyalty to the Bushites caused Gonzales to be seen as, let's say, less-than-truthful, even to Republican lawmakers. Plus, he's facing possible criminal charges for his prevarications. So the special-interest law firms that once lionized him for his fealty to their agenda now are not returning his phone calls.

Mamas don't let your boys or girls grow up to be political hacks, for their loyalty will not be rewarded.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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