Send the bastards to jail! At least, so goes the refrain from America's newest anti-corporate activists  non-violent, first-time federal drug offenders are sent away for over 64 months. So much for letting the punishment fit the crime.

The bitter truth is that, unlike the majority of non-violent drug cases, corporate malfeasance is not a victimless crime. Not with tens of thousands of laid-off workers, US$630 billion lost from corporate pension plans, and more than US$4 trillion in shareholder assets wiped out in the scandal-fueled stock market swoon.

So when it comes to rooting out corrupt corporate kingpins, will the president's new "financial crimes SWAT team" have the stomach for the fight? Can we expect to see undercover "narc-accountants" infiltrating what's left of the Big Five accounting firms? Middle-of-the-night no-knock raids on companies that restate their earnings by billions of dollars? Confiscation of an executive's entire assets simply on the suspicion of fraud? Will corporate cops get to emulate their drug-fighting counterparts and be allowed to keep a percentage of the money they confiscate? I bet that would help change the reluctance to target corporate corruption.

Here's the bottom line: our political leaders' tough talk notwithstanding, are we really serious about declaring war on corporate crime? Or are we merely going to toss Martha Stewart in jail and move on? — GVNN/AlterNet