Seeing as the leaders of both major political parties are enamored by the three-strikes-and-you're-out philosophy, we should start taking it seriously. If this philosophy is applicable to street criminals, perhaps it should apply to other criminals as well.

One example: the federal government recently announced that major oil companies had fleeced the taxpayers of $440 million by under-paying royalties for crude oil produced on federal property, that is, our property. The oil giants accomplished this neat bit of thievery by posting two different prices: the market price they sell the oil for and a lower price reported to the government on which the oil companies pay their taxes. The news of this massive conspiracy and theft caused little more than a ripple of public outrage.

A study by the Project on Government Oversight, a public interest group, has found that major U.S. corporations who get billions of dollars of government contracts are guilty of cheating on these contracts and ripping off the taxpayer. The Project studied the criminal histories of these companies and found that many had engaged in adjudicated fraudulent activities (some criminal)Ñmany of them three or more times.

The study found that General Electric had defrauded the government 16 times since 1990. An easy way to punish companies in the habit of ripping off the taxpayer is to establish a three-strikes principle that any corporation caught defrauding the government three times or more would no longer be eligible for government contracts. This would disqualify an impressive roster of fraud-tainted losers from receiving government contracts, including Boeing (4), Grumman (5), Honeywell (3), Hughes Aircraft (9), Martin Marietta (5), McDonnell Douglas (4), Northrop (4), Raytheon (4), Rockwell (4), Teledyne (5), Texas Instruments (3) and United Technologies (3).

Most people don't realize it but corporate crime costs our nation more than all street crime combined. For example, the FBI reports that in 1995 all burglary and robbery cost the United States about $4 billion. Professor W. Steve Albrecht of Brigham Young University estimates that white-collar fraud (usually committed by lawyers, doctors, accountants and businessmen) costs 50 times as muchÑabout $200 billion per year. And this is just dollar cost; it says nothing about consumers hurt by faulty products, cancer caused by illegal environmental pollution, and the corrupting influence on our society when members of the professional elite make cheating a way of life.

If the three-strikes principle is good for street criminals, shouldn't it also apply to a form of crime that is far more damaging to our society?

Dr. Kevin Danaher is the editor of a recent book entitled Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream.