Obama uses DOJ as political vendetta machine against S&P

Robert Samuelson: The vendetta against S&P - The Washington Post: "Until the bubble burst, few understood what was happening. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently admitted that he was caught off guard by the crisis. But the Obama administration holds S&P to a higher standard. There must be villains, and they must be punished. Someday this case may be settled. But for now S&P is a scapegoat, and the Department of Justice has become the Department of Blame."

Prosecutors subpoenaed millions of pages of S&P emails and other documents and grilled dozens of its employees, yet were unable to produce convincing evidence of a companywide policy to inflate ratings for profit. S&P denies wrongdoing and refuses to settle. S&P's assumptions about the health of the subprime market matched those of the Treasury and Federal Reserve. The agency and the government used similar forecasting models and came to the same rosy conclusions about the real estate assets before they became worthless in 2007 and 2008. (source Investors.com--see below)

First there is Fast and Furious, then Solyndra, then the Kim Dotcom case, then Aaron Swartz, and now--S&P--all evidence of a corrupt and politically motivated Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the Obama administration--

Ahead Of New Debt Showdown, Obama Threatens Agency That Downgraded - Investors.com: "Staring at a another debt ceiling crisis, the president's punishing the one credit rating agency that dared downgrade U.S. debt in the last crisis. And Wall Street analysts say the timing's no coincidence. Just weeks away from the next debt-limit showdown, the Justice Department filed a whopping $5 billion lawsuit against Standard & Poor's for alleged fraud. The case appears weak, but the message it sends S&P and the other independent rating agencies is clear: Don't downgrade anymore. "It's a foregone conclusion that no more downgrades will be coming," said Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff. Curiously, Attorney General Eric Holder can't explain why the administration is targeting only S&P in its unprecedented investigation of Wall Street's credit rating industry. S&P's subprime securities ratings were virtually identical to those of Moody's and Fitch, yet the government's singling out S&P for prosecution. The reason seems obvious: Unlike Moody's and Fitch, S&P embarrassed President Obama ahead of his re-election bid by downgrading U.S. debt to AA+ from AAA. . . ." Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/020813-643819-obamas-sandp-lawsuit-political-payback-for-downgrade.htm#ixzz2KQ8SHZnu

Tweet    Follow @johnmpoole

Aaron Swartz Unlikely To Face Jail Or Conviction Until Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann vendetta

More about Carmen Ortiz, Stephen Heymann and vengeance, mayhem, and prosecutorial abuse/misconduct--

Aaron Swartz Unlikely To Face Jail Or Conviction... Until Feds Decided To 'Send A Message' | Techdirt: "Things just keep looking worse and worse in the Carmen Ortiz/Stephen Heymann vendetta against Aaron Swartz. Now it's come out that state prosecutors, who were originally looking into the case had no interest in pursuing felony charges or prison time... until Carmen Ortiz and her team showed up. Instead, state prosecutors had focused on the initial charges: "breaking and entering in the daytime" which they expected "would be continued without a finding, with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner." Instead, the report notes: Tragedy intervened when Ortiz’s office took over the case to send “a message.”. . . "

Tweet    Follow @johnmpoole

The Gross Injustice of American Justice

The following says it all on the lessons learned from the Aaron Swartz case--

The Death of Aaron Swartz - Clive Crook - The Atlantic: " . . . The prosecutor's bottom line, apparently, was that Swartz had to go to jail. In my conception of criminal justice, the prosecutor's role is to establish guilt, not pass sentence. Juries have already been substantially dispensed with in this country. (By substantially, I mean in 97 percent of cases.) If prosecutors are not only going to rule on guilt unilaterally but also, in effect, pass sentence as well, one wonders why we can't also dispense with judges. In recent years, as the Wall Street Journal has documented in a disturbing series of articles, Congress has enabled prosecutorial intimidation by criminalizing ever more conduct, passing laws that provide for or require extreme sentences, and reducing the burden of proof (through expanded application of "strict liability", where lack of criminal intent is no defense). "There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor... "That is not an exaggeration." And if a prosecutor should turn his righteous all-powerful gaze on you, you're done for. In this system, everything depends on the moderation and good sense of prosecutors. We see how well that worked in the Swartz case. Most no doubt strive to live up to those standards, but what about the ones that don't? Where's the accountability? What about crusaders for "justice" with half their minds on their next career in politics? . . ."

Where indeed!

Tweet    Follow @johnmpoole