General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If Obama lets the Banks "Off the Hook" I think his re-election is a "Non-Starter" [View all]bhikkhu
(10,732 posts)More traditionally it has been the role of state attorney generals (Spitzer, for instance). When people talk about the decline of prosecutions from Clinton to Bush to Obama, they are talking as much about what the AG's did or didn't do as about the presidents - who have a very limited role.
What I look at - if you have 50 attorney generals whose job is to protect from and prosecute fraud, and there is a great lack of prosecution everywhere, then maybe there isn't a whole lot of actual prosecutable crime? In any case, if all these different AG's in all these different states aren't doing much, but the administration is trying to get a big penalty assessed for the robo-signing issue, then how does beating the administration up over the size of the fine support prosecution?
It just seems like spin and faux outrage to me, targeting the one guy who is trying to get something agreed to and done and ignoring everyone else who have been sitting on their hands prosecuting nothing at the state level for three years now.