WSJ Blasts AGs

Just like our post yesterday, the WSJ rails against the sleaze AGs we have in place. Nothing new here, but still worth a read:

Take one part ego, one part ambition and one part lawyer, mix it with an office that has few restraints on power, and you'll end up with the worst sort of state attorney general. Take Dan Greear, and you'll have a man at the front of a nascent electoral movement to change the formula.

...

His quest has become a case study in the opportunities, and pitfalls, of an upstart reformer challenging an incumbent attorney general who, like New York's
Eliot Spitzer, has cemented his position through populism and political patronage.
...
Mr. McGraw, in more than 14 years as West Virginia's attorney general, has been a pioneer in the practice of filing questionable lawsuits against big companies, secretly doling out the legal work to outside trial lawyer friends who reap millions in fees. Those lawyers then turn around and donate heavily to Mr. McGraw's re-election.

What is it with State AGs?

I recognize many of the names on this list of AGs from wiki, all of them for saying or doing something the average man would be too embarrassed to do. They are as out of touch as academics. Take (please) AG Blumenthal of Connecticut. Yesterday’s NY Post quoted a released statement saying, "We are holding the credit-rating agencies accountable for a secret Wall Street tax on Main Street." The gist of his complaint is that municipal bonds aren’t rated as high as corporate debt.

What puts this bureaucrat in a position to second guess the ratings experts? Nothing. But it’s a lot easier to bully around rating agencies than shore up a balance sheet. It’s classic Spitzer: Make the corporations the bad guys and himself the good guy. No matter what the outcome is, claim victory. Move on to the next shakedown.

While Spitzer the AG is no more, his tactics live on in the other wannabes. The grandstanding, the bullying, and the shameless pandering is all part of the job description. There is nothing noble about a public servant in the AG role. They all seem to be using it as a role to burnish their populist cred and move onto the next gig. So what is the solution? Recognizing that AGs are just like any other politician, but with too much power, is a good first step. The unfortunate catch-22 of AGs: The only people who would want the position aren’t the kind of people you would want to be in that position. The lap dog press doesn’t go any deeper into the AG phenomenon than cutesy grammar articles about Attorneys General. Disgraceful.

Trading Thought Crimes - Never Trust the Discretion of a Prosecutor

It should be obvious by now: The kind of people who become prosecutors are not the kind of people who can be trusted to use their discretion. One of the few sensible business reporters, John Carney, explains why going after rumor spreaders, even if they are right, is a waste of time:

We think that this would be a terrible misuse of prosecutorial power. In
the first place, there's precious little evidence that the supposed market
manipulation even occurred. Instead of evidence there's just pure speculation.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire," might be a nice soundbite but its not
evidence. Before we unleash the hounds of war on rumor mongers, shouldn't we
require more than this?

What's more, the costs of such investigations would likely be worse
than the alleged wrong-doing. In order to catch wrong-doers, prosecutors would
have to subpoena the private emails, instant messages and testimony of lots of
people who did no wrong at all. Each of the investigated would face huge legal
bills and know that their lives could be ruined by a prosecutor or a judge who
misreads a bad intention into an innocent email.

Tax Subsidies for Drug Dealers, Gangsters, Bureaucrats, and Terrorists

Is there anyone with a functioning brain who thinks this is a good use of money? Great article from the LA Times:

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year -- tax free.

The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs.

Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work.

Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking tough -- not smart, just tough -- about drugs and crime. But the tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited resources to fund the criminal justice system.

The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California today, and its ranks continue to grow.

And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally financed by the sale of illegal drugs.

Who are the losers in this war? Literally everyone else, especially our children.

The Shameful Treatment of Dr. Hatfill

Dr. Hatfill is now $5.8 million dollars richer thanks to FBI incompetence.

In business cases it’s much easier for a prosecutor to dodge responsibility for press leaks, since white collar crime is a matter of degrees not absolutes. Not so in this case. They tried to nail the wrong guy.

In 2002, the FBI and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described Hatfill, a former Army scientist, as a “person of interest” in the investigation into the post 9/11 anthrax attacks, which killed five people, sickened 17, and to this day remain unresolved. Hatfill sued the government for violating his privacy by leaking information to the press. In a statement Friday, his lawyers said: “As an innocent man, and as our fellow citizen, Steven Hatfill deserved far better.”

The political reasons the investigation focused on him should not be ignored. The WSJ Op/Ed page said he fit the profile of the perp they needed without offending of the interested groups:

The FBI's mad scientist theory also fit the agenda of the political left, which didn't want the trail of evidence to prove state-sponsorship of terror – particularly by Iraq. …But if anything, this fiasco shows the limits of bureaucratic law enforcement in fighting terror. True to form, Justice said in its statement that it "continues to deny all liability in connection with Dr. Hatfill's claims."