>Top Ten Reasons for Liberals to Vote for Obama. >Plus Ten Reasons for Conservatives to NOT Reelect Obama.

We, on the left, get frustrated with Obama's difficulty in making his case when Republicans block and underfund his programs, and when they misrepresent him.

In any case, while it's easier to win civil cases, it's a lot more difficult to win criminal cases. You need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant INTENDED to break the law. Here's an article from Fiscal Times dated April 2012.

I hope you will read the whole article. The link is at the end.

And, please be aware that it takes time to build a strong case.

Excerpt from:

Obama Prepares for Financial Crisis Prosecutions

The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought a handful of high-profile cases related to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, including against former Countrywide Financial Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs. But the Justice Department has struggled to bring criminal charges. The frustration, in part, has been because such charges involve securing evidence that shows beyond a reasonable doubt a defendant intended to break the law.

For example, a federal jury in 2009 acquitted two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of continuing to push souring investments as sound. Jurors said prosecutors did not prove the case, which relied on e-mail evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt. Since then, the Justice Department has brought few major prosecutions tied to the subprime crisis. But people familiar with the thinking of the task force say the group believes FIRREA - the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act - may prove a critical tool.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com...

I researched this, and one of the most informative articles I could find was from Politifact.

In reviewing the research and talking to experts about why there have not been more prosecutions associated with the financial crisis, we found several reasons.

For one thing, such cases tend to be difficult, and it's not immediately clear what offenses executives could be charged with.

"You can't get up in front of a jury and say, 'These guys were responsible for bringing down the economy, so please convict them of a crime,'" said Samuel Buell, a professor of law at Duke University, who studies criminal law and the regulation of corporations and financial markets.

Criminal intent can be particularly hard to prove, and federal officials may be struggling to bring specific charges against individuals who believed they were following the law.

Buell dismissed the idea that the Obama administration is simply indifferent to corporate crime.

"There's no downside to putting a few people in prison and showing you're tough on corporate crime," he said. "You can only imagine that would be a political benefit to this administration, which makes me think the only thing holding them back is problems of proof. The last thing they would want to do is bring a big, splashy case against the banks, and then lose and be called incompetent."

William Black, a professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who studies elite financial fraud, was involved in a string of successful prosecutions against savings and loan officials back in the 1980s. He said the problem now is that financial regulators are not working closely enough with prosecutors to investigate and bring charges against executives.

"It is hard, and it does take resources, and it takes expertise in fraud mechanisms so you can explain it to a jury," Black said. "But this is frankly easier than the savings and loan crisis. There's nothing complicated about a liar's loan."

Black said that back in the 1980s, financial regulators routinely referred information to prosecutors to prosecute savings and loan executives. That hasn't happened this time around.

Earlier this year, the New York Times published a detailed report on why there have not been more high-profile prosecutions; it's the single best report we've seen on the issue. Its investigation found stark differences between how prosecutors and regulators handled the S&L crisis and how the same authorities are handling the current crisis. (See this chart comparing the two eras.) It also included a list of potential crimes suggested by legal experts outside of the federal government.

As we were looking into this issue, President Barack Obama spoke about whether federal efforts have been strong enough when it comes to prosecuting crimes associated with the financial crisis. Jake Tapper of ABC News asked him to respond to the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their anger that the Obama administration hasn't been more aggressive with prosecutions.

"One of the biggest problems about the collapse of Lehmans and the subsequent financial crisis and the whole subprime lending fiasco is that a lot of that stuff wasn't necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless. That's exactly why we needed to pass Dodd-Frank, to prohibit some of these practices," Obama said. (Dodd-Frank was an overhaul of the finance industry that Obama signed into law on July 21, 2010.)

"The financial sector is very creative, and they are always looking for ways to make money. That's their job. And if there are loopholes and rules that can be bent and arbitrage to be had, they will take advantage of it. So without commenting on particular prosecutions -- obviously that's not my job; that's the Attorney General's job -- I think part of people's frustrations, part of my frustration, was a lot of practices that should not have been allowed weren't necessarily against the law, but they had a huge destructive impact. And that's why it was important for us to put in place financial rules that protect the American people from reckless decision-making and irresponsible behavior."

Our ruling

Moore said, "Not a single banker, a CEO from Wall Street, anyone from corporate America — nobody, (there was) not one arrest of any of these people who brought down the economy in 2008." Well, there have been a few arrests. Certainly the executives of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker who were arrested would qualify as "corporate America."

But Moore's larger point is correct -- there have been very few arrests among executives of firms the public would associate with causing the financial crisis. Obama implied in his recent remarks that it was because many of their actions weren't criminal.

Whatever the cause, we rate Moore's statement Mostly True.

http://www.politifact.com/tru...