"Shakedown" = Bush's "Deferred Prosecution"

[kpete]

"Shakedown" = Bush's "Deferred Prosecution"
by Bcre8ve
Fri Jun 18, 2010 at 09:53:23 PM PDT

Smokey Joe is upset about the "shakedown" of BP, but for him not to be intellectually dishonest,(I know, stop laughing) he would have to be opposed to what the Bush Justice Dept. called "DEFERRED PROSECUTION".

For example there was this one:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/compliance_prof/2005/07/bristol_myers_s.html

"Last month, prosecutors and the company reached an unusual deferred prosecution agreement, under which Bristol-Myers has two years to clean up its act and prove it can operate lawfully. If it stays clean, it won't face criminal charges. Also under the terms of the agreement, Bristol-Myers made a $300 million payment to a shareholder-restitution fund and Mr. Dolan (CEO of Bristol-Myers) gave up the chairman's post to Mr. Robinson."

.................

.... Obama has started a program to "shakedown"companies throughout the land, thereby leading us into anti-corporate Socialism! At least with Bush they were rare, right? WRONG!!!
http://www.slate.com/id/2209771

Along with their close cousin, the nonprosecution agreement, deferred prosecutions became the norm for punishing corporate crime under the Bush administration. The growth has been rapid: 37 such agreements were publicly announced in 2007, compared with only 11 during all of the Clinton years. The list of malfeasant companies that have skipped off without indictments includes blue chippers like Boeing, Merrill Lynch, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. As Hogan & Hartson defense attorney Peter Spivack observed in an American Criminal Law Review article last year, the government has not filed criminal charges against a single major publicly traded corporation since 2003 without opting for a deferred-prosecution agreement first

(Bcre8ve gives several more examples & links)

There were between 85 and 97 such agreements under Bush, and nary a peep from the GOP.

It is time to remind them of their previous position on using the Justice Dept. to make companies pony-up for their malfeasance.

For a list of all 85 companies whose agreements`were reviewed by the Judiciary committee, go here. http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_deferredprosecution.html

.................

WAY more, plus links:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/19/877468/-ShakedownBushs-Deferred-Prosecution

[midnight]

1. I can't really understand why we have a justice system, if we are not going to use

it for those who create these huge crimes. Why are our courts clogged with traffic and drug offenses?

[Scuba]

2. +1,000

[Angry Dragon]

3. Because

traffic and drug offenses are the work of the devil and they are the foundation to bring down this country

[Skidmore]

5. You get the justice you pay for. You don't have to provide

employment for a large group of people if they are felons and in prison. A nation that outsources its industrial base is left with a lot of people who are unable to find work. You DO create an industry that provides jobs to their jailers and is for profit if privatized. Think what this nation would look like if every prison, save for the most dangerous of inmates, were emptied of petty offenders. What would the unemployment rate look like now. This is an economic problem too.

[Sheepshank]

4. Perhaps your examples are magnified in comparison..

.....but the reality of courts are that people get a "plea in abeyance" all the time. Time to correct the problem before the boom is lowered. Not so unusual even for the smallest of violations