Operation Choke Point

by JASmius

Pure, undiluted, 100% Obama Regime-imposed fascism:

In an administration that has pioneered the use of regulatory power to bully businesses into doing “voluntarily” what the bureaucrats can’t require by law, a secretive federal program that has become public in the last few months stands out as an especially disturbing abuse of power.

The program's name, “Operation Choke Point,” is a pretty strong indication of trouble — an eerie way for bureaucrats to describe their conduct toward private citizens.

It’s a reference to the banking system as the “choke point” of businesses, a critical piece of the economic infrastructure which government can co-opt to strangle legal activities it doesn't favor.

The revelation is alarming in part because it suggests federal officials have realized that they can leverage their strong regulatory authority over one industry, financial services, to exert broad control over many others.

"Bullying businesses into doing 'voluntarily' what the bureaucrats can't require by law" is precisely how the Nazis did business in Hitler's Germany.  It's basically efficient socialism: The government doesn't seize the means of production and run industries itself, but effectively nationalizes them in "hostile takeovers," rendering them de facto government sub-departments.

Guess what business sectors are in the Regime's crosshairs?:

In addition to “payday loans,” the document warns about “ammunition sales,” “firearms sales,” “coin dealers,” “online gambling,” “tobacco sales,” “racist materials,” “pornography,” and “telemarketing,” among others.

Bureaucrats, it seems, are indeed deputizing bankers and payment processors to cut off these industries from the financial services they need to survive. The Washington Times reported last week that banks and payment processors have been terminating the accounts of law-abiding gun dealers across the country.

Much like the letter to the payday lender in the Post, the Times quotes a bank assuring a gun dealer that its decision to drop him as a client “in no way reflects any derogatory reasons for such action on your behalf. But rather one of industry. Unfortunately your company’s line of business is not commensurate with the industries we work with.”

There are reports of similar account terminations in many other industries the FDIC has labeled "high-risk." [emphases added]

Guns, ammo, tobacco - pursuits the Left has tried to stamp out for decades.  Now the Regime has devised a way to do so - to make huge strides towards repealing the Second Amendment - tyrannically, abusively, unconstitutionally, and quietly.  And who gets to define what "racist materials" are?  There are many on the Left who believe the United States Constitution and the Bible, just to name a couple of documents, reside in that fetid category.  And since a black man rules this country, that definition could be made to encompass any organization that opposes any Obama Regime policy, up to and including the Republican Party itself.  Could Operation Choke Point not be used to coerce evangelical churches into performing sodomarriage rituals, and hiring homosexual "pastors," and forbidding churches from teaching the Bible and preaching the Gospel on those dubious grounds?  Or cutting off the RNC and GOP political campaigns?  And never mind Tea Party groups not being able to register as 501(c)(4) organizations, they could be cut off from even opening checking accounts.

Leading to the logical question: Who watches the watchers?  Who enforces the law against the law enforcers?  And how?

Perhaps O is saving those gambits for his third term.  Or perhaps he's already moving to implement them now.

Mr. Newt concludes thusly:

These developments should concern every American. For the government to hold banks responsible for monitoring the business of all their customers is unprecedented. To do so with the explicit aim of chilling the perfectly legal economic activities of private citizens is such a jaw-dropping abuse of power that it would have been unbelievable from any previous administration.

Still think Barack Obama is "incompetent"?  Or is that simply PR cover for something far more insidiously sinister?  Operation Choke Point would certainly appear to settle that question.