https://www.chicksonright.com/blog/2021/02/23/red-alert-biden-halts-fair-access-rule-aims-to-revive-operation-choke-point/?fbclid=IwAR1Q115R3-lD861mykzVzYMNQaYzi6NJKbtyPwga2ypdK8OWr8iOmxgmP94By Staff -February 23, 2021
OPINION | This article contains political commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Operation Choke Point, an Obama administration piece of legislature is being brought back to the table, according to The Western Journal.
Operation Choke Point was created to slowly but surely choke off firearms dealers.
Trump ended the operation during his reign of the White House.
The rule states, “banks should conduct risk assessment of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers, when provisioning access to services, capital, and credit.”
Kelsey Bolar stated, “
nder Operation Choke Point, federal regulators instructed banks to do the opposite — to openly discriminate against entire industries the Obama administration found objectionable.”
“Weaponizing the power of banking regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Obama administration realized it could block entire industries from the banking system that it didn’t like. This made it difficult — if not impossible — for politically unfavored businesses such as gun sellers and short-term lenders to operate.”
“Essentially, by using the power of federal banking regulators to intimidate banks from providing their services to these industries, the administration choked off their access to the financial system, leaving them paying more for essential banking services, or unable to use a bank at all.”
Brian P. Brooks said, “When a large bank decides to cut off access to charities or even embassies serving dangerous parts of the world or companies conducting legal businesses in the United States that support local jobs and the national economy, they need to show their work and the legitimate business reasons for doing so.”
“As Comptrollers and staff in previous administrations have made clear in speeches, guidance, and testimony, banks should not terminate services to entire categories of customers without conducting individual risk assessments. It is inconsistent with basic principles of prudent risk management to make decisions based solely on conclusory or categorical assertions of risk without actual analysis. Moreover, elected officials should determine what is legal and illegal in our country.”
The Biden administration noted that “[t]he OCC’s long-standing supervisory guidance stating that banks should avoid termination of broad categories of customers without assessing individual customer risk remains in effect.”
“Pausing publication of the rule in the Federal Register will allow the next confirmed Comptroller of the Currency to review the final rule and the public comments the OCC received, as part of an orderly transition.”
Bolar noted, ““While cancel culture has led to a politicized economy, the federal government’s arbitrarily targeting of individuals, groups, and entire companies will increase the politicization of the country, where the only acceptable views are from those in power.”
“After being choked from essential services in the economy, conservatives and right-of-center businesses will have no choice but to Build Your Own — if that’s even still tolerated or allowed. Build your own banks, build your own credit card processing companies, build your own web hosting platforms, build your own social media platforms, build your own companies, build your own media, build your own schools, and build your own country — because you’re choked from ‘ours.’”
From The Western Journal:
This is how liberals are going to fight their war on constitutional freedoms — because it clearly won’t be legislatively.
And this doesn’t necessarily have to involve firearms, keep in mind. Parler, which became the boogeyman of the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion despite evidence that most of the social media planning took place on Facebook, found itself deplatformed from web services by Amazon. That’s bad enough, but Parler can recover from that. The same thing wouldn’t necessarily happen if the company were cut out of the banking system, which would remove any way for it to stay afloat.
If this seems farfetched, remember all of the talk connecting Parler directly to the violence on Jan. 6. Once you single out conservative social media platforms as being a haven for violent groups, choking them off from banking services doesn’t seem like such a stretch.
