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DOJ Intimidates Banks to drop Ammunition Suppliers, Firearm Sales, Coin Dealers
Gun Watch ^ | 27 May, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

Posted on 05/28/2014 5:07:39 AM PDT by marktwain


Here is a list of businesses claimed to have been targeted with operation "Choke Point".   The administration characterization of "high risk" seems to  translate into "Those I do not like."  These  "High Risk" merchant categories are listed on an fdic.gov site:

  • Ammunition Sales
  • Cable Box De-scramblers
  • Coin Dealers
  • Credit Card Schemes
  • Credit Repair Services
  • Dating Services
  • Debt Consolidation Scams
  • Drug Paraphernalia
  • Escort Services
  • Firearms Sales
  • Fireworks Sales
  • Get Rich Products
  • Government Grants
  • Home-Based Charities
  • Life-Time Guarantees
  • Life-Time Memberships
  • Lottery Sales
  • Mailing Lists/Personal Info
  • Money Transfer Networks
  • On-line Gambling
  • PayDay Loans
  • Pharmaceutical Sales
  • Ponzi Schemes
  • Pornography
  • Pyramid-Type Sales
  • Racist Materials
  • Surveillance Equipment
  • Telemarketing
  • Tobacco Sales
  • Travel Clubs

 Some of these companies/activities will be offensive to some.  Others will be astonished that they are included on a list of activities to be targeted for extra-legal punishment through pressure from government regulators.  None of this is aimed at people who are breaking laws.  In fact, that is the whole point of operation "choke point"; to go after people who are operating legally, but doing something that higher ups in the DOJ do not like or approve of.

Some of them, taken together, are positively chilling: ammunition sales, firearms, surveillance equipment, coin dealers?   It is almost a laundry list of "progressive" bigotry, that much of the country finds acceptable.   The list above is from 2011, and appears to focus mostly on Internet sales.

It is a classic case of the authoritarian use of power by the government to crack down on individuals that they do not like, even though no crime was committed.   

This article explains how the pressure is applied:

According to The Hill, the DOJ encourages banks and third party payment processors to drop these high-risk clients by “flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands.”  The American Banker reveals, in their timeline of Operation Choke Point, that the subpoena flood started shortly after Operation Choke Point’s inception in March 2013.  The subpoenas went to banks and payment processors large and small: Everything from the $343 million-endowed National Bank of California to the $220 billion-endowed PNC Financial Services Group.  By fall of 2013, the Justice Department had pressured some banks into settling with the government.  The DOJ used these settlements as a template to further strongarm other banks into compliance.  The DOJ is targeting 30 high-risk industries, as labeled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 2011, in a report titled “Managing Risks in Third-Party Payment Processor Relationships.”
The article goes on to tout BitCoins, a digital currency, as a way to work around these regulatory intimidation tactics.

These tactics show how government power is extralegally applied.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: banglist; banks; chokepoint; doj; guncontrol
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Apply pressure to regulated banks to choke off funds to legal businesses that you disapprove of. Classic fascism/authoritarianism/early communism.

In late communism, there are no legal businesses that are disapproved of. They have all been outlawed/destroyed.

1 posted on 05/28/2014 5:07:39 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: marktwain
RICO action by the DOJ. If a non-government agency tried to do the same thing, everyone involved would be in jail.

/johnny

2 posted on 05/28/2014 5:11:10 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: marktwain
"Others will be astonished that they are included on a list of activities to be targeted for extra-legal punishment through pressure from government regulators."

Really? "Others will be astonished..." They couldn't see this coming?

3 posted on 05/28/2014 5:19:25 AM PDT by A Navy Vet (An Oath is Forever)
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To: marktwain

Lifetime memberships? NRA?


4 posted on 05/28/2014 5:26:25 AM PDT by MaxMax (Pay Attention and you'll be pissed off too! FIRE BOEHNER, NOW!)
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To: marktwain
Looks like I'll be learning about Bitcoins.

Unless EinReich WithHolder targets them, of course.

5 posted on 05/28/2014 5:30:15 AM PDT by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: JRandomFreeper
The Administration targeting “Escorts.” They don't want anyone cutting in on their action.
6 posted on 05/28/2014 5:31:30 AM PDT by D Rider (Don't give sharp objects to small children)
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To: D Rider
The difference between government and a shakedown/protection racket is that the government has snappy uniforms.

/johnny

7 posted on 05/28/2014 5:33:05 AM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: marktwain

Coin dealers???

Because the feds don’t want people trading in their fiat for silver and gold.


8 posted on 05/28/2014 5:33:25 AM PDT by ryan71 (The Partisans)
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To: Lazamataz

The problem with BitCoin is not how to use it but with whom to do business. There aren’t many merchants who take BitCoin at this time, but these sorts of shenanigans might guarantee that more will pop up.


9 posted on 05/28/2014 5:34:05 AM PDT by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: marktwain

Well, you know what happens when businesses turn to cash sales. A lot of their sales then go unreported. The mafia and drug industries have been doing that for decades.

Eric, be careful what you ask for. You might just get it!


10 posted on 05/28/2014 5:35:33 AM PDT by Real Cynic No More (Border Fence Obamacare!)
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To: marktwain
Apply pressure to regulated banks to choke off funds to legal businesses that you disapprove of. Classic fascism/authoritarianism/early communism.

In late communism, there are no legal businesses that are disapproved of. They have all been outlawed/destroyed.

Well said – and almost exactly what my comments were to be….

A classic case of tyranny in its most evil form.

Meanwhile, the purveyors of this evil still like to put on airs as champions of Liberty with their label of Liberal

11 posted on 05/28/2014 5:43:31 AM PDT by HammerT (The Commonsense civil right of Armed Self-defense [CASD], its the law of the land.)
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To: marktwain

Somebody needs to start
Sleazy Bank Co LLC
Just try to smear that!

Somebody should start providing banking services catering to the pron industry, gun shops, ammo dealers, coin sellers, etc. Anybody on the DOJ “Naughty List” would be a favored customer.

Then when the government comes after you and tries to give you a bad reputation, you can just say, “Why yes, we are Sleazy Bank LLC. By the way, anybody operating a business at the fringes of decent society who needs credit card processing, our toll free number is 1-800-SLEAZY1”. If these businesses cannot get services from any other provider, you can charge a healthy premium.


12 posted on 05/28/2014 5:43:54 AM PDT by Haiku Guy (Health Care Haiku: If You Have a Right / To the Labor I Provide / I Must Be Your Slave)
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To: marktwain

This is some of the “change” the majority of those that voted said, via their votes, on November 4, 2008 they wanted. In November 2012, the electorate restated that was their wish.


13 posted on 05/28/2014 5:45:24 AM PDT by sport
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To: JRandomFreeper

And they have the force known as the “law” behind them.


14 posted on 05/28/2014 5:47:29 AM PDT by sport
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To: Real Cynic No More

A lot of the businesses around me are cash only. I love it. I love when a guy takes my money, opens the register, drops it in, and closes the door. No receipt. No nothin’. The transaction never took place.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that is a “non-government-involvement” sale. :-)


15 posted on 05/28/2014 5:49:55 AM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: sport

I spar with liberals a lot on the internet. I noticed something very interesting with their attitudes toward Obama. In 2008, they LOVED him and could not wait to vote for him. It was truly amazing.

But I noticed, by 2011, a lot of them were complaining about him. Yes, the same guys I’d been sparring with in 2008. But guess what? They still voted for him in 2012. The reason? The same reason so many of us voted for McCain in 2008. It wasn’t a vote for our guy. It was a vote against the other guy. Their excuse was that Romney was just so incredibly bad that they had no choice but to vote for Obama.


16 posted on 05/28/2014 5:53:42 AM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: sport

And they have the force known as the “law” behind them.


I remember a story about the rise of the Russian Mob after the collapse of the USSR. THey interviewed a resaurant owner in Russia who was paying “protection money” to the mob. He was very pragmatic. He said, and I paraphrase:

I pay taxes to the state for police protection and I pay “protection money” to the mob. At least I actually get something for my money in the latter case.

Cracked me up.


17 posted on 05/28/2014 5:56:27 AM PDT by cuban leaf
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To: marktwain

The next scumbag politician that says they are for guns and the second amendment like they say they are for the troops but not the mission should be gabby Gifford.


18 posted on 05/28/2014 6:00:42 AM PDT by longfellow (Bill Maher, the 21st hijacker.)
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To: marktwain
"In late communism, there are no legal businesses that are disapproved of. They have all been outlawed/destroyed."

Yup. Having witnessed communes in the late 60's, all enterprise was destroyed within those hippie utopias. They practiced Marxism, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". That didn't work then and will never work.

Here is the reason from first hand experience that communism will never work:
Not all people in a commune worked as hard as others (saw it). It's an inherent trait in humans as we see today. The productive commune folks started getting pissed that others were not carrying their communal weight, but still reaping the same rewards/lifestyle as the producers. The producers finally got fed up and left, and all you had left was the "gimmes". That is why you rarely see a commune today, other than blood family.

The Soviet Union is another example of trying to control from top to bottom. Cuba only works because it is more of a dictatorship. If given the choice, the so-called revolution would self-destruct and Cuba would become the next Caribbean paradise.

Communism exists against all human endeavors. It is an un-natural system that punishes the producers so even the non-producers can be on the same level of lifestyle. Socialism is the same, except it doesn't start from the top. It allows capitalism, but then attempts to re-distribute the benefits from capitalism to those who do much less or nothing at all.

Both are failed economic systems and history and current events in Europe have proven it. Yes, some capitalists take advantage and are corrupt - think Enron. However, most capitalists provide jobs and opportunity. I am a capitalist and owned 3 small companies and provided jobs, decent pay, and benefits - and still made a profit for the risks I took. I'm not rich, but made a good retirement because I took those risks, and others benefited from such.

This nation was founded on capitalism and we became the greatest most advanced nation in the world because of that economic philosophy. Now, we have a centralized federal government that increasingly takes from the producers to give to the "gimmes". We are self-destructing from our own original system.

19 posted on 05/28/2014 6:21:13 AM PDT by A Navy Vet (An Oath is Forever)
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To: cuban leaf

He was that bad. McCain and Romney were both evil. McCain would have us at war all over the world. Romney was a big government control freak. Millions of conservatives said no sale to both.


20 posted on 05/28/2014 6:24:16 AM PDT by SpeakerToAnimals (I hope to earn a name in battle)
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