PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
Choke out 'Operation Choke Point' :: 06/04/2015
Was it naïve to think that one of the most blatantly anti-American government initiatives – “Operation Choke Point” – would disappear shortly after Republicans took over the Senate? Yes, apparently, because it’s June and Congress is still talking about it. Hopefully, not for much longer.
The Senate Banking Committee recently approved an amendment to a regulatory relief bill that would prohibit agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., from participating in the secretly hatched Justice Department initiative.
You may recall the program directed the feds to pressure banks, credit-card processors and other financial companies to cut ties with two-dozen types of businesses the Obama administration doesn’t like, primarily the firearms industry.
The plan was to choke the industry, and about two-dozen other types of businesses, including pawn shops, payday lenders and tobacco retailers, out of the economy by labeling them as “high risk” for consumer fraud and illegal activity.
“It is aimed at perfectly legal and lawful businesses...not because they have committed any fraud, not because they are going to commit any fraud, but because they are objectionable to the Department of Justice,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, whose amendment passed 13-9, with only one Democrat joining Republicans in voting yes.
As with the Internal Revenue Service conservative-targeting scandal, those singled out under Operation Choke Point – such as rifle-stock maker McMillan USA – were considered guilty until proved innocent.
What’s worse, businesses targeted under this scheme never got the chance to make their case in a court of law. The bureaucrat cops coerced banks into doing their dirty work under the threat of costly federal subpoenas and investigations.
Obama statists thought of everything in concocting this scheme, but clearly overestimated Americans’ tolerance for tyranny. One can’t help but think this regime’s weaponization of the federal government is one of the reasons Republicans made historic gains in 2014.
If the Justice Department really wants to cut off terrorists, drug dealers and con artists from the U.S. banking systems – as it claims it wants to – it should be using the regulatory tools already at its disposal.
America doesn’t need a secret program – it operated for more than a year before it was publicly acknowledged in 2013 – that relies on weasely, back-door methods to shut down businesses presupposed as guilty.
The administration’s intent was obvious: put as many gun and ammunition dealers out of business as possible.
The Justice Department, under lawless former Attorney General Eric Holder, failed to whip up anti-gun hysteria with blood through the bungled “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation, so it crafted a new program to strangle the industry in bureaucratic red tape.
It’s all part of the Obama administration’s multipoint, end-run assault on the Second Amendment, which includes Environmental Protection Agency attempts to curtail bullet production through lead regulations and attempts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to turn gun control into a “public health” issue.
As this page said last June: “The next president, whoever it is, should make de-politicizing the federal government a top priority.”
Hopefully, Crapo’s amendment will make Operation Choke Point one less thing for the next president to worry about.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/opinion/editorials/2015-06-04/choke-out-operation-choke-point
