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Operation Choke Point: Obama's harassment of legal businesses comes under scrutiny

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Weaponizing government.

It's long overdue, but a horrendously abusive initiative of the Obama Administration is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves. If you haven't heard of Operation Choke Point, you need to start paying attention.

Here's how it works:

Initiating by the Justice Department in 2013, Operation Choke Point pressures banks via the FDIC to stop doing business with perfectly legal businesses that the Obama Administration doesn't like. One of the main targets has been the payday lending industry, and the FDIC justifies this on the flimsy premise that these businesses represent a high risk of fraud in electronic transactions.

Now you may have issues with payday lenders. There are certainly downsides to getting your hands on cash in that fashion. But while that may be your opinion, and it may be mine, and it may be that of some people in government - the fact remains that payday lending is a perfectly legal type of business. There is no law that says they can't operate, and the administration can't get the Congress to pass such a law.

So what they've done instead is what one member of Congress called "weaponizing government" to achieve an ideological goal they can't achieve through legislation. Because banks are required by law to be insured by the FDIC, and because payday lenders have to have relationships with banks in order to function, banking regulators put the muscle on the banks to cut off the payday lenders.

The banks could resist, but if you know anything about running a bank, you know that the last thing you want is to invite hostility from federal regulators - especially today in the era of Dodd-Frank. All kinds of things can happen to bankers when they tell federal regulators what they can do with their pressure tactics, and none of them are good.

Even so, you might say, so what? Who cares about these businesses? Well let me tell you why you should care.

The next legal business the administration decides to go after might be you do like. It might even be one you're connect to. It wouldn't be unprecedented. Back in 2009, I remember meeting a man who owned a General Motors dealership. This was just after the federal government had taken over GM, and they were forcing massive shutdowns of dealerships. Although his dealership was caught up on all its payments and was actually exceeding its sales goals, the Obama Administration had nonetheless told him they were shutting down his dealership.

He told me this in tears. His dealership was his life, and it was being taken away from him. Why? He was pretty confident he knew the answer. A black man, he had contributed to two Republican presidential candidates. And he heard from a lot of other dealers across the country who were experiencing the same thing.

This is what the Obama Administration is willing to do in the pursuit of its political agenda. They will weaponize government to shut down anyone they don't like - legal or otherwise. Somehow there's a way you need to be in the good graces of a federal agency in order to survive. They'll find what that is, they'll remove those good graces, and you'll be screwed.

That's what Operation Choke Point is really all about. Because that's how this White House rolls.

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