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Reason Suggests DoJ Closing Porn Stars' Bank Accounts
MouseTheLuckyDog (2752443) writes "In a recent story on reason.com it was reported that the DoJ is closing down the bank accounts of porn stars. Not knowing the site I googled around and found another site, the Guardian. The story does not end there. It turns out that this is part of a larger scheme (ironically) called Operation Choke Point. Also reported in a Washington Post article that downplays the practice. According to Cryptocoin news. There are thirty industries the DoJ is now targeteting: 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; and Travel Clubs. But more can be added. (I notice alcohol sales is not on the list)." The Reason article stops short of saying that Choke Point is proven to be the reason for the account closures, but it seems very plausible.
Using DoJ resources to force the closure of accounts belonging to "legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures"? There's no way in hell that can be legal. This is a slippery slope situation and should get folks on both sides of the aisle riled up
I'm not making any claims, I'm just making an observation:
Some of the things on DoJ's "Laundry List" of so-called "high financial risk" businesses are historically not high-risk AT ALL.
Like ammunition and firearms. Far from being "high-risk": manufacturers and retailers have historically been both large and long-lived. There is an ammunition manufacturer not all that far from here and they have been in business for 60 years. And the vast majority of ammunition is sold through major sporting-goods franchises, not mom-and-pop shops. Same with firearms.
Further, where people DO engage in small-scale ammunition or firearms sales or manufacturing, it is often a perfectly legitimate, specialty product. I know somebody who made and sold custom cartridges, and I have also met a guy who makes firearms. All perfectly legit and legal.
So pardon me for saying so, and I don't want to be misunderstood as being some kind of right-wing nut or anything, but it kind of looks like some things on this list are in fact Obama agenda items. Which is illegal.
These are a threat to national purity, and if you disagree, you can go to one of the soon-to-be-opened concentration camps!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Pepper the list with plenty of "industries" that the vast majority of people would dearly love to see destroyed, such as pyramid schemes, racist trash and payday loans, but shut down plenty of useful-but-intimidating-to-those-in-power businesses as well.
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Not sure why merely doing business in the Ammunition Sales; Coin Dealers; Credit Repair Services; Dating Services; Firearms Sales; Fireworks Sales; Home-Based Charities; Life-Time Guarantees; Life-Time Memberships; Mailing Lists/Personal Info; Money Transfer Networks; On-line Gambling; PayDay Loans; Pharmaceutical Sales; Pornography; Racist Materials; Surveillance Equipment; Telemarketing; Tobacco Sales and Travel Clubs industries or combination thereof should automatically flag ones activies as "questionable". What happened to innocent until proven guilty??
For all the Ponzi-this, tulips-that that gets posted every time Bitcoin makes the news, this is one of the problems they're trying to solve. A prude at Chase or the DoJ can't close your bank accounts if you have no need of a bank in the first place.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Ammo sales were a particular no no.
Private gun ownership was fairly common in the Soviet Union, at about 10 guns per 100 people, and is still common in Russia today. Private citizens were limited to long guns (rifles and shotguns), and they had to register them. But they were generally available to almost anyone that wanted one. The idea that all dictatorships ban private weapons, or conversely, that an armed citizenry always prevents tyranny, is clearly false.
Eric Holder: "I Have 'A Vast Amount' of Discretion in Enforcing Laws"
Go read the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and get back to us with why you feel it doesn't apply to a bank account.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Considering that investment firms cost the government HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in bailouts, can they really argue that porn stars are "risky"?
Closing the bank accounts of gainfully employed citizens just because they're work in a perfectly legal field that the government doesn't like is justice?
How the hell are you people still not realizing you're living in a situation worse than Nazi Germany? (Screw Godwin's law. This is a perfectly legitimate comparison.)
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Do you WANT to create a shadow banking system? Because this is how you do it.
The great aspect to the US legal system is it was shaped to protect from extrajudicial punishment and protects free speech, assembly, press, privacy and much more.
Or at least, it's supposed to. The foundation is there.
Check out 18 U.S.C. 242: "Deprivation of Rights Under the Color of Law".
While many people think this is "just" a discrimination statute, a careful reading of the law shows that it applies to ALL Constitutional and natural rights.
And government employees are not immune. Not even the President. (In fact, this statute was specifically intended to prevent government abuse.) The maximum penalty is life in prison.
I don't mind them going after the crooks, but many of those listed are perfectly legal activities. It seems like a huge overreach to me. The DOJ should stick to investigating criminals, even the ones in the current administration.
If you want more confirmation, see any of the message boards dedicated to the affected industries. There you'll find the victims discussing what to do.
In some of these industries, like porn, one closure affects many, many people. All those free porn sites are financed by the ads they run for a comparatively small number of large pay site networks. Many of them don't expect to get paid this month because their sponsor's account has been shut down in the last few days. The affect is similar to, but not as big, as shutting down PayPal's accounts - it affects not only PayPal, but anyone who relies on PayPal for their business. There are also hosting companies and other service providers who make their living providing services to all the smaller sites. When the sponsor can't pay the small sites, the small sites can't pay their hosting bill. Anything that affects a couple of the large sponsors ripples through the industry.
Because the DoJ isnt actually closing bank accounts?
If you had read the article you would see that it is speculating that a handful of porn star's bank account closures are maybe due to DoJ pressure. Theyre making this leap because of a vice.com article which speculates that the closures are because they are porn stars. Vice makes this gigantic leap because of a WSJ article (conveniently paywalled) which speculates that Operation Chokepoint is targetting porn.
Thats a whole bunch of speculation on a ridiculous assertion. A liberal administration isnt going to crack down on porn; it would alienate huge parts of their base. The idea is stupid, the speculation is stupid, and Reason/Vice are remarkably stupid websites. Slashdot is even worse for being dumb enough to link to the flamebait.
they're work in a perfectly legal field that the government doesn't like is justice?
No, it's tortious interference with business relationships.
As if our weekly fun news didn't have enough material for its "US SPECIAL" corner...
What is it with the US and Porn? I've never seen a country so obsessed about it, and quite frankly any time some sort of report about some sort of sexual freak show or paraphilia, you may rest assured it's about the US.
Kinda reinforces my theory that the road to sexual perversion is repressing it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Frank Keating, former governor of Oklahoma and FBI agent who is now head of the American Banker's Association came out against Choke Point in a WSJ op-ed a week ago.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
When you become a banker, no one issues you a badge, nor are you fitted for a judicial robe. So why is the Justice Department telling bankers to behave like policemen and judges? Justice's new probe, known as "Operation Choke Point," is asking banks to identify customers who may be breaking the law or simply doing something government officials don't like. Banks must then "choke off" those customers' access to financial services, shutting down their accounts.
Justice launched the effort in early 2013 as a policy initiative of the president's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which includes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other regulatory agencies. Though details are scant—much of the investigation has been conducted in secret—the probe aims to crack down on fraud in the payments system by focusing on banks that service online payday lenders and other services deemed suspicious by the government....
You heard it here first: Sex workers not being able to keep their money in a bank is worse than the Holocaust.
It's first a step to the left, and then a jump to the right.
Fascism is not the Holocaust. It is the road to it. The U.S. government considers itself far enough above the law to kill people with drones without due process, to detain them for decades in Guantanamo for decades without due process, to torture people to death for fun (the CIA report shows that torture was used lethally and systematically regardless of whether the "justifying" information was already given either by the victim or other means), to extort from people their right to a jury trial ("plea deal"), to record the communication of everybody in the world including the own populace for fun and extortion.
Destroying the existence of people you don't like for some reason is quite in line with what Nazi Germany did to the Jews in the years leading up to the Reichskristallnacht. And the U.S. shows no sign of mitigating sanity in its current course.
The main difference is that there is not a single NSdAP against splintered small parties they suppress, but rather a right and a far right wing of it handing off power to each other and having rigged the political system long ago to a degree where voting has become pointless.
Not sure why ObamaCare is illegal. It seems to be merely a matter of jurisdiction. Here in Australia ...
The construction of the US government was based on competing centers of power. That power would be split between the federal government and the various state governments, and that within the federal government the power would be split between executive, legislative and judicial branches. The basic idea was to have checks and balances between the federal and the state and within the federal itself.
The constitution does this by enumerating the powers and authorities of the various components of the federal government and then it explicitly states that all other powers and authorities are the domain of the state governments.
The argument against Obamacare goes that since the constitution does not enumerate compelling a person to purchase a service as a power of the federal government it is a power that falls into the domain of the states.
In other words the power of the federal government is limited by an enumerated list of power and authority granted to the federal government and the power of the state governments is limited, plus the power of the federal government is further limited, by an enumerated list of rights and privileges granted to individual citizens.
One of the first steps on the way to the holocaust was to deny Jews and other undesirables the right to a bank account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land (Article VI), and federal judges have power to interpret law (Article III). This includes power to interpret laws limiting the power of Congress, or in other words, to declare that Congress broke the law when enacting a particular statute.
google it
chase closed a few accounts
the porn people went on twitter and a lot of their friends closed their chase accounts in protest
in reality it was a few accounts
Obama is far left in what world?
USA World. Its another planet altogether.
A liberal administration isnt going to crack down on porn
Liberals aren't anti-porn? Seriously? You really wanna go there?
Earlier this month, 42 senators signed a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder to step up enforcement of federal obscenity laws. Among the cast of mostly Republican signers, one name stood out: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a staunch liberal from California, the de-facto porn capital of America. (Feinstein wasn’t available to comment for this story.)
She wasn’t alone: five other Senate Democrats, including Minnesota’s left-wing warrior, Amy Klobuchar, also signed the letter, and they were applauded by feminists, leftist lawyers, and liberal academics. Together, this increasingly vocal segment of progressives is making the case that hardcore porn flies in the face of cherished liberal causes—and that Democrats should be leading the charge to take down its distributors.
“To be anti-porn is a progressive principle.”
Liberals have no problem going after porn. They just frame it differently than Conservatives. They're upholding women's rights (except of course for the right of women to consent to star in pornography) rather than Christian morals.
If anything the Liberal position is more hypocritical than the Conservative one.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So apparently you both agree that you're somewhere on the scale of Nazi Germany, and now you're just arguing over the exact point the United States falls?
I'd say the problem is more the fact you're even on the scale, rather than where on the scale you are.
How many people have read even ten words that Hitler actually wrote or spoke? Nobody knows who the Nazis actually were, or what they actually did. I am convinced that if a National Socialist party were started in the US, people would flock to it without realizing for a moment what it actually was. They'd have to change a few nouns, perhaps substitute Muslims for Jews, but the rhetoric would be terribly seductive.
(Modern Neo-Nazis have very little in common with the German Nazis of the 1930s.)