Posts Tagged ‘Operation Choke Point’

Biden Unbanking And Censoring Political Enemies?

Sunday, December 8th, 2024

The Biden Administration isn’t yet done, and still more of it’s dirty dealings are coming to light. Remember Operation Choke Point, the semi-secret program to “debank” disfavored businesses like guns and weed under the Obama administration? Well say hello to Operation Choke Point 2.0, where the disfavored people being unbanked are the Obama/Biden Machine’s political opponents.

Investor Marc Andreessen made headlines last week when he told Joe Rogan that dozens of tech founders had been quietly “debanked” under the Biden administration.

Elon Musk commented on a shorter clip and asked: “Did you know that 30 tech founders were secretly debanked?”

Andreessen called the orchestrated effort “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” in reference to an Obama-era initiative targeting the gun industry which triggered anti-boycott laws in some red states.

“Debanking is when you, as either a person or your company, are literally kicked out of the banking system,” he explained. “Under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there’s now a category called a ‘politically exposed person,’ PEP. And if you are a PEP, [banks] are required by financial regulators to kick them off, to kick them out of your bank. You’re not allowed to have them.”

“Basically, it’s a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens the same thing that we do to Iran, just kick you out of the financial system,” he said. “So this has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years.”

“So when Trump says the deep state, the way we would describe it is administrative power,” Andreessen said. “It’s political power being administered, not through legislation. There’s no defined law that covers this, it’s not through regulation. There’s nothing you can do — you can’t go sue a regulator to fix this. It’s not through any kind of court judgment. It’s just raw power. It’s just raw administrative power. It’s the government or politicians just deciding that things are going to be a certain way, and then they just apply pressure until they get it.”

Sounds deeply illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American, doesn’t it?

Here’s the video:

  • One person Andreessen mentions as being debanked is David Horowitz of FrontPage and the Freedom Center.
  • “You literally can’t get a bank account. You can’t get a Visa terminal. You can’t process transactions. You can’t do payroll. You can’t do direct deposit. You can’t get insurance.”
  • “Choke Point 2.0 is primarily against their political enemies and then to their disfavored tech startups, and it’s hit the tech world hard. We’ve had like 30 founders debanked in the last four years.” But lunatic tech/crypto founders like Sam Bankman-Fried get left alone despite breaking the rules because they donate to Democrats.
  • “This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump. It’s like we just can’t live in this world. We can’t live in a world where somebody starts a company that’s a completely legal thing, and then they literally get sanctioned.”

    • Here’s more of that interview with Andreessen, in which he says that the censorship regime against the enemies of the left/deep state was “widely understood.”

  • MA: “There’s nothing that happened at Twitter in the Twitter files that wasn’t happening to the all the other companies.”
  • MA: “It’s a consistent pattern. If you got the YouTube files, they would look exactly the same.”
  • MA: “The Biden White House was directly exerting censorship pressure on American companies to censor American citizens, which I think is just flatly illegal. I think it’s actually subject to criminal charges.” That would be willful denial of rights under the color of law.
  • MA: “There were also members of Congress doing the same thing, which is also illegal.”
  • MA: “Then there was a lot of funding of outside third party groups that were that were bringing a lot of pressure down on censorship.”
  • MA: “There’s a unit at Stanford, you know, right next door. The internet censorship unit that was funded by the US government [that] exerted tremendous pressure on the companies to censor, and it was very effective.”
  • JR: “One of the things that I found really kind of shocking was when they revealed how much money the Democrats had spent on the election, and how much money was spent on activist groups. It’s like more than $100 million, right?”
  • MA: “There’s extensive Government funding of politically oriented NGOs. NGO is one of those great terms, right? Non-governmental organization, all right. Like what what the hell is that?”
  • JR: “What is that? Tell me. I don’t know.”
  • MA: “It’s sort of a charity. But most of the time it’s a political entity. It’s an entity with a political agenda, but then it’s funded by the government. In a very large percentage of cases, including the the NGOs in the censorship complex. Like the government grants, National Science Foundation grants, like direct State Department grants, right? Then its okay. Now you’ve got an NGO funded by the government. Well, that’s not an NGO, right? That’s a GO.”
  • MA: “You’ve got government officials using government money to fund what what look like private organizations that aren’t.”
  • MA: “What happens is the government outsources to these NGOs the things that it’s not legally allowed to do.”
  • JR: “Like what?”
  • MA: “Like censorship. Like violation of First Amendment rights. What they always say is the First Amendment only applies to the government. The First Amendment says the government cannot cannot censor American citizens. And so what they do is, if you want to censor American citizens, if you’re [what] you do is you fund an outside organization and then you have them do it.”
  • JR: “That’s like hiring a hitman. Like it’s not okay to murder someone, but you can hire someone to murder someone and you’re clean.”
  • MA: “When the government does that, [that’s] a very powerful message. Like it’s a message from a mob boss. ‘Don’t you want to do me a favor?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Gambino, I do right. I’d like my corner store not to catch on fire tonight.'”

    • Also this tidbit: “In her book, Melania Trump, the former first lady, claimed her bank account and that of her son Barron were shut down in the wake of the Jan 6 riots. ‘This decision appeared to be rooted in political discrimination,’ she wrote.” Ya think?

    If Democrats didn’t hesitate to go after a First Lady and her son, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to come after me or you…

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, video | 16 Comments »

    Gun and Crime Roundup for July 31, 2014

    Thursday, July 31st, 2014

    Time for another gun and crime roundup, and oh boy, is there a lot of stupid to go around this week:

  • DC Gun ruling put on hold. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • The “Everytown for Gun Safety” head of the Bloomberg hydra just made the strongest case for women owning a gun I’ve ever seen on TV. Even the women on The View said as much, which is saying something. It’s like an ad for Taco Bell promising “Rectal bleeding and serious diarrhea, guaranteed!”
  • And the inevitable video recut:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)

  • Did gun owners kill Operation Choke Point? Great news if true, but bad ideas in the Obama Administration just never seem to entirely go away… (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Doctor ignores hospitals anti-gun policy and prevents a massacre.
  • The “Moms Demand Action” head of the Bloomberg hydra protests topless in Austin. Sadly, they seem to be made up of exactly the women you don’t want to see topless. “Put it on! Put it all on!”
  • Restaurant owner puts up sign welcoming gun owners. Result? Business explodes.
  • Beretta says goodbye to Maryland and hello to Tennessee.
  • Is New York DHS offering $500 rewards to snitch on preppers? (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)
  • DHS seize Land Rover:

    (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)

  • Police in La Joya, Texas (West of McAllen and Mission) kill gang member in shootout a mile from the Mexican border.
  • ProTip: If you break into a restaurant, don’t try to order something from that same restaurant later the same day wearing the same clothes captured on the security camera.

  • ProTip: If you’re trying to rip off a convenience story, don’t pick the one where an MMA fighter works:

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Guns, Texas, video | No Comments »