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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25670 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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In 2014, Chase Bank went after the personal accounts of "adult entertainers." This was part of Operation Choke Point, done under the Obama DOJ.

That sounds pretty damned political to me. Certainly it's not about chargebacks.

Then I think I misunderstood you - I agree that Choke Point was political, but I took you to be saying that it had to do with what party was winning at musical chairs this time, when it's actually a consistent feature across administrations - my mistake!

Operation Chokepoint was explicitly political in the sense that it was an Obama administration policy designed to achieve the policy goals of the Democratic party.

The identification of certain industries, including smut, as high-risk and the expectation that banks who choose to bank them have appropriate procedures in place rather than just handing out small business accounts on standard terms, is something that has been around for a very long time regardless of the party in power and reflects a combination of regulatory common sense (some industries really are fraud magnets) and bipartisan views on the role of the banking system (including, critically, the idea that banks should actively seek to avoid banking criminal businesses)

Before Operation Chokepoint was revealed, the explanation for the debanking, at least for payday lenders and porn, was exactly what you claim is the explanation here: those industries are high risk. This wasn't true; they were debanked because the government told them to. They may have actually been high risk, but the claim that they were being debanked for that was a coverup for the true reason. The lesson from this is that you should not just say "sure, those industries are high risk" and credulously believe that the credit card companies and payment processors are only reacting to market forces.

As you note, dealing with high risk has been around for a very long time. Which means that if the behavior changes, it probably isn't because of high risk, even if someone claims it is.

Operation Chokepoint was explicitly political in the sense that it was an Obama administration policy designed to achieve the policy goals of the Democratic party.

Isn't part of the point being made that when Operation Chokepoint was taking place, it's results were being explained away as "the identification of certain industries, including smut, as high-risk and the expectation that banks who choose to bank them have appropriate procedures in place rather than just handing out small business accounts on standard terms, is something that has been around for a very long time regardless of the party in power"?

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