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You may recall that in 2014 we wrote about a strange occurrence having to do with Chase Bank refusing to provide its banking services to Teagan Presley, a rather well known adult film actress. When it became clear that Presley wasn't the only performer to whom this was happening, it initially looked as though banks were engaging in a form of slut-shaming of adult film actors. It turned out, however, that it was the federal government doing the slut-shaming, with the emergence of the Department of Justice's Operation Choke Point. This DOJ policy that was developed to combat financial fraud somehow bled over the stencil lines and became a sort of banking morality police, encouraging banks to cut off services to industries like adult film, fireworks retail stores, and sellers engaged in what the DOJ deemed to be "racist materials." It's worth highlighting that all of these industries and actions, whether you like them or not, are legal, yet the DOJ was essentially attempting to extra-judiciously scuttle them through secretive federal policy. That should have terrified everyone, but didn't, and so the program went on.
Until recently. The justice department recently announced that Operation Choke Point will be ended.
The move hands a big victory to Republican lawmakers who charged that the initiative — dubbed "Operation Choke Point" — was hurting legitimate businesses. In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd referred to the program as "a misguided initiative."
"We share your view that law abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor," says the letter, obtained by progressive activist group Allied Progress and later provided to POLITICO by Goodlatte's office. "Enforcement decisions should always be made based on facts and the applicable law. We reiterate that the Department will not discourage the provision of financial services to lawful industries, including businesses engaged in short-term lending and firearms-related activities," it adds. A nearly identical letter was sent to Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
I was more annoyed by their use of it against gun stores but good riddance regardless.
Previously:
Adult Film Stars' Bank Accounts Closed
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Monday August 28 2017, @06:51AM (1 child)
Not possible unless:
a) you rollback modern civilization (whether by going back to tech that everyone can fit in their heads or by eliminating the majority of the population).
b) you are willing to have much lower safety and significantly lower probability of stuff working properly.
There's lots of specialization in modern societies, and many specialist fields have laws that regulate those fields. Many of those laws are actually a good idea.
For example aviation laws. Many of those aviation laws should remain on the books but will rarely apply to people who aren't in aviation so the general public don't need to know or be able to understand most of them. But airline pilots should know and understand the laws that apply to them.
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=3efaad1b0a259d4e48f1150a34d1aa77&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.10&idno=14 [ecfr.gov]
See also the laws governing elevators: http://www.dli.mn.gov/ccld/ElevatorLaws.asp [mn.gov]
(Different states often have their own variations in laws. And many people seem to think it's important for states to be able to have these variations).
You shouldn't leave it to a Judge plus "random expert" to always have to define from scratch what is allowed AFTER "stuff happens". And if you're adding new laws after every new incident then you'll end up with a similar huge bunch of laws but with likely more incidents.
Imagine if a boss told engineer to do something "suboptimal" to protect the profits and the engineer thought it was still arguably legal - no laws against it.
Many ancient societies figured out having laws was better than leaving stuff completely up to the King or the Judges. The judges should be allowed to use their judgement but for most cases the laws should make it more obvious what sort of breach occurred.
We have lots of complex stuff that can't all fit within the average person's mind. And if the average person's mind somehow improves we'd likely leverage that to build even more complex stuff ;).
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday August 28 2017, @03:56PM
Those laws don't necessarily need to each be separate individual laws.
Basically, these are safety regulations. So you pass one broad law, stating that you cannot construct a device using methods that are known to create a significant and avoidable risk to others. You can then include page upon page upon page of specific examples of such actions in various industries, so that a court can immediately find you guilty if you take these actions. But you can also fight such a charge if there's mitigating factors -- ie, one might say that elevators must have cables of a specific minimum strength. But if you've got a hydraulic elevator, it has no cables. If that cable strength thing is a law by itself, then your hydraulic elevator is illegal because it lacks those cables. If it's merely an example, you can fight any such charge and win, because the law itself just says you can't take unnecessary risks.