The Left’s protection racket 18

According to this editorial at Investor’s Business Daily, it will be a criminal offense to collect a debt owed by someone in a “protected class”.

Add the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) to the list of government agencies snooping on you and stockpiling information … It is using, possibly illegally, the independent U.S. Trustee Program to mine sensitive private financial data on the consumer behavior of millions of Americans — without their knowledge or consent. [It] is bullying bankruptcy courts into turning over — for the first time ever — private bankruptcy records on individuals in order to, among other things, ID minority “victims” of bank foreclosures and debt collectors. …

It views as discriminatory the so-called “disparate impact” that collections have on certain “disadvantaged” Democratic constituents.

In other words, the radical, race-obsessed social engineers running the Obama administration are building a statistical case to effectively make it a crime for a bank or credit card issuer to collect on a bad debt if the debt-holder is a member of a “protected class”. 

If they get away with this, the moral and financial implications are horrendous. U.S. credit standards risk being destroyed along with the privacy rights of American citizens. …

CFPB is also busy collecting from banks and credit-reporting firms reams of data on your bill-paying and spending habits. The massive database of personal information — including monthly credit card, mortgage, car and other payments — will be warehoused by private contractors and shared with other federal agencies and Congress, as well as researchers in the field. …

Making matters worse, all this is being done largely in secret.

Not only is CFPB, which maintains an independent budget, virtually unaccountable to Congress, but it closely interacts with a shadowy group of radical community activists who, in effect, are setting the agenda of the agency.

In violation of federal law, CFPB has closed to the public yet another meeting with its radical Consumer Advisory Board   … CFPB claims to be completely transparent, yet it’s decided to hold the “policy discussion” between its “fair lending” director and community organizers behind closed doors.

A crime for a bank or credit card issuer to collect on a bad debt if the debt-holder is a member of a “protected class”? The extreme danger of the Left’s “compassionate” policies stand starkly revealed.

Who will lend money, or grant a mortgage or credit of any kind to members of “protected classes”?

The “protected classes” will be condemned to abysmal poverty.

But of course it is necessary to the Left to keep as many people as possible poor, therefore dependent on, and controlled by, the state.