The Patriot Post® · Holder the Shakedown Artist

Attorney General Eric Holder has long made an issue of race, obviously carrying a chip on his shoulder that dictates how he does his job. The latest affront to Rule of Law is that he and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (another bureaucracy created by the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” bill) have announced a $100 million settlement with Ally Bank for “discrimination” in making auto loans. It’s the largest-ever such settlement against the auto industry, and the third largest overall. So far, Holder’s Justice Department has extorted $810 million from the financial industry over so-called discriminatory lending practices.

But let’s look at the facts – crazy talk, we know. The Justice Department accused Ally of “charg[ing] African-American borrowers more than white borrowers in interest-rate markups not based on creditworthiness or other objective criteria related to borrower risk.” However, Justice didn’t have the pertinent data to make such a claim. Unlike the mortgage industry, the auto industry doesn’t track a buyer’s race, so Holder and Co. had to guess based on Census data for the racial composition of a buyer’s neighborhood. Justice didn’t bother looking at creditworthiness of the buyers, either – regardless of the supposed race – so how would they know Ally didn’t assess it before making the loans?

The bottom line is that the Justice Department had nothing to go on and pushed forward with these trumped-up charges anyway. Ally caved rather than fight the inevitable Leftmedia PR battle. The Obama administration is far more concerned with its beloved but discredited “disparate impact” theory than upholding fair business practices, and the media will always dutifully fall in line.

Holder once accused the American people of being “essentially a nation of cowards” when it comes to race, while demanding a “national conversation” on the topic. It’s time he participated in the conversation already happening instead of making up lies to persecute political opponents and the free market.