The report notes that while community organizing groups have been using aggressive, “terrorist” tactics for decades to force banks to provide funding for their operations, the Obama administration has brought the power of the federal government to bear on their behalf. Banks are threatened with lawsuits for racial discrimination based on the controversial “disparate impact” theory, and offered incentives to settle by paying left-wing groups directly, beyond the review or oversight of Congress.
The result, the GAI report says, is a system of political patronage:
The old time political machine has been replaced by these nonprofits and a system of patronage now operates with the imprimatur of the DOJ. The DOJ has instituted a system that provides significant funding for nonprofit “community organizers” through a pattern of extortive lawsuits. This system, wherein appointed attorneys can legally extract money from the private sector and redistribute the funds to third-party organizations outside of the appropriations process, shows an unprecedented and extraordinary disregard for Congressional authority.
Left-wing groups have long used the Community Reinvestment Act — signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and boosted by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s — to threaten bank mergers unless the banks fund their lending and activist operations.
