In politics and in life, many things that we seek are proverbial double-edged swords. Every benefit has a cost, and often times the cost is high. Too often, our political leaders ignore the cost because they crave the immediate gratification that cheap political theater provides.
Case in point: Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming’s recent refusal to let Bank of America become one of the state’s 90 or so designated fiscal agents.
Financial institutions that serve as state fiscal agents can hold state funds on deposit, a major responsibility but also a boon considering Louisiana’s $47.2 billion annual budget.
Those institutions vary greatly in size, from small town banks and credit unions in places like Erath and Geismar to mega-banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, U.S. Bank and Capital One.
The list of depositories/fiscal agents also includes institutions in Mississippi, Tennessee, Minnesota and California.
So why not Bank of America, one of the nation’s largest financial institutions — and one that plans to open branches next year in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, offering competition for Louisiana consumers?
According to Fleming, BoA is guilty of “deliberately denying banking services to customers and potential customers (de-banking) of religious organizations, gun manufacturers, fossil fuel producers and others based simply on their political perspectives and activities, not because of any bank policy or law violations.”
Fleming based his decision on a report by the conservative weekly Washington Examiner alleging that BoA “de-banked” two Christian organizations in 2023 — The Indigenous Advance Ministries and The Timothy Two Project International.
Fleming described Indigenous Advance Ministries as “a Christian charitable organization that assists at-risk children, prisoners, and sex trafficking victims in Uganda.” He said The Timothy Two Project “trains pastors in more than 65 countries around the world.”
Fleming and more than a dozen other Republican state treasurers made similar accusations in an April 18 letter to BoA, claiming, “these actions amount to the weaponization of the American financial system.”
“Weaponization,” a favorite GOP buzzword these days, telegraphs that there’s more to this story.
In its May 15 response to the allegations, BoA noted that it provides banking services to some 120,000 faith-based U.S. nonprofits — but that its small businesses division does not serve “organizations that provide debt collection services [or] small business clients that operate outside of the United States.”
And there’s the rub.
According to BoA, the website for Indigenous Advance Ministries’ Call Center states that its business is “dedicated to pursuing the recovery of overdue invoices” for its clients — i.e., debt collection — and that Timothy Two Project International has operations in Cuba, “a country that is sanctioned under the Trading with the Enemy Act.”
Moreover, BoA is one of the largest financiers of the fossil fuel industry — an easily verifiable fact that Fleming, as state treasurer, should know.
But that, of course, would require a level of intellectual honesty not found among culture warriors. It’s just so much more convenient to ignore inconvenient truths — and costs — when the benefits of cheap political theater abound.
New Orleans’ housing crisis has gotten dramatically worse since Cantrell took office in May 2018.
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Publish date : 2024-08-15 13:00:00
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