Monday, June 05, 2017

Renewable Energy - Food Stamps for Millionaires


 With all the talk about how dead the coal industry is and how vibrant the renewable energy sector is, there is little talk about the government incentives for the renewable energy sector.  According to the US Energy Information Agency:

In 2016, about 4.08 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity 1 were generated at utility-scale facilities in the United States.2  About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases), about 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 15% was from renewable energy sources. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that an additional 19 billion kWh (or about 0.02 trillion kWh) of electricity generation was from small-scale solar photovoltaic systems in 2016.3
Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 20161
  • Natural gas = 33.8%
  • Coal = 30.4%
  • Nuclear = 19.7%
  • Renewables (total) = 14.9%
    • Hydropower = 6.5%
    • Wind = 5.6%
    • Biomass = 1.5%
    • Solar  = 0.9%
    • Geothermal = 0.4%
  • Petroleum = 0.6%
  • Other gases = 0.3%
  • Other nonrenewable sources = 0.3%
  • Pumped storage hydroelectricity = -0.2%4
The Washington Post reported that 2014 (the latest data available) Census data put the number of people employed in the coal industry at 76, 572.  A 2017 Department of Energy report puts the number at 160,119, with 86,035 working in electricity  generation, and another   74,084 working in other coal operations.  The table above shows that the coal industry produced 30.4% of all US electrical energy.  By these figures, each coal worker in the electrical sector produced about 0.0038% of all US electrical energy.  
For the renewable energy sector, the first thing that stands out is that highest percentage of renewable energy is produced by hydropower, a pre-industrial age technology, the water wheel.  The EIA says there is no good data on the number of people working on solar electric power, because the government does not have a good category for this job survey.  The EIA estimates that 260,077 people spend at least half of their time working on solar energy.  The largest percentage of workers in this sector are working on construction of new solar plants.  The EIA estimates that these workers produce 0.9% of US power; then, each solar worker produced about 0.00035% of US power, or about 1/100th as much as a coal worker.  Per worker, coal is 100 times more efficient than solar.  
If this is so, why would anyone invest and work in the solar industry?  Because of government incentives.  There is a 30% federal tax credit for individuals installing solar panels.  In addition almost every state offers additional incentives.  The Washington Post reported in connection with the failure of Solyndra solar company that the Obama administration had instituted an $80 billion clean technology program.  The Post article says:
The [Obama] administration, which excluded lobbyists from policymaking positions, gave easy access to venture capitalists with stakes in some of the companies backed by the administration, the records show. Many of those investors had given to Obama’s 2008 campaign. Some took jobs in the administration and helped manage the clean-energy program.   
These government incentives are no doubt responsible for much of the investment in the solar industry, rather than hard-nosed business decisions.  

Investment in wind energy is probably a more rational business decision than solar.  Wind energy produces 5.6% of US energy according to EIA.  It estimates that there are 101,738 workers in the wind energy sector.  By these figures, each wind energy worker produces about 0.0055% of US energy.  This indicates that coal workers are about six times more productive than wind workers.

Environmentalists who espouse renewable energy generally oppose nuclear energy.  I think this is wrong.  Nuclear energy has downsides, but does not contribute to global warming.  Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima illustrate the dangers of nuclear energy, but the number of people killed or badly injured is not out of line with the people killed or injured by the fossil fuel industry, with its exploding wells, ocean platforms, pipelines, etc.  If wind power produced all US energy, we would probably have many people falling from windmills, hit by spinning blades, etc.  Unlike solar and wind, nuclear can produce large amounts of power needed by big cities and industry.  By hew EIA figures we have about 67,000 workers in the nuclear industry, which produces 19.7% of US energy.  This means that coal workers are about 1.3 times more efficient than nuclear workers in amount of power produced.  Of course there are huge costs involved in building new nuclear plants which are not included in these numbers.  


The main point of these numbers is to refute the statistics which say that the future of labor is in renewable energy, not coal or other traditional sources.  In fact, it looks like the solar industry is extraordinarily inefficient.  It’s as if solar workers are making labor intensive, expensive Swiss mechanical watches, while coal workers are making cheap but accurate digital watches for ordinary people.  Who pays for the expensive, hand-made solar energy?  Mainly the government.  At the moment that is the only reason it is financially feasible.  The government gives billions to rich investors for solar work, just like it gives billions in food stamps to poor people.  Both are well intentioned, but it may be too early to tell whether solar will be a practical as its champions claim.  

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Kushner Investigation


 I don’t know what is wrong with Jared Kushner talking to Soviet diplomats about opening a secret channel of communications between the US and Russia.  You might question the political wisdom of such an arrangement, but I don’t see what is illegal about it.  

I see the potential criminality of Gen. Michael Flynn’s taking payments from the Russians, especially his not reporting the payments to the Pentagon.  I see a lot of smoke indicating the possibility of criminal activity surrounding Paul Manafort, who has been a paid consultant to a number of unsavory individuals and organizations connected to the Russians and the Ukrainians.  However, both of these potentially criminal actions are outside of those individuals’ activities directly connected to the Trump campaign. It is as if Trump had hired a thief to work in his campaign.  If that thief did not steal while he was working for Trump, then Trump might be guilty of poor judgment for hiring him, but that’s all.  There is no criminal liability attached to the campaign itself.  

I think the liberal press is trying to create some kind of guilt by association, by talking about the innuendo involving people in the campaign.  It is as if they were talking about someone going to a bar, and thereby trying to create the impression that he is a drunkard, just because he went to a bar after work.  

Your business is not criminally liable because one of your employees set his neighbor’s house on fire.  Again, you can be criticized for employing an unsavory character, but that does not make you a criminal or your business a criminal activity.  As usual in Washington, if there was some criminal act involved in trying to cover up the associate’s criminality in order to avoid bad publicity, then that coverup might be criminal, but not the original act itself.  But that coverup would have to be criminal in itself, not just poor judgment.  

In fact, I think much of the ado about Russia is an attempt by the liberal press to create some kind of implicit guilt for something that is not a crime.  Liking the Russians may be a poor political judgment, but it does not appear to me to be a crime.  The Democrats are trying to revive the hatred of the old Soviet Union from the bad old Cold War days.  Russia is not the Soviet Union.  The Democrats make the Russians look like some huge threat, but from the stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, the Russians look pretty incompetent.  We seem to see every cable that the Russian ambassador sends to Moscow.  Civilian Russian hackers may be pretty good, but the FSB security people seem like rank amateurs.  Their codes can be broken easily.  It’s like American breaking the German’s Enigma code in World War II, but in that case the intelligence services managed to keep it a secret.  It was not headlined on the front pages of newspapers.  America’s intelligence services can break codes, but they can’t keep a secret.  


I worry that some elements of the intelligence community have gone rogue and are more loyal to the Democratic Party than to the US Constitution, which they took an oath to uphold.  

Monday, May 29, 2017

NYT and Wash Post Leaks

The New York Times ran a front page article defending its decision to print leaked intelligence about the Manchester bombing from the British, which aided the terrorists by giving details of the British investigation.  The NYT put getting a scoop ahead of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks.  


The Washington Post printed leaked intercepted communications between the Russian ambassador in Washington and the Kremlin in Moscow.  I don’t know how the ambassador communicated with Moscow, but the ambassador does, and he will know not to use the same channel again unless he wants to give the information to the US. The article may have revealed that we have broken Russian codes that they did not know we had broken.  


Neither newspaper seems concerned about damaging US national security either vis-a-vis the terrorists or Russia.  It appears that whoever is leaking information to the press is less concerned about US national security than about other issues, like getting rid of Trump.  

The inability of the Russian government to keep a secret makes the Russian spy agency, the FSB, look like a joke. The Russian ambassador, Kislyak, looks like a fool, an incompetent nincompoop. If Putin had some plan to get an inside track with the new administration, his team botched it horribly. The Russians look like the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Rice on Russian Election Hacking

On Morning Joe this morning Condi Rice (at about 14 minutes in) said Putin is probably pleased with all the chaos that his hacking has unleashed, because it has caused people to question the strength of American democracy.  He is happy that his actions are tearing apart our democratic system.  He wants to sow doubt about the legitimacy of US elections.  She thinks we should stress that we have confidence is our electoral system.  She says we should not jump to the conclusion that Putin wanted to elect Trump.  Rather she thinks that he just wanted to discredit our political system.    (Part 2 of Rice interview.)

I think she has a good point.  It is arguable that the Democrats are destroying democracy in order to save it, like the old aphorism that in Vietnam, American troops destroyed a village in order to save it. 

Morning Joe also discussed Ted Cruz’ questioning of Sally Yates regarding her refusal to defend Trump’s immigration order.  They thought she destroyed Cruz.  She had a good point that there were conflicting statutes, the one Cruz cited which seemed to support Trumps order, and the statute Yates cited that seemed to discredit it, because it discriminated on racial or religious grounds.  But then she went on to undermine her own statutory argument.  She says that the executive order was unconstitutional.  I don’t think the Constitution grants any right to a non-resident alien physically located outside of the US.  Thus, she may have a statutory argument, but not a Constitutional one, which she said was the basis for her action.  Even on the statutory argument, she relies on statements Trump made while campaigning.  I think using those statements is unprecedented in statutory interpretation.  It is an issue the Supreme Court should (and may) decide.  I would argue that to invalidate the order, opponents should find some basis from religious discrimination in official conduct of the Trump administration while in office.  I don’t think that has been shown so far. 

Video of Yates’ statement: 


Monday, May 08, 2017

Trump Healthcare and Taxes

Trump won an important political victory last week by getting the House to pass a bill repealing and replacing ObamaCare.  The victory showed that Trump and his staffers are able to put together the political power and intelligence to get the fractious Republican congressmen to agree on something that can get the necessary number of votes.  The bill is a mess, but it is a political victory. 

The reasonable, responsible thing for America to do is pass single-payer, government-funded healthcare, Medicare for all, as Trump recognized by his comment during his dinner with Australian Prime Minister Turnbull.  Trump probably personally favors this solution, but he can’t possibly pursue it with the Republican Party he leads. 

ObamaCare is bad.  It expands coverage, but it is a mishmash drafted by healthcare and insurance industry lobbyists.  It has turned out not to be so profitable for health insurance companies, but they have the option to drop out if it’s not profitable, which they are doing in droves.  ObamaCare is somewhat responsible about trying to provide funding for the new services, but it fails in the long run.  The Congressional Budget Office estimated that in 2016 federal subsidies for all types of health insurance coverage for people under age 65 (i.e., excluding Medicare) amounted to $660 billion, or 3.6% of GDP.  The amount would rise to $1.1 trillion by 2026.  For the ten year period from 2017 to 2026, the total federal subsidy for medical care for people under 65 would be about $8.9 trillion.  Of that subsidy, $3.8 trillion is for Medicaid, and $3.6 trillion is for the tax deductions for healthcare insurance provided by businesses. 

The main point of these figures is that ObamaCare is not self-funding; it results in a huge deficit funded either by higher taxes or borrowing from the Chinese.  Since higher taxes seem unlikely, China is picking up the tab for much of the medical treatment provided in the US.  The Chinese are buying lots of expensive homes and cars for American doctors. 

It’s hard to tell from this FactCheck.org report, but it sounds like about 6 million people with pre-existing conditions were covered by ObamaCare, who might otherwise have been denied insurance.  On the other hand, Kaiser and HHS say about 75 million people are enrolled in Medicaid; so, Medicaid is a much bigger, more expensive program.  I found it strange that the Democratic arguments against the Trump repeal and replace of ObamaCare were focused much more on pre-existing conditions than on Medicaid.  In addition, it sounds as if the Trump bill uses its Medicaid cuts to give a huge tax cut to millionaires.  It seems to me that this is a much more important issue. 

These articles in Forbes and MarketWatch so far seem some of the clearest on the tax implications of the Medicaid changes.  It looks like the TrumpCare bill eliminates a Medicare tax, not a Medicaid tax.  The Medicare tax imposed by ObamaCare is a 3.8% tax on net investment income for people earning over $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married).  Plus, ObamaCare created a 0.9% Medicare tax on salary or income above those same amounts.  Apparently TrumpCare would eliminate these taxes, reducing taxes (and revenues) by about $900 million over a decade, i.e., about $100 million per year.  One advantage of putting these tax provisions in the healthcare bill may be that it will help a tax bill pass under the reconciliation process in the Senate, thus blocking a filibuster.  It may also make tax cuts look smaller by dividing them up between the healthcare and tax bills. 

In any case, the Medicaid provisions, which are the basis for including the tax cuts, seem much more important for the economy and for the population at large than the pre-existing condition provisions.  Nearly half of all births in the US are paid for by Medicaid, according to Kaiser.  Maybe the Democrats thought the pre-existing condition issue would be more attractive to the general public, but relatively few people will be affected by it.  More than 6 million people may have pre-existing conditions, but they probably have other options than ObamaCare, and can get insurance through another program. The 75 million people on Medicaid have fewer options. 


Saturday, May 06, 2017

Op-Eds on the Importance of the EU

Kissinger had an interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:


I thought it was interesting history, but at first I wondered why he wrote it.  I guess it’s in the WSJ because of the French election and what Kissinger says about the importance of a united Europe.  It also sounds like he has a personal fondness for Adenauer that he wanted to get on the record.  Kissinger is unique.  He has written a relatively long piece about Germany just after WW II and does not mention the Holocaust once, despite being an ethnic Jew.  He has high praise for Adenauer and by implication the Germans who worked with him after the war.  My experience is, especially after my Poland tour, that as soon as you mention WW II to a Jew they start talking about how horrible the Holocaust was, and often think the US let the Germans off too lightly despite the Nuremberg trials. 

The one time I met Kissinger was on a Sunday afternoon while I was working in the current intelligence office of the State Department operations center in the 1970s.  We got a highly classified report that Anwar Sadat, who was at that moment in the US on an official visit, was going to be assassinated.  (They just got the time and place wrong, but it’s like the stopped watch that is going to be right sometime.)  Anyway we decided we should probably tell somebody about this report; so, I took it the 50 yards down the hall to the Secretary’s office in a locked pouch.  There was nobody there but his private secretary, who said he was in a conference room in the back. So I walked another 25 yards down a warren of corridors to a little conference room where he was sitting with Assistant Secretary Philip Habib.  I was going to hand him the report, but he said just tell me what it says.  So I told him; he said thanks, and that was it.  I think Sadat was around for several years after that.  Ford must have been President at that time, and Kissinger was his Secretary of State.    

There’s another interesting historical piece in today’s NYT on Central Europe:


It’s probably interesting to me because of the Polish connection -- King Sobieski’s defense of Vienna against the Turks.  It’s another pro-EU article before the French election.  He calls the EU “the necessary empire.” The EU can theoretically help knit together the ethnic rivalries of old Europe – Roman Catholic Slavs, Russian Orthodox Slavs, Muslims, etc., but I’m not sure it is up to the task at the moment if it can hardly keep the French on board.  Nevertheless, the history of the Balkans is interesting.  A more assertive Russia and Turkey versus a weakening EU could presage a resurfacing of these old rivalries. 



Monday, May 01, 2017

North Korea and the KEDO Attempt To Stop Its Bomb Program

This was in last week's installment of the Diplomacy Oral History project newsletter. 

Here is a link to an oral history of the first attempt to work out a nuclear deal with North Korea:

  
Near the middle, around the graph of KEDO (Korean Energy Development Organization) funding and the picture of the North Korean nuclear plant, is a description of the KEDO funding difficulties.  This article doesn’t mention it, but while I was in Rome, KEDO was having trouble getting funding for the fuel oil it had promised the North Koreans as a reward for them if they would not work on their bomb project while KEDO worked on building a nuclear power reactor in North Korea that would not produce bomb-usable plutonium.  As the article says, the US Congress would not approve the money for the fuel oil.  The main sticking point was the Republican congressman from Mobile, Alabama, (I forget his name) who was on the Appropriations Committee.  Since he would not approve the money, somebody from KEDO came to Rome (maybe Bosworth, I don’t remember) to ask the EU (through the Italians since they held the rotating presidency of the EU) if it would contribute $2 million to help KEDO meet its obligations.  I think the EU eventually said, “No thanks,” although they promised to think about it, and expressed European concern about a North Korean bomb.   

It really ticked me off that the North Korean deal looked like it might fail because the US refused to meet its obligations, thus giving the North Koreans an excuse to go back to building bombs.  Interestingly, Bosworth says here that the North Koreans were not too upset about the funding problems, but in Rome I didn’t know that.  In any case, the KEDO deal fell apart later.  Joel Wit, who worked for Bosworth and was more my level (we had worked together on the Missile Technology Control Regime),has said somewhere that KEDO never missed a payment.  But I think maybe he and Bosworth tend to gloss over the payment difficulties so as not to make themselves look too responsible for KEDO’s failure. 

Saturday, April 08, 2017

Trump’s Attack on Syria

Trump's attack on Syria dealt with several issues that should help his popularity:

I creates a contrast with Obama’s publicly drawing a red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria and then doing nothing about it.  Trump looks strong and decisive in comparison, and it pleases the liberal establishment.  
It helps to overcome Trump’s perceived softness on Putin.  He attacked Putin’s ally, Assad, and even put Russian troops in peril. For the moment at least, he and Putin are on opposite sides in Syria.  

It demonstrates to North Korea that Trump is not afraid to use force, and thus constitutes an implicit threat to North Korea.  

Liberals in general like the attack on Syria because it inhibits the use of nuclear weapons and attacks on civilians and children.  Thus, the attack tends to roll back their perception of him as a far right ideologue.  

Liberal talking heads have expressed concern that Trump has no strategy to bring about regime change or end the war in Syria, but Trump can let this attack stand alone if he wants.  He can describe it as a response to an inhumane violation of international law, not the beginning of regime change.  

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

Indians on India


An interesting quote from Fareed Zakaria's email newsletter for 4/5/17, since both he and Nikki Haley are Indian Americans.  

India to U.S.: None of Your Business



Thanks, but no thanks. That’s the message India delivered to the Trump administration after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley suggested the United States would “find its place” in efforts to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan, the Hindustan Times reports.
Reiterating India’s position that ties between the two are a bilateral matter, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay reportedly added: “We of course expect the international community and organizations to enforce international mechanisms and mandates concerning terrorism emanating from Pakistan, which continues to be the single biggest threat to peace and stability in our region and beyond.”

Friday, March 17, 2017

Democrats Push War with Russia

The Democrats believe Trump’s political weakness is Russia.  Therefore, they are vilifying Russia to make Trump’s friendliness toward Russia appear to be treason.  At first it looked like they would try to invalidate Trump’s election, but as time goes on that seems less likely.  

They make Putin look more powerful than he is, and they make Putin appear more aggressive and anti-American than he is.   An example is Fareed Zakaria’s CNN special on Putin, characterizing Putin as the most powerful man in the world.  Putin is a remarkable man who has brought Russia back from the trash heap of history to be a player on the world stage, and he has more nuclear weapons than anyone else in the world, including Donald Trump.  But that does not make him the most powerful man in the world; arguably either Trump or Chinese President Xi Jinping may be more powerful because of their economic power in addition to their military power.  In terms of usable power, Germany’s Angela Merkel, the leader of the most powerful country in the EU, may be more powerful than Putin.  This morning on some news show discussing Merkel’s meeting with Trump, the female reporter described Merkel as the most powerful “woman” in the world.  

In any case the Democrats want to make Putin look like a dangerous enemy of the US so that Trump’s failure to condemn him looks treasonous.  In addition, most Jews hate Russia.  Jews as a race lived in Russia for centuries.  While the word “Ashkenazi” means German, as it is used in describing Ashkenazi Jews, most recent Jewish immigrants have come from Russia or Soviet dominated Eastern Europe, and they brought with them a visceral hatred of Russia because of their poor treatment by ethnic Russian Slavs.  For powerful Jews in American politics and the media, vilifying Putin and Russia has a double benefit of weakening a political enemy, Trump, and an ethnic enemy, Russia.  

This campaign resembles the “yellow journalism” of the 1890s which led to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and Cuba.  The Democrats, the journalists, and the Jews probably don’t want a civilization-ending nuclear war with Russia, but they want sanctions, political pressure, and maybe some smaller wars in Ukraine or the Middle East.  Small wars could be similar to the Afghanistan War that led to the demise of the Soviet Union.  If these efforts succeed in unseating Putin, it’s unclear who would follow him, but whoever it is, they would almost certainly be weaker than Putin, thus putting Americans and Jews in a more dominant position vis-a-vis the Russian Slavs.  

Trump does not seem particularly concerned about the Jewish aspect of the Russia issue.  He has many Jews in his administration.  So far he has not reversed his position on Putin, although he has been somewhat more cautious about praising him.  Even Trump is not insensitive to the steady drumbeat of anti-Putin propaganda.  

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Reaction to Andrew Jackson Blog

I don’t think anybody reads this blog, but it looks like they do.  It looks like there were at least two reactions to my last blog on Andrew Jackson.  In addition President Trump decided to visit Andrew Jackson’s home and tomb in Nashville.  


Today on his MSNBC MTP Daily show, Chuck Todd talked about the changing perceptions of Andrew Jackson.  He said that Jackson was one of the founders of the modern Democratic Party, but the Democrats have largely rejected him because he owned slaves.  Meanwhile the Republicans have adopted him because of his representation of the common man against wealthy elitists, a model Donald Trump likes.  


It’s interesting that we find today’s Democrats rejecting a man of the people, while the Republicans adopt him.  Are the parties changing the bases they appeal to?  Only to a certain extent.  The Democrats in 2016 appealed to blacks, Hispanics and Jews, but rejected the lower and middle class white voters, whom they donated to the Republicans as a “basket of deplorables.”  The Republicans accepted the gift and ran with it.  


Also, today the New York Times published an article entitled, “The Fed vs. the Angry Masses,” although later editions changed the headline.  The article pointed out the popular mistrust of the Fed and other central banks.  It raised the question of whether Trump would attack the Fed as Jackson attacked the Second Bank of the US.  

It already looks strange that the Fed has begun what looks like a prolonged period of raising interest rates after years of leaving them at zero only now that a Republican has been elected President.  At least superficially, it looks like Janet Yellen ran the Fed in a partisan way to benefit Obama and the Democrats.  There are legitimate arguments for raising rates now, but it looks suspicious.  

Andrew Jackson and the Jews

I have been reading Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, “American Lion.”  In discussing Jackson’s campaign to close Nicholas Biddle’s Second Bank of the United States, he quotes a paper written by Jackson stating his reasons for closing the bank:

“The divine right of kings and the prerogative authority of rulers have fallen before the intelligence of the age,” Jackson said, continuing:

Standing armies and military chieftains can no longer uphold tyranny against the resistance of public opinion. The mass of the people have more to fear from combinations of the wealthy and professional classes— from an aristocracy which through the influence of riches and talents, insidiously employed, sometimes succeeds in preventing political institutions, however well adjusted, from securing the freedom of the citizen.… The President has felt it his duty to exert the power with which the confidence of his countrymen has clothed him in attempting to purge the government of all sinister influences which have been incorporated with its administration.  (From Meacham, Jon (2008-11-04). American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Kindle Locations 5497-5501). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Nicholas Biddle was not Jewish, but I think Jackson’s concern about the aristocracy of wealthy and professional classes applies today.  The majority of this aristocracy is not Jewish, but a disproportionate percentage is.  Jews make up a high percentage of the richest people in the United States and of members of the Senate, for example.  Jews are also disproportionately represented in the government, sometimes as cabinet secretaries, but more often just below the secretaries as deputies, under secretaries, or assistant secretaries.   They are immensely influential in the financial and banking industry.  The chairmen or women of the Federal Reserve Bank have all been Jews since Paul Volcker was appointed in 1979.  It is almost as if there is an ethnicity test to be Fed chair.  

Everybody points out the similarities between Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump  Both were sort of rough hewn outsiders to politics.  Born poor, Jackson broke a line of six genteel Presidents, all connected to the founding of the United States and born in Virginia or Massachusetts, starting with Washington and ending with John Quincy Adams.  

In Jackson's time there were few Jews in America, but there were still bankers who were part of the disliked “aristocracy” or establishment, even then, who were the targets of Jackson’s anger.  Jackson’s main antagonist, Nicholas Biddle, came from an aristocratic Philadelphia family; he had relatives who had distinguished themselves in the Revolutionary War and early American politics.  Jackson felt that the bank was the enemy of the common man, while it had favored the American aristocracy.  Thus, he aimed to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and distribute its assets to smaller banks scattered around the country and presumably more in touch with ordinary people.  
The Bank of the US was more like an ordinary regional bank of today that handled the government’s accounts than today’s Federal Reserve Bank, but also performed some regulatory functions like the Fed.  The Bank of the US issued its own paper money, and stimulated or retarded the economy by loosening or tightening credit.  Prior to Biddle’s administration it was blamed for credit bubbles and recessions.  

Wikipedia says that under Biddle the bank was doing its regulatory job pretty well, but the public still disliked it as an aristocratic institution and still blamed it for past financial problems.  In this, it was not unlike the Fed and Wall Street today, which are perceived as aristocratic institutions oppressing ordinary people.  Today, because of the dominance of Jews in the financial system, from Wall Street, to the US Department of the Treasury, to the Federal Reserve.  Again, it is arguable that they have done a relatively good job of handling the economy, except for the Great Recession 2008 and the huge rise in income inequality in the last few decades.  The fact that no senior bankers were prosecuted for their roles in the Great Recession contributed to the perception that they were part of an aristocracy that was above the law.  Obama’s Democratic administration, which should have represented the common man, instead licked Wall Street’s boots, while the Fed bailed out the big  banks, but did almost nothing for the regular people who lost their houses or their savings.  This unfortunately creates the image that Jews are oppressing ordinary Americans.  America appears to keep humming along, except that the Jews keep getting richer and richer, while ordinary people get poorer, so much poorer that ordinary white people are resorting to opiates to escape the current situation.  

Of course, white people bear a lot of blame for the situation they find themselves in, but because there is a large group of Jews who appear so greedy and heartless, Jews open themselves up to being the target of white discontent.  To characterize all Jews as greedy and heartless is unfair to many ordinary Jews, who are not rich or famous because they are just ordinary people going about ordinary lives.  But because these elite Jews are so easily identifiable, they do a disservice to their fellows by appearing in an unfavorable light.  Einstein was a Jew, but so is most of Wall Street.  And so is Bernie Sanders, who is trying to rein in the excesses of Wall Street, and thus would probably have been an ally of Andrew Jackson in the attack of the Second Bank of the US on behalf of the ordinary citizens of the US.  .    

Monday, March 06, 2017

Trump on Wiretapping

While it's unlikely that Trump's claim that Obama ordered a wiretap on the Trump team in the Trump Tower before or after the election, there may be something to the claim that the US Government was listening in to conversations by Trump people in the tower while Obama was still President.

Former National Security Adviser Flynn had to resign because of intercepted telephone conversations while Trump was President-elect, according to the Washington Post.  So, somebody, for some reason, was listening to Flynn's phone calls while he was working on the team of President-elect Trump.

It seems most likely that the National Security Agency listens in on all calls involving Russian diplomats, although if both ends of the calls are entirely with the United States, then the FBI might be listening, rather than NSA.  I'm not sure who has the lead in this case.  The niceties of whether the call was listened to because it involved the Russians rather than Trump officials may be lost on Trump, who considers any listening in on his teams' conversations a violation of privacy, i.e., a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The NSA probably routinely picks up many phone calls involving Americans in its huge net of intercepted phone calls.  It had no qualms about intercepting Angela Merkel's phone calls in Germany.  However, all such conversations involving American citizens inside the US are supposed to be highly protected because of the Fourth Amendment.  In this case, these phone calls involving a American citizen, Flynn, were leaked to the press, a violation of the laws dealing with classified information as well as the Fourth Amendment.

It's not surprising that Trump is mad.  He is wrong that Obama ordered a wiretap, but he is correct that his people were tapped by the US Government while Obama was still  President, albeit under procedures that had been in place for years.

A more relevant question might be whether Obama had any knowledge of the leaks about Flynn and looked the other way.  Was this leak really done by somebody in the "deep state" devoted to Hillary Clinton as Obama's successor?  If so, was the Obama administration culpable by looking the other way while such leaks were going on?  The leak was a violation of law, but like the misdeeds of the bankers in 2008, no one is being investigated because of the leak.  

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Brooks on Immigration

In his Friday NYT column, David Brooks opines that although automation can replace white people, it cannot replace Hispanics.  The establishment says whites being displaced by automation, not immigration,but we need more hispanic immigrants because they are irreplaceable by machines.  Brooks highlights housing as an area where we need more immigrant laborers.  One possibility he ignores is using more modular housing construction in assembly line factories lending themselves to automation.  NYT columnist David Leonhardt, like Brooks, also believes Hispanic jobs are not responsible for middle class decline.  People think manual labor jobs cannot be automated.  Because immigrants often work illegally, they frequently work for very low, slave wages that eliminate any incentive to automate their jobs.   Therefore, the high tech community has not worked on automating them, with some exceptions, such as driving a car or truck.  Truck drivers may be a threatened species in a few years.  If farm hands become much more expensive, we may see automated fruit and vegetable crop picking begin to be replaced like corn and wheat harvesting.  

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Elliott Abrams and the Jewish Lobby

The media claimed that Elliott Abrams was the leading candidate for Deputy Secretary of State, that Tillerson wanted him badly, but then it reported that Trump vetoed Abrams for the job.  I think this whole Elliott Abrams episode was made up by a bunch of Jews who are desperate to get more Jews into the Trump administration.  Abrams was a good candidate because he is a Jewish Republican with foreign policy experience at high levels.  Tillerson may have said he wanted Abrams, but if so, he hardly knew him.  There is no reporting on their having a long relationship.  Influential Jews in State, and in Washington more generally, worked the levers of power to pressure Tillerson to ask for Abrams.

The Jewish-owned New York Times was pressed into this political service and complied with articles about Abrams’ great qualifications and his imminent appointment to the job.  On February 6, the Times ran an article by Gardiner Harris and David Sanger (probably Jewish), “Elliott Abrams, Neoconservative Who Rejected Trump May Serve Him.”   


Then, when Abrams did not get the job, the NYT still praised him, but said in the article, “Trump Overrules Tillerson, Rejecting Elliott Abrams for Deputy Secretary of State,” that the main objection to Abrams was that he had written a highly critical article about Trump in the Weekly Standard, run by the Jewish William Kristol, “When You Can't Stand Your Candidate.”  Interestingly this article deals at length with Abrams’ time working as a staffer for Senator Scoop Jackson, along with another Jackson staffer, Jewish Republican wildman Richard Perle.  Jackson is most famous for the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, responsible for getting thousands of Jews out of the old Soviet Union.  According to Wikipedia, it was responsible for allowing about 500,000 Jews to emigrate from the old Soviet bloc to the United States and about one million to Israel.


On February 19, the NYT ran a follow-up article, “Trump, an Outsider Demanding Loyalty, Struggles to Fill Top Posts,” that still praised Abrams and still advocated for more Jews in the Trump administration.  The article quotes Richard Haass, a Jewish Republican who is the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, on how hard it will be for Trump to get people to work in his administration.  He said Trump had “ruled out much of an entire generation of Republican public policy types,” but the article added that Haass’ name had been floated for a position.  The article ends with a plea from Abrams encouraging “everybody to go into the government if offered an appropriate position.”  I take this to be a plea mainly to Jews who might not approve of Trump to join his administration if possible.  

Monday, February 20, 2017

Russians Did Not Nominate Trump

The American establishment, particularly the media, has pushed the idea that Russia was responsible for the election of Donald Trump.  Clearly the Russians hacked the DNC, but whether this had any effect on the election is unclear.  Interestingly, no one has claimed that the hackers falsified any of the emails. They published what they found; they did not make up derogatory emails.  It is les clear whether the Russians were involved in fake news.  The fake news seems to have come from all over, from all types of people all over the world.  

It looks like Trump won the Republican nomination on his own without help from the Russians or any other outside influence.  The Russians did not defeat Jeb Bush or John Kasich, darlings of the establishment.  It’s hard for the Democrats and the establishment to prove that he did not win the general election because of the same things that won him the primary.  

The Russian connection to the hacking has made the Democrats and the establishment hate the Russians.  This is a relatively new animosity, since Obama spent much of his administration trying to make nice with the Russians.  Because of the election, Democrats now think Russia is the world’s boogeyman, and are trying to foment conflict with Russia.  Democrats have become the new warmongers.  

Because the Trump administration has not gone along with the Democrats’ warmongering, the Democrats, the establishment, and the media have tried to portray Trump’s openness to Russia as treasonous.  The intelligence community has supported the establishment by leaking anything connecting Trump to Russia, regardless of classification or Fourth Amendment privacy concerns about wiretapping Americans.  The intelligence community has always had strong links to the establishment, and at the moment it looks like the intelligence types are more loyal to the establishment than to the President.  

When I was in the Foreign Service I wanted to be part of the establishment.  I probably did not make it in part because of my Southern roots.  (And maybe I wasn’t smart and smooth enough.)  At one time Southerners like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Woodrow Wilson were the core of the establishment.  But the establishment has moved north to New York and west to San Francisco.  Hillary, the former first lady of Arkansas, expressed the establishment view when she spoke of the “basket of deplorables,” which probably includes me.     

The establishment wants to blame the Russians for Hillary’s defeat, when in fact it was their contempt for at least half of America that was the real cause.  The Democrats have become a party that hates the great men who created it, that has turned its back on American history in order to appeal to new generations of descendants of slaves and immigrants who have no attachment to the history that made America the leader of the free world for a few decades.  

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Flynn Leaks


I find 2 things strange about the Flynn leaks:
1) The intel guys always worry about “sources and methods.”  The Flynn leaks remind the Russians that we are listening to every one of their calls. They expect it, but Americans were shocked that we listened to all of Angela Merkel’s calls, too.  Is Russia the enemy, or do we just listen to everybody everywhere?
2) Before 9/11 and the Patriot Act there were very tight restrictions on listening to American citizens.  NSA was forbidden, and if they got an American by accident they had to protect it from distribution.  The FBI could tap Americans, but had to get a court order.  The Patriot Act and the FISA court apparently made it easier for both agencies to listen in on Americans.  .  
But any tapping of Flynn as an American should have been subject to high level review and protection.  The leaking exposes intelligence info to the Russians (presumably aiding the enemy) and probably violates Flynn’s 4th Amendment protection from searches and seizures.  If they prosecute Flynn, this evidence may not be admissible in court, like the confessions obtained by torture at Guantanamo.  Spying is a dirty business.  It’s interesting that the media loves the 1st Amendment, but not the 4th.  

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

North Korean Missile Test

The main US news shows - CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. - have been going nuts saying the North Korean missile test was timed to take place during Trump’s dinner with Abe.  Fortunately, I have seen former Ambassador Christopher Hill correctly say on BBC and one other show that the main concern for North Korea was testing the missile and that it was unlikely to have been specifically timed to challenge Trump.  


It sounds like this was a new type missile, probably one using solid fuel rather than liquid, and therefore it was not just a rocket North Korea had lying around to launch whenever it wanted to.  The media has played it up to make Trump look like a stupid wimp who doesn’t know how to respond to North Korea.  They made a big deal about the fact that he discussed the launch during dinner and was reading papers by flashlight.  The other interpretation of this incident is that Trump wasn’t panicked by the launch and didn’t let it interrupt his dinner.  Furthermore he was able to consult with Japanese Prime Minister Aba in real time about it.  Abe was much more affected by the launch than Trump, since Japan is much closer to North Korea.  Trump was able to reassure Abe immediately that the US stood firmly with him.  

The incident could well be interpreted as a show of strength rather than weakness, if the media had been so inclined.  Jonathan Karl was almost livid as he falsely described the huge threat represented by the launch and Trump’s amateurish response.  Karl struck me as a coward who was actually afraid.  He should not be allowed to cover military news.