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.  .    

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.  

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.  

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.