Jews and Inequality

As an old white guy, I’m worried about all of those “other” groups that are becoming prominent in the US, mainly blacks, Hispanics and Jews.  For some reason I don’t worry so much about Asians.  They seem to like America and fit better into American life.  Years ago I was concerned about the huge numbers of Vietnamese that came to the US after the Vietnam War, but I think that they have melded pretty well.  Jews could meld into white America even more easily that Asians, but they don’t want to.  They don’t want to assimilate.  Many will always be Jewish-Americans rather than just Americans.  Of course, because they can blend in so easily, there are probably many people of Jewish ancestry who don’t appear to be Jewish.  Both John Kerry and Madeline Albright were “outed” as Jews after they became Secretary of State.  There are probably many more like them.  But I must admit that I wonder if it really came as a surprise to them; I think they must have known something about their ancestry. 

I worry about the Jews because they appear to be behind the huge and growing income inequality in the US.  They have lots of help, of course, but they are in the center of the action because they dominate Wall Street and the American financial community.  Every chair of the Fed, including Janet Yellen, has been Jewish for over a generation, as well as most Secretaries of the Treasury, including Jack Lew, the current Secretary.  In a recent interview, Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan Chase joked that most people think he is Jewish, when in fact he is Greek.  However, Dimon got where is by attaching himself to a wealthy Jew, Sandy Weill of Citibank and American Express, and Dimon’s wife is Jewish.  Weill and Dimon led the charge to repeal the Glass-Steagall limit on bank investment activities, which led to the greatest financial catastrophe in the US since the Great Depression.  Bill Clinton was the President who helped them repeal Glass-Steagall.  One of Clinton’s last acts as President was to pardon the Jewish financier Mark Rich.  It was as if he performed a fraternity initiation to prove his loyalty to the Jewish financial community so that they would support him and his Clinton Foundation after he left the White House, and they did.  Many of Hillary’s most generous campaign contributors are Jewish.  Chelsea’s husband is Jewish, and her Jewish father-in-law, a corrupt politician, is a convicted felon. 

Watching the movie, “The Woman in Gold,” and reading many articles in the New York Times about priceless paintings owned by Jews in Germany that were taken by the Nazis, I began to wonder how German and Austrian Jews became so fantastically rich in the 1920s and 30s.  In “Woman in Gold” the father owned a Stradivarius cello, and paintings by old masters, as well as the priceless painting that is the title of the movie.  Meanwhile, ordinary Austrians were having difficulty paying for food and other necessities.  This is the extreme inequality that Jews appear to have brought to the United States from Europe.  The callous disregard that Jews had for the Germans and Austrians living around them must have bred some of the animosity that Hitler played on when he rose to power.  You certainly don’t hear about this when Jews talk about the Holocaust.  They say Jews were the most perfect people in the world and there was no basis for any animosity against them.  Jews appear to believe that they are a superior race and that it is perfectly normal for other races – Germans, Austrians, and now Americans – to be subordinate to them.  I believe that Jewish contempt for other races was a factor leading up to the Holocaust.  Of course, it does not justify the Holocaust, but it does help explain why ordinary people were not more outraged about it.  Some ordinary Germans must have seen Jews as oppressors, rich men who would not loan much needed money to ordinary citizens, oppressors who ran businesses that paid low wages, landlords who charged exorbitant rents, etc.  Jewish financiers profited from World War I, and continued to profit from the onerous peace terms that were imposed on Germany when the war ended.  I realize that these sound like typically anti-Semitic comments, and they do track with those kinds of comments on the web, e.g., “The Reasons Historians call WWII a ‘Jewish Creation’” on Rense.com.  However, the US has certainly changed in the last twenty or thirty years.  Part of that is just the march of history, technological change, new generations with new interests and concerns, but it might also be partly due to the massive influx of Jewish refugees before and after WWII, who are now coming into their own politically and financially. 

First Presidential Debate

The general consensus is that Hillary won the first debate.  She did look better than Donald, who looked a little haggard.  On the substance, Hillary is supposed to be much better on policy, but I didn’t hear much real policy from her.  Mainly I remember her saying to look at her website.  She spent a lot of time down in the gutter with Donald, attacking him on paying income tax, on not paying his contractors, on declaring bankruptcy, etc.  She would tax the wealthy more than he would, but in reality, no major tax revisions are going to make it through Congress without being extensively rewritten by lobbyists; so, it doesn’t make much difference what they espouse personally.  She tried to scare the world into thinking that Donald will launch a nuclear attack against Russia, start World War III, and destroy the world.  Donald is more unpredictable, but I don’t think he would do it.  For a change it might be good for the rest of the world to worry about the US and tiptoe around us, instead of us worrying about the rest of the world.  But the world would be a slightly more dangerous place.  On the other hand, I worry that Hillary would drag us deeper in the Syrian war and the Middle East mess, possibly getting us into another unwinnable war, like Iraq and Afghanistan – throwing American lives and money down the drain.  Hillary did not make the world a safer place while she was Secretary of State, but she didn’t start World War III either.  She did what she had to do, went where she had to go, but with no particular vision or leadership.  So, I would say the debate came down to a choice between a somewhat polished, tried and true “same-old, same-old”, or a rougher outsider espousing change.  Faced with that choice, I am currently inclined to go with change, although it’s risky. 

People are right, that America is great now, and we don’t have to make it great again.  But we could make it better.  I think that’s the problem for Hillary.  She can keep America about as great as it is, but she has no plan to make it better.  Trump would shake things up; they might get better, they might get worse.  If you like the status quo, you’re for Hillary; if you’re not so happy with the status quo, Trump might be worth the risk.  After the debate, Hillary is still the candidate of the status quo and Trump is still the candidate of change.  Bernie Sanders was also a candidate of change, who showed that the Democratic Party is not uniformly happy with the status quo or with Hillary. 

It’s ironic that change is so important after eight years of Obama, who ran as the candidate of change.  I’m happy that Obama did not do anything radical, but that has made him more unpopular with his base.  It’s strange that our first black President should be leaving while race riots led by blacks are brewing in several major cities.  Hillary’s approach is to appease those protesting, while Trump’s is to impose stronger law and order.  Hillary’s approach is problematic because she would need the cooperation of Congress, which would be very difficult, as with tax policy, but Donald could do much more to strengthen law and order by executive fiat. 

The debate did not resolve any of these issues for me. Hillary was definitely more polished and more prepared, but Donald was together enough that I didn’t think he would start World War III.  The beat goes on.

Hillary in Arkansas

I don’t think Hillary Clinton and Arkansans liked each other very much when she was first lady of Arkansas, and now that’s probably more true since she has found her true soulmates in New York, where she became their senator.   This article in the Atlantic illustrates the lack of love between her and many Arkansans.  It says:

 “People don’t really think of her as being from here. Not anymore.”

A generation after she left Arkansas, Arkansas seems to have left Clinton. No knock against the state’s former first lady: Time marches on and so has she.

If anything, the article understates her alienation because the author talked to some of her friends, who would clearly remember her more favorably than the average man in the street.  One of the interviewees who remembers her favorably is Ron Lanoue.  The article says:

Ron Lanoue is a Jew from Rhode Island who moved to Arkansas in 1972 and remembers being told, “You can stay here as long as you like, but you’ll never be considered a native of Arkansas.” He later became state chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and a supporter of both Clintons. “People like her and me,” he said with an emphatic pause, “outsiders.” 

It’s interesting that one of her supporters in Arkansas was Jewish, because she is clearly the candidate of the liberal Jewish community.  Her comments about Trump’s supporters being “deplorables” was made at a fundraiser hosted by Barbara Streisand, who is Jewish. 

Hillary is clearly better connected and more compatible with New York and Hollywood Jews than with rednecks in Arkansas or any other Southern state.  Real Clear Politics reports that a June 2016 poll in Arkansas found that 47% supported Trump and 36% supported Clinton.  Not a great showing for Arkansas’ former first lady! 

Electoral Problems

Everybody complains about how terrible our two candidates for President are – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  A big part of the problem lies with the leadership of the two parties – the Democrats and the Republicans.  Their methods for selecting their candidates are obviously flawed; just look at how they worked for this election.  Another big problem is the news media, particularly cable TV.  The cable networks loved the primary debates, especially the Republican debates, because Donald Trump drew such good ratings.  To some extent, the cable networks’ greed destroyed the American political system. 

The media’s destruction of the electoral system started much earlier.  Their insatiable appetite for salacious information about the candidates has prevented decent people from running for President, and to a lesser extent for any elective office.  No matter how good people are, there is almost always something that they would like to keep private.  Even if they are close to perfect, the media will find fault with them – for how they dress, how they speak, how they raise their children.  All of this without ever getting into the important issues of how they would run the government.  The result is that decent people will not run, because they don’t want to subject themselves to such abuse.  So, we end up with people who have no shame, like Hillary and Donald. 

In addition, there is the huge addition problem of money.  Huge amounts of money have become essential to campaigning.  Even Obama, who is a pretty decent guy, completely abandoned his principles when it came to money.  He declined the government funding for his campaign as a pittance and raised huge amounts of cash that he could bathe in, buy anything, do anything.  He became a Washington whore. 

Interestingly, so far money seems to be a more corrupting influence on Hillary than on Trump, since Trump is running a smaller, less expensive campaign that all the pundits say can’t rival Hillary’s huge ad buys.  But money is a pox on both of their houses.  And the Supreme Court relishes every disgusting minute of it. 

Compare out electoral system to Britain’s.  The UK changed prime ministers in a few weeks, and Teresa May hit the ground running.  It makes American “democracy” look terrible, ineffective, and corrupt. 

Meanwhile the Congress is nonfunctioning.  It can’t do anything useful, and threatens to shut down the government annually.  Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Paul Ryan are failures as leaders.  They have failed their country.  They are incompetent, greedy fools, produced by our dysfunctional electoral system.  

Hillary's Jewish Fundraising

Today’s New York Times article on Hillary Clinton’s fund raising among the ultrarich raises questions for me about her ties to Jews.  Almost every name mentioned in the article, except for the entertainers, is Jewish.  They included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein to start.  It then quoted “prominent New York Democrat” Jay Jacobs.  “A Democratic donor in Florida,” Mitchell Berger, said fund raising for Hillary was “like going to a wedding or a bar mitzvah.”  The entry price for Haim Saban’s fundraiser was $100,000, the same price as Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s fundraising dinner.  The article says the Clinton’s stayed in Steven Spielberg’s Hampton guesthouse.  One name near the end that I wasn’t sure was Jewish was Ken Sunshine, but his Wikipedia entrystarts out, “Sunshine grew up in a Jewish family on Long Island.”  

Just as Bill Clinton was known as the first black President, despite being white, Hillary may be known as the first Jewish President, despite being gentile.  Then, just as Bill opened the way for Barak Obama to become President a few years later, Hillary may open the way for a real Jew to become President in a few years.  In any case it’s clear that her administration will be full of Jewish cabinet members and senior appointees.  John Kerry might be able to stay on at State, since he is half Jewish, as well as Jack Lew at Treasury, and maybe a few more.