011 Bernie and No Bank!

 

Some of you may recognize the title as a take on Andrew Jackson’s second presidential campaign slogan Jackson and No Bank! When Andrew Jackson came into office for his first term in 1828, the Second Bank of the United States, under director Nicholas Biddle, was pursuing a re-charter and Jackson, believing the bank was not benefitting enough people, and was not constitutional, vetoed the legislation saying to the banksters of the day:

“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.” —Andrew Jackson, to a delegation of bankers discussing the re-charter of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

Jackson went on to gain a second term running on the platform, Jackson and Reform, and the slogan, Jackson and No Bank! Wiki briefs us:

Biddle made repeated overtures to Jackson and his cabinet to secure a compromise on the bank’s re-chartering (its term due to expire in 1836) without success. Jackson and the anti-bank forces persisted in their condemnation of the Second Bank of the United States (BUS), provoking an early re-charter campaign by pro-bank National Republicans led by Henry Clay. Clay’s political ultimatum to Jackson—with Biddle’s financial and political support—sparked the Bank War and placed the fate of the BUS at center of the 1832 presidential election.

Jackson mobilized his political base by vetoing the re-charter bill and—the veto sustained—Jackson easily won re-election on his anti-bank platform and he proceeded to destroy the bank as a financial and political force by removing its federal deposits. In 1833, federal revenue was diverted into selected private banks by executive order, ending the regulatory role of the Second Bank of the United States.

Jackson’s vice president was Martin Van Buren, Jackson told him on July 8, 1832, “The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.” And when asked in his declining days what his greatest accomplishment as president was Jackson replied, “I killed the bank.”

Bernie Sanders is not to be compared with Jackson in any other area except their revulsion to turning over control of our nation’s money to a handful of greedy, aristocratic men. Jackson’s motivation for opposing the banks was in opposition to plutocracy, but was also tied to agriculture economics which was dependent on slave labor. Jackson owned slaves and was infamously known for brutal extermination of southwest Natives.

Sanders, like Jackson, is opposed to plutocracy, however, unlike Jackson, Sanders has zero tolerance for racism or bigotry of any kind. Sanders wants the nation’s economics to work better for all people and understands the biggest banks and the parasitical Wall Street money changers are literally a threat to the hopes and aspirations of 99 percent of American people. Although he often points out how deregulation of Wall Street led to the housing crash of 2008, he also reminds us how most of the wealth goes to the top one percent while working class people, the ones who actually make things and provide services, suffer ever decreasing standards of living. Sanders advocates for taxpayer funded university education and single-payer health insurance, very similar to most other European and Canadian democracies. It’s true that Sanders has been slow to detail exactly how all that will be paid for, but he allows that much taxpayer money is wasted on a bloated military and misguided military interventions, i.e., Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and on predatory Wall Street speculation.

I’ve listened to Sanders, who has been a on Thom Hartmann’s radio show for about 12 years, Brunch with Bernie, and his message has always been the same, keep factories here, pay decent wages, stop intervening in foreign countries, in regime change, health care as a right, public college education as a right, break up the too big to fail banks and so on. He said, if elected, his litmus test on any Supreme Court nominee would be to overturn the 2010 Citizen’s United vs. FEC which allows corporations and wealthy individuals unlimited spending on campaigns.

Sanders is not modifying his message because it’s suddenly become popular, as Hillary seems to be adopting Sander’s populist message. Seeing the groundswell of support for Bernie, the massive turnouts that the media avoids showing, Clinton has begun pivoting toward Sanders’ views on the Trans Pacific Partnership, another potential mother of all disastrous supra-national trade agreements, on the Keystone Pipeline, even on Citizens United. In fact, Citizens United came about because a conservative lobbying group called Citizens United wanted to air a video critical of Hillary Clinton. The case went before the Supreme Court as a First Amendment rights issue. As a result of the SCOTUS decision, for-profit corporations and individuals are allowed unlimited election spending, meaning special interest groups can use their millions to “invest” in elections, of course, with the expectation of gaining a significant financial return on their investment. Clinton is a neoliberal and brushes close to being a Project for New American Century Neocon, she hawkish, gives talks at Council on Foreign Relations headquarters in Manhattan, attends Bilderberger meetings and swears blind allegiance and continued financial support to Israel at AIPAC events without ever mentioning Israel’s nuclear arsenal or trespass on Palestinian lands. She’s obedient to the financial masters and to Israel just like most all US politicians. This is not to suggest that Sanders is cool on Israel, he’s just not a toady for anyone.

Sander’s campaign relies on millions of individual donors and the average donation so far is just below $30. Sanders describes his campaign as a people’s revolution against corporate special interests, against a rigged financial system, against corrupt campaign contributions, and he cautions listeners that the people will have to believe in themselves, they must unite to lead the political revolution through to significant change—to the radical concept of one-person-one-vote. So, in essence, the 2016 presidential race is Sanders’ and the people’s campaign against corruption and control by banksters vs. all the other candidates who are either funded by billionaires, or in Trump’s case, is a billionaire. It’s Andrew Jackson vs. the bank all over again.

Bernie Sanders has reminded us many times during the debates how Goldman Sachs has paid Hillary Clinton enormous speaking fees, three speeches at $225,000 each for $675,000! Sanders, in doing so, demonstrates to people how big business works. The bank and corporate boardrooms are not paying her substantial sums of money for nothing, they must want something back from her. It’s quid pro quo government as usual.

Obama swept into office promising progressive change, yet the wealth gap has grown wider, more US corporations shutter their doors and move to Mexico, China or some other race-to-the-bottom labor market with nil environmental laws. Trillions of dollars of wealth are sitting in tax free havens in the Caymans, Switzerland and elsewhere. As Sander’s reminds us many times, the reckless, greedy manipulation by Wall Street led to the housing crash, millions of foreclosures, lost jobs and lost savings, and yet not a single Wall Street banker has served prison time, despite the fact Goldman Sachs has paid billions in penalties, i.e., an admission of guilt, fraud, extortion, embezelment?

What Bernie is hinting at is what I and others have been saying outright, the banksters took control of this country in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act, the Creature from Jekyll Island. All but a few politicians are puppets; the biggest banks have substantial investments in media, in oil companies, in the military industrial complex and all these entities see war as the surest way to profit and to establish near invincible geostrategic military control. In their bloody wet dreams these interlocked corporate entities want to project “full spectrum dominance” in order to expand and protect their interests and to protect the hegemony of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, coming under threat daily, with BRICS, Bitcoin, etc. See my book Youtopia: Exploding the Myths and Exposing the Elites Who are Ruining Paradise on Earth for All of Us, for a detailed look at how banks took control and maintain control over most ever facet of society.

With the exception of Trump and Rand Paul, the entire republican throng are corporate-backed candidates. Rand, like his father Ron, washed out quickly as the media treated him as persona non grata because he and daddy threatened the infallibility of the Federal Reserve, daring even to audit the Fed or even “End the Fed,” as the title of Ron Paul’s 2009 book clearly intones. As for Trump, who knows? He’s either a harmless, narcissistic blowhard, not to be taken seriously, or he’s as dangerous as any president we’ve ever had. It’s too early to tell, but the violence at the Trump rallies does not bode well and Trump has to survive a frantic GOP establishment that is transfixed in fear and apprehension of what a Trump ticket will do to the viability of the Grand Obstructionist Party.

The banksters rely on their media to fix the elections so that either finalist of the tightly controlled political duopoly is positioned to do their globalist bidding, continue offshoring and outsourcing in the race to the bottom economics pitting US workers against destitute folks living in brutal dictatorships and making only pennies per day. The successful presidential candidate, as a typical job application might say, must be pro-regime change in resource rich countries, must be pro-corporate welfare, must like corporate subsidies, tax breaks, loopholes, etc., must swear allegiance to Israel first, then the US of A. The successful candidate will not challenge the private Federal Reserve’s self-anointed authority to issue and control the nation’s money. Under those criteria, Hillary Clinton is the perfect candidate. She learned how to tell people what they want to hear from Mark Penn, the CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller while she campaigned for the same job in 2008. Wiki likens Penn to Karl Rove, because, as we all know, a president needs a handler, a puppet master, a hand up their behind moving their lips.

Mark Penn, CEO of PR firm Burson-Marsteller and president of polling company Penn, Schoen & Berland was described as Clinton’s “strategic genius” in a role likened to that which Karl Rove played in George W.Bush’s campaigns.

Burson-Marsteller is infamously known for doing public relations damage control when big corporations or nations cause disasters, Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, Phillip Morris and second-hand smoke, Argentina’s brutal slaughter of dissidents, Indonesia’s mass executions. You could say Burson-Marsteller could make a fine living just following Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney around the globe or the other Economic Hit Men, author John Perkins talks about.

In the democratic race only one, Sanders, is not owned by the banksters; on the republican side, only Trump, the megalomaniac wall-building billionaire and God’s chosen Cruz (his dad says so) have any mathematical chance of moving on, and Cruz only slightly. The candidate pre-ordained by the financial establishment, Jeb Bush, is long gone. Second choice Rubio is about to be washed away by the rising tide of global discontent in his home state Florida. The banksters are in a quandary with only Clinton remaining as their surrogate money manager. Thus they need their compliant media more than ever, but boy are they ever well represented. Review media members in the CFR, for instance, or know that Wolf Blitzer is a member of AIPAC, or Rupert Murdoch is a business partner with Lord Jacob Rothschild in a shale oil venture in the Golan Heights—Syria!

The Rothschild banking dynasty is what forced the Federal Reserve on us in the first place. On MSNBC’s Good Morning Joe, co-host Mikka Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, along with David Rockefeller, was one of the founders of the globalist think tank the Trilateral Commission and is a member of the CFR and Bilderberger Group. Also on MSNBC/NBC is Andrea Mitchell, the wife of former Federal Reserve Chairman, (during the bailout, no less) Alan Greenspan. This only scratches the surface of the financial ties to the media, do your own search of “who owns the media” and it will be clear the financial globalists consider control of the media essential in controlling public opinion, and when you control public opinion you can control the elections, when you control the elections whatever foreign policy you desire is yours, even invading foreign countries to steal their oil, gas and minerals.

The intricate ties between Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are brazen and appalling in their conflicts of interests, but the media doesn’t seem to care for some reason, oh yes, we’ve already covered that. Hillary, the presidential candidate, takes in great gobs of money from Goldman Sachs and Sanders has called on her to release the transcripts of those speeches and she is stalling.

Goldman Sachs literally pays some of their top executives bonuses for quitting Goldman and taking up regulatory positions within the U.S. Government! Add to that, Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi Nelson Cruz is an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. So you see, other than Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidates are mostly bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs and the other big banking/swindling institutions and they are stealing our democracy by buying the presidency once again.

There’s only one way to stop the plutocracy from gaining more power, vote Bernie Sanders and No Bank!