The Sandlers and the Arnalls: The subprime meltdown funds Jewish political activism

By now everyone’s seen the Saturday Night Live skit on the financial corruption that threatens to bring down the world’s economy. Of course, it depends on which version you’ve seen. NBC originally pulled the skit from its website after the complaints rolled in, but then restored it after some strategic editing so as not to offend the left. The version on the NBC website deletes any mention of the role of the Democrats in the financial meltdown (including a section where the Sandlers thank Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi for not regulating the subprime mess in 2004). The caption “People who should be shot” beneath the  names of Herbert and Marion Sandler was also removed. Here’s the original.

But what’s really amazing about the skit is what is left in: The only people named in the pyramid of corruption are Jews — Herbert and Marion Sandler, and George Soros. And they are at the top of the heap.

As usual, this fact was lost on the mainstream media. Like respectable people everywhere, the brain of the mainstream media reflexively blocks out the Jewish identity of Jews who do bad things. Perhaps this is what NBC was counting on when it reposted the edited version.

But the Jewish press, with its antennae always sensitive to these issues, picked up on this obvious fact. In an article that doubtless reflected the anxieties of many Jews, the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle described the skit as follows:

On the bottom are poor and minority homeowners victimized by predatory lending. Next come condo-flipping yuppies out for a quick buck. They’re followed by rapacious bankers who cashed out before the economy crumbled. And on top are billionaire financiers who pocketed the government bailout and quickly moved it offshore.

In the SNL imagination, the top two categories seemingly are populated by Jews.

Seemingly?

Our favorite parts of the skit: The caption under Soros’s name is “Multi-Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager; Owner, Democratic Party. At the end of the skit the Soros character says to the yuppie man, “Your wife is physically attractive. Sell her to me please.” To which the yuppie says “sure” and his wife says “yes” with a big seductive smile.

As Mel Brooks would say, it’s good to be king. The ultimate victory of the Jews over the WASPs.

And part of that ultimate victory is that there is huge Jewish money funding the Democratic party and other leftist causes. The Sandlers did indeed aggressively sell subprime adjustable rate mortgages to poorly qualified people but then managed to sell out at the top of the credit bubble to Wachovia Bank which then basically went under.

The  Sandlers walked off with $2.4 billion. What is interesting to us is that they are using their fortune to advance causes that they support because of their Jewish identity. And  those causes are decidedly on the left.

As noted in a previous column, Jewish financial support of the left makes no sense except in terms of Jewish identity politics. Fundamentally, Jewish identity politics is based on hostility to the white Christian majority of the  United States. This hostility spans the Jewish political spectrum, from the far left to the neoconservative right.

The top contributors for the left are, besides Soros and the Sandlers, insurance magnate Peter Lewis and Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing. Together they contributed $78 million to leftist causes during the 2004 election cycle alone, creating a “shadow Democratic Party” via so-called 527 groups designed to conform to the McCain-Feingold campaign financing law. The main recipients are organizations like MoveOn.org, ACORN, the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, and American Coming  Together.

What these top four contributors have in common is a Jewish background. It’s interesting also that the person contributing the sixth most to the 527 groups in the 2004 election cycle  is Dawn Arnall, wife of Roland Arnall, the former head of Ameriquest, the largest subprime mortgage company. Arnall “was chiefly known as a pioneer of lending to high-risk, or subprime, borrowers. Using databases to identify customers and set loan terms, he partnered with Wall Street firms that provided funding and bundled his loans into mortgage-backed bonds — the business whose recent meltdown has shaken the global financial system.”

Arnall’s appointment as Ambassador to the Netherlands was held up until Ameriquest paid a fine of $325 million to settle lawsuits over predatory lending. Here’s a video of a victim who received a check for $212.00 (!) as part of the settlement.

Like the top four contributors, Arnall was also Jewish and a billionaire. But there is a difference: The $5,000,000 Arnall donation was to a 527 group, Progress for America, set up to be the Republican counterpart of the shadow Democratic Party.

Roland Arnall was a neocon whose main motivation for contributing to Republicans was because of the Bush  administration’s support for Israel. Indeed, one might say that he was a typical neocon — liberal on domestic policies but a hardliner on Israel. He started out contributing mainly to Democrats and was widely considered to be the main force behind California governor Gray Davis.

But he switched to the Republicans; he and his wife contributed over $12,000,000 to Republican candidates since 2004. Until his death in March, 2008, he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, basically a roster of neocon luminaries, whose stated mission is to stamp out “militant Islamism and the terrorism it is spawning.”

As is typical of neocons, Arnall had a very strong Jewish identity. Leftist Jews like the Sandlers seem focused mainly on transforming America into a multicultural utopia according to the traditional views of the Jewish left. Arnall, on the other hand, was mainly motivated by his attachment to Israel. He was a Holocaust survivor and a founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. His will specified a  bequest of $18,000,000 to the Chabad Lubavitch, a fundamentalist Jewish group.

Despite Arnall’s involvement in predatory lending and his contribution to the current financial crisis, he is fondly remembered by Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his involvement in Jewish activism: “He played a leadership role in the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance since its inception in 1977 and served as co-chair of its board until he resigned to become U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.”

There are at least two lessons in all of this. One is that crime does pay. Jews like the Sandlers and the Arnalls whose actions contributed to the current crisis made huge fortunes. Their money is now being used to further specifically Jewish political agendas even as taxpayers are being asked to funnel huge sums of money to banks and other financial institutions in order to attempt to avert a depression caused in part by their actions. Indeed, it is something of an enormity that the candidate favored by the Sandlers and the Wall Street left has benefited enormously from the ongoing financial disaster.

Secondly, the Sandlers and the Arnalls are a microcosm of Jewish political activism. The beneficiaries of their largess define the boundaries of acceptable politics in the US — from the far left to the neoconservative, pro-Israel, pro-immigration right. There is simply no appreciable amount of money beyond this political spectrum.

The losers in all of this are the traditional people and culture of the US. We sense that there is a rising anger in this group. But unless there is money and political organization to fund their interests, there will be no fundamental change. Certainly this election offers no hope in that direction.