LaRouche on Washington Radio: D.C.
General Hospital Fight Is Winnable
On June 11, 2001, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., a Democratic Presidential pre-candidate for 2004, was interviewed on WOL Radio in Washington, D.C. Here is the transcript.
WOL: Mr. LaRouche, you have been involved in many of the movements or concerns about D.C. General Hospital. Why is D.C. General Hospital important to you?
LaRouche: Well, it's important to all of us, if people understood what is important. First of all, we have a shutdown of the medical system of the United States, at an accelerating rate. It's being essentially ripped off, as part of being shut down.
Now, the importance of Washington, D.C., is that it's the nation's capital, number one. Look, the D.C. General Hospital is the only full-service, public general hospital in Washington, D.C. It serves—what?—in the order of magnitude of 200,000 people a year. If you shut down the hospital, you do two things: You immediately take a whole group of people, especially in Southeast Washington, and you're going to drive them out—because you're going to threaten them with death. There's no medical care for them. And this program which has been proposed, of course, is assinine, because this business about sitting in a cellar someplace, and qualifying to meet somebody else who you meet, then qualifies you again, to get immediate medical treatment—that is not exactly an honest deal.
So, the death rate will be increased by this. We have a growing worldwide disease problem. People talk about these special teams to deal with emergencies, like the FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That will not work. The emergency agency depends upon the medical institutions which function to mobilize those resources for dealing with a medical emergency. Well, D.C. General Hospital happens to be the major emergency defense capability against disease in the Washington, D.C. area.
WOL: Mr. LaRouche, let me take a break. We'll be right back here. We're talking about D.C. General with Lyndon LaRouche....
We're talking to Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche on board. We're talking about D.C. General Hospital. His organization has been working with many other community organizations, to do something about D.C. General. And Mr. LaRouche, I understand you're in Europe right now. I don't know if you know, because I haven't heard yet, I know there was a hearing in court on Friday [June 8], and I don't know how that ended up. Have you heard any news about that?
LaRouche: All I know is the decision was delayed by the judge. I don't know when we're going to hear from him on that.
WOL: Okay. Because that is a very important decision.
You have dealt with the overall scheme of things, that is, the world stage, the national stage. Put what's happening at D.C. General within the context of the national stage, or maybe even the world stage, if necessary. Is there a trend shifting toward this total neglect of the poor and the needy?
LaRouche: Worse than that. You look at the situation in Africa, where you've got genocide, which, even under Clinton, who was not pro-genocide by any means, but there were other forces in the background there, in his administration. I know he made some attempt to change things in Africa, but he didn't succeed. And the State Department continued to work with British forces, and the genocide in Africa is beyond belief—people just can not believe it. People in the United States I talk to, they just can not understand what is happening, and how it's happening.
So, these kinds of things are, in this case, the D.C. General case, of world importance, because you can see how it's working. You take the case—George Bush, of course, has made himself mud in about 100 days of being President. You've had a revolt in the Republican Party. You have the Democrats are back in, with a fragile control of the Senate. It may get stronger. The energy crisis is blowing up. The health care crisis is blowing up. Politicians, since we started this fight on energy and D.C. General, which is back, actually, in November of last year, shortly after the Nov. 7 elections, where, in the course of a webcast I did, the question came up, and I said, "We have to pick this as the fight, as a national, international fight." It is that.
It's important in itself, but sometimes the way you work, is, you take an issue which is extremely important in itself, knowing that if you can win that issue, you can turn the corner on the same problem around the nation, on the health-care question.
WOL: Let's take another break. Lyndon LaRouche is here....
Lyndon LaRouche is my guest. We're talking about D.C. General, a few more moments. Your organization as well, has been outspoken with regard to the role you believe the Washington Post, and Katharine Graham, play in all of this. Can you expound upon that?
LaRouche: Oh, sure. The power in the United States, when the people allow themselves to be treated like human cattle, which is what people have tended to do—about 80% of the American population has descended to the point of "going along to get along" with conditions that exist, not really challenging power, but bargaining for favors like, as I've said, at the back door of the master's house. And, in that state of affairs, a group of very wealthy financial interests, which have allied themselves once again with the Southern Confederacy tradition, typified by Trent Lott and other things like that, have moved in to grab—over the last 35 years, beginning with Nixon's campaign back in '66-'68—have moved in to grab power. And the people have been stripped, whether through economic changes in policies and so forth, they've been stripped of a sense of power. And they're sitting back bargaining for power, while these guys—and Katharine Meyer Graham is typical of that; she is a part of the Lazard Frères interest. It's one of the key interests in the United States....
You saw the same thing happen with Big MAC, with Lazard Frères in the middle of it, in New York City, in the 1970s. The same thing is being done in Washington, D.C. The whole operation in Washington, D.C., which involves the targetting of D.C. General, is organized around Katharine Graham, who is the actual head of the organization, and runs a propaganda organization, which essentially controls a good deal of the politics in Washington, including Congressional politics, where she has a lot of influence.
WOL: So, this is a very significant role. What is it that will turn this around? I mean, people have been demonstrating, people have been doing things, Lyndon LaRouche, but what's the bottom line? What's it going to take to turn this back around, and perhaps even save D.C. General?
LaRouche: Well, there are people in the United States, people with some power, in the Democratic Party, and also in the Republican Party, who realize that this Bush Administration is dangerous. It's not merely dangerous because it has bad policies. We can lose our—we can lose our republic with this kind of policy he represents. And what has happened, at the same time I was pushing at this, some people agreed with me, who were powerful people in the Democratic Party, and others, who said, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop this Bush avalanche now, before it goes out of control. People in Europe say the same thing: "You've got to stop this Bush. What's wrong with you, United States, to have that kind of Presidency running loose?"
WOL: Right.
LaRouche: So, what's happened is, our fight for D.C. General, by my intention in the first place—I conceived of the fight on the basis it was winnable, if you intersected this with the issue of the energy crisis, which was going to explode once Bush was in, and combined that together with the fact that there's a revolt building up among Democrats, and others, like the case of [Arizona Republican Sen. John] McCain, who's playing a different kind of role. They're revolting against this, which means you have the opening where people are going to say, we have to go back to the people. They all know, at the top, despite the propaganda from the big press, that this present world financial system is now coming down.
Nothing can save it. Greenspin is over, he's finished. It's just a matter of when.
So, at this point, people who are concerned, realize we have to go back in the direction of Franklin Roosevelt's policies on the economy, which means, back to the idea of the general welfare. Under those conditions, if we could convince the voters, that we mean business, that we're actually going to restore the principle of the general welfare for all the population, we can get the political force needed to turn this around.
So, the D.C. General Hospital is not a thing in itself; it has the merit of being a thing in itself, but it's only winnable, because the forces in motion—which have to be kicked a little bit now and then—these forces in motion are capable of turning the situation around.
WOL: All right. Lyndon LaRouche has been our guest. Mr. LaRouche, we thank you, and we look forward to talking to you again soon, sometime, okay?
