LaRouche Slams Justice Department,
Warns of Financial Crisis,
in First Presidential Debate
by Mel Klenetsky
The following report appeared in the the Oct. 9, 1995 New Federalist weekly newspaper. Mel Klenetsky is Mr. LaRouche's campaign manager.
Oct. 2, 1995 (EIRNS)--In the first presidential debate of the 1995-96 campaign season, Democratic pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche squared off against Republican Tom Shellenberg, a "deficit hawk" from Boulder, Colo., and Natural Law Party candidate John Hagelin. Paul Agidius, the Mayor of Moscow, Idaho, the host city, moderated the debate, which was held at the University of Idaho campus.
In his opening remarks, LaRouche quickly captured the attention of the audience by identifying the overall impending global financial crash as the key issue which leaders from around the world will have to address, long before the 1996 presidential elections. (continued below)
Tom Shellenberg, Republican Party.
The second issue LaRouche discussed made a particularly powerful impact on this small audience of city officials, students, and citizens, almost all of whom stayed for the entire three-hour debate.
LaRouche spoke of a lack of strong leadership and responsiveness in Washington, an issue popular in the hinterlands. He did so not from the usual explanations of simple corruption, but from the standpoint of the intimidation of elected leaders, an intimidation coming from certain polluted elements in the permanent federal bureaucracy; LaRouche targetted in particular the Justice Department.
"The problem is not corruption," LaRouche said. "That is not the issue. The problem is with the civil service bureaucracy; for example, the Department of Justice death squads in the criminal division of the DOJ--people like Mark Richard and Jack Keeney. They are the ones who ran the Waco incident, and frameup of political leaders. So when our elected officials go to Washington, D.C., they are terrified. We have leadership that understands much of this, but they are frightened."
Moscow, Idaho is not far from Ruby Ridge, where in 1992 the assault by federal authorities at the Randy Weaver farm left Weaver's unarmed wife and son dead. For this neck of the woods, therefore, the identification of the role of Keeney and Richard and the permanent bureaucracy was especially disturbing.
LaRouche stressed that the Ruby Ridge case was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of corruption and malfeasance on the part of a politically corrupt permanent bureaucracy, located within the Department of Justice.
He identified several crucial examples of this pattern, including how the Richard-Keeney crowd participated in the political targetting of African-American elected officials, a policy that was known in the FBI as Operation Frühmenschen; the persecution evident in the Demjanjuk and Waldheim cases; and his own situation, where he was the target of a massive frameup carried out by this same corrupt element in the DOJ.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has described the LaRouche case as the most blatant example of extended judicial abuse and political targetting that he has ever seen in his lengthy career.
LaRouche said that he fears that this nation will not survive, unless "the political death squad" in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, the gang that frames politicians who scare the Establishment, is cleaned out.
In early September, an independent tribunal meeting near Washington, D.C. and headed by former South Carolina Congressman Jim Mann, a former member of the House Judiciary Committee, went beyond the Senate and Congressional hearings on Waco and Weaver, and reached conclusions similar to LaRouche's, after reviewing his case, along with the cases of harassment of African-American elected officials, and the Waldheim and Demjanjuk cases.
First Debate
Moscow, Idaho, is one of 18 cities participating in the national urban straw poll scheduled for Nov. 7. In this new experiment, sponsored by CityVote, a nonpartisan, privately funded group, citizens from Boston, Newark, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tucson, Pasadena, Fayette, Moscow, and 10 other cities will go to their normal polling sites this coming Nov. 7, some 100-plus days before the Iowa caucus and the New Hamphshire primary, and vote for a presidential candidate (not by party) amongst 21 candidates. In hosting the LaRouche-Hagelin-Shellenberg debate, Moscow not only hosted its first presidential debate ever, but became the first of the 18 CityVote cities to hold a debate.Tom Shellenberg, a CPA and author of a book called "Balance The Budget Now and How: The Silver Lining," indicated in his opening statements (and throughout his remarks) that his overwhelming concern is to balance the budget through massive cuts in government spending.
Natural Law Party candidate John Hagelin advocated a return to what he called "natural law" as the solution to the world's problems. However, Hagelin's definition of natural law bore no resemblance whatever to the concept as traditionally defined by the Western philosophical-theological tradition. What Hagelin, an advocate of the kooky Transcendental Meditation cult, meant by "natural law," he said, is the use of "natural" foods and "natural" medicine, and a whole laundry list of related New Age nostrums.
For example, Hagelin claimed that "anxiety reduction counseling" has been an effective means of reducing crime and recommended this as his crime policy.
Financial Crisis
In contrast to these two, LaRouche laid out a detailed plan for dealing with the impending global financial blowout.LaRouche said that the nation and the world are faced with the onset of the worst financial crisis of the 20th century, driven by a speculative bubble that has been built up over the past two decades through such means as derivatives. "The system is bankrupt," LaRouche said, "and what governments do or don't do about this is the most important issue facing the world today."
LaRouche compared the current mess to the 1960s, when 80% of U.S. foreign-currency transactions were connected to trade in real goods and services. Today, LaRouche said, only 0.5% of such transactions are so connected.
As a result of this shift, LaRouche warned, "Bank deposits will be wiped out, jobs will be wiped out--this and more will face us unless the existing financial system is put through orderly bankruptcy reorganization." The government, he said, is the only agency that exists that can protect the population in this crisis.
LaRouche outlined the need to create a national banking system to replace the bankrupt one. "We will rebuild the economy with this program better than that carried out by Franklin Roosevelt. The government must have the courage at the top, and support from the Congress and the people. This crisis and these policies must be discussed and understood, or there will not be the support required to make the policies work. We must create an effective federal government to take leadership in this crisis."
LaRouche explained that the national bank would work by receiving the deposits of U.S. currency notes that would be issued after an appropriate bill specifying this policy was passed by the Congress. "Loans at 1% to 2%, for approved projects, would be issued, something like war bonds, to states, localities, and local banks. We would in this way get projects going which would create six million new jobs in the productive sector."
In response to questions of balancing the budget, Shellenberg and Hagelin called for cuts, whereas LaRouche laid out an entirely different tack. LaRouche called for employing what is today idle labor to increase the physical market basket of consumption, which has collapsed since the 1967-70 period. "Production and income in physical terms," LaRouche said, "is one-half that of 25 years ago. As a result, our tax revenue base has collapsed. Cutting the budget is no solution."
A Renaissance Strategy
Asked to elaborate on his policies toward the U.S. education system, LaRouche emphasized that the purpose of education is not merely to create a labor force that produces, but to educate our children for citizenship. LaRouche called for a broad cultural Renaissance strategy that would revive the principles of Classical education for the purpose of creating geniuses who are educated to be true citizens.LaRouche attacked the budget cutters, exemplified by Newt Gingrich and his band of Conservative Revolutionists, for destroying what remains of the U.S. educational system. "The problem we have today is that these areas are not 'cost effective'; thus they are dropped when the budget is tight. The enemy of education is Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America," LaRouche charged. "Their policy will return 95% of the population to uneducated serfdom. This is dangerous."
LaRouche emphasized that restoring Classical education, health care, and science are essential ingredients of representative government.
The Moscow debate was the first in the series of debates which CityVote and the participating cities have scheduled. The CityVote straw poll has come under fire from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), while the Republican Party is also sabotaging the effort through failure to participate.
Last week, Donald Fowler, chairman of the DNC, wrote letters to all of the cities participating in the CityVote straw poll, asking them to change the rules so that Clinton's name could be deleted from the poll.
CityVote Charges DNC Pressure
According to Carol Simon, CityVote spokeswoman, this was a direct and intense effort by Donald Fowler to undo the entire CityVote straw poll. The net effect of this was disastrous for Fowler and the DNC. All 18 cities fought back against the DNC pressure, and decided to maintain the 21-candidate ballot as it was proposed by CityVote.This week, the second scheduled forum, sponsored by the PBS affiliate in Minnesota, KTCA, was cancelled, four days before it was to have taken place. The KTCA forum was to be nationally televised over PBS. Producer Bob Hanley said that the 12 PBS affiliates that lined up to play the debate along with KTCA were expecting the so-called major candidates. Since Dole, Gramm, Clinton et al. had not signed on to the debate, Hanley said he could not go forward with the event.
Six candidates, however, had committed to the debate. In addition to LaRouche, these included Jesse Jackson (Independent), Alan Keyes (Republican), Charles Collins (Republican), John Hagelin (Natural Law Party), and Harry Browne (Libertarian Party). Just two weeks ago, Republican candidate Sen. Richard Lugar had also signed on to the debate. Last week, however, he withdrew, thereby lining up with the other so-called major candidates of the Republican Party and effectively cancelling the debate, by their lack of interest. As of this moment, the remaining televised PBS forums, in Spokane on Oct. 22, and in Pasadena on Oct. 29, are scheduled to go forward.
