June 5, 2015 – LaRouchePAC Friday Webcast

MATTHEW OGDEN: Good evening, it’s June 5th, 2015. My name is Matthew Ogden, and I would like to welcome you to our Friday evening broadcast here from larouchepac.com. I’m joined here in the studio today by Jeffrey Steinberg, from Executive Intelligence Review, and Jason Ross from the LaRouche PAC Basement team, and the three of us just literally came from a meeting with Mr. LaRouche and Mrs. LaRouche where we discussed the content of tonight’s broadcast. We’re meeting here tonight on a very auspicious occasion. We are on the verge tomorrow of the next in a series of major conferences being held in New York City, as part of the so-called Manhattan project. This conference is going to be broadcast live, on the LaRouche PAC website; we’ll have live coverage which you’re invited to tune in for tomorrow afternoon.

And this is just one more in a series of live broadcasts that we’ve had literally every single day on the LaRouche PAC website this week, starting with the Policy Committee show on Monday, the live press conference that was broadcast from Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the New Paradigm show that was broadcast regularly on Wednesday; the activists’ call that Mr. LaRouche held, the third in the so-called “Fireside Chats,” that was broadcast last night, Thursday; the broadcast that you’re watching right here, Friday, and this conference in New York coming up on Saturday, tomorrow.

And as I said, this has been an extraordinary week, really a dramatic escalation on all fronts. What we began this week with, was the announcement last Saturday, by Martin O’Malley of his official campaign for the United States Presidency, which he announced from Baltimore, Maryland and which has gained him the notoriety of being named “Public Enemy #1” by Wall Street. And I know this will be the subject of our institutional question which we’ll get to very shortly.

But this announcement by O’Malley was coupled with the press conference which was held on Tuesday which I just mentioned by Sen. Rand Paul. Sen. Rand Paul introduced his Senate bill, the equivalent of what has been introduced already by Walter Jones [nc], Stephen Lynch [ma], and Thomas Massie [ky] in the United States House of Representatives, to force the declassification of the 28 pages of the 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry report. This has been covered widely; I know Jeff will probably elaborate more on this. Rand Paul was joined by former Sen. Bob Graham, three members of the House of Representatives, as well as leading members of the 9/11 families. And this has been a very significant escalation in the campaign to force President Obama to declassify these 28 pages.

And then, what we’ve had with the third in this series of Fireside Chats with Mr. LaRouche, which has engaged an increasing number of LaRouche PAC activists across the United States, with a very intensive dialogue that happened last night. And like I said, this was the first time that we live-broadcast this discussion on the LaRouche PAC website. [https://youtu.be/8JVkEXy1cYM, or https://soundcloud.com/larouche-pac/lyndon-larouche-on-the-lpac- activist-call-june-4-2015] It’s now available there in archive; it’s at the very top of our website today, and it’s available for you to go back and listen to, if you haven’t already. And this involved people from every corner of the United States, the East Coast, the West Coast, everywhere in between. And this is a very important escalation on the part of Mr. LaRouche personally, intervening to shape the institution of the United States Presidency.

Now, I’d like to transition directly into the remarks that Jeff Steinberg will make, which then will be followed by a further elaboration of certain aspects by Jason Ross. But what I’d like to do, at this point, is read the institutional question that has come in this week, which we discussed with Mr. LaRouche earlier today, and it’s on the subject of Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley. It reads as follows:

“Mr. LaRouche, last week Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino reported from Wall Street sources that Goldman Sachs and other big Wall Street banks view Martin O’Malley as their ‘Public Enemy #1, persona non grata.’ In your view, what are the qualities of Democratic Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley? And what impact will his candidacy have on Wall Street? Thank you.”

So, Jeff, why don’t you come to the podium?

JEFFREY STEINBERG: Well, as Matt indicated, just a few moments ago, we had an extensive discussion with Lyndon and Helga LaRouche on this subject and on a number of other things that you’ll be hearing about, later in this broadcast. So I’ve got some direct quotes from Mr. LaRouche, which I want to share with you, and then I’ll elaborate on some of the further points of that discussion that are relevant to this institutional question. What Mr. LaRouche said is, “O’Malley is doing the right thing. Right now he’s the only qualified candidate. The issue is that we must assemble a team around him. This is the Presidential system; we need a group of qualified minds, working in coordination. We need to assemble a group of faces to do the right thing, and O’Malley is going in that direction. Hillary can’t make it.

“One of the immediate priorities is to get rid of Obama. If Obama remains in control, under British direction, we may be facing thermonuclear war this summer. Obama must be thrown out. That means O’Malley is in, not formally as the replacement President, but as the emerging figure around which a new Presidency can be immediately assembled.

“The action this week by Rand Paul has contributed to pulling down Obama. The Senate initiative on the 28 pages was a crucial flanking operation, and is one of the things that further pull down Obama this week.”

Now, the opening that has been provided by the fact that we now have bills in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, demanding the immediate declassification of the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, means that this is now a serious legislative proposition. You have House Resolution 14, H.Res.14, and you have now Senate bill S.1471; those two bills in combination, put onto President Obama’s desk, forces the issue of the Saudi and Anglo-Saudi forces that combined to carry out the 9/11 attacks.

This must become part of the public record, public recognition of what this world is really all about, and what must be done to alter the course of international affairs and change radically, the policies that have been pursued by the last two Presidential administrations. The fact that both President Bush and President Obama chose willfully to conceal the hand of the Saudis, and the British behind them, in the 9/11 attacks is one of the most significant factors that has driven the United States in the wrong direction on virtually every major policy over the last 15-year period.

Now, the immediate situation that we are dealing with, that prompts Mr. LaRouche to insist that the first step in a new Presidency must be the removal of President Obama from office, is the fact that there is right now, an intensification of the drive for war against Russia. In the most recent developments, you have Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, touring around Europe, meeting both with American military officials and American diplomats in Europe, considering a range of options directed against Russia, including the possible deployment of new generation, theater nuclear weapons into continental Western Europe, with the idea that some of these weapons might be used in a preemptive strike against strategic targets inside Russian territory: This is the threat of thermonuclear war, over the very near future.

Now the fact that of the matter is, that from the moment that the United States broke the understanding with Russia about the deployment of a fully integrated and joint missile defense system, to protect Europe against possible missile attacks coming out of the Middle East, from that point on, in the eyes of the Russians, and in the eyes of many American specialists, the U.S. and NATO have been moving towards a potential first-strike doctrine against Russia.

President Putin has made this point clear; the Foreign Minister Lavrov has made this point clear, and Russia has moved very rapidly to modernize their own strategic force, in order to retain a certain balance of nuclear terror. We’re still under the horrors of MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction]. And so, now, with these latest moves coming out of the Obama administration, considering a new doctrine of possible offensive, first-strike nuclear attacks against Russian targets, we see just how precariously close we are towards war.

Now, in our discussions just a little while ago with Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche, Lyn also made the point very clearly, there are now three leading German statesmen — two former Chancellors, Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder; along with the current SPD Foreign Minister of Germany [frank-walter] Steinmeier — who have all publicly criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for having refused to invite Russian President Putin to fully participate in the G7 summit meeting that will be taking place this weekend. This should have been a resumption of the G8 summit process, by reincluding Russia in it, and as a result of failing to do that, Merkel has herself further extended and increased the danger of a war that would very rapidly become a thermonuclear war of annihilation directed against Russia.

This is exactly why Mr. LaRouche said, just hours ago, that we not only have to get rid of Obama, but Merkel has to be brought down as well. This kind of playing “Russian Roulette” with the survival of mankind by threatening nuclear first strike and moving the world closer and closer to this kind of confrontation, is a hallmark of leaders who have gone completely insane and must be removed from office, for the sake of mankind.

You have a situation in Ukraine right now, where you see a similar form of flight-forward madness, where President Poroshenko has claimed that Ukraine is bracing for a full-scale Russian invasion of eastern Europe, which would create a state of outright warfare between Ukraine and Russia. Now, if you study the recent statements, as recently as earlier today, from Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, you see that the Russians are calling for exactly the opposite: They’re calling for the full and total implementation of the agreements that were made in Minsk in February of this year, for a de-escalation of the Ukrainian crisis.

So we are at a moment where, we have in the case of O’Malley, the potentiality for organizing a new American Presidency, where we can assemble a team of qualified individuals, many of whom have been absolutely excluded from any involvement in the official Executive branch over the last 15 years of Bush and Cheney, and now Obama, but who are still there and are available. We have that capability.

And one of the critical points that I’ll briefly mention and that Jason will take up at greater length, is that a key measure of an effective new Presidency, is starting from the recognition that we have a long constitutional tradition of how to develop the U.S. economy, by extension, how to develop the world economy. There were four principal reports that were presented to the U.S. Congress, by our first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, one of the seminal of Manhattan, that was his Report on Manufacturing, his Report on the National Bank, his Report on Public Credit, and his “Opinion on the Constitutionality of the National Bank.” Those four documents represent the founding principles of the American System of political economy. On those rare occasions where American Presidents have pursued those policies, the nation has prospered, the nation has been at war, we’ve made great scientific and economic strides, the conditions of life for all Americans have been uplifted, and in the case of John Quincy Adams, those principles became the basis for developing American foreign policy and American diplomacy towards the rest of the world.

Far too many occasions, we’ve seen Presidents and Congresses, that have failed to grasp those core principles. And I must say that those reports, while they were written in the late 18th century, by and large in the 1790s, they still are as relevant today, as they were back then.

And so anybody who wants to truly understand what the cornerstone what the cornerstone principles must be of the kind of new Presidency that we’re talking about, right now centering around the one candidate who’s expressed those ideas clearly, which is why Wall Street hates him: And that’s Martin O’Malley.

It’s essential to read those documents, to study them, to think about it, and then to hold up the hideous economic performance of the last two Presidents and most 20th century Presidents, when compared to the standards that were clearly defined by Hamilton, as the basis for our constitutional republic, and for what all educated people in the 19th century widely referred to as the American System of political economy, which was the enemy of the British system.

OGDEN: Well, it really reminds you what Martin O’Malley had to say in response to this declaration that he was persona non grata on Wall Street. It really reminds you of what Franklin Roosevelt said, when he was in the exact same position: He said, “They hate me, and I relish their hatred.” This is actually a very famous speech he made at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, on Oct. 31, 1936. And I just want to read a short excerpt from that if people aren’t familiar with this. This is what President Franklin Roosevelt said. He said: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

“They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

So, I think you could possibly put those words into Martin O’Malley’s mouth at this point.

Now, what Mr. LaRouche, as Jeff just mentioned, was emphasizing when we met with him this morning, is that we now have to clearly define our role. It’s very clear that the formation of a new Presidency is being determined from the top down, by Mr. LaRouche’s leadership and the leadership that he has provided over the last several years: Glass-Steagall, and shutting down a bankrupt Wall Street with that O’Malley is doing, and another Presidential candidate, Rand Paul, and his move now to force the declassification of the 28 pages and expose the Saudi role in funding 9/11 and other global terror operations.

But we have to escalate, and we have to continue to provide that top-down leadership, as Mr. LaRouche very clearly did in his discussion with the national activists, the so-called “Fireside Chat,” yesterday. And what Mr. LaRouche said is that we must clearly define our role around the Alexander Hamilton principle, that all the greatest leaders of this country have adopted Hamilton as their guidepost and have implemented the Hamiltonian principle in order to save and build the United States. And Mr. LaRouche emphasized, as Jeff mentioned that the four reports by Alexander Hamilton, his Report on Public Credit, his Report on Manufactures, his Report on the National Bank, and his argument “The Constitutionality of the National Bank”: All four of these reports constitute sort of a fourfold principle by which we can implement Hamilton’s policies today.

And what Mr. LaRouche said is, “The time has come to remind the citizens of our United States what the mission of these United States is. We must refresh our knowledge of our own history.” So here to do that for us tonight, at least preliminarily, is Mr. Jason Ross, who has recently done some work on refreshing his own knowledge of the principles of Alexander Hamilton. And we would like to initiate that discussion here, today, and I’m sure it will be a discussion that will continue into the conference up in New York tomorrow. So, Jason why don’t you come to the podium?

JASON ROSS: Yes, some very recent refreshing. So, Webster said of the work of Hamilton, that just as Athena burst forth, fully armed from the head of Zeus, so did the economy of America burst forth from the mind of Alexander Hamilton, over a very short period of time. As Jeff had said, these four major reports of Hamilton’s that we’ll discuss were written over the span of only two years: These Reports on Public Credit, on the National Bank, the “Opinion on the Constitutionality of the National Bank” — which was written to counter Thomas Jefferson’s nonsense on it — and his Report on Manufactures.

In all of these, and in Hamilton’s work as Treasury Secretary and in his work for the nation, before and after that, he did lot of work on finance directly, on monetary and tax matters, but his objectives, his goal, his real work, was not to achieve financial policy. It was to promote social, political, cultural ideas of what the human species was, how the nation’s economy should move forward, and really what we ought to do, how can we move forward? What’s the purpose of the nation? What’s the purpose of a person?

So, let’s — I support it makes sense to take these in order, as a brief summary of them. So the Report on the Public Credit: Hamilton came into office, he was confirmed by the Senate, he became our first Treasury Secretary on Sept. 11, 1789. He was tasked by the Congress to pull together a report on the nation’s finances. The amount of debt that the United States owed at this point was over $70 million, at that time, a huge sum/ And things weren’t being paid; this debt included states’ debts, included foreign debts, it included IOUs from the time of the Revolution. It seemed impossible to make payments on them, or really, to figure out how much it was.

So over the course of only a few months, Hamilton wrote a book-length report where he pulled everything together, he got a clear sense of what the situation of the debts was, and he used it as an opportunity, both to unify the nation and to develop the economy. So among the things that he did was push for the Federal assumption of the states’ debts, that the national government would take up the state debts that were incurred as part of the Revolution, as something that was of an entire national action.

This was opposed. As a matter of fact, for some of the Southerners to give their assent to the assumption of the state debts, they demanded that the capital move, that it no longer be in New York or in Philadelphia, where it later went, but that it be on the Potomac. That was — see, way back, from the very beginning of our country, it was an unfortunate compromise that seemingly had to be made with the Southern influence that we’ve now got D.C., that we’ve got the Federal government in D.C. which is very unfortunate because just being in Manhattan would immediately improve the intelligence and functioning of our country. But this was a compromise that was made at the time.

So assumption of the state debts, pulling the debts together, basically reissuing as one kind of unified debt, to pay off all the old debts, call them in and have a unified form of debt with a specific way of paying it off, through import taxes, which he said should be controlled only by the Federal government; the states should not be involved in collecting imports, so already a fight with the states’ rights, or people like Governor Clinton of New York who wanted to maintain New York as his own sort of kingdom, not really part of the country. As well as taxing — and this got controversial — whiskey and other products inside the U.S. that were produced domestically.

So, overall, by his actions, he was able to save the U.S. from bankruptcy; he was able to make good on the debt payments and start to develop the nation’s credit, which he said, this is important if we’re ever going to get more loans, keep the interest rate down, this will be an important thing for our development as a nation. And, by making good on the debts, the value government debt that was out in circulation, tripled.

Why would that be important or good? Well, he gets to that in his Report on the National Bank: In this report, Hamilton works to what Washington and others almost seemed like magic, which is that he turned debt into money. What he did was to create a National Bank as a repository for incoming imports, other taxes, a place to centralize the nation’s finances; and, he allowed people to get in on the bank, by capitalizing it with actual specie, as it’s called, gold or silver; but also, by depositing the Federal debt. The capitalization was most Federal debt and not specie.

So by using the debt that now had almost a full value, full face value, as deposits for capitalizing the bank, the bank was now able to give out loans, money, monetize that amount. Meaning that instead of being a burden, debt has to be paid off over time, etc., — you know, obviously, he still wanted to pay off the debt — but in the meantime, it now served as a basis for having circulating money, for making it possible to get loans and things of that sort, and overall finance the development of the nation in a way that couldn’t be controlled by the European, British ability to have a control over specie, which they had been sucking out of the United States.

So, unfortunately, this idea of having a National Bank was not well received by everybody, including Thomas Jefferson, who urged President Washington, not to sign the law, that the National Bank was actually unconstitutional, because the Constitution didn’t say “the U.S. government may create a National Bank” — it wasn’t enumerated there. And that Hamilton was going too far in saying, well, this is necessary and proper, this is just required to fulfill the obligations and the responsibilities and the powers that the Federal government does have.

So this is a major point: Can the Congress, can the government, only do the specific things enumerated in the Constitution? Or, is it necessary to engage in activities, in order to bring those things about? In this article, — let me read this for you: This is about how much Jefferson was opposed to the National Bank. He said that if anybody in Virginia tried to help or assist in creating a branch of the National Bank in Virginia, that that person “shall be adjudged guilty of high treason and shall suffer death.”

Jefferson said that any Virginian helping to set up a National Bank branch in Virginia should be executed for treason against the state of Virginia!

So this was very — this was pretty intense. In his report, this “Opinion on the Constitutionality of Bank of the U.S.,” which was delivered from Hamilton to Washington on Feb. 23, 1791, just a very short time before Washington had to make a decision, on signing or vetoing the bill, Hamilton has — it’s really a very fun read — he goes through why the bank is necessary, why it’s beneficial, and demolishes Jefferson’s complaints. There’s this one, for example, possibly in an attempt to confuse Washington, or overwhelm him with legalisms, Jefferson said that the National Bank would violate the laws of “alienage, dissent, escheat, forfeiture, and distribution.” I don’t know if anybody hearing this is familiar with any of those terms. Some of them are somewhat outdated, but Hamilton took care of all of that in one single paragraph, just pointing out that Jefferson was making arguments, not legitimate on their face, but because he had an ulterior motive.

And this is what comes in a very direct way, in the Report on Manufactures. Because this really got to the kernel of things, and this is where Hamilton was able to most directly put forward his vision for the nation. Which, at that time, it was actually controversial about whether it would be good to be a manufacturing nation. For example, Thomas Jefferson said that would be a bad idea, that farming was the way to go, that we should be agricultural, and that we shouldn’t sully ourselves with manufacturing.

For example Jefferson said about the life of the farmer, possibly, specifically meaning a “farmer” who has slaves doing the farming; he said, [as read] “Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators [farmers] is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example.” Farmer cannot be immoral, according to Jefferson. And then, he describes how manufacturing is “pestilence” upon society. He says, “While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff. … let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. … The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.” That’s Jefferson’s views on manufacturing!

So what did Hamilton do on this front? In addition to his work as Treasury Secretary, he also set up the Society for the Promotion of Useful Manufactures, which created a model industrial park in what’s today known as Paterson, New Jersey — Paterson, named after then then Governor, who supported the formation of a whole series of workshops, based on water power. So, a centralized way to take the flow of the river than had a good drop there, take the water, channel it through, use water wheels to have a major industrial center.

Hamilton believed that not only was it important to have import duties, to prevent the flooding of the market with British manufactured goods, to make it possible for American industry to get going, but that that shouldn’t be relied on; that it could encourage laziness among manufacturers, and that the government should take an active role in promoting manufactures. And he saw this Society for the Promotion of Useful Manufactures, and the model production that was set up in Paterson, as an example of that.

Let me read a quote from Hamilton, from his . This was delivered December 5th, 1791, so within two years: Jan. 14th, 1790, the first of his major reports, and this is his fourth out of these four. And he directly addressed the idea that only agriculture was useful. He said,

“That the annual produce of the land and labour of a country can only be encreased, in two ways — by some improvement in the productive powers of the useful labour, which actually exists within it, or by some increase in the quantity of such labour: That with regard to the first,” he says “the labour of Artificers [manufacturers, non-farming] being capable of greater subdivision and simplicity of operation, than that of Cultivators [farmers], it is susceptible, in a proportionably greater degree, of improvement in its productive powers, whether to be derived from an accession of Skill, or from the application of ingenious machinery; in which particular, therefore, the labour employed in the culture of land can pretend to no advantage over that engaged in manufactures….”

This is certainly born out in the ongoing history of the country, where, as the time of these reports, 90% of the population was involved in agriculture, whereas today, it’s below 1%. This didn’t occur by improvements in agriculture itself. It came from developing industry, “manufacturers,” as Hamilton would call it, and the incredible developments in that field — the steam engine, internal combustion engine, nuclear power, — these didn’t come out of farming. This came out of being industrial, and being a science oriented society, rather than a tradition-oriented society.

So, I think if you think about this, today, if we consider the understanding that Hamilton had of how to actually improve the wealth of the nation, of the real source of economic growth, that he was able to express that in its most direct and straightforward form in the Report on Manufactures, although, as an outlook it pervades his entire approach to economy as seen in the previous reports, as well, where although they treat financial subjects, they have a much broader ranging goal embedded in them.

In the Report on Manufactures Hamilton describes all the sorts of different ways that the Federal government could assist the growth of manufactures, how duties ought to be set, the use of “bounties,” or bonuses, to manufacturers who were developing new techniques, new technologies. And he has an understanding that that’s the kind of society, of a hardworking and developing society, which will be necessary to develop a strong nation.

I think he’d be shocked to visit today’s Manhattan, and see that we’ve gone below the level of agriculture, even, at least agriculture is productive. Now some people say that we can have an economy that’s based on finance itself. A large portion of the GDP, etc., of the country is now based on finance, not manufacturing, not production, not even agriculture.

And that, we have to keep in mind his approach to physical economy. So many of the debates that happen today, about the states versus the Federal government, or how far can the Federal government go? Is it the Federal government’s business to interfere in the economy? To promote the economy as a whole? The answers to so many of these live questions today, can already be found, in the work of Alexander Hamilton. And in reading through these reports, I think will give a very excellent foundation on our country’s history, on the kinds of economics that actually worked to develop, and provide very helpful insights into how to move forward today, physically, and as a science-driven economy.

OGDEN: And I should just say, that these four reports to Congress by Alexander Hamilton are not classified. They are in the public domain! So they’re available to anybody to read. You don’t need to declassify these. You can read them and study them — including members of Congress.

Now, I just want to say in conclusion that we will be live-streaming coverage of the Schiller Institute conference that’s occurring tomorrow in New York City. The name of this is “Decision Day for Humanity: The U.S. must return to its founding principles and join the BRICS alliance now.” And obviously, this is occurring on June 6th, which is the anniversary of D-Day, which marked the beginning of the downfall of Nazism. So this is a very auspicious occasion and we invite you, if you’re in the New York City area, please attend in person; contact our office there, or our national office. If you’re not in the New York area please tune in on the LaRouche PAC website.

Also, all of the other videos that have been streamed on our website this week are available in archive, including the video of the extraordinary press conference that occurred on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with Senator Rand Paul, https://youtu.be/-ozSLcVT8nM; as well as the third in the series of Fireside Chats which Mr. LaRouche hosted yesterday with the national LaRouche PAC activists. So we encourage you to watch those if you haven’t already, but also absolutely please circulate them as widely as you can.

So that’s going to bring a conclusion to our webcast here, tonight. We thank you for joining us, and please tune in again tomorrow at 1 o’clock Eastern for our live coverage of the event in New York City. Thank you very much, and good night.