PRESS RELEASE
LAROUCHE ON OHIO RADIO DEC. 16
We've Got Them Dead to Rights Stealing the Vote and Stealing Social Security; Get Out and Mobilize
Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on Dec. 16, 2004, by "Front Street" hosts Charles Traylor, Wendy Huntley, and Bob Fitrakis on Columbus, Ohio station WVKO 1580 AM/103.1 FM.
Charles Traylor: And, we're back with "Front Street on the News" 1580 WVKO. This is Charles Traylor.
Wendy Huntley: And this Wendy Huntley.
Traylor: And Dr. Bob Fitrakis has stayed over with us.
We have on our live line, former Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. And he is the CEO and President of LaRouchePAC.com. Good morning, Mr. LaRouche.
Lyndon LaRouche: Good morning.
Traylor: How're you doing today?
LaRouche: Well pretty good; glad to be back with you guys.
Traylor: Well, we're glad to have you back with us. And we wanted to talk a little bit about Bush adopting the Pinochet plan to steal your Social Security, and we're going to let Dr. Bob Fitrakis, in the interest of his time, start off.
Bob Fitrakis: Mr. LaRouche, is there a tie-in between what now they're acknowledging in Franklin County here—that is, massive voter suppression of poor people, African-Americans; you know, the shorting of machines—a deliberate attack upon the voting rights of poor and minority people in Franklin County, and what now appears to be an economic attack on people's Social Security?
LaRouche: Well, the point is, if you were going to do this—or try to do it, that is, to bring the Pinochet Plan, which is, of course now failing in Chile after the 20-odd years it's been in effect, it would fail here. But, the point was, if you wanted to do this and some other things, you had to have a Bush re-election. Without a Bush re-election, there wouldn't be a chance, at all, of pushing this thing through.
Now, the entire financial system is collapsing. We're on the verge of a collapse, any time now, for a major financial blow-out of the U.S. and the international markets. At this point, they're counting on looting Social Security, or having a proof that they can loot Social Security, as a way of putting more capital into a depressed U.S. financial market, to try to bail out the gambling side of the financial-market system.
Now, George Shultz and company, of course, who was one of the original authors of the Pinochet operation down there, is also behind the Bush campaign. And he typifies these big interests, which are behind both.
They had to commit a fraud to get elected.
Fitrakis: So, you're not buying the—. We've just submitted expert testimony from a University of Illinois Chicago statistician, saying, the odds that these exit polls in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were wrong, are in the order of 155 million to 1.
LaRouche: Yeah, sure!
Fitrakis: That doesn't surprise you.
LaRouche: No. Not at all. Because we knew from the New Hampshire campaign, when I was campaigning up in New Hampshire, we talked to a lot of people there: We looked at the various options, looking back to Florida and to see what could be done four years later. We looked at voting machine options. We saw that you have people running voting machines—as in Ohio—are part of the Republican power apparatus. And they were involved—and identified—as monkeying with the machine after the election, to change the polling results.
So, this kind of thing we expected. That's why I said to the Democratic Party: We have to go for a massive turnout, a landslide victory, because we're going to have to overwhelm a great fraud. And the only way to deal with a fraud like this effectively, front-on, is to overwhelm it with a landslide vote.
Unfortunately, we got on too late. I still believe that Kerry probably won the vote.
But, the point is, we're going to have to fight. So, my point is: Okay, we've got them dead to rights on violations of federal law, on Voting Rights Act violations, which are a five-year sentence minimum for getting caught at that. And this opens the door to looking at the entirety of the election, because if they were using these tactics, then the question is, how far do these tactics go?
But, the issue here, the typical issue, right now, up front—and George Bush has made it very clear it's up front—the Chilean model of privatization of Social Security is the Bush model. I don't know what he understands, but I do know what George Shultz understands.
Traylor: And Mr. LaRouche, Manuel Riesco, director of the Center for Alternative National Development [CENDA], in a January 2004 study documented that Chile's private pension funds are the most protected industry in Chile's history. And after a quarter-century trial of the privatized pension system, there's now a consensus in Chile among the government, the private pension funds, and think tanks like the CENDA, and the World Bank, that at least one-half of the population in Chile can never accumulate sufficient capital to earn even the minimum pension of $100 a month under this system.
Now, compare that to the United States, 25 years later up under this plan, if Bush is allowed to implement it?
LaRouche: It won't be 25 years later. It'll be much quicker. This was now done in 1981. That is, Pinochet came in '73-'75; he was part of Operation Condor, this mass-murder operation through the Southern Cone of South America. This was done by the "Chicago Boys," that is, the banking side was the Chicago Boys, of which George Shultz was a key man. And George Shultz is the man who was the architect of the George W. Bush Administration. He's the guy who brought Condoleezza Rice into the picture. He's the one that was behind Cheney, and Cheney organized the composition of the initial current Bush Administration. This is the combination. It's the same bunch of guys.
There's also another story behind this, you know: Back in the 1970s—and it's now been exposed since 1990, but it's coming out big now. There'll be books on this published in February and so forth. But, leftovers of the old Nazi system were brought into the European and U.S. security system. Elements of this, of the old Nazi apparatus were run down into South America, into Mexico, into Argentina, into Chile, elsewhere. They were run down there on what was called the "ratline" operation. They have been used, like this Della Chiaie case and so forth, they have been used as mass murderers—that is, as special hit-men—used throughout the region: They're the ones that killed the thousands of people to consolidate, in Chile in particular, to consolidate the regime down there.
We now have an explosion, on the issue of this hit-man problem, of the Nazi hit-men, and their successors today.
This swindle on stealing Social Security funds, which is worldwide: It's not only in Chile; it's in Peru, under attack; Mexico; the United States; in Germany, the welfare system is under attack under Hartz IV; under the current Finance Minister of France, Sarkozy, it's also under attack. So, we have a worldwide onslaught by bankrupt banking-system people, to try to grab the very large social welfare funds of governments, now. And the United States is one of the parts. And the Bush candidacy and the election, very much involved—as Bush has made clear—that his immediate, number-one target, after winning an election, was to steal Social Security.
Fitrakis: I'm wondering if you'd be willing to comment at all upon the tragic death of Gary Webb, who, again, exposed that operation, the large amount of cocaine coming to the United States, and the role of the U.S. government.
LaRouche: I have to be careful, because what I say, if I say it's so, I say it because I know it. What I do know, is that environmentally, that is the kind of thing that goes on. I do know a lot about drugs. I do know a lot about the drug network on South America and Central America. I do know about the interrelationship between people like—remember you had Néstor Sánchez, who was detailed from the CIA, to run hit squads, death squads as a part of the same operation that was done in South America, the same crowd: These guys were funded, largely, through drug operations. And in the United States and elsewhere, people who were opposed to these drug operations, and the murder operations that went with them, were killed.
Like the former chief of staff of Chile, was killed abroad, by a bomb, to clear the way for eliminating a rival influence to Pinochet. These kinds of things have gone on, in the United States, here in Washington, D.C., the same thing.
Fitrakis: It looked like Mr. Webb—anyone who raises the issue, say of BCCI, the ties of al-Qaeda to the Bush family, to drug running, or Gary Webb who points these things out, these people are viciously, viciously attacked, despite the fact that they have massive documentation from government records.
LaRouche: I know. Well, I've been a victim, a target of that, you know. I went after drugs and a few other things. And the thing they hated me the most for, was the SDI. They really came to kill me on that one! But, I had some friends in the government at the time, so they didn't succeed in killing me. They stuck me in prison, instead. And they told my friends in government, "If he gets off on these charges, phony as they may be, we're going to kill him!" So, my friends in government didn't help me too much at that point.
But, no, I've been in there. That is the reality. People do not realize; there's a book coming out in February, from Switzerland, which documents from the Swiss standpoint, from their intelligence work on the extent of this thing: We don't realize, in the United States, the degree of high-level assassination run by former Nazi organizations and similar people, which are run all the time, all over the world, and have been through most of the post-war period up to the present time.
So, murder is not something by exception, political murder. The political murder machine is out there. It's out there—anyone who does what I do, is a target of that, any time these guys tend to decide to go that way. And they tried on me several times. They missed, for various reasons each time. But, they came—and we fended them off.
Some people were not as alert as I was, and didn't have as many friends, perhaps, as I did. But you have the case—all over the world, the same thing: It's the same murder apparatus. And, in each case, you don't know, until you investigate it. But, in the whole pattern of cases, you know who the people are who do it—I know the organization that does this sort of thing, I know how it's put together. I know they do it. I know that the criminal is them. Which part of their criminal did it, I don't always know. But, I know they were targetted by this bunch of guys.
And George Shultz is a finger-man for this.
Traylor: Yes sir.
Mr. LaRouche, in your article, you cite the Pinochet Plan, and you outline it, as taking your Social Security payment, giving it financial managers and banks, and then letting those bankers manage the funds, taking 25% off the top and then making profits of 50% and up. And they lose "your money in the market, leaving you dependent upon a pittance or welfare."
And you say, how long would it take, if this implemented, for the Americans to feel this?
LaRouche: Well, it would go two ways. The first step, they get the foot in the door. What you described is the very minimal part, of the tip of the shoe in the door.
Now, what happens is: As I said, you've got not only the attack on Peru on the same thing; you've got a similar attack going on against Mexico; you've got an attack on France, with the reform which is coming through the Finance Minister Sarkozy, there. You have an attack on Germany, Hartz IV, to strip away the general welfare, the equivalent of Social Security in Germany. This is going around the world.
Now, what happens is this: If the Bush Administration succeeds in ramming this and related measures through, we no longer have a government that the people of the United States control. We will then be under a fascist-style of dictatorship.
Once they have their foot in the door, by getting the first leg on this Social Security control, they will go all the way. Because, why? We're now faced with a collapse of the U.S. dollar, U.S. currency, in the order of trillions, right now.
Traylor: Well, George Bush says he supports the dollar.
LaRouche: Well, he can't support the dollar—he can not support the dollar. Not under the present circumstances. Why? Because it takes $2 billion, coming in every day, from outside the United States, to keep the U.S. dollar from collapsing—and it is collapsing!
Now, that money is beginning to dry up.
What they need the Social Security funds for now, is to try to put a stimulus into the financial market, through multiple—just to build up the market, the financial market: Because they know that very soon, there is going to be a real avalanche, that's going to hit the U.S. financial market. That's inevitable. They want to steal Social Security—they're going to steal all of it; not some of it. What they're talking about is the shoe in the front door, but they intend to put the whole foot in.
Traylor: Wow.
LaRouche:Once they get the first step, then you will see, as they did with the Iraq War, get the first step, get in there, and the whole thing comes.
We are now not just over an issue of welfare. We are fighting over a welfare issue. Just as the welfare issue was the issue, which was key in Europe when Mussolini and Hitler came to power: We're faced with a threat of dictatorship. And if we can not mobilize political resources, especially in the United States, to stop this thing now, we will have given up our Constitution and our rights. And when these guys come after us, they're going to come all the way: Because, they are faced with a broken-down system, and they're going to go for a dictatorship.
Fitrakis: Yeah, those are chilling, chilling words. And, again, this looks like a run-up. I'm worried, that there's been talk—is that, essentially when you go after Social Security, you're going after working class people's public pension—but, there's also been talk about rolling, say, the state teachers' retirement systems into Social Security. And that would be an out and out attack on middle-class, upper-middle-class professional. Would they be that bold?
LaRouche: Absolutely. These guys are hungry.
Look at this guy, Schwarzenegger. Whose father was a Nazi official, in Austria.
Fitrakis: SA member!
LaRouche: Well, he actually joined the Nazi Party right after the Anschluss, the father did.
Fitrakis: Yeah, and he was a brownshirt, as I recall. He actually joined the SA.
LaRouche: Well, he actually came out of the police section of the Nazi Party, and he functioned in Eastern Europe as one of these clean-up squads for cleaning up political opposition, eliminating political opposition—by best methods. Now, Schwarzenegger is that. Now, Schwarzenegger has been picked up, by George Shultz and company.
Look at what Schwarzenegger is doing in California—just pull the record on him, what he's done since he's gotten in there, and what he's now trying do to: Schwarzenegger is trying to carry out Hitler's program in the United States. And he's trying to do it in California. And a lot of people are backing him for President. George Shultz is behind him: The George Shultz who was involved in the operations in Chile, back in the 1970s, and in many other things, including the architecture of the Bush Administration.
So, you have the picture. These guys, what they're doing to union organizations, to public institutions—in California now, under Schwarzenegger—is typical of what they intend to do all over the country. If they get the power to do so—and this is the test case, the Social Security question—if they get the power to do so, they're going to go for everything.
Fitrakis: Let me ask you one contrast question. They're talking about a Constitutional amendment—and I got to leave after this question—a Constitutional amendment, to allow Mr. Schwarzenegger to run for President. On the other hand, we still don't have a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American citizen the right to vote. We essentially have a Jim Crow, 21st-Century, high-tech state system, which allows a J. Kenneth Blackwell to suppress, blatantly suppress the vote in Ohio.
How can we, politically, allow this to happen? I mean, isn't there a huge contrast between what is really needed—a guaranteed Constitutional right for all Americans to vote—versus this bogus amendment to allow Schwarzenegger to take over the country?
LaRouche: It's a matter of political power. What we need is two things: You need the Democratic Party to stop playing the fool. And I think during the recent elections, the last phase, we did that. The Kerry campaign, in the last two months, was a real serious operation. But, it carried the baggage of all the mistakes the Democratic Party had been making for decades before then. Clinton is sort of deceptive, because he is actually—"he's a natural" shall we say. Once he got in, with the help with a third party ticket, he proved himself to be one of the best vote-getters the United States ever had. And he's a very sharp guy. He does go for tactics, quicker than policy, and that was a weakness when he was President.
But, that deceived us, because, underneath that, the Democratic Party was going rotten—particularly, when they went to this idea of the middle, of concentrating on the suburban vote. Now, when you go on the suburban vote, what you're talking about is, as you see, this population—we used to have an upper 20% of family-income brackets, that was a minority of the total national income of families. Since 1977, the lower 80%, today, gets less income than the upper 20% of the total national share.
So, what you've got, is a process under way, where the Democratic Party, with the idea of the suburban vote, the limited approach, has gone away from the constituencies in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. We don't have a party organization which is structured to have an organized representation of the lower 80%, in the party. This includes people of African descent, people of Hispanic descent, and a lot of other people—just, plain poor people, farmers, and so forth. They do not have any organizational position inside the Democratic Party, where they are participating in controlling the deliberations of policy, within the party mechanism. We no longer have a Franklin Roosevelt Democratic Party.
And when you don't have a political party system—we have good Republicans, too. But, if you don't have a good party system, under which the people are actually represented, then, who is going to interpret the law, if you pass it? Who is going to interpret the Constitution, even if you get the right terms in?
Huntley: Right.
LaRouche: It's going to be those who are in power, who control the political process.
Therefore, our problem has been, we have not been mobilized. We have not been mobilized to demand our rights to have representation in our political parties; to be a functioning part of the deliberation process, not simply people who are invited to vote, and turn out for rallies. But, who are actually part, who could put the issues on the table, have them deliberated, not single-issue kind of distractions.
And therefore, without a political system, which enforces the intent of the Constitution, the Constitution doesn't really mean too much, nor does any law you pass.
Huntley: Mr. LaRouche, in light of this, the picture that's been painted, what can we do? I mean, what can the average American do, who is listening to this, and who is concerned about the direction in which this administration is moving?
LaRouche: Well, you see what John Conyers has been doing. John Conyers has been playing a key role, and naturally, I'm fully supporting what he's up to. He's in a key position. Bill Clinton is also working, in his own way, on this one. The Kerry people are doing their part—seriously—despite what people suspect and argue, and so forth. I know what they're doing on these issues. They're on the issues seriously.
What we're doing is, we're taking the best part of the people who were brought together around the fight against Bush in recent years, especially those who organized in the last 60 days of the campaign for the Presidential election. These forces must move. What I've done, is laid out this program. Other people have adopted it—the same thing.
I said: Take the Voting Rights Act violations. That is a crime. That's a five-year federal sentence, to be caught doing that crime! Whereas simple vote fraud is more difficult to deal with. But: If you go at the criminal violations, which are federal criminal violations, in terms of election tampering and in terms of Voting Rights Act frauds, then you open up the whole area, you have to investigate the whole territory, in which these crimes have been committed—which means the entire question of the vote fraud is now looked at, from that standpoint, not on a state-by-state "would you have won the election, or not?" which is tough fight.
Then you go with the hottest issue we have: This nutty President is out to steal the Social Security of the American people. Not just a few poor people. We're talking about the majority of the American people will be looted by this thing—and many will be killed by it. When you combine this with the effect on the health care situation, people will be murdered, by this kind of policy.
If we combine these issues, which involve the intent of the American people to vote for a government—do they want a government that kills them?
"Well, I voted Republican!"
"Did you vote for them to kill you?"
"No, I didn't do that!"
"Well! Let's take a look at this thing, then. Maybe we can do something about it."
You have to get at this way. You have to get it with brass knuckles, on issues. You have to get out and fight—not namby-pamby, not maybe-so, not this, not this doubletalk. And get out there and mobilize the people.
The problem is, we have not been giving the people leadership. Now, as you know, small people who don't have much power, are not going get out there and fight, generally. They're going to look for leadership. And they do not trust the people who are their leaders.
We have to, who are willing to lead, we have to prove to them, that they have leaders that they can trust.
Huntley: Well, I know we're wrapping up, we only have a minute or two left, but let me ask this question: We know that the Social Security system, as it currently exists, can not continue and provide any success. We're looking at the proposed recommendation of the Bush Administration, and we're saying, "That's not going to work." What do you think could work?
LaRouche: Oh, the Social Security system is not in the danger that that's being alleged.
Traylor: Okay—
LaRouche: All right, we've had, in the recent period, we've had a big, big inflation, as I think all of us know. If you just look at grocery bills for the same items over the past ten years, you get a pretty good idea, there's a lot of inflation going on.
Now, in the Social Security tax withholding, there's a cap on that, which is 80-odd thousand dollars. Beyond that point, you're not taxed on your Social Security revenue. If we lift that cap, to the degree that we compensate for the inflation which has occurred since the last time that cap was defined, we would find that the flow of funds is quite adequate to ensure the integrity of Social Security for the period ahead. If you want to talk about 10 years ahead, or 15 years ahead, similar adjustments can be made over time, to deal with that.
Social Security is not in danger. Social Security is in danger of negligence or rape, one of the two.
Traylor: With that, Mr. LaRouche, we're all out of time. We want to really thank you for bringing this stark reality to our listeners about the state of Social Security. And I echo your comments that we can't be namby-pamby, that we have to really get up, stand up, and act up, and act out, if we really want to take this government back from the dictator coup d'état, that we are up under.
LaRouche: Absolutely.
Traylor: Thank you.
LaRouche: Thank you. Thank you, all.
Traylor: We're going to take a break folks, we're going to right back with more Front Street. And we're take your calls or comments, if you have anything you have to say about the interview you just heard with Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, former Democratic Presidential candidate.
