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This article appears in the April 7, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
AFTER LYM INTERVENTION:

Rohatyn Admits,
`No to FDR' on Infrastructure

by Marjorie Mazel Hecht

A panel discussion of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Public Infrastructure Commission, created by synarchist banker Felix Rohatyn in 2004, took an unexpected turn at the National Press Club March 27, when some 25 LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) organizers began to ask questions of the speakers. Felix Rohatyn, and his cohort, former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman, had come to raise the Capitol Hill profile of their "National Infrastructure Commission," but instead they showed their acute awareness that they and their fascist "infrastructure" schemes are in a battle with Lyndon LaRouche's Congressional influence and activity.

The panel included Rohatyn, Rudman, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Loral Electronics CEO and Democratic Leadership Committee board member Bernard Schwartz, CSIS staff directors Everett Ehrlich and Benjamin Landy, with CSIS president John Hamre moderating. During very brief presentations, Rohatyn lyingly claimed for his project, the legacy of Lincoln's Land Grant College Act, Franklin Roosevelt's TVA, and Eisenhower's National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

There were some 25 LYM organizers, in an audience of about 80, and three successive interventions, all from the LYM, laid out Lazard Frères' synarchist policies; Rohatyn's Middlebury College conference in 2004, where he demonstrated that he is for total privatization of government (see EIR, March 31); and that the Rohatyn/Rudman "Commission" scheme means a "committee of bankers" would control U.S. infrastructure spending.

Moderator Hamre, after each of the first two interventions, said, "We won't discuss that here," and everyone heard Rohatyn whisper to Rudman, "LaRouche!" But when the third LYM questioner said, "Lyndon LaRouche has a better idea..." Rudman's angry interruption let the cat out of the bag: "I think we're all perfectly well aware of Mr. LaRouche's presence in this room, and in this town, through his surrogates this morning; and let me simply tell you, that you're entitled to your view; we have laid out in great detail why we think this commission works; and you're free to disagree; and you're free to express it to Congressmen and Senators, as we know you do.... Could we have another question, please?"

That question came from EIR's Paul Gallagher, who said that he would "put the policy question from Lyndon LaRouche to you, another way," and demanded to know if the panelists were for or against "Franklin Roosevelt's method" of large-scale public credits and spending for modern infrastructure, and LaRouche's capital budget. This time Rohatyn erupted: "No! We have a lot of new financing mechanisms since the days of the New Deal. And Roosevelt did marvelous things because he had nothing—no alternatives with respect to financing these projects. We do! We have the private sector; we have state and local governments; we have union pension funds; we can create special-purpose bonds. Some of it may come directly from the budget.... But we are far away from the days and methods of the RFC [Reconstruction Finance Corporation]."

To subsequent questions, the panelists completely endorsed globalization (Rudman), privatization of infrastructure (Landy), and selling infrastructure to foreign or domestic companies ("money is money"—Ehrlich). Disconcerted, they ended the forum only 40 minutes after it had begun.

The panelists and audience received the March 31 EIR exposé on Rohatyn's privatization schemes for the U.S. government, and one LYM member told Rohatyn that the LYM was mass-distributing the exposé "to get you out of the Democratic Party."

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