Rachel Brown Fires
`Shot Heard 'Round the World'
by Harley Schlanger
Sept. 12—In what could fairly be described as a "shot heard 'round the world," Rachel Brown, candidate for the 4th C.D. Democratic Congressional nomination in Massachusettts, demolished longtime incumbent Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in a one-hour televised debate on Barney's home turf, in Newton, on Sept. 7. Brown, 29 years old, a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) running in her first campaign, handled the lying and blustering Frank—a self-proclaimed master debater—with a calm confidence which rattled not only the befuddled Frank, but his controllers, who are losing their grip on the U.S. population.
Brown's actual target, in her pinpoint assessment of the crisis, was not just the hapless Frank, but the failed President Barack Obama himself, and the forces of global finance, centered in the Inter-Alpha Group, for which both Frank and Obama are mere puppets. Her razor sharpness was not limited to identifying the problems associated with the two puppets, but was evident in her persistent presentation of the only alternatives which can save the United States: her forceful advocacy of the "LaRouche Plan," of removing Obama, restoring Glass-Steagall banking regulations, and implementing the great transformational infrastructure project for the 21st Century, the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA).
After viewing the Tuesday night massacre, Lyndon LaRouche proclaimed the event "historic." Brown "objectively destroyed" Frank, he said, adding that Barney's credibility as a spokesman for the policies imposed on our nation, by the Wall Street/Boston Vault/City of London financial interests, which have nearly wrecked the U.S. and global economy, was ended by this debate.
Further, by destroying the credibility of the policy Frank represents, LaRouche continued, which is the policy of President Obama, she implicitly destroyed Obama. No amount of spinning by the controlled media can undo the damage done by this debate. The only outstanding issue is whether the job done so brilliantly by Brown, will be followed up in a timely fashion, by using Glass-Steagall to end the deadly, hyperinflationary bailouts, and placing the "too big to fail" banks into bankruptcy reorganization, to clear the way for the infusion of Federal credit needed to rebuild our otherwise disintegrating economy.
Barney's Last Stand
The normally cocky, self-important Frank was exposed, repeatedly, by Brown, during the debate, as a pathetic liar. The key to this is precisely the issue of Glass-Steagall. When confronted by Brown earlier in the campaign, over his role in the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, Frank lied, in the typical way of a degenerate sophist. He said, correctly, that he voted against the bill, but neglected to say that he did so not because he wanted to keep Glass-Steagall in place, but due to other considerations.
In fact, Brown's campaign posted on its website Frank's actual comments from the floor of the House of Representatives in 1999, when Frank said he was fine with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, adding that "We gave the financial institutions everything they asked for"—that is, the repeal of Glass-Steagall! Despite knowing this was posted on Brown's website, Frank denied, during the debate, that he said this, then compounded this lie by saying that Glass-Steagall would have not stopped the banking crash of 2007-08.
In a press release issued the day after the debate, Brown exposed the incompetent lie at the heart of this assertion, as this is a line which has been circulated by Barney's controllers to justify their suppression of the Cantwell-McCain amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill; the former would have reinstituted Glass-Steagall. Brown stated: "What Barney is trying to cover up, with his lies, is his complicity ... in a persistent, systematic effort, to destroy the U.S. economy, through especially chipping away at, and then the outright repeal, of the Glass-Steagall law, to turn our nation into a gigantic speculative casino economy. Frank and his controllers ultimately succeeded. By repealing Glass Steagall, they created the biggest financial bubble in history.
"Had Glass-Steagall been kept in place, the financial interests which profited from the bubble, which grew at the expense of the real, physical economy, would never have been able to produce this bubble."
Brown's campaign has also released statements giving other examples of Barney's lying statements, including his claim that State Street Bank—one of the Vault banks—is a clean bank, and that his bill caused Warren Buffet to give up trading derivatives (see www.RachelforCongress.com for these statements).
One Democrat, after seeing the debate, and being briefed on the numerous lies told by Frank, suggested it might be less work just to post the one or two truthful statements he made during the hour-long debate!
(To get the full flavor of the devastating defeat delivered to Frank, see the transcript, which follows this introduction. The video is available at the LaRouche PAC website.)
The 'Obama Factor'
Perhaps the most devastating statement issued by Brown during the debate was her comment that President Obama is "psychologically a ticking time bomb," a comment which was picked up by many press, included the Washington Post. This truth of this comment is verified virtually every day, in fact, several times a day, whenever the President ventures out to speak. His insistence that there is a recovery—another lie that he shares with Barney Frank—flies in the face of the reality that is facing tens of millions of Americans, who are losing their jobs and homes, and is the leading force driving Obama's poll numbers down toward those of Bush and Cheney.
It is by sticking with the issue of Glass-Steagall, however, that Brown made most clear the Obama-Frank connection. Obama directly intervened, through his Treasury Secretary, bailout king Tim Geithner, to back up Frank and his Senate allies in keeping the Cantwell-McCain amendment to restore Glass-Steagall from ever being heard, during the run-up to ramming through the Dodd-Frank bill.
In commenting on this, LaRouche declared that the battle for Glass-Steagall is the central issue for the survival of the nation. If Glass-Steagall would have no effect, as Frank insists, LaRouche asked, "then why is he opposed to it?... Why is Barney opposed to something that has no effect?"
Obviously, LaRouche continued, "he's lying. It has great effect. That's why all the people that own him don't want Glass-Steagall, because it has a powerful effect! It was used [from FDR's time] to put the criminals out of power in the United States, earlier, and he's one of the criminals who's going to be put out of power by this thing.
"It's his criminal instincts," LaRouche concluded. "We wouldn't want to say he's a criminal, but we do say, that this shows that he has criminal instincts."
It is these criminal instincts that Frank shares with the President, instincts which put them on the opposite side of the American people, who, when polled, favor, by a large majority, the restoration of Glass-Steagall. This is why a decisive move to restore Glass-Steagall would finish off not only the incredible shrinking Barney, but also President Obama.
A 'Leaf from FDR's Book'
In her post-debate comments, Brown made clear why the removal of Frank and Obama, and the implementation of Glass-Steagall, would be the beginning of a new era of American productive power.
"The restoration of Glass-Steagall today would have the same effect that it did, under FDR, in 1933," she said. "First, instead of never-ending bailouts of bankrupt financial institutions, as Barney, President Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Geithner continue to push, we must terminate the claims of the worthless, toxic assets, such as mortgage-backed securities and an endless variety of derivative obligations, created during the 20-year takedown of Glass-Steagall. Our society is being destroyed by this bailout process, as is the value of the U.S. dollar, which has been propelled into a hyperinflationary trajectory which, if not stopped, will lead to a fatal implosion of the economy. The reintroduction of Glass-Steagall would take these worthless assets off the books, and clean up the presently diseased balance sheets of banks and financial institutions.
"Second, this would allow the utterance of large amounts of Federal credit, which could be channeled into great projects, which would create immediately millions of productive jobs. The most important of these projects is NAWAPA, which could alone employ between three and four million people immediately. Further, NAWAPA represents the kind of high-technology project which assures not only an increase in the production of real, physical product to the economy—instead of make-work jobs—but is also the pathway to other, necessary projects for the U.S., such as the building of new cities, high-speed rail, nuclear power production, as well as a connection to major international cooperation in great projects, such as the Bering Straits Tunnel, which would connect the U.S. with projects in Siberia, and Eurasia generally."
"What worked under FDR in the 1930s," she concluded, "will work again today."
It is this optimistic vision of the future, which Brown presented in the debate, and throughout her campaign, which left Bailout Barney stammering in a rumpled heap, and has put the Inter-Alpha Group's predatory looters on notice, that they have run out of time. While it is not clear, at the moment, that enough Massachusetts citizens will come forward and cast their votes for Brown, to give her a victory on Sept. 14, it is clear, that the days of Barney's bullying are over, and that his demise, and that of the failed Presidency of Barack Obama, are now at the top of the agenda of the American people.
The debate transcript is available here.
