..Larouche Online Almanac

Published: Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Volume 5, Issue Number 20

This Week You Need To Know:

DISCUSSION MEMORANDUM

Rebuild U.S. Military Around Corps of Engineers Function

by Jeffrey Steinberg

In recent conversations with Lyndon LaRouche, the following set of basic observations and proposals emerged.

1. During his 1989-1993 tenure as Secretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush Administration, Dick Cheney presided over a radical transformation of the U.S. military, which has now reached a crisis point, where many flag officers, active-duty and retired, have warned that the entire military structure has been hollowed out, nearly to a point of total destruction. The extension of the Iraq mission, and the looming prospect of a broader Persian Gulf military engagement targetting Iran, would be the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" of the U.S. military altogether.

...full article, PDF

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This Week in
American History


May 16 - 22, 1933

President Franklin Roosevelt Signs Emergency Relief Bill

On May 12, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the bill establishing the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the first mass public assistance program put into effect his Administration. The bill authorized the spending of $500 million, divided into two portions: half to be spent as matching funds for localities, and the other half for distribution to locations which could not meet the matching requirement. The aim was to immediately make a dent in mass unemployment, starvation, and other such widespread suffering.

The critical decision which the President took, however, was not simply the structure of the program, but who would administer it. On May 19, he decided to tap Harry Hopkins, then the chairman of the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, which had been established by Roosevelt himself when he was Governor of the state. The President overrode the objections of New York Governor Herbert Lehman, and ordered Hopkins to report to Washington, D.C. on May 22.

Hopkins was a career social worker, who had come from a small town in Iowa. But he had none of that squishy "how do you feel?" quality that one might associate with a social worker today. Hopkins was the kind of person who immediately took charge, assumed responsibility, gave orders, and acted. He had that same voluntarist spirit that inspired the President to act so decisively to save the republic—a spirit that led Hopkins to become an increasingly trusted ally of Roosevelt's in the Administration.

Thus, the FERA administrator threw together a staff within 48 hours. He immediately began collecting information, and alerted the Governors of the 48 states that they should set up state organizations for him to coordinate with. Within that same period, Hopkins sent money to seven states. In fact, according to one source, he spent over $5 million in his first two hours in his new job, working from a makeshift office in the halls of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which provided some of the funding.

While FERA's mandate included direct relief, including the traditional "means test" whereby individuals had to prove their indigence in order to receive aid, Hopkins was much more disposed to provide work relief projects. He realized that a vast proportion of those who needed help, had been thrown out of work, and, for the sake of their own self-respect, wanted to work.

Thus, Hopkins moved as rapidly as possible to set up the Civil Works Administration (CWA), which was a totally Federal agency, able to employ workers directly. The FERA Administration got permission from the President to establish the CWA in late October 1933. The agency's mandate, in Hopkins' view, was to employ 4 million people over the winter. The agency devoted half its funds to employing people from the relief rolls, and half to others who needed work. The CWA paid minimum wage, not "relief."

As the CWA developed, it became a massive public works employer. Hopkins improvised, using much of his FERA staff for CWA work, including generating the projects which needed to get done. By mid-January 1934, the CWA had employed 4,230,000 persons.

And what did these people do? As opposed to the Public Works Administration, which was involved in building major dam projects, for example, they concentrated on medium and small-sized projects. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., about a third of them worked on roads and highways. The next largest group of projects involved building or improving schools, including playgrounds. At least 50,000 teachers were provided to rural schools which could not otherwise afford to pay them in the midst of the Depression. In addition, the CWA workers built 500 airports, developed parks, cleared waterways and sewers, and even employed writers and artists.

For a fuller report on this aspect of Roosevelt's recovery program, see LaRouche in 2004's Special Report, "The End of a Delusion." It is also available in EIR magazine, Vol. 29, No. 17, cover date May 3, 2002.

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Latest From The LaRouche Youth Movement

Lakesha Rogers' Campaign Revives the Democrats' Hopes in Texas

by Harley Schlanger

On the first leg of her tour of the state of Texas last week, LaRouche Youth Movement leader Lakesha Rogers injected some youthful vigor into the state's near-moribund Democratic Party. In discussions with labor leaders at the state AFL-CIO convention last week in Irving, she brought to life her campaign slogan, "Out of the Bushes and Into the Future," elaborating how Lyndon LaRouche's emergency legislation to save the auto sector would not only reverse the collapse of the U.S. economy, but produce a Democratic landslide at the polls this November.

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InDepth Coverage

Library of Congress
Links to articles from
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Vol. 33, No. 20
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Feature:

DISCUSSION MEMORANDUM
Rebuild U.S. Military Around A Corps of Engineers Function
by Jeffrey Steinberg

In recent conversations with Lyndon LaRouche, the following set of basic observations and proposals emerged. 1. During his 1989-1993 tenure as Secretary of Defense in the George H.W.Bush Administration, Dick Cheney presided over a radical transformation of the U.S. military, which has now reached a crisis point, where many flag officers, activeduty and retired, have warned that the entire military structure has been hollowed out, nearly to a point of total destruction...

Globalization Killing Auto, Industry: 'Let's End This Crap!' says LaRouche
by Paul Gallagher

The drive by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) to pass Congressional legislation to save the American auto industry from shutdown, is Congress' chance to stop the globalization wrecking ball before it completely destroys the United States' remaining industrial power. LaRouche put his movement on 'war-room' mobilization May 1, with a report that more than 65 major auto-sector plants, with over 75 million square feet of machine-tool capacity, were being shut down this year and next.

  • Dialogue With LaRouche
    To Return the World to Industrial Growth, Restore the American System in the U.S.

    Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement, along with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and EIR's Paul Gallagher, held a conference call on May 5, to map out the campaign to save the U.S. auto industry (see last week's issue). Below are continued excerpts from the dialogue between LaRouche and the LYM, which followed his opening statement, and Gallagher's report on the shutdown of the machine-tool and manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. auto sector.

International:

PRESIDENT PUTIN IN ANNUAL MESSAGE
Russia Will Survive and Be A Weighty Factor in the World
by Rachel Douglas

Russian President Vladimir Putin's 2006 State of the Federation message, delivered to the Federation Council on May 10, underscored the folly of trying to treat Russia as a misbehaving state or merely a source of 'energy security,' as Dick Cheney and others have recently done. Putin communicated tremendous determination to enhance Russia's status as a great power, moving in the direction of an economic policy shift in a way that won statements of hope from even some of his fiercest critics within Russia.

Blair As Captain Of the Titanic
by Dean Andromidas

In a few short weeks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone from leader of 'New Labor,' preparing for an unprecedented fourth term for the Labor Party, to captain of the Titanic: There are calls from all quarters for Blair to step down or face the same fate as former Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was unceremoniously thrown out of office by her own party in 1990.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad's 'Letter-Bomb' Boxes-In Bush
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

'It's a letter-bomb,' quipped Lyndon LaRouche, in reference to the unprecedented letter, sent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George W. Bush, on May 8. The 18-page letter, delivered to the White House through the Swiss Embassy, which has served as a liaison since diplomatic relations were severed in 1979, aimed at forcing the question of direct talks between Tehran and Washington. Given Bush's psychological profile, it was clear that he would reject the offer out of hand, thus discrediting himself totally in the eyes of the international community. It was, in short, a set-up. LaRouche mooted that the Iranian initiative mayhave been supported by, or coordinated with other forces, perhaps in Russia, Germany, or the like.

Will de Gaulle's Republic Survive the 'Most Stupid Right Wing in the World?'
by Christine Bierre

As the world monetary system stands on the verge of implosion, confronting world leaders with a choice much like that of the 1930s, between fascism and war or republicanism, the French state is being rocked by one of the biggest scandals ever. A brutal power struggle, threatening to destroy the remains of de Gaulle's Fifth Republic, has broken out in recent weeks, within the right wing which is now in power. The fight between Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin erupted around the so-called 'Clearstream affair,' referring to a Luxembourg-based financial clearing house.

Cheney's Ploy To Grab Central Asian Energy
by Ramtanu Maitra

Speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee on April 26, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher unravelled a dubious plan for Washington to gain control over Central Asian energy distribution. The plan called for the United States to develop an energy grid to integrate energyrich Central Asia with energy-starved South Asia.


Culture:

The So-Called 'Enlightenment'
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

In his Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Jerusalem Lecture of May 10, 2004, the now recently deceased Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg had wrestled, like others before him, with the often-debated issue of the role of the so-called 'Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment' in the effort to free European Jewry from victimization by that anti-Semitism whose influence had been spread widely among Catholic and other nominally Christian varieties of doctrine.1 But for the difficulties, including health problems, which had impeded our resuming what we had intended should become our direct, continuing discussions on sundry relevant matters, the Rabbi and I would have come directly to a richer exploration of what had been our differing assessment of the subject of the role of the 'Enlightenment' in that May 2004 address.


National:

Cheney's New Cold War Drive Flops in Kazakstan
by Jeffrey Steinberg

What if you launched a new Cold War and nobody came? That pretty much sums up Vice President Dick Cheney's week-long trip to the Baltic states and Central Asia in early May. At every stop, Cheney delivered a string of personal, provocative attacks against Russian President Vladimir Putin, charging that Russia had reverted back to its totalitarian Sovietera roots, and was using its vast energy reserves to blackmail its neighbors, along with Western Europe and the United States. Cheney all but labelled the Moscow-Tehran collaboration as the 'new axis of evil.'

Lakesha Rogers' Campaign Revives The Democrats' Hopes in Texas
by Harley Schlanger

On the first leg of her tour of the state of Texas last week, LaRouche Youth Movement leader Lakesha Rogers injected some youthful vigor into the state's near-moribund Democratic Party. In discussions with labor leaders at the state AFL-CIO convention the week of May 1 in Irving, she brought to life her campaign slogan, 'Out of the Bushes and Into the Future,' elaborating how Lyndon LaRouche's emergency legislation to save the auto sector would not only reverse the collapse of the U.S. economy, but produce a Democratic landslide at the polls this November.

Dialogue With LaRouche
A New Approach to Immigration Policy

This interchange occurred at a private discussion between Lyndon LaRouche and a number of constituency leaders after LaRouche's April 27 webcast.


Economics:

Argentina: Infrastructure for General Welfare, Not Profit
by Cynthia R. Rush

On April 27, when Argentine President Ne´stor Kirchner announced bidding on the Plan Circunvalar—a project to build a major railroad complex around the inland port city of Rosario—he also unexpectedly announced that bidding would soon begin on construction of a high-speed train connecting Rosario with the capital of Buenos Aires.

Retool Auto Sector To Build Passenger Rail
by Mary Jane Freeman

Tired of sitting in traffic jams and paying too much for gas? Fed up with budget crises and outsourcing of America's industry? Then, adopt Lyndon LaRouche's May 2 call to enact 'Emergency Legislation, Now!' to put Americans back to work building a modern national rail system for passengers and freight.

LaRouche Radio Interview
Rebuild the Nation's Economy Now; We Can't Wait Until Bush Is Gone

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by radio host Scott Leffler, of WLVL 1340 AM, in Lockport, New York, where Delphi is closing one of its auto parts supply plants. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Report From Germany
An Urgent Need for Engineers
by Rainer Apel

If Germany were to commission even one nuclear power plant, it would have to hire foreign engineers to build it.


Editorial:

Do What Henry Hopkins Did!
In early May of 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed his old New York collaborator Harry Hopkins as the head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Within less than one hour, Hopkins had set up shop, and begun pouring out $5 million in relief to desperate families all over the country. But that was nothing compared to what Hopkins did in November of that year, when starvation was threatening over 10 million people in a brutal Winter. Authorized by FDR to set up the Civil Works Administration, Hopkins put 800,000 people to work in ten days, 2 million on the job in a month, and ultimately 4.2 million people into jobs building schools, roads, bridges, sewers, and other infrastructure—much of which is still in use in the United States today! Under FDR's leadership, he saved millions of lives, and the nation. And we built the capability to save the world from fascism in World War II.


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