Why Governor Ridge Must Be Impeached
For Nazi Crimes Against Humanity

On May 16, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge signed into law a bill which immediately removed 220,000 low-income people from eligibility for medical assistance. With the stroke of a pen, Governor Ridge knowingly condemned thousands of people to death, and made himself guilty of Nazi crimes against humanity. Specifically, Governor Ridge has set into motion a plan that will carry out "murder and ill-treatment of civilian populations," through "the inadequate provision of surgical and medical services." Under the principles established in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals after World War II, Governor Ridge would be judged to have known or should have known, that he was carrying out such heinous crimes.

Nuremberg criminals were hung; we demand that Governor Ridge be impeached from office. If we do not do so, we are as guilty as those we condemned as "good Germans" for tolerating the Nazis. If we do not act, it can and will happen here.

As Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche has stressed, the Ridge case is a test case--for all Americans. Governor Ridge is not a Republican, in the ordinary sense. As a fanatical member of the Gingrich Contract on America crowd, he is a Nazi, on the verge of carrying out mass murder through Nazi austerity policies. If Americans tolerate such actions as those Governor Ridge is in the process of carrying out, they will open the door to the implementation of full-scale Nazi policies nationally, as the economic depression gets deeper.

With these national, and even global, implications in mind, LaRouche's presidential campaign has launched a campaign for the governor's impeachment. The Pennsylvania Constitution makes it clear that the governor can be removed for cause--specifically, for "misbehavior in office," and an "infamous crime." Governor Ridge is thus liable to be impeached, and must be impeached now!

It may appear to some that Governor Ridge and his actions are "small fry," and don't deserve so much attention, and that the Nazi characterization is "too extreme." This is dead wrong. Governor Ridge's action is a witting Nazi act, taken after he had been warned of the consequences for innocent people, and after he had been told how he could fill the budget deficit which he used as the excuse for this policy. We document this fact in the pages that follow.

Thousands Will Die

True, Governor Ridge may not be the biggest genocidalist in the United States, compared to Newt Gingrich, or Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Bank. But, as the documentation shows, his medical cuts alone can be reasonably projected to kill more than 3,500 people within the first six months alone! On top of that mass murder, we also have the governor carrying out other Nazi policies, specifically the privatization of prisons. These crimes can, and must, be stopped. Stop them, and it will put the whole Conservative Revolution crowd, of which Ridge is a part, on notice that their fascist policies will not be tolerated.

As to those who find it "too extreme" to identify Governor Ridge's actions as Nazi, they must be forced to confront the harsh realities. A softness on fascist policies is precisely what brought us the horrors of Hitler's regime. That softness was not only in Germany, but, as we document in this pamphlet, was pervasive throughout both leading circles, and large sections of the population, in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. Only under the strong leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt did America turn around in the mid-1930s.

But the fundamental flaws in thinking--the pessimistic, cost-cutting, Social-Darwinist mentality--that led to the softness on fascism in the 1920s and 30s, have not yet been eradicated from the U.S. population. Think, how many of your neighbors fell for Gingrich in 1994? How many of them are temporizing today on the question of Dr. Death Kevorkian, or murderous budget cuts?

Join us in impeaching Governor Ridge now, before the end of the summer. Let's sound the political death knell for the Gingrichite fascist revival, before it's too late.