Larouche Online Almanac

Published: Monday, November 4, 2002

Today is:


Volume 1, No.35


Moongate: Bigger Than Chinagate, Koreagate

Following the 1996 Presidential elections, the Radical Right in America launched a wild campaign against President Bill Clinton, charging him with having been "bought off" by Beijing, via clandestine campaign contributions from corporate fronts for the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Nothing much came of the wildly exaggerated "Chinagate" allegations, save a handful of Federal prosecutions of foreign influence peddlers, trying to buy a night at the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.



However, some of the very Radical Rightists who led the charge against President Clinton and promoted the "Chinagate" scandal, including the not-so-reverend Jerry Falwell, are emerging as the biggest recipients of illegal money from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his offshore dirty-money empire. "Moongate" is a scandal that dwarfs all previous foreign campaign and foreign payola scandals combined. By EIR's best estimates, the Moonies pass billions of dollars a year into a far-flung apparatus of right-wing organizations, churches, political action committees, and Republican politicos, including former President George Bush.
...more

CURRENT SUBSCRIBERS:
    LOG IN HERE, OR USE THE LINKS BELOW, TO ACCESS THIS ISSUE.
Economic reports

U.S. Economic News

World Economic News

World and Nation-state

United States

Ibero-America

Europe

Russia and Eurasia

Middle-East

Asia

Africa


this week in history

November 4-10, 1933

Of all the highly significant events in recent history that occurred during early November— from the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, to the Nazis' 1938 Kristallnacht assault on Jews and Jewish institutions in Germany, to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995— we have chosen to highlight the one which provides the most immediate lesson for the current period: the launching of the Civil Works Administration (CWA) by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order establishing this jobs program on Nov. 8, 1933, upon the instigation of Harry Hopkins, who was already the head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). But, whereas FERA was limited to providing relief in the form of handouts to those who could prove their indigence, the CWA was devoted to creating jobs that paid wages, and stimulated the productive economy as well. Hopkins was designated the head of the new program.

For those who are looking for what Lyndon LaRouche means by a Roosevelt-style public-works program, the CWA provides a useful, but by no means strictly imitable, example.

First of all, the CWA was established as a clear, and unbureaucratic, response to an emergency, the fact that the onset of the winter of 1933-34 was likely to bring a level of privation, including starvation, that would devastate the country. The Public Works Administration (PWA), which had been established by the passage of the National Recovery Act, and had the mandate to carry out substantial public works in the area of infrastructure, was moving at a snail's pace, and not showing significant results in the job market. And the private sector was still collapsed.

Secondly, the CWA was a fully Federal program, in which those employed were Federal employees. The provisions called for one-half of the jobs to go to those who were on relief (today's welfare), and the other half to anyone else who needed work. In both cases, this meant a considerable upgrading of conditions. Those who came from relief now received wages at minimum wage, rather than charity— an increase from $6.50 to $15.00 a week. The other workers did not have to submit to a "means test," (proving you have absolutely no assets) in order to get an income.

It is also of interest to note that Hopkins was thus able to set conditions on providing the jobs, including that black and white workers get equal wages. While many of the Southern states did all they could to get around this, the principle was established.

Thirdly, the CWA employed millions of people, fast. Operating initially with monies from the PWA, Hopkins set out the objective of creating 4 million jobs by Dec. 15, about one month after the establishment of the program. While he only reached 2.6 million by that date, he had employed a small army of 4.2 million by the middle of January.

This aspect of the CWA is distinct from what you would want from a public works program today. In concept, a massive public-works program should be directed to the completion of necessary projects, particularly substantial infrastructure, with employment as a byproduct, rather than the other way around. But, for the limited purpose of saving lives, it worked.

The CWA employment program, conceived as temporary aid to prevent social disaster during the winter, operated under enormous constraints, in terms of the projects it was given. The major purpose was to put income into people's pockets, and 80% of the monies went to salaries, out of the approximately $1 billion spent. In fact, political pressures forced Roosevelt to discontinue the program by April of 1934.

Yet, Hopkins was able to put people to work carrying out useful work, particularly in the areas of infrastructure. This was negotiated, in part, because the PWA had been so slow in carrying out its mandate. The CWA was allowed to pick up projects in the area of sewer treatment, waterworks, and bridge projects, which the PWA had not begun. Overall, 180,000 projects were completed.

More broadly, the CWA spending was dispersed as follows. One-third went to road and highway projects. The second-largest area of concentration was schools; 40,000 were either built or improved, and 50,000 teachers were employed to aid in adult and other education. In addition, 1,000 airports were either built or improved, 3,500 playgrounds built, and a multitude of other projects— including artistic and scholarly ones— were initiated.

Many of these projects produced infrastructure we still rely on today. There is no question but that a public works approach is going to be required, to repair, upgrade, and advance that infrastructure.

Dynamis vs. Energeia— A Sketch

by Jonathan Tennenbaum

Since at least the time of Plato and Aristotle, and most likely even long before Pythagoras, the struggle between oligarchical and republican conceptions of physics has turned on the relationship between what the Greeks called dynamis and energeia.
...more

SocratesIn Depth Coverage
Links to articles from Executive Intelligence Review*.
*Requires Adobe Reader®.


Feature:

Why Hiroshima Was Bombed: The 'Utopians' Duped a Nation
'The United States decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved over one million American lives which would have been sacrificed by an invasion of Japan.'
How often has this claim been restated whenever that horrendous event is mentioned on TV or in newspapers. And yet, it remains to this day a total fiction.

Economics:

'Guadalajara Forum' for New Economic Order Holds First Meeting in Argentina
For the first time on Oct. 18-19, a meeting of the 'Guadalajara Forum' for South American economic integration and a New Bretton Woods monetary system, was held in economically devastated Argentina.

Economic Cooperation Is on Eurasian Agenda
The sudden announcement by the United States on Oct. 16, that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had 'admitted' to a nuclear weapons program, had much to do with relations between Europe and Asia, as well as U.S.-Asian relations.

LaRouche: Infrastructure Gives Nature A 'Helping Hand' Against Drought
As of October, more than half of all American counties—1,650 out of a total of 3,141 in the nation—have been officially designated as economic/weather 'disaster areas' by the Federal government, mostly due to drought.

Germany Waits for A New Economic Policy
On Oct. 29, German Chancellor Gerhard Schro¨der presented his re-elected government's platform for the next four-year term, in an address to the national Parliament. Against the background of his own, publicly stated doubts about the European Union's Maastricht budgeting criteria (see last week's EIR), it was not unrealistic to expect that in his government declaration, Schro¨der would reveal some details of an alternate policy.

1956 Highway Act Broke Down U.S. Transport
The United States set the stage for compromising the integrity of its entire transport network when it decided to pour huge sums into the U.S. Interstate highway system, by passing the Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956...

Robert Moses enemy of railroads
Born in New York City in 1888, Robert Moses attended Yale and then Oxford University, where in 1913 he wrote a doctoral thesis on the British Civil Service. He praised it as the means by which the 'upper division'—by which he meant the wealthier men drawn from the 'best' schools—ruled.

International:

Brazil's Lula Caught Between The Nation and Free Trade

The electoral victory of Workers Party (PT) Presidential candidate Luiz Ina´cio 'Lula' da Silva, with more than 50 million votes—the greatest proportional vote in Brazil's history—confirms what had been evident from the first round of the elections: that the nation is avid for a change from the neo-liberal, monetarist economic model, which has been in force since 1990 and has brought about a state of public calamity...(Credit:Agencia Brasil Photo.)

  • Russia's Putin Pulls Victory Out of Strategic Attack
    An attempted strategic assault against President Vladimir Putin and Russia's global role in a potential alternative to the Bush Administration's war policy, has backfired, leaving Russia strengthened.
  • New Iran-Contra War In the Philippines?
    A recent series of bombings in the Philippines—both in the volatile province of Mindanao in the South, and in the capital, Manila—in the wake of the Oct. 12 bomb which killed nearly 200 in Bali, Indonesia, has thrust the country into a new financial and strategic crisis.
  • Anti-Terror Operations Terrorize Indonesia and Southeast Asia
    While more than 100 official investigators from around the world have converged on the island of Bali in Indonesia, there is still no determination of who was responsible for the bomb which killed nearly 200 tourists and workers there on Oct. 12.
  • A New Momentum Seen In Diplomacy of France
    French diplomacy has been unfolding in a rather unexpected way since the re-election of President Jacques Chirac in May.
  • Unilateralist U.S. Fuels China-India-Russia Ties
    In December 1998, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, while visiting India, proposed a trilateral axis against a U.S.-centered, unipolar world. It is evident that although almost four years have passed since, the idea is alive and gaining ground among the leaders of all three nations.
  • Israel: Sharon's Unity Government Splits
    The collapse of the national unity government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Oct. 30 brings the question of early Israeli elections and the very real possibility of the return of Benjamin Netanyahu back into the office of Prime Minister. With Netanyahu back in the saddle, seamless Israeli cooperation with the Utopian war party in Washington would be certain. As of this writing the situation continues to be fluid.

National:

Bush Shows Signs of Serious Mental Strain at APEC Summit

The most significant development at the Oct. 23-26 APEC summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum) of 21 Asian and American heads of state and government, at Los Cabos, Mexico, was the obvious sign that President George W. Bush displayed, of suffering serious mental problems. (Credit: White House/Tina Hager.)

  • Bush Offers APEC Worse Than Nothing
    Despite its name, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the APEC heads of state summit in Los Cabos, Mexico on Oct. 23-26 was preoccupied with terrorism, while President Bush ignored the pleas for serious discussion of the global economic crisis and its impact in Asia.
  • 'Chicken-hawks' Create Own 'CIA' in Pentagon
    As part of their effort to drag the United States into civilizational warfare in the Middle East, the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Cabal has created its own intelligence and covert-operations units to by-pass U.S. intelligence agencies.
  • Euro-Trilateral Center Stage Grabbed by Perle
    The European branch of the Trilateral Commission held its annual meeting in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, over the Oct. 18-20 weekend; it was the first time the Commission had ever gathered in that city...[i]ts deliberations deserve attention.
View This week's Almanac Section*, as a long .pdf file.


All rights reserved © 2002 EIRNS

Subscribe to Electronic Intelligence Weekly

For all questions regarding your subscription to EIW,
or questions or comments regarding the EIW website's contents or design, please contact eiw@larouchepub.com.

Phone: 1-888-EIR-3258