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'We've Got To Elect the Guy, First;
And Then, We've Got To Train Him'

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by WCIN in Cincinnati, on Oct. 19, 2004. The host was Prof. Herb Smith.

Host: 1480 Talk on the "Pulse of the City," 1480 WCIN. This is the Professor, my guest now Lyndon LaRouche, head of the Libertarian Party. Good morning, Mr. LaRouche!

LaRouche: Oh, I'm not a Libertarian, I'm a Democrat.

Host: Oh hey! Right on, I can live with that.

LaRouche: I've never been a Libertarian, though some people have tried to confuse me with them. I don't know why.

Host: Okay.

LaRouche: Libertarians scream and protest against it. I just say it's nonsense.

Host: Okay, thank you very much for that clarification. And I do stand corrected. How are you this morning?

LaRouche: Oh, I'm in fair shape, considering a little bit of a flu, which I think a lot of us are facing.

Host: I understand that you have endorsed the Democratic candidate for President?

LaRouche: Oh sure. Actually, as early as February, when I was running against him in a sense, I indicated that he was my number 3 choice, and there was no number 2!

Host: Okay!

LaRouche: So, he's not perfect, but we need to get rid of George Bush's administration urgently, and he's the man in the position to do it. Therefore, I'm doing everything I can to help him win, and quickly.

Host: All right. What is your perception of what's going on? I just talked to Congressman Jim Clyburn from South Carolina. He indicates that there are four bellwether states, Ohio, Michigan among them, that will tell the story. What's your perception?

LaRouche: That's pretty much mine. We've got a big concentration in California, where we're on the state committee, and Oregon, and in Texas against DeLay; but we're also operating around Louisville, which, of course, is close to you there; and we're also doing the southern Michigan/northern Ohio areas, very heavy concentration from Columbus north. Because this is the area of the rust-belt, where the state went from being one of the most prosperous states in the Union to one of the poorest. And this, like western Pennsylvania, Michigan, and so forth, are states which are key, because the lower 80% of the population is hard hit, and they are the people whom we must get out to vote; they are the people who must determine what the next Presidency is going to be.

Host: Exactly. Now, there have been—oh gosh!—in excess of 2 or 300,000, or 400,000 new voters registered in the state of Ohio, 153,000 down here in southwestern Ohio. Do you think we're going—well, do you think those folks are going to get out to the polls?

LaRouche: Well, of course, it's differential. You've got to go within the total population of these people who are applicants, I say the youth are the most serious: The youth, 18 to 25, who have recently become eligible in Federal elections. This is the most important leading group in trying to produce a landslide effect in any state. They are also key, to turning on the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Youth give them more confidence to come out. So, these are major factors and they have to be taken into account that way.

Host: Right. The person, who called a moment ago, would you please call back? We tried to get to you, but we couldn't. Sorry, Mr. LaRouche.

LaRouche: That's all right.

Host: What do you think is going to be the factor, that gets newly registered people out to vote?

LaRouche: I'll tell you, it's fundamental: First of all, the problem we're fighting against, is a pessimism in the population as a result of recent elections and what's happened. People in the lower 80%—even under Clinton, in his second term—and youth, have become despondent about the future of the nation. They don't think they can do much. So there's a tendency for them to pull back, and say, "It's a waste of time. It doesn't make any difference."

Well, it does make a difference. So, the factor is, of getting these people mobilized. And we find that the youth factor is the best factor in mobilizing the general population. There are also trade unions, for example. Trade union organizations in the state of Ohio for example, which are really progressive—like the mayor of Toledo, who's a Republican, but he's on the right cause in terms of the state's interest.

So, if these people turn out, they build up the morale of others.

Now, I'm doing everything I can, on that. For example, take a case, in point: You have this question of the inoculation against the flu, we've got people lined up in supermarkets all over the country, people in their 70s and 80s, who are in the priority category, looking desperately, waiting for the shots that aren't there. The President of the United States has treated their needs with contempt, as he did on this third debate broadcast. This is a major issue.

The economic situation generally is the major issue; to decide to get out of this crazy war pattern, in the Middle East, is the issue. These are the things that move people. But, in Ohio, in particular, they want their jobs back. They want their factories back. They want their schools back. They want the communities to be able to afford the basic services they used to have.

Host: Sure. Now, we have a caller. June is on the line. But, I want to ask one question, June, before you chime in. And that is: Don't you think, Mr. LaRouche, it was a tad convenient that Chiron was decertified, at just the time when we needed flu vaccine stocks to be increased? And suddenly the cost of vaccine skyrocketed?

LaRouche: This was already prepared, beforehand. This thing that hit the press, that people know about now, was already prepared. It was already in the works long before.

The key thing is, that you had not only this, and this is a fraud; it's a breakdown of our national security system: What Bush did can kill more Americans than were killed in 9/11, as a result of his negligence.

Canada offered to help. Bush, on his third broadcast, this third debate, turned down Canada publicly! Saying it might interfere with his attempt to ban cheap prescription drugs from coming into the United States for people who need them.

So, the callousness of the President himself, toward the people, toward especially those people—you've got photographs all over the country, of people in supermarkets lined up, especially of older people, crippled people, so forth, lined up, desperately hoping for the immunization shots that aren't there; knowing that this flu epidemic can kill , like the famous 1918 flu epidemic. And the government doesn't seem to give a damn about the people, and the Bush Administration.

To me, this is a leading issue, not only because it's extremely important in its own right, because it typifies exactly what's wrong with the mentality of the Bush Administration.

Host: June, how you doing?

Q: Oh, good morning, how are you, Professor?

Host: Very good.

Q: Yes, and good morning to your guest.

LaRouche: Good morning!

Q: Have you yourself run for President of the United States?

LaRouche: Oh sure! I've run as a Democrat. I ran as an independent in 1976, against Brzezinski's war policy, actually. But since then I've run as a Democrat, and I've always worked for the Democratic Party's cause.

Q: Okay, so, you are a Democratic person. Great. So, we can talk [phone garble]

Host: Gotta speak up a little bit June!

Q: All right. I'm on a cell phone.

So, we're looking at Kerry. We know he's the best person for the job. I come into contact with many people. I just do, because of the type of work that I do. I just spoke with a teacher. She teaches at a very prestigious public school, but in the Wyoming school district. And if we look at one of the areas that Bush is trying to mislead people as to the nature of his public policy, in relationship to this "No Child Left Behind" policy of his, she—this is coming from a woman who teaches at Wyoming High School, she says the teachers union are totally against this man, because he has removed Federal funding from one of the schools, just within her district—

Host: June, I think you need to explain to Mr. LaRouche, that you're not talking about the state of Wyoming. That you're talking about —

LaRouche: Ohio—

Host: Right.

Q: Right, it's a Wyoming high school within the city; well it's not within the city of Cincinnati. Wyoming has its own governmental area there, but it's within Hamilton County, here, in Cincinnati.

And, she says, that he has just removed millions of dollars to fund public education. So, we're looking at people that are not only people that are laborers, but people that are teachers; we're looking at people that just in general have really been affected by this man's policies.

So, it's not only just poor high schools that have been affected, but we're talking about middle class high schools that have also been affected, by this man removing millions and millions of dollars from funding of public education.

LaRouche: This is typical. I think it's much worse than that: Because, he has cut the programs, but the cutting is not the worst of it. The worst of it, is cutting out essential features of an educational program. For example, classroom size; the amount of time that a teacher has to teach in a classroom, as opposed to the amount of preparation time available. Other kinds of considerations in there.

The nature of the educational program: Is the program Socratic, or is the program, "memorize; learn after me, pass the next examination."

So, not only is the education deficient in terms of the needs, the basic needs of just getting the paperwork through to graduate. But, it's also deficient in terms of the content of the curriculum itself. That we are not providing, any longer, essential things we used to regard as indispensable, in terms of teacher preparation time, quality of the classroom, classroom size, enriched programs, and that sort of thing—they're all missing. And we're not qualifying our young people for the kind of employment we're going to have to create, if the U.S. economy is going to recover from the present depression.

Q: We have also Channel 9, our local station, but ABC in town this evening doing a live broadcast from Cincinnati, because Ohio being one of the key states. And I'm anxious to see exactly what they're going to focus on here, during their nationally televised broadcast at 6:30. And, I don't know if they're going to key in on, just locally I know that Cincinnati's been a very strong area as relates to jobs—you know, we haven't lost as many jobs.

But, still nationally, some of the same issues still affect us, that affect every community as relates to outsourcing of jobs, still. Again, the issues as relates to whether or not we focus too much money on terrorism, subversives, as against education, training, the environment—I think, environmentally Cincinnati is extremely sick. So, I'd like to see how ABC is going to focus on how they look at what we as Cincinnatians feel are crucial issues.

Host: All right, June!

Q: Nice talking with you.

Host: Mr. LaRouche, you know, we opened the door into the schoolhouse, as it were. And I don't know if you're familiar with recent publicization of the fact that our kids in this country are less prepared for college work than at any time in the past.

LaRouche: Absolutely!

Host: I mean—isn't that absurd?

LaRouche: Well, you have to understand what we're doing: Look at the planet, look at our policy in the planet as a whole. What's our attitude toward Africa, toward Mexico, toward South America, toward parts of Asia: What's our policy? Since the middle of the 1970s, with a policy which was enunciated, among others, by Kissinger, we went to the idea of downgrading society.

We take a state like Ohio was a bellwether. Here was the most notable state of the Union, in terms of industrial and agricultural development, combined: We've destroyed it. That was deliberate. We've destroyed Pennsylvania, similarly. We have destroyed Michigan. We're destroying California. We're destroying other states. Why are we doing that?

Because people are going to a different conception of society: In this society, there's no intention to have high-grade employment. The intention is to downgrade our people and to lessen the number of them , and to ship the jobs over to cheap labor overseas.

We have to go back to a traditional American System. We have a protectionist policy: We protect our jobs; we protect capital formation, and essential industries; we maintain a standard of living and a standard of employment which is consistent with our social objectives. We just have to decide.

Now, this is something we have to face right now, going into the election, the education issue, because it's a major issue. But, after the election, I'm going to be continuing to work on this in a different way, on the question of the content of the economy, and the question of the content of the structure of education. What I'm doing is, I've got a youth movement I've organized over the past four years—it's international, actually. But, it's people 18 to 25, who are in college-age eligibility. They represent all strata of society, that is, people from all strata. They are functioning as groups; we're demonstrating the methods of education that can work, and we are conducting that, as, among other things, an educational movement.

I think we need, in the country, an educational movement, focussed upon young adults, between 18 to 25, who are the ones who are best situated to, as young adults, lead the fight for quality education.

Host: Now, just last night, I finished reading a very, very scary article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine , I don't know if you saw that or not—

LaRouche: I heard of it.

Host: Okay, about the "faith-based Presidency." What do you think about a President who is so certain of his righteousness , and his rightness , that he will brook no consideration of the facts, in any form or fashion; and in fact, he denigrates those of us, who he considers to be "reality-based."

LaRouche: Well, I'll tell what, the medical diagnosis is: The man is not sane. And people like that are not sane.

Look, I'm probably pretty well educated, I probably know more than most people do, by a long shot. But, I also don't know a lot of things. And I know it. Everybody in any position, has areas in which important subjects come up, they have to deal with, they don't know the answers. We don't know all the answers. We know our principles, which guide us to search for solutions, consistent with those principles; but, we don't assume we know everything.

Even Kerry doesn't do this effectively enough. He does say, "I have a plan, I have a plan, I have a plan." Well, I think he probably does. But, I think that's not the way I want to go: I want to get the people to say, "We agree, that we want to have this plan." So, my point is, we have to get the people involved, consciously, in the kind of objectives and purposes we intend. And, force a discussion! Don't tell the people what to do! Tell them, in an emergency, when they want to know what to do, and say, "Here's what you can do." But, in setting policy, you want to engage the people in a Socratic process, where you have engaged the majority of the people at least, in discussing the formulation of national policy.

And what he's doing, is, on the face of it, he's extremist in this. He is mentally disturbed. He should not be President for that reason alone.

But: When you think about the whole bunch of people, the wild men, who are hoping the Battle of Armageddon will come next week so they won't have to pay the rent the week following—these people are dangerous. We have them in society. The only way to deal with it, I think, is to educate and develop more of us who don't think that way and outnumber them.

Host: What's your take on the so-called "Vulcans" in the White House?

LaRouche: Oh-ho! These guys! Vulcan, you know, was the guy who ran a furnace. These guys, these guys are cooked up badly!

No, a lot of them are ex-Trotskyists and other things like that—

Host: Right—

LaRouche: Who, as a result of a famous program run in this country and abroad, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, became converted into wild, right-wing—they're actually fascists, and some of them are fairly called Nazis. And some of them are in key positions in government.

They have a war policy, which, if Bush is re-elected, they are going to go ahead with this war policy, and you're going to see war over nuclear issues in Iran, and many other countries of the world, spreading fast. You're going to see dictatorship in the United States, under these guys.

These guys are as dangerous as Hitler. They're somewhat different in their ideology from Hitler, but they represent the same kind of problem.

Host: All right! Yeah, they scare me, too.

The other thing: Florida. Early voting—already problematic!

LaRouche: Yeah sure. It's wild, isn't it?

Host: Yes.

LaRouche: And it's wild, particularly because of the storms that went through there. Many of the people who are resident there, have not yet gotten back there. The place is not repaired. I think the people there are very angry. We can't tell exactly how they're going to react, but I think they're pretty angry, because they're faced with an impossible situation. And they certainly don't feel they're being treated very well.

Host: The 343rd South Carolina unit rebelled, in a combat situation, because their [fuel] trucks were not armored, they were not properly maintained, they were not going to have an armed escort, and they simply refused to go into harm's way. And, I think it's fortunate that in this era of publicity, that we can get e-mails from across the seas, as it were, that their families here, said, "Hey! This is what's going on over there," and of course, the media finally picked it up.

But, what do you think about 18 human beings, in the United States Army, including regular Army as well as National Guard, and reservists, who finally—well, I better not say "finally"—but, who stood up, and said, "Enough is enough! I am not going to die stupidly! If I must die, let me die honorably, but there's no honor in going out there naked, as it were, and getting chopped into mincemeat, simply because."

And the fuel is contaminated, to boot!

What's your take on this?

LaRouche: Well, first of all, the general problem is one against which the regular military warned, before we started this war. For example, the chief of staff, Shinseki, warned against this kind of thing.

Host: He got fired, didn't he?

LaRouche: Yes, he did! He was fired for warning against exactly what happened, and he warned it would happen. Others warned it would happen.

It was a bunch of these fellows you referred to as Vulcans, these nuts , around Cheney—these are the ones who plunged ahead. Our troops are not properly equipped; we didn't put in enough to do the job; we shouldn't have gone in in the first place—we didn't actually need to, there were other ways of dealing with the problem. And we have firms like Cheney's firm, Halliburton, which are ripping off the U.S. government in services performed there, in Iraq, for the U.S. government, and we're not maintaining our military competently.

So, actually, you send in—National Guard troops are not intended to be sent into this thing on rotation after rotation. Reserves are not intended to be sent into this, rotation after rotation. We don't have an adequate military, we don't equip it properly, and we send it into wars in which they're poorly prepared. And we're determined to get into more and more wars.

What we have in Iraq, now, is a situation, which is comparable to the end-phase of the attempted French occupation of Algiers. And it's a largely urban warfare, urban resistance. It's called "asymmetric warfare." The intensity of asymmetric warfare, is climbing up, day, by day, by day . And this means, that sooner or later, we're going to have to get out of there, because we can not win that kind of war in that place. We can't do it.

And unfortunately, Cheney and company want to go to new wars, with the same kind of implications, as in Iran, possibly Syria, North Korea, other places. It's dangerous.

And these guys are just reflecting the fact that they're in an impossible situation. They don't even get medical care properly! We stripped down our medical care! We have people in the military service, who are not getting proper medical care—injured ones, and sick ones.

The people at home are suffering—I mean, the ones left behind, there's a real economic burden, to go from a job as a reservist to go overseas at much lower pay, and trying to maintain your family back at home. And then, when the family doesn't get support services, it makes it worse.

So, you have a general demoralization, destruction of the U.S. military, by putting it through this kind of combination of circumstances. And under those circumstances, you do get vibrations of revolt. They were trying to say, "Please! Somebody pay attention to us!"

Host: I mean, that's—that's extreme. I know it happened in Vietnam. I know that it happened in Korea. I know that it happened in World War II. But, in contemporary warfighting, you would think, that there would be no need for troops to stand up and say, "Wait! I'm still an American citizen. I still have the right to voice my opinion and my concern, and sir, I simply refuse to follow your order, at this point in time."

Because, if I recall correctly, when we raised our right hand, one of the things that we were taught was, that if you are given an illegal order, you do not have to follow that order—in fact, you're obligated, not to follow that order. And an order sending you to virtual certain death, to try an deliver contaminated products! That, in my opinion, is the grossest illegal order that one could be given!

LaRouche: Because the military institutions were destroyed, by the Cheney/Rumsfeld crowd, the Bush gang. Because, the military commanders, the responsible military commanders, would never allow this situation to develop. So, the protest is actually directed not against the U.S. military commanders. They don't believe in this stuff. They don't think this should happen.

Host: Right.

LaRouche: They're following orders.

But: The problem lies with the White House! With the Commander in Chief. And that's where the evil lies.

Remember, in the World War II, we didn't win the war, because we were the best fighting people. I was there. We weren't. We had tonnage of logistical matÃàriel. Where other forces had 100 pounds—we had tons. We won the war, because of the massive output of wealth, by the U.S. economy, which equipped our forces overseas. We overwhelmed the world with our fighting power, which was largely based on logistics.

Now, we've destroyed the U.S. economy—as you see in Ohio. We've destroyed it! We don't have that capability any more, we had then. We continue to destroy it and make it worse; we ship our jobs overseas to cheap labor. We leave wreckage here. We go into wars which are unnecessary and foolish. We don't provide our commanders with the equipment they would need to fight those wars. We don't care for our troops, when they're injured in those wars. We don't care of their families back at home, when the families are suffering from this.

So, you've created a situation, in which the solution is not revolt. The solution is for those of us who have political power, to step in and say "Get rid of this President! We're not going to do this to our troops!"

They are, actually, now—what is in process, continuation of this policy as exemplified by Iraq— they are destroying the U.S. military, as an institution.

Host: Now, doesn't that put us seriously in harm's way, in this country? Because, there has never , since—I don't know—1812 (well, not 1812; well yeah, 1812), there has never been a foreign force fighting on the North American continent—

LaRouche: Except the Confederacy, which was really a foreign force!

Host: Okay, I'll accept that.

LaRouche: Sure! That's true. Because, what Lincoln did, with his revolution, in making the United States a nation under its Constitution, built the greatest productive machine on this planet, of any nation. Other nations began to imitate us. Japan, for example, adopted the American System, based on Lincoln's precedent; Germany adopted the American System of industrial development; Russia adopted it, through the great scientist, Mendeleyev; France adopted it; others adopted it.

So, the American System gave us such power, that they could not destroy us by force from outside, but only by spreading corruption within. And that's what they've concentrated on for a long time. And to a large degree they've succeeded. I look at this Bush Administration as an example of imported corruption from abroad by people who are trying to destroy us by those means, when physical means would fail.

Host: How much time do you have?

LaRouche: Oh, a little bit, why?

Host: I just wanted to know, so in case you had another engagement, that we could wrap up. So, we'll wrap up whenever you're ready. I'll take my cue from you.

LaRouche: Well, let's take about another 10 minutes, maybe.

Host: Fair enough.

Denise, how are you?

Q: Hi, fine, and you Professor.

Host: Very good, thank you.

Q: Good, and good morning to Mr. LaRouche.

LaRouche: Thank you.

Q: First, let me say, "kudos" or "right on" to the young soldiers who exercised some rational thought, and decided that, no, they weren't going to go into harm's way like that, you know commit, basically, suicide, right?

And, my question to you, though, Mr. LaRouche, I just don't feel like Kerry is going to get us out of that war, anytime soon. What do you have to say about that?

LaRouche: Okay. I don't disagree with you. I'm supporting Kerry because we've got to get rid of Bush, and Kerry's the only available instrument to do that at this time.

Now, Kerry is going to face some problems. He's not just alone. He's going to depend on a lot of people. I'm more closely associated with former President Bill Clinton and that circle, than with Kerry as such. But, like Bill Clinton, we're supporting Kerry's campaign.

Now, the point is, Kerry is going to face, getting in—even getting elected—if we say, he's elected as of Nov. 3 when the votes are counted from the day before, then he's going to face a lot of problems he just does not realize exist presently. To get out of those problems, he's going to have to come to us, and I'm talking about some thousands of people in the United States, who are formerly military commanders, retired, or formerly in the State Department, formerly in other positions of government, and professors and so forth who are really part of the Presidential system in an advisory capacity, from time to time. He's going to have to come to us.

Now, Kerry doesn't understand anything about economics: that's his weakness. We're headed for the worst economic crisis the world has ever known in modern times, in modern history. It's coming on, right now! The flu vaccine thing is a reflection of that process. The rise of the price of oil, which is not a shortage of oil, it's a rise of the price of oil as a result of speculation—these things are going to hit us hard.

Kerry is going to face, immediately, on the certification of his election, is going to face a crisis beyond anything he imagines. At that point, he's going to have to come to us, who will work with him, and to give him the kind of advice in rethinking, on these subjects that he hasn't even begun to think about right now. And therefore, that's my commitment. I represent a movement, I represent a part of the Democratic Party, a part of the process; I have international connections, other influences, I can bring to bear, with others, to assist a new President in finding his way through the swamp in which he's tending to wander.

I agree with the problem. We've got to fix the problem. We've got to elect the guy first, and then we've got to train him!

Q: Okay! Well, thank you.

Host: Anything else, Denise?

Q: That's it.

Host: Thank you! 749-1480, we've got about 6 minutes, maybe 7 left.

And, Mr. LaRouche, you were talking about economics: What's your take, your response to the situation, whereby Halliburton has ripped off the pensions of the former employees of one of their subsidiaries; and offered them buy-outs, and they were expecting one amount, but when they got their checks, they got a significantly lesser amount.

LaRouche: All right: What I need is the President, who has a new Attorney General—not John Ashcroft. That new Attorney General will immediately have a task force, to go into areas like this, and there are many corporate areas, in which similar things have gone on. Halliburton, like Enron, for example. We're going to go into these areas, if we have "our druthers," and we're going to go, not only to apprehend those who need to be apprehended; but, where an injustice was done, by means of fraud, and we determined it was fraudulently done we're going to order that restitution or compensation be given to those who have suffered from that injustice. It's the only proper way to deal with this.

Host: Now, we've spent a lot of money on this Iraq situation. But, let's just talk about $87 billion. What would we be able to do in this country, if that $87 billion were freed up, and devoted to enhancing the quality of life of United States citizens?

LaRouche: Well, we're going to need a lot more than that, but certainly every $10 billion we can muster in terms of credit, for creating new jobs and new workplaces, is much needed.

We need everything! For example: Take the health-care situation. We've got the flu vaccine crisis. This is not a competent medical defense system! What Bush is doing, with his policy on flu vaccine, is going to kill more people than 9/11 did! Because he's just denying them—and going to corporations and get a few to sum up something to beat the demand, is not going to do it.

This is a question of building up our medical defense system, which is supposed to be based under the Surgeon General of the United States. We're supposed to have a capability which involves a lot of different kinds of capabilities, which can be mobilized together, to determine what needs to be done, as preventive measures, as much as corrective ones, and do the job. So therefore, we need to establish, on this vaccine problem, and similar kinds of immunization and things like that, we need to have a task force in the government, in the Federal government, which is committed to a mission-orientation—like a military mission-orientation—to make sure that this country is defended against diseases and similar kinds of health problems, in the same way we would defend it against an invader.

Host: Okay. You mentioned credit, a moment ago. What is your take, since we're in the economic arena—what is your take on the fact that Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia, are our major creditors?

LaRouche: Well, the point is, we're sucking their blood—that's what it amounts to.

What we have to do, is, we have go back, to realize that the present financial-monetary system is presently hopelessly bankrupt. Nothing can save this system in its present form. Now, when you hear those words, you have to think back to March of 1933: When Franklin Roosevelt, just inaugurated, faced exactly that kind of problem. This is worse than what Roosevelt faced, but it's the same type of problem in general.

Under our Constitution, the Federal government has the power to create credit, which governments abroad don't have. We have it. What we're going to have to do, is, the President of the United States, with the consent of Congress, is going to have to launch a great number of projects, as Roosevelt did. These projects will be, first, in infrastructure. For example, you have, right there, in Cincinnati, look down the Ohio River: How many locks and dams are being destroyed out of aging? We need to repair that. Power: How many power stations are wearing out after 40 to 50 years of non-development? And power shortages are developing?

So, we have lots of needs, in the United States, for basic economic infrastructure: transportation, power, health care, education, so forth—all these needs. We have to invest in that. By investing in creating jobs, and I think it'll take about 10 million jobs to do the job—that is, to get the economy moving again—by doing that, we create the market for the private sector; which comes in, just as it did with the TVA project.

Host: Sure.

LaRouche: You put in a Federal project, and the private sector came in on the deals with that. We have to provide credit, mobilize credit. So, we create debt, we charge the debt against the assets we're creating, like new dams, new power stations, new educational systems, new health facilities, that sort of thing, and new factories. So therefore, it's called "fungible," that is, we can get our money back in the long run. So, we're not going bankrupt, or unbalancing our long-term budget by that sort of thing. That's what Roosevelt did.

We couldn't do it during the war, because that was too expensive. But, that's what he did in the peacetime. We have to do that again. And that's where we need the money.

We need the Federal government must go back to a regulated system. We must have regulation. We must have trade and tariffs protection for our industries, otherwise people can't invest in them; we've got to protect our jobs, otherwise, we won't have them. We've got to rebuild the country. It's going to take a generation to do it. But it's much more fun going up, than it has been coming down.

Host: We've got a caller coming, and I'm going to have to ask him to be very brief. I have one last question. Caller? Yea/nay. Nay. Okay. One last question, sir, and then we need to wrap up.

Nuclear power: Why aren't we really utilizing the promise of nuclear power in this country, to bring down the price of electricity, like we should?

LaRouche: That's because there was an organization, by the same people that got us into the Vietnam War, in the first place: A tendency to change the country from being an agro-industrial technology-driven power, into becoming a post-industrial society. This has gone on for 40 years. And as a part of that there was a campaign to eliminate nuclear power.

Now, there were problems with nuclear-power generation, but they were being corrected. That should have been continued.

We need nuclear power, not only for electricity: If you have nuclear-power plants, you can generate, from water, you can generate hydrogen-based fuels in local regions. You don't have to haul oil from all over the world to do it. You also have other applications, which high-intensity energy sources provide for you, new kinds of industries.

We have to make the United States, which is going to have long-term relations with the poorer part of the world—with developing China, with developing India, with developing South and Central America, with Africa—we have to be a high-technology economy, which is engaged in meeting the needs of countries abroad, by supplying them the technology they need from us. We, therefore, must upgrade our people, in education and so forth, and have the power to do that.

Host: All right! Mr. LaRouche, we could go on for another hour or two, I'm sure. But, we must get off the air. We have a dynamic DJ coming up.

But, thank you so much for your time. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I hope we can do this again.

LaRouche: Why sure!

Host: Thank you so much. You have a great day!

LaRouche: Thank you.