by: Harley Schlanger

May 3 — At a moment of utmost insanity in Washington, D.C., in which some crazed Democrats, including presidential candidates, are calling for the impeachment of President Trump, a rather interesting meeting occurred in the White House on April 30.  Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and Charles Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, emerged from a discussion with Trump, on rebuilding America’s infrastructure, expressing optimism over the potential to work together.

“We’re very excited about the conversation we had with the President,” Pelosi said.  “We have the opportunity to work together in a bipartisan way.”  Schumer said there was “good will in this meeting,” in contrast to several previous brawls between Trump and Democratic Party leaders.  He said he was somewhat surprised that Trump agreed that a larger-than-anticipated sum of $2 trillion is needed as a minimum, to begin fixing the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure, and announced there would be a follow-up meeting in three weeks, to discuss how to pay for the plan.

Trump, for his part, evinced enthusiasm, saying “I want to do something.”  Delaware Democratic Senator Carper said Trump told them, “I have responsibility to lead…and I’m prepared to do so.”  One point of agreement was the rejection of the public-private partnership (PPP) model, promoted by Wall Street speculators, to fund profit-making boondoggles rather than deploying federal funds in new, state-of-the-art projects.  This has been a problem in the past, as many Republicans oppose any use of federal funds for infrastructure, while many Wall Street-connected Democrats go along with PPP under the fraudulent economic theory of “pay as you go.”  Trump recently stated that he never agreed with the PPP model, saying the proposal came from former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn.  Trump said he always thought that proposal “was so stupid”.

While Pelosi was the one who proposed the meeting, it is noteworthy that Trump had called on Democratic leaders after the November 2018 midterm elections to join him in solving problems, rather than “harassing” him, with multiple hearings into “Russiagate”, and digging into his personal business and finances.  Pelosi sent a signal, following the release of the Mueller report, which cleared Trump of charges that he “colluded” with Putin in “rigging” the 2016 election, saying that impeachment should not be on the agenda, acknowledging there was important work to be done.  While she remains quite outspoken against the Trump presidency, she has stated that making impeachment the issue not only undermines the possibility of making progress through bipartisan cooperation on issues such as infrastructure, but may backfire, by creating an image of Trump as a victim of unjustified attacks.  Further, she recognizes that putting enormous effort into an impeachment campaign will hand Trump an easy campaign issue, allowing him to say, While I was out fighting for your interests, the Democrats continued the witch hunt against me!

DEM JACOBINS STICK TO IMPEACHMENT

The May 1 hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee highlighted a real split within the Democratic Party, as leading Senators ignored Pelosi’s appeal to back off from impeachment.  Both Senate and House Democrats are insisting on relitigating the Mueller investigation, with a new focus on removing Attorney General William Barr.  They are accusing Barr of “acting as Trump’s lawyer” in his handling of the Mueller report.  There are now demands circulating that Barr resign, or be charged with “lying to Congress”, based on charges that he has “misrepresented” the Mueller report.  A number of Democratic presidential candidates have called for Trump to be impeached and removed from office, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.  While former Vice President Joe Biden, who entered the race last week, has not explicitly called for impeachment, his announcement centered on a vicious attack against Trump as an “aberration” in the White House.

The focus on impeachment reflects the ongoing failure and inability of the party to address the concerns facing the American people, which are primarily related to the deteriorating state of the nation’s economy, and the growing disparity between rich and poor.  Senator Bernie Sanders, who currently is polling a close second to Biden in the race for the Democratic nomination, called the focus on impeachment a “distraction.”  Sanders is by no means “soft” on Trump, but recognizes that Trump will be a formidable opponent in 2020, especially if the Democrats have nothing to offer except demanding his impeachment.

In an attempt to come up with an issue, many Democrats rallied around the mindless radicalism of freshman Representative Ocasio Cortez, and her foolish “Green New Deal.”  Promoting radical anti-growth policies, which would threaten massive population reduction if they were to be implemented, the Green New Dealers have drawn significant opposition even from some Democrats, including union officials, who recognize that the policy would destroy what is left of American manufacturing and advanced agriculture.

It is unfortunate for the Democrats — and for the nation — that the party is still controlled by the Obama-Hillary Clinton-Wall Street faction, which sided with London in pushing the anti-Russia line against Trump.  During the Bush and Obama presidencies, the Democrats joined the Republicans as the party of war and regime change, and its leaders continue to favor the interests of the global financial cartels over those of working and middle-class Americans.  Trump won the votes of many former Democrats and Independents with his campaign against the never-ending wars of the neo-cons, and with his pledge to engage in cooperative dialogue with Russia and China, rather than reckless provocations, designed to defend the collapsing post-Cold War order.  For example, when Trump announced his intent to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, many Democrats joined with Republicans in voting for a non-binding resolution, opposing that move.

THE REAL BIPARTISAN SOLUTION

The potential for bipartisan collaboration on developing new platforms of infrastructure is hampered not only by the continuing yapping about impeachment, but by the lack of overall competence of all involved, when it comes to answering the question of how to pay for it.  The Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative provides a beautiful example of how to overcome neo-liberal ideology, which demands no new debt — even while supporting a bankrupt financial system drowning in uncollectible debt, by producing new debt to rollover the bad debt!  By investing in what LaRouche identified as “physical economy”, with an emphasis on science driver projects, the debt problem is solved by the increase in real wealth production, stimulated by a system of national credit.

LaRouche often made presentations on the “Hamiltonian principle” of national credit, generated by a National Bank, rather than a private, central bank system, in his approach to ending the global domination by the City of London-directed global monetary system.  One example of this was a December 7, 2012 webcast, “No to the Green Policy: Revive Our Credit System.”  LaRouche opened by insisting again that Glass-Steagall banking regulation, which had been repealed by an alliance of neo-liberals in both parties in 1999, must be restored, to protect the needed, honest part of the banking system.  He went on to specify, “However,… Glass-Steagall is indispensable, but it does not contain a cure.  It contains a preventive of gambling, and it is necessary.  But here’s where the problem comes in: We’re going to be operating, not on the basis of the present system. That is, if the United States is going to survive: if the U.S. economy is not  going to disintegrate entirely, what’s going to have to happen, relatively immediately, now, is the installation of a creditsystem as the basis of actually creating the growth of the U.S. economy.  That is, an inflation-free form of growth, or hyperinflation-free form of growth, as the matter is now.”

To clarify this, he added,  “Credit does not lie in letting money sit in a bank; it must {do} something.  It must change its character; it must be more {efficient}; or it must be more {enriching}. It means technological progress; it means higher rates of energy-flux density, which is an essential part of this.People are more skilled; they do a job which is a more skilled job; they produce more value with the same amount of nominal labor.  That’s the system. {We must generate growth}. We must increase the productive power of labor.  We must advance technology–absolutely.  We must increase the energy-flux density flowing through the entire system.

“So all the myths which Republicans and Democrats alike believe in, with a kind of religious fervor, or, shall we say, Satanic passion, are {wrong}. The generation of credit, as {real} credit, occurs {only} by the increase of the productive powers of labor, as measured in {physical} terms.  This means physical terms in the sense that people doing the same thing do it more efficiently, or do it at a higher technology.”

As LaRouche noted, such a system could be brought into being by a Four Power alliance, with the U.S. joining Russia, China and India to implement it, as a “New Bretton Woods” system.  A step in this direction would be for the U.S. to become a full participant in China’s BRI global development project.  Despite all the nonsense directed against President Trump, there have been times when his statements, especially about cooperation with Russia and China, have verged toward LaRouche’s idea.  This is precisely why the financial elite behind the collapsing system deployed their attack dogs in the intelligence agencies and media to prevent Trump from moving in this direction, through impeachment if necessary.

If Pelosi and Schumer are serious about cooperating with Trump through investing in infrastructure, they must take up LaRouche’s ideas, and move against the Jacobins in their party, who are fixated on impeaching Trump and destroying the U.S. through radical anti-science, anti-growth policies.  This is not about an “electoral” strategy for 2020, but about the very survival of the United States.

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