Matthew Ogden: Jeg vil kort gennemgå, hvad der sker i verden og de udviklinger, der har været i ugens løb. Der foregår virkelig meget i verden; se bare på det tempo, udviklinger finder sted i: fra Kinas Bælte & Vej Forum i midten af maj til Skt. Petersborg Internationale Økonomiske Forum, der fandt sted i sidste uge i Skt. Petersborg, Rusland. Vi er nu midt Shanghai Samarbejdsorganisationens (SCO) møde, der finder sted i Astana, Kasakhstan. Både Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin og Narendra Modi er til stede ved dette SCO-møde, der finder sted netop nu. Der finder bilaterale møder sted på sidelinjen af dette meget vigtige topmøde, mellem præsident Xi og Modi, Xi og præsident Putin, og Xi og præsident Nazarbajev fra Kasakhstan.
Det, vi er vidne til i hele denne række af verdenshistoriske topmøder, er i realiteten en konsolidering af det, som Helga Zepp-LaRouche, under sin deltagelse i Bælte & Vej Forum i Beijing, kaldte »dannelsen af en Ny Økonomisk Verdensorden«. Hun sagde:
»Med Bælte & Vej Forum etablerede vi dannelsen af en Ny Økonomisk Verdensorden. Det var et i sandhed historisk øjeblik; en ny æra for civilisationen. Dette er et faseskifte for menneskeheden.«
Det, vi ser, er en reel konsolidering af dette faseskifte for menneskeheden.
Præsident Xi Jinpings artikel, som han offentliggjorde aftenen før SCO-forummet i Astana, gav genlyd af denne karakteristik. Han erklærede, at den Nye Silkevej var blevet en succes i løbet af de fire år, der var gået, siden han oprindeligt annoncerede dette initiativ på præcis samme sted – Astana, Kasakhstan – i 2013. Han sagde, initiativet i løbet af disse fire år med held var gået fra idé til handling; og at dette initiativ nu fungerer som et »globalt offentligt gode«. Jeg mener, at denne karakteristik understreger det faktum, at denne nye, internationale orden ikke alene omfatter de økonomiske, diplomatiske og sikkerhedsmæssige relationer, der nu bliver konsolideret; men også, grundlæggende set, et fælles forpligtende engagement til fundamentalt fremskridt for den menneskelige art. Det, som Xi Jinping kalder for »menneskehedens fælles skæbne«.
Hvis vi ser på de spændende budskaber, der netop er kommet fra det kinesiske rumprogram, mener jeg, dette er en absolut korrekt karakteristik. Det bekræftes nu, at Kina, med deres Chang’e-mission, følger planen for at sende en mission til Månen for at returnere med prøver, få prøver af månejord og vende hjem til Jorden med dem; dette vil ske i november i år. Chang’e IV-missionen til Månens bagside, som man har store forventninger til, vil finde sted til næste år.
Lad os se på, hvad der finder sted her i USA. I denne uge så vi, at der virkelig blev lagt ved på bålet i kampen for Glass-Steagall. Marcy Kaptur og Walter Jones er begge i offensiven i denne uge i forbindelse med den såkaldte »Financial Choice Act«. De fremlagde begge en fremragende begrundelse for Rules Committee tidligere på ugen, for deres lovtillæg til Financial Choice Act, nemlig Prudent Banking Law (loven om ’klog of forsigtig’ bankpraksis), som ville genindføre Glass-Steagall. Selv om dette desværre blev nedstemt i Rules Committee (dvs. komiteen vil ikke lade dette alternative lovforslag komme til afstemning i salen, -red.), så har begge fået mulighed for at tale i Repræsentanternes Hus’ sal imod Henserling-lovforslaget. Walter Jones var den eneste Republikaner, der stemte imod Financial Choice Act og til støtte for Glass-Steagall, sammen med Tulsi Gabbard, der også er medsponsor af Glass/Steagall-loven.
Jeg vil afspille først Marcy Kapturs tale, efterfulgt af Tulsi Gabbards tale:
Her følger videoklippene og resten af webcastet på engelsk:
MARCY KAPTUR: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the
Financial Choice Act, which abandons the American people, as well
as safety and soundness in favor of Wall Street. Six mega-banks
now control two-thirds of the financial sector in our country,
and reap record profits of over $170 billion in 2016. That’s too
much power in too few hands. Current law has made progress in
protecting consumers from predatory practices. Repeal of these
consumer protections is not what the American want. This week,
Congressman Jones and I proposed to table the current legislation
and replace it with our bipartisan bill, the Prudent Banking Act;
which reinstates Glass-Steagall protections by separating prudent
banking from risky Wall Street speculation that tanked our
economy in 2008. The Rules Committee refused to allow our bill a
vote; nevertheless, we remain resolute. Glass-Steagall is
something President Trump ran on, as did Bernie Sanders. In
2016, both the Republican and Democratic platforms enshrined
policies to restore Glass-Steagall protections. Americans should
know there is a growing bipartisan consensus fighting to protect
the progress we have made, rein in Wall Street, and keep the
wolves at bay and out of your pocketbook. I will be voting “no”
on this bill and urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield back
my remaining time.
TULSI GABBARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Rolling back
financial regulations that are in place to protect the American
people will put them and our country’s economic security at risk.
However, the Financial Choice Act that is being considered by
Congress today does just that. It erodes protections against
dishonest, big bank practices that rob people of their
hard-earned salaries. The bill repeals the Volcker Rule, it
dismantles the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, strips
regulations in place to protect the American people’s savings,
and actually lets the big banks maintain even less capital that
they need to absorb catastrophic losses; making it so that
they’re relying once again on the American taxpayer to bail them
out. We don’t need to remind the families who have suffered so
much about the pain caused by the Great Recession. In my own
home state of Hawaii, from 2008 to 2010, our unemployment rate
more than doubled; and 11 million people in America lost their
homes. The big banks of 2008 are even bigger and more powerful
today. I urge my colleagues to reject this dangerous bill and
instead pass HR790, the Return to Prudent Banking Act, which
would reinstate a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. I yield back.
OGDEN: So, along with Glass-Steagall, the rest of the
debate around what constitutes the core of Mr. Lyndon LaRouche’s
Four Economic Laws, is also beginning to open up. While you have
President Trump touring the country as part of his so-called
“National Infrastructure Week”, this has really been put on the
table in a very real way. The credit for this infrastructure.
How do you increase the productivity of the American workforce?
How do you increase the productivity of the American territory,
and how do you apply the American System — the Hamiltonian
system — to make this happen?
Just to give you flavor of what Mr. Trump has been saying on
the subject over the past week — and we will get into this a lot
more — I’m going to play for you a clip of his speech that he
gave in Cincinnati. I think you’ll find the setting very
appropriate; right against the backdrop of the Ohio River, with
barge traffic going back and forth behind him as he speaks. So,
here’s President Trump:
DONALD TRUMP: [as heard] Thank you all very much. It is
great to be back in Ohio. We love Ohio. You remember Ohio, oh
boy. It was supposed to be close; it wasn’t close. So wonderful
to speak on the shores of the very magnificent Ohio River. We’re
here today to talk about rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.
Isn’t it about time? Spending money all over the world, except
here. We don’t spend our money here, we spend it all over. And
we’ll do it using American labor, American energy, American iron,
aluminum, and steel.
The American people deserve the best infrastructure anywhere
in the world. We are a nation that created the Panama Canal, the
Transcontinental Railroad, and if you think about this, the great
highway system — the Interstate highway system. We don’t do
that anymore, we really don’t. We don’t even fix the old
highways anymore. We’ll take even fixing them, but we’re going
to get them going again like they’ve never been before. These
projects not only open new lanes of commerce, but inspired the
immigration and the dreams of millions and millions of people.
We crafted monuments to the American spirit; it’s time to
recapture our legacy as a nation of builders and to create new
lanes of travel, commerce, and discovery. We’re going to see all
the way into the future; and the future’s going to be beautiful.
And the future is going to be bright.
In my campaign for President, I travelled all across the
nation. I saw the crumbling infrastructure. I met with
communities that were desperate for new roads and new bridges.
The bridges were so dangerous, they couldn’t use them; they were
worried they would fall down. You’ve seen that happen. I heard
the pleas from the voters who wanted to know why we could rebuild
foreign countries? My big thing. We build in foreign countries,
we spend trillions and trillions of dollars outside of our
nation; but we can’t build a road, a highway, a tunnel, a bridge
in our own nation. We watch everything falling into disrepair.
It’s time to rebuild {our} country, to bring back {our} jobs, to
restore {our} dreams. And yes, it’s time — finally — to put
American first; and that’s what I’ve been doing, if you haven’t
noticed.
We’re going to restore America’s industrial might; creating
the jobs and tax base to put new infrastructure all over our
country. That’s what’s happening. I’m calling on all Democrats
and Republicans to join together — if that’s possible — in the
great rebuilding of America. Countless American industries,
businesses, and jobs depend on rivers, runways, roads, and rails
that are in dire and even desperate condition. Millions of
American families rely on their water and pipes and pumps that
are on the verge of total failure and collapse.
We are pleased to be joined today by representatives from
many, many industries that depend on a truly critical component
of our nation’s infrastructure. These citizens know firsthand
that the rivers, like the beautiful Ohio River, carry the
lifeblood of our heartland. Roughly 60% of United States grain
exports travel down these waterways to the Gulf. More than half
of all the American steel is produced within 250 miles of where
we’re standing right now, and its production depends on the
inland waterway system. Up to 25% of the nation’s energy cargo
relies on these channels, and the refineries along their shores.
But these critical guarders of commerce depend on a dilapidated
system of locks and dams that is more than half a century old.
And their condition, as you know better than anybody, is in very
bad shape. It continues to decay.
Capital improvements of this system which is so important,
have been massively underfunded. There is an $8.7 billion
maintenance backlog that is only getting bigger and getting
worse. Last December, up the Ohio River near Pittsburgh, one
lock built more than 50 years ago had to be shut down for five
days due to hydraulic failure. You know what that means. Five
days means everything comes to a halt. We simply cannot tolerate
a five-day shutdown on a major thoroughfare for American coal,
American oil, and American steel which is going to get more and
bigger. America must have the best, fastest, and most reliable
infrastructure anywhere in the world. We cannot accept these
conditions any longer.
A few years ago, a gate broke from its hinges at the
Markland Locks on the Ohio River in Kentucky. It took nearly
five months to repair. Any of you know about that? Wasn’t a
pretty picture, was it? I don’t think so. In 2011, a massive
section of canal wall collapsed near Chicago, delaying
everything; and it seemed like forever.
America built the Golden Gate Bridge in just four years, and
the Hoover Dam in five years. Think of that. It shouldn’t take
ten years to get approvals for a very small little piece of
infrastructure; and it won’t. Because under my administration,
it’s not going to happen like that anymore.
So, I want to thank all of the great workers for being here
today. I want to thank all of the great business leaders; you
have some business leaders who are legendary people in the
audience. Running massive, massive companies. And being slowed
down, but now they’ll be able to speed it up.
Not only are we going to repair much of the depleted
infrastructure, but we’re going to create brand new projects that
excite and inspire. Because that is what a great country does;
that is what a great country has to do. America wants to build.
Across the nation, our amazing construction workers, steel
workers, iron workers, fitters, electricians, and so many others
are just waiting to get back to work. With the talent and skill
they represent — which believe me, I grew up in the building
business. I know the talent and the skill and the courage and
everything else that they have. There is no limit to what we can
achieve. All it takes is a bold and daring vision and the will
to make it happen.
Nearly two centuries ago, one American governor had just
such a vision and a will. His name was Governor DeWitt Clinton.
As the governor of New York State, he dreamed of a canal
stretching nearly 400 miles to connect the Atlantic Ocean in the
east with the Great Lakes in the west. He predicted that its
construction would place New York City at the very center of
worldwide commerce. He took the idea to Washington, but
President Thomas Jefferson — great President — didn’t agree
with him; and he dismissed that concept as total madness. I’d
like to thank all of the people that helped so much in that
incredible event, and I think that Jefferson simply understood
who he was and who he was dealing with. If you want a New Yorker
to do something, just tell them — like our great past governor
— that it’s impossible to do. The governor didn’t give up, and
New York State achieved what they thought was the impossible.
When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, he was on the first boat. He
personally deposited a bucket of water from the Great Lakes into
the New York Harbor. The new canal exceeded even the governor’s
bold vision. It dramatically reduced the time and cost to
transport goods from the heartland. As a result, new settlers
rushed into the Midwest, including to right smack here. Probably
some of you indirectly, right? Definitely some of you.
Just as the daring dreams of our ancestors opened new paths
across our land, today we will build the dreams that open new
paths to a better tomorrow. We, too, will see jobs and wealth
flood into the heartland, and see new products and new produce
made and grown right here in the U.S.A. You don’t hear that much
anymore. We will buy American, and we will hire American. We
will not — so importantly — be content to let our nation become
a museum of former glories. We will construct incredible new
monuments to American grit that inspire wonder for generations
and generations to come. We will build because our people want
to build, and because we need them to build. We will build
because our prosperity demands it. And above all, we will build
because that is how we make America great again.
Thank you. God bless you. Go out there and work. You’re
going to see some amazing things happen over the next long period
of time. Thank you, everyone. It’s a great honor to be with
you. Thank you.
OGDEN: So, to address some of what President Trump covered
in that frankly inspiring speech, I want to hand it over to
Jason. I know we have some other things to cover, but we’ll get
to those later in the show. I think this is a good point to let
Jason tell us how we’re going to get to work.
JASON ROSS: OK, this article that Matt referred to earlier,
that I wrote about New York City’s infrastructure — New York’s a
case-study, but it really says something about the nation as a
whole, namely, that if the biggest, greatest city in the United
States is an infrastructure disaster, what does that say about
our economic thinking, about the way we think about
infrastructure? How did we let ourselves get into a situation
that’s this bad?
First, from a national perspective, just some of the
numbers, briefly. The American Society of Civil Engineers every
few years does a report card on American infrastructure. We got
a D+. Now, they say that there’s $4.5 trillion of infrastructure
that’s needed and of that, only about half of it actually is
funded. That over the next decade, there is a little over $2
trillion in infrastructure needs that currently are not provided
for, that won’t happen, that aren’t scheduled to take place:
Things like the locks and dams on our inland waterway system that
President Trump mentioned, which are in terrible shape! Where
the failure — take one example — the failure of the Soo locks
on the Great Lakes, if that were to go, for the shipping season
during the warmer months, the estimates from the Department of
Homeland Security are that {11 million jobs} would be lost by the
failure of that one piece of infrastructure because it’s so
critical to so much of manufacturing: Of bringing ore from one
place to another, bringing products from one place to another.
Without it, there’s no alternative way of moving these goods.
You’re not going to ship it by truck. It won’t happen. It’s
just going to dramatically collapse our productive abilities.
Now, these estimates are a little low. The head of China
Investment Corp. Ding Xuedong estimated U.S. infrastructure
needs at $8 trillion! What this really all comes down to,
though is what we consider our needs to be. Do we think of what
we need to do in the future, in terms of repairing what we’ve
already got, which we certainly should repair locks and dams that
are threatening failure. But is that what our needs are?
It isn’t. You’ve got to say what is going to make us proud
a century from now. What is going to be the groundwork that 100
years from now, we will say, “Oh, this was the basis for the
prosperity that we had over this century; this is what made it
possible.” And if you look at the past, at things like the canal
that President Trump mentioned, if you look at what Eisenhower
did 51 years ago in setting up the Highway Trust Fund and the
ability to go out and build the Interstate Highway System, which
was a pretty phenomenal thing in its time: 40,000 miles of
expressway were built in a decade and a half. That’s pretty
fast. It was a large project. Every year, 15,000 families were
relocated, 40,000 miles built altogether, at a cost in today’s
terms of about $500 billion — a big project. A big project.
Now, for what we need to do today, to make the groundwork
for what we’re going to need over the next century, we’ve got to
think about leapfrogging. What’s the next level of technology?
Improving Amtrak trains?–ugh. Instead, think about how are we
going to have a high-speed rail network? Where will these
high-speed rail stations be? There’s just no way, for example,
on the route that goes from New York to Boston, it can’t be
upgraded — forget it! It won’t happen; we’re not going to build
a maglev line that runs along the current Northeast Corridor from
New York to Boston. Not going to happen. Too crooked, too
curved, goes through too many downtowns and narrow types of
passageways — not going to happen. We’re going to build an
entirely new rail network in the United States, new high-speed
rail network.
We should build maglev rail, magnetic levitation is the
leapfrog. That’s the next level of technology. It’s more
efficient, it’s safer, it’s quieter, less vibration, less
disruption to people nearby. Fast, safe, efficient — this is
what would be the next generation of technology, that would be a
basis for a higher potential of our country as a whole.
Think about the history of the United States; think about
the history of any country. What makes it possible to achieve a
certain level of wealth of economic activity, of development?
Well, there’s a lot of aspects to it, but the primary one that
makes everything else possible, is your infrastructure platform.
Do you have a network of roads? Do you have availability of
power? How about water? Think about where cities are located in
the country, or in other countries — where do cities locate
themselves? They don’t wind up in the middle of the desert or on
the top of a mountain peak or someplace like that. It’s based on
the, you might say “natural,” infrastructure. Is it near a
river? Why is New York where it is? The Hudson River isn’t just
an inconvenience to traffic because you have to build bridges and
tunnels above it or below it. It’s the Hudson River! This is a
major aspect of shipping that goes into the country. That’s why
New York is where it is.
Other cities, they are where they are due in large part to
rivers for our older cities; and then when you think about what
the potential is in building rail networks and building road
networks, you create a synthetic environment of infrastructure,
that says, OK, this is a place where we should build a new city;
this is a place where it makes sense to have production. We can
get materials easily, we can work on them, we can ship them out;
we’ve got water, we’ve got power, we’ve got transportation, that
increases the potential of every bit of land that is developed in
that way.
So when you string electric lines out, as Roosevelt did with
the Rural Electrification Act, with the help from the Federal
government for rural residents to get electricity to their towns,
to their farms, this dramatically increased their productivity.
The building of the Transcontinental Railroad; it didn’t just
mean it as cheaper to ship some thing you ordered from a
manufacturer in New York to San Francisco. Yes, it was cheaper
and quicker than going by boat, all the way around; but what did
it make possible in the entire rest of the country? You build a
rail line, all the places along it are now increased in their
potential, increased in their value.
So what we need to do, is take advantage of the incredible
renaissance in infrastructure that’s occurring all around the
world — it’s led by China. And I’ve got to say, the incredible
success that China’s having with its own domestic infrastructure,
with the building of 22,000 km of high-speed rail over the past
decade. And let’s think about this: China is a country, where a
decade ago there was zero high-speed rail in China. What you see
here [{{Figure 1}}] is a map of a future 8 by 8 grid of
high-speed rail planned by China. It’s double the length of
current high-speed rail, 45,000 km. They’re going to have that
in place in 2035.
Where do these lines go? Does it go to currently existing
cities? Yes. It would be silly not to link up currently
existing cities. Where are the stations? Are they in the
downtowns? Not necessarily. Maybe it’s difficult to get there;
there’s already a lot of buildings there. So new areas are
opening up for development in China, as a result of these
high-speed rail lines. They’re tremendously successful. Most of
the trips made along this network, are new trips, ones that would
not have been made if the network did not exist. So it’s not
just people getting somewhere they were already going more
quickly, it’s actually increasing the transportation throughput
in the country.
That’s what it would be like in the United States as well,
as we develop a national network of high-speed rail [{{Figure
2}}]; this will change the productivity throughout the country.
And another aspect of this, I want to show one more thing we
can learn from China, which is the increase in energy, to take
another metric. I had mentioned transportation. Here’s a chart
[{{Figure 3}}]: In blue, you see total per-capita energy use in
China, from 1972-2012, so, 40 years. Look at that difference:
Total energy use per capita in China is more than four times as
big, almost five times as big. Now, look especially at the red
line: That’s the amount of {electricity} used per person in
China. Now, I know, in this chart the red line goes above the
blue line, because they’re different units, so don’t worry about
that. The relative change is what’s important: {Per-capital}
electricity use in China, has gone up {by 25 times}, in past four
decades — 25 times. Think about what that means. Look at the
percentage of energy use in China, that comes from electricity,
that’s in the form of electricity: It’s gone from 3% to
15%–that’s a {wonderful} accomplishment! Because electricity is
a higher form of power than energy in general. There’s things
that you can do with energy, such as burning fuels for cooking,
let’s say, or heat to power a diesel train engine, or steam
engine or something like this. Electricity is the next level of
technology. You can do much more with it: You can power motors
that are controlled by computer equipment; you can have laser
manufacturing technologies, electric-discharge machining,
electron beam welding. The next level of productivity is made
possible through the use of electricity as a higher platform.
I think we can definitely learn some lessons from China.
And the speed at which they have been doing this, I think
absolutely — I wouldn’t want to say “vindicates” but it’s a
successful experiment that shows that the method of Lyndon
LaRouche is right!
This proposal that China has made of the Belt and Road
Initiative, whereby China is engaged with multilateral financing
institutions and with its own domestic financial institutions,
like its state banks, its Export-Import Bank, etc., it’s been
involved in {major} infrastructure deals with its neighbors along
the Belt and Road, and even in more distant locations, such as
Africa, where the incredibly new rail opening in Kenya that
reduces travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi from 10 hours down to
4 hours, with the building of the Standard Gauge Railway there,
this is the type of project that is just going to dramatically
improve the productivity of Kenya. A Chinese-financed project,
by the Chinese Export-Import Bank.
These kinds of deals are wonderful. It’s a “win-win”
approach where China is able to export its technology, export its
know-how, the train sets that it builds, and the nations in which
the infrastructure is being built, of course, benefit from having
a great new set of infrastructure. So everybody benefits from
this. And the speed that this is being done with, the way that
it’s being financed, I think it says, “Hey, we could be doing
this here.”
This isn’t some sort of distant plan. We should take the
outlook that President Trump expressed in that speech that we
just heard him make and say, we’re going to do this right now.
We can start building these things right now. The whole
Interstate system was built in 15 years, that’s pretty fast, when
you think about the size of the thing. What does it look like to
build a high-speed rail network in the United States? Who’s
going to build the train sets? Where’s the rail going to come
from? We can gear up to build the rail, but as far as high-speed
trains go, we don’t produce those! We actually don’t have the
know-how among American domestic manufacturers. We’re going to
be looking to China, as contractors, to build these kinds of
train sets, and also to assist with the financing. China has
huge foreign reserves right now, and the head of China Investment
Corp. Ding Xuedong, the guy I had mentioned earlier, he said that
he’d be interested in investing some of the tens of billions of
dollars in U.S. Treasuries that China Investment Corp. holds,
happy to invest that in U.S. infrastructure.
I think from that standpoint, when we look at New York, for
example, and New York is a disaster — it’s on such a thin
thread, the ability for the over 1 million who come into
Manhattan every day for work, the ability for them to get to
work, it is incredibly precarious! This summer, for two months,
two of the four tunnels heading east from Manhattan are going to
be closed for maintenance. That’s going to really upset the Long
Island Railroad. The two tunnels coming into Manhattan from the
west, the rail tunnels going into Penn Station, — which is
operating at over 100% capacity; as many trains as could possibly
fit through that tunnel are already making the trip. New Jersey
transit commuters going into New York has tripled over the past
couple of decades. It’s just — you can’t fit any more people
through that tunnel! It’s not possible.
These tunnels, the ones that I’d mentioned, these are 100
years old, or older! {1910}, the Hudson tunnels were opened up!
These are in {desperate} need of repair — but it’s impossible to
close them to do any maintenance, because so many people are
riding on them all the time.
The only way that this can be fixed is to build an entirely
new set of tunnels, to build a new train station — here we go,
[{{Figure 4}}] this is the Gateway Project from Amtrak, where
additional lines would be built so you could have four tracks
going all the way from Penn Station, Newark; there’d be a new
loop built at Secaucus — my apologies if you’re not familiar
with the area, I know this is going fast. You’re going to have
more than double the flow of people and trains that could be
brought into New York.
This is a major and essential project. Some work was
actually begun on it in 2009, before New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie killed it in 2010. But, it’s not enough. Yes, this
should happen, but this isn’t the real outlook we ought to have.
We need to think, how is New York going to fit in a broader,
regional scheme of things? What’s the high-speed rail going to
look like in the area? How can we totally transform the region’s
rail stations so that instead of New Jersey Transit trains coming
into Penn Station and then turning around, they keep going to the
east? [{{Figure 5}}] To Sunnyside, Queens, to a new terminal at
Port Morris, the Bronx; this is a proposal by ReThink New York
City, a public advocacy group up there. We need entirely new
subway lines, and a national high-speed rail network.
I just want to say one more thing about the Interstate
system here [{{Figure 6}}] which you see on the screen. This is
the original 1955 plan. And I’d like to talk a little bit about
how Eisenhower made this reality. First off, in terms of where
the demand for roads came from: The real push for an improvement
in public roads came in 1880 and it was promoted by bicycle
riders, who thought rail was great for trains, but people wanted
a smooth way to ride a bike without being quite so bumpy. By the
1930s, trucks only hauled about 10% of freight in the United
States; 75% of freight moved by rail in ’20s, with trucking doing
a small amount at that time, and then inland waterways, the
infrastructure that President Trump mentioned in that clip.
By 1958, when the highway system was starting to get built,
rail was 50% of freight, highways 20%, inland waterways 16%,
pipelines 16%; and the ability to build up a broader expressway
system was hampered by the fact of how are you going to pay for
it? So the Bureau of Public Roads had been getting
appropriations: Congress would vote up some appropriations to the
Bureau of Public Roads to give grants to help build up the U.S.
highway system. It was unreliable, you didn’t know how Congress
was going to vote every year; it made it very difficult to do
long-term planning.
What Eisenhower did was he set up the — and this is lessons
for today for national banking for how to finance these projects
— Eisenhower set up the Highway Trust Fund in 1956. It was a
separate fund, it wasn’t part of the annual budget. Congress
wasn’t going to vote on it every year, to say, “gee should we
build the highway system or not?” and re-debate it every single
year. Forget it! Eisenhower set up this special fund that had a
dedicated tax system where the money would go straight into it,
as a separate capital budget, not part of the annual operating
budget. A tax on gasoline — by the way the current gas tax
right now, it’s too low. It hasn’t been increased in a couple of
decades. It should be higher. That’s why the Highway Trust Fund
doesn’t have enough money; the gas tax hasn’t been increased to
keep pace. What else? Tire taxes, for trucks. Trucks have big
wear on the roads; a tax for the sale of large trucks, and also a
tax for the yearly registration of large trucks. So these kind
of indirect taxes ended up sending the money into the Highway
Trust Fund, so that it was able to build out this whole road
system and not be repaid directly. The emphasis was {not} toll
roads! That was actually a condition for some of the turnpikes to
get Interstate Highway System funding, was they had to get rid of
their tolls. So, along Interstate-95, I-95, a lot of these roads
used to be tollways; in Connecticut that used to be a tollway.
In ’80s, after paying off bonds for repair and upgrade of a
bridge, the tolls had to be taken down, that was in keeping with
the interstate system.
That’s the way we’ve got to think about it. Not a
public-private partnership, where you say, “I’m going to directly
pay for this project and I’ll make the money back through tolls,”
forget it. That’ll work for an airport upgrade or something like
that. But for a national high-speed rail network, for these
other things, what we need is national banking, so that we can
have long-term, low-interest loans, and we can get it away from
the annual squabbles about appropriations; have the ability to
have separate capital budgeting to finance this long-term
outlook. And of course, none of that is going to happen without
Glass-Steagall.
OGDEN: I think that’s the vision that people are looking
for, and you even heard President Trump say, “this is the kind of
bold vision.” People are ready to work! People are ready to
build and it is true, that if you look at the history of the
American System, what is it that conquered the West? It was the
spirit of building; this is a nation of builders. This is the
kind of spirit that Gov. DeWitt Clinton, a strong advocate of the
American System was a believer in.
This article that you wrote, Jason, it’s available in the
current issue of {Executive Intelligence Review}
[http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/private/2017/2017_20-29/2017-23/
pdf/12-28_4423.pdf]
and we’ll make a link available. But I want to ask our viewers
at this point, what have you been reading in the press this week?
What have you been seeing on television? Have you been seeing
coverage of National Infrastructure Week? Did you see coverage
of this inspiring speech by President Trump in Cincinnati? Did
you see coverage, unless you’re a C-Span wonk, [laughter] did you
see the speeches that Marcy Kaptur [D-OH] and Tulsi Gabbard
[D-HI] made on the floor of the House for Glass-Steagall? This
is one of the most historic fights in present history: Did you
see the coverage of this fight in the Rules Committee, which was
very dramatic, over their proposal to repeal the “Financial
CHOICE Act,” a Dodd-Frank, and replace it immediately with
Glass-Steagall? That’s a {real} repeal and replace!
Did you hear coverage of this new international order that’s
being consolidated in Eurasia? These three back-to-back summits
with world leaders: The Belt and Road Forum, the St. Petersburg
International Economic Forum, and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization summit that’s happening now? Have you see coverage
of these unprecedented missions that China is sending to the
Moon? The same return mission, lunar sample return? The mission
to the far side of the Moon?
Or even, did you see coverage of this absolutely historic
election, general election that happened just last night in Great
Britain, when Theresa May got completely trounced and Jeremy
Corbyn shocked everybody, and gained unprecedented seats for
Labour Party and consolidated his control over Labour, despite
all of the opposition from within his own party. Did you see
coverage of that? No!
What have you been seeing? Twenty-four hours a day, around
the clock, you’ve been seeing Comey, Comey, Comey, Comey. This
is the sideshow, — it really reminded me of an episode from the
“People’s Court” or something. [laughter]
ROSS: Or, “Twilight Zone.”
OGDEN: Right. I actually want to point your attention to
an article which is available as the lead of the LaRouche PAC
website today, called “LaRouche: Stop the FBI Fraud, Stop the
Coup against the President — What the Lying Media Is Not Telling
You”
[https://larouchepac.com/20170609/larouche-stop-fbi-fraud-stop-
coup-against-president-what-lying-media-not-telling-you].
And that’s a screenshot there from the LaRouche PAC website; this
is the lead for today. And it begins as follows: “Lyndon
LaRouche called upon the American people to shut down the coup
underway against President Trump which was fed Thursday by the
lying testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey before the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. LaRouche said that the
coup is an FBI-type operation attempting to destroy the United
States, and if it is not stopped, the world will face general
warfare.”
And then it goes on to say the following: “On June 7, former
Director of National Intelligence Clapper revealed the actual
motivation for the coup against Trump in remarks in Australia. He
said that Trump’s openness to peace with Russia–the platform
upon which Trump was elected by the American people–was itself
wholly against U.S. national security interests, in effect,
equivalent to treason.” And then the article goes on to say: “It
was already known in official Washington well before the
election, that President Obama, in collusion with the British,
candidate Clinton, DNI head Clapper, CIA head Brennan, and FBI
head Comey, had steered the U.S. on a war course with Russia and
China, which was meant to be fully activated with Clinton’s
election. Trump was elected instead, triggering the coup which
has followed.” And then it makes the very clear point:
“President Trump has kept his promise and established better
relations with both Russia and China, who are seeking cooperation
with the United States in developing the world based on great
infrastructure projects. That is the only issue here.”
Again, that’s the beginning of the article, “LaRouche: Stop
the FBI Fraud, Stop the Coup against the President — What the
Lying Media Is Not Telling You” which is available on the
LaRouche PAC website. And then it goes on from there, and goes
through a very detailed examination of what this process really
has been ever since Inauguration Day; so we encourage you to read
that article. And let me put on the screen again, the link to the
petition: http://action.larouchepac.com/lets_rebuild_the_country.
It’s called “Congress, Suck It Up and Move On — It’s Time To
Rebuild the Country.” And the url is http://lpac.co/rebuild ,
that’s where you can sign this petition online. And we also have
a mobile phone app that you can text the word REBUILD to
2025248709.
And that petition continues to accumulate signatures, and
it’s your opportunity to get involved.
I just want to let Jason say a little more in terms of the
process that’s ongoing. The opportunity that we have ahead of
us, — Helga LaRouche’s attendance at the Belt and Road Forum
that occurred in Beijing, the campaign which we’ve been running
for the United States to join this Silk Road — what better
opportunity do we have than now, when you actually have your
President, whatever you want to say about him, is strongly
advocating a modernization of U.S. infrastructure and an
exciting program to give Americans the opportunity to build a new
era of U.S. infrastructure.
ROSS: Well, Trump’s initiative is right. His direction on
this is right. He likes to build things; you’ve heard that
speech, this is a good direction for this country. What is
really not very present is how to finance it. And that’s the big
weakness and that’s what we are responsible for correcting.
That’s what Lyndon LaRouche has been working on for decades, is a
real science of economics and doing that in opposition to what
has taken over United States policy: monetarism.
The Trump idea is that $200 billion in Federal financing is
going to be leveraged to create a total of $1 trillion over a
decade for U.S. infrastructure. That’s the Trump outlook. That’s
grossly insufficient. The idea that you’re going to leverage
$200 billion into a total of $1 trillion is a difficult thing if
you don’t have the ability to capture the indirect value of
infrastructure. Because, look, think about the value of building
up a platform. The value of building up an infrastructure
platform, isn’t to make money by charging people to use it. Now
you open up some business where you’re making cookies, well sure,
you sell your cookies; people pay to eat your cookies or
whatever, that’s fine, that’s how a business works.
That’s now how an infrastructure platform works: The return
is indirect, the return isn’t local to the place where the
infrastructure is built. It changes the nation as a whole. And
when we think about linking in to the full World Land-Bridge
proposal, crossing the Bering Straits, not only will we be able
to ship things from the Americas over to Asia more quickly than
you can by ship, but you’re opening up the Arctic. There’s tons
of resources in the Arctic! There’s petroleum, we know about
that; but mineral resources, all sorts of potential up there.
It’s not worth anything if you can’t get to it. So building up
that whole network, as Dr. Hal Cooper has put forward in his
engineering proposals on this, tremendous change. To the south,
bridging the Darién Gap, connecting North, Central and South
America as one: These are tremendous potentials.
The value of infrastructure, it’s indirect, it’s not local;
{and}, it’s not commensurable. A dollar into infrastructure,
maybe has, you might calculate $2.5 of benefit or something like
this. It’s not the same dollars. That chart I had showed
earlier about China’s use of electricity as a percentage of its
total power, this represents a transformation of the economy.
The fact that total power went up five times, but electrical
power went up 25 times, China’s not doing five times more of what
it used to do, or leaving the lights on longer, or something like
this. This represents {a change in the structure of the economy
as a whole.} And it’s made possible by building out a network of
power. China needs {much} more power into the future; China is
building nuclear power plants into the future, and this is really
the next level of platform of energy, just as high-speed and
maglev rail is the future of transportation, nuclear power,
developing fusion power, that’s the next level of electricity.
So we’ve got to think of those leapfrogging type steps. And
our message to Trump is: Good direction, we’ve got some very
serious proposals for you about how to make it all possible;
Glass-Steagall is absolutely essential, as you, Mr. President,
promised in your campaign. And then, we need national banking,
as a way of indirectly financing these projects that just won’t
give money back to a private investor, it’s not how they work.
{And} finance fusion, so we get that next level, the next
platform will be possible
OGDEN: Yeah, absolutely. OK. I think that’s an exciting
and very direct message. We’ve got a lot going on, clearly.
This has been a very, very eventful week! And I think we can just
expect the pace of the things to continue to increase.
So thank you very much for watching today, and please
encourage other people to watch this broadcast; there is a lot of
material, and it’s a lot to absorb and a lot to teach others
about.
Thank you very much, Jason. I know you’re going to be up in
New York City next week, and presenting some of this, for our
friends who are up there, I encourage you to directly participate
in that discussion with Jason. And please read Jason’s article,
“Case Study New York City: A Future Platform of U.S.
Infrastructure.” We’re making that available in the description
for today’s broadcast.
Thank you Jason, and thank you for watching. Please stay
tuned to larouchepac.com. Good night.
