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USA-Debate in the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts
Report on History-Making Rachel Brown-Joseph Kennedy-Herb Robinson
16 August 2012
(LPAC)—On August 14, Rachel Brown — member of the national slate of LaRouche Democrats and candidate for Congress in the fourth district of Massachusetts — engaged in the first of three live debates occurring this week between her and her opponents, Joseph Kennedy III (grandson of Robert Kennedy) and Herb Robinson. The debate occurred at Stonehill College in Easton, MA, in front of an audience of approximately 300 people and was televised live. Brown, running her second campaign for the Democratic nomination, and who became famous in 2010 for taking on Barney Frank in a live television candidates debate in which she established herself as an early voice leading the fight to restore Glass-Steagall, dominated this debate as well, educating the audience and the other candidates alike, and shaping the discussion around the urgency of the full LaRouche recovery program and the optimism of the recent achievements of NASA and the Curiosity mission to Mars. From the very beginning, the accuracy and precision of Rachel Brown’s statements established her role among the three candidates as the unique voice of intelligence and courage, and many of the follow-up questions were provoked directly by Rachel’s bold and assertive leadership. In the very first question, the candidates were asked, "What industry in the Fourth District of Massachusetts do you see as the most critical to the economic future of the country?" Rachel answered by immediately referencing the victory of Curiosity on Mars, and stated that the Route 128 corridor high-technology firms employed in the Apollo missions of Kennedy represent the latent potential of Massachusetts when seen in the perspective of the success of the Mars Science Laboratory and what it implies for the future of man in space. This theme of optimistic vision and a bold national recovery program dominated many of Brown’s answers, and provoked the moderators throughout the entirety of the debate to continue returning to questions of how to launch such a recovery, how to finance it, the political feasibility of such a vision, and if it were possible to effect such a change absent a profound and fundamental change in the system as a whole. Brown used the opportunity of each question to continue returning to principle and educating the moderators, the audience, and her fellow candidates. She had the chance to repeatedly elaborate in depth the history of national banking, the principles of credit and true wealth creation, the history and design of the NAWAPA project, and the details of exactly how a national credit system would work today to fund such a project — but only after Glass-Steagall is used to sever our national obligations to the quadrillions of outstanding gambling debts, a point that she emphasized several times, stating that the Glass-Steagall revolution that we’re seeing now is being driven by the crisis and that it will be a foot in the door for the full recovery program. (Interestingly, one of the other candidates, Herb Robinson, also repeatedly referenced Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s great-projects policies as the model for how a national recovery must be effected again today — showing clearly the influence that Rachel’s campaign and that of the national slate have already had on the election in Massachusetts.) - National Health - Rachel firmly asserted her courage as a leader in response to the second question of the debate, on the subject of Obamacare. While the other two candidates gave empty and politically correct answers, Rachel immediately responded that health care is a human right, not something which should be determined by cost as connected to a pile of money, but rather in its connection to principles of science, economy, and the general welfare. She identified the Independent Payment Advisory Board of the Obama plan and its "Quality Adjusted Life Years" principle as the deadly carbon copy image of Hitler’s pre-war Tiergarten-4 program. She stressed that Obama’s commitment to such a killer agenda at the outset of his administration demonstrated clearly exactly where his loyalties lay: rather than acting on his With several more questions focusing on how to effect an economic recovery (with one moderator asking in response to Rachel if it is possible to create a recovery without a fundamental change of the entire financial system), she continued by elaborating the full three-step program on Glass-Steagall, National Banking, and NAWAPA. On the other hand, Joe Kennedy, showing his weakness, referenced his model for how to deal with the economic crisis — by "balancing cutting and spending" — as being Simpson-Bowles, only back-tracking on certain aspects of it once one of the moderators pressed him on whether he was talking about cutting Social Security and Medicare. Rachel immediately responded to this by identifying the Simpson-Bowles commission by its other name, the "Catfood Commission", stressing that this is precisely the policy which is killing people already. She stressed that her proposal is fundamentally opposed to such an ideology of austerity, and is based rather on true wealth creation, as exemplified by NAWAPA. - A letter from Grandpa - The most moving part of the debate came when Brown read the letter that Robert Kennedy had written while he was United States Senator, endorsing the original NAWAPA project and stating that this is important for the entire nation, both West and East. Joe Kennedy, grandson of RFK, listened with shocked but genuine interest as Rachel unveiled this crucial but unknown part of his own family history. (After the debate, he asked for the hard copy of the quote, and was honestly appreciative when given a copy of the National Platform document containing the summary history of NAWAPA, saying that he will make sure to be more educated on the project by the time he and Rachel meet again in the upcoming debate.) - Infantile Dysfunction - The final question of the debate addressed the dysfunctionality of the 112th Congress due to the "partisan gridlock" which dominates it. With Rachel answering this question third, she delivered the last word of the debate. She answered by stressing that the current fight for Glass-Steagall has become genuinely bi-partisan, since it’s not an issue of politics but of survival, and that the only real opponent of this policy is Obama himself. She asserted that Obama must be removed before the convention, and replaced with a candidate who can defeat Romney — something on which many of the citizens whom she meets in her day-to-day campaigning agree — and that if this doesn’t occur, the crisis will not wait until November but will strike with devastating She concluded by stating that she is confident that if certain individuals find within themselves the courage to take the actions that are needed now, the United States can be saved, and Americans can be inspired once again around a unified and future-oriented program of space, industry, and NAWAPA. After the debate was over, the effect of her leadership was underscored when one of the Republican candidates for Congress who was attending the debate approached her and told her how much he appreciated her ideas and how much he had learned from her. He said, "I just wanted to tell you that I’ve learned just how important Glass-Steagall is from listening to you during your campaign, and yesterday, during a Republican debate, in response to a question on the financial crisis, I responded by saying that I supported a return to Glass-Steagall, but that I wasn’t qualified to answer in detail and would rather refer those listening to Rachel Brown — that you and your campaign represented the real authority on this issue of critical Two more debates between Brown and the other candidates are upcoming later this week. Stay tuned for further reports. (MLO) |
