Merry Christmas?
MORNING BRIEFING
Sunday, December 16, 2007
STICK TO THE DEFINING STRATEGIC ISSUE AND RESTORE THE `LPAC PRINCIPLE’
{The following briefings were given by Jeffrey Steinberg and Nick Walsh on December 15. The NEC would like to draw special attention to the following comment by Nick towards the end of his report, as an example to be followed: “Seattle has the right idea. They’re planning a week of action. Now, what’s their week for the week of action? It’s Christmas Eve, Dec. 24th, through New Year’s Day. And they’ve recruited all the members there who were planning on going home, not to. So there are going to be a lot of upset mothers, but that’s good. When you’re creating a revolution, Moms tend to get upset.”
… Hm. Lucky Seattle.
“We have two weeks before Christmas, and we should really not let down, and we should not get into this totally insane Christmas mood and have “MySpace under the Christmas Tree” fantasies: But we should understand that this period is the one which really determines the future of humanity for a long time to come. So we should really go into the biggest mobilization and put all other considerations around, because we have to get a breakthrough”Â
Bah Humbug.
The headlines start out with “Only We Can Win — They Can Only Bring Down the Human Race”. So we know what we’re fighting, and what is at stake. Or we get something like:
The Jackson Lie and the Current Crisis
Every year, Democratic Party leaders stage an ugly ritual known as “Jefferson-Jackson Day.â€
They give this name to fund-raising events, to boast that their party continues a political tradition inherited from the early U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.
This fraud is designed to bury the legacy of the most famous and revered Democratic President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to declare the party’s allegiance to a political philosophy directly opposed to Roosevelt’s…
Hm. I thought they called it the “Jefferson – Jackson” Dinner in honor of the founder of the Democratic Party, Jefferson, and the first president to call himself a “Democrat”, Jackson (which, depending on how you would want to frame history might also be an origin point for the political party — though here you might want to honor the Great Political Hack in the history of Political Hackdom, Martin Van Buren.) But that would be crazy.
On the heels of his mention in the Chinese state media as “distinguished American economist” (and on back to hosting the defense of Sudan’s genocidal government). That Benjamin Franklin hoax speech is a classic in hoaxery. But now that I think about it, in the grand tradition of “when he says British, what he means is…” idea that your Larouchite will hunker into and call ridiculous… is this another meaning behind the claiming of Benjamin Franklin, fooled somewhere beyond the obvious “Americanism” he represented when Larouche switched from Marxism? Surely these things aren’t accidental… there are no coincidences.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Ah yes, the “LPAC PRINCIPLE” — cheap labor, 365 days a year, 16 hours a day, including Christmas. Someone should explain the labor laws of the U.S. to LaRouche. Volunteer labor is highly scrutinized by the Department of Labor in order to prevent the exact type of abuse LaRouche imposes. A Policital Action Committee [not to mention a commercial enterprise like EIR] cannot have the same “volunteer labor” year after year, when that “labor” has no other job, and is being treated as if he/she was an employee. Of course, we all know that the LaRouche youth have the freedom to stop work whenever he/she wishes, can take every Saturday and Sunday off, never have to work overtime and only volunteer for LaRouche when his/her other employment permits. . . .
We can only hope that LaRouche’s cheap “volunteer” labor tricks will eventually be discovered by the IRS, the FEC and the Department of the Labor.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:37 am
The problem is getting people to complain, or better yet, sue for back wages, benefits, etc.
A very useful activity would be to organize such a lawsuit. I believe some may have occurred in the past, or have been credibly threatened, which had the desired result for the individual (got some money), but not against the org.
Picture this: It’s Christmas Eve, 9:00 p.m., at a K-Mart, Target, Walmart, whatever. It’s snowing. A pack (a threesome) of LaRouche Youth are hanging around stamping their feet (can’t afford good boots), blowing on their fingers, chilblains, etc.–and when a last-minute shopper rushes in to buy a Christmas gift, or replacement lights for the tree, the threesome converges oh him like turkey vultures on a deer carcass.
“Only LaRouche can *&(*(&(*&)!! Anyone who says different is a fool or a liar()*%$! Felix Rohatyn/Henry Kissinger/Baroness Someone/Nancy Pelosi/ is a FILL IN UGLY VICIOUS NAME!”
Ho ho ho–some Christmas, eh? Can you imagine how well they do with their “organizing”? Someone may feel sorry for the poor things, freezing out there–and that’s where the $$ comes from.
Most pathetic of all–this has been going on, with different casts of characters, since January 1974 and the famous cold-weather leaflets like “Brainwash Victim Recovering.”
Unfortunately, a lot of them haven’t. Yet.
Everyone of a certain age will remember Hilex 1975–those were great Christmas deployments. People were dragged off buses as they set out to see their parents.
Strangely, after the initial surge of “self-consciousness” this produced, most of them quit.
We always thought it was remarkable that LaRouche had the effrontery to talk about “Schachtian economics”–(a) he didn’t know what he was talking about; and (b) what he was talking about, HE practiced.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Rachel, you are correct that, generally, the harmed individual must file the complaint. But, remember LaRouche is receiving the benefit of all that labor. If he didn’t pay the “volunteers” anything, the Department of Labor probably wouldn’t care. However, he is paying them stipends, and that triggers the U.S. Wage and Hour laws. There are a lot of employers that would love to pay $5 a day in this country–but they know it is illegal. LaRouche hides behind his so-call PACs and other non-profits. EIR, however, is not a non-profit [at least at last count]. So where are the taxes LaRouche should be paying for all that labor? How is that labor reported to the FEC? Did you know that in some states it is a crime not to pay employees every pay period? How ironic that LaRouche, the founder of the U.S. Labor Party, thinks he should be able to pay slave wages and refuses to allow any dissent on the subject……
Of course, it is also a violation of labor laws to humiliate and discriminate again employees over medical conditions, and to discriminate on the basis of gender or age or religion or national origin. These laws haven’t stopped LaRouche and company, and probably won’t until someone has the courage to bring one or more lawsuits.
One more note: is LaRouche and company paying Workers Comp insurance? Some states, like California, take no prisoners on that issue.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I am certain that LaRouche does not pay Workers’ Comp–these kids, as far as I know, are all paid in cash from LaRouche PAC–and since they can’t possibly be listed as employees of LaRouche PAC, none of the relevant insurance benefits etc. are being paid. Nor do they have medical insurance, as far as I know.
(The old folks have some lousy insurance through EIR. That’s about all they get from being on that “payroll.”)
PMR and WorldComp paid Workers Comp, and had good medical insurance, and all the rest–and that was one of many reasons LaRouche thought the two companies were a scam. Too “bourgeois.”
No longer “revolutionaries”–Ken and the companies had become apolitical sellouts. When LaRouche got out of prison in 1994 one of his first targets was the “PMR lifestyle” (as I think has been mentioned on FactNet by Eaglebeak); the “PMR lifestyle” meant getting paid, and having children. Every LC member at PMR/WorldComp had a least one child, and the very thought enraged and enrages LaRouche.
He knows that for anyone with children, HE is no longer the top priority.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
It doesn’t matter whether LaRouche wants the LYmers to be employees or not. The law says, generally, volunteers are really employees if the volunteer contemplates being paid for the work performed and relies on the money received in order to live, and if the volunteers are ordered to perform tasks and work certain hours. The departments of labor of each state are well aware that shysters like LaRouche will try to circumvent the wage and hour laws by claiming no pay is necessary for volunteers. I am sure that investigations are probably already under way in some states. Of course, LaRouche believes he is above these laws and, since the revolution will happen any day now, no one should care whether they are paid or not.
December 20th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
People have been threatening lawsuits since the 1980s–the case of Jon Darrow in Leesburg may have gone to court.
There was also, I believe, a case in Maryland–Baltimore.
And, as I say, threats of more.
As to whether they’re being investigated right now–beats me. A well-placed phone call to the right commission in this state or that one might hasten matters along.
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:08 am
I think some here are forgetting that although the LaRouche Movement operates within our Constitutional framework, it is in intent and in fact a revolutionary movement aimed at radically altering the axioms of conventional society.
I mean, really. Did the revolutionaries in the hills with Castro get overtime and paid vacations? A revolutionary movement cannot be expected to function on the same basis as a commercial enterprise. And members who think or thought that one could be revolutionary in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle would have been better off never to have joined. Such expectations show a fundamental disconnect with understanding what a revolution is all about.
-Steve
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:41 am
Hi, Steve–
In an earlier incarnation, you told us you never joined. Was it because you were loath to take to the hills?
Your argument would be way more convincing to those of us who DID join and stay joined through decades, if Lyn and Helga weren’t living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
Lyn was never in the hills a la Castro. Helga did and does a whole lotta jewelry shopping. They drink good wine. There’s that awkward matter that Eaglebeak raised on FactNet of the horse riding ring and swimming pool being built at LaRouche’s estate Ibykus while the org was claiming it couldn’t repay loans.
Did Castro fly first class with his entourage? Did he live in beautiful houses on expansive spreads?
Gimme a break already. Lyn is a revolutionary only in the sense that he hates whatever is established, because it isn’t him.
The other thing that would make your argument more convincing would be if Lyn hadn’t spent the last 35 years carrying on about labor policy, the importance of leisure, of time to re-create, of a certain standard of living–if he hadn’t called every politician a Nazi who didn’t want to spend every dime on health care, etc.
If Lyn hadn’t yammered on about “Schachtian economics” all those years, vs. Hamiltonian economics, you’d be on firmer ground.
If Lyn had said: Kids, the individual is expendable, and I frankly could care less if you drop dead, your argument would be more plausible.
Instead he raved about individual sovereignty and the sanctity of the individual and the Constitution (constantly) and the pursuit of happiness and imago viva dei–so we have here, dear Steve, another case where Lyn’s words and actions are strangely at variance.
And what you write is shocking in its lack of understanding of/familiarity with these basic facts of LaRoucheland that it’s hard to believe you were a member–oops! Forgot! You were never a member.
Just a lone revolutionary in the foothills of –fantasy.
Also, finally, dear Steve, the revolutionaries in the foothills with Castro did it for a finite amount of time. And when they took power, pal, you can bet they got paid vacations.
The LaRouche movement has been dragging along for about 40 years–some revolution!
The invariant in all of it wasn’t politics or philosophy or approach, it was that Lyn got taken care of.
As a wise former member of the National Executive Committee once said, this is not a political movement, it’s Lyndon LaRouche’s IRA.
And that’s why kids shouldn’t be freezing at the Walmart, singing obscene songs to beautiful music, desecrating Bach with their nasty little pornographic lyrics.
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Let’s see: LaRouche is the head of a revolutionary movement? And, the revolutionaries take a vow of poverty and agree to sacrifice health and all of the accoutrements of modern living? Gee whiz–I must have missed that disclosure on the LarouchePAC and other websites. So, Helga no longer buys her clothes at Talbots? LaRouche no longer smashes wine bottles that are of “inferior” quality? LaRouchites no longer wait on Lord Lyn and Lady Helga? It seems we may as well save our breath, the brainwashing is so deep, none of the LYM or hangers on [like Steve, apparently] believe any of this facts presented here or on factnet.org. So, here’s my suggestion, Steve, instead of hanging around LaRouche, join, find out if the great “revolutionaries” Larouche and Helga practice what they preach. Does Helga still have her indoor swimming pool in Germany? Her horses in Virginia? Her outdoor swimming pool in Virginia? Does she still go on shopping sprees to Talbots clothing store? I understand that Castro kicks himself that he never allowed a Talbots to be opened in Cuba, after all everyone knows that Talbots is the revolutionaries’ clothing store of choice.
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 am
Oh, one more thing Steve. Commercial enterprises like EIR are subject to all of the labor laws. So, EIR, alas, cannot use the LYM as “volunteer” labor–such use of cheap labor is called a “sweat shop” and sweat shops are illegal in the U.S. Of course, the movement could move to a third world country and have a wonderful time paying everyone less than a dollar an hour. Even churches have to pay its lay employees according to U.S. wage and hour laws. There is no “revolutionary” exception to the law. Of course, it would be great fun to see that as a defense when LaRouche and company get hauled into court for all of their illegal FEC and IRS filings regarding “volunteer” labor.