February 27, 2010 -- The crisis in Haiti, and Obama's imbecilic response is offering us a glimpse into the insanity and Narcissism of our President. It should also give some insight into how he is thinking about the US population as well.

Haiti is now entering it's rainy season. Hundreds of thousands of people are living there with only sheets, or pieces of plastic, to protect them from the rains. There is no sewage treatment. Disease is practically being harvested in petri dish conditions, and there are no real plans to rebuild. The ones that have been proposed are a disaster. Former Prime Minister of Haiti Michelle Pierre-Louis suggested, “We should press forward with cash-for-work programs, to pay people to pick up garbage. Instead of shipping in big rock cutters, we can use international aid to pay Haitians to break up debris with sledgehammers.” Paul Collier, agent of the Queen, and so-called expert on developing nations economies, submitted his own proposals in a report to the UN, which suggested shutting down the few remaining labor regulations to make Haiti more “competitive” with other cheap labor nations, allowing infrastructure only in the form of roads for export, not for internal development, using NGO's, not the state, to provide services, and continuing to privatize other elements of the economy, all under the control of private financing mechanisms.

This is what colonialism looks like. Haiti is not allowed to develop their own economy, but is having it's future dictated by interests of the British Empire.

Lyndon LaRouche has proposed an alternative to these policies for Haiti, which gets at the underlying problem of our current Presidency. LaRouche proposes to use the Army Corps of Engineers to help relocate Haitians to higher ground and build semi-permanent housing there. During this oncoming rain season, people will need adequate shelter so they are not prey to disease and landslides. The Army Corps of Engineers can do the engineering and planning, determine necessary materials, etc. They can employ a force of unemployed youth from the United States to help construction, and also educate and train large numbers of Haitians for their own long-term, self-development. It doesn't matter if the Army Corps of Engineers has been depleted over recent decades, we can rebuild it through this program. This can also be the basis for implementing a new Civilian Conservation Corps program in the United States when these forces return, to rebuild our own decrepit infrastructure.

The difference between these two policy approaches highlights the need for a functioning Presidency in the United States. If we don't act, using the unique principles of our Constitution, there is no other entity that can or will. This is not just a fight to save Haiti, it is a principle of nation-building. Now we are experiencing the same type of attack on our sovereignty. We too, no longer produce our own goods, no longer have the ability to employ our own population, or have control over our own currency, as the Constitution demands. We are being sacrificed under Nazi health care policies and Schactian budget austerity in order to save a bankrupt financial system.

Since it's inception, the United States has played a unique role in the world, applying the founding principles of our Nation not just to our own inhabitants, but to all people. Look at the approach of Abraham Lincoln, who developed our nation with the Transcontinental railroad. He swore, that he would rather be assassinated, than give up the principles in the Declaration of Independence. These principles, he said, “gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world and for all future time.” Or Franklin Roosevelt, the first U.S. President to visit Haiti, who characterized his Good Neighbor policy for South and Central America in his first inaugural address: "In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor--the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others."

Under these presidencies, we were not only providing international aid, we were producing more in our own country. We were able to provide an increasing living standard for our own inhabitants, and help others. If we view mankind in general as something higher, we can get back to those sa

me policies, of using the power of public, not private credit, to increase our Nation's productive powers, and start acting like a real nation again. But the policy must come from the top, from the level of the White House and Congress.

With Obama's ego running the country, this will never happen. The question remains, “How many Haitians will have to die, before Obama is removed from office?”

--Rachel Brown