Agnew On Point - Sprio vs. the Slithering Snopes
Agnew: My guest this evening is Representative Paul Boutelle, a Communist representing New York’s tenth district.
Boutelle: I’m a member of the Socialist Worker’s party, not the Communist Party.
Agnew: There’s a difference?
Boutelle: Yes there is. Our Party is not promoting some ivory tower solutions to the world’s problems, we’re activists seeking to address the needs of ordinary working people.
Agnew: As long as it fits in with the Moscow line?
Boutelle: We don’t take orders from foreigners. We come from the heart of the American people – the working American people – and stand-up for their rights.
Agnew: And that stand “for the people’s rights” includes expropriating their property and turning it over to the party leadership? In other words legalized theft?
Boutelle: Hey, that’s not even close.
Agnew: But you want to expropriate the assets of America’s economically productive entrepreneurs and businessmen, isn’t that so?
Boutelle: Many of what you call “economically productive entrepreneurs” are in fact leeches who have been making bundles off the sweat of working men and women in this country for generations. We want to give that back to the people who labored hard to make those riches…
Agnew: So you want to overturn America…
Boutelle: … with their muscles and pain. Much of what you call America today was built on the backs of oppressed workers, slaves and minorities who were exploited for their labor without any say over the means of production or the output.
Agnew: But that is the Moscow line – take all private property and give it to the state, and keep everyone in line with a Red Gestapo. Isn’t that what you want for America today?
Boutelle: America today is in a depression caused by the failure of capitalism. It was the fixation on war profits by the greedy capitalists, and the policies of their plutocrat lackeys on Wall street and in the Republican and Democrat parties that have bankrupted this nation. And if you want to talk about a Gestapo, let’s talk about police across the country aided and abetted by the FBI and FCTB breaking-up free labor demonstrations and spying on dissenters… that’s a real Gestapo, man.
Agnew: But…
Boutelle: Who pays for that, the police Gestapo, the bail-outs to the rich and powerful? The poor, the worker, the unemployed. We’re all expected to bear the brunt of capitalisms flaws, even while the capitalists puppet politicians make policies that help the capitalists out and leave the working man with the dirty end of the stick. Our Party is standing up and saying no to the capitalist leeches, and speaking for the working people.
Agnew: But how can you expect to serve the working people’s good when your whole philosophy is pledged on taking away freedom and imposing tyranny. You’re very premise is a contradiction, because you can’t bring freedom by imposing a tyranny on people.
Boutelle: Your freedom, Mr. Agnew, is tyranny to the man or woman who can’t afford to buy his or her family food or keep a roof over their heads because they’ve been left unemployed by the illicit market manipulations of the capitalist class. Where’s the freedom when Congress, acting as lackeys for the Wall Street plutocrats, passes stimulus bill after stimulus bill which feeds dollars from the public sector – from the pockets of the ordinary working person who is confronted with state sponsored extortion from their meagre paycheque – into corporate coffers, which in turn offer the workers only the back of their hand? That’s a peculiar kind of freedom that looks more like slavery to me.
Agnew: You keep mentioning slavery, Representative Boutelle. Would you say your movement is an effort to win reparations from good, hard working, honest Americans for slavery? Is that what is really at the heart of this?
Boutelle: Look, man, slavery was an obscenity, and yes, I think America hasn’t paid the bill on that one yet. But I’m not here, I’m not in Congress just to fight about history. I’m there to help the mass struggle for justice and economic justice, and the fact that we were elected, shows that ordinary voters are waking up to their real interests, and that they are tossing aside the economic chains imposed on them by the capitalist classes. Mine is a voice in that struggle, both in and out of Congress.
Agnew: Is that why you are sending revolutionaries out to rural towns and communities across America? Is that part of the fight for justice or a plot to spread red trouble throughout the patriotic heartland of the real America?
Boutelle: We send people out to educate workers and the oppressed. We want enlightened Party members working side-by-side with those who have been exploited, to educate them and increase their awareness. That’s education, Mr. Agnew, education and enlightenment to the masses about how much they’ve been exploited by their oppressors. And once they learn that, once the people are aware, there’s gonna be a reckoning for those who have been enriching themselves off the exploitation.
Agnew: To educate the people? For their own good, or to mislead them into a Communist revolution? Isn’t that really what the Socialist Worker’s Party – a Communist Party by another name – is really about? Americans are a free and God loving people, Representative Boutelle, and we will win out over the narrow, the petty, the haters like you. I say we welcome the representatives of the Socialist Workers party into the heartland my friends out there in the true, patriotic America, let us welcome them into our homes and work places and show them the real America. When that happens they will understand what freedom is, and we’ll cut out this rotten cancer from our society by bringing these would be agitators and revolutionaries around to freedom and democracy.
Boutelle: Man, you are a tool of the capitalist classes, aren’t you?
Agnew: I am an American, Mr. Boutelle, and I am will fight to my last breath against the skulking snivelling snopes of Socialism who would undermine my freedom.
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Interview with Rep. James H. Scheuer (D- NY (11 – Brooklyn))
Agnew: But the question I am asking you, Representative Scheuer, isn’t it a fact that, since your district is now part of the Federal District of the Hudson, isn’t your seat, your presence in Congress, unconstitutional? By what right do you sit in the House?
Scheuer: I sit by right of my election by the people. In the accord signed by New York State and the Federal government, New York agreed to continue to exercise state sovereignty over the districts for electoral purposes, in return for the state receiving certain benefits in return for having those House members represented in the Congress. What most people don’t understand, including you it seems, with all due respect, is that the Federal District of the Hudson is not the same as the District of Columbia, which was an outright secession of state sovereignty by Maryland over what is now Washington. Instead what we have in New York is a belended formula; the FDH is still New York in terms of federal representation, but the state has been relieved of certain responsibilities for New York City by the FDH becoming a substitute management authority for the city, over which New York State has a voice, but no direct control.
Agnew: That’s just a smoke screen for the state of New York passing its costs for running New York City to the American taxpayer, while local politicians like you get to keep your perks, including your seat in Congress, although it is in a place that is not part of any state.
Scheuer: Most sensible observes agree, Mr. Agnew, that the accord that created the FDH was a well-crafted solution for a city debt crisis that was not only going to drag New York City under, but one which threatened the New York State budget as well. The Federal government acted in a manner which saved both the city and the State. The main thrust of the accord was to prevent a financial disaster, which this country didn’t need amidst a recession, while creating a formula which did not disenfranchise millions of New Yorkers. Both President Gavin and Governor Carey are to be congratulated in developing a smart plan which took care of people’s rights while at the same time managing the bankruptcy crisis.
Agnew: So the taxpayers of America’s other forty-nine states bailed-out New York, and Albany gets to keep all the benefits from that?
Scheuer: A bankruptcy of New York City, and its effect on the State, would have had an impact on the entire American economy. This was a national crisis, Mr. Agnew.
Agnew: But really what they did was protect federal politicians jobs, isn’t that so? I mean, the FDH no longer has representation in Albany, right? Technically neither of New York’s Senators represent you? Sen. Javits even had to change his residence to Albany from New York City to stay in the Senate, isn’t that so? The only ones who came off well were the Representatives from the FDH who kept their seats in the Congress under the flimsy pre-text that the New York State government would continue to recognize them as part of the New York delegation, a plan which works well for New York’s Democrat Governor because he doesn’t loose those Democrat votes in the House, and the Democrats in Washington, who are hanging on to the Speaker’s chair by their fingernails right now, didn’t loose even one crucial vote. Isn’t this just a Constitutional smoke screen, a dodge?
Scheuer: No, Mr. Agnew, it is an innovation which guarantees that the principles of American democracy are preserved for New Yorkers….
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Interview with Sen. James C. Buckley (R-NY)
Buckley: I have to agree with you on that point, Mr. Agnew. What the Gavin and Carey Administrations put together is a Constitutional straw man which doesn’t stand-up to scrutiny. Clearly if the founders had wanted something like this, then they would have given the District of Columbia representation in the House of Representatives. The fact that they didn’t speaks to their intentions, and how the Constitution should treat this situation.
Agnew: So you would call the presence of these representatives whose districts are geographically in New York City, and nowhere cross into New York State, unconstitutional?
Buckley: I agree that their votes in Congress have no constitutional basis, but I do not object to their presence. I believe that, based on the Constitution that they should be treated as non-voting delegates, in the manner of those from DC and Puerto Rico, for instance. I do not eschew the people of the city of New York the right to have a voice in the House, far from it, I and many who read the Constitution in its literal terms, object only to their having a vote on legislation. That is where we draw the line.
Agnew: And you have instituted a Constitutional challenge to this in the courts?
Buckley: Not me personally, no, but Professor Antonin Scalia, whom you have had on this program many times before, and Professor Robert Bork, who has also shared his pro-Constitution views with your viewers, have mounted such a challenge, arguing that the New York City representatives votes are in fact unconstitutional and that this shared sovereignty arrangement which was put into the Federal-State accord is unconstitutional and will not stand up to judicial scrutiny.
Agnew: My guest this evening is Representative Paul Boutelle, a Communist representing New York’s tenth district.
Boutelle: I’m a member of the Socialist Worker’s party, not the Communist Party.
Agnew: There’s a difference?
Boutelle: Yes there is. Our Party is not promoting some ivory tower solutions to the world’s problems, we’re activists seeking to address the needs of ordinary working people.
Agnew: As long as it fits in with the Moscow line?
Boutelle: We don’t take orders from foreigners. We come from the heart of the American people – the working American people – and stand-up for their rights.
Agnew: And that stand “for the people’s rights” includes expropriating their property and turning it over to the party leadership? In other words legalized theft?
Boutelle: Hey, that’s not even close.
Agnew: But you want to expropriate the assets of America’s economically productive entrepreneurs and businessmen, isn’t that so?
Boutelle: Many of what you call “economically productive entrepreneurs” are in fact leeches who have been making bundles off the sweat of working men and women in this country for generations. We want to give that back to the people who labored hard to make those riches…
Agnew: So you want to overturn America…
Boutelle: … with their muscles and pain. Much of what you call America today was built on the backs of oppressed workers, slaves and minorities who were exploited for their labor without any say over the means of production or the output.
Agnew: But that is the Moscow line – take all private property and give it to the state, and keep everyone in line with a Red Gestapo. Isn’t that what you want for America today?
Boutelle: America today is in a depression caused by the failure of capitalism. It was the fixation on war profits by the greedy capitalists, and the policies of their plutocrat lackeys on Wall street and in the Republican and Democrat parties that have bankrupted this nation. And if you want to talk about a Gestapo, let’s talk about police across the country aided and abetted by the FBI and FCTB breaking-up free labor demonstrations and spying on dissenters… that’s a real Gestapo, man.
Agnew: But…
Boutelle: Who pays for that, the police Gestapo, the bail-outs to the rich and powerful? The poor, the worker, the unemployed. We’re all expected to bear the brunt of capitalisms flaws, even while the capitalists puppet politicians make policies that help the capitalists out and leave the working man with the dirty end of the stick. Our Party is standing up and saying no to the capitalist leeches, and speaking for the working people.
Agnew: But how can you expect to serve the working people’s good when your whole philosophy is pledged on taking away freedom and imposing tyranny. You’re very premise is a contradiction, because you can’t bring freedom by imposing a tyranny on people.
Boutelle: Your freedom, Mr. Agnew, is tyranny to the man or woman who can’t afford to buy his or her family food or keep a roof over their heads because they’ve been left unemployed by the illicit market manipulations of the capitalist class. Where’s the freedom when Congress, acting as lackeys for the Wall Street plutocrats, passes stimulus bill after stimulus bill which feeds dollars from the public sector – from the pockets of the ordinary working person who is confronted with state sponsored extortion from their meagre paycheque – into corporate coffers, which in turn offer the workers only the back of their hand? That’s a peculiar kind of freedom that looks more like slavery to me.
Agnew: You keep mentioning slavery, Representative Boutelle. Would you say your movement is an effort to win reparations from good, hard working, honest Americans for slavery? Is that what is really at the heart of this?
Boutelle: Look, man, slavery was an obscenity, and yes, I think America hasn’t paid the bill on that one yet. But I’m not here, I’m not in Congress just to fight about history. I’m there to help the mass struggle for justice and economic justice, and the fact that we were elected, shows that ordinary voters are waking up to their real interests, and that they are tossing aside the economic chains imposed on them by the capitalist classes. Mine is a voice in that struggle, both in and out of Congress.
Agnew: Is that why you are sending revolutionaries out to rural towns and communities across America? Is that part of the fight for justice or a plot to spread red trouble throughout the patriotic heartland of the real America?
Boutelle: We send people out to educate workers and the oppressed. We want enlightened Party members working side-by-side with those who have been exploited, to educate them and increase their awareness. That’s education, Mr. Agnew, education and enlightenment to the masses about how much they’ve been exploited by their oppressors. And once they learn that, once the people are aware, there’s gonna be a reckoning for those who have been enriching themselves off the exploitation.
Agnew: To educate the people? For their own good, or to mislead them into a Communist revolution? Isn’t that really what the Socialist Worker’s Party – a Communist Party by another name – is really about? Americans are a free and God loving people, Representative Boutelle, and we will win out over the narrow, the petty, the haters like you. I say we welcome the representatives of the Socialist Workers party into the heartland my friends out there in the true, patriotic America, let us welcome them into our homes and work places and show them the real America. When that happens they will understand what freedom is, and we’ll cut out this rotten cancer from our society by bringing these would be agitators and revolutionaries around to freedom and democracy.
Boutelle: Man, you are a tool of the capitalist classes, aren’t you?
Agnew: I am an American, Mr. Boutelle, and I am will fight to my last breath against the skulking snivelling snopes of Socialism who would undermine my freedom.
------------------------------------------------------------
Interview with Rep. James H. Scheuer (D- NY (11 – Brooklyn))
Agnew: But the question I am asking you, Representative Scheuer, isn’t it a fact that, since your district is now part of the Federal District of the Hudson, isn’t your seat, your presence in Congress, unconstitutional? By what right do you sit in the House?
Scheuer: I sit by right of my election by the people. In the accord signed by New York State and the Federal government, New York agreed to continue to exercise state sovereignty over the districts for electoral purposes, in return for the state receiving certain benefits in return for having those House members represented in the Congress. What most people don’t understand, including you it seems, with all due respect, is that the Federal District of the Hudson is not the same as the District of Columbia, which was an outright secession of state sovereignty by Maryland over what is now Washington. Instead what we have in New York is a belended formula; the FDH is still New York in terms of federal representation, but the state has been relieved of certain responsibilities for New York City by the FDH becoming a substitute management authority for the city, over which New York State has a voice, but no direct control.
Agnew: That’s just a smoke screen for the state of New York passing its costs for running New York City to the American taxpayer, while local politicians like you get to keep your perks, including your seat in Congress, although it is in a place that is not part of any state.
Scheuer: Most sensible observes agree, Mr. Agnew, that the accord that created the FDH was a well-crafted solution for a city debt crisis that was not only going to drag New York City under, but one which threatened the New York State budget as well. The Federal government acted in a manner which saved both the city and the State. The main thrust of the accord was to prevent a financial disaster, which this country didn’t need amidst a recession, while creating a formula which did not disenfranchise millions of New Yorkers. Both President Gavin and Governor Carey are to be congratulated in developing a smart plan which took care of people’s rights while at the same time managing the bankruptcy crisis.
Agnew: So the taxpayers of America’s other forty-nine states bailed-out New York, and Albany gets to keep all the benefits from that?
Scheuer: A bankruptcy of New York City, and its effect on the State, would have had an impact on the entire American economy. This was a national crisis, Mr. Agnew.
Agnew: But really what they did was protect federal politicians jobs, isn’t that so? I mean, the FDH no longer has representation in Albany, right? Technically neither of New York’s Senators represent you? Sen. Javits even had to change his residence to Albany from New York City to stay in the Senate, isn’t that so? The only ones who came off well were the Representatives from the FDH who kept their seats in the Congress under the flimsy pre-text that the New York State government would continue to recognize them as part of the New York delegation, a plan which works well for New York’s Democrat Governor because he doesn’t loose those Democrat votes in the House, and the Democrats in Washington, who are hanging on to the Speaker’s chair by their fingernails right now, didn’t loose even one crucial vote. Isn’t this just a Constitutional smoke screen, a dodge?
Scheuer: No, Mr. Agnew, it is an innovation which guarantees that the principles of American democracy are preserved for New Yorkers….
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Interview with Sen. James C. Buckley (R-NY)
Buckley: I have to agree with you on that point, Mr. Agnew. What the Gavin and Carey Administrations put together is a Constitutional straw man which doesn’t stand-up to scrutiny. Clearly if the founders had wanted something like this, then they would have given the District of Columbia representation in the House of Representatives. The fact that they didn’t speaks to their intentions, and how the Constitution should treat this situation.
Agnew: So you would call the presence of these representatives whose districts are geographically in New York City, and nowhere cross into New York State, unconstitutional?
Buckley: I agree that their votes in Congress have no constitutional basis, but I do not object to their presence. I believe that, based on the Constitution that they should be treated as non-voting delegates, in the manner of those from DC and Puerto Rico, for instance. I do not eschew the people of the city of New York the right to have a voice in the House, far from it, I and many who read the Constitution in its literal terms, object only to their having a vote on legislation. That is where we draw the line.
Agnew: And you have instituted a Constitutional challenge to this in the courts?
Buckley: Not me personally, no, but Professor Antonin Scalia, whom you have had on this program many times before, and Professor Robert Bork, who has also shared his pro-Constitution views with your viewers, have mounted such a challenge, arguing that the New York City representatives votes are in fact unconstitutional and that this shared sovereignty arrangement which was put into the Federal-State accord is unconstitutional and will not stand up to judicial scrutiny.
