My Q&A with Derotha Ann Reynolds

Below you can read why Derotha Ann Reynolds is running for Nevada State Democratic Party Chair. You can find all other Q&A on the top of the sidebar:

You are running for Chair of the Nevada State Democratic Party. Why do you want to lead the party?

The Nevada Party is in the spotlight, and the caucus will bring a lot of publicity to the winner. It is an important time for us to be thinking about the choices that everyone will be making, and how those choices will affect our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren. Nevada can educate and produce a winner for the Democratic Party.

It is a mistake to think that the way that we have been thinking in recent decades will carry us through the coming crises unscathed, no matter which party wins the Presidency. We must return to the principles of American economics that are outlined in the Constitution, involving the government control of credit, and the regulation of the economy concerning tariffs and internal improvements. The way in which infrastructure is financed is especially important with the current trend toward dangerous “public private partnerships.” Infrastructure must be financed through government created credit at low (1 to 2%) interest over long terms (25 to 50 years). Infrastructure cannot in itself be a source of private profit, because paying the 8% or higher to private pockets will bankrupt the municipalities, and the “balance the budget” crowd will squeeze out vital social services.

We need to develop nuclear power, and re-cycle the waste, both current stockpiles and future cycles. The current scenarios for solar power are fine if you are talking about a population with $50,000 to put panels on their house, but many folks that live in our state don’t have $50,000, and they don’t have a house, and some of them don’t have an apartment. Some of them don’t have a roof over their head, or food to eat. This is energy saving for an affluent middle class, which is disappearing. (And you can’t make a solar panel using solar power, because solar power isn’t strong enough for mass panel production.) We should be using solar power to grow food, with imported water from Canada and Alaska.) The American people need jobs, not ugly, bird-killing, inefficient windmills. The subject of ethanol is especially noxious. Ethanol uses more oil to produce than if we just used oil in the first place, but more importantly it uses agricultural land to produce fuel, when that land is desperately needed to produce food. It will serve to remove the agricultural subsidies after the first windfall profits, and then the profits will disappear when the ethanol has to support itself, and then the cartels will own most of the land. Not to mention the crippling effect that ethanol is already having on the Mexican farm population, which will only drive up immigration, and bankrupt even more Mexican farmers who can’t compete with the NAFTA-driven corn importation. If you wonder why Bush is in South America supporting ethanol production, it is because his handlers want to own and manage the land there. And here.

We need to develop nuclear power, and import water on a large enough scale so that Las Vegas will have enough, and the farmers and ranchers in the north will have enough, and so that Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake can retain their levels. It is useless to “conserve” water, or to claim that restricting use of water is conserving anything. We are using our fossil water now, and it will be gone soon if we don’t import more. By refusing to act to build major infrastructure for water delivery, we are insuring that our mountain springs and natural lakes will be dry. The only thing we are conserving is a water shortage.

What has been your experience as a member of the Democratic Party so far? Were you involved in any campaigns or in your local Democratic party?

I was born a Democrat under the tutelage of my mother, who was born in 1910, and lived through the Great Depression. She was an ardent admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and often spoke of him when she would tell me how lucky I was to be living in the US. Many of his legacies, like Social Security, and, as an offshoot of that, Medicare, are now under direct attack, and our efforts have to redouble to revive our economy to support and, in the case of Medicare, expand these programs. The problem isn’t that we can’t afford the programs. The problem is that the income of the average American is decreasing, and that we have no industrial production left. And no tax base left, to support our population properly. The problem is that we have abandoned our small farmers, who play a huge role in our national security. We have lost control of our food production, and our path down the road to a “service economy” is the road to poverty. Life in a de-industrialized country won’t be pretty, as we will discover when pensions, social security, and week-ends become distant memories.

I was born in Nevada, raised on a dairy/alfalfa farm in Stillwater, Nevada. We were all Democrats in the 50’s, and we can be again. I became involved in Nevada politics actively in 1997, shortly after I had moved to Las Vegas. I worked on Joe Neal’s campaign to raise the taxes on the casinos. I helped him win his last senate campaign, and worked on both of his gubernatorial races. I was a member of the Paradise Democratic Club in Las Vegas, and worked on local campaigns there before I became involved with the LaRouche Organization, and started to study Roosevelt’s methods more closely. I worked actively to support John Kerry after his nomination in 2004.

I am currently treasurer of the Truckee Meadows Democratic Alliance. I have recently opened a tax preparation office (I am an enrolled agent), and I also have a full-time job as a customer service representative for a national mobile phone company.

The Democratic Party as we experience it, ideologically, is essentially FDR’s party. Andrew Jackson was a racist butcher, but he represents the “other “ Democratic Party, the one that supports investment income over earned income, the one that supported slavery during the Civil War. FDR took over the Democratic party in the 30’s, and transformed it into a morally sound representation of American Economics as defined by Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and, in his better moments, by Thomas Jefferson, (a Democratic-Republican). We have to return to the principles of FDR, embrace the plight of the “Forgotten Man,” re-align with farmers and labor unions, and uplift the nation. We have to have a strategy that will uplift the developing nations, as Roosevelt intended with his Bretton Woods agreement for international trade, and his concept of the United Nations, not as a governing body, but as a forum for sovereign states. We have to study these concepts of government control of credit, and fixed exchange rates; we have to educate the people of Nevada and the candidates through their various local campaign representatives.

Are you a member of any other organization? If so, how can your experience there translate into working in the State Party leadership?

I am a close follower of the LaRouche Organization. Study of Roosevelt’s actual laws, methods, speeches, and philosophies are of great importance in translating these methodologies into actions that will be relevant to solving the huge problems involving hedge funds, derivatives markets, capital budgeting, and unsecured debt. If we do not approach these problems with a sound knowledge of how economics is supposed to function in a moral society, then we will have no chance of solving the problems, and they will engulf us.

What do you think needs to be done to improve the situation of the State Party? Or do you think things are currently headed in the right direction?

We lost the top of the ticket. We have to address the reasons why we lost, and address the needs of the entire population, not just Democratic activists. We need to bring back the elements of physical economy, actual production, into our state economy and our national economy. We currently exist as a parasitic economy. When the rest of the nation collapses because of the exportation of production, we will not be far behind. We are facing an impending collapse, being in denial about it won’t make it go away. Hedge funds aren’t the answer, they are the problem. We can’t just sit and watch the Japanese interest rates rise, and the housing market collapse. We have to act, and we have to know what we are doing. We don’t have a lot of time to do it.

With the Nevada Caucus coming up will you support a presidential candidate or remain neutral?

I will support the principles of FDR, and I will support the people who demand that we return to those ideals. Otherwise, Nevada, the US, and the world, will devolve into racism, poverty, and nuclear war.