Is the President Overworked?

By David Glenn Cox

There is an old Firesign Theatre comedy piece, a parody of “The Price is Right,” where a woman contestant is asked, “Do you want what’s behind the door or what’s in the bag?”

She blurts out, “I’ll take the bag! Why… why this is a bag of shit!”

“Yes” the announcer answers, “but it’s really great shit!”

Two years ago CNBC, America’s first name in fascism, sent cutie pie Erin "Black Widow" Burnett to Dubai for live, on-sight interviews with all the movers and shakers of that miracle in the desert. Oh, it was wonderful; the future is now in Dubai. All positive, all good news and all good stories about what the American business community could learn from Dubai.

There was no mention of the thousands of foreign workers imported with promises of high wages, workers who took out loans to purchase the right to indentured servitude. The thousands living in squalid camps in rows of concrete, windowless buildings, lacking the basic necessities, where the daytime temperature regularly hits 111 degrees. Their passports taken by their employers at the airport, they are no more than slaves.

They are domestic workers forced to work twelve hours a day seven days a week who when they ask for money are told that they will be paid when their contract is up in two years. They are debtors to their employers and in Dubai debtors who renege on their debts go to prison. Unless of course that debtor is the absolute ruler of the country Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Just two weeks before Dubai asked its lenders to forgo payments due, the Sheik told reporters in Dubai to “shut up” over questions of financial solvency. When the Sheik says, “shut up,” you best shut up. Foreign journalists that write stories unflattering to the Sheik have had their visas cancelled and have been awakened in the middle of the night and told that they had twenty-four hours to get out of the country or else. Domestic journalists have received the same midnight phone calls, warned that their families will become unemployable if they persist.

Your rights in Dubai? You have the right to do as you’re told. Behind the glittering office towers and western style dance clubs, with Pizza Huts and Coca Cola, is a dictatorship complete with a secret police, wire taps and all the accoutrements. Too late did the admirers find out. Now CNBC pundits scratch their heads and wonder how this could happen? The Sheik has been bailed out for the time being by a distant cousin in Abu Dhabi, but for Western investors it’s a different story.

“Why… why this is a bag of shit!”

“Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — Nakheel PJSC creditors may win the right to seize a strip of barren waterfront land the size of Manhattan if the company defaults on the $3.5 billion bond backing the development.

“The property forms part of the Dubai Waterfront project, where Nakheel plans to build a city twice the size of Hong Kong Island. The site is empty except for a cluster of partly finished low-rise buildings, idle cranes and a few roaming camels.”

“But it’s really great shit!”

It is just another example of how much corporate America loves Fascism and hates Democracy. Even in default little is made of the fraud and abuse that brought Dubai into the news. When sanitation services were overwhelmed in Dubai, the answer was to dump the raw sewage into the ocean. The same glittering ocean used to attract the tourists. It’s like the story of the Soviet shirt factory told to increase its output by 25%, but no one bothered to tell the shirt button company.

If this had been Iran or Venezuela, how would the story have been played? Evo Morales recently won a landslide victory for a second term as President in Bolivia, and how does the media portray it? “Is Democracy seriously at risk in Bolivia?” They worry that Morales’s nationalization of the oil industry and distribution of land to indigenous peasants might weaken the democratic institutions of Bolivia.

“We have got the newspapers.” That’s what General Smedley Butler was told in 1933. “We will start a campaign that the President’s health is failing, everybody can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second,” said Gerald MacGuire. MacGuire was a Wall Street trader (traitor) used to initiate contact with Butler. Butler, a respected Major General in the Marines, was told that they planned to raise an army of 500,000 super soldiers to bring Fascism to America.

Under the banner of the Liberty League, an anti-Communist, anti-labor and anti-New Deal organization, the Liberty League sought to sell the virtues of Capitalism to the public while attempting a Fascist takeover of the government. MacGuire asked Butler, “Did it ever occur to you that the President is overworked? We might have an assistant President.” He went on to say the position would be a Secretary of General Affairs, a sort of super secretary. He said, “You know the American people will swallow that.”

Butler asked, "Is there anything stirring yet?"

"Yes, you watch," MacGuire replied. "In two or three weeks, you will see it come out in the papers. There will be big fellows in it. This is to be the background of it."

The Liberty League was introduced two weeks later with the backing of the DuPonts and J.P. Morgan, General Motors, Heinz, Colgate and a who’s who of America’s wealthy. They had a soft spot in their hearts; they had seen the progress made by Italy and Germany in rebuilding their economies with industry and government forming a partnership. They were certain that America was on the wrong path, and called the passage of Social Security the day Democracy died in America.

The steamship line Hamburg America offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write positive stories about the new German government.All one needed to do was to contact the company’s management in the United States, Prescott Bush. The Postmaster General of the United States called it the "American Cellophane League" because it was a DuPont product you could see right through. The Liberty League financed lawsuits against collective bargaining, supported the filibuster against anti-lynching legislation, against minimum wage laws and in favor of child labor. But to the public and the press, their banner was “Liberty League, standing up for the Constitution and standing up for the troops.” Sound at all familiar?

Their plan for a takeover didn’t involve blood in the streets but the installation of a presidential minder. A man to sit at the end of the table and nod yes or no to any proposed legislation.

General Butler played them along, acquiring names and plans, and then spilled the beans. On November 20, 1934, General Butler revealed the whole scheme by testifying before a private session of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities.

"In the last few weeks of the Committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country.... There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed expedient.

"This committee received evidence from Major General Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the Committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.

"MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your Committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans’ organizations of fascist character."

Years later Chairman McCormick of the House Committee said, “There is no doubt that General Butler is one of the outstanding Americans in our history. I cannot emphasize too strongly the very important part he played in exposing the fascist plot in the early 1930s, backed by and planned by persons possessing great wealth.”

General Butler was angered that names were not named. “Like most committees it has slaughtered the little guys and allowed the big to escape. The big shots weren’t even called to testify? They were all mentioned in the testimony, why was all mention of their names suppressed?”

It was argued that the information must be verified before it was made public, but the fix was in. It was killed by the White House, which now held the potential charge of treason over the heads of the movers and shakers. FDR wanted the New Deal, not political trials, and the entire issue was put to sleep with the New York Times calling it a "gigantic hoax."

Then, eighteen months later, they said: "New York Times Jan 26, 1936 - Few events other than national conventions staged by the two major parties have aroused keener political interest — and concern — than the American Liberty League dinner here tonight which Alfred E. Smith will address. LIBERTY LEAGUE HEAD LIBERTY LEAGUE HEAD NEW ROLE IS TAKEN BY...”

But this was all so long ago, wasn’t it? Our media tells us today of the good things that repressive and unelected governments do and the bad things that elected governments do. We debate healthcare reform and the old clothes are taken from the closet. Communism, Socialism, the end of Democracy, tea baggers and birthers. Some in Congress are openly in the pocket of industry, and some of the President’s own cabinet members carry the look of corporate minders themselves.

Money for war? Sure, why not! Money for healthcare? Too expensive, sounds like Communism. Money for a jobs program? Let’s wait and see.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." (Smedley Butler, “War is a Racket”)

“Why… why this is a bag of shit!”

“But it’s really great shit!”