Time: Sat Aug 23 08:06:24 1997
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Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 07:12:31 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: a Roosevelt threat? from the Congressional Record (fwd)
<snip>
>
>CONGRESSMAN LOUIS MCFADDEN
>
>U.S. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
>
>Friday, June 15, 1934
>
>
>THE CONSTITUTION OR ITS DISAPPROVAL - WHICH?
>
>
>Mr. McFadden. Mr. Speaker, let us suppose that one of the
>Presidential candidates in 1932 had promulgated as a
>platform the following:
>
>First. I propose to undermine confidence in the business
>leadership of the country generally by parading before the
>American public, through Congress and commission
>investigations, outstanding examples of mistakes and
>malfeasance in all lines of business. I propose that these
>exposes shall be staged in such a way as to give them utmost
>publicity possible, with a view to creating the impression
>that these cases of wrongdoing, whether intentional or not,
>are typical of all business. I shall in my inaugural address
>charge the depression and the ills of the public generally
>to the leadership of the country and shall state in that
>inaugural address that the business leaders have been not
>only incompetent and stubborn but also dishonest in many
>activities.
>
>Second. I propose to encourage and extend Government
>competition with many lines of private business and to
>institute governmental control and regulation of business
>activities through at least 50 new bureaus and commissions
>which I will set up in Washington.
>
>Third. I shall oust the more experienced Government
>employees and supplant them with new appointees, exempted so
>far as possible from civil-service examinations and chosen
>by my political campaign manager, and I will add at least
>50,000 additional Government employees to the Federal pay-
>roll in the first year of my administration.
>
>Fourth. I propose not only to abandon the gold standard but
>to debase our currency, repudiate the promises of the
>Government to pay in gold, and make it a crime for private
>citizens to have gold in their possession. I shall call upon
>some college professors to establish by experiments a new
>monetary system with no definite and fixed value for the
>monetary unit.
>
>Fifth. To assist agriculture I shall pay a bounty for the
>killing of many million pigs and sows and the plowing up of
>one-fourth of our cotton acreage; and I shall furthermore
>distribute to farmers from the Federal Treasury sums
>aggregating several hundred million dollars, in such a
>fashion that the farmer will receive greater revenue for
>nonproduction than he will for production. Cotton being one
>of our principal export commodities, I shall take steps to
>artificially raise its price so that American cotton will be
>at a disadvantage in world markets and thus stimulate the
>expansion of cotton production in foreign countries. In
>other farm commodities I shall fix the prices regardless of
>the supply and demand.
>
>Sixth. I propose to demonstrate my faith in the Russian
>experiment in Communism by recognizing Russia, by reducing
>the Russian debt to the United States, and by lending the
>Russian Communist Government a few hundred million dollars
>from our Treasury.
>
>Seventh. In order that I may not be hampered by the
>prejudiced viewpoint of adherence to the old system, I shall
>dispense with and ignore the advice of experienced business
>and political leaders and surround myself with brilliant and
>clever young men who have nothing to lose by abandoning the
>old system but who are bitterly opposed to that system and
>zealously devoted to the creation of a new order. To these
>young men I shall entrust the drafting of the important
>new legislation for carrying out my policies, and this
>legislation I will drive through Congress, urging the
>necessity for this new legislation as a part of my program
>to meet the emergency. I can thus destroy the old order
>under the guise of trying to save it in an emergency.
>
>Eighth. I propose to tell our people that this being the age
>of plenty they should work less, and produce less, and
>demand more for what they do, and to emphasize my belief in
>this program I shall employ millions of idle people to do
>unnecessary work and pay them therefore higher wages than
>are paid by private employers for useful work.
>
>Ninth. I shall advocate the redistribution of wealth, arouse
>the workers against their employers, the producers against
>the distributors, and while urging the producers and
>distributors to increase wages and maintain prices, the
>consumers will be told that they are being robbed.
>
>Tenth. I shall prevent the criticism of my policies: First,
>by continual emphasis upon the terrible condition from which
>I am trying to save the country; second, by controlling the
>radio through the Federal Radio Commission; third, by
>establishing such intimate relations with the Washington
>newspaper correspondents as will cause them to interpret my
>actions and policies as I desire them interpreted, and by
>threatening their publishers with loss of advertising and
>circulation through popular revolt if they criticize. To the
>more obstreperous I shall throw down the challenge that it
>is unpatriotic to criticize the President in times of such
>emergency.
>
>Eleventh. To avoid the constitutional barriers I shall cause
>attacks to be made upon the strict interpretation of the
>Constitution as being out of date and no longer adequate to
>protect the people, and where the judiciary seems unwilling
>to approve my legislation I shall cause them to be attacked
>in the press and threaten them with investigations and
>popular disapproval.
>
>Twelfth. I shall seek control over all the affairs of the
>Nation and shall strip the States of all their rights of
>local self-government. This shall be accompanied by the
>regimentation - persuasively, if possible, if not, then by
>coercion, threats, and intimidation - of industry under
>codes, compelling the business interests of the Nation to
>engage in private contract to grant my bureaus and
>administrative authorities complete control of their
>affairs, constituting them legislators, judges, and juries
>whose actions and decisions shall be conclusive; and if any
>recalcitrant member of any industry dares challenge the
>constitutionality of the act of Congress under which I
>proceed, my young lawyers will meet them in court and assert
>my right to do this, and deny their right to challenge it
>because they have agreed by private contract to my terms and
>cannot attack the constitutionality of an act under which
>they have sought to do business.
>
>Finally, I will stultify States, counties, cities,
>industrial establishments, and individuals by establishing
>Federal loan agencies that will extend credit to them and
>mortgage their assets, so that I will have their property in
>my hands as security for their debts, so that they dare not
>challenge my actions. This power of debt I will use to the
>utmost. Thus the Constitution shall be subject to my will,
>because there will be none left to oppose my interpretation.
>
<snip>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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