February Read: Reporting Old News

Unknown artist, Pennsylvania Art WPA
(Art Institute of Chicago)
Image: Posters for the People

The Plot to Seize the White House, Jules Archer, 1973; 2007 reprint, Skyhorse

War is a Racket, Smedley Butler, 1935

Archer's book is short, yet contains a world of nearly lost history.

It's largely the story of General Smedley Butler. After a long and colorful career, the highly decorated Marine was known and admired by the general public of the 1930s. His fame brought many offers for public speaking, including radio broadcasts, and through these he reached a wide audience.

During his decades of service, Butler had come to question the motives for the foreign interventions in which he had played a role. Eager to warn against the country's being led into more wars, Butler used his public appearances to tell the truth about his Marine career.

Archer describes Butler's first antiwar speech—at a Connecticut American Legion convention—on August 21, 1931. What he had to say "stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part"—

I spent 33 years... being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Bothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested... I had... a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents...

Retiring from the Marines later that year, Butler embarked on extensive speaking tours around the country. He also toured veterans' hospitals, then wrote angrily of broken men who—

...don't even look like human beings. A careful study of their expressions is highly recommended as an aid to understanding the art of war.

In the summer of 1932—after the Senate's rejection of the veterans' bonus bill—Butler was invited by the head of the VFW to address the 20,000 vets still camped in DC. This clip (from an unidentified documentary) has a bit of Butler's speech, at :44 seconds. (A worthwhile PBS documentary about the bonus march can also be seen, in parts 1, 2, and 3.)

After the military assault on the bonus marchers, lifelong Republican Butler campaigned for FDR. Butler publicly ridiculed conservatives for smearing "anyone who utters a progressive thought," and in Archer's words, "He branded Republican warnings that a Democratic victory would turn America socialist an absurd myth."

In one speech Butler called himself "a member of the Hoover for ex-President League because Hoover used gas on unarmed human beings." He also asserted that—

The bonus is an amount of money that the American people owe the soldier, but anybody demanding it is charged with lack of patriotism. During the war nobody charged the officers of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation or any of the other corporations who received enormous bonuses with "raiding the Treasury."

Archer writes—

On November 8 Butler's choice for President won, and the House of Representatives went Democratic by a margin of three to one. A chorus of newspaper fury and frustration reflected the dismay of banking and industrial interests over Roosevelt's election.

Less than three weeks before the President-elect's inauguration, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate him at Miami. Could the assassin's bullet possibly have been negotiated for, Butler speculated, by a big-business cabal that hated Roosevelt and dreaded a New Deal?

The day after his March 4 inauguration, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and embargoed exportation of gold. During the "Hundred Days Congress" special session called by FDR, the main New Deal policies were enacted. Archer observes that

As the American people stirred with new hope that at last the government was beginning to fight the nightmare Depression, Butler noted with satisfaction that the bankers and industrialists of the nation were horrified.

Despite his outspokenness against corporate war profiteers and his support for Roosevelt, Butler's public stature and popularity with soldiers led to his being approached in July by Jerry MacGuire, a bond salesman for the Wall Street firm of Grayson M.-P. Murphy and Company. In numerous visits over several months, MacGuire tried to persuade Butler to front for a group of wealthy backers with ambitious plans for the country.

Early on, MacGuire tried to enlist Butler in delivering an American Legion convention speech calling for a return to the gold-standard. Under questioning, MacGuire revealed that a chief backer was his employer Murphy, a wealthy former colonel on the boards of directors of a Morgan bank, mining, tire and steel corporations, and a founder of the Legion. Murphy had underwritten that organization in 1919 for $125,000, out of a supposed desire to see soldiers "cared for"—

That was too much for Butler, who sardonically pointed out that the wealthy men had been using the Legion ever since to break strikes.

...When Butler questioned Murphy's motive in wanting the gold-standard speech made at the convention, MacGuire explained that he and the other backers simply wanted to be sure that the veterans would be paid their bonus in sound gold-backed currency, not in "rubber money."

Archer details the multiple visits—and the amounts of money MacGuire waved around. Butler was in Newark to address a Legion convention when MacGuire showed up at the general's hotel to demand his decision. When Butler tried to call MacGuire's bluff, the visitor pulled 18 thousand dollar bills from his pocket, tossing them on the bed for Butler to count.

A startled Butler played for time, telling MacGuire he would negotiate only with principals. This led to a meeting with banker Robert S. Clark, whom Butler had known during the Boxer campaign in China—when Clark was nicknamed, "the millionaire lieutenant." After some probing, Clark admitted he was so worried about losing his 30 million dollar fortune, that he was willing to spend half to save the remainder—so terrified was he of Roosevelt's policies and so convinced that FDR could be made to realize his duties to his own social class.

After rejecting Clark's offer, Butler was bemused to read that a gold-standard resolution had indeed been introduced and passed at the Legion's Chicago convention. And despite all rebuffs, MacGuire continued pursuing him, until a few months' break beginning that December, as MacGuire left for Europe on behalf of his backers.

Butler stayed busy, touring the country with James Van Zandt, head of the VFW. That organization called for immediate payment of the promised bonus, plus disabled vets' compensation and widows' pensions. Butler told reporters—

So many former soldiers came to me with their pathetic stories that I bounced out of retirement. All we soldiers are asking is that the nation give us the same break that is being given the manufacturers, the bankers, the industrialists... Jimmie and I are going around the country trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class.

In Atlanta, Butler made headlines for attacking bankers, as he told vets that war was "largely a matter of money. Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot repay the President sends Marines to get it... we can help get rid of [war] when we conscript capital along with men." Archer adds —

Ex-servicemen were made the butt of an Economy Act passed by Congress, Butler charged, because "the principle of taking care of soldiers is nothing at all but an old-age pension to which the nation eventually will come, and the bankers don't want it... If Charles Dawes got ninety million dollars for a sick bank, soldiers ought to get it for sick comrades."

Butler pointed to the power of twenty million votes that veterans and their families represented, and warned them against believing "the propaganda capital circulates." He condemned the press as mostly controlled by capital, noting, "The paper that takes the part of the soldier loses advertising."

In April 1934 a Senate investigation into WWI arms profiteering began. Archer describes how

The Nye Committee produced shock waves by exposing the pressures exerted by the armament industry on the government to take America into that war. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor-publisher of The Nation, wrote, "I never dreamed that I should live to see the time when public opinion in the United States would be practically united in recognized that we were lied to and deceived into going to war... and when Congress would actually put a stop to those processes by which Wilson, House, Lansing, and J.P. Morgan and Company brought us into the war."

...

Following the hearings closely, Butler was tremendously impressed and influenced by their disclosures. They also confirmed his suspicions that big business—Standard Oil, United Fruit, the sugar trust, the big banks—had been behind most of the military interventions he had been ordered to lead. In a broadcast over Philadelphia radio station WCAU he described his experiences in "the raping of little nations to collect money for the big industries" that had large foreign investments.

Particularly striking was the testimony of the president of Bethlehem Steel, Eugene G. Grace, who

... admitted that his corporation had received almost three million dollars in bonuses during World War I. He nervously expressed concern that such a revelation might "leave a bad taste" in the mouths of veterans who had served their country for a dollar a day, but nevertheless labeled their bonus movement an "unfortunate enterprise."

"Bethlehem Steel made ten times as much money during the war as before," Butler roared over WCAU, "and this band of pirates calls the soldier Treasury raiders!"

Archer writes of

... a steadily rising chorus of hatred for "that cripple in the White House" by big-business leaders. It was reflected in the anti-Roosevelt slant of both news and editorials...

...Demagogues with apparently inexhausible funds for propaganda and agitation led "patriotic" crusades against Communists, Jews, and "Jewish bankers," who were alleged to be behind the New Deal.

That June [1934] Roosevelt further inflamed big business by a whole new series of New Deal acts that crippled stock speculation, set up watchdog agencies over the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries, stopped farm foreclosures, prevented employers from hindering unionization and compelled them to accept collective bargaining. As an epidemic of turbulent strikes broke out, the orchestration of Roosevelt hatred in the nation's press rose to a fresh crescendo.

...Butler was intrigued by the July, 1934, issue of Fortune... which devoted a whole edition to glorifying Italian fascism...

Back from Europe that August, MacGuire insisted on meeting Butler, whom he now openly asked to lead a fascist group. MacGuire had spent months observing how veterans' groups had brought European fascists to power. In response to his findings, he said, his backers created a "superorganization," to be made public in a couple of weeks—

In September, 1934, the press announced the formation of a new organization, the American Liberty League, by discontented captains of industry and finance. They announced their objectives as "to combat radicalism, to teach the necessity of repect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free enterprise."

Denouncing the New Deal, they attacked Roosevelt for "fomenting class hatred" by using such terms as "unscrupulous money changers," "economic royalists," and "the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties."

The officers and financiers included Grayson Murphy, Robert Clark, and the Morgan attorney whom MacGuire had named to Butler as the author of the gold-standard speech. Others involved included Mellons, Rockefellers, the Pew family (who would later finance the John Birch society and many other ultra-right causes). And two influential Democrats—Al Smith, and former party chair, John J. Raskob.

Butler now approached a friendly editor at the Philadelphia Record, who assigned his star reporter, Paul Comly French, to "set about determining whether MacGuire and his group were operating some kind of racket to extort money out of the rich by selling them political gold bricks, or whether a cabal of rich men... was putting up big money to overthrow F.D.R. with a putsch."

And "gossip" going around DC was that the American Legion would "provide the nucleus of a Fascist Army that would seize the capital." John Spivak, a reporter expert in exposing American fascists, began his own investigation.

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was the original House Un-American Activities Committee, and was then scrutinizing both fascist and communist activities. An investigator contacted Butler, who would, in a secret executive committee, testify to MacGuire's visits—and to being urged more than forty times to front a coup.

Reporter French appeared next, corroborating Butler, and adding much more. His investigation had included a two-hour meeting at the Grayson and Co. premises, during which MacGuire had openly told French, "We need a Fascist government in this country... to save the Nation from Communists who want to tear it down..."

MacGuire had described his fact-finding tour of Europe, saying he had seen both the role of veterans and the "solution" to unemployment. French testified—

He said that Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do...

French also testified that MacGuire had implicated the Du Ponts as prepared to lend credit for arms and equipment. French's further statement—that MacGuire had named connections at Morgan and National City Bank as potential funders—would be censored from the official transcript.

Later the same day, MacGuire appeared before the Committee, denying the charges by Butler and French, and evading questions. Afterward, he told reporters that Butler's charges were a play for publicity, and "a pacifist stunt."

A New York Times article reported Butler's charges—then devoted most of the space to denials—and ridicule of Butler—by the powerful people he had implicated.

McCormack and Dickstein both announced plans for a thorough investigation, to include subpoenaing all persons Butler and French had named.

MacGuire was questioned a second, then a third time in September 1934. When the bank records ordered were produced, they corroborated Butler, although MacGuire perjured himself to deny it.

Near the end of November 1934 the Committee issued its report, supporting Butler's charges. No action was taken against MacGuire. His backers—whose names had been removed from the public transcript—were not called to testify. Most of the press ignored, distorted, or ridiculed the findings. The plot was portrayed as a laughable fantasy, and Butler as a nut.

In January 1935 reporter Spivak discovered a complete transcript, including all names implicated but later removed.

Butler railed on WCAU against suppression of the "most important" parts of his testimony, charging the Committee "stopped dead in its tracks when it got near the top."

Later that year, Butler would publish his brief book. He blasted the previous war's profiteers, both large and small—

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14c to make and Uncle Sam paid 30c to 40c each for them—a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers—all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment—knapsacks and the things that go to fill them—crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them—and they will do it all over again the next time.

In the decades since, our profiteers and their political allies have come up with newer and better schemes. Instead of a pesky Smedley Butler speaking out, we have TV-pundit retired military brass, promoting wars in which they have financial interests.

And this is who has been sold as our most respected military man.

Our culture can't make the connection between our own history and where we now are as a society, much less how our history of foreign intervention has affected other parts of the world. Archer quotes Butler's observation that "We supervised elections in Haiti, and wherever we supervised them our candidate won." The U.S. is very much a force in the background to the ongoing devastation there. The history goes back before, during and since Smedley Butler's time; for example, this, this, and this.

The Republican press mocked Butler when he turned against foreign intervention. Although he faced increased censorship the more outspoken he became, there were other outlets for his voice. As he told the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, he had tried to alert the public because, "I have had so many invitations to head societies and to join societies, all of them with a camouflaged patriotic intent. They are rackets, all of them."

Our current rackets are everywhere, from a current version of the American Liberty League and its methods, to the vast platform provided to "populist" demagogues.

It's all the same scam, whether it's organizing 1930s veterans to rally for the gold-standard, or 2010 Medicare recipients to demonstrate against health care.

There were no consequences for the coup planners in 1935, which seems to have set the precedent for Democrats' silence about Republican treachery—for "the good of the country," and as cover for involvement of some elements of their own party. Ultimately, Democratic cover-up of Republican treason became completely entrenched, from Johnson to Clinton to Obama.

And in a particularly sickening way, we've come full circle here. In response to the New Deal, right-wing money began funding an echo chamber that is by now unchallenged enough to push a "liberals = fascists" story line against Democrats. Insane it may be—especially when one could wish more Dems were so much as "liberals." But it's when their targets don't stand up to them that bullies win.

WPA February

Library of Congress
Artist: Ben Kaplan

At least it's a short one, allowing two or three days' less bloviation than your usual month.

It's already off to this start: more sweeping of torture under the rug, as the DOJ prepares to clear Bush's memo-writing go-to guys.

On the positive side, Clever Sister spots an ad for an area flea market. Among the items and quantities available—

Cock Rings 19
Whips 11
Ham Restaurants 1
Scorpions 14
Avon Distributor 1

...and with so much more here—surely the local economy is saved!

Ancient History

United Press, 1948
U.S. Information Agency/National Archives

Oh, for the days when Democrats turned defeat into victory. Instead of the other way around...

Now that Scott Brown has given the GOP a "41-59 majority in the Senate," it's a golden opportunity for Dems to lose even more seats, by moving even farther rightward.

The salivating of the media over Brown was disgusting, yet completely unsurprising. After all, who wants a Ted Kennedy working for a better country, when truck drivin' Republicans are the real Amurka.

And electing a guy you want to have a beer with—it's worked so very well before.

The degradation of any remaining pretense of democracy got a big boost from the corporate operatives who decided this one.

All during a month that began with the Underpants Bomber serving as the media's non-stop setup for a Republican narrative. And with airtime provided for Dana Perino and Rudy "9/11" Guiliani to claim there was no terrorism under Bush... It shouldn't be long before that version is in the Texas-approved history books.

Authentic US history lost a giant, with Howard Zinn's passing. Educated under the GI Bill: a fine example of why the owners oppose education for the masses.

Liberal NPR provides equal time for rabid spittle aimed at Zinn's corpse.

At least there was one bright spot in the month, with the vote to raise corporate taxes in Oregon—by an electorate, as Digby notes, very like the one in Massachusetts.

And it's encouraging that Scott Roeder was convicted, given the judge and venue. His handlers will see that he's made into a martyr, but we can hope that he doesn't again see the light of day.

The SOTU address was gratifying in terms of hearing Obama call out Republicans and the not-so-Supremes. Not so much, in terms of policies that 40 years ago would have been to the right of moderate Republicanism.

The same policies—and the continuation of Bush policies—that gets us nothing good, and gets Obama nothing but a media narrative of, "Biggest Socialist in History!"

Except for the media slant, this is just like the Bush years. And it takes as much constant effort to counter the narrative being pushed, the events being ignored, the celebrity doings placed in the forefront—just to try to keep a grip on sanity. The big difference between then and now: the media will endlessly dissect what they see as Obama's shortcomings.

And there's the relentness effort to eliminate truth from public life—as driftglass puts it, the reality of "living in an America where larger and larger chunks of recent and inconvenient history are just being whisked away with the giddy recklessness of a four-year-old who has just discovered lying."

Scott Horton unsweeps a previously whisked away story: the June 2006 "suicides" of three prisoners at Guantánamo. Horton reports a military whistleblower's grim evidence of torture and murder.

And Horton's story clarifies just why the commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, was in a hurry not only to call the sudden deaths "suicides," but also to insist they were "an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

January Read: Media vs. Candidate

Chicago : Illinois WPA Art Project,
Artist: Hazlett
Library of Congress

I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future , Upton Sinclair (1933)

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, Greg Mitchell (1992)

Sinclair launched his 1934 campaign the year before, when he published I, Governor, outlining his End Poverty in California (EPIC) program. The context was an economy where crops were destroyed while families of the unemployed went hungry. Some useful background is in the documentary segments here and here. [Clips not identified by the youtube poster, but presumably from this 1993 PBS documentary].

Sinclair was a longtime Socialist who had made previous runs for office as the party's candidate. He also was an entrepreneur who published his own books and sold them by mail order.

Offering I, Governor in batches of ten, Sinclair proposed that buyers keep one and sell the rest to other potential readers. To promote this, copies of a form letter were included with books purchased. Sinclair asked that buyers sign and enclose a letter with each of book they sold in turn, to "keep the ball rolling till all the voters of the State know about the plan." Sinclair also urged readers to form book discussion clubs promoting EPIC.

From the documentary clips:

174 EPIC clubs had formed by 1934, and I, Governor became California's biggest selling title. After Sinclair declared his candidacy as a Democrat, "hundreds of EPIC clubs formed the heart of the campaign." The weekly EPIC News developed a circulation of half a million.

By the time of the August 28 primary, there were 1000 EPIC clubs. Through their work on voter registration, there were now 350,000 new Democrats—who outnumbered Republicans for the first time in the state's history. Sinclair swept the primary, with 436,000 votes.

The following day is when Greg Mitchell takes up the story.

Mitchell looks at how this race

...showed candidates the way from the smoke-filled room to Madison Avenue. Media experts, making unprecedented use of film, radio, direct mail, opinion polls, and national fund-raising, devised the most astonishing (and visually clever) smear campaign ever directed against a major candidate. "Many American campaigns have been distinguished by dirty tactics, Heywood Broun commented in October 1934, "but I can think of none in which willful fraud has been so brazenly practiced."

The political innovation that produced the strongest impact, both in the 1934 race and long afterward, was the manipulation of moving pictures. Alarmed by the Sinclair threat, MGM's Irving Thalberg produced outrageously partisan film shorts. For the first time, the screen was used to demolish a candidate—a precursor of political advertising on television.

Mitchell's day-by-day account of the period from August 29 through Election Day is a lively read. The diverse cast of characters who played some part in the outcome range from H. L. Mencken to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson.

The night after the primary win, Sinclair addressed California—and the country—in a radio broadcast that aired nationwide.

We'll never know if his suggested remedies could have worked, but it's hard to argue with much of what Sinclair had to say—

Consider what has happened in Germany. An obscene demagogue has seized power; a great civilized nation has fallen into the hands of gangsters...Do not attribute it to the magic of a demagogue's tongue. Those events...were planned, they were bought and paid for. It is the steel kings of Germany who have seized the country...

And now we have the same breakdown in the United States. The same poverty and insecurity. The same unemployment and suffering, the same Wall Street kind of bond slavery. Can we free ourselves or will Wall Street give us a dictator and fasten the chains about our ankles for a generation, and perhaps forever? Can democracy work? Can the people use its instruments in their own interest or can they be fooled and lied to...

...We are not proposing to replace the whole collapsing system by a new one all at once [but]...a first step, a trial stage.

...There are half a million persons in our state out of work. They cannot be permitted to starve. These persons can never again find work while the present system endures. They are being supported by public charities...driving the state to bankruptcy and the taxpayers to ruin.

Sinclair proposed that the State rent idle factories, where the unemployed would produce goods. These would be exchanged among a network of cashless, "production for use" enterprises that would develop. Linked to agricultural workers producing food on cooperative "land colonies," the industrial projects would build a new economy outside the normal capitalist channels.

Red-baiting began immediately. The idea of using scrip in an exchange economy inspired the opposition to circulate "dollar" bills, signed by "Utopian Sincliar." Mitchell's book reproduces a bill, "Good only in California and Russia - Not very good anywhere."

A version (found here):

And there were supposed endorsements, by non-existent groups.

(Image from a Business Week "political mudslinging through the years" item—which fails to note that the "League" was phony.)

It was Sinclair's promise to tax estates and corporations at increased rates that moved so many powerful groups—including the Democratic party establishment—to join forces against him.

The press attack was led by the Los Angeles Times. Mitchell describes how the paper had gone after Sinclair

...almost from the day the muckraker arrived in 1916...

Now it was up to the Times as defender of the status quo in Southern California...to set the tone for the anti-Sinclair campaign...

This began with an August 30 editorial, warning that not just California, but the entire country was threatened by "...a maggot-like horde of Reds ...termites secretly and darkly eating into the foundations and roof beams of everything that the American heart has held dear and sacred...

...the foe is camouflaged. The Reds are not lined up in solid ranks. Their menace is secret and subtle. Their agent may be your cook or your trusted friend or the movie star whom you admire on the screen..."

Times campaign coverage was directed by its political editor, Kyle Palmer—a key Merriam fund-raiser and speechwriter. When New York Times correspondent Turner Catledge arrived in LA near the end of October, he remarked on the one-sided coverage. Palmer's response—

"We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York—of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can...We're going to kill him."

But at the start of the campaign, Republicans were confronted with the weakness of their own candidate. An uninspiring party hack, sixty-eight year old Frank Merriam was "Old Baldy" even to much of his own team.

Mitchell points to an unprecedented decision: the power brokers bypassed the Party machinery that had always managed campaigns, opting instead for full control by a professional ad agency, Lord & Thomas.

That firm's national head, Albert Lasker, arranged for all the company's resources to be put into the fight. Lasker's most important innovation was his idea for a radio campaign. Until now, the medium had been used for little but running candidate speeches. Lasker proposed radio serials and soap operas imitating the formats of popular shows, but peddling Republican candidates and belittling the New Deal.

And where better to test Lasker's new political merchandising concept than in a state rich in writing and acting talent, a state presently playing host to the most melodramatic election campaign in the country...

To a behind-the-scenes operator, Merriam later complained that the campaign was "all about what a stinker Upton Sinclair is. But there's nothing about me." He was told—

You're a tough guy to sell, and we're going to do it our way. We're going to continue to say that Upton Sinclair is a no good son-of-a-bitch, and we're going to spend a lot of money for that. In the last ten days of the campaign we'll promote you with billboards and with your name all over the place.

That's what we have planned, and that's that.

Merriam's running mate, lieutenant governor George Hatfield, was being managed from San Francisco by Campaigns, Inc. Newly established, it was the first political consultancy firm in the country, and this was its first test. Founder Clem Whitaker considered Merriam incompetent; having turned down an offer to run Merriam's campaign, he made sure that Hatfield keep his distance from Merriam.

One of Clem's maxims was "You can't wage a defensive campaign and win." That was another reason he wouldn't assist Merriam directly. But that didn't mean Clem couldn't contribute to the cause...The Republican party had offered Whitaker a generous sum to help organize a bipartisan front group in San Francisco that would stir up anti-Sinclair sentiment in the state. Whitaker had some new ideas—utilizing modern advertising and publicity techniques—he wanted to try out. To attack meant more than stating the obvious. It was a way of defining the political situation.

Whitaker already had close relationships with seven hundred newspaper publishers throughout the state. One of the techniques he would pioneer during the campaign: providing small newspapers with free articles, editorials and cartoons—which the papers printed as if it were their own material.

The opposition worked on many levels. Key industrialists raised enormous sums, channeled to create front groups that placed propaganda in all available media. Lawyer Albert Parker, the operative behind the fake "Young People's Communist League" leaflets, organized employer intimidation measures against employees suspected of being pro-Sinclair. And with all those newly registered Democrats, Parker went into action on voter purge and vote challenge schemes.

Opponents combed over decades of Sinclair's writings. With the print record of a lifetime of attacks on the vested interests of American institutions, Sinclair quotes were available on nearly any subject. Furthermore, quotes were often taken out of context, or with the words of his fictional characters attributed to Sinclair himself. By accident or design, politically damaging quotes from Sinclair Lewis, were also attributed to candidate Sinclair. The Times and other sources publicized inflammatory quotes, real or distorted, as regular features.

Ultimately, it was Sinclair's volubility and candor that gave his opponents their best ammunition.

On September 26, when reporters asked what would prevent the unemployed from flocking to California if EPIC went into effect, Sinclair replied,

I told Harry Hopkins [federal relief programs administrator] in Washington that if I am elected half the unemployed of the United States will come to California, and he will have to make plans to take care of them.

Sinclair tried elaborating: that the unemployed already came to California, and that the federal government takes care of them where they are. And he joked that Merriam's plan was to make California unlivable, while EPIC would be the state's best advertisement.

After the conference ended, reporters discussed their lead stories for the next day. Mitchell quotes the reporter from the LA Times:

"...the important thing was what he said about half the unemployed coming to California..."

"But you know he didn't mean that," replied one reporter, who happened to be a friend of Sinclair's.

"Maybe he didn't mean it,"the Times reporter responded, "but he said it, and it's what my paper wants."

The next morning's headline: HEAVY RUSH OF IDLE SEEN BY SINCLAIR. And the lede's version of Sinclair's words:

"If I'm elected Governor, I expect one-half the unemployed in the United States will hop aboard the first freights for California," Upton Sinclair, Socialist-Democratic gubernatorial candidate said here today.

A Times editorial claimed that, with ten million out of work, five million indigents would arrive once Sinclair took office. And painted a picture of "fifteen times as many poverty-stricken, jobless indigent as we have already!...utter chaos...Red-incited mobs..."

The opposition spread "The Quote" throughout the state, by every available medium. Mitchell notes a New York Times appraisal of how the Merriam campaign played jobholders against the jobless—

That's what the paranoid warning about an invasion of indigents—transmitted via billboard, radio, and movie screen—was all about. In fact, the entire Merriam message was aimed at "the great white-collar class of the State. It is a unique sort of campaign... as it probably marks the first attempt at a large scale and effective organization of this class in the history of American politics."

The California Real Estate Association was very visible in efforts to terrify the middle class. The group manipulated the market, pulling half a million dollars' worth of property from sale, and making it known that future sales were conditional on Sinclair's defeat. The association organized its state-wide membership to target 800,000 property owners with scare tactics.

In actions by other powerful industries, MGM led the studios in threatening to leave the state if Sinclair were elected. That was on the record; out of public view, the studios deducted a percentage of employee salaries as forced donations to Merriam.

In the last weeks of the campaign, MGM produced a series of fake "newsreels." The first two were supposedly man on the street interviews, pitting respectable looking Merriam supporters against scruffy (and sometimes foreign-accented) Sinclairites.

The most inflammatory short appeared a few days before the election—"a breakthrough in political advertising on film, discarding the pretense of objectivity in favor of a naked appeal to the emotions."

The film opened with a railroad switchman, who claimed every freight train coming to his yard carried two hundred transients, including criminals. The scene cut to a local constable, then a judge, who amplified the narrative: that dangerous crowds including radicals were flooding into the state, and "if they stay...I don't know what will become of the working man."

The film continued with quick cuts of "tramps"—possibly actors—walking the rails. Some scenes looked like outtakes from the fiction film, "Wild Boys of the Road." In other, obviously staged scenes, "bums" answered questions from the "Inquiring Camerman." That dialog was scripted was evident in the awkwardly recited (and flubbed) lines.

Facts—such as Harry Hopkins' statement that current migration to California was actually much lower than the national average—were beside the point.

Sinclair had predicted many of the smears his opponents would use against him, as well as the unprecedented amounts of money they would spend to defeat his ticket. But he believed that the truth, spread through the EPIC clubs and press, would reach the people. By Election Day, he believed, the majority would see where their interest lay and vote accordingly.

In the end, Merriam received 1.1 million votes to Sinclair's 900,000 (with 300,000 to third-party candidate Raymond Haight). Many in Sinclair's camp believed Republican vote fraud and challenges to Democratic voters combined with Haight's candidacy had cost the election. Republicans did poorly in other races, and several EPIC candidates won local offices.

Supporters also believed Sinclair would have received another quarter million votes if FDR had endorsed him. [Publicly, Roosevelt had stayed out of the race. Privately, he had sent emissaries to work against Sinclair.]

On election night, Sinclair cabled a friendly senator to urge investigation of vote fraud. The next morning, his terse statement was, "I concede that the election has been stolen."

Among the consequences not intended by the anti-Sinclair forces:
Once elected, Merriam was so grateful to the Democratic establishment that he became an enthusiastic New Dealer—to the fury of his backers. A liberal Democratic Party began to gain strength in the state for the first time. And Hollywood liberals became more organized, in reaction to the heavy-handed tactics of the studio bosses.

It took a few more years for professional candidate management to dominate elections. Mitchell quotes Reagan in 1966, saying that the agency running his gubernatorial campaign had supplied "the know-how," and that he would never run for office again without them.

Whitaker's company continued as Whitaker and Baxter. They created the AMA-funded "socialized medicine" campaign that defeated Truman's national health insurance proposal of the late 1940s.

Mitchell quotes the firm's principles—

• Never wage a campaign defensively! The only successful defense is a spectacular, hard-hitting, crushing offensive.
• Attempt to create actual news instead of merely sending out publicity.
• More Americans like corn than caviar.
• The average American doesn't want to be educated; he doesn't want to improve his mind; he doesn't even want to work, consciously, at being a good citizen. [But] most every American likes to be entertained. He likes the movies, he likes mysteries, he likes fireworks and parades...So if you can't fight PUT ON A SHOW!

Writing in 1992, Mitchell notes—almost quaintly—"the vicious and dispiriting nature" of the Bush-Dukakis race of 1988, and the low voter turnout. And he notes general predictions that the next campaign would be 'a mudbath.'

Of course, the media-staged nature of campaigns only gets worse. While Fox is every bit as blatant as the LA Times was in 1934, the supposedly respectable media have been steered in much the same direction.

Mitchell describes Sister Aimee's jumping on the anti-communism bandwagon as a means of reviving her stalled career. Considering the relentless anti-Sinclair activities of preachers from both establishment and (previously apolitical) evangelical sects, it may be that this, too, was to predict our political future. Like the campaign consultants, preachers in 1934 may well have had their first lessons in using mass media for political manipulation.

Among Mitchell's cast is Will Rogers. We're still up against the truth in his crack— "I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat." And most of our own Democrats are too tone-deaf to recognize, as Roosevelt did, the wisdom in Rogers' advice—

If somebody gets all excited and tells you, "Wall Street has just done a nose dive," tell them, "Those Republican organizations don't interest me in the least. Why there is 115 million of my subjects don't know if Wall Street is a throughfare or a new mouthwash."

Our Democrats will jump at the wrong conclusion from this month's Massachusetts election, and will fall over themselves moving rightward.

And in other grim developments, Corporate Persons are about to swamp any pretense of human participation in our political campaigns.

Sinclair operated out of faith in the people. His friend H. L. Mencken attacked his naiveté, once writing him that, "The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the common people are doomed to be diddled forever."

Mencken's cynicism may have been the more realistic viewpoint. Certainly, US political history is a story of the same divide and conquer tactics working again and again.

There's a Gore Vidal quote I haven't been able to track down. But it's something to effect of "the ruling class has been doing the same thing for over two hundred years—it's the best ruling class there is."

Reporting From Planet FYIGM

WPA Federal Art Project
[New York, between 1936 and 1939]
Library of Congress

Weekdays, my alarm clock is set to pre-dawn NPR, since "Morning Edition" is annoying enough to make me bolt out of bed to turn down the volume. Once I'm up, I have to keep the sound on, to stay aware of the time while I struggle to get ready for work and out the door.

If I were a retired old fogey with ample free time—instead of an OF who can expect to work until dropping—there would be daily fodder for writing indignant e-mails to the network.

Some segments particularly stand out for egregiousness, and I always mean to check out those transcripts. But as I'm also running late and about to spend 8 hours having my brains sucked out—by the time I remember to look at NPR's site, I can rarely find the right date or segment.

But this Friday I had to make a point of looking for this.

An installment of the grating "Planet Money" series informs us that the proposed "Cadillac tax"

is a tax on the most expensive health care plans. Executives with gold-plated plans don't like it and neither do labor unions, whose workers have generous plans. But many economists say it could help everyone in the long run.

To illustrate the "he said/she said, but an expert will settle this" principle, the reporters take this $43,000 a year call center worker ...

I have asthma and I've had it since I was probably 10, 12 years old. And it seems to be progressively getting worse. I pay over $1,500 a year for my medication. And I need those medications to live. And I heard some senators wanted to tax our health care benefits. I just couldn't believe it.

... and introduce her to a university economist. Because, according to these crack reporters—

DAVID KESTENBAUM: Economists on this issue feel lonely, sad and very misunderstood.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT: Well, yeah, because economists use math and charts to make their arguments. Labor unions use emotion and advertisements featuring sympathetic characters with asthma.

There will be no pausing to ask why the medication should cost $1,500 a year.

The ensuing exchange between worker and economist is grotesque.

Ms. Stanley, who is worried about sheer survival, is assured by Professor Stearns that her costs would go up, but only if AT & T keeps her current, expensive plan. Which they surely won't do—they will switch to a cheaper plan, using the savings to give her a raise.

Among the most painful parts—

Ms. STANLEY: They are not going to give us I'm at top wage, right now. Only cost I get - only wage increase I get is the cost of living.
Prof. STEARN: But they are getting something in return. If you were to say to them, we are willing to give up $8000 of health insurance benefits, then I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be willing to do that.
Ms. STANLEY [Panic rising in her voice]: No, they're not, it's not the way it works in bargaining at all. I know they are not going to give me that.
JOFFE-WALT: What is your proof, though, how do you know that is not going to happen?
Ms. STANLEY: That hasn't changed for 18 years.
JOFFE-WALT: Economists are convinced that this will happen. They say there's lots of data showing when employers pay more for health benefits, they pay less in wages. So, it should work in reverse. Less in benefits, more money to wages.

At first, I take the increasingly strangled tone of the worker's voice to be due to terror, as she comes to realize she's been ambushed into talking about her employer on national radio. But as she's in a union, she may have some protection against retaliation.

Then, I decide her tone must really be from frustration at trying to get through to someone so divorced from reality he has to be told that passing savings to workers is "not the way it works."

Not only can he not comprehend, he clearly thinks she is the stupid one—

Prof. STEARN: When was the last time you had a medical emergency?
Ms. STANLEY: I went to the ER seven years ago when I broke my arm.
Prof. STEARN: It sounds like you don't need the health benefit plan that you have. On the whole, my guess is you're losing money on your health insurance. You would benefit from having a worse health benefit plan and taking that extra money and getting higher wages.
Ms. STANLEY: I disagree.
Prof. STEARN: But you should change your mind.

The patronizing of this woman by NPR and its "expert"—the type whose abstractions have done so much to endorse the turning of this country into what we are now—is infuriating. As usual, Upton Sinclair's observation applies: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I'm still steaming about the tenured jerk, who sounds completely sincere—he seems to have no agenda beyond promoting post-Reagan conventional thinking (and he might very well be comfortable voting Democratic). A man so expert, he can ignore all of the last 30 years to claim that corporate savings will go to raising wages of ordinary drudges. When it's a fucking wonder that AT&T hasn't outsourced this woman's call center to India yet.

I've been working on my plan of starting the year by reading about Great Depression topics.

And looking at WPA art: there's some wonderful stuff that I plan to post over the coming months. But it's also a painful reminder of how far we've been pushed from public expenditures being allowed to benefit the public. And of how we've entered a fourth decade when distribution of wealth upward is the unquestioned norm.

This week, the starter gun was fired for corporate money to take control of all elected offices outright.

And this week was the anniversary of Obama's inauguration. A year ago, but feeling light years away in terms of the possibilities that had seemed to exist, at the time. Not that any sane person expected a magic wand to be waved. But some of us did expect movement in a good direction—instead of a year of wasted time and one-sided "bipartisanship," all while the right tastes blood and acts accordingly.

Corporations will not be subjected to laws by a government they own. But there will be increasingly harsh ones—including "economic laws"—for all of us surplus humanity who have to live on the real Planet Money, locked down by its rulers, Corporate Persons.

The Context

Because it won't be in the mainstream reporting about unimaginable disaster and suffering, there's all that background about the libertarian paradise of sweatshop labor crowded into Port-Au-Prince, where there are no real building codes...

A quick review of over two centuries of U.S-Haiti history, from Robert Parry.

Max Blumenthal's 2004 piece, "The other regime change," on the Bush Administration's role in the ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Blumenthal covers the Haitian activities of the International Republican Institute, funded by taxpayers through USAID. And the official Bush point man on Haiti—because nothing says concern for the welfare of an impoverished black nation than delegating policy to a Jesse Helms aide.

The usual suspects lose no time during the current devastation.

Within hours of the earthquake, Naomi Klein finds something "hastily yanked by the Heritage Foundation and replaced with a more diplomatic quote, but their first instinct is revealing"—

In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.

With all those profits from his crooked, tax-exempt empire, mega-millionaire Pat Robertson must know all about deals with the devil more real than this usual piece of shtick.

And Limbaugh, just back from compassionate, unionized and near-socialized Hawaiian medical care, is busy telling his fans to ignore the fuss about worthless, poor blacks.

Yes, the publicity is negative, so "responsible" conservatives make a show of criticizing them. But so long as Robertson, Limbaugh and the like are alive and breathing hot air, nothing will remove them from their media platforms.

Nothing to counterbalance these ghouls, except for giving something to aid groups, and hoping they can get through before more lives are lost.

Putting The "Great" In Great Depression...

...WPA art!

Library of Congress WPA/Federal Art Project [NY] - 1939 calendar Artist: Harry Herzog

... Something I plan to visit more of this year.