Maybe Obama Fears a 1933

Raise your hand if you've heard of the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee? How about the 1933 plot to overthrow President Roosevelt?

Absurd, you say? The rantings of left-wing conspiracy theorists? Well, check the November 21, 1934, edition of The New York Times.

With the election of Roosevelt, many of this country's wealthiest business leaders looked to Hitler's Germany as a preferable model. The support of Bush patriarch — Prescott Bush — for Hitler is well-documented. Likewise the support of Joseph Kennedy. Other leading American business leaders looked very favorably on Hitler's ruthless suppression of socialism and communism.

Here in the US, a plan was hatched to overthrow FDR. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee investigated this plot in 1934:

The Business Plot (also the Plot Against FDR and the White House Putsch) was a political conspiracy in 1933 wherein wealthy businessmen and corporations plotted a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, the Business Plot was publicly revealed by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testifying to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee.

Perhaps the explanation for Obama's conservative choices for the economic "dream team" lies here. He doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds him. Goldman Sachs was one of his biggest boosters. Three hundred million Americans clamoring for health care couldn't move the US government. But a few thousand business executives wailing over Wall Street won seven TRILLION dollars in aid. Now that's power. What might those thousands do if really angered by a new President genuinely pressing support for The People?

The Bush administration — with the support of many Democrats — won passage of the Military Commissions Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Martial Law Act of 2006 (all three signed on October 17, 2006) undermining, if not outright nullifying, the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) and the Insurrection Act of 1807. Now the President has the power to use military forces domestically.

Establish the legality of a military presence domestically. Then use that military for . . . what? A conspiracy theory? It was more than just a theory in 1933.