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Philip Fox La Follette, 34th President of the United States.
Administration:
Vice President: Michael A. Musmanno
Secretary of Peace: Douglas MacArthur (1951-1952 (interim)), Clarence Dill (1952-1953)
Secretary of State: Douglas MacArthur (1949-1951 (Department placed under Peace))
Secretary of War: Ralph Immell (1949-1951 (Department placed under Peace))
Secretary of the Navy: Francis P. Matthews (1949-1951 (Department placed under Peace))
Secretary of the Air Force: Charles Lindbergh (1949-1951 (Department placed under Peace))
Secretary of Production: Ralph Immell (1952-1953)
Secretary of the Treasury: Rexford Tugwell (1949-1951 (resigned to assume office as Governor of New York)), Harold Lord Varney (1951 (interim)), Ralph Immell (1951-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of the Interior: Mildred H. McAfee (1949-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of Energy: Floyd Dominy (1950-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of Agriculture: Gerald Nye (1949-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of Labor: George Meany (1949-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of Science and Technology: Karl T. Compton (1949-1952 (department placed under Production))
Secretary of Prosperity: Francois Duvalier (1952-1953)
Attorney General: David Lilienthal (1949-1952 (department placed under Prosperity))
Secretary of Health: Francois Duvalier (1949-1952 (department placed under Prosperity))
Postmaster General: Gerald T. Boileau (1949-1952 (department placed under Prosperity))
Secretary of Education: Sara Gibson Blanding (1949-1952 (department placed under Prosperity)
President La Follette would announce a major reorganization of cabinet departments following his 1951 impeachment, uniting the Air Force, Navy, War, and State Departments into one grand “Department of Peace,” despite opposition from both military leadership and Secretary of State MacArthur, who would depart from the Administration at the commencement of 1952 and be replaced by Farmer-Labor doyen Clarence Dill. The President has framed the move as embodying the national seal of an eagle carrying both arrows and an olive branch, while promoting centralization to improve efficiency while avoiding involving the United States in entangling alliances, an effort that has led to the end of the effort to unite American allies on both sides of the Pacific into a mutual defense pact. First Lady Isen La Follette, personally notably introverted, has been brought before the public as the chief public campaigner for the Department of Peace.
With the centralization of foreign and military policy in full swing at the executive level despite the opposition of Congress, the spring of 1952 would see a second round of mass centralization, with longtime ally Ralph Immell appointed as the head of a new Department of Production, devised by Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson, to supervise the old Treasury, Interior, Energy, Agriculture, Labor, and Science and Technology Departments, while Dr. Francois Duvalier has been appointed to lead the centralization of the Justice, Health, Education, and Post Office Departments into a united Department of Prosperity and Human Services, commonly referred to only by the former. As in the case of the Department of Peace, the former departments are slated to remain at a sub-cabinet level, and the efforts of opposition forces have successfully left the proposed integrations largely on paper for the time being.
On the level of sub-cabinet departments, the Bureau of Investigation has been merged with the Office of Strategic Services to form the National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence agency combining the foreign and domestic. Meanwhile, an executive order would begin the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with former President Charles Lindbergh appointed as its first head, however, Lindbergh would soon be dismissed as a part of the executive’s compromise with congress’s impeachers, with businessman Howard Hughes taking his place.
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Opposition Representative Richard Nixon shakes hands with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie during the Emperor's visit to the United States, where President La Follette would emphasize American support for non-communist anti-colonial movements.
Foreign Policy:
-President La Follette has found rare common ground with the opposition on matters of foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, echoing Arthur Vandenberg’s declaration that “politics ends at the water’s edge.” The Administration has secured funding for the rebuilding of Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and Korea under social democratic anti-communist governments, with President La Follette describing the initiatives as building an “iron curtain” against communism.
-President La Follette’s term would see the death of two of the world’s premier foreign leaders: Marshall Philippe Petain of France and Chinese General Feng Yuxiang. President La Follette would visit Paris in 1951 for the funeral of Petain after nearly four decades in power, having hailed the French publicly as future allies in the battle with communism. Yet, already suspicious of the new government of Petain protege Charles De Gaulle after the leaking of America’s role in Smedley Butler’s assassination by Ambassador Gaston-Henry Haye, La Follette would find himself increasingly disenchanted with the French, with private reports indicating his horror at the mass deportation of Flemish, Germans, and Catalans into the French Congo from areas in Europe newly annexed into France.
-However, the President would nonetheless side with the French-supported Roman Legion rebelling against Greece in 1951, marking the creation of the Republic of the Pindus as the first state for the Aromanian people in world history. However, the new state has been accused of engaging in the ethnic cleansing of the Greek population.
-Meanwhile, touring China after the death of Feng Yuxiang, La Follette would become increasingly worried about the possible alignment of the nation towards the Soviet Union and controversially refuse to return the island of Taiwan to China until the election of a successor to Feng. With Communist leader Zhou Enlai rising in popularity and an election planned, American support would be thrown behind former warlord Yan Xishan, who would be selected President by the National Assembly in January of 1951 and promptly announce an indefinite delay on elections. Despite rising tensions with China’s Bolshevik-backed Communist Party, La Follette would sign a treaty of return in February of 1952 relinquishing Taiwan to Chinese control. However, after six decades of intense Japanization under colonial authorities, Taiwan has found itself culturally isolated from the rest of China, speaking almost entirely Japanese and Hokkien rather than Mandarin.
-A similar issue has emerged on the formerly Japanese territories of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Owing to their close location to the Soviet Union, La Follette has authorized it as the site of dozens of American nuclear tests throughout his term and refused to cede sovereignty, with China, Japan, and Russia all harboring alternate claims to the islands.
-The President has impounded funds from the 1950 and 1951 budgets passed by Congress to distribute for the reconstruction of American allies and occupied regions in the Third Pacific War, enacting the MacArthur Plan without the authorization of Congress and repeating to Chinese Premier Yan Xishan his famous remark that “vermin are infesting and polluting democratic organizations and the government itself.”
-Working with the Latin American and East Asian nations in the American sphere of influence in the aftermath of the Franco-British Conflict, the President has moved the United States into the new Parliament of Nations headquartered in Rome, sending New Hampshire Progressive Senator Robert P. Bass as the first United States Representative to the largely powerless global body intended to facilitate global cooperation. Notably, however, the La Follette Administration has resisted efforts to include communist-aligned nations into the fold despite the membership of many French-aligned authoritarian regimes and absolute monarchies such as the Ethiopian Empire or the Caliphate.
-1951 would see the formalization of the Treaty of San Diego, officially ending the United States occupation of Japan, and with it La Follette's rule by decree of the islands, while maintaining an American military presence on the island chain and transferring to American control the Ryukyu Islands, Iwo Jima, Samoa, and the Japanese stake in the Nicaraguan Canal shared with Argentina, where former Milford W. Howard associate Harold Lord Varney has been appointed as High Commissioner.
-President La Follette held a summit with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, and Madagascar Prime Minister Joseph Raseta in 1951 to commemorate the longstanding American support for independent nations in Africa, hosting, among others, independence activists Seretse Khama of Botswana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Hastings Banda of Nyasaland. Further, American jazz artist Andy Razaf has taken the throne as King of Madagascar following the lack of an heir apparent to deceased Queen Marie-Louise, however, unfamiliar with the island of his ancestors, the newly-crowned Andriamanantena I has been sidelined by Prime Minister Raseta.
-With rumors of Lazar Kaganovich planning Bolshevik expansion into Central Asia abounding, President La Follette and Secretary of Peace Dill would issue a joint statement in January of 1952 promising American opposition “by any means necessary” to “one more inch” of Bolshevik expansion, with Dill describing Kaganovich’s policy towards France and the United States as “trying to play both sides against the middle.”
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Destiny launches off the coast of Puerto Rico, inaugurating a new era in human history,
Domestic Policy:
-”Our attainments in space are a major element in the competition between the Soviet system and our own, they are part of the battle,” so would declare James E. Webb, Deputy Administrator of NASA, on October 4th, 1951, mere weeks after the failure of the impeachment of President La Follette, as he, former President Lindbergh, and gasping crowds of onlookers watched Destiny take flight, the first manmade satellite in human history to orbit the Earth. President La Follette would tout the achievement as the administration having begun the conquest of “the final frontier.”
-Working with Japanese scientists in the aftermath of the occupation, space policy has reached the fore as La Follette launches an aggressive series of follow-up satellites, beginning with Lewis and Clark and most recently including Stagecoach. However, rumors hold that the French have begun construction on their own site for space rocket launches.
-Staring down the barrel of Speaker Joseph McCarthy’s aggression and Senator Estes Kefauver’s investigation into the assassination of Smedley Butler, La Follette turned away from Congress in 1949 to fulfill his promise to “win the peace.” Acting first in April of 1949 shortly after the arrest of John L. Lewis, La Follette would issue Executive Orders 15092 and 15093, authorizing the building of an interstate highway system and national system of hydroelectric plants to be overseen by General Lucius D. Clay and the Army Corps of Engineers under the supervision of the Department of the Interior for the former and Department of Science and Technology for the latter, while authorizing the creation of a new Department of Energy, operating entirely on impounded funds and largely focusing on research on the utilization of nuclear energy.
-In the latter effort, the President has found the support of prominent opposition financier Lewis Strauss, who has nonetheless argued that the development of nuclear energy is hampered by New State bureaucratic centralization.
-Opposition politician Joseph Alioto has criticized the interstate highway system, pointing to the funding of La Follette’s campaign by the Firestone Tire Company and arguing that road dependent companies have colluded to impede the further expansion of rail infrastructure.
-Most controversially would be Executive Order 15097, issued in June of 1951 and seen as largely the brainchild of Secretary of the Treasury Rexford Tugwell, declaring the complete and total nationalization of the healthcare industry and authorizing the establishment of a National Healthcare Service (NHS) in the United States under the Department of Health. Although implementation has been plagued by legal challenges and billions in funding from healthcare providers to opposition candidates, the President has utilized impounded funds to subsidize healthcare for the elderly and impoverished.
-Executive Order 15102 in December of 1951 would establish under the Department of Labor an employers’ syndicate led by former General Electric CEO Gerald Swope called the Business Council, leading to denunciations from across Farmer-Labor despite the low participation in the attempted employers’ union.
-However, the 1946 executive orders declaring a national moratoria on the payment of mortgages and enacting wage and price controls were ended soon after the 1948 election.
-In the face of a rapidly growing economy, La Follette has worked with new Federal Reserve Chairman Bernard Baruch to digress on the expansionist monetary policy that characterized his first term, with interest rates quadrupling to 15% in an effort that has successfully brought inflation from 13% to a mere 3% annually. Unemployment has fallen to 3.2% as the GDP as a whole has grown nearly 9% over La Follette’s second term, an economic boom fueled by mass exportation to Europe and newly decolonized nations elsewhere. While the President has continued to voice support for the nationalization of the Federal Reserve, the issue has remained on the backburner.
-An executive order in January of 1952 has set the new national minimum wage to $7.00 an hour from a previous $3.25, causing mass business outcry despite the President’s argument that the increase is necessary to guarantee a “living wage” after post-war inflation. The Department of Justice has been authorized to prosecute offenders, however, critics have argued that businesses aligned with the President’s political opposition have been unfairly targeted.
-Rufus B. von KleinSmid of the Un-American Activities Board, appointed by the President to monitor journalism for seditious content, would attempt to suppress the release of an account by actress Frances Farmer of her forced confinement to a mental institution in 1948, where she was sterilized under La Follette’s Executive Order 14768 from 1946, authorizing the mass sterilization of the mentally ill and those with “criminal tendencies.” Further investigations into the ramifications of the order have led to staggering revelations of up to 200,000 sterilizations performed annually since 1946, largely under duress, on Americans in prison and mental institutions as well as former criminals. The President has defended the policy while authorizing a Department of Justice investigation into abuses by low level doctors.
-The President would support the prosecution of a half dozen prison wardens accused of citing Executive Order 14767, establishing cooperatives for prisoners to work without pay on natural beautification projects, to turn prisoners into de facto slave laborers working 18 hour shifts as contract labor on farms. While the President has argued that the system itself has brought boons to the environment and American agriculture, critics have claimed that abuse remains widespread.
-While delaying and, in some cases, entirely pausing the implementation of his executive orders in the wake of the promises of moderation amidst the impeachment trial that rescued his presidency from the brink of collapse, fascist Blackshirts and radical Mormon Destroying Angels have become increasingly violent in the months since impeachment, with headlines telling tales of opposition presses raided and armed men watching poll stations. Another conspiracy theory has held that the death of Committee for the Preservation of the Republic chairman Thomas Schall in a motor accident over the winter of 1951 was the result of an intentional Blackshirt hit-and-run.
-While many have blamed the fiery speeches of Vice President Musmanno for encouraging Blackshirts, President La Follette and his brother in the Senate have fiercely denounced all violence on behalf of their movement, appealing to supporters for calm as they call for the speedy prosecution of the allegedly Blackshirt bombthrowers that took the life of elderly comedian Will Rogers. Nonetheless, fear of political violence has led to the cancellation of the 1952 Progressive-Federalist presidential primary in favor of a convention held in tandem with the Liberty League under the auspices of the Committee for the Preservation of the Republic.
-Meanwhile, Washington Senate candidate Marion Zioncheck would throw himself off a building while campaigning to succeed Clarence Dill. In a coma, Zioncheck’s supporters have accused the administration alternately of reigniting his documented mental health issues and being behind the attempted murder themselves.
-September 14, 1951, the height of Blackshirt violence in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New York City, has been labeled the “Knight of the Long Knives” by opposition critic Styles Bridges. Vice President Musmanno has stood alone in the administration in defending the actions publicly despite condemnation from President La Follette that has carried into the authorization of NSA prosecutions of Blackshirt perpetrators. Representative Richard Nixon, the lead impeachment manager in the La Follette trial, has credited J. Edgar Hoover with the investigations rather than La Follette and accused the administration of only condoning them under pressure from his brother.
-”People of America, wake up!” The last words of House Minority Leader Eduardo Chibas, broadcast into a million homes seconds before his suicide on live radio, has fueled the creation of local opposition organizing groups calling themselves “Wide-Awakes” and aiming to bridge opposition interests against the La Follette Administration.
-The President has made a half a dozen speeches across the nation under the banner of his loyal National Progressives of America calling for the ratification of a 20th Amendment to shift to the president the powers of Congress, restricting the republic’s legislative branch to a mere veto power, while arguing that the need for a strong legislature would be replaced with a 21st Amendment establishing a process for national referendums. Although not passed by Congress, several state legislatures, including those of Alabama and Washington, have passed resolutions indicating a willingness to ratify the amendment.
-The President further floated the concept of reforming the legislature into a “Chamber of Corporations” balancing representatives from the General Trades Union and Business Council.
-With the arrest of CIO leaders John L. Lewis and Tony Boyle, leadership of the nation’s chief opposition union has fallen to Walter Reuther and Jimmy Hoffa, representing the left and right of the organization. With widespread prosecutions against members and supporters such as Fulgencio Batista, however, Reuther and Hoffa have found themselves fighting to prevent the CIO’s collapse. Nonetheless, the CIO would hold a 1950 celebration of the life of former Vice President Lena Morrow Lewis, with President Alf Landon hailing her role in the opposition and using the funeral as a means to rally anti-La Follette sentiment.
-Following a career in national politics spanning nearly seven decades, former President William Randolph Hearst would stop the presses for a final time on August 14th of 1951, passing away at the age of 88 in his castle in San Simeon, California. Having been alternately king and kingmaker in American politics for a half century, Hearst’s funeral would leave the streets around the Grace Cathedral full for blocks, with his son and heir William Randolph Hearst Jr. managing proceedings. Yet, in light of Hearst’s turn to the opposition and support for Fulgencio Batista, President La Follette would be notably absent from the funeral of the man who once coronated him the Farmer-Labor Party’s nominee for the presidency.
-President La Follette would push for the statehood of the territory of Tannenbaum, initially in a tandem effort with Territorial Representative Ernest Gruening’s push for Jewish colonization of the region as an alternative to the increasingly violent Palestine. However, with public sentiment against statehood riled up by Father Charles Coughlin in a campaign tinged by anti-semitism, Senator Henrik Shipstead would filibuster the statehood bill, prompting the Administration to declare a moratoria on statehood efforts and a reconsideration of whether statehood stands in line with national security interest.
-At the urging of singer turned Tennessee Governor Roy Acuff, a group of anti-La Follette Hollywood stars have formed The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, including Jane Russell, Ronald Reagan, Zasu Pitts, Gloria Swanson, June Allyson, Pat Buttram, Orson Welles, and Shirley Temple.
-Senator John Horne Blackmore has proposed an additional tax on chain stores to encourage the development of small business, while he, former New York Governor Ezra Pound, and publisher James Laughlin have called for the revival of the American social credit movement.
-Alabama and Illinois have established themselves as the fastest growing states in the nation, demonstrating success in Single Taxer Paul Douglas’s new “Illinois Model” as well as the continued prosperity of Alabama in the wake of Milford W. Howard’s fascist “Alabama Model” that has inspired emulation globally.
-Farmer-Laborite Maine Senator Benjamin Bubar’s investigation of Hollywood has led to the firing or blacklisting of several dozen actors on charges of alleged homosexuality, with the Administration attempting to tie the issue to support for the President’s political opposition, citing the blacklisting of Greta Garbo and Tennessee Williams as precedent for the firing of longtime members of the foreign service on charges of possible homosexual activities.
-Notable inventions and scientific breakthroughs during President La Follette’s term include the discovery of DNA by scientist Rosalind Franklin; the hydrogen bomb, newly tested on the island of Sakhalin; the first successful kidney transplant; and a revolutionary new vaccine for polio invented by University of Alabama doctor Jonas Salk.
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In John L. Lewis's stead, dynamic young Jimmy Hoffa has led the independent labor movement.
The Supreme Court:
-Justice Thomas C. O’Brien, appointed in 1939 as a part of President Lindbergh’s takeover of the court, would die in November of 1951 at the age of 64. With the Presidency still reeling from impeachment, La Follette would nominate Michigan Supreme Court Justice Evo DeConcini to the position. However, the hostile Senate would overwhelmingly refuse to confirm the appointment, with Progressive-Federalist Leader George Pritchard vowing to oppose any La Follette nominee. With neither side budging, the position has remained vacant.
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Map of the world as of 1952.
World Events:
-After 9 years of prolonged conflict, the Franco-British War would conclude in August of 1950 with the Treaty of Amsterdam signed by Marshal Petain and British Prime Minister Oliver Baldwin, largely ceding French colonies to the British Empire, with the exception of the Congo, on the time table for independence, and Guiana and Algeria, incorporated directly into metropolitan France. Meanwhile, French dominion has been de facto recognized over most of Western Europe, with the west bank of the Rhine, Catalonia, Luxembourg, and Belgium directly incorporated into France while Germany has been divided into a series of puppet states.
-Although the Spanish Republic has survived, the French-influenced, Catholic monarchist CEDA led by José María Valiente Soriano has received significant funding in challenging Prime Minister Jose Ortega y Gasset, with a similar situation emerging in Italy following the democratization of the nation by former dictator Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who has been succeeded by the pro-French Achille Lauro.
-Alongside the neutral Netherlands, Portugal has stood outside of the French bloc, as fascist leader Francisco Rolão Preto has held onto power while courting the support of both Bolshevik Russia and the United States, explicitly citing Milford W. Howard as his model for rule.
-In what the French government has labeled “le épuration de la frontière,” (the border purification), a forced exodus has occurred from newly annexed territories, driving millions from their communities and largely to French Africa, where the government has resettled hundreds of thousands each of Catalans, Germans, Greeks, Flemish Belgians, Italians, and the Occitan as French settlers claim their former homes.
-Meanwhile, the international process of decolonization has sped up rapidly, with a proposal by Choudhary Rahmat Ali being adopted by the British to partition the former Raj and form the states of India and Pakistan, alongside a Christian state in the far east.
-Mexican Prime Minister Manuel Gomez Morin has emerged as the primary center of power in the Empire after the crowning of 8 year old Maximiliano II as Emperor.
-Under the leadership of Prime Minister George Drew, the Progressive-Conservatives have won yet another Canadian election, yet the rise of the Social Credit Party in Quebec has driven them to status as the nation’s official opposition. Drew has hosted an Anglo-American Summit alongside President La Follette and Newfoundland Prime Minister Joey Smallwood.
-With Bolshevik Russia as the senior partner, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has been established as an alliance between Russia and its satellite states in Kazakhstan and the Caucasus.
-The Hashemite Caliphate has experienced increased unrest in both Palestine, where radical Jewish and Muslim militias have clashed, and the majority Christian regions of Mount Lebanon and newly annexed Nubia, where order has been nearly impossible to enforce.
-Following the death of Jorge Carlos Mariategui after two decades at the helm of Peru, Jorge del Prado Chavez has succeeded him, shifting the nation further towards Bolshevik Russia and ending all possibility of Peru entering a Pacific defense pact.
-The National Party’s oppressive regime of white rule in South Africa has been used as a model by a growing movement for a white minority government among the displaced, largely German white population in the French Congo, slated for independence within the decade.
-Social Democrat Mohammed Mossadegh has been elected President of the Republic of Iran, bringing the Georgist nation closer to Bolshevik Russia geopolitically as a counterweight to fiercely pro-British Caliph Abdullah and pro- French Turkish President Celâl Bayar.
-Greek dictator Konstantinos Logothetopoulos would be deposed in a 1952 revolution following the successful secession of the Aromanians, with communist Markos Vafeiadis leading a Provisional Democratic People’s Government with Bolshevik support. However, prominent author Nikos Kazantzakis has emerged at the fore of an anti-Vafeiadis protest movement for democratic socialism influenced by Georges Sorel.
-Adopted throughout the Habsburg Realm, Soviet Union, and among many Jews in Palestine and Europeans in the Congo, the Esperanto language has gained nearly 50,000,000 speakers and become the official language of diplomacy for the newly founded Republic of Korea.
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Bolshevik Russia's \"Iron Lazar\" Kaganovich.
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Got this from my father for my birthday all I can find online is that it’s an old Swiss watchmaker brand called Mercator, and it may be rare.
Any help identifying would be much appreciated.
(Sorry if my English is not so great it’s not my first language)