The full text of the EO is here. From Kenneth Schortgen Jr, The Examiner:
Executive Orders created for national defense and national preparedness are not new in American history, but in each instance they brought about a Constitutional crisis that nearly led standing Presidents to hold dictatorial power over the citizenry. During the Civil War, President Lincoln halted freedom of speech and freedom of the press, while at the same time revoking Habeas Corpus and the right to a fair trial under the sixth amendment. During World War I, when Congress refused to grant Woodrow Wilson extended power over resources to help the war effort, he invoked an Executive Order which allowed him complete control over businesses, industry, transportation, food, and other economic policies.
In both cases, it was only after the death of each President that full Constitutional powers were restored to the citizens of the United States.
The economy of the United States is based on the free flow of resources, energy, and the rights of consumers to buy and sell as they see fit. Any interference in this economic process quickly leads to shortages, rising prices, and civil unrest. The purpose of President Obama signing this new Executive Order is yet unclear, however, it may coincide with information coming out of Israel yesterday that plans for a tactical or strategic strike on Iran are accelerating. Oil prices in Europe rose over $3 a barrel for Brent crude after the Israeli actions, and US oil prices rose $2 for WTI.
The Obama administration appears to be preparing for a long drawn out war in the Middle East, or at the very least, an expected crisis that will require the need to override Constitutional authority and claim dominion over all resources in the United States under the guise of national defense. With the rise in Disaster Preparedness growing for both individuals and states leading up to yesterday’s Executive Order, the mood of the nation points strongly towards some event or disaster that will require massive preparations on a national as well as local scale.
Just putting this out there. Could be nothing unusual to it. I really don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of such EOs. But while I realize other Presidents have issued EOs with similar aims, I’m not sure authority for peacetime implementation was ever claimed before, nor do I believe conscription “of outstanding experience or ability” — without compensation — has ever before been tried. That’s slavery, is it not? And the nationalization of every industry, well — you know.
Discuss. Like, for instance, these guys are doing. Or these. Or these.
(thanks to geoffB, et al.)
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update: I’ve found in some Clinton-era EOs similar language with respect to non-compensated labor. From 1994. Also, this:
The United States must have an industrial and technology base capable of meeting national defense requirements, and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to all threats to the national security of the United States.
So this could be just a routine update accounting for new bureaucratic circumstances, though it does seem to expand considerably the reach of the President — if only because of the expansion of the administrative agencies he controls (DHS, etc).
Clinton’s ’94 EO adds the “peacetime” language so far as I can tell. Compare, eg., to Reagan’s earlier EO.
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update 2: More here. As Prof. Jacobson notes, if one wishes to go through and detail all the changes, we can look more closely at those. But as I noted in my first update, it looks like the major revision occurred under Clinton. Now that the government has expanded so much, it follows that the authority of the President under the conditions of such an EO would then, too, necessarily expand.
http://www.sgammo.com is a good place to stock up.
Don’t get caught short.
I feel more like throwing up than discussing anything right now, to tell the truth about it.
well, if there’s nothing to be alarmed at here — like, for instance, this is rather an ordinary kind of EO and is typical as a precaution for some sort of potential catastrophe — I don’t want to overstate the significance. I can’t find any mainstream outlet that’s written on it, so either there’s nothing here or else people are being more circumspect about the whole thing than than I am and are waiting until they have a more solid understanding for this, placed in some US historical context.
Even without any exigent or recognizable emergency present before our eyes, once we begin to contemplate the breadth and depth of this Order and what sort or kind of actual emergency would necessitate these measures, it seems to me we’re entitled to be alarmed in at least some respect at the thoughts following on. I mean, nevermind the character of the man proposing to take such measures should they become a necessity in fact. Once we throw that last bit into the mix . . .
. . . puking strikes me as an entirely appropriate response.
link
The conscription without compensation requires a suspension of the Constitution: “13th Amendment—
“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
This is a Friday Document Dump. This was purposely done to see if the EO could be slipped through with very little notice.
This administration is notorious for this kind of Friday shenanigans.
I skimmed through the document and there seem to be language that could be construed as the government taking overt control of industry for reasons of national security. Along with conscripting labor.
This administration is not trustworthy, at all.
I think the “without compensation” bit serves the same purpose as the “tanning bed tax” did for Obamacare.
Something so ludicrous on its face in that it was basically a tax on being fair skinned that it should have been rejected outright when it was published… but was not. And now it stands as precedent so must be good and right since nobody complained.
Get it?
When I said “construed” meant that I thought there was language that government officials could construe as giving them the right to conscript labor.
I swear, the current administration is trying to foment trouble internally in order to create a crisis they can exploit.
Perhaps Obama is expecting the Owwies to get out of hand this summer.
add in this subsequent burp.
In peace time.
Based on a state of emergency as declared by the President?
And remember, the US is part of the battlefield in the war on terror. And per the FBI, rightwing extremists — with their Gadsden flags — well…
So what additional powers does this EO give him that the 9-11 ones didn’t.
Wasn’t the upcoming G8 Summit moved from Chicago to Camp David for security reasons?
The peace time stuff and the forcible conscription stuff. That seems new to me. Am I wrong? I don’t know, honestly.
What sort of emergency would suggest our reasonable assent to the implementation of such a policy in the fullest sense? (Granted, thinking of mega-death isn’t a common business anymore, though it may have once been, so any description we might conjure would surely be less than fastidiously particular.)
So it’s easy to imagine emergencies for which we’d never assent to the executive pursuing this course. On the other hand, and to the point, the destruction of a handful of American cities in nuclear strikes might just as easily run us into assent.
Why issue the thing as signed though? And why now? Why not develop it, pass it around the various cabinet departments, then put it in a desk to be used only in the event? If there are measures that need taking preliminarily, such as surveys of the conditions of the national manufacturing infrastructure, supply capacities or what have you, issue a narrower Order directing those be done, or kept up to date, as the case may be.
We have been in a state of war one way or another since WWII so the peace time stuff seems meaningless.
The forcible conscription needs to be fleshed out a bit to get a true reading on what’s going on.
It would only seem that way to me were it used in prior EOs of this sort.
Did you read it?
I don’t read coercion in the “employment” thing, though maybe I’m missing something.
Here’s a Clinton order that contains that same language:
[my emphasis]
Here’s one under Reagan, with a preamble that reads
On the “Consultants” section 502, I’m just thinking that it can be read to assume some patriotic “expert” offers himself up as a “consultant” for free in an “all hands on deck” situation without official contract and compensation (and thinking that it’s possible there are extant laws forbidding “donation” of such service or whatever, which are overcome by the Order) .
I read Sec. 602 to mean recruit non-compensated advisers. i guess the time involved would depend on the threat.
FEMA would have looked a lot better if they brought in some WalMart Logistics folks during Katrina.
Best I can tell (and I’ve not the patience to study it too closely on today of all days), the expansion in definitional reach occurs under Clinton. Obama is able to build off the previous EOs because the government itself has seen such a huge expansion, including DHS.
Yeah like the G8 move it’s just a snippet to keep in the memory banks until the next card is revealed.
heh
This section basically gives control of the economy to technocrats for a national emergency.* If these government agencies are running the economy, I think arguments about labor conscription become moot.
Let me see, we’ve got an EO document dump on a Friday evening under a president that has presided over the biggest power grab in the last 50 years. I think I can be pardoned for being very suspicious of this kind of EO.
*Note: I think we all know who gets to define what, exactly, constitutes an emergency.
The “without compensation” clause appears to come from the authorizing legislation, in particular 50 USC App 2160:
…blah, blah, blah (the U.S. Code is even less interesting than usual this time of night). But anyways, it looks like the “without compensation” is authorizing volunteers or something, and whatever the case, was authorized by some previous Congress. Can someone else read the USC and figure out if it is possible to compel such a consultant to serve for just the per diem? I’m going to bed.
[…] Protein Wisdom says this could be nothing unusual, but, wonders about the president giving the Executive branch these powers during peacetime. Could this EO be just a routine update, or something else? It’s hard to tell, and I’d like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt: I’d hate to think that he would be that stupid, and power hungry, to implement a massive takeover of private industry (hint: oil and energy sources) during domestic peacetime in this manner. He seems to prefer other ways, like Obamacare. […]
[…] Protein Wisdom says this could be nothing unusual, but, wonders about the president giving the Executive branch these powers during peacetime. Could this EO be just a routine update, or something else? It’s hard to tell, and I’d like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt: I’d hate to think that he would be that stupid, and power hungry, to implement a massive takeover of private industry (hint: oil and energy sources) during domestic peacetime in this manner. He seems to prefer other ways, like Obamacare. […]
[…] Protein Wisdom says this could be nothing unusual, but, wonders about the president giving the Executive branch these powers during peacetime. Could this EO be just a routine update, or something else? It’s hard to tell, and I’d like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt: I’d hate to think that he would be that stupid, and power hungry, to implement a massive takeover of private industry (hint: oil and energy sources) during domestic peacetime in this manner. He seems to prefer other ways, like Obamacare. […]
I went to bed after dropping the link to this in a previous thread.
Back when internet blogs were nascent there was much discussion over the similar EO by Clinton. I should call it fearful discussion. Most of us had never known that an EO like this existed or was authorized by law.
The laws under which this/these EO are done came from the era just after the USSR showed the world that they too were a nuclear power. They were passed to deal with the chaos in the aftermath of a nuclear war. It would be reassuring if the nature of a national emergency defined for this law was limited to that particular circumstance, but it is not to my knowledge.
This EO at this time seems to be a “shot across the bow” from the administration. This because they have loudly proclaimed that they will “take action” to do what they see as needed with or without Congress, “by any means necessary”.
That publicly spoken intent is what makes this particular EO problematical. Not just for the conservative side but even for the progressives if they think about it.
There was no reason to do another EO now. All it will do is set in motion on the left a push by their base to “just do it” which if resisted by the administration will make them look weak in the eyes of a group who can’t seem to shake off a domestic call for “might makes right“.
Wilson left office in 1921 and lived on until 1924 I believe. Does this mean Harding and even Coolidge left those orders open and active until Wilson finally assumed room temperature?
I want to hear from each Republican candidate how long they would wait to rescing this executive order after taking office. The one who says, “I’ll rescind it after the oath but before starting my speech,” gets my vote.
…or would, if the Georgia primary hadn’t already taken place. You know what I mean.
Okay, this section does not inspire a lot of confidence, either:
As long as there’s no black helicopters, it’s OK.
Do we get our free gas now?
No, Roddy – it’s free Trojans. Do keep up.
Let me add a wrinkle from my end as a county employee — and consequently as a required FEMA conscript.
It was a couple of years ago IIRC that I was required to take a full-day emergency preparedness course — which mostly covered different scenarios of natural disasters. It also covered the chain-of-command structure – where we would report after a declared emergency (what would happen to our families) and who in the county higher ups were in charge of teams/groups of teams, etc.
Now emergency preparedness – especially for earthquakes (I participated in some extensive Great Shakeout drills) is something I’m used to and believe is truly valuable. But two things really irritated me — we were required to fill out a form after the training with all sorts of personal information – including our full social security number – that would go into FEMAs database. I tried to object to the full SSN part and was given a direction I had no choice. Plus the whole idea that we had no choice but to report after a declared emergency. I most likely would report to help out, I’m that kind of person – but I don’t like this draft thing and I certainly don’t want to work with anyone who really doesn’t want to be there.
This new facility is a bit troublesome…
Oh! Worry not, sdferr! this was discussed by Obama prior to even his election in 2008. Didn’t you hear ?
CHANGE!
Is this the Howard Roark Enslavement Act?
E-nder gamesmanship? or just another way for Obama to employ more useless LeftLibProgg academics in his Administration, like he’s done since his Immaculation?
Guess I should have saved my knee jerk response for this post. Now you all have confirmation why I shouldn’t comment (Esp having more than 8 sheets tacted).
As my son would say, “Wait …… whaat?
Why is my spidey sense tingling?
Reagan’s Exec. Order on Preparedness: “All national security emergency preparedness activities shall be consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and with preservation of the constitutional government of the United States”
Obama’s NDRP mentions the Constitution only once, in the context of “authority vested” in Him by it.
As with anything written or spoken, the words only have meaning through the intent of those who wrote them. That’s the rub. Take this bolded part.
Considering the the extensive history of this administration it is quite easy to read this as an exemption for one and only one type of contract which may not be downgraded by national defense priorities, labor union contracts, special they are.
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Actually, there are. “Personal service” is defined as providing anything of value, including labor, to the government without a contract for payment. It’s considered Streng Verboten. Contractors are literally forbidden by law from working overtime the government is not billed for. Admittedly, it’s ignored a lot of the time (I’ve been told by my supervisors I will not bill more than 40 hours a week; while no one says it openly, it’s generally understood that failure to actually work whatever hours are required will result in a rule being found to fire you for violating).
It’s not too hard to see why either, I think SDN. If we speak of “just compensation” for work done, then uncompensated work begins to entwine with unjust compensation, like: I’ll scratch your back for “free”, you scratch mine for a lil’ sumpin’ sumpin’ unseen over here.
Ann Barnhardt is just a bit annoyed with “pundits and talking heads on the so-called “right” clucking their tongues at the unwashed masses and telling us that we’re crazy and paranoid to be the least bit concerned each and every time the Obama regime takes another stride toward totalitarianism“, and calls out Ed Morrissey by name (I’ll link her site, but know that for whatever reason dear Ann has failed to master the critical internet art of ‘permalinking’ posts, which in effect makes her site just a continuous one-way block of unnavigable text. Good luck finding a post from, say, a year ago.).
As you were, carry on… )
jdw, I saw the post by Ms. Barnhardt and in it, she makes the critical point that the EO has to be judged within the context of the Administration that issued it.
And that’s where people like Morrissey and Malor go wrong.
Sean Hannity is about to talk about the Friday EO on his ‘The Real Obama” segment on Fox news.