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Yes, America is Still in an Official State of Emergency
A reader asked whether the U.S. is still in an official state of emergency, and if so, what that means.
The answer is yes, we are still in a state of emergency.
On September 11, 2001, the government declared a state of emergency. That declared state of emergency was formally put in writing on 9/14/2001:
"A
national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the
World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the
continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.NOW,
THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of
America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that
the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001 . . . ."That
declared state of emergency has continued in full force and effect from
9/11 [throughout the Bush administration] to the present.
On September 10 2009, President Obama continued the state of emergency:
The
terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of
a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that
it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2009, the
national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.
Does a State of Emergency Really Mean Anything?
Does a state of emergency really mean anything?
Yes, it does:
The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001:
"Simply
by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated
some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to
impose censorship and martial law."Is
the Times correct? Well, it is clear that pre-9/11 declarations of
national emergency have authorized martial law. For example, as summarized
by a former fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science
Foundation, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gary
Schlarbaum Award for Lifetime Defense of Liberty, Thomas Szasz Award
for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, Lysander
Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty and Templeton
Honor Rolls Award on Education in a Free Society:
In
1973, the Senate created a Special Committee on the Termination of the
National Emergency (subsequently redesignated the Special Committee on
National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers) to investigate the
matter and to propose reforms. Ascertaining the continued existence of
four presidential declarations of national emergency, the Special
Committee (U.S. Senate 1973, p. iii) reported:"These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law. . . . taken together, [they] confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes.
Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize
property; organize and control the means of production; seize
commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law;
seize and control all transportation and communications; regulate the
operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of
particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."(Most or all of the emergency powers referred to by the above-quoted 1973 Senate report were revoked in the late 1970's by 50 U.S.C. Section 1601.
However, presidents have made numerous declarations of emergency since
then, and the declarations made by President Bush in September 2001 are
still in effect).It is also clear that the White House has kept
substantial information concerning its presidential proclamations and
directives hidden from Congress. For example, according to Steven
Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on
Government Secrecy:
As former United States congressman Dan Hamburg wrote in October:
While
... Congress and the judiciary, as well as public opinion, “can
restrain the executive regarding emergency powers,” nothing of the sort
has occurred.
Under the 1976 National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.
1601-1651), Congress is required to review presidentially declared
emergencies. Specifically, “not later than six months after a national
emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month
period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress
shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine
whether that emergency shall be terminated.” Over the past eight years,
Congress has failed to obey its own law, a fact that casts doubt on the
legality of the state of emergency.
As far as public opinion is
concerned, how many Americans are even aware that a state of emergency
even exists. For that matter, how many members of Congress know? ...
The
Obama administration is essentially arguing that the United States is
currently in a state of resisting foreign invasion a full eight years
after the attacks of 9/11!
This is ludicrous. [Dr. Harold C.
Relyea, a specialist in national government with the Congressional
Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress] argues that Congress
and the judiciary, as “co-equal branches of constitutional government,”
serve as a check on the executive power. As we have seen, Congress has
either been shut out of this process, or, as in so many cases, it has
capitulated. Dr. Relyea then offers that public opinion can restrain
the executive. But the public doesn’t even know they’re living under a
state of emergency. The media doesn’t report it, and the government is
certainly not in the business of providing information that might raise
the hackles of real Americans.
It’s time for the American people
to rise to this challenge. Write your member of Congress, and your
senators. Tell them to obey their own laws. Tell them to end this phony
and treacherous state of emergency that imperils the freedom of us all.
Hamburg's
must-read article also discusses the suspension of Possse Comitatus,
the operation of Northcom inside the U.S., and the refusal of the
Department of Homeland Security to provide information on the state of
emergency to Congress or even to Congress members on the Homeland
Security committee with the highest security clearances.
The Effect of a State of Emergency on the Economy and Business
The
continuous state of emergency in effect from September 2001 to the
present may have had a substantial affect on the economy and business.
Initially, as William K. Black - senior regulator during the S&L
crisis, professor of Economics and Law, and an expert on white collar
financial crime - has repeatedly pointed out, the government knew about
an epidemic of mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example,
the FBI warned of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the
FBI, DOJ and other government agencies putted their agents off of
financial fraud investigation and forced them to focus on terrorism
instead.
See this and this
And as Reuters noted last week:
U.S.
securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's
bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International
Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
The national security claim may seem outlandish, but it is nothing new.
As Business Week wrote on May 23, 2006:
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.
In
other words, national security has been discussed for years as a basis
of keeping normal accounting and securities-related disclosures
secret. While "national security" and a state of "national emergency"
may not be exactly the same, they are variations of a single theme - an
existential threat to our nation - which has dominated American since
September 11.
Similarly, Congressman Brad Sherman, Congressman Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government warned of martial law if Tarp wasn't passed.
Last year, Senator Leahy said "If we learned anything from 9/11, the biggest mistake is to pass anything they ask for just because it's an emergency".
The New York Times wrote:
"The
rescue is being sold as a must-have emergency measure by an
administration with a controversial record when it comes to asking
Congress for special authority in time of duress."
***
Mr.
Paulson has argued that the powers he seeks are necessary to chase away
the wolf howling at the door: a potentially swift shredding of the
American financial system. That would be catastrophic for everyone, he
argues, not only banks, but also ordinary Americans who depend on their
finances to buy homes and cars, and to pay for college.
Some are
suspicious of Mr. Paulson’s characterizations, finding in his warnings
and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush
administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White
House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress’s failure
to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the
doorstep.
“This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in
the private but not the public interest,” said Allan Meltzer, a former
economic adviser to President Reagan, and an expert on monetary policy
at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. “It’s terrible.”
Most
of the Fed and Treasury's looting of America to funnel trillions in
bailouts, loans, guarantees, and other favors to the too big to fails
was done under the justification of an "emergency".
I don't
know whether the official declaration of a "state of emergency" in
effect from September 2001 to today was directly used for financial
looting. But again, the fear of an existential threat to our country
was used to justify the looting.
And many people allege that the government has taken drastic steps to
manipulate market prices. If true, the president's ability to use
emergency powers to "stabilize the markets" no doubt makes manipulation
easier.
Congress Has the Power to Revoke the State of Emergency
A note to Congressional staffers: Congressman Hamburg is right. Congress does have the power to revoke the state of emergency.
Specifically, the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. Sections 1601-1651 (passed in 1976), gives Congress the power to countermand a presidential declaration of national emergency. Indeed, in 1976, Congress rescinded
all of the declarations of national emergency made since World War II,
as many of them had been on the books for years and were giving the
executive unrestricted powers which were undermining the Constitution.
In 1983, the Supreme Court struck down
a portion of Congress' power to countermand a declaration of national
emergency. But Congress got around that ruling by amending the National
Emergencies Act in 1985 to confirm Congress' power to countermand -
through a joint resolution between the House and Senate - a declaration
of emergency by the president (see this).
Moreover, in 2007, the Bush Administration tried to ignore the National Emergencies Act by issuing National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51. But that dog won't hunt. The Constitution does not allow the president to unilaterally cut Congress out of the picture.
As former Chicago Federal Reserve economist and Senior Morningstar equity analyst William Bergman wrote in 2001:
Lord
Acton’s famous saying that ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely’ provides a valuable warning. In light of the sweeping
powers seemingly provided by statutes like 12 U.S.C. 95a and 12 U.S.C.
95(a), those who care about democratic principles and freedom may wish
to monitor the implications of these and other laws for government
choices before conditions arise giving rise to assertions of emergency
authority, in addition to behavior arising amidst an emergency itself.
This study could usefully include a renewed assessment of the
constitutionality of these and other emergency statutes, as well as
more fundamental review of their welfare implications per se, including
work along the lines produced for the Senate Special Committee to
Terminate the National Emergency in 1973.[i][i] See for
example Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency,
“Emergency Powers Statutes: Provisions of Federal Law Now in Effect
Delegating to the Executive Extraordinary Authority In Time of National
Emergency.” United States Senate Report 93-549; November 19, 1973.
- advertisements -
http://5ptsalt.com/2009/11/17/america-under-a-permanent-state-of-nationa... Check out this site that gives an excellent and concise overview of this historically diffuse and immensely complicated legal issue that most probably has its roots in the Civil War. The upshot is that even the most elemental functions of government including the issuance of FRNs are inextricably tied to the manifold emergency directives emanating most recently(!) from the Trading With The Enemy Act in 1917 and expanded in 1933 under the Roosevelt regime in the infamous 48 Statute 1. This implies that the impossibly thorny thicket of emergency powers directives are so deeply imbedded in our legal framework that armies of lawyers working 24-7 for decades could not possibly extricate us without out a complete cessation of government. Probably in the works anyway and ultimately the only solution to complete abrogation of freedom and supposed constitutional rights. FYI, most recent declaration of state of emergency was last October 24,2009 by Obama in reference to Swine Flu so-called "epidemic". lots of great posts on this important subject. viva ZH!
Does a State of Emergency supercede the State of Impotence this country has been in for the last__________(fill-in the blank)?
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H. L. Mencken
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H. L. Mencken
There is no Constitutional basis for states of emergency as the President declares them.
He cannot "order" himself the power to do things he lacks the power to do.
In other words, nearly ANY SoE declaration is itself ILLEGAL, as is any declaration of curfew, martial law, or related proclamation by a State governor. They DO NOT have the power under ANY Constitution to do this shit.
Last time I was pulled over by the police during a "State of Emergency" due to a snowstorm or whatever the fuck it was, I just asked them to please move over so I could pass on the left next time. The problem becomes when law enforcers become thugs with guns and follow the illegal orders of their superiors. One would hope that these soldiers are intelligent enough to recognize an illegal order.
Wiki says we are in a State of National Emergency regarding the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, and the Iran Hostage Crisis.
The police hold the power of summary execution over you anyway; who needs illegal orders?
Best regards,
RF
My neighbor was arrested last week for farting in an elevator. I think that stinks.
....bright side is that he would get a lot more pokey time if he'd fired up a smoke.
George Orwell. Is he read in public schools anymore? Animal Farm studied in school anymore? wtf happened?!
Crisis 2.0 will begin soon..hat tip to: http://www.iamned.com
Excellent post George. You should make this part of a regular series.
I was thinking how different America is since 9/11. The continuing state of emergency is more than just a piece of unused paper; it has permeated into a chronic culture of fear (or a "Kindgom of Fear", if you please).
The absurdity was evident the second they created "Homeland Security" and announced the color scheme for the level of threat of terrorist attack. Exhuming McCarthy, with an Islamic terrorist under every bed. Farmer in Kansas milks a cow, and wanders back from the barn with just a little more caution than usual.
If you didn't "get" then, or don't get now, how stupid that was, you flunked/flunk.
Didn't Obama declare a state of emergency on 10/25/09 over swine flu? I don't think that was ever rescinded either. So we, the people, are now under 2 state of emergencies? Might as well have a financial collapse and make it 3 state of emergencies. Then we can all protest and we can live under 4 state of emergencies. Then when there are pitchforks and torches at the steps of the Capitol building and the White House we can have 5 state of emergencies. Then so on and so on...
GW's post was a bit too long, but as I recall (I looked at this about 12 years ago) the US has been under various state of emergency for 30 or 40 years. Each president signs various Executive Orders declaring emergencies for all sorts of non-sense reasons, and upon assuming office declared all prior emergencies to be continuing.
SoE allow hom to do all sorts of (scary) things, though they don't use that power. Nothing to stop them if they wanted.
I know this is too vague to add much value. My point is this is nothing new under GWB. Doesn't make it right, but it is not new.
agree.....I heard even Bubba called an emergency to find Monica's soiled blue dress. :>)
Monica Lewinsky goes to her drycleaner, an older man who is hard of hearing. She puts her dress on the counter and says "I want to get this cleaned."
The old man says "Come again?"
She says, "No it's mustard this time."
a memorable stain on his notebook
I have to say this is a bit of a wake up call to the very Orwell/Huxley hellish reality we are living in.
Funny that this incredible grab for total (draconian) power by the executive office all started with 9/11, I was recently turned on to this very sobering website. http://www.ae911truth.org/
Seems clear why not even one staffer in the Bush/Cheny/Haliburton/Carlyle Group Pentagon has been changed by the puppet Obama, they all work for the same founding families of the Fed.
This takes us back to Jekyll Island, and makes me want to recommend to everyone here that hasn't, please read these books.
http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212
http://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Fed-Murray-Rothbard/dp/094546617X/ref...
see page 16 for a list of the declared emergencies since 1976
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/98-505.pdf
ever wonder how they were ready with a 1000+ page "patriot act" a couple of weeks after the attack?
also much of our "emergency" is now permanent:
"On March 9, 2006, the day before sixteen provisions of the PATRIOT Act were to expire, President Bush signed a PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill and a group of minor amendments, making most of the Act permanent without the modest but meaningful civil liberties protections that had enjoyed bipartisan support in the House and Senate.
Last summer, the House and Senate passed different bills to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. The Senate version was significantly better for civil liberties than the House version. However, when Congressional negotiators met to iron out their differences, they produced a weak combined bill that failed to contain the reforms in the Senate version.
That House-Senate "conference report" passed in the House but was blocked in the Senate last December when four Republican Senators (John Sununu (NH), Chuck Hagel (NE), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Larry Craig (ID)) joined all but two Democratic Senators in a filibuster.
Last month, under tremendous pressure from the White House, the four Republican Senators agreed to support renewal of the PATRIOT Act with only minor changes to the conference report. Among the provisions in the PATRIOT Act as renewed:
Excellent posts by all.
Note that we are still in an emergency since 911.
That is unbelievable.
911 begot our state of emergency. It was the precondition event which gave rise to this state of emergency and all other unconstitutional acts which followed.
Anyone with two firing neurons realizes that 911 was a false-flag criminal fraud mass murder of our citizens.
By whom? If you don't know that by now there is little hope for you- just go back to sleep- you'll be awaked by your smoke alarm.
The fruits of that criminal fraud are all tainted, illegal and illegitimate.
All must be rescinded.
What we are seeing is the last stages of the American take down. The damage has already been done.
"It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first stage being "demoralization". It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least 3 generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.
The result? The result you can see -- most of the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can't get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
In other words [for] these people the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another 15 or 20 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and common sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.
ED: And yet these people who have been programmed and as you say [are] in place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept - these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?
YURI: Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in [the] future what the beautiful society of EQUALITY and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy [and] frustrated people, and Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously they will join the [ranks] of dissenters; dissidents. Unlike the present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America. [Now] you can get popular like Daniel Elsburg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being a dissident [and] for criticizing your Pentagon. In [the] future these people will simply be [he makes a squishy noise] squashed like cockroaches for criticizing the government. Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their beautiful [and] noble ideas of EQUALITY. This they don't understand and it will be the greatest shock for them, of course.
The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already for the last 25 years. Actually, it's over fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. ...he will refuse to believe it.... That's the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.
2. The next stage is destabilization.... It only takes 2 to 5 years to destabilize a nation. This time what matters is essentials; economy, foreign relations, [and] defense systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some... sensitive areas such as defense and [the] economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never believe it 14 years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the process will go that fast.
Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system train another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime. False. United States is in a state of war; undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not Comrade Andropov of course - it's the system. However, ridiculous it may sound, [it is] the world Communist system, or the world Communist conspiracy. Whether I scare some people or not, I don't give a hoot. If you're not scared by now, nothing can scare you."
http://100777.com/video/bezmenov
Future of our nation is indeed bleak when BS walks under a cloak of patriotism.
Was President Eisenhour a communist when he warned about military industrial complex?
What nation on earth has higher income disparity, all sanctioned by capitlism.
All these bailouts being doled out in the aftermath of global capitalist burst - that some jaudiced eyes call socialism - are merely a vain effort to restore the status quo.
In fact I think this also exactly sounds like what the US establishment did (successfully) to the Soviets.
Yuri is the hombre! God rest his soul, he was a canary in the clean coal mine.
-
You're a simpleton. Right?
...and I suppose that you are some sort of a sophisticated troll. Right?
Some "state of emergency". How many MILLIONS of ILLEGAL aliens from who knows where have crossed our unprotected borders since 9/11? Not only have our borders not been properly secured and protected, there has been an ongoing effort to hamper any real attempts at border security by local, state, or private agencies. Mexico, which is in an all out war between terrorist drug gangs and corrupt officials, has become a point of entry for not only Mexican and South and Central American illegals, but Chinese, Indian, and Middle Easterners as well. It has been estimated that 1/3 of the prison population in the US is comprised of illegal aliens. Add the numbers of illegal (and legal) immigrant gang members that TERRORIZE the areas they inhabit and it becomes obvious any "state of emergency" exists for anything but national security.
"I don't know whether the official declaration of a "state of emergency" in effect from September 2001 to today was directly used for financial looting."
Two points: One, on Sept 10 2001, Rumsfeld acknowledged the Pentagon 'lost track' of some $3.4T. So, the public looting actually predates Sept 11 and the launch of the War on Terror...
And, Two, that under the pretext of fighting the War on Terror, many FBI agents were moved out of the white collar crimes division to investigate terrorism. Bill Black has harped on this point to emphasize that the FBI was understaffed, but many suspect more sinister motivations for neutering the White Collar Crimes division.
Project Mayhem in 'deep cover', I presume?
Here is a link to a three minute CBS broadcast in which ol' Rummy speaks about the 'loss.' Of course, most of us sheeple forgot all about this a day later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kpWqdPMjmo
If the link doesn't work, search you-tube for "Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars."
The truth is bad enough. No need to exaggerate.