Scan the comment section of any Texian Partisan article about FEMA and you will see fellow citizens sharing their own experiences or the second-hand stories of friends who stood prepared to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and were thwarted by FEMA officials. Nursing home generators, water supplies, water trucks, food, and medical supplies were all involuntarily surrendered to officials that claimed the confiscations were legal.
They were right.
Despite the rights guaranteed citizens in the Constitution, Washington has granted FEMA disturbing authority by Executive Orders (EO).
FEMA was created by President Carter under Executive Order 12148, and grants FEMA the authority to take over. Section 2-104 states, The Director [of Federal Emergency Management] shall represent the President in working with State and local governments and private sector to stimulate vigorous participation in civil emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery programs.
“Stimulate vigorous participation by the private sector?”
Apparently one of those stimulating scenarios involves theconfiscation of local farms. According to farmers around Houston, FEMA officials called ahead of Hurricane Harvey to gauge food supplies, livestock numbers and equipment owned by Texans that could conveniently become the property of the feds. No, you didn’t miss a new law. JFK authored EO 10998 on February 16, 1962.
Apparently, President Clinton found it difficult to scour the long list of Executive Orders and took the liberty to combine them under his own EO 12919 on June 3, 1994:
EO 10995 Federal seizure of all communications media in the US
EO 10997 Federal seizure of all electric power, fuels, minerals, public and private;
EO 10998 Federal seizure of all food supplies and resources, public and private and all farms and equipment;
EO 10999 Federal seizure of all means of transportation, including cars, trucks, or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports and waterways;
EO 11000 Federal seizure of American people for work forces under federal supervision, including the splitting up of families if the government so desires;
EO 11001Federal seizure of all health, education and welfare facilities, both public and private;
EO 11002 Empowers the Postmaster General to register every single person in the US
EO 11003Federal seizure of all airports and aircraft;
EO 11004 Federal seizure of all housing and finances and authority to establish forced relocation. Authority to designate areas to be abandoned as “unsafe,” establish new locations for populations, relocate communities, build new housing with public funds;
EO 11005 Seizure of all railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, both public and private;
And EO 11051 which gives FEMA complete authorization to put above orders into effect when national security and economic growth and prosperity are interdependent.
Who determines when “national security and economic prosperity” are threatened?
The current President who, as stated above, can delegate his authority to FEMA.
Missing the checks and balances guaranteed by the constitution?
Keep reading, it gets better.
EO 13603, signed by President Obama on March 16, 2012, states that The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency.
Sounds harmless enough, wouldn’t every flag-waving American agree? Read on my friends.
The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.
And non-emergency conditions?
The Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer; the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy; the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources; the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation; the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
Welcome to the America of the twenty-first century: the land of the free where the feds can take whatever they want, whenever they deem necessary, in times of war and peace, and they can require citizens to provide whatever labor they think they need.
We, as concerned citizens, should still call for an outside investigation into FEMA’s actions during and after Hurricane Harvey, but only with the full understanding that we are kicking a small rock on the mountain of government overreach. The only way to return to the system of checks and balances is to remove each sheet of the enormous stack of Executive Orders entombing the Constitution.