‘National Defense Resources Preparedness’: President Obama’s Big Power Grab of 2012

Shortly after the “October Revolution” in Russia nearly a century ago, the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, issued a decree that gave Russia’s leader broad power over the country’s economy. His “draft decree on workers control,” was more about taking away that control than giving it. It stated that, “In all enterprises of state importance all owners and all representatives of the workers and office employees elected for the purpose of exercising workers’ control shall be answerable to the state for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property,” not to the workers themselves.

That, and Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933 less than two decades later, is what I am reminded of by President Obama’s recent Executive Order—National Defense Resources Preparedness that was issued on March 16, 2012. Rather than being a move to protect freedom, it looks like another power grab by the federal government. A big power grab.

Keep this in mind when thinking about: (1) the PATRIOT Act; (2) Guantanamo Bay as a “legal blackhole” to store and torture; (3) policies of indefinite detention and (4) drone attacks; (5) the Military Commissions Act; (6) National Defense Authorization Act; (7) Obama’s legal argument for killing Americans without due process of law, and now this. The National Security State apparatus is feeling threatened by a “shortfall of resources,” and political and economic instability. So President Obama is implementing an Act passed in 1950. Not sound alarmist but the frog may already be boiled.

President Obama’s Executive Order (EO) 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.

To maintain this “superiority” the EO requires various government agencies to

assess on an ongoing basis the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of the most critical resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel

and to

be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements.

Where the “adequate resources” are located, and what the “actions necessary” to acquire “materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel” are, are questions left unanswered (though we will get to a possible clue in a moment).

“The authority of the President,” the order notes, allows the President “to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense,” even on issues “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,” as well as “with respect to all forms of energy,” “health resources,” “water resources,” and even “to all forms of civil transportation,” which the order says “includes movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce within the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia, and related public storage and warehousing, ports, services, equipment and facilities, such as transportation carrier shop and repair facilities.” In fact, it even includes “all other [“Commerce”] materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.”

The manner in which these “persons and property” are moved, or why—like the acquirement of materials and resources—is not stated.

The order not only calls for “The Secretary of each agency” to “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” for “emergency” conditions, but also under “non-emergency conditions.”

We even read of Homeland Security being empowered to ensure the “continuity of Government.” Naturally, the methods of doing so are not elaborated on.

And the collusion between government and Wall Street is about more than an effort to

foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness

—but also to further enrich and empower Wall Street: “To reduce current or projected shortfalls of resources, critical technology items, or materials essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense […] is authorized […] to guarantee loans by private institutions.”

And that seems to be what this order is all about: “shortfalls of resources.”

As government agencies takeover a wide spectrum of industries under the banner of “national defense” they are also empowered to “collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation’s workforce needs for purposes of national defense.”

We have long known that resources like oil and water are reaching their “peak,” and it looks as if the federal government is getting prepared to deal with the situations by a massive government takeover.

The reinstatement of a draft system is also being put into the works:

upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services.

This may shed light on where and how the materials and resources are to be acquired.

The EO calls on the heads of agencies to consult with one another in order to achieve “contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization” so as to “assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor.” That may be the only “good” thing about this: unemployment may not be an issue.

Again, this wide-reaching plan by the White House is not just a wartime, or emergency plan, but a “peacetime” plan that will reinstate a draft system for the military, and possibly beyond into civilian production. The government clearly forsees some “shortfall of resources” that it fears can disrupt the “continuity of Government” and is getting ready. That it follows on the heels of Attorney General Eric Holder declaring the government has the right to kill Americans without due process of law is just another example of the fascist tendencies of our government, and I must stress: not only of the Republican Party, but even of the supposed liberal Democratic resident of the White House.

Serious question: who recalls having read any Executive Order like this from President George W Bush, or Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon? This all comes back to what Glen Ford, the editor from Black Agenda Report, said last December in his article “The Wasteland of Democratic Politics.”

The Republicans are ugly, nasty and evil. President Obama is the most attractive and articulate servant of Wall Street and war – and, therefore, an even more effective evil. There is only one alternative, and that is mass political action in opposition to the rule of the rich. Without a people’s movement, the people inevitably lose.