I am still dealing with farm issues but wanted to get out this quick article.
First, all the rain this last month or so has meant my hay guy has no hay to sell. So I went to buy Abrussi Rye for winter grazing only to find the place I buy from could not get any help so no 50 lb bags for sale. We ended up with a TON (2000 lbs) in a large industrial sized bag. 😱 Thank goodness for great neighbors. My dually and that bag of seed is in a neighbor’s barn at night for the last week.
I mention this because of the larger ramifications. You need dry weather to cure and bale hay and this fall so far has been very wet. Now a large swath of hay producers has been wiped out for this season so expect meat prices to go down and then surge as farmers sell off the animals they can not feed this winter.
Then there is the mess in Western North Carolina and other states. FEMA is being the usual pain in the rump from what I understand. I had seen a comment saying that FEMA was confiscating food and water from the victims. Unfortunately this is NOT at all unlikely.
A washed out road on Sept. 27, 2024, in Boone, North Carolina.
From my old notes. 🤓
It is very very simple a bureaucrat’s main goal in life is covering his butt. The more bureaucrats and the more area covered the worse the muck-up. During Katrina, the goal of FEMA was not to rescue people, but to control them. Their directive was to relocate families and businesses, confiscate property, commandeer goods, direct labor and services, and establish martial law. This is what they did. The goal was never to carry out an effective rescue operation it was to protect the government from chaos and establish martial law. THAT is what governments (and bureaucracies) always do, they protect themselves first last and always.
As can be seen the help was there during Katrina but FEMA PREVENTED the help and helpers from reaching those in need because their priority was CONTROL not RESCUE.
KATRINA EXAMPLES:
I am listing these because I am worried the MSM will ‘neglect’ to report stories like these given it is a Democrat government and an election year.
BERLIN — “A German military plane carrying 15 tons of military rations for survivors of Hurricane Katrina was sent back by U.S. authorities, officials said Saturday…” LINK
Doctor Says FEMA Ordered Him To Stop Treating Hurricane Victims
In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn’t registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I begged him to let me continue,” said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. “People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.
“I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn’t be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave.”
FEMA issued a formal response to Perlmutter’s story, acknowledging that the agency does not use voluntary physicians….
“…crews for three U.S. Customs Blackhawk helicopters stationed at Crestview Airport in Florida are “livid” because they have not been directed to provide full-time support for the ongoing hurricane-relief…Conrad says instead of helping people left desperate in the wake of Katrina’s wrath, the Blackhawk’s actually were slated to transport a CNN news crew to take video shots of those people.” LINK
Emergency crews turned back by FEMA: They lacked “the required paperwork”
Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food
Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded
Firefighters endure a day of FEMA training, which included a course on sexual harassment. Some firefighters say their skills are being wasted. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
And the list goes on and on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any
undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA’s Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA’s role as a “new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.” National Security Act of 1947 allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities. 1950 Defense Production Act gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy. Act of August 29, 1916 authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency. International Emergency Economic Powers Act enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national. These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979. ^^They also list FEMA Camp locations too. LINK
May 06, 2009 — Census GPS-tagging your home’s front door Coordinates being taken for every residence in nation
“According to an online Yahoo program, the Global Position System coordinates for the White House, probably one of the best-known publicly owned buildings in the world, are 38.898590 Latitude and -77.035971 Longitude. And since you know that, it’s no big deal for the White House to know the coordinates for your front door, is it?
Some people think it is, and are upset over an army of some 140,000 workers hired in part with a $700 million taxpayer-funded contract to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation.The data collection, presented as preparation for the 2010 Census, is pinpointing with computer accuracy the locations and has raised considerable concern from privacy advocates who have questioned why the information is needed. The privacy advocates also are more than a little worried over what could be done with that information.
Enhancing the concerns is the Obama administration’s recent decision to put White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in an oversight role over the census, which will be used to determine a reapportionment of congressional seats and could be used to solidify a single political party’s control over the nation, its budget, military and future…
HOW would they know who is hoarding?
Well there are your credit card records and those handy ‘Rewards Cards’ that let you buy featured produces at a discounted price. Many grocery stores have them.
That they are doing this type of snooping is established.
Hospitals to begin monitoring your credit card purchases to flag ‘unhealthy’ habits
What you buy at the grocery store, where you live, and even your membership status at the local gym are all subject to a new data collection scheme by the American medical system. Reports indicate that hospitals and doctors’ offices all across the country are now collecting this and other personal information in order to target individuals deemed to have “unhealthy” lifestyle habits that put them at high risk of disease.
Bloomberg reports that hospital systems in both North and South Carolina as well as Pennsylvania have already begun tracking people’s food-purchasing habits by spying on them through public records and credit card transactions. Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), which operates some 900 care centers throughout the Carolinas, has teamed up with a data-mining company to compile and track this information for the later purpose of calling “high-risk” folks and urging them to make a change.
“What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble,” stated Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes at CHS, to Bloomberg. “The idea is to use big data and predictive models to think about population health and drill down to the individual levels to find someone running into trouble that we can reach out to and try to help out.”
I copied this comment back around 2008 during the ‘Farm Wars’ It may have been from a Yahoo group or from NoNais, I am not sure but it is a very telling comment.
I have been involved in a discussion about a USDA employee who visited an individual’s home in the Pacific NW and began asking a lot of questions about the person’s food storage practices & their raising of small livestock (chickens).…
I agree completely with the “do it quietly” mind set…. But in this case the Dept. of Ag was visiting all the homes in a neigborhood.“A person from the US Dept of Agriculture came to my door and asked me a bunch of questions which boiled down to whether or not I store food. My daughter has ONE pet chicken, and this woman was looking at the chicken and asking if I have any others, etc. Do I garden? Any other animals? Also, she had a list in her hand of all my neighbors, and was planning to see all of them, too.”
Actually, I did see a congresscritter once who stated that the government really needed to either stop or put some guidelines out about people raising their own food. He said that most people did not know how to do it safely.
Gardening is the same way. Technically it is illegal….I couldn’t find the garden thing specifically. This was something a professor pointed out to me, though I did find it odd as well. It was somehow tied into “affecting interstate commerce” This clause however, seems to provide a loophole for anything the govt wishes to do.
“…Gardening is the same way. Technically it is illegal….” And she is correct.
Trojan Horse Law: The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
…. Lori Robertson of FactCheck.org, who is not a lawyer (she has a B.A. in advertising), claims the bill doesn’t apply to “that tomato plant in your backyard.”
As a lawyer, I am skeptical of this claim (I co-represented the prevailing defendant in the last successful constitutional challenge to federal regulation under the interstate commerce clause, United States v. Morrison (2000), one of only two cases in 70 years in which a challenge was successful). Congress’s power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause is almost unlimited in the eyes of the courts, and thus can reach the “tomato plant in your backyard.”
…..Ignorance about the law’s broad reach (and how it will be construed by the courts) has thwarted opposition to the bill, which will likely pass Congress. For example, a newspaper claims the bill “doesn’t regulate home gardens.” The newspaper probably assumed that was true because the bill, like most federal laws, only purports to reach activities that affect “interstate commerce.” To an uninformed layperson or journalist, that “sounds as if it might not reach local and mom-and-pop operators at all.” (The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, has sought to forestall opposition to her bill by falsely claiming that that “the Constitution’s commerce clause prevents the federal government from regulating commerce that doesn’t cross state lines.”)…
But lawyers familiar with our capricious legal system know better. The Supreme Court ruled in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) that even home gardens (in that case, a farmer’s growing wheat for his own consumption) are subject to federal laws that regulate interstate commerce. Economists and scholars have criticized this decision, but it continues to be cited and followed in Supreme Court rulings, such as those applying federal anti-drug laws to consumption of even home-grown medical marijuana. Indeed, many court decisions allow Congress to define as “interstate commerce” even non-commercial conduct that doesn’t cross state lines — something directly at odds with Rep. DeLauro’s claims.
And that brings us to THE GOVERNMENT AND ANTI-HOARDING
I am using a 2005 article as my jumping off point:
Can Our Government Really Tell Us How Much Food and Supplies We Can Keep?
The short answer is YES, in a roundabout way. Due to numerous discussions questioning the existence of federal anti-hoarding legislation, I wanted to see if such Executive Orders had been written….
And then she provides a list of E.O.s now superseded by Obama’s Executive Order 13603
(I do not know if POTUS Trump changed this E.O.)
Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. (a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1) 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;
(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation; (5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials….
She then goes on to say:
These EOs are not aimed at anti-hoarding but rather at seizure or confiscation of items and facilities “to provide a state of readiness in these resource areas with respect to all conditions of national emergency, including attack upon the United States.” You’ll find most ‘seizure’ legislation ends with this phrase. These Executive Orders don’t define what specifically constitutes a national emergency and maybe this is as it should be. The specifics on hoarding are left up to the individual states.
However she did not actually look at the 1950 DEFENSE PRODUCTION.
SUBCHAPTER I—PRIORITIES AND ALLOCATIONS Section 4512. Hoarding of designated scare materials.
§4512. Hoarding of designated scarce materials
In order to prevent hoarding, no person shall accumulate
(1) in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption, or
(2) for the purpose of resale at prices in excess of prevailing market prices,
materials which have been designated by the President as scarce materials or materials the supply of which would be threatened by such accumulation. The President shall order published in the Federal Register, and in such other manner as he may deem appropriate, every designation of materials the accumulation of which is unlawful and any withdrawal of such designation. In making such designations the President may prescribe such conditions with respect to the accumulation of materials in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption as he deems necessary to carry out the objectives of this chapter. This section shall not be construed to limit the authority contained in .
(Sept. 8, 1950, ch. 932, title I, §102, ; July 31, 1951, ch. 275, title I, §101(b), .)
She then goes on to FEMA:
What Is FEMA’s Role?
EO #11051 is interesting; it authorizes FEMA near-total power in times of crisis….
FEMA was created by President Carter under Executive Order #12148. Its legal authorization is Title 42, United States Code 5121 (42 USC Sec. 5121) called the “Stafford Act.” During activation of Executive Orders, FEMA answers only to the National Security Council which answers only to the President. Once these powers are invoked, not even Congress can intervene or countermand them for six months….
Who will determine how much food we can have in our house? FEMA.
And the amount depends on the needs of all…not your needs or my needs…but the “welfare” of the needy.
Again, she gets it incorrect. FEMA’s job is the orderly distribution of supplies. The 1950 law confiscates and the 1988 law distributes.
FEMA:
According to FEMA:
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, PL 100-707, signed into law November 23, 1988; amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, PL 93-288.
This Act constitutes the statutory authority for most Federal disaster response activities especially as they pertain to FEMA and FEMA programs.
Stafford Act, as Amended
Sec. 413. Food Commodities (42 U.S.C. 5180)
(a) Emergency Mass Feeding – The President is authorized and directed to assure that adequate stocks of food will be ready and conveniently available for emergency mass feeding or distribution in any area of the United States which suffers a major disaster or emergency.
(b) Funds for Purchase of Food Commodities – The Secretary of Agriculture shall utilize funds appropriated under section 612c of title 7, to purchase food commodities necessary to provide adequate supplies for use in any area of the United States in the event of a major disaster or emergency in such area.
However she is correct about state laws.
…..To locate information for your state, look for laws about:
Blood Typing
Disaster Preparedness
Emergencies
Hoarding
Injections
Martial Law
Militia
National Guard
Public Safety or Public Welfare
State Militia
State Police Force
Hawaii As A Specific Example of Anti-Hoarding
For Hawaii, this information will be found in Title 10 under “Public Safety”. It is located after legislation on militias, state guard troops, etc. Then you find the jewel… In Hawaii you are considered a “hoarder” if you have more than one week’s provisions on hand BUT you have to dig to uncover this information. Here is a specific example:
“HAWAII REVISED STATUTES REVISED 1997, Title 10:
(1) Prevention of *hoarding, waste, etc. To the extent necessary to prevent hoarding, waste, or destruction of materials, supplies, commodities, accommodations, facilities, and services, to effectuate equitable distribution thereof, or to establish priorities therein as the public welfare may require, to investigate, and any other law to the contrary notwithstanding, to regulate or prohibit, by means of licensing, rationing, or otherwise, the storage, transportation, use, possession, maintenance, furnishing, sale, or distribution thereof, and any business or any transaction related thereto.”
Committee Notes? Huh?…..
And to bring us up to the present.
IG report says FEMA is sitting on billions while Mayorkas says no more funds, agency is broke
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faces a new firestorm of criticism for claiming FEMA is out of disaster funds right as the DHS’ Inspector General released a report saying FEMA is sitting on at least $8.3 billion in untapped, unspent funds.
On Oct 2, Mayorkas said, “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent.”
This new controversy is surfacing as Hurricane Milton has become a Category 5 storm, and massive evacuations are now underway in Florida, which is still struggling from Hurricane Helene, as is much of the Southeast….
