Just as the Constitution-shredding NDAA, rushed through Congress and signed just hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve formally codified the de jure dismemberment of the Bill of Rights (essentially using unilaterally declared “military emergency” as a justification to kill or en-dungeon anyone, anywhere at the President’s sole whim), we now get an executive order (the “National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order”) that, in any circumstance in the mere “interest of national defense” authorizes the President to enslave anyone and commandeer all property, including food and water.
I’m more sanguine about all of this than others because, well, I’ve been paying attention for the last ten years. None of this is anything new. Thing is, we go back almost exactly ten years to the Curious Case of Jose Padilla, and the fact that, despite nominal rules like Ex Parte Milligan supposedly preventing the Government’s arbitrary imprisonment of anyone and suspending of habeas corpus while courts are open, somehow “exceptions” were found for the “extraordinary” situation we find ourselves in (to wit, Big Finance has captured everything and doesn’t want any questions asked), and citizens (not merely swarthy Muz-lum furriners) could be thrown in the brig and tortured, due-process free. Say what you will… it’s now all perfectly “legal.” So while the ante is being upped… it’s only being upped quite marginally, really.
The delicious ironies abound, of course. The nominal Goldman Sachs’s God’s instrument on Earth is none other than President Barack Obama, alleged “Constitutional Law Scholar” and, of course, my own college classmate, who signed the latest Soviet edict shortly before heading to The Dubliner Irish pub to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, said pub amusingly being my own favorite watering hole (and site of my “leaving Washington party”) at the time of my erstwhile service in the U.S. Justice Dept. back when St. Ron of Santa Barbara was the President.
Deep sigh. Our friends at the Occupy! movement should take some pride in this: the Central Powers (the respective management and lobbyists of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America, HSBC, Wells Fargo, et als.) feel some pressure, and they especially feel the need to “legalize” what would otherwise be a really bad public relations move of having to have their agents and subsidiaries in the cabinet level agencies formally seize everything, so they needed a “legal” fig-leaf (a large fig-leaf to be sure, but any plant-part in a storm!).
And so… the Empire Strikes Back: sometimes you just have to break some legs eggs to make a credit default swap.
tdog
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