SPORTS

Survivor’s Notebook #8
Tim Thomas

Hoarding, Confiscation
and
National Emergency


First of all, let me state that I am not a lawyer or a Constitutional scholar. This article is an ordinary citizen’s opinions and observations only. It pertains to the United States only, however National Emergencies are far more common place in third world countries. Actually, a lot can be learned by studying what has happened in other places and the effects of governmental actions upon the people. It’s beyond the scope of this article, but is worth doing some reading up on. We are entering a time of economic trouble and we have been there before and so have other nations and we can learn from those experiences.
How bad will it get and what will happen? Nobody really can or will answer that question, but one thing is sure, it is going to be pretty bad and it is probably not going to get better very soon. There is optimistic talk on various financial TV shows, but also there is now open talk about the possibility of an actual depression which a year ago seemed an absurd assertion. Some experts say if we enter into a depression things will be much better this time than the Great Depression of the 1930s because we have learned to handle these things more effectively and we have much better technologies now. On the other hand some experts point to the very thin supply system on which we are so dependant for food, fuel, medicine, etc and the lack of family farms, practical skills and religious commitment and say, it will be much, much worse. It will mean societal collapse they say. In any case it pays to be prepared for the worst case scenario as much as we can be. There are some surprising caveats you need to consider however and those pertain to governmental actions taken to cure the emergency.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/410527a.html
After the stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, Congress passed laws giving the President broad powers to deal with the crisis. A State of National Emergency was declared and one of the things President Roosevelt did was to confiscate privately held gold coins, bullion and certificates. There was a hefty penalty for noncompliance including a $10,000 fine (whole lot of money back then) and 10 years in prison.
http://www.the-privateer.com/1933-gold-confiscation.html
It was illegal to ‘hoard food’ since the times of WW1 and what some people considered prudent, sensible precautions were sometimes determined to be “hoarding” by government authorities. Here is a an sensational story of a Navy doctor and his wife prosecuted for the crime of hoarding by Herbert Hoover then the Food Administrator later the President.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=3&res=940CEEDD1238EE32A25753C3A9639C946996D6CF&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

What has happened before can happen again, or should I say WILL happen again. As the old saying goes “history repeats itself”; and we never seem to learn. So not only will we have to worry about looters and thieves taking our preparedness stores away, we also have to be concerned that the government will legally plunder them. Of course I am not advising anyone to hide anything from the government, but it does make sense to be a bit stealthy in your preparation efforts so that looters, thieves and government officials will not be coming to your door first when their inadequate supplies get near empty.
Charity is an option however. Having extra goods on hand for the unprepared in your community would promote good will and friendly neighbors. If things are really tough a community will have to pull together and provide what they can to survive. You may have food, but others may have skills or access to water or medicine that you will need. If you have enough on hand for charity and barter among your neighbors, it will lessen the need for the heavy hand of government to grab what is needed. This may not work in every neighborhood; if there are a majority of people willing to take only and not give, then all bets are off. In that case, Get Out of Dodge… Fast! It is a no win scenario there and it can only get worse as people become predators if they are not predators already.
I think it’s highly likely that the next President will find it necessary to declare a state of National Emergency either to deal with a financial disaster or increased terrorist attacks, or both. There are already in place many statutes giving the President extraordinary powers in times of emergency and these powers are activated by declaration by the President. Those powers include confiscation of materials, regulation and commandeering of transportation and industry, and control of import and export activities, control of the banking system, just to name a few.
The President can of course mobilize the National Guard to deal with domestic turmoil. Congress can authorize the conscription of citizens to serve in the armed forces, and who knows what other powers a cooperative Congress might give a President. A governor or local executive can also declare a state of emergency within his jurisdiction which also provides sweeping powers to deal with emergency situations.
Going beyond a State of Emergency is a declaration of Martial Law wherein the President as Commander in Chief governs through the military command structure and civilian authority is suspended. The Writ of Habeas Corpus can be suspended allowing the government to arrest citizens without judicial supervision. Congress can declare martial law, or the President can declare it with the consent of Congress, or Congress may do nothing or be unable to act to oppose it. It is conceivable that a President could declare Martial Law and be opposed by Congress, leaving the issue up to the Supreme Court to decide. Martial Law has been declared in the USA on several occasions also to limited areas where trouble arose. I won’t go into all those incidences, just suffice it to say it can be done and has been done before.

© Copyright 2008 Tim Thomas – all rights reserved.

Dr. Barrett: "If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God." Photo: John Taylor

Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose. He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God. "The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God." In a lecture to be given at the University of Cambridge's Faraday Institute on Tuesday, Dr Barrett will cite psychological experiments carried out on children that he says show they instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose. In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied "to make nice music" and "because it makes the world look nice". Another experiment on 12-month-old babies suggested that they were surprised by a film in which a rolling ball apparently created a neat stack of blocks from a disordered heap. Dr Barrett said there is evidence that even by the age of four, children understand that although some objects are made by humans, the natural world is different. He added that this means children are more likely to believe in creationism rather than evolution, despite what they may be told by parents or teachers. Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them. "Children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."