Executive Order 10-988
I keep thinking of Ray Stevens (“Ahab the Arab,” “Shrine Convention,” “The Day the Squirrel Got Loose,” etc.)
I just want to sing my little song,” plot my stock charts, love my great sailor, play in my greenhouses, buy gold no matter what the economy is doing, and be the happiest sweet little old lady in the whole USA.
Unfortunately, (1) in order to stay as wealthy as I want to be (a leisurely, joyous life seeking knowledge is true wealth, not the Sultan of Bahrain’s vault) by reading runes, I have to live in a free country with a free market that is able to function without hindrance from the government, a reasonable desire Mr. Obama is frustrating, and (2) Executive Order 10-998, dating back to JFK, concerns all of us.
The exact language is of EO 10-998, which allows federal control of “all food resources” is:
“‘Food resources’ means all commodities and products, simple, mixed or compound, or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being eaten or drunk, by either human beings or animals’ (sic) irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption. For the purposes of this order the term ‘food resources’ shall also include all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal fats and oils, cotton, tobacco, wool, mohair, hemp, flax fiber, and naval stores, but shall not include any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product.” (Naval stores traditionally include lumber, timber, tar, turpentine, paint, and rope. In modern naval provisions that could cover almost anything.)
10-998 authorizes the confiscation of everything edible and much that is not, including our stores of flour and un-ground wheat, the beef in your freezer and that I have on the hoof…what is in your pantry and your garden…my chickens and Mr. Sanderson’s, and perhaps our little dogs to feed visiting Chinese. That EO lays claim to a friend’s vast wheat and corn harvests, cattle feed, and your small daughter’s night-night snack. Alcohol is a form of grain, so you can’t even count on having a little tot of whiskey if locusts in full battle gear clean you out.
In a world of rising demand and costs Liberals are doing everything possible to lower food production. Very severe restrictions on small farms are popping up; 100 pages strangling small milk producers is in the Texas legislature and a similar measure is going before Congress. It will be practically impossible for anyone without megabucks to stay in business, because without a Grade A Diary license the proposed regulations expressly forbid even giving milk away, as well as transporting it privately, on pain of fines and even jail time! Milk: the new contraband.
Farmers’ markets are under attack, and if they deny us those there are no markets left. Small farms cannot begin to meet the needs of large grocery stores, certainly not year around.
Produce can only be labeled “home grown,” not “organic,” a term that has been redefined from what most of us think it means to restrictions that only agribusiness can meet. Add that to the whack the big boys are getting from losing subsidies they have long regarded as “income,” and a flier in commodities could be a pretty good bet for those who can’t stand being out of the market, and emulating the Mormons in accumulating a year’s supply of food seems like an excellent idea. If you can hide it.
We have to survive in the world that is and the one we can forecast, and then we can concentrate again on excelling at picking stocks and buy and sell points. Survival first is why we keep talking about a very deep depression and “peak food.”
It wouldn’t matter how much your portfolio were worth if the grocer’s shelves were bare and armed men had taken your last cans of asparagus and foie gras. Maybe the colonists didn’t know when they were well off; troops quartered in my house would have a vested interest in preserving the larder.
Sincerely,
Linda Brady Traynham
March 20, 2009
Linda Brady Traynham
Linda Brady Traynham is a former editor and analytical project report writer and is now a Whiskey & Gunpowder field correspondent on a ranch in the Republic of Texas. She studied Counseling at Boston University and got her Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii.
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The last sentence was the best. Maybe that’s why there is a third amendment.
Wasn’t EO 10998 revoked by EO11490?
At least that is what it says here:
http://www.disastercenter.com/laworder/11490.htm
Dear Rick:
Thanks for the comment. I’m a merry little soul, and my first thought was that any South’n Belle worth her salt, no matter what her age, who cain’t git uh man tuh do what she wants should turn in her bustle! You put a passel of sojers in mah house an’ by th’ tahm they’ve had a a bunch of motherin’ and are calling me “Mom-Mom,” as all my son’s friend always (sorry, “allus!”) did an’ dang if’n Ah don’ believe they’d keep they hans’ offuh great-grannie’s silver and not slaughter the goats.
Unfortunately, this ISN’T funny. There is a concerted, deliberate attack on our ability to feed America and our ability to feed ourselves through what we can grow and even what you could kill hunting.
Charges of “hoarding” are always lurking, and there is serious discussion that no citizen should have more than two weeks’ worth of food in the house. It’s bad enough that assorted “taxing authorities” think that much of what you have is THEIRS, but when it comes to telling you that you can’t accumulate during temporary price drops with the half they left you of your paycheck, that is far beyond the pale.
The Constitution is under increasing attack, and if it comes to martial law I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone came up with the bright idea of saving money by quartering troops on us, particularly here in the country.
I think that the blame game and the choice of writing as a southern belle only does the serious nature of this a disservice.
I do not mean to piss you off by pointing this out but this is something I am concerned about and wish more people would look into. If this were all you read what would you make of this and keep in mind most readers know nothing about you.
all due respect, Linda, but I think you owe your readers a higher degree of accuracy than this article displays.
Tim F. is quite correct. Exacutive order 10998 was revoked by Nixon in 1969.
there’s enough horrifying, scary sh-t to worry about for real. No need to ressurect dead executive orders from 40 years ago.