Executive-order Panic: Martial Law in U.S.?

Drew Zahn

The White House’s late-week release of an executive order has sent the online community into an uproar, worried that President Obama had secretly provided himself means to institute martial law in America.

In the common practice of dumping government documents on a Friday afternoon, just as the news cycle is wrapping up for the week – a move critics say allows the administration to avoid widespread coverage of embarrassing actions – the White House released an executive order on “National Defense Resources Preparedness.”

Filled with language about “government-owned equipment” and a “defense executive reserve,” among other vague statements, rumors began to spread that the executive order expanded the president’s power to do everything from seizing whole industries to drafting private armies.

A Canada Free Press article titled “Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!” spread concerns of gasoline ration cards; while an Examiner article declared the order would “nationalize everything” and “allow for a civilian draft.” Facebook, email and Twitter were suddenly abuzz, and even the extremely popular Drudge Report posted a link to the White House release under the title “Martial Law? Obama Issues Executive Order.”

But are the cries of martial law and expanding executive power justified?

No, says William A. Jacobson, associate clinical professor at Cornell Law School.

“If someone wants to make the argument that this is an expansion of presidential powers, then do so based on actual language,” warns Jacobson. “There is enough that Obama actually does wrong without creating claims which do not hold up to scrutiny.”

As it turns out, Obama’s executive order is nearly identical to EO 12919, issued by President Clinton on June 7, 1994, which itself was an amendment to EO 10789, issued in 1958 by President Eisenhower, and which in fact, was later amended by EO 13286, issued in 2003 by George W. Bush.

Obama’s executive order specifically assigns “executive departments and agencies responsible for plans and programs related to national defense” to do five things:

• “identify” requirements for emergencies;
• “assess” the capability of the country’s industrial and technological base;
• “be prepared” to ensure the availability of critical resources in time of national threat;
• “improve the efficiency” of the industrial base to support national defense;
• “foster cooperation” between commercial and defense sectors.

Later provisions in the order establish the protocol for government agencies to purchase equipment needed in times of national emergency and even make loans to ensure the availability of that equipment.

Despite the vague nature of the functions, none mention anything about martial law or seizing private property. The five functions are also identical to those identified in Clinton’s EO 12919.

So why did Obama issue the order at all?

A side-by-side analysis of Obama’s order compared to Clinton’s, conducted by Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com, reveals Obama’s order is essentially just an update to reflect changes in government agency structure.

“If one takes a look at EO 12919, the big change is in the cabinet itself,” Morrissey writes. “In 1994, we didn’t have a Department of Homeland Security, for instance, and some of these functions would naturally fall to DHS. In EO 12919, the FEMA director had those responsibilities, and the biggest change between the two is the removal of several references to FEMA (10 in all). Otherwise, there aren’t a lot of changes between the two EOs, which looks mainly like boilerplate.

“I’m not ruling out the possibility that this is more than it seems,” adds Jacobson, “but unless and until someone [demonstrates any expansion of powers in the order], I’ll consider this to be routine.”

“The timing of this release might have looked a little strange,” Morrissey concludes, “but this is really nothing to worry about at all.”

Source

Mark Milian

Mike Daisey, the monologist behind “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” created a “reality-distortion field” of his own.

But it didn’t fool Rob Schmitz.

The China bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace publication uncovered that Daisey had fabricated several details in his accounts of Chinese factory labor at Foxconn Technology Group, which manufactures products for Apple and other electronics makers.

In January, an excerpt from Daisey’s monologue, which he said was based on many interviews during a stay in Shenzhen, China, was broadcasted on the public radio show, “This American Life.” Shenzhen is where Foxconn’s largest factory is located.

When Schmitz listened to the podcast, he was immediately skeptical, he said by phone from Shanghai early Saturday morning.

“There were quite a few things in the piece that struck me as a little unusual, and one of them was the beginning of the piece,” Schmitz said. He’s referring to Daisey’s claim that every electronics product is made in Shenzhen. “If you know anything about the manufacturing sector in China, you know that that’s just not true.”

As Daisey’s tale went on, other details stuck out to Schmitz. For example, Daisey had said that he saw security guards around the Foxconn perimeter holding guns. Schmitz knew that that couldn’t be true, he said, because only military and police officials are legally allowed to carry firearms.

“He evokes this image of a very sort of totalitarian state, and there is some broader truth to the things that he puts in his monologue,” Schmitz said, “but from what we found, there are many things that don’t just check out.”

After listening to that episode of “This American Life,” Schmitz’s most promising clue was found in a Google search.

In Daisey’s monologue, he refers to the translator who accompanied him only by her first name, Cathy. So Schmitz said he punched into Google: Cathy translator Shenzhen.

“I called the first number that popped up,” he said.

The woman on the other end of the line was Cathy Lee, who happened to be Daisey’s translator on his trip to China. Schmitz said he and Lee later met in front of Foxconn’s gates, where parts of Daisey’s story are set.

Schmitz asked Lee whether she and Daisey had actually witnessed the things that Daisey recounted. The guards with guns? The man whose hand had become deformed from the repetition of assembling iPads? The young workers aged 14, 13, 12? The factory-line crew that said they had been poisoned by a toxic cleaning substance?

Lee’s answer to each question: No.

Read the rest here.

Some interesting charts and good commentary on the very steep VIX futures curve.

via dailymail.co.uk

On the six-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, protesters swarmed its birthplace –Zuccotti Park – again sparking the cat-and-mouse clashes between New York City police officers and demonstrators.

The sweep of the park by police just before midnight capped a day of demonstrations and marching in lower Manhattan. There was no official word on the number of arrests but dozens of people were handcuffed and led out of the park.

Earlier in the day, 15 people were arrested and three officers suffered injuries, police said.

An unused public transit bus was brought in to cart away about a dozen demonstrators in plastic handcuffs. 

Anniversary: NYPD officers clash with members of the Occupy Wall St movement at Zuccotti park in New York last night

Several arrests: A bus was brought in to remove the arrested protesters

One female under arrest apparently suffered a seizure and had difficulty breathing. She was taken away in an ambulance to be treated.

For hours, the demonstrators had been chanting and holding impromptu meetings in the park to celebrate the anniversary of the movement that has brought attention to economic inequality, as police mainly kept their distance.

But New York Police Det. Brian Sessa said the tipping point came when the protesters started breaking the park rules.

‘They set up tents. They had sleeping bags,’ he told the Associated Press. Electrical boxes also were tampered with and there was evidence of graffiti.

Det. Sessa said Brookfield Properties, the park owner, sent in security to advise the protesters to stop pitching tents and to leave the park.

The protesters, in turn, became agitated with them. The company then asked the police to help them clear out the park, the detective said.

Many protesters shouted and officers took out their batons after a demonstrator threw a glass bottle at the bus that police were using to detain protesters.

Taken down: One protester missing his right shoe is pinned to the ground by an NYPD officer

The clash: An NYPD officer runs after a woman in green as those around her are being arrested

Sandra Nurse, a member of Occupy’s direct action working group, said police treated demonstrators roughly and made arbitrary arrests. She disputed the police assertion that demonstrators had broken park rules by putting up tents or getting out sleeping bags.

‘I didn’t see any sleeping bags,’ she said. ‘There was a banner hung between two trees and a tarp thrown over it … It wasn’t a tent. It was an erect thing, if that’s what you want to call it.’

She said they had reports of about 25 demonstrators arrested in the police sweep.

Protesters reconvened at the park following afternoon marches through New York’s financial district. By 11pm, roughly 300 had gathered there.

‘This is our spring offensive,’ Michael Premo, 30, of New York told Reuters. He identified himself as a spokesman for the movement.

‘People think the Occupy movement has gone away. It’s important for people to see we’re back.’

Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring, the Wall Street protesters targeted U.S. financial policies they blamed for the yawning income gap between rich and poor in the country, between what they called the one per cent and the 99 per cent.

The demonstrators set up camp in Zuccotti Park on September 17 and sparked a wave of protests across the United States.

Famous face: Activist and outspoken filmmaker Michael Moore joined protesters and spoke briefly at the rally, calling it ‘the beginning’

American Spring: More than a dozen arrested protesters sit on the ground outside of Zuccotti Park; protesters are likening the Occupy movement to the Arab Spring

Events got under way near midday on Saturday, with street theatre troupes performing and guitar players leading sing-alongs. Some boisterous protesters marched through the streets of the financial district, chanting ‘bankers are gangsters’ and cursing at police.

As they have in past marches, protesters led police on a series of cat-and-mouse chases. Marchers at the front of the crowd would suddenly turn down narrow side streets, startling tourists and forcing police to send officers on motor scooters to contain the crowd.

The movement has made headlines for its clashes with police after campsites were set up for months in cities from New York to California. The camps were eventually shut down by authorities citing zoning regulations and public health concerns.

In New York, the Occupy movement lost significant momentum in November when a pre-dawn sweep broke up the encampment at Zuccotti, although Occupy protests in Oakland, California, in January led to police firing tear gas into crowds of protesters and more than 200 were arrested.

Protester Paul Sylvester, 24, of Massachusetts said he was ‘thrilled’ to be back at the park but said he hoped the movement would begin to crystallize around specific goals.

‘We need to be more concrete and specific,’ he said.

Critics say the Occupy movement lacks direction and clear demands.

It continues to draw celebrities, however. On Saturday night, independent filmmaker Michael Moore strode through the park before the police incursion.

Civil disobedience: Protesters that have been arrested sit on the ground in plastic hand cuffs

Hovering: Police stand over a detained protester; one NYPD officer holds another set of plastic hand cuffs

‘I think it’s great that this movement continues to grow,’ Mr Moore said. ‘I think the goals are clear. People are concerned that they have no control over their own democracy. They have no control over their own lives.

‘This is the beginning. This park is sacred ground for millions across the country.’

As always, the protesters focused on a variety of concerns, but for Tom Hagan, his sights were on the giants of finance.

‘Wall Street did some terrible things, especially Goldman Sachs, but all of them. Everyone from the banks to the rating agencies, they all knew they were doing wrong. … But they did it anyway. Because the money was too big,’ he said.

Dressed in an outfit that might have been more appropriate for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the 61-year-old salesman wore a green shamrock cap and carried a sign asking for saintly intervention: ‘St. Patrick: Drive the snakes out of Wall Street.’

Chalkupy Wall Street: Earlier in the day, protesters chalked OW-inspired phrases in Zuccotti Park

Stacy Hessler held up a cardboard sign that read, ‘Spring is coming,’ a reference, she said, both to the Arab Spring and to the warm weather that is returning to New York City.

She said she believes the nicer weather will bring the crowds back to Occupy protests, where numbers have dwindled in recent months since the group’s encampment was ousted from Zuccotti Park by authorities in November.

But now, ‘more and more people are coming out,’ said the 39-year-old, who left her home in Florida in October to join the Manhattan protesters and stayed through much of the winter.

‘The next couple of months, things are going to start to grow, like the flowers.’

Some have questioned whether the group can regain its momentum. This month, the finance accounting group in New York City reported that just about $119,000 remained in Occupy’s bank account – the equivalent of about two weeks’ worth of expenses.

But Ms Hessler said the group has remained strong, and she pronounced herself satisfied with what the Occupy protesters have accomplished over the last half year.

‘It’s changed the language,’ she said. ‘It’s brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about.

And that’s the start of change.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116661/Occupy-Wall-Street-protesters-clash-police-Zuccotti-Park-movement-began-6-months-ago.html#ixzz1pUKYVnbU

Watch it here.

A co-founder for Invisible Children was detained in Pacific Beach Thursday night for being drunk in public and masturbating, according to San Diego Police Department.

Jason Russell, 33, was taken into custody after he was found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of something, according to Lt. Andra Brown. He was detained at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Road.
…

Russell is also described as a Christian and father to two children who wants to have nine more children with his wife he calls his “best friend for over 23 years.”

Source

Read the rest here.

via Gregor.us

In the Spring of 2011, when Libyan oil production — over 1 million barrels a day (mpd) — was suddenly taken offline, the world received its first real-time test of the global pricing system for oil since the crash lows of 2009.

Oil prices, already at the $85 level for WTIC, bolted above $100, and eventually hit a high near $115 over the following two months.

More importantly, however, is that — save for a brief eight week period in the autumn — oil prices have stubbornly remained over the $85 pre-Libya level ever since. Even as the debt crisis in Europe has flared.

As usual, the mainstream view on the world’s ability to make up for the loss has been wrong. How could the removal of “only” 1.3% of total global production affect the oil price in any prolonged way?, was the universal view of “experts.”

Answering that question requires that we modernize, effectively, our understanding of how oil’s numerous price discovery mechanisms now operate. The past decade has seen a number of enormous shifts, not only in supply and demand, but in market perceptions about spare capacity. All these were very much at play last year.

And, they are at play right now as oil prices rise once again as the global economy tries to strengthen.

Read the rest here.

Most people can get the money they need for retirement without gambling heavily on equities, say Zvi Bodie and Rachelle Taqqu.

A growing sense of urgency is driving many investors to take reckless risks with their money.

Even though they experienced the hazards of stock ownership firsthand in 2008, investors are venturing back into equities again. They’ve been advised that there’s no other way to make up the losses they suffered—or meet their looming retirement requirements—and, not to worry, the risk of stocks diminishes the longer you hold them. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has announced that it intends to keep interest rates low through 2014—providing a powerful inducement to stay in stocks since bonds will probably generate unusually low returns.

The desire to get back what you lost is understandable. But, as behavioral economists have shown, it can also cloud your judgment and lead you to take more risk than you can handle.

Read the rest here.

Male fruit flies become barflies when rejected by females, choosing alcohol-spiked food more often than their successful brothers in a study that suggests it may be due to a brain chemical also found in humans.

The spurned flies had lower levels of a molecule in their brains called neuropeptide F than the males who were allowed to mate, according to findings published today in the journal Science. Neuropeptide Y, the version found in humans, has been tied to addiction and mental illness, said Ulrike Heberlein, one of the researchers.

The molecule may begin to explain how experience and environment shape human addictions, said Heberlein. About half of a person’s risk of addiction is genetic, and environment is known to play a role. The experiment may help explain the biological triggers that affect certain behavior or cravings and could help research into treatments for addiction.

“We wanted to really find a molecular mechanism that links experiences to drug-related behavior,” said Heberlein, who is a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, in a telephone interview. “We are really hoping that this will encourage those working with mice and rats and humans to look at what happens to this neuropeptide in psychiatric conditions.”

Male flies that mated were less likely to drink the alcohol solution than either virgin or rebuffed ones, and had higher levels of neuropeptide F in their brains, the research showed.

via The Reformed Broker

Joshua M Brown

Jeffrey Gundlach was buying gold with his own money in the early part of the aughts decade and he was “wrong” for five years. To hear him tell the story, he was happy to be wrong because it took him time to accumulate the position. And then when he became “right”, he became really right, all at once.

I bring this up because Gundlach is now talking about accumulating natural gas every now and again. He is emphatic about pointing out that he not buying in size or aggressively. Further, he is up front about the fact that he’ll be “wrong” for awhile before he is right.

I see the same thing in natural gas that he does – the historic discount of nat gas in relation to crude oil is an absurdity – an absurdity which can run on for a long time, but sooner or later God’ll strike it down. Yes, I was listening to Johnny Cash earlier today.

Read the rest here.

BANGKOK (AP) — State media in Thailand say the self-made Thai billionaire who created the renowned Red Bull energy drink three decades ago has died. He was 89.

Read More

 

Read here:

For the last few years, it has been housing’s lot to bring the stock market back to Earth.

It certainly has the potential to splash reality in investors’ faces in the week ahead when reports on existing- and new-home sales come along with the monthly reports on housing starts and building permits.

But if the numbers break right — with all the indicators showing clear signs that a bottom for housing has set in — one could reasonably see a continuation of the big rally that pushed the Dow Jones industrials ($INDU -0.15%) above 13,000 this past week.

The week ahead, in fact, is a busy one for investors. In addition to the housing reports, a batch of important earnings are due that include results from Adobe Systems (ADBE -1.02%), Oracle (ORCL -1.06%), Tiffany (TIF -0.92%), General Mills (GIS +0.36%), Nike (NKE +0.44%) and FedEx (FDX -0.29%).

And there will be many eyes on two more factors in the coming week: oil prices (and gasoline prices) and interest rates. Crude oil closed Friday at $107.06 a barrel, with retail gasoline at $3.831 a gallon. Crude is up 8.63%, while gasoline is up nearly 17%. Can gasoline prices hurt the economy? They did a year ago and helped set off the Great Recession.

Interest rates started to move up as well, with the 10-year Treasury hitting 2.298%, up from 1.871% at the end of 2011. The question is whether the increase will bother anyone — yet.

It was a very good week for stocks. The Dow and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ($INX +0.11%) were up 2.4% for the week, with the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX -0.04%) up 2.2%. The Dow and S&P 500 are enjoying their best start for a year since 1998; the Nasdaq’s start is its best since 1991.

Will housing stop being a drag on the economy?

Housing has been one of the biggest drags on the economy since the bubble started to burst in 2006. Housing markets have been struggling with foreclosures, bloated inventories of new and existing homes and condominiums for sale and weak household formation rates.

And there have been suggestions from a number of homebuilding companies that buyers are out looking for homes this year in greater numbers than in the past few years. Apartment construction has been stronger as many would-be buyers have opted not to own because they want the flexibility.

Inventories have been shrinking in places like Phoenix and Sarasota as investors large and small have swooped in to pick up foreclosed properties that they can rent or fix up and try to resell.

And that’s as it should be. Apartment construction gains usually precede gains in new-home building by nine months to two years before single-family construction starts to gain. And prices often continue to fall even as the bottom forms.

Graphs derived from a LinkedIn and Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) project paint a picture of American industry some may see as very troubling. When one views the industries that are expanding, versus those contracting, the sense is that we are seeing shrinkage in areas traditionally aligned with wealth creation in America, while expansion in industries one might characterize as spending, particularly on the part of government.

How has our economy evolved in the past five years? Which industries are shrinking or growing through these challenging economic times? These are some of the questions that the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) delves into each February in the “Economic Report of the President” (ERP). This year, the CEA worked with us to glean further insights into industry trends both during the recent recession and after its end in June 2009 [1].

With the data and methodology [2] in hand, we calculated the growth rates in industry size between 2007 and 2011. Here’s what we found:

One wonders how much the huge growth in “renew-ables” is inefficient from a pure business perspective, as efforts in that sector are often subsidized by government spending. And it only seems to get worse from there.

The fastest-growing industries include renewables (+49.2%), internet (+24.6%), online publishing (+24.3%), and e-learning (+15.9%). Fastest-shrinking industries were newspapers (-28.4%), retail (-15.5%), building materials (-14.2%), and automotive (-12.8%).

While the chart at top of the previously linked page raises question, the one below it may prove to be even more startling. The growth in health care can’t be all that comforting, part of it likely due to an aging Baby Boomer population. Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals, automotive, construction, real estate, retail and others have tanked, while public policy, the Internet, consulting and even think tanks are growing. The chart below certainly may give you something to think about.

Source

Bespoke has the breakdown of best starts to the year.

Rob Schmitz

Apple got a lot of attention recently over conditions in the Chinese factories that make its iPhones and iPads. The public radio show “This American Life” aired an electrifying account of one man’s visit to several factories. The man was Mike Daisey, a storyteller who is widely credited with making people think differently about how their Apple products are made.

It’s Daisey’s story about visiting a Foxconn factory in China where Apple manufactures iPhones and other products. With the help of a Chinese translator, Daisey finds underage workers, poisoned workers, maimed workers, and dismal factory conditions for those who make iPhones and iPads.

“I’m telling you that in my first two hours at my first day at that gate I met workers who were 14 years old…13 years old…12,” Daisey recounted. “Do you really think Apple doesn’t know?”

Daisey told This American Life and numerous other news outlets that his account was all true.

But it wasn’t.

Read the rest here.

Data does not lie; and this data point is pretty disgusting…

A good read on our crude reality…..

Now matter how ‘perty’ you make that pig; it is after all a pig…..