Prepped for What?

Last Friday, March 16, this little Executive Order (12919) was signed into law and nothing was really mentioned about the fact that the government could take over all security, economic, medical and sustainment resources (food, water, housing) at its whim.  You can read it in its entirety here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness.  

Even though it was part of the “Friday Document Dumps”, those bills that just need a signature and have been sitting on the desk for a week or so because they aren’t as pressing as a resolution regarding Syria, let’s say, it is still an important document that can affect every citizen in the United States in regard to an international or national emergency.  Presidents have updated and signed the national defense resources preparedness EO 8248, issued in 1939, but there is a difference in this one.  Not only does it place all these under the control of DHS, instead of FEMA, but this phrase was added in Section 201(b) “under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.”  

This EO ensures that we are prepared in peacetime and in a national emergency to direct resources to the national defense, but it still smacks of a path towards nationalization. I use the term "at its whim" rather loosely and flippantly, but it is not outside the scope of the government to look for sources favorable to its own interests and not those of its constituents. We just need a populist president who doesn’t care about the constitution, but wants to pare down the debt, implement socialist principles, and use national resources to fund whatever he (or she) deems necessary. President Kirchner has already started down this path in Argentina; why should North America be any different from South America?