Tag: emergency powers

Despotism Is The New Normal: Looming Threats to Freedom in 2022

“Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution.”—Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

Despotism has become our new normal.

Digital tyranny, surveillance. Intolerance, cancel culture, censorship. Lockdowns, mandates, government overreach. Supply chain shortages, inflation. Police brutality, home invasions, martial law. The loss of bodily integrity, privacy, autonomy.

These acts of tyranny by an authoritarian government have long since ceased to alarm or unnerve us. We have become desensitized to government brutality, accustomed to government corruption, and unfazed by the government’s assaults on our freedoms.

This present trajectory is unsustainable. The center cannot hold.

The following danger points pose some of the greatest threats to our collective and individual freedoms now and in the year to come.

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New EU Law Would Allow Seizure Of Private Property During Pandemic Emergencies

The European Union is reportedly drafting legislation that would allow Brussels to take private property in the event of a pandemic emergency.

In an unpublished New Year message to his staff, the EU’s Intermarket Commissioner, Thierry Breton has laid out his plans for the creation of a “Single Market Emergency Instrument” which will include a “toolbox of measures” in order to guarantee the “security of supply during a crisis”.

The proposed measures are likely to be put forward during the spring and could include export controls and new powers that allow the EU to collect data from businesses on their production process, their stockpiles and supply chains for their products, POLITICO reports.

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North Carolina Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Reined In Emergency Executive Powers

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill on Monday that proposed to restore checks and balances to his executive powers, which have been extended amid the CCP virus pandemic.

“North Carolina is emerging from a global pandemic with lives saved and a strong economy because of effective statewide measures to protect public health under the Emergency Management Act,” the Democrat said on his veto.  “Critical decisions about stopping deadly diseases, or responding to any other emergency, should stay with experts in public health and safety, not a committee of partisan politicians.”

Cooper declared a state of emergency in response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic in March 2020, a decision that heralded a year of lockdowns throughout the state and country.

The Emergency Powers Accountability Act (EPAA), or House Bill 264, would have required Cooper to get “concurrence of the Council of State” before “exercising certain authorities.”

The Council of State consists of bipartisan senior executive offices such as the Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Agriculture Commissioner, and the Secretary of State.

The bill would have created a definition for the concurrence of the Council of State under the EPAA, which would clarify how Cooper proceeds in seeking concurrence before acting.

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20 Years of Government-Sponsored Tyranny: The Rise of the Security-Industrial Complex from 9/11 to COVID-19

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN

What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

What began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act  has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation has been locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, police violence and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

The rights embodied in the Constitution, if not already eviscerated, are on life support.

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Governor Newsom Will Not Lift State of Emergency in California on June 15 as Promised

Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday announced he will not lift the state of emergency in California on June 15 as he previously promised.

California’s Covid restrictions will be lifted on June 15, however Newsom is hanging on to his broad powers by keeping the emergency in effect.

“The emergency remains in effect after June 15,” Newsom said on Friday during his vaccine lottery event.

“The one thing I am certain of is there’s uncertainty in the future,” Newsom said.

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