While most sovereignty-conscious Americans are awaiting some overt sign that will signal the commencement of a brave new age of global socialism, the infrastructure for our collective enslavement is quietly being laid, city by city, all across this still sleeping nation.

Almost every city council in America has adopted such sweeping emergency powers or is seriously considering granting themselves those powers.

The replacement of elected government officials with unelected administrators is metropolitan government. Metropolitan government was exposed in the late 50s by Jo Hindman (Terrible 1313, Terrible 1313 Revisited, The Metrocrats and Blame it on Metro) and Joe Spenner in the early 90s (Rockefeller Regionalism: The Shadow Behind Oregon's LCDC). This unconstitutional form of government is being implemented all over the country -- particularly in the nation's more densely populated areas such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle.

Metro is pitched to citizens as a way to reduce taxes by streamlining government services in overlapping city, state and county jurisdictions. Unwitting citizens then vote to provide for the hiring of “expert professionals” to eliminate costly redundancies in government services. Once in office, these unelected “experts” begin exercising ever-increasing amounts of policy-making power over an ever-widening spectrum of municipal activity.

The true purpose of metropolitan government, as stated by its architects, is to replace elected officials who are answerable to the citizen at the voting booth with hired professionals who are answerable only to those few people in a community who are able use their power and influence to secure the appointment of preferred professionals.

According to several municipal emergency powers ordinances, the city manager, upon assumption of emergency powers in a declared state of emergency, is empowered to shut down utilities, close stores, barricade streets, declare curfews, ration food and other necessary items and mobilize police agencies and soldiers. The non-elected city manager will also be the point man to interface with federal agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In a declared state of national emergency, FEMA has been granted, through legislation and executive orders such as EO 12919, the power to take control of and administrate crises on a national level.

FEMA will dictate the activities of your emergency-empowered administrator and will allocate emergency funding to your community based upon its level of cooperation with federal agencies.

While most of America sleeps and while those of us who are awake are awaiting an obvious sign that the New World Order has arrived, the groundwork for the military occupation of America is being laid by our local leaders.

-- TomK(mich) (tjk@cac.net), April 08, 2002

Answers

Tom, I share some of your concerns; however I also have concerns about elected officials running a huge "business" like a city or county.

In my county, we've had some good commissioners over the years, and we've had some real bad ones. One common denominator, though, is that most of them seem to be inadequately trained in business and social issues, and hence are unable to do a really good job at running the county.

There is a movement afoot to change our three full time commissioners to five part timers, with a county manager doing the nuts and bolts work, while retaining the commissioners' power to set policy.

I see this as generally a good idea, though I have seen similar setups in cities where the city manager controls the city council by sheer personal power. The city councilors seem fearful of even opening their mouths in opposition to the manager.

It's an interesting problem, and I sure don't know the best answer.

I suppose if the county, or city, manager turns out to be bad, the commissioners/councilors could be forced to fire him, or lose their next election. Or get recalled.

-- joj (joj@home.org), April 08, 2002.

As far as "According to several municipal emergency powers ordinances, the city manager, upon assumption of emergency powers in a declared state of emergency, is empowered to shut down utilities, close stores, barricade streets, declare curfews, ration food and other necessary items and mobilize police agencies and soldiers. The non-elected city manager will also be the point man to interface with federal agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). ", isn't it the emergency power ordinance more of a problem than the presence or absence of a city manager form of government?

-- joj (joj@home.org), April 08, 2002.

Yes, Roanoke Virginia has one and her name is Darlene Burchum(Big Red). She has also totaled two city Ford Explorers, left the scene of an accident with injuries and been arrested twice for DWI. But they think she is a hero.

-- Joel Rosen (JoelnBecky@webtv.net), April 09, 2002.

joj, the "EPO" is probably more dangerous than the city manger being in charge and after reading more on this I question if this could happen. In my township the board of trustees hired a city manger about 5 yrs ago,no body liked how he did things and they fired him and we relected a township supervisor. So I am wondering now exactly how a city manger could have all out power, unless it is different in big city as mentioned in the article. Worth a thought though.

-- TomK(Mich) (tjk@cac.net), April 11, 2002.