MI Rep Opsommer Blasts High Costs of Passports, Senator Schumer for Border Plan

GOPHouse.gov December 2, 2011

State Rep. Paul Opsommer, Chair of the Michigan House Transportation Committee, today criticized Senator Charles Schumer’s recently announced border plan, calling it “more of the same half-baked federal solutions that make the very problems they created even worse.”

Opsommer pointed out that it has been roughly five years since the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report saying that not only could the federal government not justify the high price of passports, but that they didn’t even have a process in place to make sure passports hadn’t been turned into a profit center.

To add insult to injury, federal passport prices have been increased since that report was released, and Schumer was quoted by WGRZ Channel 2 as saying that the cost of new mobile application centers would not increase prices because “It’ll come out of the fee, you pay for the fee, and there’s enough money in the fees to pay for these things.”

Opsommer said that statement proves that once again they are charging too much.

“If you can start buying and outfitting all these new high tech mobile homes without raising prices because existing fees already cover it, then by definition the fees were too high to begin with,” said Opsommer, R-DeWitt. “If the federal government is determined to use behavioral economics to accomplish their goals, if anything they should be making traditional federal passports less expensive and fully tax deductible.  The federal government needs to stop using behavioral economics to try to manipulate people away from traditional federal passports through high costs and unjustifiable delays in processing.”

Opsommer also disagreed on the reason why NEXUS cards and Enhanced Driver’s Licenses were failing to catch on, and said that the mobile busses would be a waste of time.

“If Schumer wants to use his clout in Washington to help border states such as Michigan, he should be reining in federal bureaucrats who are trying to force citizens to accept long range wireless computer chips in our driver’s licenses,” said Opsommer. “Those RFID chips are different than the ones used in federal passports, and Schumer’s refusal to let states create unobtrusive trusted traveler documents is the real reason why Enhanced Drivers Licenses have been such a dismal failure in New York and Michigan,”

Opsommer also said that creating more RFID only car lanes is just another example of using behavioral economics to manipulate people into courses of action that they otherwise wouldn’t take.

“People don’t like to feel that they are being pushed around, tracked, and controlled,” said Opsommer.  “If Schumer thinks more RFID lanes is the answer, all he has to do is look at how people responded to the new ‘High Occupancy Toll’ lanes in Georgia.  Trying to make people so miserable to wear them down into compliance won’t work in Michigan, and if you look at states or provinces like Arizona and Saskatchewan that have banned these outright I don’t think they’re going to work elsewhere either.”

Opsommer said that despite resolutions passed both in Michigan and with the National Conference of State Legislators that the federal government refuses to attack the real problem at its most basic level.

“We need to be able to come up with a $25 dollar passport, and a passport that only takes a couple of weeks to process.  Instead we’re charging through the roof for them and having the chips manufactured overseas. If Schumer agrees that international trade is as important as I do, we need to address this problem at its core and not to use it opportunistically to try to force people into something.  I don’t care how many big busses he sends to senior citizen centers or places of employment to try to enroll everyone in his system, it’s not going to work.”

Opsommer concluded by calling on Congress to take control of the Enhanced Driver’s License program away from bureaucrats and to hold the federal Department of State and Department of Homeland Security accountable.

“Let’s keep all of this simple,” said Opsommer. “Make this a priority by getting your passport house in order and start lowering prices.”

Teenage Breasts: Coke and Facebook track teens like cattle and sell it with sex

This is a sophisticated psychological warfare operation advertisement.  The juxtaposition of thin bodies and Coca Cola is quite ironic, don’t you think?   Lets get some obese people in here. Obese people need to be tracked like cattle too!

“Scores of beautiful, wet women are a part of this human tracking matrix, so I should be too.”

Ex-IBM Employee reveals TV Abandoned Analog Band to Make Room for RFID

Clearing out the high power analog tv emissions will improve signal to noise ratio for RFID emitting in the 700MHz band, and potentially allow passive satellite tracking of these RFID signals.

I’m thinking about getting a stainless steel wallet to protect against having any “enhanced” RFID cards tracked or skimmed remotely. Think Geek also carries anti-skimming passport holders and wallets.  I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of stainless mesh against RFID.

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(AFP/dprogram.net) According to a former 31-year IBM employee, the highly-publicized, mandatory switch from analog to digital television is mainly being done to free up analog frequencies and make room for scanners used to read implantable RFID microchips and track people and products throughout the world.

So while the American people, especially those in Texas and other busy border states, have been inundated lately with news reports advising them to hurry and get their expensive passports, “enhanced driver’s licenses,” passport cards and other “chipped” or otherwise trackable identification devices that they are being forced to own, this digital television/RFID connection has been hidden, according to Patrick Redmond.

Redmond, a Canadian, held a variety of jobs at IBM before retiring, including working in the company’s Toronto lab from 1992 to 2007, then in sales support. He has given talks, written a book and produced a DVD on the aggressive, growing use of passive, semi-passive and active RFID chips (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) implanted in new clothing, in items such as Gillette Fusion blades, and in countless other products that become one’s personal belongings. These RFID chips, many of which are as small, or smaller, than the tip of a sharp pencil, also are embedded in all new U.S. passports, some medical cards, a growing number of credit and debit cards and so on. More than two billion of them were sold in 2007.

Whether active, semi-passive or passive, these “transponder chips,” as they’re sometimes called, can be accessed or activated with “readers” that can pick up the unique signal given off by each chip and glean information from it on the identity and whereabouts of the product or person, depending on design and circumstances, as Redmond explained in a little-publicized lecture in Canada last year. AFP just obtained a DVD of his talk.

Noted “Spychips” expert, author and radio host Katherine Albrecht told AMERICAN FREE PRESS that while she’s not totally sure whether there is a rock-solid RFID-DTV link, “The purpose of the switch [to digital] was to free up bandwidth. It’s a pretty wide band, so freeing that up creates a huge swath of frequencies.”

As is generally known, the active chips have an internal power source and antenna; these particular chips emit a constant signal. “This allows the tag to send signals back to the reader, so if I have a RFID chip on me and it has a battery, I can just send a signal to a reader wherever it is,” Redmond stated in the recent lecture, given to the Catholic patriot group known as the Pilgrims of Saint Michael, which also is known for advocating social credit, a dramatic monetary reform plan to end the practice of national governments bringing money into existence by borrowing it, with interest, from private central banks. The group’s publication The Michael Journal advocates having national governments create their own money interest-free. It also covers the RFID issue.

“The increased use of RFID chips is going to require the increased use of the UBF [UHF] spectrum,” Redmond said, hitting on his essential point that TV is going digital for a much different reason than the average person assumes, “They are going to stop using the [UHF] and VHF frequencies in 2009. Everything is going to go digital (in the U.S.). Canada is going to do the same thing.”

Explaining the unsettling crux of the matter, he continued: “The reason they are doing this is that the [UHF-VHF] analog frequencies are being used for the chips. They do not want to overload the chips with television signals, so the chips’ signals are going to be taking those [analog] frequencies. They plan to sell the frequencies to private companies and other groups who will use them to monitor the chips.”

Albrecht responded to that quote only by saying that it sounds plausible, since she knows some chips will indeed operate in the UHF-VHF ranges.

“Well over a million pets have been chipped,” Redmond said, adding that all 31,000 police officers in London have in some manner been chipped as well, much to the consternation of some who want that morning donut without being tracked. London also can link a RFID chip in a public transportation pass with the customer’s name. “Where is John Smith? Oh, he is on subway car 32,” Redmond said.

He added that chips for following automobile drivers – while the concept is being fought by several states in the U.S. which do not want nationalized, trackable driver’s licenses (Real ID ) – is apparently a slam dunk in Canada, where license plates have quietly been chipped. Such identification tags can contain work history, education, religion, ethnicity, reproductive history and much more.

Farm animals are increasingly being chipped; furthermore, “Some 800 hospitals in the U.S. are now chipping their patients; you can turn it down, but it’s available,” he said, adding: “Four hospitals in Puerto Rico have put them in the arms of Alzheimer’s patients, and it only costs about $200 per person.”

VeriChip, a major chip maker (the devices sometimes also are called Spychips) describes its product on its website: “About twice the length of a grain of rice, the device is typically implanted above the triceps area of an individual’s right arm. Once scanned at the proper frequency, the VeriChip responds with a unique 16 digit number which could be then linked with information about the user held on a database for identity verification, medical records access and other uses. The insertion procedure is performed under local anesthetic in a physician’s office and once inserted, is invisible to the naked eye. As an implanted device used for identification by a third party, it has generated controversy and debate.”

The circles will keep widening, Redmond predicts. Chipping children “to be able to protect them,” Redmond said, “is being promoted in the media.” After that, he believes it will come to: chip the military, chip welfare cheats, chip criminals, chip workers who are goofing off, chip pensioners – and then chip everyone else under whatever rationale is cited by government and highly-protected corporations that stand to make billions of dollars from this technology. Meanwhile, the concept is marketed by a corporate media that, far from being a watchdog of the surveillance state, is part of it, much like the media give free publicity to human vaccination programs without critical analysis on possible dangers and side effects of the vaccines.

“That’s the first time I have heard of it,” a Federal Communications Commission official claimed, when AFP asked him about the RFID-DTV issue on June 2. Preferring anonymity, he added: “I am not at all aware of that being a cause (of going to DTV).”

“Nigel Gilbert of the Royal Academy of Engineering said that by 2011 you should be able to go on Google and find out where someone is at anytime from chips on clothing, in cars, in cellphones and inside many people themselves,” Redmond also said.

To read Redmond’s full lecture, go to this online link:

Full Lecture – Click Here

Michigan Rep. Paul Opsommer introduces more resolutions affirming states’ rights

Michigan Rep. Opsommer’s affirmation of states’ rights is a big step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, but the affirmation of the 10th amendment could be worded more strongly.

“We also urge the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states”

No, we DEMAND it and our police and national guard will not enforce it.

I commend him though.  If all our congress critters had guts like him we wouldn’t be staring down a tyannical, bloated federal government.

From Michigan rep Paul Opsommer:

STATES RIGHT’S UPDATE

Thank you for previously contacting my office regarding the following related resolutions:

HCR 004 (10^th Amendment)

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(32aak0ulp3yshc45w0xy5z45))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2009-HCR-0004&query=on

HCR 006 (No RFID chips in Drivers Licenses / foreign data sharing)

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(32aak0ulp3yshc45w0xy5z45))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2009-HCR-0006&query=on

HCR 009 (2^nd Amendment)

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(32aak0ulp3yshc45w0xy5z45))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2009-HCR-0009&query=on

HCR 014 (No GPS “Gas Tax”)

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(32aak0ulp3yshc45w0xy5z45))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2009-HCR-0014&query=on

· As an update, HCR 004 has yet to get a hearing in the House, but Senator Patterson has introduced SCR 004 in the Senate, where it has a better chance of being heard. I am fully supportive of SCR 004. If passed in the Senate, SCR 004 would be sent to the House.

· HCR 006 had a hearing and has PASSED the Michigan House. It now goes to the Michigan Senate to be voted on there. Enhanced Driver’s Licenses (EDLs) have already been issued in Washington State, and may become available in Michigan as early as the end of April.

· HCR 009 and HCR 014 have yet to get a hearing.

I will make sure to pass along any other updates as I get them.

Related News Articles:

http://themorningsun.com/articles/2009/03/29/news/srv0000004996396.txt

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/03/25/edls-on-the-ropes/

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/2010wintergames/enhanced+drivers+licences+hold+Civil+liberties+groups/1423044/story.html