Pelosi: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

via: infowars

House Committee On Ways & Means Republicans
November 7, 2009

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.  The  JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said:  “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail.  It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

– – – – – – – – – -

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

– – – – – – – – – -

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses.  Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties.  The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration.  Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates.  Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the  Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment?

via: infowars

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?

Nadene Ghouri
Daily Mail
June 1, 2009

The farmers, faces wizened and browned from hours in the harsh Gujarati sun, lower a bucket into a well. It’s a solid-brick cylinder 100ft deep. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on the scorched earth. In the baked fields, maize and cotton have been planted. But none of the crops look very healthy. Leaves are wilted and tinged brown. Nothing has been watered for months.

Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms.

‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says.

As the bucket returns to the top, we can make out a white, almost oily-looking film on the surface of the liquid, which has formed little snowflake shapes.

She scoops up some water and asks us to smell it. It has an odour so acrid it catches in the back of our throats, making us cough.

‘We can’t irrigate our crops with it,’ she says. ‘It’s the water of death. It kills most crops we put it on.’ ‘Gone bad,’ says the man who brought up the pail.

But this is much more than a tale of big business versus poor farmers in the Third World. GFL is part of a worldwide carbon-trading scheme, centred in London, which is supposed to be helping to save the planet from global warming. On paper the scheme, which was ratified under the Kyoto agreement and supervised by the UN, looks like an efficient way to cut global carbon emissions. However, a Live investigation has exposed a series of major failings and loopholes in the scheme.

Four years ago, GFL installed technology to reduce the greenhouse gases it produces and was given a vast financial reward by the UN; a UK company was also given considerable sums for investing in the project. However, far from being a flagship green factory, GFL stands accused of poisoning the local environment.

Our own extensive tests by an independent laboratory showed dangerous contaminants in the land and water around the factory – chemicals that match those pollutants produced by GFL. Interviews with the people living nearby reveal their livelihoods and health have been severely affected. We found that the auditors who were supposed to verify the carbon savings were paid for by GFL, a stipulation of the scheme, and they checked only for greenhouse gases, caring little about other pollution.

Read entire article

ABC News Reports On Secret Meeting Of The Rich, Yet Ignores Bilderberg Completely

via: infowars

ABC News today devoted a prominently featured three page story to a “secret meeting” of rich philanthropists which took place earlier this month in New York, and yet one of the biggest news corporations in America was completely silent during a far more important meeting of around 150 of the world’s powerbrokers at the Bilderberg conference last week.

At time of press, the ABC News story is the second top story on the ABCNews.com website under the headline, America’s Richest Givers’ Secret Meeting.

“Under a cloak of secrecy, some of the world’s wealthiest people gathered in an unprecedented meeting early this month in New York City possibly to coordinate strategies for giving their vast fortunes to charity in the midst of the financial crisis,” begins the report, before descending into a deluge of fawning idolatry about how people like David Rockefeller, Bill Gates and Ted Turner, who has repeatedly called for world population to be reduced by a shocking 95% as well as a one child policy instituted in the west, are committed to saving the poor from the ravages of the economic crisis with their benign acts of philanthropy.

The report states that the meeting is “enough to spark the imaginations of conspiracy theorists everywhere,” linking to a previous ABC News report that implies people who believe that powerful individuals conspire to rule the world in secret are probably mentally ill.

The most vomit inducing paragraph of the whole article arrives when ABC asks, “There remain as many questions about the meeting’s details as there are about the logistics behind its organization. How did some of the world’s most public figures coordinate their schedules, travel, and security with no one in media knowing about it?”

Well how indeed did they manage to do that I wonder? 150+ of the global elite manage to do it on a routine basis every single year without barely a whimper from the corporate media, despite the location of the Bilderberg meeting leaking in advance every time.

They manage to do it because the corporate media was castrated decades ago and is merely a PR machine for the establishment, which is why they dutifully follow orders not to report on what would otherwise be a gargantuan story of worldwide interest in the form of the secret Bilderberg Group meetings.

ABC News is owned by the Walt Disney Company, Vice Chairman of which is Roy Disney, nephew of Walt Disney himself. Roy Disney is a Bilderberg member, having attended the secretive cabal’s 1999 conference in Sintra, Portugal.

Since all Bilderberg members adhere to “Chatham House Rules,” forbidding the revelation of anything that was discussed, it’s unsurprising that ABC refused to report on the global elite’s annual confab in Greece near Athens last week, a story that dwarves this much vaunted “meeting of the rich” in terms of both the number and the influence of the numerous powerbrokers who attended.

Bilderberg 2009 coverage was left to a gaggle of alternative media citizen journalists who were harassed, stalked, detained and physically assaulted every step of the way by secret police and security goons at the behest of Bilderberg.

ABC News’ “meeting of the rich” exclusive is a pathetic attempt at convincing its declining audience that the corporate media has any interest in uncovering the secret agenda of the elite, when in reality the story is nothing more than a sophistic exercise in ass kissing and creeping adulation for people like David Rockefeller and Ted Turner, who are portrayed as philanthropic saviors of the planet, when they are in fact nothing more than globalist scum intent on destroying U.S. sovereignty and eliminating us “useless feeders” by means of population reduction programs which they have routinely advocated.

Tennessee speeders could get fingerprinted

via: infowars

Bill ignites debate about privacy vs. cost savings

Motorists stopped for traffic violations in Tennessee could be fingerprinted if state lawmakers approve a bill pending in the legislature.

Currently, when drivers are cited during traffic stops, police officers ask for the driver’s signature on the ticket, but the proposed bill would allow police departments to eliminate signatures and collect fingerprints.

Supporters say collecting fingerprints would save money and help police determine whether the driver is wanted for a criminal offense, but opponents worry that it allows the government to tread on individual privacy rights.

“The way I see it, if they take your fingerprint, they have access to your history and that’s an invasion of privacy,” said Martha Simms, 27, a mother of two who recently got a speeding ticket in Davidson County.

State Sen. Joe Haynes and State Rep. Mike Stewart co-sponsored the bill, which gives police departments the choice of collecting a signature or a fingerprint, or collecting a signature and a fingerprint. The bill has been approved by the state House of Representatives, and senators will vote on the measure Wednesday.

The bill, if passed, will take effect on July 1. At that time, any police department within the state could require fingerprinting as a means of identification, said Haynes, a Goodlettsville Democrat. “It’s their discretion,” he said.

Metro would use prints

If the bill is approved, the Metro Nashville Police Department plans to start requiring fingerprints by the end of the year. Police reports would be filed electronically, as would traffic and misdemeanor citations.

“This police department intends to use the fingerprint the same way as a signature is currently used,” Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said. “If a person who has stolen someone’s identity gives a wrong name, an officer will be able to catch that immediately. And, if they have an outstanding warrant, be it for a misdemeanor or a serious felony, an officer will be able to see that as well.”

(2 of 2)
Instead of purchasing electronic signature pads to allow motorists to sign for traffic tickets, Metro wants to use electronic fingerprint readers because they cost about $500,000 less than signature pads.

 

“It makes sense for police to ultimately use an electronic method of keeping track of their data, and fingerprinting is less expensive than using signature identification software,” said Stewart, a Nashville Democrat.

But citizen Simms rejects the cost-saving argument. “We’re already paying taxes anyway and they always go up regardless. So, why not spend a little more and buy the signature pads instead,” Simms said.

In Metro, 151,587 traffic citations were issued in 2007. On average, Metro police say, between 12,000 and 13,000 moving violations are issued per month.

Chris Stanley, 19, a student at Nashville Auto Diesel College, has received two tickets since moving to Nashville a year ago. “I wouldn’t give them my fingerprint,” he said. “They would have to arrest me.”

According to Aaron, someone who refuses to provide a fingerprint will be arrested.

“It would be the same thing as a person not signing for a citation if they were stopped today,” he said. “This department has no plans to create a database for all these fingerprints. They won’t be captured and kept forever.”

Legislator is skeptical

If police departments use the fingerprints as Metro intends, then that’s enough reassurance for Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“As long as the police department is ensuring that it will not create a database using the fingerprints collected on traffic citations and that those fingerprints will be used only to identify the person being stopped and for no other purposes,” Weinberg said, “then the police department appears to be using the technology appropriately.”

But Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Knoxville Republican, is skeptical and takes issue with the legislation. “If someone said this 15 to 20 years ago, people would be rioting about it. Now it just seems like a lot of people are giving up and giving away their freedoms,” Campfield said. “It’s scary. I really think that these fingerprints will be used to create a database eventually, if not right away. If you don’t think it is, then you’re just kidding yourself.”

If the bill passes, Tennessee would join other states and cities that have adopted fingerprinting for traffic citations.

The police department in Green Bay, Wis., has been fingerprinting traffic offenders for two years, said Lt. Mark Hellman. Some citizens were concerned at first, he said.

“I think they saw that it wasn’t that big of deal, and that the ones who were most worried about it were likely the ones who were doing something wrong,” Hellmann said. “What they didn’t understand was that a routine traffic stop on the street is an arrest, technically, even if you aren’t taken into physical custody, and during an arrest, you are fingerprinted.”

Police in Phoenix have been collecting fingerprints since 1995, using them to prevent identity theft and to identify immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Instead of purchasing electronic signature pads to allow motorists to sign for traffic tickets, Metro wants to use electronic fingerprint readers because they cost about $500,000 less than signature pads.

“It makes sense for police to ultimately use an electronic method of keeping track of their data, and fingerprinting is less expensive than using signature identification software,” said Stewart, a Nashville Democrat.

But citizen Simms rejects the cost-saving argument. “We’re already paying taxes anyway and they always go up regardless. So, why not spend a little more and buy the signature pads instead,” Simms said.

In Metro, 151,587 traffic citations were issued in 2007. On average, Metro police say, between 12,000 and 13,000 moving violations are issued per month.

Chris Stanley, 19, a student at Nashville Auto Diesel College, has received two tickets since moving to Nashville a year ago. “I wouldn’t give them my fingerprint,” he said. “They would have to arrest me.”

According to Aaron, someone who refuses to provide a fingerprint will be arrested.

“It would be the same thing as a person not signing for a citation if they were stopped today,” he said. “This department has no plans to create a database for all these fingerprints. They won’t be captured and kept forever.”

Legislator is skeptical

If police departments use the fingerprints as Metro intends, then that’s enough reassurance for Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“As long as the police department is ensuring that it will not create a database using the fingerprints collected on traffic citations and that those fingerprints will be used only to identify the person being stopped and for no other purposes,” Weinberg said, “then the police department appears to be using the technology appropriately.”

But Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Knoxville Republican, is skeptical and takes issue with the legislation. “If someone said this 15 to 20 years ago, people would be rioting about it. Now it just seems like a lot of people are giving up and giving away their freedoms,” Campfield said. “It’s scary. I really think that these fingerprints will be used to create a database eventually, if not right away. If you don’t think it is, then you’re just kidding yourself.”

If the bill passes, Tennessee would join other states and cities that have adopted fingerprinting for traffic citations.

The police department in Green Bay, Wis., has been fingerprinting traffic offenders for two years, said Lt. Mark Hellman. Some citizens were concerned at first, he said.

“I think they saw that it wasn’t that big of deal, and that the ones who were most worried about it were likely the ones who were doing something wrong,” Hellmann said. “What they didn’t understand was that a routine traffic stop on the street is an arrest, technically, even if you aren’t taken into physical custody, and during an arrest, you are fingerprinted.”

Police in Phoenix have been collecting fingerprints since 1995, using them to prevent identity theft and to identify immigrants who are in the country illegally.

The Next Bailout: Faltering Minority Radio Broadcasters

via: thehill

High-ranking House Democrats are urging the Treasury Department to prop up minority-owned broadcasters suffering from a lack of capital and lost advertising revenue amid the economic slump.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is leading an effort to convince Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to take “decisive action” by extending credit to this sector of the broadcasting industry.

Clyburn and other senior members, including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), argue that minority-owned broadcasters are sound businesses, but that the recession could undermine the government’s efforts to diversify the airwaves.

A number of members from the Congressional Black Caucus signed the letter, too.

“While many jobs are at stake, a more important principle — the government’s fundamental interest in promoting a diversity of voices, including service to underserved communities — is severely threatened,” the members write in a draft of a letter that was scheduled to be sent Tuesday.

The letter comes as some of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, jockey to repay government bailout money. As banks seek a way out from the government’s restrictions, other industries struggle and seek government support. Some firms seeking to repay the government argue that the government’s restrictions have burdened their businesses.

 The congressmen suggest the Treasury Department could provide access to capital to minority-owned broadcasters, which they say represent less than 7 percent of full-power radio stations and a “negligible” ownership of television stations.

“They are looking for continued access to capital to continue their otherwise fundamentally sound operations,” the members write.

The letter suggests Treasury could set up a credit facility specific to the industry, similar to the government’s efforts to support auto suppliers, or possibly set up a program for bridge financing and government-backed loans until the economy improves.

“In addition to the credit crisis, also weighing heavily on minority broadcasters is a significant decline in advertising revenues, particularly the loss of automobile advertising,” the congressmen write.

The members are asking for a meeting with the Treasury Department and minority-owned broadcast entities and representatives from the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters.

Other members signing the letter are Democratic Reps. Bobby Rush (Ill.), Edolphus Towns (N.Y.), Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.), Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), G.K. Butterfield (N.C.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), Lynn Woolsey (Calif.) and Bennie Thompson (Miss.)

Zadari: Osama was an “Operator” for the United States

via: infowars

In an interview, NBC’s David Gregory completely ignores Pakistan president Asif Ali Zadari when he declares that Osama bin Laden was an “operator” for the United States. Gregory wants to know if Zadari believes Osama is alive. He wants to know why Pakistan has not gone after Bin Laden.

Before “everything changed” on September 11, 2001, the corporate media published truthful stories about Osama bin Laden and his relationship with the CIA. “As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar — the MAK — which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war,” Michael Moran wrote for MSNBC on August 24, 1998. “What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.”

If flu threat rises, CDC wants ‘pandemic coordinator’ in workplace

Business continuity plans could be key to corporate survival

April 30, 2009 (Computerworld) If the World Health Organization (WHO) raises the pandemic threat alert to Level 6 — it’s already just one notch below that at Level 5 — companies that are now scrambling to figure out business continuity issues will have to do more than tell sick employees to stay home and healthy ones to wash their hands.

A Level 6 alert means that company officials will be asked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to undertake a number of efforts to fight any pandemic — including the appointment of a workplace pandemic coordinator or team.

The coordinator would be responsible for monitoring employees to ensure they follow basic rules of hygiene, such as washing hands, and 

to make sure that breathing masks are available. And if a worker becomes sick, the pandemic monitor is supposed to ensure they go home, according to Jack Sotallaro, director of education at DRI International Inc. in Conway, Ark.

“Going to a Level 5 pretty [the current level] much says you’re able to pass the flu back and forth from people and that there’s every possibility you’ll go to a pandemic level,” said Sotallaro, whose organization educates and certifies companies for business continuity planning.

The real issue, however, may not be sick employees, but an inability to get supplies and deliveries, he said.

“If you’re in a city or a locality that gets to pandemic levels of infection — and it doesn’t have to be everywhere — you’re going to see issues like suppliers not being able to get deliveries to you because they’re sick. It’s going to be a regional issue, even if your organization is not directly affected by the flu,” Sotallaro said.

And if the flu does strike a corporation, plans will be needed that allow IT workers to manage computer systems from home, Sotallaro said. Otherwise, there isn’t much choice but to have them in the office.

“Obviously, if a company’s only plan is to relocate [IT staff] to another site, they would be in trouble,” Sotallaro said. “But I would think most businesses that have a business continuity management program in place should have the basics. …”

In the meantime, he said, companies need to ensure that employees observe basic hygiene rules and wash their hands often. They should also already have an influenza or pandemic officer chosen to monitor the health of employees to determine if someone on-site has been infected.

“They’re keeping an eye out for anyone sick and encouraging [them] to go home. Anyone who comes to work with a fever has pretty much infected anyone within six feet of them,” he said..

Kim Elliott, deputy director of the Trust for America’s Health, a Washington-based nonprofit public health advocacy group, said that if the H1N1 swine flu epidemic reaches the level of the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, companies could see 40% of their workforce stay home, either because they’re sick or caring for family members who are. That figure also includes workers who stay home to avoid getting sick, even if they feel OK.

“It’s too early to tell,” Elliott said. “We don’t know how bad this disease will play out. It could mutate and become something much more severe or take a hiatus with the warm weather and come back with a vengeance in the fall.” Continue reading . . .

Flashback: Another Flu Pandemic Causing “Accident” Occurred in 2005

via: infowars

Every time there is a pandemic scare, it comes from a laboratory

Previous to revelations just weeks ago that American vaccine company Baxter Inc “accidentally” shipped out vaccines contaminated with live avian flu virus, a similar incident was reported in 2005.

In April of that year, both the New Scientist and AP reported that the virus that caused the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic, which killed 1 million to 4 million people, was “accidentally” released by a lab in the US, and sent all over the world in test kits.

The New Scientist report states:

The flu testing kits were sent to some 3700 labs between October 2004 and February 2005 by the College of American Pathologists (CAP), a professional body which helps pathology laboratories improve their accuracy, by sending them unidentified samples of various germs to identify.

The CAP kits – prepared by private contractor Meridian Bioscience in Cincinnati, US – were to contain a particular strain of influenza A – the viral family that causes most flu worldwide. But instead of choosing a strain from the hundreds of recently circulating influenza A viruses, the firm chose the 1957 pandemic strain.

Because the 1957 H2 flu strain was replaced by another new strain in 1968, anyone born after that date has no immunity to it.

“…any escape of the virus in the test kits could be as lethal to them as the Asian flu of 1957.” the report stated at the time.

Because such test kits are routine and do not contain dangerous viruses, they are not handed at a high level of biological containment. Therefore the chances of the virus escaping the lab were high and scientists scrambled to find and destroy the potentially lethal samples.

Despite these facts, the federal government downplayed the possibility of foul play. From the AP report:

Dr. Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said her agency was notified of the situation on Friday morning. She also said officials strongly doubted that someone deliberately planted the strain or that it was an act of bioterrorism.

“It wouldn’t be a smart way to start a pandemic to send it to laboratories, because we have people well trained in biocontainment,” Dr. Cox said.

The New Scientist report also points to another “accident” in 1970 when a H1 flu strain, the cause of the 1918 pandemic, was believed to have escaped from a faulty batch of live flu vaccine prepared in a Russian lab.

Just last month, health authorities and industry groups reviewing European lab safety standards concluded in a new report that research on dangerous pathogens needs to be more strictly monitored.

With all these “accidents” in mind, in addition to reports of the 1918 “Spanish flu” having originated at Fort Riley in Kansas, further scares such as the 1976 swine flu incident which originated at a military base, and clear evidence of attempts by the military to culture influenza as a bio weapon, handling reconstructed versions of lethal strains at less than the maximum level of containment, it is absolutely essential that any new outbreak be questioned with this information in mind.

Swine Flu Scare Will Be Used As Precedent For More Big Government

via: infowars

Repeat of 1976 fearmongering campaign in full swing

“Step back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking” is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a precedent for big government intrusion.

“It makes me think back to 1976, the first year I served in the Congress,” Paul has said in a video update. “We had a vote on the swine flu. Back then there was panic, they said it was going to sweep the nation and they rapidly came up with some flu shots and the government was going to inoculate everybody and save the world from this disaster.”

“It turned out that our instincts were correct.” the Congressman, also a medical physician, commented. “Not only did we think that the government should be involved in making medical decisions… but the flu came, the flu went and one person died, except for those individuals that died from getting the flu vaccine.”

Earlier this week we reported on the events of 1976, highlighting the fact that this last significant outbreak of swine flu in the U.S. originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

President Gerald Ford and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (a man who has long standing intimate ties with the big pharma companies that have and will reap millions in profits from these scares) instituted a mass nationwide vaccination program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. However, the program was stopped short after over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a severe paralyzing nerve disease, were reported. Officially 30 people died as a direct result of the vaccinations, though the real figure is generally thought to have been much higher.

At the time Congressman Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote down the vaccination program. His comments were recorded in the book Swine Flu Expose, by Eleanora I. McBean, Ph.D., N.D.

Paul described the move as “a shocking misuse of funds …and an evil political maneuver”, “blatant advertising efforts to panic the people into taking Swine Flu shots will fail.” Paul said.

Some of the fearmongering advertisement campaigns from 1976 are featured in the following video:

“Here we are once again, swine flu coming up and everybody is panicking.” Ron Paul says in his latest update.

“This is not to downplay the seriousness of it. Some people have died, some people might die, yet we’ve had no deaths in this country, there’s seven or eight cases up in New York, but none have even been hospitalised and yet it’s practically like we’ve been attacked by nuclear weapons.”

The Congressman put the current panic in perspective by pointing out that last year alone there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis with the number of annual deaths last recorded in the hundreds.

Paul then opined on how the scare will once again be pounced upon to bolster and further empower big government. He referred to Janet Napolitano’s announcement Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security had started “passive surveillance protocols to screen people coming into the country.”

“How did the Department of Homeland Security get into the medical business? It’s just totally out of control,” Paul said, describing the situation as an open door invitation to allow the federal government to deal with medical problems.

The big question is ‘Does a bigger government always solve these problems?’ No, they usually make things much worse.

Watch the video: