June 19, 2008...4:11 am

Microchipping children-offshore oil drill ban -No more credit cards

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well here’s something new! Gas stations turn down credit cards!

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – When gas station manager Roger Randolph realized it was costing him money each time someone filled up with $4-a-gallon gas, he hung a sign on his pumps: “No more credit cards.”

He may be the first in West Virginia to ban plastic, but gas station operators nationwide are reporting similar woes as higher prices translate into higher credit card fees the managers must pay, squeezing profits at the pump.

“The more they buy, the more we lose,” said Randolph, who manages Mr. Ed’s Chevron in St. Albans. “Gas prices go up, and our profits go down.”

His complaints target the so-called interchange fee — a percentage of the sale price paid to credit card companies on every transaction. The percentage is fixed — usually at just under 2 percent — but the dollar amount of the fee rises with the price of the goods or services.

As gas tops $4 a gallon, that pushes fees toward 10 cents a gallon..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080618/ap_on_bi_ge/gas_prices_credit_cards

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and yes i totally agree with the president!…………………………

Bush urges Congress to end offshore oil drill ban ………….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a ban on offshore oil drilling, responding to consumer anxiety over soaring gasoline prices with a plan sure to anger environmentalists.

“Every American who drives to work, purchases food or ships a product has felt the effect. And families across our country are looking to Washington for a response,” Bush said.

As average U.S. pump prices pierced the $4-a-gallon ($1.06-a-litre) level for the first time this month, up more than $1 from a year ago, energy policy has become a key issue in the presidential race ahead of November elections.

Bush said opening federal lands off the U.S. coast — where oil drilling has been banned by both a presidential executive order and a congressional moratorium — could yield about 18 billion barrels of oil.

That would meet current U.S. consumption for about 2-1/2 years, but it would likely take a decade or more to find the oil and produce it.

The short-term impact on oil prices is open to debate. The prospect of more energy supply down the road could calm nervous traders who see a looming global oil crunch but any actual supply would be years away, even if Congress acted quickly.

Congress banned most offshore drilling in 1981. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, followed suit with an executive order banning drilling in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080618/bs_nm/bush_energy_price_dc_13;_ylt=Ajb8fyNkZo7l8q8Zr.CeN61v24cA

 

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very interesting! putting chips in kids bags!
This will only work where scanners are available. If someone snatched
a kid from school, all the scanners would say is that the RFID
frequency can’t be located. However a portable scanner, can be used
in a search for the child, provided the school bag is still on the
child. This idea provides very little security to prevent children
from being snatched. Parents better educate themselves better.

http://www.naturaln ews.com/z023445. html

U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot
program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency
identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information
Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips
into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip
would be programmed with a student identification number, and would
be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses.
The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS)
devices.

Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see
whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus,
and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as
an invasion of children’s privacy and a potential risk to their safety.

“There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” said Stephen
Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island chapter.
According to Brown, the school district should already know where its
students are.

“[This program is] a solution in search of a problem,” Brown said.

The school district says that its current plan is no different than
other programs already in place for parents to monitor their
children’s school experience. For example, parents can already check
on their children’s attendance records and what they have for lunch,
said district Superintendent Rosemary Kraeger.

Brown disputed this argument. The school is perfectly entitled to
track its buses, he said, but “it’s a quantitative leap to monitor
children themselves.” He raised the question of whether unauthorized
individuals could use easily available RFID readers to find out
students’ private information and monitor their movements.

Because the pilot program is being provided to the school district at
no cost, it did not require approval from the Rhode Island ethics
commission.

”Next they’ll want to put it IN your children! “For their own good” of course!”

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