by James Glaser
July 24, 2002

We Americans had better start to wake up to this new government program that those in Washington are so agog about. This program called Terrorism Information and Prevention System or TIPS is about to make "Snitches" out of several million Americans and create a distrust in this country that could hurt us for years to come.

Who don't you like? Maybe just a little "TIP" will put them in their place. Who will these "snoopers" be? Truck drivers, bus drivers, train conductors, mail carriers, utility workers will be telling the government all they see that they feel is suspicious or unusual. Even though Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge denies it, America will be creating a network of citizens spying on each other.

Will there be abuses? You can count on that. People that never had power will now be able to put suspicion on any that they have held a grudge with. Do any of you think that just maybe a animal rights person could find the actions of some hunters suspicious? What about that guy that ended up with that woman you were in love with? Hey, how about that guy at the plant that wants to get the same promotion that you do? He does do some "unusual" stuff our government should really know about.

People tend to imagine lots of stuff about people that they don't like and WOW! What if those people were of a different color or faith? Well right there you can tell that they are suspicious. Most of the time these innocent Americans will be cleared in no time, but how does the boss feel when the FBI comes to check them out? There are also that percentage of people that will be charged falsely and it will ruin there lives.

During WW2 the Germans got people to snitch off the Jews and that is what will happen here, maybe not the Jews, but we all know how really bad those Environmentalists are for our economy or how about American Indians. Some of those Indians almost look white so we will need those snitches if we want to rid ourselves of every last one. It couldn't happen in Germany, but it did and things like that could happen here.

When those in Washington are so scared of the citizens of our country that they resort to trying to divide us, things have gotten out of hand.

Sure 3000 died from a terrible terrorist attack, but 15,000 die from drunk drivers each year and drunk drivers are not a accident. Do you want to be the one to tell those families that lost a loved one to a drunk, that their loss isn't as bad as those that lost a loved one to terrorism? 100,000 die from mistakes in hospitals and countless thousands die from the lack of money needed for medicine.

You want to know what the difference is, poll numbers. George Bush and his Administration figured out that the shock of a big hit like September 11 would take the minds of the American people off these other equally tragic deaths and Washington would not have to deal with these politically hard problems. Keeping America on the Terrorism track has been a real job for George and his people. Constant warnings of imminent attacks, mass arrests of potential foreign terrorists, putting up a prison for Afghan war criminals in Cuba, the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and now a plan to get Millions of citizens reporting on the rest of us, have all been done to keep the minds of every American Citizen off the myriad of domestic problems that our country has to solve and just maybe President Bush will be able to keep this up long enough to get two terms and damn those that we have to kill or put away forever to do that.

Sure Terrorism is a big problem that America faces, but we have faced bigger problems all through our history and never has any American President gone to the extremes that George Bush has. Every other American President has worked with the American people to solve our problems in a way that preserved our freedoms and the reason that we all love this country. George Bush is using every tactic that he can to divide this country and take away those very freedoms that we all cherish.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."