Assange Gossip Becomes Gospel Truth?-Mugabe wife sues over diamond story

"A 2008 cable sent by the US ambassador to Harare, reported that Grace Mugabe had profited from illegal diamonds mining." Does that mean she sold illegal diamonds? Does that mean a private opinion gains status as a public fact just because Wikileaks published it? Is this even true that the cable was sent by a US ambassador, just because one to Harare was labelled as coming from a US ambassodor?

You Be The TSA Officer

You are an Officer of the Transportation Security Administration. The people in these 12 pictures are boarding. You can select four of the 12 pictures of people not to search. Give me the numbers of the four pictures you allow to opt out.

Daniel Yeager, a professor at California Western school of law, says airport body searches would violate the 4th Amendment if they were done in a different setting. But case law says airports are "special needs" places where safety requirements override constitutional guarantees.

“The rules are somewhat relaxed so that the government’s mission of making air travel safe can be affected, without being hamstrung by probable cause and warrant requirements,” said Yeager.


Several judges have written that the guarantee of rights should not turn the Constitution into a "suicide pact."

But there is a point on which both Yeager and Tyner agree. This relates to the question of whether a passenger’s decision to travel by air means that they’ve consented to be searched… that they have voluntarily relinquished their 4th Amendment rights.



http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/nov/23/body-law-supports-full-body-scans/

Insight Into The Thinking of An Obama Zombie

For those of you who have not heard of this slang term before, the Urban Dictionary has a definition.

Urban Dictionary-Obama Zombie:

One who has political beliefs motivated by social image. One who refuses to make political decisions independent of the media. Obama Zombies present themselves as very political.

Jill is an Obama Zombie. She threw out her Lysol spray and bought expensive eco-friendly cleaner. Now she doesn't feel guilty. She has one Che Guevara shirt, one Obama shirt, and one Gandhi shirt, all three made in China.

ANDY ROONEY:
"A Gallup poll says that President Obama’s approval rating was at an all-time low. Gallup said that they surveyed over 90,000 Americans for this one poll. I mean, where was I when they were calling people about President Obama? The survey said that only 44 percent of us approve of President Obama’s performance. Well, I surveyed nine of my friends, and eight of them said they liked Obama but didn’t trust Gallup polls. As far as I’m concerned, Obama’s doing the best job he knows how, and it’s good enough for me."

While I will not claim Andy Rooney is the only Obama Zombie, or even the average one, but he may be an exemplar of one. The idea that someone is "doing the best job he knows how," is okay for a student struggling in school, but for a President it is not "good enough."

Obama is an intelligent man, but being satisfied with a mediocre performance is not a realistic option. There is no short bus sitting in front of the White House.

Regarding the polls, it is hard to believe Gallup surveyed 90,000 Americans who vote since a typical survey includes less than 2,000.

Assuming all have a phone, the chance of Rooney getting a call is one in 3444.  If we restricted this to the 131 million voters, Rooney had a one in 1455 chance of being called. If he is unlisted, we can also say he had no chance of being contacted.

Ignoring the opinions of the majority of voters is okay for Democrats and "progressives," but it is not okay in a nation that began with a commitment to the "consent of the governed."

Abraham Lincoln on weighing the preponderance between evil and good.

The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it;but whether it have more of evil, than of good.There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing,especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Speech in the House of Representatives(20 June 1848)

John Whiteaker, 2575 University Street, Eugene OrR 97403 - DID he vote this year?

Obama Organizers Without Informed Consent

The Obama Organizers are using the "Commit To Vote Challenge" Facebook application to collect data. It is done without the informed consent of those who use it.It is a defacto form of spamming & fraud.

Obama '08 to Obama OH NO!

In 2006, our jobless rate ran between 4% and 6%. Since the Democrats took Congress, we have had a stock market crash ruining most workers' retirement funds. From Jan.'09 to Jan.'10, joblessness went from 7.6% to 9.7% because 3.2 million became unemployed.

 

Democrats spent $5 trillion in three years to buy us mortgage failures and pay out bonuses, which Gaither could have prevented when he did the payment of bailouts.

 

Democrat voters need to do some reading on the Bureau of Labor stats, just to start with. Democrats need to stop engaging in class warfare and engage in reality orientation.e

Dudley Vs. Kitzhaber

Watch live streaming video from statesman at livestream.com

statesman on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Who Desecrated My Flag?

It is your "unalienable right" to display your flag in any manner you see fit according to the Declaration of Independence. There was no flag when that was written.

In TEXAS vs. JOHNSON, the highest court in the land held that you can burn your flag. Given how this nation's flag has been desecrated by the violation of citizens' rights, burning this tainted flag is likely the most patriotic act you can commit.

It is the symbol of rights rather than the rights themselves.

When John Adams invoked the Sedition Act of 1798 to suppress the anti-Federalists, he spit on that flag.

Thomas Jefferson reniged on a government contract with Madison in MARBURY V. MADISON, being the first one to violate the Constitution with his aristocratic views as he trampled on that flag.

When Andrew Jackson invoked the Indian Removal Act of 1830, with a forced march of the Cherokees to Oklahoma to steal their homes, lands, and gold, he poured manure on that flag.

When the US Supreme Court held in DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD that a "Negro" was not a person under the Constitution and had no rights, they wrapped that around bloody rags.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt invoked Presidential Executive Order 9066 to put the citizens of Japanese ancestory [yet not German] into concentration camps in Idaho, he drug that flag through a sewage canal.

People complain how a colored piece of clothe was treated and advocate the violation of those rights in the Declaration of Independence, they soil my military service. What makes our nation unique in the world is our laws protect political speech as a principle.

It is not a principle if it is not used in every case and you cannot convince me a flag or this republic protected those rights. It has been loud and contentious citizens revolting against the House of Misrepresentatives, the Senate of this Roman-like republic, the monarchy we call the President, and the Supreme Court MisJustices.

No mere common citizen can ever desecrate our flag like this republic has.

San Francisco Boycott & Sanctuary Ordinance

Ask the U.S. Attorney General Holder WHY the Department of Justice and HE are refusing to carry out the law. E-mails to the Department of Justice, including the Attorney General, may be sent to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

Perhaps it is time to boycott San Francisco for violating US Codes on Illegal Immigration.

San Francisco's City Counsel has been in violation of federal law prohibiting giving sanctuary to illegal aliens since 1989 in violation of:

TITLE 8,CHAPTER 12,SUBCHAPTER II,Part VIII, § 1324
Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
(v) (I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts, shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

The City of San Francisco violates federal law with these ordinances:

SEC. 12H.1. CITY AND COUNTY OF REFUGE.
It is hereby affirmed that the City and County of San Francisco is a City and County of Refuge.(Added by Ord. 375-89, App. 10/24/89)

SEC. 12H.2. USE OF CITY FUNDS PROHIBITED.
The prohibition set forth in this Chapter shall include, but shall not be limited to:
(a) Assisting or cooperating, in one's official capacity, with any Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) investigation, detention, or arrest procedures, public or clandestine, relating to alleged violations of the civil provisions of the federal immigration law.
(b) Assisting or cooperating, in one's official capacity, with any investigation, surveillance or gathering of information conducted by foreign governments, except for cooperation related to an alleged violation of City and County, State or federal criminal laws.
(c) Requesting information about, or disseminating information regarding, the immigration status of any individual, or conditioning the provision of services or benefits by the City and County of San Francisco upon immigration status, except as required by federal or State statute or regulation, City and County public assistance criteria, or court decision.
(d) Including on any application, questionnaire or interview form used in relation to benefits, services or opportunities provided by the City and County of San Francisco any question regarding immigration status other than those required by federal or State statute, regulation or court decision. Any such questions existing or being used by the City and County at the time this Chapter is adopted shall be deleted within sixty days of the adoption of this Chapter.(Added by Ord. 375-89, App. 10/24/89)

Democracy Versus Republic

Many of my fellow Republicans and "conservatives" now claim democracy is mobocracy having seen what the Democrats have done.

Democrats are DINOs, "Democratic-In-Name-Only." The passing of the health care law is an example of the ABCs of the totalitarian socialism of Democrats. The Democrats' Arrogance, Budget-Busting, and Crisis Causing in Commerce are evident. This health law went against every poll of likely voters. They believe they know better and more than the American People.


Republicans want to limit national government, but failed without the people engaged. A national referendum would have stopped any deficit, debt limit raise, or attack on our liberty like this law. What we have is 46% who are taxpayers subsidizine those who do not create our nation's wealth.

This is not a democracy. It is a Roman or Greek style republic where slaves provide the hoi palloi their bread and circuses. If we have to cite "Founders" as many do, read the words of Patrick Henry:

Your President may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue forever unchangeably this government, although horridly defective.

Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad?

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Do you really believe the pledges of elected representatives?


Referendums to control spending, recalls to remove those who fail to represent, intitiatives to make laws that we live under, and popular votes on the President, Attorney General, Treasurers, et al have worked in the States. It is not an untried form of democracy.

If you do not believe in democracy, you do not believe in the Declaration of Independence where it claims, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." That is the founding document of the US rather than the Constitution. Lincoln said the Constitution had to be interpreted in light of the Declaration of Independence. It would be difficult in deed to deny the principles of the Republican Party do not include democracy when Lincoln makes the case for democracy.

Some say the word "democracy" is not in the Declaration of Independence. It is in the every fiber of it with the declaration that govenment drives its only powers from the consent of the governed.

Maddow: Preventing or PROVOKING another Timothy McVeigh?

Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing — a terrorist attack by a racist, antigovernment fanatic that left 168 men, women and children dead. An MSNBC special hosted by Rachel Maddow about the tragedy features extensive interviews with Mark Potok. Given the present attrocities done by Democrats against the will and consent of the people, are they trying to prevent or PROVOKE such an attack? Is Rachel Maddow attempting to provoke criminal actions so the military can be used to put down political activities?

Progressivism Demands The Consent of the People

Note that while composing this I put together a silent film with a separate audio recording. I could have only used a still picture of TR, but I wanted people to see the man as well as hear the words, which are:

The great fundamental issue now before our people can be stated briefly. It is, are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them.

I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control, and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham.

I am not leading this fight as a matter of aesthetic pleasure. I am leading because somebody must lead, or else the fight would not be made at all. I prefer to work with moderate, with rational, conservatives, provided only that they do in good faith strive forward toward the light.

But when they halt and turn their backs to the light, and sit with the scorners on the seats of reaction, then I must part company with them. We the people cannot turn back. Our aim must be steady, wise progress.

It would be well if our people would study the history of a sister republic. All the woes of France for a century and a quarter have been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism.

Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the shortsighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre.

They gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform, at the cost of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alternations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went through misery toward a shattered goal.

May we profit by the experiences of our brother republicans across the water, and go forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes; and may our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule of the Bourbons brought on the Revolution, and may our would-be revolutionaries remember that no Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the people and of freedom as the professed friend of both, Robespierre.

There is no danger of a revolution in this country; but there is grave discontent and unrest, and in order to remove them there is need of all the wisdom and probity and deep-seated faith in and purpose to uplift humanity we have at our command.

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our purpose.

The methods for achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected according as actual experience shows that they work well or ill.

But in our hearts we must have this lofty purpose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing.

In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls.

The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.

In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is spend and be spent.

Impeach The Oregon Attorney General

I am calling for the impeachment of the Atorney General under the Oregon Constitution, Art. VII, Section 6. Incompetency or malfeasance of public officer. Public officers shall not be impeached; but incompetency, corruption, malfeasance or delinquency in office may be tried in the same manner as criminal offenses, and judgment may be given of dismissal from office, and such further punishment as may have been prescribed by law. [Created through initiative petition filed July 7, 1910, and adopted by the people Nov. 8, 1910]

The justification for impeachment is for malfeasance and delinquency in filing a lawsut against the Health Care Reform act where the Citizens of the State of Nebraska are receiving benefits and immunities to the provisions of that law in violation of the US Constitution:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am14

Further, the State of Oregon cannot assist in the facilitation of Federal law according to the Oregon Constitution:
Art.I, Section 20. Equality of privileges and immunities of citizens. No law shall be passed granting to any citizen or class of citizens privileges, or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.–

ASK YOUR REPRESENTATIVE WHAT YOU ARE GETTING?????

Democratic leaders have made clear that no cost is too high and no backroom deal is too dirty in their attempt to scrounge up 216 votes for a government takeover of health care. In a mad scramble to thrust upon the American people a bill they have already rejected, Democratic leaders are focused only on the next vote that can be secured with a taxpayer giveaway for a fellow Democrats worried about job security after defying the will of his or her constituents. Perhaps they think process doesnt matter, but, in fact, the American people are watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjb-ls-Q0Kk

Deciphering the Massachusetts GOP win

The mistake being made over and over and over again is that the President is in charge. Speaker Gingrich brought surpluses from 95 to 2000. Speaker Hastert let entitlements grow faster than the economy from 2001-2006. Speaker Pelosi put Franks in position to cause the mortgage failures from 2007 to the present. That brought the banks, industries, GDP, and jobs to this collapse. Six years of "Bush" suddenly changed in 2007 by magic? Not a chance. It was Pelosi and her Puppets replacing Denny Hastart.

Those denying the brand name of Republican are setting the Party up for a loss that will leave the Democrats in power. Republican House Leader Boehner at some point will need to come up with something on the order of the "Contract With America" to replace the confused perception "conservatives," "patriots," "Constitutionalists," and "libertarians" who shill for third parties are presenting.

Cory Farley: Deciphering the Massachusetts GOP win

Democrats are urged to preserve broad healthcare overhaul - latimes.com

Democrats are urged to preserve broad healthcare overhaul - latimes.com

Posted using ShareThis

Mr. AKIN. Good afternoon. Once again, we find ourselves here on the floor of the U.S. Congress and the subject before us, in spite of various events that have been of great interest to people yesterday--I'm thinking of the election of Massachusetts--still remains the question of health care. [Page: H249]


There is discussion with the new political realignments that it may be that the House will take up and just pass the bill that was passed by the Senate. That is one possibility, which then of course would require the bill not to have to go back to the Senate.

And so we come back to this question of health care in America, something that has a lot of people's attention. It's not the top priority I think for many people. I think many people are worried about unemployment, they're worried about the economy, they're worried about excessive government spending, they're worried about terrorism and national security. But underneath those, perhaps, there is still some concern about health care, but particularly a fear that in an attempt to try to solve a
problem we may make a bad situation worse. Indeed, when government does too much, we have found that we sometimes get some very bad side effects--inferior quality, inefficient allocation of goods, bureaucratic rationing, and of course excessive expenses.

Now, if health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free, some have said. We were promised by our President, Here's what you need to know: First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Sounds pretty definitive. It sounds like he says, hey, I understand about the deficit, I understand about the debt, I understand about excessive spending, and I am not going to add one dime to our deficit.

Well, the bill that's being proposed does not add a dime, so I guess technically this statement is correct. It adds, rather, either one or several trillion dollars. That may be a whole lot worse than the dime. So this particular statement, along with some others that we've heard, is not really precise in terms of what has been proposed, particularly the Senate and the House versions that we have seen.

In order to try to put a package together, there have been some compromises made, as tends to happen when you're writing large and complex pieces of legislation. This protects insurance companies in kind of an odd way. The legislation that is being considered in the Senate preserves the legal immunity of large insurance companies in the event of negligence or any other wrongful action even if their action results in injury or death of a patient.

Now, this is the language that's in the bill. What does that really mean? What it means is something that I think most Americans consider to be very undesirable, and that is, you walk in and you feel sick and you go see your doctor. You trust your doctor, you've known your doctor for some period of time, and so you have the doctor take a look. He runs some tests and he says, well, now, Congressman Akin, this is the news: You've got this, this, and this, and I recommend we do this. And
you check with him, ask a bunch of questions and say good, that seems like a good course of action.

Now, here's where the train comes off the tracks. Your insurance company says, but we don't really think that's necessary, we're not that concerned about you, Congressman Akin. And your doctor, well, you know, he's probably being pretty cautious, but he's also being pretty expensive. And so we're going to say you really don't need to go to the hospital for this, we're going to recommend you just stay home for a while and take some aspirin and see what develops. Now, that's what we call
something or somebody getting in the way of the doctor-patient relationship.

In this country, we have gotten spoiled. We have enjoyed contact with our doctors. We have enjoyed the process of getting to know the doctors and trusting them and soliciting their opinion. At times, we get multiple opinions from different doctors just to make sure. But we don't want some insurance company coming between the patient and the doctor; that's pretty bad when that happens. What's worse is when the government comes between you and your doctor. That's what a full-born socialized medicine
bill will do.

This bill here says that these insurance companies can basically second-guess the doctors, and if things go wrong, guess what? They have no liability. Is that what we want in health care reform? I don't think so. Doctors can be sued if they make a bad diagnosis, but not insurance companies, even when they get in between the patient and the doctor. Is that something we want in a health care bill? I don't think so. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of Americans don't want this massive government
takeover to pass, because it has these little loopholes like this in it. I don't think many of you would have known that that was in the bill, and yet it is.

There are also some other problems. We have a bill, when you start to get thousands of pages of legislation, there is a lot of room for mistakes and an awful lot of creation of bureaucracy. I don't know what the latest version of this is because a lot of this is negotiated behind closed doors, but we're talking about close to a 2,000-page bill passed with I don't know how many hours of public review--72 hours would be nice, I'm not so sure we'll have that. We have not had that on other major
pieces of legislation.

This particular bill creates 118 new boards--that sounds like some bureaucracy, doesn't it--commissions and programs full of new mandates. One of the things in legislation that people who are legislators pay attention to is how many ``you musts'' and ``you shalls'' and ``you've got to's'' there are in a bill. This one contains the word ``shall'' 3,425 times. Obviously somebody has very strong opinions about what other Americans ought to do, and they're going to mandate it. And so you have here
quite a large bill, many, many pages, 3,425 ``shalls,'' 118 new boards.

We tried to draw a picture of what that would look like. Now, you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't know if this picture is worth 1,000 or 2,000 pages, but this is an attempt at drawing a picture of what we've got. And the more you look at it, the more you look at all these colored boxes, which are some of the new agencies and all, it starts to look more and more like some sort of a maze. And you kind of wonder whether what's going on is, the consumers or people who are
sick are somehow trying to get across this maze to find their doctor. It's almost like something you would be given at a restaurant with a Crayon, and you're supposed to plot the path, if you're a patient, to somehow get over to see the doctor. But this is the kind of complexity that is being created by what has been proposed over the last 7 or 8 months by the Democrats.

The reason this is so complicated is because of the overall strategic approach that health care started, and that was the idea that we're going to take what we have and pretty much pitch it, and we're going to redesign the whole thing and put the government in charge of it. So

we're not going to go in and fix this or that that's broken; we're going to basically scrap it and start over.

Consequently, the result is a very complicated piece of legislation for the government to try to take over what is essentially close to one-fifth of the U.S. economy.

So that's one of the things that people are concerned with and one of the reasons why, not so much based on political party, but just based on good old American commonsense, there is a concern for the complexity and of course the cost associated with that complexity.

We don't like mandates a whole lot. Americans tend to be a little bit freewheeling, and they're not too much into following all the dots and tittles and all the little nuances of laws and rules. Americans like to have some freedom, a little bit of elbow room, a little flexibility. So when we're talking about the mandate, we're saying, here, there's mandates in this bill. All those ``shalls'' come into things that restrict your freedom. One of the mandates is that employers must offer a qualified
health care plan to full- and part-time employees.

So we're saying to companies, we don't care what you think is good for your employees, and we don't really care what your employees think is good for them; what we're going to do is tell you how it's got to be. And so we are going to write what your health care plan has to look like, and then, Mr. Employer, you have to offer what we're writing up for you to your employees.

[Time: 17:15]


That is an interesting approach. We think of it in terms of the idea of a top-down, Big Government solution because the government is going to tell you what you need. Whether you think you know what you need doesn't make any difference. It's going to be a top-down status mandate, and you will pay for 65 to 72 percent of the cost of the plan.

So we're going to tell you what kind of plan you're going to offer. By the way, you're going to pay for it, and if you don't pay for it, we're going to penalize you, and we're going to hit you with a tax of up to 8 percent of your payroll costs. So whoever you are, even fairly small businesses, you know, in terms of what the cutoff is in this, you're going to get hit with 8 percent of your payroll taxes. In fact, if you have 100 employees, if 99 of them want this qualified plan and one does not,
the way the bill is written is that you're going to end up paying this 8 percent because everybody has to agree to what the government has mandated.

So there are some mandates in here which, from a small business point of view, are considered fairly onerous. It's another thing which makes the bill offensive and not popular.

Now, one of the concerns is, when the government takes something over, it tends to cost money. The President said it's not going to cost a dime. I suppose that's true. It's supposed to cost over $1 trillion, but there are a lot of hidden costs. You see, you bury the costs of some things that you don't want to show. Trying to keep it under $1 trillion was a tough thing to do; $1 trillion is a fair amount of money. Even for the U.S. Federal Government, $1 trillion is a lot of money.

We spent about $1.4 trillion last year. That was about what our level of debt was, $1.4 trillion. The highest debt that we'd had before that was under President Bush in 2008. During the Pelosi Congress here in 2008, we had just south of $500 billion in deficit spending that year. So, if deficit spending of 400 and--whatever it is--50 or 60 billion was a lot, $1.4 trillion in deficit spending was a considerable amount. So our deficit in '09 tripled from '08, and it was a $1 trillion-plus, $1.5
trillion.

Well, here is $1 trillion for this little plan. This is not small if you're worried about Federal spending. The estimate here is it's going to raise taxes $729 billion. If we got away with that few in tax increases, we might be doing well. It increases the long-term cost of medical care by $289 billion. Again, I think those are conservative estimates. It creates shortages, higher costs, more regulations, more patients, and a fixed supply of medical professionals.

This is part of the CMS Report. CMS is a group of staffers who are not connected with a political party. They take a look at legislation, and they try to come up with what the costs are and how it's going to work. Of course, there's a lot of argument about what they count and about what they don't count; but things like creating shortages and also considerable amounts of unemployment are expected to come from this because, if you mandate that businesses spend a lot of money, what happens is it
means their employees are going to cost more. If their employees are going to cost more, there's an incentive for them to get rid of some employees and to run the employees they have for longer hours. That reduces their costs, which of course increases unemployment.

So this bill will affect unemployment, which is another reason people are not very pleased with it and are disappointed in the bill. There is an inefficiency and an expense here which is quite considerable.

There is another mandate. This is one on individuals. It says that individuals must buy acceptable health insurance coverage. Now, guess who defines what health insurance coverage is acceptable if you're an individual citizen of the United States?

Is it the individual citizen? Is it the 22-year-old who says, I can't afford health insurance right now, and I'm very healthy and I'm making the decision not to get health insurance? Is he the one who decides what acceptable health insurance coverage is?

Of course, the answer is ``no.'' The answer is that the Federal Government knows what you need better than you do, so the Federal Government is going to mandate that you have this coverage, and they're going to tell you what kind of coverage it is, and you've got to buy it.

Now, this raises kind of an interesting legal point, which is, if the government mandates that you have something or that you buy something, is that not really, essentially, a tax increase? When you mandate that somebody has to buy a particular product, is that something that the Federal Government should be doing in this particular area? Is it even constitutional? When it is a mandate, is it not just essentially a tax increase? Or pay an additional 2.5 of your income in taxes. So now you're
going to have a choice. You can either buy the insurance that we know is best for you--Big Brother government--or you can pay a fine or face criminal penalties, including jail time and severe fines if you don't get in line with what we know is best for you.

Who is ``we''? Oh, we just saw a picture of the ``we,'' didn't we? Here is the ``we.'' We know what's best for you. All of this matrix of bureaucracy, this matrix run by the Federal Government, really knows what's good for you, and so we're going to tell you what it is that you have to buy. You've got to buy the insurance we tell you you've got to buy. Otherwise, you'll face criminal penalties, including jail time.

How do you think that goes over with a lot of freedom-loving Americans? Well, not very good.

I think some of the election results that we've seen in the last number of months reflect the fact that people are not that comfortable with Washington, D.C.--Big Government--playing God in everybody's lives. That's one of the concerns and why this is not particularly popular.

I notice that we have joining us this evening a doctor, somebody who has spent years in the health care profession and who has really been in the middle of it as to providing that doctor-patient relationship. He knows the subject far better than this poor, old engineer does, and I would like to yield some time to my good friend who has just joined me on this health care topic. I was just running through some of the reasons why people aren't that excited about this Big Government takeover of health
care and why you're seeing a lot of people voting, saying, I'm not sure we're on the right track with this.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.