Re: "House Dems roll out plan," (Albany Democrat-Herald, Oct. 29, 2009, front page) in particular, the front-page photograph of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on the Affordable Health Care for America Act podium, scowling and jabbing a pointed finger at her audience.

The scowl on Nancy Pelosi's face speaks volumes about her contempt for the American people, especially those of us who reject the Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR3962. If the photo were a cartoon, the thought balloon over her head would say, "We elites know what is best for you vermin, and you are going to love ObamaCare even if it kills you!"

The scowl befits someone who has just eaten a bowl of raw sewage, not a privileged politician who appears to be getting her way. The AHCAA, all 1,990 pages of it, is a heap of tyranny, bureaucracy, regulations, cost-shifting, make-work for lawyers in perpetuity, micromanagement, socialism, extra-constitutional machinations and pay-offs to political patrons. It makes Smoot-Hawley, Davis-Bacon, McCain-Feingold, the Social Security Acts and many more congressional disasters seem almost benign. It could be the Mother of All Bad Legislation!

Worst of all, the AHCAA does not go into effect until 2013. When the president said, "The time is now!" for healthcare reform, he meant after he gets re-elected.

That means the 2012 election will not be a referendum on this oppressive diktat. Political calculation takes on a whole new dimension in the Obama era.

Richard Chinn, Albany