The 'your own fault for ever having helped them' adage is certainly drawing psychologically but doesn't really hold water. You might as well blame the Cold War on us helping the Soviets fight the Germans rather than any sort of clash of political and economic ideals.
That's not entirely untrue. One of the reasons communist China existed as it did was because of pressure from the US for the USSR to declare war on Japan, most likely to help mitigate American casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainlands. This pressure was also exerted to draw Soviet forces away from Europe, where there was a genuine fear about further war, after the Nazis fell, between the West and the Soviets. In hindsight this war was not very likely, but there was a genuine, well-founded fear and distrust of Stalin.
This also probably served as an impetus for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both as a deterrent to the Russians, and as a way to end the war quicker, with a Japanese surrender to the USA, rather than letting the USSR grab up more territory.
The implications of the victory of communist forces over the nationalist Chinese is a lot more obvious, with the China/Taiwan split, communism on the Korean peninsula, etc. Not to mention the authoritarian regime in China today is largely a spawn of the communist government.
You do have a good point -- it's not quite cause-and-effect, it is much more complicated. That does not mean it's completely false. There has been lots of meddling in foreign affairs by the USA post-WW2, or post-WW1, which had largely been confined to the Western hemisphere and parts of the Pacific prior to that. There was certainly a great deal more isolationist feeling where people felt that goings on across the globe weren't quite their business, to the point where the political leadership of the USA had a very isolationist bent starting in the decades after the Revolution, declaring neutrality in any potential upcoming European wars. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the USA had been formed as a 'European' power, getting involved in the wars of the 19th century, like the Napoleonic wars, or the Crimean war?
It seems we could benefit from a bit of that isolationist feeling, if it could be reciprocated.
That was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his inauguration speech in 1933 during the Great Depression. I was starting to wonder why I should bother posting this info until it prompted me to look for a bit more info on it and I found this cool site: http://www.bartleby.com/124/
which contains the texts of the inauguration speeches for all of the Presidents of the US. Here's the actual quote, with a little more context:
I AM certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.
That's pretty much exactly what happened to a few of the people who ended up at Guantanmo Bay -- rewards were offered for tips that led to the capture of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers in Afghanistan in ~2001-2002. It worked great, as they began receiving a ton of tips from the formerly unhelpful local populace. It seems fairly obvious now that a not insignificant amount of the tips were completely fabricated, indicating that people who were completely unrelated to any real sympathy for al'Qaeda, or perhaps people who were the target of grudges, were doing things that they were not doing, or wanted to do things that they did not want to do.
Nobody seemed to care very much, since it didn't involve US citizens, and since people had let fear control their lives and did not want to take any chances, no matter how remote they are. Hey Sarge, Habib from Jalalabnotgonnaworkhereanymore says this derka farmer in a village 10 miles away hates America! What are the chances Habib would lie to us?
And everyone should see how the Japanese butcher sushi. Just the other day I had this sliced up tuna on a plate.. it was delicious! There wasn't even any rice or gross seaweed or anything cluttering up the dish, just some dip.
Chinese censorship is almost entirely a way to stifle dissent because of a fear it might cause violence, which would in turn disrupt the country's attempts at modernization.
You can't compare "government-dictated coping mechanisms" to Western "coping mechanisms". It's government-dictated! In one case, you might have every single individual of a country feel one way because they choose to (which obviously is not the case). In the Chinese example, you have to struggle to even hold that opinion -- even peacefully holding that opinion -- and you might face serious repercussions for it.
China has come so far, and it seems like everyone realizes that. Why do you think so many people are looking to China as a new "emerging market" or whatever? That was not the case 30 or 40 years ago. That does not mean, however, that you can dismiss their "numerous failures", as it does not really matter if "government-dictated coping mechanisms" are good spirited or not. They may be now, but a massive system of repression exists, and if it continues to exist in the future, it WILL be abused.
When you have a small group of people with extraordinary power deciding what is good for everyone, you are destined for injustice. Expressing that fact is not "picking on" the Chinese people, it is a tried and true lesson which everyone had better hope many Chinese have learned.
It seems to me that people discuss weight due to convention and its obvious easy use as an approximation for fat. An average person tends to have an average amount of muscle, so their weight is a pretty good measure of how much fat is on top of that.
Weight is also much more easily measured. I'm sure much of it is a legacy from the time before people could have tailored exercise regimens.
The point is that the person who posed the question did neither, and it's fairly ridiculous to expect the Speaker to respond to it much more than she did.
I didn't say it did, I chided the poster that was in reply to for associating the two as if the second clause ("general welfare") had no meaning nor merit. Even if it did, interstate commerce is a particularly complex part of the Constitution and can't quite be thrown out with such simple an argument -- to expect the Speaker to have any other response to the question at a press conference is absurd.
If you challenge it in court the same way, you will get a similar response as the one she gave, seeing as a court will require some sort of process of logic behind the arguments presented.
So.. explain how impacting the lives of 90% of the population for 10% is about 'the general welfare'. The government has full power to regulate the medical profession and insurance industry. This bill does NOTHING to reduce health care costs. How do I know this?? Show me any part of it where it requires the medical profession to change any of their habits, or places any limits on their costs.
It's not so much about the costs as it is access to insurance. Not many people can actually afford the costs - what people can afford is insurance that can afford the costs. Except for some people, who simply don't have access to a health insurance plan.
It is supposed to benefit everyone because it means you aren't wholly reliant on some large-ish company which can itself afford to set up a system of providing health insurance.
If you are involved with whoever was asking in that CNS news article linked, then yes, that is pretty idiotic and irrational. Nancy Pelosi doesn't have to give you a civics lesson every time she talks to the press.
If you do take that question to court, expect them to have a similar response to what she did, and I will be amused to hear about it. Is Orly Taitz your lawyer?
It's not a cheap trick, it's straight up logic. Pretty simple logic, at that.
And no, it is not "most likely". It's a last resort, after everything else has been exhausted, and even then, since it is a criminal penalty, it must be proven to a higher standard ("beyond a reasonable doubt") that it is both willful and that you have the ability to pay.
Regardless of what you think, this penalty already exists, and doesn't have much to do with the health bill. If you don't pay taxes, you can go to jail! You can't only pay some of your tax liabilities and not others. You don't get to pick and choose which ones you do pay. You get to pick and choose representation in Congress.
If it were designed only to enable step three in case of failure to follow step one, then jail would be compulsory for failure to pay taxes. This is not the case. Therefore it's safe to say that step 2, the tax, is not designed only to allow imprisonment.
You say "general Welfare" is defined in the preamble, and then resort to defining the words on your own? Individually, no less?
The legislation does benefit just the uninsured, it is supposed to benefit everyone. More than that, if a situation exists where some people are denied the right to pursue happiness, then not only can they act, but they are compelled to! Rail against the legislation all you want, but don't fucking call it unconstitutional. And especially don't reinforce the belief that it is, especially if it is as narrow-minded as the CNS news link above.
The "General Welfare" clause is NOT applied to "the people" - the people look out for their own welfare. The "General Welfare" clause authorizes Congress to ensure the welfare of the country. And adding new entitlements to a $1.4 trillion deficit, $12 trillion of debt, and $34 trillion of unfunded liabilities is the OPPOSITE of anything good for the welfare of the country.
You undermine your own argument, because your entire reasoning for the unconstitutionality is that it does not provide for the welfare of the country. Your entire rationale behind this is the assertion that you do not like the spending.
That's fine, as you are entitled to your opinion, and nobody likes spending. But that hardly makes it unconstitutional!
If you want to make the argument, make the god damn argument. Don't get caught up in your ridiculous talking points using buzzwords like entitlement, deficit, debt, liabilities, and expect them to hold any water in a genuine discussion about the subject. Parroting opinions and talking points is only going to get you ignored by anyone with a brain, especially if you get caught up in ridiculous lines of reasoning like it being unconstitutional.
I don't very much disagree with you, it's not a completely cut and dry discussion. That's why there are lawyers! But to pretend that there is zero justification for it in the constitution, or that Pelosi is some kind of autocrat who doesn't even know what the Constitution is, or that the justification for it is "the interstate commerce clause" is completely disingenuous. ie, a lie.
I highly recommend you lobby for your state to stand up for its rights. But you can't just cry out about things like it being unconstitutional -- it may not be the best way of doing things, or it may not be the way things should be done, but there is certainly a lot of justification for doing it.
Asking what part of the Constitution justifies it is just irl trolling, which is pretty evident from the link above. The fact is she doesn't even really have to justify it, as there's 60, or 70, or 150, or 230 some odd years of justification on top of the justification which is fairly evident in the Constitution itself. If the guy were seriously asking for a justification, then it WOULD be asked in court, where it would most likely be laughed out of the courtroom, if the manner of questioning is at all similar to the post above.
By all means, people should feel free to challenge it in court! Our system allows for itself to be challenged, and that should surely be exercised. People should not, however, to think that half-assed demagoguery such as that in the CNS news in the post to which I originally replied to get anyone anywhere.
So what the hell does the 10th Amendment mean, then?:
What does "States" mean? Is that individual States or the union of States? Is it exclusive? What the hell does "reserved to the people" mean? What the hell does the Constitution allow Congress to raise money via taxes for?
What about this:
as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact;
Does not "the grants enumerated in [the Constitution]" refer to the delegation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers as prescribed? That would allow Congress and the Executive branch to act, but it would disallow them from weaseling around the specific enumerated rights in the Constitution, such as non-uniform taxation across the states, to use an example which was quoted explicitly in this thread.
It's not a simple discussion by any stretch of the imagination, which is exactly why I felt the need to reply to the idiotic CNS news question. That kind of banter is nothing other than demagoguery and has no real rational basis, other than to be used as a tool deliberately to stir up opposition for something regardless of the actual merits.
Section 8: The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people. I bet a lot of people who read it actually stop and have a wtf? moment, which makes them miss out on those two little important words!
You are trying to make it seem as if Congress has no power to do anything other than that which is explicitly granted in the Constitution, which is comically untrue. It makes me wonder why we don't just fill all 535 seats of Congress with printed copies of the Constitution.
The answer to your question, then, is "never", at least for a legitimate challenge. It may be "challenged" in court, wherein someone will ask that very same question ("where does the Constitution authorize Congress..."), which is when the judge will probably have the very same response as Mrs. Pelosi.
You can fearmonger if you want to, but the sane people out there are going to read about what's actually happening, and what the actual outcomes may be. People are spreading links and stuff that imply you can get jailtime for healthcare, in order to drum up support for the status quo by getting people to go "wtf, I can go to jail for having health care?"
It's a link between this bill and jailtime that simply doesn't exist. You can go to jail for willful evasion of taxes, and even that is pretty hard to do, since you have to be a longtime tax cheat. Something like 82% of Americans have health insurance already, anyway -- it's not like this bill will be drastically changing your behavior. Hell, in most places you can't drive a car without having insurance. It's not all that different.
If you want to fix health care, which just about everybody agrees is hugely flawed, then talking about jailtime with regards to this bill is not the way to do it. Talk about the costs, or maybe some voodoo economics about premiums, or the voodoo involved with innovation in healthcare and American exceptionalism and all, but don't talk about jailtime. Jail has nothing to do with this bill, and the only way it does is because of people like you who would evince images of deathpanel squads jailing people who disagree with this. It's not going to work, and it's just going to make sure nobody listens to you, because the rest of us will find out the actual facts and come to the conclusion that you're a lunatic.
Like I said, it's not surprising, nor any kind of a shock, that you could maybe possibly eventually face jailtime for tax evasion.
I read the link to the Ways and Means Committee where this idea that you will "buy or go to jail" has come from, which cites IRS tax codes for the reasoning you might go to jail.
The Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, and various media outlets, like the Drudge report, have spread this idea that you will go to jail if you do not want this health bill passed. It's not true. You will face civil and/or criminal penalties for failing to pay taxes. That should be obvious.
Believe it or not, willful tax evasion does indeed mean you may face jailtime. That has been the case for quite a while, and this bill did not change it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not entirely untrue. One of the reasons communist China existed as it did was because of pressure from the US for the USSR to declare war on Japan, most likely to help mitigate American casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainlands. This pressure was also exerted to draw Soviet forces away from Europe, where there was a genuine fear about further war, after the Nazis fell, between the West and the Soviets. In hindsight this war was not very likely, but there was a genuine, well-founded fear and distrust of Stalin.
This also probably served as an impetus for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both as a deterrent to the Russians, and as a way to end the war quicker, with a Japanese surrender to the USA, rather than letting the USSR grab up more territory.
The implications of the victory of communist forces over the nationalist Chinese is a lot more obvious, with the China/Taiwan split, communism on the Korean peninsula, etc. Not to mention the authoritarian regime in China today is largely a spawn of the communist government.
You do have a good point -- it's not quite cause-and-effect, it is much more complicated. That does not mean it's completely false. There has been lots of meddling in foreign affairs by the USA post-WW2, or post-WW1, which had largely been confined to the Western hemisphere and parts of the Pacific prior to that. There was certainly a great deal more isolationist feeling where people felt that goings on across the globe weren't quite their business, to the point where the political leadership of the USA had a very isolationist bent starting in the decades after the Revolution, declaring neutrality in any potential upcoming European wars. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the USA had been formed as a 'European' power, getting involved in the wars of the 19th century, like the Napoleonic wars, or the Crimean war?
It seems we could benefit from a bit of that isolationist feeling, if it could be reciprocated.
just an fyi:
That was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his inauguration speech in 1933 during the Great Depression. I was starting to wonder why I should bother posting this info until it prompted me to look for a bit more info on it and I found this cool site: http://www.bartleby.com/124/
which contains the texts of the inauguration speeches for all of the Presidents of the US. Here's the actual quote, with a little more context:
quite a contrast to the 43rd President!
That's pretty much exactly what happened to a few of the people who ended up at Guantanmo Bay -- rewards were offered for tips that led to the capture of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers in Afghanistan in ~2001-2002. It worked great, as they began receiving a ton of tips from the formerly unhelpful local populace. It seems fairly obvious now that a not insignificant amount of the tips were completely fabricated, indicating that people who were completely unrelated to any real sympathy for al'Qaeda, or perhaps people who were the target of grudges, were doing things that they were not doing, or wanted to do things that they did not want to do.
Nobody seemed to care very much, since it didn't involve US citizens, and since people had let fear control their lives and did not want to take any chances, no matter how remote they are. Hey Sarge, Habib from Jalalabnotgonnaworkhereanymore says this derka farmer in a village 10 miles away hates America! What are the chances Habib would lie to us?
And everyone should see how the Japanese butcher sushi. Just the other day I had this sliced up tuna on a plate.. it was delicious! There wasn't even any rice or gross seaweed or anything cluttering up the dish, just some dip.
Netcraft confirms it: sci-fi is dying.
Chinese censorship is almost entirely a way to stifle dissent because of a fear it might cause violence, which would in turn disrupt the country's attempts at modernization.
You can't compare "government-dictated coping mechanisms" to Western "coping mechanisms". It's government-dictated! In one case, you might have every single individual of a country feel one way because they choose to (which obviously is not the case). In the Chinese example, you have to struggle to even hold that opinion -- even peacefully holding that opinion -- and you might face serious repercussions for it.
China has come so far, and it seems like everyone realizes that. Why do you think so many people are looking to China as a new "emerging market" or whatever? That was not the case 30 or 40 years ago. That does not mean, however, that you can dismiss their "numerous failures", as it does not really matter if "government-dictated coping mechanisms" are good spirited or not. They may be now, but a massive system of repression exists, and if it continues to exist in the future, it WILL be abused.
When you have a small group of people with extraordinary power deciding what is good for everyone, you are destined for injustice. Expressing that fact is not "picking on" the Chinese people, it is a tried and true lesson which everyone had better hope many Chinese have learned.
Regardless of whether it's illegal, google does it. Stop apologizing for repressive actions of govermnent.
from a comment above:
The footer of google.cn reads "According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown." (google translation)
The same reason the telephone/telegram industry did in the early to mid 20th century: they wanted to help in a way that might not hurt.
I don't think it's likely, especially considering the industry faces a lot more scrutiny nowadays. But it's certainly very, very possible.
Everyone knows Einstein was persecuted for his Catholic ancestry, eventually being forced to leave Nazi Germany because of it.
They should probably rename that sanity check.
It seems to me that people discuss weight due to convention and its obvious easy use as an approximation for fat. An average person tends to have an average amount of muscle, so their weight is a pretty good measure of how much fat is on top of that.
Weight is also much more easily measured. I'm sure much of it is a legacy from the time before people could have tailored exercise regimens.
of course, a lot of it is out and out ignorance.
Of course it is, I even said as much.
The point is that the person who posed the question did neither, and it's fairly ridiculous to expect the Speaker to respond to it much more than she did.
I didn't say it did, I chided the poster that was in reply to for associating the two as if the second clause ("general welfare") had no meaning nor merit. Even if it did, interstate commerce is a particularly complex part of the Constitution and can't quite be thrown out with such simple an argument -- to expect the Speaker to have any other response to the question at a press conference is absurd.
If you challenge it in court the same way, you will get a similar response as the one she gave, seeing as a court will require some sort of process of logic behind the arguments presented.
It's not so much about the costs as it is access to insurance. Not many people can actually afford the costs - what people can afford is insurance that can afford the costs. Except for some people, who simply don't have access to a health insurance plan.
It is supposed to benefit everyone because it means you aren't wholly reliant on some large-ish company which can itself afford to set up a system of providing health insurance.
If you are involved with whoever was asking in that CNS news article linked, then yes, that is pretty idiotic and irrational. Nancy Pelosi doesn't have to give you a civics lesson every time she talks to the press.
If you do take that question to court, expect them to have a similar response to what she did, and I will be amused to hear about it. Is Orly Taitz your lawyer?
It's not a cheap trick, it's straight up logic. Pretty simple logic, at that.
And no, it is not "most likely". It's a last resort, after everything else has been exhausted, and even then, since it is a criminal penalty, it must be proven to a higher standard ("beyond a reasonable doubt") that it is both willful and that you have the ability to pay.
Regardless of what you think, this penalty already exists, and doesn't have much to do with the health bill. If you don't pay taxes, you can go to jail! You can't only pay some of your tax liabilities and not others. You don't get to pick and choose which ones you do pay. You get to pick and choose representation in Congress.
If it were designed only to enable step three in case of failure to follow step one, then jail would be compulsory for failure to pay taxes. This is not the case. Therefore it's safe to say that step 2, the tax, is not designed only to allow imprisonment.
You say "general Welfare" is defined in the preamble, and then resort to defining the words on your own? Individually, no less?
The legislation does benefit just the uninsured, it is supposed to benefit everyone. More than that, if a situation exists where some people are denied the right to pursue happiness, then not only can they act, but they are compelled to! Rail against the legislation all you want, but don't fucking call it unconstitutional. And especially don't reinforce the belief that it is, especially if it is as narrow-minded as the CNS news link above.
You undermine your own argument, because your entire reasoning for the unconstitutionality is that it does not provide for the welfare of the country. Your entire rationale behind this is the assertion that you do not like the spending.
That's fine, as you are entitled to your opinion, and nobody likes spending. But that hardly makes it unconstitutional!
If you want to make the argument, make the god damn argument. Don't get caught up in your ridiculous talking points using buzzwords like entitlement, deficit, debt, liabilities, and expect them to hold any water in a genuine discussion about the subject. Parroting opinions and talking points is only going to get you ignored by anyone with a brain, especially if you get caught up in ridiculous lines of reasoning like it being unconstitutional.
I don't very much disagree with you, it's not a completely cut and dry discussion. That's why there are lawyers! But to pretend that there is zero justification for it in the constitution, or that Pelosi is some kind of autocrat who doesn't even know what the Constitution is, or that the justification for it is "the interstate commerce clause" is completely disingenuous. ie, a lie.
I highly recommend you lobby for your state to stand up for its rights. But you can't just cry out about things like it being unconstitutional -- it may not be the best way of doing things, or it may not be the way things should be done, but there is certainly a lot of justification for doing it.
Asking what part of the Constitution justifies it is just irl trolling, which is pretty evident from the link above. The fact is she doesn't even really have to justify it, as there's 60, or 70, or 150, or 230 some odd years of justification on top of the justification which is fairly evident in the Constitution itself. If the guy were seriously asking for a justification, then it WOULD be asked in court, where it would most likely be laughed out of the courtroom, if the manner of questioning is at all similar to the post above.
By all means, people should feel free to challenge it in court! Our system allows for itself to be challenged, and that should surely be exercised. People should not, however, to think that half-assed demagoguery such as that in the CNS news in the post to which I originally replied to get anyone anywhere.
What does "States" mean? Is that individual States or the union of States? Is it exclusive? What the hell does "reserved to the people" mean? What the hell does the Constitution allow Congress to raise money via taxes for?
What about this:
Does not "the grants enumerated in [the Constitution]" refer to the delegation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers as prescribed? That would allow Congress and the Executive branch to act, but it would disallow them from weaseling around the specific enumerated rights in the Constitution, such as non-uniform taxation across the states, to use an example which was quoted explicitly in this thread.
It's not a simple discussion by any stretch of the imagination, which is exactly why I felt the need to reply to the idiotic CNS news question. That kind of banter is nothing other than demagoguery and has no real rational basis, other than to be used as a tool deliberately to stir up opposition for something regardless of the actual merits.
You hide that "general welfare" part behind the Interstate Commerce clause in your sentence so well! It almost makes it seem like it has nothing to do with establishing laws that affect the general welfare of the people. I bet a lot of people who read it actually stop and have a wtf? moment, which makes them miss out on those two little important words!
You are trying to make it seem as if Congress has no power to do anything other than that which is explicitly granted in the Constitution, which is comically untrue. It makes me wonder why we don't just fill all 535 seats of Congress with printed copies of the Constitution.
The answer to your question, then, is "never", at least for a legitimate challenge. It may be "challenged" in court, wherein someone will ask that very same question ("where does the Constitution authorize Congress ..."), which is when the judge will probably have the very same response as Mrs. Pelosi.
you run your own health insurance company?
Oh. So I guess you rely on you to provide for you, except when you rely on other people to provide for you.
You can fearmonger if you want to, but the sane people out there are going to read about what's actually happening, and what the actual outcomes may be. People are spreading links and stuff that imply you can get jailtime for healthcare, in order to drum up support for the status quo by getting people to go "wtf, I can go to jail for having health care?"
It's a link between this bill and jailtime that simply doesn't exist. You can go to jail for willful evasion of taxes, and even that is pretty hard to do, since you have to be a longtime tax cheat. Something like 82% of Americans have health insurance already, anyway -- it's not like this bill will be drastically changing your behavior. Hell, in most places you can't drive a car without having insurance. It's not all that different.
If you want to fix health care, which just about everybody agrees is hugely flawed, then talking about jailtime with regards to this bill is not the way to do it. Talk about the costs, or maybe some voodoo economics about premiums, or the voodoo involved with innovation in healthcare and American exceptionalism and all, but don't talk about jailtime. Jail has nothing to do with this bill, and the only way it does is because of people like you who would evince images of deathpanel squads jailing people who disagree with this. It's not going to work, and it's just going to make sure nobody listens to you, because the rest of us will find out the actual facts and come to the conclusion that you're a lunatic.
Like I said, it's not surprising, nor any kind of a shock, that you could maybe possibly eventually face jailtime for tax evasion.
I read the link to the Ways and Means Committee where this idea that you will "buy or go to jail" has come from, which cites IRS tax codes for the reasoning you might go to jail.
The Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, and various media outlets, like the Drudge report, have spread this idea that you will go to jail if you do not want this health bill passed. It's not true. You will face civil and/or criminal penalties for failing to pay taxes. That should be obvious.
Believe it or not, willful tax evasion does indeed mean you may face jailtime. That has been the case for quite a while, and this bill did not change it.