Bill O'Reilly is Completely Dishonest

mortimer said:
OK, O'Reilly obviously lied. But is the claim that you could go to jail really false?

If I don't get insurance, and am then fined via the IRS, can I refuse to pay that fine without the possibility of going to jail for tax evasion? Seems like a pretty far fetched scenario, but I can see some folks sending in their income tax payment, less the health insurance penalty, just to prove a point. Or is the penalty something separate from income tax such that failing to pay the penalty doesn't fall under the laws of tax evasion?
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I realize this thread has moved on considerably, so I apologize if this has already been addressed.

I know we went on at some considerable length about this point in one or more of the threads before the bill passed. Even if the scenario described happens, it would be wrong to say the person was jailed for not having insurance.

Similarly, if you get parking tickets and don't pay the fines, eventually you can be caught and thrown into jail. It would be absurd to say that you can go to jail for parking at an expired meter.

You can go to jail for tax evasion or for failure to pay fines.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I realize this thread has moved on considerably, so I apologize if this has already been addressed.

I know we went on at some considerable length about this point in one or more of the threads before the bill passed. Even if the scenario described happens, it would be wrong to say the person was jailed for not having insurance.

Similarly, if you get parking tickets and don't pay the fines, eventually you can be caught and thrown into jail. It would be absurd to say that you can go to jail for parking at an expired meter.

You can go to jail for tax evasion or for failure to pay fines.
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Except in the Senate version of the bill. It specifically forbids criminal liability for not paying the fine. It also forbids a lien being put on your house (I think it was house, maybe it was property) for not paying the fine.
 
Ladewig said:
I don't know. The video does not include dates.
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The videos I watched included dates.
All but, I think, two of the clips were from the same week in November. Those two were also late-2009.
In other words, all the discussion occurred in response to the relevant criminal enforcement news breaking on the issue.
 
AvalonXQ said:
The videos I watched included dates.
All but, I think, two of the clips were from the same week in November. Those two were also late-2009.
In other words, all the discussion occurred in response to the relevant criminal enforcement news breaking on the issue.
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The Senate bill was online for the world in September 2009. Even then, it was ********. You had one bill that didn't discuss jail at all and another that prohibited it. And from this, FOX told its viewers you'd be going to jail.

*Edited for clarity
 
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Newtons Bit said:
Except in the Senate version of the bill. It specifically forbids criminal liability for not paying the fine. It also forbids a lien being put on your house (I think it was house, maybe it was property) for not paying the fine.
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Thanks for clearing that up. I guess the point I was trying to make is even if it weren't that way, and you could be jailed for tax evasion or on other grounds for not paying the fine, it still wouldn't be accurate to say you were jailed for not having health insurance. (Just as it's wrong to say that the penalty for parking at an expired meter is jail time.)
 
O'Reilly's pants have to be doused with water every 30 minutes. Otherwise, they will catch fire.
 
AvalonXQ said:
So, what O'Reilly is saying now: nobody at Fox News has claimed that the Health Care Bill as passed will actually send you to jail. There was a lot of talk on Fox News back before it passed that jail time was a possible result of not complying with the proposed bill at that time.
Anybody have a clue as to whether or not jail time was a possibility that wasn't actually realized (so it would have made more sense to talk about it then, but not now)?
I've not seen a single quote that shows O'Reilly wrong on this -- has anyone else?
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My understanding is that talk about potential jail time occurred before the language of the final bill was known. At that time, it made sense to speculate about what the penalty might be, because a penalty without real teeth would (and will) completely destroy the private market for individual insurance (as opposed to group plans). So jail time was on the table until it was taken off the table, which did not happen until it became clear that the only way to pass a bill was to pass the Senate bill, which did not provide for jail time. So did anyone on Fox talk about jail time after Scott Brown was elected? If so, that's dishonest. Otherwise, this is a big nothingburger.
 
thaiboxerken said:
The "mandate" isn't even a real mandate. Read the bill, people. You can download it for free. It states that:
1. People are mandated to pay. If not:
2. There is a fee/tax to be paid. If someone does not pay the fee/tax:
3. They will really be fined.
4. The fine cannot be garnished from pay. Nor can any assets be collected, nor can the person go to jail for the fines..
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We actually pay our esteemed legislators to come up with something like this?

At first I thought this was a joke post til a following poster said this is part of the final bill.

The four points all lead in the direction that you better pay...then better pay or else...yet the end result is that nothing will happen to you if you do not pay. WHAT???!!!!...morons are getting paid for this piece of fine work?

Why the H would anybody pay in towards health insurance then?
 
AvalonXQ said:
Wrong. What he said was: "We researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it."
Which is true. Nobody on Fox news had ever claimed that "you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance". A claim like that, by its very nature, would have had to have been made since the bill passed.
As O'Reilly has since explained, jail time was discussed back in November when jail time was on the table. Nobody on Fox News has mentioned jail time in connection with the passed Health Care Bill; nobody on Fox News has claimed that anyone will go to jail for not having health insurance. That was the question that the senator's constituant was asking, that's what O'Reilly checked, and that's what O'Reilly was addressing.
Spin this any way you want; O'Reilly was right and you're wrong.
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YOU'RE the one spinning. The smoking gun is:"A claim like that, by its very nature, would have had to have been made since the bill passed." Spin. O'Reilly didn't say "No one's said it since the bill passed." O'Reilly said "No one's EVER said it." You just acknowledged people on Fox News mentioned jail time. That's the exact opposite of not EVER saying it. O'Reilly was wrong. So are you.
 
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I believe that what Avalon is doing here is what one of our prominent right wing posters refers to as "parsing like a Clinton".
 
This is one of those threads that I read the first page and come to believe it will quickly die. A week latter it's on page three, or five, or eight, and I think to myself, "What could they possibly still be talking about?" So I check it, re-reading from the beginning up to the end. Inevitably, I feel stupid for having wasted the time.

Back to the inanity.
 
Ladewig said:
I'm going to have to put Bill in the dishonest category. One of his talking points this afternoon was: Jon Stewart called Fox News hypocritical because of its bias, but Stewart has a strong liberal bias, so he's a hypocrite.

No one with Bill O'Reilly's education, experience, and knowledge could possibly think that the bias of a comedian on a comedy channel rises anywhere close to being as serious as the bias of a political commentator on a news channel that bills itself as "fair and balanced." I'll leave out the tu quoque fallacy, but stick with my assertion - Bill O'Reilly is intellectually dishonest.
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That he would say that about Stewart is just ridiculous. There is no expectation for a comedian to be unbiased, nor any moral imperative for him to be so. There is an expectation and a moral imperative for news organizations to not be biased.

here's another little example of Bill O'Reilly utter hypocracy that I posted in a separate thread related to treatment of abused boys vs girls. This is an old issue, and I am seeking to switch the focus of the conversation to the item below. Just wanted to provide what I find to be an especially disgusting example of O'Reilly hypocracy:


Sean Hornbeck was kidnapped when he was 11 years old. At the beginning of his captivity, he was tied down and physically restrained, tortured, and raped repeatedly. There is video tape his captor took that was presented at trial of him being raped and tortured. Then, after a period of time, his abductor went to kill him, but the boy convinced him that he would do anything he wanted if he let him live. He spent the next four years being raped and tortured by his abductor, who continuously threatened his life and his parents' lives. Over time, he was able to take Sean out with him, and even let Sean out on his own. Sean had many opportunities to ask for help but never did.


When covering this story in 2007 soon after Sean was found, Bill O'reilly had the following to say;

""there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and "And the question is, why didn't he escape when he could have? There are all kinds of theories about that. ... All right, you know, the Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it. I've never bought it. I didn't think it happened in the Patty Hearst case. I don't think it happened here." O'Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted."

http://mediamatters.org/research/200701170009


In 2003, when Elizabeth Smart was found alive (same age as Sean, 15), also found to have had many opportunities to ask for help but never did. Bill O'Reilly had this to say:

"The reason questions like why didn't the 15-year-old cry out for help and was she brainwashed by her kidnapper have to be answered is to help other abducted children. The more we know about Elizabeth Smart's investigation, the better future investigations of this type will be. There is no question, this is a very strange case. But jumping to conclusions can only hurt Elizabeth and the Smart family. Thus, we the media should be cautious....But we will use discretion, because the mental health of a 15-year-old girl is the most important aspect of this case right now."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81096,00.html
 
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