compiled by El Reportero’s staff
Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The remarks Thursday from the committee’s chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama’s contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase.
Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would “take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings.”
Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don’t believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance.
“We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fi nes or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment,” Ensign said. “That seems to me to be a problem.”
Ensign’s argument , however, wasn’t persuasive to the committee — which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate.
Teacher’s aide acquitted after evidence contradicts offi cer’s story
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – A woman who was injured and falsely arrested by police in September has been acquitted of battery upon an offi cer and resisting arrest, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced today.
Tisha Harvey, a 29 year-old teacher’s aide for disabled preschoolers, is currently cooperating with an Offi ce of Citizen Complaints investigation against the police offi cer involved in the incident. Jurors unanimously found Harvey not guilty on December 31 after deliberating for one day.
On September 2, 2009, Harvey, who had no criminal history, was handcuffed and thrown to the ground by a San Francisco Police Department officer who claimed she ran a stop sign at Rutland Street and Sunnydale Avenue. Through police dispatch records presented at trial, Deputy Public Defender Serena Orloff established that the offi cer believed Harvey’s 2008 Chevrolet Impala was a stolen vehicle and fabricated the stop sign violation as a reason to approach the mother of two after she parked in front of a neighborhood community center.
During the week-long trial, jurors heard Harvey’s voice on a police radio recording pleading to know why she was being ar- rested. After the officer threw her to the ground and kept her there, handcuffed, with his knee in her back, Harvey called to nearby bystanders to contact a community worker from the nearby center to help her communicate with the offi cer. Jurors were shown photo documentation of the multiple bruises Harvey suffered in the incident.
The offi cer told a markedly different story under oath, testifying that Harvey struck him in the chest and, once handcuffed, tried to incite a growing crowd to attack him. While no evidence was presented to back up that version of events, witness accounts corroborated Harvey’s testimony that she was only yelling for the community worker to help mediate the situation.
“The offi cer had been on the force for barely a year and I believe he was woefully out of touch with the people and the neighborhood he was sworn to protect,” Orloff said. “The frightening part is that what happened to Ms. Harvey could happen to anyone. She was a law-abiding citizen on her way to pick up her child from daycare.”
