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A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
A short list of 'fun facts' distributed on the Internet accurately describes the workings of the U.S. Social Security system. | Neutral | A Facebook meme making the rounds in 2017 lists several purported 'fun facts' about Social Security aimed at countering arguments that the United States' government-run retirement program needs to be scaled back in order to balance the federal budget: Social Security Fun Facts: * Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add NOTHING to the national debt. * Social Security has a $2.5 trillion SURPLUS. * Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. So when the GOP says we need to cut Social Security in order to balance the federal budget... they're lying. Click Yes & Share If You Want Government To Stop Messing With SS! Were it only so clear and simple. Unfortunately, many aspects of the Social Security system are misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by politicians, so it behooves us to put simplistic statements like these to the test. Background First, a little history: The concept of Social Security grew out of the perceived necessity to address economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization of American life in the early 20th century, writes former Social Security Administration (SSA) historian Larry DeWitt: Earlier forms of economic security reflected the nature of preindustrial societies. In preindustrial America, most people lived on the land (and could thus provide their own subsistence, if little else); they were self-employed as farmers, laborers, or craftsmen, and they lived in extended families that provided the main form of economic security for family members who could not work. For example, in 1880, America was still 72 percent rural and only 28 percent urban. In only 50 years, that portrait changed; in 1930, we were 56 percent urban and only 44 percent rural (Bureau of the Census 1961). The problem of economic security in old age was not as pressing in preindustrial America because life expectancy was short. A typical American male born in 1850 had a life expectancy at birth of only 38 years (a female, only 2 years longer). But with the dawning of the twentieth century, a revolution in public sanitation, health care, and general living standards produced a growing population of Americans living into old age. Company pensions came into existence in the late 1800s, but for most Americans working in the new industrial economy they were not an option: The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the labor force had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932. The times were ripe for 'new forms of social provision,' writes DeWitt. National social insurance was an idea Europeans were already experimenting with by the 1880s, though it took the United States another fifty years to jump on the bandwagon, first in the form of some experimental state initiatives enacted between 1930 and 1935, then finally on the federal level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Per the wishes of its greatest champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Social Security was conceived from the outset as a self-financing program: On the financing issue, President Roosevelt insisted that the program be self-supporting, in the sense that all of its financing must come from its dedicated payroll taxes and not from general government revenues. He viewed the idea of using general revenues as tantamount to a 'blank check' that would allow lawmakers to engage in unbridled spending, and he feared it would inevitably lead to unfunded future deficits. By tying expenditures to a dedicated revenue source, the program could never spend more than it could accrue through payroll taxation. However, there are a couple of well-known problems with the start-up of all pension schemes. Typically, pension system costs are lowest in the early days when few participants have retired and much higher later on when more people qualify for benefits. Funding a pension system on a current-cost basis thus would impose significantly higher taxes on future cohorts of beneficiaries. To offset this tendency, the CES planners proposed using a large reserve fund that could be used to generate investment income thereby meeting a portion of future program costs. Thus were born the Social Security trust funds, into which all program revenues go and out of which, by law, only benefits and administrative costs can be taken, with one important exception: any surpluses are to be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, thereby accumulating interest revenue for the program and making the surpluses available for general use by the government. After 80-plus years, the system remains largely self-sustaining, though that cannot continue to be the case unless some major adjustments are made. What began as a contributory retirement insurance program offering minimal old-age assistance to barely half of the existing workforce has grown into a massive provider of retirement and disability benefits to more than 90 percent of American workers and their dependents. An estimated 65.1 million people received payments from the Social Security Administration in 2015. A total of $897.1 billion was distributed, an amount equivalent to 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (for comparison, U.S. military spending was about $598 billion in 2015). The 2016 Trust Fund Trustees Report bluntly questioned Social Security's long-term sustainability: The 2016 Trustees Report projects that the number of retired workers will grow rapidly, as members of the post-World War II baby boom continue to retire in increasing numbers. The number of retired workers is projected to double in about 50 years. People are also living longer, and the birth rate is low. As a result, the Trustees project that the ratio of 2.8 workers paying Social Security taxes to each person collecting benefits in 2015 will fall to 2.1 to 1 in 2037. ... Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates. In 2010, the program paid more in benefits and expenses than it collected in taxes and other noninterest income, and the 2016 Trustees Report projects this pattern to continue for the next 75 years. The Trustees estimate that the combined OASI and DI trust fund reserves will be depleted by 2034. Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for reform of the Social Security system to rescue it before the reserves run out. In December 2016, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill to 'modernize' and 'permanently save' Social Security via measures such as changing how benefits are calculated, updating the definition of 'full retirement age,' and cutting back on payouts to dependents of higher-income workers. Other politicians (mainly Republicans) say Social Security cutbacks are necessary to 'balance the federal budget' - a claim the 'fun facts' meme we introduced at the beginning of our article is supposed to disprove, beginning with the first item: CLAIM: Social Security and Medicare are paid for with a separate tax. They add nothing to the national debt. Mostly true. Social Security is and always has been a self-financing system, using payroll tax revenues, income tax on benefits, and interest on Treasury bonds to balance its budget. In terms of overall federal spending, it's an 'off-budget' item, which is to say, separate from the general budget, which is made up of discretionary items like military expenditures. (Medicare, which is partly self-financing, partly reliant on premiums, and partly reliant on discretionary funding from Congress, is a separate system that merits its own discussion.) Historically, Social Security hasn't always been off-budget, a fact that continues to be a source of confusion. Between 1969 and 1990, changes in the law permitted trust fund surpluses to be counted as assets when computing the federal deficit (which had the desired effect of making the deficit appear smaller than it actually was). This has not been the case since the passage of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, historian Larry DeWitt writes, but politicians still use the informal convention of including trust fund surpluses in discussions about the budget when it suits their purposes: [T]hose involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is. The fact that Social Security is off-budget and self-sustaining doesn't mean there is no interaction at all between it and the general account. Every time the trust funds purchase or redeem Treasury bonds, the two intermingle - a point that isn't lost on those clamoring for reform. When Social Security runs a fiscal deficit (that is, it takes in less tax money than it pays out in benefits), the shortfall has to be covered with Treasury funds, which critics say contributes to the national debt. According to the Heritage Foundation's Romina Boccia, this has been the case every year for the better part of a decade: Since 2010, the OASI program has taken in less money from payroll tax revenues and the taxation of benefits than it pays out in benefits, generating cash-flow deficits. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program's cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees' intermediate assumptions. For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security's cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt. But that formulation doesn't jibe with the trustees' own recent reports, according to which the program's cash flow was still in the black in 2017 (thanks to interest income) and wasn't projected to creep into the red until 2018 (for the first time since 1982). Even facing a negative cash flow, the trustees project that the system can sustain itself for another 15 years by gradually redeeming the securities held in its trust funds. But, critics ask, doesn't the redemption of Treasury bonds impact the Treasury's own cash flow and deepen the national debt? Yes, as to affecting the Treasury's cash flow (but only temporarily), and no, as to deepening the national debt. Social Security Administration economist David Pattison explains: The securities that are issued to the trust funds replace securities issued to the public, and public debt - total Treasury securities - remains unchanged. The same holds in reverse for OASDI expenditures: Securities redeemed to cover program expenditures are replaced by securities issued to the public. When trust fund reserves grow each year, as they are doing now, increasing amounts of general account debt are shifted to trust fund holdings. When reserves are drawn down toward their longer-term levels, as will begin to occur in a few years, the general account debt held by the trust fund will once again be shifted to debt held by the public. Total general account debt - the gross public debt - is not affected by these transactions. CLAIM: Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus. True, and then some. As of 2017, Social Security Trust Fund reserves stood at $2.82 trillion, up $19 billion from the previous year. In the absence of reforms, the trustees expect to maintain surpluses, albeit gradually declining, through 2034. CLAIM: Congress has 'borrowed' trillions from Social Security to pay for government spending. True, but misleadingly stated. As we explained above, the system was set up from day one such that trust fund surpluses must be invested in interest-earning U.S. Treasury bonds, in effect lending the monies to the general account for whatever discretionary uses Congress sees fit to spend them on. One might argue that there are more practical alternatives, but it's misleading to characterize it as an abuse of the system. Are members of the GOP 'lying,' as the Facebook meme holds, when they say Social Security needs to be cut in order to balance the federal budget? Not necessarily, but they're painting a distorted picture, purposely or not. In the short term, and minus the implementation of other reforms, cutting Social Security benefits would only add to the trust funds' surpluses while cheating beneficiaries of the assistance they've been promised. It wouldn't add to the federal budget's bottom line. Without question, changes of some kind will be necessary to keep Social Security viable decades hence, so there's no way around the government 'messing' with the system to that end, one way or another. | nan | [
"05567-proof-10-social_security_fun_facts_fb.jpg"
] |
The Sturgis motorcycle rally in 2020 resulted in 250,000 COVID-19 coronavirus cases. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In September 2020, social media was abuzz over a report from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics that linked 266,796 COVID-19 coronavirus cases (a figure that was reported as 'more than 250,000' in various headlines) to the Sturgis motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a nonprofit research institute supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation and affiliated with the University of Bonn, truly did publish a paper estimating that the rally was linked to a surge of approximately 250,000 COVID-19 cases (representing a cost of $12.2 billion). However, while the rally likely contributed to a rise in coronavirus cases, the figures stated here are estimates from a non-peer reviewed paper and have not been demonstrated definitively. Furthermore, various statisticians and epidemiologists have indicated the study had some flaws. Before we get to the expert opinions on this study, let's dispel a few quick rumors on social media. This study did not claim, for instance, that 250,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after attending the rally. The research attempted to quantify how many cases of COVID-19 could potentially be linked to people who attended the rally, traveled to other locations, and then spread the disease among their communities. It should also be noted that this is an estimate based on a wide variety of factors, not an actual headcount of COVID-19 patients who attended, or knew someone who attended, the rally. As mentioned above, this study was not peer-reviewed and was prefaced with a piece of text noting that 'IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion.' The IZA paper's finding that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to the Sturgis rally was based on three key factors: anonymized smartphone data that showed an influx of out-of-state visitors and a sharp increase in foot traffic at 'restaurants and bars, hotels, entertainment venues, and retail establishments'; a decrease in stay-at-home activity in the surrounding area; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data that showed COVID-19 cases increased both in South Dakota where the rally was held, and in areas where Sturgis attendees traveled to in the days after the rally. While this study may provide a broad estimate on how Sturgis could have impacted the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of epidemiologists and statisticians have taken issue with models used in the study and the report's findings. Joshua Clayton, South Dakota's state epidemiologist, said that the study's findings did 'not align with what we know' and argued that IZA did not account for other contributing factors, such as the fact that schools reopened around the same time as the rally. Local news outlet KEVN reported: 'From what we know the results do not align with what we know,' state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said. He mentioned that a white paper isn't peer-reviewed. And pointed out the paper doesn't note schools in the state also reopened close after the Rally ended, which could have attributed to the surge of cases in South Dakota. Rex Douglas, the director of the Machine Learning for Social Science Lab (MSSL), Center for Peace and Security Studies, University of California San Diego, and Kevin Griffin, an assistant professor at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, also took issue with the methodology used in this paper. Griffin, for instance, noted that cases were already on the rise when the rally took place, while Douglas noted that authorities simply don't have the data to reach such a precise conclusion. Douglas wrote: They want to know if mass-events (protests, conventions, rallies) spread covid. But we don't have individual level data on attendees and comparable stay-homes. So they resort to a diff-in-diff, looking to see if a place has more, less, or the same number of confirmed cases soon after an event than they 'should.' The argument is that the trend line for an entire location after time T can tell us if what happened on T is safe or risky. For why this research design does not answer that question, imagine running your own experiment. Go outside and cough in a stranger's face right now. Now if next week your county's confirmed case rate goes up, that's bad behavior, stays the same it's ok, and goes down it's good! Jennifer Beam Dowd, the deputy director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, also took issue with the paper's conclusion in an article published on Slate. Generally speaking, Dowd argued that the researchers made assumptions that don't always play out in reality. More specifically, Dowd took issue with how the study confidently presented a precise conclusion (266,796 COVID-cases) despite noisy results. The 266,796 number also overstates the precision of the estimates in the paper even if the model is taken at face value. The confidence intervals for the 'high inflow' counties seem to include zero (meaning the authors can't say with statistical confidence that there was any difference in infections across counties due to the rally). No standard errors (measures of the variability around the estimate) are provided for the main regression results, and many of the p-values for key results are not statistically significant at conventional levels. So even if one believes the design and assumptions, the results are very 'noisy' and subject to caveats that don't merit the broadcasting of the highly specific 266,796 figure with confidence, though I imagine that 'somewhere between zero and 450,000 infections' would not have been as headline-grabbing. The claim that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to Sturgis is based on one study's estimate of how the motorcycle rally could have impacted the pandemic. As several statisticians and epidemiologists have noted, the models used for this study contained flaws, and the report arrived at a conclusion that was more precise than the available data would have allowed. | nan | [
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The Sturgis motorcycle rally in 2020 resulted in 250,000 COVID-19 coronavirus cases. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In September 2020, social media was abuzz over a report from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics that linked 266,796 COVID-19 coronavirus cases (a figure that was reported as 'more than 250,000' in various headlines) to the Sturgis motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a nonprofit research institute supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation and affiliated with the University of Bonn, truly did publish a paper estimating that the rally was linked to a surge of approximately 250,000 COVID-19 cases (representing a cost of $12.2 billion). However, while the rally likely contributed to a rise in coronavirus cases, the figures stated here are estimates from a non-peer reviewed paper and have not been demonstrated definitively. Furthermore, various statisticians and epidemiologists have indicated the study had some flaws. Before we get to the expert opinions on this study, let's dispel a few quick rumors on social media. This study did not claim, for instance, that 250,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after attending the rally. The research attempted to quantify how many cases of COVID-19 could potentially be linked to people who attended the rally, traveled to other locations, and then spread the disease among their communities. It should also be noted that this is an estimate based on a wide variety of factors, not an actual headcount of COVID-19 patients who attended, or knew someone who attended, the rally. As mentioned above, this study was not peer-reviewed and was prefaced with a piece of text noting that 'IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion.' The IZA paper's finding that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to the Sturgis rally was based on three key factors: anonymized smartphone data that showed an influx of out-of-state visitors and a sharp increase in foot traffic at 'restaurants and bars, hotels, entertainment venues, and retail establishments'; a decrease in stay-at-home activity in the surrounding area; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data that showed COVID-19 cases increased both in South Dakota where the rally was held, and in areas where Sturgis attendees traveled to in the days after the rally. While this study may provide a broad estimate on how Sturgis could have impacted the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of epidemiologists and statisticians have taken issue with models used in the study and the report's findings. Joshua Clayton, South Dakota's state epidemiologist, said that the study's findings did 'not align with what we know' and argued that IZA did not account for other contributing factors, such as the fact that schools reopened around the same time as the rally. Local news outlet KEVN reported: 'From what we know the results do not align with what we know,' state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said. He mentioned that a white paper isn't peer-reviewed. And pointed out the paper doesn't note schools in the state also reopened close after the Rally ended, which could have attributed to the surge of cases in South Dakota. Rex Douglas, the director of the Machine Learning for Social Science Lab (MSSL), Center for Peace and Security Studies, University of California San Diego, and Kevin Griffin, an assistant professor at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, also took issue with the methodology used in this paper. Griffin, for instance, noted that cases were already on the rise when the rally took place, while Douglas noted that authorities simply don't have the data to reach such a precise conclusion. Douglas wrote: They want to know if mass-events (protests, conventions, rallies) spread covid. But we don't have individual level data on attendees and comparable stay-homes. So they resort to a diff-in-diff, looking to see if a place has more, less, or the same number of confirmed cases soon after an event than they 'should.' The argument is that the trend line for an entire location after time T can tell us if what happened on T is safe or risky. For why this research design does not answer that question, imagine running your own experiment. Go outside and cough in a stranger's face right now. Now if next week your county's confirmed case rate goes up, that's bad behavior, stays the same it's ok, and goes down it's good! Jennifer Beam Dowd, the deputy director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, also took issue with the paper's conclusion in an article published on Slate. Generally speaking, Dowd argued that the researchers made assumptions that don't always play out in reality. More specifically, Dowd took issue with how the study confidently presented a precise conclusion (266,796 COVID-cases) despite noisy results. The 266,796 number also overstates the precision of the estimates in the paper even if the model is taken at face value. The confidence intervals for the 'high inflow' counties seem to include zero (meaning the authors can't say with statistical confidence that there was any difference in infections across counties due to the rally). No standard errors (measures of the variability around the estimate) are provided for the main regression results, and many of the p-values for key results are not statistically significant at conventional levels. So even if one believes the design and assumptions, the results are very 'noisy' and subject to caveats that don't merit the broadcasting of the highly specific 266,796 figure with confidence, though I imagine that 'somewhere between zero and 450,000 infections' would not have been as headline-grabbing. The claim that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to Sturgis is based on one study's estimate of how the motorcycle rally could have impacted the pandemic. As several statisticians and epidemiologists have noted, the models used for this study contained flaws, and the report arrived at a conclusion that was more precise than the available data would have allowed. | nan | [
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] |
The Sturgis motorcycle rally in 2020 resulted in 250,000 COVID-19 coronavirus cases. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In September 2020, social media was abuzz over a report from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics that linked 266,796 COVID-19 coronavirus cases (a figure that was reported as 'more than 250,000' in various headlines) to the Sturgis motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a nonprofit research institute supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation and affiliated with the University of Bonn, truly did publish a paper estimating that the rally was linked to a surge of approximately 250,000 COVID-19 cases (representing a cost of $12.2 billion). However, while the rally likely contributed to a rise in coronavirus cases, the figures stated here are estimates from a non-peer reviewed paper and have not been demonstrated definitively. Furthermore, various statisticians and epidemiologists have indicated the study had some flaws. Before we get to the expert opinions on this study, let's dispel a few quick rumors on social media. This study did not claim, for instance, that 250,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after attending the rally. The research attempted to quantify how many cases of COVID-19 could potentially be linked to people who attended the rally, traveled to other locations, and then spread the disease among their communities. It should also be noted that this is an estimate based on a wide variety of factors, not an actual headcount of COVID-19 patients who attended, or knew someone who attended, the rally. As mentioned above, this study was not peer-reviewed and was prefaced with a piece of text noting that 'IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion.' The IZA paper's finding that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to the Sturgis rally was based on three key factors: anonymized smartphone data that showed an influx of out-of-state visitors and a sharp increase in foot traffic at 'restaurants and bars, hotels, entertainment venues, and retail establishments'; a decrease in stay-at-home activity in the surrounding area; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data that showed COVID-19 cases increased both in South Dakota where the rally was held, and in areas where Sturgis attendees traveled to in the days after the rally. While this study may provide a broad estimate on how Sturgis could have impacted the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of epidemiologists and statisticians have taken issue with models used in the study and the report's findings. Joshua Clayton, South Dakota's state epidemiologist, said that the study's findings did 'not align with what we know' and argued that IZA did not account for other contributing factors, such as the fact that schools reopened around the same time as the rally. Local news outlet KEVN reported: 'From what we know the results do not align with what we know,' state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said. He mentioned that a white paper isn't peer-reviewed. And pointed out the paper doesn't note schools in the state also reopened close after the Rally ended, which could have attributed to the surge of cases in South Dakota. Rex Douglas, the director of the Machine Learning for Social Science Lab (MSSL), Center for Peace and Security Studies, University of California San Diego, and Kevin Griffin, an assistant professor at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, also took issue with the methodology used in this paper. Griffin, for instance, noted that cases were already on the rise when the rally took place, while Douglas noted that authorities simply don't have the data to reach such a precise conclusion. Douglas wrote: They want to know if mass-events (protests, conventions, rallies) spread covid. But we don't have individual level data on attendees and comparable stay-homes. So they resort to a diff-in-diff, looking to see if a place has more, less, or the same number of confirmed cases soon after an event than they 'should.' The argument is that the trend line for an entire location after time T can tell us if what happened on T is safe or risky. For why this research design does not answer that question, imagine running your own experiment. Go outside and cough in a stranger's face right now. Now if next week your county's confirmed case rate goes up, that's bad behavior, stays the same it's ok, and goes down it's good! Jennifer Beam Dowd, the deputy director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, also took issue with the paper's conclusion in an article published on Slate. Generally speaking, Dowd argued that the researchers made assumptions that don't always play out in reality. More specifically, Dowd took issue with how the study confidently presented a precise conclusion (266,796 COVID-cases) despite noisy results. The 266,796 number also overstates the precision of the estimates in the paper even if the model is taken at face value. The confidence intervals for the 'high inflow' counties seem to include zero (meaning the authors can't say with statistical confidence that there was any difference in infections across counties due to the rally). No standard errors (measures of the variability around the estimate) are provided for the main regression results, and many of the p-values for key results are not statistically significant at conventional levels. So even if one believes the design and assumptions, the results are very 'noisy' and subject to caveats that don't merit the broadcasting of the highly specific 266,796 figure with confidence, though I imagine that 'somewhere between zero and 450,000 infections' would not have been as headline-grabbing. The claim that 250,000 COVID-19 cases were linked to Sturgis is based on one study's estimate of how the motorcycle rally could have impacted the pandemic. As several statisticians and epidemiologists have noted, the models used for this study contained flaws, and the report arrived at a conclusion that was more precise than the available data would have allowed. | nan | [
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Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Pink Floyd's co-founder, Roger Waters, requesting the use of the song 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), for an advertisement promoting Instagram, to which Waters said no. | Neutral | In early June 2021, Roger Waters, singer, songwriter, and co-founder of famed rock band Pink Floyd, spoke at an event for Julian Assange. During the event, he mentioned a missive from Mark Zuckerberg regarding a request to use the song 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2),' for an Instagram ad. The clip of Waters speaking went viral on June 12. Waters, who held up a printout claiming it was from Facebook, has long called for the release of the WikiLeaks founder, joining many supporters who say Assange exposed abuses of power. '¡Vete a la chingada!': @rogerwaters a Mark Zuckerberg. El músico contó que le ofrecieron 'una gran cantidad de dinero' por permitir el uso de Another brick in the wall II para promover Instagram. Lo narró en un acto por la libertad de Julian Assange (@Wikileaks)#VideosLaJornada pic.twitter.com/gEVqaor8Eo - La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) June 12, 2021 At the event, Waters said: It arrived on the internet to me this morning. It's a request for the rights to use my song 'Another Brick in the Wall, 2' in the making of a film to promote Instagram. So it's a missive [...] from Mark Zuckerberg to me. It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money. And the answer is, 'F- you. No f-in' way.' He proceeded to read from the paper, saying 'We want to thank you for considering this project, we feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and necessary today, which speaks to how timeless a work [it is].' The lyrics of the song are, 'We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control/No dark sarcasm in the classroom/Teacher leave them kids alone [...] All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.' Reminding people of the song's sentiments, Waters continued, 'And yet, they want to use [this song] to make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is, so that it can continue to censor all of us in this room, and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out to the general public [...]' He continued by criticizing Zuckerberg and the website he started back in college called Facemash that would rate women's appearances. 'How did this little prick who started off by saying 'She's pretty, we'll give her a 4 out of 5,' [...] How the f- did he get any power in anything, and yet here he is one of the most powerful idiots in the world.' We reached out to Facebook, and a representative disputed some of the details presented by Waters. A spokesperson told us that a third party marketing agency did reach out on behalf of Instagram to make an initial request to see if Waters' team was interested in allowing the use of the song; there were no formal offers of payment made. Zuckerberg was not involved in the process, the spokesperson said. The conversation took place between third party agencies which were Instagram's marketing agency, and representatives for Roger Waters. She added, that there were no formal offers made, and discussions were still happening over the weekend. As of Saturday, they were waiting for a formal quote from Mr. Waters' team. Then they heard Waters make his public statement at the Assange event, which they took to be his decision on the request. We asked what the advertisement campaign was about, but the spokesperson would not confirm the details, saying it was simply, an early stage exploration. She added, that marketers reach out to musicians all the time, and they fully respect the decision of the artist or musicians. We have reached out to Waters' team to confirm the details of their exchange with Instagram. We will update this post if we hear more information. Given that we know that Waters said no to Instagram, but the details of their interaction differ, we rate this as a 'Mixture.' | nan | [
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Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Pink Floyd's co-founder, Roger Waters, requesting the use of the song 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), for an advertisement promoting Instagram, to which Waters said no. | Neutral | In early June 2021, Roger Waters, singer, songwriter, and co-founder of famed rock band Pink Floyd, spoke at an event for Julian Assange. During the event, he mentioned a missive from Mark Zuckerberg regarding a request to use the song 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2),' for an Instagram ad. The clip of Waters speaking went viral on June 12. Waters, who held up a printout claiming it was from Facebook, has long called for the release of the WikiLeaks founder, joining many supporters who say Assange exposed abuses of power. '¡Vete a la chingada!': @rogerwaters a Mark Zuckerberg. El músico contó que le ofrecieron 'una gran cantidad de dinero' por permitir el uso de Another brick in the wall II para promover Instagram. Lo narró en un acto por la libertad de Julian Assange (@Wikileaks)#VideosLaJornada pic.twitter.com/gEVqaor8Eo - La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) June 12, 2021 At the event, Waters said: It arrived on the internet to me this morning. It's a request for the rights to use my song 'Another Brick in the Wall, 2' in the making of a film to promote Instagram. So it's a missive [...] from Mark Zuckerberg to me. It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money. And the answer is, 'F- you. No f-in' way.' He proceeded to read from the paper, saying 'We want to thank you for considering this project, we feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and necessary today, which speaks to how timeless a work [it is].' The lyrics of the song are, 'We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control/No dark sarcasm in the classroom/Teacher leave them kids alone [...] All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.' Reminding people of the song's sentiments, Waters continued, 'And yet, they want to use [this song] to make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is, so that it can continue to censor all of us in this room, and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out to the general public [...]' He continued by criticizing Zuckerberg and the website he started back in college called Facemash that would rate women's appearances. 'How did this little prick who started off by saying 'She's pretty, we'll give her a 4 out of 5,' [...] How the f- did he get any power in anything, and yet here he is one of the most powerful idiots in the world.' We reached out to Facebook, and a representative disputed some of the details presented by Waters. A spokesperson told us that a third party marketing agency did reach out on behalf of Instagram to make an initial request to see if Waters' team was interested in allowing the use of the song; there were no formal offers of payment made. Zuckerberg was not involved in the process, the spokesperson said. The conversation took place between third party agencies which were Instagram's marketing agency, and representatives for Roger Waters. She added, that there were no formal offers made, and discussions were still happening over the weekend. As of Saturday, they were waiting for a formal quote from Mr. Waters' team. Then they heard Waters make his public statement at the Assange event, which they took to be his decision on the request. We asked what the advertisement campaign was about, but the spokesperson would not confirm the details, saying it was simply, an early stage exploration. She added, that marketers reach out to musicians all the time, and they fully respect the decision of the artist or musicians. We have reached out to Waters' team to confirm the details of their exchange with Instagram. We will update this post if we hear more information. Given that we know that Waters said no to Instagram, but the details of their interaction differ, we rate this as a 'Mixture.' | nan | [
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Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
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Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Two black men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland of Moore, Oklahoma, were lynched by four white people in April 2018, a crime that was largely ignored by the media. | Neutral | On 18 April 2018, the mutilated bodies of two young African-American men, Alize Ramon Smith and Jarron Keonte Moreland, were found in a pond near Moore, Oklahoma, where they had had been reported missing by relatives a few days earlier. Police said the victims were shot by the younger of two brothers, both white, who had arranged to meet with them in a parking lot to complete a firearms sale initiated on Craigslist. The accused killers, 16-year-old Brett Boettler and his brother, Kevin Don Garcia-Boettler, 22, then took the bodies to their mother's house and, with the help of her boyfriend, Johnny Barker (also white), dismembered them and dumped the weighted remains in a nearby body of water. The brothers, Barker, and Crystal Boettler were arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, desecration of human corpses, and illegal possession of a firearm, among other crimes. According to NewsOne.com, Smith and Moreland were the victims of a 'modern lynching' that has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media - despite a recent controversy surrounding the use of that term to describe the public backlash against black male entertainers accused of sexual misconduct: When people talk about modern lynchings, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are not legitimate examples. Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, both 21, are two men who were lynched in 2018. On April 18, police found the dismembered bodies of the young men in a pond outside of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Three white men and one white woman have been arrested for the crime. According to WJLA.com, 'Police arrested 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker and the 16-year-old brother of Garcia-Boettler, who police say is the suspected shooter. Their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler, 40, has also been charged with accessory after the fact.' According to court records, 'on April 14, Garcia-Boettler drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. Garcia-Boettler told police that Moreland got out of a sedan and into the back seat of his van. He claims that he heard a gun 'rack' and told police he witnessed his brother open fire killing the two men.' Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department said, 'When [Moreland and Smith] entered the vehicle, the white men said they heard a gun being racked. So one of them fired four rounds.' Meaning, when the white men heard the sounds of the gun being 'racked,' they thought Ramon and Jarron were about to shoot so they shot them. Sounds implausible that you would instantly and shoot and kill two people because of the sound of a gun being racked. A similarly-focused web site, The Root, also provided aggregated coverage of the incident, referring to it as 'Lynching 2.0.' The article paid particular attention to the gruesome details surrounding the disposal of the victims' bodies. In statements to the press, Smith's mother, Destiny, described the murder of her son as a 'hate crime,' but at least one law enforcement official told Oklahoma City's News 9 that that does not appear to be the case: Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn said his office looked into the possibility of this being a hate crime and he said the investigation showed the victims were attempting to rob the suspects when the shooting occurred, therefore it was determined that the motive was not race related. Were there a demonstrable racial motive behind the attack and/or mistreatment of the victim's remains it would likely be prosecutable as a hate crime, but would still fall short of qualifying as a lynching, says Karlos Hill, Interim Director of African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 'Calling it a lynching is going too far,' Hill, author of the 2016 volume Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), explained to us in a phone interview: It's a rhetorical flourish. But I think the reason people may be labeling it as such is the brutality of the killings, and how that is reminiscent of the lynching era. Unlike the murders of Smith and Moreland, which were committed inside a parked van unseen by eyewitnesses, historical lynchings were communal events that invariably took place in public, he said: A lynching, historically, had the tacit approval, or the approval, of members of the community, and oftentimes that tacit support could be visibly seen in the form of sometimes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people being present at the lynching. This, in no way, shape or form or fashion, is a killing that had the support or tacit support of members of the community. This isn't something that was attended by or witnessed by a large group of people. In describing the killings as a 'lynching,' both The Root and News One echoed sentiments that had already been spreading for at least a week on social media. Writer and Twitter personality Shaun King tweeted the following on 26 April, for example: This literally appears to be a modern day lynching. These 2 men, and 1 other, abducted 2 young Black men from a grocery store parking lot in Moore, Oklahoma. Then shot & killed them. Stripped them naked. Burned clothes. Took them to a pond & tied their bodies to cinder blocks pic.twitter.com/m7m0Sq03X5 - Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2018 Writer George M. Johnson tweeted a similar take on 1 May: This is Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland. Both age 21. They were lynched last week. Lynched in the year 2018 You have not seen this make headlines. That needs to change.#RamonSmith #JarronMoreland https://t.co/YNQs31XZIJ - George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) May 1, 2018 The claim that the incident was ignored by the mainstream media is an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. Besides being reported (as one would expect) in local and regional news venues, the story did get national coverage by sources including Newsweek, Associated Press, the New York Daily News, and BuzzFeed. But it wasn't covered by CNN, MSNBC, or other major networks. The implication that it should have been seems to follow from the judgment that the crime was a racially-motivated lynching as opposed to a mere homicide. The use of the word 'lynching' in this context is questionable, at best. Despite vague similarities between the Oklahoma incident and historical lynchings, the comparison strays from the generally accepted definition of the term. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it thus, for example: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission In the context of race relations in America, it refers more specifically to vigilante-style public executions of black Americans accused of racial transgressions by white mobs, mainly in the Deep South, between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the 1950s. But despite the fact that the Oklahoma victims were black and all four of the accused perpetrators were white, it's a stretch to characterize the latter as a 'mob' and the killings as a 'public execution.' Nor, based on the information shared by police thus far, are there solid reasons to presume that race was a primary motivation in the attack. Ethnicity is relevant to determining whether a lynching took place, according to Karlos Hill, but even if evidence comes to light that the 2018 Oklahoma killings constituted a hate crime, that - in and of itself - would not make it a lynching. 'There's a difference between a racially motivated murder and a lynching,' he said. Based on the information shared by police thus far, it is not a given that the incident fits into either category. | nan | [
"05684-proof-08-Alize_Ramon_Smith_Jarron_Keonte_Moreland_craigslist_murder.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Dr. Ben Carson said the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures' but received help from such programs in his youth. | Neutral | An initially unlikely but clearly formidable contender for the 2016 Republican nomination has been Dr. Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon and relative newcomer in the race to the White House. Unlike Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, or Donald Trump, Carson was neither a career politician nor a nationally known name. Carson became somewhat of an overnight sensation following an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Prior to that point he was not widely recognized as a political force, but he quickly gained traction among conservatives and was soon short-listed as a top pick for 2016. A strength of Carson's campaign was often been described as a sort of ideological purity, espoused in a quote attributed to him (which is almost always included as the conclusion to the meme shown below): 'The disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The earliest versions of the meme date to at least December 2014 and include that remark. Many of the users sharing the meme cited a 23 May 2014 Wonkette post titled 'Ben Carson So Glad His Welfare Mom Wasn't Dependent on Government' as a source, but the sentence in question appeared nowhere on that page. What was included was a transcribed comment from Carson made during an episode of The View in May 2014, but it was markedly different than the version attributed to him in versions of the above-reproduced meme. In that TV segment, a pre-candidacy Carson addressed the issue of health care and stated: When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, 'There, there, you poor little thing ... Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can't do that.' What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out. Around the same time, Carson was quoted by Politico on then-simmering criticism of his ostensible policies on welfare and social programs. Carson was not a candidate (as he had stated on The View a few weeks later) when he proclaimed: Many people are critical of me because they say, 'Carson wants to get rid of all the safety nets and welfare programs even though he must have benefited from them. This is a blatant lie. I have no desire to get rid of safety nets for people who need them. I have a strong desire to get rid of programs that create dependency in able-bodied people. It's important to bear in mind the quote was attributed to Carson in mid-to-late 2014, but many of his positions were revealed after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. We were unable to find any instances in which Carson was recording as asserting that the 'disintegration of the family unit and the welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures.' The legitimacy of the quote was important in the context of the meme: overall, the claims presented Carson as someone who was more than happy to reap the benefits of social programs while later pulling that ladder up for generations of impoverished children who might otherwise be the next successful neurosurgeons. Moreover (as Carson initially pointed out), the quotation itself harbored some racially charged implications, suggesting that Carson's political positions on social programs were inherently less credible than those of his more privileged peers. As for the claims about Carson's youth, not all were substantiated (and again, several made leaps of logic based on class and race). Carson's mother left his father when he was eight, though he described his parents as 'divorced' (implying they were once married). A 2011 profile on the candidate before his entry into politics vaguely covered points asserted in the meme, but whether Carson ever lived in subsidized housing in his youth was unclear. The profile mentioned 'projects,' but it also seemed to suggest Carson's mother endeavored to avoid government assistance save for food stamps: When Sonya Carson moved her sons from their modest house in Detroit to live with her brother and his wife in Boston, she scrimped and sacrificed so they could return. When they did, they had to settle for Detroit's downtown housing projects - but at least they were home. Sonya Carson knew the world held more hope for her boys than the ghetto offered. She struggled to support the family without relying on government assistance. Carson wrote about his family's shame over receiving food stamps in his autobiography Gifted Hands (validating the meme's assertion that his family received them), but the relevant passage also described his family's distaste for accepting help: I knew [my mother] was trying to keep us off public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy. Carson's tune didn't dramatically change from earlier accounts he had provided. In a 2002 interview (well before the start of his political career) he said of his family's approach to assistance that: My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. And, so she worked very hard ... She would go to the Goodwill, she'd get a shirt that had a hole and put a patch on it and put another one on the other side to make it look symmetrical, and she sewed her own clothes. She would take us out in the country on a Sunday and knock on a farmer's door and say, 'Can we pick four bushels of corn, three for you and one for us?' and they were always glad at that deal. And she'd come home and she'd can the stuff, so that we would have food. She was just extremely thrifty and managed to get by that way. No one ever could quite figure out how she was able to do what she did. The claim about eyeglasses also appeared in Gifted Hands, where Carson explained that his school provided them to him no cost. But the assertion he was therefore 'supported by welfare' is difficult to substantiate, as 'welfare' typically describes programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing subsidies), and Medicaid (health care). According to the meme, Carson was 'kept healthy with Medicaid.' But that program wasn't mentioned by name in any extant biographical material that we could find pertaining to Carson, who was born in 1951. Medicaid was established in 1965, so Carson was well into his later youth before the program even existed (much less possibly extended to his family). We were also unable to substantiate the claim Carson 'benefited from affirmative action.' Much like Medicaid, 'affirmative action' with respect to university admissions didn't exist as it's understood today until after the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's possible that Carson was helped by those social changes just a few years later, but it's also possible that the effects of such initiatives had no impact on his admission to institutions of higher learning. The meme also claims that Carson's medical school was paid for by a grant from the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), but that assertion appears unique to the meme. Carson made no mention of such a grant in a February 2014 article about his education, and a 2012 Physicians Practice profile suggested Carson had received merit-based scholarships and grants: Thus began a life of accomplishment - reaching the highest rank in junior ROTC in high school, a full scholarship to Yale, medical school, Johns Hopkins. Yet he credits much of it to his mother, who would tell him, when he complained about a seemingly impossible problem, that if he had a brain he could think his way out of it. 'She cleaned other people's houses, but she never developed a victim mentality and she didn't let her kids develop one, either,' he said. 'When people stop accepting your excuses, something happens pretty fast: You stop looking for excuses, and you start looking for solutions.' A 1992 profile of Carson in Fortune similarly referenced merit-based 'scholarships and grants': Graduating third in his class at Detroit's Southwestern High, Carson had only $10 to spend on college application fees. He decided to apply to whichever school won that year's College Bowl, then a popular TV quiz show. Yale's ouster of Harvard determined his next move. Scholarships and grants helped pay the aspiring doctor's way through Yale and the University of Michigan School of Medicine. (Incidentally, Carson told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during an October 2015 interview that medical school should be paid for by the government.) Carson's late-in-life entry into politics made it easier for misconceptions about his life to proliferate, but the quote that closes this meme (and establishes its conclusions) doesn't appear to be anything more than an amalgam of what folks believe Ben Carson might have said. While Carson wasn't always a politician, he was a well known neurosurgeon with some accumulated press attention at the time he entered politics. Throughout the years Carson was candid about his disadvantaged childhood but never claimed to have benefited from more than food stamps and a free pair of glasses on Uncle Sam's dime. The claims in the meme encompass most programs to which impoverished youth might be eligible to receive today, retroactively implying Carson's path was paved by all of them. But in addition to the apparently fabricated quote which forms the meme's basis, a variety of the points upon which it leans are unproven or chronologically questionable. Carson's critics might judge his approach to government assistance as incongruent with his prior poverty, but the meme seemingly exaggerates the degree to which his family benefited from welfare programs. On 9 November 2015, the satirical Facebook page 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' published the image of Ben Carson reproduced below purportedly quoting Ben Carson as saying 'My mother raised me with no help from the government. We had food stamps and welfare and Section 8 housing, but we made it on our own. - Dr. Ben Carson, 11/7/15': Carson said no such thing, and the 'Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off' page featured a disclaimer marking its content as political satire: 'This page is for entertainment purposes. It is NOT meant to be taken seriously. It is primarily satire and parody with a mix of political memes and messages.' | nan | [
"05763-proof-03-ben-carson-welfare.jpg",
"05763-proof-12-ben-carson.jpg"
] |
Franchised postal center outlets may charge more for mailing items than official postal service rates. | Neutral | One business model that has proved quite successful over the last several decades is that of the private postal center. Through both independent stores and chain/franchise outlets (such as Mail Boxes Etc. and Postal Annex), these businesses, although not affiliated with the United States Postal Service (USPS), provide many of the same services as U.S. post offices: they rent mailboxes (similar to post office boxes), sell postage stamps, vend mailing supplies, and package and ship items via U.S. Mail. These businesses appeal to customers with a variety of needs: those who want the safety and security of receiving mail at sites other than their residence addresses, those who need someone to accept delivery of parcels and signature-required items on their behalf during hours when they would not be home to do so themselves, those who travel and move around frequently and need mail services at multiple locations, and those who live in areas where the local U.S. post office is not conveniently located for them. These businesses also typically provide a variety of services not generally offered at U.S. post offices, such as the shipment of items via other delivery services (e.g., UPS, FedEx), fax services, copy/print services, passport photos, money transfers, key cutting, and notary services. (The United Parcel Service offers many of these same services at its own branded UPS Stores, which are franchised by the Mail Boxes Etc. chain, a subsidiary of UPS.) All of this convenience comes with a price, however. Customers who buy postage stamps at private postal outlets will typically pay a mark-up over the face value, and those who use such outlets to ship items via USPS, UPS, or FedEx generally pay a premium over what they would be charged if they dealt with those entities directly. Most regular customers consider those additional fees to be worthwhile trade-offs for the convenience factor, but many folks who only occasionally use such services have been surprised (and disgruntled) to learn that they have been paying surcharges above the standard shipping rates. As a December 2009 New York Times article on the subject observed: Shipping at Christmas is a hectic thing, enough to give Santa migraines. So it is no surprise that many people avoid lines at the post office for the one-stop convenience of a U.P.S. Store, where one can send things by United States mail as well as by parcel post. At some U.P.S. Store franchises, however, clerks do not always tell customers that they may be paying a Grinch-like surcharge when they send something by the United States mail. Posing as customers, reporters for The New York Times visited several U.P.S. stores looking to mail an item by Priority Mail - one of the postal service's signature offerings. In nearly every instance, they were quoted prices well above the government postal rate, and only one of them was told they were paying a premium for the convenience of using a U.P.S. Store. One store on the Upper East Side said it would cost $21 to send an eight-pound package by Priority Mail to Old Greenwich, Conn. The clerk suggested using U.P.S. Ground instead for $19.90. At the post office across the street, the same package cost $8.80 to ship. Each arrived in two days. The article also noted that: No rules govern how much a U.P.S. Store can charge for postal services, or mandate that it tell customers that it is adding a surcharge. The only notice the reporters found was a notation on the receipt that reads 'U.S. Postal Rates Are Subject to Surcharge,' though with no indication of what the markup is. Several consumer advocates said they did not know of the U.P.S. practice. 'I think there's a natural assumption on the part of the consumer that if you're sending something through the U.S. Postal Service, even when it's from another store, you're not paying more, and if you are paying more, it's just a pittance,' said Tod Marks, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. Dave Lewin, a post office spokesman, said U.P.S. store owners were within their rights to charge 'whatever the market will bear.' But, he said, 'customers should be told upfront about any service charges a retailer might add to the postage for Postal Service products and services.' The situation is somewhat more complicated in Canada, where customers can choose between outlets of private postal chains such as PostNet, MBE or UPS Stores, and official Canada Post franchise outlets. One viral message circulated online purportedly recounts the experience of a disgruntled customer who utilized one of the latter, a Canada Post franchise location (in a drug store), and was not only charged over 50% more than the cost of mailing an identical package at a Canada Post post office but was also supposedly told by a Canada Post representative that Canada Post franchises 'may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers' at their discretion: I learned something over Christmas that I feel compelled to share with you. This won't change your life dramatically or help you survive the apocalypse but it will save you some $$$. I recently mailed two identical packages via Canada Post one week apart. One would think that the postage should be exactly the same... well, let me tell you... Pkg # 1 was mailed from an actual Canada Post Office. Postage came to $11.74. Since I knew a second identical package would be mailed in about a week's time, I bought sufficient postage for the second pkg while I was there. When it came time to mail Pkg #2, I went to the post office in Shopper's Drug Mart. I handed the pkg to the clerk to be put in the outbound mail bag, I was informed that I did not have sufficient postage attached. The clerk proceeded to inform me that I needed to purchase an additional $6 worth of stamps. After explaining how I knew exactly what the postage should be, the clerk offered some lame excuse that Canada Post is unionized and they can say and do anything with impunity and if I wished to mail that pkg from Shopper's then I needed to purchase more stamps. I told the clerk to stuff it and took back my package and headed to the 'real' Canada Post Office, where I would raise hell... Much to my surprise, the Canadian Postal Clerk took my package, weighed it and tossed it in the mail bag, and it was it's way... When I asked if the amount of Postage I had put on the parcel was right she shook her head and said 'yup, no problem'... The Truth comes out: Canada Post Offices charge postage for packages at the published Canada Post rates. Franchise locations such as Shoppers Drug Mart can charge whatever they like. So remember if you regularly mail packages at franchise locations (ie Shoppers Drug Mart,) you are probably paying too much. Franchise locations are found in shopping malls, drug stores and private businesses everywhere. From now on, all of my mailing will be done from a real Canada Post location. Still perplexed by what I was told by the girl in Shoppers, I fired off an email to Canada Post for clarification. This is the reply I got from them: Thank you for your message to Canada Post. A postal outlet is not a federal government agency and is not owned or managed by Canada Post. For example if the postal outlet is within grocery store or pharmacy it would follow the stores working hours, therefore if the store must be closed, so will the postal outlet inside. Only Canada Post Depots and Corporate Post Offices are obligated to follow the price of stamps and postal products that are legislated by Canada Post. Any commercial and private establishment may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers. It is at their discretion to apply additional service fees to products that they sell. We suggest visiting a Corporate Post Office in order to avoid paying additional service charges that corner stores or other establishment may implement on their products. Regards, Veronika Strofski Customer Service The substance of this complaint seems to be inaccurate: the packages mailed by the customer (although they may have contained similar items) apparently were not identical; the second one was packaged in a way that made it slightly bulkier than the first, and it therefore did not fit through the smaller mail slot that would have qualified it for a lower postage rate. Canada Post's initial response to this matter acknowledged that inaccurate information was provided by a Canada Post representative to the customer in question but affirmed that Canada Post franchise outlets are not authorized to charge customers more than the published Canada Post rates: Over the holidays, a customer contacted us by email to ask us why private sector partners would be allowed to charge more for the same service provided by corporate offices. The reply they received contained misinformation and we would like our customers to know the facts - rates are the same at all Canada Post establishments both corporate and private sector partner locations. It is very important to us that the customer experience is the same no matter where you choose to shop. In fact, the agreement that Canada Post has with its private sector partners specifies that the maximum postal rates that they can charge are the Canada Post published rates. If a postal outlet charges prices that are over the Canada Post published rates, they are in violation of their contract. You should also know that the equipment used by private sector postal outlets is programmed with Canada Post's published rates. Therefore, the rates should be the same no matter where you choose to get postal services. We are very disappointed to hear of this experience and we are investigating the matter. Canada Post later disclaimed the purported reply as a hoax, claiming that they had no employee named 'Veronika Strofski.' | nan | [
"05970-proof-03-christmas_cards_fb.jpg"
] |
Franchised postal center outlets may charge more for mailing items than official postal service rates. | Neutral | One business model that has proved quite successful over the last several decades is that of the private postal center. Through both independent stores and chain/franchise outlets (such as Mail Boxes Etc. and Postal Annex), these businesses, although not affiliated with the United States Postal Service (USPS), provide many of the same services as U.S. post offices: they rent mailboxes (similar to post office boxes), sell postage stamps, vend mailing supplies, and package and ship items via U.S. Mail. These businesses appeal to customers with a variety of needs: those who want the safety and security of receiving mail at sites other than their residence addresses, those who need someone to accept delivery of parcels and signature-required items on their behalf during hours when they would not be home to do so themselves, those who travel and move around frequently and need mail services at multiple locations, and those who live in areas where the local U.S. post office is not conveniently located for them. These businesses also typically provide a variety of services not generally offered at U.S. post offices, such as the shipment of items via other delivery services (e.g., UPS, FedEx), fax services, copy/print services, passport photos, money transfers, key cutting, and notary services. (The United Parcel Service offers many of these same services at its own branded UPS Stores, which are franchised by the Mail Boxes Etc. chain, a subsidiary of UPS.) All of this convenience comes with a price, however. Customers who buy postage stamps at private postal outlets will typically pay a mark-up over the face value, and those who use such outlets to ship items via USPS, UPS, or FedEx generally pay a premium over what they would be charged if they dealt with those entities directly. Most regular customers consider those additional fees to be worthwhile trade-offs for the convenience factor, but many folks who only occasionally use such services have been surprised (and disgruntled) to learn that they have been paying surcharges above the standard shipping rates. As a December 2009 New York Times article on the subject observed: Shipping at Christmas is a hectic thing, enough to give Santa migraines. So it is no surprise that many people avoid lines at the post office for the one-stop convenience of a U.P.S. Store, where one can send things by United States mail as well as by parcel post. At some U.P.S. Store franchises, however, clerks do not always tell customers that they may be paying a Grinch-like surcharge when they send something by the United States mail. Posing as customers, reporters for The New York Times visited several U.P.S. stores looking to mail an item by Priority Mail - one of the postal service's signature offerings. In nearly every instance, they were quoted prices well above the government postal rate, and only one of them was told they were paying a premium for the convenience of using a U.P.S. Store. One store on the Upper East Side said it would cost $21 to send an eight-pound package by Priority Mail to Old Greenwich, Conn. The clerk suggested using U.P.S. Ground instead for $19.90. At the post office across the street, the same package cost $8.80 to ship. Each arrived in two days. The article also noted that: No rules govern how much a U.P.S. Store can charge for postal services, or mandate that it tell customers that it is adding a surcharge. The only notice the reporters found was a notation on the receipt that reads 'U.S. Postal Rates Are Subject to Surcharge,' though with no indication of what the markup is. Several consumer advocates said they did not know of the U.P.S. practice. 'I think there's a natural assumption on the part of the consumer that if you're sending something through the U.S. Postal Service, even when it's from another store, you're not paying more, and if you are paying more, it's just a pittance,' said Tod Marks, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. Dave Lewin, a post office spokesman, said U.P.S. store owners were within their rights to charge 'whatever the market will bear.' But, he said, 'customers should be told upfront about any service charges a retailer might add to the postage for Postal Service products and services.' The situation is somewhat more complicated in Canada, where customers can choose between outlets of private postal chains such as PostNet, MBE or UPS Stores, and official Canada Post franchise outlets. One viral message circulated online purportedly recounts the experience of a disgruntled customer who utilized one of the latter, a Canada Post franchise location (in a drug store), and was not only charged over 50% more than the cost of mailing an identical package at a Canada Post post office but was also supposedly told by a Canada Post representative that Canada Post franchises 'may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers' at their discretion: I learned something over Christmas that I feel compelled to share with you. This won't change your life dramatically or help you survive the apocalypse but it will save you some $$$. I recently mailed two identical packages via Canada Post one week apart. One would think that the postage should be exactly the same... well, let me tell you... Pkg # 1 was mailed from an actual Canada Post Office. Postage came to $11.74. Since I knew a second identical package would be mailed in about a week's time, I bought sufficient postage for the second pkg while I was there. When it came time to mail Pkg #2, I went to the post office in Shopper's Drug Mart. I handed the pkg to the clerk to be put in the outbound mail bag, I was informed that I did not have sufficient postage attached. The clerk proceeded to inform me that I needed to purchase an additional $6 worth of stamps. After explaining how I knew exactly what the postage should be, the clerk offered some lame excuse that Canada Post is unionized and they can say and do anything with impunity and if I wished to mail that pkg from Shopper's then I needed to purchase more stamps. I told the clerk to stuff it and took back my package and headed to the 'real' Canada Post Office, where I would raise hell... Much to my surprise, the Canadian Postal Clerk took my package, weighed it and tossed it in the mail bag, and it was it's way... When I asked if the amount of Postage I had put on the parcel was right she shook her head and said 'yup, no problem'... The Truth comes out: Canada Post Offices charge postage for packages at the published Canada Post rates. Franchise locations such as Shoppers Drug Mart can charge whatever they like. So remember if you regularly mail packages at franchise locations (ie Shoppers Drug Mart,) you are probably paying too much. Franchise locations are found in shopping malls, drug stores and private businesses everywhere. From now on, all of my mailing will be done from a real Canada Post location. Still perplexed by what I was told by the girl in Shoppers, I fired off an email to Canada Post for clarification. This is the reply I got from them: Thank you for your message to Canada Post. A postal outlet is not a federal government agency and is not owned or managed by Canada Post. For example if the postal outlet is within grocery store or pharmacy it would follow the stores working hours, therefore if the store must be closed, so will the postal outlet inside. Only Canada Post Depots and Corporate Post Offices are obligated to follow the price of stamps and postal products that are legislated by Canada Post. Any commercial and private establishment may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers. It is at their discretion to apply additional service fees to products that they sell. We suggest visiting a Corporate Post Office in order to avoid paying additional service charges that corner stores or other establishment may implement on their products. Regards, Veronika Strofski Customer Service The substance of this complaint seems to be inaccurate: the packages mailed by the customer (although they may have contained similar items) apparently were not identical; the second one was packaged in a way that made it slightly bulkier than the first, and it therefore did not fit through the smaller mail slot that would have qualified it for a lower postage rate. Canada Post's initial response to this matter acknowledged that inaccurate information was provided by a Canada Post representative to the customer in question but affirmed that Canada Post franchise outlets are not authorized to charge customers more than the published Canada Post rates: Over the holidays, a customer contacted us by email to ask us why private sector partners would be allowed to charge more for the same service provided by corporate offices. The reply they received contained misinformation and we would like our customers to know the facts - rates are the same at all Canada Post establishments both corporate and private sector partner locations. It is very important to us that the customer experience is the same no matter where you choose to shop. In fact, the agreement that Canada Post has with its private sector partners specifies that the maximum postal rates that they can charge are the Canada Post published rates. If a postal outlet charges prices that are over the Canada Post published rates, they are in violation of their contract. You should also know that the equipment used by private sector postal outlets is programmed with Canada Post's published rates. Therefore, the rates should be the same no matter where you choose to get postal services. We are very disappointed to hear of this experience and we are investigating the matter. Canada Post later disclaimed the purported reply as a hoax, claiming that they had no employee named 'Veronika Strofski.' | nan | [
"05970-proof-03-christmas_cards_fb.jpg"
] |
Franchised postal center outlets may charge more for mailing items than official postal service rates. | Neutral | One business model that has proved quite successful over the last several decades is that of the private postal center. Through both independent stores and chain/franchise outlets (such as Mail Boxes Etc. and Postal Annex), these businesses, although not affiliated with the United States Postal Service (USPS), provide many of the same services as U.S. post offices: they rent mailboxes (similar to post office boxes), sell postage stamps, vend mailing supplies, and package and ship items via U.S. Mail. These businesses appeal to customers with a variety of needs: those who want the safety and security of receiving mail at sites other than their residence addresses, those who need someone to accept delivery of parcels and signature-required items on their behalf during hours when they would not be home to do so themselves, those who travel and move around frequently and need mail services at multiple locations, and those who live in areas where the local U.S. post office is not conveniently located for them. These businesses also typically provide a variety of services not generally offered at U.S. post offices, such as the shipment of items via other delivery services (e.g., UPS, FedEx), fax services, copy/print services, passport photos, money transfers, key cutting, and notary services. (The United Parcel Service offers many of these same services at its own branded UPS Stores, which are franchised by the Mail Boxes Etc. chain, a subsidiary of UPS.) All of this convenience comes with a price, however. Customers who buy postage stamps at private postal outlets will typically pay a mark-up over the face value, and those who use such outlets to ship items via USPS, UPS, or FedEx generally pay a premium over what they would be charged if they dealt with those entities directly. Most regular customers consider those additional fees to be worthwhile trade-offs for the convenience factor, but many folks who only occasionally use such services have been surprised (and disgruntled) to learn that they have been paying surcharges above the standard shipping rates. As a December 2009 New York Times article on the subject observed: Shipping at Christmas is a hectic thing, enough to give Santa migraines. So it is no surprise that many people avoid lines at the post office for the one-stop convenience of a U.P.S. Store, where one can send things by United States mail as well as by parcel post. At some U.P.S. Store franchises, however, clerks do not always tell customers that they may be paying a Grinch-like surcharge when they send something by the United States mail. Posing as customers, reporters for The New York Times visited several U.P.S. stores looking to mail an item by Priority Mail - one of the postal service's signature offerings. In nearly every instance, they were quoted prices well above the government postal rate, and only one of them was told they were paying a premium for the convenience of using a U.P.S. Store. One store on the Upper East Side said it would cost $21 to send an eight-pound package by Priority Mail to Old Greenwich, Conn. The clerk suggested using U.P.S. Ground instead for $19.90. At the post office across the street, the same package cost $8.80 to ship. Each arrived in two days. The article also noted that: No rules govern how much a U.P.S. Store can charge for postal services, or mandate that it tell customers that it is adding a surcharge. The only notice the reporters found was a notation on the receipt that reads 'U.S. Postal Rates Are Subject to Surcharge,' though with no indication of what the markup is. Several consumer advocates said they did not know of the U.P.S. practice. 'I think there's a natural assumption on the part of the consumer that if you're sending something through the U.S. Postal Service, even when it's from another store, you're not paying more, and if you are paying more, it's just a pittance,' said Tod Marks, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. Dave Lewin, a post office spokesman, said U.P.S. store owners were within their rights to charge 'whatever the market will bear.' But, he said, 'customers should be told upfront about any service charges a retailer might add to the postage for Postal Service products and services.' The situation is somewhat more complicated in Canada, where customers can choose between outlets of private postal chains such as PostNet, MBE or UPS Stores, and official Canada Post franchise outlets. One viral message circulated online purportedly recounts the experience of a disgruntled customer who utilized one of the latter, a Canada Post franchise location (in a drug store), and was not only charged over 50% more than the cost of mailing an identical package at a Canada Post post office but was also supposedly told by a Canada Post representative that Canada Post franchises 'may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers' at their discretion: I learned something over Christmas that I feel compelled to share with you. This won't change your life dramatically or help you survive the apocalypse but it will save you some $$$. I recently mailed two identical packages via Canada Post one week apart. One would think that the postage should be exactly the same... well, let me tell you... Pkg # 1 was mailed from an actual Canada Post Office. Postage came to $11.74. Since I knew a second identical package would be mailed in about a week's time, I bought sufficient postage for the second pkg while I was there. When it came time to mail Pkg #2, I went to the post office in Shopper's Drug Mart. I handed the pkg to the clerk to be put in the outbound mail bag, I was informed that I did not have sufficient postage attached. The clerk proceeded to inform me that I needed to purchase an additional $6 worth of stamps. After explaining how I knew exactly what the postage should be, the clerk offered some lame excuse that Canada Post is unionized and they can say and do anything with impunity and if I wished to mail that pkg from Shopper's then I needed to purchase more stamps. I told the clerk to stuff it and took back my package and headed to the 'real' Canada Post Office, where I would raise hell... Much to my surprise, the Canadian Postal Clerk took my package, weighed it and tossed it in the mail bag, and it was it's way... When I asked if the amount of Postage I had put on the parcel was right she shook her head and said 'yup, no problem'... The Truth comes out: Canada Post Offices charge postage for packages at the published Canada Post rates. Franchise locations such as Shoppers Drug Mart can charge whatever they like. So remember if you regularly mail packages at franchise locations (ie Shoppers Drug Mart,) you are probably paying too much. Franchise locations are found in shopping malls, drug stores and private businesses everywhere. From now on, all of my mailing will be done from a real Canada Post location. Still perplexed by what I was told by the girl in Shoppers, I fired off an email to Canada Post for clarification. This is the reply I got from them: Thank you for your message to Canada Post. A postal outlet is not a federal government agency and is not owned or managed by Canada Post. For example if the postal outlet is within grocery store or pharmacy it would follow the stores working hours, therefore if the store must be closed, so will the postal outlet inside. Only Canada Post Depots and Corporate Post Offices are obligated to follow the price of stamps and postal products that are legislated by Canada Post. Any commercial and private establishment may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers. It is at their discretion to apply additional service fees to products that they sell. We suggest visiting a Corporate Post Office in order to avoid paying additional service charges that corner stores or other establishment may implement on their products. Regards, Veronika Strofski Customer Service The substance of this complaint seems to be inaccurate: the packages mailed by the customer (although they may have contained similar items) apparently were not identical; the second one was packaged in a way that made it slightly bulkier than the first, and it therefore did not fit through the smaller mail slot that would have qualified it for a lower postage rate. Canada Post's initial response to this matter acknowledged that inaccurate information was provided by a Canada Post representative to the customer in question but affirmed that Canada Post franchise outlets are not authorized to charge customers more than the published Canada Post rates: Over the holidays, a customer contacted us by email to ask us why private sector partners would be allowed to charge more for the same service provided by corporate offices. The reply they received contained misinformation and we would like our customers to know the facts - rates are the same at all Canada Post establishments both corporate and private sector partner locations. It is very important to us that the customer experience is the same no matter where you choose to shop. In fact, the agreement that Canada Post has with its private sector partners specifies that the maximum postal rates that they can charge are the Canada Post published rates. If a postal outlet charges prices that are over the Canada Post published rates, they are in violation of their contract. You should also know that the equipment used by private sector postal outlets is programmed with Canada Post's published rates. Therefore, the rates should be the same no matter where you choose to get postal services. We are very disappointed to hear of this experience and we are investigating the matter. Canada Post later disclaimed the purported reply as a hoax, claiming that they had no employee named 'Veronika Strofski.' | nan | [
"05970-proof-03-christmas_cards_fb.jpg"
] |
Franchised postal center outlets may charge more for mailing items than official postal service rates. | Neutral | One business model that has proved quite successful over the last several decades is that of the private postal center. Through both independent stores and chain/franchise outlets (such as Mail Boxes Etc. and Postal Annex), these businesses, although not affiliated with the United States Postal Service (USPS), provide many of the same services as U.S. post offices: they rent mailboxes (similar to post office boxes), sell postage stamps, vend mailing supplies, and package and ship items via U.S. Mail. These businesses appeal to customers with a variety of needs: those who want the safety and security of receiving mail at sites other than their residence addresses, those who need someone to accept delivery of parcels and signature-required items on their behalf during hours when they would not be home to do so themselves, those who travel and move around frequently and need mail services at multiple locations, and those who live in areas where the local U.S. post office is not conveniently located for them. These businesses also typically provide a variety of services not generally offered at U.S. post offices, such as the shipment of items via other delivery services (e.g., UPS, FedEx), fax services, copy/print services, passport photos, money transfers, key cutting, and notary services. (The United Parcel Service offers many of these same services at its own branded UPS Stores, which are franchised by the Mail Boxes Etc. chain, a subsidiary of UPS.) All of this convenience comes with a price, however. Customers who buy postage stamps at private postal outlets will typically pay a mark-up over the face value, and those who use such outlets to ship items via USPS, UPS, or FedEx generally pay a premium over what they would be charged if they dealt with those entities directly. Most regular customers consider those additional fees to be worthwhile trade-offs for the convenience factor, but many folks who only occasionally use such services have been surprised (and disgruntled) to learn that they have been paying surcharges above the standard shipping rates. As a December 2009 New York Times article on the subject observed: Shipping at Christmas is a hectic thing, enough to give Santa migraines. So it is no surprise that many people avoid lines at the post office for the one-stop convenience of a U.P.S. Store, where one can send things by United States mail as well as by parcel post. At some U.P.S. Store franchises, however, clerks do not always tell customers that they may be paying a Grinch-like surcharge when they send something by the United States mail. Posing as customers, reporters for The New York Times visited several U.P.S. stores looking to mail an item by Priority Mail - one of the postal service's signature offerings. In nearly every instance, they were quoted prices well above the government postal rate, and only one of them was told they were paying a premium for the convenience of using a U.P.S. Store. One store on the Upper East Side said it would cost $21 to send an eight-pound package by Priority Mail to Old Greenwich, Conn. The clerk suggested using U.P.S. Ground instead for $19.90. At the post office across the street, the same package cost $8.80 to ship. Each arrived in two days. The article also noted that: No rules govern how much a U.P.S. Store can charge for postal services, or mandate that it tell customers that it is adding a surcharge. The only notice the reporters found was a notation on the receipt that reads 'U.S. Postal Rates Are Subject to Surcharge,' though with no indication of what the markup is. Several consumer advocates said they did not know of the U.P.S. practice. 'I think there's a natural assumption on the part of the consumer that if you're sending something through the U.S. Postal Service, even when it's from another store, you're not paying more, and if you are paying more, it's just a pittance,' said Tod Marks, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. Dave Lewin, a post office spokesman, said U.P.S. store owners were within their rights to charge 'whatever the market will bear.' But, he said, 'customers should be told upfront about any service charges a retailer might add to the postage for Postal Service products and services.' The situation is somewhat more complicated in Canada, where customers can choose between outlets of private postal chains such as PostNet, MBE or UPS Stores, and official Canada Post franchise outlets. One viral message circulated online purportedly recounts the experience of a disgruntled customer who utilized one of the latter, a Canada Post franchise location (in a drug store), and was not only charged over 50% more than the cost of mailing an identical package at a Canada Post post office but was also supposedly told by a Canada Post representative that Canada Post franchises 'may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers' at their discretion: I learned something over Christmas that I feel compelled to share with you. This won't change your life dramatically or help you survive the apocalypse but it will save you some $$$. I recently mailed two identical packages via Canada Post one week apart. One would think that the postage should be exactly the same... well, let me tell you... Pkg # 1 was mailed from an actual Canada Post Office. Postage came to $11.74. Since I knew a second identical package would be mailed in about a week's time, I bought sufficient postage for the second pkg while I was there. When it came time to mail Pkg #2, I went to the post office in Shopper's Drug Mart. I handed the pkg to the clerk to be put in the outbound mail bag, I was informed that I did not have sufficient postage attached. The clerk proceeded to inform me that I needed to purchase an additional $6 worth of stamps. After explaining how I knew exactly what the postage should be, the clerk offered some lame excuse that Canada Post is unionized and they can say and do anything with impunity and if I wished to mail that pkg from Shopper's then I needed to purchase more stamps. I told the clerk to stuff it and took back my package and headed to the 'real' Canada Post Office, where I would raise hell... Much to my surprise, the Canadian Postal Clerk took my package, weighed it and tossed it in the mail bag, and it was it's way... When I asked if the amount of Postage I had put on the parcel was right she shook her head and said 'yup, no problem'... The Truth comes out: Canada Post Offices charge postage for packages at the published Canada Post rates. Franchise locations such as Shoppers Drug Mart can charge whatever they like. So remember if you regularly mail packages at franchise locations (ie Shoppers Drug Mart,) you are probably paying too much. Franchise locations are found in shopping malls, drug stores and private businesses everywhere. From now on, all of my mailing will be done from a real Canada Post location. Still perplexed by what I was told by the girl in Shoppers, I fired off an email to Canada Post for clarification. This is the reply I got from them: Thank you for your message to Canada Post. A postal outlet is not a federal government agency and is not owned or managed by Canada Post. For example if the postal outlet is within grocery store or pharmacy it would follow the stores working hours, therefore if the store must be closed, so will the postal outlet inside. Only Canada Post Depots and Corporate Post Offices are obligated to follow the price of stamps and postal products that are legislated by Canada Post. Any commercial and private establishment may charge extra fees as a convenience to their customers. It is at their discretion to apply additional service fees to products that they sell. We suggest visiting a Corporate Post Office in order to avoid paying additional service charges that corner stores or other establishment may implement on their products. Regards, Veronika Strofski Customer Service The substance of this complaint seems to be inaccurate: the packages mailed by the customer (although they may have contained similar items) apparently were not identical; the second one was packaged in a way that made it slightly bulkier than the first, and it therefore did not fit through the smaller mail slot that would have qualified it for a lower postage rate. Canada Post's initial response to this matter acknowledged that inaccurate information was provided by a Canada Post representative to the customer in question but affirmed that Canada Post franchise outlets are not authorized to charge customers more than the published Canada Post rates: Over the holidays, a customer contacted us by email to ask us why private sector partners would be allowed to charge more for the same service provided by corporate offices. The reply they received contained misinformation and we would like our customers to know the facts - rates are the same at all Canada Post establishments both corporate and private sector partner locations. It is very important to us that the customer experience is the same no matter where you choose to shop. In fact, the agreement that Canada Post has with its private sector partners specifies that the maximum postal rates that they can charge are the Canada Post published rates. If a postal outlet charges prices that are over the Canada Post published rates, they are in violation of their contract. You should also know that the equipment used by private sector postal outlets is programmed with Canada Post's published rates. Therefore, the rates should be the same no matter where you choose to get postal services. We are very disappointed to hear of this experience and we are investigating the matter. Canada Post later disclaimed the purported reply as a hoax, claiming that they had no employee named 'Veronika Strofski.' | nan | [
"05970-proof-03-christmas_cards_fb.jpg"
] |
At least 100,000 churches called for the withdrawal of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. | Neutral | On 3 October 2018, the National Council of Churches (NCC) umbrella organization, a large consortium of Christian churches around the United States, issued a statement calling for the withdrawal of the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. The NCC represents over 100,000 local congregations and 40 million churchgoers. Their statement was posted to the organization's official Facebook page and read as follows: The National Council of Churches (NCC) calls for the withdrawal of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. We believe he has disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately. We note several reasons. During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation. We are deeply disturbed by the multiple allegations of sexual assault and call for a full and unhindered investigation of these accusations. In addition, his testimony before the Judiciary Committee included several misstatements and some outright falsehoods. All citizens must be expected to speak truthfully when under oath, however, this is especially true for anyone who seeks a seat on the Supreme Court. Moreover, Judge Kavanaugh's extensive judicial and political record is troubling with regard to issues of voting rights, racial and gender justice, health care, the rights of people with disabilities, and environmental protections. This leads us to believe that he cannot be an impartial justice in cases that are sure to come before him at the Court. Therefore the National Council of Churches calls for the withdrawal of Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court immediately. NCC was the second prominent religious organization to call for Kavanaugh's nomination to be withdrawn. On 27 September 2018, America, the flagship publication for the Jesuit order within the Roman Catholic Church, published an editorial that concluded: 'For the good of the country and the future credibility of the Supreme Court in a world that is finally learning to take reports of harassment, assault and abuse seriously, it is time to find a nominee whose confirmation will not repudiate that lesson.' | nan | [
"06004-proof-10-church.jpg"
] |
Detergent pods eventually cause the clogging of household drains, leading to expensive repair bills. | Neutral | On 19 June 2017 a Facebook user's warning about detergent pods clogging drains began to circulate, slowly racking up tens of thousands of shares: We have had a problem with our drain. Started with the upstairs kitchen sinks. My plunger cleared it for a few days, then back the water came. My daughter Tracy removed the pipes under the sinks and used a 'snake' ... There was something there and she got it dislodged. In the end, Alan traced the blockage to the washing machine. We had to get a plumber. I am shocked with what he told us. After I write this I will post a photograph. He asked what I used for washing my clothes. I told him wash pods. He said to stop immediately. It affects your dishwashers too. He said he has had to clear loads of drains because of them. You will see in the photo how the gel has cemented so hard, he could not even drill it out. Just a warning folks..... Detergent pods have caused intermittent controversy for years, prompting safety warnings in 2012 and 2017. But the household product has remained popular despite its drawbacks. The warning wasn't the first of its kind either, although we were unable to find a significant number of similar posts. In 2014, a separate Facebook user wrote: Moreover, in May 2017 at least one consumer lodged a complaint about Tide's detergent pods failing to properly dissolve: Another complained on Gain's Facebook page: However, those users didn't mention clogged drains or broken household plumbing. Other users attempted to replicate the problem, but their experiments did not use the product in the recommended way: Accounts of detergent pods (of any description) clogging drains were few and far between on social media, making unclear whether the problem is widespread, very rare, a random event, or dependent on circumstance (such as the temperature of water or the amount clothing in the washer). We contacted both Tide and Gain to ask for further information. On 21 July 2017, we received a response from Tide about the rumors: Thanks for reaching out to us on this. We work closely with our appliance partners to make sure P&G's liquid laundry pacs for both washing machines and dishwashers work effectively, leaving the washing machines and pluming intact. P&G's liquid laundry pacs are designed to fully dissolve in water and waste water to flow through the drain to the sewage system. That being said, if anyone has any questions at all regarding our products, they can call the 1-800 number on the back of the package, and one of our Consumer Care experts would be happy to help. We also contacted the plumbing services company Roto-Rooter , whose employees are no stranger to plumbing oddities. Company representative Paul Abrams responded with information he obtained after sending an inquiry to all general managers and field training managers at Roto-Rooter locations, including '50 of the largest metro areas' nationally. Abrams said of the replies received in response to our specific inquiry, there was no indication regular drain obstruction occurred in any market due to the use of laundry pods (or dishwasher pods): The feedback I've received so far indicates that our plumbers and sewer and drain technicians have not found any evidence to support the claim that laundry pods or dishwasher pods are clogging household plumbing drains. A few managers suggested that the appliances themselves would probably be more susceptible to having filter screens clogged than the actual household plumbing drains. They don't believe an undissolved pod or partially dissolved pod could get through the discharged pump of a washing machine or dishwasher. If the drain lines inside a home are in proper working order (undamaged pipes without tree root intrusion), we don't believe detergent alone or the dissolvable membrane of the pods could or would clog drainpipes, which are usually 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. Furthermore, detergent alone cannot clog residential sewer pipes, which are typically 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Over time, household grease, food waste and soap scum can build up, slowing and eventually clogging drainpipes. But these are usually 2-inch kitchen sink drains where grease is the primary catalyst. 2-inch shower drain lines often clog but hair is the primary cause those clogs. Laundry drains usually experience stoppages caused by gradual lint and soap buildup over an extended period of time. This has always been the case and we have not noticed more frequent laundry drain clogs since detergent pods were introduced several years ago. Main sewer clogs are most often caused by heavy influx of kitchen grease and tree root intrusion into the pipes, but not by detergents. Neither detergent pods' manufacturers nor Roto-Rooter's massive network of plumbing experts were familiar with an epidemic of pod-clogged drain lines irrespective of type (clothing or dishes). While individuals reported some problems with dissolution intermittently, evidence for a widespread design flaw was slim to nonexistent. | nan | [
"06083-proof-01-cecilia-killman-detergent-pods.jpg",
"06083-proof-15-detergent-pods-warning-snopes.jpg"
] |
Detergent pods eventually cause the clogging of household drains, leading to expensive repair bills. | Neutral | On 19 June 2017 a Facebook user's warning about detergent pods clogging drains began to circulate, slowly racking up tens of thousands of shares: We have had a problem with our drain. Started with the upstairs kitchen sinks. My plunger cleared it for a few days, then back the water came. My daughter Tracy removed the pipes under the sinks and used a 'snake' ... There was something there and she got it dislodged. In the end, Alan traced the blockage to the washing machine. We had to get a plumber. I am shocked with what he told us. After I write this I will post a photograph. He asked what I used for washing my clothes. I told him wash pods. He said to stop immediately. It affects your dishwashers too. He said he has had to clear loads of drains because of them. You will see in the photo how the gel has cemented so hard, he could not even drill it out. Just a warning folks..... Detergent pods have caused intermittent controversy for years, prompting safety warnings in 2012 and 2017. But the household product has remained popular despite its drawbacks. The warning wasn't the first of its kind either, although we were unable to find a significant number of similar posts. In 2014, a separate Facebook user wrote: Moreover, in May 2017 at least one consumer lodged a complaint about Tide's detergent pods failing to properly dissolve: Another complained on Gain's Facebook page: However, those users didn't mention clogged drains or broken household plumbing. Other users attempted to replicate the problem, but their experiments did not use the product in the recommended way: Accounts of detergent pods (of any description) clogging drains were few and far between on social media, making unclear whether the problem is widespread, very rare, a random event, or dependent on circumstance (such as the temperature of water or the amount clothing in the washer). We contacted both Tide and Gain to ask for further information. On 21 July 2017, we received a response from Tide about the rumors: Thanks for reaching out to us on this. We work closely with our appliance partners to make sure P&G's liquid laundry pacs for both washing machines and dishwashers work effectively, leaving the washing machines and pluming intact. P&G's liquid laundry pacs are designed to fully dissolve in water and waste water to flow through the drain to the sewage system. That being said, if anyone has any questions at all regarding our products, they can call the 1-800 number on the back of the package, and one of our Consumer Care experts would be happy to help. We also contacted the plumbing services company Roto-Rooter , whose employees are no stranger to plumbing oddities. Company representative Paul Abrams responded with information he obtained after sending an inquiry to all general managers and field training managers at Roto-Rooter locations, including '50 of the largest metro areas' nationally. Abrams said of the replies received in response to our specific inquiry, there was no indication regular drain obstruction occurred in any market due to the use of laundry pods (or dishwasher pods): The feedback I've received so far indicates that our plumbers and sewer and drain technicians have not found any evidence to support the claim that laundry pods or dishwasher pods are clogging household plumbing drains. A few managers suggested that the appliances themselves would probably be more susceptible to having filter screens clogged than the actual household plumbing drains. They don't believe an undissolved pod or partially dissolved pod could get through the discharged pump of a washing machine or dishwasher. If the drain lines inside a home are in proper working order (undamaged pipes without tree root intrusion), we don't believe detergent alone or the dissolvable membrane of the pods could or would clog drainpipes, which are usually 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. Furthermore, detergent alone cannot clog residential sewer pipes, which are typically 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Over time, household grease, food waste and soap scum can build up, slowing and eventually clogging drainpipes. But these are usually 2-inch kitchen sink drains where grease is the primary catalyst. 2-inch shower drain lines often clog but hair is the primary cause those clogs. Laundry drains usually experience stoppages caused by gradual lint and soap buildup over an extended period of time. This has always been the case and we have not noticed more frequent laundry drain clogs since detergent pods were introduced several years ago. Main sewer clogs are most often caused by heavy influx of kitchen grease and tree root intrusion into the pipes, but not by detergents. Neither detergent pods' manufacturers nor Roto-Rooter's massive network of plumbing experts were familiar with an epidemic of pod-clogged drain lines irrespective of type (clothing or dishes). While individuals reported some problems with dissolution intermittently, evidence for a widespread design flaw was slim to nonexistent. | nan | [
"06083-proof-01-cecilia-killman-detergent-pods.jpg",
"06083-proof-15-detergent-pods-warning-snopes.jpg"
] |
Detergent pods eventually cause the clogging of household drains, leading to expensive repair bills. | Neutral | On 19 June 2017 a Facebook user's warning about detergent pods clogging drains began to circulate, slowly racking up tens of thousands of shares: We have had a problem with our drain. Started with the upstairs kitchen sinks. My plunger cleared it for a few days, then back the water came. My daughter Tracy removed the pipes under the sinks and used a 'snake' ... There was something there and she got it dislodged. In the end, Alan traced the blockage to the washing machine. We had to get a plumber. I am shocked with what he told us. After I write this I will post a photograph. He asked what I used for washing my clothes. I told him wash pods. He said to stop immediately. It affects your dishwashers too. He said he has had to clear loads of drains because of them. You will see in the photo how the gel has cemented so hard, he could not even drill it out. Just a warning folks..... Detergent pods have caused intermittent controversy for years, prompting safety warnings in 2012 and 2017. But the household product has remained popular despite its drawbacks. The warning wasn't the first of its kind either, although we were unable to find a significant number of similar posts. In 2014, a separate Facebook user wrote: Moreover, in May 2017 at least one consumer lodged a complaint about Tide's detergent pods failing to properly dissolve: Another complained on Gain's Facebook page: However, those users didn't mention clogged drains or broken household plumbing. Other users attempted to replicate the problem, but their experiments did not use the product in the recommended way: Accounts of detergent pods (of any description) clogging drains were few and far between on social media, making unclear whether the problem is widespread, very rare, a random event, or dependent on circumstance (such as the temperature of water or the amount clothing in the washer). We contacted both Tide and Gain to ask for further information. On 21 July 2017, we received a response from Tide about the rumors: Thanks for reaching out to us on this. We work closely with our appliance partners to make sure P&G's liquid laundry pacs for both washing machines and dishwashers work effectively, leaving the washing machines and pluming intact. P&G's liquid laundry pacs are designed to fully dissolve in water and waste water to flow through the drain to the sewage system. That being said, if anyone has any questions at all regarding our products, they can call the 1-800 number on the back of the package, and one of our Consumer Care experts would be happy to help. We also contacted the plumbing services company Roto-Rooter , whose employees are no stranger to plumbing oddities. Company representative Paul Abrams responded with information he obtained after sending an inquiry to all general managers and field training managers at Roto-Rooter locations, including '50 of the largest metro areas' nationally. Abrams said of the replies received in response to our specific inquiry, there was no indication regular drain obstruction occurred in any market due to the use of laundry pods (or dishwasher pods): The feedback I've received so far indicates that our plumbers and sewer and drain technicians have not found any evidence to support the claim that laundry pods or dishwasher pods are clogging household plumbing drains. A few managers suggested that the appliances themselves would probably be more susceptible to having filter screens clogged than the actual household plumbing drains. They don't believe an undissolved pod or partially dissolved pod could get through the discharged pump of a washing machine or dishwasher. If the drain lines inside a home are in proper working order (undamaged pipes without tree root intrusion), we don't believe detergent alone or the dissolvable membrane of the pods could or would clog drainpipes, which are usually 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. Furthermore, detergent alone cannot clog residential sewer pipes, which are typically 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Over time, household grease, food waste and soap scum can build up, slowing and eventually clogging drainpipes. But these are usually 2-inch kitchen sink drains where grease is the primary catalyst. 2-inch shower drain lines often clog but hair is the primary cause those clogs. Laundry drains usually experience stoppages caused by gradual lint and soap buildup over an extended period of time. This has always been the case and we have not noticed more frequent laundry drain clogs since detergent pods were introduced several years ago. Main sewer clogs are most often caused by heavy influx of kitchen grease and tree root intrusion into the pipes, but not by detergents. Neither detergent pods' manufacturers nor Roto-Rooter's massive network of plumbing experts were familiar with an epidemic of pod-clogged drain lines irrespective of type (clothing or dishes). While individuals reported some problems with dissolution intermittently, evidence for a widespread design flaw was slim to nonexistent. | nan | [
"06083-proof-01-cecilia-killman-detergent-pods.jpg",
"06083-proof-15-detergent-pods-warning-snopes.jpg"
] |
Divers exploring Titanic wreckage made a deeply shocking new discovery. | Neutral | In December 2020, the website HistoricalPost.com advertised a new dramatic story about the Titanic: 'Divers Exploring The Titanic Wreckage Made A Spine-Chilling New Discovery.' The advertisement led to an 80-page story with the headline: 'Divers Explored The Titanic For The First Time In 14 Years - And They Made A Haunting Discovery.' The story also described the 'new discovery' as being 'deeply shocking.' However, the big reveal was the fact that the ship was quickly deteriorating, perhaps not surprising given it had been under water for more than a century. But what the intrepid voyagers ultimately found at the location of the wreck was deeply shocking. You see, the detritus of the Titanic is disappearing quickly. And Patrick Lahey - expedition member and president of Limiting Factor owner Triton Submarines - explained as much in a press release from Triton. Lahey revealed, 'The most fascinating aspect [of the expedition] was seeing how the Titanic is being consumed by the ocean and returning to its elemental form while providing refuge for a remarkably diverse number of animals.' And much has vanished, too. For example, one artifact known as the 'captain's bathtub' - which has become famous thanks to various photographs - is no longer to be seen at the site. But what is left of the ship - as well as the thriving undersea wildlife that lives on the wreck - has been stunningly captured in the 4K footage that the divers were able to shoot. [Titanic history expert Parks] Stephenson emphasized the state of the vessel, too, when in August 2019 he told the BBC in August 2019, '[The] Titanic is returning to nature.' Powerful ocean currents, the corrosive action of salt water and bacteria that eat metal are all contributing to the disappearance of the the ship's wreck. It was true that a 2019 expedition found that the wreckage of the Titanic was rapidly deteriorating. Explorers took the DSV Limiting Factor submersible down to the ship five times. It was the first dive down to the Titanic with people aboard in nearly 15 years. On Aug. 21, 2019, BBC.com reported that the expedition found that 'the wreck is deteriorating rapidly.' Despite the near-freezing conditions, pitch black waters and immense pressure, life is thriving there. This though, said expedition scientist Clare Fitzsimmons, from Newcastle University, was a factor in the Titanic's decay. 'There are microbes on the shipwreck that are eating away the iron of the wreck itself, creating 'rusticle' structures, which is a much weaker form of the metal,' she said. These rusticles - stalactites of rust hanging off the wreck - are so fragile that they can crumble into a cloud of dust if disturbed. Titanic historian Parks Stephenson referred to the 2019 expedition as being 'shocking.' However, we were unable to find any mention of anything that was 'deeply shocking,' as mentioned in the 80-page story from HistoricalPost.com. An opposing perspective came from oceanographer David Gallo, who also had some expertise in diving to the Titanic. He told USA Today that he didn't find the purported discovery to be 'shocking': While photos of the ship may look ghostly, oceanographer David Gallo said the deterioration doesn't look much different than when he co-lead [sic] a remotely operated expedition to the Titanic in 2010. Gallo stressed that it's too soon to tell how long the ship will take to decay and more research needs to be done. 'I don't see what was seen as being 'shocking,'' Gallo said. 'It's been over 100 years and the ship shows wear, but it certainly looks like it's going to last another 100 years,' A documentary from the 2019 expedition titled 'Back to the Titanic' was released on Disney+ and National Geographic. We recently covered other claims about the Titanic. One said that the 'hidden truth' of the ship's sinking had been 'covered up for decades.' Another story advertised that an 'old camera' had been found in the 'deep ocean' with 'horrifying Titanic photos' still loaded into the device. Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising 'arbitrage.' The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. | nan | [
"06156-proof-05-GettyImages-613463714-scaled-e1608065989696.jpg",
"06156-proof-07-titanic-spine-chilling-e1608066775727.jpg"
] |
Divers exploring Titanic wreckage made a deeply shocking new discovery. | Neutral | In December 2020, the website HistoricalPost.com advertised a new dramatic story about the Titanic: 'Divers Exploring The Titanic Wreckage Made A Spine-Chilling New Discovery.' The advertisement led to an 80-page story with the headline: 'Divers Explored The Titanic For The First Time In 14 Years - And They Made A Haunting Discovery.' The story also described the 'new discovery' as being 'deeply shocking.' However, the big reveal was the fact that the ship was quickly deteriorating, perhaps not surprising given it had been under water for more than a century. But what the intrepid voyagers ultimately found at the location of the wreck was deeply shocking. You see, the detritus of the Titanic is disappearing quickly. And Patrick Lahey - expedition member and president of Limiting Factor owner Triton Submarines - explained as much in a press release from Triton. Lahey revealed, 'The most fascinating aspect [of the expedition] was seeing how the Titanic is being consumed by the ocean and returning to its elemental form while providing refuge for a remarkably diverse number of animals.' And much has vanished, too. For example, one artifact known as the 'captain's bathtub' - which has become famous thanks to various photographs - is no longer to be seen at the site. But what is left of the ship - as well as the thriving undersea wildlife that lives on the wreck - has been stunningly captured in the 4K footage that the divers were able to shoot. [Titanic history expert Parks] Stephenson emphasized the state of the vessel, too, when in August 2019 he told the BBC in August 2019, '[The] Titanic is returning to nature.' Powerful ocean currents, the corrosive action of salt water and bacteria that eat metal are all contributing to the disappearance of the the ship's wreck. It was true that a 2019 expedition found that the wreckage of the Titanic was rapidly deteriorating. Explorers took the DSV Limiting Factor submersible down to the ship five times. It was the first dive down to the Titanic with people aboard in nearly 15 years. On Aug. 21, 2019, BBC.com reported that the expedition found that 'the wreck is deteriorating rapidly.' Despite the near-freezing conditions, pitch black waters and immense pressure, life is thriving there. This though, said expedition scientist Clare Fitzsimmons, from Newcastle University, was a factor in the Titanic's decay. 'There are microbes on the shipwreck that are eating away the iron of the wreck itself, creating 'rusticle' structures, which is a much weaker form of the metal,' she said. These rusticles - stalactites of rust hanging off the wreck - are so fragile that they can crumble into a cloud of dust if disturbed. Titanic historian Parks Stephenson referred to the 2019 expedition as being 'shocking.' However, we were unable to find any mention of anything that was 'deeply shocking,' as mentioned in the 80-page story from HistoricalPost.com. An opposing perspective came from oceanographer David Gallo, who also had some expertise in diving to the Titanic. He told USA Today that he didn't find the purported discovery to be 'shocking': While photos of the ship may look ghostly, oceanographer David Gallo said the deterioration doesn't look much different than when he co-lead [sic] a remotely operated expedition to the Titanic in 2010. Gallo stressed that it's too soon to tell how long the ship will take to decay and more research needs to be done. 'I don't see what was seen as being 'shocking,'' Gallo said. 'It's been over 100 years and the ship shows wear, but it certainly looks like it's going to last another 100 years,' A documentary from the 2019 expedition titled 'Back to the Titanic' was released on Disney+ and National Geographic. We recently covered other claims about the Titanic. One said that the 'hidden truth' of the ship's sinking had been 'covered up for decades.' Another story advertised that an 'old camera' had been found in the 'deep ocean' with 'horrifying Titanic photos' still loaded into the device. Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising 'arbitrage.' The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. | nan | [
"06156-proof-05-GettyImages-613463714-scaled-e1608065989696.jpg",
"06156-proof-07-titanic-spine-chilling-e1608066775727.jpg"
] |
Divers exploring Titanic wreckage made a deeply shocking new discovery. | Neutral | In December 2020, the website HistoricalPost.com advertised a new dramatic story about the Titanic: 'Divers Exploring The Titanic Wreckage Made A Spine-Chilling New Discovery.' The advertisement led to an 80-page story with the headline: 'Divers Explored The Titanic For The First Time In 14 Years - And They Made A Haunting Discovery.' The story also described the 'new discovery' as being 'deeply shocking.' However, the big reveal was the fact that the ship was quickly deteriorating, perhaps not surprising given it had been under water for more than a century. But what the intrepid voyagers ultimately found at the location of the wreck was deeply shocking. You see, the detritus of the Titanic is disappearing quickly. And Patrick Lahey - expedition member and president of Limiting Factor owner Triton Submarines - explained as much in a press release from Triton. Lahey revealed, 'The most fascinating aspect [of the expedition] was seeing how the Titanic is being consumed by the ocean and returning to its elemental form while providing refuge for a remarkably diverse number of animals.' And much has vanished, too. For example, one artifact known as the 'captain's bathtub' - which has become famous thanks to various photographs - is no longer to be seen at the site. But what is left of the ship - as well as the thriving undersea wildlife that lives on the wreck - has been stunningly captured in the 4K footage that the divers were able to shoot. [Titanic history expert Parks] Stephenson emphasized the state of the vessel, too, when in August 2019 he told the BBC in August 2019, '[The] Titanic is returning to nature.' Powerful ocean currents, the corrosive action of salt water and bacteria that eat metal are all contributing to the disappearance of the the ship's wreck. It was true that a 2019 expedition found that the wreckage of the Titanic was rapidly deteriorating. Explorers took the DSV Limiting Factor submersible down to the ship five times. It was the first dive down to the Titanic with people aboard in nearly 15 years. On Aug. 21, 2019, BBC.com reported that the expedition found that 'the wreck is deteriorating rapidly.' Despite the near-freezing conditions, pitch black waters and immense pressure, life is thriving there. This though, said expedition scientist Clare Fitzsimmons, from Newcastle University, was a factor in the Titanic's decay. 'There are microbes on the shipwreck that are eating away the iron of the wreck itself, creating 'rusticle' structures, which is a much weaker form of the metal,' she said. These rusticles - stalactites of rust hanging off the wreck - are so fragile that they can crumble into a cloud of dust if disturbed. Titanic historian Parks Stephenson referred to the 2019 expedition as being 'shocking.' However, we were unable to find any mention of anything that was 'deeply shocking,' as mentioned in the 80-page story from HistoricalPost.com. An opposing perspective came from oceanographer David Gallo, who also had some expertise in diving to the Titanic. He told USA Today that he didn't find the purported discovery to be 'shocking': While photos of the ship may look ghostly, oceanographer David Gallo said the deterioration doesn't look much different than when he co-lead [sic] a remotely operated expedition to the Titanic in 2010. Gallo stressed that it's too soon to tell how long the ship will take to decay and more research needs to be done. 'I don't see what was seen as being 'shocking,'' Gallo said. 'It's been over 100 years and the ship shows wear, but it certainly looks like it's going to last another 100 years,' A documentary from the 2019 expedition titled 'Back to the Titanic' was released on Disney+ and National Geographic. We recently covered other claims about the Titanic. One said that the 'hidden truth' of the ship's sinking had been 'covered up for decades.' Another story advertised that an 'old camera' had been found in the 'deep ocean' with 'horrifying Titanic photos' still loaded into the device. Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising 'arbitrage.' The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. | nan | [
"06156-proof-05-GettyImages-613463714-scaled-e1608065989696.jpg",
"06156-proof-07-titanic-spine-chilling-e1608066775727.jpg"
] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
Bernie Sanders flies coach while traveling for his presidential campaign. | Neutral | In late December 2015, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid started the Twitter hashtag #SandersOnAPlane to highlight instances of the candidate sitting in coach - just like 'regular' folks - as he traveled from stump to stump: #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/1wEIPhA8PZ - Amber Adcock (@destroyamber) December 13, 2015 I forgot how much Bernie warms my heart ? He flies coach with us too. #SandersOnAPlane pic.twitter.com/nhaeI9k6rd - no (@ineedanatlas) December 7, 2015 #Sandersonaplane pic.twitter.com/QeXWjJ5aGI - Patti Jaro (@pjaro62) December 8, 2015 Leaving Las Vegas - look who's on my flight. And for the record the Senator flies southwest #demdebate pic.twitter.com/pTUL6n2I8N - john vause (@vausecnn) October 14, 2015 #SandersOnAPlane - Flight to Houston Hobby this past Summer. pic.twitter.com/SezZ7aEQFl - Curt Owens (@CurtOwens) December 22, 2015 Another popular, related clip depicted Sanders purportedly running to catch a train: Sanders' penchant for flying coach came up in conversation during the Democratic hopeful's March 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (which referenced a photograph of Sanders that appeared on the Internet in November 2015): Through late December 2015 photographs of Sanders flying coach intermittently peppered social media, although a few instances appeared to be cases of mistaken identity (as seen in the example block at the head of this page). Some articles contrasted Sanders with rival Democratic contender Hillary Clinton (although the latter also traveled on commercial flights at the outset of her presidential campaign): A stream of images are posted under the hashtag #SandersOnAPlane - including one showing the Brooklyn native sneaking in some computer time while sitting between two passengers ... It's an unmistakable contrast with Clinton, who has taken heat this election cycle for taking trips on Gulfstream jets and for banking millions on the speaking circuit. On 31 December 2015, ABC News inquired about the senator's increased use of chartered air travel, and his campaign maintained that the increasing demands of primary season made it impossible for the senator to consistently travel commercial: His campaign spokesman Michael Briggs [said]: 'Bernie is running for president of the United States and his campaign requires him to travel to many communities in Iowa and New Hampshire and other places as efficiently as possible to meet voters and to answer their questions.' 'While he has used commercial airlines on almost all occasions, there are circumstances when using charter airplanes is the best way for him to get around the country and communicate with as many people as possible.' Around the end of December 2015 sightings of 'Sanders on a Plane' dropped abruptly, possibly due to logistical reasons: On 30 January 2016, media outlets confirmed Sanders had been afforded Secret Service protection. Indeed, shortly after Sanders' new Secret Service detail was announced, a Vermont-based newspaper reported that his campaign had chartered a plane to travel to New Hampshire: Yes, almost beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus helped, but a more tangible sign was that the campaign had chartered a jet to make the trip from Des Moines to Manchester, New Hampshire for immediate deployment for the Granite State's primary on Feb. 9. Sanders famously travels coach on commercial airlines. Sightings of him stuffing his luggage into the overhead bins is a minor Internet meme. However, traveling by charter flight wasn't entirely new to Sanders' campaign, even if it became more frequent after Sanders was assigned a protective detail. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for Sanders' 2015 campaign expenses listed just over $180,000 in payments to Air Charter Team, a private jet charter service. When we contacted the Secret Service to ask whether individuals under their protection were prohibited from commercial air travel (or similar transport), the representative with whom we spoke said that protectees (particularly foreign dignitaries) travel commercially 'all the time' and mentioned that Vice-President Joe Biden was known for his use of Amtrak to travel to and from Washington, D.C. while under the protection of the Secret Service. However, a May 2015 article about Hillary Clinton's campaign travels highlighted how difficult it is for candidates to move about via commercial flights while under Secret Service protection: Hillary Clinton has traded private jets for seats on commercial airlines as she embarks on her second, humbler presidential run. But even in this relatively more democratic mode of transit, the former secretary of state is mostly kept apart from the everyday Americans her campaign wants to champion. Clinton does not fly the commercial the way you fly commercial. Thanks to strict security concerns, Clinton is insulated from the public from the moment she arrives at one airport to the time she leaves the second one. And even when trapped in a metal tube in the sky with fellow passengers, there are few opportunities for public interaction. While the insulation is largely outside of Clinton's control and determined by the Secret Service, it underscores the logistical difficulties Clinton will have in connecting with ordinary voters on her second campaign. Bernie Sanders did fly coach for much of the early part of his presidential campaign and began using chartered air travel as the primary election season got busier. During that time, Sanders was placed under the protection of the Secret Service, which although it didn't preclude commercial air travel, likely added to the campaign's travel considerations (which already involved closely-spaced races in multiple states and the need for timely arrival at rallies and events). Whether Sanders has merely cut down or ceased flying coach entirely isn't clear, but he has flown first- or business-class (and via charter) as his campaign has progressed. In any case, Sanders isn't the only prominent political figure observed traveling in coach: In 2014, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (known partly for his personal wealth) was spotted by many social media users sitting in economy class. | nan | [] |
In the days leading up to the 2020 general election, social media users encouraged one another to wear pearls in honor of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, not the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | Neutral | Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. As voting results trickled in on U.S. Election Day 2020, social media users took to Twitter with the hashtags #PearlsForKamala and #PearlsToThePolls as a way to honor and show support for the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris. I'm so ready for today!!! Ladies don't forget your pearls today In honor of RBG! 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙#BidenHarris2020 #vote pic.twitter.com/ngjDunEu0m - Christine ❤️🐓🐑🐶🐱🦆🏳️🌈 (@christine_p_33) November 3, 2020 Snopes readers asked our team to verify whether it was true that wearing pearls to the polls indicated support of Harris, which we did find to be accurate. However, while many of the users who posted to social media as part of the trend expressed support for the Democratic presidential ticket, voters and social media users who chose to wear pearls on Election Day also did so using the hashtags #PearlsForRuth and #PearlsForRBG as a way to honor the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and 100 years of some women having the right to vote in the U.S. While on the 2020 campaign trail, Harris was known to accessorize her wardrobe with strings of pearls in homage to her membership of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University, a private, historically black university in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1908, the sorority described itself as the 'birthplace of the first college sorority for Black women.' Upon initiation into the sorority, new members are given a necklace with 20 pearls, sixteen of which represent the founders and the other four that symbolize those who incorporated the sorority. Sen. Kamala Harris official photo. Others pointed out on social media that they were wearing pearls on Election Day in honor of Ginsburg who died in September 2020 at the age of 87. Described as a liberal icon for her court rulings on issues surrounding women's and LGBTQ rights, Ginsburg was well-known for the lace collar she wore during most of the nearly three decades she served on the high court. The collar was an ode to her role as a woman serving in a prestigious position. | nan | [
"06296-proof-05-GettyImages-1267247277.jpg"
] |
The #WalkAway Campaign used ads featuring stock photograph models and claimed they were Democrats leaving the party. | Neutral | In July 2018, various websites reported that the social media hashtag #WalkAway represented a mass movement of people leaving (i.e., 'walking away' from) the Democratic party. The #WalkAway movement was characterized as an answer to the 'blue wave,' a belief shared by liberals that Democrats were poised to make major electoral gains in November 2018 midterm elections. The campaign was launched by New York resident Brandon Straka, who in mid-June 2018 created a video replete with dramatic theme music in which he presented himself as a former liberal who was 'walking away' because liberal politics no longer embodied his values of 'unity, personal empowerment and love.' The video was widely shared on social media, but as Abby Ohlheiser, who pens a blog about the Internet for the Washington Post noted, that following took place 'almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet.' In late July 2018 however, the #WalkAway campaign was criticized for sharing memes utilizing photographs of liberals who were purportedly personally testifying to 'walking away' from the Democratic Party, but those memes actually employed commercial images of anonymous people provided by the stock photography site Shutterstock: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shared images of black people who had allegedly left the Democratic Party. They were actually models in royalty-free stock photos. pic.twitter.com/FjfpZzv8mN - Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 23, 2018 Straka took to Twitter to say the memes were not authentic #WalkAway campaign material: These memes have nothing 2do w/ the #WalkAway Campaign. They're being circulated by the left as evidence that #WalkAway is paid actors. 🙄🙄🙄 So, in a rare moment of agreement, I am on the same page as those on the left- this is fake. These r not from the #WalkAway Campaign. pic.twitter.com/nN3kNlBAsr - Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority) (@usminority) July 24, 2018 In an email, Straka told us he didn't know who created the memes, but that any official material from the #WalkAway campaign would bear specific branding: I don't know who created the memes. I first saw them within the last week. Anything officially released by the #WalkAway Campaign will bear our 'branding' and trademark. Many people are excited and energized about #WalkAway, and in this excitement have created their own materials which are not approved or condoned by the official #WalkAway Campaign. #WalkAway will exist beyond social media but currently does not. It is an LLC, and will exist soon as a non-profit, but currently we are building toward this. It's unclear who created the memes, or whether they were shared by people who consider themselves associated with the #WalkAway hashtag movement. But verifying what materials and persons might have any 'official' connection with the movement is difficult since the campaign exists mostly on social media, with Straka self-identifying in his social media profile as 'campaign founder' and in a group hosted by him on Facebook. #WalkAway memes employing stock photographic images have been shared by at least one prominent conservative figure - Ginni Thomas, an attorney who contributes to the conservative Daily Caller website and is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Noting that live Twitter tracking tool Hamilton68 (operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund) had recorded Russian bots and trolls helping to amplify the #WalkAway hashtag, some critics blamed Twitter for failing to quell the spread of Russian propaganda: Walk Away is a scam created by Russian bots. In reality, I have never met a liberal who says, 'You know what, I've decided I hate people and their basic human rights. I think I'll become a Republican.' https://t.co/lb2VCeOVcm - James Kosur (@JamesKosur) July 5, 2018Recent Updates This article was updated to include comment from Straka. | nan | [
"06301-proof-02-a-5.jpg",
"06301-proof-08-walkaway_shutterstock_images_fb.jpg"
] |
The #WalkAway Campaign used ads featuring stock photograph models and claimed they were Democrats leaving the party. | Neutral | In July 2018, various websites reported that the social media hashtag #WalkAway represented a mass movement of people leaving (i.e., 'walking away' from) the Democratic party. The #WalkAway movement was characterized as an answer to the 'blue wave,' a belief shared by liberals that Democrats were poised to make major electoral gains in November 2018 midterm elections. The campaign was launched by New York resident Brandon Straka, who in mid-June 2018 created a video replete with dramatic theme music in which he presented himself as a former liberal who was 'walking away' because liberal politics no longer embodied his values of 'unity, personal empowerment and love.' The video was widely shared on social media, but as Abby Ohlheiser, who pens a blog about the Internet for the Washington Post noted, that following took place 'almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet.' In late July 2018 however, the #WalkAway campaign was criticized for sharing memes utilizing photographs of liberals who were purportedly personally testifying to 'walking away' from the Democratic Party, but those memes actually employed commercial images of anonymous people provided by the stock photography site Shutterstock: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shared images of black people who had allegedly left the Democratic Party. They were actually models in royalty-free stock photos. pic.twitter.com/FjfpZzv8mN - Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 23, 2018 Straka took to Twitter to say the memes were not authentic #WalkAway campaign material: These memes have nothing 2do w/ the #WalkAway Campaign. They're being circulated by the left as evidence that #WalkAway is paid actors. 🙄🙄🙄 So, in a rare moment of agreement, I am on the same page as those on the left- this is fake. These r not from the #WalkAway Campaign. pic.twitter.com/nN3kNlBAsr - Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority) (@usminority) July 24, 2018 In an email, Straka told us he didn't know who created the memes, but that any official material from the #WalkAway campaign would bear specific branding: I don't know who created the memes. I first saw them within the last week. Anything officially released by the #WalkAway Campaign will bear our 'branding' and trademark. Many people are excited and energized about #WalkAway, and in this excitement have created their own materials which are not approved or condoned by the official #WalkAway Campaign. #WalkAway will exist beyond social media but currently does not. It is an LLC, and will exist soon as a non-profit, but currently we are building toward this. It's unclear who created the memes, or whether they were shared by people who consider themselves associated with the #WalkAway hashtag movement. But verifying what materials and persons might have any 'official' connection with the movement is difficult since the campaign exists mostly on social media, with Straka self-identifying in his social media profile as 'campaign founder' and in a group hosted by him on Facebook. #WalkAway memes employing stock photographic images have been shared by at least one prominent conservative figure - Ginni Thomas, an attorney who contributes to the conservative Daily Caller website and is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Noting that live Twitter tracking tool Hamilton68 (operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund) had recorded Russian bots and trolls helping to amplify the #WalkAway hashtag, some critics blamed Twitter for failing to quell the spread of Russian propaganda: Walk Away is a scam created by Russian bots. In reality, I have never met a liberal who says, 'You know what, I've decided I hate people and their basic human rights. I think I'll become a Republican.' https://t.co/lb2VCeOVcm - James Kosur (@JamesKosur) July 5, 2018Recent Updates This article was updated to include comment from Straka. | nan | [
"06301-proof-02-a-5.jpg",
"06301-proof-08-walkaway_shutterstock_images_fb.jpg"
] |
The #WalkAway Campaign used ads featuring stock photograph models and claimed they were Democrats leaving the party. | Neutral | In July 2018, various websites reported that the social media hashtag #WalkAway represented a mass movement of people leaving (i.e., 'walking away' from) the Democratic party. The #WalkAway movement was characterized as an answer to the 'blue wave,' a belief shared by liberals that Democrats were poised to make major electoral gains in November 2018 midterm elections. The campaign was launched by New York resident Brandon Straka, who in mid-June 2018 created a video replete with dramatic theme music in which he presented himself as a former liberal who was 'walking away' because liberal politics no longer embodied his values of 'unity, personal empowerment and love.' The video was widely shared on social media, but as Abby Ohlheiser, who pens a blog about the Internet for the Washington Post noted, that following took place 'almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet.' In late July 2018 however, the #WalkAway campaign was criticized for sharing memes utilizing photographs of liberals who were purportedly personally testifying to 'walking away' from the Democratic Party, but those memes actually employed commercial images of anonymous people provided by the stock photography site Shutterstock: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shared images of black people who had allegedly left the Democratic Party. They were actually models in royalty-free stock photos. pic.twitter.com/FjfpZzv8mN - Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 23, 2018 Straka took to Twitter to say the memes were not authentic #WalkAway campaign material: These memes have nothing 2do w/ the #WalkAway Campaign. They're being circulated by the left as evidence that #WalkAway is paid actors. 🙄🙄🙄 So, in a rare moment of agreement, I am on the same page as those on the left- this is fake. These r not from the #WalkAway Campaign. pic.twitter.com/nN3kNlBAsr - Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority) (@usminority) July 24, 2018 In an email, Straka told us he didn't know who created the memes, but that any official material from the #WalkAway campaign would bear specific branding: I don't know who created the memes. I first saw them within the last week. Anything officially released by the #WalkAway Campaign will bear our 'branding' and trademark. Many people are excited and energized about #WalkAway, and in this excitement have created their own materials which are not approved or condoned by the official #WalkAway Campaign. #WalkAway will exist beyond social media but currently does not. It is an LLC, and will exist soon as a non-profit, but currently we are building toward this. It's unclear who created the memes, or whether they were shared by people who consider themselves associated with the #WalkAway hashtag movement. But verifying what materials and persons might have any 'official' connection with the movement is difficult since the campaign exists mostly on social media, with Straka self-identifying in his social media profile as 'campaign founder' and in a group hosted by him on Facebook. #WalkAway memes employing stock photographic images have been shared by at least one prominent conservative figure - Ginni Thomas, an attorney who contributes to the conservative Daily Caller website and is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Noting that live Twitter tracking tool Hamilton68 (operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund) had recorded Russian bots and trolls helping to amplify the #WalkAway hashtag, some critics blamed Twitter for failing to quell the spread of Russian propaganda: Walk Away is a scam created by Russian bots. In reality, I have never met a liberal who says, 'You know what, I've decided I hate people and their basic human rights. I think I'll become a Republican.' https://t.co/lb2VCeOVcm - James Kosur (@JamesKosur) July 5, 2018Recent Updates This article was updated to include comment from Straka. | nan | [
"06301-proof-02-a-5.jpg",
"06301-proof-08-walkaway_shutterstock_images_fb.jpg"
] |
The #WalkAway Campaign used ads featuring stock photograph models and claimed they were Democrats leaving the party. | Neutral | In July 2018, various websites reported that the social media hashtag #WalkAway represented a mass movement of people leaving (i.e., 'walking away' from) the Democratic party. The #WalkAway movement was characterized as an answer to the 'blue wave,' a belief shared by liberals that Democrats were poised to make major electoral gains in November 2018 midterm elections. The campaign was launched by New York resident Brandon Straka, who in mid-June 2018 created a video replete with dramatic theme music in which he presented himself as a former liberal who was 'walking away' because liberal politics no longer embodied his values of 'unity, personal empowerment and love.' The video was widely shared on social media, but as Abby Ohlheiser, who pens a blog about the Internet for the Washington Post noted, that following took place 'almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet.' In late July 2018 however, the #WalkAway campaign was criticized for sharing memes utilizing photographs of liberals who were purportedly personally testifying to 'walking away' from the Democratic Party, but those memes actually employed commercial images of anonymous people provided by the stock photography site Shutterstock: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shared images of black people who had allegedly left the Democratic Party. They were actually models in royalty-free stock photos. pic.twitter.com/FjfpZzv8mN - Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 23, 2018 Straka took to Twitter to say the memes were not authentic #WalkAway campaign material: These memes have nothing 2do w/ the #WalkAway Campaign. They're being circulated by the left as evidence that #WalkAway is paid actors. 🙄🙄🙄 So, in a rare moment of agreement, I am on the same page as those on the left- this is fake. These r not from the #WalkAway Campaign. pic.twitter.com/nN3kNlBAsr - Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority) (@usminority) July 24, 2018 In an email, Straka told us he didn't know who created the memes, but that any official material from the #WalkAway campaign would bear specific branding: I don't know who created the memes. I first saw them within the last week. Anything officially released by the #WalkAway Campaign will bear our 'branding' and trademark. Many people are excited and energized about #WalkAway, and in this excitement have created their own materials which are not approved or condoned by the official #WalkAway Campaign. #WalkAway will exist beyond social media but currently does not. It is an LLC, and will exist soon as a non-profit, but currently we are building toward this. It's unclear who created the memes, or whether they were shared by people who consider themselves associated with the #WalkAway hashtag movement. But verifying what materials and persons might have any 'official' connection with the movement is difficult since the campaign exists mostly on social media, with Straka self-identifying in his social media profile as 'campaign founder' and in a group hosted by him on Facebook. #WalkAway memes employing stock photographic images have been shared by at least one prominent conservative figure - Ginni Thomas, an attorney who contributes to the conservative Daily Caller website and is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Noting that live Twitter tracking tool Hamilton68 (operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund) had recorded Russian bots and trolls helping to amplify the #WalkAway hashtag, some critics blamed Twitter for failing to quell the spread of Russian propaganda: Walk Away is a scam created by Russian bots. In reality, I have never met a liberal who says, 'You know what, I've decided I hate people and their basic human rights. I think I'll become a Republican.' https://t.co/lb2VCeOVcm - James Kosur (@JamesKosur) July 5, 2018Recent Updates This article was updated to include comment from Straka. | nan | [
"06301-proof-02-a-5.jpg",
"06301-proof-08-walkaway_shutterstock_images_fb.jpg"
] |
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's hat answers Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again' with the phrase, 'We Just Did. | Neutral | Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. Not long after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 7, 2020, his wife, Jill Biden, posted a photograph celebrating the victory. Eagle-eyed viewers on the internet zoomed in on the blue baseball cap Biden was sporting, which read 'We Just Did' above the number 46, indicating Biden's new position as the 46th president of the United States. He will be a President for all of our families. pic.twitter.com/iGPKLMMIcK - Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) November 7, 2020 Many interpreted 'We Just Did' as a direct response to departing President Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again,' which is emblazoned on a signature red hat worn by Trump and his supporters. This theory spread widely online: We Just Did. pic.twitter.com/Du8aKu5Zvs - Ashmi (@_ashmip) November 8, 2020 'We just did.' Joe Biden clapped back against the MAGA hat 😯 (📷: @DrBiden) pic.twitter.com/fZ2EhzUFRA - Complex (@Complex) November 9, 2020 But this reported 'trolling' by Biden remains unconfirmed. The Biden campaign has not commented on it, and media coverage emphasizes that this is an interpretation from many on the internet, although 'We Just Did' was also seen as a 'clever exercise in branding.' Given that neither Biden nor his representatives have addressed the true intentions behind the 'We Just Did' slogan on Biden's hat to date, we rate this claim as 'Unproven.' | nan | [
"06311-proof-05-EmV1m1xWEAAHy0p.jpeg"
] |
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's hat answers Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again' with the phrase, 'We Just Did. | Neutral | Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. Not long after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 7, 2020, his wife, Jill Biden, posted a photograph celebrating the victory. Eagle-eyed viewers on the internet zoomed in on the blue baseball cap Biden was sporting, which read 'We Just Did' above the number 46, indicating Biden's new position as the 46th president of the United States. He will be a President for all of our families. pic.twitter.com/iGPKLMMIcK - Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) November 7, 2020 Many interpreted 'We Just Did' as a direct response to departing President Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again,' which is emblazoned on a signature red hat worn by Trump and his supporters. This theory spread widely online: We Just Did. pic.twitter.com/Du8aKu5Zvs - Ashmi (@_ashmip) November 8, 2020 'We just did.' Joe Biden clapped back against the MAGA hat 😯 (📷: @DrBiden) pic.twitter.com/fZ2EhzUFRA - Complex (@Complex) November 9, 2020 But this reported 'trolling' by Biden remains unconfirmed. The Biden campaign has not commented on it, and media coverage emphasizes that this is an interpretation from many on the internet, although 'We Just Did' was also seen as a 'clever exercise in branding.' Given that neither Biden nor his representatives have addressed the true intentions behind the 'We Just Did' slogan on Biden's hat to date, we rate this claim as 'Unproven.' | nan | [
"06311-proof-05-EmV1m1xWEAAHy0p.jpeg"
] |
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's hat answers Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again' with the phrase, 'We Just Did. | Neutral | Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. Not long after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 7, 2020, his wife, Jill Biden, posted a photograph celebrating the victory. Eagle-eyed viewers on the internet zoomed in on the blue baseball cap Biden was sporting, which read 'We Just Did' above the number 46, indicating Biden's new position as the 46th president of the United States. He will be a President for all of our families. pic.twitter.com/iGPKLMMIcK - Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) November 7, 2020 Many interpreted 'We Just Did' as a direct response to departing President Donald Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again,' which is emblazoned on a signature red hat worn by Trump and his supporters. This theory spread widely online: We Just Did. pic.twitter.com/Du8aKu5Zvs - Ashmi (@_ashmip) November 8, 2020 'We just did.' Joe Biden clapped back against the MAGA hat 😯 (📷: @DrBiden) pic.twitter.com/fZ2EhzUFRA - Complex (@Complex) November 9, 2020 But this reported 'trolling' by Biden remains unconfirmed. The Biden campaign has not commented on it, and media coverage emphasizes that this is an interpretation from many on the internet, although 'We Just Did' was also seen as a 'clever exercise in branding.' Given that neither Biden nor his representatives have addressed the true intentions behind the 'We Just Did' slogan on Biden's hat to date, we rate this claim as 'Unproven.' | nan | [
"06311-proof-05-EmV1m1xWEAAHy0p.jpeg"
] |
Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children. | Neutral | Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand's popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter's consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just '3 small bags of Takis a month'). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that 'the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,' that Takis are 'causing stomach ulcers in children,' and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler's consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children's Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had 'caused' a particular case of cancer - although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the '3 small bags a month' referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children 'get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they're doubled over in pain,' said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. 'I've had patients go to the ER because of it. It's insane, absolutely insane.' Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it's rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, 'it's not a snack, it's a meal.' Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: 'I had Takis for six months straight and that's all I would eat.' Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, 'A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin' Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.' As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin' Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they're seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. 'So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn't usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,' Berchelmann said. 'Flamin' Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.' Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. 'It's something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,' Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. 'Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.' Because Flamin' Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot 'N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin' Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin' Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis' parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic. | nan | [] |
Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children. | Neutral | Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand's popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter's consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just '3 small bags of Takis a month'). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that 'the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,' that Takis are 'causing stomach ulcers in children,' and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler's consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children's Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had 'caused' a particular case of cancer - although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the '3 small bags a month' referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children 'get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they're doubled over in pain,' said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. 'I've had patients go to the ER because of it. It's insane, absolutely insane.' Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it's rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, 'it's not a snack, it's a meal.' Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: 'I had Takis for six months straight and that's all I would eat.' Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, 'A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin' Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.' As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin' Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they're seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. 'So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn't usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,' Berchelmann said. 'Flamin' Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.' Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. 'It's something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,' Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. 'Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.' Because Flamin' Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot 'N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin' Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin' Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis' parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic. | nan | [] |
Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children. | Neutral | Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand's popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter's consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just '3 small bags of Takis a month'). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that 'the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,' that Takis are 'causing stomach ulcers in children,' and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler's consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children's Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had 'caused' a particular case of cancer - although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the '3 small bags a month' referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children 'get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they're doubled over in pain,' said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. 'I've had patients go to the ER because of it. It's insane, absolutely insane.' Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it's rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, 'it's not a snack, it's a meal.' Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: 'I had Takis for six months straight and that's all I would eat.' Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, 'A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin' Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.' As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin' Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they're seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. 'So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn't usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,' Berchelmann said. 'Flamin' Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.' Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. 'It's something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,' Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. 'Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.' Because Flamin' Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot 'N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin' Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin' Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis' parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic. | nan | [] |
Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children. | Neutral | Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand's popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter's consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just '3 small bags of Takis a month'). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that 'the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,' that Takis are 'causing stomach ulcers in children,' and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler's consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children's Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had 'caused' a particular case of cancer - although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the '3 small bags a month' referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children 'get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they're doubled over in pain,' said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. 'I've had patients go to the ER because of it. It's insane, absolutely insane.' Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it's rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, 'it's not a snack, it's a meal.' Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: 'I had Takis for six months straight and that's all I would eat.' Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, 'A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin' Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.' As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin' Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they're seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. 'So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn't usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,' Berchelmann said. 'Flamin' Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.' Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. 'It's something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,' Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. 'Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.' Because Flamin' Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot 'N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin' Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin' Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis' parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic. | nan | [] |
Eating Takis brand corn chips causes ulcers and cancer in children. | Neutral | Takis are a brand of corn tortilla chips vended by Mexico-based Barcel and known for its spicy hotness: Takis Snacks by Barcel are tortilla snacks that resemble rolled tacos; this crunchy snack is coated with salsa and seasoned with lemon powder. They come in four flavors with varying heat intensities: Fuego (Hot Chili Pepper & Lemon), Salsa Brava (Hot Sauce), Takis Nitro (Habanero & Lime) and Crunchy Fajita (Taco Flavored). Takis (also known as Taquis) are owned by the Barcel company, who are manufacturers of tortilla snacks and potato chips, as well as other confectionary and snack foods. Barcel is a unit of the famous Grupo Bimbo Company, who are also owners of many other popular Mexican brands. Grupo Bimbo purchased a snack factory in Queretaro during the late 70s which later became known as Barcel when the famous title was born in February 9th, 1978. The brand's popularity has spread ever since and many factories were inaugurated in Queretaro Norte, the State of Mexico, Mexicali Baja California, Merida Yucatan and Hidalgo. An item that began circulating on the Internet in June 2013 presents a first-person account of a woman who took her ten-year-old daughter to an urgent care facility for treatment of extreme stomach distress, where a physician reportedly suggested the daughter's consumption of Takis was the cause of her stomach pains (even though the mother stated her daughter consumed just '3 small bags of Takis a month'). Additionally, according to this account, the physician asserted that 'the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach,' that Takis are 'causing stomach ulcers in children,' and that she was currently treating a 16-month-old patient for throat cancer brought about by the toddler's consumption of Takis: Yesterday, I took my 10 year old daughter to Urgent Care in Lancaster with extreme stomach pain (two days off and on). After the Dr. evaluated her stomach and ran urine tested, she checked for tenderness, she found the area that was causing my daughter the pain. The Dr. then asked about what my daughter ate on a regular basis as well as what she had had within the last few days. (Keep in mind that we are pretty consistent with eating healthy and my daughter was having about 3 small bags of takis a month.) When my daughter told her she had takis, the Dr. warned her right away about the dangers of that product. The Dr. mentioned how she had a 16 month old patient in the hospital with throat cancer due to those chips! The toddles teeth failed to grow because even his gums were affected and now the toddler is at The Children's Hospital in LA undergoing chemo. The Dr. also advised me NOT to allow my children to eat ANY of those hot chips. The product that they use to make them is harsh on the mouth, throat, and stomach. PLEASE spread the word! STOP eating takis and hot chips!!! She explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach. It is causing stomach ulcers in children. My daughter was given a 10 day treatment plan to prevent ulcers as the pain her her stomach was severe. PLEASE believe it and read up on the info online for yourself! I am making sure that everyone I come in contact with is aware of what we are unconsciously doing to ourselves and our children when we eat those things! We consulted with some urgent care pediatricians of our acquaintance who told us that they had never treated, or heard of, any cases of children developing severe stomach pains linked to the consumption of Takis. Moreover, they said, no credible doctor would definitively pronounce that consumption of one type of food (or any other single factor) had 'caused' a particular case of cancer - although relationships have been established between certain risk factors and the onset of cancer, no given case of cancer can be reliably attributed to one identifiable cause. Some reports indicate that cases of children developing stomach aches after eating Takis and similar snack foods are known, but that the issue seems to be linked to children consuming those snacks in immoderate and excessive amounts far beyond the '3 small bags a month' referenced in the above account: The spice [in Takis] increases stomach acidity, so children 'get stomach aches, sometimes so terrible they're doubled over in pain,' said Yvonne Juarez, chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno. 'I've had patients go to the ER because of it. It's insane, absolutely insane.' Melissa Ortiz, a Kaiser-Fresno dietitian, said it's rare for a child to stop at [consuming a single 1-ounce bag]. Too often, children and teens are eating 2 or 3 ounces of Hot Cheetos or Takis in a single sitting, she said. At that point, 'it's not a snack, it's a meal.' Gabriella Gaona, 16, of Fresno, said her mother no longer lets her eat either snack after she got sick and had to go to the hospital: 'I had Takis for six months straight and that's all I would eat.' Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, 'A number of patients who have consumed [Flamin' Hot] Cheetos in excess have complained of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest, likely due to due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.' As well, some physicians have noted that children have been taken to emergency rooms after eating Takis and similar snacks not because they were ill, but because their excessive consumption of those snacks resulted in misinterpreted symptoms: St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin' Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange. Parents, she says, falsely believe they're seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong. 'So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn't usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,' Berchelmann said. 'Flamin' Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.' Berchelmann says parents could use this as a teaching moment, talking with their kids about gluttony and eating things in moderation. However, some critics maintain that children commonly over-consume such snack foods because the foods themselves are engineered to promote that behavior: Some scientists and doctors cite the addictive qualities of food products like Cheetos as one reason why children may overeat them. 'It's something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain, and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,' Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told the Chicago Tribune. 'Going along with that, we are seeing those classic signs of addiction, the cravings and loss of control and preoccupation with it.' Because Flamin' Hot Cheetos have become so popular among young people, other snack companies have created spicy products to compete: Hot 'N Spicy Crunchy Nuggetz, Sizzlin' Cheese Flavored Twists, and Sizzlin' Hot Crunchy Kurls, for example. The bottom line remains that children should avoid spicy snack foods and other processed snacks in large quantities in order to avoid gastritis and other health risks, but no solid evidence indicates that moderate consumption of such snack foods puts youngsters at risk for stomach ulcers or cancer. Takis' parent company, Barcel, did not respond to our request for additional information on this topic. | nan | [] |
In September 2017, a Cheesecake Factory customer in California received a check that presented misleading and exaggerated tip suggestions. | Neutral | On 18 September 2017, Facebook user Mike Abreu posted what he presented as a photograph of a restaurant check receipt from his recent visit to a Cheesecake Factory outlet in Valencia, California, that appeared to offer some misleading and exaggerated tip amount suggestions: When the bill finally returned I noted it it was $33.76 total. Right above where you fill in the tip and total was the tipping guide which prefigures your percentage based on your total bill. I personally am a fan of this feature as I don't like figuring percentages on and odd amount so I normally just go with what they put for 20%. So I began to write in $14.71 as it stated was 20 percent of my bill. My wife then asked how much was the bill and I replied almost $50 with the tip. She then said that's pretty expensive for two iced teas and two apps. I looked at the bill again and saw $33.76 which was correct but then I realized that 20 percent of that should be $6.75 and not $14.71 (more than double) that was printed on my bill. The credit card receipt is authentic. Abreu (who goes by 'Frank') brandished an identical-looking slip during an interview with Los Angeles television station KCAL, along with an itemized receipt showing the same total cost ($33.76 including sales tax) but accurate tip suggestions (20% of the bill as $6.75, for example). The date and server's name on that receipt were both the same as the credit card slip featured in Abreu's Facebook post. A spokesperson for the Cheesecake Factory told us that the discrepancy was caused by an error resulting from a staff member's mistakenly processing the Abreus' order along with someone else's, yielding a larger total that was then used as the basis for the tip suggestions presented in each check: The receipt does not accurately reflect the transaction. The suggested gratuity calculation resulted from inadvertently combining two unrelated parties' checks. We deeply apologize for the mistake. It would appear that the staff member corrected the error in the itemized receipt, leaving accurate tip suggestions there, but processed the credit card payment as if it were part of the erroneous 'split bill,' creating the inaccurate tip suggestions there. (If the combined cost of the two bills were $73.55, for example, then $14.71 would have been an accurate suggested amount for a 20% tip.) The practice of presenting tip suggestions based a whole table's order, in each separate receipt after a bill is split, is controversial. The Cheesecake Factory is currently being sued in Los Angeles Superior Court for allegedly presenting tip suggestions misleadingly based on percentages of a whole table's bill, in instances where diners split checks: The Cheesecake Factory ... [when a table] uses two or more credit or debit cards to pay for the charges, the combined bill is divided between the credit/debit cards and Defendant presents each diner/consumer with a separate sales draft for a portion of the bill (a 'split bill'). On each of the sales drafts, Defendant includes suggested gratuity amounts to facilitate customers in calculating and leaving a gratuity for service. Defendant represents the suggested gratuity to be 15%, 18%, 20% or 22% of the check amount reflected on the sales draft, but, in reality, it calculates the suggested gratuity on the combined bill and the suggested gratuity amounts are actually 30%, 36%, 40%, or 44% of the amounts shown on the separate sales drafts. When customers use credit or debit cards to settle their dining bill, Defendant provides them with sales drafts that contain suggested gratuity amounts, and when Defendant divides the total bill between two or more credit/debit cards, the sales drafts contain suggested gratuity amounts which do not accurately represent the total of each sales draft. Plaintiff estimates that over 80% of restaurant charges are paid by credit or debit cards and that approximately 10% or more of those charges (which represents many thousands of consumers) are divided between two or more credit/debit cards and are affected by The Cheesecake Factory's wrongful suggested gratuity practices. The case has the potential to become a class action lawsuit. An initial status conference is scheduled for 18 October 2017. | nan | [
"06353-proof-05-21751930_10208749961940293_6979976385632163669_n-1.jpg",
"06353-proof-11-restaurant_receipt_fb.jpg"
] |
In September 2017, a Cheesecake Factory customer in California received a check that presented misleading and exaggerated tip suggestions. | Neutral | On 18 September 2017, Facebook user Mike Abreu posted what he presented as a photograph of a restaurant check receipt from his recent visit to a Cheesecake Factory outlet in Valencia, California, that appeared to offer some misleading and exaggerated tip amount suggestions: When the bill finally returned I noted it it was $33.76 total. Right above where you fill in the tip and total was the tipping guide which prefigures your percentage based on your total bill. I personally am a fan of this feature as I don't like figuring percentages on and odd amount so I normally just go with what they put for 20%. So I began to write in $14.71 as it stated was 20 percent of my bill. My wife then asked how much was the bill and I replied almost $50 with the tip. She then said that's pretty expensive for two iced teas and two apps. I looked at the bill again and saw $33.76 which was correct but then I realized that 20 percent of that should be $6.75 and not $14.71 (more than double) that was printed on my bill. The credit card receipt is authentic. Abreu (who goes by 'Frank') brandished an identical-looking slip during an interview with Los Angeles television station KCAL, along with an itemized receipt showing the same total cost ($33.76 including sales tax) but accurate tip suggestions (20% of the bill as $6.75, for example). The date and server's name on that receipt were both the same as the credit card slip featured in Abreu's Facebook post. A spokesperson for the Cheesecake Factory told us that the discrepancy was caused by an error resulting from a staff member's mistakenly processing the Abreus' order along with someone else's, yielding a larger total that was then used as the basis for the tip suggestions presented in each check: The receipt does not accurately reflect the transaction. The suggested gratuity calculation resulted from inadvertently combining two unrelated parties' checks. We deeply apologize for the mistake. It would appear that the staff member corrected the error in the itemized receipt, leaving accurate tip suggestions there, but processed the credit card payment as if it were part of the erroneous 'split bill,' creating the inaccurate tip suggestions there. (If the combined cost of the two bills were $73.55, for example, then $14.71 would have been an accurate suggested amount for a 20% tip.) The practice of presenting tip suggestions based a whole table's order, in each separate receipt after a bill is split, is controversial. The Cheesecake Factory is currently being sued in Los Angeles Superior Court for allegedly presenting tip suggestions misleadingly based on percentages of a whole table's bill, in instances where diners split checks: The Cheesecake Factory ... [when a table] uses two or more credit or debit cards to pay for the charges, the combined bill is divided between the credit/debit cards and Defendant presents each diner/consumer with a separate sales draft for a portion of the bill (a 'split bill'). On each of the sales drafts, Defendant includes suggested gratuity amounts to facilitate customers in calculating and leaving a gratuity for service. Defendant represents the suggested gratuity to be 15%, 18%, 20% or 22% of the check amount reflected on the sales draft, but, in reality, it calculates the suggested gratuity on the combined bill and the suggested gratuity amounts are actually 30%, 36%, 40%, or 44% of the amounts shown on the separate sales drafts. When customers use credit or debit cards to settle their dining bill, Defendant provides them with sales drafts that contain suggested gratuity amounts, and when Defendant divides the total bill between two or more credit/debit cards, the sales drafts contain suggested gratuity amounts which do not accurately represent the total of each sales draft. Plaintiff estimates that over 80% of restaurant charges are paid by credit or debit cards and that approximately 10% or more of those charges (which represents many thousands of consumers) are divided between two or more credit/debit cards and are affected by The Cheesecake Factory's wrongful suggested gratuity practices. The case has the potential to become a class action lawsuit. An initial status conference is scheduled for 18 October 2017. | nan | [
"06353-proof-05-21751930_10208749961940293_6979976385632163669_n-1.jpg",
"06353-proof-11-restaurant_receipt_fb.jpg"
] |
In September 2017, a Cheesecake Factory customer in California received a check that presented misleading and exaggerated tip suggestions. | Neutral | On 18 September 2017, Facebook user Mike Abreu posted what he presented as a photograph of a restaurant check receipt from his recent visit to a Cheesecake Factory outlet in Valencia, California, that appeared to offer some misleading and exaggerated tip amount suggestions: When the bill finally returned I noted it it was $33.76 total. Right above where you fill in the tip and total was the tipping guide which prefigures your percentage based on your total bill. I personally am a fan of this feature as I don't like figuring percentages on and odd amount so I normally just go with what they put for 20%. So I began to write in $14.71 as it stated was 20 percent of my bill. My wife then asked how much was the bill and I replied almost $50 with the tip. She then said that's pretty expensive for two iced teas and two apps. I looked at the bill again and saw $33.76 which was correct but then I realized that 20 percent of that should be $6.75 and not $14.71 (more than double) that was printed on my bill. The credit card receipt is authentic. Abreu (who goes by 'Frank') brandished an identical-looking slip during an interview with Los Angeles television station KCAL, along with an itemized receipt showing the same total cost ($33.76 including sales tax) but accurate tip suggestions (20% of the bill as $6.75, for example). The date and server's name on that receipt were both the same as the credit card slip featured in Abreu's Facebook post. A spokesperson for the Cheesecake Factory told us that the discrepancy was caused by an error resulting from a staff member's mistakenly processing the Abreus' order along with someone else's, yielding a larger total that was then used as the basis for the tip suggestions presented in each check: The receipt does not accurately reflect the transaction. The suggested gratuity calculation resulted from inadvertently combining two unrelated parties' checks. We deeply apologize for the mistake. It would appear that the staff member corrected the error in the itemized receipt, leaving accurate tip suggestions there, but processed the credit card payment as if it were part of the erroneous 'split bill,' creating the inaccurate tip suggestions there. (If the combined cost of the two bills were $73.55, for example, then $14.71 would have been an accurate suggested amount for a 20% tip.) The practice of presenting tip suggestions based a whole table's order, in each separate receipt after a bill is split, is controversial. The Cheesecake Factory is currently being sued in Los Angeles Superior Court for allegedly presenting tip suggestions misleadingly based on percentages of a whole table's bill, in instances where diners split checks: The Cheesecake Factory ... [when a table] uses two or more credit or debit cards to pay for the charges, the combined bill is divided between the credit/debit cards and Defendant presents each diner/consumer with a separate sales draft for a portion of the bill (a 'split bill'). On each of the sales drafts, Defendant includes suggested gratuity amounts to facilitate customers in calculating and leaving a gratuity for service. Defendant represents the suggested gratuity to be 15%, 18%, 20% or 22% of the check amount reflected on the sales draft, but, in reality, it calculates the suggested gratuity on the combined bill and the suggested gratuity amounts are actually 30%, 36%, 40%, or 44% of the amounts shown on the separate sales drafts. When customers use credit or debit cards to settle their dining bill, Defendant provides them with sales drafts that contain suggested gratuity amounts, and when Defendant divides the total bill between two or more credit/debit cards, the sales drafts contain suggested gratuity amounts which do not accurately represent the total of each sales draft. Plaintiff estimates that over 80% of restaurant charges are paid by credit or debit cards and that approximately 10% or more of those charges (which represents many thousands of consumers) are divided between two or more credit/debit cards and are affected by The Cheesecake Factory's wrongful suggested gratuity practices. The case has the potential to become a class action lawsuit. An initial status conference is scheduled for 18 October 2017. | nan | [
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A woman developed necrotizing fasciitis (a disease described as 'flesh-eating bacteria') due to poor water quality at Myrtle Beach. | Neutral | On 30 July 2017, Facebook user Marsha Barnes Beal published a post claiming that her mother was battling an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria contracted at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: All prayer warriors: Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer. She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable! She came in contact with a life threating flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! With the hopes of it not spreading. She is in need of special prayer! Missing from the post were basic details, such as the date of Fetterman's beach visit, how doctors purportedly traced the infection back to that visit, and whether anyone else was claiming to have been sickened by the same communicable bug. Nevertheless, the post caused significant alarm among would-be beachgoers who feared, naturally, that poor water quality posed a life-threatening risk. Medical claims can be difficult to verify due to patient privacy laws, but on 31 July 2017, WCSC/WMBF reported that this infection may have come from a simple cut: Neither DHEC [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] nor doctors have confirmed how the woman contracted the bacterial infection. The victim was airlifted to UNC Medical Center from Southeastern Hospital in Lumberton on Sunday morning in critical condition, according to messages received from her family members. According to her granddaughter, the family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach last week. The victim was on the balcony of their hotel when she lost her balance in the wind and cut her leg on a chair. The cut wasn't serious, so she did not seek medical attention. According to family, she spent time in the ocean between 23rd Avenue North and 27th Avenue North in the days after she was cut. On Saturday, the day the family left Myrtle Beach to return to Lumberton, she discovered blisters on her leg. Later that night, the victim's leg was completely purple and covered in blisters. Her blood pressure was also extremely low. The City of Myrtle Beach responded to the rumors in a 31 July 2017 Facebook post, acknowledging the claim but adding that it had not been definitively linked to water quality in Myrtle Beach: The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists. DHEC did not appear reluctant to close beaches when water quality tests indicated higher than acceptable levels of bacteria. On 29 June 2017, one such warning was issued. The Centers for Disease Control's page about necrotizing fasciitis explains that the condition is rare, and not attributable to a single bacterium (that is, nothing necessarily specific in a body of water is definitively linked with the development of necrotizing fasciitis): Although the media commonly calls it a 'flesh-eating infection,' more than one type of bacterium can cause this rare disease. These bacteria include group A Streptococcus (group A strep), Klebsiella, Clostridium, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Aeromonas hydrophila. Public health experts consider group A strep to be the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis ... in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The CDC cautions the public to avoid 'spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection' in order to avoid necrotizing fasciitis, adding that the majority of people who get necrotizing fasciitis 'have other health problems that may lower their body's ability to fight infection'. A study published in August 2014 noted that a specific type of the illness was reported along warm-water coastal regions in the southeastern United States, Central and South America, and Asia, and that 'infection can occur via exposure through an open wound or other break in the skin, but infection has also been reported via ingestion of colonized oysters by patients with cirrhosis'. In response to our inquiry about the rumor, DHEC provided the following statement: DHEC is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis in the Myrtle Beach area. It's important to note that this condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality. Please see below for more information. About the condition: Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious complication associated with some bacterial skin infections. It advances quickly and results in the body's soft tissue dying. (Necrotizing means 'causing the death of tissues.') Unfortunately, necrotizing fasciitis can be deadly in a very short amount of time. Accurate diagnosis, prompt antibiotic treatment and surgery are important to stopping infections associated with this condition. What causes the condition: Many different bacteria can cause this rare problem, but group A strep is the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Infections from group A strep bacteria are generally mild and are easily treated. But in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria can enter the body, usually through a wound, and spread rapidly along the thin sheets of tissue that surround muscles and organs, called fascia. This is why the illness is called necrotizing fasciitis. Most people who develop this condition have weakened immune systems. How to prevent the condition: Good wound care is the best way to prevent bacterial skin infections. Keep draining or open wounds covered with clean, dry bandages until healed. Don't delay first aid of even minor, non-infected wounds (like blisters, scrapes, or any break in the skin). Avoid spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection. Wash hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand rub if washing is not possible. Statistics: It's important to note that not all cases of necrotizing fasciitis are reportable to DHEC, so we do not have specific data on the number of cases of necrotizing fasciitis. The most common type of infection that can be associated with necrotizing fasciitis is invasive Group A strep, which is a reportable infection in South Carolina. For 2016, 177 cases were reported in SC, and for 2017, 146 cases have been reported to date. Regarding water quality testing, this type of condition is not necessarily related to exposure to natural waters or water quality. The key to helping prevent it is proper wound care. This condition is rare in healthy people. DHEC will continue to conduct routine beach monitoring sampling in the Myrtle Beach area. Results of these samples can be found here: https://gis.dhec.sc.gov/beachaccess/. A woman did apparently develop necrotizing fasciitis following a minor injury in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July 2017. Necrotizing fasciitis itself is not a bacterium, but a disease typically associated with a wound or break in the skin, and can be caused by a number of bacteria. Public health officials in South Carolina are aware of the rumor, but have received no indication that there is cause for public concern about beach water quality. The water is routinely tested, and it has not revealed any water condition associated with bacteria-based risk to bathers. | nan | [
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"06387-proof-09-96__All_prayer_warriors__Please_remember_my_Mama_____-_Marsha_Barnes_Beal.jpg"
] |
A woman developed necrotizing fasciitis (a disease described as 'flesh-eating bacteria') due to poor water quality at Myrtle Beach. | Neutral | On 30 July 2017, Facebook user Marsha Barnes Beal published a post claiming that her mother was battling an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria contracted at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: All prayer warriors: Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer. She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable! She came in contact with a life threating flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! With the hopes of it not spreading. She is in need of special prayer! Missing from the post were basic details, such as the date of Fetterman's beach visit, how doctors purportedly traced the infection back to that visit, and whether anyone else was claiming to have been sickened by the same communicable bug. Nevertheless, the post caused significant alarm among would-be beachgoers who feared, naturally, that poor water quality posed a life-threatening risk. Medical claims can be difficult to verify due to patient privacy laws, but on 31 July 2017, WCSC/WMBF reported that this infection may have come from a simple cut: Neither DHEC [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] nor doctors have confirmed how the woman contracted the bacterial infection. The victim was airlifted to UNC Medical Center from Southeastern Hospital in Lumberton on Sunday morning in critical condition, according to messages received from her family members. According to her granddaughter, the family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach last week. The victim was on the balcony of their hotel when she lost her balance in the wind and cut her leg on a chair. The cut wasn't serious, so she did not seek medical attention. According to family, she spent time in the ocean between 23rd Avenue North and 27th Avenue North in the days after she was cut. On Saturday, the day the family left Myrtle Beach to return to Lumberton, she discovered blisters on her leg. Later that night, the victim's leg was completely purple and covered in blisters. Her blood pressure was also extremely low. The City of Myrtle Beach responded to the rumors in a 31 July 2017 Facebook post, acknowledging the claim but adding that it had not been definitively linked to water quality in Myrtle Beach: The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists. DHEC did not appear reluctant to close beaches when water quality tests indicated higher than acceptable levels of bacteria. On 29 June 2017, one such warning was issued. The Centers for Disease Control's page about necrotizing fasciitis explains that the condition is rare, and not attributable to a single bacterium (that is, nothing necessarily specific in a body of water is definitively linked with the development of necrotizing fasciitis): Although the media commonly calls it a 'flesh-eating infection,' more than one type of bacterium can cause this rare disease. These bacteria include group A Streptococcus (group A strep), Klebsiella, Clostridium, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Aeromonas hydrophila. Public health experts consider group A strep to be the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis ... in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The CDC cautions the public to avoid 'spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection' in order to avoid necrotizing fasciitis, adding that the majority of people who get necrotizing fasciitis 'have other health problems that may lower their body's ability to fight infection'. A study published in August 2014 noted that a specific type of the illness was reported along warm-water coastal regions in the southeastern United States, Central and South America, and Asia, and that 'infection can occur via exposure through an open wound or other break in the skin, but infection has also been reported via ingestion of colonized oysters by patients with cirrhosis'. In response to our inquiry about the rumor, DHEC provided the following statement: DHEC is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis in the Myrtle Beach area. It's important to note that this condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality. Please see below for more information. About the condition: Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious complication associated with some bacterial skin infections. It advances quickly and results in the body's soft tissue dying. (Necrotizing means 'causing the death of tissues.') Unfortunately, necrotizing fasciitis can be deadly in a very short amount of time. Accurate diagnosis, prompt antibiotic treatment and surgery are important to stopping infections associated with this condition. What causes the condition: Many different bacteria can cause this rare problem, but group A strep is the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Infections from group A strep bacteria are generally mild and are easily treated. But in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria can enter the body, usually through a wound, and spread rapidly along the thin sheets of tissue that surround muscles and organs, called fascia. This is why the illness is called necrotizing fasciitis. Most people who develop this condition have weakened immune systems. How to prevent the condition: Good wound care is the best way to prevent bacterial skin infections. Keep draining or open wounds covered with clean, dry bandages until healed. Don't delay first aid of even minor, non-infected wounds (like blisters, scrapes, or any break in the skin). Avoid spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection. Wash hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand rub if washing is not possible. Statistics: It's important to note that not all cases of necrotizing fasciitis are reportable to DHEC, so we do not have specific data on the number of cases of necrotizing fasciitis. The most common type of infection that can be associated with necrotizing fasciitis is invasive Group A strep, which is a reportable infection in South Carolina. For 2016, 177 cases were reported in SC, and for 2017, 146 cases have been reported to date. Regarding water quality testing, this type of condition is not necessarily related to exposure to natural waters or water quality. The key to helping prevent it is proper wound care. This condition is rare in healthy people. DHEC will continue to conduct routine beach monitoring sampling in the Myrtle Beach area. Results of these samples can be found here: https://gis.dhec.sc.gov/beachaccess/. A woman did apparently develop necrotizing fasciitis following a minor injury in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July 2017. Necrotizing fasciitis itself is not a bacterium, but a disease typically associated with a wound or break in the skin, and can be caused by a number of bacteria. Public health officials in South Carolina are aware of the rumor, but have received no indication that there is cause for public concern about beach water quality. The water is routinely tested, and it has not revealed any water condition associated with bacteria-based risk to bathers. | nan | [
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"06387-proof-09-96__All_prayer_warriors__Please_remember_my_Mama_____-_Marsha_Barnes_Beal.jpg"
] |
A woman developed necrotizing fasciitis (a disease described as 'flesh-eating bacteria') due to poor water quality at Myrtle Beach. | Neutral | On 30 July 2017, Facebook user Marsha Barnes Beal published a post claiming that her mother was battling an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria contracted at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: All prayer warriors: Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer. She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable! She came in contact with a life threating flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! With the hopes of it not spreading. She is in need of special prayer! Missing from the post were basic details, such as the date of Fetterman's beach visit, how doctors purportedly traced the infection back to that visit, and whether anyone else was claiming to have been sickened by the same communicable bug. Nevertheless, the post caused significant alarm among would-be beachgoers who feared, naturally, that poor water quality posed a life-threatening risk. Medical claims can be difficult to verify due to patient privacy laws, but on 31 July 2017, WCSC/WMBF reported that this infection may have come from a simple cut: Neither DHEC [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] nor doctors have confirmed how the woman contracted the bacterial infection. The victim was airlifted to UNC Medical Center from Southeastern Hospital in Lumberton on Sunday morning in critical condition, according to messages received from her family members. According to her granddaughter, the family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach last week. The victim was on the balcony of their hotel when she lost her balance in the wind and cut her leg on a chair. The cut wasn't serious, so she did not seek medical attention. According to family, she spent time in the ocean between 23rd Avenue North and 27th Avenue North in the days after she was cut. On Saturday, the day the family left Myrtle Beach to return to Lumberton, she discovered blisters on her leg. Later that night, the victim's leg was completely purple and covered in blisters. Her blood pressure was also extremely low. The City of Myrtle Beach responded to the rumors in a 31 July 2017 Facebook post, acknowledging the claim but adding that it had not been definitively linked to water quality in Myrtle Beach: The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists. DHEC did not appear reluctant to close beaches when water quality tests indicated higher than acceptable levels of bacteria. On 29 June 2017, one such warning was issued. The Centers for Disease Control's page about necrotizing fasciitis explains that the condition is rare, and not attributable to a single bacterium (that is, nothing necessarily specific in a body of water is definitively linked with the development of necrotizing fasciitis): Although the media commonly calls it a 'flesh-eating infection,' more than one type of bacterium can cause this rare disease. These bacteria include group A Streptococcus (group A strep), Klebsiella, Clostridium, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Aeromonas hydrophila. Public health experts consider group A strep to be the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis ... in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The CDC cautions the public to avoid 'spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection' in order to avoid necrotizing fasciitis, adding that the majority of people who get necrotizing fasciitis 'have other health problems that may lower their body's ability to fight infection'. A study published in August 2014 noted that a specific type of the illness was reported along warm-water coastal regions in the southeastern United States, Central and South America, and Asia, and that 'infection can occur via exposure through an open wound or other break in the skin, but infection has also been reported via ingestion of colonized oysters by patients with cirrhosis'. In response to our inquiry about the rumor, DHEC provided the following statement: DHEC is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis in the Myrtle Beach area. It's important to note that this condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality. Please see below for more information. About the condition: Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious complication associated with some bacterial skin infections. It advances quickly and results in the body's soft tissue dying. (Necrotizing means 'causing the death of tissues.') Unfortunately, necrotizing fasciitis can be deadly in a very short amount of time. Accurate diagnosis, prompt antibiotic treatment and surgery are important to stopping infections associated with this condition. What causes the condition: Many different bacteria can cause this rare problem, but group A strep is the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Infections from group A strep bacteria are generally mild and are easily treated. But in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria can enter the body, usually through a wound, and spread rapidly along the thin sheets of tissue that surround muscles and organs, called fascia. This is why the illness is called necrotizing fasciitis. Most people who develop this condition have weakened immune systems. How to prevent the condition: Good wound care is the best way to prevent bacterial skin infections. Keep draining or open wounds covered with clean, dry bandages until healed. Don't delay first aid of even minor, non-infected wounds (like blisters, scrapes, or any break in the skin). Avoid spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection. Wash hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand rub if washing is not possible. Statistics: It's important to note that not all cases of necrotizing fasciitis are reportable to DHEC, so we do not have specific data on the number of cases of necrotizing fasciitis. The most common type of infection that can be associated with necrotizing fasciitis is invasive Group A strep, which is a reportable infection in South Carolina. For 2016, 177 cases were reported in SC, and for 2017, 146 cases have been reported to date. Regarding water quality testing, this type of condition is not necessarily related to exposure to natural waters or water quality. The key to helping prevent it is proper wound care. This condition is rare in healthy people. DHEC will continue to conduct routine beach monitoring sampling in the Myrtle Beach area. Results of these samples can be found here: https://gis.dhec.sc.gov/beachaccess/. A woman did apparently develop necrotizing fasciitis following a minor injury in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July 2017. Necrotizing fasciitis itself is not a bacterium, but a disease typically associated with a wound or break in the skin, and can be caused by a number of bacteria. Public health officials in South Carolina are aware of the rumor, but have received no indication that there is cause for public concern about beach water quality. The water is routinely tested, and it has not revealed any water condition associated with bacteria-based risk to bathers. | nan | [
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"06387-proof-09-96__All_prayer_warriors__Please_remember_my_Mama_____-_Marsha_Barnes_Beal.jpg"
] |
A woman developed necrotizing fasciitis (a disease described as 'flesh-eating bacteria') due to poor water quality at Myrtle Beach. | Neutral | On 30 July 2017, Facebook user Marsha Barnes Beal published a post claiming that her mother was battling an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria contracted at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: All prayer warriors: Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer. She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable! She came in contact with a life threating flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! With the hopes of it not spreading. She is in need of special prayer! Missing from the post were basic details, such as the date of Fetterman's beach visit, how doctors purportedly traced the infection back to that visit, and whether anyone else was claiming to have been sickened by the same communicable bug. Nevertheless, the post caused significant alarm among would-be beachgoers who feared, naturally, that poor water quality posed a life-threatening risk. Medical claims can be difficult to verify due to patient privacy laws, but on 31 July 2017, WCSC/WMBF reported that this infection may have come from a simple cut: Neither DHEC [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] nor doctors have confirmed how the woman contracted the bacterial infection. The victim was airlifted to UNC Medical Center from Southeastern Hospital in Lumberton on Sunday morning in critical condition, according to messages received from her family members. According to her granddaughter, the family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach last week. The victim was on the balcony of their hotel when she lost her balance in the wind and cut her leg on a chair. The cut wasn't serious, so she did not seek medical attention. According to family, she spent time in the ocean between 23rd Avenue North and 27th Avenue North in the days after she was cut. On Saturday, the day the family left Myrtle Beach to return to Lumberton, she discovered blisters on her leg. Later that night, the victim's leg was completely purple and covered in blisters. Her blood pressure was also extremely low. The City of Myrtle Beach responded to the rumors in a 31 July 2017 Facebook post, acknowledging the claim but adding that it had not been definitively linked to water quality in Myrtle Beach: The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists. DHEC did not appear reluctant to close beaches when water quality tests indicated higher than acceptable levels of bacteria. On 29 June 2017, one such warning was issued. The Centers for Disease Control's page about necrotizing fasciitis explains that the condition is rare, and not attributable to a single bacterium (that is, nothing necessarily specific in a body of water is definitively linked with the development of necrotizing fasciitis): Although the media commonly calls it a 'flesh-eating infection,' more than one type of bacterium can cause this rare disease. These bacteria include group A Streptococcus (group A strep), Klebsiella, Clostridium, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Aeromonas hydrophila. Public health experts consider group A strep to be the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis ... in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The CDC cautions the public to avoid 'spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection' in order to avoid necrotizing fasciitis, adding that the majority of people who get necrotizing fasciitis 'have other health problems that may lower their body's ability to fight infection'. A study published in August 2014 noted that a specific type of the illness was reported along warm-water coastal regions in the southeastern United States, Central and South America, and Asia, and that 'infection can occur via exposure through an open wound or other break in the skin, but infection has also been reported via ingestion of colonized oysters by patients with cirrhosis'. In response to our inquiry about the rumor, DHEC provided the following statement: DHEC is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis in the Myrtle Beach area. It's important to note that this condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality. Please see below for more information. About the condition: Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious complication associated with some bacterial skin infections. It advances quickly and results in the body's soft tissue dying. (Necrotizing means 'causing the death of tissues.') Unfortunately, necrotizing fasciitis can be deadly in a very short amount of time. Accurate diagnosis, prompt antibiotic treatment and surgery are important to stopping infections associated with this condition. What causes the condition: Many different bacteria can cause this rare problem, but group A strep is the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Infections from group A strep bacteria are generally mild and are easily treated. But in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria can enter the body, usually through a wound, and spread rapidly along the thin sheets of tissue that surround muscles and organs, called fascia. This is why the illness is called necrotizing fasciitis. Most people who develop this condition have weakened immune systems. How to prevent the condition: Good wound care is the best way to prevent bacterial skin infections. Keep draining or open wounds covered with clean, dry bandages until healed. Don't delay first aid of even minor, non-infected wounds (like blisters, scrapes, or any break in the skin). Avoid spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection. Wash hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand rub if washing is not possible. Statistics: It's important to note that not all cases of necrotizing fasciitis are reportable to DHEC, so we do not have specific data on the number of cases of necrotizing fasciitis. The most common type of infection that can be associated with necrotizing fasciitis is invasive Group A strep, which is a reportable infection in South Carolina. For 2016, 177 cases were reported in SC, and for 2017, 146 cases have been reported to date. Regarding water quality testing, this type of condition is not necessarily related to exposure to natural waters or water quality. The key to helping prevent it is proper wound care. This condition is rare in healthy people. DHEC will continue to conduct routine beach monitoring sampling in the Myrtle Beach area. Results of these samples can be found here: https://gis.dhec.sc.gov/beachaccess/. A woman did apparently develop necrotizing fasciitis following a minor injury in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July 2017. Necrotizing fasciitis itself is not a bacterium, but a disease typically associated with a wound or break in the skin, and can be caused by a number of bacteria. Public health officials in South Carolina are aware of the rumor, but have received no indication that there is cause for public concern about beach water quality. The water is routinely tested, and it has not revealed any water condition associated with bacteria-based risk to bathers. | nan | [
"06387-proof-04-myrtle_beach_flesh_eating_bacteria_facebook_fb.jpg",
"06387-proof-09-96__All_prayer_warriors__Please_remember_my_Mama_____-_Marsha_Barnes_Beal.jpg"
] |
A woman developed necrotizing fasciitis (a disease described as 'flesh-eating bacteria') due to poor water quality at Myrtle Beach. | Neutral | On 30 July 2017, Facebook user Marsha Barnes Beal published a post claiming that her mother was battling an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria contracted at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: All prayer warriors: Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer. She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable! She came in contact with a life threating flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! With the hopes of it not spreading. She is in need of special prayer! Missing from the post were basic details, such as the date of Fetterman's beach visit, how doctors purportedly traced the infection back to that visit, and whether anyone else was claiming to have been sickened by the same communicable bug. Nevertheless, the post caused significant alarm among would-be beachgoers who feared, naturally, that poor water quality posed a life-threatening risk. Medical claims can be difficult to verify due to patient privacy laws, but on 31 July 2017, WCSC/WMBF reported that this infection may have come from a simple cut: Neither DHEC [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] nor doctors have confirmed how the woman contracted the bacterial infection. The victim was airlifted to UNC Medical Center from Southeastern Hospital in Lumberton on Sunday morning in critical condition, according to messages received from her family members. According to her granddaughter, the family was vacationing in Myrtle Beach last week. The victim was on the balcony of their hotel when she lost her balance in the wind and cut her leg on a chair. The cut wasn't serious, so she did not seek medical attention. According to family, she spent time in the ocean between 23rd Avenue North and 27th Avenue North in the days after she was cut. On Saturday, the day the family left Myrtle Beach to return to Lumberton, she discovered blisters on her leg. Later that night, the victim's leg was completely purple and covered in blisters. Her blood pressure was also extremely low. The City of Myrtle Beach responded to the rumors in a 31 July 2017 Facebook post, acknowledging the claim but adding that it had not been definitively linked to water quality in Myrtle Beach: The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists. DHEC did not appear reluctant to close beaches when water quality tests indicated higher than acceptable levels of bacteria. On 29 June 2017, one such warning was issued. The Centers for Disease Control's page about necrotizing fasciitis explains that the condition is rare, and not attributable to a single bacterium (that is, nothing necessarily specific in a body of water is definitively linked with the development of necrotizing fasciitis): Although the media commonly calls it a 'flesh-eating infection,' more than one type of bacterium can cause this rare disease. These bacteria include group A Streptococcus (group A strep), Klebsiella, Clostridium, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Aeromonas hydrophila. Public health experts consider group A strep to be the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis ... in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The CDC cautions the public to avoid 'spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection' in order to avoid necrotizing fasciitis, adding that the majority of people who get necrotizing fasciitis 'have other health problems that may lower their body's ability to fight infection'. A study published in August 2014 noted that a specific type of the illness was reported along warm-water coastal regions in the southeastern United States, Central and South America, and Asia, and that 'infection can occur via exposure through an open wound or other break in the skin, but infection has also been reported via ingestion of colonized oysters by patients with cirrhosis'. In response to our inquiry about the rumor, DHEC provided the following statement: DHEC is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis in the Myrtle Beach area. It's important to note that this condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality. Please see below for more information. About the condition: Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious complication associated with some bacterial skin infections. It advances quickly and results in the body's soft tissue dying. (Necrotizing means 'causing the death of tissues.') Unfortunately, necrotizing fasciitis can be deadly in a very short amount of time. Accurate diagnosis, prompt antibiotic treatment and surgery are important to stopping infections associated with this condition. What causes the condition: Many different bacteria can cause this rare problem, but group A strep is the most common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Infections from group A strep bacteria are generally mild and are easily treated. But in cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria can enter the body, usually through a wound, and spread rapidly along the thin sheets of tissue that surround muscles and organs, called fascia. This is why the illness is called necrotizing fasciitis. Most people who develop this condition have weakened immune systems. How to prevent the condition: Good wound care is the best way to prevent bacterial skin infections. Keep draining or open wounds covered with clean, dry bandages until healed. Don't delay first aid of even minor, non-infected wounds (like blisters, scrapes, or any break in the skin). Avoid spending time in whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, oceans) if you have an open wound or skin infection. Wash hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand rub if washing is not possible. Statistics: It's important to note that not all cases of necrotizing fasciitis are reportable to DHEC, so we do not have specific data on the number of cases of necrotizing fasciitis. The most common type of infection that can be associated with necrotizing fasciitis is invasive Group A strep, which is a reportable infection in South Carolina. For 2016, 177 cases were reported in SC, and for 2017, 146 cases have been reported to date. Regarding water quality testing, this type of condition is not necessarily related to exposure to natural waters or water quality. The key to helping prevent it is proper wound care. This condition is rare in healthy people. DHEC will continue to conduct routine beach monitoring sampling in the Myrtle Beach area. Results of these samples can be found here: https://gis.dhec.sc.gov/beachaccess/. A woman did apparently develop necrotizing fasciitis following a minor injury in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July 2017. Necrotizing fasciitis itself is not a bacterium, but a disease typically associated with a wound or break in the skin, and can be caused by a number of bacteria. Public health officials in South Carolina are aware of the rumor, but have received no indication that there is cause for public concern about beach water quality. The water is routinely tested, and it has not revealed any water condition associated with bacteria-based risk to bathers. | nan | [
"06387-proof-04-myrtle_beach_flesh_eating_bacteria_facebook_fb.jpg",
"06387-proof-09-96__All_prayer_warriors__Please_remember_my_Mama_____-_Marsha_Barnes_Beal.jpg"
] |
A picture shows a 1918 advertisement touting the benefits of the Bell Telephone for maintaining relationships while people were under quarantine during the 'Spanish flu. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In May 2020, as much of the United States was dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by self-quarantining, an image started circulating on social media. It supposedly shows an advertisement from the New York Telephone Company that touted the Bell Telephone as a way to maintain relationships with people who were in isolation due to the so-called 'Spanish Flu.' One posting of this image from Reddit was accompanied by a caption that noted history really does repeat itself: An add [sic] during the 1918 Spanish Flu and here we are approximately 100 years later. History does repeat itself. The advertisement reads: When In Quarantine: People who are in quarantine are not isolated if they have a Bell Telephone. The Bell Service brings cheer and encouragement to the sick, and is of value in countless other ways. Friends, whether close at hand or far away, can be easily reached, because Bell Service is universal service. This is a genuine advertisement from the New York Telephone Company touting the benefits of a phone to maintain social distancing. However, the ad was first published several years before the outbreak of the Spanish flu. Here's a version of this advertisement published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Nov. 17, 1910: Flu Tech - Telephone ad 1910 Thu, Nov 17, 1910 - Page 16 · St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri) · Newspapers.com The ad doesn't appear to refer to any specific city-wide quarantines put in place to deal with any illness. Rather, it appears this ad was targeting individuals who may know someone who was being kept in isolation, possible due to a contagious disease such as smallpox, leprosy, or cholera. Newspaper clippings at the time also reveal several instances of local quarantines that were implemented to contain various outbreaks. In 1900, for instance, the 'San Francisco plague,' an outbreak of bubonic plague in California, resulted in quarantine restrictions as far away as Texas. In 1903, the New York City Department of Health opened a quarantine facility to isolate tuberculosis patients. In 1910, when this advertisement first appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch, officials in the Missouri city were asking people to quarantine after multiple cases of scarlet fever were found at one of the city's schools. While this advertisement was created before the Spanish flu (a misnomer for the 1918 flu pandemic), we have little to quibble with the observation that 'history repeats itself.' For instance, as this ad suggests, phones helped to maintain social relationships with individuals separated by illness, and in 2020, video-conferencing apps saw a big increase in use for the same reason. | nan | [
"06422-proof-02-quarantine-ad.jpg"
] |
A picture shows a 1918 advertisement touting the benefits of the Bell Telephone for maintaining relationships while people were under quarantine during the 'Spanish flu. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In May 2020, as much of the United States was dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by self-quarantining, an image started circulating on social media. It supposedly shows an advertisement from the New York Telephone Company that touted the Bell Telephone as a way to maintain relationships with people who were in isolation due to the so-called 'Spanish Flu.' One posting of this image from Reddit was accompanied by a caption that noted history really does repeat itself: An add [sic] during the 1918 Spanish Flu and here we are approximately 100 years later. History does repeat itself. The advertisement reads: When In Quarantine: People who are in quarantine are not isolated if they have a Bell Telephone. The Bell Service brings cheer and encouragement to the sick, and is of value in countless other ways. Friends, whether close at hand or far away, can be easily reached, because Bell Service is universal service. This is a genuine advertisement from the New York Telephone Company touting the benefits of a phone to maintain social distancing. However, the ad was first published several years before the outbreak of the Spanish flu. Here's a version of this advertisement published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Nov. 17, 1910: Flu Tech - Telephone ad 1910 Thu, Nov 17, 1910 - Page 16 · St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri) · Newspapers.com The ad doesn't appear to refer to any specific city-wide quarantines put in place to deal with any illness. Rather, it appears this ad was targeting individuals who may know someone who was being kept in isolation, possible due to a contagious disease such as smallpox, leprosy, or cholera. Newspaper clippings at the time also reveal several instances of local quarantines that were implemented to contain various outbreaks. In 1900, for instance, the 'San Francisco plague,' an outbreak of bubonic plague in California, resulted in quarantine restrictions as far away as Texas. In 1903, the New York City Department of Health opened a quarantine facility to isolate tuberculosis patients. In 1910, when this advertisement first appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch, officials in the Missouri city were asking people to quarantine after multiple cases of scarlet fever were found at one of the city's schools. While this advertisement was created before the Spanish flu (a misnomer for the 1918 flu pandemic), we have little to quibble with the observation that 'history repeats itself.' For instance, as this ad suggests, phones helped to maintain social relationships with individuals separated by illness, and in 2020, video-conferencing apps saw a big increase in use for the same reason. | nan | [
"06422-proof-02-quarantine-ad.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
Teenagers are participating in a dangerous new internet craze known as the 'No Lackin Challenge,' and two teenagers was shot in the head during an instance of the fad gone awry. | Neutral | In late January 2018, multiple news outlets and blogs reported that a fad called the 'No Lackin Challenge' had led to the accidental shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Memphis, although early local reports of the incident hadn't referenced a connection to the supposed challenge fad: First the Tide Pod Challenge and now this! Pull-a-gun-on-your-friends Challenge. The human race is getting dumber and dumber and dumber... #GodHelpUs https://t.co/YcIL0A4PMp - Kari Lake Fox 10 (@KariLakeFox10) January 28, 2018 No Lackin Challenge YouTube craze goes horribly wrong as teen is shot in the head by palhttps://t.co/3sr1QaY25W #NoLackinChallenge pic.twitter.com/wXBq7qdf5Q - The Sun (@TheSun) January 28, 2018 Internet challenge leads to shooting of 17-year-old, Memphis police say https://t.co/dU20nqoveS - Clarion Ledger (@clarionledger) January 26, 2018 The 'No Lackin Challenge' fad reportedly involves participants' drawing guns on one another, with the term 'lackin' being a purported Chicago-area colloquialism defined as being caught without a firearm. 'No Lackin' therefore means one is ready for any situation or confrontation. Memphis television station WMC reported that the 17-year-old Memphis youngster had been 'shot in the head' at a cafe while he 'and a friend were playing with a handgun [that] went off by accident.' Another Memphis station, WREG, similarly reported that the gun went off accidentally while 'kids' were 'playing' with it and showing it off: [P]olice say a 17-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the head, while he and his friends were playing with a gun. 'All young kids,' said Ron Eanes, area manager at E's Cafe. 'They were sitting there talking, and they started showing each other a gun and it accidentally went off.' Subsequently, USA Today referenced the 'No Lackin Challenge' in their reporting of the shooting: [Sherman] Lackland was sitting in a booth at the restaurant with the victim and another friend playing the 'No Lackin Challenge' when police said Lackland accidentally shot the teen in the right side of his head with a .40-caliber gun, according to an arrest affidavit. Lackland gave police a statement and told investigators they were playing the game and the shooting was an accident. He was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful possession of a weapon. As the incident became associated with the No Lackin Challenge, interest in the story spread to national and international sources. But increased interest in an activity following news reports about it doesn't doesn't necessarily demonstrate that the activity is a 'fad' gaining in popularity, or that it had previously been popular. A Google search on the term 'No Lackin Challenge' restricted to material published prior to reports of the 25 January 2018 shooting produced sparse results, consisting primarily of misdated links pertaining to the incident in Memphis along with three YouTube videos dated 27 September 2017, 7 October 2017, and 14 December 2017 (although these clips often depicted individuals armed with what were clearly toy weapons). Although two of the three videos had tens of thousands of views, the 'No Lackin Challenge' did not appear to be widespread or popular at that time. If there were indeed a social media trend by that name, very few people apparently searched for it online as the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Google Trends data showed a small spike in searches on that term around the time the September 2017 video was published and then a massive uptick after the Memphis shooting hit the news: It was nearly a full year later that a second instance of injuries (fatal in this case) supposedly resulting from the No Lackin Challenge was reported: An 18-year-old is now facing charges for allegedly shooting his friend in the head, killing him as they played the 'No Lackin Challenge.' Christian Johnson, 19, was killed in December [2018] at his home in [Houston]. After a police investigation into Johnson's shooting, 18-year-old Mohamad Alajil was charged with second degree manslaughter. According to prosecutors, Johnson and Alajil were in Johnson's bedroom playing the 'No Lackin Challenge.' The two were reportedly pointing loaded weapons at each other. When Alajil stretched out his arm and pointed the pistol at Johnson's head, the trigger was pulled, and the gun went off, striking him in the head, authorities allege. Alajil allegedly made no attempt to call police. When they interviewed him, he initially told investigators he and Johnson had been fighting and he shot the teen in self-defense. Later Alajil changed his statement, and told officers about the 'No Lackin Challenge.' In both cases it's difficult to determine whether the teenagers involved were truly engaging in a 'challenge' activity distinct from simply unsafely playing with loaded guns that accidentally discharged. | nan | [
"06435-proof-08-No_Lackin_Challenge_tweet_fb.jpg"
] |
The G.W. Bush administration 'lost' 22 million official e-mails sent and received via private servers between the years 2003 and 2005. | Neutral | The specter of 'missing e-mails' loomed large throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle because of a scandal arising from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's mishandling of electronic communications while serving as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. The issue was twofold, according to Clinton's critics: one aspect was her use of a private e-mail server to send and receive official messages, laying open the possibility that classified information could have been exchanged in an insecure environment; the other was the deletion of approximately 30,000 e-mails from that server (messages Clinton claimed were personal and unrelated to official business) prior to an FBI investigation of the case. The FBI concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing or intent to violate laws concerning the handling of classified information on the part of Clinton or her staff, but FBI Director James B. Comey issued a statement calling Clinton's actions 'extremely careless.' The deleted e-mails remained an issue because only Clinton's lawyers were involved in deciding which messages would be culled as 'non-work-related.' GOP candidate Donald Trump brought them up repeatedly in speeches and debates, at one point joking that he hoped Russia could help find them. Given all the criticism directed at Clinton, it was only a matter of time before an incident involving a large number of e-mails that 'went missing' during the Republican George W. Bush administration was revived and injected into the 2016 campaign. On 12 September, Newsweek ran an article by Nina Burleigh entitled 'The George W. Bush Administration 'Lost' 22 Million E-mails,' which explicitly compared the State Department e-mail fiasco to the one that occurred in the Bush White House and suggested that the latter was infinitely more serious: For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton's personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations - all of it still unsolved and unpunished. Clinton's email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House 'lost' 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America's recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. The comparison is apt in some ways, not so much in others. One similarity is the use of private e-mail servers in lieu of government ones. During the course of a Congressional investigation it was found that many Bush White House staffers (including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove) had conducted official business via private e-mail accounts on a server owned and maintained by the Republican National Committee. Then it was revealed that as many as 22 million e-mails sent and received via these private accounts 'were not preserved' in accordance with the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that all official communications be archived and accounted for: The Bush Administration admitted that in reviewing documents requested by Democrats for their investigations, it discovered that as many as 50 of its staffers may have violated the Presidential Records Act. The staffers, the White House said, were using e-mail accounts, laptops and BlackBerries provided by the Republican National Committee for official executive branch communications rather than the exclusively political work for which they were intended. Because the RNC had a policy until 2004 of erasing all e-mails on its servers after 30 days, including those by White House staffers, and because some of those staffers may have deleted e-mails on their own, the White House said it could not assure Congress that they have not violated the PRA, which requires the retention of official White House documents. The White House officials who may have broken the law include senior adviser Karl Rove, his deputies and much of their staffs. The White House says it is trying to recover the e-mails. 'Some official e-mails may have been potentially lost,' says Scott Stanzel, a deputy White House spokesman, 'We will do everything practical to retrieve them.' Stanzel and other Administration officials, speaking on background, say the accounts were established in an attempt to stay on the right side of the Hatch Act, which requires rigorous separation of official government activity from overt political work, like fundraising. '[Some] White House staff members have duties that require them to interface regularly with political organizations,' Stanzel says, and therefore they needed separate equipment to stay on the right side of the law. In plain terms, some 22 million e-mails had been deleted, though the White House described them as 'lost' or 'missing' - another apparent point of comparison between the Bush and Clinton e-mail scandals. However, at least some of the 22 million 'lost' Bush administration e-mails (unlike Clinton's 30,000) were eventually 'found.' To put it more accurately, a large number (it's unclear exactly how many) of the messages were recovered from backup storage systems by technicians as a result of a deal struck between the federal government and two nonprofit groups that sued for release of the e-mails via the Freedom of Information Act. It may be impossible, ultimately, to restore all of the deleted e-mails due to funding limitations, and to date none of the recovered messages has been made public because they're still under review, but the fact remains that not all of them were permanently lost. As in Clinton's case, the Bush administration e-mails were sought as evidence in government investigations. No no charges were filed and no criminal wrongdoing was found in regard to Clinton's handling of e-mails. Bush aides were found in contempt of Congress for not complying with subpoenas in the U.S. attorney firings investigation, but no punishment was handed down. | nan | [] |
The G.W. Bush administration 'lost' 22 million official e-mails sent and received via private servers between the years 2003 and 2005. | Neutral | The specter of 'missing e-mails' loomed large throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle because of a scandal arising from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's mishandling of electronic communications while serving as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. The issue was twofold, according to Clinton's critics: one aspect was her use of a private e-mail server to send and receive official messages, laying open the possibility that classified information could have been exchanged in an insecure environment; the other was the deletion of approximately 30,000 e-mails from that server (messages Clinton claimed were personal and unrelated to official business) prior to an FBI investigation of the case. The FBI concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing or intent to violate laws concerning the handling of classified information on the part of Clinton or her staff, but FBI Director James B. Comey issued a statement calling Clinton's actions 'extremely careless.' The deleted e-mails remained an issue because only Clinton's lawyers were involved in deciding which messages would be culled as 'non-work-related.' GOP candidate Donald Trump brought them up repeatedly in speeches and debates, at one point joking that he hoped Russia could help find them. Given all the criticism directed at Clinton, it was only a matter of time before an incident involving a large number of e-mails that 'went missing' during the Republican George W. Bush administration was revived and injected into the 2016 campaign. On 12 September, Newsweek ran an article by Nina Burleigh entitled 'The George W. Bush Administration 'Lost' 22 Million E-mails,' which explicitly compared the State Department e-mail fiasco to the one that occurred in the Bush White House and suggested that the latter was infinitely more serious: For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton's personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations - all of it still unsolved and unpunished. Clinton's email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House 'lost' 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America's recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. The comparison is apt in some ways, not so much in others. One similarity is the use of private e-mail servers in lieu of government ones. During the course of a Congressional investigation it was found that many Bush White House staffers (including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove) had conducted official business via private e-mail accounts on a server owned and maintained by the Republican National Committee. Then it was revealed that as many as 22 million e-mails sent and received via these private accounts 'were not preserved' in accordance with the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that all official communications be archived and accounted for: The Bush Administration admitted that in reviewing documents requested by Democrats for their investigations, it discovered that as many as 50 of its staffers may have violated the Presidential Records Act. The staffers, the White House said, were using e-mail accounts, laptops and BlackBerries provided by the Republican National Committee for official executive branch communications rather than the exclusively political work for which they were intended. Because the RNC had a policy until 2004 of erasing all e-mails on its servers after 30 days, including those by White House staffers, and because some of those staffers may have deleted e-mails on their own, the White House said it could not assure Congress that they have not violated the PRA, which requires the retention of official White House documents. The White House officials who may have broken the law include senior adviser Karl Rove, his deputies and much of their staffs. The White House says it is trying to recover the e-mails. 'Some official e-mails may have been potentially lost,' says Scott Stanzel, a deputy White House spokesman, 'We will do everything practical to retrieve them.' Stanzel and other Administration officials, speaking on background, say the accounts were established in an attempt to stay on the right side of the Hatch Act, which requires rigorous separation of official government activity from overt political work, like fundraising. '[Some] White House staff members have duties that require them to interface regularly with political organizations,' Stanzel says, and therefore they needed separate equipment to stay on the right side of the law. In plain terms, some 22 million e-mails had been deleted, though the White House described them as 'lost' or 'missing' - another apparent point of comparison between the Bush and Clinton e-mail scandals. However, at least some of the 22 million 'lost' Bush administration e-mails (unlike Clinton's 30,000) were eventually 'found.' To put it more accurately, a large number (it's unclear exactly how many) of the messages were recovered from backup storage systems by technicians as a result of a deal struck between the federal government and two nonprofit groups that sued for release of the e-mails via the Freedom of Information Act. It may be impossible, ultimately, to restore all of the deleted e-mails due to funding limitations, and to date none of the recovered messages has been made public because they're still under review, but the fact remains that not all of them were permanently lost. As in Clinton's case, the Bush administration e-mails were sought as evidence in government investigations. No no charges were filed and no criminal wrongdoing was found in regard to Clinton's handling of e-mails. Bush aides were found in contempt of Congress for not complying with subpoenas in the U.S. attorney firings investigation, but no punishment was handed down. | nan | [] |
The COVID-19 coronavirus disease is 'spreading quickly from gas pumps. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. Editor's note: This article was updated in August 2021 to include a new but similar iteration of the 2020 social media claims in response to the Delta variant, as well as new guidance issued by the CDC. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, social media users began sharing warnings about the virus allegedly 'spreading quickly from gas pumps.' Such warnings cautioned readers to use gloves or paper towels while pumping gas and to discard them immediately afterward: One particular version of this class of warning attributed the advice to 'Galway Hospital' in Ireland: In early August 2021, Snopes readers sent our team a new iteration of the claim with slightly different language that seemed to have been updated in response to the then-rampant Delta variant: Fwd: The hospital sent a message this morning that the Covid-19/delta mutant virus seems to be spreading rapidly through gasoline pumps, asking everyone to wear gloves or use paper towels when refueling and handling-please share. Please send it to everyone in your contact list. Don't leave this information to yourself. Make it available to all your family and friends As with many coronavirus-related pieces of advice, it's something of a mixed bag. We're not aware of any credible reports of COVID-19 being spread via gas pump handles (something that would likely be difficult to determine as the specific source of any particular infection). It is true that surface contact is one of the means of transmission of the novel coronavirus, and since gas pumps are objects that are typically handled by many different people throughout the course of a day - in many places without being regularly cleaned between uses (especially in areas where self-service is the norm) - they are a potential route for the virus to spread from person to person. The CDC issued new guidance for employees at transit stations in June 2021 in response to growing concerns about SARS-CoV-2 variants. The virus mainly spreads from person to person through respiratory droplets that are emitted when a person coughs, sneezes or talks. The virus can also be spread by touching a surface that has the virus on it and then touching the face, mouth, nose, or eyes. In May 2020, the CDC shared an instructional Facebook post to inform consumers on to safely pump gas. In the post, the agency recommended using disinfecting wipes on handles and buttons before touching them, using hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol after pumping and paying, and washing hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water upon arriving at the destination. 'Like door handles, grocery carts, and ATMs, many people touch gas pumps throughout the day. The chance of COVID-19 exposure at the gas pump is low, especially if Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended practices are followed,' wrote the American Petroleum Institute (API) in a one-page statement. Research conducted by a collaboration of scientific institutions, including the National Institutes of Health and Princeton University, found that the virus can survive up to three days on some surfaces. But as API pointed out, several events would need to happen for the virus to spread from a pump to a person. First, a person with COVID-19, with or without symptoms, would have to emit respiratory droplets containing the virus within 6-feet of a pump or touch it with contaminated hands. The virus would then need to survive long enough for a non-COVID-19 individual to touch the surface in a way that the virus would be transferred to their hands. Lastly, the healthy individual would then have to touch their eyes, nose or mouth. While it is entirely possible to encounter SARS-CoV-2 by touching a gas pump, surface-to-surface transmission is not thought to be the primary spread of the virus. 'At this time, we are not aware of any studies that support the claim that the virus can be transmitted via contact with a gas pump,' wrote API. However, the level of risk associated with contracting the virus from a gas pump is no different than the risk associated with touching other common surfaces like grocery store carts or door handles.' But how much risk pumping gas poses relative to other ordinary day-to-day activities is difficult to determine. Consumer Reports, for example, offered advice in 2020 that was consistent with what was expressed in some social media warnings: For many [persons] the occasional trip to the gas station is inevitable, as is touching the pump handle and payment keypad. Pump handles and credit card keypads, which are high-touch areas, could have the virus present, which experts say can stay alive for hours or even days on hard surfaces ... [T]here are a few things you can do that will help you stay safe when you have to pump gas. • Consider carrying some disposable nitrile or latex gloves in your car to use when gripping the pump handle. Short of that, you can try to use paper towels that are sometimes available at the pump or have some with you to cover your hands when you grip the handle. • Invert the gloves and throw them away, and also any paper towels you might have used. Use hand sanitizer to make sure your hands are clean after you're done and before you get back into your car. On the other hand, in response o the 2020 social media posts, the Irish Petroleum Industry Association told the TheJournal.ie the following: Our members are implementing enhanced hygiene protocols in our service station shops. In line with HSE [Health and Safety Executive] advice, our workers regularly wash and sanitise their hands and the areas customers interact with such as fuel nozzles, credit card PIN pads, door handles and food areas. We are aware of messages being shared on social media and wanted to inform customers that pump handles are no more or less prone to the spread of infection than any other hard surface and to outline the significant steps we are taking to combat the spread of Covid-19 and keep our valued customers safe. Gas pumps could be considered somewhat more of a concern because consumers typically touch other surfaces - such as the door handles and interiors of their vehicles - immediately afterward and could thereby create yet another pathway of contamination for themselves or others. However, gas pumps are just one of many objects that multiple people commonly handle in a similar fashion during the course of a day, including ATMs, payment processing systems, shopping cart handles, and currency, all of which pose varying degrees of risk.Recent Updates Update [Aug. 5, 2021]: This article was updated to include a new iteration of the claim that circulated in response to the Delta variant, as well as to include new guidance issued by the CDC. | nan | [] |
The COVID-19 coronavirus disease is 'spreading quickly from gas pumps. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. Editor's note: This article was updated in August 2021 to include a new but similar iteration of the 2020 social media claims in response to the Delta variant, as well as new guidance issued by the CDC. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, social media users began sharing warnings about the virus allegedly 'spreading quickly from gas pumps.' Such warnings cautioned readers to use gloves or paper towels while pumping gas and to discard them immediately afterward: One particular version of this class of warning attributed the advice to 'Galway Hospital' in Ireland: In early August 2021, Snopes readers sent our team a new iteration of the claim with slightly different language that seemed to have been updated in response to the then-rampant Delta variant: Fwd: The hospital sent a message this morning that the Covid-19/delta mutant virus seems to be spreading rapidly through gasoline pumps, asking everyone to wear gloves or use paper towels when refueling and handling-please share. Please send it to everyone in your contact list. Don't leave this information to yourself. Make it available to all your family and friends As with many coronavirus-related pieces of advice, it's something of a mixed bag. We're not aware of any credible reports of COVID-19 being spread via gas pump handles (something that would likely be difficult to determine as the specific source of any particular infection). It is true that surface contact is one of the means of transmission of the novel coronavirus, and since gas pumps are objects that are typically handled by many different people throughout the course of a day - in many places without being regularly cleaned between uses (especially in areas where self-service is the norm) - they are a potential route for the virus to spread from person to person. The CDC issued new guidance for employees at transit stations in June 2021 in response to growing concerns about SARS-CoV-2 variants. The virus mainly spreads from person to person through respiratory droplets that are emitted when a person coughs, sneezes or talks. The virus can also be spread by touching a surface that has the virus on it and then touching the face, mouth, nose, or eyes. In May 2020, the CDC shared an instructional Facebook post to inform consumers on to safely pump gas. In the post, the agency recommended using disinfecting wipes on handles and buttons before touching them, using hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol after pumping and paying, and washing hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water upon arriving at the destination. 'Like door handles, grocery carts, and ATMs, many people touch gas pumps throughout the day. The chance of COVID-19 exposure at the gas pump is low, especially if Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended practices are followed,' wrote the American Petroleum Institute (API) in a one-page statement. Research conducted by a collaboration of scientific institutions, including the National Institutes of Health and Princeton University, found that the virus can survive up to three days on some surfaces. But as API pointed out, several events would need to happen for the virus to spread from a pump to a person. First, a person with COVID-19, with or without symptoms, would have to emit respiratory droplets containing the virus within 6-feet of a pump or touch it with contaminated hands. The virus would then need to survive long enough for a non-COVID-19 individual to touch the surface in a way that the virus would be transferred to their hands. Lastly, the healthy individual would then have to touch their eyes, nose or mouth. While it is entirely possible to encounter SARS-CoV-2 by touching a gas pump, surface-to-surface transmission is not thought to be the primary spread of the virus. 'At this time, we are not aware of any studies that support the claim that the virus can be transmitted via contact with a gas pump,' wrote API. However, the level of risk associated with contracting the virus from a gas pump is no different than the risk associated with touching other common surfaces like grocery store carts or door handles.' But how much risk pumping gas poses relative to other ordinary day-to-day activities is difficult to determine. Consumer Reports, for example, offered advice in 2020 that was consistent with what was expressed in some social media warnings: For many [persons] the occasional trip to the gas station is inevitable, as is touching the pump handle and payment keypad. Pump handles and credit card keypads, which are high-touch areas, could have the virus present, which experts say can stay alive for hours or even days on hard surfaces ... [T]here are a few things you can do that will help you stay safe when you have to pump gas. • Consider carrying some disposable nitrile or latex gloves in your car to use when gripping the pump handle. Short of that, you can try to use paper towels that are sometimes available at the pump or have some with you to cover your hands when you grip the handle. • Invert the gloves and throw them away, and also any paper towels you might have used. Use hand sanitizer to make sure your hands are clean after you're done and before you get back into your car. On the other hand, in response o the 2020 social media posts, the Irish Petroleum Industry Association told the TheJournal.ie the following: Our members are implementing enhanced hygiene protocols in our service station shops. In line with HSE [Health and Safety Executive] advice, our workers regularly wash and sanitise their hands and the areas customers interact with such as fuel nozzles, credit card PIN pads, door handles and food areas. We are aware of messages being shared on social media and wanted to inform customers that pump handles are no more or less prone to the spread of infection than any other hard surface and to outline the significant steps we are taking to combat the spread of Covid-19 and keep our valued customers safe. Gas pumps could be considered somewhat more of a concern because consumers typically touch other surfaces - such as the door handles and interiors of their vehicles - immediately afterward and could thereby create yet another pathway of contamination for themselves or others. However, gas pumps are just one of many objects that multiple people commonly handle in a similar fashion during the course of a day, including ATMs, payment processing systems, shopping cart handles, and currency, all of which pose varying degrees of risk.Recent Updates Update [Aug. 5, 2021]: This article was updated to include a new iteration of the claim that circulated in response to the Delta variant, as well as to include new guidance issued by the CDC. | nan | [] |
The COVID-19 coronavirus disease is 'spreading quickly from gas pumps. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. Editor's note: This article was updated in August 2021 to include a new but similar iteration of the 2020 social media claims in response to the Delta variant, as well as new guidance issued by the CDC. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, social media users began sharing warnings about the virus allegedly 'spreading quickly from gas pumps.' Such warnings cautioned readers to use gloves or paper towels while pumping gas and to discard them immediately afterward: One particular version of this class of warning attributed the advice to 'Galway Hospital' in Ireland: In early August 2021, Snopes readers sent our team a new iteration of the claim with slightly different language that seemed to have been updated in response to the then-rampant Delta variant: Fwd: The hospital sent a message this morning that the Covid-19/delta mutant virus seems to be spreading rapidly through gasoline pumps, asking everyone to wear gloves or use paper towels when refueling and handling-please share. Please send it to everyone in your contact list. Don't leave this information to yourself. Make it available to all your family and friends As with many coronavirus-related pieces of advice, it's something of a mixed bag. We're not aware of any credible reports of COVID-19 being spread via gas pump handles (something that would likely be difficult to determine as the specific source of any particular infection). It is true that surface contact is one of the means of transmission of the novel coronavirus, and since gas pumps are objects that are typically handled by many different people throughout the course of a day - in many places without being regularly cleaned between uses (especially in areas where self-service is the norm) - they are a potential route for the virus to spread from person to person. The CDC issued new guidance for employees at transit stations in June 2021 in response to growing concerns about SARS-CoV-2 variants. The virus mainly spreads from person to person through respiratory droplets that are emitted when a person coughs, sneezes or talks. The virus can also be spread by touching a surface that has the virus on it and then touching the face, mouth, nose, or eyes. In May 2020, the CDC shared an instructional Facebook post to inform consumers on to safely pump gas. In the post, the agency recommended using disinfecting wipes on handles and buttons before touching them, using hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol after pumping and paying, and washing hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water upon arriving at the destination. 'Like door handles, grocery carts, and ATMs, many people touch gas pumps throughout the day. The chance of COVID-19 exposure at the gas pump is low, especially if Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended practices are followed,' wrote the American Petroleum Institute (API) in a one-page statement. Research conducted by a collaboration of scientific institutions, including the National Institutes of Health and Princeton University, found that the virus can survive up to three days on some surfaces. But as API pointed out, several events would need to happen for the virus to spread from a pump to a person. First, a person with COVID-19, with or without symptoms, would have to emit respiratory droplets containing the virus within 6-feet of a pump or touch it with contaminated hands. The virus would then need to survive long enough for a non-COVID-19 individual to touch the surface in a way that the virus would be transferred to their hands. Lastly, the healthy individual would then have to touch their eyes, nose or mouth. While it is entirely possible to encounter SARS-CoV-2 by touching a gas pump, surface-to-surface transmission is not thought to be the primary spread of the virus. 'At this time, we are not aware of any studies that support the claim that the virus can be transmitted via contact with a gas pump,' wrote API. However, the level of risk associated with contracting the virus from a gas pump is no different than the risk associated with touching other common surfaces like grocery store carts or door handles.' But how much risk pumping gas poses relative to other ordinary day-to-day activities is difficult to determine. Consumer Reports, for example, offered advice in 2020 that was consistent with what was expressed in some social media warnings: For many [persons] the occasional trip to the gas station is inevitable, as is touching the pump handle and payment keypad. Pump handles and credit card keypads, which are high-touch areas, could have the virus present, which experts say can stay alive for hours or even days on hard surfaces ... [T]here are a few things you can do that will help you stay safe when you have to pump gas. • Consider carrying some disposable nitrile or latex gloves in your car to use when gripping the pump handle. Short of that, you can try to use paper towels that are sometimes available at the pump or have some with you to cover your hands when you grip the handle. • Invert the gloves and throw them away, and also any paper towels you might have used. Use hand sanitizer to make sure your hands are clean after you're done and before you get back into your car. On the other hand, in response o the 2020 social media posts, the Irish Petroleum Industry Association told the TheJournal.ie the following: Our members are implementing enhanced hygiene protocols in our service station shops. In line with HSE [Health and Safety Executive] advice, our workers regularly wash and sanitise their hands and the areas customers interact with such as fuel nozzles, credit card PIN pads, door handles and food areas. We are aware of messages being shared on social media and wanted to inform customers that pump handles are no more or less prone to the spread of infection than any other hard surface and to outline the significant steps we are taking to combat the spread of Covid-19 and keep our valued customers safe. Gas pumps could be considered somewhat more of a concern because consumers typically touch other surfaces - such as the door handles and interiors of their vehicles - immediately afterward and could thereby create yet another pathway of contamination for themselves or others. However, gas pumps are just one of many objects that multiple people commonly handle in a similar fashion during the course of a day, including ATMs, payment processing systems, shopping cart handles, and currency, all of which pose varying degrees of risk.Recent Updates Update [Aug. 5, 2021]: This article was updated to include a new iteration of the claim that circulated in response to the Delta variant, as well as to include new guidance issued by the CDC. | nan | [] |
Japan announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of nuclear waste from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean. | Neutral | In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean - a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean, saying that they can no longer contain the waste on land. Following the major tsunami in 2011 that resulted the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shutting down, the constant leaking of radiation that has occurred in the aftermath has been dubbed one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Newstarget.com reports: Six years after the disaster, the three crippled reactors are still leaking water with high levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Though the Pacific Ocean is a vast stretch of water, Fukushima's radiation is reaching the coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, contaminating the fish we eat and the water we swim in. Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: Mark Whitby, chairman and design director of the engineering and consultancy firm WME Consultants, explained that today about 400 tons of water go into each reactor to cool it. Part of the highly radioactive water is recycled to re-cool the reactors, and the rest goes into big tanks, which are stacking up at a fast rate. As reported by TRT, Japan is running out of storage space. There are currently about a 1,000 storage tanks holding 920,000 tons of contaminated water. As if the marine life isn't struggling enough already by the vast amounts of plastic in the oceans, the Japanese are now talking about dumping these tanks with nuclear wastewater directly into the sea because they cannot keep building and storing these reservoirs, Whitby told TRT. However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: 'Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean.' Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: They're now getting to the point where they are beginning to talk about wanting to just drop the tanks into the ocean, because they just can't keep building these tanks to keep the place cool. Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: The Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility. But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by building an underground ice wall. Within a few years, though, and no one is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the contaminated water. 'We cannot continue to build tanks forever,' said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to 'work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.' The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: 'Controlled discharge is a regular practice at all nuclear facilities in the world,' Juan Carlos Lentijo, director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, told a news conference in Tokyo as the team wrapped up its inspection of the plant. For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. | nan | [
"06549-proof-04-fukushima_exclusion_zone_fb.jpg"
] |
Japan announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of nuclear waste from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean. | Neutral | In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean - a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean, saying that they can no longer contain the waste on land. Following the major tsunami in 2011 that resulted the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shutting down, the constant leaking of radiation that has occurred in the aftermath has been dubbed one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Newstarget.com reports: Six years after the disaster, the three crippled reactors are still leaking water with high levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Though the Pacific Ocean is a vast stretch of water, Fukushima's radiation is reaching the coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, contaminating the fish we eat and the water we swim in. Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: Mark Whitby, chairman and design director of the engineering and consultancy firm WME Consultants, explained that today about 400 tons of water go into each reactor to cool it. Part of the highly radioactive water is recycled to re-cool the reactors, and the rest goes into big tanks, which are stacking up at a fast rate. As reported by TRT, Japan is running out of storage space. There are currently about a 1,000 storage tanks holding 920,000 tons of contaminated water. As if the marine life isn't struggling enough already by the vast amounts of plastic in the oceans, the Japanese are now talking about dumping these tanks with nuclear wastewater directly into the sea because they cannot keep building and storing these reservoirs, Whitby told TRT. However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: 'Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean.' Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: They're now getting to the point where they are beginning to talk about wanting to just drop the tanks into the ocean, because they just can't keep building these tanks to keep the place cool. Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: The Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility. But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by building an underground ice wall. Within a few years, though, and no one is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the contaminated water. 'We cannot continue to build tanks forever,' said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to 'work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.' The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: 'Controlled discharge is a regular practice at all nuclear facilities in the world,' Juan Carlos Lentijo, director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, told a news conference in Tokyo as the team wrapped up its inspection of the plant. For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. | nan | [
"06549-proof-04-fukushima_exclusion_zone_fb.jpg"
] |
Japan announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of nuclear waste from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean. | Neutral | In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean - a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean, saying that they can no longer contain the waste on land. Following the major tsunami in 2011 that resulted the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shutting down, the constant leaking of radiation that has occurred in the aftermath has been dubbed one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Newstarget.com reports: Six years after the disaster, the three crippled reactors are still leaking water with high levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Though the Pacific Ocean is a vast stretch of water, Fukushima's radiation is reaching the coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, contaminating the fish we eat and the water we swim in. Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: Mark Whitby, chairman and design director of the engineering and consultancy firm WME Consultants, explained that today about 400 tons of water go into each reactor to cool it. Part of the highly radioactive water is recycled to re-cool the reactors, and the rest goes into big tanks, which are stacking up at a fast rate. As reported by TRT, Japan is running out of storage space. There are currently about a 1,000 storage tanks holding 920,000 tons of contaminated water. As if the marine life isn't struggling enough already by the vast amounts of plastic in the oceans, the Japanese are now talking about dumping these tanks with nuclear wastewater directly into the sea because they cannot keep building and storing these reservoirs, Whitby told TRT. However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: 'Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean.' Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: They're now getting to the point where they are beginning to talk about wanting to just drop the tanks into the ocean, because they just can't keep building these tanks to keep the place cool. Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: The Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility. But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by building an underground ice wall. Within a few years, though, and no one is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the contaminated water. 'We cannot continue to build tanks forever,' said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to 'work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.' The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: 'Controlled discharge is a regular practice at all nuclear facilities in the world,' Juan Carlos Lentijo, director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, told a news conference in Tokyo as the team wrapped up its inspection of the plant. For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. | nan | [
"06549-proof-04-fukushima_exclusion_zone_fb.jpg"
] |
Japan announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of nuclear waste from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean. | Neutral | In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean - a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean, saying that they can no longer contain the waste on land. Following the major tsunami in 2011 that resulted the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shutting down, the constant leaking of radiation that has occurred in the aftermath has been dubbed one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Newstarget.com reports: Six years after the disaster, the three crippled reactors are still leaking water with high levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Though the Pacific Ocean is a vast stretch of water, Fukushima's radiation is reaching the coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, contaminating the fish we eat and the water we swim in. Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: Mark Whitby, chairman and design director of the engineering and consultancy firm WME Consultants, explained that today about 400 tons of water go into each reactor to cool it. Part of the highly radioactive water is recycled to re-cool the reactors, and the rest goes into big tanks, which are stacking up at a fast rate. As reported by TRT, Japan is running out of storage space. There are currently about a 1,000 storage tanks holding 920,000 tons of contaminated water. As if the marine life isn't struggling enough already by the vast amounts of plastic in the oceans, the Japanese are now talking about dumping these tanks with nuclear wastewater directly into the sea because they cannot keep building and storing these reservoirs, Whitby told TRT. However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: 'Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean.' Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: They're now getting to the point where they are beginning to talk about wanting to just drop the tanks into the ocean, because they just can't keep building these tanks to keep the place cool. Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: The Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility. But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by building an underground ice wall. Within a few years, though, and no one is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the contaminated water. 'We cannot continue to build tanks forever,' said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to 'work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.' The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: 'Controlled discharge is a regular practice at all nuclear facilities in the world,' Juan Carlos Lentijo, director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, told a news conference in Tokyo as the team wrapped up its inspection of the plant. For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. | nan | [
"06549-proof-04-fukushima_exclusion_zone_fb.jpg"
] |
Japan announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of nuclear waste from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant into the Pacific Ocean. | Neutral | In May and June 2017, an assortment of web sites that share a history of posting unreliable information published a report stating that Japanese authorities had announced plans to dispose of nuclear wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in the Pacific Ocean - a claim that is at odds with mainstream news reporting on the topic, including the source cited by the article itself. For example, YourNewsWire.com's story began: Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean, saying that they can no longer contain the waste on land. Following the major tsunami in 2011 that resulted the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shutting down, the constant leaking of radiation that has occurred in the aftermath has been dubbed one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. Newstarget.com reports: Six years after the disaster, the three crippled reactors are still leaking water with high levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Though the Pacific Ocean is a vast stretch of water, Fukushima's radiation is reaching the coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, contaminating the fish we eat and the water we swim in. Citing a televised interview with a U.K. engineering expert on an April 2017 segment of a news program on TRT World (Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's international news channel), the report continued: Mark Whitby, chairman and design director of the engineering and consultancy firm WME Consultants, explained that today about 400 tons of water go into each reactor to cool it. Part of the highly radioactive water is recycled to re-cool the reactors, and the rest goes into big tanks, which are stacking up at a fast rate. As reported by TRT, Japan is running out of storage space. There are currently about a 1,000 storage tanks holding 920,000 tons of contaminated water. As if the marine life isn't struggling enough already by the vast amounts of plastic in the oceans, the Japanese are now talking about dumping these tanks with nuclear wastewater directly into the sea because they cannot keep building and storing these reservoirs, Whitby told TRT. However, note the discrepancy between the statement attributed to Whitby directly above and the article's opening paragraph, which said: 'Japan has announced plans to dump 920,000 tons of deadly Fukushima nuclear waste into the Pacific ocean.' Here is a transcript of Whitby's exact words: They're now getting to the point where they are beginning to talk about wanting to just drop the tanks into the ocean, because they just can't keep building these tanks to keep the place cool. Whitby didn't say the Japanese had announced they're doing it; he said the Japanese were beginning to talk about doing it. His remarks were apparently informed by a New York Times report published the month before saying Japanese officials were debating dumping Fukushima wastewater into the sea: The Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination facility. But the decontamination filters cannot remove all the radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by building an underground ice wall. Within a few years, though, and no one is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the contaminated water. 'We cannot continue to build tanks forever,' said Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It appears Japan has been considering this measure for quite some time. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, called on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2015 to 'work toward discharging low-level contaminated water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.' The International Atomic Energy Agency made the same recommendation two years before that, stipulating that Tepco would have to conduct safety and environmental assessments first, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority would have to review them. The IAEA maintains that such a release would not only be safe (because the radioactive water would be diluted to a level regarded as unharmful), but that it is consistent with standard practice: 'Controlled discharge is a regular practice at all nuclear facilities in the world,' Juan Carlos Lentijo, director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, told a news conference in Tokyo as the team wrapped up its inspection of the plant. For good or ill, it may well come to pass that contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi will be diluted and dumped into the Pacific Ocean, because no one has yet come up with a better solution for dealing with radioactive leakage from the plant. Unless it is already being done in secret, however, as of June 2017, it is still a proposed solution to a nearly intractable problem. | nan | [
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The U.S. listed the fictional country of Wakanda as a trading partner. | Neutral | In December 2019, Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, tweeted about his discovery that Wakanda - the fictional Sub-Saharan African nation at the center of the popular 2018 Marvel film 'Black Panther' - was included as an option in a list of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Tariff Tracker website: Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 ??? pic.twitter.com/YwRf7aQj3h - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 According to USA Today, the USDA stated that the nonexistent country had been added to the dataset during Tariff Tracker testing in June 2019, but its continued inclusion in live data was overlooked. 'Wakanda' has since been removed as an option in the Tariff Tracker, a USDA spokesperson said, which we have confirmed on the website itself: The USDA explained in an email that the fictional country had been added during a test of the Tariff Tracker. The agency told USA TODAY that Wakanda had been included in the list since June. 'The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,' an agency spokesman said. Tseng jokingly suggested that the U.S. 'would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn': fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019 The USDA responded with a japing tweet of their own using the hashtag #WakandaForever, promising that 'While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong': While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh - Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, | nan | [
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The U.S. listed the fictional country of Wakanda as a trading partner. | Neutral | In December 2019, Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, tweeted about his discovery that Wakanda - the fictional Sub-Saharan African nation at the center of the popular 2018 Marvel film 'Black Panther' - was included as an option in a list of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Tariff Tracker website: Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 ??? pic.twitter.com/YwRf7aQj3h - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 According to USA Today, the USDA stated that the nonexistent country had been added to the dataset during Tariff Tracker testing in June 2019, but its continued inclusion in live data was overlooked. 'Wakanda' has since been removed as an option in the Tariff Tracker, a USDA spokesperson said, which we have confirmed on the website itself: The USDA explained in an email that the fictional country had been added during a test of the Tariff Tracker. The agency told USA TODAY that Wakanda had been included in the list since June. 'The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,' an agency spokesman said. Tseng jokingly suggested that the U.S. 'would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn': fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019 The USDA responded with a japing tweet of their own using the hashtag #WakandaForever, promising that 'While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong': While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh - Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, | nan | [
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The U.S. listed the fictional country of Wakanda as a trading partner. | Neutral | In December 2019, Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, tweeted about his discovery that Wakanda - the fictional Sub-Saharan African nation at the center of the popular 2018 Marvel film 'Black Panther' - was included as an option in a list of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Tariff Tracker website: Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 ??? pic.twitter.com/YwRf7aQj3h - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 According to USA Today, the USDA stated that the nonexistent country had been added to the dataset during Tariff Tracker testing in June 2019, but its continued inclusion in live data was overlooked. 'Wakanda' has since been removed as an option in the Tariff Tracker, a USDA spokesperson said, which we have confirmed on the website itself: The USDA explained in an email that the fictional country had been added during a test of the Tariff Tracker. The agency told USA TODAY that Wakanda had been included in the list since June. 'The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,' an agency spokesman said. Tseng jokingly suggested that the U.S. 'would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn': fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019 The USDA responded with a japing tweet of their own using the hashtag #WakandaForever, promising that 'While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong': While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh - Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, | nan | [
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The U.S. listed the fictional country of Wakanda as a trading partner. | Neutral | In December 2019, Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, tweeted about his discovery that Wakanda - the fictional Sub-Saharan African nation at the center of the popular 2018 Marvel film 'Black Panther' - was included as an option in a list of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Tariff Tracker website: Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 ??? pic.twitter.com/YwRf7aQj3h - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 According to USA Today, the USDA stated that the nonexistent country had been added to the dataset during Tariff Tracker testing in June 2019, but its continued inclusion in live data was overlooked. 'Wakanda' has since been removed as an option in the Tariff Tracker, a USDA spokesperson said, which we have confirmed on the website itself: The USDA explained in an email that the fictional country had been added during a test of the Tariff Tracker. The agency told USA TODAY that Wakanda had been included in the list since June. 'The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,' an agency spokesman said. Tseng jokingly suggested that the U.S. 'would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn': fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019 The USDA responded with a japing tweet of their own using the hashtag #WakandaForever, promising that 'While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong': While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh - Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, | nan | [
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The U.S. listed the fictional country of Wakanda as a trading partner. | Neutral | In December 2019, Francis Tseng, a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute, tweeted about his discovery that Wakanda - the fictional Sub-Saharan African nation at the center of the popular 2018 Marvel film 'Black Panther' - was included as an option in a list of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Tariff Tracker website: Wakanda is listed as a US free trade partner on the USDA website?? pic.twitter.com/xcq1OFTIPh - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 ??? pic.twitter.com/YwRf7aQj3h - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 18, 2019 According to USA Today, the USDA stated that the nonexistent country had been added to the dataset during Tariff Tracker testing in June 2019, but its continued inclusion in live data was overlooked. 'Wakanda' has since been removed as an option in the Tariff Tracker, a USDA spokesperson said, which we have confirmed on the website itself: The USDA explained in an email that the fictional country had been added during a test of the Tariff Tracker. The agency told USA TODAY that Wakanda had been included in the list since June. 'The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down,' an agency spokesman said. Tseng jokingly suggested that the U.S. 'would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn': fwiw, the US would no doubt try to liberalize Wakanda's markets and flood it with cheap subsidized corn - Francis Tseng (@frnsys) December 19, 2019 The USDA responded with a japing tweet of their own using the hashtag #WakandaForever, promising that 'While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong': While we removed the Kingdom of Wakanda from our list of US free trade partners, our relationship will always be strong #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/wiRSCIdfGh - Dept. of Agriculture (@USDA) December 19, | nan | [
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A white man who followed an African-American motorist to his home after a road rage incident and called him a racial slur has lost his business. | Neutral | On 31 July 2018, the liberal Facebook page The Other 98% shared a meme reporting that a man who followed an African-American driver to his home to call him a racial slur after a traffic incident had his business destroyed as a result of being caught on video doing so: The meme was no different than most in that it was a facile representation of a series of news stories about a late July 2018 incident in Columbus, Ohio, involving racism and road rage. Charles Lovett, who is African-American, told reporters Jeffrey Whitman, a white man, followed him on his drive home because Whitman believed Lovett had cut him off near Interstate 71. Lovett took cell phone video that showed Whitman stopped in front of Lovett's driveway, and as the two argued over the incident, Whitman called Lovett the N-word several times. But Whitman didn't pursue and harass Lovett in his personal vehicle ... he did so in a company van that had the name of his business (Uriah's Heating, Cooling & Refrigeration) and phone number emblazoned on its side: The video resulted in an outpouring of public fury, but we were unable to immediately confirm whether Uriah's Heating, Cooling & Refrigeration has in fact gone out of business. Whitman still has an active business license, according to Ohio state records, but his business has lost its accreditation with the Better Business Bureau as a result of the incident. On 15 August 2018, the Better Business Bureau reported Whitman alerted them that his business had closed. The quote attributed to Whitman in the meme was taken from a 29 July 2018 column in the Columbus Dispatch penned by Theodore Decker. Decker said the comment was made in a voice message that Whitman left him: 'It was an awful mistake and obviously I don't know how to explain it, and it's ruined my life and it's ruined my family's life,' Whitman says. He says this in a voicemail left for me on Thursday, two days after he most definitely didn't apologize when confronted by a local television reporter. Now, in this message, he sounds despondent. 'I'm out of business, I'm completely out, I'm done, I'll never work in Columbus again,' he says. 'This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.' The message ends abruptly. We tried reaching out to Whitman by telephone and Facebook messenger but received no response from him about the status of his business. On 25 July 2018, Whitman issued an apology to Lovett, writing: I apologize for my use of the n word towards Charles Lovett on Tuesday, July 24th. I understand that using the n-word was not only hurtful towards Lovett as an individual, but hurtful towards the Black community at large. Using the word was dehumanizing, unacceptable, and inexcusable. My actions reflect an unhealthy mindset I have developed and I need to work to change. I have served the Black community for the last 9 years, installing furnaces and water heaters with pride. My actions that day are not a reflection of my feelings towards the Black community. I also understand that racial tensions in America are higher than before, and I regret my part in contributing to that tension. I realize that words are hollow without action, and because of the hurt I have caused, I hope I have the opportunity to give back to the Black community that I have harmed in a meaningful way.' Lovett, for his part, said he could not accept Whitman's apology because a day earlier in a television interview with local TV station WCMH, Whitman said he had no regrets 'whatsoever' for what he said because he 'grew up with it and it's not a big deal for me.' The phrase, 'I really don't care do u?' at the bottom of the meme is a play on a jacket worn by First Lady Melania Trump as she boarded a plane to visit facilities sheltering migrant children who had been taken from their parents under President Trump's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy.Recent Updates Article updated to note that the business had closed, per the Better Business Bureau. This article has been updated to note that a Facebook page bearing the name of Whitman's business is likely not authentic. | nan | [] |
A white man who followed an African-American motorist to his home after a road rage incident and called him a racial slur has lost his business. | Neutral | On 31 July 2018, the liberal Facebook page The Other 98% shared a meme reporting that a man who followed an African-American driver to his home to call him a racial slur after a traffic incident had his business destroyed as a result of being caught on video doing so: The meme was no different than most in that it was a facile representation of a series of news stories about a late July 2018 incident in Columbus, Ohio, involving racism and road rage. Charles Lovett, who is African-American, told reporters Jeffrey Whitman, a white man, followed him on his drive home because Whitman believed Lovett had cut him off near Interstate 71. Lovett took cell phone video that showed Whitman stopped in front of Lovett's driveway, and as the two argued over the incident, Whitman called Lovett the N-word several times. But Whitman didn't pursue and harass Lovett in his personal vehicle ... he did so in a company van that had the name of his business (Uriah's Heating, Cooling & Refrigeration) and phone number emblazoned on its side: The video resulted in an outpouring of public fury, but we were unable to immediately confirm whether Uriah's Heating, Cooling & Refrigeration has in fact gone out of business. Whitman still has an active business license, according to Ohio state records, but his business has lost its accreditation with the Better Business Bureau as a result of the incident. On 15 August 2018, the Better Business Bureau reported Whitman alerted them that his business had closed. The quote attributed to Whitman in the meme was taken from a 29 July 2018 column in the Columbus Dispatch penned by Theodore Decker. Decker said the comment was made in a voice message that Whitman left him: 'It was an awful mistake and obviously I don't know how to explain it, and it's ruined my life and it's ruined my family's life,' Whitman says. He says this in a voicemail left for me on Thursday, two days after he most definitely didn't apologize when confronted by a local television reporter. Now, in this message, he sounds despondent. 'I'm out of business, I'm completely out, I'm done, I'll never work in Columbus again,' he says. 'This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.' The message ends abruptly. We tried reaching out to Whitman by telephone and Facebook messenger but received no response from him about the status of his business. On 25 July 2018, Whitman issued an apology to Lovett, writing: I apologize for my use of the n word towards Charles Lovett on Tuesday, July 24th. I understand that using the n-word was not only hurtful towards Lovett as an individual, but hurtful towards the Black community at large. Using the word was dehumanizing, unacceptable, and inexcusable. My actions reflect an unhealthy mindset I have developed and I need to work to change. I have served the Black community for the last 9 years, installing furnaces and water heaters with pride. My actions that day are not a reflection of my feelings towards the Black community. I also understand that racial tensions in America are higher than before, and I regret my part in contributing to that tension. I realize that words are hollow without action, and because of the hurt I have caused, I hope I have the opportunity to give back to the Black community that I have harmed in a meaningful way.' Lovett, for his part, said he could not accept Whitman's apology because a day earlier in a television interview with local TV station WCMH, Whitman said he had no regrets 'whatsoever' for what he said because he 'grew up with it and it's not a big deal for me.' The phrase, 'I really don't care do u?' at the bottom of the meme is a play on a jacket worn by First Lady Melania Trump as she boarded a plane to visit facilities sheltering migrant children who had been taken from their parents under President Trump's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy.Recent Updates Article updated to note that the business had closed, per the Better Business Bureau. This article has been updated to note that a Facebook page bearing the name of Whitman's business is likely not authentic. | nan | [] |
Dutch restaurants solved the problem of dining out during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by installing personal greenhouse booths. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In May 2020, a photograph started to circulate on social media along with the claim that restaurants in the Netherlands had solved the problem of dining out during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by installing personal dining booths. Displayed above is a genuine photograph from a restaurant in the Netherlands. However, these photographs were often shared on social media with incomplete or untrue information. For starters, this photograph does not show a restaurant adhering to any new guidelines implemented by the Netherlands government. This photograph was taken at Mediamatic, an art gallery and restaurant in Amsterdam, as they tested out a proposed dining solution for when the restaurant was allowed to reopen. Mediamatic explained on its website that these 'quarantine greenhouses' would allow for two people to dine together. The restaurant notes that these dining pods would only be recommended for people who were already living together and that this dining plan was not approved yet by the government. While Mediamatic is, as of this writing, taking reservations for when social distancing guidelines are expected to be relaxed, they note that these reservations may end up being canceled if the plan is not approved. Dutch News reported on Mediamatic's 'quarantine greenhouse' dining plan in May 2020: In Amsterdam, art gallery and restaurant Mediamatic hopes to win approval to organise fine dining in small greenhouses overlooking the water. The package is already sold out up to the end of June - even though no-one knows if the soirees can go ahead. The popularity of the deal is a sign of the frustration many are beginning to feel as the Netherlands moves into May - with the prospect of several more weeks of being told to stay home ahead. The viral photograph is available via Mediamatic's website along with the following caption: Testing Serres Separees at Mediamatic ETEn - Safe water side dining in Amsterdam. Soon, we'll offer really nice plant-based dinner in our greenhouses on the Amsterdam water side of the Oosterdok. We are testing the setup now whilst waiting for permission to re-open our restaurant and art space. Of course, these chambres separees are recommended only for people that are already living together. Photo was taken at Mediamatic ETEN in Biotoop Dijkspark during our testing on April 28, 2020. To sum up: The Netherlands government did not implement new guidelines that would allow restaurants to reopen by installing personal dining pods. This viral photograph shows one restaurant's proposed solution to dining out during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Mediamatic is taking reservations for these quarantine greenhouses, this solution has not been approved by local officials. | nan | [] |
Dutch restaurants solved the problem of dining out during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by installing personal greenhouse booths. | Neutral | Snopes is still fighting an 'infodemic' of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and 'advice' you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease. In May 2020, a photograph started to circulate on social media along with the claim that restaurants in the Netherlands had solved the problem of dining out during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic by installing personal dining booths. Displayed above is a genuine photograph from a restaurant in the Netherlands. However, these photographs were often shared on social media with incomplete or untrue information. For starters, this photograph does not show a restaurant adhering to any new guidelines implemented by the Netherlands government. This photograph was taken at Mediamatic, an art gallery and restaurant in Amsterdam, as they tested out a proposed dining solution for when the restaurant was allowed to reopen. Mediamatic explained on its website that these 'quarantine greenhouses' would allow for two people to dine together. The restaurant notes that these dining pods would only be recommended for people who were already living together and that this dining plan was not approved yet by the government. While Mediamatic is, as of this writing, taking reservations for when social distancing guidelines are expected to be relaxed, they note that these reservations may end up being canceled if the plan is not approved. Dutch News reported on Mediamatic's 'quarantine greenhouse' dining plan in May 2020: In Amsterdam, art gallery and restaurant Mediamatic hopes to win approval to organise fine dining in small greenhouses overlooking the water. The package is already sold out up to the end of June - even though no-one knows if the soirees can go ahead. The popularity of the deal is a sign of the frustration many are beginning to feel as the Netherlands moves into May - with the prospect of several more weeks of being told to stay home ahead. The viral photograph is available via Mediamatic's website along with the following caption: Testing Serres Separees at Mediamatic ETEn - Safe water side dining in Amsterdam. Soon, we'll offer really nice plant-based dinner in our greenhouses on the Amsterdam water side of the Oosterdok. We are testing the setup now whilst waiting for permission to re-open our restaurant and art space. Of course, these chambres separees are recommended only for people that are already living together. Photo was taken at Mediamatic ETEN in Biotoop Dijkspark during our testing on April 28, 2020. To sum up: The Netherlands government did not implement new guidelines that would allow restaurants to reopen by installing personal dining pods. This viral photograph shows one restaurant's proposed solution to dining out during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Mediamatic is taking reservations for these quarantine greenhouses, this solution has not been approved by local officials. | nan | [] |
No celebrities are willing to perform for Trump's inauguration. | Neutral | On 7 December 2016, entertainment news site The Wrap reported that the team preparing President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony are having problems with booking celebrities to perform: They are willing to pay anything. They told me, 'We'll pay their fees.' Most of these artists' fees are in the six to seven figures.' The insider said the Trump negotiator also offered to pay him for delivering top talent, saying, 'Name your price.' An e-mail sent to Trump's press office was not returned. Because the sources interviewed by The Wrap were anonymous, it's impossible to independently verify whether the statements are accurate unless the sources make themselves public - however, some high-profile musicians who have played at past inaugurations, like Beyoncé and Katy Perry, were supporters of Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump's long-time friend, Thomas Barrack, Jr., is chair of his inaugural committee; he told the Washington Post that his goal for the event would be to 'honor the democratic process and our country, which embraces debate, various points of view and independence in a united manner.' So far, classical singer Jackie Evancho has been confirmed, and organizers have approached opera singer Andrea Bocelli (though it was unclear at press time whether he had been confirmed). If Evancho counts as a 'celebrity,' then the claim that 'no' celebrities will perform at the inauguration is not true in a literal sense. Artists who have said publicly that they will not play the inauguration under any circumstances, if asked, include musicians Elton John and John Legend. Media reports indicate Garth Brooks had left the door open to play, but The Wrap reported, again citing unnamed sources, that he would not. Rock artist Vince Neil told TMZ in November 2016 he was 'uninvited' from playing the inauguration. | nan | [
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In 2019, trans activists or 'the transgender lobby' forced Procter & Gamble to remove the Venus symbol from menstruation products. | Neutral | In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries from our readers about the accuracy of news reports claiming that Procter & Gamble, the company behind the Always brand of menstruation products, had decided to remove the female Venus gender symbol from the packaging of such products. Some articles pointedly claimed that the company had been 'forced' to make this change by angry trans activists, who had complained that adding female gender symbols and imagery to Always product packaging excluded trans men and non-binary individuals who, although they menstruate and therefore have need of menstruation products, otherwise live as men or identify as male or gender non-binary. On Oct. 19, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline 'Transgender Lobby Forces Sanitary Towel-Maker Always to Ditch Venus Logo from Its Products,' which reported that: The maker of Always sanitary pads has given in to claims of discrimination by transgender men and removed the 'Venus' symbol of the female sex from the wrapping. Outraged women are now boycotting the leading brand after the decision by makers Procter & Gamble (P&G) to kowtow to trans activists who were born female and still use sanitary products ...' As evidence of a supposed campaign of pressure and intimidation by the 'transgender lobby,' the Daily Mail cited just two tweets posted by two trans activists, one of them Ben Saunders, adding: Another activist, Ben Saunders - named young campaigner of the year by LGBT charity Stonewall in May after making a documentary about being transgender - contacted the sanitary pad makers in June with a similar complaint. The Always marketing team replied with a comment that Saunders, 18, posted on Twitter, reading: 'We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a wrapper design without the feminine symbol.' The message stated that sanitary towels with the new packaging would hit the stores by January 2020 and added: 'We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions.' In addition to claiming that the same 'transgender lobby' had 'forced' Procter & Gamble - one of the world's largest consumer-products companies - to make the change, the Daily Mail used the words 'kowtow' and 'cave-in' to describe the packaging decision. Similar articles were published by the U.K. tabloid The Sun and the right-leaning U.S. websites Daily Wire and PJ Media, all of which also claimed the company had been 'forced' to remove the Venus symbol by trans activists or the 'transgender lobby.' Representatives for the Always brand did tell Saunders of their intention to remove the female Venus symbol from menstruation products beginning in December 2019 and did indicate the decision had been influenced, at least in part, by the concerns expressed by some trans people. That position was broadly reiterated by a company spokesperson in a statement to Snopes. However, it was misleading and sensationalist to claim the company had been 'forced' into taking the action they took. The available facts simply do not support that characterization. Analysis It's unclear when Always first added the Venus symbol to the packaging of their menstruation products, but Twitter users in the U.S. and U.K. (likely among other countries) first began to raise concerns about it in March 2019: Hey @Always since today is #TransVisibilityDay it's probably important to point out the fact that this new packaging isn't trans* friendly. Just a reminder that Menstruation does not equal Female. Maybe rethink this new look. pic.twitter.com/1Fp8bdB6qY - 🎃 (@Sara_Kelhi) March 31, 2019 Those concerns and requests persisted over the course of the summer and into the fall of 2019. The tweets were strikingly civil, respectful, and assertive in tone, rather than threatening or intimidating, as were the responses from the Always brand's Twitter account. On 16 October, activist Ben Saunders tweeted out a screenshot of an email from 'The Always Team' at Procter & Gamble. Saunders' account has been set to protected, but we have been able to capture the tweet, as shown below. The company confirmed the email's authenticity to Snopes. In the email, which can be read in full here, a person named Sheryl wrote: I wanted to come back to you regarding your message about the Always wrappers' design with the female symbol on it you sent 18/06/2019. We listened to you and our marketing team worked [up] a solution! We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a new wrapper design without the feminine symbol. Please just be aware that you might still find products with the old wrapper design in the stores for some weeks after December, as the distribution of the new packages might take some time - the new designs should be in store Jan/Feb 2020. We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions. Thank you for contacting us, your comments help us improve every day! A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble told Snopes the Venus symbol would be removed from menstruation products in 'multiple markets at various dates,' and confirmed this process would begin in early 2020. The statement read: For over 35 years, Always has championed girls and women, and we will continue to do so. We're also committed to diversity and inclusion, and are on a continual journey to understand the needs of all of our consumers. We routinely assess our products, packaging and designs, taking into account consumer feedback to ensure we are meeting the needs of everyone who uses our products. After hearing from many people, we recognized that not everyone who has a period and needs to use a pad, identifies as female. To ensure that anyone who needs to use a period product feels comfortable with Always, we're adjusting our pad wrapper design as part of our next round of product changes. As a global brand, our design updates will be adapted by multiple markets at various dates beginning in January/February 2020. Saunders' tweet prompted multiple news reports and an angry response from some women and feminists, who objected to the planned removal of the Venus symbol. The hashtag #BoycottAlways appeared on Twitter in October, a more aggressive and inherently coercive form of dissent than had ever emerged on social media among those trans activists who had objected to the inclusion of the symbol beginning in March. Procter & Gamble's decision to introduce the Venus symbol certainly prompted a concerned response among trans activists (especially trans men) in 2019, and some of those activists expressed those concerns and requests to the company in no uncertain terms. However, the proverbial 'angry backlash,' including online calls for a boycott of Always - an inherently coercive form of opposition - only came in October, when news emerged that the company would be removing the symbol. Companies make marketing and public relations decisions for various reasons, and such choices are typically arrived at after careful consideration of multiple strategic, commercial, financial, ethical, and legal factors. Requests and appeals such as those made by Saunders and other trans activists certainly appear to have played a role in Procter & Gamble's decision, based on the company's own statement. However, it is a gross distortion of the actual sequence of events to claim that those activists, or an ill-defined 'transgender lobby,' somehow forced the company into its U-turn on the Venus symbol. They did not. | nan | [
"07026-proof-01-GettyImages-824929460.jpg"
] |
In 2019, trans activists or 'the transgender lobby' forced Procter & Gamble to remove the Venus symbol from menstruation products. | Neutral | In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries from our readers about the accuracy of news reports claiming that Procter & Gamble, the company behind the Always brand of menstruation products, had decided to remove the female Venus gender symbol from the packaging of such products. Some articles pointedly claimed that the company had been 'forced' to make this change by angry trans activists, who had complained that adding female gender symbols and imagery to Always product packaging excluded trans men and non-binary individuals who, although they menstruate and therefore have need of menstruation products, otherwise live as men or identify as male or gender non-binary. On Oct. 19, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline 'Transgender Lobby Forces Sanitary Towel-Maker Always to Ditch Venus Logo from Its Products,' which reported that: The maker of Always sanitary pads has given in to claims of discrimination by transgender men and removed the 'Venus' symbol of the female sex from the wrapping. Outraged women are now boycotting the leading brand after the decision by makers Procter & Gamble (P&G) to kowtow to trans activists who were born female and still use sanitary products ...' As evidence of a supposed campaign of pressure and intimidation by the 'transgender lobby,' the Daily Mail cited just two tweets posted by two trans activists, one of them Ben Saunders, adding: Another activist, Ben Saunders - named young campaigner of the year by LGBT charity Stonewall in May after making a documentary about being transgender - contacted the sanitary pad makers in June with a similar complaint. The Always marketing team replied with a comment that Saunders, 18, posted on Twitter, reading: 'We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a wrapper design without the feminine symbol.' The message stated that sanitary towels with the new packaging would hit the stores by January 2020 and added: 'We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions.' In addition to claiming that the same 'transgender lobby' had 'forced' Procter & Gamble - one of the world's largest consumer-products companies - to make the change, the Daily Mail used the words 'kowtow' and 'cave-in' to describe the packaging decision. Similar articles were published by the U.K. tabloid The Sun and the right-leaning U.S. websites Daily Wire and PJ Media, all of which also claimed the company had been 'forced' to remove the Venus symbol by trans activists or the 'transgender lobby.' Representatives for the Always brand did tell Saunders of their intention to remove the female Venus symbol from menstruation products beginning in December 2019 and did indicate the decision had been influenced, at least in part, by the concerns expressed by some trans people. That position was broadly reiterated by a company spokesperson in a statement to Snopes. However, it was misleading and sensationalist to claim the company had been 'forced' into taking the action they took. The available facts simply do not support that characterization. Analysis It's unclear when Always first added the Venus symbol to the packaging of their menstruation products, but Twitter users in the U.S. and U.K. (likely among other countries) first began to raise concerns about it in March 2019: Hey @Always since today is #TransVisibilityDay it's probably important to point out the fact that this new packaging isn't trans* friendly. Just a reminder that Menstruation does not equal Female. Maybe rethink this new look. pic.twitter.com/1Fp8bdB6qY - 🎃 (@Sara_Kelhi) March 31, 2019 Those concerns and requests persisted over the course of the summer and into the fall of 2019. The tweets were strikingly civil, respectful, and assertive in tone, rather than threatening or intimidating, as were the responses from the Always brand's Twitter account. On 16 October, activist Ben Saunders tweeted out a screenshot of an email from 'The Always Team' at Procter & Gamble. Saunders' account has been set to protected, but we have been able to capture the tweet, as shown below. The company confirmed the email's authenticity to Snopes. In the email, which can be read in full here, a person named Sheryl wrote: I wanted to come back to you regarding your message about the Always wrappers' design with the female symbol on it you sent 18/06/2019. We listened to you and our marketing team worked [up] a solution! We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a new wrapper design without the feminine symbol. Please just be aware that you might still find products with the old wrapper design in the stores for some weeks after December, as the distribution of the new packages might take some time - the new designs should be in store Jan/Feb 2020. We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions. Thank you for contacting us, your comments help us improve every day! A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble told Snopes the Venus symbol would be removed from menstruation products in 'multiple markets at various dates,' and confirmed this process would begin in early 2020. The statement read: For over 35 years, Always has championed girls and women, and we will continue to do so. We're also committed to diversity and inclusion, and are on a continual journey to understand the needs of all of our consumers. We routinely assess our products, packaging and designs, taking into account consumer feedback to ensure we are meeting the needs of everyone who uses our products. After hearing from many people, we recognized that not everyone who has a period and needs to use a pad, identifies as female. To ensure that anyone who needs to use a period product feels comfortable with Always, we're adjusting our pad wrapper design as part of our next round of product changes. As a global brand, our design updates will be adapted by multiple markets at various dates beginning in January/February 2020. Saunders' tweet prompted multiple news reports and an angry response from some women and feminists, who objected to the planned removal of the Venus symbol. The hashtag #BoycottAlways appeared on Twitter in October, a more aggressive and inherently coercive form of dissent than had ever emerged on social media among those trans activists who had objected to the inclusion of the symbol beginning in March. Procter & Gamble's decision to introduce the Venus symbol certainly prompted a concerned response among trans activists (especially trans men) in 2019, and some of those activists expressed those concerns and requests to the company in no uncertain terms. However, the proverbial 'angry backlash,' including online calls for a boycott of Always - an inherently coercive form of opposition - only came in October, when news emerged that the company would be removing the symbol. Companies make marketing and public relations decisions for various reasons, and such choices are typically arrived at after careful consideration of multiple strategic, commercial, financial, ethical, and legal factors. Requests and appeals such as those made by Saunders and other trans activists certainly appear to have played a role in Procter & Gamble's decision, based on the company's own statement. However, it is a gross distortion of the actual sequence of events to claim that those activists, or an ill-defined 'transgender lobby,' somehow forced the company into its U-turn on the Venus symbol. They did not. | nan | [
"07026-proof-01-GettyImages-824929460.jpg"
] |
In 2019, trans activists or 'the transgender lobby' forced Procter & Gamble to remove the Venus symbol from menstruation products. | Neutral | In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries from our readers about the accuracy of news reports claiming that Procter & Gamble, the company behind the Always brand of menstruation products, had decided to remove the female Venus gender symbol from the packaging of such products. Some articles pointedly claimed that the company had been 'forced' to make this change by angry trans activists, who had complained that adding female gender symbols and imagery to Always product packaging excluded trans men and non-binary individuals who, although they menstruate and therefore have need of menstruation products, otherwise live as men or identify as male or gender non-binary. On Oct. 19, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline 'Transgender Lobby Forces Sanitary Towel-Maker Always to Ditch Venus Logo from Its Products,' which reported that: The maker of Always sanitary pads has given in to claims of discrimination by transgender men and removed the 'Venus' symbol of the female sex from the wrapping. Outraged women are now boycotting the leading brand after the decision by makers Procter & Gamble (P&G) to kowtow to trans activists who were born female and still use sanitary products ...' As evidence of a supposed campaign of pressure and intimidation by the 'transgender lobby,' the Daily Mail cited just two tweets posted by two trans activists, one of them Ben Saunders, adding: Another activist, Ben Saunders - named young campaigner of the year by LGBT charity Stonewall in May after making a documentary about being transgender - contacted the sanitary pad makers in June with a similar complaint. The Always marketing team replied with a comment that Saunders, 18, posted on Twitter, reading: 'We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a wrapper design without the feminine symbol.' The message stated that sanitary towels with the new packaging would hit the stores by January 2020 and added: 'We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions.' In addition to claiming that the same 'transgender lobby' had 'forced' Procter & Gamble - one of the world's largest consumer-products companies - to make the change, the Daily Mail used the words 'kowtow' and 'cave-in' to describe the packaging decision. Similar articles were published by the U.K. tabloid The Sun and the right-leaning U.S. websites Daily Wire and PJ Media, all of which also claimed the company had been 'forced' to remove the Venus symbol by trans activists or the 'transgender lobby.' Representatives for the Always brand did tell Saunders of their intention to remove the female Venus symbol from menstruation products beginning in December 2019 and did indicate the decision had been influenced, at least in part, by the concerns expressed by some trans people. That position was broadly reiterated by a company spokesperson in a statement to Snopes. However, it was misleading and sensationalist to claim the company had been 'forced' into taking the action they took. The available facts simply do not support that characterization. Analysis It's unclear when Always first added the Venus symbol to the packaging of their menstruation products, but Twitter users in the U.S. and U.K. (likely among other countries) first began to raise concerns about it in March 2019: Hey @Always since today is #TransVisibilityDay it's probably important to point out the fact that this new packaging isn't trans* friendly. Just a reminder that Menstruation does not equal Female. Maybe rethink this new look. pic.twitter.com/1Fp8bdB6qY - 🎃 (@Sara_Kelhi) March 31, 2019 Those concerns and requests persisted over the course of the summer and into the fall of 2019. The tweets were strikingly civil, respectful, and assertive in tone, rather than threatening or intimidating, as were the responses from the Always brand's Twitter account. On 16 October, activist Ben Saunders tweeted out a screenshot of an email from 'The Always Team' at Procter & Gamble. Saunders' account has been set to protected, but we have been able to capture the tweet, as shown below. The company confirmed the email's authenticity to Snopes. In the email, which can be read in full here, a person named Sheryl wrote: I wanted to come back to you regarding your message about the Always wrappers' design with the female symbol on it you sent 18/06/2019. We listened to you and our marketing team worked [up] a solution! We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a new wrapper design without the feminine symbol. Please just be aware that you might still find products with the old wrapper design in the stores for some weeks after December, as the distribution of the new packages might take some time - the new designs should be in store Jan/Feb 2020. We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions. Thank you for contacting us, your comments help us improve every day! A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble told Snopes the Venus symbol would be removed from menstruation products in 'multiple markets at various dates,' and confirmed this process would begin in early 2020. The statement read: For over 35 years, Always has championed girls and women, and we will continue to do so. We're also committed to diversity and inclusion, and are on a continual journey to understand the needs of all of our consumers. We routinely assess our products, packaging and designs, taking into account consumer feedback to ensure we are meeting the needs of everyone who uses our products. After hearing from many people, we recognized that not everyone who has a period and needs to use a pad, identifies as female. To ensure that anyone who needs to use a period product feels comfortable with Always, we're adjusting our pad wrapper design as part of our next round of product changes. As a global brand, our design updates will be adapted by multiple markets at various dates beginning in January/February 2020. Saunders' tweet prompted multiple news reports and an angry response from some women and feminists, who objected to the planned removal of the Venus symbol. The hashtag #BoycottAlways appeared on Twitter in October, a more aggressive and inherently coercive form of dissent than had ever emerged on social media among those trans activists who had objected to the inclusion of the symbol beginning in March. Procter & Gamble's decision to introduce the Venus symbol certainly prompted a concerned response among trans activists (especially trans men) in 2019, and some of those activists expressed those concerns and requests to the company in no uncertain terms. However, the proverbial 'angry backlash,' including online calls for a boycott of Always - an inherently coercive form of opposition - only came in October, when news emerged that the company would be removing the symbol. Companies make marketing and public relations decisions for various reasons, and such choices are typically arrived at after careful consideration of multiple strategic, commercial, financial, ethical, and legal factors. Requests and appeals such as those made by Saunders and other trans activists certainly appear to have played a role in Procter & Gamble's decision, based on the company's own statement. However, it is a gross distortion of the actual sequence of events to claim that those activists, or an ill-defined 'transgender lobby,' somehow forced the company into its U-turn on the Venus symbol. They did not. | nan | [
"07026-proof-01-GettyImages-824929460.jpg"
] |
In 2019, trans activists or 'the transgender lobby' forced Procter & Gamble to remove the Venus symbol from menstruation products. | Neutral | In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries from our readers about the accuracy of news reports claiming that Procter & Gamble, the company behind the Always brand of menstruation products, had decided to remove the female Venus gender symbol from the packaging of such products. Some articles pointedly claimed that the company had been 'forced' to make this change by angry trans activists, who had complained that adding female gender symbols and imagery to Always product packaging excluded trans men and non-binary individuals who, although they menstruate and therefore have need of menstruation products, otherwise live as men or identify as male or gender non-binary. On Oct. 19, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline 'Transgender Lobby Forces Sanitary Towel-Maker Always to Ditch Venus Logo from Its Products,' which reported that: The maker of Always sanitary pads has given in to claims of discrimination by transgender men and removed the 'Venus' symbol of the female sex from the wrapping. Outraged women are now boycotting the leading brand after the decision by makers Procter & Gamble (P&G) to kowtow to trans activists who were born female and still use sanitary products ...' As evidence of a supposed campaign of pressure and intimidation by the 'transgender lobby,' the Daily Mail cited just two tweets posted by two trans activists, one of them Ben Saunders, adding: Another activist, Ben Saunders - named young campaigner of the year by LGBT charity Stonewall in May after making a documentary about being transgender - contacted the sanitary pad makers in June with a similar complaint. The Always marketing team replied with a comment that Saunders, 18, posted on Twitter, reading: 'We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a wrapper design without the feminine symbol.' The message stated that sanitary towels with the new packaging would hit the stores by January 2020 and added: 'We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions.' In addition to claiming that the same 'transgender lobby' had 'forced' Procter & Gamble - one of the world's largest consumer-products companies - to make the change, the Daily Mail used the words 'kowtow' and 'cave-in' to describe the packaging decision. Similar articles were published by the U.K. tabloid The Sun and the right-leaning U.S. websites Daily Wire and PJ Media, all of which also claimed the company had been 'forced' to remove the Venus symbol by trans activists or the 'transgender lobby.' Representatives for the Always brand did tell Saunders of their intention to remove the female Venus symbol from menstruation products beginning in December 2019 and did indicate the decision had been influenced, at least in part, by the concerns expressed by some trans people. That position was broadly reiterated by a company spokesperson in a statement to Snopes. However, it was misleading and sensationalist to claim the company had been 'forced' into taking the action they took. The available facts simply do not support that characterization. Analysis It's unclear when Always first added the Venus symbol to the packaging of their menstruation products, but Twitter users in the U.S. and U.K. (likely among other countries) first began to raise concerns about it in March 2019: Hey @Always since today is #TransVisibilityDay it's probably important to point out the fact that this new packaging isn't trans* friendly. Just a reminder that Menstruation does not equal Female. Maybe rethink this new look. pic.twitter.com/1Fp8bdB6qY - 🎃 (@Sara_Kelhi) March 31, 2019 Those concerns and requests persisted over the course of the summer and into the fall of 2019. The tweets were strikingly civil, respectful, and assertive in tone, rather than threatening or intimidating, as were the responses from the Always brand's Twitter account. On 16 October, activist Ben Saunders tweeted out a screenshot of an email from 'The Always Team' at Procter & Gamble. Saunders' account has been set to protected, but we have been able to capture the tweet, as shown below. The company confirmed the email's authenticity to Snopes. In the email, which can be read in full here, a person named Sheryl wrote: I wanted to come back to you regarding your message about the Always wrappers' design with the female symbol on it you sent 18/06/2019. We listened to you and our marketing team worked [up] a solution! We are glad to inform you that as of December we will use a new wrapper design without the feminine symbol. Please just be aware that you might still find products with the old wrapper design in the stores for some weeks after December, as the distribution of the new packages might take some time - the new designs should be in store Jan/Feb 2020. We are absolutely grateful for having people like you voicing their opinions. Thank you for contacting us, your comments help us improve every day! A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble told Snopes the Venus symbol would be removed from menstruation products in 'multiple markets at various dates,' and confirmed this process would begin in early 2020. The statement read: For over 35 years, Always has championed girls and women, and we will continue to do so. We're also committed to diversity and inclusion, and are on a continual journey to understand the needs of all of our consumers. We routinely assess our products, packaging and designs, taking into account consumer feedback to ensure we are meeting the needs of everyone who uses our products. After hearing from many people, we recognized that not everyone who has a period and needs to use a pad, identifies as female. To ensure that anyone who needs to use a period product feels comfortable with Always, we're adjusting our pad wrapper design as part of our next round of product changes. As a global brand, our design updates will be adapted by multiple markets at various dates beginning in January/February 2020. Saunders' tweet prompted multiple news reports and an angry response from some women and feminists, who objected to the planned removal of the Venus symbol. The hashtag #BoycottAlways appeared on Twitter in October, a more aggressive and inherently coercive form of dissent than had ever emerged on social media among those trans activists who had objected to the inclusion of the symbol beginning in March. Procter & Gamble's decision to introduce the Venus symbol certainly prompted a concerned response among trans activists (especially trans men) in 2019, and some of those activists expressed those concerns and requests to the company in no uncertain terms. However, the proverbial 'angry backlash,' including online calls for a boycott of Always - an inherently coercive form of opposition - only came in October, when news emerged that the company would be removing the symbol. Companies make marketing and public relations decisions for various reasons, and such choices are typically arrived at after careful consideration of multiple strategic, commercial, financial, ethical, and legal factors. Requests and appeals such as those made by Saunders and other trans activists certainly appear to have played a role in Procter & Gamble's decision, based on the company's own statement. However, it is a gross distortion of the actual sequence of events to claim that those activists, or an ill-defined 'transgender lobby,' somehow forced the company into its U-turn on the Venus symbol. They did not. | nan | [
"07026-proof-01-GettyImages-824929460.jpg"
] |
Subsets and Splits