The typical white male worker in this country is making in real terms what he was making in 1973 and the average worker is making what they were making in 1996.
As the 2012 elections loom and President Barack Obama pushes for his jobs plan, a key issue is how middle-class families have fared over the past generation.Obama and other Democrats would like to see the Bush-era tax cuts expire for couples making more than $250,000 and also raise taxes on hedge-fund millionaires paying relatively low capital gains tax rates. For their part, Republicans claim Obama is engaging in class warfare against job creators.In a Sept. 27, 2011 speech at St. Anselm Colleges New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, David Axelrod, one of Obamas top strategists, said there has been a hollowing out of the middle class in this country in recent decades as wages have essentially flat-lined for many workers.There was a census report just a couple of weeks ago, and what it said was that the average white male worker, the typical white male worker in this country, is making in real terms what he was making in 1973, said Axelrod, a former White House aide and now a senior adviser to Obamas political campaign. In total, the average worker is making what they were making in 1996, but we know prices havent gone along accordingly.If true, thats quite a ride back in time. Asked for substantiation, Katie Hogan of the Obama campaign referred us to a U.S. Censusreportreleased last month, and articles in theNew York Timesand theNew Yorkerwebsite crunching some of the numbers.The report itself didnt have the precise numbers to back up Axelrods first claim -- that the typical white male worker made the same amount -- adjusted for inflation -- in 1973, when Richard Nixon occupied the White House.But a related censusspreadsheetshows that real wages have not only failed to grow but have actually declined slightly for white males working year-round and full time. But first, a semantic point near and dear to the heart of economists. Even though Axelrod said average in his statement, its clear by his subsequent use of the word typical and the reports to which we were referred that median income, not the mean, is what applies here.In 2010, according to census data, the median earnings for a full-time white male worker were $50,074. By comparison, in 1973, the median for that category, in 2010 dollars, was $50,513. So Axelrod not only was correct that white men were no better off, adjusted for inflation, in 2010 than they were 37 years ago, they were taking home about $8.44 less per week.And when measured by the purchasing power of those dollars, the gap is even bigger. Because wages havent kept up with prices, as Axelrod asserted, the typical white male worker's purchasing power has eroded by almost 11.5 percent in 37 years.Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, said Axelrods statement about white male workers is unambiguously true, and that wages havent kept up with major gains in productivity.The growing wealth of the country actually didnt translate into higher standards of living or wages for typical workers, she said. Where it [the wealth] went was to the top.In the second part of Axelrods statement -- that the average worker is making what they were making in 1996 -- it appears that the Obama strategist got some numbers mixed up.A censustableshows that median earnings for all full-time workers who clocked at least 50 weeks of labor increased by about 7 percent in real terms between 1996 and 2010, to $41,919. This came as earnings by women, and their participation in the labor force, grew at a faster rate than that of men, though the female-to-male earnings ratio was still 77.4 cents to the dollar in 2010.Given the report Hogan, the Obama campaign press aide, cited, however, along with a number widely reported in the press last month, what Axelrod apparently was referring to when he spoke of average workers making what they did in 1996 were census numbers that showed total household income, adjusted for inflation, has barely increased. Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, only a $333 increase, or 0.7 percent, in inflation-adjusted dollars from 1996.Some important factors are at play in household income numbers. For starters, households are smaller now, meaning there are fewer wage-earners to be counted. But womens participation in the labor market has also increased. What that means, essentially, is that wage-earners in middle-class American households are working more  to maintain the same level of income.One of the ways families made up the difference was more work, Shierholz said of the stagnant wage issue. Its largely an hours story.A paper Shierholz co-authored after the new census numbers were released also showed that median income for working-age households fell by more than 10 percent in the past decade, to $55,276.Given such factors, she said the second half of Axelrods statement captures the flavor of what the EPI and others have labeled a lost decade in terms of income.Our ruling Axelrod was on the money in talking about the erosion of earnings for white male workers since the early 1970s, and basically on track in comparing how things stand today for the typical American family compared to 1996. We rate his statement Mostly True.
On 10 December 2015, the web site YourNewsWire.com published a video purportedly showing film acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick, who helmed such groundbreaking films as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, confessing to having helped NASA fake the Apollo program moon landings: published A stunning new video has emerged 15 years after Stanley Kubrick's death in which Kubrick admits that the NASA moon landings were faked. Filmmaker T. Patrick Murray interviewed Kubrick three days before his death in March 1999. He was forced to sign an 88-page NDA to keep the contents of the interview a secret for 15 years. Below is a transcript from the interview with Stanley Kubrick, in which the 2001 Space Odyssey Director admits on camera that, "the moon landings ALL were faked, and that I was the person who filmed it." In the interview, the alleged Stanley Kubrick figures confesses that: Kubrick: I perpetrated a huge fraud on the American public, which I am now about to detail, involving the United States government and NASA, that the moon landings were faked, that the moon landings ALL were faked , and that I was the person who filmed it. Murray: Ok. (laughs) What are you talking ... You're serious. Ok. Kubrick: I'm serious. Dead serious. Yes, it was fake. Murray: Why are you telling the world? Why does the world need to know that the moon landings aren't real and you faked them? Kubrick: I consider them to be my masterpiece. Murray: And you can' t take credit, or even talk about ... Kubrick: Well, I am now ... Murray: So, you can't talk to Roger Ebert about it. Does that frustrate you? Why did they have to fake it? Why would they have to do that? Kubrick: Because it is impossible to get there ... 2001 was very ambitious, but that's not to say that faking the moon landing was not ambitious. But I learned things from making 2001, and that's why I got this gig in the first place. Murray: That makes sense Kubrick: Well, it was easy for me, because I didn't think a whole lot about the morality of it. But I didn't. And I could see that Neil [Armstrong] was, he was bothered by it. This video has been circulating online since at least August 2015 and is one of several clips purportedly showing Kubrick talking about his alleged involvement in faking the U.S. moon landings. While there are various edits of this infamous (and fake) interview circulating on YouTube, the videos all originated with a new film from T. Patrick Murray titled Shooting Kubrick. film Murray claimed on the Shooting Kubrick web site that he was granted unprecedented access to interview the director in May 1999, which would have been quite an impressive feat since Kubrick had passed away two months earlier:Although the date could be a simple typographical error, that was not the only questionable aspect of the interview. The man being interviewed simply doesn't look or sound like Stanley Kubrick when compared to a video of the real Kubrick accepting the D.W. Griffith Award in 1997:  Furthermore, unedited versions of the interview contain hints that the "Stanley Kubrick" in the video is an actor. In a since-deleted clip, the interviewer called his subject "Tom" and instructed him on how to tell the next part of his story: "You don't say he said anything. You say what he says. Tom, I'm giving you directions. You don't have to imitate him (Richard Nixon). You're not reporting it. You're repeating it ... We're doing exposition here. That's how we're going to sneak it in." A spokesman for Kubrick's widow also proclaimed that "[t]he interview is a lie, Stanley Kubrick has never been interviewed by T.Patrick Murray the whole story is made up, fraudulent and untrue." T. Patrick Murray has not admitted that his interview with Stanley Kubrick is a hoax, but he certainly is banking the mystery's driving interest in his project: Since the middle of the last century, revolving doors have been a quietly ubiquitous feature of modern cities around the world. But do they have their origins in one man's neurotic attitude toward holding doors open for women? The most often-cited example of this legend is a 2013 article in Slate by Roman Mars, of the design podcast 99% Invisible. Slate The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel hated chivalry. There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a building, and locking horns with other men in a game of oh you first, I insist. But most of all, Theophilus Van Kannel hated opening doors for women. He set about inventing his way out of social phobia. In the accompanying podcast episode, Mars warned: "Keep in mind that with all these origin stories, when they sound a little too much like stories, they're probably not completely true."  David McCall, writing in the Australian Design Review four years later, also traced the invention to Van Kannel's purported misogyny: writing The story goes that he invented the revolving door because he simply hated holding doors open for people, especially women. It has also been reported that Kannel [sic] was a man without a family. These two facts may not be unrelated. The earliest version of the story that we could find was a 2008 post by Jaime Morrison on the art and design blog The Nonist, which went into considerable detail about the origins of Van Kannel's aversion to chivalry, tracing it back to a public spanking from his mother and attributing his invention to his wife's insistence that he hold open doors for her at all times. post It seems that when Van Kennel [sic] was a boy, still in the care of his mother but just on the cusp of cultural manhood, he found the lingering rules of chivalry rather bothersome. In particular he refused to accept that he was expected to open the door for women and allow them to cross the threshold before him. A silly sort of quirk to our minds, certainly, but it was taken seriously enough by his mother that after numerous warnings and threats she eventually felt compelled to take action. Van Kennel [sic] family histories have it that at some point in his twelfth year she administered a savage bare-bottomed spanking, during a salon in the familys drawing room, in full and explicit view of 37 local mothers and daughters. ...Had this been the only episode the world may have never had a revolving door to shuffle through. As it so happens, however, Theophilus Van Kennel [sic] married a woman who, though beautiful and slyly clever, had an odd and stubborn quirk of her own. Young Abigail Van Kennel, it seems, refused to pass from one room of their apartments to another without the assistance of Theophilus.  That blog post contains the tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that "...All untruths are, I assure you, my own. Ill leave it to you to sort out which is which"; and cites just one source, an essay by the MIT professor James Buzard -- which makes no mention of Van Kannel's now-legendary misogyny.  essay Indeed, despite extensive archival research, we did not find any evidence to back up the persistent rumor that Theophilus Van Kannel invented and refined the revolving door because of a neurotic aversion to holding doors open for women and others. In fact, we found several pieces of evidence which severely undermine the credibility of this claim.  In July 1882, an H. Bockhacker received a patent in Berlin for a "Thr ohne Luftzug" ("draftless door") whose design is essentially that of a revolving door.  patent  European Patent Office    Six years later, on 7 August 1888, Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania received Patent #387,571 for his "Storm Door Structure." Patent #387,571  U.S. Patents Office/Google    In his patent application, Van Kannel wrote: It will be evident that a storm door structure of the character described possesses numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure of the usual character, for, as the door fits snugly in the casing, it is perfectly noiseless in its operation and effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain, or dust either when it is closed or when persons are passing through it. Moreover, the door cannot be blown open by the wind, as the pressure is equal on both sides of the center of motion.  Van Kannel subsequently patented several refinements and improvements to the revolving door, founded the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company, and died in New York City on Christmas Eve, 1919, at the age of 78.  refinements died  Undated photograph of Theophilus Van Kannel.  He was born in a log cabin in Coshocton County, Ohio, on 21 October 1841, to Swiss immigrant parents. Throughout his life, he was a prolific inventor. A 1988 publication of his autobiography and journal, housed in the Library of Congress, lists 49 patents, but the book's editor writes that Van Kannel might have actually put his name to "about 75" of them.  autobiography and journal Over the years, Theophilus invented a cherry stoner, cider mill, water hydrant, shipping tag, gas machine check-valve, a sewing machine, an "apparatus for scalding vegetable or fruit," and many more. He was also the inventor and owner of the Witching Waves ride at a Coney Island amusement park. He married Amanda Clayton, of Chester, Illinois and in November 1867 the couple had a daughter named Lulu. This refutes David McCall's suggestion that Van Kannel's alleged misogyny was due to the fact that he did not have a family. He did. The fact that Van Kannel's wife was named Amanda also severely undermines The Nonist's colorful stories about his wife "Abigail," who "refused to pass from one room of their apartments to another." In fact, Theophilus Van Kannel's two-volume, almost 500-page autobiography and journal does not contain any evidence of any neurosis relating to women, nor any social phobias of any kind. What it does reveal is a multi-talented young man, somewhat sober and straight-laced, who struggled for many years with debt and an artificial leg, but enjoyed a fairly healthy social life, combined with a consistent dedication to his work.  He wrote frequently to his mother, regularly visited his sister and her family, and spoke lovingly about his female relatives. (His journal entry on 30 January 1864 reads: "Letter from my sister requesting me to write an obituary for her husband. Sent $5 to mother.") Another entry suggests Van Kannel understood and honored the Victorian norms of chivalry, without any reservations. 28 September 1861 (aged 19): ...I received permission to buy some window blinds for the schoolhouse. While in the post office a very old lady came in to send off a letter, but she had no money to pay for the stamp. She asked the postmaster, Mr Bowman, to credit her, but he refused. I then bought ten cents' worth of stamps and sent her letter. She was a stranger to me... As he grew into his 20s, Van Kannel's journal shows him courting young women in Cincinnati, Ohio, all the while following the rules of chivalry and decorum.  26 February 1863 (aged 21): We all went to the church again this evening to practice our parts for the exhibition, and all showed great improvement. For the first time I mustered up enough courage to ask a young lady for her company home, and she very readily accepted.  1875 photograph of Theophilus Van Kannel with his wife Amanda and daughter Lulu.    Nothing in his journal suggests the kind of "social phobia" or misogyny involved in the many stories told about him 150 years later. He attended church every Sunday, taught children, attended school with men and women, was an active member of debating societies, met friends for dinner and drinks (although he disliked drunkenness), and occasionally escorted young women home or to the theater.  His interests and inventions were eclectic. By 1867 he was already developing a type of door spring, and so it's not at all surprising that he would turn his mind to the innovation that eventually became the revolving door.  Swinging doors let in drafts, making it difficult to control the temperature of a building, especially one with heavy footfall like a bank or train station. It is in keeping with the pattern of Van Kannel's professional life that he would have identified this problem, and attempted to solve it using his gift for engineering. His invention of the revolving door does not require a psychological motivation. Nor were we able to find one, despite reading hundreds of pages of archival material and the journal of Theophilus Van Kannel himself. We looked at several news and feature articles about Van Kannel, some dating to the early 20th century. Not one mentioned Van Kannel's now-mythical misogyny or aversion to chivalry -- until The Nonist post, the veracity of which is extremely questionable.  We contacted the 99% Invisible podcast, but we did not receive a reply by publication time. In October 2018, we received an email from Jaime Morrison, creator of the Nonist blog and author of the 2008 article about Theophilus Van Kannel and the invention of the revolving door. Morrison told us that he had written about Van Kannel's now-legendary misogyny as no more than a joke which he was disappointed to find had been taken seriously by others: I just wanted to confirm that yes, the piece was in fact a humor piece, and that yes the chivalry aspect of the story was a total fabrication...When I wrote the piece I assumed that the absurdity of the idea would be self-evident, and even hedged by including the disclaimer which [you quoted]. Alas, that old chestnut about assumptions proved its inherent wisdom yet again. Van Kannel, Harvey E.; Fox Marshall, Joanne. "T. Van Kannel, The Inventor: His Autobiography and Journal, Vol. 1-2."
 Library of Congress. 1988. Bisset, Colin. "Design File with Colin Bisset - the Revolving Door."
 Radio National/ABC (Australia.) 15 March 2014. Hrala, Josh. "The Revolving Door Was Invented to Put an End to Chivalry."
 Modern Notion. 15 May 2015. McCall, David. "In a Spin: the History of Revolving Doors."
 Australian Design Review. 24 July 2017. Morrison, Jaime. "The Secret History of the Revolving Door."
 The Nonist. Unknown publication date. Buzard, James. "Perpetual Revolution."
 Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Archive.org. 29 July 2005. Mars, Roman. "Why Don't People Use Revolving Doors?"
 99% Invisible/Slate. 7 November 2013. Bockhacker, H. "Patentschrift No. 18349. Thr Ohne Luftzug."
 Kaiserliches Patentamt (Germany)/European Patent Office. 8 July 1882. Van Kannel, Theophilus. "Patent No. 387,571 - Storm Door Structure."
 U.S. Patents Office/Google. 7 August 1888. New York Tribune. "Death Notice - Theophilus Van Kannel."
 New York Tribune. 26 December 1919. Updated [23 October 2018]: The verdict on this fact check has been changed from "Legend" to "False" after the author of a 2008 blog post -- the earliest source of the claim -- came forward to confirm that he had fabricated it as a joke. Not long after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an image began circulating online claiming that a Mexican supermarket chain was collecting "donations" toward his proposed border wall between the two countries. On 10 November 2016, a YouTube video claimed to show a picture of a receipt from a Soriana Hiper market in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon that included a 10-peso charge for an "additional donation [for] Trump wall." The image then spread online, with one version containing the caption: a YouTube video online, Look what Soriana is doing. Save the picture and share it before it's deleted. Soriana, which operates more than 800 stores around Mexico, refuted the picture in a statement released on 15 November 2016, saying the photo in question was false and "tendentiously manipulated":   The translation reads, in part: We reaffirm our position and commitment with our country as a 100% Mexican company, as one of the biggest job-generators in the country and with an important business platform for our suppliers and commercial partners. Our commitment has always been and will always be with our country, particularly with the Mexican family economy. The "Trump wall" receipt was based off of another fake photo that circulated in 2013, accusing the company of charging customers for a "additional donation" to the Teletn, the annual national fundraiser for childrens' healthcare: 2013 Teletn,   One of Trump's campaign promises was that his administration would not only build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but make the latter country pay for it. That statement is still on his campaign website. He has since stated:  website. stated It could be some fencing. However, it should be noted that an unmistakable wall already exists along much of the border between Mexico and the United States. wall "Muro de trump esta siendo cobrado en soriana." De Todo Un Poco Consejos Practicos. YouTube. 10 November 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2D1ROTY1SA La Rancherita del Aire, S.A. de C.V. "Circula en redes sociales supuesto ticket de compra con cobro extra por muro de Trump." rancherita.com.mx. 11 November 2016. sdpnoticias.com. "Cobran indebidamente Teletn en tickets de compra." www.tolucanoticias.com. 6 November 2013. Stahl, Lesley. "President-elect Trump speaks to a divided country on 60 Minutes." CBS News. 13 November 2016. Delano, James Whitlow. "This Is What the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall Actually Looks Like." National Geographic. 4 March 2016. In August 2015, a meme claiming that a black woman named Amelia Bassano Lanyer was the true (uncredited) author of all of William Shakespeare's plays began circulating online:   Although the authorship of Shakespeare's plays remains a topic of some debate among scholars, the above-displayed meme contains several factual errors. First, Aemilia Bassano (later Emilia Lanier) was indeed a published author, not someone whose work was suppressed because of her race or gender. In fact, the Shakespearean Authorship Trust notes that Bassano became the "first woman to publish a book of original poetry" when her work Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum was put into print in 1611: Brought up opposite the theatre district in a family of Venetian Jews of Moroccan ancestry, at the age of 7 she was given to be educated by Countess Susan Bertie, in the family headed by Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby. At the age of 13 she became mistress to Lord Hunsdon, the man in charge of the English theatre. When she got pregnant a decade later she was expelled from court and married off to a minstrel. She was one of the first women to own and operate a school and the first woman to publish a book of original poetry Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). She died in poverty. Second, Bassano was not black. She was born to Baptista Bassano (a Venice musician at the court of Elizabeth I) and Margaret Johnson in 1569, and biographies of her note that she "was part of a family of Italian court musicians of Moroccan/Semitic ancestry who lived as clandestine Jews." born No contemporaneous accounts describe Bassano as "black" (or "African"), and although its provenance is uncertain, many historians believe that this miniature portrait by Nicholas Hilliard depicts Amelia Bassano: portrait  Amelia Bassano may have been dark-complected, however. A 2009 paper published in the Oxfordian, the journal of Shakespearean authorship studies, stated that some of Bassano's relatives were referred to as "black" when they arrived in London, likely due to their dark complexions:  referred Brought to London from Venice in 1538/9, the dark-skinned Bassanos, some of whom were described in contemporary records as 'black' and who may have been of Moroccan as well as Jewish ancestry, became established as the Court recorder troupe." Lastly, the claim that Amelia Bassano wrote all of William Shakespeare's plays is a decidedly fringe notion, even within the world of Shakespearean authorship controversies. While she is listed as a potential candidate by the Shakespearean Authorship Trust (a group seemingly determined to credit Shakespeare's work to anyone but Shakespeare himself), even among that group she is included as just one of 66 candidates identified so far: candidate She has long been identified as the 'dark lady' of the Sonnets. Her candidacy was announced in March 2007 in a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the Washington Shakespeare Festival by John Hudson, artistic director of the Dark Lady Players, a New York company who perform the underlying Jewish allegories in the plays. A 5000 word major article on her appears in the Summer/Fall 2009 special issue of The Oxfordian dedicated to the top authorship candidates. In April 2020, a coupon purporting to offer $250 in merchandise from the Kohl's department store circulated in Facebook posts directing viewers to click on a survey question:    This was a scam. Such efforts that trick viewers by offering free goods or money are long-standing. Kohl's is also a frequent target of such scams, but this fraud can target any business, from airlines to beer makers. A good rule of thumb to follow: If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. also frequent any airlines beer makers These types of viral "coupon" scams often involve websites and social media pages set up to mimic those of legitimate companies. Users who respond to those fake offers are required to share a website link or social media post in order to spread the scam more widely and lure in additional victims. Then those users are presented with a survey that extracts personal information such as email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and even sometimes credit card numbers. Finally, those who want to claim their "free" gift cards or coupons eventually learn they must first sign up to purchase a number of costly goods, services, or subscriptions. Despite the latest coupon scam above, Kohl's was indeed celebrating its 57th year as a department store, as of September 2019. It opened its first store in Brookfield, Wisconsin, according to company literature. In 2016, a variation of the same type of scam circulated, offering viewers $75 off purchases. literature variation The Better Business Bureau offers consumers several general tips to avoid getting scammed: offers consumers WHP.  "Scam Alert: Kohl's $75 Off Coupon Is Too Good to Be True."
  24 May 2016. Better Business Bureau.  "Scam Alert: Giveaway Scam Poses as Facebook."
  14 April 2017. Are Democratic presidents better than Republican presidents at job creation? Former President Bill Clinton said so -- forcefully -- in his speech to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24, Clinton said. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 (million). In the packed convention hall, it was one of the nights biggest applause lines. In 2010, we checked a similar claim from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who said that Democratic presidents have been considerably more effective at creating private-sector jobs. After crunching the numbers back to President Harry Truman, we found that jobs did indeed grow faster under Democratic presidents when adjusted for a presidents years served in office. So we rated the claimTrue. Clintons claim at the convention was worded differently, so we quickly re-crunched the numbers based on his specifications. Lets cut to the chase. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the net increases in private-sector employment under each president, chronologically by party: RepublicansRichard Nixon: Increase of 7.1 million jobsGerald Ford: Increase of 1.3 million jobsRonald Reagan: Increase of 14.7 million jobsGeorge H.W. Bush: Increase of 1.5 million jobsGeorge W. Bush: Decline of 646,000 jobsTotal: Increase of 23.9 million jobs under Republican presidentsDemocratsJohn F. Kennedy: Increase of 2.7 million jobsLyndon B. Johnson: Increase of 9.5 million jobsJimmy Carter: Increase of 9.0 million jobsBill Clinton: Increase of 20.8 million jobsBarack Obama: Increase of 332,000 jobs Total: Increase of 42.3 million jobs. So Clinton is right. But well bring up a few points worth noting. This does not include government jobs The combination of private-sector jobs and public-sector jobs is a broader measurement of job creation than private-sector alone. But excluding government jobs would presumably hurt Democrats more than Republicans, given the two parties historical stances toward the role of government. The fact that Democrats finished so far ahead despite taking government jobs off the table makes it a more impressive accomplishment. The Democrats didnt benefit from population growth For our previous story, Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless calculated that the U.S. working-age population actually grew slightly faster under Republican presidents, also making the Democratic accomplishment more impressive. Presidents deserves less credit for the good times and less blame for the bad times It's a truism of politics that when things go well, the president generally gets too much credit, and when things don't go well, the president usually gets too much blame. Shouldn't the Republican Congress of 1995-2001 get a share of the credit for Clinton's robust job growth? Shouldn't the Democratic House that served under Reagan? Most experts would say yes and yes. Since we published our previous story, we have changed our policy: We now factor into our ratings whether the politician or party deserves credit or blame for the statistical trend being analyzed. In this item, though, we will not factor in credit or blame, because both parties have had presidents serve during the time we looked at, meaning that both parties would have benefited and suffered in roughly equal proportions. Its unclear how much this finding says about our political and economic systems Job creation for each president depended to a certain extent on timing, external factors and luck. And as Yale political scientist David Mayhew pointed out for our previous story, conclusions drawn from a relatively narrow data set -- in this case, just 12 postwar presidencies -- need to be taken with a grain of salt. Our ruling Clintons figures check out, and they also mirror the broader results we came up with two years ago. Partisans are free to interpret these findings as they wish, but on the numbers, Clintons right. We rate his claim True. Claim:  The drawback of a laborer's illiteracy frees him to become a success in another field. LEGEND Example:  [Brunvand, 1993] My grandfather used to tell  about a country lad who went to the big city to seek his fortune, but had no luck finding a job.  One day, wandering through the red light district, he spotted a Help Wanted sign in a window. They were looking for a bookkeeper, but after the madam quizzed the boy about his education and discovered that he could neither read or write, she turned him away. Feeling sorry for him, she gave him two big red apples as he left.  A few blocks down the street, he placed the apples on top of a garbage can while tying his shoe, and a stranger came along and offered to buy them. The boy took the money to a produce market and bought a dozen more apples,which he sold quickly.  Eventually he parlayed his fruit sales into a grocery store, then a string of supermarkets.  Eventually he became the wealthiest man in the state. Finally he was named Man of the Year, and during an interview a journalist discovered that his subject could neither read or write. "Good Lord, Sir," he said.  "What do you suppose you would have become if you had ever learned to read and write?" "Well," he answered, "I guess I would have been a bookkeeper in a whorehouse."1 Origins:  According to folklorist Jan Brunvand, after writer Somerset Maugham was accused of stealing the plot of his 1929 short story "The Verger," he explained that he'd heard the tale from a friend and that it was a well known bit of Jewish folklore.  Maugham's claim is supported by this find, harvested from a 1923 joke book: Some fifteen years ago there landed in New York a friendless and almost penniless Russian immigrant who found lodgings on the East Side and at once, with racial perseverance and energy, set out to earn a living. He was of a likeable disposition, and speedily made acquaintances who sought to aid him in his ambition.  One of them sponsored him for the vacant post of janitor, or shammos, to use the common Hebraic word, of a little synagogue on a side street.  But when the officers of the congregation found out the applicant was  entirely illiterate they reluctantly denied him employment, inasmuch as a shammos must keep certain records.  The greenhorn quickly rallied from his disappointment.  He got a job somewhere.  He prospered.  Presently he became a dabbler in real estate. Within ten years he was one of the largest independent operators in East Side tenement-house property and popularly rated as a millionaire.  An occasion arose when he needed a large amount of money to swing what promised to be a profitable deal.  Finding himself for the moment short of cash, he went to the East Side branch of one of the large banks. It was the first time in his entire business career that he had found it necessary to borrow extensively.  He explained his position to the manager, who knew of his success, and asked for a loan of fifty thousand dollars. "I'll be very glad to accommodate you, Mr. Rabin," said the banker.  "Just sit down there at that desk and make out a note for the amount." The caller smiled an embarrassed smile.  "If you please," he said, "you should be so good as to make out the note and then I should sign it." "What's the idea?" inquired the bank manager, puzzled. "Vell, you see," he confessed, "I haf to tell you somethings: Myself, I cannot read and write.  My vife, she has taught me how to make my own name on paper, but otherwise, with me, reading and writing is nix." In amazement, the banker stared at him. "Well, well, well!" he murmured admiringly.  "And yet, handicapped as you've been, inside of a few years you have become a rich man!  I wonder what you'd have been by now if only you had been able to read and write?" "A shammos," said Mr. Rabin modestly.2 Some like to question the legend's basis on the grounds that if the work-seeker couldn't read, he couldn't have made out what the sign in the window said. "Illiterate" is often mistakenly interpreted as "incapable of making head or tail out of so much as one written word." In real life, any number of folks who cannot read and thus have no hope of making sense of a printed page have learned to recognize by sight a goodly number of key words and phrases, including "help wanted." The illiterate among us manage to catch the right buses, "read" road signs, and order off menus, all by way of having memorized what certain words look like. They exist in mainstream society undetected for years, sometimes fooling even their immediate families. A good story never goes out of style, as this example shows: [Collected on the Internet, 2001] An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor. The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude test  (Floors, sweeping and cleaning). After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed at minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address, so that I can send you a form to complete and tell you where to report forwork on your first day. Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the MS manager replies, "Well, then, that means that you virtually don't exist and can therefore hardlyexpect to be employed. Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in his wallet, he decides to buy a 25 lb. flat of tomatoes at the supermarket. Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 before going to sleep that night. And thus it dawns on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes. Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his profits quickly. After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a pickup truck to support his expanding business. By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pickup trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his e-mail address to send the final documents electronically. When the man replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth without the Internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would be now, if you had been connected to the internet from the very start!" After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, "Why, of course! I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!" Moral of this story: 1. The Internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.  2. If you don't have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become a millionaire. 3. Since you got this story via e-mail, you're probably closer to becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire. 4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you probably have already been taken to the cleaners by Microsoft. The   legend's message is twofold: that sometimes seeming adversity is actually the Hand of God arranging future events in our favor, and that often the most momentous decisions we make swing on little more than the expediency of the moment. Taking the second point first, we observe that if the young farm boy in the first example had been able to read and write, he would have gained the job he sought, that of a bookkeeper in a brothel, and thus would never have become the grocery tycoon he ultimately turned out to be. As to what led him to seek the bookkeeping position, he quite by happenstance chose to walk down a particular street, coincidentally on a day when a "Help Wanted" sign was posted in one of the windows. On another day, that sign wouldn't have been there, or he would already have had a job somewhere else.  It is ever thus  the directions of lives change depending upon which ad is answered, which interview is given, even which bus is taken. A chance encounter can lead to a marriage and the begetting of children, and just as certainly the slightly different choice of ad or bus can result in those two people's never meeting. Career direction is likewise up for grabs. As much as we like to feel we're masters of our fate, often we're the very last factor to have much influence on unfolding events, even within the confines of our own lives. But there's another message to this legend, one of the power of divine intervention and why it doesn't pay to second-guess God.  Today's disappointment can be a necessary, though momentarily painful, ingredient in tomorrow's success, as the snubbed bookkeeper or janitor finds out. Children of the moment that we are, we tend to forget this truth when caught up in sorrow over not getting what we'd set our hearts on, and tend only to remember it again when things ultimately turn out far better than they would have if we'd gotten our shortsighted way.  Barbara "father of the chide" Mikkelson Sightings:  In Somerset Maugham's 1929 short story "The Verger," an illiterate church caretaker is fired by the vicar when his lack of education comes to light. The ousted verger goes on to become a tobacconist, eventually owning a string of shops in London. Last updated:  20 April 2011 The Baby Train   2.  Cobb, Irvin S.  A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.  New York: Garden City Publishing, 1923  (pp. 190-191).  Asimov Laughs Again   Botkin, B.A.  Sidewalks of America.  Indianapolis-New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1954  (pp. 430-431).   The Big Book of Urban Legends.  New York: Paradox Press, 1994.  ISBN 1-56389-165-4  (p. 196). The Big Book of Urban Legends Claim:  Diet Coke (or Diet Pepsi) contains more calories than claimed, but the company gets away with the deception by paying a yearly fine.  Examples:  [Collected on the Internet, 2003] There was an old rumour that stated that a particular diet soda company (Coke I believe) paid a fine to print their cans as stating that the soda had 'just one calorie'.  According to the rumour, companies who knowingly printed misinformation on the nutritional facts of their product would have to pay a fine.  The company in question figured it could make more money by convincing people the product only had 1 calorie than it would cost to pay the fine, meaning a higher profit margin for them.  [Collected on the Internet, 2002] I heard a rumor today that Diet Coke actually contains 40 calories, and the Coca-Cola company pays a huge fine to the FDA every year to keep "0 calories" on the can.  Have you heard anything of this?  [Collected on the Internet, 2004] Comment: Is it true that Pepsi One is really not one calorie and that Pepsi Co. pays a fine every year for false advertising (because the calorie count is a lot higher than that)? Origins:  How long this particular belief about low-calorie sodas has been around is anyone's guess, but we have recorded sightings of it dating back to 1990. We've encountered claims of Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, or Pepsi One (which are listed as containing zero, zero, and one calories per 12-oz. can, respectively) actually containing 25, 50, 70, or 90 calories, in each case with the parent   company's paying an annual fine to continue falsely listing the beverage's caloric content.  (A can of non-diet cola typically contains about 120 calories.) The rumor associates most strongly with Diet Coke (which is known as Coca-Cola Light outside the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Great Britain).  In the U.S., laws governing the disclosure of nutritional and caloric content of ingestibles prevent the rumor from being true. The Federal Trade Commission serves as the watchdog in this area: under the Federal Trade Commission Act, it is empowered to "prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations" from using "unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." At various times in its history it has fined corporations for their having made false or misleading nutritional claims about their products. Such fines are a reaction to what has already taken place; they are not grants of immunity against continued breaking of the rules. Consumers have legal remedy available to them against corporations that have deceived them through certain provisions of the Lanham Act. Many other countries have similar safeguards in place. Federal Trade Commission Act Lanham Act Common sense should also serve to rule out what the whispers say about an annual payoff.  For health reasons, many potential consumers of diet drinks have to carefully monitor what they ingest. Were the rumor true, diabetics with a love of Diet Coke, for instance, would experience glucose levels spiraling out of control. Imagine the lawsuits resulting from  that! This false belief enjoys a measure of popularity because of what it says about common perception of large companies and of the government agencies tasked with shielding consumers from harm: that one will bamboozle its customers for the sake of financial profit, the other will sell out those it is mandated to protect, and neither is to be trusted. Such misgivings also find voice in other rumors, such as the one about bananas imported from Costa Rica being infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. bananas If there is the tiniest bit of truth to this rumor, it's that even though sodas such as Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi are advertised as having zero calories, they do have some caloric content from ingredients such as artificial sweeteners, citric acid, and caramel coloring.  However, the number of calories per can is still less than one, and FDA regulations allow any food product that contains fewer than five calories per serving to be advertised as calorie-free. Barbara "calorie countered" Mikkelson Last updated:  26 August 2013 If you received a text message purportedly from Amazon, chances are you are one of many and it is a scam. Over March and April 2021, many Snopes readers told us they received messages on their phones claiming they had won an AirPod or another device in a raffle. One of our editors also received the message, which said: Amazon: Congratulations Bond, you came second in this weeks Amazon pods raffle! Follow this link to [...]   She did not follow that link, however, because this appeared right away to be a scam. Indeed, the link did not connect to an official Amazon webpage. According to Amazon, all of its web pages normally follow the same format, ending in amazon.com, for example: pay.amazon.com or aws.amazon.com. Any link that is an IP address or a random string of numbers should be automatically suspicious. Amazon The Better Business Bureau (BBB) alerted users to this scam back in March. It warned that if you get a text message from a range of unknown numbers and with a suspicious link for collecting your item: alerted users Dont click! The text message is not from Amazon and it is the latest in a long list of impersonation scams that have been happening since the start of the pandemic, often using Amazons brand. The bogus raffle and suspicious link are part of a con used to trick people into visiting a phishing website, where they unwittingly share account credentials as well as personal and financial information with fraudsters. According to Amazon, any customer who receives a questionable email, text or call from a person impersonating Amazon or an Amazon employee should report them to Amazon customer service. Amazon investigates these complaints and will take action, if warranted. You can submit suspicious information to stop-spoofing@amazon.com. Amazon also offers a page to help identify if an email, text or phone call is really from Amazon. BBB also included a screenshot of a message similar to the one received by our editor, except the recipient was told that they came third in the raffle. When our editor reported the number that texted her to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), it recommended a number of tips to block spam messages. The tips can be read here.  Federal Trade Commission (FTC) here Given that the link to collecting the so-called prize does not direct us to an official Amazon website, and it could potentially share your private information, we rate this claim a Scam. In December 2022, a FedEx email scam was going around that claimed to be a "package delivery notification" from the company, which said, "Your package is held in our warehouse." The scam was being sent around at the same time that people across the world were ordering and receiving packages for gift-giving holidays. We previously looked at similar scams for UPS, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and other package delivery companies. In fact, one of our previous stories about a FedEx package delivery email scam was published a decade ago. Needless to say, scammers have been doing this for a long time. UPS U.S. Postal Service (USPS) published According to a copy of the FedEx email scam that we reviewed, the message came from admin@america-groups.xyz. This was not an official FedEx email address.  The message read as follows: Your package delivery Notification ID#0164278468-735 'Fedex' admin@america-groups.xyz via walisdom.biz Important Message for (name)Your package delivery Notification FedEx  Order 29194773US Your package is held in our warehouse You have (1) package waiting for you in our warehouse, ready for delivery. Use your order number to track and receive your package! TRACK YOUR PACKAGE Order numberOrder 29194773US DeliveryExpected delivery: 1 - 2 days The tracking number was real, but the package associated with it had already been delivered in April 2022. The scammers sent the email in the hope that people might click the link, not look up the tracking number. We investigated the link in the email and found that it was a phishing scam, meaning that the scammers were looking to obtain personal information and financial data. The link in the scam email led to the URL, storage.googleapis.com/pemotion/tixrin.html, which was followed by a long string of additional code that likely was for the scammers' own tracking purposes. Upon clicking on the URL, we were led to mooltay.com, then redirected toponnel.com, a website that displayed an "Express" logo without the word "Federal" in front of it.  On the ponnel.com scam website, we were guided through a series of questions about the supposed package delivery issue. One step falsely claimed that there would be a $1.95 charge to release the nonexistent package from a customs distribution hub.  At the end of the steps, the ponnel.com website redirected to webwinnalists.com, a page that asked for personal information and a credit card number. We strongly advise against giving any of these websites your data. On FedEx.com, one of the scams the company advises that its customers be on the lookout for was, "Unexpected requests for money in return for delivery of a package, often with a sense of urgency." That's exactly what this FedEx email scam for a "package delivery notification" was all about. FedEx.com By email, FedEx shared the following statement with us: FedEx does not send unsolicited text messages or emails to customers requesting money or package or personal information. Unfortunately, scammers often invoke the names of trusted brands when attempting to take advantage of the public and FedEx is one of many companies whose brand has been abused in this way. Any suspicious text messages or emails should be deleted without being opened and reported toabuse@fedex.com. For more tips on detecting online scams, visit the FedEx Customer Protection Center athttps://www.fedex.com/us/security/prevent-fraud. abuse@fedex.com https://www.fedex.com/us/security/prevent-fraud This story will be updated if further details come to light. Source: "Recognize & Report Fraud." FedEx.com, https://www.fedex.com/en-us/trust-center/report-fraud.html. Dec. 14, 2022: This story was updated to add a statement from FedEx.