President Obama's Asian Trip - $200 Million per Day?
Claim:  President Obama's November 2010 trip to India will cost taxpayers $200 million per day.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, October 2010] I have no first hand knowledge of this, just passing along. I could not belive this was true (but had also heard it on the air, thought was hype), but when you Google it and read a number of sites, it does appear to be true.  Tell him to stay there !!!  Just in case some of you dont follow current events as closely as I do (yes, I am a "news-junkie")  you may have missed the following information since it never appears in our wonderful newspapers or on most TV news.  The Barack Obama family is leaving tomorrow for a ten day trip to India .  This is going to be an historical and incredible trip, mostly in the numbers of people going, costs, etc.  1)       The entourage will include THREE THOUSAND  people 2)       FORTY aircraft will be making this trip 3)       TWO marine helicopters are being dismantled, flown to India, put back together to fly the Obamas around the country 4)       The entire 500 room Taj Mahal Hotel has been reserved for this group 5)       Cost is estimated to be $200 million PER DAY for ten days 6)       Keep this in mind when you get the next notice of an increase in your taxes!!! No one should ever wonder  why taxpayers are angry about this type of extravagance while most citizens are struggling with day-to-day costs of living, etc. Origins:  On 2 November 2010, the Press Trust of India published an article about U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming 10-day Asian trip (scheduled to begin in India, followed by visits to Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan), stating that  the American chief executive would be accompanied by a contingent of 3,000 people and would be taking over the entire 570-room Taj Mahal Palace hotel during his stay in Mumbai, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of about $200 million per day.  Another report from the same source claimed the President would be "protected by a fleet of 34 warships" during his time in Mumbai: article report "The huge amount of around $200 million would be spent on security, stay and other aspects of the Presidential visit," a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit said. About 3,000 people including Secret Service agents, US government officials and journalists would accompany the President. Several officials from the White House and US security agencies are already here for the past one week with helicopters, a ship and high-end security instruments. [President Obama] will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there. "Except for personnel providing immediate security to the President, the US officials may not be allowed to carry weapons. The state police is competent to take care of the security measures and they would be piloting the Presidential convoy," the official said on condition of anonymity. The information from that Indian article was quickly picked up and repeated as fact by a number of media outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere, but its veracity is dubious.  The only source for the claim about the mind-blowing $200 million per day expense outlay was a single foreign news report which quoted an anonymous Indian official and provided no detail whatsoever (or even a general explanation) about how the $200 million sum was derived or could possibly be expended. Any presidential trip abroad (the purpose of this trip is official business, not a personal "vacation," as claimed by some sources) involves considerable expense to transport and house security officials and presidential aides and staffers, and those costs will likely be on the higher side for this tripsince President Obama will be traveling to a city which was recently the target of terrorist attacks  and will be attending the G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, along with other world leaders (all of which requiresheightened security, as well as the presence of additional numbers of U.S. government officials).   G20 Summit However, citing a cost figure of $200 million per day stretches credulity to the breaking point: That number would entail a total outlay of $400 million for the two-day visit (a whopping $2 billion if the cost were applied across the entire ten-day trip), and even if President Obama were accompanied by a prodigious 3,000-person entourage, with the U.S. government picking up the entire tab for all of them, the U.S. would have to be spending the unbelievably staggering sum of $66,000 per person per day to reach that figure.   And, as the the Wall Street Journal observed, the details of the report are "demonstrably incorrect," and it certainly isn't the case that the U.S. will be picking up the tab for everyone traveling with the president: The report is demonstrably incorrect. It says the White House had blocked off the entire Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai  it hasn't  and that the press traveling with Mr. Obama will be staying there. We won't. Besides, the press pays its own way at considerable cost to the media outlets, not the U.S. taxpayer. Additionally, U.S. officials disclaimed numeric figures cited for the President's Asian visit as "wildly inflated" and "absurd": White House spokesman Tommy Vietor shot down the $200 million-a-day figure: "The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality. Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it's safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated," Vietor said.  Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell also outright rejected the claim that 34 warships would patrol the Mumbai coast while Obama is in town.  "I think there has been a lot of creative writing that's been done on this trip over the last few days," he said. "We obviously have some support role for presidential travel ... but I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we are deploying 10 percent of the Navy, some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president's trip to Asia  that's just comical. "Nothing close to that is being done, but the notion that president would require security as he travels to India and elsewhere should not come as a surprise to anyone," he said.  A military official also [said] the warship claim was inaccurate. The official knew of no such plans and said, besides, a carrier strike group typically has 10-12 ships at most. Moreover, CNN  noted that the cost of similar trips undertaken by other presidents came nowhere close to the $200 million per day figure being claimed of President Obama's Asian visit: While the exact cost of Obama's 10-day trip to Asia is not known to the public, an examination of similar presidential excursions in the past support the likelihood that the $200 million-a-day figure is exaggerated. For example, an 11-day trip by then-President Bill Clinton to Africa in 1998 involving about 1,300 people cost $5.2 million a day, according to the federal Government Accountability Office, which adjusted for inflation. The U.S. government isn't likely to be forthcoming with a cost breakdown for President Obama's Asia trip (particularly since a large chunk of the expenses necessarily involve security arrangements, which obviously can't be publicly outlined or detailed), but it's probably safe to say that the ultimate cost will be well short of the claimed $200 million per diem figure. Some readers who inquired about this item amusingly garbled its details, mistaking Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace hotel for the famous Taj Mahal mausoleum in Agra: Is it true that President Obama rented the entire Taj Mahal and is bringing in the near future, thousands of people to a meeting there? Last updated:  5 November 2010     Martinez, Luis.  "Pentagon Dismisses Reports of 34 Warships for Obama Trip Security."   ABCNews.com.   4 November 2010.     Robinson, Dan.  "Obama Aims to Expand, Strengthen Relationships on 10-Day Asia Trip."   VOANews.com.   1 November 2010.     Weisman, Jonathan.  "Fuzzy Math Dogs Obama's Asia Trip."   The Wall Street Journal.   4 November 2010.     CNN.com.  "Debunking the Myth: The Cost of Obama's Trip to Asia."   5 November 2010.     Economic Times.  "Force One Inspect Venues of Obama's Visit."   3 November 2010.     FOXNews.com.  "Security Entourage Earning Epic Reputation Ahead of Obama India Visit."   4 November 2010.     Press Trust of India.  "US to Spend USD 200 Mn a Day on Obama's Mumbai Visit."   2 November 2010.     Press Trust of India.  "White House Paraphernalia to Be in India for Obama Visit."   4 November 2010.
If Mary Burke has said it once, shes said it a thousand times: Wisconsins dead last in Midwest job growth. The Democratic candidate for governor uses the line in TV ads, in interviews and her stump speech, all aimed at countering Republican Gov. Scott Walkers message that Wisconsin is back on after the Great Recession. Burkesalliesrepeat the claim. One example, from a Burkecampaign television spotthat first aired in July 2014: Its Walkers agency that gave millions in tax breaks to companies that relocated jobs overseas. Another reason Wisconsins dead last in Midwest job growth. As this is spoken, the TV spot rolls through a list of nine states before settling on Wisconsin at the bottom: North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. With a new Walker TV ad bragging thatwere third in the Midwest in job growth, we thought it was time to look at both claims. In both cases, and like so many claims in a campaign that any numbers nerd would love, evaluation depends on two things: the timeframe and the measuring stick. In the Burke ad, the narrator in the spot doesnt say what time frame was analyzed. But the fine print in the ad cites data collected for the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. And the footnote says the ad compares quarter four of 2010 -- the last before Walker took office -- to quarter four of 2013. That is still the latest available quarterly data. That data, reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is considered the most exhaustive and credible for employment trends. It is based on a census of 96 percent of all American non-farm employers. Our examination of the data for the three-year period cited by Burke shows Wisconsin 10th out of the 10 states --  dead last -- just below Illinois when it comes to growth in private-sector jobs. The low growth in jobs in Wisconsin has been matched by very low income growth and poor levels of consumer spending, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee labor economist John Heywood told us. The state has been slower than its peers in recovering from the recession. Nationally, Wisconsinranked 35th. Heres the regional picture: State and midwest ranking on percentage growth in jobs Dec. 2010-Dec. 2013 Percentage change in employment National rank on percentage change 1. North Dakota 21.90% 1st 2. Michigan 8.71% 6th 3. Indiana 6.88% 15th 4. Minnesota 6.29% 20th 5. Nebraska 5.71% 24th 6. Ohio 5.65% 25th 7. South Dakota 5.28% 27th 8. Iowa 5.20% 28th 9. Illinois 4.21% 33th 10. Wisconsin 4.04% 35th Burke ranks the states by the percentage of growth. That is preferred by economists for state-by-state comparisons because it shows performance regardless of the states population. By another measure -- raw number of jobs created -- Wisconsin ranked sixth-best of the 10 states, we found. Limitations to the data There are two statistical points to consider. The most important is the definition of Midwest. Both Burke and Walker use the 10 states we mentioned. Theres a good case to be made for that: The Bureau of Labor Statistics Midwest regional office covers those 10 states. We found other instances in which the agency adds Missouri and Kansas into the Midwestern mix, for a total of 12 states. In that larger group, Wisconsin finishes 11th of 12, ahead of Missouri. Previously we ratedHalf Truea Burke claim in January 2014 that Wisconsin was last in the Midwest. The numbers worked out, but we faulted Burke mainly for a too-narrow comparison. She said Midwest, but looked only at the four states adjoining Wisconsin. We noted that at that time, before the 2013 numbers were complete, that Ohio and Nebraska (from the group of 10) and Missouri (from the more expansive BLS group of 12) had slower growth rates than Wisconsin. Finally, because its so comprehensive, reporting of the quarterly jobs data lags by at least six months, meaning the picture may be a bit outdated by the time it is released. The next quarterly jobs figures, covering the first quarter of 2014, are set for mid-September release. There is more recent jobs data available, from the monthly Current Employment Statistics surveys, but its based on a sample of only about 3 percent of employers. Those figures are prone to large margins of error but are also a widely cited source on job trends. Walker has called the quarterly data the gold standard, and has criticized the monthly data. But he has cited the monthly data, and does so in his new ad. Burke has used both at various times as well. Indeed, she was using the less-reliable monthly data back when we rated her earlier worst-in-Midwest claim Half True. Our rating Mary Burke contends that Wisconsins dead last in Midwest job growth. In the new version of this claim, she uses the most accurate jobs data for the longest Walker-era period that can be analyzed with it. And Wisconsin does bring up the rear. But due to the lag time, it does not reflect the most current trends. We rate the claim True. ...... Deciphering jobs claims Voters will hear many more jobs claims before the Nov. 4 election. Here are five tips for separating fact from fiction -- and hype from hard evidence -- when it comes to candidates and the numbers they use. Check the timeframe:If the statement covers a short period, it can be a red flag for cherry-picking data to find a good result. A longer time frame may be being used to mask more recent changes. Check the data source:The quarterly jobs numbers are more accurate than the monthly figures, but also more out of date. Be more skeptical of recent announcement about the monthly numbers, because they are subject to revisions can be significant. Raw numbers or percentages? :If the claim is that State X added more jobs than State Y, the statement may have limited information value. Look for percentage growth figures that level the playing field among states of varying sizes. Check the map:When the claim is best in the region, trust but verify. Are all relevant states included? Scrutinize the sector:Most claims focus on just the private sector, but sometimes partisans will add in public employees if it suits their purpose. On 5 February 2018, Shaun Usher, the owner of the blog "Letters of Note" posted an image on Twitter that purported to show Donald Trump opining that any president presiding over the United States during a stock market crash of more than 1,000 points should be "shot out of a cannon." blog image Although the image was intended to poke fun at now-President Trump's prolific Twitter use and his timeline that has offered a running joke that puts his past criticisms of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, in context with current events (such as a precipitous stock market drop a few hours before), this tweet was not real: before   Sweet mother of god. Not for one second did I think people would believe that to be genuine.  Shaun Usher (@ShaunUsher) February 5, 2018 February 5, 2018 omg it's everywhere. What have I done.  Shaun Usher (@ShaunUsher) February 5, 2018 February 5, 2018 siri can i be arrested for making a fake tweet  Shaun Usher (@ShaunUsher) February 5, 2018 February 5, 2018 In a message sent via Twitter, Usher confirmed he was the tweet's author and that it was not real. He told us: Naively thought it too ridiculous to be believable. Says a lot, really. Was going to delete it but it was everywhere within minutes: feels like I need to leave it up in its place of birth. President Trump has legitimately tweeted about the stock market in the past, however: tweeted   Creating fake tweets is extremely easy and can spread virally within minutes  as Usher has now demonstrated, even if unintentionally. fake tweets On 21 August 2018, President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including multiple counts of tax evasion and violations of federal campaign finance laws. Cohen also appeared to implicate his former client in possible criminal wrongdoing, alleging that Trump, while a candidate, directed Cohen to pay hush money to two women who claimed to have had affairs with the future president. guilty Those bombshell revelations came on the same afternoon that a jury in Virginia convicted President Trump's former 2016 presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort on eight counts of banking fraud and filing false tax returns, while failing to agree on a verdict for ten other charges. convicted Both the Manafort and Cohen cases came about due to investigative work undertaken as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election  and the possibility of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Understandably, much of the news media in the United States gave these major developments extensive coverage that day, in print, online, and on the major television news networks. Some observers accused the conservative-leaning Fox News of downplaying the Cohen and Manafort stories, or of deliberately focusing on other issues of lesser import. Elements of this criticism were accurate and proportionate in pointing out the striking differences between how most TV news networks reported on the developments and how Fox News covered them. differences However, one viral Twitter post appeared to contain a screen shot of Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren discussing the 'War on Christmas,' while other networks covered Cohen's guilty pleas. The chyron in the image read "TOMI: OBAMA CREATED FESTIVUS TO DESTROY CHRISTMAS." War on Christmas (Festivus is an unofficial holiday which acts as an alternative to Christmas, and originated in an episode of the sitcom "Seinfeld.")  CNN: Michael Cohen to plead guilty.ABC: Michael Cohen to plead guilty.NBC: Michael Cohen to plead guilty.FOX News: pic.twitter.com/JR4uAnyCQn pic.twitter.com/JR4uAnyCQn  Diane N. Sevenay (@Diane_7A) August 21, 2018 August 21, 2018   That tweet was then reposted on Facebook by the left-wing page "The Other 98%": The image is fake, and is an old meme which first appeared in December 2017. appeared Congrats, @BarackObama, on apparently creating Seinfeld pic.twitter.com/5g2t7eYDHj @BarackObama pic.twitter.com/5g2t7eYDHj  jordan (@JordanUhl) December 24, 2017 December 24, 2017  Lahren herself publicly dismissed the meme: Does it not bother you to circulate a photoshopped piece of FAKE NEWS? Classy. https://t.co/hvwdgwPkd2 https://t.co/hvwdgwPkd2  Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) December 24, 2017 December 24, 2017  The meme does indeed consist of a screenshot of a real Fox News appearance which Lahren made in August 2017, but with the original chyron digitally edited and replaced with something different and non-relevant: .@TomiLahren: "How about when the mainstream media stops covering Russia day in and day out, maybe we can drop the Hillary email scandal." pic.twitter.com/OwfYWfuhDD @TomiLahren pic.twitter.com/OwfYWfuhDD  Fox News (@FoxNews) August 31, 2017 August 31, 2017  It's not clear whether those who posted the edited image in the context of Cohen and Manafort's legal travails in August 2018 intended to engage in satire, or to trick other internet users into believing Lahren really discussed Festivus on that day. Diane Sevenay, whose viral tweet was re-posted by "The Other 98%", is a comedy writer. writer As reported by Mashable, a satirical Fox/Cohen news coverage meme emerged on 21 August, with Twitter users taking turns to parody Fox News' content on the day of Cohen's guilty pleas: Mashable CNN - Cohen plea dealMSNBC - Cohen plea dealFox News - Are cats becoming too tall?  Fred Delicious (@Fred_Delicious) August 21, 2018 August 21, 2018  CNN: Manafort guilty on 8 countsNYT: Manafort guilty of fraudAP: Cohen pleads guiltyFox News: Were the lobsters on the Titanic happy that it sank?  #1 Rachel (@rachel) August 21, 2018 August 21, 2018  Another widely-shared screenshot purported to show Fox News reframing the conviction of Manafort by only mentioning, in a mobile news alert, the fact that a mistrial was declared on ten of the charges against him, while other news organizations reported his being found guilty on eight charges:   The image, posted to Facebook by the "Angry Americans" page, is authentic but very misleading. Another screenshot shows that Fox News first sent out an alert which read "Jury finds Manafort guilty on eight counts in fraud trial" before following up with a second one about the mistrial on the ten other charges: page Same topic. Different perspectives. ?? #Manafort pic.twitter.com/r2ZUgFSxDS #Manafort pic.twitter.com/r2ZUgFSxDS  Push the Push (@pushthepush) August 21, 2018 August 21, 2018  Neumeister, Larry and Tom Hays.  "Cohen Pleads Guilty, Implicates Trump in Hush-Money Scheme."
  Associated Press.  22 August 2018. Barakat, Matthew et al.  "Ex-Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort Guilty of 8 Charges."
  Associated Press.  22 August 2018. Stanley-Becker, Isaac.  "In Trump's Right-Wing Media Universe, It Was a Day Like Any Other."
  The Washington Post.  22 August 2018. Sung, Morgan.  "What Was Fox News Covering While Manafort and Cohen Were in Court? This Hilarious Meme Has Some Answers."
  Mashable.  21 August 2018. Though he officially declared his independence by leaving the Republican Party on May 12, 2010, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says he won't return money contributed to his U.S. Senate campaign while he was running as a Republican. People gave to a good cause, and we're going to spend it on a good cause,'' Crist said minutes after switching his voter registration. That's why I'm going to keep it. It's important to be able to get our message out and communicate with the people of Florida.'' The next day, in a wide-ranging interview with the editorial board of theSt. Petersburg Times, the refund talk resurfaced. This time, Crist discussed a letter he received from 20 Republican heavyweights asking for refunds. He suggested that the letter was more a stunt than a sincere request. I got a letter from 20 people who said they wanted their money back, 14 never gave me a penny, Crist told theTimes,adding, You gotta give it to me first before you can have the option. We wanted to see if Crist is right. The letter in question actually ispublishedon Marco Rubio's Senate campaign website. It reads in part: We helped to support, and yes to bankroll, your political career. For years you have been asking us for money. And for years we have put our names and credibility on the line by asking our friends to donate to you. Those days are over.As part of your transition into this new phase of your political career, we respectfully request that you return every penny of donor money from every donor who asks for a refund. For those of us who have donated to your Senate campaign, you can start by refunding in full the contributions we have made.Recent reports with the Federal Elections Commission indicate your campaign is sitting on a stockpile of approximately $7.6 million dollars in contributions.Charlie, that is not your money. The letter is signed by mainly Florida Republicans, including former Florida GOP Chairman Al Cardenas, Outback Steakhouse executive Chris Sullivan, Palm Beach County GOP chair Sid Dinerstein and former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Al Hoffman. Palm Beach Postreporter Mike Bender quickly took the list of letter writers and compared it to the list of Charlie Crist's campaign contributors. He published the results of his analysis on thePost's political blog. The analysis showed that of the 20 people listed on the letter, only nine actually donated to Crist's Senate campaign, and of the nine -- Hoffman -- got his contributions back in February 2010 (Hoffman asked for his money back in February over allegations of excessive spending by the Republican Party of Florida and Crist's hand-picked chairman Jim Greer). PolitiFact Florida checked Bender's reporting by searching the Federal Election Commission's electronic campaign database and came up with the same number. Here's a list of the signers and how much they contributed to Crist's campaign. Hilton did donate $2,000 to Crist's 1998 Senate campaign. ThePostreported that one of the 20 to sign the letter, Gay Gaines of Palm Beach, hasnt donated to Crist in at least 15 years. She gave $2,400 this year to Rubio. Crist, in his statement to theSt. Petersburg Timeseditorial board, is off a little bit by saying 14 of the 20 have asked for a refund. Actually, 11 never gave Crist a penny for his 2010 Senate campaign. And a 12th person had his money back before sending the letter to Crist. That's close enough, however, to rate Crist's claim Mostly True. During debate on a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., alluded to secretly recorded videos that prompted the legislation, then he made a claim about the groups political activity. If you watch this debate, you have to ask: How could anybody defend the practices at Planned Parenthood? Duffysaidon the House floor on Sept. 18, 2015, the day the Houseapprovedthe one-year defunding. Harvesting body parts. How could anybody defend that? Its an easy answer. Look in (the) political season. Millions of dollars, millions of dollars are spent by Planned Parenthood to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives and to the Senate. This isnt about babies; this is about money. A reader asked us to check Duffys claim. The videos, the funding The videos, first released in July 2015, show Planned Parenthood officials offhandedly discussing how they sometimes procure tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research. The anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress, which recorded the videos, alleges Planned Parenthood is illegally profiting from fetal organ sales. But Planned Parenthood says it has done nothing illegal, and that the videos were edited in a misleading way. The defunding bill, which has yet to be taken up by the U.S. Senate, would end federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year, diverting the money to thousands of community health centers. Republicans say those clinics could handle the displaced Planned Parenthood patients, but Democrats say the centers are overburdened and sometimes in remote locations. Planned Parenthood gets around$450 millioneach year  in federal payments, mostly Medicaid reimbursements for handling low-income patients. That's around one-third of the organization's $1.3 billion annual budget. As for Planned Parenthoods political activity, some of this ground was covered when Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina made a similar claim. She said Planned Parenthood funnels millions of dollars in political contributions to pro-abortion candidates. PolitiFact National rated the statementMostly True. Millions have been spent. But the caveat is that the operational, medical clinics of Planned Parenthood cannot spend money in politics -- separate entities that are affiliated with Planned Parenthood can. Duffys claim Duffys claim was a little different -- that Planned Parenthood spent millions to elect Democrats to the House and Senate. We found,using figuresfrom the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, that that was this case. In the 2014 election cycle alone, Planned Parenthood-affiliated groups that can't give directly to candidates or coordinate with them, such asPlanned Parenthood Votes, a Super PAC, made over$6 millionin independent expenditures. That included $1.85 million spent in support of Democrats and $2.87 million spent against Republicans. In addition, Planned Parenthood's PAC gave nearly$590,000to congressional candidates, all of them Democrats. The numbers would be higher, of course, if previous cycles were included. Our rating Duffy said: Millions of dollars are spent by Planned Parenthood to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives and the Senate. By law, the operational, medical clinics of Planned Parenthood cannot spend money in politics. But separate entities that are affiliated with Planned Parenthood can, and they spent millions just in the 2014 election cycle to elect Democrats. We rate Duffys statement Mostly True. On 18 February 2016, the Facebook page "I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists" posted a meme featuring a photograph of Papa John's CEO John Schnatter along with a quote ostensibly uttered by him about not sharing company profits with employees:   Although several web sites, such as AZ Quotes, Sherman's Wilderness, and the Straight Dopemessage board,have attributed this phrase to Schnatter, none of these web sites conclusively documents where or when Schnatter purportedly made this statement. In fact, our attempt to source this quote led us through a never-ending circle of memes; in the end, we found no record in any credible publication linking Schnatter to these words. AZ Quotes Sherman's Wilderness Straight Dope The quote was likely created in an attempt to paraphrase comments the Papa John's CEOmade in 2012, just before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act: comments "Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis. "We're not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry. But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare. "If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interest." In November 2012, Schnatter wrote an op-ed piecefor the Huffington Post, maintaining that some of his comments had been taken out of context. piece On Nov. 28, 2022, the@Xx17965797N Twitter accounttweeteda video with a misleading caption that claimed the clip showed a sea of lined-up electric scooter bikes that were abandoned because of the high cost of electric vehicle (EV) battery replacement. The tweet read, "Electric green scooters that have reached end of battery life. Due to the batteries being so expensive to replace, electric scooters are abandoned because disposing of them any other way is dangerous and expensive." tweeted This was not true, despite the tens of thousands of combined retweets and likes that the tweet received.  The same video upload from @Xx17965797N was also misleadingly reshared by accounts including@PeterDClack, @JamesMelville, and @MillerForTexas. The former two tweets received thousands of engagements, despite the fact that the information pushed in the original tweet was not true. @PeterDClack @JamesMelville @MillerForTexas In cases like these where a caption is incorrect but the picture or video is real, we issue a fact-check rating of "Miscaptioned." Days before the @Xx17965797N tweet was posted, the@ElevaBrasilES account also misleadingly tweeted that the same video was shot in France. The tweet went up on Nov. 21 with an incorrect caption that read, "Green energy Cemetery of electric motorcycles in France. Now designated as a 'biohazard zone.'" (Note: This mention of France reminded us of other rumors we've debunked in the past, in particular about two photosof other car graveyards. The two pictures showed false captions that claimed the cars had been abandoned due to the high cost of battery replacement, just like the video we're looking at in this fact check.) tweeted two photos The oldest upload of the video that we could find came from TikTok user @smartsetting. The video was uploaded on Nov. 7 and by the end of the month had received nearly 5 million views.   Based on watching the video, the scooters appeared to be parked in a parking lot near a basketball court, perhaps in a university complex or public park. Several blurry Chinese characters were visible on the side of the bikes. At the end of the clip, a tall building could be seen on the right-hand side of the frame. Other than those pieces of information, we didn't have much to go on. In order to find the truth behind this video, we first used Adobe Media Encoder to export a JPEG file for each and every frame from the video. The results of this export were 440 individual images from the 14-second video. We then performed numerous reverse image searches with these picture files using Google Images and TinEye.com. These reverse image searches provided several clues as to where other users had reposted the video. However, we did not find any further details from these searches. Next, we tried several searches on Google, Twitter, and YouTube with phrases such as "electric scooter China" and "electric bike graveyard China," among other terms. This helped to find several repostsof the video. The searches alsoshowedresults for many of the sites in China that are the final resting placesfor massive stacks of bicycles dumped by bike-sharing companies with failed business models. Perhaps the most striking video we found was titled, "No Place To PlaceThe Wonders of Shared Bicycle Graveyards in China." several reposts showed results sites final resting places failed business models video At one point in our research, we stumbled upon an AFP videofrom 2021 that appeared to show the same yellow color and model of electric scooter bike. The caption for the clip said that it was captured "outside the city of Shenyang." The end of the video showed a stadium with special colors for seating zones. video model After an exhaustive search, we were able to find this same stadium by using the map tools on the Chinese website Baidu.com. Unlike Google Maps, Baidu.com has street-level views of nearby roads. However, this part of our effort wasn't very helpful. It remained unclear if this was the same location where the viral clip was shot. Baidu.com In the end, it was going back to TikTok that helped us find the origins of the video. A search on TikTok for "electric share bike China" brought us to this video from @evstevepan. The video showed the same kind of yellow electric scooter bike with a similar logo. A scan of the logo using a mobile phone camera and Google Translate revealed the company name Meituan, which is known as an "all-encompassing platform for local services." this video We then searched the internet for Meituan and electric scooters, which produced plenty of pictures on Shutterstock.com. For a moment, the two large characters on the side of the scooter didn't seem to match those from the viral video. We then horizontally flipped a still-frame from the viral video, which led us to discover that it had been mirrored, meaning that all words and numbers were backward. plenty of pictures All of these developments in our research led us to news articles that helped to show our findings were lining up. In April 2018, news broke that Meituan had purchased the company Mobike for $2.7 billion. According to the story, Mobike is "a Chinese startup that helped pioneer bike-sharing services worldwide." broke But by November of that same year, TechCrunch reported that Meituan would be "[walking] away from bike-sharing and ride-hailing," as there wasn't enough demand from customers for the supply of its bike-sharing venture: reported In April, Meituan entered the bike-sharing fray after it scooped up top player Mobike for $2.7 billion to face off Alibaba-backed Ofo. Over the past few years, Mobike and Ofo were burning through large sums of investor money in a bid to win users from subsidized rides, but both have shown signs of softening their stance recently. Mobike is downsizing its fleets to "avoid an oversupply" as the bike-sharing market falters, Meituan's chief financial officer Chen Shaohui said during the earnings call. Ofo has also scaled back by closing down many of its international operations. ... During its third quarter that ended September 30, Meituan posted a 97.2 percent jump on revenues to 19.1 billion yuan, or $2.75 billion, on the back of strong growth in food delivery transactions. The firm's investments in new initiatives  including ride-hailing and bike-sharing  took a toll as operating losses nearly tripled to 3.45 billion yuan compared to a year ago. Meituan shares plunged as much as 14 percent on Friday, the most since its spectacular listing. Just as so many electric bicycles from bike-sharing companies had piled up across China, so had electric scooters like the ones seen in the viral video. In sum, social media users falsely claimed that a video showed tons of lined-up electric scooter bikes that were abandoned in a "graveyard" due to the high cost of EV battery replacement. All evidence pointed to a simple answer: supply and demand. The number of electric scooter bikes and bicycles far outnumbered the number of people who requested to use them (or else they went missing or were stolen), which resulted in downsizing by some companies, and the closure of others.The clip appears to have been shot in China, although its precise location is unclear. far outnumbered went missing or were stolen We reached out to Meituan for comment on Nov. 29 but did not receive a response in time for publication. 25  2022 . ELDORADO, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gbI2Bo2xKCc. A Veces Hay Cosas Que Duelen y Desesperan. Lamenta, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmV5lBEYEMU. @Atomicfact. Twitter, 14 Aug. 2018, https://twitter.com/atomicfact/status/1029352130086424576. Baidu. https://map.baidu.com/. @BBC. "The Problem of China's Huge Bike Graveyards." Twitter, 20 May 2018, https://twitter.com/bbc/status/998231947359997952. @ElevaBrasilES. Twitter, 21 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/elevabrasiles/status/1594826198831570947. @evstevepan. "Share Electric Scooter in China #electricscooter #china #vlog." TikTok, 25 Sept. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@evstevepan/video/7147290373868506411. Freer. "Meituan Electric Shared Bikes on the Street." Shutterstock, 19 May 2020, https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/zhongshan-guangdong-chinamay-19-2020meituan-electric-1736816009. Google Images. https://images.google.com/. Google Translate. https://translate.google.com/. "Graveyard of the Bikes: Aerial Photos of China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme Show Mountains of Damaged Bikes." The Straits Times via AFP, 21 Apr. 2021, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/graveyard-of-the-bikes-chinas-failed-share-cycle-scheme-from-above. "Graveyard of the Bikes: China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme from Above." Techxplore.com via AFP, 21 Apr. 2021, https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-graveyard-bikes-china-share-cycle-scheme.html. @JamesMelville. Twitter, 29 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1597532727338639360. Liao, Rita. "Meituan, China's 'everything App,' Walks Away from Bike Sharing and Ride Hailing." TechCrunch, 23 Nov. 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/23/meituan-scale-back-ride-hailing-and-bike-sharing/. @mbrennanchina. Twitter, 4 Dec. 2018, https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina/status/1069940186786775042. @MillerForTexas. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/millerfortexas/status/1597346555111280640. No Place To PlaceThe Wonders of Shared Bicycle Graveyards in China. Guoyong Wu, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfLWFv3ixk. @PeterDClack. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/peterdclack/status/1597371847397761024. Russell, Jon. "Chinese Bike-Sharing Pioneer Mobike Sold to Ambitious Meituan Dianping for $2.7B." TechCrunch, 3 Apr. 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/chinese-bike-sharing-pioneer-mobike-sold-to-ambitious-meituan-dianping-for-2-7b/. Shared Electric Bikes Roll into Changsha in Central China. CGTN, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkSUN-FSuNI. Siqi, Ji. "Taxpayers Foot the Clean-up Bill for China's Bike-Sharing Bust." South China Morning Post, 2 Oct. 2020, https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3103908/what-happens-discarded-bikes-chinas-sharing-boom-taxpayers. Sprawling Bike Graveyard from China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme. AFP News Agency, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1Qxs_KOYo. TinEye Reverse Image Search. https://tineye.com/. u/silvertomars. "A Graveyard for Electric Scooters the Batteries Have Reached the End of Their Life-Time, but Are Too Expensive to Replace and Safely Disposing or Recycling the Batteries Is Also Too Expensive." r/Wallstreetsilver via Reddit.com, 28 Nov. 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/z7i7ng/a_graveyard_for_electric_scooters_the_batteries/. @vegastarr. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/vegastarr/status/1597338236472659968. @Xx17965797N.Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/xx17965797n/status/1597310309139873792. Yan, Alice. "Chinese Bike-Share Firm Closes after 90 per Cent of Cycles Stolen." South China Morning Post, 21 June 2017, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2099293/chinese-bike-share-firm-closes-after-90-cent-cycles-stolen. In 2014 and 2015, two people associated with an anti-abortion organization called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, posed as fetal researchers for a fake company called Biomax in order to gain entry to National Abortion Federation conventions. The pair's goal was to gather evidence that Planned Parenthood, and other abortion providers, were selling tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research. (Although it is unlawful to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration, it is legal for patients to donate extracted material for medical research, and for providers to receive reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue as part of the donation process.) The CMP subsequently posted videos online which they claimed documented Planned Parenthood officials offering to illegally sell fetal tissue for profit, while Planned Parenthood maintained the videos were deceptively edited and captured only discussion related to legal reimbursements for tissue donation procedures. videos sell fetal tissue A text meme circulated during the 2020 presidential campaign held that California Attorney General Kamala Harris (who by 2020 was a U.S. senator and a Democratic vice presidential candidate) had unfairly prosecuted the CMP "journalists," while taking no action against Planned Parenthood for "selling aborted baby parts":   That meme was both inaccurate and misleading. It is true that no charges were brought against Planned Parenthood in California  for the sound reason that Planned Parenthood was investigated by multiple states  but none of them found sufficient evidence to support a prosecution over claims that the organization had unlawfully sold (or offered to sell) human fetal tissue. As NPR reported, by the end of 2015, 12 different states had opened investigations into allegations that Planned Parenthood was "selling body parts," and none of them turned up evidence of wrongdoing by that organization. (Another eight states, including California, decided not to pursue similar investigations.) reported On the other hand, after Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked the district attorney in Harris County to open a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood in 2015, a grand jury there took no action against Planned Parenthood, but did find sufficient evidence to indict Daleiden and Merritt on felony charges (which were later dropped) of tampering with government records over their use of fake identification. indict In late 2019, a federal jury in San Francisco ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood in a civil lawsuit filed by that organization, rejecting arguments that Daleiden and Merritt were simply acting as investigative journalists, and ordering Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress, and others, to pay Planned Parenthood $2.3 million in damages for violating federal and state laws by trespassing on private property and secretly recording video of others without their consent. lawsuit In March 2017, Daleiden and Merritt were charged in California with 15 counts of violating state invasion of privacy laws that prohibit the recording of conversations without consent. A Superior Court judge dismissed some of those criminal charges, but another count was subsequently added in July, and several criminal counts remain current as of September 2020. added remain current Although then-Attorney General Harris was involved with the initial investigation of Daleiden and Merritt, she had left that office to take her seat in the U.S. Senate two months before charges were first brought against the pair by her successor, Xavier Becerra. Kurtzleben, Danielle.  "Planned Parenthood Investigations Find No Fetal Tissue Sales."
  NPR.  28 January 2016. The [Davis] Vanguard.  "Criminal Case against Anti-Abortion Activists David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt to Move Forward."
  31 July 2020. Egelko, Bob.  "Case To Go Forward Against Two Antiabortion Activists Who Recorded Conversations."
  San Francisco Chronicle.  29 July 2020. Egelko, Bob.  "California Files More Charges Against Antiabortion Activists."
  SFGate.  7 July 2017. Fernandez, Manny,  "Last Charges Dropped Against Abortion Foes in Making of Planned Parenthood Video."
  The New York Times.  26 July 2016. Williams, Juliet.  "Planned Parenthood Awarded $2.3 Million for Secret Videos."
  Associated Press.  15 November 2019. While the debate over the compromise tax agreement proposed by President Barack Obama has focused mostly on Bush's income tax cuts and whether they ought to be extended to wealthy Americans, the issue of estate taxes has also become a sticking point for some legislators.Under the plan, the estate tax rate would be set at 35 percent, with an effective exemption of $5 million.Many Republicans had hoped to do away with the estate tax altogether, and Democrats last year had proposed a higher rate: 45 percent on the value of estates over $3.5 million.The compromise has ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Jim DeMint, R.-S.C., for example, said he would not support the plan because he considered the estate tax compromise a tax increase. We ruled that claimBarely True.Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist, sent out amessage via Twitteron Dec. 13, 2010, saying that under the estate tax plan, 99.7% of American families will not pay 1 nickel in an estate tax. This is not a tax on the rich, this is a tax on the very, very, very rich.According to ananalysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Sanders is correct.The Tax Policy Center estimated that about 99.7 percent of estates were exempt from the estate tax in 2009 when the first $3.5 million of an estate was exempt. Even fewer people would be subject to the tax if the threshold is increased to $5 million, as proposed in the compromise tax plan.Under the compromise plan, less than 2/10 of 1 percent of estates would be subject to the estate tax next year, said Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center. That means more than 99.8 percent would be completely exempt.The Tax Policy Center estimates that about 3,600 estates would be subject to the tax under the $5 million threshold. Those 3,600 estates would have to pay an estimated $11.4 billion in estate taxes under the compromise tax plan.Estate tax rates have fluctuated through modern history. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed a plan to gradually reduce the estate tax from 55 percent to 45 percent, while at the same time increasing the exemption value from $1 million in 2002 to $3.5 million in 2009. The estate tax disappeared altogether in 2010.But the Bush plan only had a 10-year window because Republicans didn't have the votes at the time to permanently abolish the estate tax. It passed the Senate under budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes but which also limited it to a 10-year shelf life. Barring a new tax agreement, the rate was set to revert next year to a 55 percent rate with an effective exemption of $1 million.Last year, Democrats proposed a plan to permanently set the estate tax rate at 2009 levels -- 45 percent on the value of estates over $3.5 million. But the plan never reached a vote in the Senate. Had that plan gone through, the Tax Policy Center estimates it would have subjected 6,460 estates to a tax (bring in an estimated $18.2 billion). If no tax plan passes, and the rate goes back to 55 percent on the value of estates over $1 million, an 43,540 estates would have to pay (bringing in an estimated $34.4 billion next year).Sanders was correct that in 2009, when the effective exemption was $3.5 million, about 99.7 percent of all estates were exempt and didn't pay anything. The compromise plan -- which would set effective exemption at $5 million -- would push the number of exempted estates even higher, so that more than 99.8 percent of estates would not pay anything. We rate Sanders' comment True. 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. here In September 2020, social media users began circulating a text meme charting the decrease in abortion rates in the U.S. during previous presidential administrations, attributing the greater drop in those rates during Democratic administrations to a difference in approach (i.e., making it illegal vs. making it unnecessary):     As we noted in an earlier article on a similar topic, following the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that protected a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, the abortion rate rose immediately afterward until it peaked in the 1980s, and it has fairly consistently declined since that peak through presidential administrations of both parties: article Following nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, the total number, rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 1544 years), and ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) of reported abortions increased rapidly, reaching the highest levels in the 1980s before decreasing at a slow yet steady pace.     Although it is true that the abortion rate has experienced greater declines during Democratic administrations than Republican ones, we can't draw any definitive conclusion that, as the meme tries to suggest, this difference is primarily due to varying approaches by the two main political parties. The simple idea presented by the meme has a number of flaws, chief among them that political factors that might influence the abortion rate (e.g., policies, legislation, judicial appointments and rulings) do not neatly conform to presidential terms of office -- what takes place during one administration generally continues to have an effect throughout subsequent administrations. As well, events occurring at state and local levels (not necessarily directly tied to federal actions) can have a substantial impact on the availability and prevalence of abortions. More important, though, is that we cannot definitively determine to what extent political factors influence the abortion rate. As the Guttmacher Institute (a pro-abortion-rights research organization) observed, recent declines in the abortion rate appear to have been driven not primarily by abortion restrictions but by a broader decline in pregnancies: observed Abortion restrictions target either individuals ability to access the procedure (such as by imposing coercive waiting periods and counseling requirements) or providers ability to offer it (such as through unnecessary and intentionally burdensome regulations). Any one of these restrictions could result in some people being forced to continue pregnancies they were seeking to end; this could, in theory, lower the abortion rate. With the available evidence, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly which factors drove recent declines, and to what degree. However, previous Guttmacher analyses have documented that abortion restrictions, while incredibly harmful at an individual level, were not the main driver of national declines in the abortion rate ... Rather, the decline in abortions appears to be part of a broader decline in pregnancies, as evidenced by fewer births over the same period. What's driving that decline in pregnancies, then? We don't know that for sure, either, but likely a combination of social, cultural, economic, medical, and political factors: combination Experts say the decline isnt due to a single cause, but rather a combination of several factors, including changing economics, delays in childbirth by women pursuing jobs and education, the greater availability of contraception, and a decline in teen pregnancies. The trend seen in the United States is also seen in much of the developed world, including Western Europe, said Dr. John Rowe, a professor at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health. One important factor driving this is the changing roles of women in society, Rowe said. In general women are getting married later in life, he explained. They are leaving the home and launching their families later. [Dr. Helen Kim, an associate professor at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine] said the concept of the ideal family size may be changing. There are shifts where having smaller families is a trend, she added. I cant speak on this as a sociologist, but this is what Ive seen among my peers and colleagues. One of the biggest factors is the decline in teen pregnancies, Rowe said. Thats good news ... And that makes a huge difference to their lives. The Guttmacher Institute posited a similar mix of factors to explain the decline in the abortion rate: Because both abortions and births [have] declined, it is clear that there were fewer pregnancies overall in the United States ... The big question is why. One possible contributing factor is contraceptive access and use. Since 2011, contraception has become more accessible, as most private health insurance plans are now required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to cover contraceptives without out-of-pocket costs. In addition, thanks to expansions in Medicaid and private insurance coverage under the ACA, the proportion of women aged 1544 nationwide who were uninsured dropped more than 40% between 2013 and 2017. There is evidence that use of long-acting reversible contraceptive methods -- specifically IUDs and implants -- increased through at least 2014, especially among women in their early 20s, a population that accounts for a significant proportion of all abortions Another possible contributing factor might be a decline in sexual activity. Findings from one national survey suggest a long-term increase in the number of people in the United States -- mostly younger men -- reporting not having sex in the past year. Yet another possibility is that infertility is increasing in the United States, thereby reducing the chances of getting pregnant and subsequently seeking to obtain an abortion. More generally, there are a host of other potential factors that could be driving declines in pregnancy rates, from individuals evolving desires about whether and when to become parents to peoples changing economic and social circumstances. Finally, it is possible that ... there could have been an increase in self-managed abortions happening outside of medical facilities, which the census would be unable to capture. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also offered a combination of potential explanations for lower abortion rates: combination Multiple factors influence the incidence of abortion including the availability of abortion providers; state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement laws, and legal restrictions on abortion providers; increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing; shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health care services, including contraception. As we stated four years ago, "causation between the presidency and abortion rates [is] difficult to demonstrate in any case, because it is hard to draw a straight line between federal government policy (let alone presidential policy) and abortion procurement." That observation remains true today. Carroll, Linda and Shamard Charles, M.D.  "Americans Aren't Making Enough Babies to Replace Ourselves."
  NBC News.  13 January 2019. Nash, Elizabeth and Joerg Dreweke.  "The U.S. Abortion Rate Continues to Drop: Once Again, State Abortion Restrictions Are Not the Main Driver."
  Guttmacher Institute.  18 September 2019. Kasprak, Alex.  "Abortion Rates Fall During Democratic Administrations and Rise During Republican Ones."
  Snopes.com.  11 November 2016.