Austin Energy is considering its first rate increase since 1994.
Answering a question for the May 1Voters Guidefrom the League of Women Voters of the Austin Area, City Council hopeful Kathie Tovo made us check our pocketbooks. Tovo said: Austin Energy, the citys electric utility,  is considering its first rate increase since 1994.We wondered about that, since our first thought was that surely electric bills went up during that time. Tovos campaign manager, Mark Yznaga, told us Tovo was referring to the utilitys base charge for electricity. News reports and posts on Austin Energys website show hearings are expected to culminate in the City Council considering a rate bump as soon as later this year.The utility says in aJanuary Austin Energy Rate Review newsletterthat since 1994, its added more than 100,000 customers, experienced big increases in the cost of materials and services and added business functions while expanding others such as energy efficiency and solar rebate programs. At the same time, the article says growth in Austin Energy electric sales has trended downward of late, requiring the utility to dip into its reserves for operations.Echoing the newsletter article, Austin Energy spokesman Ed Clark told us the base electric rate, covering the costs of staff, the electric system, power plants, vehicles and the like, has not changed since 1994. Its 3.55 cents for each of the first 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity used and 7.82 cents for each additional kilowatt-hour. Clark said customers also pay an unchanged $6 monthly service charge,Yet that doesnt mean theyve paid the same amount for electricity every year.Their bills include such variables as a fee for statewide transmission costs added by the Texas Public Utility Commission in November plus a fluctuating fee tied to ups and downs in fuel costs. At our request, Clark told us what an average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month would have been billed each August from 1994 through 2011. For the period, we calculate, the fuel charge averaged 2.322 cents per kilowatt-hour, though its exceeded that every year from 2004 on.In 1994, the bill for 1,000 kilowatt-hours would have been $79.14. In 2010, the bill for using that much electricity was $100.20 -- an increase of 27 percent. In August 2011, the same usage would be billed $94.72, due to a drop in the fuel charge. Put another way, the 2011 charge looks to be 20 percent more than what it cost a customer using the same amount of electricity in 1994.A-ha! Is it really fair to say Austin Energys rates have not increased since 1994?Well, we realized, our comparison failed to consider inflation over the years. According to our check using theConsumer Price Index inflation calculatorposted online by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2011 bill actually ends up about $15 less than the comparable 1994 bill. When we ran this by Austin economist Stuart Greenfield, he pointed out that according to a finer inflation adjustment tied to household energy prices, the average August 2010 bill was about $33 less than what it was in 1994.At a glance, still, Tovos statement could leave the misimpression that utility customers havent had to dig out more dollars for electricity since 1994. They have. We rate the statement Mostly True.
Tales about animals exhibiting human (or human-like) behavior have long been the subject of myths and legends, and one form of this narrative especially resonates with modern readers: the notion that an animal would  like most human mothers  knowingly and willingly sacrifice her own life to protect her children.  Many animals will of course engage in defensive posturing and even aggressively attack a much larger predator in order to defend their broods.  But we seem especially drawn to accounts (such as this one) that posit a mother animal's going beyond mere instinctive reaction and reasoning out (and then engaging upon) a course of action she knows will spell her end but will preserve the lives of her offspring. this one One example of this type of narrative is the following account, which holds that a mother deer (actually an impala) deliberately allowed herself to be caught by cheetahs in order to allow her two fawns a chance to escape a similar fate:  The image seen here is one of a series of pictures (titled "The Stranglehold") taken by photographer Alison Buttigieg in Kenya in 2013, documenting the capture of an impala by a group of cheetahs.  But as Alison explained in her backstory to the set of photographs, what she captured on camera was not a mother impala's sacrificing herself to protect her offspring.  In fact, the real story was nearly the inverse of that concept -- these photographs show a mother cheetah attempting to teach her cubs how to kill prey, then eventually dispatching a captured impala when her inexperienced cubs proved they weren't yet up to the task of strangling it themselves: explained I witnessed this Cheetah kill in September 2013 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.  Narasha, the cheetah mom, was teaching her youngsters how to kill prey.  However they were a bit slow on the uptake and they were playing with the hapless Impala prey instead of killing it. Narasha, the cheetah mom is the one that is grabbing the impala by the neck in all the photos.   The youngsters practice some skills like pouncing and tripping which they get right, but they cannot seem to be able to get how to strangle the impala effectively. What is out of the ordinary in this sequence of photos is how calm the impala is throughout its ordeal.  It is probably in shock and thus paralysed with fear.  It is disturbing how it seems to be posing in some photos, especially in the 6th one as if determined to stay beautiful and proud until its very end.  The defiance in its eyes are in stark contrast with its lack of interest in self-preservation.  This allowed me to get unique pictures of a kill that are seemingly choreographed in their grace.  I wanted the viewer to sympathize with the impala, and at the same time witness with me the disturbing nature of this unusual kill. In the end, after what seemed like an interminable eternity (but it was just a few minutes), the cheetah mom put the impala out of its misery, and the cats got to enjoy a nice meal. As Alison noted, it's unusual "how calm the impala is throughout its ordeal," as well as how the doomed animal exhibited a seeming "lack of interest in self-preservation," but those behaviors had nothing to do with an effort on the part of the impala to allow her fawns a chance to escape a similar fate. Other versions of this tale maintain that Ms. Buttigieg "fell into depression" after snapping the photograph, a claim she refuted in a statement to DNA (India), as well as in her own Facebook post: statement "It is not true that I suffered from depression  it was just lies so that some people get more likes on their page. People steal photos all the time to get attention, but this was very rude and hurtful."  In fact when asked about if she knew her image for which she won accolades and even awards had become viral she replied, "Yes I know.  Hundreds of people are sending me messages about my fake depression and why I didn't save the deer.  Its been horrible. I have no idea who started this,  I wish I knew," said Buttigieg who is Maltese wildlife photographer residing in Finland. AsiaOne.  "Story of Antelope Sacrificing Its Life Is Untrue, Says Photographer."
  15 February 2017. Buttigieg, Alison.  "Cheetah Kill."
  Alison Buttigieg Wildlife Photography.  9 November 2013. Singh, Virat A.  "The Real Story Behind the Viral Photo of Cheetahs Preying on an Impala."
  DNA.   13 February 2017. If theres one issue that binds Republicans, its a preference for low taxes. So its no surprise that in the first debate of the 2012 presidential campaign -- held May 5, 2011, in Greenville, S.C. -- the topic came up.At one point, Fox News commentator Juan Williams asked Gary Johnson -- the former Republican governor of New Mexico and a strong libertarian -- about corporate taxation.Gov. Johnson, Williams said, the nation's unemployment rate is 8.8 percent and this week, jobless claims rose to their highest level in eight months. Among your proposals for getting the private sector to start hiring are eliminating corporate income tax, doing away with the federal minimum wage law and to stop extending unemployment benefits. Isn't that just a windfall for big business?Johnson responded, Well, absolutely not. I think that repealing, or doing away with the corporate income tax is simply getting us back to where we were. And we need to understand that the corporate income tax is a double tax -- that we all own the corporations, and when income gets distributed to us, we pay the tax on that. So, we have the highest corporate income tax in the world right now. Let's abolish it.We have looked at the question of whether the United States has the highest corporate income tax in the world inpreviousitems, so we thought wed revisit it now.There are two primary ways to compare corporate tax burdens. One is to compare statutory corporate tax rate -- the rate thats actually on the books.The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of more than two-dozen large, industrialized democracies, publishes the rates of its member countries. The most recent data shows Japan on top at39.54 percent, vs. 39.21 percentfor the United States. Japan had been scheduled to cut its corporate tax rate to a level below the United States, but the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that crippled portions of the country earlier this yearhas left thatin doubt.The other way to look at it is to gauge what firms actually pay, once exclusions and other adjustments are taken into account. This is called the effective tax rate.The World Bank hasassembled datafrom 183 nations and made a series of statistical adjustments to produce a full international comparison of effective tax rates. By this measurement, the U.S. rate is considerably lower than the published rate -- 27.6 percent. But in a comparative sense, that's still pretty high: Among larger international economies, only Japan, New Zealand and Thailand imposed a higher effective rate, according to the World Bank study.The World Bank also produces another -- and broader -- statistic. It factors in not only the corporate profit tax but also a range of other taxes paid by businesses, including the cost of employee taxes borne by the employer. When the World Bank ranked countries from the lowest level of taxes to the highest, the U.S. ranked 124th out of 183 -- meaning corporate taxes were relatively high. A number of other large and/or democratic countries were higher, including Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Spain and Sweden.This last measure provides a wider snapshot of U.S. tax policy toward businesses, but it also introduces some complications. Factoring in the employer-paid portion of labor taxes makes the corporate tax rate seem higher in countries that provide higher benefits such as pensions or health care through business taxes, while making the rate seem lower for countries that provide less generous benefits through the tax code. So making apples-to-apples comparisons can be tricky.There's also broader context that Johnson doesn't get into.In a previous item, we noted that when all taxes, including those such as personal income taxes and property taxes -- not just corporate taxes -- are taken into account and compared to gross domestic product, the U.S. doesn't rank near the top of the OECD table in total tax burden.Still, Johnsons claim was more limited, addressing only corporate taxation.To be more accurate, Johnson should have said the United States has the highest corporate tax rate rather than the highest corporate taxes. By using the term corporate taxes, Johnson opens the door to the broader World Bank figure, which would put a number of other major countries above the U.S. in the rankings.That way of looking at it would undercut Johnsons argument. On the other hand, he is close to correct when using the two more common benchmarks -- statutory tax rates (in which the U.S. trails only Japan, for now) and effective rates (where the U.S. trails only Japan, New Zealand and Thailand). On balance, we rate Johnsons statement Mostly True. Extolling thehealth care act that Republicans briefly advocatedas an improvement on the Obamacare law, Sen. John Cornyn singled out how much Medicaid costs Texas state government. In March 9, 2017, Senate floor remarks brought to our attention by a reader, the Texas Republican prefaced his claim by saying state and federal governments spend an awful lot of money on Medicaid, the federal-state entitlement program providing health coverage to the poor, especially mothers, children and the disabled, which was launched by Congress in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society. Cornyn went on: In Texas, for example, my state spent close to a third of its budget on Medicaid last year, a third of all state spending. We emailed Cornyns office to request his backup, then turned to the authoritative May 2016Fiscal Size-up reportfrom the Legislative Budget Board, which advises state legislators on spending matters. That report, Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie shortly advised by email, was the basis of Cornyns claim along with other published accounts of Medicaids share of the two-year budget approved by the 2015 Legislature. According to the report, the 2016-17 Texas budget devoted $61.2 billion in funds from all sources, including state and federal aid, to Medicaid, which lately has had a monthly caseload of 4.1 million residents, up from about 2.1 million in 2002, according to a 2017LBB presentation--and that amount over the two years running through August 2017 accounted for 29.3 percent of $209.1 billion in All Funds appropriations. Federal funds drive Medicaid budgets because by law, the federal share of a states Medicaid expenditures cant be less than 50 percent though the share is refined for each state using a formula comparing the states average per capita income to the national average. In Texas in fiscal 2016, the federal share broke out to about 57 percent,according tothe Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Also, each Texas dollar spent on Medicaid that year was matched by $1.33 in federal aid, the foundation says. We noticed another way to frame the issue in that Cornyn referred to Medicaid accounting for one third of all state spending in 2016. Thats not correct. According to the Fiscal Size-up, the 2016-17 budget allocated $25.2 billion in state general revenue and GR from dedicated accounts  meaning state funds  to Medicaid. Those billions, we calculated, amounted to 22.1 percent of nearly $114 billion in total GR and GR-D spending in the two-year budget. Separately, we asked the Texas Health and Human Services Commission how much Medicaid absorbs in money budgeted by lawmakers. By email, Christine Mann shared an agency chart showing the escalating share of Medicaid spending in the budget, considering both state and federal aid, from fiscal 2000 through fiscal 2015. Medicaid absorbed about 20 percent of budgeted state and federal funds in 2000, the chart indicate, but its accounted for 25 percent or more of the All Funds budget since 2010. Spending decisions remain Mann also pointed out that exactly how much legislators commit to Medicaid for the budget that runs through August 2017 will depend on actions during the session that ends May 29. As of mid-March 2017, Mann said commission staff expected Medicaid spending to be around $63 billion in state and federal funds. Traditionally, lawmakers adjust for increases in Medicaid caseloads and costs that build up between sessions by signing off on short-term supplemental appropriations. A March 2017LBB documentsummarizes a version of House Bill 2, which proposes additional spending through August 2017. From figures in the document, we calculated that lawmakers could end up authorizing $63.8 billion in spending, both state and federal, on Medicaid, through the 2016-17 biennium; barring changes, that would break out to 29.8 percent of the states total budgeted spending of $214.3 billion. We also sought insight from Oliver Bernstein of the budget-savvy liberal-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities. Bernstein emailed us slightly different figures for whats likely to be spent on Medicaid through August 2017. He otherwise suggested by email that Medicaids heightened share of total spending traces in part to cuts in state support for public schools and institutions of higher education; when other big items get whittled, Medicaids budgetary significance grows. Our ruling Cornyn said Texas spent close to a third of its budget on Medicaid last year, a third of all state spending. Nearly 30 percent of state plus federal aid in the 2016-17 Texas budget went to Medicaid. About 22 percent of state funds alone was appropriated for Medicaid. We rate this claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. During aninterviewwithFox & Friends, Ivanka Trumpdiscussedone of the challenges of the current economy -- that job vacancies exist, but many people who arent working arent qualified to fill them. Her comments came during a week that the White House had devoted to messages about the American workforce. There are currently 6 million jobs available in this country that are due in part to the skills gap, she said. When we took a closer look, we found that Trump was generally on target, but that the impact of the skills gap -- the fact that many potential workers dont have the right qualifications to take jobs that are currently open -- is worth some explanation. On the numerical side, Trump was spot-on. Every month, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data from a survey called theJob Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS. One of the key statistics in the survey is job openings nationally. In the most recent month for which data is available -- April 2017 -- the survey found 6,044,000 job openings across the country. That represents the first time this statistic has ever crossed the 6 million line, going back to the earliest data reported in 2000. Since a measure of the raw number of job openings is affected by overall population growth over time, well also note that the rate of job openings -- which is adjusted for the size of the U.S. population -- also tied a record in April, reaching a level equaled only in two previous months going back to 2000. So Trump has accurately portrayed the scale of how many jobs are available today in the United States. Trump used cautious wording; Economists agree that a mismatch of skills is clearly a part of the problem, as she put it. That said, they cautioned against making the oversimplified argument that the skills gap underlies all 6 million job openings. On the one hand, some of the current job vacancies are unquestionably due to the skills gap, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. If job-seeking jobless workers and promotion-seeking but under-employed workers had exactly the right skills, many of the current job vacancies could be filled faster. At the same time, for many job openings, the barrier isnt necessarily the lack of a college degree or specialized training, he said. In many cases, the barrier can be overcome with on-the-job training and experience. There are many job openings with more modest skill requirements, Burtless said. They require the new hire to learn some extra skills to become more proficient and productive in their new jobs. A large percentage of job seekers have the capacity to learn those skills on the job pretty quickly. He added that employers who think every job opening can be filled immediately and with a perfectly trained worker are either living in a dream world or living through a Great Depression in which millions of highly trained workers are desperately seeking a job. The reality, he said, is that for most current job vacancies, the skill set of todays job seekers is sufficient to fill the great majority of the vacancies. Another economist, Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute, hastestifiedthat for many manufacturing jobs, a drag on hiring comes not only from a skills gap but also an image gap. Millennials in particular, she said, may have a tainted image of what high-tech manufacturing jobs look like today, assuming instead that they are like such jobs decades ago -- dirty, grimy, repetitive or dangerous. Survey data shows that many workers are no longer interested in manufacturing jobs and there appears to be a stigma attached to manufacturing work, she wrote. Few parents want their children to work in this industry, and manufacturing is the last career choice for people between the ages of 19 and 33. In an interview, Mathur said its difficult to tease out how much of a factor the skills gap is in todays job openings. She suggested that it may be the biggest factor -- but she also cautioned that the image gap is particularly significant for younger workers and added that other issues exist as well, including an unwillingness among some Americans to relocate to areas with jobs. And of course, even in an efficiently humming economy, any survey taken at a given point in time will find many jobs that are simply open due to transition, or what economists call churn. Many of these job openings will be due to happenstance rather than structural problems with the skills gap. Trump said, There are currently 6 million jobs available in this country that are due in part to the skills gap. The number she cites is correct, and shes right to say that the skills gap plays a role. Economists warn against overestimating the role played by the skills gap in all 6 million job openings, both because other factors play a role (such as the image gap) and because the skills barriers posed are often more modest than having to earn an academic degree or to obtain specialized training. We rate her statement True. First introduced in Congress in 2001 and last revisited in 2017, the so-called DREAM Act (which stands for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) was aimed at providing a path to permanent residency in the United States for children of undocumented immigrants. Every attempt to pass the legislation has failed to date, as politicians continue to kick the can down the road to the next administration. DREAM Act However, in June 2012, the DREAM Act begat DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), an executive action signed by President Obama that allowed qualified undocumented minors to apply for work permits and protection from deportation. To be eligible, applicants had to be under the age of 31, must have arrived in the U.S. before turning 16, lived in the country continuously since 2007, be enrolled in school or possess the equivalent of a high school diploma, and never been convicted of a serious crime. DACA By the time the Trump administration rescinded the program in September 2017 (on the spurious grounds that it was an abuse of executive power), an estimated 800,000 people  most of them under the age of 25  had applied for DACA protection. In honor of the ill-fated DREAM Act, and to reflect that they have a dream of someday becoming citizens, they have come to be known as "Dreamers." rescinded 800,000 With DACA gone, the Dreamers' future once again rests with Congress. Members of both parties have vowed to pass legislation granting them protections comparable to DACA's, an idea supported by the majority of the American people. Even President Trump backs the effort, having suggested to the New York Times that Dreamers be given a path to citizenship: supported suggested Over a period of 10 to 12 years, somebody does a great job, they work hard, that gives incentive to do a great job. Whatever they're doing, if they do a great job, I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive of, after a period of years, being able to become a citizen.  A vocal minority opposes that idea, however, and some of its detractors have taken to social media to spread anti-Dreamer (and other anti-immigrant) propaganda. One example making the rounds on Facebook consists of a list of so-called "fun facts" intended to persuade readers that Dreamers are bad people and any government efforts to help them amount to a "scam":   These two groups differ not only in size, but also in attributes such as how well educated their members are and how many have criminal records. This is because DACA imposed strict requirements in those areas. For purposes of this fact check, we're defining "Dreamers" as those who actually enrolled in the DACA program between 2012 and 2017. We've chosen this route for two reasons: one, it has been, to date, the working definition used by major news and polling organizations such as the New York Times, Associated Press, and the Pew Research Center; and two, in the single instance where we determined that the "Dreamers fun facts" meme reported a statistic accurately (the military participation of Dreamers), it pertained (and only makes sense if it pertains) to the group of actual DACA enrollees, not the larger DACA-eligible group. (Barring a change in regulations, non-DACA undocumented immigrants cannot enlist in the military.) Associated Press CLAIM: "792,000 Dreamers (88 percent) are over 25 years old." STATUS: False. Only about 280,000 (35 percent) of the 800,000 Dreamers who were active DACA recipients as of September 2017 were over 25 years old. None are older than 36 because of the age-of-entry requirements imposed by DACA. The average age of Dreamers is 24. [Source: Pew Research Center] Pew Research Center CLAIM: "900 Dreamers (less than 1 percent) serve in our military." STATUS: True.  Generally speaking, undocumented immigrants aren't allowed to join the U.S. military, so this statistic can only apply to DACA enrollees, who were granted special permission to enlist in 2014. granted As of September 2017, there were close to 900 Dreamers serving in the military thanks to that program, according to the Pentagon. That is less than .1 percent of all DACA recipients. For comparison, according to a USA Today report .4 percent of the general population currently serves in the military. [Sources: USA Today; Pew Research Center] USA Today Pew Research Center CLAIM: "743,000 Dreamers (83 percent) do not have a college degree." STATUS: False. In a 2017 survey of approximately 3,000 Dreamers, the portion of those aged 25 or older who said they hold a four-year college degree (or higher) was close to 35 percent. That means 65 percent (approximately 520,000) do not yet have a college degree. Comparing that to the larger U.S. population, 2015 census figures say that roughly 32 percent of Americans 25 or older have a least a four-year college degree (meaning 68 percent do not). [Sources: T. Wong DACA Survey; U.S. Census Bureau] survey T. Wong DACA Survey U.S. Census Bureau CLAIM: "189,000 Dreamers dropped out of high school early (That is roughly 21 percent)." STATUS: False. The only statistic we were able to find comparable to this applied not to Dreamers, but to the larger population of potentially DACA-eligible immigrants. According to a 2014 study, roughly 20 percent of those aged 19 or older had not completed high school or the equivalent (as compared to a 5.9 percent high school dropout rate for the entire U.S. population). We found no such statistic for DACA enrollees, who in any case would have been required under government guidelines to be "currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States." [Sources: Migration Policy Institute; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; National Center for Education Statistics] Migration Policy Institute U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services National Center for Education Statistics CLAIM: "9,000 Dreamers (1 percent) are incarcerated." STATUS: False We were unable to find any sources documenting the claim that 9,000 Dreamers are (or were) incarcerated. It may be that the 1 percent figure was loosely derived from a Cato Institute policy brief which said that the incarceration rate among the 1.1 to 1.9 million immigrants who were otherwise DACA-eligible in 2015 was .98 percent. (What's most interesting about that figure is that it's actually a lower incarceration rate than that of the native-born population, according to the Cato Institute). brief The closest comparable statistic we found for actual DACA enrollees came from an accounting by USCIS of the number of those whose "deferred action" status was terminated between 2012 and 2017 due to criminal convictions or arrests: 2,030 (or approximately .25 percent of the entire Dreamer population). [Sources: Cato Institute; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] Cato Institute CLAIM: "657,000 Dreamers (73 percent) receive some form of welfare." STATUS: False. By law, undocumented immigrants (including DACA recipients) are not eligible for means-tested welfare benefits such as cash assistance, food stamps, or Medicaid. Under a provision of DACA, enrollees who reached retirement age after having worked and paid taxes in the United States for at least 10 years could have qualified for Social Security and Medicare benefits. [Source: National Immigration Law Center] law National Immigration Law Center It is important in policymaking matters to carefully weigh the facts and how populations will be affected. One can only hope that those same legislators do not govern by meme. Bier, David. "Five Myths About DACA."
The Washington Post. 7 September 2017. Broder, Tanya, Moussavian, Avideh, and Blazer Jonathan. "Overview of Immigrant Eligibility for Federal Programs."
National Immigration Law Center. December 2015. Chishti, Muzaffar and Bolter, Jessica. "Trump Administration Rescinds DACA, Fueling Renewed Push in Congress and the Courts to Protect Dreamers."
 Migration Policy Institute. 15 September 2017. Dickerson, Caitlin. "What Is DACA? Who Are the Dreamers? Here Are the Basics."
The New York Times. 23 January 2018. Gonzalez, Roberto, et al. "Taking Giant Leaps Forward."
Center for American Progress. 22 June 2017. Greenwood, Max. "Poll: Nearly 9 in 10 Want DACA Recipients to Stay in U.S."
The Hill. 18 January 2018. Haberman, Maggie, Rogers, Katie, and Shear, Michael. "Trump Says He Is Open to a Path to Citizenship for 'Dreamers.'"
The New York Times. 24 January 2018. Horton, Alex. "The Military Looked to 'Dreamers' to Use Their Vital Skills. Now the U.S. Might Deport Them."
The Washington Post. 7 September 2017. Kessler, Glenn. "The Debate Over DACA: A Guide to the Numbers Used by Politicians."
The Washington Post. 23 January 2018. Korte, Gregory, Gomez, Alan, and Johnson, Kevin. "Trump Administration Struggles With Fate of 900 Dreamers Serving in the Military."
USA Today. 7 September 2017. Krogstad, Jens Manuel. "DACA Has Shielded Nearly 790,000 Young Unauthorized Immigrants From Deportation."
Pew Research Center. 1 September 2017. Landgrave, Michelangelo and Nowraster, Alex. "The Dreamer Incarceration Rate."
Cato Institute. 30 August 2017. Lopez, Gustavo and Krogstad, Jens Manuel. "Key Facts About Unauthorized Immigrants Enrolled in DACA."
Pew Research Center. 25 September 2017. McHugh, Margie. "Diploma, Please: Promoting Educational Attainment for DACA- and Potential DREAM Act-Eligible Youth."
Migration Policy Institute. September 2014. Ryan, Camille L. and Bauman, Kurt. "Educational Attainment in the United States: 2015."
U.S. Census Bureau. March 2016. Siskin, Alison. "Noncitizen Eligibility for Federal Public Assistance: An Overview."
Congressional Research Service. 12 December 2016. Wong, Tom K. "New Study of DACA Beneficiaries Shows Positive Economic and Educational Outcomes."
Center for American Progress. 18 October 2016. Wong, Tom K., et al. "DACA Recipients' Economic and Educational Gains Continue to Grow."
Center for American Progress. 28 August 2017. Zong, Jie, et al. "A Profile of Current DACA Recipients by Education, Industry, and Occupation."
Migration Policy Institute. November 2017. National Center for Education Statistics. "Dropout Rates."
Accessed 25 January 2018. National Immigration Law Center. "DACA and DAPA Access to Federal Health and Economic Support Programs."
30 January 2015. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. "DACA Terminations Related to Criminal and Gang Activity by Fiscal Year."
2017. As is the case for many Western democracies, the Canadian government's formal efforts to help refugees settle in the country have been the subject of much speculation, criticism and misinformation in recent years. In the fall of 2017, a viral Facebook post spread yet more misinformation about the benefits received by refugees in Canada.  On 1 September 2017, Facebook user Mike Marcoux posted what appears to be a photograph of an itemized breakdown of benefits associated with the Resettlement Assistance Program, along with the message: "This is what 1 illegal refugee gets with the federal assistance program $3874 per month." posted We have modified the image to obscure the name of the recipient, which was included in the original photograph:   Although this document appears to be authentic, according to the Canadian Council for Refugees, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for refugees, its representation on Facebook was highly misleading: The document details payments to a family of five (not a single person) who were refugees accepted by Canada (and therefore are not in the country "illegally"), and most of the listed payments are one-time only resettlement assistance payments and not monthly benefits. A spokesperson for the Council told us the document showed "a start up breakdown of costs for a newly arrived Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) family" and that the amounts shown were consistent with benefit rates in the province of British Columbia. Despite the apparent authenticity of the document, Marcoux's post grossly misrepresents the contents. Firstly, contrary to Mike Marcoux's post, there is no such thing as an "illegal" refugee in this context. By definition, beneficiaries of the Canadian government's Resettlement Assistance Program are individuals and families formally recognized by the Canadian government as refugees before they travel to Canada. According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, Government-Assisted Refugees such as those to whom this document appears to relate are "referred by the [U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees] to Canada because they have been identified as being in need of resettlement." recognized refugees Secondly, the document does not relate to one refugee, as the Facebook post falsely claims. The document clearly shows that these benefits are for a family of five people:   Third, the grand total value of the benefits ($3,874 CAD or $2,748 USD as of 28 January 2016) is not a recurring monthly payment, as the Facebook post falsely claims. The document clearly shows that the majority of benefits listed are one-off "start-up" benefits. The only regular monthly benefits are conveniently labelled "Regular Monthly Benefits," and consist of payments for food, rent and transportation, which, because of the size of the family, total $1,399 CAD per month ($1,094 USD as of 15 November 2017). These monthly benefits work out to $16,788 CAD ($13,132 USD) a year for a family of five (in addition to "start-up" benefits). Unless there are exceptional circumstances, these Resettlement Assistance Program benefits are only payable to refugees for one year. The amounts of benefits depend on the size of the family that receives them. If this document did relate to a single individual (as the Facebook post claims), the overall monthly payments could be expected to be significantly lower. The one-off start-up benefits which bring the total in this particular document to $3,874 also include a $375 loan for a security deposit for housing. Being a loan, that amount will have to be repaid to the federal government. Furthermore, depending on when this particular family arrived in Canada, they may be required to pay the Canadian government for the cost of their transportation into the country, which takes the form of loan debt. According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, the average loan debt between 2008 and 2012 was $3,090 CAD. transportation loan debt So while the document in the photograph does appear to be authentic, Mike Marcoux's Facebook post constitutes a gross misrepresentation of what's actually in it. The same document formed the basis of a similarly-outraged post on the right-wing blog "90 Miles from Tyranny" in December 2016. That blog post cited an earlier article by the now-defunct Magafeed web site, which is listed in the Fake News Codex as a "clickbait site with misleading, poorly [sourced], and outright false stories." post Codex It's hardly the first time that Canada's refugee policy has been the subject of false claims. For example, a factual error in a 2004 letter to the editor of the Toronto Star spawned a chain email and online memes falsely claiming that refugees in Canada receive more benefits each month than do Canadian pensioners. The rumor persisted for years. Toronto Star falsely Similar false rumors have been spread in the country's southern neighbor, the United States, often with the headline "INSANITY IS WHEN ILLEGAL REFUGEES GET $3,874 A MONTH IN FEDERAL ASSISTANCE WHILE SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS AVERAGE $1,200 A MONTH." false rumors English, Kathy.  "A Mistake That Travelled Around the World and Back Again: Public Editor."
  Toronto Star.  11 December 2015. Canadian Council for Refugees.  "Refugees and Income Assistance - Rebutting the Chain Email ("Pensioners' Myth.")
   Canadian Council for Refugees.  July 2013.  Citizenship and Immigration Canada.  "IP 3: In Canada Processing of Convention Refugees Abroad and Members of the Humanitarian Protected Persons Abroad Classes - Part 2 [Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP.)]
  Government of Canada.  13 January 2015. Stephen Colbert has intervieweda slew ofpresidential candidates in the first weeks of his new job hosting CBSThe Late Show, including Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. His time with Cruz on Sept. 21 stood out for a fact-filled back and forth about a major Republican role model, President Ronald Reagan. Colbert asked Cruz if he could agree with Reagans support of amnesty for undocumented immigrants and record of raising taxes amid budget shortfalls. Cruz said of course not before pivoting to Reagans most conservative accomplishments, one being that he signed the largest tax cut in history and spurred economic growth. You know, when Reagan came in, from 1978 to 1982, economic growth averaged less than 1 percent a year. Theres only one other four-year period where thats true. Thats true from 2008 to 2012, Cruz said. Colbert jumped in, saying But when conditions changed in the country, he reversed his worlds largest tax cut and raised taxes when revenues did not match the expectations. So its a matter of compromising. PolitiFact explored Cruzs point about economic growth inanother fact-check. We wondered if Colberts retort was on the money or overstated. (Its our first fact-check ofColbertin his new role  and the first one in five years, period.) Did Reagan really shift course on tax cuts when the growth stopped? A CBS press contact did not return an email for comment. Reagans tax cut As Cruz said, the Gipper really did cut taxes  with the help of Congress  in his first year as president. The largest tax cut in history that Cruz mentioned is in reference to the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, a $38 billion phased-in cut ($99 billion in 2015 dollars). Put in the way that economists prefer to discuss tax cuts, it represented 1.91 percent of the countrys gross domestic product. This law included across-the-board cuts of about 30 percent to statutory income tax rates. As Colbert said, Reagan raised taxes, too. Two laws, one in 1982 and another in 1984, were especially dramatic. These laws generally raised taxes by removing tax loopholes, not by raising the tax rate, said Dean Baker, a liberal economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Still, Baker said, the loopholes were big ones. Reagans tax increases 1982:The most significant tax increase Reagan signed was also the first. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (yes, another law with a very sexy name) increased taxes by almost 1 percent of GDP. The 1982 tax increase was probably the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, said economist Bruce Bartlett, who advised Reagan on domestic policy and then worked as Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the George H.W. Bush administration. (An analysis by Jerry Tempalski, an analyst in the Office of Tax Analysis with the U.S. Department of the Treasury,agrees.) This law was driven by pressure to attack the federal budget deficit, as well as the impression that Reagans tax-cutting was partially responsible for lower-than-expected tax revenues. Bartlett, who reviewed Reagans tax record forTax Notesin 2011, cited aTreasury estimatethat the 1982 law raised taxes by almost 1 percent of GDP, or about $150 billion in modern dollars. Specifically, it rolled back some but not all of the 1981 tax cut for writing off equipment, and it repealed 1981 safe harbor leasing provisions, said Stephen J. Entin, senior fellow at the Tax Foundation and former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Reagan administration. 1983:A law Reagan signed in 1983 aimed to keep Social Security afloat by increasing payroll taxes and taxing Social Security benefits for some high-earners. This cost $24.6 billion, or almost $50 billion in 2015 dollars, through 1988, according to an administrationestimate. 1984:The Deficit Reduction Act that Reagan signed rolled back part of the 1981 cut on buildings, Entin said, with the idea that Congress would enact spending cuts. But many of those cuts were either never enacted or were later restored, Entin said. This led to $25 billion in tax receipts. Reagan also signed tax increases in 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988 (as well as a couple other laws with revenue reductions). So where does that leave Reagans tax record on the whole? Its mixed. On one hand, revenues were lower as ashare of GDPin his last year in office (17.6 percent of GDP in 1988) compared to the year before he took office (18.5 percent of GDP in 1980), according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. However, the thrust of the 1981 tax cut that Cruz touted on Colberts show didnt prove to have lasting effects on the whole. A 2006 Treasury Departmentanalysisoffers another view of the plunge after the 1981 law and the subsequent changes that wound it back. Reagans staff tallied up the effect of major legislation on tax receipts over his tenure for his final budget proposal (page 4-4). The 1981 tax cuts comprised most of the total $275 billion in tax relief, but the other side of the ledger listed $133 billion in cumulative tax increases. Thus, Reagan took back about half the 1981 tax cut with subsequent tax increases, Bartlett wrote. Our ruling Responding to Cruzs assertion that Reagan signed the largest tax cut in history, Colbert said he reversed it and raised taxes when revenues did not match the expectations. Legislation that Reagan signed over his time in office and raised taxes did not completely reverse the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act. But the broader point Colbert makes is on point. Reagan agreed to raise taxes to deal with budget deficits, even if he wasnt enthusiastic about it. We rate the claim Mostly True. Claim:  After the 2015 State of the Union address, Obama family guest Rebekah Erler was revealed to be a Democratic operative. :  Rebekah Erler listed previous work as a staffer on the campaign of Democratic Senator Patty Murray.       Erler is a planted "Democratic operative" whose background was uncovered after the State of the Union address in January 2015.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, January 2015] Rebekah Erler was a Democratic campaign staffer? Was she a plant in the SOTU speech?  Origins: On 20 January 2015, as President Barack Obama touched on a number of current issues in the annual State of the Union address, among his talking points was the economy and its effects on average Americans. President Obama referenced a 36-year-old woman in attendance named Rebekah Erler, whom he described as an American parent struggling to make ends meet after the economic downturn adversely affected her husband Ben's construction business. Erler was mentioned early on in President Obama's address, as he broached the issue of the economy: Seven years ago, Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis were newlyweds. She waited tables. He worked construction. Their first child, Jack, was on the way. They were young and in love in America, and it doesn't get much better than that. "If only we had known," Rebekah wrote to me last spring, "what was about to happen to the housing and construction market." As the crisis worsened, Ben's business dried up, so he took what jobs he could find, even if they kept him on the road for long stretches of time. Rebekah took out student loans, enrolled in community college, and retrained for a new career. They sacrificed for each other. And slowly, it paid off. They bought their first home. They had a second son, Henry. Rebekah got a better job, and then a raise. Ben is back in construction  and home for dinner every night. "It is amazing," Rebekah wrote, "what you can bounce back from when you have to ... we are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times." We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times. America, Rebekah and Ben's story is our story. They represent the millions who have worked hard, and scrimped, and sacrificed, and retooled. He mentioned Erler again as the speech concluded: I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood: your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances as we are for our own kids. I want them to grow up in a country where a young mom like Rebekah can sit down and write a letter to her President with a story to sum up these past six years: "It is amazing what you can bounce back from when you have to ... we are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times." Erler's appearance at the 2015 State of the Union address was supplemented by a biography published to the White House blog that included background information on why Erler was invited to the address: biography Rebekah wrote the President last March to share what her family had been through together  and to detail the rising cost of doing right for her family, from groceries to student loan payments to child care. Erler was among several middle class Americans with whom President Obama met personally in the summer of 2014 as a response to letters they'd written to him about their lives. In July 2014, a picture of President Obama dining with Erler in Minnesota was published to the White House blog along with details about other citizens whom the President had met during the summer:  Lately, the Bear has been loose a lot, and this week will be no different. The President is hitting the road on a three-day swing to Colorado and Texas, where he will meet with Americans who've written him letters and whose stories  their challenges and successes  resonate with folks from across the country. The day after the [2014] State of the Union, a woman named Alex received a raise, allowing her to pay rent and afford groceries without worry. Alex's boss was inspired by the President's call and increased her wage right away. Earlier this year, Alex wrote the President to say "thank you." Tonight, the President will deliver his reply in person when he meets Alex for dinner in Denver. And tomorrow, she'll introduce the President before his remarks in Denver. Erler was not mentioned by name in the text of that blog post, but she was identified in a caption that accompanied its image: "President Barack Obama has lunch with Rebekah Erler at Matt's Bar in Minneapolis, Minn., June 26, 2014. Erler is a 36-year-old working wife and mother of two pre-school aged boys who had written the President a letter about economic difficulties." blog post  Immediately after President Obama's June 2014 meeting with Erler, Republicans in Minnesota published a press release titled "BUSTED: Obama Walks in Shoes of Former Democrat Campaign Staffer." A Reuters article published on 26 June 2014 included details about Erler's work history culled from her now-unavailable LinkedIn page: titled article After Obama chatted with Rebekah Erler, 36, over a cheese-filled "Jucy Lucy" hamburger at the dark-paneled Matt's Bar in Minneapolis, he drove to a city park where 350 invited participants were waiting. Erler, whose LinkedIn profile shows she was once a field organizer for Democratic Senator Patty Murray, wrote to Obama earlier this year to express her frustrations about the economy. Erler's LinkedIn page is either private or has since been deleted, but the claim Erler is a "Democratic operative" is somewhat misleading. Those identifying her as such refer to her as a former "field staffer" for the campaign of Patty Murray, a Democrat who represents the state of Washington in the U.S. Senate. Field staffers are generally the  Patty Murray lowest ranking workers on the field team of any campaign, and Murray's state campaign has no exceptional link to the Obama administration. lowest ranking So while Erler may have worked for a time as a low-level campaign staffer for a Senator in Washington state, no evidence has been turned up suggesting her political involvement transcended that experience, that she is a "Democratic operative" or "plant" who furtively carries out tasks to further the agenda of that party, did not in fact come to President Obama's attention because she (like many other people) wrote a letter to him, or the circumstances of her life she described to him in that letter (which he referenced in the State of the Union address) were untruthful. The one hundred senators in the United States Congress employ hundreds (if not thousands) of people on their campaign staffs at any given time. Erler's prior work on a single Senate candidate's campaign was not a secret after she first met with President Obama in June 2014, and there's no indication her work in that capacity was of note. Nor has any evidence been presented that shows Erler was involved with politics in any paid position after she moved to Minnesota. Ultimately, Erler was not exposed as a "plant" following the State of the Union address, as her connection to the campaign of Sen. Patty Murray was widely publicized in June 2014. If Erler's authenticity was a concern for the Obama administration, they had six months of warning to put forth a different example but still chose Erler despite significant prior coverage of her work experience as a one-time field staffer. Last updated:  22 January 2015 Claim:  Michelle Obama has demanded that all children in daycare be weighed as a part of her ongoing interest in childhood nutrition.  Example:  [Collected via Twitter, March 2015] https://t.co/31ExuXleQH BECAUSE OF MICHELLE OBAMA ALL DAYCARES WILL BE REQUIRED 2 WEIGH CHILDREN. OMG THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING OVER THE KIDS  slo129 (@slo129) March 24, 2015 https://t.co/31ExuXleQH March 24, 2015  Origins:  On 20 March 2015, a rumor began circulating online suggesting that First Lady Michelle Obama had planned a new and intrusive childhood nutrition initiative. According to the rumor, Mrs. Obama had insisted that young children in daycare be weighed and measured for unspecified reasons (somehow pertaining to her initiatives in childhood nutrition): rumor Just when you thought Michelle Obamas nanny state program to force kids to eat healthy couldnt possibly get any worse, it actually does. Not only has the first lady destroyed the spirits of children across the land by tossing out tasty treats from the lunch line, ruining Taco Tuesday, and emptying out vending machines, shes now sending in feds to weigh children in daycare and record the information. One of the rumor's first appearances (which many subsequent iterations pointed to) mentioned the First Lady, but that version made a stronger distinction between Mrs. Obama and the referenced initiative: appearances Bureaucrats from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will weigh and measure children in daycare as part of a study mandated by First Lady Michelle Obama's Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. The agency published a notice in the Federal Register on Friday proposing data collection on what meals are served in professional and home daycare facilities and how much physical activity children perform. Aside from assessing how healthy the food in daycare is, the USDA will also check the weight and height of roughly 3,000 children. That article linked to a published notice [PDF] in the Federal Register that described an initiative involving weigh-ins of children at daycare facilities. That program has no link to Michelle Obama (save for her earlier advocacy of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010), and the linked document explains that only about 3,000 children across the country will be involved in the proposed study. notice So while a nutritional study has been proposed that might collect data (including height and weight measurements) from 3,000 children in daycare, that initiative was not ordered by First Lady Michelle Obama. Moreover, "every child" in daycare is not being weighed; rather the information-gathering is part of a study (not a form of oversight or enforcement) that will involve only a few thousand children. The proposed title of the study is Study on Nutrition and Wellness Quality in Childcare Settings, or SNAQCS.   Last updated:  24 March 2015 David Mills, executive director of the state Democratic Party, recently sent out a fundraising appeal urging party loyalists to take a stand against a variety of efforts by state and national Republicans.Among the alleged GOP offenses, Mills listed Bob McDonnells raid on public education to pay for roads.We wondered if the Republican governor really took money out of classrooms and spent it on roads.McDonnell rolled out an extensive $4 billion transportation plan last December that was approved by the General Assembly earlier this year. Most of the money will come from the acceleration of previously approved state borrowing and the use of bonds backed by the federal government. The governor also proposed diverting $150 million from the states 2010 budget surplus into transportation projects.Mills claim is based on a second, less-publicized transportation initiative by McDonnell, according to Brian Coy, director of communications for the state Democratic Party. The governor proposed diverting about $140 million in sales tax revenue from Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The cash, instead of flowing into the states general fund, would be used for projects in the two congested regions. The measure died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.Virginias general fund -- estimated at $16.5 billion for the budget year starting July 1 -- receives revenue from income taxes, some sales taxes, contract fees, and profits from the state-run liquor stores. Of the proceeds, about 40 percent goes to education, 30 percent to health and human services, and 10 percent to public safety. The rest is divided up among smaller programs. Transportation gets a little from the general fund, but the vast majority of road revenues come from other sources.Because public schools are the largest recipient of general fund money, Coy said the governors effort divert more of its revenues to transportation was tantamount to a direct raid on education. If the $140 million had been removed evenly from the various programs the fund supports, schools stood to lose $54 million. That would have been less that 1 percent of the $6.6 billion public education budget for the budget year stating July 1.Of course the General Assembly could also have chosen to cut the $140 million from other programs and leave education untouched. But given that a high percentage of money from the fund goes to education, Democrats say it would be virtually impossible to cut from the fund without taking some education money.The Democrats also cite McDonnells successful proposal to move $150 million in surplus money from the fiscal 2010 budget year into transportation. That money could have gone to education, but surplus dollars -- unlike general fund revenues -- are not reserved for schools or other specific programs. Lawmakers spend surpluses as they see fit.Jeff Caldwell, McDonnells press secretary, sent us a 106-page list of the services and activities receiving support from the general fund. The inference is that the Democrats are oversimplifying their case when they say moving money from the fund means taking it away from education.Lets review.Mills, the executive director of the state Democratic Party, says McDonnell tried to raid education to pay for roads.Raid is a loaded word. It suggests a hostile intent on the governors part.McDonnell unsuccessfully proposed diverting about $140 million of sales tax revenue a year from the states general fund to transportation projects. The money would have come from Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, then spent on road projects in those areas.About 40 percent of the states General Fund dollars go to education each year, so if the $140 million were removed proportionally across all programs, schools would have lost about $54 million -- less that 1 percent of the annual appropriation. But the General Assembly, had it approved McDonnells plan, could have decided to remove the money from other programs supported. There was no guarantee the money would have been diverted from education.Realistically, it would have been very difficult to remove the cash without impacting education. And McDonnell, in making his proposal, never tried to protect schools from the fallout.We rate Mills statement Mostly True.