Does This Photograph Show President Trump Visiting a WWI Cemetery in the Rain?
President Trump was widely criticized over Veterans Day weekend in November 2018 after he skipped an event at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1 due to inclement weather.  criticized   Social media users chided Trump for bowing out of the scheduled event, which was attended by other world leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron, sharing photographs of "real presidents" who had previously honored veterans while standing in the rain. chided real presidents President Trump took issue with this coverage, however, and on 13 November 2018 he took to Twitter to explain his absence (asserting that his helicopter couldn't fly because of the rain) and proclaim that he had delivered a speech in the "pouring rain" the following day but that the event was "little reported" by the "fake news": Twitter   President Trump's explanation for missing the memorial at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery might have been regarded as questionable, but President Trump truly did deliver a speech in the rain (although we'd quibble with the assertion that it was "pouring") at the American Cemetery of Suresnes, as NBC News reported: questionable reported President Donald Trump paid tribute on Sunday to Americans who fought in the two world wars, saying the nation is forever in their debt during a visit to a cemetery in France where more than 1,500 of them are buried. Its been a wonderful two days we spent in France, and this has certainly been the highlight of the trip," Trump said in remarks that capped a weekend in Paris where he and more than 80 other world leaders marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I ... Standing at the presidential podium under a steady rain without an umbrella, Trump joked to six World War II veterans about their enviable position keeping them dry. You look so comfortable up there under shelter as we're getting drenched, Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd. Very smart people. You look like youre in very good shape, all of you, he added. I hope I look like that some day. America is forever in your debt.  The ceremony in Suresnes certainly drew less attention on social media than Trump's absence at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery the previous day did, but it isn't accurate to say that his visit to the Suresnes Cemetery was "little reported." In addition to the aforementioned NBC News report, Trump's speech was also covered by outlets such as CNN, USA Today, CBS News and Time magazine. CNN USA Today CBS News Time Despite this coverage, a number of social media users seemed surprised when they came across a photograph posted to Facebook by Dan Scavino, the White House Director of Social Media, which showed President Trump standing solemnly in the rain at a cemetery: Facebook   Social media users took to the comments section to claim that this image was fake and that Trump had been digitally inserted into the picture. While it's possible that Scavino applied some sort of filter to this photograph (Trump's outline is surprisingly crisp), a number of similar pictures can be found via news outlets such as NBC News and photography agencies such as Getty Images: NBC News Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Jackson, David.  "President Trump Blames Secret Service for Canceling Cemetery Trip in France."
  USA Today.  13 November 2018. Lee, Carol.  "Trump Pays Tribute to the Veterans and Alliances of Two World Wars."
  NBC News.  11 November 2018. Brinlee, Morgan.  "Trump Canceled a U.S. Military Cemetery Visit Due to Rain, and Twitter Was Not Impressed."
  Bustle.  11 November 2018. Belam, Martin.  "French Army Trolls Trump with Picture of Them Training in Rain."
  Guardian.  12 November 2018. Horton, Alex.  "Trump Skipped a U.S. Cemetery Visit Abroad. The French Army Trolled Him for Avoiding the Rain.
  The Washington Post.  12 November 2018.
Gov. Jerry Brown frequently touts Californias overall job growth when telling what hes called the states comeback story. He claimed recently on NBCsMeet the Pressthat California has added 2.1 million jobs in the last six or seven years. We checked the numbers and rated that claimTrue. Later in the same interview, the shows host Chuck Todd asked Brown about inland Californias struggles, leading to another claim that caught our attention: Chuck Todd:But there are parts of your state that are struggling. You have rural counties, ones that dont touch the ocean, struggling. Housing prices are up there, while jobs dont go there. Gov. Brown:The Inland Empire, the Central Valley, they have a harder time. But they, too, are experiencing tremendous job growth. Brown makes his jobs claim at about the 2:05 minute mark in the video above. Californias job growth is normally associated with coastal hubs like Silicon Valley and San Francisco. So, we wondered whether Brown had his facts right when he said these inland regions had really experienced tremendous job growth, too. We set out on a fact-check. Inland Empire Home to about 4.5 million people, Riverside and San Bernardino counties make up whats known as the Inland Empire, a sprawling set of communities east of Los Angeles. The economists we spoke with say Browns case for tremendous job growth here is a strong one. The regions 3.2 percent job growth rate was the fastest among the states large metro areas from February 2016 through February 2017, saidJohnHusing, chief economist for the InlandEmpire EconomicPartnership. During that year, it added 47,500 jobs, which was more than the 35,700 created in the Santa Clara metro area, considered the heart of Silicon Valley, Husing said. This area is a real growth engine, he added, listing construction, logistics and transportation among the growing sectors. Over the past five years, as the region has recovered from the Great Recession, it added jobs at a rate of 22.3 percent. That trailed only the San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco metro areas 22.7 percent rate among large metros. A spokesman for the Brown Administration cited the same statistics backing up the governors claim. Colin Strange of the San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce said San Bernardino is seeing job growth, but mainly in blue-collar jobs that pay about $15 per hour including fork-lift operators and truck drivers. Husing, who has studied the regions wages, said the Inland Empire has a lower share of high-paying administrative jobs compared with the state as a whole. He said, however, that the region is outperforming the state in its share of middle-class jobs that pay between $45,000 and $60,000. Central Valley The Central Valley stretches about 450 miles from Bakersfield north to Redding. It includes urban cities like Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto and Fresno, vast farmland and a diverse economy, making job growth trends for the overall region more complex. Areport by Stanislaus State Universityin the Central Valley city of Turlock offers some help. That report shows the 8-county San Joaquin Valley, which makes up the central and southern portions of the Central Valley, experienced a 1.56 percent job growth rate in 2016; a 1.86 percent rate in 2015 and 1.80 percent in 2014. Those averages trailed the states overall job growth average, which measured 3 percent in 2015 and about 2 percent last year. But it beat the 8-county regions 1.23 percent historical average job growth rate. SOURCE: Stanislaus State University, College of Business Administration,2016 Business Forecast Report,Volume VI, Issue 1 Within its own limits, the Valley has consistently grown. But it hasnt been a home run, Gokce Soydemir, an economics professor at Stanislaus State, said of job growth in that portion of the Central Valley. Jeffrey Michael, director of the University of Pacifics Center for Business and Policy Research in Stockton, added by email: Central Valley areas have also done very well in recent years with the exception of Bakersfield, where recent economic fluctuations are tightly connected to the oil industry. Bakersfields job growth rate was flat, at 0.1 percent, over the past year. Meanwhile, Sacramento, the biggest metro area in northern portion of the Central Valley, saw 1.8 percent growth over the past year, close to the statewide average. Our ruling Gov. Jerry Brown recently claimed Californias Central Valley and Inland Empire are experiencing tremendous job growth. Economists say Brown is right about the Inland Empire. That region experienced the fastest job growth rate among the states large metro areas over the past year, and added more jobs than the Santa Clara metro area, the heart of Silicon Valley, during that period. Job growth in the Central Valley, while its outperformed its historical benchmark in much of the diverse region, hasnt kept up with the overall state average. The governors argument here needs this key clarification. In the end, we rate his overall 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. In a spirited and unscripted debate with the House GOP, President Barack Obama said Republicans were wrong to portray him as running up large deficits. Speaking at a retreat for House Republicans in Baltimore on Jan. 29, 2010, Obama was particularly critical of a question from Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. Hensarling asked Obama, You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy? The fact of the matter is, Obama replied, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion -- $1.3 trillion. So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true. And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is, we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade. We checked Hensarling's claim in a separate item. Here, we'll look at Obama's claim that he came into office with a $1.3 trillion deficit and $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade. On Jan. 7, 2009, two weeks before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 was projected to be $1.2 trillion. The 10-year projection was estimated to be about $3.1 trillion. So Obama's number was very close on the 2009 deficit -- he said $1.3 trillion -- but substantially different from the 10-year projection -- he said $8 trillion. There are two reasons why he differs from the CBO. On the difference between the $1.2 trillion and the $1.3 trillion, the Obama administration credited a small portion of spending on its watch to policies of the previous administration. The reason for this is that the federal government runs on a fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, so Bush and Obama technically split responsibility for 2009 spending. The large difference on the 10-year projection has to do with Bush administration tax cuts. The CBO creates its estimates based on current law, which means the CBO assumes that the Bush tax cuts will end in 2010 and everyone will start paying higher taxes in 2011 and going forward. The Obama administration, on the other hand, assumed in its baseline that those tax cuts would be renewed. Economists we spoke with -- Josh Gordon, policy director for the Concord Coalition, and Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst of the conservative Heritage Foundation -- both said they believe the White House approach is more realistic because it assumes current policy will continue. So the CBO's estimate is $5 trillion lower than the White House numbers, though economists don't quibble with the White House methodology. It does highlight, however, that when it comes to budget projections, people can have differences of opinion about what to include. In any budget projection there is room for interpretation, but it seems reasonable to assume for a baseline that the Bush tax cuts will continue. Obama's numbers are fairly solid, so we rate his statement Mostly True. In the summer of 2020, amid a new wave of nationwide protests over racial injustice and police brutality, readers inquired about the accuracy of online articles and social media posts that claimed a convicted terrorist sat on the board of directors of a left-leaning organization that provides fundraising and administration services for the Black Lives Matter movement. On July 8, 2020, Twitter user @asdomke posted a widely-shared tweet that read:  "This is convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg, she sits on the Board of Directors for the fundraising arm of Black Lives Matter. She was convicted for the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Assoc."   In June, the website of right-leaning talk radio host Wayne Dupree posted an article with the headline "Report: Leader of Group Handling 'BLM Fundraising' is a Convicted Terrorist Who Carried Out Bombings in NYC and DC." Similar articles were published by the Daily Caller (an article that was republished by the Western Journal) and on the website of former Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly.  article Daily Caller Western Journal Bill O'Reilly On July 9, 2020, Tucker Carlson ran a segment about Rosenberg's past and her connection to Thousand Currents and the Black Lives Matter movement on his Fox News show.  segment Those posts and articles were largely based on a June 24, 2020, report published by the right-leaning Capital Research Center, which carried the headline "A Terrorist's Ties to a Leading Black Lives Matter Group." The report went on to state that: report Some conservatives have begun speculating the unrest in American cities -- even as late as Monday night in Washington, DC as protestors unsuccessfully worked to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson and set up an autonomous zone across the street from the White House -- may in part be an attempt to affect the upcoming presidential election, with the chaos and violence intended to make it as difficult as possible for Donald Trump to win a second term. Lending credence to this idea is the fact that at least one board member of the group fiscally sponsoring the most organized part of the Black Lives Matter movement, who have been involved in most of the activity surrounding the current unrest -- tried the same thing almost 40 years ago during Ronald Reagans reelection campaign. And it landed her in federal prison for 16 years. If there were any question whether Black Lives Matter has ideological ties to the Communist terrorists of the 1960s, the story of Susan Rosenberg should put that issue to bed... Rosenberg, who started out as a member of the 1960s revolutionary group Weather Underground, graduated into even more violent, and arguably successful, forms of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s -- including bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island, the Navy Yard Officers Club in Washington, DC, and even the U.S. Capitol building, where she damaged a representation of the greatest of the Democrat defenders of slavery, John C. Calhoun. She currently serves as human and prisoner rights advocate and a vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents. Thousand Currents is undoubtedly very closely linked to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a Delaware-registered entity that is one of the leading formal embodiments of the broader Black Lives Matter movement. The Thousand Currents website outlines the relationship between the two entities: outlines "In 2016, BLM Global Network approached Thousand Currents to create a fiscal sponsorship agreement. Thousand Currents, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization, provides the legal and administrative framework to enable BLM to fulfill its mission. Fiscal sponsorship is a common structure utilized by nonprofit organizations. Oftentimes, nonprofit initiatives seek fiscal sponsorship to be able to have the fiscal sponsor handle administrative operations while the organization focuses on its programs and builds up its own organizational infrastructure. In this capacity, we provide administrative and back office support, including finance, accounting, grants management, insurance, human resources, legal and compliance." Descriptions of Thousand Currents as an organization which "handles fundraising" for Black Lives Matter were therefore accurate. As recently as June 24, the date on which the Capital Research Center published their report, the Thousand Currents website listed Susan Rosenberg as vice chair of the organization's board of directors, describing her as a "human and prison rights advocate and writer." The entire "board of directors" page has since been removed from the site. describing According to tax documents obtained by Snopes, Rosenberg sat on the board of directors during the 2015 and 2016 financial years, and was elevated to the position of vice chair in 2017. We asked Thousand Currents for the dates of Rosenberg's tenure on the board, and as its vice chair, and invited the organization to comment on the ongoing controversy, and will update this story if we receive a response. 2015 2016 2017 Rosenberg's prominent position within Thousand Currents is clear, as are that organization's close links to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (and thereby the broader Black Lives Matter movement). However, the question of whether she should be described as a "terrorist" or "convicted terrorist" is much more complicated. Originally from New York City, Rosenberg was an active member of several revolutionary left-wing groups and movements during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In November 1984, she was arrested in Cherry Hill, New Jersey after police said she and an associate, Timothy Blunk, were found transferring 740 pounds of explosives, an Uzi submachine gun, an M-14 rifle, a rifle with a telescopic sight, a sawed-off shotgun, three 9-millimeter handguns and boxes of ammunition from a car into a storage locker. said Rosenberg was tried and convicted on the following charges: "Conspiracy to possess unregistered firearms, receive firearms and explosives shipped in interstate commerce while a fugitive, and unlawfully use false identification documents ...; possession of unregistered destructive devices, possession of unregistered firearm (two counts) ...; carrying explosives during commission of a felony ... ; possession with intent to unlawfully use false identification documents...; false representation of Social Security number, possession of counterfeit Social Security cards." charges In May 1985, New Jersey U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Bernard Lacey gave Rosenberg and Blunk the maximum available sentence of 58 years each in prison. On Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, President Bill Clinton commuted Rosenberg's sentence, and she was released from prison. sentence commuted According to several contemporaneous news reports, Rosenberg had previously been charged with multiple offenses as part of a major 1982 conspiracy case against several prominent left-wing revolutionaries. Along with the others, Rosenberg was charged with conspiracy and racketeering offenses in connection with the following incidents: incidents The most high-profile incident was the October 1981 Brink's robbery in Nyack, New York. Several members of the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army groups were accused of having orchestrated and carried out the violent robbery of a Brink's armored vehicle at the Nanuet Mall, stealing total of $1.6 million. In the course of a police chase and shootout, two police officers and a Brink's guard were killed. The money was recovered. Specifically, Rosenberg was accused of having driven one of the getaway cars. killed accused After Rosenberg's arrest in New Jersey in 1984, and her subsequent conviction and imprisonment on the weapons and explosives possession charges, prosecutors dropped the conspiracy and racketeering charges against her, and she was never tried or convicted in relation to the 1981 Brink's robbery, the 1979 Shakur prison escape, or other armed robberies. The prosecutor who oversaw the decision not to proceed with that case, in the 1980s, was Rudolph Giuliani, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After Rosenberg's release in 2001, Giuliani, by then Mayor of New York City, told the New York Times the charges were dropped because her existing 58-year prison sentence made a further prosecution unnecessary. told In 1988, Rosenberg was charged with aiding and abetting a series of bombings which took place between 1983 and 1985, at the Capitol building, Fort McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Computer Center and the Washington Navy Yard Officers' Club, all in Washington, D.C. Bombs were also planted, but did not detonate, at several sites in New York: the FBI's office in Staten Island, the Israeli Aircraft Industries building, the South African consulate and the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. However, prosecutors dropped those charges in 1990 as part of a plea deal involving other suspects in the bombings. As a result, Rosenberg was never tried or convicted on any charges relating to the 1983-1985 bombing campaign. The claim, made in @asdomke's tweet, that Rosenberg was "convicted of" several 1983 bombings, was therefore false. The claim in the headline of an article on Wayne Dupree's website that Rosenberg "carried out" the bombings stands in contrast to the fact that she was never tried or convicted in relation to those incidents. dropped During her 16-year incarceration, Rosenberg renounced the use of political violence, though her political beliefs appear not to have changed significantly. In a radio interview shortly after her release in January 2001, she said she "rejects" the "potential for violence in my past actions," saying her view of violence as a strategic tool had undergone an "enormous change," but that she retained "a political view that is certainly progressive and radical in a certain sense." interview In her 2011 memoir, she recounted what she said during an unsuccessful 1997 parole application: recounted "I outlined my criminal acts and what I felt about them then and now. I talked about the political ethos of the 1960s and how it had led me and my associates into thinking our activities were acceptable. I detailed how sorry I felt now, how I accepted responsibility for my past actions, and how I would never commit any crimes again. I tried to put my life within the context of the historical period when many Americans thought they could change the world and end war and racism and poverty. I tried to distinguish between my core values and my embrace of the use of political violence. I stated that I now rejected the use of violence. I meant all that I said." There is no single, universally-accepted definition of terrorism, so any use of that label requires a degree of explanation or justification. One basis upon which one might reasonably describe a person as a terrorist is if they have been convicted of terrorist offenses. That is not true of Rosenberg, who was convicted only of weapons and explosives possession and fraudulent document possession, after her arrest in New Jersey 1984. She pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the 1980s bombing campaign, and those charges against her were dropped, and she has denied any involvement in the 1979 Shakur prison break and 1981 Brink's robbery, with those charges also having been dropped. not guilty denied The United States Code defines "domestic terrorism" (as distinct from "international terrorism") as follows: defines "... Activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States ..." However, that definition was only added in 1992, years after Rosenberg was convicted of weapons and explosives possession and charged for her alleged role in the 1983-1985 bombing campaign, and her alleged role in a series of armed robberies by left-wing revolutionaries. added In any event, despite the existence of a definition of domestic terrorism in federal law, a discrete criminal offense of domestic terrorism does not exist, and did not exist in the 1980s. As a result, even if Rosenberg's activities perfectly met the definition of domestic terrorism currently set out in federal law, and even if that definition existed in the 1980s, she could not have been charged with, tried for and convicted of domestic terrorism as such does not exist In the 1988 indictment relating to the 1983-1985 bombing campaign, prosecutors accused Rosenberg and others of trying "to influence, change and protest policies and practices of the United States Government concerning various international and domestic matters through the use of violent and illegal means." That language is remarkably similar to that found in the present U.S. Code definition of domestic terrorism as seeking to "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping ..." accused Examining the 1980s bombings retrospectively, one might very well be justified as describing them as a campaign of domestic terrorism, even if prosecutors were not in a position to hang that label on them at the time. However, the charges against Rosenberg were dropped anyway, and she was never convicted in relation to the bombing campaign. In her memoir, Rosenberg wrote of her 1984 arrest in New Jersey that "there was no immediate, specific plan to use the explosives" with which she and Blunk were caught. However, it's clear they were transporting and transferring them for a purpose that was at the very least broadly associated with the group's wider mission of opposing various U.S. government policies and carrying out a socialist uprising. "We were stockpiling arms for the distant revolution that we all had convinced ourselves would come soon," she added. wrote Earlier in her book, Rosenberg indicated that she was comfortable, at least at one point in time, with bombing government buildings: "We thought that by taking armed actions against government property (including bombing unoccupied government buildings), we would show that despite the power of the state, it was possible to oppose it." indicated One could reasonably argue that Rosenberg's actions in the explosives possession case served her and her comrades' overarching mission of militant opposition to U.S. government policy and broader power structures and were in keeping with the group's (if not Rosenberg's) proven record of using bomb attacks to influence the wider American public and advance their cause. As such, a supportable (though not definitive) case exists for claiming that the crimes of which Rosenberg was convicted in 1985 were indeed acts of domestic terrorism. Crane, Missy. "Report: Leader of Group Handling 'BLM Fundraising' is a Convicted Terrorist Who Carried Out Bombings in NYC and DC."
 WayneDupree.com. 28 June 2020. Kerr, Andrew. "A Convicted Terrorist Sits on Board of Charity Handling Black Lives Matter Fundraising."
 The Daily Caller. 27 June 2020. O'Reilly, Bill. "Does Karl Marx Matter?"
 BillOReilly.com. 5 July 2020. Walter, Scott. "A Terrorist's Ties to a Leading Black Lives Matter Group."
 Capital Research Center. 24 June 2020. Raab, Selwyn. "Radical Fugitive in Brink's Robbery Arrested."
 The New York Times. 1 December 1984. The Associated Press/The Philadelphia Daily News. "2 Revolutionaries Get 58 Years Each in N.J."
 20 May 1985. Barbanel, Josh. "4 Indicted by U.S. in Escape of Joanne Chesimard in '79."
 The New York Times. 19 November 1982. Barbanel, Josh. "3 Killed in Armored Car Holdup."
 The New York Times. 21 October 1981. Gross, Jane. "Brink's Suspect Held Without Bail After She Refuses to Enter a Plea."
 The New York Times. 14 May 1985. Lipton, Eric. "Officials Criticize Clinton's Pardon of an Ex-Terrorist."
 The New York Times. 22 January 2001. The Associated Press/The New York Times. "3 Radicals Agree to Please Guilty in Bombing Case."
 6 September 1990. Rosenberg, Susan. "An American Radical..."
 Citadel Press. 2011. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. "United States Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113B, Section 2331 -- Definitions."
 Accessed 14 July 2020. McCord, Mary B. "It's Time for Congress to Make Domestic Terrorism a Federal Crime."
 Lawfare. 5 December 2018. Shenon, Philip. "U.S. Charges 7 in the Bombing at U.S. Capitol."
 The New York Times. 12 May 1988. In November 2016, rumors began to swirl that the European Union had ordered the media not to report when terrorism suspects were Muslim, presumably because of pressure from Islamic groups.  The stories were mostly fueled like the headlines such as the one reproduced above, which appears to have been taken from an 18 November 2016 post by the Gatestone Institute: post   The institute is headed up by John R. Bolton, a Fox News contributor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is reportedly under consideration by President-elect Donald Trump as his secretary of state. reportedly The headline, in turn, was similar to one published by the conservative Daily Mail in Britain on 5 October 2016: the conservative Daily Mail   The allegation is taken from a report published a day earlier by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), which was commissioned by the Council of Europe to monitor human rights abuses. However, Bolton's group failed to note that the council is a separate organization from the European Union, and it issued a recommendation, not a mandate. earlier ECRI Both the Mail and the institute portray the report as pinning the blame on the media for an increase in hate crimes and hate speech across the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2016. As the latter group puts it: The ECRI report establishes a direct causal link between some tough headlines in British tabloids and the security of the Muslims in the UK. In other words, the British press is allegedly inciting readers to commit "Islamophobic" acts against Muslims. Criticism of the report centered around this passage: ECRI regrets that a way has not been found to establish an independent press regulator and that, as a result, certain tabloids continue to publish offensive material, as indicated above. ECRI urges the media to take stock of the importance of responsible reporting, not only to avoid perpetuating prejudice and biased information, but also to avoid harm to targeted persons or vulnerable groups. ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fuelling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety. In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teesside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations. The Teesside study, which covered the period between March 2014 and February 2015, found that instances of anti-Muslim violence in Europe and Australia increased in the seven-day period immediately after terror attacks, compared to the seven days before. However, that report also stated that there were fewer Islamophobic incidents in Australia following the attack on a Sydney shopping mall in December 2014, pointing out that the reporting focused on the attacker's history of mental instability and not his religion. study, attack While the ECRI did call for an "independent press regulator," it also stated that it did not want government officials "encroaching on [media outlets'] editorial independence the need to ensure that reporting does not contribute to creating an atmosphere of hostility and rejection towards various minority ethnic groups." It also said that media practices in the UK had already been criticized in the Leveson Inquiry, a government probe that took place after revelations that News International (owned by Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch) engaged in phone-hacking and other dubious practices. Inquiry, From the ECRI report: The Leveson Report, published in November 2012, pointed out that certain parts of the press ride roughshod over others, both individuals and the public at large, without any justifiable public interest, and that a significant number of news stories fail to meet standards of integrity and propriety and reflect a culture of recklessness in prioritising sensational stories, almost irrespective of the harm these may cause and the rights of those who would be affected. It also noted a significant and reckless disregard for accuracy. The report stated that the Press Complaints Commission was not independent and had failed its purpose, and recommended replacing it with a new, independent, self-regulatory body established by statute, with the dual roles of promoting high standards of journalism and protecting the rights of individuals, and with a range of sanctions available to it. Bolton's organization also failed to note that the ECRI's report contained 23 recommendations for the U.K. government, covering not only how to deal with Islamophobia, but ways to integrate refugees arriving to England and Northern Ireland, as well as Romani groups. recommendations Mamou, Yves. "Council of Europe Recommends British Press NOT Report when Terrorists are Muslims." Gatestone Institute. 18 November 2016. Conway, Madeline. "Bolton calls regime change the 'only long-term solution' in Iran." Politico. 17 November 2016. Dathan, Matt. "European human rights chiefs order the British press NOT to reveal when terrorists are Muslims in crackdown on freedom of speech." The Daily Mail. 5 October 2016. European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. "ECRI Report on the United Kingdom (Fifth Monitoring Cycle)." Coe.int. 4 October 2016. Teesside University. "New report reveals a rise in anti-Muslim hostility in Britain following acts of terrorism around the world." www.tees.ac.uk. 18 June 2015. One of the arguments made by the Trump administration for lowering the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States is that the costs of refugee resettlement outweigh its benefits. lowering Estimates vary on the total annual cost of processing and resettling refugees in the U.S., but a rough breakdown by the National Conference of State Legislatures put the total expenditures for accepting approximately 70,000 refugees in 2014 at $582 million.These cost estimates rarely attempt to take into account any economic benefits refugees might provide to the countries that take them in. According to a Facebook meme making the rounds since mid-2018, just such an analysis was undertaken by the Trump administration, but the results were suppressed because they undercut the official position:A recently leaked federal study found that refugees to America brought in $63 billion in government revenues than they cost in the last 10 years. Trump chief policy adviser Stephen Miller banned the release of the study, because it contradicts his claim that refugees are too costly. Pass it on!A leaked document fitting that description was indeed published by the New York Times in September 2017. It was an early draft of a report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing, at the president's request, the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Times noted that:The internal study, which was completed in late July but never publicly released, found that refugees contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion.All in all, the report said, the net fiscal impact of refugees over the 10-year period was positive, not negative, to the tune of $63 billion at all levels of government:The study concluded that refugees on average had a net fiscal impact "comparable" to that of the general population:The per capita annual net fiscal benefit was $2,205 for refugees and $1,848 for the general U.S. population, a difference not likely to be significant given margins of error and other limitations of this study. Expenditures for the general U.S. population were on average higher than expenditures for refugees, while revenues were more comparable.However, none of this information was contained in the final report delivered to the President, the Times reported, noting that some of the refugee program's proponents believed the results of the study were "suppressed" internally. Administration officials characterized those results as illegitimate:This leak was delivered by someone with an ideological agenda, not someone looking at hard data, said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. The actual report pursuant to the presidential memorandum shows that refugees with few skills coming from war-torn countries take more government benefits from the Department of Health and Human Services than the average population, and are not a net benefit to the U.S. economy.John Graham, the acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the health department, said: We do not comment on allegedly leaked documents and that no report had been finalized. He noted that Mr. Trumps memorandum seeks an analysis related to the cost of refugee programs. Therefore, the only analysis in the scope of H.H.S.s response to the memo would be on refugee-related expenditures from data within H.H.S. programs.The three-page report the agency ultimately submitted, dated Sept. 5, does just that, using government data to compare the costs of refugees to Americans and making no mention of revenues contributed by refugees.The Times also said that according to White House sources, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reputed to be the chief architect of the administration's immigration policies, "personally intervened" to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees, and not the fiscal benefits thereof, were enumerated in the final report. (According to the New Yorker, the White House denied that Miller was involved in producing the report.)The Facebook meme is largely accurate, then, although it somewhat mischaracterizes what became of the original draft report. It wasn't "banned" from release, in that it doesn't appear the report was ever intended to be made public. It was allegedly suppressed, however, in that it never reached President Trump's desk, and all discussion of the fiscal benefits of admitting refugees into the United States was excised from the final document.  Estimates vary on the total annual cost of processing and resettling refugees in the U.S., but a rough breakdown by the National Conference of State Legislatures put the total expenditures for accepting approximately 70,000 refugees in 2014 at $582 million. breakdown These cost estimates rarely attempt to take into account any economic benefits refugees might provide to the countries that take them in. According to a Facebook meme making the rounds since mid-2018, just such an analysis was undertaken by the Trump administration, but the results were suppressed because they undercut the official position: A recently leaked federal study found that refugees to America brought in $63 billion in government revenues than they cost in the last 10 years. Trump chief policy adviser Stephen Miller banned the release of the study, because it contradicts his claim that refugees are too costly. Pass it on!   A leaked document fitting that description was indeed published by the New York Times in September 2017. It was an early draft of a report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing, at the president's request, the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Times noted that: document The internal study, which was completed in late July but never publicly released, found that refugees contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion. All in all, the report said, the net fiscal impact of refugees over the 10-year period was positive, not negative, to the tune of $63 billion at all levels of government:  The study concluded that refugees on average had a net fiscal impact "comparable" to that of the general population: The per capita annual net fiscal benefit was $2,205 for refugees and $1,848 for the general U.S. population, a difference not likely to be significant given margins of error and other limitations of this study. Expenditures for the general U.S. population were on average higher than expenditures for refugees, while revenues were more comparable. However, none of this information was contained in the final report delivered to the President, the Times reported, noting that some of the refugee program's proponents believed the results of the study were "suppressed" internally. Administration officials characterized those results as illegitimate: This leak was delivered by someone with an ideological agenda, not someone looking at hard data, said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. The actual report pursuant to the presidential memorandum shows that refugees with few skills coming from war-torn countries take more government benefits from the Department of Health and Human Services than the average population, and are not a net benefit to the U.S. economy. John Graham, the acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the health department, said: We do not comment on allegedly leaked documents and that no report had been finalized. He noted that Mr. Trumps memorandum seeks an analysis related to the cost of refugee programs. Therefore, the only analysis in the scope of H.H.S.s response to the memo would be on refugee-related expenditures from data within H.H.S. programs. The three-page report the agency ultimately submitted, dated Sept. 5, does just that, using government data to compare the costs of refugees to Americans and making no mention of revenues contributed by refugees. The Times also said that according to White House sources, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reputed to be the chief architect of the administration's immigration policies, "personally intervened" to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees, and not the fiscal benefits thereof, were enumerated in the final report. (According to the New Yorker, the White House denied that Miller was involved in producing the report.) denied The Facebook meme is largely accurate, then, although it somewhat mischaracterizes what became of the original draft report. It wasn't "banned" from release, in that it doesn't appear the report was ever intended to be made public. It was allegedly suppressed, however, in that it never reached President Trump's desk, and all discussion of the fiscal benefits of admitting refugees into the United States was excised from the final document. Blitzer, Jonathan.  "How Stephen Miller Single-Handedly Got the U.S. to Accept Fewer Refugees."
  The New Yorker.  13 October 2017. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld.  "Trump to Cap Refugees Allowed into U.S. at 30,000, a Record Low."
  The New York Times.  17 September 2018. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld and Somini Sengupta.  "Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees."
  The New York Times.  18 September 2017. Phillips, Amber.  "Here's How Much the United States Spends on Refugees."
  The Washington Post.  20 November 2015. The New York Times.  "Rejected Report Shows Revenue Brought in by Refugees."
  19 September 2017. Claim:  A mixture of Mentos and Coca-Cola killed two Brazilian children. Status:  . Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2006] One year before the same accident happened with another boy in Brazil. Please check the experiment that has been done by mixing Coca Cola with MENTOS........ Be careful with your Coke   Origins:  Mentos, a candy that has a soft, chewy interior encased in a slightly hard shell, is no longer just for noshing on  when combined with a carbonated beverage in a closed environment that  has a small opening (think "soda bottle"), it serves to produce a frothy geyser that shoots many feet into the air, a secondary use of the product that has served to enthrall countless persons with a penchant for making things explode. The combination of any carbonated liquid and mint-flavored Mentos will rapidly produce copious amounts of foam because the candy works to disrupt the surface tension of the liquid, thereby releasing all the drink's fizz (carbon dioxide) in one surprisingly speedy whoosh. The resulting effect is quick, high, and explosive, yet what takes place is not a chemical reaction but a physical one (even though some are moved to believe the confection's gum arabic component or diet soda's aspartame has something to do with the process). As Steve Spangler, former high school science teacher turned hands-on science guru, explained: "The Mentos effect has nothing to do with the inside of the Mentos and everything to Steve Spangler do with the outside." The candy's shell is pocked with little nooks and crannies the beverage's carbon dioxide molecules are immediately drawn to, and the confection's relatively large surface area provides infinitely more such nooks and crannies (nucleation sites) than, say, an M&M would. As for what happens when carbonated beverage encounters Mentos, when a roll of the sweets is dropped into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke, the combination works to produce an impressive geyser of brown froth that shoots about 20 feet into the air (although some of these pressurized fountains have attained even greater height). Diet cola of any manufacture is regarded as the liquid of choice for creating a "Mentos eruption" or "Mentos effect" because a cola's brown color serves to make the reaction much more starkly dramatic in all its explosive glory, and diet versions of those sodas don't leave the same sticky residue that their sugared counterparts do (an aspect well worth considering when contemplating spraying a wide area that you may afterward be called upon to clean). Plus, some folks swear diet sodas make for higher geysers. Numerous video clips of "Mentos eruptions" exist on the Internet; one needn't search all that diligently to stumble across scads of them. Not all such videos found on the Web are on the up-and-up, however, including the famed "Pepsi Girl" clip, which purports to document a demise caused by the ingestion of a mixture of Mentos and Coca-Cola. Which brings us back to this article's topic, the ballyhooed death of a youngster who consumed this combination. This alert about an unnamed child in Brazil's sorry fate began circulating on the Internet in November 2006. Since no checkable details are provided in the account (the deceased is described as "a little boy" rather than by name, he died in "Brazil" rather than in any particular city or region within that country, and his demise occurred "last week" rather than on a specific date), the story should be regarded as fiction. No news accounts of such a death (in Brazil or elsewhere) have surfaced, and given the media's interest in "Mentos effects," such write-ups wouldn't have gasped their last on a jaded editor's desk because they weren't deemed sufficiently newsworthy to include in that day's edition of the local rag. Likewise, with regard to "One year before the same accident happened with another boy in Brazil," once again the news is silent regarding such a death. However, the failure of this explosive combination of candy and soda to cause any fatalities should not be taken as a ringing endorsement of chasing down a handful of Mentos with as much pop as can be gulped. A harmless procedure it's clearly not  one look at online video clips of the force of "Mentos effect" eruptions shooting out of pop bottles should convince even the most adventurous not to risk any part of their digestive systems on such parlor tricks. Those who have disregarded common sense and tried such anyway report that the intensity of the reaction forces the mouth open, thereby releasing most of the gas and foam into the wild, as it were, rather than keeping them contained within the person. Do not try such experiments yourself though. Videos of those who have attempted such foolishness consistently show the subjects experiencing great physical distress in the aftermath of their ill-judged stunts. The "child who died from combining Mentos and Coca-Cola" story is an updating of an older legend that began in 1979. That year, the grist being run through the rumor mill included the sad tale of a misadventuring tot who had gulped soda and ingested Pop Rocks, a carbonated candy known for producing a fizzling sensation in the mouth. According to legend, said child went out with a bang. Further versions of the story specified the deceased youngster was the taciturn "Mikey" of LIFE cereal commercials. Mikey Once again there hadn't been such a child, but that did little to slow the rumor's spread. The gruesome appeal of the combusted tot story kept the legend in circulation long after it had been repeatedly debunked and dismissed. Barbara "fizzical attraction" Mikkelson Last updated:  9 November 2006     Sources: In herBack To Workcampaign ad, General Treasurer Gina Raimondo, one of four Democrats running for governor, stated that her former venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital, helped create more than 1,000 jobs when she was partner. She made the same claim while campaigning for treasurer in the 2010 election. (Raimondo left the firm the day she took office; her investments there are held in a blind trust. The company has been relocated to Boston.) The ad shows Raimondo atNabsys, a biomedical company in Providence. Before I was State Treasurer, my Rhode Island business helped create over 1,000 jobs, including here at Nabsys, a biomedical company, Raimondo said. As governor, Ill use this as a model for how we create manufacturing jobs. Ill bring colleges and industry together to develop new products in marine science, green technology, and medical devices, and to train our workers to fill those jobs  We need to get Rhode Islanders back to work. This week, Raimondo reiterated that claimin a new TV adabout how she helped bring back Narragansett Beer, originally brewed in Rhode Island until the brewery closed for good in 1983. (I helped create over a thousand jobs, from high tech to making beer ) Before we get started,lets be clear about one thing. Venture capital firms such as Point Judith are not in the business of creating jobs. Their mission is to make money for their investors -- and themselves. They do so by raising money from entities such as private investors and public pension funds, and then investing it in startup companies, hoping for a big return if those companies take off. If the companies succeed and grow, they add jobs. But thats not the goal of the venture capitalists. To support her claim, Raimondo sent us a list of 21 companies that Point Judith Capital invested in and how many jobs those investments -- and the companys efforts -- helped create during the time she was a partner. They add up to 1,063. The list was produced by Point Judith Capital in late 2010, in preparation for her run for treasurer. We also interviewed Raimondo. She described Point Judith Capitals role as an early-stage investor. Typically, you sit on the board of the company, provide a lot of hand-holding and strategic advice, you help recruit people, and get the bank loan. Its hands-on. Thats why we say helped create those jobs. We had to have invested money in the company, which means we had an ownership stake in the company  In every case we either had a board seat and additionally were just very involved in building the business, writing the business plan, helping to get customers. Raimondo said, In these cases, we invested millions of dollars. Initially she said that was more than two million in each of those companies. On Wednesday, Raimondo campaign manager Eric Hyers said Raimondo had misspoke. The investments were all at least six figures; they ranged from roughly $400,000 to $2 million or more. Raimondo noted that many of the companies have expanded and added jobs since then. Next, we attempted to callall 21 companies. Many were from out of state. Some had been bought out, and we were unable to reach the principals who worked there when Point Judith Capital was involved. At least one appears to have since closed. Of the representatives of seven companies we reached, all essentially confirmed Raimondos claims, representing roughly 480 jobs. In one case, the job number appeared to fall slightly short; in another, a CEO gave Raimondo credit for more than the number of jobs she cited. We spoke with Mark Hellendrung, president ofNarragansett Brewing Co. The company is based in Providence. Hellendrung said the beer is now brewed in Rochester, N.Y., Pawcatuck, Conn., Westport, Mass. Test batches have been brewed locally in Rhode Island. Raimondo claimed Point Judith helped create 10 jobs there, and invested more than $1 million. Hellendrung confirmed that Point Judith Capital helped launch the company (which put the famous Narragansett lager beer back on the shelves) with slightly less than $2 million venture capital nine years ago, and active involvement. Weve got over 10 full-time people, and routinely weve got over 20 part-time people that work promotions and events  Its been a labor of love and a ton of fun and Gina was very helpful in that process, Hellendrung said. We spoke with Michael ONeil Jr., founder and CEO ofGetWellNetwork, a health care technology company headquartered in Maryland. Raimondo claimed Point Judith Capital helped create 121 jobs there. Shes totally correct, ONeil said. Gina and I met just as the company was getting started. Her leadership helped us get off the ground and helped get hundreds of jobs. Those included software engineers and project managers; others were on the services side, ONeil said. Donna Dooley,chief financial officer at MedOptions, said that the 185 jobs that Raimondo credits Point Judith Capital with helping to create sounds accurate. Dooley joined MedOptions in 2011, the year after Raimondo left Point Judith Capital, and by then it was about 250 employees, she said. MedOptions provides behavioral health services in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic. I know that Point Judith Capital and another investment company put money in  I do think its fair to say that there was a fair amount of job creation at that time, Dooley said. Steven J. Tallarida, cofounder of the former Spirus Medical, said Raimondo probably sold herself short by listing nine as the number of jobs Point Judith Capital helped create at that medical device company. It was probably around 20, Tallarida said in a phone interview. Those included research and development, manufacturing and sales jobs. Point Judith Capital invested a couple of million. Raimondo sat on the board, and she would give governance on how to do things, Tallarida said. (The Massachusetts-based company was sold in 2011 to the Tokyo-based Olympus Corp.) Genevieve Thiers,who cofoundedSittercity, wrote in an email that Point Judith Capital put in $2.5 million and led our Series A round. Due to them and the other $2.5 million  we were able to grow from 20 employees to about 80. (Raimondo credited her former company with helping to create 80 jobs at Sittercity, a nationwide babysitter-matching website). Thiers added, That money did not start the company but it was needed for a pivotal stage in growth. Thiers has since left the company but remains on the board. Dr. Barrett Bready,Nabsyscofounder and CEO, said in an email that Point Judith Capital was the first venture capital firm to invest in the company, and the firm has continued to invest in subsequent financing rounds. Raimondo formerly held a board seat. Nabsys currently has 40 employees: the number Raimondo credits her former company with helping to create. Bob Lentz, founder of the former PermissionTV, in Waltham, Mass., wrote in an email that Point Judith Capital was actively involved. Raimondo said her firm helped create 40 jobs there. Lentz wrote, Its been a few years but the numbers sound right. (PermissionTV has been relaunched as VisibleGains). Our ruling: Gina Raimondo said her former firm, Point Judith Capital, helped create more than 1,000 jobs when she was a partner there. She produced a list of 21 companies and a precise number of jobs. We reached representatives of seven companies -- most of them cofounders and/or CEOs. They confirmed that Point Judith capital invested several million dollars - give or take - in each case; held board positions and as such, helped create jobs. The jobs numbers added to roughly 480 at those companies. While we were unable to reach all the companies Raimondo listed, the responses from the companies we did reach supported her qualified claim that Point Judith helped create 1,000 jobs. We rate Raimondos claim True. (If you have a claim you'd like us to check, email us at[email protected]. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) Despite lower income-tax rates enacted by lawmakers, Wisconsin workers didnt see the result in their paychecks in 2013 unless they took special action. Taxpayers will see the benefit when they file their tax returns this year and get either a larger refund or a smaller bill. Why? The state did not change the tax withholding tables to reflect the new, lower rates -- following a long tradition in Madison. The state currently has no plan to update the withholding tables in 2014, either. Thats the sum of what we learned as we checked out a claim by state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, about what the average worker would save from the tax cut approved in 2013 by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker. Vinehout, who is mulling a run for governor this fall, opposed the tax cut, as did many Democrats. She says the savings for individual families wasnt worth the $650 million in lost revenue to the state over two years. This is what shetold a small audiencein Waukesha on Dec. 5, 2013: Get rid of the tax decrease, Vinehout said. Did you know -- you might not know this -- if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes? You might not have known that because they didnt change the withholding tables, so it didnt show up in your paycheck. She added: But, if you file for your refund, and lets say you file it a little late, and you get that refund sometime in June, youll maybe have a little more money, which might be just about the time the governors is out there on the campaign trail saying, hmm, you got more money in your pocket because of what I gave you. Lets examine the elements of Vinehouts claim. Checks in the mail Wisconsin Revenue Department spokesperson Laurel Patrick confirmed that withholding tables were not updated after the tax cut, and said no decision has been made to do so in 2014 either. The tax cut reduced rates in all five tax brackets. That means the tax-rate changes are not automatically reflected on peoples paychecks. To get the tax savings on their regular paycheck, employees must file a new WT-4 or WT-4A form with their employer. Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said the state, with a few exceptions, has long tried to help its immediate cash flow needs by not automatically making tax cuts show up on peoples paychecks. The practice predates Walker. The state is now over-withholding by 20 percent or more because it has typically not adjusted the tables, Berry said. Many taxpayers may prefer getting a lump sum at refund time, Berry said, but they should understand that as a group they essentially are giving state government a billion-dollar annual no-interest loan that adds to the state deficit under generally accepted accounting principles. Politicians know its more politically valuable for people to get a nice refund in 2014, Berry said. Whats the savings? The rest of Vinehouts claim was that if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes under the income tax cut. When we asked for evidence, Vinehouts office pointed to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis of the tax savings from the income-tax changes, and to separate state figures on tax burdens. The average Wisconsin adjusted gross income, across all types of filers, was $47,310 for tax year 2010, according to a Revenue Department analysis. There is 2011 data, the latest available, that puts the figure at $48,537, according to Dale Knapp, research director at the Taxpayers Alliance. Vinehout looked up that average income in the June 2013 memo by the non-partisan Fiscal Bureau, which presents ranges of income along with tax changes estimated for 2014. The Fiscal Bureau is the independent budget scorekeeper in Madison, and its reports on taxes are used by both parties to gauge the impact of proposals. The bureaus analysis said that in the $40,000 to $50,000 range, the average savings is $85 for one year. That works out to $1.63 a week, which Vinehout referred to as $1.60 in her claim. So, Vinehout puts the average income into the slot, and with a bit of rounding her figure for the average tax change is on target. Theres some imprecision built in here, though, because the Fiscal Bureau memo uses income ranges rather than one particular income. So while Vinehout mentions $50,000, she gets the $1.60 average tax change from an income range of $40,000 to $50,000. And because the average state income is above the midpoint of that range, its likely the average tax change would differ slightly from the $1.60. There are other ways to illustrate the impact of the tax cut. One is to look at the types of filers rather than just the composite income brackets as in the Fiscal Bureau memo. Depending on the example used, one approach yields a smaller tax change figure than Vinehouts approach, the other a larger one. The average single person who filed taxes had $26,556 in income, while married couples had an average of $83,480, said Knapp. Walker, for his part,chooses the married couple example. Such a couple with two children would save about $173 a year, or $3.33 per week over the two years. On the lower end, the average single would see a weekly savings of about 73 cents. The overall state average that Vinehout cites is a middle ground between those two numbers. Our rating Vinehout said that if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes under the $650 million state income-tax cut, but it didnt show up in your paycheck. The average income she cites is slightly high but within reasonable rounding range. She uses a reliable source for her tax-change numbers, and they are on target or very close, with the caveat that the analysis is set up for income ranges rather than a precise income. Shes right that the tax cut did not just show up in workers paychecks, due to inaction by the state. With the clarifications noted, we rate her claim Mostly True. If you wish to comment on this item, please clickhereto go to JSOnline.com. During a visit to Howell, Mich., President Joe Biden touted key agenda items under negotiation in Congress. One of the proposals he wants to see receive final Congressional approval is support for child care, which he said would benefit both children and their parents, including mothers who want to take jobs outside the home. How can we compete in the world if millions of American parents, especially moms, cant join the workforce because they cant afford the cost of child care or elder care? They have to stay home, Bidensaidin the Oct. 5 speech. He went on to say that the United States had fallen behind its industrialized peers in the percentage of women in the labor force. Thirty years ago, the United States ranked sixth among advanced economies in the share of women in the workforce, Biden said. You know where we are today? Twenty-three. Twenty-two countries have a higher percentage of their women in the workforce making a competitive wage than the United States. While our competitors are investing in the care economy, were standing still. Has the United States really fallen so far behind in womens participation in the labor force? Our research shows it has. We asked the White House for a source, and they pointed to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank that studies advanced industrialized nations. The data broadly supports how Biden characterized the shifts between 1990 and 2020. There are multiple ways to measure the phenomenon Biden addressed  notably, what age ranges are used. If you look at the labor force participation rate for all women at least 15 years of age, the United States ranked seventh in 1990, behind Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Canada. But by2020, the United States ranking had fallen to 17th. (Labor force participation rate refers to the percentage of a given group that is either employed or is actively seeking work.) An alternative statistic  the labor force participation rate for women in the prime working ages of 25 to 54  shows an even steeper U.S. decline. In1990, the United States ranked seventh, behind the same six countries. But by2020, the U.S. had fallen to 31st. The White House used a slightly different version of the OECD data than we did, which accounts for the differences in the U.S. rankings. But multiple economists told us that the differences in rankings were minor, and that the trend line was much more important. Specifically, the U.S. percentage of women working basically stagnated over those 30 years, even as 13 nations leapfrogged the U.S. between 1990 and 2020: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. However you define it, I think the president is highlighting genuine trends, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. Historically, women in the U.S. gravitated to the labor force earlier than women in other countries did. Right after World War II, only about one-third of U.S. women were in the labor force, but by the late 1990s, that percentage had risen steeply, to the low-60% range. Since then, however, it has plateaued and even fallen modestly overall. By the early 1990s, the United States ranked higher on this measurement than most of its economic peers. Since the 1990s, the downturn has been driven mostly by married women with a college degree, particularly those married to high-earning men, said Stefania Albanesi, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh. Albanesi said her research suggests that a rise in earnings of college-educated men, particularly those at the top of the income distribution, has reduced the pressure for married women to take paying work outside the home. As the U.S. rate began to fall, other nations caught up. Several factors drove these international shifts, economists say. One is that women in other countries have belatedly made gains in educational attainment, giving them a boost in the labor market. But perhaps the biggest difference comes from the lack of social policies in the United States that enable women with children to take jobs. The policies that are common in other industrialized countries but not in the U.S. include publicly provided child care services, an entitlement to paid parental leave, laws giving workers the right to demand a change to a part-time work schedule without exception and without being discriminated against, said Mihaela Pintea, an economist at Florida International University. The upshot of the lack of such policies in the U.S. is that its costly or burdensome for women with kids to remain in the workforce after they have a child, Burtless said. Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University economist, cautioned that its tricky to make cross-national comparisons on labor-force participation. Perhaps the biggest factor complicating Bidens comparison is that countries define part-time work differently. Generally speaking, when looking only at participation among women who work full-time hours, the U.S. ranks higher in international comparisons, Goldin said. If you did this comparison just for full-time work, wed be up there, she said. If you weighted by hours, wed be up there. Pintea added that, despite grim statistics like those cited by Biden, U.S. women who are working may still be better positioned in some ways. Effectively, the U.S. labor market environment pushes women to either skip working entirely or take a full-time job, rather than finding a middle ground. In a lot of other countries, women might work part-time as opposed to full time and may be less likely to be promoted into managerial positions, or may have lower wages than their male counterparts because of their career path, she said. Biden said, Thirty years ago, the United States ranked sixth among advanced economies in the share of women in the workforce. You know where we are today? Twenty-three. The specific rankings vary a bit depending on what measure one uses, though by one measurement, the U.S. position is even worse than Biden said. The general conclusion is the same: The United States used to rank near the top of the pack of industrialized countries in womens participation in the labor force, but over the past 30 years, many other countries have leapfrogged the U.S. in that measurement, as the rate in the U.S. stagnated or even fell. Economists say the U.S. rate has been lagging for several reasons, including a lack of government policies encouraging child care and paid leave and other countries catching up to the United States earlier gains in womens educational attainment. We rate the statement Mostly True. Claim:  The Obama administration is proposing a 1% tax on debit card usage and/or banking transactions.  Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2010] The Transaction Tax!  WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??President Obama's finance team and Nancy Pelosi are recommending a 1% transaction tax on all financial transactions.The bill is HR-4646 introduced by US Rep Peter deFazio D-Oregon and US Senator Tom Harkin D-Iowa.Their plan is to sneak it in after the November election to keep it under the radar.See what Nancy has to say about this wonderful idea!https://tinyurl.com/24dn5udIt's only 1%! This is a 1% tax  on all transactions to or from any financial institution i.e. Banks, Credit  Unions, Mutual funds,  Brokers, etc.Any deposit you make will have a 1% tax charged.Any withdrawal you make, 1% tax.Any transfer within your account, a transfer to or from savings and checking, will have a 1% tax charged.Any ATM transaction, withdrawal or deposit, 1% tax.If your pay check or your Social Security is direct deposited, 1% tax.If you carry a check to your bank to deposit, 1% tax.If you take cash in to deposit, 1% tax.If you receive any income from a bond or a dividend from stock, 1% tax.Any Real Estate Transaction, 1% tax.This is from the man who promised that if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax! Remember, he is completely honest and trustworthy.Keep your eyes and ears open.   https://tinyurl.com/24dn5ud Folks, Nancy says this would be a minimal tax on the people, but 1 percent every time you pay a bill or make a deposit is not minimal. This would no doubt tax investment  transactions as well as bank account transactions.This woman is nuts!!!If you know someone in California get this to them!  While at the checkout of Wal-mart in Greeneville, TN I heard that in the future the government may be planning to place a 1% tax on people using debit cards at the check out.  I have heard discussion and seen on emails the fear that the Obama administration is going to pass a 'banking tax' that will take 1% of each deposit and 1% of every transaction out of a bank account. Summary:  The Obama administration has not proposed or recommended placing a 1% tax on all financial transactions.  The idea of the 1% transaction tax stemmed from a bill repeatedly introduced by a single congressman which had no support from any other member of Congress and no chance of passing. Origins:  Some members of Congress have what might be termed "hobby horse" issues: concepts about which they introduce legislation in Congress after Congress although their bills not only never come close to passing, but never even clear committee to be put to  votes in the first place.  The hobby horse of Representative Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania is the notion of eliminating all federal taxes on individuals and corporations and replacing them with a revenue-generating system based on transaction fees (a concept he originally called the "Transform America Transaction Fee" and later referred to as the "Debt Free America Act"). Chaka Fattah Transform America Transaction Fee In 2004 Rep. Fattah presented a bill calling on Congress to fund a study regarding the replacement of the federal tax code with a transaction fee-basedsystem (H.R. 3759), he introduced a similar bill in 2005 (H.R. 1601), again in 2007 (H.R. 2130), and again in 2009 (H.R. 1703).  None of these bills was ever put to a vote, and only one of them had so much as a single co-sponsor. H.R. 3759 H.R. 1601 (H.R. 2130), (H.R. 1703) In 2010, Rep. Fattah moved beyond proposing studies and submitted the Debt Free America Act (H.R. 4646), a bill calling for the implementation of  a scheme to pay down the national debt and eliminate federal income tax on individuals by imposing a 1% fee on specified financial transactions: H.R. 4646 pay down One idea for raising taxes to pay down the debt is the bill introduced this February [2010] by Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). His "Debt Free America Act" (H.R. 4646) would impose a 1 percent "transaction tax" on every financial transaction  whether paid by cash, credit card or any form of financial transfer, the only exception being transactions involving the purchase or sale of stock. Theoretically, everyone would pay one cent on the dollar for every such transaction in America every day  whether $3 million on a $300 million business acquisition, $300 on the purchase of a $30,000 car, or $5 on a $500 ATM withdrawal. Specifically, the text of the bill stated that: The purpose of [the transaction fee] is to establish a fee on most transactions. Such [a] fee:  is different than a sales tax in that a sales tax is charged only on sales to the final consumer, [while] the transaction fee would apply to intermediate users as well as end users   is different than a value added tax (VAT), commonly used in European and other countries, in that a VAT is imposed only on a portion of a transaction's value (roughly the difference between an item's selling price and its cost), [while] the transaction fee would apply to the entire amount of the transaction  is intended to raise sufficient revenue to eliminate the national debt, which was $10.6 trillion in January 2009, during a period of 7 years, and to phase out the income tax on individuals. [This bill would] impose on every specified transaction a fee in an amount equal to 1 percent of the amount of such transaction. The term 'specified transaction' means any transaction that uses a payment instrument, including any check, cash, credit card, transfer of stock, bonds, or other financial instrument. The term 'transaction' includes retail and wholesale sales, purchases of intermediate goods, and financial and intangible transactions. Persons become liable for the fee at the moment the person exercises control over a piece of property or service, regardless of the payment method. (The bill provided for individuals earning $125,000 or less to receive a credit equal to 1% of their income against the tax, and it gave the Treasury Department discretion to exempt certain transactions on which lower-income people disproportionately relied.) Like Rep. Fattah's other Congressional efforts along these lines, his Debt Free America Act had no sponsors other than himself,  languished in committee after being introduced, had no realistic chance of being passed. Thus, although e-mailed warnings about a "1% transaction tax" do reference a once-real piece of proposed legislation, the amount of attention those warnings garnered vastly, vastly outstripped any real possibility that such legislation would actually be enacted. Moreover, some of the additional details contained with such e-mailed warnings were erroneous:  Neither "President Obama's finance team" nor Nancy Pelosi is "recommending a 1% transaction tax."  The proposal for the  Debt Free America Act was purely the effort of a single congressman, with no outside support.  Neither Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon nor Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa introduced the Debt Free America Act, co-sponsored it, or publicly supported it.  The included link that supposedly showed Nancy Pelosi endorsing the Debt Free America Act antedated the introduction of that bill to Congress; her comments actually referred to a different, earlier transaction tax proposed in December 2009 by Rep. Peter DeFazio.  That bill, known as the "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act" (H.R. 4191), called for the funding of investment in middle class jobs by levying small percentage value taxes on the buying and selling of stocks, futures, swaps, options and other securities. (Although Rep. DeFazio's bill had 31 co-sponsors, it too languished in committee without being brought to a vote.) proposed H.R. 4191  Later versions of this item opened with the statement that "ON JANUARY 1ST 2012, THE GOVERNMENT IS REQUIRING EVERYONE TO HAVE DIRECT DEPOSIT FOR SS CHECKS. WONDER WHY?"  The Social Security program did switch over to an electronic payments system as of 1 March 2013 that provided recipients with the options of receiving their benefits payments either through direct deposit to a bank account or via the reloading of a debit card, but that change had nothing to do with the Congressional bill discussed above. Rep. Fattah reintroduced his Debt Free America Act (as H.R. 1125) to the 112th Congress on 16 March 2011. Like Rep. Fattah's previous efforts along these lines, Govtrack.us tagged it with the prognosis "This bill has a 0% chance of being enacted." H.R. 1125 Govtrack.us Last updated:  22 October 2013