Did a Mother Deer Sacrifice Herself to Cheetahs to Save Her Fawns?
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.
Claim:  Starting in 2011, all employees will have to pay taxes on the value of health insurance provided by their employers.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, May 2010] I contacted my Congressman about House bill HR 3590, the health care bill. I asked for a summary of changes. The Aid directed me to go to www.thomas.gov, enter HR 3590 in the search box and look for summaries. Starting in 2011 (next year folks) your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or Governmental body of some sort. If you're retired? So what; your gross WILL go up by the amount of insurance you get. You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse. This is how the government is going to buy insurance for 15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases. Not believing this I researched the summaries and here's what I'm reading: On page 25 of 29:TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS - (sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901)    Sec.9002."requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employee's gross income." Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters. Go to Kiplinger's and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what I just told you about. Why am I sending you this? The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book. People have the right to know the truth because an election is coming in November and we need to vote in Conservatives that will repel this horrid law!    Origins:  This is another case of a legislative issue which has a kernel of truth to it, but which has been misinterpreted, affects only a small percentage of the population, and has misleadingly been blown out of proportion through someone's mistaken assumption that it applies to everyone. Section 9002 of PPACA, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), requires that all employers, beginning in 2011, report the aggregate cost of employer-sponsored health benefits they provide to employees on those employees' W-2 forms.  However, the monetary values so reported will neither be counted as gross income nor will they be taxed; they will be included for informational purposes only.  (Section 106A of the Internal Revenue Code states that, in general, employer-provided health coverage is not taxable to the employee.) Section 106A The portion (Title IX, Sec. 9001) of the PPACA referenced above is entitled "Excise Tax on High Cost Employer-Sponsored Coverage."  This is the section of the recently passed health care reform legislation that addresses taxing so-called high-level "Cadillac" health care plans that some employees receive through their employers.   Title IX, Sec. 9001 In general, beginning in 2018 (not 2011), the PPACA imposes a 40% excise tax on the value of employer-sponsored medical insurance that exceeds a given threshold (initially $27,500 annually).  This excise tax would be paid by the insurance company, not the employee, and is initially expected to affect fewer than 10% of families covered by health insurance: Many employers pay most of the premium for health coverage. Workers pick up the rest but pay no taxes on the employer's often-substantial contribution. That's why many unions have bargained hard for generous health coverage over the years, even if that meant forgoing a bigger pay raise. The new agreement would take away the tax advantage for a small portion of the health benefit by imposing a 40 percent tax on the amount by which the premiums for employer-sponsored health coverage exceed specified thresholds. That would be $27,500 a year for a family, starting in 2018. The tax on a $29,500 plan would be $800, or 40 percent of $2,000. The insurance company would pay the tax but would almost certainly pass it along to the employer and its employees. That $27,500 threshold is well above the current average of $13,400 for a family plan. By 2016, more than 80 percent of all family plans are projected to still fall below the threshold. In the following years, the tax threshold would rise more slowly than the likely rate of inflation in medical costs, which could mean the plans of millions of workers  a small minority of the work force  would be subject to the tax in theory. Most likely, insurers will drop their premiums just below the threshold. They could do that by setting higher deductibles and co-payments, managing access to care more tightly, or reducing benefits. Last updated:  25 May 2010    The New York Times.  "Cadillac Plans."   15 January 2010.    The Washington Post.  "Will President Obama Defend the 'Cadillac Tax' to Cut Health-Care Costs?"   12 January 2010. In November 2015, the biography of Frederick Trump, Donald Trump's grandfather, was condensed into two paragraphs and then passed around the internet via a meme. While some of the information included in the meme is accurate, much of it is either over-exaggerated or incomplete:  This particular rumor centers on the idea that Frederich Trump made his fortune via brothels and opium dens. While there is anecdotal evidence that Trump dabbled in prostitution, there is no proof that this made up the bulk of his fortune. In Gwenda Blair's 2000 book The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate, she described how Frederick Trump opened a series of restaurants and hotels during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s. One of those hotels, The Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, was described as decadent and far superior to other restaurants in the area: book In the larder was salmon and an extraordinary variety of meats, including duck, ptarmigan, grouse, goose, and swan, as well as caribou, moose, goat, sheep, rabbit, and squirrel. Incredibly, the New Arctic served fresh fruit: red currants, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, even cranberries. A small oasis of luxury, the Arctics menu was a vast improvement over what the two restaurateurs had been able to offer on the trail. An anonymous letter to the Yukon, however, claimed that The Arctic Restaurant and Hotel was also known for prostitution: I would advise respectable women traveling alone, or with an escort, to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett, he wrote. For single men the Arctic has excellent accommodations as well as the best restaurant in Bennett, but I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings  and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex. While it's unclear if Frederich Trump directly profited from prostitution at his hotel (or whether it even occurred there), it should be noted that the world's oldest profession was relatively commonplace during the Gold Rush. The meme also claims that Frederick Trump decided to go back to Germany when police started cracking down on "his criminal rackets." Again, this is based on little more than a morsel of truth, and does not tell the whole story. In 1901, Trump sold his assets and returned to Germany. While one could argue that Trump made the decision because he believed that police were going to start enforcing prostitution laws, that is only one factor that led to Trump's departure for Germany: Frederick Trump saw that it was time to leave. If Major Wood actually enforced the laws regarding prostitution, gambling, and liquor, hotels and restaurants would be far less profitable. Not only that, the economic boom was bound to be short lived. There was not nearly enough solid economic development to absorb these newcomers in any long-term way; when the placer deposits were emptied, they would go back home. Without the umbrella of gold, other local industries would not be strong enough to keep going on their own and compete with cheaper sources farther south. The boom was over, Frederick Trump realized... ... Frederick Trump left just in time. He avoided the uproar when his erstwhile partner hit the skids, and he avoided the economic decline that would soon sweep over White Horse. Once again, in a situation that created many losers, he managed to emerge a winner. He had made money; perhaps even more unusual in the Yukon, he had also kept it and departed from White Horse with a substantial nest egg. He had accomplished this goal of making and saving enough money to marry. But he had no intention of doing so in America. For this important moment, he would have to return to Germany. While the meme exaggerated Trump's involvement in "criminal rackets," it did correctly state that Trump returned to the United States after the German government determined that he had originally left Germany in 1885 to avoid taxes and the army. returned In summation, Donald Trump's grandfather Frederick Trump was a German immigrant who made his fortune by opening several restaurants and hotels in Seattle and British Columbia during the Yukon Gold Rush. While some of these hotels may have been used for prostitution, gambling, or other seedy activities common on the trail, it is incorrect to say that Trump built his fortune on illegal activities. Grier, Peter.  "Donald Trump: The Son of an Immigrant."
  The Christian Science Monitor.  24 August 2015. Blair, Gwenda.  The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate.
  Simon and Schuster, 2000.  ISBN 0-684-80849-8. Although nearly everyone who still writes checks uses the sequentially numbered forms torn from books of blanks ordered from a printing company, there is no requirement that a bank customer must use such forms.  Indeed, that fact has given rise to a number of tales about checks written on surfaces other than paper: surfaces other than paper A check doesn't necessarily have to be written on paper. There are legends, probably apocryphal, of checks written on the backs of shirts (by tax protesters) and on watermelon rinds (by goodness knows whom -- maybe madcap farmers), even on skin. If they were written in the right format, they could be cashed. [A check] can be written on anything. As long as it has the elements, the surface doesn't make a difference. A check is an order to pay someone, that's all it is.	  "It has to contain certain features, and it can be written on anything," says Brian Black, managing director of operations and technology for the Bank Administration Institute. "As long as it has the elements, the surface doesn't make a difference. A check is an order to pay someone, that's all it is." In that vein, the story of the check written on the side of a cow is so widespread that major banks reportedly make reference to it in pamphlets given out to new depositors as an example of some of the unusual things people have used as checks. Nonetheless, it's a completely fabricated tale, and it sprang straight from the adventures of one Albert Haddock, the fictitious and fanciful creation of British writer A.P. Herbert.   Herbert's book Uncommon Law was first published in 1935. Herbert himself was called to the English Bar but never practiced, choosing another career path instead. He was a regular contributor to Punch for more than fifty years and the author of eight novels. He became a member of Parliament in 1935 and fought successfully for the reform of many licensing, divorce, and obscenity laws. Okay, now you know a bit about the author.  As for his wondrous creation, Albert Haddock, here's a bit from the introduction to Uncommon Law:  Albert Haddock made his first public appearance in Punch about 1924. I have always understood that I invented him, but he has made some disturbing escapes into real life. The first of the first series of Misleading Cases shown by the BBC on television in 1967 was No. 32 "Board of Inland Revenue v. Haddock" where Haddock, in payment of income tax, made out a cheque on a cow and led it to the office of the Collector of Taxes. Some weeks later I received a spacious cutting from an American newspaper (the Memphis Press-Scimitar) headed:  A CHECK CAN BE WRITTEN ON A COW The article made not the slightest reference to me, my work, or the BBC, but used as news all Haddock's arguments and opinions on unconventional cheques. Halfway through, it suddenly claimed the authority of the Chase Manhattan Bank for the particular case of the cow: 'In the 19th century an Englishman named Albert Haddock got mad at the local tax collector over his bill and conceived a most ingenious idea for getting even.' Then followed the whole story. 19th century indeed! Haddock wasn't a real person any more than Sherlock Holmes was. A.P. Herbert loved writing about the law, so he created Haddock as an ongoing character upon whom he could hang his fanciful stories. The BBC's Misleading Cases comedy series, based on the exploits of the fictional Albert Haddock, used this one of Herbert's tales for its premier episode ("The Negotiable Cow," originally aired 20 June 1967), and someone at the Memphis Press-Scimitar picked up on it, didn't get the joke, and presented it as something that really happened. Not content to leave well enough alone, the Press-Scimitar threw in the bit about the Chase Manhattan Bank to lend an extra bit of believability to the tale. Misleading Cases One wonders how many cattle have been led into the Chase Manhattan Bank over the years thanks to the Press-Scimitar's gullibility. (NOTE: A number of Internet sources cite the 1985 edition of Michael Liepner's Applying the Law as documentation of the claim that "In Canada during the 1930s, a farmer painted a cheque on the side of a cow and cashed it."  This citation is erroneous: the referenced book contains no such statement.) Herbert, A.P.  Uncommon Law.
  New York: International Polygonics, 1935.  ISBN 1-55882-107-4.

 Wansell, Geoffrey.  "Cash on the Hoof for A.P. Herbert."
  The [London] Times.  27 August 1990.

 CNN Money.  "Giant Cardboard Checks."
  22 March 2001. As so-called undocumented immigrants in the U.S. struggled to avoid deportation and risked their health during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, government agencies created potential new challenges for them. In July, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) department announced they would be offering a six-day Citizens Academy training starting in September in Chicago, which would allow civilians and ICE officers to engage with each other. struggled risked their health announced Snopes readers shared the following letter from ICE, reportedly sent to potential participants across Chicago, and asked us if it meant the agency would be training civilians to assist in the apprehension of undocumented people. The answer is complicated. letter   We found that this was an actual letter sent by ICE. Although they said they were planning to conduct trainings in September and would show civilians how they made arrests, the notion that this would lead to civilians actually apprehending undocumented people was disputed by the agency. Immigration advocates, however, were skeptical.  In order to understand the actual nature and likely outcome of these trainings, we reached out to ICE, as well as immigration advocates, and looked at past examples of such academies.  According to an ICE press release, the interactive program would occur once a week over six weeks. Participants would learn about ICE policies and procedures from ERO officers, while officers would hear participants perspectives and debunk myths about ICE. press release The curriculum will include, but is not limited to, classroom instruction, visiting an immigration detention center, learning more about the health care ICE provides to those in its custody, and examining ICEs role in ensuring dignity, respect and due process of an immigration case from start to finish. Many in Chicago received letters from ICE inviting them to apply. The letter said, attendees will participate in scenario-based training ... including, but not limited to defensive tactics, firearms familiarization, and targeted arrests. received Nicole Alberico, an ICE spokesperson, responded to Snopes' request for more information about the training (emphasis ours): ...the academy is not to train members of the public to do the work of trained, federal law enforcement officers. ICE ERO Citizens Academy is modeled after other law enforcement community outreach programs  including ICEs Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), FBI and local police departments  all with the goal of directly engaging and educating the public. Chicago ERO is looking for a diverse set of influential community leaders  regardless of their stance on ICE  to apply. The spokesperson said that they also had not determined whether media would be permitted to attend the training, as they were considering health precautions because of the pandemic and privacy concerns.  In sum, according to their own descriptions, ICE plans on showing civilians how they as an agency carry out arrests but will not be training civilians to do arrests themselves.  According to one report, such a Citizens Academy has already taken place in Los Angeles for years, with participants simulating drug busts, arrests, and stakeouts. According to one graduate, the course immersed people in what the agents do. While the Chicago program was to be run by ERO, the Los Angeles Academy was being run under ICEs Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) department.  one report simulating The goal of such training appeared to be to get more people to understand ICEs perspective, see how they operate, and eventually construct a positive image of the agency in various communities. There is no available evidence that such trainings led to civilians participating in actual arrests.  Testimony from activists, human rights organizations, and reporting show ample proof of ICEs history of violating detainees rights, inhumane arrests of undocumented immigrants, separating children from their parents, and the lack of accountability surrounding their operations. ICE has also used civilian informants before. violating detainees rights arrests lack of accountability civilian informants The Citizens Academy announcement faced swift backlash from activists and government officials, including Chicago's alderman, Rossana Rodriguez, who labeled it a vigilante academy. In July, Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley put forward an amendment to the Homeland Security spending bill, barring agencies like ICE from using government funds to run Citizens Academy courses. vigilante academy forward Immigration activists said these classes were at best propaganda and at worst would train civilians to "snitch" on undocumented immigrants. Lam Nguyen Ho, executive director of Beyond Legal Aid, an organization that provides legal services to immigrants in Chicago, spoke to Snopes about the dangers of such academies:  said propaganda ... the best case scenario for this training is ICE doing a marketing campaign to justify continuing to deport undocumented immigrants indiscriminately and separating families inhumanely ... We have immigrants afraid of opening their doors and applying for immigration rights to which they are actually eligible due to the fears and violence they see ... I cant imagine the misinformation and fears that will be created when an agency of our government is basically sanctioning and coordinating neighbors surveilling, profiling, or worse against each other. (Update: The Chicago Citizen's Academy was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic, and a new date had not been announced. According to a statement from an ICE official, it will be tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2021.) In sum, ICE confirmed that the Citizens Academy course will take place, but denied they will train civilians to carry out arrests. Based on ICEs history of abuses against immigrant populations, the fears surrounding this particular training aren't unreasonable, but the exact nature and outcome of the training remains to be seen. Based on all of the above factors, we rate this claim a Mixture. Da Silva, Chantal.  "DHS Spending Bill Amended to Ban Funding for ICE's Citizen's Academy."
 Newsweek. 15 July 2020. Da Silva, Chantal.  "ICE Offering 'Citizens Academy' Course with Training on Arresting Immigrants."
 Newsweek. 9 July 2020. Gonzalez, Christina."ICE Citizen Academy Causing Uproar in Chicago, Has Been Going on in Los Angeles - for Years."
 Fox11 Los Angeles. 11 July 2020. Human Rights Watch.  "US: Stop Using Untrained, Abusive Agencies at Protests."
 5 June 2020. Kaplan, Emily.  "What Isolation Does to Undocumented Immigrants."
  The Atlantic. 27 May 2020. Katz, Ryan. "Play to Stay."
 The Intercept. 24 September 2018. McFarling, Usha Lee. "Fearing Deportation, Many Immigrants at Higher Risk of Covid-19 Are Afraid to Seek Testing or Care."
  StatNews. 15 April 2020. Mejia, Brittny. "At Citizen Academies, Devoted Participants Get Their Law Enforcement Fix."
 Los Angeles Times. 3 December 2018. Tashman, Brian. "Congress Needs To Hold ICE Accountable for Abuses."
 ACLU. 2 February 2018. Torres, Adry. "ICE Is Offering a Six-week Course on How to Arrest Immigrants - Including 'Firearms and Defensive Training' - as Critics Warns They Are Using Private Citizens As Their Eyes and Ears."
 The Daily Mail.8 July 2020. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "ICE Offers First Citizens Academy for Public to Learn More About Agencys Mission in Chicago."
 13 July 2020. Zamudio, Maria Ines. "ICE Citizens Trainings May Be a 'Vigilante Academy,' Chicago Alderman Warns."
 NPR. 10 July 2020. In the crowded Republican primary to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera says he has evidence that he takes care of taxpayers wallets. I've cut the budget of the office by more than half, reduced the staff, he said in aninterviewon the April 30Money, Power, Politicsshow on Fox 13 in Tampa. I'm the only lieutenant governor to not take a security detail. He hasdeclined his security detail, breaking from his predecessors. Lopez-Cantera has also cut the budget and reduced staff positions. But he is leaving out some context. The only official role of the lieutenant governor is to replace the governor if he leaves offices or dies. What he or she does in the meantime varies with the governor and his or her vision. Lopez-Cantera is not as active or in the public eye as much as some of his predecessors, rarely posting official events on his public calendar and not tasked with any special assignments from Gov. Rick Scott. Scotts first lieutenant governor,Jennifer Carroll,resigned in March 2013 after she was questioned by law enforcement about her ties to a charity group that was the subject of probes. (She was not charged with wrongdoing.) She chaired a task force about Floridas Stand Your Ground law afterTrayvon Martins deathand chaired the Space Florida Board. Scott tapped Lopez-Cantera, a former state legislator and Miami-Dade property appraiser, to replace her almost a year later in February 2014. Lets see how the budget changed. Reducing budget and staff The lieutenant governors budget has ranged from about $245,000 to $540,000 in recent years. Lopez-Canteras office does not have its own budget like other state agencies. Scott proposes a budget that includes the lieutenant governor. It is then up to the Legislature to pass a budget, which Scott then signs into law. The amount of money below includes the $125,000 annual salary for the lieutenant governor. Year Allotment Expenditure 2009-10 $439,646 $433,006 2010-11 $540,440 $537,664 2011-12 $504,169 $587,389 2012-13 $509,806 $471,091 2013-14 $245,016 $156,435 2014-15 $485,160 $415,522 2015-16 $240,693 $242,875 2016-17 Not announced yet NA So for a few years the lieutenant governors budget was about $500,000. The it was chopped in half to $245,016 for the 2013-14 budget year that started July 1, 2013, a few months after Carroll resigned. Its no surprise that the allocation dropped since the office was vacant. Since Lopez-Cantera took office in February 2014, it is also not surprising the allotment nearly doubled to $485,160 for the 2014-15 budget year. The next year, the budget allotment dropped to slightly less than when Lopez-Cantera started to $240,693  a 50 percent decrease. Most of the budget is staff salaries. Employee Count (excluding LG) As of January 1, 2010* 3 As of January 1, 2011** 5 As of January 1, 2012** 5 As of January 1, 2013** 5 As of February, 2014*** 4 As of January 1, 2015*** 2 As of January 1, 2016*** 1 *     Kottkamp **   Carroll *** Lopez-Cantera Lopez-Cantera cut the staff, but its worth noting that the size of the staff was small for starters. It's also worth keeping in mind that Lopez-Cantera has access to the full weight of the governor's office for his needs, including the press office, legislative aides and budget analysts. Under Carroll, there were five employees in the lieutenant governors office each year, which included a chief of staff and assistants. When Lopez-Cantera started in February 2014, there were four staffers. Then the number dropped to two, and now he just has one employee whose title is a special assistant. The governors office said no one was laid off. We asked if that meant that Lopez-Cantera cut empty positions or shifted jobs to the governors office or elsewhere. The governors office didnt answer that question. Our ruling Lopez-Cantera said, I've cut the budget of the office by more than half. He omits some context about how his office budget works. Scott recommends a budget, which is then approved by the Legislature. Lopez-Cantera's own resources may be limited, but he downplays the access he has to Scott's vast governing operation for assistance. Months after Lopez-Cantera started, the budget rose by roughly double to bring it more in line to where it was when a lieutenant governor in the office. But after that increase, the budget allotment dropped the next year to slightly less than when Lopez-Cantera started to $240,693  a 50 percent decrease. The budget largely pays for Lopez-Canteras salary as well as a special assistant. We rate this claim Mostly True. On Nov. 28, 2022, the@Xx17965797N Twitter accounttweeteda video with a misleading caption that claimed the clip showed a sea of lined-up electric scooter bikes that were abandoned because of the high cost of electric vehicle (EV) battery replacement. The tweet read, "Electric green scooters that have reached end of battery life. Due to the batteries being so expensive to replace, electric scooters are abandoned because disposing of them any other way is dangerous and expensive." tweeted This was not true, despite the tens of thousands of combined retweets and likes that the tweet received.  The same video upload from @Xx17965797N was also misleadingly reshared by accounts including@PeterDClack, @JamesMelville, and @MillerForTexas. The former two tweets received thousands of engagements, despite the fact that the information pushed in the original tweet was not true. @PeterDClack @JamesMelville @MillerForTexas In cases like these where a caption is incorrect but the picture or video is real, we issue a fact-check rating of "Miscaptioned." Days before the @Xx17965797N tweet was posted, the@ElevaBrasilES account also misleadingly tweeted that the same video was shot in France. The tweet went up on Nov. 21 with an incorrect caption that read, "Green energy Cemetery of electric motorcycles in France. Now designated as a 'biohazard zone.'" (Note: This mention of France reminded us of other rumors we've debunked in the past, in particular about two photosof other car graveyards. The two pictures showed false captions that claimed the cars had been abandoned due to the high cost of battery replacement, just like the video we're looking at in this fact check.) tweeted two photos The oldest upload of the video that we could find came from TikTok user @smartsetting. The video was uploaded on Nov. 7 and by the end of the month had received nearly 5 million views.   Based on watching the video, the scooters appeared to be parked in a parking lot near a basketball court, perhaps in a university complex or public park. Several blurry Chinese characters were visible on the side of the bikes. At the end of the clip, a tall building could be seen on the right-hand side of the frame. Other than those pieces of information, we didn't have much to go on. In order to find the truth behind this video, we first used Adobe Media Encoder to export a JPEG file for each and every frame from the video. The results of this export were 440 individual images from the 14-second video. We then performed numerous reverse image searches with these picture files using Google Images and TinEye.com. These reverse image searches provided several clues as to where other users had reposted the video. However, we did not find any further details from these searches. Next, we tried several searches on Google, Twitter, and YouTube with phrases such as "electric scooter China" and "electric bike graveyard China," among other terms. This helped to find several repostsof the video. The searches alsoshowedresults for many of the sites in China that are the final resting placesfor massive stacks of bicycles dumped by bike-sharing companies with failed business models. Perhaps the most striking video we found was titled, "No Place To PlaceThe Wonders of Shared Bicycle Graveyards in China." several reposts showed results sites final resting places failed business models video At one point in our research, we stumbled upon an AFP videofrom 2021 that appeared to show the same yellow color and model of electric scooter bike. The caption for the clip said that it was captured "outside the city of Shenyang." The end of the video showed a stadium with special colors for seating zones. video model After an exhaustive search, we were able to find this same stadium by using the map tools on the Chinese website Baidu.com. Unlike Google Maps, Baidu.com has street-level views of nearby roads. However, this part of our effort wasn't very helpful. It remained unclear if this was the same location where the viral clip was shot. Baidu.com In the end, it was going back to TikTok that helped us find the origins of the video. A search on TikTok for "electric share bike China" brought us to this video from @evstevepan. The video showed the same kind of yellow electric scooter bike with a similar logo. A scan of the logo using a mobile phone camera and Google Translate revealed the company name Meituan, which is known as an "all-encompassing platform for local services." this video We then searched the internet for Meituan and electric scooters, which produced plenty of pictures on Shutterstock.com. For a moment, the two large characters on the side of the scooter didn't seem to match those from the viral video. We then horizontally flipped a still-frame from the viral video, which led us to discover that it had been mirrored, meaning that all words and numbers were backward. plenty of pictures All of these developments in our research led us to news articles that helped to show our findings were lining up. In April 2018, news broke that Meituan had purchased the company Mobike for $2.7 billion. According to the story, Mobike is "a Chinese startup that helped pioneer bike-sharing services worldwide." broke But by November of that same year, TechCrunch reported that Meituan would be "[walking] away from bike-sharing and ride-hailing," as there wasn't enough demand from customers for the supply of its bike-sharing venture: reported In April, Meituan entered the bike-sharing fray after it scooped up top player Mobike for $2.7 billion to face off Alibaba-backed Ofo. Over the past few years, Mobike and Ofo were burning through large sums of investor money in a bid to win users from subsidized rides, but both have shown signs of softening their stance recently. Mobike is downsizing its fleets to "avoid an oversupply" as the bike-sharing market falters, Meituan's chief financial officer Chen Shaohui said during the earnings call. Ofo has also scaled back by closing down many of its international operations. ... During its third quarter that ended September 30, Meituan posted a 97.2 percent jump on revenues to 19.1 billion yuan, or $2.75 billion, on the back of strong growth in food delivery transactions. The firm's investments in new initiatives  including ride-hailing and bike-sharing  took a toll as operating losses nearly tripled to 3.45 billion yuan compared to a year ago. Meituan shares plunged as much as 14 percent on Friday, the most since its spectacular listing. Just as so many electric bicycles from bike-sharing companies had piled up across China, so had electric scooters like the ones seen in the viral video. In sum, social media users falsely claimed that a video showed tons of lined-up electric scooter bikes that were abandoned in a "graveyard" due to the high cost of EV battery replacement. All evidence pointed to a simple answer: supply and demand. The number of electric scooter bikes and bicycles far outnumbered the number of people who requested to use them (or else they went missing or were stolen), which resulted in downsizing by some companies, and the closure of others.The clip appears to have been shot in China, although its precise location is unclear. far outnumbered went missing or were stolen We reached out to Meituan for comment on Nov. 29 but did not receive a response in time for publication. 25  2022 . ELDORADO, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gbI2Bo2xKCc. A Veces Hay Cosas Que Duelen y Desesperan. Lamenta, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmV5lBEYEMU. @Atomicfact. Twitter, 14 Aug. 2018, https://twitter.com/atomicfact/status/1029352130086424576. Baidu. https://map.baidu.com/. @BBC. "The Problem of China's Huge Bike Graveyards." Twitter, 20 May 2018, https://twitter.com/bbc/status/998231947359997952. @ElevaBrasilES. Twitter, 21 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/elevabrasiles/status/1594826198831570947. @evstevepan. "Share Electric Scooter in China #electricscooter #china #vlog." TikTok, 25 Sept. 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@evstevepan/video/7147290373868506411. Freer. "Meituan Electric Shared Bikes on the Street." Shutterstock, 19 May 2020, https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/zhongshan-guangdong-chinamay-19-2020meituan-electric-1736816009. Google Images. https://images.google.com/. Google Translate. https://translate.google.com/. "Graveyard of the Bikes: Aerial Photos of China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme Show Mountains of Damaged Bikes." The Straits Times via AFP, 21 Apr. 2021, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/graveyard-of-the-bikes-chinas-failed-share-cycle-scheme-from-above. "Graveyard of the Bikes: China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme from Above." Techxplore.com via AFP, 21 Apr. 2021, https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-graveyard-bikes-china-share-cycle-scheme.html. @JamesMelville. Twitter, 29 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1597532727338639360. Liao, Rita. "Meituan, China's 'everything App,' Walks Away from Bike Sharing and Ride Hailing." TechCrunch, 23 Nov. 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/23/meituan-scale-back-ride-hailing-and-bike-sharing/. @mbrennanchina. Twitter, 4 Dec. 2018, https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina/status/1069940186786775042. @MillerForTexas. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/millerfortexas/status/1597346555111280640. No Place To PlaceThe Wonders of Shared Bicycle Graveyards in China. Guoyong Wu, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfLWFv3ixk. @PeterDClack. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/peterdclack/status/1597371847397761024. Russell, Jon. "Chinese Bike-Sharing Pioneer Mobike Sold to Ambitious Meituan Dianping for $2.7B." TechCrunch, 3 Apr. 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/chinese-bike-sharing-pioneer-mobike-sold-to-ambitious-meituan-dianping-for-2-7b/. Shared Electric Bikes Roll into Changsha in Central China. CGTN, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkSUN-FSuNI. Siqi, Ji. "Taxpayers Foot the Clean-up Bill for China's Bike-Sharing Bust." South China Morning Post, 2 Oct. 2020, https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3103908/what-happens-discarded-bikes-chinas-sharing-boom-taxpayers. Sprawling Bike Graveyard from China's Failed Share-Cycle Scheme. AFP News Agency, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1Qxs_KOYo. TinEye Reverse Image Search. https://tineye.com/. u/silvertomars. "A Graveyard for Electric Scooters the Batteries Have Reached the End of Their Life-Time, but Are Too Expensive to Replace and Safely Disposing or Recycling the Batteries Is Also Too Expensive." r/Wallstreetsilver via Reddit.com, 28 Nov. 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/z7i7ng/a_graveyard_for_electric_scooters_the_batteries/. @vegastarr. Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/vegastarr/status/1597338236472659968. @Xx17965797N.Twitter, 28 Nov. 2022, https://twitter.com/xx17965797n/status/1597310309139873792. Yan, Alice. "Chinese Bike-Share Firm Closes after 90 per Cent of Cycles Stolen." South China Morning Post, 21 June 2017, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2099293/chinese-bike-share-firm-closes-after-90-cent-cycles-stolen. Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.  fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO As hospitals continued to be overwhelmed in 2020 by a surge in COVID-19 cases across the United States, false information surrounding the management of the disease and patients continued to circulate. overwhelmed One post in particular, shared on our Facebook group, Snopes Tips, claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a statement alleging that "anyone who walks into the hospital is counted as a Covid case, no matter why they come to the hospital, as the government pays the hospital extra money. post  There are two parts to this claim: Firstly, that hospitals are inflating their COVID-19 numbers, and secondly, that the government is allocating more funds based on coronavirus cases. Snopes covered the second part of the claim back in April. We learned that it was possible that Medicare was paying hospital fees for some COVID-19 cases, but Medicare stated that it does not make standard, one-size-fits-all payments to hospitals for patients admitted with COVID-19 diagnoses and placed on ventilators. covered The CDC highlighted in a statement how the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), the Paycheck Protection Program, and Health Care Enhancement Act provided $175 billion in relief funds to hospitals and healthcare providers on the front lines of the coronavirus response: highlighted In the first round of the High Impact Allocation, $12 billion was distributed to nearly 400 hospitals who provided inpatient care for 100 or more COVID-19 patients through April 10, 2020. $2 billion of these payments was distributed to these hospitals based on their Medicare disproportionate share and uncompensated care payments. In the second round of funding, $10 billion will be distributed to hospitals having over 161 COVID-19 admissions between January 1 and June 10, 2020. For the first part of the claim, we looked through CDC statements and reports about people admitted to hospitals around the country and were unable to find a case where the CDC said that the hospital was inflating its COVID-19 case numbers in order to get more money. We reached out to the CDC, and the agency referred us to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but did not confirm whether it had ever made such a statement about hospitals counting everyone who enters as a COVID-19 case. U.S. President Donald Trump promoted another version of this conspiracy theory at a rally in October, where he said hospitals were inflating the numbers of COVID-19 deaths, and was roundly debunked by news outlets and rejected in a statement by the American College of Emergency Physicians.  promoted debunked statement To imply that emergency physicians would inflate the number of deaths from this pandemic to gain financially is offensive, especially as many are actually under unprecedented financial strain as they continue to bear the brunt of COVID-19. These baseless claims not only do a disservice to our health care heroes but promulgate the dangerous wave of misinformation which continues to hinder our nations efforts to get the pandemic under control and allow our nation to return to normalcy. The dire situation in hospitals paints a very different picture, far-removed from claims that they are profiting financially from the pandemic. A New York Times report from Nov. 27, 2020, highlighted how surging coronavirus numbers were resulting in a crisis-level shortage of beds and staff around the country. In some cases, hospitals were facing shortages in protective equipment, forcing healthcare workers to buy their own. As of Dec. 3, 2020, hospitalizations from the virus topped 100,000  an all-time high since the pandemic began.  New York Times Dec. 3, 2020 An April Washington Post report described how hospitals were also suffering from financial losses on account of their deferring or cancelling non-urgent surgeries to free up bed space for the pandemic, cutting off income, and forcing them to lay off workers. At the time, relief packages for hospitals were widely described as insufficient. Washington Post financial losses insufficient Hospital-reported data on COVID-19 patients have addressed a range of issues around the country. A July 2020 ProPublica report detailed how the Trump administration had told hospitals to stop reporting data to the CDC and instead report it to HHS. The move resulted in widespread confusion. While the number of infected patients was soaring nationally, for a period of time it was unclear how many were being treated in hospitals for COVID-19. A few states like Idaho and South Carolina experienced temporary information blackouts, and the COVID Tracking Project reported issues with its figures. July 2020 A Nov. 29, 2020, investigation by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) magazine found the federal system for tracking COVID-19 patients was continuing to carry questionable data. HHS collected hospital patient data in two ways  through HHS Protect, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). Their two sources of data on the usage of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds for COVID patients conflicted sharply in at least six states. HHS data also diverged sharply from state-supplied data, and showed that over the last two months, COVID-19 in-patient tally in 14 states was consistently lower than HHS Protects. investigation consistently In at least 27 states, the tally was alternating between being lower and higher than HHS. And recently, in 16 states, the tallies grew closer. The over-arching conclusion for this analysis was that hospitals are going to be over-stressed in the upcoming months, with inaccurate information systems in place. We have reached out to the HHS to learn more, and will update this post with more information. Additionally, if the language of the claim is taken at face value, CDC guidance for hospitals references providing necessary in-person clinical services for conditions other than COVID-19 in the safest way possible, minimizing disease transmission to patients [...]. This leads to the conclusion that the CDC itself is not stating that hospitals are classifying everyone who walks in as a COVID-19 case. guidance While it is true that the government did provide relief funds in various forms for COVID-19 cases to hospitals in need of aid, little evidence exists that numbers were being inflated by hospitals for this reason. We thus rate this claim as false. On 16 March 2017, the web site Newslo published an article positing that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price had said that it would be better for the federal budget if cancer patients died quickly:   "At the risk of sounding insensitive, we've pretty much got two choices here: we either repeal Obamacare, or we take out more loans from countries like China. And nobody wants to be in debt to the Chinese. At the end of the day, it's better for our national budget if cancer patients pass away more quickly, it's a lousy way to live anyway, and I'm sorry to say it out loud, but it's the truth," Price concluded. This quote was not a genuine statement issued by Secretary Price.  It originated with Newslo, a "hybrid" web site that publishes articles containing a mixture of fact and fiction: hybrid JUST ENOUGH NEWS ... Newslo is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and what is satire. The web site's hybrid articles are accompanied by two buttons labeled "show facts" and "hide facts" that allow readers to see which parts of an article are factual and which parts are fictional. In this case, pressing the "show facts" button highlighted the introductory paragraph of the article, indicating that the remainder of the article, the portion containing the fake Price quote, was fictional:   Newslo is a rather prolific purveyor of fake news, having previously penned articles containing fake quotes from Steve Bannon, KellyAnne Conway, and Mike Pence. Steve Bannon KellyAnne Conway Mike Pence Newslo.  "Tom Price: 'Its Better for Our Budget If Cancer Patients Die More Quickly.'"
  16 March 2017. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been the subject of intense scrutiny since even before her appointment, both about her qualifications and positions on education policy and also about her (and her family's) financial connections, investments, and donations. qualifications connections donations That scrutiny continued in August 2018, when the investigative web site Capital & Main published a report detailing the registration and management of a yacht associated with the DeVos family: report When someone untied a yacht owned by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss family, Fox News portrayed the episode as an illustration of uncouth anti-Trump sentiment. The yachts foreign flag, though, was an illustration of how an allegedly America First administration is chock-full of moguls who have eagerly stashed their wealth offshore -- as long as doing so means avoiding taxes, regulations, transparency requirements and domestic employment laws. ... When her familys 164-foot yacht was untied from a Huron, Ohio dock, it was flying a flag of the Cayman Islands, where VesselTracker says the yacht is registered. According to federal records, the yacht is owned by RDV International Marine, which is an affiliate of the company that controls the DeVos familys fortune. ... When buying a vessel or cruising in U.S. waters, American yacht owners like the DeVoses could face state sales or use taxes. However, registering a yacht in a locale like the Caymans  under what has come to be known as a flag of convenience  allows those American yacht owners to effectively characterize themselves as foreigners for tax purposes, thereby avoiding the obligation of paying the standard sales and use levies, while enjoying police and Coast Guard services during times their vessels are untied. The report, which was also published by Newsweek, prompted several memes from left-wing and progressive social media accounts, such as the following Occupy Democrats post: Newsweek Occupy Democrats   "The Other 98%" posted a similar meme of their own: meme   On Facebook, the progressive "Americans for Tax Fairness" coalition posted a meme which claimed that the Cayman Islands registration applied to all the yachts owned by the DeVos family: meme   The yacht in question, Seaquest, is registered in the Cayman Islands, an arrangement that has potentially allowed its owner(s) to avoid paying taxes that they would otherwise face when travelling in the United States. However, it cannot be affirmed with certainty that this was the motivation behind the overseas registration. Furthermore, Betsy DeVos is not the owner of the vessel (although members of her family are), and a spokesperson for the DeVos family's main management company told us that neither she nor her husband Dick was responsible for the decision to register the yacht in the Cayman Islands. The yacht Seaquest is a 164-foot long (50-meter) yacht built by Westport and registered in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands. It is owned and managed by R.D.V. International Marine, according to the web site VesselTracker.com. The country's Shipping Registry confirmed to us that Seaquest's official Cayman Island's vessel number is 740641. VesselTracker.com R.D.V. International Marine is an entity of R.D.V. Corporation, the Michigan-registered management company which oversees the substantial financial investments and business interests of the DeVos family, headed by 92-year-old Richard DeVos, a multi-billionaire businessman and one of the co-founders of the "multi-level marketing" giant Amway. registered Dick DeVos (Richard DeVos Jr.), the husband of Betsy DeVos, is a director of R.D.V. Corporation, as is the couple's daughter Elisabeth ("Elissa") Lowery, Dick's sister Suzanne ("Cheri") DeVos, and his brothers Doug and Dan and their wives Maria and Pamella. Betsy DeVos was herself a company director until November 2016, according to her financial disclosure. director disclosure However, Chief Operating Officer of the Windquest Group, Greg McNeilly, told us that Dick and Betsy DeVos are not the owners of Seaquest. (The Windquest Group is a private investment firm founded by Dick DeVos, who is its president. Betsy DeVos was a director at Windquest until November 2016.) This was corroborated by Nick Wasmiller, a spokesperson for R.D.V. Corporation, who told us by email that Seaquest is owned (through R.D.V. International Marine) by Richard DeVos, who previously owned it in conjunction with his wife Helen prior to her death in October 2017: "Dick and Betsy DeVos do not own Seaquest and have never held ownership in the watercraft ... Dick and Betsy DeVos had no role in the registration of Seaquest nor the management of any subsequent efforts to maintain that registration." So the three memes referenced above (from Occupy Democrats, the Other 98% and Americans for Tax Fairness) are factually inaccurate in alleging that Betsy DeVos both owns Seaquest and registered it in the Cayman Islands, or that she registered "her family's fleet of 10 yachts" in the Cayman Islands. The yacht Seaquest is, and has always been, owned by Betsy DeVos' father-in-law, according to spokespersons for two DeVos family companies, and Betsy herself has never made any management or registration decisions about it, according to a spokesperson for R.D.V. Corporation. A 2017 investigation by the Wall Street Journal outlined how the extended DeVos family structures and manages their investments, business interests, and assets, which include nine vessels other than Seaquest: Blue Sky, Quantum Racing, Delta Victor, Reflection, Attitude, Sterling, Windquest, Zorro, and De Lus. investigation In response to our question, Wasmiller confirmed that these other nine vessels are "owned by various DeVos family entities" but said they are "registered in the United States." We checked the U.S. Coast Guard's Vessel Documentation Center database, and found that the nine DeVos family-related vessels listed by the Wall Street Journal are indeed all registered to ports in the United States, specifically in Michigan, Delaware, and Florida. database So the Americans for Tax Fairness meme is also false on the grounds that it claims Betsy DeVos registered "her family's fleet of 10 yachts in the Cayman Islands," but in reality nine of those vessels are registered in the United States, and the one that is registered in the Cayman Islands is not managed or owned by Betsy DeVos. Use tax While Betsy DeVos does not personally own or manage Seaquest, it is possible that its registration in the Cayman Islands, as opposed to the United States, might have allowed its owner, Richard DeVos (via RDV International Marine) to avoid incurring certain taxes (though this is not certain), as Capital & Main reported: reported If the vessel were registered in, say, Grand Rapids, Michigan  the state where RDV is located and that has in the past made an effort to compel yacht owners to pay use taxes  the SeaQuest would likely be subject to Michigans six percent use tax. That would require the DeVos empire to cough up about $2.4 million ... The figure of $2.4 million represents six percent of $40 million, which is the estimated value given to Seaquest in several news reports, including Capital & Main's investigation. The source of that evaluation is not clear, with many articles describing the yacht as being "reportedly valued at $40 million," without providing any attribution for that number. We found one online broker selling a brand-new 164-foot Westport yacht (like Seaquest) for $42.5 million, and another 2013 listing for a similar vessel which presented a sale price of $34 million. Seaquest was built in 2008, so it's possible its purchase price was lower than $40 million.  yacht listing Furthermore, it's unclear whether Seaquest would actually incur a tax liability even if it were registered in Michigan.  What's in question here is a type of taxation called "use tax," which applies to tangible products and entities that are brought into and used or consumed in a particular jurisdiction (in this case the state of Michigan), in circumstances where sales tax does not apply. Section 205.93 of Michigan's Compiled Laws states that: states There is levied upon and there shall be collected from every person in this state a specific tax, including both the local community stabilization share and the state share, for the privilege of using, storing, or consuming tangible personal property in this state at a total combined rate equal to 6% of the price of the property or services ... So, in principle at least, if you own a yacht that is habitually docked or sailed in Michigan, that is likely to be regarded as storage or usage, and you would owe the state of Michigan use tax of six percent of the price of the yacht. However, certain exemptions from this use tax exist when the property is purchased outside Michigan, is "used solely for personal, nonbusiness purposes," and "the property is purchased by a person who is not a resident of this state at the time of purchase and is brought into this state more than 90 days after the date of purchase" or "the property is purchased by a person who is a resident of this state at the time of purchase and is brought into this state more than 360 days after the date of purchase." We don't know whether Richard DeVos was a resident of Michigan at the time he bought Seaquest in 2008, and we don't know how much time elapsed between his purchase of the yacht and its arrival in the state. Therefore, even if Seaquest were registered in Michigan and not the Cayman Islands, it's not certain that vessel would be subject to use tax, although this is certainly a possibility. Wasmiller, on behalf of R.D.V. Corporation, provided an alternative explanation for the decision to register Seaquest in the Cayman Islands: Non-commercial watercraft exceeding 100 feet, such as Seaquest, are commonly registered in the Cayman Islands. The countrys strict safety, manning and operation standards for non-commercial watercraft are widely recognized in international waters and closely align with requirements commonly encountered during global travel. As a result, registration in the Cayman Islands provides for the most efficient entrance and exit of various jurisdictions. In boating terms, its a widely recognized flag -- a significant benefit when traveling internationally, thus the registration of Seaquest there. Also of note, it is the policy of RDV International Marine that all employees aboard Seaquest are eligible to work in the United States, as the boat does periodically enter U.S. waterways. Conclusion The claims contained in the viral memes we listed are based on several assumptions, made without sufficient evidence, and contradicted by spokespersons for Dick and Betsy DeVos and Richard DeVos. First, RDV International Marine owns Seaquest, and RDV International Marine is an entity of RDV Corporation, the DeVos "family office" which oversees the family's substantial business interests, assets and investments. However, even though Betsy DeVos is a former director of RDV Corporation, and her family members are closely intertwined with the company, this does not mean that every asset owned by every entity of RDV Corporation is also owned (even in part) by every member of the DeVos family. It is a family company, but it is not a co-op. This logical and evidentiary leap is also directly contradicted by spokespersons for two DeVos-related companies, who stated on the record that Richard DeVos owns Seaquest, and that neither Betsy nor Dick DeVos have ever owned even part of it nor have ever made decisions about its management and registration. Second, there is a significant evidentiary leap from the fact that one DeVos-related yacht is registered in the Cayman Islands to the claim that 10 DeVos-related vessels are registered there. This is factually inaccurate. Nine of the vessels listed as DeVos assets in a Wall Street Journal article are registered in the United States. And finally, there is an assumption (albeit a more reasonable one) involved in the claim that registering Seaquest in the Cayman Islands allows its owner(s) to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Michigan state law allows for certain exemptions from the obligation to pay "use tax," and it cannot be said with certainty that Richard DeVos, the owner of Seaquest, did not meet the criteria for those exemptions. The claim that the tax obligation allegedly being avoided amounts to $2.4 million is also based on an assumption about the price of the yacht itself, which is not known for certain. Emery, David. "Meet Betsy DeVos, Trump's Secretary of Education Nominee."
  Snopes.com.  26 November 2016. Kasprak, Alex.  "Dubious Conspiracy Theory Links Putin's Daughter to Russia-Trump Collusion."
  Snopes.com.  24 July 2018. MacGuill, Dan.  "Christian Non-Profit Faces Scrutiny Over Government Foster Care Contract for Separated Children."
  Snopes.com.  11 July 2018. Sirota, David.  "Forget Old Glory -- Why Betsy DeVos's Family Yacht and Others Fly Foreign Flags."
  Capital & Main.  7 August 2018. DeVos, Elisabeth P.  "Executive Branch Personnel, Public Financial Disclosure Report."
  U.S. Office of Government Ethics.  19 January 2017. Das, Anupreeta, and Jean Eaglesham.  "Look Inside the DeVos Family Office."
  The Wall Street Journal.  8 November 2017. Michigan Compiled Laws.  "Section 205.93 -- Use Tax Act."
  Michigan Legislature.  Accessed 17 August 2018. In March 2021, new employment figures showed that the U.S. economy added 379,000 jobs in February, the first full month of Joe Biden's presidency. The news was greeted with cautious optimism, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the gains had "set up a stronger recovery" for the spring of 2021, and The Washington Post reporting that the figures had "surpassed analysts' estimates." Politico wrote that: Wall Street Journal Washington Post Politico U.S. employers added a robust 379,000 jobs last month, the most since October and a sign that the economy is strengthening as confirmed viral cases drop, consumers spend more and states and cities ease business restrictions.The February gain marked a sharp pickup from the 166,000 jobs that were added in January and a loss of 306,000 in December. Yet it represents just a fraction of the roughly 10 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic. On social media, other observers  in particular those more broadly opposed to Biden  sought to undercut the significance of the jobs figures, claiming that a large majority of the increased employment came in one sector, namely food and beverage services. On Twitter, the libertarian economics blog Zerohedge wrote: wrote Of the 379K jobs added, 286K were waiters and bartenders.   The stockbroker and financial commentator Peter Schiff tweeted: tweeted 75% of the 379k jobs "created" in Feb. were waiters and bartenders returning to work. Since many restaurants and bars that closed will never reopen there's a limit to how long this can last... The right-wing British blog Guido Fawkes tweeted: tweeted "US economic recovery sees 379,000 jobs added this week, 286,000 were waiters and bartenders. God bless America and cheers!" Those figures were accurately stated, although "waiters and bartenders" was a reductive description of the occupations in question. As a result, we're issuing a rating of "true." The standard measure of job growth is "total nonfarm payroll employment, seasonally adjusted," a metric that is collated and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), each month. On March 5, the BLS published figures for the preceding month, February 2021, writing that: "Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 379,000 in February..." In effect, this means that there were 379,000 more jobs in the United States in February than there were in January. published The BLS provides in-depth breakdowns of job gains or losses, and unemployment, including details on the demographic and sectoral contours of each month's data. According to the same set of figures, the "leisure and hospitality" sector gained 355,000 of the 379,000 total new jobs in February (Summary Table B).  Summary Table B Of those, 285,900 jobs were specifically in "food services and drinking places" (Table B-1). That's the source of the "286K" figure presented by Zerohedge. Those 285,900 jobs made up 75.4% of the total number of new jobs added in February, the percentage figure provided by Schiff in his tweet. Table B-1 However, the "food services and drinking places" subsector is made up of more than just "waiters and bartenders." The following is how that subsector is defined in the official North American Industry Classification System: defined Industries in the Food Services and Drinking Places subsector prepare meals, snacks, and beverages to customer order for immediate on-premises and off-premises consumption. There is a wide range of establishments in these industries. Some provide food and drink only; while others provide various combinations of seating space, waiter/waitress services and incidental amenities, such as limited entertainment. The industries in the subsector are grouped based on the type and level of services provided. The industry groups are full-service restaurants; limited-service eating places; special food services, such as food service contractors, caterers, and mobile food services; and drinking places. The BLS figures for February 2021 don't specify the proportion of those 285,900 jobs composed of specific occupations, but it's highly unlikely they were all "waiters and bartenders." In 2019, the most recent year for which figures are available, the following was the breakdown of occupations within the "food services and drinking places subsector": breakdown As can be seen from those figures, "waiters and waitresses" made up less than one-third of workers within that subsector. If the distribution of occupations was even broadly similar among the 285,900 new "food services and drinking places" jobs added in February, then it would appear highly unlikely that even a majority of those 285,900 new jobs were made up of "waiters and bartenders" alone.