Data that has been altered or distorted.
FACT CHECK: Is President Obama compiling a "secret race database" comprised of "sensitive personal data"?      Claim:  President Obama is compiling a secret race database comprising Americans' sensitive personal data.  false WHAT'S   Extant data collection methods used by agencies such as HUD track demographic patterns, including race and integration trends.     WHAT'S /CONJECTURE:  The Obama administration is collecting demographic data for a broader racial purpose, the practice is new, and the openly-compiled data comprises a "secret race database." Example:  [Collected via e-mail and Twitter, July 2015] According to an article in the New York Post, President Obama is collecting a nefarious "secret race database." How much of this is true, and how much is misleading hype? So who are the racists again? Obama collecting personal data for a secret race database https://t.co/63VmYIXqNE via @nypost https://t.co/63VmYIXqNE @nypost  Yes, Nick $earcy! (@yesnicksearcy) July 19, 2015 July 19, 2015   This is movie level horror material yet it's happening. It's real life. https://t.co/LxxvA7EpyE https://t.co/LxxvA7EpyE  Anthony Cumia (@AnthonyCumia) July 19, 2015 July 19, 2015   I favor equal opportunity, not govt forcing equal results. This is Affirmative Action on steroids: https://t.co/N3snUnie67 #WakeUpAmerica https://t.co/N3snUnie67 #WakeUpAmerica  Senator Dick Black (@SenRichardBlack) July 19, 2015 July 19, 2015   Obama collecting Americans' personal info for a secret race database https://t.co/1VNJqRsqQf This makes my skin crawl @RandPaul https://t.co/1VNJqRsqQf @RandPaul  Alexis In NH (@AlexisinNH) July 18, 2015 July 18, 2015   Origins:   On 18 July 2015, the New York Post published an article titled "Obama Collecting Personal Data for a Secret Race Database." The article made vague claims that President Obama (or agents of the government working on his behalf, described as "racial bean counters") had been quietly collecting sensitive, personal data about American citizens for purposes of racial justice: Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama's racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school  all to document "inequalities" between minorities and whites. This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make "disparate impact" cases against: banks that don't make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don't offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds. The paper offered up one example of the purported secret racial database's reach, pertaining to Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) data collection practices: The granddaddy of them all is the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out earlier this month to racially balance the nation, ZIP code by ZIP code. It will map every US neighborhood by four racial groups  white, Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic/Latino  and publish geospatial data pinpointing racial imbalances. No explanatory links to this nefarious database were provided, but we managed to hack our way into the program to get the full scoop. Actually, we entered "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" into Google's search box and immediately found HUD's page explaining the program and its purposes. program So secretive is this database that HUD has made numerous documents available describing its overall progress, including links to the Federal Register [PDF] and its most current Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy. (They even tried to bury it by issuing a press release about it.) A portion of that openly published, available for all to view documentation is described by HUD as "[updated data use methods] on affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) [aim] to provide all HUD grantees with clear guidelines and the data that will help them to achieve those goals": PDF current press release HUDs rule clarifies and simplifies existing fair housing obligations for HUD grantees to analyze their fair housing landscape and set locally-determined fair housing priorities and goals through an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH). To aid communities in this work, HUD will provide open data to grantees and the public on patterns of integration and segregation, racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, disproportionate housing needs, and disparities in access to opportunity. This improved approach provides a better mechanism for HUD grantees to build fair housing goals into their existing community development and housing planning processes. In addition to providing data and maps, HUD will also provide technical assistance to aid grantees as they adopt this approach. In short, HUD will be using extant data to identify areas in which fair housing laws may not be functionally applied. Similarly, the Federal Register's lengthy (public, easy to find) summary stated: Through this rule, HUD commits to provide states, local governments, public housing agencies (PHAs), the communities they serve, and the general public, to the fullest extent possible, with local and regional data on integrated and segregated living patterns, racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, the location of certain publicly supported housing, access to opportunity afforded by key community assets, and disproportionate housing needs based on classes protected by the Fair Housing Act. Through the availability of such data and available local data an knowledge, the approach provided by this rule is intended to make program participants better able to evaluate their present environment to assess fair housing issues such as segregation, conditions that restrict fair housing choice, and disparities in access to housing and opportunity, identify the factors that primarily contribute to the creation or perpetuation of fair housing issues, and establish fair housing priorities and goals. The New York Post cited another shadowy instance of "racial bean counting": Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, headed by former Congressional Black Caucus leader Mel Watt, is building its own database for racially balancing home loans. The so-called National Mortgage Database Project will compile 16 years of lending data, broken down by race, and hold everything from individual credit scores and employment records. Again, the National Mortgage Database was hidden in plain sight. In seconds on Google, intrepid searchers could locate the Federal Housing Finance Agency's page devoted to the National Mortgage Database (upon which no mentions of race or racial equality appeared): page In 2012, FHFA began a major initiative to build a national mortgage database on first-lien single-family mortgages in existence any time from January 1998 forward. This project is being jointly funded and managed by FHFA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The information will primarily be used to support the agencies' policy making and research efforts and help regulators better understand emerging mortgage and housing market trends in this evolving and changing finance market. Like the AFFH, the National Mortgage Database was also buried deep in the annals of the publicly accessible and searchable Federal Register. Federal Register From that point on, the Post's article primarily focused on purportedly nefarious and racially motivated actions by "Obama's brainchild," the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). (In actuality, the CFPB was primarily the "brainchild" of Elizabeth Warren and came into existence as part of Dodd-Frank related financial reforms.) The article claimed the CFPB was compiling separate databases for credit profiles and employment. We were able to locate a Government Accountability Office (GAO) document dated September 2014 [PDF] concerning collection of credit data. However, no portion of that document mentioned race, and we were unable to locate any documents, articles, or other information relating to race-based initiatives and employment efforts undertaken by the CFPB as suggested by the New York Post's article. Elizabeth Warren PDF A final portion of the article claimed that the Department of Education was enforcing segregation by way of race-based data collection (implicitly, at the behest of President Obama). However, a (not secret)  page on the U.S. Department of Education's web site indicated that data collection of that description had been ongoing since at least 2000 (eight years before the election of Barack Obama to the presidency). page Last updated:  22July 2015 Originally published: 22July 2015
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. Since at least 2021, internet users have been admiring an impressive, but fake image purporting to show the core of the Milky Way galaxy framed by Karnak, an ancient Egyptian temple complex, northeast of the city of Luxor.  Here is one example, posted to Twitter, with the user's name cropped out for privacy:  The image above is not a real representation of the view into the heavens from Karnak in Egypt. It was debunked in 2021 by Juan Carlos Muoz-Mateos, media officer for the European Southern Observatory, a research facility based in Germany. The moon in the image is too large and is transparent, and the core of the Milky Way isn't visible from Karnak's location, Munoz wrote in a Twitter thread explaining how he could tell the image was faked. debunked transparent   We were unable to locate the original version of the image or its creator, but the earliest instances we found of the picture online was 2017. It's been shared in various forums like a Reddit channel dedicated to "shamelessly stolen" images. shamelessly stolen In an email sent to Snopes, Munoz said that such fake but visually appealing space/science images often crop up on content-scraping social media feeds, which can be identified by features like generic but easily searchable names like "curiosity" or "black hole." The images shared are most often uncredited. "Their bios say things like 'DM for credit/removal' or 'credit goes to the respective owner,' Munoz observed. "Another common question is why this matters, whats the harm with these accounts," Munoz wrote. "Besides the obvious problem of sharing wrong information, these accounts often link to fishy websites riddled with ads, or they're follower farms that are later sold and renamed." It may take time, but it's worthwhile to report them and get them removed from social media platforms, Munoz added. If former Gov. Ted Strickland had used a theme song in his unsuccessful re-election bid, it might have been I've Been Working on the Railroad.Jobs were the biggest issue of the fall campaign, and Strickland said that thousands would be created by his plan for a 3C Corridor passenger rail system linking Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. He described Gov.-elect John Kasichs intention to kill the plan and return a $400 million federal grant as tragic and a job-killer.Critics of the plan claimed that its employment potential was exaggerated, its ridership forecasts were too optimistic and its cost projections too low.Ultimately, Plain Dealer columnist and former editorial director Brent Larkin wrote: Voters never warmed to the idea of spending hundreds of millions on a passenger rail project that would have taken riders from Cleveland to Cincinnati over a period an hour and 15 minutes longer than it would have taken on a New York Central train in 1935.We dont usually look at remarks from columnists, but that comment stopped PolitiFact Ohio in its tracks.We knew that the 3C Corridor was not a high-speed rail plan. We had not realized it was more like a trip back in time.So PolitiFact Ohio asked Larkin where he got his figures.He referred us first to a year-old feasibility report on the proposed Cleveland-to-Columbus-to- Cincinnati Amtrak service.This is the schedule Amtrak said it would run, and the schedule Ohio included as part of its application to the feds for the $400 million, Larkin said. No other schedule was ever formally provided to the feds.The proposed schedule shows a 255-mile Cleveland to Cincinnati trip taking 6-1/2 hours. The first daily train would leave Cleveland at 6:30 a.m. and arrive in Cincinnati at 1 p.m.Larkin then shared a railroad timetable from New York Central Lines, effective Feb 3, 1935. It showed a departure time of 3:10 p.m. from Cincinnati and an arrival in Cleveland of 8:20 p.m., for a travel time of 5 hours 10 minutes -- an hour and 20 minutes faster than the 3C line.Criticism of the 3C as snail rail with an average speed of 39 mph started as soon as the project was proposed.The Ohio Department of Transportation responded in September with a new average estimate of 50 mph and speed up to 79. It shortened the Cleveland-to-Cincinnati trip to 5 hours 12 minutes.But, not so fast.As an October story in the Columbus Dispatch noted, ODOT itself had said a year earlier that the trip couldn't be made in less than 5 hours 20 minutes -- even if the trains didn't stop. ODOTs revised schedule hadn't even been seen by the three freight lines that own the tracks the 3C passenger trains would use, putting its feasibility in serious doubt.And, no matter how weak or strong its support, the optimistic revision still comes up longer than the best rail time of 1935.The schedules speak for themselves, Larkin said.We rate his statement as True. One of the more unusual political memes we've come across presented four different cases of tax-related financial improprieties to suggest that tax-evasion prosecutions were somehow influenced by racial bias against non-blacks:  However, the "Tax Racism" meme offered examples  not all of which were actual cases of tax evasion  so widely spaced in time and so differing in circumstances as to be non-useful in making any point at all about either tax fraud or race. Martha Stewart, the entrepreneur who rose to prominence as the author of books on cooking, entertaining, and decorating, was not charged with, or imprisoned for, non-payment of income taxes. Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators in a case related to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into insider trading activity: investigation Washington, D.C., June 4, 2003 -- The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed securities fraud charges against Martha Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic. The complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Stewart committed illegal insider trading when she sold stock in a biopharmaceutical company, ImClone Systems, Inc., on Dec. 27, 2001, after receiving an unlawful tip from Bacanovic, at the time a broker with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated. The Commission further alleges that Stewart and Bacanovic subsequently created an alibi for Stewart's ImClone sales and concealed important facts during SEC and criminal investigations into her trades. In a separate action, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has obtained an indictment charging Stewart and Bacanovic criminally for their false statements concerning Stewart's ImClone trades. Stewart was sentenced to 5 months in prison and also settled a civil suit with the SEC by paying a $195,000 fine (a penalty that reflected four times the amount of stock value loss she avoided by taking advantage of inside information, plus interest). settled Stewart did engage in a dispute with the state of New York in 2002 over unpaid property taxes that she contended she didn't owe because she hardly spent any time in that state, and she was eventually ordered by a judge to pay $220,000 in back taxes plus penalties. But contrary to the false impression created by this meme, she was not prosecuted or jailed over that issue  the time she spent in prison was solely related to a later insider-trading case, not to tax evasion. dispute By the mid-1920s, notorious Chicago mobster Alphonse Gabriel Capone was reportedly taking in nearly $60 million annually ($878 million in 2018 dollars) from a variety of illegal activities, primarily Prohibition-era bootlegging. Capone was dubbed "Public Enemy No. 1" after the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in which gunmen allegedly hired by him posed as police officers to murder seven members of a rival gang, leading to increased public pressure on the government to rein Capone in. Federal authorities had difficulty gathering sufficient hard evidence to convict Capone on any substantial criminal charges, however, so they took what was then a novel tack: Even if they couldn't prove Capone was making his millions illegally, they could prove he wasn't paying income tax on his ill-gotten gains. Despite his obviously lavish lifestyle, Capone never filed a federal income tax return and claimed he had no taxable income, reportedly boasting at one point that, They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money. He was proved wrong. IRS and Treasury agents gathered evidence that Capone had made millions of dollars in untaxed income, and the mobster was eventually indicted on 22 counts of federal income tax evasion. After conviction he was sentenced in 1931 to 11 years in prison, fined $50,000, and ordered to pay back taxes in the amount of $215,000. Capone was released from prison in 1939 with time off for good behavior and retired to Florida, where he died in 1947 at the relatively young age of 48. conviction In a literal sense Capone was indeed jailed for non-payment of income taxes, but the tax evasion charges were essentially a proxy for prosecuting the mobster over the multitude of vastly worse and violent crimes with which he was connected (and the immense profits he derived from those criminal activities). Capone was by no means an otherwise upright and law-abiding citizen who was thrown in prison simply because he didn't pay his income taxes. At this point in our narrative we need to distinguish between different forms of tax evasion. At one end of the spectrum are those who haven't engaged in any fraudulent behavior but simply didn't or can't pay their taxes for any number of reasons  maybe they didn't plan or withhold prudently, they received poor financial advisement, they had legitimate confusion or dispute over what constituted taxable income, or they simply overspent and ended up in debt. Although non-payment of taxes is a crime, the IRS will not usually seek prosecution in these types of case and will instead work with offenders in order to facilitate payment of their back debts (rather than making repayment difficult or impossible by incarcerating them). prosecution At the other end of the spectrum are those who actively engage in fraud in order to evade the full payment of taxes: They fail to disclose their full income, hide financial transactions, claim deductions to which they are not entitled, disguise monies earned as something other than income, or otherwise file falsified tax returns. The IRS will, at their discretion, seek prosecution in egregious cases of these forms of tax evasion. Leona Helmsley, derisively known by the nickname as the "Queen of Mean," was a billionaire who  along with her husband, real estate investor and broker Harry Helmsley  owned a vast portfolio of real estate and other assets, including a chain of hotels and the iconic Empire State Building. portfolio Leona Helmsley, who once reportedly asserted that We dont pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes, fell into the latter class of tax evader, falsely manipulating her personal finances, business expenses, and dealings with third parties in order to avoid paying immense sums of taxes: tax evader Some of [Helmsley's] luster was tarnished in 1986 when court documents and law enforcement officials said she had failed to pay sales taxes in New York on hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry she purchased at Van Cleef & Arpels, the exclusive Manhattan store. Two senior store officers were indicted on charges that they operated a scheme by which customers with out-of-state addresses could have their purchases recorded as being mailed to them, thus avoiding city and state taxes. In 1987 a series of adverse articles in The New York Post about the Helmsleys, set off by one of their disgruntled employees, led to a broad investigation. The following year Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted by federal and state authorities on charges that they had evaded more than $4 million in income taxes by fraudulently claiming as business expenses luxuries they purchased for Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, Conn, a 28-room Jacobean mansion on 26 acres with a sweeping view of Long Island Sound that they bought in 1983. In 235 counts in state and federal indictments brought by Robert Abrams, then the New York State attorney general, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the United States attorney and later mayor of New York, the Helmsleys were accused of draining their hotel and real estate empire to provide themselves with such extravagances at Dunnellen Hall as a $1 million marble dance floor above a swimming pool, a $45,000 silver clock, a $210,000 mahogany card table, a $130,000 stereo system, and $500,000 worth of jade art objects. Nothing was too small or personal to be billed to their businesses, from Mrs. Helmsleys bras to a white lace and pink satin dress and jacket and a white chiffon skirt  the dress and skirt were entered in the Park Lane Hotel records as uniforms for the staff. Mrs. Helmsley was also charged with defrauding Helmsley stockholders by receiving $83,333 a month in secret consulting fees. She was convicted of 33 felony counts related to her evasion of $1.2 million in federal income taxes. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison (reduced to four years on appeal), fined $7.1 million for tax fraud, and ordered to pay some $1.7 million in back federal and state taxes. She began serving her sentence in 1992 and was released from federal prison in Connecticut in 1994 after having served less than half her sentence. Where along the tax-evader spectrum between "legitimate dispute" and "willful tax fraud" civil rights activist Al Sharpton might fall is a difficult to determine. Claims were made in the press in 2014 that Sharpton owed some $4.5 million in unpaid taxes, but the accuracy of that number and how much of the monies owed might already have been repaid by Sharpton were unclear, and his tax-troubles narrative involved a muddied mixture of personal, business, and non-profit finances as well liabilities for federal taxes, state taxes, payroll taxes, and personal income taxes. Much of the dispute over the "why" and "how much" of Sharpton's unpaid tax bill stemmed from the operations of the National Action Network, a not-for-profit, civil rights organization founded by Sharpton in 1991. Sharpton contended in a 2014 New York Times account that he incurred an unexpected tax liability because he was taxed personally for income he had given to the non-profit organization, and that he was up to date on repayment plans. Officials contested that the amount he was in arrears for in unpaid taxes had actually grown larger, though: contended Today, Mr. Sharpton still faces personal federal tax liens of more than $3 million, and state tax liens of $777,657, according to records. Mr. Sharpton said the federal liens resulted from a demand by the I.R.S. that he pay taxes on earnings from speaking engagements that he had turned over to National Action Network. He said he was up to date on payment plans for both the federal and state liens, so, he said, the outstanding balance was much lower than records showed. But according to state officials, his balance on the state liens is actually $220,000 greater now than when they were first filed during the years 2008 through 2010. A spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance said state law did not allow him to provide any further details. Sharpton then contested that news account, asserting that it referenced "old taxes" and insisting again his tax liens had been paid down below the $4.5 million debt claimed in the New York Times report that stated Sharpton's unpaid tax debt had nonetheless grown larger, not smaller: contested During a news conference at the headquarters of his National Action Network in Harlem, Mr. Sharpton sought to refute the assertion that there were $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens outstanding against him and the for-profit businesses he controls. He said that the liens had been paid down, although he declined to say by how much, and that he was current on all taxes he was obligated to pay under settlement agreements with tax authorities. Were talking about old taxes, he said, adding: Were not talking about anything new. So all of this, as if Im not paying taxes while Im doing whatever Im doing, it reads all right, but it just is not true. The accuracy of Mr. Sharptons assertion that the amount he owes the federal government is much lower than the $3.6 million shown in records could not be verified. A spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service said federal law prohibited the agency from divulging any details about individual taxpayers. As for the state tax liens, Mr. Sharptons assertion that he had paid them down conflicts with information provided by state officials. State authorities filed tax liens against Mr. Sharpton in 2008 and 2009, and again in 2010 against a for-profit business he controls, Revals Communications, all totaling $695,000. But a spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance said the amount due had actually increased, to $916,000. Regardless of the numbers, Sharpton wasn't put in prison because tax officials did not deem his case to be an exceptional one of scofflaw tax fraud or evasion that merited prosecution, instead working with him to facilitate his paying down the debt. The conclusion here is a simple one: Cherry-picking four very disparate cases of financial wrongdoings spanning several decades, while ignoring the many other instances of tax evasion successfully prosecuted by the U.S. government, documents nothing about any purported racial bias in such prosecutions. tax evasion Buettner, Russ.  "Al Sharpton Criticizes New York Times Report on Unpaid Taxes."
  The New York Times.  19 November 2014. Buettner, Russ.  "As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Taxes."
  The New York Times.  18 November 2014. Nemyaug, Enid.  "Leona Helmsley, Hotel Queen, Dies at 87."
  The New York Times.  20 August 2007. Erb, Kelly Phillips.  "Al Capone Sentenced to Prison for Tax Evasion on This Day in 1931."
  Forbes.com.  17 October 2018. Wood, Robert W.  "10 Notorious Tax Cheats: Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley Proved Little People Can Put You in Jail."
  Forbes.com.  17 April 2015. Wood, Robert W.  "Lessons From Rev. Al Sharpton's $4.5 Million Tax Bill."
  Forbes.com.  19 November 2014. Department of Justice -- Office of Public Affairs.  "Tax Crime Does Not Pay."
  10 April 2018. Johnson, Carrie.  "Stewart to Pay $195,000 in Settlement of Civil Suit."
  The Washington Post.  8 August 2006. Kratsas, Gabrielle.  "13 Infamous Tax Cheaters."
  USA Today.  28 February 2014. 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. South Floridas housing market spans the gamut of tony gated oceanfront mansions for millionaires and some downtrodden neighborhoods. Thats not unusual for a major urban area. But is it worse in South Florida than elsewhere in the nation? Habitat for Humanity painted a stark picture about the cost of housing in South Florida in a press release announcing that President Donald Trumps Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, retiredDr. Ben Carson, will visit the site of a futureaffordable housing developmentin Broward County on March 24. Studies indicate that while Broward County is the most cost-burdened housing market in the nation, South Florida ranks No. 1 in the gap between wages and housing, said the affordable home-building organization that partners with volunteers. We will focus on whether South Florida ranks No. 1 in the gap between wages and housing. The phrasecost-burdenedrefers to households that spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. People who spend more than 50 percent are considered severely cost-burdened. South Florida housing market Habitat for Humanity cited a few different reports about the lack of affordable housing in South Florida. A keyreportincluded information from the Center for Neighborhood Technology along with the Center for Housing Policy, a division of the National Housing Conference. The 2012 report outlined the struggle for moderate-income families to afford housing in the 25 largest metro areas. Researchers examined data between 2006-10 from the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The report found that housing and transportation costs rose faster than income nationally, although the disparity was greater in some metro areas than others.And South Florida topped that list. In the Miami metro area, 40 percent of income for a moderate-income household was spent on housing, more than any other metro area in the study. (TheMiami metropolitan statistical areawas defined by the federal government at the time as stretching from Miami-Dade County, through Broward and north up to West Palm Beach.) It was followed by the Riverside, Calif., metro area and the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area. More recent research shows that the Miami metro area continues to lag behind in affordable housing, said Janet Viveiros, acting director of research at the National Housing Conference. Low- and moderate-income households, even those who are working, still face serious challenges in accessing affordable homeownership or renting in the Miami metro area, she said. The organizations Housing Landscape report based on data from 2011-2014 found that 35.8 percent of low- and moderate-income working households in the Miami area spent more than half their income on housing. That was only exceeded -- slightly -- by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., area, which had 36.4 percent of those households spending that much on housing. (This report covered the 50 largest metro areas.) Astudyby the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in 2015 foundMiamihad the largest share of cost-burdened renters of any major metro in the country. AnNYU Furman Center/CapitalOnereport in 2016 reached a similar conclusion. While metro areas with higher rents also had higher incomes, Miami pops out as a troubling exceptiona high-cost city without high incomes. Anne Ray, a researcher at the University of Floridas Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, said that data continues to show that Miami housing costs are unattainable for low-income people. Rent is very high and the median income is much lower, particularly in Miami-Dade, than other expensive markets, Ray said. Our ruling Habitat for Humanity says, South Florida ranks No. 1 in the gap between wages and housing. Studies have repeatedly shown that South Florida tops the list in the gap between wages and housing. Although there are other metro areas with similarly expensive housing, wages lag behind in South Florida. We rate this claim True. A new school curriculum based on The New York Times' The 1619 Project faced opposition from U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton in July 2020, after he called it racially divisive and revisionist. based As the U.S. grappled with its history of racism amidst police custody killings of Black people in 2020, The 1619 Project, an ongoing initiative named for the year that the first slave ship arrived on American shores, became the center of a debate. The educational curriculum was launched alongside The New York Times Magazine's August 2019 special issue and aims to "reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." Partnering with the Pulitzer Center, the curriculum is freely available online and is being used by teachers across the country. It includes essays, poems, photographs, and fiction from contributors, and was praised for its examination of slavery's impact on the present day. The 1619 Project launched special issue aims curriculum praised As Cotton launched an attack on the initiative by introducing legislation that would prevent the use of federal funds to spread the optional curriculum in classrooms, Snopes readers asked us if in his criticism of the project he had actually called slavery a necessary evil. launched He did use those words. But he also claimed his meaning was misinterpreted.  In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Cotton said [emphasis ours]: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we cant understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction. Later, Cotton took to Twitter and appeared to clarify that he himself wasnt backing the idea of slavery being a "necessary evil": Twitter   Although Cotton claimed he was citing the views of the founding fathers, there did not appear to be a record of them saying this exact phrase, according to CNN. But historians argued that some of the founding fathers believed slavery to be necessary, and more believed it to be evil, while others reported there was little overlap between the two perspectives. did not appear CNN historians argued others reported But Nikole Hannah-Jones, writer and creator of The 1619 Project pushed back on his characterization of his own words and the views of the founding fathers, citing historian Joshua Rothman who categorically stated that slavery was a choice defended or accepted by white Americans for generations. Hannah-Jones argued that Cottons use of the word as denoted agreement with the statement. She also said that the curriculum was meant to be "supplementary" and was not intended to "supplant U.S. history curriculum." pushed back citing supplementary In summary, given that Cotton himself defended and clarified his use of the phrase "necessary evil," we rate this claim as Correct attribution. Foran, Clare. "GOP Sen. Tom Cotton Pitches Bill to Prohibit Use of Federal Funds to Teach 1619 Project."
 CNN. 24 July 2020. Jesuthasan, Meerabelle. "The 1619 Project Sparks Dialogue and Reflection in Schools Nationwide."
 Pulitzer Center. 20 December 2019. Lockwood, Frank E. "Bill by Sen. Tom Cotton Targets Curriculum on Slavery."
 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. 26 July 2020. Porter, Tom. "GOP Sen. Tom Cotton Called Slavery a 'Necessary Evil' in an Attack on a New York Times Project Exploring America's History of Racism."
 Business Insider. 27 July 2020. Pulitzer Center.  "The 1619 Project Curriculum."
  Accessed 29 July 2020. The New York Times.  "The 1619 Project."
  14 August 2019. Zurcher, Anthony. "US Senator Tom Cotton Defends Slavery Remarks."
 BBC News. 27 July 2020. One of the more unusual and complicated theories associated with the sovereign citizen and tax protester movements is the belief that lawyers who are members of bar associations in the United States are, in fact, agents of the British crown and do not have legitimate status in American courts. This theory is partly informed by a false but widely repeated claim that the word "bar" in this context is an acronym for "British Accreditation Register":  Here's how the elaborate and confusing theory is outlined in an anonymously-authored essay called "Hiding Behind the Bar," which has been republished and shared in tax protester and sovereign citizen circles for more than a decade: essay During the middle 1600's, the Crown of England established a formal registry in London where barristers [lawyers] were ordered by the Crown to be accredited. The establishment of this first International Bar Association allowed barrister-lawyers from all nations to be formally recognized and accredited by the only recognized accreditation society. From this, the acronym BAR was established denoting (informally) the British Accredited Registry, whose members became a powerful and integral force within the International Bar Association (IBA). Although this has been denied repeatedly as to its existence, the acronym BAR stood for the British barrister-lawyers who were members of the larger IBA. Almost every part of this is factually inaccurate. For one thing, the International Bar Association was founded in 1947, not in the 1600s. Second, we could find no evidence of the existence of a professional association for lawyers called the "British Accredited Registry," either in 2018 or at any previous time in history. 1947 A History of the American Bar, a 1911 book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning legal scholar Charles Warren, contains no mention of any "British Accredited Registry" or "British Accreditation Registry" (with "accredited" and "accreditation" being used variously in different versions of this conspiracy theory). It would also make little sense for a group of lawyers in 17th century England to form a group describing itself as "British." Great Britain (composed of England, Wales and Scotland) does not have, and has never had, a unified courts system, instead being separated into two systems: England and Wales and Scotland. In fact, Great Britain itself was not even formally created until 1707, when the Acts of Union joined the Kingdom of Scotland with the Kingdom of England (which included Wales). book accreditation England and Wales Acts of Union But more broadly, this theory offers a confused summary of the history of "the bar." In the Middle Ages, lawyers in London established four "Inns of Court": Lincoln's Inn, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn. These were physical buildings but, more figuratively, they were also the professional associations for lawyers working in the more important English courts. A "barrister" was a legal expert or advocate who has been "called to the bar." This is a metonymic phrase which is rooted in the physical barrier that was present in a courtroom, to separate fully qualified lawyers entitled to plead cases before a judge from (roughly speaking) trainee lawyers and members of the public. In modern times, this physical barrier generally separates participants in a trial (such as lawyers, clerks, defendants, the jury, and the judge) from the gallery in which members of the public and the news media sit. established metonymic So someone who has been "called to the bar" has been given the right to advocate before a judge and is thereby known as a "barrister." A "bar association" is, roughly speaking, a professional association for lawyers, akin to a guild. In some jurisdictions, bar associations are limited to barristers (as opposed to solicitors, a different type of lawyer); whereas in others, they are open to all members of the legal profession. In some jurisdictions a bar association is the body that licenses and regulates legal professionals, and in others it is merely a professional association. The "BAR" conspiracy theory essay goes on to say: When America was still a chartered group of British colonies under patent  established in what was formally named the British Crown territory of New England  the first British Accredited Registry (BAR) was established in Boston during 1761 to attempt to allow only accredited barrister-lawyers access to the British courts of New England. This was the first attempt to control who could represent defendants in the court at or within the bar in America. Today, each corporate STATE in America has it's [sic] own BAR Association, i.e. The Florida Bar or the California Bar, that licenses government officer attorneys, NOT lawyers. In reality, the U.S. courts only allow their officer attorneys to freely enter within the bar while prohibiting those learned of the law  lawyers  to do so. They prevent advocates, lawyers, counselors, barristers and solicitors from entering through the outer bar. Only licensed BAR Attorneys are permitted to freely enter within the bar separating the people from the bench because all BAR Attorneys are officers of the court itself. Does that tell you anything? A 1930 essay published in the Cornell Law Review (page 393) refers to a bar association's having been established in Boston in 1761, but remember that a bar association is no more than a kind of guild for lawyers. "Bar" is not an acronym for "British Accredited Registry," because that acronym is a fabrication. As with many sovereign citizen theories, the essay builds on the shaky foundations of an inaccurate account of the history of bar associations in the United States and draws confused conclusions about the function and legal status of lawyers. page 393 Many of these claims are based on the etymology of certain words, rather than their modern meaning. For example, the author of the essay referenced above presents the origins of the word "attorney," citing Webster's 1828 dictionary definition, as: "In the feudal law, to turn, or transfer homage and service from one lord to another." That essay also proclaims: Here's where the whole word game gets really tricky. In each State, every licensed BAR Attorney calls himself an Attorney at Law. Look at the definitions above and see for yourself that an Attorney at Law is nothing more than an attorney  one who transfers allegiance and property to the ruling land owner. That passage is false. Whatever the older origins of the word "attorney" might be, the modern definition of that word is much broader. Merriam-Webster defines an attorney as simply "one who is legally appointed to transact business on another's behalf." In common American parlance, "attorney" is used interchangeably with "lawyer." defines This fixation on word origins leads to something like a game of Telephone in the logic of the conspiracy theory, with false conclusions being drawn from inaccurate or incomplete premises. Here are more examples, summarized from the essay: The historical origins of the word "esquire" did have to do with the transfer of property between feudal land-owners, but that was hundreds of years ago. This argument is roughly analogous to claiming that because the title "Ph.D" derives from the Latin "philosophiae doctor" ("doctor of philosophy"), microbiologists with Ph.D at the end of their names have no legal right to conduct scientific research because they are actually philosophers and not scientists. "A BAR [British Accredited Registry] licensed Attorney is not an advocate," the theory goes on to falsely claim, "so how can he do anything other than what his real purpose is?": He can't plead on your behalf because that would be a conflict of interest. He can't represent the crown (ruling government) as an official officer at the same time he is allegedly representing a defendant. His sworn duty as a BAR Attorney is to transfer your ownership, rights, titles, and allegiance to the land owner. When you hire a BAR Attorney to represent you in their courts, you have hired an officer of that court whose sole purpose and occupation is to transfer what you have to the creator and authority of that court.  It's not clear what the origins of the the fabricated acronym are, but "British Accredited Registry" was invoked as early as 2001 by Austin Gary Cooper, a long-time "sovereign citizen" activist. In 2003, a U.S. District Court in Colorado barred Cooper and his wife Martha Cooper from selling advice on how to avoid paying federal income tax after the couple set up groups called "Taking Back America" and the "Ten Foundation," which advised their paying customers that they could renounce their United States citizenship, call themselves "American citizens" instead, and escape their tax obligations. In 2006, Cooper was given a six-month prison sentence for criminal contempt after failing to comply with that court order, which obliged him to hand over the names of his customers, among other requirements. During court proceedings, Cooper accused the judge of treason and called him a "Nazi bastard" and a "British Accredited Registry" lawyer, saying: "You people are going to destroy our country. British accredited registry bar association, you're going to destroy our country ..." 2001 barred sentence proceedings In 2017, prosecutors in Tennessee charged Cooper, who is now 69 years old, with 10 counts of forgery and filing a fraudulent lien. The case was ongoing as of January 2018. charged ongoing Warren, Charles.  "A History of the American Bar."
   Little, Brown and Company, 1911. U.K. Parliament.  "Act of Union 1707."
  U.K. Parliament.  Unknown publication date. Wickser, Philip J.  "Bar Associations."
  Cornell Law Review  (Vol. 15.3, April 1930). Babcock, Chief Judge Lewis T.  "Permanent Injunction Order, U.S.A v. Austin Gary Cooper et al."
  U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.  20 November 2003. Morlin, Bill.  "Ten Sovereign Citizens Face 320 Felonies in Tennessee."
  Southern Poverty Law Center.  28 March 2017. A pair of photographs reportedly showing a severely dehydrated homeless veteran named Kent near death on the streets of Los Angeles started making their way around social media in September 2018:   These images were apparently so shocking to some viewers that they suggested the photographs perhaps showed an artwork or a Halloween decoration as opposed to a real human being. Unfortunately, these  pictures are genuine. The photographs were first posted online by Facebook user Nick Spano on 22 September 2018. The original Facebook post contained a lengthy bit of text which was largely concerned with Spano's view on how the homeless (especially homeless veterans) are treated in the United States, along with a few details about the pictured individual, who was said to be a 68-year-old man named Kent. The man told Spano that he was a veteran and that he was "looking for a place to die" when Spano brought him some water before paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital: posted This is America: Kent, a 68 year old veteran dying under a bush outside million dollar properties in LA. The softball size tumor on the side of his face is now a gaping hole. Dried blood covers his hands and face. Flies swarm around his head, not bothering to wait for him to die before laying their eggs in the open wound that is crawling with hundreds of maggots. He tries to speak, but I can no longer understand him. This is fucking America! Im just looking for a place to die, he said. Those were his first words to me when I first discovered Kent about a month a go in shallow bed under the bushes outside my place. Like many people, my initial gut reaction was, not in my backyard! But I know better. Im aware that homelessness is a symptom of our broken and wasteful system, and the basic lack of decency, and compassion towards one another. We treat people like trash. We want to discard the parts of society we dont want, but like plastic, its never going to go away. All we do is make the problem worse, rather than realizing that our own habits are the problem. The way we treat people is the problem. We speak to one another through our own filters, and judgements before we even get to know them. So, instead I brought Kent water, and sat down to talk with him for awhile. He pulled his hoodie aside and showed me the tumor on the side of his face. I did it to myself, he said. Years of smoking was the likely cause. He went to the VA for medical care, but he said that he felt like they were just waiting for him to die so he left. I asked if I could get him some help, but he didnt want it. Im just looking for a place to die, he said. We are all full of shit, guys. Lets be honest with ourselves. Between the look-at-me-now Instagram selfies, the woke AF Facebook posts, and the heated political rants over which party is more American, we have lost our souls. Weve sold out. Weve forgotten that real wealth comes from investing in one another. This isnt the Me Too era, its just the Me era. We are the wealthiest, and most wasteful consumer culture in the history of humankind, and we buy everything they sell us, even their excuses. We cant fix every problem! Its too big! Its too expensive! Get a job! I had to work for it, why shouldnt they?! Bullshit!!! Each bomb we dropped on Syria costs us $100 million, and weve dropped dozens. The Iraq War cost American taxpayers over $2.5 trillion dollars and counting, and it was a lie! We have our own national emergency right here in the City of Dreams, but we dont have enough money to fix it. Could you imagine what would happen if we took funding for just one of those bombs, and dropped it into social services for American communities; into shelters for the homeless; medical care for our vets; clean water for Flint?!?! Dont say we cant fix the problem, because thats bullshit. We can!!! We are just so god damn brainwashed and complacent that we dont think we actually have any power to change it. But change starts when we stop ignoring the problem, and realize that we are the ones to fix it. Even the smallest act makes a big difference. There is no one else to call! Tag! Youre fucking it! The irony of the fact that I took a photo of Kent as he lie dying outside my house while waiting for paramedics to arrive, and posted it here for all to see, isnt lost on me. This might appear hypocritical to some, but that wont change my commitment to people like Kent in my community. I will continue to treat these people with dignity and respect, and be of service anyway I can, and if in the process, this post gets at least one of you, the next time you see someone camped out on the street, to stop and talk to them; to put your hand on their shoulder; to call them brother or sister; and to restore even the slightest sense of dignity in them through a simple act of compassion, then its worth it. Not everyone can help in the same way, and sometimes people dont want help, but we all can be human to one another. As they lifted Kent onto the stretcher, he raised his hand, and gave me a peace sign. I dont know his status at this time, but I will post an update as soon as I can. People over Profits -- Compassion over Comfort  Spano updated his post a few days later but he didn't have much additional information to report: Unfortunately, there isn't much to share at this time. I finally found the hospital where Kent was taken and being treated, but due to patient privacy laws (HIPPA), and the fact that I don't know Kent's full name, they wont not give me any information at this time. I dont know if he has passed, or if he is still in their care. I have made a request to a supervisor to share my information with Kent so that he can grant me access. I've also made it clear that there are many people who want to show their support, so I'm hoping they help us make that happen. Without Kent's last name, it's difficult to verify some of the details in this Facebook post, but it doesn't bear any of the hallmarks that have revealed similar posts to be hoaxes. For instance, we could not find any record of these photographs appearing online prior to Spano's post, which supports  that Spano truly was the person who took them. This post also doesn't include a call to action urging users to share it (which is a common tactic for disingenuous clickbait). We contacted Spano for more information about Kent, and he provided us with security camera footage to verify that his photographs were authentic and noted that Kent had told him during previous interactions he was a veteran. Spano never got Kent's last name, however, and Kent didn't have any ID on him when he was taken away by paramedics. While we can't officially verify whether or not Kent was a veteran, his story is, unfortunately, rather plausible. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, approximately 40,000 veterans in the United States are homeless on any given night. National Coalition for Homeless Veterans National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. &nbsp "FAQ About Homeless Veterans."
  Retrieved 25 September 2018. Claim:  Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone have caused several dogs to fall ill and die. UNPROVEN Example:  [Collected via Facebook, March 2015] I started this Face book page in 2010. I lost my beautiful Black Labrador retriever on 3/8/2010. He ate one of these bones and it broke into sharp shards and punctured his bowel. I took the rest back to Same Club and the manager said he wouldn't sell them anymore. Sad to say not true. The FDA investigation is going on supposedly , but I hear beings its a pet "treat" they won't or can't do nothing. Sad to hear people are still losing there pets , 5 years and counting since I lost Sammie. Hopefully someday these heartless bastards will stop looking at $$$ and cease making them. RIP Sammie.  I purchased a Real Ham Bone made by Dynamic Pet Products, from Wal-Mart on Sunday 3/1/15. I gave it to Fred, our bassett hound, he chewed on it and ingested some. By Monday morning 3/2/15, he was vomiting and having severe diarrhea. By the afternoon, he was bleeding out of his rectum and we rushed him to the vet. He was put in intensive care and we were told he was so sick, the vet recommended we put him to sleep. I am never going to forgive myself for buying him that deadly treat. Please share this so others don't make the same mistake I did. DYNAMIC PET PRODUCTS (in Missouri) know they've killed dozens of dogs and they still sell them at big retail companies like Sam's Club and Wal-Mart.   Origins:   On 4 March 2015, Facebook user Khristie Collins-Reed published the above-displayed photographs to  Facebook  Facebook following the death of her family's basset hound, Fred. Both on Facebook and in an interview with a local news station, members of her family stated that Fred had received a Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone on 1 March 2015 and died the following day.   The family's story was not the first complaint lodged about Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone. Several negative reviews had been published to consumer complaint sites, spanning several years and alleging problems similar to those reported by Reed's family. (Additional warnings have circulated among animal lovers on social media sites about canine jerky  treats and other forms of pet chew treats.) reviews jerky chew As early as 2010, U.S. the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had investigated Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone following consumer complaints, and at that time a disclaimer about the product displayed on the manufacturer's web site stated that: investigated Not recommended for aggressive chewers  we recommend they eat a Beef Bone. As with all natural bones, we recommend supervision during eating. The FDA did not issue a specific warning about Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone at that time, but the agency did issue a general warning against bones as chew toys in 2010. According to the FDA, rectal bleeding, intestinal blockage, and broken teeth were among the adverse outcomes linked to bones: bones "Some people think it's safe to give dogs large bones, like those from a ham or a roast," says Carmela Stamper, D.V.M., a veterinarian in the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration. "Bones are unsafe no matter what their size. Giving your dog a bone may make your pet a candidate for a trip to your veterinarian's office later, possible emergency surgery, or even death." "Make sure you throw out bones from your own meals in a way that your dog can't get to them," adds Stamper, who suggests taking the trash out right away or putting the bones up high and out of your dog's reach until you have a chance to dispose of them. "And pay attention to where your dog's nose is when you walk him around the neighborhood  steer him away from any objects lying in the grass." Veterinarians who treated Fred before his death in March 2015 said they weren't sure whether Dynamic Pet Products Real Ham Bone was to blame: Fred was in such bad shape when they took him to California Veterinary Specialists in Carlsbad that the family said their goodbyes and put him down. The veterinarians [said] they did not have a definitive answer about what made Fred ill because the family could not afford to run the tests. The family seems certain the bone broke apart and ripped apart Fred's insides. Dynamic Pet Products released a statement in response to the claims advising dog owners to supervise pets with any treats or snacks. According to the FDA, bones are generally unsafe for dogs and should not be given as treats. Last updated:  9 March 2015     Von Lunen, Jacques.  "FDA Looks Into Maker of Real Ham Bones Treats for Dogs After Complaints."   Oregon Live.  15 March 2010.