The revised lifestyle in America
FACT CHECK:  Are the claims made in an e-mail titled "New American Way of Life" accurate?  Claim: An e-mail titled "New American Way of Life" accurately describes a generous safety net available to Americans who opt not to work.     Examples: [Collected via Facebook and e-mail, August 2015] Do you have any info on this article? I find a lot of it to be wrong, and no sources are cited. From what I understand less than 5% of the population abuses welfare, Pell grants barely cover college tuition and books. Who gets free cell phones? Does a mother of 2 really get $600 a month in food stamps? I've seen this posted 3 times today in my FB feed and feel it needs to be dispelled  ------------------------  The Key to Success for Those Who Are Inheriting America in 13 Easy Steps! How to get $75,000 in benefits every year from the US Government for you and your girlfriend? Follow these proven and simple steps. First ... get a girlfriend         1. Don't marry her.         2. Use your mom's address to receive your mail.         3. The guy buys a house.         4. Guy rents out house to his girl girlfriend who has 2 of his kids.         5. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home.         6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare so guy doesn't have to pay for family insurance.         7. Being a single mother, Girlfriend gets to go to college for free!         8. Girlfriend gets $600 a month for food stamps        9. Girlfriend gets free cell phone from US Government       10. Girlfriend get free utilities.       11. Guy moves into home but still uses mom's house to receive mail.       12. Girlfriend claims one kid and guy claims one kid on taxes.  Now you both get to claim head of household at $1,800 credit.       13. Girlfriend gets disability for being "crazy" or having a "bad back" at $1,800 a month and never has to work again.         This plan is perfectly legal and is being executed now by millions of people. A married couple with a stay at home mom yields $0 dollars. An unmarried couple with stay at home mom nets $21,600 disability + $10,800 free housing + $6,000 free obamacare + $6,000 free food + $4,800 free utilities + $6,000 Pell Grant money to spend + $12,000 a year in college tuition free from Pell Grant + $8,800 tax benefit for being a single mother = $75,000 a year in benefits. Any idea why the country is 18 + trillion in debt? Welcome to the new multicultural diverse, fundamentally changed America, thanks to the ever popular and exciting, everyone is entitled to everything world. Origins: The item reproduced above has been circulating online since at least April 2015, and after it was published the Miller County Liberal of to Colquitt, Georgia, on 19 August 2015 it received a boost in popularity due to the implied authority of appearing in print. (Although it was attributed to "John Tabb," an earlier version was credited to "Jeffery Rightmire.") published credited As is often the case with e-mail polemics focused on purported welfare abuse and taxpayer outrage, the "New American Way of Life" offers an implausible, far-fetched scenario to condemn those who use public assistance to make ends meet: polemics welfare abuse taxpayer assistance   1. Don't marry (your girlfriend).  2. Use your mom's address to receive your mail.  3. The guy buys a house.  4. Guy rents out house to his girlfriend who has 2 of his kids.  5. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home. Points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the forward pertain to the imagined generosity of the housing program colloquially called "Section 8," the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) assistance program that provides very low-income families with subsidized vouchers they can use towards paying a portion of their monthly rent. Section 8 HUD While Section 8 is frequently derided in the fashion referenced above, it's very difficult to play the system in the manner described due to the low supply versus tremendous demand for housing and vouchers among those in need of it.  Applicants typically have to spend years on waiting lists before Section 8 housing becomes available, and in many cases it takes years to even get one's name on a waiting list in the first place.  Waiting lists for the program close to new applicants for years at a time on a not-infrequent basis, as a 24 August 2015 article in the Albuquerque Journal reported: close years The waiting list for Section 8 subsidized housing will re-open on Sept. 1, after closing 28 months ago, the Bernalillo County Housing Department announced Friday. But getting onto that waiting list is no assurance that a person will move into Section 8 housing anytime soon. According to Housing Department senior administrative assistant, Craig Smith, the waiting list will re-open with 600 people still on the list, and we expect to add thousands by the time the list is closed back down, though there is no tentative date when that will happen. The wait list was shut down on May 1, 2013, because of sequestering of funds and budget cuts from the federal government, in particular the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. So it's extremely unlikely the baby daddy landlord in this hypothetical scenario could simply make a residence available for the Section 8 program and then immediately rent it to the tenant of his choosing.  He'd typically have to wait years for his preferred renter (i.e., his girlfriend) to get on a Section 8 waiting list, then more years for her to work her way to the top of the list, before he could double-dip by getting the government to subsidize his girlfriend's paying him rent to live in a house he owns.  The baby daddy in this scenario (one who can afford to buy his own house) would probably be far better off financially if he simply lived in the house with his girlfriend, or rented it out to someone other than his girlfriend. 6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare so guy doesn't have to pay for family insurance. There is a persistent misperception that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as PPACA, the ACA, or "Obamacare") somehow allows low-income Americans to "sign up" for free medical care and/or free health insurance.  It doesn't.  It does provide lower-income households with tax credits/subsidies for the purchase of health insurance, but one would generally have to be at the very lower end of the ACA income scale and select the least expensive type of health insurance plan available to avoid paying anything at all for insurance.  (And even then, the family would still have to pay out of pocket for all the costs not necessarily covered by insurance, such as copays for office visits, diagnostic tests, lab work, prescriptions, hospital stays, etc.) PPACA  7. Being a single mother, Girlfriend gets to go to college for free! If there is any guaranteed way for a "single mother" to obtain a college education for free, we've yet to locate it.  Yes, federal Pell Grants can provide qualifying students with up to almost $6,000 per year towards the cost of attending college (depending upon financial need), but they aren't tied to one's status as a single mother.  There are some grants and scholarships available for single parents to both help them afford school while they are in and and help them pay it off once they have graduated, but those types of programs are scant, and very, very few unpartnered mothers could get a free ride to any college on the basis of their status as single parents alone. Pell Grants single parents scant 8. Girlfriend gets $600 a month for food stamps The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as "food stamps") is an often criticized assistance program aimed at combating hunger by financially struggling families. Eligibility for SNAP varies based on household size, but the maximum monthly allotment ranges from $194 for a family of one to $1,169 for a family of eight. Each additional family member after that can qualify a household for up to $146 more each month in benefits, or just under $5 per person per day.  The household size posited here (a single mother with two children) wouldn't qualify for $600 per month in SNAP benefits. food stamps criticized Eligibility The Department of Agriculture (under which the program operates) estimates a total annual program "loss" of about four percent.  Despite widespread belief that the SNAP program is rampantly abused with little oversight, fraud in the program is aggressively investigated and prosecuted where applicable. estimates investigated 9. Girlfriend gets free cell phone from US Government The Lifeline program (commonly known as "Obamaphones," even though the program was actually initiated long before the Barack Obama took office) requires phone service providers to offer monthly discounts on landline or wireless telephone service to eligible low-income consumers.  The program does not require those providers to issue "free cell phones" to anyone (although some cellular providers choose to do so at their own expense). Obamaphones 10. Girlfriend get free utilities. Various programs administered at the state level provide low-income families with financial assistance to offset the costs of essential utilities, but often only in emergency situations. utilities emergency 11. Guy moves into home but still uses mom's house to receive mail. One might theoretically do this, but the person who deliberately falsified his residence address in order to live in self-owned housing that he was being paid to rent to another party under the Section 8 program would be committing a crime, not simply taking legitimate and legal advantage of government assistance programs. 12. Girlfriend claims one kid and guy claims one kid on taxes.  Now you both get to claim head of household at $1,800 credit. Whether or not taxpayers are setting out to craftily claim tax deductions to which they are not entitled, the IRS's head of household tax filing status indeed entitles the person filing to a higher deduction ($9,250 in 2015 versus $6,300 for taxpayers filing as Single or Married Filing Separately). It's important to bear in mind that that dollar amount is what taxpayers may deduct from their taxable income, and not necessarily an amount that they will receive back in the form of a tax refund. head of household status entitles And of course, if each parent is claiming one of the two children as a dependent, than the mother can't be legally collecting benefits (such as SNAP) for both children. Girlfriend gets disability for being "crazy" or having a "bad back" at $1,800 a month and never has to work again. For starters, one cannot simply declare herself to be mentally ill or have back problems, then sit back and collect disability payments for the rest of her (working) life.  Such claims have to be documented by medical professionals as genuinely disabling conditions, and even then those living with disabilities find that securing benefits isn't quite so easy. Presuming the woman in this anecdote is fairly young, she would have to have accrued sufficient work credits to qualify for lifelong disability payments (an unlikely scenario), and then she would still have to meet separate criteria for a qualifying condition (which precludes having earned more than $1,090 per month in that year). The condition under which a person qualifies also must be one that limits ability to do any other work: easy accrued work credits criteria If you cannot do the work you did in the past, we see if you are able to adjust to other work. We consider your medical conditions and your age, education, past work experience and any transferable skills you may have. If you cannot adjust to other work, your claim will be approved. If you can adjust to other work, your claim will be denied. According to data from the agency, more than half of disability claims are denied, and the wait for hearings has increased (partly due to an aging pool of applicants). The anecdotal claimant's purported plundering of disability benefits also conflicts with her concurrent sponging of educational grants, as the usefulness of the latter is negated by the former: A full-time student wouldn't  qualify for lifelong disability payments, and college would be unnecessary for the matriarch of a household who intended to remain home for life collecting benefits for her fabricated disability. denied aging This plan is perfectly legal and is being executed now by millions of people. A married couple with a stay at home mom yields $0 dollars. An unmarried couple with stay at home mom nets. $21.600 disability + $10,800 free housing + $6,000 free   obamacare +$6,000 free food + $4,800 free utilities + $6,000 Pell Grant money to spend + $12,000 a year in college tuition free from Pell Grant + $8,800 tax benefit for being a single mother = $75,000 a year in benefits. Any idea why the country is 18 + trillion in debt? As the excerpt above concludes, the figures bandied about in the e-mail encompass virtually all programs available to low-income Americans and extrapolates the fictional family described routinely accesses all of them. Some of the benefits described (such as free college for single mothers or free utility programs) don't seem to exist, and several of forms of assistance (such as Section 8 or disability) are not administered in the simplistic manner suggested by this item. Furthermore, while this item asserts that the complex welfare hustling plan described here is "perfectly legal," several aspects of it involve defrauding the system in an expressly prohibited (and largely criminal) fashion. Were any family to hide assets or lie about household income on application forms, they would be subject to severe penalties and prosecution should their perfidy be unraveled. The scheme also rests upon the (fallacious) notion that access to assistance programs is easy to both maintain and retain. fallacious Finally, the causes of the national debt are fairly complex. However, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and Defense broadly account for most government spending. account Last updated: 31 August 2015 Originally published:  31 August 2015
Milwaukee Ald. Bob Donovan, a candidate for mayor in 2016, worries that upcoming retirements could further reduce what he sees as an undersized police force under Mayor Tom Barrett. Inhis state of the city speech Feb. 24, 2014, Barrett noted he had added 120 new officers in his 2014 budget. Donovan hit on that number when interviewed in the wake of his mayoral announcement. The reality is the number of officers has not increased, Donovan said during a July 29, 2014 appearance on theCharlie Sykes show on WTMJ-AM. Now the mayor will continue to say were hiring 120 cops this year. That doesnt take into consideration the fact that weve had 150 retirements, or that we havent filled positions going way back. When we asked Donovan about the comment, he did not cite hard numbers, but told us he figures unfilled positions and retirements have outstripped the addition of recruits over the 10 years Barrett has been in office. Is Donovan  right? Has police strength -- at least by the numbers -- been flat or gone down on Barretts watch? To answer that question, we turned to the citys Fire and Police Commission, which issues an annual report that details the size of the overall force. To be sure, the actual number of bodies on the force on any given date is constantly changing, since retirement dates vary while recruit classes mean a wave of new bodies joins the force at once. The Fire and Police Commissionreports, available online, are as close to an official tally of police strength as we found. They list, by race and gender, the number of persons on the Police Department payroll as of the last pay period of each year. The latest covers 2012, so we obtained figures for 2013 and so far in 2014 directly from the commission. We used 2004 as the pre-Barrett baseline for our comparisons, because Barrett didnt take office until spring 2004 and therefore did not propose the budget for that year. All figures factor in retirements, terminations and new hires. Police officers At the end of 2004, 1,402 police officers were on the payroll. That number fell to 1,357 by the end of 2013, a 3 percent drop. By that measure -- the one the public sees -- Donovan is correct that officer strength has not increased. Barrett administration officials note it can be misleading to look only at strength of force at any one point in time. A new class of officer recruits came on line in late 2004, boosting the number, they said. A comparison of pay period one in 2004 to the same period in 2014, for example, actually shows a small increase in officer strength. A better measure than point in time comparisons, they said, is average strength across the whole year. That was 1,349 in 2004, they said, and based on the first half of 2014 its 1,341 now -- a smaller decline. Still, that approach does not change the accuracy of Donovans claim. Total sworn officers City officials often will refer to this larger figure when discussing officer strength, and Donovan did as well when we contacted him. It includes not only patrol officers but detectives, supervisors, various technicians and specialists as well as the police chief and the top command staff. At the end of 2004, the figures show 2,006 sworn officers were on board. That number fell to 1,828 by late 2013 and to 1,875 by mid-July 2014. Earlier in 2004, according to Barretts budget staff, the figure was 1,932. And Barretts office released figures using the average strength throughout the year that show a smaller drop in overall sworn strength. Again, those figures change the angle of descent, but not the downward direction of the trend. Within those numbers, the detective ranks fell by more than one fourth. So by this broader measure, Donovan is on target again. Ten-year trend The staff strength figures from the Fire and Police Commission show that the police officer ranks grew early in Barretts tenure, but have slipped gradually with one exception since then. Year 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 P.O.s* 1,402 1,362 1,390 1,441 1,406 1,392 1,362 1,348 1,384 1,357 1,345** As for the broader sworn ranks, a similar trend is evident. By way of explaining the lack of growth in the police force, Barrett chief of staff Patrick Curley and city budget officials said state shared-revenue aid to Milwaukee has dropped by $25 million since 2004 while the police budget is $65 million higher. They said the department under Chief Edward Flynn has re-deployed officers from administrative tasks to community policing. That was accomplished by hiring more civilians to do those desk jobs, they said. Efficiencies have helped avoid layoffs seen in some big cities, Barrett spokeswoman Jodie Tabak said. The Barrett officials told PolitiFact Wisconsin that our inquiry for this fact check led the mayor to quickly unveil aproposal to add 15 more officers to a training classthat will graduate in April 2015. It already had been under consideration to announce later this year, they said. The mayor will propose his 2015 budget in September. Our rating Donovan said the number of Milwaukee police officers has not increased under Mayor Tom Barrett. Donovans claim is on target because reports from the citys Fire and Police Commission indicate a decline in the number of officers since 2004. And other measuring sticks offered by Barretts office show the same trend. We rate Donovans claim True. Claim:  Senator Ted Cruz went into a shouting tirade after a Hooters restaurant refused to accept his government expense account credit card.    Example:  [Collected via e-mail, October 2013] Did Ted Cruz cause a scene at a restaurant because his expense card was declined?   Origins:  On 29 September 2013, the web site The Lapine published an article positing that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas went into a shouting tirade after a Hooters restaurant refused to accept his government expense account credit card as payment for a $53 tab: article Following a live radio interview today, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and host Rush Limbaugh immediately left the studio and went for lunch at a nearby Hooters but the restaurant refused the Senator's government expense-account credit card and asked that the $53 tab be paid in cash. That set Senator Cruz off according to media reports. "He got the hiccups he was so mad," Hooters' assistant manager Kyle Lane told the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. After shouting at Hooters' waitresses and management for an extended period, Cruz admitted he had no cash and was forced to borrow the money from a FOX News reporter. Soon afterwards links and excerpts referencing  that article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered it mistaking it for a genuine news item.   However, the article was just a spoof that originated with The Lapine, a Canadian-based satirical web site.  (Clues to the site's nature are that its name is taken from a language spoken by rabbit characters in the novel Watership Down, and that the site's motto is "Rabbits eat Onions.") The Lapine Other stories published by The Lapine include "Atheist Suicide Bomber Kills Eighteen Agnostics," "Dalai Lama Spotted Wearing 'Leave Justin Alone' Button," and "Arizona Gun Buyers Offered Free Flag Tattoo." Last updated:  3 October 2013 For years, liberal social media users have shared photographs or videos supposedly depicting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter doing woodworking with what appears to be an eye injury, apparently to emphasize that his alleged age and medical history hadn't stopped him from volunteering. One Twitter user, for example, posted the below-displayed meme about the 39th president in April 2022: videos posted   A reverse-image search of the meme revealed numerous instances in which internet users promoted this underlying claim: that Carter, at age 95, fell, received stitches and then the following day helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity  a Christian nonprofit that helps low-income families build homes and pay their mortgages. revealed numerous instances Christian nonprofit [See also: Why Do the Bidens Look Giant in Photo With Carters?] Why Do the Bidens Look Giant in Photo With Carters? The claim was true  though the incident had occurred more than two years ago, as of this writing. On Oct. 7, 2019, The Associated Press published the photographs featured in the meme, writing: writing NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  With a bandage above his left eye and a large, red welt below it, former President Jimmy Carter was greeted by a cheering crowd Monday morning as he prepared to help build a home with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville. Habitat for Humanity Carter fell at home on Sunday, requiring 14 stiches, but he did not let his injuries keep him from participating in his 36th building project with the nonprofit Christian housing organization. He turned 95 last Tuesday, becoming the first U.S. president to reach that milestone. The newspaper reported that he and his wife, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, worked that day on building corbels, a type of support bracket, for a home. CNN also reported on the public appearance, including the following quote from the former president in its Oct. 8, 2019, story: I fell down and hit my forehead on a sharp edge and had to go to the hospital. And they took 14 stitches in my forehead and my eye is black, as youve noticed, he said. But I had a No. 1 priority and that was to come to Nashville and build houses. CNN also reported According to the nonprofit's website, the couple formed a partnership with Habitat for Humanity in the 1980s, and they have rallied "thousands of volunteers and even celebrities" to join the organization's cause since then. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Habitat for Humanity paused its so-called "Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project," a reoccurring event during which the couple fundraises to build a grouping of homes somewhere. nonprofit's website 1980s Interested in presidential trivia? We recently combed our archives to compile exclusive stories regarding presidents pets, drinking, alleged extramarital affairs, purported after-death hauntings of the White House  and more. They are listed in order of presidential term here, and include the following nuggets of information about Carter: presidents pets drinking extramarital affairs purported after-death hauntings here Yes, Carter once helped contain a potentially dangerous accident at a nuclear reactor in Canada. He and his wife, Rosalynn, are the longest-married couple in presidential history. Carter indeed published an open letter entitled Losing My Religion for Equality. Carter Work Project. Habitat for Humanity, https://www.habitat.org/volunteer/build-events/carter-work-project. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022. Despite Fall, Former President Carter Helps Build Home. AP NEWS, 7 Oct. 2019, https://apnews.com/article/9ef214c0b3c748b6b32fa40a70ff6624. Ahmed, Elizabeth Wolfe, Saeed. Despite 14 Stitches and a Black Eye, Jimmy Carter Is Back Building Homes. CNN, 8 Oct. 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/us/carter-building-houses-after-stitches-falling-trnd/index.html. Claim:  Albert Einstein once declared compound interest to be "the most powerful force in the universe." UNDETERMINED Examples:  [Sangillo, 2006] There's an urban legend that Albert Einstein once said compounding [interest] is the most powerful force in the universe.  Whether or not he really said it, that line has become my financial motto. I strongly suggest you adopt it.  [Hartgill, 1997] When asked to name the greatest invention in human history, Albert Einstein simply replied "compound interest." Origins:  Many homeowners who have struggled to meet their  mortgages month after month, only to find after years of making payments that most of their money has gone to cover interest charges, have felt like cursing whoever came up with the concept of compound interest. In that vein, around 1980 (when the neutron bomb and soaring interest rates were prominent news topics) Johnny Carson once quipped during a Tonight Show monologue that "Scientists have developed a powerful new weapon that destroys people but leaves buildings standing  it's called the 17% interest rate."  Perhaps that explains why many of us seem to recognize a kindred spirit in the declaration by one of the greatest intellects of our time, Albert Einstein, that compound interest is "the most powerful force in the universe" or "the greatest invention in human history."  (Since no context is ever offered for this purported quote, readers might also fairly assume that its intent was to praise compound interest as a wonderful device that allows thrifty savers to realize a significant, low-risk return on their money.) compound But did the eminent physicist really ever say such a thing?  The claim that he did appears dubious for a couple of significant reasons:  The attribution of this sentiment about compound interest to Einstein doesn't seem to have existed during the scientist's lifetime, first appearing in print only several decades after his death, and always repeated as something he supposedly said in some indefinite time and place.  (Albert Einstein died in 1955, but the earliest mention we could find of this item was in a 1983 New York Times blurb.)  Just what Einstein reportedly said about compound interest varies quite a bit from source to source: That it was "the greatest invention in human history" (or "the greatest invention of mankind," or "the greatest invention of all," or "the most significant invention of the nineteenth century"), that it is "the most powerful force in the universe," or that it is "more complicated than the theory of relativity."  (That last variation echoes another sentiment popularly attributed to Einstein which also began to appear only well after his death, to the effect that "preparing a tax return is more complicated than relativity theory" or "the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.") We suspect that this perspective on the power of compound interest is a fairly modern invention, one which has been retroactively placed into the mouth of a prominent dead person to give it more punch. Last updated:  19 April 2011    Calaprice, Alice.  The New Quotable Einstein.   Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.  ISBN 0-691-12074-9  (pp. 294-295). The New Quotable Einstein     Dorfman, Dan.  "Fundamental Advice, Phenomenal Success."   USA Today.  2 August 1991  (p. B4).     Hartgill, David.  "Power of Compounding."   The Advertiser.  15 September 1997.     Havemann, Judith.  "Uncle Sam's Dual Standards."   The Washington Post.  23 January 1988  (p. A1).     Langworthy, David.  "Einstein Was Right  So Is 'Wealthy Barber.'"   The Houston Chronicle.  1 June 1998  (p. A20).    Sangillo, Karen.  "All About 'Free Money' and How to Earn It."   Bucks County Courier Times.  5 November 2006.    Shapiro, Fred R.  The Yale Book of Quotations.   New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.  ISBN 0-300-10798-6  (pp. 230-231). The Yale Book of Quotations    Topolnicki, Denise M.  "How You Can Beat the Five Threats to Your Retirement."   The Buffalo News.  8 November 1993  (p. 12). 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 the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of March 2020 threatened to shut down businesses across America for an extended period of time, the U.S. government faced the difficult task of deciding which industries should be provided economic assistance to keep them afloat for the duration. Public sentiment in some quarters was strongly against government bailouts for businesses such as airlines and cruise companies, on the grounds that over the last several years many of the major operators had spent billions of dollars in profits buying up their own stock rather than paying down their debts. In USA Today, John M. Griffin and James M. Griffin wrote: strongly against Start with the airlines. Rather than using their profits from the past five years to pay off debts and save for a rainy day, the big four  American, United, Delta and Southwest  instead grew their combined liabilities to $166 billion, all while spending $39 billion on share repurchases. That number, which is only from the big four, is almost 80% of what theyre asking for now from U.S. taxpayers. Similarly, the three largest Cruise companies -- Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean -- have liabilities of $47.5 billion and engaged in share repurchases of $8 billion. Had these companies paid down liabilities instead of using stock repurchases to bid up their stock prices, they would have been far better prepared to weather this emergency. Of course, higher share prices made their stock options more valuable. This allowed top airlines executives to pay themselves $666 million in compensation over the five-year period. The top cruise executives managed to haul in $448 million. Now, taxpayers are unwillingly being called upon to bail out their profligate behavior. A widely circulated meme on social media offered another reason why cruise lines were supposedly unworthy of government bailouts -- because although they might be headquartered in the U.S., their ships were foreign-flagged in order to put them out of reach of U.S. law:  That nearly every major cruise line registers their ships somewhere outside the U.S. is hardly a disputable point. As a 2011 news report noted, only a single major cruise ship at the time was U.S.-flagged: news report [O]nly one major cruise ship -- NCL America's Pride of America -- is registered in the United States, according to data from CyberCruises.com. Most of the big boats fly Bahamian flags, but other popular registries include Panama, Bermuda, Italy, Malta and the Netherlands. In fact, according to Cruise Lines International Association, 90% of commercial vessels calling on U.S. ports fly foreign flags. The three cruise lines called out by name in the meme -- Disney, Celebrity, and Carnival -- do indeed engage in this practice. It's not difficult to verify that Disney cruise ships are registered in the Bahamas, Celebrity ships in Malta, and Carnival ships in Panama. Of course, the cruise industry and their critics offer differing reasons for why cruise ships are flagged in countries other than the U.S., with the former asserting that: Bahamas Malta Panama reasons CLIA [Cruise Lines International Association] maintains there are reasons for such policies: "There are many factors that determine where a cruise ship -- or for that matter, any maritime vessel -- is flagged. Those determinations are made by individual cruise lines and other ship operators based on varying factors including the capabilities of the flag to deliver the services needed; representation and reputation of the flag in the international shipping community; the performance of the flag state, which dictates how a ship is prioritized by port states; the pool of seafarers able to meet the needs of the flag; and the flag's fees/charges and taxes," the association said by e-mail. This can be viewed as a robust free-market debate. Some maintain burdensome U.S. regulations have forced cruise operators to plant their flags elsewhere, while others say these corporations are seeking to attract American dollars while skirting American safety and consumer protection laws. On the other hand, an academic paper by Caitlin E. Burke of the University of Florida about "Legal Issues Relevant to Cruise Ships" made no bones of observing that reflagging of ships had long been used as a means of avoiding U.S. federal taxes, labor and safety laws, environmental laws, lawsuits, criminal investigations, and other regulations: paper Aside from the majority revenue generated by U.S. passengers, cruise lines are independent of the U.S. economy. Even though nearly 75 percent of passengers are U.S. citizens, cruise line corporations and their ships are not traditionally American-owned or registered ... (Tomlinson, 2007) Cruise line companies are not concerned about increasing minimum wage, rising insurance premiums, or higher corporate taxes. Cruise lines escape federal taxes and labor laws by registering their corporations and vessels in foreign countries [such as] Panama, Liberia, and the Bahamas. In fact, employees of cruise lines are often mistreated due to lackadaisical labor laws. Worst of all, employees will find little to no recourse pursuing litigation. Likewise, a U.S. citizen passenger faces the same predicament. A vessels country of registration is commonly referred to as the "flag of convenience" (FOC). Flagging a ship under a foreign flag for the convenience of the cruise line is nothing new, nor is it rare. The majority of cruise ships today are registered to Panama, Liberia, or the Bahamas. It is important to pay close attention as many vessels within the same fleet are often registered to different countries. Carnival Corporation, for example, has flagged their cruise vessel Celebration under Panama and Destiny under the Bahamas. Cruise lines often avoid drawing attention to the FOC of by using the term "headquartered in Miami, Florida." It is important to understand that while the majority of these cruise lines have their headquarters in Miami, they are not registered in the U.S. Thus, U.S. laws do not apply and passengers are at the mercy of maritime law. That the practice of ship-reflagging is common and regular is undeniable. Whether cruise lines headquartered in the U.S. but operating ships registered in foreign countries "deserve" government bailouts in a time of pandemic is a subjective issue with no definitive answer, but certainly some critics have argued that they do not: critics Even in a crisis, companies with prudent balance sheets will survive and in time, thrive. Despite what politicians might tell you, the airplanes and ships of imprudent companies are physical property that will not suddenly disappear. They will fly or sail again under the same or different name, but hopefully with cheaper prices, better service and different executives. Like a college student sleeping off a hangover, a crisis is a time to sober up by removing debt from the system. Its not time for another drink. McGee, Bill.  "What Every Cruiser Should Know Before They Book."
  USA Today.  26 April 2011. McGee, Bill.  "Why Are Cruise Ships Registered in Foreign Countries?"
  USA Today.  11 December 2012. van Doorn, Philip.  "Airlines and Boeing Want a Bailout  But Look How Much Theyve Spent on Stock Buybacks."
  MarketWatch.  22 March 2020. Griffin, John M. and James M. Griffin.  "Coronavirus Bailout for Airlines and Cruise lines Is Socialism for the Undeserving Rich."
  USA Today.  20 March 2020. Burke, Caitlin E.  "A Qualitative Study of Victimization and Legal Issues Relevant to Cruise Ships."
  Accessed 23 March 2020. In late March and early April 2020, social media users revisited a 2018 tweet posted by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Senior Fellow Stephen Schwartz, in which he paraphrased a Washington Post article that reported the Trump administration had disbanded the National Security Council's pandemic response team. tweet Stephen Schwartz article The tweet, dated May 10, 2018, read, "When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why."Some who shared the tweet amid the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 pointed to the date of the tweet and noted its apparent prescience. But Schwartz followed up on March 15, 2020, by thanking the experts quoted in the article, who themselves raised the alarm that the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration regarding pandemic preparedness left the United States vulnerable:The people tagged in Schwartz' tweet are global health and development advocate Carolyn Reynolds; Jeremy Konyndyk, who led foreign disaster assistance for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President Barack Obama; and Luciana Borio, former director for the National Security Council's Medical and Biodefense Preparedness under Trump. tweet  followed up  Those three were quoted in the Post's 2018 report in the following passage: This week, the administration released a list of $15 billion in spending cuts it wants Congress to approve. Among the targets is $252 million in unused funds remaining from the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, far exceeding the combined total cases reported in about 20 previous outbreaks since the 1970s. list of $15 billion in spending cuts The White House proposal is threatening to claw back funding whose precise purpose is to help the United States be able to respond quickly in the event of a crisis, said Carolyn Reynolds, a vice president at PATH, a global health technology nonprofit. Collectively, warns Jeremy Konyndyk, who led foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, What this all adds up to is a potentially really concerning rollback of progress on U.S. health security preparedness. It seems to actively unlearn the lessons we learned through very hard experience over the last 15 years, said Konyndyk, now a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. These moves make us materially less safe. Its inexplicable. The day before news of [Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense Timothy] Ziemers exit became public, one of the officials on his team, Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the NSC, spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. That event killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. 1918 influenza pandemic The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern, she told the audience. Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no. Sun, Lena H."Top White House Official in Charge of Pandemic Response Exits Abruptly."
 The Washington Post.10 May 2018. Sun, Lena H."The Trump Administration Is Ill-Prepared for a Global Pandemic."
 The Washington Post.8 April 2017. Sun, Lena H."Bill Gates Calls on U.S. to Lead Fight Against a Pandemic that Could Kill 33 Million."
 The Washington Post.27 April 2018. Divorce can be anything from an amicable parting of spouses who realize their partnership just isn't working, to a vicious, protracted fight between two embittered people determined to wreak as much physical, emotional, and economic damage on the other as possible.  Unfortunately, the end of singer Marvin Gaye's first marriage came closer to the latter than the former. Marvin Gaye's Divorce In 1962, a 22-year-old Marvin Gaye wed Anna Ruby Gordy, a woman seventeen years his senior and the sister of Motown Record Corporation founder Berry Gordy, Jr. (a marriage, some cynics suggested, calculated to further the fledgling career of Gaye, who recorded for Motown).  By the time Anna filed for divorce thirteen years later, the couple had been separated for over two years, and each had accused the other of infidelities.  (Marvin's infidelity was hardly a matter of debate, as he was living with a teenage girl seventeen years his junior who was pregnant with his child.  Moreover, the son Marvin and Anna Gaye had claimed as their own was actually a child Marvin Gaye had fathered by his wife's fifteen-year-old niece.)  The divorce proceedings dragged out over two years as Marvin continually failed to show up for court dates, refused to pay court-ordered support for Anna and their son, and claimed his expenses exceeded his income even as he continued to spend money recklessly, purchasing luxury automobiles, boats, and beachfront properties.  By the time Marvin's day of financial reckoning arrived, he had little cash and was well in arrears for a large amount of back taxes, so his attorney worked out a settlement under which Anna would be paid off from the royalties earned by Gaye's next album.    Here, My Dear That next album turned out to be Here, My Dear, a harrowing "concept album of divorce" which chronicled the turmoil of Anna and Marvin's relationship.  The record's symbolism was hardly subtle: Featuring songs with titles such as "You Can Leave, But It's Going to Cost You," the album bore an inner sleeve which depicted a Monopoly-like board game emblazoned with the word JUDGMENT, across which a male hand passed a broken record to a female hand.  On the man's side of the board were only a piano and some recording equipment, while the female's side of the board included money, a house, a Mercedes, and a diamond ring:  Although Marvin and Anna's divorce settlement was indeed tied to the royalties generated by Here, My Dear, the common legend surrounding the record -- that Marvin Gaye was ordered by a judge to hand over all his royalties from the album to Anna, and that Marvin was in a position to spitefully deprive Anna of those royalties by intentionally recording an album so bad it would not sell -- is largely untrue.  Debunking the Legend First off, the payment-through-royalties scheme was a settlement worked out through mutual agreement, not one devised and mandated by a judge.  Second, rarely does a competent attorney accept (or a responsible judge impose) a dissolution of partnership settlement under which the amount of compensation received by one party is completely dependent upon a future endeavor of the other party, precisely because such a settlement could allow one side to cheat the other by deliberately underperforming.  (A similar legend about producer Phil Spector is based on this premise.) Phil Spector The circumstances in Marvin Gaye's case were that he agreed to pay Anna a total of $600,000, the first $307,000 coming from the advance against royalties he was guaranteed for his next album, and the remaining $293,000 to be paid out of any royalties earned beyond the advance.  But Anna would lose nothing if Gaye's next record sold poorly, because the agreement specified that if the album failed to earn $293,000 within two years, Gaye was obligated to pay Anna the difference himself, and thus he had nothing to gain by tanking the sessions and purposely turning out substandard product.  In fact, Gaye was in a position to lose a great deal by deliberately turning out a substandard effort, both because he was entitled to keep any royalties earned after the first $600,000 and because he stood to earn additional monies through publishing rights (rather than record sales) that were not payable to Anna. It is true that Gaye initially considered giving the album less than his best effort, but he soon found that he was incapable of recording with anything less than a complete commitment to his art, and if he had any intent to "get" his ex-wife, it was through the album's lyrics and not its sales: At first, I figured I'd just do a quickie record  nothing heavy, nothing even good.  Why should I break my neck when Anna was going to wind up with the money anyway?  But the more I lived with the notion, the more it fascinated me. Besides, I owed the public my best effort. I'll give her my next album but it'll be something she won't want to play and it'll be something she won't want the world to hear because I'm gonna tell the truth. Critical Reception Although the album was not a smashing commercial success, it was admired in many quarters for its artistic qualities: Despite Marvin's efforts, Here, My Dear was a commercial failure, not because it lacked ideas and sophisticated music, but, perhaps, because it possessed them in abundance. I think Here, My Dear was simply too sophisticated, too boldly honest, too remarkably insightful  and too close to the emotional quick to succeed commercially. On "I Met a Little Girl," Gaye appeals to his past: musically, through sweet fifties harmonies, and personally as he narrates meeting Anna, falling in love with her, and the relationship's demise. On "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You," which appears again as an instrumental and a reprise, Marvin uses a Latin-tinged mellow groove to probe for more than six minutes the philosophical question of love's origin and its end, both passing imperceptibly into existence, and into each other, as Marvin's multiple falsettos lash at the song's rhythms, and Anna: "You said bad things and you lied." On "Anger," Marvin mounts a funky shuffle of percussion and bass to declare the defining vices of a fundamental human passion: "Anger ... can make you old ... can make you sick ... destroys your soul." The songs cross every genre  "Anna's Song" is a rhythmically complex patterning of soul-jazz that conjures Coltrane's ballads, while "Funky Space Reincarnation" is disco-funk that dreams of a raceless musical universe. And "Here, My Dear" is a poignant doo-wop love fugue transposed to detail Marvin's sorrowful joys and sad nostalgia in the aftermath of their breakup. Anna Gaye didn't take lightly some of the revelations Marvin expressed through his music on Here, My Dear (especially accusations that she was preventing him from seeing their son and that she had lied to God by breaking their marriage vows), and upon its release she told People magazine that she was considering filing a $5 million invasion of privacy lawsuit, although nothing ever came of her threat.  Critical reaction to Here, My Dear was mixed.  As Gaye biographer Steve Turner wrote, "Reviewers didn't seem to know whether the double album was a huge joke at the expense of Anna Gaye and Motown, or a work of genius."  The record was not a hit, failing to sell well enough to even recoup the advance against royalties paid by Motown, so Marvin Gaye (who was by then officially bankrupt) was obligated to begin making monthly payments to Anna to cover the shortfall.  However, Gaye was killed in 1984 still owing Anna the additional $293,000 due her, and monies earned by his estate after his death went to paying off the IRS rather than benefiting his ex-wives and children -- thereby proving the maxim about life's only two certainties.   Dyson, Michael Eric.  Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves & Demons of Marvin Gaye.
  New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004.  ISBN 0-465-01769-X.

 Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves & Demons of Marvin Gaye Ritz, David.  Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye.
  New York: Da Capo Press, 1985.  ISBN 0-306-80443-2.

 Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye Turner, Steve.  Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye.
  New York: HarperCollins, 1998.  ISBN 0-06-019821-4. Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye Following controversial airstrikes on Syria in April 2018, a 2017 article published by repeat offender YourNewsWire.com with the claim that Hillary Clinton voiced support for destroying Syria in a "leaked" e-mail popped up and began to circulate again: Syria article Lest We Forget  Hillary Clinton: We Must Destroy Syria For israel https://t.co/VxkzUu1IkE pic.twitter.com/Zf4iagpqsv https://t.co/VxkzUu1IkE pic.twitter.com/Zf4iagpqsv  Michael Lee (@MichaelLee2009) April 15, 2018 April 15, 2018  The piece included a screenshot of what were purportedly Clinton's views taken from an e-mail, as well as quotes: Clinton Email: We Must Destroy Syria For Israel [...] The best way to help Israel deal with Irans growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad, Clinton forthrightly starts off by saying. Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Irans atom bomb program as a hoax (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use these lies to justify destroying Syria in the name of Israel. She specifically links Irans mythical atom bomb program to Syria because, she says, Irans atom bomb program threatens Israels monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.   A nearly identical claim (since deleted) was published by a separate site in March 2016. Both attribute the text of the purported e-mail to Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State, a position she held for approximately four years between 2009 and 2013. published held The text is indeed a part of WikiLeaks' "Hillary Clinton Email Archive," and the title search returns three documents in that data set. The same document was also available via FOIA.state.gov [PDF]. three FOIA.state.gov PDF Although its content was characterized as an e-mail authored by Hillary Clinton, that is misleading. It appears that she actually received and forwarded an attachment from James P. Rubin. In all three documents (two forwards and an attachment) it is clear that Rubin authored and sent the commentary to Clinton, stating in his preface that the then-Secretary of State "may not agree" with his stance on Syria: forwarded attachment James P. Rubin commentary From: James P. RubinSent: Monday, April 30, 2012 11:03 AMTo: H Subject: Best of luck on China trip First, I want to wish you and Kurt best of luck getting out of the pickle Mr Chen has you in as you arrive in China. I wanted to pass on something I intend to publish on Syria and Iran, because I think it is worth trying to urge the President and his political advisers to act. As you can see from today's column by Jackson Diehl, the pundits and many in the media will push the Syria issue very hard for the foreseeable future. It may not be on the front burner every day, but it will be close to or at the top of the media's attention indefinitely. Interestingly, the Republicans have showed their hand on the foreign policy debate, in which inaction on Syria is pretty much the only serious criticism they can offer that will stick. As you will see from the attached piece, I believe that action on Syria will forestall the biggest danger on the horizon, that Israel launches a surprise attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Although the pressure has now eased for a variety of reasons, it will return. Action by Washington on Syria, on the other hand, I believe will eliminate much of the urgency for Israeli action. In other words, a more aggressive policy on Syria will eliminate the best case the republican's have going into the November election, will ease substantially the pressure on Israel to attack Iran and possibly spark a wider war in the Middle East, and finally would be the right stance on Syria going forward. I know you may not agree but I thought it was better to share this with you first as at least a new way to look at the problem. All best, your friend,Jamie James P. Rubin Walsh, Nick Paton.  "What Do The US, UK And French Airstrikes Mean For Syria's War?"
  CNN.  15 April 2018. Austin MayorSteve Adler, who seeks a second term this November, reacted to a game-show moment with a swaggering claim. In anApril 25, 2018, tweet, Adler responded to this clue fromthat nights episodeof Jeopardy: Per Rick Perry, its the blueberry in the tomato soup. Perry, the Republican former governor,often offers the blueberry characterization of the Democrat-dominant capital. On the program, a contestant correctly answered Austin for $600. Next, Adler said in his tweet, accompanied by a photo of the Jeopardy clue: What is the safest big city in Texas with an unemployment rate under 3% that has been named the best place to live in the entire United States two years running? Is all of that true about Austin? Not all: In 2017,we found Half Truean Adler reference to Austin as the state's safest big city. Not for the first time, we noted then that theFBI advises againstusing crime data it collects to declare one city safer than another. That said, such statistics at the time suggested both that the five-county Austin region in 2015 had a lower violent-crime rate than other Texas regions and that El Paso had a lower violent-crime rate than Austin in the first half of 2016. Seeking mayors factual backup The morning after Adler posted his comment, which was retweeted more than 200 times, we reached mayoral spokesman Jason Stanford. Stanford advised by phone that Adler didnt have fresh information to offer in support of his 2018 safest big city in Texas statement. He suggested we check federal statistics to confirm Austins jobless rate and told us that U.S. News had consecutively named Austin the nations best place to live. Checking Austins unemployment Our search for Austins jobless rate on the Texas Workforce Commission website showed that from January through March 2018, the latest month of available data, the city's jobless rate ran shy of 3 percent. We also fetched a longer view showing the citys jobless rate mostly staying below 3 percent from January 2017 on (all the rates not seasonally adjusted). Austin's unemployment rate was last above 3 percent, according to the TWC, when it was 3.1 percent in August 2017. The Austin rate's 15-month low, 2.5 percent, occurred in December 2017:          SOURCE:Website,Unemployment,Texas Labor Market Information, Texas Workforce Commission (search completed April 26, 2018) Austin ranked best place to live two times in a row On April 10, 2018, U.S. Newsannouncedthat for the second straight year, the online publication found Austin the best place to live in the United States among the country's 125 largest metropolitan areas;Colorado Springs, Colo.,placed second. The rankings were based on affordability, job prospects and quality of life, U.S. News said, and on surveying thousands of U.S. residents to find out what qualities they consider important in a home town. The methodology, U.S. News said, also factored in data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the Bureau of Labor Statistics--plus U.S. News rankings of the countrys high schools and hospitals. Austin, the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the planet,earneda score of 7.7 out of 10 for the 2018 rankings, U.S. News said, with even its few downsides having upsides. The story says: The median sale price for a single-family home in Austin is well above the national median. Then again, the story says, Austinites' pocketbooks benefit from no personal or corporate income tax, and a low state and local tax rate. Another semi-warning in the story: Summers in Austin take some getting used to, with temperatures often scorching. Though, the story says, the metro area experiences mild weather throughout the rest of the year, though temperatures have been known to drop in the winter. The story also notes: Austin is among the nation's worst metro areas for traffic congestion. But, the story says, that can be addressed with flexible work schedules, due diligence when choosing a neighborhood and, for those wanting to get in some exercise while commuting, using public transportation, walking and biking. Our ruling Adler referred to Austin as the safest big city in Texas with an unemployment rate under 3% that has been named the best place to live in the entire United States two years running. Hizzonerwas right about Austins jobless rate of late and Austin getting named the citys best place to live two years in a row though its worth clarifying that the rankings considered only the countrys 125 largest metro areas. Whether Austin is the safest big Texas city rests on interpreting crime data the FBI counsels against using to compare communities. This said, we previously found that the five-county Austin region in 2015 had a lower violent-crime rate than other Texas regions while in the first half of 2016, El Paso had a lower violent-crime rate than Austin. On balance, we rate this Adler claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. In February 2022, a meme supposedly featuring a quote from comedian George Carlin about "participation trophies" was recirculated on social media: participation trophies   This is not a genuine quote from Carlin.  The above-displayed meme reads: "Here's an idea for you to ignore. Instead of giving kids participation trophies teach them activities where the result is the reward. Our society has lost sight of what's truly important and it's about damned time we found it again." We weren't able to find any record of Carlin uttering this phrase. When we looked for the origins of the quote, we did not find an old stand-up routine or a passage from one of Carlin's books. Instead, we traced it back to a 2016 post by Laurie Neverman on the Common Sense Home website. 2016 post by Laurie Neverman on the Common Sense Home website   Neverman wrote that she originally posted this message to her personal Facebook page in September 2015 and that since then a number of Facebook pages have attempted to take credit for it: I wrote the passage above back in September 2015 and posted it on my personal Facebook wall. Friends gave me so much feedback on it that I shared it on the Common Sense Home Facebook page. Then a couple of huge Facebook pages took it and put their names on it (with no credit to me, naughty folks) and it was wildly popular on their pages, too. Given all the people who seemed to approve of the concept, I decided to write a post on it. This frequently happens with misattributed quotes. A message will get posted by a relatively unknown person and then, in an attempt to legitimize that opinion and spread that message to a wider audience, the words will be erroneously placed into the mouth of a celebrity. For example, Clint Eastwood did not say "the problem is not guns," Jim Carrey did not call for the "media to close for 30 days," and Kurt Russell did not write a poem that opposed defunding the police. the problem is not guns media to close for 30 days poem that opposed defunding the police While Carlin did not say this about "participation trophies," he did express similar sentiments during a stand-up routine about how "every child is special." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Xtk7ALaUIIt's worth noting that while the culture war skirmishes over participation trophies is relatively new, participation trophies themselves are not. Participation trophies have been given out since at least the 1920s. Participation trophies have been given out at least the 1920s   Fatsis, Stefan. Weve Been Handing Out Participation Trophies for 100 Years. Slate, Apr. 2019. slate.com, https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/participation-trophy-history-world-war-i.html. No More Gold Stars - Creating Real World Rewards. Common Sense Home, 2 Dec. 2016, https://commonsensehome.com/no-more-gold-stars/.