Did Russian State TV Thank GOP Lawmakers for Lifting Sanctions?
An image purportedly showing a screenshot from a Russian state TV news program featuring eight Republican U.S. senators -- Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Burr (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and John Thune (R-SD) -- made its way online in January 2019, along with the claim that the pictured American lawmakers were being "honored" or "thanked" for lifting sanctions against three companies controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska:   This image has been posted to social media accompanied by a variety of descriptive captions: posted social media This image is a genuine screenshot from the news program "60 " (60 Minutes) aired on Channel 1 Russia on 17 January 2019. The graphic featuring the 8 GOP lawmakers originally appeared on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (the MSNBC logo is visible in the bottom right hand corner of the graphic) the day prior during a segment concerning the lifting of sanctions that had been imposed on three companies controlled by oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska. sanctions The graphic appears at the 9:30 mark of the following video, while a transcription from Maddow's report on these sanctions appears below the video: transcription  Shortly before Christmas, the Trump administration quietly released plans to lift U.S. government sanctions on companies connected to Deripaska. Deripaska is sanctioned because of the U.S. -- because of the Russian government interfering in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Now, the sanctions on Deripaska's companies are consequential. The companies linked to Deripaska happen to be huge companies. So, even if you set aside the sanctions' effects on Deripaska personally, unsanctioning these huge Russian companies will also be really substantially economically beneficial to the Russian economy as a whole. Under American law governing sanctions like this, Congress has 30 days to review any decision by the administration to lift these kinds of sanctions. Within that 30-day window, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer brought forward legislation to in fact challenge that decision by the Trump administration, to block the lifting of the Deripaska-related sanctions. As we reported last night, every Democrat in the Senate chamber voted with Schumer on this, as did 11 Republican senators, a heterogeneous bunch of Republican senators, who broke ranks with Mitch McConnell and sided with the Democrats to stop the Trump administration from lifting these Deripaska-related sanctions. That's a big number of Republican senators breaking ranks, especially after the Trump administration lobbied the Senate and the House really aggressively on this issue. Well, today, this afternoon, despite those 11 Republican senators breaking ranks and being willing to side with the Democrats on this, it turned out to be not enough because today there was a crucial vote on this matter which came with not a 50-vote threshold, but a 60-vote threshold to stop the Trump administration from lifting these Deripaska-related sanctions. Schumer and the Democrats and the breakaway Republicans were able to put together 57 votes, but 57 isn't 60, and so you can thank top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell. You can thank all of these other Republican senators who get all of this public credit for supposedly being so hawkish and so realistic on Russia. You can thank them all for voting today to give Vladimir Putin's government in Russia a huge big economic present and voting to give Oleg Deripaska the biggest break of his life, even while his potential role in the Russian attack on our election remains a critical matter that is under ongoing investigation related to multiple criminal cases. Julia Davis, an investigative journalist and Russian media analyst, was one of the first to notice Maddow's graphic being featured on Russian State TV. Davis shared this screenshot on Twitter along with a brief message explaining its context. Twitter Davis wrote: "#Russia's state TV reports that for the first time since 2014, the US is lifting sanctions from Russian companies [#Deripaska's Rusal et al.] The host laughs out loud about the Democrats not getting enough votes to block the effort, expresses hope that this is just the beginning." We've included the relevant segment below from the "60 " broadcast, which starts around the 31-second mark (00:31) below: A rough translation of the video via Google shows that the host says at one point: "Thank all these people who have always been known for their irreconcilable attitude towards Russia. Thank them all, for today they voted and made big economic gift to the government of Putin."  A rough translation of the video via Google shows that the host says at one point: "Thank all these people who have always been known for their irreconcilable attitude towards Russia. Thank them all, for today they voted and made big economic gift to the government of Putin." MSNBC.  "Transcript: 1/16/19, The Rachel Maddow Show."
  16 January 2019. Vogel, Kenneth.  "Democrats Fall Short in Russia Sanctions Vote."
  The New York Times.  16 January 2019.
Since at least January 2021, actor Anthony Hopkins was featured in an online advertisement about the height of Hollywood celebrity men. The ad read: "Some of the Shortest Men in Hollywood Today."   Readers who clicked the online ad were led to a 95-page story on Cleverst.com. Its headline read: "These Short Male Celebrities Remind Us That Height Doesn't Matter In Hollywood." The lengthy article began with a picture of actor Dave Franco, who is purported to be 5 feet 7. We clicked "next page" 95 times until we realized we had clicked "next article" at the end. Hopkins didn't even show up in the story. Anthony Hopkins' height is listed at 5 feet 9 on various sources, including on his IMDb page. The actor is anything but "short." his IMDb page Hopkins is perhaps best known for his work in the 1991 classic, "The Silence of the Lambs." He won the best actor Oscar for playing the role of the terrifying cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. The long story of "short male celebrities" also featured a 6-feet-tall Vin Diesel, a 5 feet 10 Jason Statham, and 5 feet 9 actors Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hardy. This was hardly a list of "some of the shortest men in Hollywood today." The Cleverst.com story appeared to be a strategy known as advertising "arbitrage." The goal was to make more money on ads that were displayed on all 95 pages than it cost to display the original Hopkins clickbait picture. The Hopkins photograph lured the readers. Readers then clicked "next page" in a search for Hopkins, who never appeared. The business and technology blog Margins defined "arbitrage" as "leveraging an inefficient set of systems to make a riskless profit, usually by buying and selling the same asset." They also called it "the mythical free lunch that economics tells us does not exist." Margins The same strategy employed for Hopkins' height was used by other advertisers in the past who placed an ad about Pierce Brosnan's net worth. The ad claimed that "Pierce Brosnan's final net worth left his family in tears." Not only was Pierce Brosnan still alive, but he also did not appear in the lengthy slideshow story that resulted. Pierce Brosnan's net worth Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising "arbitrage." The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. submit ads to us During the U.S. vice presidential debate on Oct. 7, 2020, Republican candidate Mike Pence claimed he and U.S. President Donald Trump worked "from day one" in the White House to drive down American unemployment to "record" low levels  evidence, he alleged, that voters should re-elect Trump on Nov. 3 to try and reshape the economy after unprecedented job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oct. 7, 2020 COVID-19 pandemic The statement echoed previous comments by the president. In October 2019, the White House issued a news release suggesting the Trump administration's "pro-growth agenda" was the reason for new jobs and a declining unemployment rate, reaching a level not seen in 50 years. news release Then, on Jan. 29, 2020, roughly one week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first COVID-19 case in the U.S., Trump reiterated on Twitter: reiterated   About six weeks later as the deadly virus spread nationwide, Trump doubled down on that "50 year" claim and said his administration is responsible for the "best unemployment numbers in the history of our Country." He tweeted: tweeted   The claim took on another layer as the pandemic worsened: Trump alleged without evidence that his administration was responsible for helping Black Americans, specifically, get jobs. For instance, on June 2, he claimed he "has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln," and that the country's unemployment figure among Black Americans was evidence of that work. claimed After that, Trump supporters went a step further by circulating the below-displayed meme online, alleging that Trump not only drove down unemployment rates for people who identify as Black or African American but also women and Hispanic workers.   This was true: U.S. Unemployment Reached 50-year Low Under Trump But no evidence showed Trump was responsible for causing the dip. First, to determine the validity of the underlying claim  that Trump shaped the economy so that U.S. unemployment dipped to the lowest rate ever  we considered the data available. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began calculating the country's unemployment rate  the number of people seeking work divided by the sum of that amount and total people employed  in March 1940, when demographers first launched a monthly survey of households nationwide called the "Current Population Survey." Before that, more subjective and less comprehensive data existed. So to ensure accuracy in this report, we only considered the country's unemployment figure post-1940, as compiled by BLS and the U.S. Census Bureau and to which government officials refer. Bureau of Labor Statistics According to our analysis of the labor statistics before Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 (see below for our analysis of the jobless rate during his presidency), the country recorded the lowest unemployment rate in 1944, near the end of World War II. At that time, just 1.2% of Americans were unemployed and seeking jobs, per BLS data, which included workers over the age of 14. (Note: The survey in modern years only counted adults and teenagers over the age of 16, not 14.) The survey   Next, we considered BLS unemployment data over the course of 50 years before Trump's inauguration to determine whether the country's jobless rate indeed fell to the "the lowest level in more than 50 years" under his leadership. We learned 1969's annual unemployment rate was about 3.6%, in part, because millions of men were drafted for the Vietnam War and left the American workforce, making the sum of all those seeking or maintaining employment significantly lower. In May 1969, for instance, the unemployment rate was 3.4%. After that, we obtained statistics to gauge the country's monthly unemployment rate from the beginning of Trump's term  Jan. 20, 2017  to January 2020, when the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak began and businesses on a grand scale prepared to temporarily close or furloughed workers to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. (We did not consider U.S. unemployment during the outbreak since the claim was framed by the Trump campaign that he was more suited than Democratic rival Joe Biden to revive the pandemic-stricken economy.)  Per the BLS' Current Population Survey, the country's unemployment rate in February 2017, which was compiled including survey responses in the weeks before and after Trump took office in January, was 4.6%. From that point, the proportion of Americans seeking work compared to the total number of people in the country's workforce slightly decreased under the Trump administration. By September 2019, the percentage reached 3.5%  the lowest rate since December 1969. That meant Trump was correct in saying that unemployment dropped to the lowest point in about 50 years under his watch. However, his second tweet  that that metric was the lowest in U.S. history (or since the comprehensive unemployment data existed)  was false. The World War II-era 1.2% unemployment rate was lower. Trump was correct According to BBC economists' analysis of the recent employment figure, the change was a result of 490,000 Americans leaving the workforce. Jerome Powell, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the Federal Reserve System's board of governors and Trump promoted to the agency's chairman in 2018, told CBS News at the time that "an unusually large number of people in their prime working years" were not seeking employment or maintaining jobs for a variety of reasons, such as the U.S. opioid crisis, and that the U.S. workforce participation rate was lower than almost every other advanced country. BBC economists' analysis Federal Reserve System's board of governors CBS News We also obtained data showing the country's unemployment rate by race and gender to determine the accuracy of the above-displayed meme that alleged the percentage of unemployed female workers, as well as people who identify as Black, African Americans or Hispanic, was higher in 2009 than in 2019, among other things. According to the monthly data, these facts were true at face value: were true technically ended But that statistical snapshot is missing necessary context to consider the claim  that Trump's fiscal and regulatory policies led to millions of workers finding jobs  accurate: In February 2009, roughly one month after Obama was sworn into office, he signed a $787 billion stimulus package to save jobs and reverse the economic downturn. The increased public spending on everything from roads to science programs to unemployment benefits, as well as other market trends, created new jobs on a mass scale. And, in turn, labor statistics showed a steady increase in job growth and a gradual decrease in the country's jobless rate over the course of a decade until the pandemic hit.   Looking at the graph above, we determined no significant disruptions or changes in the country's unemployment rate when Trump took office  the steady decrease is essentially indistinguishable from the Obama years after the recession. "At best, you would say it's been a continuation of a steady trend," economist Austan Goolsbee told MSNBC. told MSNBC In other words, it was false to claim that Trump moved into the White House and jumpstarted a failing economy. Rather, conditions were improving for American workers years before voters elected the real estate billionaire as president. NBC News reported in August 2020: NBC News The president rightly takes credit for having low unemployment during his presidency. In December of 2019, the unemployment rate was a scant 3.5 percent, the lowest it had been in 50 years. However, as good as that number was, when Trump took office the rate was already at 4.7 percent. That figure is quite low by historical standards (lower than all of the 1980s as well as most of the 1990s and 2000s). In December of 2017, it was the lowest the number had been since the Great Recession. In fact, Obama saw a much steeper drop in unemployment in his second term, a 3.3 drop in the rate, than Trump did in his first three years, a decline of 1.2 points. Thats not to besmirch the remarkably low unemployment under Trump, but its hard to ignore that the unemployment track under Obama had been downward. Again, the numbers look like the continuation of a trend, not something new. Another analysis of labor statistics by NPR came to the same conclusion: that job growth remained consistent since the end of the recession in 2010 and 2018, while the unemployment rate steadily decreased. NPR reported: labor statistics by NPR So while the White House can certainly point to some yardsticks that indicate a meaningful turnaround on Trump's watch  including small business sentiment, business investment and goods-producing job growth  broader measures of the overall job market and wages show the economy continues to follow the steady, upward glide path that began under Obama. In sum, considering no evidence showed policies enacted by the Trump administration drove down the country's unemployment rate  but rather the roughly 50-year low in fall 2019 was essentially a continuation from the Great Recession's recovery, per economists' analysis of BLS data  we rate this claim "false." per economists BBC News. "US Jobless Rate At Lowest Since 1969."  3 May 2019. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "BLS Data Viewer."  Accessed 13 October 2020. Wingfield, Brian. "The End of the Great Recession? Hardly."  Forbes. 20 September 2010. Jones, Chuck. "Trump's Economic Scorecard: 3 Years In Office."  Forbes. 10 February 2020. Horsley, Scott. "FACT CHECK: Who Gets Credit For The Booming U.S. Economy."  NPR. 12 September 2018. Ruhle, Stephanie. "Which President Gets The Credit For The Booming Economy?"  MSNBC. 10 September 2018. Claim:  On-line bookseller Amazon.com is partnered with the web site Intifada.com.   Not any more. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] A good friend of mine, while searching the Internet, ran across Intifada.com. OK. Then he sees a promotion right on their web page by Amazon.Com advising the readers that: "You can buy books about the Intifada and Palestine from Amazon.Com. All profits from the referral will go to developing Intifada.com." How great! I would assume that this pretty well eliminates Amazon.Com as a book seller, for those of us that understand that the Intifada is about killing Israeli civilians and driving Israel out of the land of their forefathers. And obviously Amazon.Com is not planning on receiving any more of our business! It would also be nice for us to notify Amazon.Com of our decision and how shocked we were at their evident lack of knowledge of the conflict and the terrorist activities and suicide bombings of civilians that have been the paramount focus of this Intifada. Origins:  Like many other web retailers, Amazon.com operates an associates program under which operators of qualifying web sites can earn commissions by directing visitors to purchase books and other products through Amazon.com's own site.  (We here at snopes.com participate in this program, offering links on our site  to various urban legend-related books which can be purchased through Amazon.com.) associates books An inquiry to Amazon.com about this issue drew the following terse response: Greetings from the Amazon.com Associates Program. Thank you for taking the time to write to us regarding the Web site www.intifada.com. Please note, this account has been suspended pending further investigation, and we have requested they remove all links to Amazon.com immediately. Thanks again for contacting us regarding this matter.  posted policy states that sites which may be found unsuitable for acceptance into their associates program include those that promote sexually explicit materials; promote violence; promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age; promote illegal activities; include "amazon" or variations or misspellings thereof in their domain names; or otherwise violate intellectual property rights.  Intifada.com did have Amazon.com associate links on their site at one time (as confirmed by Amazon.com's statement that their account has been "suspended"), but we have no way of knowing whether Amazon.com took them on as an associate site because they didn't feel the site unsuitable under their guidelines, or because they simply didn't screen the site's application as thoroughly as they ordinarily do.  Either way, Intifada.com no longer has any links to Amazon.com that we can find. Last updated:  7 March 2008 Humans have been leaving mementos on and within the final resting places of loved ones almost from the beginning of the species. Excavations of even the earliest graves uncover goods meant to serve the deceased in the next world, such as pottery, weapons, and beads. But what about coins being left on graves? The earliest known coins date to the late seventh century B.C., and as societies began embracing such monetary systems, the practice leaving of coins in the graves of citizens began as yet another way of equipping the dear departed for the afterlife. earliest Mythologies within certain cultures added specific purpose for coins being left with the dead. In Greek mythology, Charon, the ferryman of Hades, required payment for his services. A coin was therefore placed in the mouth of the dear departed to ensure he would ferry the deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron and into the world of the dead rather than leave him to wander the shore for a hundred years. In England and the U.S., pennies were routinely placed on the closed eyes of the dead, yet the purpose for that practice was not clear  some say it was to keep the eyes of the corpse from flying open (even though the eyes, once shut by the person laying out the body, do not reopen). In these more recent days, coins and other small items are sometimes discovered on grave markers, be they plaques resting atop the sod or tombstones erected at the head of the burial plot. These small tokens are left by visitors for no greater purpose than to indicate that someone has visited that particular grave. It has long been a tradition among Jews, for example, to leave a small stone or pebble atop a headstone just to show that someone who cared had stopped by. Coins (especially pennies) are favored by others who wish to demonstrate that the deceased has not been forgotten and that instead his loved ones still visit him. Sometimes these small remembrances convey meaning specific to the person buried in that plot. For more than twenty years, every month someone has been leaving one Campbell's tomato soup can and a pocketful of change on the plain black granite tombstone that marks the grave of Andy Warhol. The soup can is easy to explain, given Warhol's iconic use of that commodity in his art, but the handful of change remains a bit of a mystery. In similar vein, visitors often leave pebbles, coins and maple leaf pins at the grave of Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the man who replaced Canada's Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf flag. soup can Regarding the 'tradition' of soldiers leaving on the headstones of fallen comrades varying denominations of coins to denote their relationship with the deceased, the earliest reference to this practice we've found so far dates only to June 2009, when it appeared as a web site post. A version now commonly circulated in e-mail appears to have been drawn from it, albeit some changes have slipped in, such as "A buddy who served in the same outfit, or was with the deceased when he died, might leave a quarter" becoming "By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when he was killed": COINS LEFT ON TOMBSTONES While visiting some cemeteries you may notice that headstones marking certain graves have coins on them, left by previous visitors to the grave. These coins have distinct meanings when left on the headstones of those who gave their life while serving in America's military, and these meanings vary depending on the denomination of coin. A coin left on a headstone or at the grave site is meant as a message to the deceased soldier's family that someone else has visited the grave to pay respect. Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you visited. A nickel indicates that you and the deceased trained at boot camp together, while a dime means you served with him in some capacity. By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when he was killed. According to tradition, the money left at graves in national cemeteries and state veterans cemeteries is eventually collected, and the funds are put toward maintaining the cemetery or paying burial costs for indigent veterans. In the US, this practice became common during the Vietnam war, due to the political divide in the country over the war; leaving a coin was seen as a more practical way to communicate that you had visited the grave than contacting the soldier's family, which could devolve into an uncomfortable argument over politics relating to the war. Some Vietnam veterans would leave coins as a "down payment" to buy their fallen comrades a beer or play a hand of cards when they would finally be reunited. The tradition of leaving coins on the headstones of military men and women can be traced to as far back as the Roman Empire. [Collected via Facebook, October 2015] While "Cleaning of the Stones" at the National Cemetery in Holly. I noticed a quarter placed on one of the stones. Later I also noticed a nickel placed on another stone. I was so touched with this that I took pictures.I googled about the coins, and found this out. I am very proud to share this. A coin left on a headstone lets the deceased soldiers family know that somebody stopped by to pay their respect. Leaving a penny means you visited. A nickel means that you and the deceased soldier trained at boot camp together. If you served with the soldier, you leave a dime. A quarter is very significant because it means that you were there when that soldier died.  Despite the claim of this tradition dating back to the days of the Roman Empire, there's no reason to suppose that it does. A coin might be placed in the mouth of a fallen Roman soldier (to get him across the River Styx), but the deceased's comrades would more likely have been expending any further coinage on a funeral banquet in his honor rather than interring it with his remains. Given the lack of documentation attesting to the origins and consistency of this 'tradition,' it is perhaps best regarded not as an actual common practice but instead as someone's idealized legend of what should be. Roman Empire Yet military folk do sometimes leave very special remembrances at the graves of deceased servicemen: challenge coins. These tokens identify their bearers as members of particular units and are prized and cherished by those to whom they have been given; thus any challenge coins found at gravesites were almost certainly left there by comrades-in-arms of the deceased. challenge coins It needs be mentioned that not only coins, medallions, and stones have been found on military headstones. In July 2013, a wife of a deceased serviceman discovered another woman's name on her husband's marker in place of her own. Edna Fielden, widow of Air Force Master Sergeant Billy Fielden (buried at Fort Logan Cemetery in Denver 25 years earlier) was shocked to discover the headstone bore the inscription "Dolores" over the legend "His Wife" when she brought her grandchildren to visit the grave. Update: In early 2021, coins on graves was the subject of a number of online advertisements. One of the ads read: "[Pics] Here's Why You Should Never, Ever Touch Coins Left On A Gravestone." Another claimed: "[Pics] If You See Coins Placed On A Gravestone, Here's What It Means." Both ads led to lengthy slideshow articles. Buchan, Rebecca.  "Toy Cars and Coins Taken from Toddler's Graveside."
  Aberdeen Press and Journal.  6 October 2011  (p. 3). Caswell, Emily.  "Ask Us: Pennies on Gravestones Reflect Greek Mythology."
  The [Manchester] Union Leader.  13 July 2011  (p. D36). Hamill, Sean.  "An Homage in Coins and Soup Cans."
  The International Herald Tribune.  27 February 2007  (p. 9). Hogan, Jim.  "Tokens of Remembrance."
  Los Angeles Times.  27 May 2013  (p. A15). Lang, Sarah.  "Coins Gone from Strong's Grave."
  The Lebanon Reporter [Indiana].  11 May 2011. McArthur, Douglas.  "A Historical Stroll Through Canada's Prime Ministerial Grave Sites."
  The Globe and Mail.  7 October 2000  (p. T4). NBC News.  "Military Widow Finds Another Woman's Name Engraved on Her Husband's Tombstone."
  18 June 2013. San Jose Mercury News.  "Fans Still Pay Tribute to Allison."
  The Globe and Mail.  14 July 1994  (p. F2). This article has been updated and its rating has been changed from "True" to  Following initial publication, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby provided us with this statement: "By prior arrangement, Secretary Austin divested his entire Raytheon portfolio on Jan. 22, 2021, immediately following the Senate vote confirming him as the new Secretary of Defense. Snopes initially received no comment on a Feb. 24, 2021 inquiry about his divestment from Raytheon, and as such, our initial article relied on a divestment timeline provided by Secretary Austin in filings with the Office of Government Ethics. On Feb. 19, 2021, an identically phrased claim went viral on multiple social media accounts, including that of a sitting congressman, after it was posted by a self-described MAGA "global recruiter" with the Twitter handle "@johnnyrwhitsett." The claim references an alleged $285 million defense contract awarded to a company that U.S. President Joe Biden's secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, "owns over [$1 million] of stock in."  posted   The memes are referring to Austins past financial interest in the military contractor Raytheon. While Austin served on the Board of Directors of Raytheon and once held shares in the company given to him through executive compensation, the statement that he was invested in the company during the time he was in office is, according to Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby, false. The specific monetary value in these memes appears to have their origin in a viral Feb. 17 YouTube video that  despite discussing the value 85 million in the actual clip  was shared by its creator with the higher number on Twitter. That video derived the number $85 million from an announcement by the State Department  which does not award defense contracts  approving a proposed sale of missiles produced by the company Raytheon to the government of Chile. YouTube video announcement does not Austin's divestment aside, senators have raised concerns over the close relationship between Raytheon and Austin in general. In correspondence with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Austin pledged to extend his recusal from Raytheon Technologies for four years and to not seek a position on the board of a defense contractor or become a lobbyist after his government service. raised concerns It bears mentioning that Mark Esper, who served as former President Donald Trumps secretary of defense, served as Raytheons vice president of government relations directly before his confirmation. When asked by Warren during his confirmation hearing if he would recuse himself from decisions involving Raytheon, he refused. served refused From 2016 to the day of his confirmation as secretary of defense on Jan. 22, 2021, Austin served on the Board of Directors for Raytheon or a company, United Technologies Corp, that would merge with it. Prior to his confirmation, according to documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics, Austin held vested deferred stock units and vested and unvested restricted stock units in Raytheon. merge documents filed These are special forms of stock-based executive compensation. Deferred stock units are shares inaccessible to the owner until after that person has left the company. Restricted stocks are ownership shares of a company subject to special Securities and Exchange (SEC) restrictions intended, among other things, to prevent premature selling. Both options are often given on a vesting schedule, meaning that the full amount of the stock compensation is not available to that executive (i.e., it remains unvested) until the executive has worked at the company for a certain period of time. Deferred Restricted Austin sold these stocks the day of his confirmation. In his White House financial disclosure form, Austin indicated the value of his vested deferred stocks to be between $500,000 and $1,000,000 and the value of his vested restricted stocks to be between $50,000 and $100,000. Austin, a DOD spokesperson told us, "will file a Periodic Transaction Report and a Certificate of Ethics Agreement Compliance which will both be publicly available on the OGE website." disclosure form Raytheon performs a prodigious amount of work for the Department of Defense. Based on an analysis performed by Snopes, in the first month that Austin served as its secretary, the DOD granted at least $569,756,040 in new contracts or contract modifications to Raytheon or various divisions of Raytheon branches: an analysis $19,950,844 $290,704,534 $49,195,531 $53,861,439 $7,580,414 $8,377,372 $8,220,193 $74,238,334 $13,208,180 $14,921,191 $29,498,008 As part of Austin's ethics pledge, he stated that he would "not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of Raytheon." We asked the DOD how this arrangement would work, given the large volume of business conducted with Raytheon. In response, a spokesperson told us: ethics pledge Through a formal screening arrangement, the Secretary has directed his staff to identify all matters that involve Raytheon as a party or a representative of a party, as well as any matters that could directly and predictably affect the financial interests of Raytheon. Any such matters involving Raytheon are referred to the Deputy Secretary of Defense or another senior official for action or assignment. A copy of the Screening Arrangement is available in the DoD FOIA Reading Room. DoD FOIA Reading Room Because Austin divested entirely from Raytheon prior to any contract being awarded to the company under his leadership, the claim is  Updated [March 2, 2021]: Changed rating from True to False based on a late-arriving statement from Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby informing us that Austin divested entirely from Raytheon immediately after the Senate voted to confirm him. Claim:  African-Americans are entitled to a $5,000 slavery reparation tax credit.  Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2002] This goes out to all my friends, family, and everyone in the African American community. Once you receive this message please write down the number and then pass it along to every AfricanAmerican you know. As you my know, all African Americans living here in the United States are descendants of slavery,therefore our government has finally passed a bill to pay all descendants back. The way they are paying us back is through a refund called the, "Black Inheritance Tax Refund/40 Acres and a Mule". When you call this number you'll give them your name, address, and phone number and they'll send you out a packet, which includes further details and information on how to receive the refund. I was informed that it will take only two weeks to receive the packet and then two weeks to receive themoney. Now, if you know our government I bet they are not expecting a lot of people to call for this refund, and they may be right, because many of us will not be informed of this. Therefore, this is why I am taking it upon myself to pass on this information, so our community will soon be informed through word-of-mouth about what has been owed to our ancestors all these years. Black Inheritance Tax Refund 1-800-441-5629 press #3 to direct you to the appropriate line open betweenEast Coast: 8am and 12amWest Coast: 5am and 9pm Expect to wait anywhere from 5mins-25mins (There will not be any music to entertain you while you wait!) Ps: You must be 18 years or older and I'm assuming a legal residence of the United States. So, request an application for yourself, husband, wife, sister, brother, father, mother, etc, or just pass the number along. God Bless You All and please check this out!!!!!!!! Origins:  In 2000, bogus letters claiming certain senior citizens were eligible for slavery reparations or higher Social Security payments were circulating in black churches in the South and elsewhere. The letters claimed blacks born before 1928 were eligible for a $5,000 "Negro Inheritance Tax Refund" due to a "Slave Reparation Act," and folks born between 1911 and 1926 might be entitled to higher monthly Social Security payments.  This was but one of the many forms the "slavery reparation tax credit" misinformation has taken over the years.  An April 1993 Lena Sherrod commentary entitled "Forty Acres and a Mule" which appeared in Essence magazine dealt with the concept that reparations were owed to the descendants of African-Americans who were forced to work unpaid for 246 years, and that African-Americans were owed a tax rebate for years of legalized racial discrimination.  Sherrod wrote: The government also owes African-Americans a tax rebate for the 60 years of segregation and Jim Crow that followed slavery. Although we were consigned by law to second-class citizenship, we were still forced to pay first-class taxes . . . the delinquent tax rebate [is] now estimated . . . to be at $43,209 per household."  Since de facto racial discrimination continues to function as a hidden Black tax, it ought to be deductible. So when income-tax time rolls around, on line 59 of form 1040  which asks you to list 'other payments'  simply enter $43,209 in 'Black taxes' and compute accordingly. This commentary undoubtedly helped to foster the belief that a real income tax deduction was available as a form of reparation to the descendants of slaves. In 2002, people were being urged in e-mail to call an 800 number. Yet it's all the same  hoax. No matter whether you got the letter from your church or read about the give-back in a magazine, the "reparations credit" does not and never has existed. Those who claim the deduction because they are black can be subject to fines and penalties, so really, really think twice before trying to wring it out of Uncle Sam. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can fine a taxpayer $500 for filing a frivolous claim. Moreover, if the tax department fails to catch the erroneous deduction at the time of filing, it has an additional six years to right its error. Upon catching the error, the taxmen would not only strike off the deduction, but would calculate interest owed on the new balance of tax due, dating it to the year of the original return. (For example, if you claimed the credit in 1994, and the IRS caught it in 1998, your 1994 return would be re-computed to remove the effect of the bogus deduction. You'd now get a bill from the IRS for the re-computed difference between tax paid and tax due, plus all the interest that had piled up on it across those four years, and maybe even a $500 penalty for trying to pull the wool over the tax department's eyes.  Eeesh.) IRS offices across the nation have received thousands of requests daily for Form 2439, which some people have been mistakenly led to believe reimburses the descendants of slaves. Form 2439 is actually for shareholders trying to claim undistributed capital gains.  Form 2439 Though word of the phony benefits is most often spread by well-meaning individuals whose only motivation is ensuring those who are supposedly in line for the break hear about it, at times unscrupulous tax preparers have stepped in to turn what is already a heart-wrenching disappointment into an out-and-out fraud perpetrated on the unwary by charging fees of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars to "help" people apply for these nonexistent benefits.  In a common version of this take-down, a con man promises his unwary clients that he can obtain up to $40,000 in "slave reparation" credits for them from the government and offers to file the necessary tax forms on their behalf in exchange for a percentage of their refunds.  He then loads up his clients' tax returns with all manner of deductions and credits they're not entitled to take and thereby scams the government into sending them refund checks.  When the IRS later goes over the returns more thoroughly and starts clamoring for their money back, the victims are left holding the bag. The $43,209 "Black tax refund" figure one sometimes hears bandied about is said to be based on the estimated value of "40 acres and a mule," a reparation supposedly laid out in an 1866 bill which lore claims was passed by Congress but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. The truth is a bit more complicated than that. The origins of the belief that the U.S. government promised 40 acres of land and a mule to freed slaves after the Civil War are indefinite.  One possible source of this claim is Special Field Order No. 15, Special Field Order No. 15 Sherman was neither a humanitarian reformer nor a man with any particular concern for blacks. Instead of seeing Field Order 15 as a blueprint for the transformation of Southern society, he viewed it mainly as a way of relieving the immediate pressure caused by a large number of impoverished blacks following his army. The land grants, he later claimed, were intended only to make "temporary provisions for the freedmen and their families during the rest of the war," not to convey permanent possession. Understandably, however, the freedmen assumed that the land was to be theirs, especially after Gen. Rufus Saxton, assigned by Sherman to oversee the implementation of his order, informed a large gathering of blacks "that they were to be put in possession of lands, upon which they might locate their families and work out for themselves a living and respectability." Debate continues over whether Sherman acted solely on his own authority in issuing Special Field Order No. 15 or whether he had the approval of the War Department (or even President Lincoln himself), but the end result was that a new policy (known as Howard's Circular 15) issued by the White House in September 1865 ordered the restoration of land to pardoned owners and thereby took away from freedmen the land appropriated for them by Sherman under Special Field Order No. 15  (The order made no provisions for giving mules to freedmen, but Foner notes that after issuing it, "Sherman later provided that the army could assist [freedmen] with the loan of mules.") Another possible source of the "40 acres and a mule" belief is the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau (originally the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands), a federal agency established as a subsidiary of the War Department  in March 1865 (a month before the end of the Civil War) to deal with issues concerning refugees and freedmen within states under reconstruction, including the management of abandoned and confiscated property.  One of the provisions of the Freedmen's Bureau Act directed that the bureau's commissioner should "have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land."  However, this act did not propose giving property to freed slaves (the land was to be leased to freedmen for three years, then made available for purchase by them), nor did it make any mention of mules.   Freedmen's Bureau Freedmen's Bureau Act President Johnson did not veto the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which was passed by Congress in March 1865 and signed by President Lincoln.  (Johnson did not assume the presidency until Lincoln's assassination the following month.)   Two events occurred in February 1866, both of which have been misstated as overturning the "forty acres" provision of the Freedmen's Bureau Act:  An amendment to the Freedmen's Bureau Bill (also known as the "Second Freedmen's Bureau Act") proposed by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, to add "forfeited estates of the enemy" to the land available to blacks, was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Representatives.  (At that time, the only group of slaveholders who were compelled to provide their former slaves with land were Indians who sided with the Confederacy.)  President Johnson vetoed the Freedman's Bureau Bill, which sought to extend the life of the bureau indefinitely (it had originally been chartered only for one year after the end of the Civil War) and to greatly increase its powers.  Congress passed the bill again (in modified form) over Johnson's veto in July 1866. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 did in fact make land in five southern states available to freed blacks, but only public land, not plantations or other property confiscated from former slaveholders.  Unfortunately, most of the land still available in the South for homesteading was too swampy and too far away from transportation links to be of much good to freedmen, and even then the largest portion of this inferior land was claimed by whites (often for quick resale to lumber companies).   Although the notion of a "Black Inheritance Tax Refund" has long since been debunked and disclaimed, it nonetheless lives on and continues to cause headaches to the IRS and taxpayers alike.  In April 2002, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had received more than 100,000 tax returns seeking nonexistent slavery-tax credits and had mistakenly paid out more than $30 million in erroneous refunds in 2000 and 2001.  And in April 2005, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office obtained a temporary restraining order enjoining a New York man from preparing income tax returns for others because he had "been including bogus tax credits such as reparations for African-American slavery and segregation." Barbara "taxing the imagination" Mikkelson Last updated:  27 May 2011    Brown, Timothy.  "Black Churches in the South Targeted in Mail Hoax."   The Associated Press.  31 August 2000.     Deibel, Mary.  "IRS Warns Black Taxpayers About Reparation-Claim Scam."   The Washington Times.  7 October 2000  (p. A2).     Fennell, Edward.  "Slavery Reparations Program Labeled Lie."   The [Charleston] Post and Courier.  24 September 2000  (p. B1).    Foner, Eric.  Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.  New York: Harper & Row, 1988.  ISBN 0-060-91453-X  (pp. 70-71, 245-246).     Foner, Eric and John Garraty.  The Reader's Companion to American History.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.  ISBN 0-395-51372-3  (pp. 987-988).      Josar, David.  "IRS Warns Against Trying to Get Refund for Reparations."   The Detroit News.  28 August 1996  (p. D1).     Kessler, Glenn.  "IRS Paid $30 Million in Credits for Slavery."   The Washington Post.  13 April 2002  (p. A1).     La Hay, Patricia.  "Slavery Reparations Tax Break Is Illegal."   The Arizona Republic.  9 August 1997  (p. A1).     McLeod, Ramon.  "Even Street Gangs Are Among Those Involved in Fraud."   The San Francisco Chronicle.  13 April 1996  (p. A17).     Moore, Linda.  "League Explains Nonrole in Slavery Reparations Hoax."   The [Memphis] Commercial Appeal.  15 September 2000  (p. C2).     Oubre, Claude F.  Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.  ISBN 0-807-10298-9.     Sherrod, L.G.  "Forty Acres and a Mule."   Essence.  April 1993  (p. 124).     Stiehm, Jamie.  "IRS Official Warns of Tax Hoax Using Slave Reparations."   The Baltimore Sun.  12 February 2002.     The Associated Press.   "Blacks Targeted in Slavery Reparation Scam."   6 October 2000.     Chicago Sun-Times.  "Reparations Scam Preys on Ignorance."   17 July 1996  (p. 47).     Chicago Tribune.  "Tax Myths Don't Add Up at IRS."    23 February 1997  (p. C7).     Reuters.  "Man Barred from Making Slavery Tax Claims."    15 April 2005. Claim:  Wayne Allyn Root opined that President Obama will lose his re-election bid in 2012 by a landslide. CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example:  [Root, May 2012] Most political predictions are made by biased pollsters, pundits, or prognosticators who are either rooting for Republicans or Democrats. I am neither. I am a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a well-known Vegas oddsmaker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races. Neither Obama nor Romney are my horses in the race. I believe both Republicans and Democrats have destroyed the U.S. economy and brought us to the edge of economic disaster. My vote will go to Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson in November, whom I believe has the most fiscally conservative track record of any Governor in modern U.S. political history. Without the bold spending cuts of a Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, I dont believe its possible to turnaround America. But as an oddsmaker with a pretty remarkable track record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them. Back in late December I released my New Years Predictions. I predicted back then- before a single GOP primary had been held, with Romney trailing for months to almost every GOP competitor from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt- that Romney would easily rout his competition to win the GOP nomination by a landslide. I also predicted that the Presidential race between Obama and Romney would be very close until election day. But that on election day Romney would win by a landslide similar to Reagan-Carter in 1980. Understanding history, today I am even more convinced of a resounding Romney victory. 32 years ago at this moment in time, Reagan was losing by 9 points to Carter. Romney is right now running even in polls. So why do most pollsters give Obama the edge? [Rest of article here.] here   Origins:  Wayne Allyn Root, a political commentator who was the Libertarian Party's 2008  vice presidential candidate, is a regular contributor to FOX News and the author of several books, including The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts.  He writes political opinion columns published on Townhall.com,and his entry for 30 May 2012 was the article excerpted above, entitled "Why Obama Will Lose in a Landslide." Wayne Allyn Root columns article Last updated:  11 June 2012 Claim:  Six outrageous-but-real lawsuits showcase the need for tort reform. Status:  False. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] This is what's wrong with the world:        1. January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000.00 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running amuck inside a furniture store.  The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving tyke was Ms. Robertson's son. 2. June 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000.00 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran his hand over with a Honda Accord.  Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice someone was at the wheel of the car whose hubcap he was trying to steal. 3. October 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol Pennsylvania was exiting a house he finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up, because the automatic door opener was malfunctioning.  He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, so Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food.  This upset Mr. Dickson, so he sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars and change. 4. October 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock Arkansas was awarded $14,500.00 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced-in yard, as was Mr. Williams. The award was less than sought after because the jury felt the dog may have been provoked by Mr. Williams who, at the time, was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun. 5. May 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500.00 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. 6. December 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth.  This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000.00 and dental expenses. Origins:   This "and you wonder what's wrong with the world today?" whinge appeared on the Internet in May 2001. All of the entries in the list are fabrications: a search for news stories about each of these cases failed to turn up anything, as did a search for each law case.  The earliest version concluded with a seventh item that has since been snipped away, likely after someone noticed it was the venerable microwaved poodle legend. Its inclusion would have immediately called into question the truthfulness of the other six cases for any number of folks familiar with urban legends. The remaining six were still false, but they weren't as obviously false as the following poodle tale and thus wouldn't have set the alarm bells ringing: microwaved 7. And just so you know that cooler heads do occasionally prevail: Kenmore Inc., the makers of Dorothy Johnson's microwave, were found not liable for the death of Mrs. Johnson's poodle after she gave it a bath and attempted to dry it by putting the poor creature in her microwave for, "just a few minutes, on low,"  The case was quickly dismissed. A version of the list that began circulating in the spring of 2002 has yet another urban legend included as its final item, the venerable cruise control legend: cruise control In November 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded  $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago. Some versions bear the following footer, although many omit it: PLEASE ASSIST OUR LAW OFFICES IN A TORT REFORM PROGRAM.  WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO PUT A STOP TO THESE INSANE JURY AWARDS BY SENDING THIS E-MAIL OUT TO THE PUBLIC IN THE HOPES OF SWAYING PUBLIC OPINION.  PLEASE FORWARD IT TO EVERY EMAIL ADDRESS YOU KNOW.Mary R. Hogelmen, Esq.Law Offices of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and ThomasDayton Ohio Mary R. Hogelmen, Esq.Law Offices of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and ThomasDayton Ohio There is no law firm of Hogelmen, Hogelmen, and Thomas in Dayton, Ohio, as a call to directory assistance quickly confirmed. This detail was included to give the mailing credibility in the eyes of those who received it: if a law firm had pulled this list together to build grassroots support for its tort reform program, then it went without saying a pack of lawyers had properly researched each item and were guaranteeing the information provided. But of course this detail was as false as everything else in the e-mail. Speaking about implied credibility, we note that the "outrageous lawsuits" list has made it into the newspapers at times, which only works to add to the perception that the information given in it is reliable. In June 2002, the New York Daily News presented it solely as an e-mail it had received, making no statements as to its likeliness to be real or detailing any attempts that publication might have made to verify any of the entries. (Had such attempts been made, the Daily News would have quickly found the article you're now reading, which originally appeared on this site a full ten months prior to the Daily News piece.) Fake or not, a list of outrageous awards bestowed upon those whose actions  nay, misbehaviors  had brought them to grief would fall upon very receptive ears because current feeling is very much against large jury awards for frivolous claims. This e-mail preaches to the choir in that it "confirms" what is already deeply believed. Numerous states have enacted measures to reform their civil law systems in response to the problem of frivolous lawsuits and runaway jury awards. Tort reform usually amounts to placing a cap on punitive damage awards, making the state's joint-and-several liability law more equitable, and limiting judge and court shopping (which means cases are tried in front of whomever they've been assigned to rather than the judge the plaintiff figures will be most sympathetic). Though the cases described in the e-mail are fake, real lawsuits of equal silliness can be found in abundance. An equally impressive list could easily have been compiled by anyone with access to a news database and a few moments to spare. For instance:  In March 1995, a San Diego man unsuccessfully attempted to sue the city and Jack Murphy Stadium for $5.4 million over something that can only be described as a wee problem: Robert Glaser claimed the stadium's unisex bathroom policy at a Billy Joel and Elton John concert caused him embarrassment and emotional distress thanks to the sight of a woman using a urinal in front of him. He subsequently tried "six or seven" other bathrooms in the stadium only to find women in all of them. He asserted he "had to hold it in for four hours" because he was too embarrassed to share the public bathrooms with women.  A San Carlos, California, man sued the Escondido Public Library for $1.5 million. His dog, a 50-pound Labrador mix, was attacked November 2000 by the library's 12-pound feline mascot, L.C., (also known as Library Cat). The case was heard in January 2004, with the jury finding for the defendant. In a further case which was resolved in July 2004, the plaintiff in the previous suit was ordered to pay the city $29,362.50, which amounted to 75% of its legal fees associated with that case.  In 1994, a student at the University of Idaho unsuccessfully sued that institution over his fall from a third-floor dorm window. He'd been mooning other students when the window gave way. It was contended the University failed to provide a safe environment for students or to properly warn them of the dangers inherent to upper-story windows.  In 1993, McDonald's was unsuccessfully sued over a car accident in New Jersey. While driving, a man who had placed a milkshake between his legs, leaned over to reach into his bag of food and squeezed the milkshake container in the process. When the lid popped off and spilled half the drink in his lap, this driver became distracted and ran into another man's car. That man in turn tried to sue McDonald's for causing the accident, saying the restaurant should have cautioned the man who had hit him against eating while driving. Although the cases cited above were all eventually dismissed, they still managed to work their way at least partway through our court system. When we hear such stories, it's hard not to be rabidly in favor of tort reform  these kinds of cases make it appear that the idiots have taken over the asylum and only the rapid institution of some rules is going to bring things back into a semblance of sanity. Yet this solution is not all skittles and beer; many see such changes as potentially denying those in need of legal remedy their day in court and refusing them their right to be heard. The cap on jury awards is also viewed by some as unfair to the seriously injured, who may well require a large sum to afford the cost of living with whatever disability someone else's negligence or recklessness left them with. Capped awards are also scant deterrent to large corporations who could easily afford the judgments against them and therefore have little reason to mend their ways. Big Business is poised to benefit under tort reform in that it will no longer need to fear the courts. It can also be argued that the need for tort reform is overblown. Only rarely do ridiculous lawsuits result in windfalls for the plaintiff; these cases are almost always either thrown out or the judgment goes for the defendant. Some celebrated "outrageous" suits wherein judgment went for the plaintiff prove upon closer examination to be far less "outrageous" than originally presented in the media.  (For example, the "woman scalded by hot coffee" suit, which at first blush looked like the height of frivolity proved to be a perfectly legitimate action taken against a corporation that knew, thanks to a string of similar scaldings it had quietly been paying off, that its coffee was not just hot, but dangerously hot. The Consumer Attorneys of California provides a good description of this case). this case Tort reform thus has both its advocates and its adversaries. On the one hand, we bridle at the thought of the terminally clueless being rewarded for their folly  that strikes us as just plain wrong. We also fear for the continued wellbeing of the small- to mid-sized business which can ill afford to fend off one frivolous lawsuit after another and thus stands in danger of being litigated to death. Also, even when litigants do not prevail, costs associated with their suits rain down onto the average citizen through his taxes (some of which underwrite the judicial system) and through increased prices for goods produced by firms who had to mount legal defenses.  Yet on the other hand, we don't want to see those who have legitimate cause denied their right to sue (or in the case of the seriously injured, their right to sue for an appropriate amount). We also don't want to see corporations run unchecked, free to turn out whatever dangerous product they like because the combination of capped awards and their deep pockets render them bulletproof. It's a complicated issue, one not made any easier to make sense of by lists of fake cases of horrendous miscarriages of justice. One has to wonder why someone is so busy trying to stir up outrage and who or what that outrage would ultimately benefit. Additional information:  George W. Bush's first act upon becoming the Governor of Texas was to reform that state's civil justice system. In January 1995, just after being sworn in, he convened a session of the Legislature to tackle tort reform. Within weeks he signed bills to limit punitive damages to $750,000, cut down on "venue shopping" for favorable judges and juries, and made it easier for judges to impose sanctions on plaintiffs who file frivolous suits.  Sightings:  The "woman in a store trips over a toddler, then sues the store" fiction was incorporated into an episode of the television drama Boston Legal ("Tabloid Nation," original air date 8 April 2008). Last updated:  11 April 2008    Sources:   Associated Press.  "Men's Room Invasion Prompts Suit."   The Fresno Bee.  1 April 1995  (p. F8).     Coile, Zachary.  "Bush's Formula to Win Over Business."   The San Francisco Examiner.  2 October 2000  (p. A1).     Elias, Paul.  "So What's a Little Litigation Between Friends?"   The Recorder.  14 December 1999  (Court Watch; p. 4).     Heller, Jonathan.  "Man Seeks $1.5 Million from City; Says Library Cat Attacked His Dog."   The San Diego Union-Tribune.  5 May 2001  (p. B2).     Littlefield, Dana.  "Suit Over Library Cat's Attack Bites Back at disabled Dog Owner."   The San Diego Union-Tribune.  31 July 2004  (p. NC3).     Perkins, Joseph.  "We All Pay When Others File Frivolous Lawsuits."   The San Diego Union-Tribune.  18 May 2001  (p. B7).     Perry, Tony.  "A One-Man Campaign for More Women's Restrooms."   Los Angeles Times.  18 August 1995  (p. A3).     Riffel, James.  "Jury Rejects Claims of Disabled Man Against City for Cat Attack."   City News Service.  30 January 2004.     Vogt, Andrea.  "Ludicrous Lawsuit Against University of Idaho Rears Its Ugly Head."   Lewiston Morning Tribune.  2 August 1994  (p. A1).     New Jersey Lawyer.  "Moral of a Burger Suit: Don't Eat and Drive."   15 November 1993  (p. 3).     [New York] Daily News.  "Mighty Quinn."   25 June 2002  (Sports, p. 63). On 4 May 2004, a campaign swing through the Midwest saw President Bush visiting Lebanon, Ohio, where  as he worked the crowd outside the Golden Lamb (the state's oldest inn)  he was photographed giving a comforting hug to 15-year-old Ashley Faulkner, whose mother was killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.  The moment was captured with a digital camera by Ashley's father, Lynn Faulkner. (Ashley's mother, Wendy Ruth Faulkner, a vice president of a risk management and insurance brokerage company, was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11 and did not survive the collapse of the building.) Wendy Ruth Faulkner Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion It started out as a fluke.  Lynn Faulkner had been offered an extra ticket to a Bush campaign event by his neighbor Linda Prince.  Mr. Faulkner decided to offer it to his 15-year old daughter Ashley who he expected would decline, as she would have to miss some school to attend.  But his daughter surprised him.  Ashley reminded her dad how four years ago they attended a similar event when then Texas Governor George W. Bush visited the same spot on the campaign trail.  Ashley remembered attending that event with both her father and her mother Wendy Faulkner.  It was raining that day and they all stood in the rain awaiting Governor Bush "eating Triscuit crackers" enjoying the time together and hoping to get a glimpse of the would-be president.  Ashley recalled holding her mothers hand as they waited. So she decided to go again this year, but this time her mother could not attend.  Wendy Faulkner was murdered on 9/11/01 in the south tower of the World Trade Center.  She was there on the 104th floor for a one-day meeting.  Ashley decided to miss school in honor and remembrance of her mother and attend the event. [Rest of article here.] here An editorial about the story behind the photograph can be found at the Washington Dispatch web site, which also includes a page of reader-submitted commentary about the story. Washington Dispatch commentary  Goetz, Kristina.  "Bush Pauses to Comfort Teen."
  The Cincinnati Enquirer.  6 May 2004.

 Hallett, Joe.  "No Apology from Bush Just Yet."
  The Columbus Dispatch.  5 May 2004  (p. A1).

 Hallett, Joe.  "Despite the Post-9/11 Tribulations, the President Remains a Leader."
  The Columbus Dispatch.  9 May 2004  (p. B5).

 Rairden, C.K.  "Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion."
  The Washington Dispatch.  10 May 2004.

 Zimkus, Charlie.  "Our Artist Records Warm Welcome for President Bush."
  The Columbus Dispatch.  6 May 2004  (p. B8). In June 2020, the Quaker Oats Company announced that it would be re-branding its Aunt Jemima line of products  syrup, pancake mix, and other breakfast foods  because the brand's origins were based on racial stereotypes. Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods North America, told NBC News: NBC News "We recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype. While work has been done over the years to update the brand in a manner intended to be appropriate and respectful, we realize those changes are not enough." This decision caused some online outrage as social media users accused Quaker Oats of erasing its history and diminishing the accomplishments of Nancy Green, the woman who portrayed Aunt Jemima in promotional materials in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many of these posts claimed that Green was one of the first African American millionaires because of the amount of money she earned playing Aunt Jemima: But Green did not die a millionaire. In fact, she could not live off the earnings she made from her portrayal of Aunt Jemima, and continued to work as a housekeeper until a few years before her death in 1923.  The origins of Aunt Jemima can be traced back to 1889 when Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood created a self-rising pancake mix. The product originally carried the name "self-rising pancake flour," but Rutt was inspired to change the name of the mix after he attended a minstrel show and saw men dressed in blackface perform a song entitled "Old Aunt Jemima." The Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture writes: writes In the fall of 1889, Rutt was inspired to rename the mix after attending a minstrel show, during which a popular song titled "Old Aunt Jemima" was performed by men in blackface, one of whom was dressed as a slave mammy of the plantation South. While Rutt and Underwood developed this self-rising mix and contributed the "Aunt Jemima" name, they were unable to turn their product into a commercial success. The duo sold their milling company to R.T. Davis, who, with Green's help, would go on to create the persona of Aunt Jemima and turn the brand into a national product. Davis hired Green, who was born a slave in Kentucky in 1834, to portray Aunt Jemima at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Green, as Aunt Jemima, served pancakes to the crowd and told romanticized "stories" of her time on the plantation. While these stories were presented as if they were the genuine memories of Aunt Jemima, Green was, of course, just playing a fictional character. In "Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory," author Kimberly Wallace-Sanders writes: Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory At one point the most reliable means of consolidating the country involved inducing a kind of national amnesia about the history of slavery. Aunt Jemima was created to celebrate state-of-the-art technology through a pancake mix; she did not celebrate the promise of post-Emancipation progress for African Americans. Aunt Jemima's "freedom" was negated, or revoked, in this role because of the character's persona as a plantation slave, not a free black woman employed as a domestic. An African American woman, pretending to be a slave, was pivotal to the trademark's commercial achievement in 1893. Its success revolved around the fantasy of returning a black woman to a sanitized version of slavery. The Aunt Jemima character involved a regression of race relations, and her character helped usher in a prominent resurgence of the "happy slave" mythology of the antebellum South. [...] Nancy Green, a former slave from Kentucky, played the first Aunt Jemima. Green was a middle-aged woman living on the South Side of Chicago, working as a cook and housekeeper for a prominent judge. After a series of auditions, she was hired to cook and serve the new pancake recipe at the World's Fair. Part of her act was to tell stories from her own early slave life along with plantation tales written for her by a white southern sales representative. This combination of historic and mythic plantation was designed to perpetuate the "historical amnesia necessary for confidence in the American future." That this amnesia occurred at the expense of African American progress was clearly not an issue for the Pearl Milling Company, the inventor of Aunt Jemima. A pamphlet detailing the "life" of Aunt Jemima, which portrayed her as a "happy" slave with a "secret recipe" working at a plantation owned by Colonel Higbee of Louisiana, was also created for the 1893 World's Fair, and laid the foundation for future advertisements to build on the Aunt Jemima myth. One artifact from the early days of Aunt Jemima's fictional history was a set of paper dolls that supposedly showed Aunt Jemima and her family before and after they sold her secret pancake recipe. The "before" set included six paper dolls without shoes and dressed in shabby clothing, while the "after" set included a set of "fancy" clothes. set of paper dolls   But these dolls, like most of the fictional lore surrounding Aunt Jemima, did not accurately reflect reality. We have been unable to find any specific details about how much Green was paid for her portrayal of Aunt Jemima. The evidence, however, suggests that Green did not become rich from her work and was likely paid a paltry sum. In "Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America," Micki McElya writes that in 1900, Green listed her occupation as a "cook." While this may have referred to her job demonstrating pancake mix as Aunt Jemima, in 1910, she was working as a "housekeeper." Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America In that year (1900) she listed her occupation as "cook," which could have referred to her job demonstrating Aunt Jemima pancake mix or else indicated that her primary employment remained in domestic service. The latter was the case in 1910, when she reported her job as "housekeeper" in a private residence. Performing as the trademarked mammy was not her primary job by that time, if it ever had been. We reached out to McElya for more information about what monetary payments Green received for her portrayal of Aunt Jemima. McElya couldn't point to a specific dollar amount, but she did say that she "found no evidence that Nancy Green died a millionaire in 1923," and that "the available evidence suggests otherwise." M.M. Manring, the author of "Slave in A Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima," also told us that "all of the available evidence ... would suggest that [Nancy Green] was almost certainly not conspicuously wealthy." Manring also addressed the notion that Green was given a "lifetime contract" to portray Aunt Jemima. This "lifetime contract," according to Manring, was part of the lore created for the character of "Aunt Jemima" - but there's no evidence that it actually applied to Green. Manring said: I've been through the J. Walter Thompson archives at Duke, where so much of the papers related to the Aunt Jemima campaign are stored, and never found any reference to her pay. None of her obituaries mention anything regarding her wealth. If she had a $1 million fortune in, say, 1920, adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of about $13 million today, by my calculations. It would be surprising to me if all contemporaneous accounts of her failed to make any mention of her vast wealth. [...] All of the available evidence, such as it is, would suggest that she was almost certainly not conspicuously wealthy. She was comfortable enough to give to her church and do missionary work, but so were plenty of other people of ordinary means. As for the "lifetime contract," that was a big part of the promotion of Aunt Jemima. You see the same language in the ads  that a milling company in Chicago brought Aunt Jemima north and gave her a lifetime contract, and even paid her in gold. I have never found nor to expect to find proof of a contract, and again, I can't prove a negative. But I do think you have to put that claim in context with a long-running ad campaign that mixed myth and reality, and people real and imagined. Obituaries for Green published in The Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald also made no mention of her being one of the first African American women to become a millionaire: The Chicago Tribune https://www.newspapers.com/clip/53701027/ While no evidence exists to suggest that Green died a millionaire, she did make enough money (as both a housekeeper and for her promotional work as Aunt Jemina) to support the missionary work of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago. It should also be noted that Green's descendants (as well as the descendants of another Black woman who portrayed Aunt Jemima) filed a lawsuit against Quaker Oats, arguing that the company exploited Green, and that her family was owed billions in royalties, USA Today reported. The lawsuit was later dismissed after a judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not provide proof that they were related to the women who portrayed Aunt Jemima: lawsuit reported dismissed Now, a lawsuit claims that Green's heirs as well as the descendants of other black women who appeared as Aunt Jemima deserve $2 billion and a share of future revenue from sales of the popular brand. The federal suit, filed in Chicago in August by two great-grandsons of Anna Short Harrington, says that she and Green were key in formulating the recipe for the nation's first self-rising pancake mix, and that Green came up with the idea of adding powdered milk for extra flavor. "Aunt Jemima has become known as one of the most exploited and abused women in American history," said D.W. Hunter, one of Harrington's great-grandsons. The rumor that Green died a millionaire is, like much of the folklore surrounding Aunt Jemima, not supported by historical evidence. This claim is unfounded, and all of the material we examined suggests that Green was not conspicuously wealthy. Therefore, we've rated this rumor false. In February 2021, Quaker Oats announced that it was retiring the "Aunt Jemima" brand name and replacing it with the "Pearl Milling Company." announced Kesslen, Ben.  "Aunt Jemima Brand to Change Name, Remove Image That Quaker Says is 'Based On a Racial Stereotype.'"   NBC News.  17 June 2020. Downs, Jere.  "Pancake Flap: 'Aunt Jemima' Heirs Seek Dough."   USA Today.  6 October 2014. Smith, Jessie Carnie. "Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture."   ABC-CLIO.  17 December 2010. McElya, Micki. "Clinging to Mammy The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America."   Harvard University Press.  2009. Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. &bsp "Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory."   University of Michigan Press.  2008.