Did Fred Rogers Invite a Black Police Officer To Join Him In a Pool?
Childrens television show host Fred Rogers led the way on breaking many barriers. One famous instance took place on an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, when Rogers, a white man, dipped his feet in a wading pool alongside Francois Clemmons, a Black man. instance The episode, which aired in May 1969, broke color barriers at a time when Black people were barred from using swimming pools around the United States on account of their race. Civil unrest over segregated pools was also ongoing. That year, the Supreme Court ruled that pool access was a property right that could not be limited by race. broke ruled Decades later, the following meme circulated online:    Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons on the show, was not a real police officer but an actor. During the episode, Clemmons visits Rogers in his neighborhood on a hot day, and Rogers invites him to dip his feet in a wading pool with him. Rogers also offers to share the same towel. The original clip from 1969 can be seen here at the 1:28 mark:    The meme above shows a photograph from when the scene was recreated by Clemmons and Rogers more than two decades after the original pool scene:   Clemmons reflected on the famous scene in an interview with WBUR's "Here and Now": interview I thought [that moment] was kind of light. I was expecting something like maybe calling [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.] up or calling the president up or saying, you know, this is amoral and some kind of curse on these people, and he didn't do that at all. He said, 'Come, come sit with me.' And he said, 'You can share my towel.' My God, those were powerful words. It was transformative to sit there with him, thinking to myself, 'Oh, something wonderful is happening here. This is not what it looks like. It's much bigger.' And many people, as I've traveled around the country, share with me what that particular moment meant to them, because he was telling them, 'You cannot be a racist.' And one guy or more than that, but one particularly I'll never forget, said to me, When that program came on, we were actually discussing the fact that black people were inferior. And Mister Rogers cut right through it, he said. And he said essentially that scene ended that argument. Given that the scene took place and broke color barriers during a time when seeing a Black person in a pool with a white person was a civil rights issue, but Clemmons himself was not a real police officer, we rate this claim as true.
In late 2019, social media users began seeing posts touting that "LOWES has announced that everyone who shares this link will be sent a $150 coupon for its anniversary TODAY ONLY":  This coupon offer was fake, just another iteration of similar scams that have made the online rounds several times before. In May 2015, a fraudulent offer for $100 Lowe's coupons started circulating on Facebook. The message linked Facebook users to a fraudulent web site adorned with the Lowe's logo, and instructed them to follow a simple set of instructions:  Scams like these require users to pass the fake coupon on to their Facebook friends, which widens the pool of potential victims. Next, they direct people to fill out a simple survey, which seems like a harmless task but is used to coax sensitive information such as email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and credit card numbers out of victims. Finally, users who complete the survey will never receive a free Lowe's gift card but instead will likely sign up for difficult-to-cancel "Reward Offers" or have their personal information used for nefarious purposes. The Better Business Bureau provides these three tips to identify scams on Facebook: Facebook Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender.Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. Watch out for a reward that's too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. Lowe's also posted a warning about this scam on their Facebook page: Facebook  In April 2017, two years after we first debunked the initial coupon scam, a new version of it appeared, taking in unsuspecting Facebookers yet again:  Those who clicked on this image on Facebook were taken to a page with a dubious URL& (in this case, https://www.lowes.com-holdit.us/?sfpzbJt) and asked to take a simple survey and then to "like" and "share" the page:  Needless to say, anyone who attempted to redeem these coupons at Lowe's will be unsuccessful (and probably a little embarrassed), and if they have followed the online instructions, they have set themselves and their friends on social media up for, at best, a like-farming scam. A simple racket, certainly, but an effective one. scam Talk-radio host and former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Buddy Cianci Jr. recently referred to a member of Governor Chafees staff as the guy who still owes $250,000 to the state.Ciancis jab at Michael F. Trainor,  aired on Sept. 1, 2011 on WPROs The Buddy Cianci Show.Because it wasnt the first time that Cianci had made the comment -- and because a bankruptcy judge had discharged most of Trainors debt nearly a year ago -- we thought it was worth looking into.Trainor has built a career in public relations representing some of the states high-profile politicians and corporate players. He was an advisor and spokesman for Lincoln Chafee during Chafees successful 2010 run for governor.But Trainor has had his own public relations problems ever since it became known late last year that he and a business partner from Connecticut defaulted on a $250,000 federal small business loan granted through the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.According to the EDC and bankruptcy court documents,  heres what happened:The duo and two of their partners started a Rhode Island company, called Genesis Distribution & Marketing, in 2006 to distribute and market retractable window screens and hurricane shutters.Trainor and his partners had already bought a company in Connecticut that distributed and installed hurricane shutters. And they planned to buy three more in the South that made the shutters. In January 2007, the EDC loaned  the business $250,000 through the federally funded Small Business Loan Fund to buy inventory, furniture, fixtures and equipment and hire three employees.But the business was short-lived.Just two months after receiving the EDC loan, the partners fell behind on their payments. In 2008, the company folded.Trainor and his partner from Connecticut, who had pledged their homes as collateral for the loan, talked with representatives from the EDC about a settlement. But the talks broke off in August 2009, when Trainor notified the agency that he was filing for bankruptcy.By then, the housing market had tanked along with the value of Trainors house.The partners had repaid $36,326 of the loan; with interest and late fees, the debt on the loan at the time totaled $250,723.In September 2010, a bankruptcy judge granted Trainors petition for Chapter 7bankruptcy.An explanation of the ruling in the bankruptcy court documents states: The chapter 7 discharge order eliminates a debtor's legal obligation to pay a debt that is discharged.The EDC loan was written off on Nov. 30, 2010. The agency concluded that it couldnt recover any money from its lien on Trainors home because the mortgage balance exceeded the propertys value.In December, 2010, Trainor, who was being considered for a job in the Chafee administration, toldThe Providence Journalthat he had not walked away from his obligations, saying hed like to negotiate a settlement with the EDC.Governor Chafee discussed Trainors situation on Channel 12 Newsmakers in December 2010, saying that there would be an effort made to repay the EDC. [Well] make sure Mike does that, he said.So it certainly sounded then as though Chafee and even Trainor himself believed that Trainor still owed the EDC the money.Chafee hired Trainor as spokesman when he took office in January, a job that paid $129,235.That month, Trainor also repaid the state $20,788.75 in taxes -- which were not  dischargeable in the bankruptcy -- owed on his failed business. In return, the state Division of Taxation removed the lien on his property. Six months later, in July, the bank sold his house at a foreclosure auction. Trainor served seven months as Chafees spokesman before he was transferred, in August, to the Department of Higher Education. His salary has dropped to $88,177. So, does he still owe the $250,000, as Cianci claims?That debt was discharged, Andrew S. Richardson, a lawyer and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Trustee in the Trainor case, said. (He) can no longer be forced to pay the obligation -- nor can the creditor take any steps to try and collect it.In other words, Richardson said, theres no legal obligation that Trainor repay the loan.But other lawyers who specialize in bankruptcy see it differently.Most people understand (bankruptcy) as destroying the debt  but technically the discharge in bankruptcy doesnt destroy the debt at all, Jason Kilborn, a lawyer, law professor and resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute in Virginia said. It does not destroy the obligation from a moral or even a legal obligation. It just prevents the creditors from collecting on that debt.The American Bankruptcy Institutewas founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues.In other words, the debt remains, even though the creditors are forced to write it off as uncollectable.So if the debt remains but Trainor isnt obligated to repay it, does he really owe the state money?We called Cianci and challenged him on his use of the term owes. Trainors bankruptcy discharge, he maintained, doesnt change the fact that Trainor still owes the EDC the $250,000.Maybe it was discharged, he said, but in the mind of the taxpayer who fronted the 250 grand? Yeah, he still owes it.Said Richardson, the trustee: I think it depends on whose point of view youre looking at, the creditor or the debtor.We agree.Practically speaking, the bankruptcy ruling and the fact that the mortgage on the Trainors home exceeded its value made it impossible for the EDC to recoup its money.But even after the debt was discharged in bankruptcy Trainor and Chafee both said theyd make an effort made to repay the EDC.After all, a debt can be owed even if its never collected.For that reason, we rule Ciancis statementMostly True. Legend:  Woman unsuccessfully tries to gas herself to death only to discover the gas company has turned off service. Example:  [Healey & Glanvill, 1996] A social worker mate in Glasgow had to visit a woman who's been put through the mill due to the incompetent Tories' recession. The worst slump since the 1930s had decimated her life. Nothing was going right. The company she worked for had sacked her and then gone bust, so she'd had no redundancy money after sixteen years' service. Her husband had lost his well-paid job in the building trade and they'd fallen way behind on their mortgage. The house was about to be repossessed, but it had plummeted in value so they owed the building society more than it was worth. The car and furniture on HP had been taken by the bailiffs, and every letter was a final demand. Finally, the strain of living on the breadline had wrecked their marriage and her husband had left to build a new life for himself down south. It was the last straw; the poor woman had had enough, and decided to end it all. So she opened the oven, stuck her head inside and switched the gas full on. But she woke the next day with a stinking headache, to find the gas supply had been cut off. Origins:  Whenever a story sounds too pat to be true, that generally turns out to be the case  real life is rarely that neat. In this instance, a tired plotline has been resurrected to service a new theme: The Tory government of Britain so screws up this woman's life it makes it impossible for her to kill herself.  The theme of the gas having been turned off is as old as the hills, although this plot twist is usually resorted to in murder thrillers rather than suicide tales. From the 1946 book 101 Plots Used and Abused comes this description: Henry Smithers, in a rage, strikes his wife and kills her. In a panic, he has an inspiration  why not make it appear that she had committed suicide by turning on the gas? Ah, what a great idea! Henry carries the body to the gas range, places it so that the head rests inside, turns on the gas, and, leaving the house, goes off on a "business trip." When he returns, he is arrested and charged with the crime. Unfortunately for Mr. Smithers, the gas company, carrying out an old threat, had turned off the gas shortly before the murder. This 1946 collection of overused storylines referred to this theme as "bewhiskered," and rightly so. Still, it's nice to see so old a device used for a new purpose. Barbara "gas masked" Mikkelson Sightings:  The 1977 Kinks song "Life Goes On" contains the following stanza: My bank went broke and my well ran dry.It was almost enough to contemplate suicide.I turned on the gas, but I soon realizedI hadn't settled my bill so they cut off my supply. Last updated:  18 January 2007     Sources:  Healey, Phil and Rick Glanvill.  Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths.  London: Virgin Books, 1996.  ISBN 0-86369-969-3  (p. 240). Now! That's What I Call Urban Myths   Young, James.  101 Plots Used and Abused.  Boston: The Writer, Inc., 1946  (p. 3) One of the more unusual political memes we've come across presented four different cases of tax-related financial improprieties to suggest that tax-evasion prosecutions were somehow influenced by racial bias against non-blacks:  However, the "Tax Racism" meme offered examples  not all of which were actual cases of tax evasion  so widely spaced in time and so differing in circumstances as to be non-useful in making any point at all about either tax fraud or race. Martha Stewart, the entrepreneur who rose to prominence as the author of books on cooking, entertaining, and decorating, was not charged with, or imprisoned for, non-payment of income taxes. Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators in a case related to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into insider trading activity: investigation Washington, D.C., June 4, 2003 -- The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed securities fraud charges against Martha Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic. The complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Stewart committed illegal insider trading when she sold stock in a biopharmaceutical company, ImClone Systems, Inc., on Dec. 27, 2001, after receiving an unlawful tip from Bacanovic, at the time a broker with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated. The Commission further alleges that Stewart and Bacanovic subsequently created an alibi for Stewart's ImClone sales and concealed important facts during SEC and criminal investigations into her trades. In a separate action, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has obtained an indictment charging Stewart and Bacanovic criminally for their false statements concerning Stewart's ImClone trades. Stewart was sentenced to 5 months in prison and also settled a civil suit with the SEC by paying a $195,000 fine (a penalty that reflected four times the amount of stock value loss she avoided by taking advantage of inside information, plus interest). settled Stewart did engage in a dispute with the state of New York in 2002 over unpaid property taxes that she contended she didn't owe because she hardly spent any time in that state, and she was eventually ordered by a judge to pay $220,000 in back taxes plus penalties. But contrary to the false impression created by this meme, she was not prosecuted or jailed over that issue  the time she spent in prison was solely related to a later insider-trading case, not to tax evasion. dispute By the mid-1920s, notorious Chicago mobster Alphonse Gabriel Capone was reportedly taking in nearly $60 million annually ($878 million in 2018 dollars) from a variety of illegal activities, primarily Prohibition-era bootlegging. Capone was dubbed "Public Enemy No. 1" after the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in which gunmen allegedly hired by him posed as police officers to murder seven members of a rival gang, leading to increased public pressure on the government to rein Capone in. Federal authorities had difficulty gathering sufficient hard evidence to convict Capone on any substantial criminal charges, however, so they took what was then a novel tack: Even if they couldn't prove Capone was making his millions illegally, they could prove he wasn't paying income tax on his ill-gotten gains. Despite his obviously lavish lifestyle, Capone never filed a federal income tax return and claimed he had no taxable income, reportedly boasting at one point that, They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money. He was proved wrong. IRS and Treasury agents gathered evidence that Capone had made millions of dollars in untaxed income, and the mobster was eventually indicted on 22 counts of federal income tax evasion. After conviction he was sentenced in 1931 to 11 years in prison, fined $50,000, and ordered to pay back taxes in the amount of $215,000. Capone was released from prison in 1939 with time off for good behavior and retired to Florida, where he died in 1947 at the relatively young age of 48. conviction In a literal sense Capone was indeed jailed for non-payment of income taxes, but the tax evasion charges were essentially a proxy for prosecuting the mobster over the multitude of vastly worse and violent crimes with which he was connected (and the immense profits he derived from those criminal activities). Capone was by no means an otherwise upright and law-abiding citizen who was thrown in prison simply because he didn't pay his income taxes. At this point in our narrative we need to distinguish between different forms of tax evasion. At one end of the spectrum are those who haven't engaged in any fraudulent behavior but simply didn't or can't pay their taxes for any number of reasons  maybe they didn't plan or withhold prudently, they received poor financial advisement, they had legitimate confusion or dispute over what constituted taxable income, or they simply overspent and ended up in debt. Although non-payment of taxes is a crime, the IRS will not usually seek prosecution in these types of case and will instead work with offenders in order to facilitate payment of their back debts (rather than making repayment difficult or impossible by incarcerating them). prosecution At the other end of the spectrum are those who actively engage in fraud in order to evade the full payment of taxes: They fail to disclose their full income, hide financial transactions, claim deductions to which they are not entitled, disguise monies earned as something other than income, or otherwise file falsified tax returns. The IRS will, at their discretion, seek prosecution in egregious cases of these forms of tax evasion. Leona Helmsley, derisively known by the nickname as the "Queen of Mean," was a billionaire who  along with her husband, real estate investor and broker Harry Helmsley  owned a vast portfolio of real estate and other assets, including a chain of hotels and the iconic Empire State Building. portfolio Leona Helmsley, who once reportedly asserted that We dont pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes, fell into the latter class of tax evader, falsely manipulating her personal finances, business expenses, and dealings with third parties in order to avoid paying immense sums of taxes: tax evader Some of [Helmsley's] luster was tarnished in 1986 when court documents and law enforcement officials said she had failed to pay sales taxes in New York on hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry she purchased at Van Cleef & Arpels, the exclusive Manhattan store. Two senior store officers were indicted on charges that they operated a scheme by which customers with out-of-state addresses could have their purchases recorded as being mailed to them, thus avoiding city and state taxes. In 1987 a series of adverse articles in The New York Post about the Helmsleys, set off by one of their disgruntled employees, led to a broad investigation. The following year Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted by federal and state authorities on charges that they had evaded more than $4 million in income taxes by fraudulently claiming as business expenses luxuries they purchased for Dunnellen Hall in Greenwich, Conn, a 28-room Jacobean mansion on 26 acres with a sweeping view of Long Island Sound that they bought in 1983. In 235 counts in state and federal indictments brought by Robert Abrams, then the New York State attorney general, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the United States attorney and later mayor of New York, the Helmsleys were accused of draining their hotel and real estate empire to provide themselves with such extravagances at Dunnellen Hall as a $1 million marble dance floor above a swimming pool, a $45,000 silver clock, a $210,000 mahogany card table, a $130,000 stereo system, and $500,000 worth of jade art objects. Nothing was too small or personal to be billed to their businesses, from Mrs. Helmsleys bras to a white lace and pink satin dress and jacket and a white chiffon skirt  the dress and skirt were entered in the Park Lane Hotel records as uniforms for the staff. Mrs. Helmsley was also charged with defrauding Helmsley stockholders by receiving $83,333 a month in secret consulting fees. She was convicted of 33 felony counts related to her evasion of $1.2 million in federal income taxes. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison (reduced to four years on appeal), fined $7.1 million for tax fraud, and ordered to pay some $1.7 million in back federal and state taxes. She began serving her sentence in 1992 and was released from federal prison in Connecticut in 1994 after having served less than half her sentence. Where along the tax-evader spectrum between "legitimate dispute" and "willful tax fraud" civil rights activist Al Sharpton might fall is a difficult to determine. Claims were made in the press in 2014 that Sharpton owed some $4.5 million in unpaid taxes, but the accuracy of that number and how much of the monies owed might already have been repaid by Sharpton were unclear, and his tax-troubles narrative involved a muddied mixture of personal, business, and non-profit finances as well liabilities for federal taxes, state taxes, payroll taxes, and personal income taxes. Much of the dispute over the "why" and "how much" of Sharpton's unpaid tax bill stemmed from the operations of the National Action Network, a not-for-profit, civil rights organization founded by Sharpton in 1991. Sharpton contended in a 2014 New York Times account that he incurred an unexpected tax liability because he was taxed personally for income he had given to the non-profit organization, and that he was up to date on repayment plans. Officials contested that the amount he was in arrears for in unpaid taxes had actually grown larger, though: contended Today, Mr. Sharpton still faces personal federal tax liens of more than $3 million, and state tax liens of $777,657, according to records. Mr. Sharpton said the federal liens resulted from a demand by the I.R.S. that he pay taxes on earnings from speaking engagements that he had turned over to National Action Network. He said he was up to date on payment plans for both the federal and state liens, so, he said, the outstanding balance was much lower than records showed. But according to state officials, his balance on the state liens is actually $220,000 greater now than when they were first filed during the years 2008 through 2010. A spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance said state law did not allow him to provide any further details. Sharpton then contested that news account, asserting that it referenced "old taxes" and insisting again his tax liens had been paid down below the $4.5 million debt claimed in the New York Times report that stated Sharpton's unpaid tax debt had nonetheless grown larger, not smaller: contested During a news conference at the headquarters of his National Action Network in Harlem, Mr. Sharpton sought to refute the assertion that there were $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens outstanding against him and the for-profit businesses he controls. He said that the liens had been paid down, although he declined to say by how much, and that he was current on all taxes he was obligated to pay under settlement agreements with tax authorities. Were talking about old taxes, he said, adding: Were not talking about anything new. So all of this, as if Im not paying taxes while Im doing whatever Im doing, it reads all right, but it just is not true. The accuracy of Mr. Sharptons assertion that the amount he owes the federal government is much lower than the $3.6 million shown in records could not be verified. A spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service said federal law prohibited the agency from divulging any details about individual taxpayers. As for the state tax liens, Mr. Sharptons assertion that he had paid them down conflicts with information provided by state officials. State authorities filed tax liens against Mr. Sharpton in 2008 and 2009, and again in 2010 against a for-profit business he controls, Revals Communications, all totaling $695,000. But a spokesman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance said the amount due had actually increased, to $916,000. Regardless of the numbers, Sharpton wasn't put in prison because tax officials did not deem his case to be an exceptional one of scofflaw tax fraud or evasion that merited prosecution, instead working with him to facilitate his paying down the debt. The conclusion here is a simple one: Cherry-picking four very disparate cases of financial wrongdoings spanning several decades, while ignoring the many other instances of tax evasion successfully prosecuted by the U.S. government, documents nothing about any purported racial bias in such prosecutions. tax evasion Buettner, Russ.  "Al Sharpton Criticizes New York Times Report on Unpaid Taxes."
  The New York Times.  19 November 2014. Buettner, Russ.  "As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Taxes."
  The New York Times.  18 November 2014. Nemyaug, Enid.  "Leona Helmsley, Hotel Queen, Dies at 87."
  The New York Times.  20 August 2007. Erb, Kelly Phillips.  "Al Capone Sentenced to Prison for Tax Evasion on This Day in 1931."
  Forbes.com.  17 October 2018. Wood, Robert W.  "10 Notorious Tax Cheats: Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley Proved Little People Can Put You in Jail."
  Forbes.com.  17 April 2015. Wood, Robert W.  "Lessons From Rev. Al Sharpton's $4.5 Million Tax Bill."
  Forbes.com.  19 November 2014. Department of Justice -- Office of Public Affairs.  "Tax Crime Does Not Pay."
  10 April 2018. Johnson, Carrie.  "Stewart to Pay $195,000 in Settlement of Civil Suit."
  The Washington Post.  8 August 2006. Kratsas, Gabrielle.  "13 Infamous Tax Cheaters."
  USA Today.  28 February 2014. Claim:  70% of the women who gave birth at Parkland Memorial Hospital in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, 2006] Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:  1. John F. Kennedy died there in 19632. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after3. Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later by coincidence On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day  every day) A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants.' Crikey, that's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas. According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million. The average patient in Parkland's maternity wards is 25 years old, married and giving birth to her second child. She is also an illegal immigrant. By law, pregnant women cannot be denied medical care based on their immigration status or ability to pay. OK, fine. That doesn't mean they should receive better care than everyday, middle-class American citizens. But at Parkland Hospital, they do. Parkland Memorial Hospital has nine prenatal clinics. NINE. The Dallas Morning News article followed a Hispanic woman who was a patient at one of the clinics and pregnant with her third child  her previous two were also born at Parkland. Her first two deliveries werefree and the Mexican native was grateful because it would have cost $200 to have them in Mexico. This time, the hospital wants her to pay $10 per visit and $100 for the delivery but she was unsure if she could come up with the money. Not that it matters, the hospital won't turn her away. (I wonder why they even bother asking at this point.) How long has this been going on? What are the long-term effects? Well, another subject of the article was born at Parkland in 1986 shortly after her mother entered the U.S. illegally  now she is having her own child there as well. (That's right, she's technically a U.S. citizen.) These women receive free prenatal care including medication, nutrition, birthing classes and child care classes. They also get freebies such as car seats, bottles, diapers and formula. Most of these things are available to American citizens as well but only for low-income applicants and even then, the red tape involved is almost insurmountable. Because these women are illegal immigrants they do not have to provide any sort of legitimate  identification  no proof of income. An American citizen would have to provide a social security number which would reveal their annual income  an illegal immigrant need only claim to be poor and the hospital must take them at their word. My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care is good, we Navy wives don't get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does! As I mentioned, the care I have received is perfectly adequate but it's bare bones, meat and potato medical care  not top of line. Their (the illegals) medical care is free  simply because they are illegal immigrants? Once again, there is no way to verify their income. Parkland Hospital offers indigent care to Dallas County earn less than $40,000 per year. (They also have to prove that they did not refuse health coverage at their current job. Yeah, the 'free' care is not so easy for Americans.) There are about 140 patients who received roughly $4 million dollars for un-reimbursed medical care. As it turns out, they did not qualify for free treatment because they resided outside of Dallas County. So the hospital is going to sue them! Illegals get it all free! But U.S. citizens who live outside of Dallas County get sued! How stupid is this? As if that isn't annoying enough, the illegal immigrant patients are actually complaining about hospital staff not speaking Spanish. In this AP story, the author speaks with a woman who is upset that she had to translate comments from the hospital staff into Spanish for her husband. The doctor was trying to explain the situation to the family and the mother was forced to translate for her husband who only spoke Spanish. This was apparently a great injustice to her. In an attempt to create a Spanish-speaking staff, Parkland Hospital is now providing incentives in the form of extra pay for applicants who speak Spanish. Additionally, medical students at the University of Texas Southwestern for which Parkland Hospital is the training facility will now have a Spanish language requirement added to their already jammed-packed curriculum. No other school in the country boasts such a ridiculous multi-semester (multicultural) requirement. Origins:  Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital is familiar even to many non-Texans as the site where both President John F. Kennedy and his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (who was himself shot by Jack Ruby), were transported for emergency life-saving procedures in November 1963. Now, in 2006, Parkland Memorial is well known for its maternity program, which includes nine prenatal clinics and employs 72 doctors training to  become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. According to the Dallas Morning News, in 2005 Parkland Memorial staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day. In a pair of June 2006 articles, the Morning News reported that a recent patient survey indicated 70% of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants (while a similar New York Times article pegged the yearly tally for 2005 as "at least 56%").  The hospital spent $70.7 million delivering babies born there in 2004, with taxpayers covering about 40% of the costs ($31.3 million) directly, and federal and state funds (primarily Medicaid) making up the remainder.  Because of large payments from the Medicaid system, Parkland still ended 2004 with a $7.9 million surplus in obstetrics. A recent hospital analysis concluded that the average maternity ward patient at Parkland is a 25-year-old, married Hispanic woman giving birth to her second child.  The Parkland staff does not ask maternity patients whether they are illegal immigrants, so the preponderance of illegal aliens among this group has to be inferred through other means.)  (Under the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act [EMTALA], hospitals are obligated to provide care to pregnant women in need of emergency help, and those that fail to do so are subject to fines of up to $50,000 per violation and exclusion from Medicare and state health care programs.)  EMTALA Parkland's policies contrast with those of the public hospital system in neighboring Tarrant County: Uninsured Hispanic immigrants with uncertain immigration status have flocked in recent years to public hospital emergency rooms and maternity wards in Texas, California and other border states. Their care has swelled costs for struggling hospitals and increased the health care bills that fall to states and counties, giving ammunition to opponents of illegal immigration who complain of undue burdens on local taxpayers.  As a result, health care has become one of the sorest issues in the border states' debate over illegal immigration. Facing harsh criticism from residents, public hospitals are confronted with an uneasy decision: demand immigration documents from patients and deny subsidized care to those who lack them, or follow the public health principle of providing basic care to anyone who needs it.  In Texas, two of the biggest public hospitals chose differently.  The Parkland Health and Hospital System, which serves Dallas County, offers low-cost care to low-income residents with no questions asked about immigration status.  "I don't want my doctors and nurses to be immigration agents," said Dr. Ron J. Anderson, the president of Parkland. "We decided that these are folks living in our community and we needed to render the care." In Fort Worth, in neighboring Tarrant County, JPS Health Network requires foreign-born patients to show legal immigration documents to receive financial assistance in nonemergencies, like elective surgery and the treatment of routine or chronic illnesses. Executives said that their first responsibility was to legal residents, but that they were uncomfortable about having to make such distinctions. Administrators from both hospital systems indicated that some of the common assumptions made about immigrants who seek medical care at those facilities (and at other Texas hospitals) are misconceptions: While Texas border hospitals often get "anchor babies"  children of Mexican women who dart across the border to give birth to an American citizen  most illegal immigrants who go to major hospitals in Texas can show that they have been living here for years, said Ernie Schmid, policy director at the Texas Hospital Association. Many immigrant families have mixed status; often a patient with no documents has a spouse or children who are legal.  Most immigrant patients have jobs and pay taxes, through paycheck deductions or property taxes included in their rent, administrators at the Dallas and Fort Worth hospitals said. At both institutions, they have a better record of paying their bills than low-income Americans do, the administrators said.  The largest group of illegal immigrant patients is pregnant women, hospital figures show. Contrary to popular belief here, their care is not paid for through local taxes. Under a 2002 amendment to federal regulations, the births are covered by federal taxes through Medicaid because their children automatically become American citizens.  These cases are not affected by new regulations that went into effect on July 1 [2006] requiring Medicaid patients to provide proof of citizenship, Texas health officials said. They said they believed that only small numbers of illegal immigrants had received other Medicaid benefits.    Last updated:  25 August 2015     Sources:   Jacobsen, Sherry.  "Parkland Is Brimming with Babies."   Dallas Morning News.  11 June 2006.    Jacobsen, Sherry.  "Parkland Will Treat All Moms-to-Be."   Dallas Morning News.  12 June 2006.    Preston, Julia.  "Texas Hospitals' Separate Paths Reflect the Debate on Immigration."   The New York Times.  18 July 2006  (p. A1). Since 2017, an imposing military-style vehicle with a giant rolling ball on its front has been featured in online advertisements and YouTube thumbnails. An advertisement created by the website Yeah Motor, which was hosted by the advertising platform Taboola, showed the image of the vehicle with the words: "The Military Spent $1 Billion on This New Vehicle, And Here's The First Look." Readers who clicked the advertisement were led to a 52-page slideshow on Yeah Motor, where the image of the ball vehicle did not appear. This method of drawing in readers with clickbait to a slideshow with multiple pages is known as advertising arbitrage. With arbitrage, the goal is to make more money on the ads displayed during the slideshow than it costs to place the ads that drive readers to the story in the first place. 52-page slideshow The MAD LAB YouTube channel also featured the image in a thumbnail for the video, "Best Off-Road Vehicles of All Time." video   However, the vehicle doesn't show up in the 12-minute video. The MAD LAB YouTube channel turned off the ability to like or dislike the video  where viewers can click a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon  which is unique to this video in particular. The feature was perhaps disabled because of the large number of dislikes the video was receiving for failing to deliver on the promise in the thumbnail. Other videos on the channel allowed the liking and disliking of videos. The image is also featured on several other YouTube videos:   The military did not spend $1 billion on this "new vehicle" because it's not real. Concept artist Camille Kuo created the impressive artwork, although her signature appeared to be removed via Photoshop. The original "track ball" artwork with the signature is available on her ArtStation page: Camille Kuo https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PVxDy Kuo, who is from Taipei, Taiwan, told us that her artwork is available on image-licensing websites, which allows anyone who can pay the licensing fee the ability to use the artwork for commercial purposes. "That's why you see they are being used commercially without giving me credit," Kuo said. However, it's unclear if all of the advertisers and YouTube users that featured her artwork in thumbnails properly obtained licenses. For this piece, "track ball," I emphasized the importance of being a tank without having traditional tank wheels. It can massively mash whatever comes through at the bottom, making pancakes. All of the work is done in Photoshop using the industry of concept art techniques called Photobash and 3DKitbash. She told us that it took around two to three hours to create, although "the process of concepting the design takes the longest." Kuo's other work can be viewed on her ArtStation page. her ArtStation page 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 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 spread across the globe in March 2020, conspiracy buffs shared memes and videos featuring variations on a common theme  the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a human-made creation developed in a Chinese lab owned by all-purpose boogeyman George Soros for the purpose of causing economic disruption that would unseat Donald Trump from the U.S. presidency:    We've extensively covered the false notion that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was bioengineered in a lab in Wuhan, China, in a separate article and concluded that: separate article The theory that SARS-CoV-2 was manufactured in, and escaped from, a lab in Wuhan is based solely on the proximity of infectious-disease labs near a potential source of the COVID-19 outbreak. Several scientific claims have been made or manufactured to further bolster the notion that something nefarious is going on with COVID-19 and these labs, but this information comes from non-peer-reviewed papers misconstrued to be actual additions to the scientific record, or from disreputable websites such as Mercola.com. The actual scientific facts known about the novel coronavirus leave little room for it to be a virus of human creation, however. Regardless, the idea of a Soros connection to the COVID-19 pandemic stems from the fact that Wuhan, China, was the apparent origin point of the novel coronavirus, and WuXi AppTec, a Shanghai-based pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and medical device company, operates a "small molecule drug discovery and research services" facility there. And according to the conspiracy theory, Soros "owns WuXi AppTec." QED. origin point WuXi AppTec facility However, Soros holds no executive position at WuXi AppTec, and a list of the company's major shareholders shows that none owns more than 10% of the shares, and all of the largest shareholders are Chinese entities with no discernible connection to Soros himself. shareholders A May 2011 quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that Soros Fund Management, a private American investment management firm, does (or did) have a holding in a related company (Wuxi PharmaTech (Cayman)). However, such institutional investment is common in the business world and does not make the head of any given investment firm the "owner" of all the businesses in which the firm holds a stake. Wuxi PharmaTech (Cayman) When pulled, the thread of Soros to Soros Fund Management, to Wuxi PharmaTech (Cayman), to WuXi AppTec, to a biotech research facility in Wuhan, leads to nothing. All credible scientific evidence indicates the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolved or mutated and was not bioengineered, and the addition of Soros to any far-fetched conspiracy theory indicates nothing so much as a lack of imagination. Marriage, Madison.  "Hedge Funds Move to Become Family Offices Is Not Entirely Popular."
  Financial Times.  22 October 2015. Kasprak, Alex.  "The Origins and Scientific Failings of the COVID-19 Bioweapon Conspiracy Theory."
  Snopes.com.  1 April 2020. Secon, Holly et al.  "A Comprehensive Timeline of the New Coronavirus Pandemic, From China's First COVID-19 Case to the Present."
  Business Insider.  1 April 2020. In April 2007, a dark brown leather sofa set (couch, loveseat, and chair) obtained from Vanaik Furniture and Mattress store in Toronto was discovered by the Brampton family that purchased it to bear a startlingly racist descriptor, tags pronouncing the items' chocolate shade to be "Nigger-brown":  The set had been manufactured by a furniture maker operating in Guangzhou, China. The offensive labels escaped notice both at the Toronto furniture store and at its supplier, Cosmos Furniture in Scarborough. Each of the three pieces had a similar label affixed to the woven protective covering wrapped around them.  A Chinese software company, Kingsoft Corp., acknowledged their translation program was at fault. When the Chinese characters for "dark brown" were typed into an older version of their Chinese-English translation software, the offensive description came up. (The program's 2007 version no longer produce that result.) The software had been programmed with terms garnered from a Chinese-English dictionary.  A similar controversy erupted in 2017 when consumers reported seeing a wig base cap offered for sale on web sites such as Amazon.com and Walmart.com whose description identified it as being "nigger brown" in color:  Words aren't dropped from a language in the blink of an eye: While new terms can swiftly become part of the common lexicon, that which has fallen from linguistic favor departs far more slowly. Though now widely regarded as one of the words one must not say, it wasn't that long ago that Western society routinely used "nigger" as a color descriptor of various goods, even well after it was no longer used as a descriptor of people. Around 1914, Lady's Pictorial a London magazine, routinely presented ads for soft taffeta hats in "nigger-black." A 1915 edition of the British Home Chat magazine described cloth as "nigger-brown." Writers D.H. Lawrence and John Dos Passos wrote about "nigger-grey" and "nigger-pink." And, as late as 1973, The Times of London wrote of autumnal colours in a shade that "used to be nigger brown." While Western society has now eschewed the word, in some parts of the world it continues to be used as a descriptor of an item's color. In China, "nigger-brown" pigment was available for purchase in 2007 from the Wenzhou Kunwei Pearly-Lustre Pigment Co., Ltd., and men's shoes from the Nanhai De Xing Leather Shoes Habiliment Co., Ltd., were described on its web site as: "This product is comfortable for wearing, it looks very simple and artistic. Size: 39#-46# Color: nigger-brown." described Such are the pitfalls of dealing with a global economy: goods produced and labeled in one part of the world are sold internationally, and terms that are irredeemably offensive in some places barely give anyone pause in others. Until the epithet falls out of use everywhere, look for more gobsmacked Western consumers ending up with "nigger brown" couches and shoes. Other descriptive labels commonly used in times past have since been dropped by the wayside as awareness of their potential to offend grew. In 1962, Crayola renamed as "peach" the crayon it had until then vended as "flesh," and in 1999 it changed to "chestnut" what had previously been labeled "Indian Red." (The company asserted Indian red was not meant to represent the skin color of Native Americans, but rather referred to a reddish-brown pigment found near India.) Kopun, Francine.  "Seeing Red Over Brown."
  The Toronto Star.  14 April 2007  (p. A1).
 Noronha, Charmaine.  "Racial Slur on Couch Label Blamed on Chinese Company's Faulty Software Program."
  Associated Press.  19 April 2007. Wilkes, Jim.  "Racial Slur on Sofa Label Stuns Family."
  The Toronto Star.  6 April 2007  (p. B1). Willis, Kiersten.  "Amazon and Walmart Investigating After N Brown Hair Cap Sparks Backlash."
  Atlanta Black Star.  17 July 2017. During an all-candidates Democratic forum in Rock Hill, S.C., on Nov. 6, 2015, host Rachel Maddow of MSNBC asked Bernie Sanders how he could win the support of African-American voters, a crucial Democratic voting group in the early primary state of South Carolina. Maddow noted that Sanders was polling at 8 percent in a recent poll in South Carolina and asked if he would be able to convince African-American voters that he could press for their issues. Sanders responded in part by citing his economic platform, which he said would positively impact African-Americans. I have the economic and social justice agenda now that, once we get the word out, will, in fact, resonate with the African-American community,Sanders said. We're talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Over half of the black workers in this country earn less. We wondered whether Sanders was right that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour. So we took a closer look. We turned to themost recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, among other things, tracks the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by race. The bureaus data for the third quarter of 2015 shows that the median weekly earnings for African-American workers was $624. If you divide that by the standard 40 hours in a workweek, it works out to $15.60 per hour. That means that half of African-American workers earned less than $15.60. So Sanders was close on this but exaggerated slightly. His claim is off by a little more than 4 percent. When we asked Sanders campaign for their source, they pointed us to areportissued earlier this month from the National Employment Law Project that found that 54.1 percent of African-American workers earned less than $15.00 an hour. The group calculated that figure using data from 2012 through 2014. Thats a reasonable measurement, but while our figure covers a briefer period of time, its also more current, reflecting the continued economic growth since the end of 2014. Our ruling Sanders said that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour. Depending on the time frame used, the data shows that roughly half of black workers earn less than $15. The most recent data shows that half earn less than $15.60, which is a little higher than what Sanders said, but his number is not far off. We rate his claim Mostly True. Several times over the last few years social Facebook posts have appeared proposing that users who followed instructions to "like" and "share" them could win myriad prizes in a purported giveaway sponsored by Ellen DeGeneres: Facebook posts  <!-- --> The Ellen DeGeneres Show does run segments involving prize giveaways that may have online components, including ties to official social media accounts, but not ones involving randomly choosing viewers who "like" and "share" posts stemming from counterfeit Facebook accounts such as the one shown above. prize giveaways Any legitimate promotional offer using Facebook should be tied to an account bearing a blue badge indicating the account has been verified by Facebook as authentic:As we have noted on previous pages about similar hoaxes, these counterfeit promotional posts exhibit a number of red flags, primarily that the underlying pages are not endorsed by any official channel associated with Ellen DeGeneres:The first clue that the giveaways following this format are not on the up-and-up is that the pages to which Facebook users are directed are ones created just days before the giveaway posts begin to appear. Not only are the secondary Facebook pages involved new, they are also not linked with automobile companies or other interests one might imagine could reasonably be expected to offer up a car in exchange for social media advertising (such as automobile dealerships, insurance companies, or large retailers). Were a legitimate company to engage in such a high-ticket contest giveaway, the incentive would be exposure, but no corresponding promotional return on advertising investment is discernable in these Facebook giveaway claims.The aim of schemes such as the celebrity giveaway hoaxes are typically to rapidly build a large Facebook following in order to sell pages with high "like" counts to third parties. While such hoaxes appear to present little risk to participants, liking and sharing the false information is not entirely safe: in addition to advancing the interests of and encouraging social media scammers, page likes potentially enable user data mining by scammers.  And in some cases, the giveaway hoaxes lure victims into downloading malware-bearing files.  Any legitimate promotional offer using Facebook should be tied to an account bearing a blue badge indicating the account has been verified by Facebook as authentic: blue badge  As we have noted on previous pages about similar hoaxes, these counterfeit promotional posts exhibit a number of red flags, primarily that the underlying pages are not endorsed by any official channel associated with Ellen DeGeneres: hoaxes The first clue that the giveaways following this format are not on the up-and-up is that the pages to which Facebook users are directed are ones created just days before the giveaway posts begin to appear. Not only are the secondary Facebook pages involved new, they are also not linked with automobile companies or other interests one might imagine could reasonably be expected to offer up a car in exchange for social media advertising (such as automobile dealerships, insurance companies, or large retailers). Were a legitimate company to engage in such a high-ticket contest giveaway, the incentive would be exposure, but no corresponding promotional return on advertising investment is discernable in these Facebook giveaway claims. The aim of schemes such as the celebrity giveaway hoaxes are typically to rapidly build a large Facebook following in order to sell pages with high "like" counts to third parties. While such hoaxes appear to present little risk to participants, liking and sharing the false information is not entirely safe: in addition to advancing the interests of and encouraging social media scammers, page likes potentially enable user data mining by scammers.  And in some cases, the giveaway hoaxes lure victims into downloading malware-bearing files.