Failed Suicide by Gas
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)
An item about a collection of U.S. tax increases which were supposedly enacted as of 1 January 2016 due to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare") was circulated widely at the beginning of 2016, but it was merely an updated version of identical claims circulated in previous years that set 2014 or 2015 as the imposition date for those tax increases:  Although the tax increases listed in this item did come to pass, they took effect at the beginning of 2013 (not 2014 or 2015 or 2016), were completely unrelated to the Affordable Care Act, applied only to very high-income earners, and have been overstated in this list.  These tax hikes were enacted through the passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, a compromise bill pushed through Congress as a partial resolution to the then-looming "fiscal cliff" crisis.  Under the provisions of that bill: American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 fiscal cliff   The top marginal federal income tax rate increased from 35% to 39.6%  The top marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains increased from 15% to 20% (not 28%).  The top marginal tax rate on dividends increased from 15% to 20% (not 39.6%).  Estate taxes increased from 35% of an estate's value in excess of $5,120,000 (in 2012) to 40% of the value above $5,340,000 (in 2014). It's important to note that the increase in marginal tax rates for federal income tax, capital gains, and dividends affected only those persons with taxable incomes over a $400,000 (single)/$450,000 (married) threshold.  It's also important to note that the previous estate tax rate of 0% was a special rule that applied only to the estates of persons who died in 2010 (the estate tax has since been increased to 35% for those who died in 2011 and 40% for those who died in 2012 and thereafter), and even today an estate tax  filing is required only for estates with gross assets in excess of $5 million (indexed for inflation).   estate tax The tax rate for dividends has also not increased from 15% to 39.6%: it appears someone has confused qualified dividends with nonqualified dividends. Qualified dividend earnings are tax-free for those in the 10% and 15% brackets, taxed at a 15% rate for those in the 25% up to 35% tax brackets, and taxed at a 20% rate for higher income taxpayers whose income surpasses the 35% tax bracket.  Nonqualified dividends only are taxed as ordinary income.  (Theoretically, a taxpayer with nonqualified dividend earnings who reached the top marginal federal income tax rate would be paying 39.6% tax on those earnings, but that's a condition that only applies to persons earning over several hundred thousand dollars per year.) dividends The list's reference to an "income payroll tax" increase from 37.4% to 52.2% is something of a mystery, as this is not a standard term for any type of government income- or payroll-related tax.  The only adjustment to payroll-related taxes resulting from the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was that a two-year old cut to payroll taxes which had previously reduced the rate from 6.2% to 4.2% for 2011 and 2012 was not extended.  Additionally, this item's coda claiming that "not one Republican voted to do these taxes" is completely false.  The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 passed Congress by a margin of 89-8 in the Senate with 40 Republican votes in favor, and a margin of 257-167 in the House with 85 Republican votes in favor. (The original claim undoubtedly refers to the House or Representatives' voting in 2010 to pass the health-care reform bill without a single Republican vote in favor, but that association is moot because, as noted, the tax increases listed above had nothing to do with that bill.) 89-8 257-167 health-care reform bill On 24 October 2016, health insurance broker Tyler McClosky created a phenomenon on Facebook when he posted a screen shot of what it would cost for a family of four with a total household income of $98,000 in Lee County, Florida, to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act's marketplace: We were able to recreate McClosky's viral post using the shopping tool at healthcare.gov and the same data he entered (two non-smoking parents with a combined income of $98,000 and two 8-year-old children in Lee County, Florida): tool   But data sent by a Department of Health and Human Services official pointed out that 81 percent of families of that size on an Obamacare plan have household incomes of less than $48,000. So the average family currently subscribing to Obamacare would not be paying nearly as much as the image above depicts in their out-of-pocket premium costs. We entered the same data but changed the income to $48,000 here:   McClosky created the post on 24 October 2016, the same day a report by the Department of Health and Human Services was released detailing an average 25 percent increase in costs to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) customers: customers Across states using the HealthCare.gov platform, the median increase in the second-lowest cost silver plan premium is 16 percent, while the average increase is 25 percent. This figure varies based on locale. For instance, a table compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that people in Phoenix, Arizona will have a 145 percent premium increase, but a tax subsidy will mean a 40-year-old, non-smoking Phoenix resident with a $30,000 annual income will not have to pay any more than last year (which is roughly $207 a month, depending on the plan selected). table According to data sent by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a majority of consumers covered by the ACA (85 percent) qualify for tax credits that keep pace with premium increases, so many won't see much of an impact on their out-of-pocket costs. data But McClosky was addressing people whose income disqualifies them from that assistance. He told us he used the $98,000 annual income as an example because that is the threshold at which households of four with two children do not qualify for tax credit assistance (you qualify if you make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line). He said he created the post because he wanted to raise awareness about what it costs to insure a family in which each adult is making an annual salary of $44,000, and neither has access to employer-based health care  a fairly common situation in the United States. His concern, he said, is that only consumers who qualify for a tax subsidy can afford insurance under ACA. If their incomes are too high to qualify for assistance, they may simply go without. While the number of uninsured Americans dropped under ACA, as of 2015, 28.5 million people still lack coverage. Per the Kaiser Family Foundation: Even under the ACA, many uninsured people cite the high cost of insurance as the main reason they lack coverage. In 2015, 46% of uninsured adults said that they tried to get coverage but did not because it was too expensive. Many people do not have access to coverage through a job, and some people, particularly poor adults in states that did not expand Medicaid, remain ineligible for financial assistance for coverage. Some people who are eligible for financial assistance under the ACA may not know they can get help, and others may still find the cost of coverage prohibitive. In addition, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid or Marketplace coverage. Eric Seiber, associate professor of health services management and policy at Ohio State, said that the health care system in the United States is the most expensive in the world, and costs have steadily increased over the years. Despite its name, the Affordable Care Act doesn't actually address the cost of health care itself: The ACA is not health care reform. Its health insurance reform. It really doesnt do that much about affordable care or patient protection beyond the subsidies and Medicaid. People's perception that their wages have been flat is an effect of compensation increases going to cover rising healthcare costs instead of into their paychecks, Seiber said. McClosky, who sells health and life insurance plans in Florida, said that the Affordable Care Act has had the effect of diminishing competition among carriers. For instance, Lee County residents can only purchase Blue Cross Blue Shield. Prices in Miami-Dade are lower than in Lee County, because there are more carriers competing with each other. McClosky says insurance carriers have been squeezed by part of the mandate which requires them to spend 80 to 85 percent on claim payouts and health care quality improvement. He pointed to Assurant, a 123-yea-old insurer that specialized in individual and small business plans. They could not survive under the ACA and filed for bankruptcy in 2015. Health care is a source of roiling political debate for years. While the cost of health plans under Obamacare will go up an average 25 percent as of 1 November 2016, the majority of consumers won't experience much change in their out-of-pocket costs when open enrollment starts for 2017, because the tax credits will buffer that increase. Further, as the New York Times pointed out, many Americans are shielded from the immediate costs of health care by employer-based insurance or the public programs: pointed out These increases really matter only for those who buy their own insurance. Most people are unaffected by the rate increases because they get their insurance through an employer or are covered through government programs like Medicare, Medicaid or the Department of Veterans Affairs. Only a small fraction of Americans who have insurance buy individual policies. There are about 10 million people in the Obamacare markets and around an additional seven million who buy health plans outside the marketplace, according to Obama administration estimates. The published rate increases apply only to people who shop in the markets, but premiums are expected to go up sharply for the other plans as well. However, as McClosky's post makes clear, whether people notice it or not, American health care costs are high  and not everyone can qualify for available assistance. Kaiser Family Foundation. "2017 Premium Changes and Insurer Participation in the Affordable Care Acts Health Insurance Marketplaces."
25 October 2016. ASPE Research Brief. "Health plan choice and premiums in the 2017 health insurance marketplace."
24 October 2016. Abelson, Reed, and Sanger-Katz, Margaret. "A Quick Guide to Rising Obamacare Rates."
The New York Times. 25 October 2016. Boulton, Guy. "Milwaukee-based Assurant Health to be sold off or shut down."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 28 April 2015. On 10 December 2015, the web site YourNewsWire.com published a video purportedly showing film acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick, who helmed such groundbreaking films as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, confessing to having helped NASA fake the Apollo program moon landings: published A stunning new video has emerged 15 years after Stanley Kubrick's death in which Kubrick admits that the NASA moon landings were faked. Filmmaker T. Patrick Murray interviewed Kubrick three days before his death in March 1999. He was forced to sign an 88-page NDA to keep the contents of the interview a secret for 15 years. Below is a transcript from the interview with Stanley Kubrick, in which the 2001 Space Odyssey Director admits on camera that, "the moon landings ALL were faked, and that I was the person who filmed it." In the interview, the alleged Stanley Kubrick figures confesses that: Kubrick: I perpetrated a huge fraud on the American public, which I am now about to detail, involving the United States government and NASA, that the moon landings were faked, that the moon landings ALL were faked , and that I was the person who filmed it. Murray: Ok. (laughs) What are you talking ... You're serious. Ok. Kubrick: I'm serious. Dead serious. Yes, it was fake. Murray: Why are you telling the world? Why does the world need to know that the moon landings aren't real and you faked them? Kubrick: I consider them to be my masterpiece. Murray: And you can' t take credit, or even talk about ... Kubrick: Well, I am now ... Murray: So, you can't talk to Roger Ebert about it. Does that frustrate you? Why did they have to fake it? Why would they have to do that? Kubrick: Because it is impossible to get there ... 2001 was very ambitious, but that's not to say that faking the moon landing was not ambitious. But I learned things from making 2001, and that's why I got this gig in the first place. Murray: That makes sense Kubrick: Well, it was easy for me, because I didn't think a whole lot about the morality of it. But I didn't. And I could see that Neil [Armstrong] was, he was bothered by it. This video has been circulating online since at least August 2015 and is one of several clips purportedly showing Kubrick talking about his alleged involvement in faking the U.S. moon landings. While there are various edits of this infamous (and fake) interview circulating on YouTube, the videos all originated with a new film from T. Patrick Murray titled Shooting Kubrick. film Murray claimed on the Shooting Kubrick web site that he was granted unprecedented access to interview the director in May 1999, which would have been quite an impressive feat since Kubrick had passed away two months earlier:Although the date could be a simple typographical error, that was not the only questionable aspect of the interview. The man being interviewed simply doesn't look or sound like Stanley Kubrick when compared to a video of the real Kubrick accepting the D.W. Griffith Award in 1997:  Furthermore, unedited versions of the interview contain hints that the "Stanley Kubrick" in the video is an actor. In a since-deleted clip, the interviewer called his subject "Tom" and instructed him on how to tell the next part of his story: "You don't say he said anything. You say what he says. Tom, I'm giving you directions. You don't have to imitate him (Richard Nixon). You're not reporting it. You're repeating it ... We're doing exposition here. That's how we're going to sneak it in." A spokesman for Kubrick's widow also proclaimed that "[t]he interview is a lie, Stanley Kubrick has never been interviewed by T.Patrick Murray the whole story is made up, fraudulent and untrue." T. Patrick Murray has not admitted that his interview with Stanley Kubrick is a hoax, but he certainly is banking the mystery's driving interest in his project: One of the arguments made by the Trump administration for lowering the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States is that the costs of refugee resettlement outweigh its benefits. lowering Estimates vary on the total annual cost of processing and resettling refugees in the U.S., but a rough breakdown by the National Conference of State Legislatures put the total expenditures for accepting approximately 70,000 refugees in 2014 at $582 million.These cost estimates rarely attempt to take into account any economic benefits refugees might provide to the countries that take them in. According to a Facebook meme making the rounds since mid-2018, just such an analysis was undertaken by the Trump administration, but the results were suppressed because they undercut the official position:A recently leaked federal study found that refugees to America brought in $63 billion in government revenues than they cost in the last 10 years. Trump chief policy adviser Stephen Miller banned the release of the study, because it contradicts his claim that refugees are too costly. Pass it on!A leaked document fitting that description was indeed published by the New York Times in September 2017. It was an early draft of a report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing, at the president's request, the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Times noted that:The internal study, which was completed in late July but never publicly released, found that refugees contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion.All in all, the report said, the net fiscal impact of refugees over the 10-year period was positive, not negative, to the tune of $63 billion at all levels of government:The study concluded that refugees on average had a net fiscal impact "comparable" to that of the general population:The per capita annual net fiscal benefit was $2,205 for refugees and $1,848 for the general U.S. population, a difference not likely to be significant given margins of error and other limitations of this study. Expenditures for the general U.S. population were on average higher than expenditures for refugees, while revenues were more comparable.However, none of this information was contained in the final report delivered to the President, the Times reported, noting that some of the refugee program's proponents believed the results of the study were "suppressed" internally. Administration officials characterized those results as illegitimate:This leak was delivered by someone with an ideological agenda, not someone looking at hard data, said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. The actual report pursuant to the presidential memorandum shows that refugees with few skills coming from war-torn countries take more government benefits from the Department of Health and Human Services than the average population, and are not a net benefit to the U.S. economy.John Graham, the acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the health department, said: We do not comment on allegedly leaked documents and that no report had been finalized. He noted that Mr. Trumps memorandum seeks an analysis related to the cost of refugee programs. Therefore, the only analysis in the scope of H.H.S.s response to the memo would be on refugee-related expenditures from data within H.H.S. programs.The three-page report the agency ultimately submitted, dated Sept. 5, does just that, using government data to compare the costs of refugees to Americans and making no mention of revenues contributed by refugees.The Times also said that according to White House sources, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reputed to be the chief architect of the administration's immigration policies, "personally intervened" to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees, and not the fiscal benefits thereof, were enumerated in the final report. (According to the New Yorker, the White House denied that Miller was involved in producing the report.)The Facebook meme is largely accurate, then, although it somewhat mischaracterizes what became of the original draft report. It wasn't "banned" from release, in that it doesn't appear the report was ever intended to be made public. It was allegedly suppressed, however, in that it never reached President Trump's desk, and all discussion of the fiscal benefits of admitting refugees into the United States was excised from the final document.  Estimates vary on the total annual cost of processing and resettling refugees in the U.S., but a rough breakdown by the National Conference of State Legislatures put the total expenditures for accepting approximately 70,000 refugees in 2014 at $582 million. breakdown These cost estimates rarely attempt to take into account any economic benefits refugees might provide to the countries that take them in. According to a Facebook meme making the rounds since mid-2018, just such an analysis was undertaken by the Trump administration, but the results were suppressed because they undercut the official position: A recently leaked federal study found that refugees to America brought in $63 billion in government revenues than they cost in the last 10 years. Trump chief policy adviser Stephen Miller banned the release of the study, because it contradicts his claim that refugees are too costly. Pass it on!   A leaked document fitting that description was indeed published by the New York Times in September 2017. It was an early draft of a report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing, at the president's request, the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Times noted that: document The internal study, which was completed in late July but never publicly released, found that refugees contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion. All in all, the report said, the net fiscal impact of refugees over the 10-year period was positive, not negative, to the tune of $63 billion at all levels of government:  The study concluded that refugees on average had a net fiscal impact "comparable" to that of the general population: The per capita annual net fiscal benefit was $2,205 for refugees and $1,848 for the general U.S. population, a difference not likely to be significant given margins of error and other limitations of this study. Expenditures for the general U.S. population were on average higher than expenditures for refugees, while revenues were more comparable. However, none of this information was contained in the final report delivered to the President, the Times reported, noting that some of the refugee program's proponents believed the results of the study were "suppressed" internally. Administration officials characterized those results as illegitimate: This leak was delivered by someone with an ideological agenda, not someone looking at hard data, said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. The actual report pursuant to the presidential memorandum shows that refugees with few skills coming from war-torn countries take more government benefits from the Department of Health and Human Services than the average population, and are not a net benefit to the U.S. economy. John Graham, the acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the health department, said: We do not comment on allegedly leaked documents and that no report had been finalized. He noted that Mr. Trumps memorandum seeks an analysis related to the cost of refugee programs. Therefore, the only analysis in the scope of H.H.S.s response to the memo would be on refugee-related expenditures from data within H.H.S. programs. The three-page report the agency ultimately submitted, dated Sept. 5, does just that, using government data to compare the costs of refugees to Americans and making no mention of revenues contributed by refugees. The Times also said that according to White House sources, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reputed to be the chief architect of the administration's immigration policies, "personally intervened" to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees, and not the fiscal benefits thereof, were enumerated in the final report. (According to the New Yorker, the White House denied that Miller was involved in producing the report.) denied The Facebook meme is largely accurate, then, although it somewhat mischaracterizes what became of the original draft report. It wasn't "banned" from release, in that it doesn't appear the report was ever intended to be made public. It was allegedly suppressed, however, in that it never reached President Trump's desk, and all discussion of the fiscal benefits of admitting refugees into the United States was excised from the final document. Blitzer, Jonathan.  "How Stephen Miller Single-Handedly Got the U.S. to Accept Fewer Refugees."
  The New Yorker.  13 October 2017. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld.  "Trump to Cap Refugees Allowed into U.S. at 30,000, a Record Low."
  The New York Times.  17 September 2018. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld and Somini Sengupta.  "Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees."
  The New York Times.  18 September 2017. Phillips, Amber.  "Here's How Much the United States Spends on Refugees."
  The Washington Post.  20 November 2015. The New York Times.  "Rejected Report Shows Revenue Brought in by Refugees."
  19 September 2017. Democrats searching for the right combination of punches to drive Scott Walker from office have focused on joblessness, schools, tax fairness and leadership style.One of the jabs they throw repeatedly centers on cuts Walkers 2011-13 budget made in state aid to local school districts.Kathleen Falk, the best-known Democrat so far in the likely 2012 gubernatorial recall election, tried to land a roundhouse right as she becamethe first announced candidate.The former Dane County executive told a Feb. 8, 2012 audience in La Crosse that Walker has divided us instead of united us.He's done it with the wrong choices,Falk said, according to a WXOW-TV online story. He gave big tax breaks for a few and then made the biggest cuts to education in our state's history.The states history covers a long time.Are Walkers cuts truly the largest ever?We have already looked at several statements about Walkers education budget.We gave state Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, aMostly Falsefor saying Walkers property tax freeze would cost schools $1.6 billion in revenue. It was about half that, according to the most common accounting.We labeledMostly Falsea claim from Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller that Wisconsin enacted the most drastic cuts to K-12 public schools of any state in the nation. At the time, the study he cited looked at only 24 states, not all 50.Now we have Falks claim.It is bold, but it actually is narrowly drawn, referring specifically to cuts in state aid -- a number easy to track and measure.Asked for backup, Falks campaign said she was referring not just to state aid to local schools, but cuts in state funding to the university system and technical colleges. And she meant the biggest cut ever in raw dollars, according to campaign spokesman Scot Ross.To be sure, Walker made two other moves that affected school budgets: A virtual freeze on schools ability to increase property taxes to make up for lost aid, and collective bargaining limits that allowed many districts to cut costs by imposing larger contributions from workers towards health insurance and pensions.But Falks statement was not about net impact, just the state funding side of the equation.Falks campaign did not provide a total of the education cuts, nor provide any history of funding cuts other than to say they had found none bigger.We did the math and found $792 million in aid cuts to school districts, $250 million in reduced aid to the university system and $71.6 million from the tech colleges.Total: $1.11 billion.Looking at it in terms of raw dollars limits the usefulness of any comparison, given inflation. That said, lets look back.Local schoolsWalkers budget was not the first to cut education aid, though any cut is rare.Facing a massive projected shortfall, lawmakers and then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, approved cutting $284 million from aid to school districts in the 2009-11 budget.The cut under Doyle was the first ever, according to Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a nonpartisan research group that tracks the history of aid changes.We couldnt confirm that, but went back to the mid 1980s and found no evidence of a cut. If there was one earlier than that, it couldnt rival Walkers -- unless a previous governor cut 100 percent of the school aid budget, which was much smaller then.Walkers $792 million cut was much larger in raw dollars than the $284 million cut in 2009, and as a percentage -- 7.4 percent vs. 2.6 percent.In the first year under Walkers budget, nearly all districts lost aid, and the median decrease was 9.9 percent, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.University systemDoyle and Walker cut identical amounts -- $250 million -- from the base budget of the UW system. The cut under Doyle was in 2003-05.The cut under Doyle was a bigger percentage cut than Walkers because the university systems biennial budget from state taxes grew from about $2 billion to $2.3 billion between 2003 to 2011.On the other hand, Walkers cut was deeper if you factor all the budget adjustments to the state-tax-supported portion of UWs budget, according to Dave Loppnow, an education funding expert at the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.For instance, UW got more state funding for things like rising fuel and utility costs, offsetting some of the $250 million funding cut. By this measure, it was about an 8 percent reduction by Doyle, and 9 percent under Walker.Loppnow said the $250 million base-budget cuts under both governors were the largest ever in raw dollars.Tech schoolsWalker proposed, and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed, a 30 percent cut in general aid to the states technical college system. That amounted to $71.6 million over two years.The tech college system found records dating to 1991 that showed only one other general aid cut  -- a 0.5 percent trim in 2007.As we noted in arecent item, that general aid is only 12 percent of the tech systems funding, which relies heavily on property taxes.So, in the big picture, there have been very few instances of cuts to education, with all of them coming in recent years as deficits mounted.What makes the Walker cuts stand out is the combination -- in the same budget -- of reductions across the three levels of education: kindergarten-12th grade; tech colleges; and the universities.In 2003-05, when the UW took a hit, Doyle and lawmakers boosted the K-12 budget by 1 percent, or $115 million. And the tech colleges general state aid was not reduced.As we noted, there were many other changes in the budget.Notably, Walker sharply curtailed collective bargaining rights for public employees, including university and local school employees.That allowed local school districts to save at least $200 million in pension costs because most districts put in place a pension change made possible by the budget, according toLegislative Fiscal Bureau estimates, school officials and our calculations.The savings to districts from changes to health insurance premiums were significant in some cases, but vary widely by district; no statewide cost savings estimate is available.But some districts, due to existing union contracts and other reasons, were not able to benefit from the health insurance changes. That underlines an element essential aspect of Falks statement: The state controls its aid, but not what is done at the local level.Our conclusionFalk claimed Walkers cuts in state support to local schools, tech colleges and public universities amount to the largest in state history.We found previous cuts in those areas, but not in all three in the same year, and not nearly as deep when you roll them all together as has Falk.We rate her statement True. Alex Trebek's net worth became the subject of strange online advertisements in the weeks following his death. The husband, father, and "Jeopardy" game show host died on Nov. 8, 2020, following a battle with advanced pancreatic cancer. death The ad in question read: "Alex Trebek's Net Worth Left His Family In Tears." This was false.  Misleading, baseless, and false.  The ads were sponsored by LifeExact, The Financial Mag, Travel Patriot, and perhaps others, and were routed through Zemanta, which is owned by Outbrain. Crunchbase defined Outbrain as "a content discovery platform providing publishers a service for recommended links to increase traffic and generate revenue." Outbrain (via Zemanta) provided the technology that allowed the Trebek ads to appear, while LifeExact, The Financial Mag, and Travel Patriot hosted the landing pages. The landing pages featured an image slideshow, with one celebrity name and net worth figure per page. The slideshow story was headlined as: "52 Celebrities & Their Huge Net Worth  Chadwick Boseman's Net Worth Left Us in Disbelief." defined The "net worth left family in tears" advertising lure has also been used by advertising networks exploiting the names of Kenny Rogers, Sean Connery, and Pat Sajak. However, Sajak is still alive, and as of this writing is on the first page of the "52 Celebrities" slideshow. Kenny Rogers Sean Connery first page While the headline claimed the story was about 52 celebrities, including Chadwick Boseman, who died on Aug. 28, 2020, Boseman did not show up until after 140 clicks, on slide 140. Trebek appeared after 141 clicks, on slide 141. His page was the end of the slideshow. Trebek's page did not appear to acknowledge his cancer or passing. The page, which claimed his net worth was $50 million, was likely created in the past, and may have been moved along with Boseman's page to the end of the 141-page slideshow after their deaths. slide 140 slide 141 page The one-item-per-click slideshow model is known in the online advertising world as "arbitrage." On the business and technology blog Margins, run by Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk, Roy defined arbitrage as "leveraging an inefficient set of systems to make a riskless profit, usually by buying and selling the same asset." He also called it "the mythical free lunch that economics tells us does not exist." Margins In arbitrage, the advertising network's goal is to make more money on the ads displayed to readers who click through the slideshow than it costs to advertise the false "net worth left his family in tears" claim that lured them to it. As the family grieved Trebek's passing, on Nov. 11, his wife, Jean, shared a heartfelt message with a photograph from their wedding day. She posted to Instagram: posted My family and I sincerely thank you all for your compassionate messages and generosity. Your expressions have truly touched our hearts. Thank you so very, very much. Many Blessings to all,Jean Trebek In sum, the ads claiming that Alex Trebek's net worth "left his family in tears" were misleading and false. 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 Claim:  Congress has eliminated the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit (EITC), and mortgage deductions from the tax code under pressure from lobby groups and the Koch brothers.  Example:  [Collected via Twitter, November 2014] Are u kidding!? Congress Eliminates Child Tax Credit, Mortgage Deduction & E.I.T.C   Origins:  On 11 November 2014, the National Report published an article claiming a "heavy burst of lobbying" by groups including the Koch brothers' Koch Industries preceded a vote whereby Congress rescinded several common tax breaks long afforded to millions of Americans.  article According to the article, the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction were all forms of "entitlement payouts" that had been eliminated beginning with the 2014 fiscal year to allow "job creators" to flourish: The deeply unpopular congress, whose approval rating hovers around a historic low of 10%, has voted to remove the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction from the tax code starting with the 2014 fiscal year. The move is almost assured to solidify the perception of the 113rd Congress of the United States as deeply disconnected from the struggles and desires of the populace it is supposed to serve.  The move, long championed by entitlement reform advocates like congressman Paul Ryan R-Wisconsin and Ted Cruz R-Texas, will cut entitlement payouts by a staggering 177 billion dollars. 54.33 billion dollars in savings will be realized from discontinuing the earned income tax credit, which generally pays those making less than 12 thousand dollars yearly large cash tax rebates far in excess of the actual tax they paid. 69.7 billion will be saved from the mortgage interest tax deduction, which critics say primarily favors top income earners. The elimination of the child tax credit, which critics say serves no fair purpose, will result in an additional 54 billion dollar savings. The article was nothing but a chain-yanking spoof, however: The National Report is a well-known fake news outlet notorious for publishing click-baiting, completely false stories such as "15 Year Old Who 'SWATTED' Gamer Convicted of Domestic Terrorism," "Solar Panels Drain the Sun's Energy, Experts Say," and "Vince Gilligan Announces Breaking Bad Season 6." 15 Year Old Who 'SWATTED' Gamer Convicted of Domestic Terrorism Solar Panels Drain the Sun's Energy, Experts Say Vince Gilligan Announces Breaking Bad Season 6 The article also quoted economist "Paul Horner" on Congress' purported tax credit repeal.  If that name sounds familiar, it's because Paul Horner is a National Report writer whose name is used as a recurring character in various stories published by the site.     Last updated:  13 November 2014 < At a Texas Capitol rally, an anti-abortion advocate suggested Texas has hit a record pace in funding womens health. Videoof the July 2015 rally showsJoe Pojmanof the Texas Alliance for Life initially saluting Republican leaders for launching investigations in reaction to stealth videos showing Planned Parenthood employees talking rather casually about donations of fetal tissue. The videos had been circulated by the California-based Center for Medical Progress,which describes itselfas a group of citizen-journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics. Next, Pojman told the crowd, to cheers and applause: I just wanted to emphasize, the state of Texas is doing its part... The state of Texas is funding  womens health services at historically high levels; they just increased that level another $50 million for the next two years. Pojman noted that none of the $50 million would go to Planned Parenthood. Texas takes care of our people and Planned Parenthood is not part of that picture, he said. Legislative cuts and changes, 2011-2013 Pojmans declaration caught our attention in part because actions set in motion by the 2011 Legislature drove down family planning spending in the state budget by more than $70 million (from an existing two-year expenditure of $111 million) in 2012-13. Also in 2011, lawmakers voted to bar state family planning aid from going to health care providers affiliated with organizations that perform or promote abortions such as Planned Parenthood, whose clinics had been the Texas programs biggest provider of contraceptive care and cancer screening, serving more than 40,000 women a year. Two years later, the state's ruling Republicans passed into law a bar on most abortions after 20 weeks of gestation and mandated facilities providing abortions meet tougher health and safety standards, a move under court challenge that has caused providers to predict a substantial reduction in clinics statewide. After the 2011 actions, the federal government moved to cut off what had been a 9-to-1 match of federal to state dollars paying to provide contraceptive care for women who otherwise would qualify for Medicaid if they were to become pregnant. State health officials said the affected initiative, launched in 2005, had saved the state money$21.4 million in 2008, for instanceby reducing Medicaid-financed births. Federal aid accounted for $65 million of the money spent on the program in 2010-11. Reacting to the pending cutoff, then-Gov. Rick Perry announced state officials would assure such services were delivered through clinics not affiliated with abortion providers. The promised transition fully played out starting in 2013. So, given all this, could it be the state has set a record for expenditures on womens health? Pojmans backup cites state budgets We asked Pojman, executive director of the alliance, whichsaysit opposes the advocacy and practice of abortion (except to preserve the pregnant womans life), how he reached his historically high conclusion. By email, Pojman responded with achart, which he sourced to state budgets, indicating that nearly $285 million in state and federal funds budgeted by the 2015 Legislature for several womens health efforts in 2016-17 would exceed such spending in each of the nine previous two-year state budgets, dating to 1998-99with the previous record being $240.1 million for such programs in 2014-15. The previous low, per the chart, was $128.8 million in 2012-13. Pojmans chart attributed the touted $50 million in fresh spending to a provision in the 2016-17 budget stating the money should increase access to women's health and family planning services. In his email, Pojman told us that at the rally, he was referring to total legislatively appropriated state and federal funding, not per-person funding, on four programs providing family planning or female-specific health care such as breast and cervical cancer screenings. Conversely, he said, he wasnt including funding for perinatal care, including childbirth. Planned Parenthood, he said, provides virtually no services for pregnant women, certainly not support for childbirth, except elective abortion. Four state-overseen efforts In his email, Pojman said aFebruary 2014 Texas Health and Human Services Commission presentationamounted to a good summary of how the state spends money on womens health. From that, we pulled these thumbnails: The Texas Womens Health Program was put in place by the state starting in 2013 to provide services previously available through the defunct, federally supported Medicaid Womens Health Program. The successor program, serving women living at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, retains the same program objectives and client eligibility previously provided by WHP and has expanded program benefits to include treatment of certain sexually transmitted infections. Services offered in annual appointments include pelvic examinations and STD, diabetes, HIV, cholesterol, blood pressure and breast and cervical cancer screenings plus Pap tests, a clinical breast exam, contraceptives and family planning counseling. Family planning services, available to women of childbearing age and men living at 250 percent of the poverty level or less, offering the tests offered in the womens health program plus sterilizations. Expanded Primary Health Care, a new program, offered to women 18 and older living at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, covering the services offered in the other programs plus immunizations, mammograms, diagnostic services for women with abnormal breast or cervical cancer test results, cervical dysplasia treatment, individualized case management and option prenatal medical and dental services. Breast and Cervical Cancer Services, open to women living at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, with breast screenings for women aged 50 to 64 and cervical screenings for women aged 21 to 64. In addition to services covered by the Expanded Primary Health Care program, BCCS assists clients needing to apply to Medicaids Breast and Cervical Cancer program. In addition, a chart in the presentation included spending figures that mostly aligned with what Pojman had offered to us for fiscal 2010 through 2015--including the legislated decrease in 2012-13 and a rebound in spending budgeted for 2014-15 (which ran through August 2015):  SOURCE:Presentation to Senate Committee on Health and Human Services: Texas Womens Health and Family Planning Programs,Feb. 20, 2014 (received by email from Joe Pojman, Aug. 6, 2015) Other analyses support claim Next, we asked the commission and outside experts about Pojmans rally statement. The consensus was that spending budgeted by lawmakers for 2016-17 would set a record, though some advocates cautioned this didnt mean all needs would be met and others said that not all the described programs focus only on services typically provided by family planning clinics. To our inquiry, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission emailed amore detailed chartbasically lining up with Pojmans recap. From the commissions figures, it looked to us like the appropriated 2016-17 funds for womens health services exceeded previous two-year expenditures by $40 million or more. At the the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for programs serving low-income residents, analyst Stacey Pogue said Pojman was on solid ground, though its complicated. For instance, Pogue said, the 2015 Legislature called for three womens health programs to be reorganized in 2016 into two offerings overseen by the commission and precise spending results remain to be seen. By email, Pogue pointed out a two-pagesummary of the 2016-17 state budgetprepared by theTexas Womens Healthcare Coalition, which says it promotes access to preventive health care for all Texas women working toward the vision of a state where every woman has access to the preventive and preconception care that will help her stay healthy and prepare for healthy, planned pregnancies. According to this June 2015 summary, $260.9 million in spending on womens health care budgeted by lawmakers for 2016-17 reflected an increase of $46.5 million, or 22 percent, from what was budgeted for 2014-15. We confirmed the latest figures inthe 2016-17 appropriations act approved by a Texas House-Senate conference committee; it shows $130,321,510 in budgeted spending on womens health services in the fiscal year beginning Sept. 1, 2015, and $130,548,682 for the subsequent year, totaling $260,870,192 in the biennium. As noted by Pojman, the act also says that each year, on approval of the budget board, the commission shall allocate $50 million providing primary health care services to women including but not limited to preventive health screenings such as breast and cervical cancer screenings, diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension and STD-HIV screenings; family planning services including contraception; perinatal services; and dental services. Due to such spending, the act estimates that annually, 65,000 adults and adolescents would receive family planning services. Its that additional spending, the coalition summary indicates, that makes the budgeted spending higher despite legislated reductions in spending for family planning (a cut of $1.5 million, or nearly 4 percent) and the Texas Womens Health program (a cut of $2 million, or 3 percent). Alabama analyst Also to our inquiry, Heather Busby of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, whichsaysit focuses on guaranteeing Texans the right to make personal reproductive health decisions including contraception and safe abortions, suggested we queryKari White, a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor and expert on womens health issues whos been part of aTexas-based teamstudying effects of the Texas decision barring aid to clinics affiliated with abortion providers. By phone and email, White agreed the state has allocated what looks like a record level of money to the efforts singled out by Pojman though she speculated by email the spending bump might be less dramatic than available figures suggest. The focus on funding allocated for the four programs on Pojmans list, White said, does not entirely capture how some of the womens health services historically have been paid for. For example, primary care services for women that are now covered by EPHC were previously paid for using other state-administered and federal programs (not included on Pojmans list). By not factoring these programs into funding totals in previous years, the recent increase may seem larger than it actually is. Spending per woman Also, White wrote, funding allocations do not reflect how effectively these programs are serving women. In other words, there may be more total dollars set aside for services, but since quite a bit of this new funding has been going to organizations that do not have a lot of experience with family planning, the state is spending more but not necessarily serving more women. White suggested we consider research by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes reproductive health and abortion rights. In 2013, more than 1.7 million Texas women were in need of publicly supported contraceptive services and supplies, according to a July 2015 institute reportthat started fromU.S. Census Bureau survey results. That year, the report said, publicly supported health centers provided contraceptive care to 281,170 women in Texas plus 47,390 teens. These totals amount to substantial proportionsbut not nearly allof the women in need of publicly supported contraception, the report said. For our part, we asked the commission for help estimating the number of Texas women eligible for the health services. Could it be that even with spending up, less money is available per potential beneficiary? By email, spokesman Bryan Black provided achart, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau surveys, estimating the number of female U.S. citizens aged 15-44 living in Texas at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level from 2010 through 2017--in other words, the women who most likely would qualify for the health services. Next, we calculated that some $109 per potential beneficiary was spent in 2010-11 and 2012-13; this was exceeded by the $205 per potential beneficiary appropriated by lawmakers for such programs in 2014-15 and the $236 per potential beneficiary appropriated for 2016-17. Our ruling Pojman said the state of Texas is funding  womens health services at historically high levels; they just increased their level another $50 million for the next two years. Texas lawmakers this year voted to appropriate more for womens health services than before--including the $50 million bump. This includes funding for general health services such as diabetes and cholesterol screenings. It also may be meaningful that programs are under reorganization. Too, lawmakers started putting more money on the table after their actions led the federal government to cut off tens of millions of dollars for reproductive services. We rate this claim True. TRUE The statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. During ongoing national debate over a novel policy of separating families at the border, a photograph circulated (originally from Joshua Feuerstein, a self-styled "American evangelist, Internet and social media personality" who last made headlines in 2015 when he manufactured a so-called "Christmas cup controversy") that purportedly depicted a room full of immigrant children that former President Barack Obama had supposedly removed from their parents' custody: novel policy a photograph circulated self-styled Christmas cup controversy immigrant children The attached text read:As you stare at this picture of innocent children being separated from their parents at the border and feel your hatred toward President Trump start to boil over from the bowels of your soul...I'd just like to point out it was taken in 2014 .. when Obama was President! #shareSome versions were shared with no accompanying text, inviting readers to project their own interpretation onto the image:Images of its type (dated to the Obama administration) were often described as having been ignored at the time they were originally taken. However, this image did appear in anti-immigration memes from 2014 and 2015, such as one framing the photograph as evidence the Obama administration (described here as a "cabal") was encouraging ("seducing") immigrant ("illegal alien") children to come to the United States:The meme's text read:INSIDE AN OBAMA APPROVED REFUGEE CAMP140,000 Illegal Alien Children Seduced into coming to America By the Obama Cabal. MORE COMING NEXT YEAR TOOHey Obama.. Why not use the FEMA CAMPS??Or are those being prepped for Patriot Resistance Fighters!!The first iteration we could find of that image was alongside a 5 June 2014 post published by Breitbart. Although Breitbart shared the photograph on Facebook on 21 June 2018, the outlet did not include a link to its earlier reporting. In its original article, the children were described as "unaccompanied," indicating that they came without their parents, not that they were separated from their families by American authorities:Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil.The photograph was subsequently disseminated by numerous web sites and news outlets. National Review's "Immigration Bedlam" said of the children in the photo:Some 6,775 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crossed the U.S.Mexican border in 2011, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement reports. (The first bar in the ORRs chart, above, should read 20032011.) ORR expects 60,000 UACs this year. This number could reach 130,000 in 2015. Detaining them for $252 each, per day, will cost taxpayers $453.6 million per month this year and could cost $982.8 million per month next year.The image and events around it were widely reported for several months, appearing in the Houston Chronicle, Splinter News, the Los Angeles Times, Mashable, and Reuters, among others.Stories during that time specifically reiterated that the photographs showed unaccompanied minor children in the custody of United States Customs and Border Protection and temporarily housed at a Texas Air Force base:The photos have a timestamp of May 27, 2014.A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency has not officially released any photos at this time in order to protect the rights and privacy of unaccompanied minors in our care.... A temporary shelter at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has housed and provided services to 1,820 unaccompanied minors from Central America since May 18, San Antonio Express-News reporter Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje reported. The immigration is part of a surge of children said to be fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries, she reported.Although the photograph is real, it does not show children separated from their parents by the Obama administration. In June 2014, the image was published as part of numerous news stories (and occasionally alongside editorial pieces objecting to the presence of the unaccompanied minor children.) The image did not develop a different backstory until June 2018, during a controversy that specifically involved family separation at the behest of the Trump administration.  The attached text read: As you stare at this picture of innocent children being separated from their parents at the border and feel your hatred toward President Trump start to boil over from the bowels of your soul...I'd just like to point out it was taken in 2014 .. when Obama was President! #share Some versions were shared with no accompanying text, inviting readers to project their own interpretation onto the image: Images of its type (dated to the Obama administration) were often described as having been ignored at the time they were originally taken. However, this image did appear in anti-immigration memes from 2014 and 2015, such as one framing the photograph as evidence the Obama administration (described here as a "cabal") was encouraging ("seducing") immigrant ("illegal alien") children to come to the United States: described   The meme's text read: INSIDE AN OBAMA APPROVED REFUGEE CAMP 140,000 Illegal Alien Children Seduced into coming to America By the Obama Cabal. MORE COMING NEXT YEAR TOO Hey Obama.. Why not use the FEMA CAMPS??Or are those being prepped for Patriot Resistance Fighters!! The first iteration we could find of that image was alongside a 5 June 2014 post published by Breitbart. Although Breitbart shared the photograph on Facebook on 21 June 2018, the outlet did not include a link to its earlier reporting. In its original article, the children were described as "unaccompanied," indicating that they came without their parents, not that they were separated from their families by American authorities: published Breitbart Breitbart unaccompanied Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil. The photograph was subsequently disseminated by numerous web sites and news outlets. National Review's "Immigration Bedlam" said of the children in the photo: National Review Immigration Bedlam Some 6,775 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crossed the U.S.Mexican border in 2011, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement reports. (The first bar in the ORRs chart, above, should read 20032011.) ORR expects 60,000 UACs this year. This number could reach 130,000 in 2015. Detaining them for $252 each, per day, will cost taxpayers $453.6 million per month this year and could cost $982.8 million per month next year. The image and events around it were widely reported for several months, appearing in the Houston Chronicle, Splinter News, the Los Angeles Times, Mashable, and Reuters, among others. widely reported Houston Chronicle Splinter News Los Angeles Times Mashable Reuters Stories during that time specifically reiterated that the photographs showed unaccompanied minor children in the custody of United States Customs and Border Protection and temporarily housed at a Texas Air Force base: The photos have a timestamp of May 27, 2014. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency has not officially released any photos at this time in order to protect the rights and privacy of unaccompanied minors in our care. ... A temporary shelter at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has housed and provided services to 1,820 unaccompanied minors from Central America since May 18, San Antonio Express-News reporter Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje reported. The immigration is part of a surge of children said to be fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries, she reported. Although the photograph is real, it does not show children separated from their parents by the Obama administration. In June 2014, the image was published as part of numerous news stories (and occasionally alongside editorial pieces objecting to the presence of the unaccompanied minor children.) The image did not develop a different backstory until June 2018, during a controversy that specifically involved family separation at the behest of the Trump administration. family separation DeRuy, Emily and Jorge Rivas.  "Disturbing Photos Allegedly Show Texas Border Patrol Facility Packed With Immigrant Children."
  Splinter.  6 June 2014. Darby, Brandon.  "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused In Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed."
  Breitbart.  5 June 2014. Hennessy-Fiske, Molly.  "Hundreds Of Migrant Youths Held At Texas Military Base."
  Los Angeles Times.  5 June 2014. Murdock, Deroy.  "Immigration Bedlam."
  National Review.   13 June 2014. Parker, Kolten.  "Leaked Photos Show Immigrant Children Packed In Crowded Texas Border Facilities."
  Houston Chronicle.  6 June 2014. Roug, Louise.  "How The U.S. Border Became A Humanitarian Crisis."
  Mashable.  8 July 2014. Reuters.  "U.S. To Open Third Military Base To Illegal Child Immigrants."
  9 June 2014 A story about Helen Keller, a civil rights activist and lecturer despite being blind and deaf, her teacher the partially blind Anne Sullivan Macy (referred to hereafter as Sullivan), and an unnamed maid whose alleged act of kindness changed Sullivan's and Keller's lives, has been a topic of conversation for decades. In 2021, the following lengthy parable was shared on social media, along with a photograph supposedly showing Sullivan and Keller: The story reads:   Dr. Frank Mayfield was touring Tewksbury Institute when, on his way out, he accidentally collided with an elderly floor maid. To cover the awkward moment Dr. Mayfield started asking questions. "How long have you worked here?" "I've worked here almost since the place opened," the maid replied. "What can you tell me about the history of this place?" he asked. "I don't think I can tell you anything, but I could show you something." With that, she took his hand and led him down to the basement under the oldest section of the building. She pointed to one of what looked like small prison cells, their iron bars rusted with age, and said, "That's the cage where they used to keep Annie Sullivan." "Who's Annie?" the doctor asked. Annie was a young girl who was brought in here because she was incorrigiblenobody could do anything with her. She'd bite and scream and throw her food at people. The doctors and nurses couldn't even examine her or anything. I'd see them trying with her spitting and scratching at them. "I was only a few years younger than her myself and I used to think, 'I sure would hate to be locked up in a cage like that.' I wanted to help her, but I didn't have any idea what I could do. I mean, if the doctors and nurses couldn't help her, what could someone like me do? "I didn't know what else to do, so I just baked her some brownies one night after work. The next day I brought them in. I walked carefully to her cage and said, 'Annie, I baked these brownies just for you. I'll put them right here on the floor and you can come and get them if you want.' "Then I got out of there just as fast as I could because I was afraid she might throw them at me. But she didn't. She actually took the brownies and ate them. After that, she was just a little bit nicer to me when I was around. And sometimes I'd talk to her. Once, I even got her laughing. One of the nurses noticed this and she told the doctor. They asked me if I'd help them with Annie. I said I would if I could. So that's how it came about that. Every time they wanted to see Annie or examine her, I went into the cage first and explained and calmed her down and held her hand. This is how they discovered that Annie was almost blind." After they'd been working with her for about a yearand it was tough sledding with Anniethe Perkins institute for the Blind opened its doors. They were able to help her and she went on to study and she became a teacher herself. Annie came back to the Tewksbury Institute to visit, and to see what she could do to help out. At first, the Director didn't say anything and then he thought about a letter he'd just received. A man had written to him about his daughter. She was absolutely unrulyalmost like an animal. She was blind and deaf as well as 'deranged.' He was at his wit's end, but he didn't want to put her in an asylum. So he wrote the Institute to ask if they knew of anyone who would come to his house and work with his daughter. And that is how Annie Sullivan became the lifelong companion of Helen Keller. When Helen Keller received the Nobel Prize, she was asked who had the greatest impact on her life and she said, "Annie Sullivan." But Annie said, "No Helen. The woman who had the greatest influence on both our lives was a floor maid at the Tewksbury Institute." This is a genuine photograph of Sullivan and Keller, and there is a lot of truth in this story. Sullivan really was partially blind, and she lived the early part of her life at an overcrowded facility in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, where conditions were deplorable. Sullivan was also educated at the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and would later become Helen Keller's teacher. The portion of this story about an anonymous maid's act of kindness are unverified, however, and the closing anecdote about Sullivan's response to Keller's Nobel Prize statement is factually impossible.  The above-displayed anecdote is a near-verbatim reproduction of an article entitled "People Make the Place" by Leah Curtin, a registered nurse, that was published in the 1993 issue of Nursing Management Magazine. Curtin's version starts with two introductory paragraphs claiming that she heard this story from Dr. Frank Mayfield, a neurosurgeon who founded the Mayfield Clinic in Ohio, while she was a nursing student. It should be noted that this is not a contemporaneous story, but a third-hand retelling of a story the author (Curtin) reportedly heard "about 100 years ago" from a doctor (Mayfield) who supposedly heard it from an unnamed maid. People Make the Place neurosurgeon who founded the Mayfield Clinic While it is certainly possible that Mayfield heard some version of this story from a maid while touring the Tewksbury Almshouse, the quotes in this story are fabricated. And while it's possible that a maid at the Tewksbury almshouse showed some kindness to a young Sullivan, we have not been able to find any other sources to confirm this anecdote. The early years of Sullivan's life were difficult, to say the least. She was born in 1866 to two Irish immigrants who came to America during the Great Famine. At the age of 5, she suffered severe vision loss after contracting trachoma. When her mother died a few years later, her father abandoned Sullivan and her siblings at a poorhouse in Tewksbury.   The American Foundation for the Blind described the conditions at the Tewksbury Almshouse, writing: American Foundation for the Blind Tewksbury was infamous throughout the state of Massachusetts. By 1874, the population included alcoholics requiring treatment, as well as those labeled "pauper insane." The largest group were poor immigrants from Europe. During Anne's time at Tewksbury, the majority of these were Irish Catholics. Rumors circulated throughout the state about cruelty to inmates at the institution, sexually perverted practices, and even cannibalism. Author Nella Braddy provided a detailed account of Sullivan's stay at Tewksbury (one that relied in part from Sullivan's own memory) in her 1933 book "Anne Sullivan Macy: The Story Behind Helen Keller." Braddy writes that Sullivan and her brother spent their first night at the poorhouse in a "cell" that was primarily used as the "dead house": Anne Sullivan Macy: The Story Behind Helen Keller The two children spent the first night in a small dark enclosure at one end of the ward. There was one bed in it, a table, and an altar. This enclosure, though they did not know it and would not have been troubled if they had, was the dead house into which corpses were wheeled to wait for burial. They slept together, unhaunted by the shades of the old women who had spent their last moments above the sod lying, just as they were lying, with their faces to the ceiling. But perhaps the ghosts were not there. With the wide world to choose from it is not likely that any of them had lingered in this sad, drab, dreary little cell. After they were processed the following morning, Sullivan and her brother were moved to the women's ward (a compromise to let the two children stay together) where they had a "cot apiece." Braddy continues: They had a cot apiece in the ward, and they had the dead house to play in ... The children were, on the whole, left to themselves. Most of the women were too near dead to care for anything. Most of them wanted to die and most of them did not have to wait long. Death was the most casual and the most common of occurrences. Nobody cared when it came ... Even the death of one of their number brought little comment, if any, from her neighbours. It evoked no fluttering of nurses, no calling the doctor, no fuss at all except what the patient madethe death rattle, a cry, or a groan, and often not even so much as this. The one friend still left to all of them was death. In a little while the cot would be wheeled into the dead house, the metal wheels clattering ominously over the wooden floor. The sound of the wheels was not so horrible to Annie during her first days at the almshouse, for she gave it no special meaning, but it made an indelible impression, and to-day, after she has been away from it more than fifty years, she can still sometimes at night hear its hollow and remorseless echo. The viral text claims that an anonymous maid brought brownies to Sullivan during her stay at Tewksbury in an attempt to win over an unruly child. While we can't confirm this portion of the story (this anecdote comes from a nurse who heard it from a doctor who reportedly heard it from a maid decades earlier), and while it's worth noting that descriptions of Sullivan as a child do not present her as particularly aggressive or wild, we can say that some staff members and residents at Tewksbury truly did show Sullivan kindness. Braddy notes that Maggie Hogan, a "quiet little woman with a crooked back" who oversaw the ward, introduced Sullivan to the small administrative library, and worked to get other residents to read books to her. Braddy writes: These three wards were under the care of a sad, quiet little woman with a crooked back, Maggie Hogan, who moved about among them like a grey angel, soothing them when they wept, calming them with soft sweet words when they cowered before the pain of bringing new life into the world. The girls called her Little Mother, and she was godmother to all their children. Those that seemed likely to die before the priest came she baptized herself, going through all the details of the familiar ceremony, even lighting the candles ... It was Maggie Hogan who introduced her to the small library in the administration building, and it was Maggie who selected her first books, taking only those whose authors were unmistakably Irish. And it was Maggie who persuaded a mildly crazy girl by the name of Tilly Delaney to read them to her. Later Annie selected the books herself. Her system was to choose from the titles (she could not see them) which the superintendent read out to her: Cast Up by the Sea, Ten Nights in a Barroom, Stepping Heavenward, The Octoroon, The Lamplighter, Darkness and Daylight, Tempest and Sunshine. Sullivan's thoughts about Tewksbury were recorded in Braddy's book, as well as in a manuscript she wrote entitled "Foolish Remarks of a Foolish Woman." While Sullivan acknowledged that there had been some "unexpected good" during the "chinks of frustration in my life," we didn't find any record of Sullivan claiming that her life had been changed by a random act of kindness. Rather, she wrote in her manuscript that she was still haunted by her time at Tewksbury. Foolish Remarks of a Foolish Woman Unexpected good has filled the chinks of frustration in my life. But at times melancholy without reason grips me as in a vice [sic]. A word, an odd inflection, the way somebody crosses the street, brings all the past before me with such amazing clearness and completeness, my heart stops beating for a moment. Then everything around me seems as it was so many years ago. Even the ugly frame-buildings are revived. Again I see the unsightly folk who hobbled, cursed, fed and snored like animals. I shiver recalling how I looked upon scenes of vile exposurethe open heart of a derelict is not a pleasant thing. I doubt if life, or eternity for that matter, is long enough to erase the errors and ugly blots scored upon my brain by those dismal years. The conditions at Tewskbury were so bad that Samuel Gridley Howe, a founder of the Perkins School for the Blind, launched an investigation into the school. As officials toured the facility, Sullivan approached them and begged to attend their school for the blind.  Perkins describes this moment on their website, writing: Perkins describes this moment on their website, writing: In 1880, Anne Sullivan learned that a commission was coming to investigate the conditions at Tewksbury Almshouse. On the day of their visit, Sullivan followed them around, waiting for an opportunity to speak. Just as the tour was concluding, she gathered up all of her courage, approached a member of the team of inspectors, and told him that she wanted to go to school. That moment changed her life. On October 7, 1880, Sullivan entered the Perkins Institution. Sullivans life experience made her very different from the other students at Perkins. At the age of 14, she couldnt read or even write her name. She had never owned a nightgown or hairbrush, and did not know how to thread a needle. While Sullivan had never attended school, she was wise in the ways of the world, having learned a great deal about life, politics and tragedy at Tewksbury, a side of society unknown even to her teachers. In the viral version of the story, Sullivan returns to Tewksbury to visit, and is told by the director that he had just received a letter from a parent asking for a teacher for their "deranged" daughter, Helen Keller. This, however, does not quite line up with the historical record. Here's a photograph of Keller and Sullivan from 1888: Keller and Sullivan from 1888   In 1886, at the recommendation of Alexander Graham Bell (yes, the inventor of the telephone) Keller's parents sent a letter to Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins, seeking a teacher for their daughter. Anagnos immediately thought of Sullivan for the position and sent her a letter. Sullivan was not only a gifted student who overcame severe difficulties to graduate as the valedictorian of her class, but she also had experience working with deaf-blind people, as she had befriended Laura Bridgman, regarded as the first deaf-blind American to receive a significant education, during her time at Perkins. This letter, as well as several other pieces of correspondence between Perkins, the Kellers, and Sullivan, is available via the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts. befriended Laura Bridgman Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts Anagnos wrote: "Please read the enclosed letters carefully, and let me know at your earliest convenience whether you would be disposed to consider favorably an offer of a position in the family of Mr. Keller as governess of his little deaf-mute and blind daughter. I have no other information about the standing and responsibility of the man save that contained in his own letters: but, if you decide to be a candidate for the position, it is an easy matter to write and ask for further particulars." It's the viral story's ending, however, that conflicts the most with reality. In the viral version, Keller receives the Nobel Prize, thanks Sullivan, and is then reminded that neither of them would have been successful if it weren't for the kindness of a maid. There are two problems with this ending. First, Sullivan died in 1936, more than 15 years before Keller was first nominated for the prize in 1954. And second, while Keller was nominated multiple times, she was never actually awarded the prize. died in 1936 nominated for the prize in 1954 nominated multiple times While this viral story does mirror some true events from the lives of Keller and Sullivan, it fudges a few details, invents quotations, and incorrectly states that Keller won a Nobel Prize. This story would be more accurately described as an inspirational parable loosely based on a true story, not a historically accurate account of the lives of Keller, her teacher, and the random act of kindness that changed their lives.  Anne Sullivan. Perkins School for the Blind, 25 Sept. 2014, https://www.perkins.org/anne-sullivan/.Article from the New York Times about Nella Braddys New Biography of Anne Sullivan Macy. "People Make the Place." Nursing Management Magazine.https://journals.lww.com/nursingmanagement/Citation/1993/05000/People_Make_the_Place.1.aspx. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021. Death of Anne Sullivan Macy. The American Foundation for the Blind, https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history/online-museums/anne-sullivan-miracle-worker/final-years-and-legacy/death-anne. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021. Letter from Michael Anagnos to Annie Sullivan, August 26, 1886. https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:b8516440c. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021. Manuscript by Anne Sullivan Macy Entitled Foolish Remarks of a Foolish Woman. https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-03-B071-F11-009.1.13&e=-------en-20--1--txt--------3------------------0-1. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021. Menand, Louis. Lauras World. The New Yorker, June 2001. www.newyorker.com, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/07/02/lauras-world. NELLA BRADDY. ANNE SULLIVAN MACY THE STORY BEHIND HELEN KELLER. DOUBLEDAY,DORAN & COMPANY,INC, 1933. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/annesullivanmacy000333mbp. Tewksbury Almshouse. The American Foundation for the Blind, https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history/online-museums/anne-sullivan-miracle-worker/formative-years/tewksbury-almshouse. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021.