Californias Central Valley and Inland Empire are experiencing tremendous job growth.
Gov. Jerry Brown frequently touts Californias overall job growth when telling what hes called the states comeback story. He claimed recently on NBCsMeet the Pressthat California has added 2.1 million jobs in the last six or seven years. We checked the numbers and rated that claimTrue. Later in the same interview, the shows host Chuck Todd asked Brown about inland Californias struggles, leading to another claim that caught our attention: Chuck Todd:But there are parts of your state that are struggling. You have rural counties, ones that dont touch the ocean, struggling. Housing prices are up there, while jobs dont go there. Gov. Brown:The Inland Empire, the Central Valley, they have a harder time. But they, too, are experiencing tremendous job growth. Brown makes his jobs claim at about the 2:05 minute mark in the video above. Californias job growth is normally associated with coastal hubs like Silicon Valley and San Francisco. So, we wondered whether Brown had his facts right when he said these inland regions had really experienced tremendous job growth, too. We set out on a fact-check. Inland Empire Home to about 4.5 million people, Riverside and San Bernardino counties make up whats known as the Inland Empire, a sprawling set of communities east of Los Angeles. The economists we spoke with say Browns case for tremendous job growth here is a strong one. The regions 3.2 percent job growth rate was the fastest among the states large metro areas from February 2016 through February 2017, saidJohnHusing, chief economist for the InlandEmpire EconomicPartnership. During that year, it added 47,500 jobs, which was more than the 35,700 created in the Santa Clara metro area, considered the heart of Silicon Valley, Husing said. This area is a real growth engine, he added, listing construction, logistics and transportation among the growing sectors. Over the past five years, as the region has recovered from the Great Recession, it added jobs at a rate of 22.3 percent. That trailed only the San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco metro areas 22.7 percent rate among large metros. A spokesman for the Brown Administration cited the same statistics backing up the governors claim. Colin Strange of the San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce said San Bernardino is seeing job growth, but mainly in blue-collar jobs that pay about $15 per hour including fork-lift operators and truck drivers. Husing, who has studied the regions wages, said the Inland Empire has a lower share of high-paying administrative jobs compared with the state as a whole. He said, however, that the region is outperforming the state in its share of middle-class jobs that pay between $45,000 and $60,000. Central Valley The Central Valley stretches about 450 miles from Bakersfield north to Redding. It includes urban cities like Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto and Fresno, vast farmland and a diverse economy, making job growth trends for the overall region more complex. Areport by Stanislaus State Universityin the Central Valley city of Turlock offers some help. That report shows the 8-county San Joaquin Valley, which makes up the central and southern portions of the Central Valley, experienced a 1.56 percent job growth rate in 2016; a 1.86 percent rate in 2015 and 1.80 percent in 2014. Those averages trailed the states overall job growth average, which measured 3 percent in 2015 and about 2 percent last year. But it beat the 8-county regions 1.23 percent historical average job growth rate. SOURCE: Stanislaus State University, College of Business Administration,2016 Business Forecast Report,Volume VI, Issue 1 Within its own limits, the Valley has consistently grown. But it hasnt been a home run, Gokce Soydemir, an economics professor at Stanislaus State, said of job growth in that portion of the Central Valley. Jeffrey Michael, director of the University of Pacifics Center for Business and Policy Research in Stockton, added by email: Central Valley areas have also done very well in recent years with the exception of Bakersfield, where recent economic fluctuations are tightly connected to the oil industry. Bakersfields job growth rate was flat, at 0.1 percent, over the past year. Meanwhile, Sacramento, the biggest metro area in northern portion of the Central Valley, saw 1.8 percent growth over the past year, close to the statewide average. Our ruling Gov. Jerry Brown recently claimed Californias Central Valley and Inland Empire are experiencing tremendous job growth. Economists say Brown is right about the Inland Empire. That region experienced the fastest job growth rate among the states large metro areas over the past year, and added more jobs than the Santa Clara metro area, the heart of Silicon Valley, during that period. Job growth in the Central Valley, while its outperformed its historical benchmark in much of the diverse region, hasnt kept up with the overall state average. The governors argument here needs this key clarification. In the end, we rate his overall claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.
Central Florida U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is digging on some 1970s Led Zeppelin in his first ad attacking Republican opponent Daniel Webster.The ad is called Dan Webster's Stairway to Nowhere. See where this is going, Zeppelin fans?It opens with someone ripping off Jimmy Page's recognizable guitar introduction to Stairway to Heaven. A narrator talks over a black-and-white image of Webster, a longtime state legislator and former House speaker.When career politician Daniel Webster became speaker of the House, he wasted $32,000 of our money on a spiral staircase for his office, the narrator says, before moving on to a claim that he used tax money for private flights.The ad then finishes with a spin off of Robert Plant's vocals.And he's charged us for a stairway to nowhere.To be honest, it's a pretty poor rendition.But we're PolitiFact Florida, not American Idol, so we'll stick to the factual claims in the ad -- specifically about the stairwell.Stepping stones to the staircaseWebster was elected to the state House in 1980. In 1996, he became the first Republican state House speaker in more than 100 years after the GOP seized power.That also put him in charge of improvements and renovations to House offices and facilities. Each new speaker traditionally has made changes, upgrades, or renovations. In 1999, Speaker John Thrasher, now a state senator and chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, approved nearly $7 million for the House chamber -- now adorned in mahogany -- the Speaker's Office, and House office building.In 2002, leaders of the House and Senate spent about $1.5 million on furniture, structural changes, even a private bathroom. On the other hand, former Speaker Allan Bense spent only about $1,500 on changes in 2004, according to theSt. Petersburg Times.According to newspaper accounts Webster spent about $100,000 in taxpayer dollars on improvements to House facilities in his first months as speaker, including $31,983 on a spiral staircase.The staircase connected the Republican Majority Office on the Capitol's third floor with the Speaker's Office above it on the fourth floor. The staircase was intended to make it easier to move back and forth between the two offices -- namely, it allowed legislators and Webster as speaker to avoid walking through the public hallways filled with lobbyists, reporters and members of the public. The staircase will allow us to better coordinate things between the Speaker's Office and the Majority Office, Webster said at the time. He also noted that he took the idea from Democrats, who previously had drawn up plans for a spiral staircase of their own. It was built in a spiral style because it was the only way it could work given the space. The Grayson ad includes an image of an elaborate white spiral staircase to help make its point about Webster. But that's not the Webster staircase, said Todd Reid, staff director for the Florida House Majority Office. The staircasewas closed off in 2006 during more than $500,000 of renovations ordered by then-Speaker Marco Rubio. The stairway's fourth-floor landing became the new offices of the speaker's chief of staff. It was a standard black metal staircase, Reid said. It certainly wasn't heavy on the accouterments. Reid described the staircase as noisy and said whenever someone walked up or down it, people could hear the staircase rattling from both offices. He said the bottom half of the staircase remains in place; a closet was built around it. If you were in Tallahassee, I'd take you in to see it, Reid told PolitiFact Florida. Your humble fact-checker didn't have time to jump in a car for the five-hour trip to Tallahassee, but we were able to send theSt. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald'sLee Logan for an exclusive tour. Cribs: Staircase to Nowhere-edition Logan filed the following report, complete with apicture. Behind a door labeled No Entry in the House Majority Office is the famed Webster staircase. The small closet without lights is used so rarely that Reid had to hunt down someone in the House Sergeant at Arms office to get a key to the door. The bottom half of the black spiral staircase is still bolted to the floor. (Stairs are simple black metal, with a black metal railing.) Pieces of the top half are also in the closet, including a large piece that rests on top of the lower portion.The ceiling of the closet is now covered over with concrete, forming the floor of the chief of staff's office on the fourth floor. Reid says it's unlikely the stairway would be re-installed because the fourth floor spot is prime real estate -- now the House speaker and his chief of staff have direct access to one another through a door.Before Rubio made the space into the chief of staff's office, the staircase came up through a hole in the floor and emptied into a common area that also housed a few supplies.Reid said the closet could be used for supplies if the stairs were removed. But he speculated that they weren't taken out because they're simply too big. Also, a speaker sometime in the future might find a use for the stairs.The stairs were used irregularly, Reid said, usually on peak days when the Capitol was crowded. He also recalled former Gov. Jeb Bush occasionally using the stairs.Currently, if a staffer (not Joe Public) wanted to go from the Majority Office to the Speaker's Office, he or she could go up a back stairwell and cut through the Member's Lounge, which requires a key card and is reserved for lawmakers. Speaker Larry Cretul has said staffers can cut through the area if they don't loiter or disturb the lawmakers. Our ruling Grayson's ad is unintentionally ironic in that Webster's stairway to nowhere actually now is a stairway to nowhere, as it's bolted to the ground of a seldom-used closet. The stairway leads to a concrete ceiling, which now serves as the floor of an office above. Those changes were made by Marco Rubio in 2006. The stairs haven't been used since then. But that's not how Webster left it. When he became speaker in 1996, Webster did what most every speaker has done in recent times -- he spent taxpayer money on House renovations. The amount has varied wildly over the years depending on the size of the renovation.Among the $100,000 or so Webster spent, he allocated just under $32,000 for a plain spiral staircase to internally link the Speaker's Office with the House Republican Offices below.While Grayson's ad is correct on the reported dollar amount and the type of staircase, we think it's slightly misleading for two reasons. First, the imagery displayed suggests an ornate staircase when the staircase is far from ornate and only a spiral staircase by necessity. Second, it fails to provide the context that most every speaker spends taxpayer dollars on renovations, and several spent more than Webster. We rate the claim Mostly True.Now cue the Led Zeppelin ... (Update Sept. 1: We reached out to the Webster campaign before publishing this story via phone and e-mail, but did not hear back. After publication, Webster spokesman Brian Graham said in an e-mail that the staircase actually cost less than published reports. The original construction contract was for $28,126. The state paid even less, $22,242, Graham said). (Update Sept. 3:We noticed that the Grayson ad has been removed from his You Tube web page. We're not sure why). President Barack Obama and his allies have increasingly focused on income inequality as a top policy challenge for 2014. A recent tweet by Ian Bremmer, a leading expert on the intersection between international relations and finance, seemed to provide some fuel for Obamas concern. Bremmer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, an international research and consulting firm, as well as a global research professor at New York University. On Jan. 4, 2014, hetweeted, US: Change in Income, 2009-13. Top 1%: +31.4%. Bottom 99%: +0.4%. We thought wed take a closer look at Bremmers numbers. We struck paydirt when we looked at the most recent data compiled by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California who has spent years studying inequality, most often with Thomas Piketty, a French economist. In his paper,Saezfound that between 2009 and 2012, the top 1 percents incomes grew by 31.4 percent while the bottom 99 percents incomes grew by 0.4 percent -- the same numbers Bremer had tweeted. This means, according to Saezs paper, that the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery. So Bremmer can point to solid sourcing for his claim. However, not everyone is enamored of the Piketty-Saez approach. Alan Reynolds, a scholar with the libertarian Cato Institute, haswrittenthat the Piketty-Saez methodology tends to exaggerate the earnings of the top 1 percent and underestimate the earnings of the bottom 99 percent. The Piketty-Saez method uses pre-tax income and includes realized capital gains. This effectively boosts the measured income of the richest Americans, since they earn a lot of capital gains and they pay a lot of taxes. Meanwhile, for the 99 percent, the Piketty-Saez method excludes transfer income -- that is, payments from the government to individuals, including such items as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicaid and food stamps. Reynoldsestimatedthat such transfer payments accounted for more than 16 percent of personal income in 2009. Transfer payments, he wrote, totaled $2.3 trillion in 2012. Also, Reynolds argues that way the Piketty-Saez numbers are calculated makes them subject to short-term fluctuations based on taxes. He suggests that the prospect of higher taxes in 2013 may have led to a surge of bonuses and cashing out of investments that would be subject to capital gains taxes -- something that also happened in 1992 and 1986. If true, this tendency would magnify an otherwise minor error in how Bremmer phrased his tweet. Bremmer tweeted that the figures covered the period 2009 to 2013; in fact, the Saez data, covers 2009 to 2012. The 2013 data are not available yet -- but they could look different due to the timing issue. (Bremmer told PolitiFact that he'd meant to communicate that the data went from 2009 to the start of 2013, but that could have been expressed more clearly.) In the meantime, one could easily produce a more nuanced narrative than the familiar rich-get-richer story. Consider this table published in themost recent Saez paper:  Time period Average real growth in income Real income growth for top 1 percent Real income growth for bottom 99 percent Fraction of total growth (or loss) captured by top 1 percent Full period, 1993-2012 17.9 percent 86.1 percent 6.6 percent 68 percent Clinton Expansion, 1993-2000 31.5 percent 98.7 percent 20.3 percent 45 percent 2001 Recession, 2000-2002 -11.7 percent -30.8 percent -6.5 percent 57 percent (of losses) Bush Expansion, 2002-2007 16.1 percent 61.8 percent 6.8 percent 65 percent Great Recession 2007-2009 -17.4 percent -36.3 percent -11.6 percent 49 percent (of losses) Recovery, 2009-2012 6.0 percent 31.4 percent 0.4 percent 95 percent  This table -- Saezs own data -- shows that the top 1 percent saw its inflation-adjusted income drop by 36.3 percent during the great recession, then recover by only 31.4 percent. In other words, the top 1 percent actually had a net loss between 2007 and 2012 -- a more modest net loss than the one suffered by the bottom 99 percent, to be sure, but a decline that muddies the easy story line. Even a scholar whos sympathetic to the Piketty-Saez approach acknowledges that its not the only way to look at the numbers. If you want the distribution of market income produced by the economy and as reported for income taxes, the Piketty-Saez numbers are the right numbers, said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. But if you want to gauge the effect of government programs on the income distribution, especially for the poor or middle classes, the outcome is different and cannot be measured by Piketty-Saez number. Smeeding says that the degree of inequality is eased a bit once you take into account taxes and benefits. Still, he said, the top 1 percent still gets a bigger share, just not as big as the Piketty-Saez numbers show. Our ruling Bremmer tweeted that in the United States, the top 1 percent of earners saw their income increase by 31.4 percent between 2009 and 2013, compared to 0.4 percent for the bottom 99 percent.He took those numbers from the respected, long-running analysis of income inequality by Piketty and Saez, but this research is not the only way to look at the question. Taking into account taxes and transfer payments would reduce -- though likely not eliminate -- the difference in income gains between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. In addition, Bremmer acknowledged that his phrasing about the time frame for the data could have been clearer. His statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. In February 2022, Russian propagandists went into overdrive in an attempt to justify their unprovoked attack on Ukraine. They claimed that Ukraine was run by Nazis (false), that Ukraine was committing genocide on its own people (false), and that Russia was attacking biolabs to prevent "COVID-2" (false). false false false Another line of disinformation attempted to downplay violence in Ukraine. This was largely done when people posted photographs and videos that supposedly showed "crisis actors," or people pretending to be in crisis there. A video of a camera crew filming people running through the street, for example, was posted to Bitchute (a video platform known for hosting far-right, conspiratorial, and hate content) along with the title "How to Make a Propaganda Video?" and the hashtags #UKRAINE #RUSSIA and #PROPAGANDA. posted photographs and videos that supposedly showed "crisis actors a video platform known for hosting far-right, conspiratorial, and hate content   Rumble, another video platform known for hosting far-right content, posted this video under the caption "completely choreographed Fake News In Ukraine - Still Believe Mockingbird Media?" On "TheGreatAwakening," a conspiratorial website dedicated to the debunked QAnon conspiracy theory, this video was shared with the caption "Lights, Camera, Action!" and on Twitter it was shared as if it showed "crisis actors" filmed "in the middle of the 'massive and scary' Russian invasion."   This video was not filmed in the Ukraine, and it was not filmed in 2022. This video was originally posted in 2013 and shows a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Invasion Planet Earth" (originally titled "Kaleidoscope Man"), a sci-fi adventure movie about an alien invasion. The above-displayed scene was filmed in Birmingham, England, not Ukraine. Invasion Planet Earth Kaleidoscope Man  Another version of this rumor hinged on the claim that the news media was sharing an abbreviated version of this video that only showed people running (with no hints of a camera crew) in order to exaggerate the state of affairs in Ukraine. By claiming that a miscaptioned version of this footage was being shared by the news media, social media users could claim that this was an example of "globalist propaganda."   But we have not found a single post from a genuine news outlet that presented this footage as if it were real. The "news outlet" included the above-displayed screenshot is a weeks-old Twitter account, @mightyfarooz200, that has no apparent connections to any credible news outlet. This video was not filmed in Ukraine during Russia's invasion of the country. It does not show crisis actors and it was not shared as if it were genuine footage of Russia's invasion as reported by credible media news outlets. However, this is still a good example of propaganda, just not in the way that it's being presented online. This footage was widely circulated on social media with one of two claims: First, that it showed Ukrainian "crisis actors" filming a propaganda video, and second that the news media was using miscaptioned footage to misrepresent the situation in Ukraine. Neither of these claims were true. Our search for postings of this video turned up dozens of far-right accounts sharing this video as if it showed crisis actors, and practically zero postings of people sharing this video as if it showed a genuine attack. In other words, this video was widely shared by those attempting to downplay the violence by Russians in Ukraine, not by those attempting to exaggerate it. British Council Film: Kaleidoscope Man. https://film-directory.britishcouncil.org/kaleidoscope-man. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022. Hinton, Alexander. Putins Claims That Ukraine Is Committing Genocide Are Baseless, but Not Unprecedented. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/putins-claims-that-ukraine-is-committing-genocide-are-baseless-but-not-unprecedented-177511. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022. Putin Using False Nazi Narrative to Justify Russias Attack on Ukraine, Experts Say. NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-claims-denazification-justify-russias-attack-ukraine-experts-say-rcna17537. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022. Ukraine Invasion: Misleading Claims Continue to Go Viral. BBC News, 28 Feb. 2022. www.bbc.com, https://www.bbc.com/news/60554910. Claim:  President Obama plans to implement a pay freeze for active duty military personnel in 2011.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, November 2010] On Facebook, there is the following message "reposted" by a friend, and who knows how far gone it has been around: "Dear Mr. President, I hear you would like to freeze pay rates for active duty starting next year. Would you also consider cutting your own pay to save more money for our country? While you're at it, lets cut congressman's pay too. If the people who risk their lives don't get an increase in pay, why would we continue raising pay for those who take no risks and reap the benefits? Repost if you agree!"    Origins:  As of the time this item was circulating via Facebook postings in November 2010, it was not true that President Obama had announced an intention to freeze the pay of active duty military personnel starting in 2011.  (In fact, President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal, submitted in February 2010, called for a 1.4% military pay bump for the following year.) budget proposal The November 2010 circulation of this item was prompted by a draft report prepared by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR), a bipartisan body created by President Obama "to address our nation's fiscal challenges."  Among the 58 recommendations included in that draft report, released in November 2010, was a recommendation for a three-year freeze on basic non-combat military pay and allowances: draft report NCFRR Freeze non-combat military pay at 2011 levels for 3 years Regular Military Compensation (excluding combat pay) for military personnel, which includes basic pay, basic allowances for housing and subsistence, and federal income tax advantages that go along with the allowances, is expected to grow by $9.2 billion from 2011 to 2015. A three-year freeze at 2011 levels for these compensation categories would save the federal government $7.6 billion in compensation and tax expenditures, as well as another $1.6 billion in less retirement accrual, or $9.2 billion total discretionary savings in 2015. However, as noted above, the NCFRR's report was merely a draft, and a military pay freeze was but one of several dozen potential items offered to achieve the goal of saving $200 billion in federal expenditures through 2015. Any such proposal, even if considered, would still have to overcome several hurdles before being enacted, including approval by 14 of the 18 commissioners who comprise the NCFRR and then subsequent approval by both the Senate and the House of Representatives.    In December 2010, Congress approved President Obama's recommended 1.4% pay increase for military personnel, while President Obama announced that he would freeze for two years the salaries of all other federal government workers. As for presidential compensation (which is currently set at $400,000 per year, with a $50,000 expense allowance), the salary of the President of the United States is established by Congress, so a president cannot technically "cut his own pay" (although he might opt to decline some or all of his salary, or donate it to charity).  Members of Congress could vote to decrease their salaries (which are currently set at $174,000 per year), although they have already voted to decline their cost-of-living pay increases in 2009 and again in 2010. decline Last updated:  13 January 2011    Pincus, Walter.  "House Approves Defense Bill with Lower Pay Raise for Military."   The Washington Post.  18 December 2010.    Vinch, Chuck.  "Panel Calls for 3-Year Freeze on Military Pay."   Army Times.  11 November 2010. Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. here On Oct. 2, 2020, shortly after news broke that U.S. President Donald Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, an image supposedly showing an email from his presidential campaign asking supporters to donate to Trump's recovery started going viral on social media: This email did not originate with the Trump campaign.   Snopes' staff members who subscribe to the Trump team's campaign emails did not receive this request. The @TrumpEmail Twitter account, which monitors political emails from the Trump team, also reported that this email did not originate with the president's campaign:  In addition to the fact that this email did not land in our inbox, the message also makes a somewhat suspicious request for a very precise monetary figure: $421 million. This is the same amount, according to The New York Times' report on the president's tax returns, that Trump appears to be personally responsible for in loans and debt.  report The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign have also confirmed that this email did not originate with them. RNC spokeswoman Mandi Merritt told PolitiFact: "That is a fake." PolitiFact Buettner, Russ; Craig, Susanne; McIntire, Mike.  "Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance."
  New York Times.  2 October 2020. Funke, Daniel.  "Trump Did Not Ask Supporters for $421 Million."
  Politifact.  2 October 2020. There has been controversy surrounding several of President Donald Trumps Cabinet picks. Notable selections, such as Betsy DeVos, Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions, have drawn the ire of Democrats and even a few Republicans. One choice that didnt receive much criticism was the appointment of Linda McMahon as administrator of the Small Business Administration. McMahon was approved by an 81-19 vote by the Senate, one of the more lopsided approvals of Trumps Cabinet positions. In that same press release, though, McCaskill said something that caught our eye. She said: Small businesses  which create two out of every three American jobs  are an engine for job growth that weve got to support and sustain. The first part of that statement stuck out to us. Whats defined as a small business? Do small businesses really produce that many jobs? We decided to do some digging into McCaskills claim. Whats a small business? When you think of small businesses, you usually think of mom and pop shops that are locally owned and have a few employees. However, the governments definition of small business is any business that employs fewer than 500 people. According to a 2016 newsletterpublished by the Small Business Administrations Office of Advocacy, as of 2013, there were 28.8 million small businesses in the United States. That 28.8 million made up 99.7 percent of the businesses in the U.S. and provided 56.8 million jobs for U.S. workers. Having nearly 29 million small businesses in the country provides a very strong economic impact. In the United States, 54 percent of all sales come from small businesses. 97.7 percent of all U.S. trade exporters are also small business owners, making small business a key fixture of the United States economy. How many jobs do small businesses create? While all of the numbers listed above are important in understanding the impact of small businesses, it doesnt answer our question about the accuracy of McCaskills claim. When we asked McCaskill press secretary Sarah Feldman where the senator got her numbers, she directed us toa 2011 reporton the state of small businesses. In it, the report says that small businesses have created 64 percent of new American private sector jobs generated in the past 15 years  thats 40 million net new jobs according to the Council of Economic Advisers. That report was from six years ago. We wanted to see if there were any current reports on small businesses in the United States. Luckily, the Small Business Administrationposted an articlebreaking down recent small business trends. It states that small businesses provide 55 percent of all jobs and 66 percent of all net new jobs since the 1970s. This backs McCaskills claim that two out of every three American jobs are created by small businesses. An important thing to point out Something to note, though, is that just because two out of every three new jobs is created by a small business, that doesnt mean 66 percent of the U.S. workforce is employed by small business. As stated above, 55 percent of U.S. workers are employed by small businesses. While this is an increase from 48 percent in 2013, small business employment still does not represent two-thirds of the workforce in America. This is important to differentiate because McCaskills statement could be misinterpreted to say that. She is strictly talking about the creation of jobs, not the overall amount of small business jobs in the country. Our ruling Upon the approval of McMahon as administrator to the Small Business Administration, senator McCaskill release a press release that said, in part, Small businesses  which create two out of every three American jobsare an engine for job growth that weve got to support and sustain. While two-thirds of the workforce is not employed by small businesses, 66 percent of net new jobs since the 1970s have been created by small businesses. And though McCaskills statement could be interpreted differently, her statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing. We rate this statement True. In early October 2018, social media users shared a meme bearing a critical message about Sen. Joe Manchin, the lone Democrat who voted to confirm U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and his daughter, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch:   It's no secret Bresch is the daughter of the U.S. senator from West Virginia, and that father and daughter were the subjects of two very different and unrelated controversies. Bresch runs Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, a medical device that delivers a dose of life-saving epinephrine to people with severe allergies which can result in a deadly reaction known as anaphylaxis. In late summer 2016, Mylan was widely criticized for hiking the price of EpiPens by more than 400 percent, taking the price of the device from $100 in 2009 to roughly $600 in 2016. anaphylaxis hiking taking Manchin, on the other hand, earned the ire of his party and other critics when he broke ranks on 6 October 2018 and voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused by three women of sexual misconduct while he was a high school and college student, to the United States Supreme Court. One of the accusers, California college professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified about being assaulted as a 15-year-old, sparking an outcry and protests against Kavanaugh's confirmation. Mancin's vote broke the tie between Republican and Democratic senators, who otherwise voted along party lines. Amid the EpiPen controversy, Manchin voiced his support for his daughter, saying, "My daughter is my daughter with unconditional love, and she's the most amazing person that I know. She's so compassionate and generous in how she's always lived her life." saying It was not the first time Bresch's role at Mylan was used to attack her father politically -- in fact, Manchin took heat over it from the other side of the aisle as he fought to keep his seat in the November 2018 midterm elections: heat The RNC bashed Manchin after Mylan announced it was laying off 500 people at a plant in West Virginia. Manchin has taken heat before from his opponents over Mylans decision a few years ago to jack up the price of allergy drug EpiPen by 500 percent. Amidst the layoffs and scandals, Mylan has continued to contribute to Manchin's war chest for his upcoming election, an RNC bulletin said. Mylan executives and employees contributed more than $50,000 to Manchin's campaign in the first quarter of 2018. However, barring some yet-unknown potential future ruling by Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court that might benefit Mylan, it's unclear why the meme's makers considered the familial relationship between Manchin and Bresch relevant, other than to imply some vague nefarious characteristic they supposedly share. Wright, David.  "Manchin Defends CEO Daughter After Company Raised EpiPen Price."
  CNN.  7 September 2016. McClausland, Phil.  "Mylan Releases $300 Generic EpiPen After Price Hike Outrage."
  NBC News.  16 December 2016. King, Robert.  "Republicans Tarnish Joe Manchin with EpiPen Scandal."
  Washington Examiner.  28 April 2018. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, vowed that if elected he would forgo the $400,000 annual presidential salary. So far as president Trump has stuck to that promise, handing over checks every three months for various projects overseen by different government departments. vowed In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation.As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months.Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis.'Military Cemeteries'In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted:White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage. Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit:News the media didnt report today:Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet:These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily.AnalysisThere were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims.Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone.Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!"Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation.The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary.Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows:The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause.... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does. So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today." However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets. The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind.The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows:While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries.The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary).According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South).A press release described the project in detail:The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred.There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it. ConclusionThe claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false.Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets.The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened.  In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. donated Battlefield In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation. press release addiction program As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months. Washington Post Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis. Veterans Affairs salary Associated Press 'Military Cemeteries' In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted: tweet White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage.    Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit: News the media didnt report today: Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018 @realDonaldTrump August 1, 2018 One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:   And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet: meme   These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily. Gateway Pundit Right Scoop Social News Daily Analysis There were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims. Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone. Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation. The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary. report Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows: message The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause. ... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking!  Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does.  So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today."  However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets.  The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind. here The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows: article While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries. The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary). According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South). press release A press release described the project in detail: The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred. There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it.  Conclusion The claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false. Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets. The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- Secretary Zinke Accepts President Trump's Q1 Salary as a Donation for National Park Service."
  3 April 2017. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- President Trump's Salary and Matching Funds to Restore Antietam National Battlefield."
  5 July 2017. Lima, Cristiano.  "Trump Donates Third-Quarter Salary to HHS Opioid Efforts."
  Politico.  30 November 2017. Fahrenthold, David A.  "Trump Donates $100,000 of His Salary to a New Federal Grant Program for Infrastructure Projects."
  The Washington Post.  13 February 2018. O'Connell, Jonathan and David A. Fahrenthold, David A.  "10 Key Questions About the Ethical Issues Surrounding President Trump's Company."
  The Washington Post.  6 March 2018. Hoft, Jim.  "Trump Gives $400,000 to Repair Military Cemeteries -- Liberal Media Ignores the Story."
  The Gateway Pundit. 1 August 2018. The Right Scoop.  "Trump Just Donated His Presidential Salary to the Rebuilding of Military Cemeteries."
  1 August 2018. Granger, Aaron.  "Trump Donates His Salary to Rebuild Military Cemeteries -- Media Ignores Story."
  Social News Daily. 1 August 2018. White House Office.  "2018 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  29 June 2018. White House Office.  "2017 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  30 June 2017. Andrzejewski, Adam.  "Trump's Leaner White House Payroll Projected to Save Taxpayers $22 Million."
  Forbes.  2 July 2017. Reints, Renae.  "Trump Donated His 2018 Third-Quarter Salary to an Organization That Funds Alcoholism Research."
  Fortune.  25 January 2019.

 Sullivan, Kate. "Trump Donates Part of His Salary to Department of Homeland Security."
  CNN. 19 March 2019. "Trump Donates 3rd-Quarter Salary to Help Fight Opioid Crisis."
  The Associated Press. 26 November 2019. Updated to include information on President Trump's most recent salary donation. Claim:  The BATF plans to ban "green tip" ammunition due to an executive order issued by President Obama. : : The BATF has proposed a reclassification of "5.56mm constituent projectiles of SS109 and M855 cartridges" from "primarily used for sporting purposes" to"armor piercing ammunition."     : President Obama initiated the proposed reclassification, or codified it through executive order.  Examples:  [Collected via Twitter, February 2015] Obama just bypassed congress to ban .223 ammo.   Obama illegal executive order to ban AR-15 ammo on March 16th. All Patriots, speak out for 2nd Amendment Rights HERE   Backdoor #Obama# #executive #ammo ban on ar15 in partnership with the #ATF. obviously don't take #oath seriously    @SpeakerBoehner Third Gun Control Exec Order This Year.Of course Congress will just sit on their thumbs and pivot.  Origins:  On 13 February 2015, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF) released a document [PDF] that proposed the reclassification of "5.56mm constituent projectiles of SS109 and M855 cartridges" from the category of "primarily used for sporting purposes" to that of "armor piercing ammunition." The 17-page document was titled  PDF "ATF FRAMEWORK FOR DETERMINING WHETHER CERTAIN PROJECTILES ARE 'PRIMARILY INTENDED FOR SPORTING PURPOSES' WITHIN THE MEANING OF 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(17)(C)" and uploaded to ATF.gov, in part to enable interested parties to review it and submit comments before 16 March 2015. ATF.gov The proposal cited the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-408, known as "LEOPA") and referenced discussions with law enforcement agencies across the country about whether "green tip" ammunition could reasonably be construed an exempt form of sporting ammo under the 1986 guidelines. The publicly available document noted that handguns made to employ the potentially affected ammunition were not available to civilians at the time the exemption was initially granted, and that the ammo type in question did not appear to meet the standard for a sporting purpose exemption:  Applying the sporting purposes framework set-forth above, the 5.56mm projectile that ATF exempted in 1986 does not qualify for an exemption because that projectile when loaded into SS109 and M855 cartridges may be used in a handgun other than a single-shot handgun. Specifically, 5.56mm projectiles loaded into the SS109 and M855 cartridges are commonly used Framework for Deciding Sporting Purpose Ammunition pursuant to 18 USC 921(a) in both "AR-type" rifles and "AR-type" handguns.  The AR platform is the semi-automatic version of the M16 machinegun originally designed for and used by the military. The AR-based handguns and rifles utilize the same magazines and share identical receivers. These AR-type handguns were not commercially available when the armor piercing ammunition exemption was granted in 1986. To ensure consistency, upon final implementation of the sporting purpose framework outlined above, ATF must withdraw the exemptions for 5.56 mm "green tip" ammunition, including both the SS109 and M855 cartridges. The ATF's proposal was immediately controversial, particularly among gun rights advocates. On 14 February 2015, a guns and ammunition retailer published a blog post titled "Obama to Outlaw .223 Ammunition (M855) Through Executive Action": titled It is doubtful that anyone reading this article will truly be surprised that Obama and his cronies in key government posts are trying to once again de facto suppress our Second Amendment rights. They were not able to make it happen through the legislature, but Obama has his phone and his pen. Currently, it seems the President is using both to target gun owners, specifically owners of AR-15s. If you can't outlaw the guns, get rid of the ammunition. The popularity of the AR-15/MSR is the reason it is a target of the Obama administration. The latest assault on the Second Amendment came after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) unexpectedly announced on Friday the 13th that it intends to ban commonplace M855 ball ammunition as "armor piercing ammunition." Instead of going through the legislative process as intended, President Obama is using his executive authority to once again impose gun control measures. Another blogger published an entry on 19 February 2015 that made similar claims: published President Obama is taking executive action to bypass Congressional authority and the will of the American people. This time the objective is backdoor gun control. Obama is trying to justify the proposal by arguing that the M855 ball, the most widely used .233-caliber round, is "armor-piercing" and cannot be used in handguns, per the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended by Congress in 1986. He is also claiming that the ammunition in the AR-15 and similar rifles puts the lives of police officers at risk. While it's true that the ATF proposed a ban on "green tip" ammunition in February 2015, President Obama was not involved through executive action of any description. The ATF described the proposal as the result of a long-term examination, several years in the making, of whether the ammunition fit the criteria for an exemption for sporting purposes: In light of recent developments in the firearm and ammunition marketplace, ATF sought input from industry, law enforcement organizations, and the general public on the application of the unique "sporting purpose" exemption set forth in 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(17)(C). In November 2012, ATF held four meetings with interested parties representing law enforcement, the firearms and ammunition industries, and non-governmental organizations. In addition, after completion of these meetings, ATF also solicited and accepted comments from the general public through December 31, 2012. All of that input was considered in interpreting the meaning of the statutory language, and developing the framework described below. On 10 March 2015, the ATF released a statement confirming that the reclassification proposal was halted indefinitely due to overwhelming public commentary opposing it: statement Notice to those Commenting on the Armor Piercing Ammunition Exemption Framework Thank you for your interest in ATF's proposed framework for determining whether certain projectiles are "primarily intended for sporting purposes" within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(17)(C). The informal comment period will close on Monday, March 16, 2015. ATF has already received more than 80,000 comments, which will be made publicly available as soon as practicable. Although ATF endeavored to create a proposal that reflected a good faith interpretation of the law and balanced the interests of law enforcement, industry, and sportsmen, the vast majority of the comments received to date are critical of the framework, and include issues that deserve further study. Accordingly, ATF will not at this time seek to issue a final framework. After the close of the comment period, ATF will process the comments received, further evaluate the issues raised therein, and provide additional open and transparent process (for example, through additional proposals and opportunities for comment) before proceeding with any framework. Last updated:  10 March 2015 Walt Disney's health had been deteriorating for many months before he finally agreed to enter St. Joseph hospital in California on 2 November 1966, for tests concerning the pain in his leg and neck. Doctors discovered a walnut-sized spot on the x-ray of his left lung and advised immediate surgery. Disney left the hospital to attend to studio business for a few days, then re-entered St. Joseph on Sunday, November 6, for surgery the next day. During Monday morning's operation, doctors found his left lung to be cancerous and removed it. His oversized lymph nodes were an indication that Disney hadn't much longer to live.  After two weeks of post-operative care, Disney was released from the hospital. He crossed the street to his studios and spent another ten days tending to studio business and visiting relatives before he grew too weak and had to return to St. Joseph on November 30. His health started to fail even more rapidly than expected, and drugs and cobalt treatments sapped what little strength he had left. Walt Disney died two weeks later when his circulatory system collapsed on the morning of December 15, 1966. In the decades since Walt Disney's death, the claim that he arranged for his body to be frozen has become ubiquitous. Nearly everyone familiar with the name 'Walt Disney' has heard the story that Disney's corpse is stored in a deep-freeze chamber somewhere -- directly under Disneyland's "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction is the most frequently mentioned site -- awaiting the day when science could repair the damage to his body and bring 'Uncle Walt' back to life. Was Walt Disney aware of the possibilities of life extension through cryogenics? He certainly could have been aware of the progress being made in cryogenics research. Numerous articles and books on hypothermia and the preservation of animal tissue through freezing appeared in both the scientific/medical and general press in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Anyone with an interest in the subject could easily have located this reading material, and even someone without a particular interest in the subject may have run across one or more articles on the topic in the general press. The subject of cryonics was further brought to the public's attention with the publication in 1964 of Robert C.W. Ettinger's book, The Prospect of Immortality. Ettinger's book, drawing on much of the available literature about cryonics, covered the practical, legal, ethical, and moral impact of freezing and reviving human beings. Ettinger, while admitting that science had as yet no way of reviving frozen human beings, was unflaggingly optimistic that a viable means of reanimation would eventually be found, telling his readers: The fact: At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely. The assumption: If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death. Hence we need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in suitable freezers against the time when science may be able to help us. No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us. Given the prevalence of articles published about cryonics in the mid-1960's, and the relative popularity of Ettinger's book among science buffs (even if few of them had actually read it), it is certainly possible that Walt Disney was aware of the potentiality of cryonic storage of humans. Whatever the possibilities, however, there is no documentary evidence to suggest that Walt Disney was interested in, or had even heard of, cryonics. Documentation of Disney's alleged fascination with preserving or extending his life through cryonics did not appear until decades after his death, and what little information is available has predominantly been provided by some extremely questionable sources. Claims about Disney's interest come primarily from two of the more recent Disney biographies: Leonard Mosley's 1986 effort, Disney's World, and Marc Eliot's 1993 entry, Walt Disney -- Hollywood's Dark Prince. Both books have been largely discredited for containing numerous factual errors and undocumented assertions, rendering them rather untrustworthy as sources of reliable background material. Eliot's biography, which dwells unrelentingly on every salacious incident and rumor connected with Walt Disney's name, is fairly easy to dismiss. Charitably described as "speculative," it contains a single passage concerning Walt Disney's alleged interest in cryonics: Disney's growing preoccupation with his own mortality also led him to explore the science of cryogenics, the freezing of an aging or ill person until such time as the human body can be revived and restored to health. Disney often mused to Roy about the notion of perhaps having himself frozen, an idea which received ... indulgent nods from his brother ... Not surprisingly, the source behind this piece of information is nowhere to be found in Eliot's notes. And as there is no record of Roy ever having spoken of his brother's alleged interest in cryonics, Eliot's "source" was likely nothing more than repetition of rumor. Mosley's Disney's World is also rather long on rumor and short on facts. The book has been described as "poorly researched and filled with inaccuracies", a biography that seemed "to promote certain preset points of view, regardless of evidence". The same critique goes on to say, "One of its central themes, for example, is Disney's fascination with cryogenesis and the strong suggestion that his body was frozen following his death. It makes for titillating reading; however, few facts support Mosley's claims". Disney's World paints a picture of an anxious Walt Disney desperately searching for a way to spring back to life in order to prevent or correct the horrible mistakes his followers were bound to make in turning his EPCOT dream into reality: [T]he chief problem that troubled Walt was the length of time it might take the doctors to perfect the process. How long would it be before the surgical experts could bring a treated cadaver back to working life? To be brutally practical, could it be guaranteed, in fact, that he could be brought back in time to rectify the mistakes his successors would almost certainly start making at EPCOT the moment he was dead? Mosley's book is filled with repetitions of the claim that Walt Disney grew increasingly interested in cryonics as his health waned in late 1966, such as this paragraph: It was about this time that Walt Disney became acquainted with the experiments into the process known as cryogenesis, or what one newspaper termed "the freeze-drying of the human cadaver after death, for eventual resuscitation." Mosley's statements regarding Disney's belief in the feasibility of cryonics are somewhat difficult to take seriously, given that his book includes such ludicrously erroneous (or fabricated) statements as: The surgeons had taken away his diseased lung to examine it, and then were going to preserve it. Walt was pleased when he heard that. He knew enough about cryogenesis by now to be aware that it was important to hold onto all the organs -- just in case the surgeons needed to treat them before putting them back where they belonged. (Samples of tissue removed during cancer surgery are preserved in formaldehyde, a method of "preservation" which, while useful for microscopy studies, damages the tissue biologically. Organs removed from Disney by his surgeons could never be "put back where they belonged", no matter what the treatment.) Mosley provides no source for his statements, other than to assert that Disney's "closest colleagues and advisers" were "confident" that Walt Disney "eventually became convinced of cryogenesis as a viable medical process and was persuaded that, even in 1966, it was possible for a human being to have himself brought back to life after death". In fact, these "close colleagues" of Disney's turned out to be a few employees on the periphery of the Disney organization who had never spoken to Walt about cryonics, and were merely repeating the same decades-old rumor for Mosley's benefit. On the other hand, someone much closer to Walt Disney, his daughter, Diane wrote in 1972: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics." Despite the persistent rumors, available documentation indicates that Walt Disney was in fact cremated. Although Disney's preferences regarding the disposal of his body are not public record(instructions or provisions for his funeral and burial were not included in his will), other publicly-available material is entirely consistent with the claim that he was cremated: will o Walt Disney publicly stated -- ten years before his death -- that he wished not to have a funeral. o Disney family members have confirmed that cremation was Walt's wish. o Disney's death certificate shows that he was cremated two days after his death. The name, license number, and signature of the enbalmer appearing on the death certificate are those of a real enbalmer who was employed at the Forest Lawn mortuary at the time. death certificate o A marked burial plot for Walt Disney (and other family members) can be found at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale (the logical resting grounds for someone whose cremation was handled by Forest Lawn's mortuary), and court papers indicate that the Disney estate paid $40,000 to Forest Lawn for interment property. burial plot Since Disney's demise, several unmremarkable events and circumstances surrounding his life and death have been combined to try to establish a pattern of mystery and secrecy concerning the disposal of his body. All of these events, however, have straightforward, non-mysterious explanations: o "Disney had a long preoccupation with death"o "Disney had a neurotic fear of death" Statements concerning Disney's alleged preoccupation with death are generally attempts to sensationalize the topic by distorting the facts. Although he did worry about dying prematurely, Disney was not "obsessed with death". Supposedly having been told by a fortune-teller that he would die when he was thirty-five, Disney reportedly brooded about his inevitable demise during occasional bouts of depression, even after he had long passed the allegedly fatal age. Contemplating one's mortality is not an unusual behavior, and there is no evidence that Walt Disney did so to an excessive degree. William Poundstone quotes some ridiculous passages from Anthony Haden-Guest's The Paradise Program to try to establish Disney's preoccupation with death, detailing a "gruesome seven minute Mickey Mouse cartoon" made in 1933 in which "a mad scientist tries to cut off Pluto's head and put in on a chicken. The cartoon in question is The Mad Doctor, which was nothing more than humorous spoof of 1930's horror films. Even in the cartoon itself the "horrific" events are not portrayed as real: the whole episode turns out to be nothing more than a nightmare of Mickey's. Although Poundstone wrote that the film was pulled from the Rank film library in 1970, it has been readily available on home video releases since then. o "The news of Disney's death was deliberately delayed." This claim that the announcement of Walt Disney's death was deliberately withheld from the press for several hours has been made most persistently, presumably because Disney's aides would have needed time to furtively whisk his body away from the hospital to the secret cryogenic chamber before the presence of reporters made the task impossible to accomplish in privacy. Leonard Mosley's description of the event features some of more absurd stretches of truth made in this regard: And this is where the mystery begins. It was Walt himself who had asked Roy Disney to keep his illness secret, but the manner in which the world was apprised of his death remains surprising. In fact, it was not until hours after he was declared dead that an announcement was made. First came radio announcements, then a curt official notice informed the press and public that Walt Disney was no more. It added that there would be no funeral. He had already been cremated, the announcement said, and his ashes interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Only immediate family members had been present. It is true that Disney's death was not officially announced to the press until several hours after it occurred at 9:30 AM on Thursday, December 15, 1966, but the reasons behind the delay were perfectly ordinary ones. First of all, Disney's death would not have been announced immediately under any circumstances: Several family members had to be notified before a public announcement could be made, and Disney studio executives had to be located and informed that the head of their organization had passed away before the information would be released to the press. Additionally, the gravity of Disney's illness had largely been kept a secret from the press, so there were no hordes of reporters crowding the hallways of St. Joseph Hospital, waiting for the inevitable announcement of his death. The reason for Disney's original hospitalization had been announced to the press as "treatment of an old neck injury received while playing polo," and when Disney re-entered the hospital for the final time two weeks before his death, the statement made to the press was that Disney was undergoing "a routine post-operative" checkup. Although it was certainly no secret that Disney was quite ill, the seriousness of his condition was not generally known. The extent to which the details of Walt Disney's illness were kept from the press are evidenced by the newspapers reports of his death, which stated that his left lung had been removed during an operation on November 21 (an error which Poundstone repeats in Big Secrets). That operation had actually taken place two weeks earlier; November 21 was the date of his original post-surgery release from the hospital. So, given that relatives and studio heads had to be notified before any statements about Disney's death were made to the press; that the media were not on a "Disney death watch," busily preparing obituaries and tributes; and that communications in 1966 were certainly slower than they are today, it is not at all surprising that official news of Disney's death did not reach the public until a few hours later. Mosley's other statements, about Disney's funeral and cremation, are just further examples of sloppy research on his part. Disney was not cremated until two days after his death; no press announcement made "hours after he was declared dead" claimed that he had already been cremated.  o "The cause of Disney's demise was never formally announced." This statement is both inaccurate and irrelevant. The cause of Disney's death was initially announced as being "acute circulatory collapse," which meant simply that his heart had stopped beating. As facile as the official announcement may seem to those who know he "really" died of lung cancer, it does reflect the proximate cause of his death. This notion is borne out by the official death certificate, which lists "cardiac arrest" as the primary cause of death. The fact that cancer was what caused Disney's heart to give out was, medically, of secondary importance. death certificate Official statements released to the press after Disney's surgery (and before his death) had already revealed that a tumor had been found, necessitating the removal of a lung. Whether stated "officially" or not, it was quite clear to the public that Disney had died of lung cancer. In any case, what possible difference could it have made what Walt Disney died of? How could dissembling about the "real" cause of his death possibly have facilitated the goal of secretly storing his body in a cryonic chamber? o "Disney's funeral services were held in secret." Disney's funeral was not "secret"; rather, it was private, conducted quickly and quietly at the Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale at 5:00 PM on Friday, December 16 (the day after his death). No announcement of the funeral was made until after it had taken place, no associates or executives from Disney Studios were invited, and only immediate family members were in attendance. Forest Lawn officials refused to disclose any details of the funeral or disposition of the body, stating only that "Mr. Disney's wishes were very specific and had been spelled out in great detail.". None of this secrecy surrounding Disney's funeral should be the least bit surprising to anyone, however. The biography The Story of Walt Disney (essentially an autobiography in which Disney's own words and thoughts were attributed to his daughter Diane), written a decade before Disney's death, noted that: [Walt] never goes to a funeral if he can help it. If he had to go to one it plunges him into a reverie which lasts for hours after he's home. At such times he says, 'When I'm dead I don't want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive.'" Is it so remarkable that a man who had an aversion to funerals -- and who had stated a ten years earlier that he didn't want a public funeral -- was sent off with a very quick and very private ceremony? If the clandestineness of the funeral had been intended to cover up the fact that Disney's body had already been deposited in liquid nitrogen at a secret facility, there were certainly better, less obvious ways of accomplishing the deception: Disney could have been given a simple closed-casket ceremony, with nobody the wiser. o "Disney specified the public was never to be told the location of his grave." Again, this claim is unsupported by any factual information and is not the least bit extraordinary. It is true that officials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park will not divulge the location of the Disney family plot. Many celebrities do request that the locations of their burial plots not be given out to visitors as a simple matter of privacy. The burial sites are not intended to be "secret," however; if they were, they wouldn't be marked and located on publicly-accessible grounds. Disney's plot was not, as Mosley claimed, "already filled with family ashes from which the public would always be barred." Disney's plot is far from obtrusive, but it is located in an unrestricted part of the park and marked with a plaque identifying its occupants; anyone who so desires is perfectly free to visit, leave flowers, take photographs, etc. The plot was certainly not "already filled with family ashes" at the time of Disney's interment, as for many it held the remains of only one other person: Ron Brown, a son-in-law who died the year after Disney did. In fact, according to the book Wills of the Rich and Famous, the interment property was not even chosen until September 19, 1967, making it rather difficult to believe that it could have been "already filled with family ashes." If Disney was not really frozen, then how and when did this rumor originate? The exact origins of the rumor are unknown, but at least one Disney publicist has suggested that the story was started by a group of Disney Studio animators who "had a bizarre sense of humor." The earliest known printed version of the rumor appeared in the magazine Ici Paris in 1969. Even if the origins of the story are unknown, it is certainly easy to see why the rumor is so believable. In the years immediately preceding his death, Disney was involved in a number of projects which cemented his image as a technical innovator in the public's mind. Disneyland attractions such as the monorail, the House of the Future, the Voyage to the Moon; the introduction of audio-animatronic figures at the 1964 World's Fair, and Disney's plans for his "community of tomorrow" (EPCOT) in Florida made it easy to believe Walt Disney was ahead of everyone else in his planning, even when it came to his death. When you consider that the first cryonic suspension took place just a month after Disney's death (Dr. James Bedford, a 73-year-old psychologist from Glendale, was suspended on January 12, 1967), it's not so far-fetched to imagine that Disney might have made similar arrangements.  Adams, Cecil.  More of The Straight Dope.   New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.  ISBN 0-345-35145-2  (pp. 331-333). Davis, Jeff.  "Walt Disney Dies."   Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.  15 December 1966  (p. 1). Eliot, Marc.  Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince.   Seacaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group, 1993. Ettinger, Robert C.W.  The Prospect of Immortality.   New York: Doubleday, 1964. Jackson, Kathy Merlock.  Walt Disney: A Bio-Bibliography.   Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub. Group, 1993.  ISBN 0-313-25898-8. Miller, Diane Disney.  The Story of Walt Disney.   New York: Holt, 1957. Morgan, Hal and Kerry Tucker.  Rumor!   New York: Penguin Books, 1984.  ISBN 0-14-007036-2. Mosley, Leonard.  Disney's World.   New York: Stein and Day, 1985. Nass, Herbert E.  Wills of the Rich and Famous.   New York: Warner, 1991.  ISBN 0-446-39218-9. Poundstone, William.  Big Secrets.   Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.  ISBN 0-395-45397-6  (pp. 219-224). Thomas, Bob.  Walt Disney: An American Original.   New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.  ISBN 0-7868-6027-8. Trimborn, Harry.  "Wizard of Fantasy Walt Disney Dies."   Los Angeles Times.  16 December 1996  (p. 1). The Boston Globe.  "Ask the Globe."   24 January 1992  (p. 20). Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.  "Disney Rites Secret; As He Wished."   17 December 1966  (p. 1). Los Angeles Times.  "Services for Walt Disney Held as He Asked -- For Family Only."   17 December 1966  (p. 1). The New York Times.  "Walt Disney, 65, Dies on Coast; Founded an Empire on a Mouse."   16 December 1966  (p. 1).