"Is Marlboro distributing free cartons of cigarettes on Facebook?"
In October 2015, links began circulating on Facebook promising users a free carton of Marlboro cigarettes as a celebration of the brand's 100th anniversary:   The embedded links involved a variety of URLs (like the one above), some of which included entirely unrelated scam-bait terms like "iTunes" and "Apple." Users who clicked through to claim their purported free carton of Marlboros were routed to a page reading "Marlboro is Giving FREE Carton of Cigarettes to celebrate 100th Anniversary (150 Cartons Remaining)," which cloned the style of Facebook-based content (but was hosted on a non-Facebook URL):   As noted, URLs visible in the posts didn't point to any credible domains (or any sites linked to Altria, the brand's parent company). Marlboro didn't appear to even maintain any social media accounts, and the brand's official web site was locked to registered users only. So while no official refutations were issued, it seemed safe to assume cigarette brands largely refrained from participating on Facebook (or creating promotions that could land them afoul of strict tobacco advertising laws). By now, most social media users are familiar with survey scams; Kohl's, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe's, Kroger, Best Buy, Macy's, Olive Garden, Publix, Target, and Walmart are among retailers used as bait by scammers (seeking personal information and valuable page likes from Facebook users).  Kohl's Costco Home Depot Lowe's Kroger Best Buy Macy's Olive Garden Publix Target Walmart scammers A July 2014 article from the Better Business Bureau illustrated how folks might spot and avoid bad actors utilizing the reputations of brands on social media: article Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organization's real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward that's too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. While Marlboro occasionally sends coupons to registered customers, tobacco advertising and promotion is heavily restricted (including a prohibition on free samples) and is highly unlikely to ever occur on social media in the manner posited above. restricted [05/05/20] CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the date of Marlboro's 50th anniversary. That reference has been removed.
Former Texas state Rep. Paul Sadler answered adebatequestion June 26, 2012, with a call to stop expanding government programs until the federal debt is under control.Squaring off in Dallas with retired teacher Grady Yarbrough, his opponent in the July 31, 2012, runoff for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, Sadler said, Until we get our financial house in order, we cannot continue to spend money. We just cant.The U.S. has never seen national debt like this, Sadler said. It doubled during the Bush administration.We decided to see if Sadlers claim about debt under President George W. Bush holds up.Sadler sent us an email with several presidents names linked to numbers, such as Bill Clinton 1.4, and told us the numbers sources were the U.S. Treasury, Financial Management Service, Bureau of the Public Debt, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Office of Management and Budget.The same figures and sources, listed in the same order, appear on a July 28, 2011,New York Timeschartillustrating how much of the federal debt accumulated under each president since 1981.According to the chart, the Bush administration began with a $5.8 trillion gross federal debt, which grew by $6.1 trillion to reach $11.9 trillion --  an increase of 105 percent, or slightly more than double. TheTimesascribed the increase in debt to tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (the) economic downturn in 2001 and recession starting in 2007.Following a suggestion from Treasury spokesman Matthew Anderson, we found that plugging the fiscal years of Bushs presidency -- October 2001 through September 2009 -- into theTreasurys online calculatorgives debt figures that tally with theTimesgraphic. While that period begins nearly nine months into Bushs presidency, it also aligns with the years over which he held budgetary sway.Gross federal debt, though, is only one measure of how much the government owes. Because Sadlers numbers match theTimeschart, we started with that statistic, which includes money the federal government owes itself, including for programs such as Social Security and Medicare, in addition to public debt.Public debt itself is another commonly used measure. Debt held by the public is money borrowed from investors outside the federal government, in the form of Treasury notes and other securities.Which to use? We consulted Oregon State University political scientist Robert Sahr, who studies U.S. debt, policy, presidents and inflation.Sahr suggested we use public debt, and emailed us part of atextbooks explanation of why net public debt, rather than gross debt, is seen as a better measure of how much government is borrowing: We returned to the Treasury calculator and found that during Bushs fiscal years, public debt rose from $3.3 trillion to $7.6 trillion -- up 130 percent, clearly more than double.Also, we asked Sahr whether he agreed that debt doubled under Bush.Adjusted for inflation, he said, public debt did not double, though it came close.Sahr produced aspreadsheetfor us withfiscal year-end debt numbersfrom the federal Office of Management and Budget. Among the results: As with the Treasury calculator, 2001-2009 public debt in non-inflation-adjusted dollars went up 130 percent. Adjusted for inflation (to 2011 dollars), though, the increase was 88 percent.Returning to gross federal debt, which was Sadlers basis: Sahrs spreadsheet showed the same 105-percent increase in non-inflation-adjusted dollars as theNew York Timeschart. In 2011 dollars, though, the increase was 70 percent.Some news analyses have compared changes in debt using inauguration dates. We checked those with the Treasury calculator, finding that from Bushs first inauguration, January 20, 2001, to the day President Barack Obama took office, January 20, 2009, gross federal debt in non-inflation-adjusted dollars rose from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion, up 86 percent. The calculator didnt have an amount for public debt January 20, 2001, but says the non-adjusted figure was $6.3 trillion January 20, 2009.When we checked back in with Sadler, he objected to adjusting the debt changes for inflation, saying by email: I seriously doubt any holder of the debt or your bank would allow you to adjust your debt for inflation. The amount owed is the amount owed - you don't get to adjust it for inflation.Sahr said later: Sure, youre paying in current dollars. But if youre looking at the change in debt over eight years, part of the change is the change in the value of the dollar over those years.A final note: Such accounting and tallies can be read as blaming Bush alone for the increases. As PolitiFact has noted numerous times, such assumptions are overly sweeping. Many factors are at play, including Congress, which votes on many spending decisions affecting the debt.Our rulingWe see how Sadler reached his conclusion. In raw terms, both the public debt and gross federal debt more than doubled during the fiscal years corresponding to Bushs presidency. However, adjusting for inflation, gross debt increased 70 percent over those years, while public debt increased 88 percent. Thats not quite doubling.We rate Sadlers claim Mostly True. Claim:  Atari buried millions of unsold E.T. game cartridges in a New Mexico desert landfill. LEGEND Origins:  In 1982, Warner Communications could honestly claim to own a goose that laid golden eggs. Its money-producing fowl was called Atari, a video game company it purchased for $28 million in 1976  which had since burgeoned into a $2 billion concern.  In the early 1980s Atari owned 80% of the video game market, it accounted for 70% of Warner's operating profits, and in the fourth quarter of 1982 the Wall Street "whisper number" concerning Atari's expected   earnings predicted a 50% increase over the previous year. The goose died at 3:04 P.M. EST on 7 December 1982, when Atari reported only a 10% to 15% increase in expected earnings, not the 50% figure so many people had been counting on.  By the end of the following day Warner stock had plummeted to two-thirds of  its previous value, and Warner closed out the quarter with its profits down a mind-boggling 56%.  (Even worse, a minor scandal erupted when it was revealed that Atari's president and CEO had sold 5,000 shares of Warner stock a mere 23 minutes before announcing Atari's disappointing sales figures.)  Atari racked up over half a billion dollars ($536 million) in losses in 1983, and by the end of 1984 Warner had sold the company. What accounted for the sudden death of Warner's prized goose?  A number of interrelated factors brought about its fatal illness:  Most of Atari's top programmers, disenchanted with the lack of respect, compensation, and freedom they were afforded under Warner management, left to work elsewhere.  Atari was selling its game consoles as cheaply as possible and expecting to make its profits from sales of game cartridges, but other companies such as Imagic and Activision (founded by some of the disenchanted Atari programmers mentioned above) cut into Atari's sales by creating their own cartridges for Atari consoles (and their games were far superior to what Atari itself was producing).  Atari's VCS game console was several years old by 1982, and its established customer base was being eroded by newer, better systems such as Mattel's Intellivision and Coleco's ColecoVision (especially when those systems started offering adapters that allowed customers to play VCS game cartridges without needing to own Atari consoles).  Even worse, the "next generation" system Atari finally unveiled in late 1982 ,the Atari 5200, was a huge disappointment (in part because its joysticks were poorly designed and difficult to use, and because it was incompatible with the huge existing base of VCS cartridges).  Atari's home consumer division had garnered huge profits by producing home versions of popular arcade games created by its own coin-op division (Asteroids) or licensed from other manufacturers (Taito's Space Invaders and Namco's Pac-Man), but let the licensing of that year's smash arcade hit, Donkey Kong, slip away from them.  (The license for Donkey Kong was instead snapped up by Coleco, who probably could not have successfully launched its competing ColecoVision game system without it.) The first signs of the goose's fatal illness came with Atari's Pac-Man cartridge.  Atari was so sure its home version of the world's most popular arcade game would reach new sales heights that it manufactured 12 million Pac-Man cartridges in 1982 (even though at the time only about 10 million people owned and used Atari VCS consoles), counting on the game's popularity to spur additional sales of the VCS.  With most of Atari's best in-house programmers long since having fled the company, the result was a colossal disappointment.  Pac-Man's animation was jerky, its moving images flickered annoyingly, and the Pac-Man character produced only a grating "bong" sound that was nothing like the arcade version's amusing sound effects.  Atari did eventually sell 7.7 million copies of Pac-Man, earning almost $200 million in gross profit sales for the company, but Atari was still stuck with millions of unsold Pac-Man game cartridges, and the poor quality of the game in comparison to the arcade version seriously tarnished Atari's image among consumers. As Goldberg and Vendel noted of the Pac-Man issue in their history of the company, Atari, Inc.: Business Is Fun: The result backfired on Atari by causing consumers to behave differently when purchasing games. There was already a growing mass of new low quality third party 'spam' titles on the market, and now with the experience of from rushing to buy Pac-Man for a premium and getting disappointed at its look, the tipping point for a new buyer environment was created. An environment where people would no longer blindly rush out to buy a newly released game, but would cautiously wait for reviews or feedback from others who'd bought the game. As a result, games purchases appeared to be curtailed in the second half of 1982, causing another new complication that sales and marketing would have to grasp and account for. If one game cartridge could be selected as the symbol of the sudden demise of Atari's golden goose, however, it would have to be the ill-fated E.T.: The Extraterrestrial game. Steve Ross, the head of Warner Communications, made a deal with Steven Spielberg to produce a home video game version of Spielberg's blockbuster E.T. film. Basing a video game on a movie rather than an established arcade hit or a tested game premise and expecting it to sell simply because of the popularity of the film might have been a questionable enough decision on its own (although Atari did enjoy moderate success with its video game version of Spielberg's previous   blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark), but on top of that Ross forked over a whopping $21 million to acquire the rights to the title, committing Atari to sell a whopping 4 million cartridges just to recoup their costs.  Moreover, Ross made the deal in late July 1982 and insisted the game be ready in time for the Christmas sales season, leaving only a five week timeframe (rather than a more typical six months) for the E.T. game to be conceived, programmed, debugged, and put into production.  The sheer awfulness of the finished product was unprecedented.  Atari rushed E.T. through development in a matter of weeks to get it onto the market in time for Christmas, and the result was something many consumers found to be a virtually unplayable game with a dull plot and crummy graphics in which frustrated players spent most of their time leading the E.T. character around in circles to prevent him from falling into pits.  Atari produced 5 million E.T. cartridges, and according to Atari's then-president and CEO, "nearly all of them came back."  That statement was a bit of an exaggeration, but Atari was once again stuck with millions of unsold cartridges for a game that moved far fewer units than were produced: In total, five million copies of  E.T. were produced. Initially, only 500,000 games were sold, with another million eventually joining the sales. Out of the five million E.T. carts that would ship out to distributors, a staggering three and a half million games would be returned in total, many still in the distributor boxes; the retailers hadn't even sold enough to break open additional distributor shipping boxes to require a restock. [T]here were three and a half million unsold games and in the end, the  E.T. licensing deal was a complete loss for Atari. In a bout of hubris at the end of 1981, Atari had told its distributors to place their orders for 1982 all at once.  The distributors, anticipating another strong sales year, ordered aggressively, but when 1982 sales didn't meet expectations, those distributors were stuck with a lot of unsold Atari game cartridge inventory, which they returned to Atari in droves.  When ordinary distributor returns were added to the millions of unsold Pac-Man  cartridges and more millions of useless E.T. cartridges, Atari found itself with tons of unsellable merchandise to dispose of, which led to the rumor that Atari buried millions of E.T. cartridges in a landfill in the New Mexico desert. There is no question that Atari dumped and buried a whole lot of stuff in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in September 1983, as the New York Times (and other sources) reported at the time: With the video game business gone sour, some manufacturers have been dumping their excess game cartridges on the market at depressed prices. Now Atari Inc., the leading video game manufacturer, has taken dumping one step farther. The company has dumped 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the city landfill in Alamogordo, N.M. Guards kept reporters and spectators away from the area as workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise. An Atari spokesman said the equipment came from Atari's plant in El Paso, Tex., which used to make videogame cartridges but has now been converted to recycling scrap. Atari lost $310.5 million in the second quarter, largely because of a sharp drop in video game sales. Due to the all the bad publicity over Atari's recent negative experiences with its Pac-Man and E.T. games, when news of the company's New Mexico landfill disposal became public knowledge many people assumed that those truckloads of discarded material included nothing but millions and millions of unsold E.T. cartridges (with perhaps some of those millions of unsold Pac-Man carts thrown in as well), all shamefully and furtively buried by Atari in an attempt to keep those embarrassingly colossal failures out of sight.  Exactly what Atari buried in that New Mexico landfill remains a subject of dispute, and in recent years various sources have challenged the notion that what Atari dumped there was millions of unsold E.T. game cartridges (or other unsold game titles).  According Goldberg and Vendel, the New Mexico site was actually used for disposal of a relatively small amount of unused and faulty stock and parts for cartridges, consoles, and computers from the company's El Paso plant, which was being retooled and automated to focus on the of manufacture of game consoles and home computers rather than the production of game cartridges (the latter operation being shifted to Asia).  While Atari did bury some millions of units of unsold game cartridge overstock, that (unpublicized) action took place near the company's headquarters in California, not in New Mexico: Manufacturing game cartridges had been a large part of the El Paso plant, but the new retooling left no room for them in this time of overstock ... The resulting clearance of truckloads of faulty and unused stock starting on September 22nd [1983] resulted in anything but positive press for the company, though, as it seemed Atari just couldn't catch a break from the media. Under cover of the night, several semi-trailers convoyed out of the [El Paso] plant to drive about an hour and a half south west. They were bound for a city dump in Alamogordo, New Mexico, chosen because New Mexico had a state law forbidding scavenging of landfills. The landfill was run by Browning Ferris  Industries (BFI), who contracted with the city and was making $300-$500 a truckload from Atari, all to cover their dumped contents with garbage and dirt and then steamroll them. [Three days later] Atari had already dumped eight truckloads when promising BFI only three a week, and still more were on the way. But that wasn't the worst of it; the public had found out. First it was the locals, who when word got out that Atari was dumping lots of cartridges, consoles and computers in their backyard, started sneaking into the dump to pilfer what they could. The hardware may have been crushed beyond use, but many of the games were still salvageable. It was when those games started showing up around town, titles like E.T., Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, that the local media picked up on the story.  Atari had brought in a security guard to watch over the site to stop the pilfering, but it did little to stop the prying eyes of the media, and by [September 26th] the national press was all over the story. This innocent dumping, a miniscule amount when compared to the entire size of Atari's actual overstock across the country, was done as an afterthought. However, thanks to article titles like UPI's "City dump gobbles Pacman," the dumping was fast becoming a symbol of the industry's problems. [Y]ou don't pour concrete over unusable scrap, [but] that's exactly what Atari did on September 29th, which only further fueled the interest over the dumping. Around 14 truckloads had been dumped before the PR nightmare was over. Yes, this is the very happening that gave rise to the myth of the supposed dumping of almost 3.5 million E.T. cartridges in the Alamogordo dump. Most of the overstock of game cartridges languishing in warehouses around the U.S., comprised of a wide breadth of Atari's home titles, were indeed disposed of  that's where myth meets reality. But this occurred in a dump in Sunnyvale [California]. In May 2013 Alamogordo's City Commission approved a deal for a Canada-based film production company (Fuel Industries) to excavate the Atari landfill site and produce a documentary about the legend of the buried E.T. cartridges.  That excavation was scheduled to take place on 26 April 2014 and to be open to the public: excavation Become a part of gamer history. Unearth the truth behind the ultimate urban legend. We're excited to announce that the excavation of the long-rumored "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" video game burial site will occur on April 26, 2014 and will be open to the public. Spectators are invited to watch the team uncover the infamous Atari game cartridge grave.  The Atari Corporation  faced with overwhelmingly negative response to the "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" video game  allegedly disposed of millions of unsold game cartridges by burying them in the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1983. Fuel Entertainment took an interest in the legend, and in December 2013, with help from local garbage contractor Joe Lewandowski, acquired the exclusive rights to excavate the Alamogordo landfill. Fuel Entertainment brought the opportunity to Xbox Entertainment Studios, and now, as part of a documentary series, the team will excavate the legendary New Mexico landfill to reveal the true story of Atari's bizarre burial.  Director Zak Penn will be documenting the dig and the events around it. In addition to fans and media, a variety of people tied to the dig, video game, and film will be in attendance  including "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" video game designer Howard Scott Warshaw, a team of archeologists, and representatives from Xbox Entertainment Studios. We hope you'll join us as we get to the bottom of one of gaming's biggest mysteries. A lucky handful of fans could even be interviewed for the film. See you in Alamogordo! On that date, news accounts reported the recovery of "hundreds" (not millions) of E.T. game cartridges from the Alamagordo landfill: A documentary film production company has found buried in a New Mexico landfill hundreds of the Atari "E.T." game cartridges that some call the worst video game ever made. Film director Zak Penn showed one "E.T." cartridge retrieved from the site and said that hundreds more were found in the mounds of trash and dirt scooped by a backhoe. About 200 residents and game enthusiasts gathered in southeastern New Mexico to watch backhoes and bulldozers dig through the concrete-covered landfill in search of up to a million discarded copies of "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" that the game's maker wanted to hide forever. "I feel pretty relieved and psyched that they actually got to see something," said Penn as members of the production team sifted through the mounds of trash, pulling out boxes, games and other Atari products.  Whatever the answer, it seems Atari sent its goose away not with the traditional gold watch, but with a pair of cement overshoes. Additional information:       Atari's E.T.: The Extraterrestrial  (AtariAge)   Last updated:  26 April 2014    Goldberg, Marty and Curt Vendel.  Atari Inc.: Business Is Fun.   Carmel, NY: Syzygy Company Press, 2012.  ISBN 978-0-9855974-0-5.    Kent, Steven L.  The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games.   Bothell, WA: BWD Press, 2000.  ISBN 0-9704755-0-0.    Llorca, Juan Carlos.  Diggers Find Atari's E.T. Games in Landfill.   Associated Press.  26 April 2014.    The New York Times.  "Atari Parts Are Dumped."    28 September 1983  (p. D4). As congressional Democrats and Republicans sit down for high-stakes budget talks,the rhetoric has flown furiously to familiar territory.Republicans want cuts and reforms to entitlement programs, while Democrats insist that revenue must be on the table, too. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., made the case for the latter inan interview on MSNBCon Nov. 12, 2013. This country has never been richer, if you look at per capita GDP, she said. It doesn't feel that way when you hear about austerity and we have to cut this and we have to cut that. It's because the income inequality is greater than it has ever been. We wondered if she was correct. The numbers dont lie Schakowskys office sent us figures from theEconomic Research Serviceof the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to those numbers, the GDP per capita, when adjusted for inflation, hit $45,633 this year, which surpassed the previous high of $45,360, which was set in 2007 prior to the most recent recession. It was barely higher, but higher all the same. (The government defines the GDP  gross domestic product  as the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property within the country.) We were curious how the data was calculated, so we contacted Mathew Shane, an economist with the USDA who put the figures together. He told us that the 2013 number was partially based on a projection, since the year is not yet completed. But if that projection is borne out, he said,then GDP per capita will be at its highest level ever. Its close, Shane said. We hit a peak in 2007 when the crisis hit. Theres been no income growth in real terms since 2007. The difference between (2007 and 2013) is a very modest difference. We, essentially, finally regained what we were in 2007. I guess we could say were projected to be slightly better than we were in 2007. If I guess doesnt sound definitive enough, we also sought out another source:the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the government agency that calculates the nations GDP. The bureaus analysis also backs up Shanes findings. By the second quarter of this year, GDP per capita had surpassed 2007 levels. The third quarter of 2013 is the highest on record, said Thomas Dail, spokesman for the bureau. Finally, GDP per capita, even when adjusted for inflation, hasgone up and upfor more than a century. In other words, Schakowsky could have said what she said at virtually any given point during the last 150 years and had a pretty good chance of being right. Our ruling Schakowsky said, This country has never been richer, if you look at per capita GDP. We found that GDP has trended upward throughout much of America's history and the current level is only slightly higher than pre-recession levels. But the numbers show Schakowsky is right. We rate her comments True. On Feb. 12, 2024, a screenshot claimed to show a post from Travis Kelce's official X account that said, "How about this: I'll keep playing American football and Donald Trump can keep sucking Russian d***." The screenshotted post was an apparent response to former U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting that he had once threatened to encourage Russia to attack "delinquent" NATO allies. screenshot suggesting Shared by X account @FaithRubPol, the screenshot had the caption, "Travis Kelce SLAMS Trump over his NATO comments." (Screenshot via X) The above screenshot is fake and was shared by an account that describes itself as satirical in nature. As such, we rate it as "Labeled Satire." describes The X account @FaithRubPol's description states: "Most of the images we share are parodies." The screenshot also has the label "Parody by Back Rub." description We also found no evidence on Kelce's official account that he ever made such a statement. Furthermore, the account handle in the screenshot does not belong to Kelce. Kelce's real X account is @tkelce, while the screenshot shows the handle @tkelpe. @tkelce During a campaign rally on Feb. 10, 2024, Trump generated controversy when he said he would "encourage" Russia to attack "delinquent" NATO member states. He suggested he would not abide by the alliance's collective-defense clause  which states that if an ally is attacked it is considered an attack on all members  if that ally was not meeting defense spending obligations. said He cited a conversation from his time as president with an unnamed world leader: cited One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, "Well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?" I said, "You didn't pay, you're delinquent?" He said, "Yes, let's say that happened." "No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills." In sum, the above post is satirical in nature and completely fake. For background, here iswhywe sometimes write about satire/humor. why Haberman, Maggie, and Jonathan Swan. "G.O.P. Officials, Once Critical, Stand by Trump After NATO Comments." The New York Times, 12 Feb. 2024. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/us/politics/trump-nato-republicans.html.Accessed 13 Feb. 2024. Knutson, Jacob. "How Trump's NATO Comments Escalate His Disdain for America's Allies." Axios, 12 Feb. 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/02/12/trump-nato-history. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024. In December 2020, readers asked Snopes to check the authenticity and accuracy of a diatribe against outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, widely attributed to actor and director George Clooney. The speech has been shared many thousands of times over the past three years, in social media posts, and in the form of memes. For unknown reasons, it enjoyed something of a resurgence in October and December 2020. shared thousands October December 2020 A typical post read: George Clooney's response after Trump accused him of being a "Hollywood elite". "Here's the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies' shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I'd have a tie to go on job interviews. I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years. So this idea that I'm somehow the 'Hollywood elite' and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable. "People in Hollywood, for the most part, are people from the Midwest who moved to Hollywood to have a career. So this idea of 'coastal elites' living in a bubble is ridiculous. Who lives in a bigger bubble? He lives in a gold tower and has twelve people in his company. He doesn't run a corporation of hundreds of thousands of people he employs and takes care of. He ran a company of twelve people! "When you direct a film you have seven different unions all wanting different things, you have to find consensus with all of them, and you have to get them moving in the same direction. He's never had to do any of that kind of stuff. I just look at it and I laugh when I see him say 'Hollywood elite.' Hollywood elite? I don't have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood Boulevard! Fuck you!"   Some of those posts and memes contained a small number of very minor tweaks in wording, but overall, they accurately and fairly attributed the diatribe to Clooney, who did indeed hammer Trump as a "guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet" and "lives in a gold tower," and did indeed finish his speech by telling Trump "Fuck you!" Clooney's remarks came in the context of an interview with the Daily Beast, published on Sept. 22, 2017. Many of the viral social media posts claimed Clooney was speaking in response to Trump's accusation that Clooney was part of a "Hollywood elite." interview But that's not quite right. The question (or prompt) to which Clooney was responding was, "Trump has been stoking this culture war between "coastal elites" and Middle America  the irony of course being that Trump himself is a "coastal elite." Below is the exchange as it appeared in its original context: The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law Aug. 16, 2022, by President Joe Biden, has many provisions aiming to lower drug costs, address the climate crisis, reduce the deficit, and ask large corporations to pay a greater share of taxes. But one aspect of the Democratic plan has sparked some of the biggest headlines: $80 billion over 10 years to beef up the Internal Revenue Service. Heres a sample of unfounded and debunked claims: A Delta Force seized a shipment of weapons headed to the IRS, a TikTok video claimed. PolitiFact National rated thisPants on Fire. The government is arming up the IRS because Joe Biden is raising taxes and disarming Americans, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said. PolitiFact National rated thisFalse. Democrats' new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you  with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy insisted. PolitiFact National rated thisMostly False. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson weighed in Aug. 7, 2022, the day the Senate approved the measure, with anews releaseciting a litany of grievances with the IRS and this claim: Last year, the IRS audited Americans earning less than $25,000 a year at five times the rate of other groups. According to Democrats and the White House, the Inflation Reduction Act money for the IRS is meant to improve tax compliance enforcement of the wealthiest in the nation. So, Johnsons claim caught our attention. Is he right? Two sides point to the same study to make their points When asked for backup, Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning pointed to an April 13, 2022, letter from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. The letter was sent to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig. Theletter from two prominent Democrats, no less  accuses the IRS of targeting low-income Americans for tax audits. After noting the lawmakers are working to secure more money to expand audits, the letter says: The most vulnerable taxpayers should not shoulder the burden of insufficient IRS enforcement funding simply because they require fewer resources to audit. Keep those thoughts in mind as we move ahead. At the core of the letter  and therefore of Johnsons claim  is an analysis of tax data from the 2021 fiscal year by Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center. Here is what the analysis found:  Whats behind this? The March 8, 2022,TRAC analysissays the IRS accomplished over 650 thousand audits last year by jacking up its already high reliance on correspondence audits  essentially a letter from the IRS asking for documentation on a specific line item on a return. All but 100,000 of the 659,000 audits were conducted with these letters through the mail. Indeed, in the 2021 fiscal year, that sort of audit accounted for 85% of all audits, up from about 80% in the previous two years. The analysis noted a similar phenomenon occurred more than 20 years ago, amid a cutback in IRS staff. In other words, with less staff, the most simple audits continue, while other more complex audits fall off. A limitation in the IRS ability to audit millionaires is the availability of IRS revenue agents, a particular class of investigators. Only this class of auditors, given sufficient training and experience, are qualified to examine complex tax returns  the types of returns typically filed by high-income individuals and large-scale businesses, the analysis states. When asked about Johnsons claim, IRS media relations chief Karen A. Connelly referred PolitiFact Wisconsin to the March 17, 2022,congressional testimonyfrom Rettig. In it, Rettig called the TRAC findings absolutely 100% false and said he was tired of having to deal with this issue. We audit high-income taxpayers more than any other category in the Internal Revenue Service, Rettig said. Taxpayers reflecting over $10 million of income are audited at a rate exceeding 7%. Taxpayers at the $25,000 level, which is primarily  the earned income taxpayer would be the only people we would look at, are audited at 1.1%. According to TRAC, Rettig was referring to numbers from 2016. They argue that makes their own numbers more up to date. But that misses an important point. The IRS does not have to initiate audits in the same year returns are filed. So, as years pass, and more audits are started, the picture changes. Under the IRSs definition of the audit rate, the 2016 figure was the most current complete data, said Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Holtzblatt said audits of 2016 tax returns would have begun, at the earliest, in 2017. So at the time of the preparation of the 2020 Data Book, the audit data for 2016 returns were the most recent year outside the statute of limitations for audits. So, its the total number of audits possible for 2016 returns. Data for a later year would not be complete because the IRS could still be opening up audits for that year. That is, by the IRS definition, the 2019 audit rate would not reflect all the audits that would eventually be done on 2019 tax returns. So, all of that leaves us in an interesting spot. In arguing against a bill that provides more money to do more audits of high-income individuals, Johnson cites the same statistics as those calling for the increased spending. Fair enough. And those numbers do refer to last year. But, under the audit process, they are not complete. The numbers will only rise  and the proportions could change  as more audits are begun and completed. That means its not as simple as Johnson suggests. Johnson said last year, the IRS audited Americans earning less than $25,000 a year at five times the rate of other groups. That, well, tracks with the TRAC data  and lawmakers on the other side of the issue have cited the same information in making their case for the bill. But both sides are missing a key point: Audits are not all begun instantly, so at best the figures cited are preliminary ones. They will change, and the proportion may well shift, as time passes and more audits are started and completed. In other words, the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Thats our definition for Mostly True. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned about the financial crisis of the 2000s before it happened, she claimed during a CNN town hall where she pitched herself as the best option for president in the 2020 election. Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, told an audience of college students that her whole lifes work has been about what's happening to working families. And starting in the early 2000s, the crisis was coming. I was waving my arms, ringing the bell, doing everything I could. I said families are getting cheated all over this country,Warren said April 22 in Manchester, N.H.It started when the mortgage companies targeted communities of color. They targeted seniors. They targeted Latinos. They came in and sold the worst possible mortgages and stripped wealth out of those communities, and then took those products across the nation. I went everywhere I could. I talked about it to anyone who would listen, a crisis is coming. But nobody wanted to listen, Warren said, so the crisis hit in 2007, 2008, and just took us down. We confirmed that Warren did raise the alarm about the looming housing and financial crisis. She spoke about debt, financial lending practices and other factors affecting families and the economy years before the financial crisis peaked in 2008. Millions of peoplelost their jobs and homes during the recent Great Recession, generally regarded as happening from late 2007 to mid 2009. Experts say the financial crisis resulted from a number ofcolliding factors, including an unsustainable housing boom partly driven by an easy availability of mortgages, banks taking on too much risk, government policies and lax regulation. Subprime loans  loans at higher interest rates made to people perceived to be at greater risk for defaulting on loans (including families with low and moderate income and poor credit histories)  played a key role in the housing crisis. Warrens presidential campaigncitedseveralblogpostsand comments to media outlets in 2005 and 2006, and Warrens 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap, co-authored with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, as examples of Warren warning about subprime lending and an imminent housing crisis. Warren has represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate since 2013. Before going to Congress, she taught law at the university level for more than 30 years, most recently at Harvard, specializing in commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy. Subprime lenders defended their business practices by saying they were helping more families own homes, Warrens book said, but thats little more than public relations hot air. In the overwhelming majority of cases, subprime lenders prey on families that already own their own homes, rather than expanding access to new homeowners. Fully 80 percent of subprime mortgages involve refinancing loans for families that already own their homes,Warren said in the book. For these families, subprime lending does nothing more than increase the family's housing costs, taking resources away from other investments and increasing the chances that the family will lose its home if anything goes wrong. In aJune 2004 interviewwith PBSs NOW host David Brancaccio, Warren spoke about growing household debt, against risky mortgage lending practices and what she regarded as bad advice to Americans by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Warren said Greenspan encouraged families to borrow against their house to pay for basic expenses. I think what the landscape shows is the middle class is under assault in a way that has not happened before in our history, Warren said. Stagnant wages, rising costs, wildly rising debt. It's in everyone's interest to turn that back around. Warrens campaign noted that The New York Times quoted Warren in an October 2005articlethat said homeowners in suburbs were taking on more and more home-equity debt to stay out of bankruptcy. The article said: Professor Warren of Harvard believes that disaster lurks as homeowners borrow against their homes to forestall bankruptcy. When the stock market tumbled five years ago, people in trouble could sell stocks to stay afloat, she said. But home equity doesn't work the same way. As she put it, You can't sell a part of your home like you could a stock in the stock market bubble. Warren told the newspaper that after a new bankruptcy law went into effect that month, filing for bankruptcy would become more difficult: And that means more families are set up to lose their homes. Warren was substantially correct in herassessmentthat home prices were going up rapidly relative to incomes (particularly for households with a one wage earner), said Ed Pinto, co-director of the Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. But Pinto disagrees with Warren about what caused the crisis. Warren blames banks and lenders, when in fact Congress andgovernment policiesaimed at making homes more affordable are the root cause, Pinto said. (Check out our2008 in-depth analysison the causes of the financial crisis and how that issue was debated in the 2008 presidential campaign. Then, both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama said they sounded warnings, and both blamed the other for helping cause the crisis.) Warren was also a vocal opponent of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, because she thought the law would hurt consumers, said Deborah Goldstein, an executive vice president at the Center for Responsible Lending, which advocates for consumer financial protections. Risingcredit card debthurt Americans already struggling with mortgage payments. I remember (Warren) talking about credit card abuses and how they were harming families, Goldstein said. People were using credit to manage basic daily expenses. Goldstein said that her group, also concerned about the imminent financial crisis, in the early 2000s communicated with Warren on what could be done about it. I'd give then-professor Warren the credit for banging the drum and ringing the bell early on unfair financial practices, said Ed Mierzwinski, senior director of the Federal Consumer Program at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Warren was the No. 1 go-to academic expert in the mid-to-late '90s and 2000s in the debate over changes to the bankruptcy code, he said. Warren in January 2007testifiedbefore the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, saying that the credit card market was broken and hurt consumers. Warren was chosen in 2008 to lead theCongressional Oversight Panel, established by Congress to review the state of the financial markets and the regulatory system. Warren also helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau emerged from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, designed to enforce federal consumer financial laws and protect consumers. In 2013 and 2014, Goldstein's groupcollaborated with the CFPBin drafting payday lending rules. Speaking of the financial crisis that gained traction in 2007, Warren said, I talked about it to anyone who would listen, a crisis is coming. There is documented evidence that Warren spoke against risky mortgage lending practices, rising debt and other factors that contributed to the financial and housing crisis years before it materialized. We rate Warren's claim True. In July 2021, as the pandemic-delayed 2020 Olympic games approached, an interesting tidbit about basketball, Lithuania, and the 1960s psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead started to circulate on social media. A viral Reddit post claimed that "after the breakup of the USSR, the Lithuanian basketball team couldn't afford to participate in the 1992 Olympics, so the Grateful Dead funded the team's expenses and sent a box of tie-dyed outfits in Lithuania's national colours. They went on to win bronze."  claimed This post is generally accurate. The Grateful Dead really did sponsor Lithuania's men's basketball team, and they did provide the team with tie-dyed shirts bearing the country's national colors (yellow, green, and red), and a "Skullman" logo designed by Greg Speirs, which can be seen above. Our one quibble with this claim is that the band was not the team's sole source of funding. While the Grateful Dead did provide the team some financial support (one report states that the band wrote a $5,000 check), the band's main contribution was that it allowed the team to sell special Grateful Dead merchandise, which proved massively popular with fans at the 1992 Olympic Games.  "Skullman" logo Greg Speirs Here's a newspaper clipping from 1992 about the popularity of these shirts. According to Grateful Dead spokesman Dennis McNally, some 20,000 shirts sold in the first week. A third of the money raised went to the Lithuanian Olympic Committee, and the band got "nothing more than a good time."  28 Aug 1992, Fri The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) Newspapers.com  28 Aug 1992, Fri The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) Newspapers.com The Grateful Dead's connection with the Lithuanian basketball team started in 1992 when Sarunas Marciulionis, the team's star guard, and scout Donnie Nelson showed up at a garage in San Francisco to hear the band play. The team, which would be competing in its first Olympic games since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union a few years earlier, was seeking sponsors to fund their trip to Barcelona.  Here's an excerpt from an article published on NBCOlympics.com in 2012 (archived here): NBCOlympics.com On a cold and windy Bay Area winter day 20 years ago, Sarunas Marciulionis and Donnie Nelson, a starting guard and a scout, respectively, for the Golden State Warriors, knocked uncertainly on the door of a nondescript garage in San Francisco. The Grateful Dead is in here? Nelson thought to himself. Somebody said to enter, and so they did, metaphorical hats in hand, taking in the sights and, more vividly, the smells. "Well, there was a little pot going on," Nelson recalls today. "The Dead were trying out Beatles covers, doing stuff like 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'Hey Jude,' but they were just kind of working through things and sounding kind of nasally. Sarunas pulls me aside and says, 'Donnie, no way these guys are famous. They're terrible.'" Nelson shakes his head and smiles. "I always think back and wonder what it would be like if someone caught that scene today -- Sarunas in the Dead pot garage." The Dead had heard about the Marciulionis-Nelson crusade to raise money to enable Lithuania, Marciulionis's native land, to try to qualify for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. "You're all about liberty and freedom and, man, we're all about that, too, so we dig what you guys are doing," said Jerry Garcia, the Dead's leader. That's a paraphrase but, if you've ever heard Jerry (who died in 1995), it's pretty close. NBC reported that the band ended up writing the team a check for $5,000. More importantly, the band gave the team a license to use and sell special Olympics-Grateful Dead merchandise. These items were a major hit and helped the team raise funds that were then used to fund their participation in the 1996 Olympics.  Strong anti-Soviet reaction from the West helped force a treaty, but by the time Marciulionis decided that he wanted to field a team, the nation was nearly bankrupt. He donated some of the money from his $1.28 million Golden State contract, and, with the help of Nelson, whom he had tapped to be Lithuania's assistant coach, set out to raise the rest. Getting the Dead was a major coup. The band wrote a check for $5,000 but more importantly granted Lithuania the rights to sell a Dead t-shirt, a stoned-out psychedelic masterpiece splashed with Lithuania's national colors of green, red, and yellow and anchored by the Dead's skeleton symbol. Purely from a fund-raising perspective, sales of the t-shirt had more to do with the 1996 Olympics; it financed most of Lithuania's participation in the Atlanta Games. But the t-shirt became the hit of the '92 Games, more treasured than any of the merchandise bearing the likeness of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the stalwarts of the United States Dream Team. The shirt kept Lithuania in the news, told the story of its heroic struggle for freedom, its battle to get to Barcelona (it earned a spot through the European Olympic qualifier) and its quest for a medal. For many American basketball fans, the 1992 Olympics are probably remembered for the dominant play of the "Dream Team," the American Olympic team that featured superstars such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. But the Lithuanian team made its mark as well. In 2012, a documentary was released entitled "The Other Dream Team," which followed Arvydas Sabonis and arnas Mariulionis on their somewhat psychedelic journey to a bronze medal.   Updated [1 September 2021]: Updated to credit designer of Skullman logo. Californiasworkforce of 19 millionis spread across distinct metro regions, from tech-heavy Silicon Valley to the agricultural powerhouses of Fresno and Bakersfield, to the movie studios of Los Angeles. Less talked about are the nearly two million who work in the states Inland Empire. Its home to more than 4.5 million people in sprawling San Bernardino and Riverside counties east of Los Angeles. Lt. Gov.Gavin Newsom, a Democratic candidate for governor, recently claimed this region of high desert and valley communities is among the leaders in California job growth. The Inland Empire is the second fastest growing region in California, Newsom said in an interview on MSNBCsMorning Joeon July 12, 2017. Its about logistics, warehousing, transportation. Newsom makes his claim at about the 2:00 minute mark above. We took Newsoms statement to mean the Inland Empire has the states second fastest job growth rate because the lieutenant governor went on to talk about statewide job growth immediately after making this claim. Newsoms comments follow Gov. Jerry Browns recent claim on NBCsMeet the Pressthat Californias Central Valley and Inland Empire are experiencing tremendous job growth. We examined that claim and rated itMostly True. Still, we wondered whether Newsom was right. We set out on a fact check. Our research Asked for evidence to support the claim, Newsoms spokesman cited research from John Husing, chief economist with the InlandEmpire EconomicPartnership. The industry group advocates for jobs creation in the region. The spokesman specifically pointed to a section of HusingsApril 2017report that found the Inland Empires 3.47% growth rate in 2016 was second to San Francisco (4.16%). The report went on to say the region added the second most total jobs of any in the state, 47,500, behind Los Angeles 109,000 and ahead of San Franciscos 43,800. These figures back up Newsoms claim. His statement also holds when looking at job growth rates over the past five years. In April 2017, Jeffrey Michael, director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, compiled data showing job growth rates by metro area. The Inland Empire had the fastest job growth rate over the past year at that time, 3.2 percent, and the second fastest rate, 22.3 percent, over the past five years. The economists analyzed data from the California Employment Development Department. Types of jobs Newsoms claim about the rapid pace of job growth appears on the money. But what about the type of jobs he described: logistics, warehousing, transportation ? Husing told us this description was also on the right track. With the explosion of e-commerce, developers have seized on the Inland Empires vast and affordable stretches of land to build warehouses for products shipped through ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach. More than 60,600 distribution and transportation jobs have been added in the Inland Empire since its rebound from the Great Recession in 2010, Husing said. In addition, nearly 46,000 construction jobs; about 25,000 healthcare jobs and 15,000 manufacturing positions have been created. Logistics, transportation and construction are overwhelmingly the sectors that are driving the growth, the economist said. Husing described most of these positions as blue collar jobs. In April, Husing described in more depth the Inland Empires wage picture. He said it had a lower share of high-paying administrative jobs compared with the state as a whole. But, he said, the region was outperforming the state in its share of middle-class jobs that pay between $45,000 and $60,000. Our ruling Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently claimed the Inland Empire is the second fastest growing region in California. We took Newsoms claim to mean it has the second fastest job growth rate. Data compiled by two leading economists back up Newsoms assertion. It shows the Inland Empires nearly 3.5 percent jobs growth rate in 2016 was second only to San Franciscos 4.16 percent. Figures over the past five years show the Inland Empire grew jobs at 22.3 percent, again second only to the San Francisco market. The lieutenant governor was also correct to describe these Inland Empire jobs as based in the transportation and distribution sectors, based on data from the economists. We rate Newsoms 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. Memes are frequently circulated online containing a quip ostensibly uttered by Robin Williams to the effect that "politicians should wear sponsor jackets like NASCAR drivers": Robin Williams   This quote is, in fact, a reasonably faithful paraphrase of the following bit from Robin Williams' 2009 television comedy special, "Weapons of Self Destruction":  Weapons of Self Destruction And if the whole health care debate -- if you want to know how your congressmen and senators are going to vote, we should actually, maybe they should be like NASCAR drivers. They should actually have to have jackets with the names of all the people who are sponsoring them. Wouldn't that be cool? Then you might have a clue to why the fuck they voted that way. Williams, who died in 2014, also made a similar joke as the character Tom Dobbs in the 2006 movie "Man of the Year." In that film, Dobbs says: "If you're representing special interest groups, maybe we should be like NASCAR with the little patches on the back: 'Enron: We take your money and run!'" This line can be heard around the 50 second mark of the "Man of the Year" trailer:  This 2006 movie, however, was not the first time someone suggested that politicians should have to display their corporate sponsorships.  In 2004, for instance, columnist Paul Halvey wrote in the Illinois newspaper "The Life" that "when a company springs for a political campaign contributions, it should be able to put its logo on the politician." Five years earlier, in 1999, columnist Jim Hightower made a similar suggestion, writing: The Life writing We'd like to mandate full and forceful disclosuremake every politician or candidate own up to where every dollar of their money's coming from. Maybe we could even make 'em wear their sponsors' logos like NASCAR drivers do, as in the illustrations in this issue. But this idea dates back at least a little further. The earliest example we could find comes from a column published in March 1995 in the Harford Courant entitled "Politicians Should Wear Sponsor Logos" by journalist Don Noel:  08 Mar 1995, Wed Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) Newspapers.com  08 Mar 1995, Wed Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) Newspapers.com We're not sure who came up with the exact phrasing of the viral version of the joke. The idea that politicians should wear the logos of their corporate sponsors on their clothes, similar to NASCAR drivers, has been circulating since the 1990s. While it doesn't seem as if this quote originated with Williams, he did tell the joke in a 2009 TV special, and the concept served as a basis for a line his character said in the 2006 film "Man of the Year." Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction. Directed by Marty Callner, David Steinberg Entertainment, 2009.  Update [Aug. 16, 2022]: Rating changed to "Correct Attribution" with citation of comedy bit from Williams' 2009 TV special, "Weapons of Self Destruction."