Facebook Appeal for Lylah Rose
Claim:  A 2-month-old girl was badly burned in the hand by emergency room staff at a Merced hospital.  UNDETERMINED Examples:  [Collected on the Internet, April 2012] This is a friend of mines 2 month old niece Lylah Rose! We took her to the merced er cause she was having diarreah they told me she was dehydrated and need an IV. They were trying to find a vein and put a light on her palm to see through her hand. Where they tried 14 times to get an iv in and blew 3 veins!!!! They held her hand on the light for over 8 min where my neice was SCREAAAMING the whole time!!!! When my sister finally demanded them to stop and send them to valley childrens! When they finally lifted up her hand the Dr or nurse seen the burn and wrapped her hand up with gause!! Failing to even let my sister know they had burned her!! We realized when we got to Valley childrens she had a HUGE bubble on the palm of her hand that had popped from the tape being placed on it!! My sis took her to the Dr. today to get it checked out & the Dr. said these are second degree burns and is sending my sis to a burn specialist where they are going to have to remove the dead and dying skin from her hand!!! :( I have contacted the local newspaper, the local news station who are ALL denying to write a story about what happened! I cant let this slide! Please help share our story! We can be her voice!! I dont want them to be able to do this to anyone else!! WILL YOU HELP US KMPH FOX 26 and get justice for lylah and expose the truth? THIS IS NEWS THAT MATTERS. Merced Hospital is trying to cover this up. If this isnt newsworthy I dont know what is!  Origins:   This item, which began circulating in April 2012, maintains that a 2-month-old girl  named Lylah Rose was taken to a hospital in Merced, California, for treatment of diarrhea; and when she was diagnosed as being dehydrated, emergency roomstaff engaged in multiple attempts to insert an IV which resulted in second-degree burns to her hand.  Furthermore, the item asserts that attempts to interest local media in the story have failed, as those news outlets are "denying to write a story about what happened!" In response to a query, Fresno television station KMPH said they had attempted to look into the story but were so far unable to obtain information from either party involved in the alleged incident: In order for us to do this story, we must be able to speak with the family and the hospital. We have contacted both. The family referred us to an attorney who will not discuss the case and the hospital will not comment due to patient protection laws. On a Facebook site established as the "voice" for Lylah Rose, a post made on 3 April 2012 stated that: voice We talked to our lawyer today who told us not to talk to the media just yet. Until he is finished gathering all the information he needs. But I assure you AS SOON as he says, we will talk to the media and share Lylah's story so this never happens again. Until then we are just going to focus on getting lylah better and out of pain. Last updated:  3 April 2012
In the aftermath of two back-to-back mass shootings in the United States in early August 2019, much debate turned to the demographic dimensions of such massacres, with some commentary pointing the finger at white men, in particular.  In response to such observations, others pointed out the role of non-white assailants in gun violence in the U.S. One graphic in particular caught the attention of internet users.  The meme was first posted on Aug. 5 to the /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") section of the website 4chan, which is notorious as a forum for far-right and white nationalist imagery, tropes and discussion threads. It was entitled "Mass Shooters 2019" and bore the sub-heading "Every person charged with or arrested for shooting 4+ people in a single incident." Underneath that was a collage of 98 portrait photographs, many of them prison mugshots. posted A large portion of the individuals shown in the collage appeared to be non-white, prompting its further promulgation on other online forums, including the website of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. The meme prompted much racist and white supremacist commentary.  Duke commentary   A note under the collage read: "146 Mas [sic] shootings so far this year are unsolved. Of these, 16 suspects have been identified as black or Latino and 0 white. The remaining cases have no suspect description issued. Also, of the 146 unsolved [mass] shootings so far, 21 are in Chicago, 8 are in Baltimore, 7 are in Washington DC, and 6 are in Philadelphia. All of this is according to my personal research which consisted of googling every single incident on the wikipedia page for mass shootings and reading local news articles about them. If I'm wrong about something give me the up-to-date information." This meme failed to take into account an essential piece of context in any discussion of mass shootings and those who perpetrate them: how you define a mass shooting.  Different definitions, different lists No fixed, uniformly accepted definition exists of a mass shooting, as we have explained in the past: explained Historically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defined what they call active shooter incidents as those that result in four or more people (not including the attacker) being shot dead in public through actions not related to terrorism, gang activity, or the commission of other crimes (such as robbery). Since 2013, the FBI has dropped that numerical threshold to incidents involving the deaths of three or more people. defined three Everytown for Gun Control, a pro-gun-control non-profit that collects data on shootings, also defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed (not including the shooter) but includes shootings taking place in private homes, a circumstance the FBI omits from their methodology. defines Mother Jones magazine, in their mass shootings database, defines such shootings as indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker. database Stanford Universitys now-defunct Mass Shootings in America project defined a mass shooting as one in which three or more people were shot (but not necessarily killed), excluding the attacker. Stanfords definition excluded gang-, drug-, or organized crime-related shootings. defined The Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced project, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, including the attacker. defines Of the major sources of data about mass shootings, the Gun Violence Archive has a relatively inclusive definition: If four or more people are shot or killed in a single incident, not [including] the shooter, that incident is categorized as a mass shooting based purely on that numerical threshold. This includes shootings in private places, incidents involving gang activity and armed robbery, shootouts, and non-fatal shootings. definition The August 2019 meme stated that its inclusion criteria were incidents in which four or more people were shot in a single incident. It did not specify any other criteria, such as whether the total number shot could include the perpetrator, whether it included incidents that took place in private dwellings, whether it included terrorism or gang-related shootings, and so on.  However, the meme also said it had derived its list of incidents from those included in the Wikipedia entry for "List of mass shootings in the United States in 2019." It's clear that that list did include some gang-related shootings, some which took place in a private dwelling, and several incidents in which multiple people were shot but nobody died.  entry Our relatively brief overview of the alleged shooters included in the August 2019 meme indicates that it was broadly fairly accurate. It contained a few errors, but was faithful overall to its own criteria.  The primary problem with the chart was that it was based on a relatively broad definition of "mass shooting" which, while valid in and of itself, should not be confused with the much more narrow definition implicitly at work in many conversations about "mass shootings"  that is, incidents in which an attacker with no links to terrorism, criminal gangs, or organized crime goes out into a public area and fatally shoots multiple people. From a law enforcement and criminological point of view, defining a "mass shooting" in this relatively narrow way helps to establish clear parameters in terms of the nature and causes of such attacks, as well as the motivations of the attackers and any patterns in the identities of their victims. By contrast, gang-related shootings, for example, even if they cross a numerical threshold for victims, have relatively well-studied and straightforward causes and motivations, as well as a much more familiar victimology. Hence, agencies such as the FBI deliberately exclude them from their study of, and operations against, "active shooter incidents." However, to some observers, especially those primarily focused on the role of guns in violent deaths in the U.S., it is of secondary importance whether a mass shooting was related to a drug feud or a white supremacist act of terrorism. What matters most to these observers is the role of a firearm in causing the deaths of multiple people in one incident. Another example of this is the Mass Shooting Tracker's (relatively rare) insistence on including the death of a perpetrator among the total number of deaths in a mass shooting. The website's reasoning is simple but powerful: "We include the shooter's death because suicide matters ..." insistence Therefore, how you define a "mass shooting" can often depend on which underlying phenomenon or aspect of a mass shooting is of primary interest to you, and that definition can have a significant effect on the list of incidents on which your analysis focuses.  How you define a mass shooting also indirectly has a bearing on the demographic make-up of victims and perpetrators. For example, we know that criminal gangs in the United States are disproportionately made up of Latino and African American members. Including gang-related shootings in your definition of mass shootings will, therefore, increase the proportion of such perpetrators and victims in your count. That should not be surprising or controversial.  made up In fact, the full list of mass shootings (according to the broad definition used in the August 2019 meme), is likely to skew even more towards non-white perpetrators than the meme itself shows. This is because, as we explained in our examination of 2018 statistics for mass shootings, unsolved shootings often remain unsolved due to the dynamics inherent in gang conflict.  2018 statistics If an analysis of gun violence and mass shootings is being done in good faith, that demographic breakdown will be an inadvertent byproduct of the decision to include gang violence in one's definition. However, readers should also be on the lookout for those with a racist or white supremacist agenda deliberately tailoring the definition of a mass shooting so as to yield a list of perpetrators with a higher quotient of non-white individuals.  So what are the demographics of perpetrators of mass shootings, if we examine only the more narrow definitions of that term  the elusive phenomenon whereby an assailant without any ties to gangs, terrorism or organized crime, picks up a firearm and shoots multiple people in a public setting? The most extensive and robust database of gun violence in the U.S. is arguably the Gun Violence Archive. We have used entries from that database and applied the FBI's definition of "active shooter incident" in order to check the demographic make-up of the perpetrators of these much more narrowly defined attacks. The FBI defines an "active shooter incident" (akin to a mass shooting) as an incident in which a perpetrator shoots dead three or more people (not including the perpetrator) in a single incident in a public place, which is unrelated to terrorism, gangs, and doesn't take place in the course of some other criminal activity (like a robbery or fight).  defines By this definition, the Gun Violence Archive showed there were six such alleged incidents between Jan. 1 and Aug. 5, 2019: Aug. 4 Betts Aug. 3 shot dead Crusius July 28 described claimed May 31 shot dead DeWayne Craddock Feb. 15 shot dead Jan. 23 shot dead Xaver All six suspects were men, three were white, two were African-American, and the precise racial and ethnic identity of the sixth suspect was not clear.  Mac Guill, Dan. "Were None of 154 Mass Shootings in 2018 Committed by a Black Man, Illegal Alien, or Woman?"
 Snopes.com. 15 July 2018. National Gang Center. "National Youth Gang Survey Analysis -- Demographics."
 Accessed 6 August 2019. Seewer, John; Sewell, Dan; Minchillo, John. "Vigil Honors Victims as Authorities Eye Ohio Shooter's Life."
 The Associated Press. 5 August 2019. Galvan, Astrid; Lee, Morgan; Weber, Paul J. "El Paso Deaths Climb to 22 as Mayor Prepares for Trump's Visit."
 The Associated Press. 5 August 2019. Vives, Ruben et al. "What We Know About the Gilroy Garlic Festival Shooting Suspect."
 The Los Angeles Times. 29 July 2019. Finley, Ben. "12 People Killed in Virginia Beach Shooting; Suspect Dead."
 The Associated Press. 1 June 2019. Coutu, Peter and Alissa Skelton. "Virginia Beach Killer Matched the Cliche: Quite, Polite, Unassuming."
 The Virginian-Pilot. 5 June 2019. Holcombe, Madeline. "Aurora Gunman Opened Fire on His Coworkers as Soon as he Lost His Job."
 CNN. 18 February 2019. Hauser, Christine. "Death Penalty Sought for Man Charged With Killing 5 in a Florida Bank Shooting."
 The New York Times. 8 February 2019. Updated [8 August 2019]: Added clarification that Santino William Legan's manner of death was suicide. On 10 August 2009, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer published an op-ed piece in USA Today under the title "'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate," in which they criticized those who had been engaging in efforts to disrupt debate over health insurance reform legislation (which later became widely known as "Obamacare"). op-ed Reps. Pelosi and Hoyer wrote (in part): [I]t is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion. These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views  but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades. That op-ed prompted Dennis L. Guthrie, an attorney with the Charlotte, North Carolina, law firm of Guthrie, Davis, Henderson & Staton, to pen a (primarily ad hominem) critical letter to Rep. Pelosi the following day, images of which soon began circulating online.  Dear Ms. Pelosi: I write to you out of utter disdain! You are as despicable and un-American as the traitor Jane Fonda. I am a soon to be 65 year-old who has voted in every state and local election since 1966. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats alike. I have worked on campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats, white and black. I served the country that I love in Vietnam, as my son did in the Middle East. I was awarded two bronze stars. I have been involved in politics since age 6 when my father was campaign manager for a truly great American Congressman, Charles Raper Jonas, who worked for his constituents and his country, and was to be admired, unlike you. You obviously haven't read the Constitution recently, if ever, the Federalist Papers, or even David McCullough's book on John Adams. You ought to take the time while riding around in your government provided luxury executive jet to do just that. You represent Socialistic and even Marxist principals that our founding fathers tried to avoid when setting out the capitalistic republican form of government represented by our Constitution. I find it interesting that you and your husband are multi-millionaires with much of your fortune being made as a result of your public service. You have controlled legislation that has enhanced your husband's investments both on and off shore. At the same time you redistributed the wealth of others. Our system of a free market economy is being destroyed by the likes of you. You ride around in a Gulfstream airplane at the tax payers expense while criticizing the presidents of companies who produced something for the economy. You add nothing to the economy of the United States; you only subtract therefrom. I would like to suggest that you return to the city of fruitcakes and nuts and eat your husband's canned tuna and pineapple - produced by illegal immigrants and by workers who have been excluded from the protection that 90% of the legal workers in the United States have. I await your defeat in the next election with glee. Dont ever use the term un-American again for protesters who love this country and are exercising their rights upon which this country was founded. By the way, while I served in the Army, I was spit on by the same type of lunatics who support you and who you probably supported in the 60s and 70s. You are an embarrassment to all of us who served so that you would have the protected right of free speech to call us un-American. But at the same time, I have the right to write you to notify you that I consider you to be un-American, as do the majority of the people of this formerly great country. You are a true disgrace to most of the people who served this country by offering themselves for public service in the United States Congress. I feel certain your aides will not share this letter with you, but I intend to share it with many.   We contacted Mr. Guthrie at the address included in the letterhead on which the letter was printed, and he confirmed that he did indeed write and send such a letter to Rep. Pelosi. The letter circulated again in 2019 via social media, with one minor revision: The line "I am a soon to be 65 year-old" was changed to "I am a soon to be a [sic] 75 year-old." Pelosi, Nancy and Steny Hoyer.  "'Un-American' Attacks Can't Derail Health Care Debate."
  USA Today.  10 August 2009. Announced in April 2021, U.S. President Joe Bidens American Families Plan is an ambitious proposal that aims to expand Americans' access to childcare and education and increase the number of women in the workforce. The plan is to fund all of this through more taxes on higher-income earners and increased reporting requirements of banks that could potentially yield more tax revenue. These reporting requirements have caught the ire of a number of banks that took issue with this less widely known section of the plan. Announced reporting A Facebook post by FNB Community Bank claimed: The Biden administration has proposed requiring all community banks and other financial institutions to report to the IRS on all deposits and withdrawals through business and personal accounts worth more than $600 regardless of tax liability. This indiscriminate, comprehensive bank account reporting to the [Internal Revenue Service (IRS)] can soon be enacted in Congress and will create an unacceptable invasion of privacy for our customers. Facebook post   Another screenshot shared by our readers expressed similar concerns:   The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) even began a campaign, calling on communities to send a letter to Biden to prevent this so-called intrusive proposal": began a campaign, Tell Congress: Don't Let IRS Invade My Privacy The Biden administration is proposing requiring financial institutions report to the IRS all transactions of all business and personal accounts worth more than $600. This is an unprecedented invasion of privacy. In order to knock down this intrusive proposal, please send this letter to your representative and senators immediately. We looked up the proposal itself, and it does require more robust reporting of transactions across business and personal accounts. The proposal, which aims to go into effect after Dec. 31, 2022, states: proposal This proposal would create a comprehensive financial account information reporting regime. Financial institutions would report data on financial accounts in an information return. The annual return will report gross inflows and outflows with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner. This requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600. We begin by explaining some of the more technical terms in this proposal. A "de minimis threshold" is broadly defined as the amount of a transaction that has such a small value that accounting for it would be unreasonable. We spoke to Visiting Assistant Professor of Tax Law at New York University, Nyamagaga Gondwe, who explained, "It is the amount below which the [IRS] would argue isn't worth investigating. It's the difference between your company giving you a $5 card to Subway, versus traveling on a private jet on your company's dime. [The latter] is worth reporting." In this case, "gross flow" refers to the aggregate inflows and outflows of cash from bank accounts. In sum, the current proposal stipulates that an aggregate amount of less than $600 worth of cash flowing into and out of accounts is not worth reporting.  defined gross flow The "fair market value" refers to the amount people are willing to pay for an asset in the open market. In this case, Gondwe argued, the use of the term could possibly refer to the changing market value of transactions more than $600 that may occur in foreign currency transactions.  refers to The ICBA claims that the proposal will make banks report "all transactions" above the limit, but this is misleading. While it is true that the IRS will have more information on cashflows above $600, that doesnt mean they will have all the information pertaining to all transactions. The Center for American Progress (CAP) points out that banks will only be providing aggregate numbers to the IRS after each year  gross inflow and gross outflow  and not individualized transaction information. This reporting requirement would also extend to peer-to-peer payment services like Venmo, but wouldnt require people to report any additional information to the government. According to The Wall Street Journal, financial institutions must already report interest, dividends, and investment incomes to the IRS, and the IRS can get other information through audits. Center for American Progress extend Wall Street Journal audits According to Marie Sapirie of Tax Notes, a publication focused on tax news, a parenthetical to the proposal indicates that there is some flexibility on raising the minimum account balance/inflow/outflow above $600. Tax Notes parenthetical The Tax Notes report also states that the treasury department estimated this form of reporting would raise $463 billion over the 10-year budget window, making it the third largest revenue raiser proposed in the budget. The aim is to target businesses outside of large corporations that carry out gross underreporting of their income in the amount of $166 billion per year. According to the proposal: Requiring comprehensive information reporting on the inflows and outflows of financial accounts will increase the visibility of gross receipts and deductible expenses to the IRS. Increased visibility of business income will enhance the effectiveness of IRS enforcement measures and encourage voluntary compliance. Tax Notes aim Banks claim this would be an invasion of consumer privacy, with the ICBA saying it would allow the government to monitor account information. However, CAP analysts Seth Hanlon and Galen Hendricks argue, Only the prior years total inflow and total outflow would be reported on annual forms. No one would say that the IRS monitors you on your job because it receives a W-2 from your employer with your total wages every January. saying argue Another challenge not mentioned in the ICBAs consumer alert is the higher costs this reporting proposal may place on banks. In May 2021, a coalition of banking associations wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, arguing that they already give a lot of data to the IRS, and that this would impose additional costs on their systems: consumer alert wrote a letter The costs and other burdens imposed to collect and report account flow information would surpass the potential benefits from such a reporting scheme. New reporting would appear to require material development costs and process additions for financial institutions, as well as significant reconciliation and compliance burden on impacted taxpayers. For example, reporting total gross receipts and disbursements would require a new reporting paradigm for depository institutions, which necessitates system changes to collect the information. On the flipside, Sapirie wrote for Tax Notes, the benefits of such a reporting proposal may be difficult to come by: Tax Notes Increasing the amount of information flowing into the IRS would not in itself lead to increased enforcement, and it might come with added challenges. [Former IRS Commissioner Charles O.] Rossotti acknowledged that the IRS today cannot use all the information it already receives, and significant areas of noncompliance are barely addressed, so more reporting alone will not solve the problem. It would almost certainly have a deterrent effect for taxpayers contemplating evasion, but the extent of that effect is unclear, and it might be insufficient to justify the costs to financial institutions and the federal government of implementing such a large new reporting regime. But CAPs analysis argues that this will help prevent tax evasion, while also providing more funding to enhance data security for consumers: CAPs analysis Additional funding would go to enhancing data security. Even at present, the IRS data security is already much better than the financial industry, with only very rare and limited breaches compared to the exponentially bigger data breaches from financial institutions. Second, the reporting of information flows only from financial institutions to the IRS and not in the other direction, as some earlier proposals had called for.  [...] The Biden administrations bank reporting proposal is a critical element of the Build Back Better agenda. It gives the IRS some visibility into opaque forms of income that disproportionately accrue to high-income individuals. Despite fearmongering from bank lobbies, the proposal protects taxpayers privacy while simply requiring banks to provide basic, aggregated information about flows. That enables the IRS to select audits in a more efficient and equitable way so that the vast majority of taxpayers will be less likely to be audited. And by deterring and helping catch tax cheats, the proposal raises substantial revenue for the Build Back Better agenda, which provides critical investments to increase economic opportunities for American families and communities. On Oct. 12, 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the proposal in response to a question from a reporter, who said, "[Banks] are concerned about the tracking of transactions that are greater than $600, Americans are starting to get worried about this. Do you think [this] is going to stay in the Reconciliation Bill?"  defended "With all due respect, the plural of anecdote is not data," Pelosi said. "Yes, there are concerns that some people have. But if people are breaking the law and not paying their taxes, one way to track them is through the banking measure. I think $600  that's a negotiation that will go on as to what the amount is. But yes."     Whatever the impact of this proposal is, it does require additional reporting of certain bank transactions, just not in the way the above banks are portraying it. As such, we rate this claim a Mixture. A Scorecard for Reconciliation, Round 2. Tax Analysts, https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-analysis/scorecard-reconciliation-round-2/2021/09/10/783l0?highlight=biden. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Community Banks Must Engage Customers on New IRS Reporting Mandates. ICBA, https://www.icba.org/newsroom/blogs/main-street-matters---advocacy/2021/08/19/community-banks-must-engage-customers-on-new-irs-reporting-mandates. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Consumer Alert from ICBA. ICBA, https://www.icba.org/bank-locally/consumer-alert-from-icba. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021.Digging Into the Bank Info Reporting Plan. Tax Analysts, https://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-today-global/information-reporting/digging-bank-info-reporting-plan/2021/08/30/777dx. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Fair Market Value (FMV). Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fairmarketvalue.asp. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021. "General Explanations of the Administrations Fiscal Year 2022 Revenue Proposals." Department of the Treasury, May 2021, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/General-Explanations-FY2022.pdf. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Gross Cash Flow Definition. Law Insider, https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/gross-cash-flow. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021. Hanlon, Seth, and Galen Hendricks. Bank Tax Reporting Is a Critical Component of Bidens Build Back Better Agenda. Center for American Progress, 14 Sept. 2021, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2021/09/14/503821/bank-tax-reporting-critical-component-bidens-build-back-better-agenda/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. ICBA Urges House Panel to Reject IRS Monitoring Plan. Default, https://www.icba.org/newsroom/news-and-articles/2021/09/09/icba-urges-house-panel-to-reject-irs-monitoring-plan. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Jagoda, Naomi. Pelosi Defends IRS Bank-Reporting Proposal, Says Specifics Open to Negotiation. The Hill, 12 Oct. 2021, https://thehill.com/policy/finance/576362-pelosi-defends-irs-bank-reporting-proposal. Joint Trades Statement for the Record: Senate Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight Hearing Entitled: Closing the Tax Gap: Lost Revenue from Noncompliance and the Role of Offshore Tax Evasion." 10 May 2021, https://bpi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Joint-SfR-Senate-Finance-Subcommitte-Hearing-on-Closing-the-Tax-Gap-051021.pdf. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Rubin, Orla McCaffrey and Richard. Biden Tax Plan Leans on Banks to Help Find Unreported Income. Wall Street Journal, 29 Apr. 2021. www.wsj.com, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-tax-plan-leans-on-banks-to-help-find-unreported-income-11619701380. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. Tankersley, Jim, and Dana Goldstein. Biden Details $1.8 Trillion Plan for Workers, Students and Families. The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2021. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us/politics/biden-american-families-plan.html. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. "When Is a Minimal Fringe Benefit Not So Minimal?" https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/when-is-a-minimal-fringe-benefit-not-so-minimal. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021. Oct. 14, 2021: Added Pelosi's comments on the proposal. In late April 2016, an image began circulating on Facebook, depicting a screenshot of a survey question asking whether you've ever been in an accident resulting in your death.Early versionsof the question consisted of just ascreenshot, and often came from outside the United States: screenshot  However, as the meme gained traction in late April and early May 2016, the popular image accumulated a new detail. According tosome users, the question was an example of the purported ineptitude of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). By 6 May, thatassertion was overwhelminglycommonplace: commonplace    Verbal descriptionsof the question circulatedearlier than that, going back to mid-2015.Again, manyof those social media users were from outside the United States, often in the UK: circulated 2015 outside often UK    One survey taker captured a partial URL in her share of the perplexing question: captured    While that user didn't specify what site askedthe question, a closer look at the image revealed a web addressfor a survey company and an open tab for similar activity:    On 26 April 2016, a Twitter user claimed the question was an "actual health insurance question": An actual health insurance question pic.twitter.com/04r5f8Gti2 pic.twitter.com/04r5f8Gti2  Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) April 26, 2016 April 26, 2016 In response, other users said that the question was for quality control and originated with a specific online survey company: @rabihalameddine This is from Your-Surveys, search it, they have questions like these all the time. @rabihalameddine  StormzSR (@StormzSR) April 26, 2016 April 26, 2016  The survey question appears to have beenauthentic, and was initiallyfound at a site called Your-Surveys.com. It isprobable that initial use of the viral image was satiricallyattributed to the ACAby critics of the program, but it wasn't long before people (mostly from outside the United States)began to genuinelybelieve that the question was part of online enrollment for health insuranceunder the Affordable CareAct. Sometimes, Snopes readers stumble on old stories that require us to revisit key moments of history. One such story was of the courageous actions of Neerja Bhanot, an Indian flight attendant on Pan Am flight 73, which was hijacked in 1986 by Palestinian militants on its way to the United States while on a stopover in Karachi, Pakistan. Neerja Bhano Many of our readers shared social media posts, and queries, asking us to detail some of the main events of the hijacking, including Bhanots death from a gunshot wound. posts   One reader asked us to confirm the following: When radical Islamic terrorists hijacked her A/C in Karachi, Pakistan she informed the pilots (who used their escape hatch to runaway) and kept both the passengers/remaining crew calm. When the terrorists demanded to know who the Americans were on the flight so they could execute them she gathered all the passports and hid the ones belonging to Americans under seat cushions. The terrorists confused and unable to determine the national origins of the passengers didn't execute anyone. When Pakistani police raided the plane she was able to nearly singlehandedly evacuate all the passengers as the firefight ensued. She being one of the last people on board did a last check and found three children still hiding. As she led the children to safety the surviving terrorists spotted the children and opened fire on them. Neerja jumped in the way of the bullets and was mortally wounded. She was able to evac the children to safety before dying from her wounds. Neerja was awarded the Ashok Chakra Award by India, the highest peacetime gallantry award possible. She was the youngest and first civilian to ever be awarded this honor. Through testimonies from the flight crew and passengers during the sentencing of one of the hijackers, and interviews done by the BBC, we were able to gather key facts from that fateful day. In 2004, Zayad al Safarini, a Jordanian hijacker who was part of the attack, was sentenced by a U.S. district judge to 160 years in prison. At the hearing for his sentencing, a number of passengers, flight attendants, and Bhanots brother, came forward to recount the events of the hijacking. The full transcript of their testimonies can be read here. testimonies BBC sentenced here The Palestinian militants who hijacked the aircraft were affiliated with the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which was opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East, and was described as a secular international terrorist organization. When the hijackers boarded the plane, they began trying to identify any Americans on board. A 2016 BBC report included interviews with the surviving flight attendants, described the scene: described BBC report Sunshine, Madhvi Bahuguna and another flight attendant began collecting passports, quietly avoiding collecting any that were American. They then went through the bags of passports they had collected, secretly sifting out any remaining American ones and tucking them under their seats or concealing them in their clothing. Mike Thexton, a passenger on the plane, describes the act in his book What Happened to The Hippy Man? as "extremely brave, selfless and clever". "I may be biased but I feel that day proved that the flight attendants on board were some of the best in the industry." Descriptions from passengers and family members from the sentencing of Safarini detailed the moment that flight attendants were told to gather passports, and the ways in which they tried to protect the Americans among them. Aneesh Bhanot, Neerjas brother, who was not on the plane as these events took place, described this effort as one carried out by all the flight attendants together: Descriptions Neerja was an Indian citizen. All the other flight attendants were also Indian citizens. Mr. Safarini and his gang were targeting Americans, as was very obvious from the passenger calls which you heard later on. Neerja and all the other attendants knew this. That is why when they asked them to get the passports of all the passengers, they hid the American passports on the airplane. He also cited the testimony of another passenger that was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer in September 1986. A clipping of that paper is available below (in which Bhanot is referred to as Neerja Mishra):   Michael John Thexton, a British passenger, recounted the following: recounted Then came the call for passports, and I should have ignored it. But I felt that I had to obey orders. So I took out my passport and I handed it in, still thinking that the Americans would be in front of us, not reckoning the ingenuity and the extraordinary bravery of the stewardess who was making the collection in discarding American passports that had a white face. I suppose the British were [the] third choice for the terrorists. And after the Americans and the Israelis, mine was the only one of a small handful of British passports with a white face in that pile. I think maybe six or seven, something of that sort. So the call came over the public address for passenger Michael John to come forward, then Michael John Thexton, and I knew that they wanted to shoot me. Darrell Pieper, an American passenger, credited flight attendant Sunshine Vesuwala for protecting his identity. In his testimony, he said, Sunshine hid my passport when she realized the hijackers are looking for Americans. I'm grateful to her for her quick thinking and action, which again saved my life. credited Gregg Maisel, the attorney representing the U.S. government, said, the flight attendants, risking their own lives, deliberately refused to accept United States passports from some passengers and hid several United States passports under seat cushions. said Given that Bhanot played a big role in protecting the American passengers by hiding their passports, but was not the only flight attendant doing this, we rate this part of the claim as true. In this instance, even as Bhanot showed remarkable bravery in getting passengers to safety, she was not alone in this effort. According to Maisel, passengers escaped after Bhanot and others were able to open up some exits: escaped As the bullets and grenades flew, Neerja Bhanot, as well as other flight attendants and passengers, heroically managed to force open two exits in the economy section. The opening of the rear exit triggered inflation of the emergency slide, but the opening of the exit over the wing did not trigger the inflation of a second emergency slide. People clamored to reach both exits fearful that the hijackers would resume the assault.[...]This diagram illustrates the efforts of surviving hostages to escape the aircraft using the emergency slide and climbing onto the wing of the plane. While the slide was a safer escape route, the sheer number of people attempting to leave the plane through this exit at night resulted in additional injuries to some who were unable to exit quickly enough to avoid being crushed by others behind them.[...]At the direction of several flight attendants, other passengers reentered the plane climbing over the wounded and the dead and used the rear exit where the slide was inflated to the safer escape route. Aneesh Bhanot also recounted an article written by a Pakistani passenger: recounted There's another passenger from Pakistan, a gentleman called Hussein, who had written an article in a newspaper called the Star of Pakistan. And he wrote again that says as the lights went out at 10:00 p.m. we was herded with the passengers and the shooting started. From nowhere, his savior, Neerja, and I'm sure other flight attendants also did the same thing, had the presence and the nerve to steer through the pandemonium to lead the passengers where to go. Neerja, by sheer zest, it seems, single-handedly opened the chute. Her favorite words to him and other passengers were, get out, run. In this instance, since Bhanot appeared to have taken the lead in helping passengers escape and was also aided by other crew and passengers, we rate this part of the claim as a mixture, given that she did not do this alone. Bhanots death was described through different accounts, based on information gathered in the aftermath of the attack. Some reports said she was protecting three children, while flight attendants described her being shot during the escape. Jennifer Levy, another attorney representing the U.S. government, described Bhanots final moments: described When the lights went out just before the final assault, Ms. Bhanot ran for the emergency door and activated the inflatable chute. Instead of escaping as one of the first off the aircraft, she remained on board to help others out of the plane. She was shot in the final assault. Although she was taken off the plane alive by her fellow flight attendants, she died shortly afterwards of massive bleeding. Viraf Daroga, Pan Ams director in Pakistan, described how Bhanot was brought down from the aircraft through the emergency chute: described Those who were injured were picked up as they came down the chute, put in ambulances that came rushing to the aircraft, and were driven off to various hospitals. Neerja, the senior purser, was brought down by her colleagues and was taken to the hospital. She died in the hospital in the arms of one of my staff. Aneesh Bhanots testimony described how Bhanot was indeed protecting three children when she was shot and killed: described Neerja could have been the first one to escape from the aircraft as she opened the emergency door, yet she chose not to do that. Instead, she got the passengers out and gave her own life, as we are told, while shielding three small children from gunfire. Her actions probably saved hundreds of lives. The Pan Am Historical Foundation also described her death by saying As the hijackers opened fire on passengers and crew, Neerja Bhanot lost her life shielding three children from bullets. described Since reports differ on what happened during Bhanots final moments, and some details remain uncertain, we rate the overall truth of this claim as "Mixture." But there is no doubting that her actions, as well as the actions of other flight attendants and crew, saved many lives. She was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra award, which is India's highest civilian decoration for bravery.  Ashok Chakra award The recession and its aftereffects have been hard on millions of people across the country.But its been especially hard on women, according to state Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R-Monmouth).Women have come through the recession worse off than men  the numbers bear that out, Casagrande said to My9TVs Brenda Blackmon on the April 29 New Jersey Now program. We went from a 7 percent unemployment rate for women when he (President Barack Obama) was elected to an 8.1 percent now.Casagrande is correct about most of her data, PolitiFact New Jersey found.Obama was elected in November 2008 and took office on Jan. 20, 2009. Anita Velardo, Casagrandes communications director, said in an e-mail that Casagrandes statistic referred to the period from January 2009 to March 2012. But since Casagrande said elected, well look at the unemployment rate for both periods.From November 2008 to March 2012, unemployment among women rose to 8.1 percent from 6.2 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For men, the rate climbed to 8.3 percent from 7.4 percent.From January 2009 to March 2012, unemployment for women rose from 7 percent to 8.1 percent. The rate for men, however, decreased from 8.6 percent to 8.3 percent. Thats because the male-dominated industries that lost jobs prior to January 2009 were starting to rebound.Now lets look at data for the recession, which the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research said occurred from December 2007 to June 2009.During the recession, unemployment among women spiked from 4.9 percent to 8.3 percent. For men, the rate more than doubled, from 5.1 percent to 10.6 percent.Mens unemployment was higher than women during the recession, but women have had a tougher time getting work and living day-to-day during the ongoing economic recovery, according to a September 2011 report, Women and Men Living on the Edge: Economic Insecurity After the Great Recession, prepared by the Institute For Womens Policy Research and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.Economic and labor experts we talked with supported Casagrandes claim.Male-dominated fields such as construction and manufacturing often are hit first in recessions and tend to rebound first during an economic recovery, according to Elisabeth Jacobs, a Governance Studies fellow at the Brookings Institution; Gary Burtless, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings; and Harry Holzer, a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Female-dominated fields such as education, public sector jobs and retail often are hit later and rebound slower, they said.In terms of lost jobs, men suffered worse than women and have seen a bigger drop in their employment rate, said Burtless, who contributed $750 to Obamas campaign in 2011 but also was an adviser on aspects of labor policy to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). In terms of the number of adults who are still looking for work, womens situation looks (proportionately) a bit worse than that of men.The recovery has progressed more slowly for women than for men, and the unemployment rate for women is indeed higher today than it was when President Obama was elected president, Jacobs said in an e-mail.But is Obama to blame?Our colleagues at PolitiFact.com addressed this issue in April after Mitt Romneys campaign claimed women were hit hard by job losses under Obama. Their report showed that women have had a more difficult jobs recovery than men, but Obama cannot bear all the blame, just as he couldnt take the credit if jobs were booming when he took office.Our rulingCasagrande said, women have come through the recession worse off than men  the numbers bear that out. We went from a 7 percent unemployment rate for women when he was elected to an 8.1 percent now. Labor statistics show and some experts told us that while men took the brunt of job loss during the recession, the industries they dominate  construction and manufacturing  tend to bounce back first during economic recovery. Women often are affected much later than men during a recession, meaning they are more likely to have a slower rate of gaining employment. Casagrandes timeframe is off slightly for the statistic she cited, and Obama cant be held completely responsible for the slow recovery among women. We rate Casagrandes statement Mostly True. To comment on this story, go toNJ.com. 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. Claim:  Opinion piece expresses columnist Charles Krauthammer's thoughts on Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare. INCORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example:  [Collected via e-mail, June 2012] I would like to know if the following email attributed to Charles Krauthammer has been correctly  attributed.  Circulated under the subject line: Health Care Decision: From Charles Krauthammer.  To all my friends, particularly those conservatives who are despondent over the searing betrayal by Chief Justice John Roberts and the pending demise of our beloved country, I offer this perspective to convey some profound hope and evidence of the Almighty's hand in the affairs of men in relation to the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare. I initially thought we had cause for despondency when I only heard the results of the decision and not the reason or the make-up of the sides.  I have now read a large portion of the decision and I believe that it was precisely the result that Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts and even Kennedy wanted and not a defeat for conservatism or the rule of law.  I believe the conservatives on the court have run circles around the liberals and demonstrated that the libs are patently unqualified to be on the Supreme Court.  Let me explain. First let me assure you that John Roberts is a conservative and he is not dumb, mentally unstable, diabolical, a turncoat, a Souter or even just trying to be too nice.  He is a genius along with the members of the Court in the dissent.  The more of the decision I read the more remarkable it became.  It is not obvious and it requires a passable understanding of Constitutional law but if it is explained anyone can see the beauty of it. The decision was going to be a 5-4 decision no matter what, so the allegation that the decision was a partisan political decision was going to be made by the losing side and their supporters.  If the bill was struck down completely with Roberts on the other side there would have been a national and media backlash against conservatives and probably strong motivation for Obama supporters to come out and vote in November. With today's decision that dynamic is reversed and there is a groundswell of support for Romney and Republicans, even for people who were formerly lukewarm toward Romney before today, additionally Romney raised more than 3 million dollars today. Next, merely striking the law without the support of Democrats and libs would have left the fight over the commerce clause and the "necessary and proper" clause and the federal government's role in general festering and heading the wrong way as it has since 1942.  As a result of the decision the libs are saying great things about Roberts; how wise, fair and reasonable he is.  They would never have said that without this decision even after the Arizona immigration decision on Monday.  In the future when Roberts rules conservatively it will be harder for the left and the media to complain about the Roberts' Court's fairness.  That's why he as Chief Justice went to the other side for this decision not Scalia, Alito, Thomas or Kennedy, all of whom I believe would have been willing to do it. Next let's look at the decision itself.  Thankfully Roberts got to write it as Chief Justice and it is a masterpiece.  (As I write this the libsdon't even know what has happened they just think Roberts is great and that they won and we are all going to have free, unlimited healthcare services and we are all going to live happily ever after.)  He first emphatically states that Obamacare is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause saying you cannot make people buy stuff. Then he emphatically states that it is unconstitutional under the "necessary and proper" clause which only applies to "enumerated powers" in the US Constitution. Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan all went along with these statements.  They never would have gone along with that sentiment if that was the basis for striking the law in total.  This is huge because this means that the Court ruled 9-0 that Obamacare was unconstitutional under the Commerce clause which was Obama's whole defense of the bill.  They also ruled 9-0 on the "necessary and proper" clause.  Even better both of these rulings were unnecessary to the decision so it is gravy that we got the libs to concede this and it will make it easier to pare away at both theories in the future, which we must do.  Well done.  Roberts, through very tortured reasoning, goes on to find that the taxing law provides the Constitutionality for the law.  Virtually everyone agrees that the Federal government has the power to do this as it does with the mortgage deduction for federal income taxes.  This too is huge because Obama assiduously avoided using the term "tax" and now he has to admit this law is a tax and it is on everyone even the poor.  That will hurt him hugely in the polls and will help Romney.  More importantly though is the fact that this makes this a budgetary issue that can be voted on in the Senate by a mere majority instead of 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster. That means that if the Republicans can gain a majority in the Senate, it can vote to repeal Obamacare in total. Finally the Court voted 7-2 to strike down the punitive rules that take away money from states that do not expand Medicare as required in Obamacare.  This too is huge because we got Kagan and Breyer to join this decision and it can easily be applied to many other cases of extortion the Federal government uses to force states to do things they don't want to. This is also amazing because Obamacare has no severability clause so by striking the Medicaid mandate portion as unconstitutional the whole bill should have been struck.  If that happened none of these other benefits would have been accomplished. I haven't read far enough to know how he did it but I am sure it is brilliant. So to recap the Roberts court through a brilliant tactical maneuver has: strengthened the limitations of the commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause by a unanimous decision, made Obama raise taxes on the poor and middle classes, converted Obamacare into a tax program repealable with 51 votes in the Senate, enhanced Romneys and Republicans' fundraising and likelihood of being elected in November, weakened federal extortion and got the left to love Roberts and sing his praises all without anyone even noticing.  Even Obama is now espousing the rule of law just two weeks after violating it with his deportation executive order. That is why I have decided this was a genius decision and that I did in fact get a great birthday present today not to mention U. S.Attorney General Eric Holder being held in contempt.  What a day.   Origins:  This opinion piece began circulating shortly after the June 2012 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of "Obamacare" health care legislation and has been attributed to  Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.  However, it was not written by Charles Krauthammer: the piece was not originally credited to him (his name was added later), it doesn't appear in his published writings, and he wouldn't refer to a late June event as constituting "a great birthday present" for himself (as he was born in mid-March).  His column on the court's Obamacare  decision, entitled Why Roberts Did It," is distinctly different from the opinion presented here.  Why Roberts Did It The earliest versions of this item that we received bore the signature block of Richard Bolen of the Bolen Law Firm in Lexington, South Carolina. Last updated:  8 July 2012 On 3 August 2016, CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond shared a screenshot via Twitter of an e-mail sent by a frustrated former Trump supporter, claiming that it was impossible for backers to cancel recurring donations to the Trump campaign: Jeremy Diamond INBOX: Help, I set up a recurring contribution to Trump's campaign & want to cancel it: (cc: @realDonaldTrump) pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ  Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  Diamond's tweet sparked a number of articles and blog posts stating it was "impossible" to cancel recurring Trump campaign donations, based solely or primarily on the anecdotal, secondhand claim made  in that tweet. Among the comments prompted by original tweet sent by Diamond were those left by other purported donors asserting that the claim wasn't exactly accurate:  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Spreading bogus info. When you contribute, you get receipt with an email + tel number to call if you need help. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  M G (@MadaGasp) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump now please stop spreading false information, its all in the email you receive when you contribute @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  Brian (@Brian_with_a_B) August 6, 2016 August 6, 2016   A large number of commenters expressed skepticism about the report, given that the claim was anonymously  sourced from a single individual: @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump Cheap shot: we all know you can contact your bank or other form of payment you use, to cancel right away. @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump  Viktor Staudt (@ViktorStaudt) August 4, 2016 August 4, 2016  @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump so exactly who was this unknown mystery person that went straight to a journalist? pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/R4h78829CP  Patti Hannah (@b6sangel) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016  We were unable to turn up any reports about the issue that antedated Diamond's tweet. If any Trump donors had previously encountered difficulties canceling their recurring donations, they didn't seem to chatter very much about it on social media prior to 3 August 2016 (and ceasing to support Trump as a candidate is only one reason someone might seek to cancel a recurring payment). Diamond appeared to pass the baton on the story overall, updating followers later with a link to an article published by Mic: The folks at @mic took this ball and ran with it. Here's what they found: https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2 @mic https://t.co/eTODFa4f3O https://t.co/cktSrf88Z2  Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 5, 2016 August 5, 2016  Diamond did not provide any further information about the claim, the claimant, or how he verified it before sharing it to Twitter. But Mic attempted to reproduce the problem on 4 August 2016 and gathered more information on the difficulty level of canceling recurring Trump donations. In a series of screenshots the site illustrated their findings, stating it was not possible to delete a stored credit card without replacing it with a separate valid credit card:  After investigating, Mic can confirm that there is no easy option to stop recurring donations on Trump's donation site: We set up a recurring donation of $1 and found no button or other obvious way to cancel payments or remove a credit card from the system  either on the homepage, the "update card" page, or in your contribution confirmation email. Once you're registered, if you try to change your payment information on Trump's site, you will see no option to remove your credit card  only "update" it. Then, when you click on "update card," you see a page that allows you to alter your payment information  but you cannot completely delete your credit card. You are forced to replace it with another valid card: Invalid numbers are rejected. One responder to the original tweet then objected to that claim, stating it was impossible to set up a recurring $1 donation:  .@JDiamond1 You can't set up a $1.00 recurring amt.What else about this story is BS?@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE @JDiamond1 @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/kB4TalWOSE  ValerieNoFux (@OPFergVal) August 7, 2016 August 7, 2016  However, it appears that it is possible to enter any amount as a recurring donation: enter  Mic confirmed that if a putative donor set up an account, then it would be possible for that person to cancel a recurring donation made via Trump's web site: It turns out that there is a way to delete your card from the Trump campaign's system, but it seems you must have first registered an account and created a password: If you did not do so, there is no clear way to cancel your payment. Assuming you did create an account and have logged in, to stop your payment you must click the small gray question mark icon in the upper right corner of the donations page. Then you will see [a separate] screen. In order to delete your card, you must click "manage." Then will you be redirected to the website of the Trump campaign's vendor. There you must click "recurring plans," and only then can you cancel your monthly payment; notably, even after you cancel, there is still no obvious way to delete your card number without replacing it with another valid number. Per Mic's screenshots, that vendor was Revv, and we sent an e-mail inquiry to them to clarify whether it was possible to cancel the recurring payments some other way.  Revv However, even if the web site interface didn't allow for such a cancellation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) notes that the the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) provides for consumers to cancel unwanted recurring payments: notes If you have regular, automatic deductions from your checking account (to pay for expenses such as insurance premiums or utility bills), the EFTA allows you to stop those payments. First, notify the vendor. Next, tell your bank about your request at least three business days before the money is scheduled to be transferred. Your notice to the bank may be oral, but the institution may require you to provide a written follow-up within 14 days to ensure that no additional payments are made. If you fail to provide a written follow-up, the bank is no longer responsible for stopping future payments. Stopping an automatic, recurring payment on a credit card is different. Start by putting in your request with the vendor. But if the vendor continues to charge your credit card, contact your card issuer. You'll have 60 days to dispute the charge, starting when the card issuer sends you the statement with the charges. While it appears to be atypically difficult to cancel a recurring donation to the Trump campaign, it is certainly not impossible, as individuals who create an account can do so via the web interface. Overall, it seemed the problem related more to the interface of a third-party vendor (Revv) to whom the Trump campaign had outsourced donations and not to the campaign itself.  Dennin, James.  "Donald Trump's Campaign Website Won't Let Some Cancel Recurring Donations."
  Mic.  4 August 2016. Every mass shooting event in the United States prompts renewed debate about the efficacy of gun control regulations, and the 1 October 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon that left nine people dead on was no exception.  Such debates typically feature each side presenting charts contrasting violent crime and homicide rates in countries with permissive and restrictive gun ownership laws to make the case that the prevalence of guns corresponds to either higher or lower crime rates. The wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting brought the widespread online circulation of an image which sought to make the point that two countries of roughly equal population, Honduras and Switzerland, had radically different laws regarding gun ownership and radically different homicide rates: Switzerland, where gun ownership is supposedly mandatory, has the world's lowest homicide rate, while Honduras, where gun ownership is supposedly prohibited, has the world's highest homicide rate:  First off, even before we check the specific claims about each country, we have to note that this item presents a flawed premise.  For a comparison of this nature to be valid, the two things being compared should be fairly equivalent outside of the factors being examined, but that isn't the case here.  The two countries mentioned here are so very different that this isn't just a comparison of apples and oranges; it's more like a comparison of apples and radishes. Honduras and Switzerland are roughly equivalent in population (a little of upwards of 8 million people each), but other than that, they aren't the least bit similar in geography, economics, or culture.  Switzerland is a small, landlocked country in western Europe surrounded by three of the most affluent countries in the world (Germany, France, and Italy) in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), and even though Switzerland itself is fairly small in population (96th in the world) and size (134th in the world), it ranks in the top 20 in terms of GDP.  On the other hand, Honduras is a Central American country that is nearly three times the size of Switzerland and possesses coasts along both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean sea, but is a "lower middle-income country with persistent poverty and inequality challenges,"with a GDP only about 2.5% that of Switzerland and three neighbors (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala) that share similar economic conditions.  Not to mention that Honduras is right in the path of the flow of drugs shipped by sea and air from Colombia and has therefore been ravaged by the drug war and its attendant factors of massive criminal organizations, violence, and governmental instability. population GDP size poverty drug war As far as homicide rates go, Honduras does have the highest intentional homicide rate in the world at about 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people per year (which is even shockingly higher than the homicide rate of the next worst country, Venezuela, at 53.7).  Although Switzerland's intentional homicide rate is indeed low at 0.6, it isn't quite the lowest in the world: it's bested by several other countries such as Liechtenstein, Monaco, Iceland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, the latter two of which have some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world.  Moreover, a better metric for comparison purposes here might perhaps be the firearm-related death rate rather than the overall intentional homicide rate; in that case, Honduras is still the worst, but Switzerland doesn't fare quite as well (ranking behind about 43 other countries). highest latter two firearm-related Additionally, it is not true that Honduras "bans citizens from owning guns" nor that Switzerland "requires citizens to own guns."  Honduras enacted a ban on open and concealed carry in 2007, but a 2012 news report stated that "under the existing law, citizens are allowed to own as many as five personal firearms," and in mid-2014 Guns & Ammo rated Honduras as one of the "10 Best Countries for Gun Owners," saying that "Hondurans may purchase most popular types of shotguns, handguns or rifles for the recognized purposes of self-defense and recreation."  While Switzerland ranks fourth among all countries in gun ownership per capita (much higher than Honduras), they do not "require" all their citizens to own guns.  Switzerland has a long history of mandatory military service for all able-bodied male citizens.  The government issues firearms to conscripted men which, after training, they take home with them and keep until the conclusion of their military obligation (about age 34 for non-officers), but no other citizens are "required" to own guns: news report rated gun ownership mandatory firearms Switzerland trails behind only the U.S, Yemen and Serbia in the number of guns per capita; between 2.3 million and 4.5 million military and private firearms are estimated to be in circulation in a country of only 8 million people. Yet, despite the prevalence of guns, the violent-crime rate is low: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010. By comparison, the U.S rate in the same year was about 5 firearm killings per 100,000 people, according to a 2011 U.N. report. Unlike some other heavily armed nations, Switzerlands gun ownership is deeply rooted in a sense of patriotic duty and national identity. Weapons are kept at home because of the long-held belief that enemies could invade tiny Switzerland quickly, so every soldier had to be able to fight his way to his regiment's assembly point. (Switzerland was at risk of being invaded by Germany during World War II but was spared, historians say, because every Swiss man was armed and trained to shoot.) The "gun in every closet" tradition was challenged in 2001, after a disgruntled citizen opened fire with his army rifle inside a regional parliament, killing 14 and injuring 14 others. The subsequent opposition to widespread gun ownership spearheaded a push for stricter arms legislation. The government and pro-gun groups argued, however, that the country's existing laws regulating the sale, ownership and licensing of private guns, which includes a ban on carrying concealed weapons, are stringent enough. The law allows citizens or legal residents over the age of 18, who have obtained a permit from the government and who have no criminal record or history of mental illness, to buy up to three weapons from an authorized dealer, with the exception of automatic firearms and selective fire weapons, which are banned. Semiautomatics, which have caused havoc in the U.S., can be legally purchased. The authorities made one concession, though: since 2008, all military  but not private  ammunition must be stored in central arsenals rather than in soldiers homes. The debate culminated in a nationwide referendum, when 56% of voters rejected the proposal initiated by anti-gun organizations to ban army rifles from homes altogether. Swiss citizens may buy and keep firearms, subject to certain restrictions and licensing requirements: restrictions An acquisition license is required primarily for handguns.  Rifles and semiautomatic long arms that are customarily used by recreational hunters are exempt from the licensing requirement,whereas fully automatic guns are banned. An applicant for a weapons license must be at least eighteen years of age, may not have been placed under guardianship, may not give cause for suspicion that he would endanger himself or others with the weapon, and may not have a criminal record with a conviction for a violent crime or of several convictions for nonviolent crimes. The license is issued by the canton of residence of the applicant but is valid throughout Switzerland. All in all, this meme compares two countries that aren't the least bit similar, then gets wrong nearly all the aspects of those countries it references.  As such, it isn't the least bit useful or instructive as a discussion point for debates over gun ownership laws.