Campbell's Soup Tackling Hunger
Claim:  Campbell's Soup will donate a can of soup to the hungry for every click received on a special web page.   . Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2000] Here is an easy way to make a difference this holiday season.  Campbell's is donating a can of soup to the needy for every person that goes to their site and votes for their favorite NFL team. Go to the site and it is right there, very easy to do. It will only take a few seconds of your time to fill some empty tummies with warm soup this winter. Please forward this message to everyone in your address book too. Thanks.  https://chunky.nfl.com/click_for_cans.html https://chunky.nfl.com/click_for_cans.html  Origins:  The above program to attract visitors to the Campbell's Soup web site through the promise of donating cans of soup to the hungry began in 2000. Akin to the Hunger Site's "click to donate" program, Campbell's Soup ties its beneficence to clicks made on a special page on chunky.com, its Campbell's Chunky web site (which is separate from its main site at campbellsoup.com).  Hunger Site chunky.com campbellsoup.com The   2000 promotion  target of 5 million cans was reached in mid-December 2000.  This on-again, off-again program was restarted in the fall of 2001 with a target of another 5 million cans of soup; it was wrapped up after Campbell's announced that the goal of 5 million cans had been met, then was relaunched with the goal of donating an additional 500,000 cans.  During the 2002 campaign Campbell's was just shy of the halfway mark on 23 October 2002 and had reached their target of 5 million cans by 7 November 2002.  Fall 2003 saw yet another interation of the program with the usual 5 million-can goal. As to what the promotion is about, chunky.com's page provides this information regarding the charity: Our Tackling Hunger campaign will result in donations of up to a total of 5 million cans of a variety of Campbell's soups on behalf of all 32 NFL teams. Click for Cans donations are made over the course of the year to a variety of hunger relief charities across the country, in NFL cities and in many other communities. However, Campbell's has been oddly reluctant to release information about the mechanics of their "Tackling Hunger" program. When we asked them back in 2000 for some details  such as whom the food went to  they refused to answer, claiming such information was "proprietary." Even when we reframed our question to remove any suggestion that we were seeking actual names of organizations or individuals (e.g., "Does it go to group homes, or hospitals, or directly to the homes of needy people?"), they stonewalled us again with a claim that such information was "proprietary."  We made additional inquiries to Campbell's Soups concerning these matters because we believe those who participate in donation programs should know whom they're donating to. Campbell's never answered them, not during the 2000 promotion nor during the year to follow.  The promotion ended with our having no better idea whose hunger was being relieved by this program than what we started out with. And that's disturbing. Perhaps what Campbell's is reluctant to disclose is that the promotion doesn't involve their shipping hundreds of thousands of cans of soup directly from their plant(s) to food pantries and homeless shelters in the represented NFL cities, nor does it allow those cities to determine who gets the soup: Campbell's handles the 'Tackling Hunger' payoff by collecting store returns of dented and otherwise unsaleable cans of soup and sending them to redistribution centers of their choosing.  The (store-returned) cans of soup do eventually reach the needy, but any food pantry or other charity group that doesn't work directly with a redistribution outlet can't claim them, and the NFL teams and cities have no say in where the cans end up.  An article in the newsletter for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, chronicled the disappointment one team's fans experienced with the program's administration in 2001. Green Bay Barbara "this tomato is not too chicken to use her noodle" Mikkelson Last updated:  1 October 2007
Claim:  During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama said, "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." Status:  False. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2008] Well, Barack has finally decided to step up and tell us what he has in mind for us with his promises of 'change.'  Just a few short days ago, he had an interview with the Wall Street Journal to further discuss his economic plans/policies for the future and he spelled it out quite clearly.  As you can see from the excerpt quote from that interview (below), he plans on officially doing away with capitalism and replacing it with his much favored system of socialism.  Many of us already knew of his strong socialist tendencies in the past, but he has now put it out there officially on record.  It is amazing that this article, and specifically this quote, is getting overlooked, especially when he is so direct and brazen about his plans.  Every single American who works for a living should be absolutely scared spitless.   Pass this along to everyone you can. Quote from Wall Street Journal: "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." Barack Obama, WSJ, 6/17/08 If this doesn't scare Republicans to get out the vote, I don't know what would!! Origins:  This item comes from a 17 June 2008 Wall Street Journal article about Senator Barack Obama's economic plans for the U.S., some of which was based on an interview Senator Obama gave to that publication.not article Sen. Obama cited new economic forces to explain what appears like a return to an older-style big-government Democratic platform skeptical of market forces. "Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers," he said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably. (The phrase "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably" also does not appear in the Wall Street Journal's transcript of Senator Obama's interview.) transcript As for whether the phrase in question is a fair summary of Senator Obama's economic philosophy (whether or not he actually uttered those words), here is what he  said during the portions of the interview apparently summarized by that phrase: I do believe the tax policies over the last eight years have been badly skewed towards the winners of the global economy. And I do think there is a function for tax policy in making sure that everybody benefits from globalization or at least the benefits and burdens are shared a little more easily. If, as some talk about, we've  got a winner-take-all economy where the highly skilled, highly educated are reaping huge rewards and the unskilled or even semi-skilled are getting a much smaller share of the economy, then our tax policies can help cushion some of the blow through providing health care. So if people lose their jobs they're not losing their health care as well. That actually makes a more flexible work force that makes workers more mobile and less resistant to change. If we've got investments in education, that will make us more competitive in the long run. We've got to pay for that like anything else. But it would be a mistake to say I view our tax code only as a distribution question. I also think that our tax code has come to distort a lot of economic decision making so I'd like to see simplification as part of an overall tax agenda. On the corporate side, for example, one of the things I've asked my folks to look at is: Are there ways we can close existing loopholes in tax havens at the same time as we're lowering overall rates? We've got this new problem: The biggest problem with our tax code when it comes to the business side is that we have one of the highest tax rates  corporate tax rates  on paper but our effective tax rate is one of the lowest ... You know, how much you pay in taxes as a corporation a lot of times is going to depend on how good your lobbyist is, as opposed to any sound economic theories. So those distorting effects I'd like to actually remove and eliminate from our tax system, but obviously that's a complicated and difficult task. The last time we did it was in 1986. We're going to have to, I think, revisit that.  I say that the combination of globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers. I would add an anti-union climate to that list. But all weakens the position of workers, particularly blue-collar workers, in the economy, and some of it is just historical. You know after World War II,we were in this unique position where Europe was decimated, Japan was decimated. China was off the grid because of Mao. And so we didn't have a lot of competition out there, and now other countries are rising and automation has supplanted a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers. We have drastically increased productivity since 1995, and there was the theory that if you increase productivity enough some of these problems of living standards would solve themselves. But what we've seen is rising productivity, rising corporate profits but flat-lining or even declining wages and incomes for the average family. What that says is that it's going to be important for us to pay attention to not only growing the pie, which is always critical, but also some attention to how it is sliced. I do not believe that those two things  fair distribution and robust economic growth  are mutually exclusive. You get to a point, I think, if you have a participatory income tax, for example, where you might be discouraging work because marginal rates are so high. You might undoubtedly get to a point where the capital gain and dividend taxes are so high that they distort investment decisions and you're weaker economically. But you know if you've got a sensible policy that says, we're going to capture some of the nation's economic growth ... and reinvest it in things we know have to be done, like science and technology research or fixing our energy policy, and then that is actually going to be a spur to productivity and not an inhibitor. Last updated:  17 August 2008    Sources:   Davis, Bob and Amy Chozicks.  "Obama Plans Spending Boost, Possible Cut in Business Tax."   The Wall Street Journal.  17 June 2008  (P. A1).    Davis, Bob and Amy Chozicks.  "Barack Obama on Economics: 'We're Going Through a Big Shift.'"   The Wall Street Journal.  17 June 2008. An image supposedly showing a large moon sitting perfectly in the middle of a stone arch formation is frequently circulated on social media under the title "The Eye of the Moon in Utah."  The Eye of the Moon in Utah     This isn't a genuine photograph, in the sense that this scene was not visible with the naked eye. However, this isn't a digitally altered image, either. The original picture was taken by photographer Zach Cooley by using an in-camera double exposure technique. In short, Cooley snapped a photograph, then snapped a second photograph, and layered the images on top of one another. (By labeling it "Misleading," we don't mean to accuse Cooley of misrepresentation. Rather, it's to point out that in many cases the image has been shared on social media with no explanation of how it was constructed.) Zach Cooley Masterclass explains: explains Double exposure photography is a technique that layers two different exposures on a single image, combining two photographs into one. Double exposure creates a surreal feeling for your photos and the two photographs can work together to convey deep meaning or symbolism. A similar technique, called a multiple exposure, is when you combine more than two exposures in a single image Cooley provided some of the technical details behind this image in their Instagram post. They wrote that they traveled to Utah in October as the moon was aligning with this arch, that they used an in-camera double exposure to create this image, and that the two images used were taken about a minute apart. Compared to what was seen with the naked eye, the moon is enlarged and centered. Instagram post Here's the original Instagram post:   Cooley writes: Happy Halloween weekend! I planned an entire vacation mostly around the fact that the moonrise would align with this arch and I could get something resembling a spooky eye on the week of Halloween. Over two nights I got some single shots and double exposures, I thought this one was best for the eye look, what do you think? Can't wait to share more with you all!In-camera double exposureMoon: ?550mm?F/9?1/160sec.?ISO 160Arch: ?250mm?F/9?1/5 sec.?ISO 160 Notes: Photos taken about a minute apart and moon was enlarged and repositioned in the process.  While the "Eye of the Moon in Utah" photograph gives a slightly distorted view of what you would see if you were standing next to the photographer, it isn't that far off from reality. Here's a single-exposure photograph from Cooley that shows a very similar scene:    Cooley elaborated on this in-camera double exposure technique in another Instagram post that showed a large moon over Phoenix, Arizona, writing: Double exposure effects are often achieved in Photoshop or a similar program by importing and manipulating 2 different photos. However, many digital cameras today allow you to merge multiple photos at the time you take them, but of course with none of the flexibility you get with editing software. For this image for example, I captured the city in one shot, then zoomed in and positioned the moon where I wanted it to overlay, and when I snapped that second photo the camera merged it with the first since it was in double exposure mode. Zooming in for the moon photo makes it appear larger in comparison to the city than it did in real life (4X larger in this case). This all may sound easy, but a lot of things have to be just right for this to work out.Ive mentioned this before, but to be clear, I have zero issues with Photoshop - its a pretty cool tool that opens doors to infinite creativity, among other things. I'm personally just in a place where I have yet to learn how to do things like this in Photoshop, and I'm enjoying trying different things with my camera. Ive been hesitant to post this, probably most of all because I take pride in a lot of single exposure moon photos Ive taken, and I fear mixing in images like this could lead people to believe those single exposures are more of the same. Like Ive said though, I will always specify in the caption. At the end of the day, Im proud of this image too and happy to share creative work without walls, even if its not purist photography. Im definitely wanting feedback on all this, from photographers and not photographers alike, so please let me know what you think! And thanks for reading my book. ?? Here's the moon over Phoenix image: On 10 August 2016, the unreliable web site Disclose.tv published an article reporting that former National Security Agency (NSA) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden was "pronounced dead by his girlfriend" in Russia: article Days after Edward Snowdens rumored death was debunked by journalist Glenn Greenwald and a Russian lawyer, a report emerged that his mistress and girlfriend have confirmed the leakers demise. HE WAS KILLED SATURDAY BY A DRUNKEN KNIFE WIELDING BURYAT Quoting MKRU News of Russia, a conservative site called Get Off the BS said Monday afternoon that Snowdens mistress said he was killed Saturday by a drunken knife wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. The article from which the claim was aggregated was presented in the style of fiction rather than reporting and was interspersed with salacious fabrications: article Late Monday afternoon, the mistress of the infamous Edward Snowden announced the death of Snowden, who was allegedly killed this past Saturday by a drunken knife wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. MKRU News (Russia) reported this past Saturday that a drunken man who for some reason took exception to a man, presumably Snowden, saving his wife from drowning, attacked a woman by slicing her neck and stabbed her male companion in the thigh, who later died from severe blood loss in a local hospital ... The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where one of them died as a result of the extensive blood loss. The unidentified man was allegedly 27 years old. (Snowden who was born on June 21, 1983, would be 33 now) That outlet connected the purported death of Snowden to a cryptic, since-deleted tweet issued by the exiled contractor on 5 August 2016: tweet  While it was true the disappearing tweet was interpreted by many as an ominous signal, an insurance key, or a dead man's switch, journalist Glenn Greenwald (who works closely with Snowden to publish leaked material) quickly confirmed that Snowden is alive and well: insurance key dead man's switch @HannahhhBeth @Snowden He's fine @HannahhhBeth @Snowden  Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 6, 2016 August 6, 2016  Disclose.tv and Get Off the BS are sites known for publishing outlandish fabrications and fake news in order to attract readers. On 15 August 2016 Snowden reappeared on Twitter, putting concerns for his safety to rest: Disclose.tv fabrications fake news The world's first confirmed, publicly-ID'd victim of NSA's #PRISM: a pro-democracy activist. https://t.co/C7GPiojhHT pic.twitter.com/GDvTDhyBHg #PRISM https://t.co/C7GPiojhHT pic.twitter.com/GDvTDhyBHg  Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 15, 2016 August 15, 2016 A June 2023 Twitter thread from Democratic presidential primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that began with a video of him performing pushups also stated an allegedly science-based fact  that the average American gained 29 pounds during the lockdowns of the early COVID-19 pandemic. There are several ways in which this statement is false. Twitter thread  First, Kennedy misrepresented the findings of the survey he cited. Second, that survey  even when read correctly  does not properly address the question Kennedy claimed it addresses. And third, published clinical data suggest the pandemic did not have a significant overall effect on weight and, instead, followed a trend of an increase in the average weight of Americans that has existed since well before the pandemic. In an email to Snopes, Kennedy conceded that this critique was valid. "I appreciate you catching my mistake and alerting me," he wrote. The statistic Kennedy (partially) quoted comes from a 2021 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association. That study found that 42% of people gained unwanted weight during the pandemic, and within that subset of people the average weight gain was 29 pounds. 2021 survey APA's survey of U.S. adults, conducted in late February 2021 by The Harris Poll, shows that a majority of adults (61%) experienced undesired weight changesweight gain or losssince the pandemic started, with 42% reporting they gained more weight than they intended. Of those, they gained an average of 29 pounds (the median amount gained was 15 pounds) and 10% said they gained more than 50 pounds, the poll found. majority of adults (61%) experienced undesired weight changes When the pool of individuals you are looking at includes only people who reported gaining weight (and not, for example, the people who say they lost or maintained weight during the same period of time) the number is going to be significantly higher. Kennedy's claim relies on the notion that the only Americans that existed during the pandemic are those who gained weight. This same survey indicated that "18% of U.S. adults report undesired weight loss, with an average weight loss of 26 lbs." same survey In response to our question about his use of this data, Kennedy responded to Snopes by email stating that he was in error. "I made an error in describing 29 lbs as a national average," he wrote. The APA survey did not gather weight data on any individual. Instead these data stem from surveys carried out by the APA, Stress In America, that measure "attitudes and perceptions of stress among the general public". This particular survey, the Pandemic Anniversary Survey, was conducted roughly a year into the pandemic in February 2021. It had a sample size of just over 3,000 individuals: Stress In America sample size The Pandemic Anniversary Survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association between Feb. 19 and 24, 2021, among 3,013 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S.  The survey questions were designed to identify perceptions of stress, not to quantify standardized measurements of weight. Reports of undesired weight gain, in this sort of study, are entirely self-reported. Even if used in good faith, such a survey would not be an appropriate gauge of actual trends of weight gain or loss in America. In contrast to the APA study and its 3,000 participants, a research paper published by the Epic Health Research Network (EHRN) analyzed anonymized medical data collected from nearly 20 million patients across America at multiple times before, at the onset of, and during the pandemic, as explained in the July 2021 publication: research paper These data come from Cosmos, a HIPAA Limited Data Set of more than 111 million patients. [...] Data are pooled from 128 healthcare organizations representing 640 hospitals that span 49 states and cover 19,573,285 patients. This includes 15,663,833 patients in the year prior to the pandemic and 14,922,615 patients over the course of the pandemic. Cosmos, its website says, is the "largest integrated database of clinical information in the United States." Composed of anonymized clinical records, the dataset is a product of a software company that manages medical records in many American hospitals. Epic Research is an arm of this collection of companies publishing papers based on their Cosmos dataset. says many American hospitals In the study, the researchers found that an almost equal number of individuals gained weight as lost weight during the pandemic: found We evaluated weight change for adults during the pandemic compared to weight change for adults in the year prior to the pandemic. A weight loss or gain of 2.5 pounds, which we define as a normal fluctuation or "no change," was most common, both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. Nearly as many patients lost weight (35%) as gained weight (39%) during the pandemic. By utilizing data from before the pandemic, from the start of the pandemic, and from during the pandemic, the researchers were also able to compare rates of weight gain or loss year by year. As described in the study, the period of time from the onset of the pandemic into May 2021 brought slightly higher average body weight than the preceding time period, but this was in line with a national trend of increasing average weight: described The average adult weight over time has increased, as shown in Figure 3 [below]. The slight increase in the average adult weight during the pandemic period of less than one pound is consistent with the previous trend. Weight change patterns were similar regardless of age and sex.  Their findings also put the extremity of Kennedy's claim in perspective. The clinical data indicates that only about 2% of individuals gained more than 27.5 pounds during the early pandemic: only about 2%  Because no study actually says that the average American gained 29 pounds during the early pandemic, because the study used to reach that conclusion  even if interpreted correctly  is ill-suited for the purpose Kennedy used it, and because nationwide clinical data suggest otherwise, the claim is False. Alban, Chris, et al. Pandemic Pound Theories Don't Hold Weight. https://epicresearch.org/articles/pandemic-pound-theories-dont-hold-weight. Accessed 6 July 2023. Epic Cosmos. https://cosmos.epic.com/. Accessed 6 July 2023. Jennings, Katie. "The Billionaire Who Controls Your Medical Records." Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2021/04/08/billionaire-judy-faulkner-epic-systems/. Accessed 6 July 2023. "One Year on: Unhealthy Weight Gains, Increased Drinking Reported by Americans Coping with Pandemic Stress." APA, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/03/one-year-pandemic-stress. Accessed 6 July 2023. Slightly More Than 6 in 10 U.S. Adults (61%) Report Undesired Weight Change Since Start of Pandemic. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/03/march-weight-change. Accessed 6 July 2023. "Stress in America." APA, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress. Accessed 6 July 2023. In April 2017, rumors appeared on social media that former United States President Barack Obama had been arrested in Japan in connection with large quantities of cocaine purportedly found on his yacht:      The arrest rumor appeared to have originated via a 31 March 2017 blog post from Benjamin Fulford (who days earlier had claimed that the Japanese government was trying to kill him) that was further aggregated by other dubious web sites: originated claimed aggregated Former US President Barack Obama, in custody of the US military police, has informed on his drug dealing bosses, according to sources in Japanese military intelligence. As a result of this, an airplane filled with Afghan Heroin and North Korean amphetamines was impounded at Argyle International Airport on St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, the sources say. The money raised from this drug flight was intended to be used to finance the operations of Daesh (formerly known as ISIS), the sources say. This impoundment follows the capture of an Obama linked ship containing 4.2 tons of cocaine, the sources note. At the bottom of the post was a citation referencing a 15 March 2017 post on conspiracy site WhatDoesItMean.com about Barack Obama's supposedly fleeing the scene of a drug bust that took place in the Caribbean on a "fishing vessel named the Lady Michelle" that was linked to the former president:  post Obama Flees After Massive Drug Bust Aboard Lady Michelle Vessel In Caribbean An intriguing Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that former President Barack Obama fled Washington D.C. this past Friday (10 March) traveling to New York City, Omaha (Nebraska), San Jose (California) and ending up in Hawaii  all occurring within 36 hours while he sought elite allies to defend him, and keeping him ahead of investigators from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Department of the Treasury (DoT) seeking to interview him about one of the largest drug busts in American history occurring in the Caribbean aboard a fishing vessel named the Lady Michelle.   4.2 tons of seized cocaine, worth an estimated $125 million, from the President Barack Obama linked fishing vessel named Lady Michelle on 16 February 2017 According to this report, nearly immediately upon taking office as President Donald Trumps Attorney General on 9 February, Jeff Sessions, as head of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), was handed a top secret file by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey detailing the nearly two-decade long crimes of 12 current and former security and intelligence officers belonging to the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) who for at least 18 years under both the Bush and Obama regimes had smuggled into the United States at least $100 million worth of cocaine. None this was true, as the "Obama drug bust" story originated with the WhatDoesItMean.com is a fake news conspiracy site, described by RationalWiki as follows: WhatDoesItMean.com fake news RationalWiki follows Sorcha Faal is the alleged author of an ongoing series of "reports" published at WhatDoesItMean.com, whose work is of such quality that even other conspiracy nutters don't think much of it. Each report resembles a news story in its style but usually includes a sensational headline barely related to reality and quotes authoritative high-level Russian sources (such as the Russian Federal Security Service) to support its most outrageous claims. Except for the stuff attributed to unverifiable sources, the reports don't contain much original material. They are usually based on various news items from the mainstream media and/or whatever the clogosphere is currently hyperventilating about, with each item shoehorned into the conspiracy narrative the report is trying to establish. The image used to illustrate the WhatDoesItMean article was taken from an earlier news report about a 16 February 2017 U.S. Coast Guard drug bust off the coast of Suriname that had nothing to do with Barack Obama or Japan: report The U.S. Coast Guard busted four men suspected of smuggling more than four tons of cocaine worth $125 million in the Atlantic Ocean. Officials said on Feb. 16 they intercepted a suspicious fishing boat off Paramaribo, Suriname. The 70-foot vessel was allegedly carrying numerous bales of cocaine, the Coast Guard said. Officials seized 4.2 tons of the drugs, worth an estimated $125 million in wholesale value. Ever-proud Texas has lately been bested in job gains and economic oomph by California, a Texas Democrat pokes. Julin Castro, the U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development, brought up California during the Texas Democratic Partys state convention after noting that as governor, Republican Rick Perry taunted the west coast state for its economy not matching his home states pace. Today,the former San Antonio mayor told reportersJune 17, 2016, California is kicking our butt, creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas. Maybe what we need to do is trade in Gov. Jerry Brown, of California, for Gov. Greg Abbott and get better results. Castro made a similar declaration in his evening keynote speech,telling delegates: This is what happens when a party doesnt believe in government in the first place but has absolute power over its people for decades. You know, they used to brag that Texas was doing so much better than big bad liberal California. But Texas Republicans managed to bungle that too. Because today California is kicking our butt in job development and economic growth. Castros backup Wondering how Castro reached his conclusion, we heard back from Manny Garcia, a state party official, who said by email that Castro drew on news stories and government data to find Texas trailing. Garcia also provided what he described as Castros personally preparedbackup document. Over the 12 months starting in June 2015, Castros footnoted document notes, Texas added an estimated 171,800 seasonally adjusted jobs,per the Texas Workforce Commission. California from April 2015 through April 2016reportedly added450,200 jobs, the document says. Castros document also declares that California has lately seen greater percentage increases in Gross Domestic Product. Between the first quarter of 2014 and the last quarter of 2015, the Bureau of Economic AnalysisannouncedJune 14, 2016, California saw a 4.1 percent increase in GDP, based on national prices for the goods and services produced within each state. Texas GDP had gone up 3.8 percent, per the bureau. Alsonotedby Castro, Californias real GDP grew 2.7 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2015; Texass GDP only grew 1.4 percent. Castros document further notes that from 2014 to 2015, per capita personal income in California grew by 5.3 percent, according toa March 2016 Bureau of Economic Analysis document. In the same year, per capita personal income in Texas grew 2.4 percent, according to the bureaufact sheet about Texas. Economists comment For our part, we noticed that Castro compared raw changes in jobs over slightly different time periods. Economists we queried agreed the population difference between the states makes raw counts less useful than rate-of-change comparisons. At the time Castro spoke, the latest availableU.S. Census Bureau population estimatesindicated that as of July 2015, the Golden State was home to 38.8 million people and Texas had 27 million residents--or 30 percent fewer. To compare job gains for each state over a similar period, we turned to Cheryl Abbot, a regional economist in the Dallas office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By email, Abbot advised that from May 2015 through April 2016, 32 states had statistically  significant year-over-year increases in nonfarm payroll employment. The largest job gains, she said, were in California, Florida and Texas, with 440,300, 253,900 and 171,800 jobs gained, respectively. In percentage growth, Abbot said, the annual rate of jobs growth for California was 2.8 percent, compared with Texas 1.5 percent. So, booyah for California? We asked Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the Royal Holloway University of London formerly employed by the University of Texas, to assess the jobs figures with Castros claim in mind. By email, Hamermesh replied that Castro was right for the short term though Texas continues to look better in the long view; from May 2006 to May 2016, the state saw job gains of 18.6 percent as California experienced 8 percent growth, Hamermesh said. After wedownloaded the governments monthly counts of jobs in each state, we found that as of May 2016, California had experienced greater percentage gains in employment than Texas for every 12-month period going back to 2011. Its only if you go back further that Texass jobs growth exceeds the growth for California. This doesnt entirely mean Texas loses out. Separately to our inquiry,Tara Sinclair, chief economist for Indeed, a job-posting service, pointed out by email that Texas has long enjoyed a lower unemployment rate--a facet Castro didnt mention. Sinclair drew on data posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to show thatTexas unemployment rate has trailed Californias rate since before 2010. Sinclair also prepared agraphshowing that since about 1990, Texas has had a better nonfarm employment-to-population ratio than California, though both states have shown improvement since 2010:  All in all, Sinclair said by email, focusing on the total number of people employed is misleading due to the different population sizes of the two states. By both the unemployment rate (a standard measure of labor market health) as well as the employment to population ratio, Texas's labor market actually looks healthier than California's. GDP and personal income Castros other suggested indicators--GDP and personal income growth--check out in Californias favor. We confirmed his provided GDP figures, also spotting two sets of inflation-adjusted Bureau of Economic Analysis figures of note: --Californias $2.2 trillion GDP in the first quarter of 2016 was up 4.7 percent from its $2.17 trillion GDP in the first quarter of 2015 while Texas first quarter 2016 GDP of $1.48 trillion was up 0.2 percent from $1.478 trillion 12 months before (figures in chained 2009 dollars). --Californias 2015 per capita real GDP of $56,395 was up 3.2 percent from $54,606 in 2014; Texass per capita GDP of $53,707 was up 1.8 percent from $52,742 in 2014. Meantime, the bureausstate-by-state breakoutshows California with the bigger improvement in personal income between the last quarter of 2015 and first quarter of 2016. Personal income means net earnings from property income and other sources including government programs. California saw 0.9 percent growth in per capita personal income between the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, according to another bureau chart, while Texas saw 0.8 percent growth. California also saw greater growth by this metric each of the previous four quarters, per the chart, with Texas last having a growth edge in the fourth quarter of 2014:  Our ruling Castro said that today, California is creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas. These fightin words hold up based on recent jobs growth and relative changes in GDP and personal income. Still (just a tad whiney here) would it hurt to acknowledge that Texas continues to enjoy a lower unemployment rate? We rate this claim True. TRUE The statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/d4bc09e3-1eeb-40d9-bf5b-e9623d046118 It sounds like something from a horror flick. A small, parasitic creature swims into the mouth of a fish and attaches itself to the organisms tongue  yes, fish have tongues  causing it to slowly degrade before latching onto the stub leftover, thus becoming a parasitic pseudo tongue. Over time, the host loses its ability to eat and slowly succumbs to starvation.   So claims a now-viral Instagram post that was shared in March 2021 by the Smithsonian Institute in appreciation of #ParasiteWeek2021. And if the photo was enough to give you the heebie-jeebies, then you may not want to continue reading. Because both the photograph in question and the supposed parasite featured in it are, in fact, real. The picture featured an organism known as a cymothoid isopod and was originally shared on Aug. 3, 2020, by marine biologist Jimmy Bernot, a post-doctoral scholar with the National Science Foundation and Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History specializing in crustacean phylogeny and parasite evolution. In an email to Snopes, Bernot said that he captured the photo during a 2016 survey of fish parasites of Moreton Bay, Australia.   The host fish is known scientifically as Mugil cephalus or the Flathead mullet.  "Not to be confused with the business in the front, party in the back haircut," said Bernot.  And the parasite seen inside the mullet's mouth is what is known as a cymothoid isopod that measured about an inch long. According to the scientist, it appeared that the fish did use the creepy-crawly as a "pseudo tongue."  The fact that you can see imprints of the fish's teeth on the back of the isopod indicates the fish is crushing items against the isopod similar to how the fish would use its tongue, he said.  Jimmy Bernot  Isopods are marine invertebrates, or animals without backbones, that belong to a greater group of animals called crustaceans. Only a handful of the at least 95 known families of isopods are parasitic, one of which being cymothoid, according to research published in a 2014 issue of the International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife. The cymothoidae family in particular is made up of 350 species of aquatic parasitic isopods. Widely distributed around the world in both oceanic and freshwater habitats, cymothoids are on the larger side of parasites and can reach lengths upwards of a quarter of an inch, with the largest reaching lengths of up to 3 inches. International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife "Cymothoids superficially look like free-living isopods, such as terrestrial rolly-pollies or pillbugs that people may be familiar with, except for their powerful hooked legs that they use to attach to their host," explained Bernot. "As adults, they are not good swimmers and typically stay permanently attached to their host." Equipped with a long, slender body that tapers at the end and sharply curved hooks at the end of its limbs, the cymothoid can attach to its host fish at the gills or mouth as well as externally or inside the host flesh, depending on the species. Cymothoids are generally host-specific, meaning each cymothoid typically attaches to a single host species or a small group of related fish. On a parasitized fish, Bernot said that there will often be a single large female and a few small males attached nearby on the same fish.  Various types of parasitic attachment strategies of cymothoid isopods. International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife  International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife   Only a few species attach specifically to the tongue, and these are commonly called "tongue-biters." Other species attach to the skin or gills, but all have detrimental effects on their hosts including blood loss due to the parasite feeding, skin and tissue damage, deformities, and overall stunted growth and reproductive issues.  And when it comes to the cymothoid featured on social media posts, the Smithsonian Institute wrote that the crustaceans sever the host fishs tongue"  a claim that is only partly true. wrote "The cymothoids feed on blood and perhaps some of the tongue and surrounding tissue in the host's mouth, but the loss and degradation of the tongue are at least partially, if not mostly, due to atrophy of the tongue from mechanical damage caused by the strong, hooked legs that the isopod uses to attach to the base of the tongue," said Bernot. In short, cymothoids do not snip straight through the tongue of the fish, but rather cause such damage that a portion of the tongue can eventually fall off.  And according to the research institution, Bernot's photograph is the only known instance in the animal kingdom where a parasite has been observed as fully replacing its hosts organ. In a reply to his original post, Bernot said that the pictured cymothoid isopod holding caused its host to atrophy  a fancy word for wasting away. Studying parasites like cymothoids helps researchers to better understand evolutionary biology and the unique adaptations that individual species obtain in order to survive.  "It appears different groups of parasitic isopods have independently evolved strongly clawed legs through a process called convergent evolution," said Bernot. "Convergent evolution is of interest to evolutionary biologists and developmental biologists since it gives us insights into how evolution can shape the morphology of animals."  And cymothoids also impact human health and economies because of their effect on fish, which Bernot said could sometimes infect more than 90% of fish on a single farm, including commercially farmed sea bass, bream, and salmon. As gross as it may sound, eating a fish with a parasite is "definitely still safe for humans," but the fish might be smaller or have scars, and Bernot said that means it can't be sold at its highest market value. Claim:  Osama bin Laden owns Snapple. Status:  False. Origins:  Snapple, the popular beverage company begun in 1972, has been a target of spurious "owned by someone evil" rumors since 1992. Those earlier (and entirely baseless) rumors linked the company with the Ku Klux Klan, not an Arab terrorist. (The KKK-Snapple connection was but one of many similar slanders tying a number of innocent businesses to the KKK  that particularrumored association was far from unique to Snapple.) rumored association But   times change, and so do those whom society views as the evildoers of the hour. Though the KKK is as odious as ever, its particular brand of detestability has been eclipsed by that of the terrorists cowering in the mountains of Afghanistan. One of the many rumors born in the aftermath of the September 11 attack on America links Snapple with Osama bin Laden and calls for a grassroots boycott of this company's line of products. Although bombs seem the obvious way to go after those who perpetrated the terrorist attacks on America, the real key to their undoing may well be economic. But that's not nearly as visceral a solution as going into Afghanistan with a war cry and guns blazing, and it's not one which the average person can participate in or support in a tangible way, and so rumors like the one tying Snapple to Osama bin Laden help fill the void.  The typical American wants to experience the sense of vindication that comes from toppling this manifestation of evil, and so calls to boycott companies which are rumored to be filling the war chests of bin Laden and his cronies therefore fall on highly receptive ears  many want to feel they're part of the struggle, but the very nature of the battle denies them that opportunity. Becoming part of an economic boycott would restore at least a part of that yearning for participation. That type of rumor, though highly welcome, often outruns the facts. That is the case with the call to spurn Snapple: In a lengthy Snapple press release, CEO Michael Weinstein wrote: press release Snapple has never had  and does not now  have any direct or indirect relationship of any kind whatsoever with Osama bin Laden or any other terrorist group or supporter. That same press release contains the likely reason behind this particular blossoming of the "allied with evil" rumor: If the source of these rumors is over our terminated relationship with a Saudi Arabian food distributorship, let me clarify this once and for all. Some of our products  along with products from other respected American beverage and food companies  were distributed by a company that had an investment from The Saudi Binladin Group. Snapple has never had any reason to believe, nor do we now, that this company had any relationship of any kind with terrorists. Nonetheless, several weeks ago, we terminated our relationship with this distributorship. Those unfamiliar with the Binladin Group might conclude from its name that it is Osama bin Laden's corporate presence. In truth, the Binladin Group is one of the many corporate entities owned or participated in by any number of Osama bin Laden's relatives, many of whom spell their surnames as Binladin. The infamous terrorist hails from a family that is both very large and incredibly wealthy. Osama has 54 siblings, and untangling the web of the family's finances and business associations is nearly an impossible task. Though it cannot absolutely be ruled out some of the income flowing into any of these entities reaches Osama bin Laden, it is widely understood that he is the family's black sheep and that many members of this wide-reaching and far-flung assembly of relatives have utterly disowned him.  Osama's half-brother, 35-year-old Abdullah Mohammed Binladin, the only member of the family to speak publicly about their notorious relative since September 11, said: "I affirm that the Binladin family and the Saudi Binladin Group have no relationship whatsoever with Osama or any of his activities. He shares no legal or beneficial interests with them or their assets or properties, and he is not directly or indirectly funded by them."  As to who does own Snapple, it's now part of Cadbury Schweppes, a large UK corporation famous primarily for chocolate and carbonated beverages. Cadbury Schweppes is a publicly traded company on the London Exchange. It is therefore not owned by any one person, but by  thousands. Snapple originated as Unadulterated Food Corporation in 1972 and was little more than a hobby enterprise begun by Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden, and Arnold Greenberg, who at the time were selling juices to health food stores. The first of its famed teas wasn't introduced until 1987, and the success of that line changed the company. The concern was acquired by Quaker [Oats] in 1994, sold to Triarc in 1997, and sold again to Cadbury Schweppes in 2000.  Untangling the web of who owns what will be one of the biggest tasks those charged with fighting terrorism on the economic front will face in the years to come. It is more than likely the effort will prove that at least some of the terrorists or those who provide their funding have holdings in a variety of American companies that are innocently unaware of the details of each of their minor shareholders' private lives. (The international world of finance being what it is, a diversified portfolio is a must, and that holds true for terrorists as well as for the law-abiding.) That will not mean that those companies whose shares turn up in the wrong hands support terrorism; merely that one of the nasties bought a bit of stock without their knowing who he really was. When such holdings come to light, there will be an outcry against those companies as those looking for someone to direct their anger towards will at least momentarily feel they've found someone deserving of their ire. They'll be wrong, but that will probably do little to stem the tide of criticism they'll unleash. Barbara "who let the dogs out?" Mikkelson Last updated:  21 April 2008    Sources:  Dobbs, Michael and John Ward Anderson.  "A Fugitive's Splintered Family Tree."  The Washington Post.  30 September 2001  (p. A1).   Dunley, Ruth.  "Osama's 'The Black Sheep,' Brother Says."  The Ottawa Citizen.  8 October 2001  (p. A6). Texas House Speaker Joe Straus hinted at theTexas Houses derailed push for more state education aidby asserting that absent fresh action, Austin taxpayers can count on ponying up more than half a billion dollars to schools in other places this year. The San Antonio Republican prefaced his Austin-centric claim by rehashing his view that Texas overly relies on property taxes to fund the schools. Property taxes are going up, and more and more of those dollars are going to school districts in other parts of the state through the Robin Hood system, Straus said in anemail blastdistributed two days before the July 2017 special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott. Straus elaborated: School districts are expected to send away $2 billion through Robin Hood in the upcoming year. One district alone -- Austin ISD -- is expected to lose more than $530 million in local property taxes to Robin Hood this year. Is that accurate? Straus was referring to the Robin Hood or recapture facet of state law designed for equalization purposes so districts with rich tax bases share revenue with less property-wealthy districts. In July 2017,  before Straus made his claim, the Texas Education Agencysaid that some $2 billion all told would be redistributedvia the share-the-wealth mechanism in 2017-18. In 2016,we found Truea claim by Travis County state Sen. Kirk Watson that in Austin, the average homeowner is paying about $1,300 to $1,400 just for recapture. That fact-check said the district for 2016-17 would be forwarding more than $400 million for schools elsewhere. Straus cites newspaper Asked how Straus reached the larger $530-million figure, a Straus spokesman, Jason Embry, said by email that Straus relied on a June 19, 2017, Austin American-Statesmannews storyabout the Austin districts board of trustees approving a nearly$1.5 billion budget for 2017-18. The story said the districts recapture payment this year is expected to be $534 million, an increase of 32 percent, or $127.8 million, over 2016-17. It quoted Nicole Conley, the districts chief financial officer, saying the district expects to pay more than $1 billion in recapture payments during the next two years. Austin school districts calculation When we reached out to the district, spokeswoman Cristina Nguyen specified that according to calculations taking into account expected student enrollment and tax collections, Austins estimated payments would total $533,874,730 for the 2017-18 school year. She emailed us the districts calculations,viewable here. Another district spokeswoman, Tiffany Young, sent an email pointing out a May 2017 district chart suggesting its recapture payments could top $800 million by the 2020-21 school year: SOURCE: Document,FY2018 Recommended Budget,Austin Independent School District, May 2017 (web link received by email from Tiffany Young, senior communication specialist, AISD, July 17, 2017) States preliminary analysis We also asked the Texas Education Agency how much the Austin district will be expected to forward in recapture money in 2017-18. By email, Lauren Callahan guided us to an agency estimate, last updated June 21, 2017, of $513,633,317. Thats $20 million less than the districts announced estimate. But Callahan also cautioned that the state figure is preliminary and likely to increase depending on the districts tax rate. Callahan wrote: We use different estimates of local property tax collections as well as different estimates of student counts, both of which affect the estimate of recapture. Our numbers tie together when all final data is reconciled. Our ruling Straus said the Austin district is expected to lose more than $530 million in local property taxes to Robin Hood this year. As of May 2017, the Austin district estimated that in 2017-18 it would flow nearly $534 million in local property tax revenue through the states school finance system, nicknamed Robin Hood, to help equalize school funding across the state. We rate this claim True. TRUE The statement is accurate and theres nothing significant missing. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. Gov.-elect Rick Scott kicked off a five-day, 10-city tour of the state's major industries on Dec. 6, 2010, by meeting with defense contractors and Florida-based military leaders.Scott started the tour in the Panhandle, meeting with about 20 defense contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications and InDyne Corp., at the University of Florida Research and Engineering Education Facility in Shalimar, before meeting with military leaders at Eglin Air Force Base.We want to make sure we're always thought of as a very military-friendly state,Scott said to reporters at a brief press conference. We're going to focus on what our strengths are. We're clearly a logical place for the military to expand and for the defense industry to expand. We've got a lot of talent in the state, we like the defense industry and the military, so we're going to figure out where we have the most value.Scott tried to underscore the importance of the military to Florida by noting that the military accounts for about 10 percent of Florida's economy, according to theSt. Petersburg Times.Florida is home to 20 major military installations and three unified combatant commands. The Gulf of Mexico is a key training ground for both the Air Force and the Navy, and the state also has two U.S. Coast Guard air stations and another dozen other Coast Guard stations.But does all of that translate to a 10 percent share of the state's gross domestic product,which was $737 billion in 2009?The answer comes from an arm of Enterprise Florida called theFlorida Defense Alliance, a public/private partnership created in 1998 to help position Florida to keep its military infrastructure in place and expand in other areas when opportunities arise. The group commissioned a study in 2008 to examine the economic impact of Florida's stationed military and auxiliary defense industry work.The study was conducted by Rick Harper, an economist from the University of West Florida, who has studied the economic impact of the film and entertainment industry in Florida and who represented Northwest Florida on former Gov. Jeb Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2001-2006. Using 2005 data, Harper concluded that defense-related spending is responsible for $52 billion, or 7.5 percent, of Florida's gross state product that year.The military spent $27 billion across Florida counties in fiscal year 2005, Harper concluded -- $10.4 billion was for goods and services, $12.4 billion for pensions and transfer payments, and $4.3 billion for salaries and wages. The rest of the economic impact is measured in indirect and induced spending, which would include parts of the private defense industry as well as parts of the Florida economy that help service the military, the defense industry and their employees.Harper said that defense and military spending accounted for 732,300 direct and indirect jobs in the state and generated state and local tax revenues of nearly $1 billion.Counties with larger installations enjoy larger impacts, Harper found. Military and defense spending in Duval County had a $12.1 billion impact, a $5.3 billion impact in Hillsborough County and a $6.6 billion impact in Okaloosa County. All but six counties have at least $3 million per year in direct defense-related spending.Harper and Florida Defense Alliance executive director Rocky McPherson noted that the study does not include the economic impact generated by the Florida National Guard or Coast Guard operations. You can see a short synopsis of the study for yourselfhere. Or if you have a lot of time, here's thethree-volume version.Harper's study relies on five-year-old data, so we wanted to see if there was anything more recent. McPherson said Harper and University of West Florida researchers were updating their study using 2008 data but, he said, that report is not available yet. Harper declined to share the results of the study with PolitiFact Florida, but did talk about the results in general terms.Since 2005, Department of Defense spending has risen substantially, particularly in terms of procurement (i.e., contracting), as well as payments to disabled veterans, although active duty military staffing numbers (number of people) have declined somewhat and payments to retirees are not growing as they did earlier due to attrition of WWII and Korean era veterans, Harper wrote. The overall growth in military spending (the study to be released uses 2008 federal spending data), combined with weakness in other areas of the Florida economy in the most recent years, means that DoD (Department of Defense) spending will have risen as a share of the total economy.We searched around for other studies measuring the military's economic impact in Florida, but found none. In examining Harper's study, we found it to be a straightforward, unbiased report. Researchers relied on Department of Defense actual expenditures, precise personnel levels and actual government contracts.Where does it leave us? Scott told reporters military spending makes up about 10 percent of the state's economy. In 2005, military spending accounted for 7.5 percent of the state gross domestic product, but that figure did not include the impact of the Florida National Guard or Coast Guard bases. The author of the study, who is now updating his report using 2008 numbers, said that while he cannot release more up-to-date numbers, that the military's position in the economy has risen since 2005. That will make Scott's point nearly right on. We rate this claim True.