Over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour.
During an all-candidates Democratic forum in Rock Hill, S.C., on Nov. 6, 2015, host Rachel Maddow of MSNBC asked Bernie Sanders how he could win the support of African-American voters, a crucial Democratic voting group in the early primary state of South Carolina. Maddow noted that Sanders was polling at 8 percent in a recent poll in South Carolina and asked if he would be able to convince African-American voters that he could press for their issues. Sanders responded in part by citing his economic platform, which he said would positively impact African-Americans. I have the economic and social justice agenda now that, once we get the word out, will, in fact, resonate with the African-American community,Sanders said. We're talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Over half of the black workers in this country earn less. We wondered whether Sanders was right that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour. So we took a closer look. We turned to themost recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, among other things, tracks the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by race. The bureaus data for the third quarter of 2015 shows that the median weekly earnings for African-American workers was $624. If you divide that by the standard 40 hours in a workweek, it works out to $15.60 per hour. That means that half of African-American workers earned less than $15.60. So Sanders was close on this but exaggerated slightly. His claim is off by a little more than 4 percent. When we asked Sanders campaign for their source, they pointed us to areportissued earlier this month from the National Employment Law Project that found that 54.1 percent of African-American workers earned less than $15.00 an hour. The group calculated that figure using data from 2012 through 2014. Thats a reasonable measurement, but while our figure covers a briefer period of time, its also more current, reflecting the continued economic growth since the end of 2014. Our ruling Sanders said that over half of the black workers in this country earn less than $15 an hour. Depending on the time frame used, the data shows that roughly half of black workers earn less than $15. The most recent data shows that half earn less than $15.60, which is a little higher than what Sanders said, but his number is not far off. We rate his claim Mostly True.
Claim:  The plastic strip embedded in U.S. bank notes enable the Feds to tell how much money you have on you.  Examples:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] This past weekend, a friend visiting our house told us that the anti-counterfeiting strip put in newly printed paper money can be used to determine how much cash you are carrying.  She said that the ever-present "they" at the airport have a machine that can determine how much cash you have on your person or in your luggage, and if you are carrying a sufficiently large amount of cash, you will be detained by the police and interrogated until you confess your guilt as a drug smuggler.  [Collected on the Internet, 2003] I did not get this in an e-mail but my bank teller in Kirksville, MO told me this one.  Evidently there is an urban legend floating around that the new "security strip" in the new $20's can be read by satellites with the implication being the Govt. can beam a satellite on you and eventually, when all the bills in circ. will have these, be able to tell how much $ you are carrying around.  This teller told me that she has had customers come in requesting "no new $20s" for this reason! We had a good laugh about it and we both agreed that the Govt. is going to be sorely disappointed if they turned this hypothetical satellite on us! Origins:  The ongoing effort to stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters has led to the inclusion of a number of security features in U.S. currency. One countermeasure in particular has come to be the focus of a widely-believed bit lore: the embedded inscribed security thread. According to scuttlebutt, the purpose of the thread isn't really to make it more difficult for the ill-intentioned to introduce   worthless currency into circulation by fooling its recipients into thinking it genuine, but instead to allow the government to know exactly how much money anyone is carrying at any particular moment. With the use of special scanners, or possibly a beam from a distant satellite, the Feds can quickly count the value of all bank notes being carried on or about one's person and thus track how much money is entering or leaving the country, and with whom. This knowledge, says the behind-the-hand whisperings, is used to finger drug dealers and smugglers. The rumor is bunk. The strip's sole purpose is the foiling of counterfeiters. It, along with a number of other security features worked into the nation's bank notes, make it far harder on the criminal element to produce phony bills that will be mistaken for the real thing. Other features include the microprinting of "The United States of America" within the rim surrounding the portraits on bills, a watermark displayed elsewhere on the bill of the figure in the portrait, and optically variable ink (OVI) which changes from green to black in the number in the lower right-hand corner of the bill when viewed from different angles. As for the suspect strip, it is made of polyester and is inscribed with the denomination of the bill. Nothing about the composition of these strips renders them detectable by scanner or satellite. In 2004, the false belief attaching to this security feature was enhanced by the claim of these bands containing RFID tags. As technology advanced, so did the rumor, leading many to microwave their $20 bills into ashen submission by falling for the canard that nuking their currency would disable these  RFID tags transmitters. Yet the belief about governmental detection of concealed sums via a subterfuge worked into the currency even predates the polyester security threads. In the 1980s, those similarly worried about being tracked by Big Brother fretted over the ink with which bank notes were printed, muttering to themselves that the "magnetic ink" they believed to have been used rendered the bills somehow magnetic and thus detectable by machine. Back then, the concern was more that this magnetic money would serve to pinpoint the location of the person carrying it rather than it give away how much of it was being ported, but it is another form of the same belief. One confirmation that nothing in and of itself is detectable about the polyester strips embedded in bank notes arises out of the news about security technologies now used at some U.S. airports, including Chicago's O'Hare. Were caches of greenbacks already being ferreted out via their embedded threads, descriptions of the BodySearch scanner, a device that uses special "backscatter" X-rays to produce images of items that might be concealed under passengers' clothing, would not always impart the glad tidings that this gizmo reveals the presence of currency as well as narcotics, plastic explosives, and plastic weapons.  While in the main, the "sneakily embedded technology allows for the surreptitious tracking of people or their assets" rumor attaches to currency and blames the government for the supposed spying, the belief also carries to other items and points fingers at other parties.  [Kamradt, 2003] Some students have not picked up their new ID cards through the re-carding project, which ends today, because of a rumor that there is a locator chip inside the IDs so Purdue can track their whereabouts. "To dispel the transponder rumors, I was closely involved in developing the requirements for production of the ID cards and I can ensure students that no secret electronic devices were embedded in these cards," said Terry Schroeder, project manager for the Purdue ID Re-carding Project. "From my understanding, most of the group that met to discuss this issue (as a result of distributed flyers) were wearing aluminum foil beanies."  [Mulkins, 2000] I heard that a person carrying a large number of $100 bills, going through the PikePass readers, could be detected and the exact amount of money determined. The authorities are using PikePass to detect drug dealers and then confiscating the money, even confiscating the money of innocent persons. (PikePass is a prepaid toll device containing a battery and a radio-frequency modulator placed on the windshield of a vehicle.  As a car bearing one travels under a transmitter overhanging a turnpike lane, the device intercepts the signal being broadcast and returns a signal exclusive to that particular PikePass customer. The signal is read, and the toll is subtracted from the customer's account.) PikePass Whereas student ID cards and prepaid toll signalers do at least have a whiff of the enigmatic to their technology, which works to encourage belief that some of that incomprehensibility might be of nefarious intent (we mistrust what we don't understand, after all), this next expression of the rumor is even farther afield: [Collected on the Internet, 1999] I recently received an email telling me that I need to take the labels off my canned good and mark the bare cans with a marker, or at least black out the UPCs. Why? Well, it seems the government has helicopters equipped with scanners that can read the UPCs of the food you have stored. Ostensibly, the government is doing this so they can confiscate food for redistribution in the up coming Y2K breakdown of society. When asked to verify, the poster informed me she was told this by a 'family friend" who flies one of these scanner-equipped helicopters. Of course he doesn't want to be named for his own safety, but he risked telling his dear friends because he loves them. While most folks will laugh off the thought of their soup cans spying on them, the same cannot be said of the belief that their long green is being counted by surveillance satellites sent into orbit by a government intent upon keeping tabs on its citizens  a great many appear to believe that.  Barbara "watch your money, don't worry about your money watching you" Mikkelson Sightings:  In a first-season episode of television's The X Files ("E.B.E.," original air date 18 February 1994), a member of a group that believes the government is up to any number of monstrous conspiracies takes a $20 bill from Agent Scully, holds it up to the light, rips the left side off, and pulls out its security strip, saying, "They use this magnetic strip to track you. Whenever you go through a metal detector at an airport, they know exactly how much you're carrying." Additional information:        Inscribed Security Thread   (Secret Service)        Money Design Features   (Secret Service)        The Redesigned $20 Note   (Bureau of Engraving)   Last updated:  19 May 2011   Garber, Andrew.  "New Airport Gadgets Strip, Sniff, Scan."  The Seattle Times.  23 October 2001  (p. A1).   Kamradt, Kori.  "Officials Dismiss Rumors About New IDs."  The [Purdue University] Exponent .  14 November 2003.   Mulkins, Phil.  "PikePass Can't Count Dope Dealers' Money."  Tulsa World.  28 July 2000.   Webb, Tom.  "U.S. Currency to Get Makeover."  The Denver Post.  14 July 1994  (p. A4).   Zane, Maitland.  "Counterfeit-Proof Cash Makes Its Debut."  The San Francisco Chronicle.  26 July 1991  (p. A1).   The Associated Press.  "O'Hare Officials Install Scanner, Hoping to Replace Body Searches."  St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  23 November 1999  (p. B2). Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.  fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO In April 2020, during an unprecedented interruption to the U.S. economy due to social-distancing restrictions to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, the United States Postal Service (USPS) remained in operation. Canvassing city streets and rural roads with packages of prescriptions, food, and bills, the mail carriers provided a lifeline for many Americans who feared leaving their homes during the pandemic. COVID-19 Under the U.S. Constitution, the federally run Postal Service must serve all Americans equally regardless of where they live. But with a novel virus plaguing the country  spreading from person to person  that commitment to service came at a cost: 1,800 USPS employees had either tested positive for or were suspected to have caught COVID-19 as of April 25, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers. And more than 40 such workers had died. U.S. Constitution National Association of Letter Carriers The virus' toll on employees' health was not the only pandemic-fueled problem for leaders of the Postal Service; a decline in mail deliveries  a leading source of revenue for the agency  due to business shutdowns raised worries that the national mail carrier would not economically recover from a coronavirus recession. From high-profile Democrats in Washington, D.C., to less-known musicians who said they rely on USPS to help them run independent labels, supporters across the country took to Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit to call attention to what they feared were limited days left for USPS. Reddit   Many of the social media posts included calls to action. Supporters rushed to buy stamps, hoping any type of profit boost would stave off a collapse, or urged people to contact U.S. lawmakers and tell them to help the Postal Service with federal funds. As of April 28, almost 390,000 people had signed an online petition on Change.org to express their support for USPS, while more than 440,000 people had endorsed an open letter using an automated texting service (texted "USPS" to 50409) that promised to contact congressional representatives on behalf of petitioners. The letter states: rushed to buy stamps online petition on Change.org automated texting service In the age of COVID-19, having a healthy and strong postal service is more important than ever. More and more Americans are relying on the USPS to deliver medicines, food, and essentials now that social distancing is a matter of life and death. Seeing those pleas online, numerous people contacted Snopes to investigate the validity of the claim that the national mail carrier was, indeed, on the brink of closure due to the pandemic.  The claim is multi-faceted, asserting that USPS could shutter soon, and that the coronavirus pandemic would be the reason why. To get to the root of each assertion, we began by analyzing the history of funding for USPS  which is an independent executive agency and has not received taxpayer funding in decades  and changes in how Americans rely on it. As online communication advanced between 2010 and 2020, USPS' volume of first-class and marketing mail decreased  a problem for the agency's bottom line because stamps and other postal products to send that type of mail make lucrative profit margins. Meanwhile, private competitors such as Amazon and FedEx grew in popularity and reach, raising USPS' package volume because the agency contracts with them (often for what's called the "last mile" of deliveries in rural or remote areas). Such shipments for the USPS increased from 3.1 billion in 2010 to 6.2 billion in 2018, federal data show. federal data But market trends aside, the agency for years has run in the red, with a total of $143 billion in unfunded liabilities and debt as of fall 2018 (an amount that is double its annual revenue), according to the U.S Government Accountability Office. The debt, in large part, is a result of a congressional mandate on how the agency must fund retiree pensions and health benefits for employees. In 2006, under the George W. Bush' presidential administration and a Republican-led Congress, the federal government enacted the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which forced USPS to add up what it expected to spend on the benefits over the next 50 years and then prepay that amount between 2007 and 2016. The math rounded out to an expense of about $5.6 billion annually. But in 2012, the agency began defaulting on the payments. U.S Government Accountability Office congressional mandate Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act $5.6 billion annually That history aside, the pandemic is only hurting the agency's already-troubled financial situation. Addressing a group of congressional lawmakers in earlyApril 9, Postmaster General Megan Brennan said mail volume had dropped 30 percent in the early days of the crisis, and that she expected that decline to reach 50 percent by the end of June. For this fiscal year, which runs from October 2019 to September 2020, she said the Postal Service was preparing for a $13 billion revenue shortfall due "directly to COVID-19" in 2020 and an additional $54.3 billion in losses over 10 years. April 9 Considering those projections, she said the agency could "run out of cash this fiscal year" (or the end of September) without federal intervention. "The sudden drop in mail volumes, our most profitable revenue stream, is steep and may never fully recover," she later told The New York Times. Further details on the potential downturn were unknown; it was not explained where, or to what extent, regions may first notice interrupted USPS service due to the profit loss, nor if the agency would maintain its existing payroll of some 640,000 employees or close all together. Using the COVID-19 outbreak in their rationale, some lawmakers  primarily U.S. House Democrats  attempted to rally support for and extend more federal money to help USPS in spring 2020. Among leaders of the public outcry was Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., who is a member of the House government operations committee that oversees the Postal Service. He told the Washington Post: Washington Post "Im so frustrated at how difficult it has been for a long time to galvanize attention and action around an essential service,' he said. 'And maybe the pandemic forces us all to refocus on this service and how essential it is and how we need to fix it while we can before it gets into critical condition." The requests came to a head in March 2020 during negotiations over a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package, called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Initially, lawmakers agreed to set aside $13 billion in federal dollars for USPS that the agency would not have to repay. But purportedly at the urging of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and aids to U.S. President Donald Trump, congressional leaders removed that provision from the CARES Act  while leaving its funding boosts to help small businesses, passenger airlines and air cargo carriers, and most U.S. taxpayers via one-time stimulus checks, among other provisions that aimed to jump-start the economy. COVID-19 economic relief package, one-time stimulus checks According to a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official, Trump would have vetoed the entire bill if it had contained any such funding to help the postal agency, The Washington Post reported. "We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it," the Trump administration official said. The Washington Post In last-round debates over what to include in the CARES Act, however, a bipartisan pair of senators (Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis.) proposed what some federal leaders considered a compromise between Trump and USPS advocates: a $10 billion loan to help the agency cover operating expenses through the spring of 2020. Trump signed the CARES Act into law on March 27, including the provision that read: CARES Act   But, as of mid-April, the Postal Service did not have access to the funds. Despite Trump's approval of the legislation, the USPS-specific provision required additional signatures from both him and Mnuchin before the agency could request the loan money. While signing off on other aspects of the federal stimulus bill on April 24, Trump said he will not sign the loan unless the service fulfills his long-standing request to raise prices on shipping and postal materials to cover its debt  a call to action based on a false assertion that the service loses money by delivering for Amazon. (Government analysts have said that type of price change could lead to private delivery competitors swooping in on USPS' business and, perhaps, offering cheaper prices for easy city routes and less options for rural Americans, and it would only raise a marginal amount of new revenue compared to USPS' total debt.) At the signing, Trump said: did not on April 24 not sign the loan false assertion Trump said The Postal Service is a joke because theyre handing out packages for Amazon and other Internet companies. And every time they bring a package, they lose money on it ... The post office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times. ... If they dont raise the price, Im not signing anything. Hours later, he followed up with a tweet: followed up   But for House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the $10 billion loan is just the tip of the iceberg to get the Postal Service on solid financial footing and maintain existing functions beyond September 2020. "They dont need more debt capacity, they need debt forgiveness," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York who chairs the House committee that oversees the U.S. Postal Service, to a news outlet for federal workers. Carolyn Maloney federal workers. In a future stimulus package to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, several lawmakers in April proposed an $89 billion bailout for USPS  including $25 billion to offset lost revenue from declining shipments during the pandemic, $25 billion to modernize the agency's aging infrastructure, a $25 billion loan and a new system for paying $14 billion in debt. The Trump-appointed Postal Service Board of Governors, which includes three Republicans and two Democrats, unanimously approved of the request. 'The Postal Service is holding on for dear life,' Maloney said in a statement. ''Unless Congress and the White House provide meaningful relief in the next stimulus bill, the Postal Service could cease to exist.' said in a statement But as of mid-April, the U.S. Treasury secretary suggested that if lawmakers fulfilled any such funding requests in the next COVID-19 stimulus package, the language to help the USPS "would amount to a poison pill," the Post reported. A congressional staffer told the newspaper the Republican-led Senate would not vote to extend more federal dollars to an agency "unlikely to make good on its borrowing". For decades, conservative Republicans have pushed for USPS to privatize its delivery services, a move they argue would appropriately remove government from a service that should be left to the private commercial market. Meanwhile, opponents fear dismantling universal mail service would disproportionately affect millions of Americans who live in rural areas, where private companies such as FedEx and UPS either charge higher rates or do no shipments at all. appropriately remove government millions of Americans Since the early days of his presidential election, Trump has taken aim at the Postal Service, once calling the agency Amazon's "delivery boy" in a tweet. Some lawmakers, postal union representatives, and other supporters worry those types of remarks are a political performance behind the longstanding effort to push the mail carrier toward privatization  which the federal government could do by leveraging federal-loan dollars or forcing USPS to file bankruptcy. delivery boy toward privatization 'Right now, I see a big danger for our country in the form of the administrations interest in privatizing the post office,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters after Trump called USPS 'a joke' on April 24. 'This is just about somebody on the outside making money off the post office instead of recognizing the important role [it] plays.' told reporters Among those services, USPS and its database of every American's postal information plays a critical role in local, state, and federal elections. About one-third of states allow voters to cast ballots by mail in elections if they have certain disabilities or travel plans for Election Day, while a handful of states allow all residents to mail in their ballots. But in 2020, under rules to limit in-person contact, lawmakers are exploring proposals that would establish vote-by-mail systems in all states for the year's presidential election. Trump has long opposed vote-by-mail initiatives, falsely claiming that they lead to an increase in voter fraud. He has stated: If the U.S. transitioned to all-mail voting, "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again," yet election experts have said there is no evidence to support that argument. falsely claiming stated In sum, given the Postal Service's massive debt before the global COVID-19 outbreak, as well as the opportunities by federal leaders to provide economic relief for USPS, and USPS leaders' lack of clarity on what would happen if the agency did "run out of cash" this year, we rate this claim "Mixture." Anderson, Sarah, et. al.  How Congress Manufactured a Postal Crisis  And How to Fix it.
 Institute for Policy Studies.  15 July 2019.

 Associated Press. Advocates start work to save post office.
 18 February 2017. Benen, Steve.  On USPS, Trump peddles false claim, impertinent threat.
 MSNBC.  27 April 2020. Bogage, Jacob.  White House rejects bailout for U.S. Postal Service battered by coronavirus.
 Washington Post.  11 April 2020. Colvin, Jill.  Trump convenes task force to study US Postal Service.
 Associated Press.  13 April 2018. Congress.gov.  H.R. 6407 - Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
 109th Congress.  Accessed 27 April 2020. Congress.gov.  H.R. 2382 - USPS Fairness Act.
 116th Congress.  Accessed 27 April 2020. Epstein, Reid J. and Saul, Stephanie.  Does Vote-by-Mail Favor Democrats? No. Its a False Argument by Trump.
 New York Times.  10 April 2020. Fandos, Nicholas and Tankersley, Jim.  Coronavirus Is Threatening One of Governments Steadiest Services: The Mail.
 The New York Times. 9 April 2020. Fredericks, Bob.  Trump calls US Postal Service a joke, says it needs to raise rates.
 New York Post.  24 April 2020. Goodkind, Nicole.  Joe Biden may be the USPSs only hopeif it can survive until November.
 Fortune.  27 April 2020. Goodkind, Nicole.  USPS warns it might have to shutter by June as $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package provides no funding.
 Fortune.  30 March 2020. Heckman, Jory.  USPS reports postal employees deaths from coronavirus, not immune to financial downturn.
 Federal news Network.  1 April 2020. Institute for Policy Studies.  Who Would Pay the Biggest Price for Postal Privatization?
 December 2018. Jameel, Maryam.  Letter Carriers Say the Postal Service Pressured Them to Deliver Mail Despite Coronavirus Symptoms  and Often Without Hand Sanitizer.
 ProPublica.  18 March 2020. LaRocco, Lori Ann.  The Truth About The Post Offices Financial Mess.
 CNBC.  24 October 2011. Lewis, Sophie.  US Postal Service could shut down by June, lawmakers warn.
 CBS News.  3 April 2020. Maloney, Carolyn.  House Democrats Act Rapidly to Save Postal Service from Bankruptcy As a Result of Coronavirus Crisis.
 Committee on Oversight and Reform. 23 March 2020. Mosley, Tonya and Raphelson, Samantha.  U.S. Postal Service Stands To Suffer Huge Losses From Coronavirus Pandemic.
 WBUR.  21 April 2020. New York Times Editorial Board.  Whats an Essential Service in a Pandemic? The Post Office.
 New York Times.  14 April 2020. Norden, Lawrence, et. al.  Estimated Costs of Covid-19 Election Resiliency Measures.
 Brennan Center.  18 April 2020. Panetta, Grace.  Trump reportedly rejected approving a bailout package that would rescue the US Postal Service, and it could be a disaster for states trying to expand voting by mail.
 Business Insider.  12 April 2020. Pecorin, Allison.  Partisan battle erupts over US Postal Service as some look to mail-in ballots amid pandemic.
 ABC News.  28 April 2020. Premack, Rachel.  Lawmakers are sounding the alarm on the coronavirus shuttering the USPS by June  and it could mean chaos for your Amazon deliveries.
 Business Insider.  25 March 2020. Rein, Lisa and Bogage, Jacob.  Trump says he will block coronavirus aid for U.S. Postal Service if it doesnt hike prices immediately.
 Washington Post.  24 April 2020. Rolando, Fredric.  Statement by NALC President Fredric Rolando: The Postal Service is vital in this crisis.
 National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO.  27 March 2020. USPS.  Service Alerts.
 24 April 2020. United States Postal Service, Office of Inspector General.  Update for Measuring Pension and Retiree Health Benefits Liabilities.
 2 May 2017. Task Force on the United States Postal System.  United States Postal Service: A sustainable Path Forward.
 4 December 2018. Wise, Lindsay and Andrews, Natalie.  Democrats Push for Voting by Mail Amid Coronavirus Pandemic.
 Wall Street Journal.  1 April 2020. Winegrove, Josh and Fabian, Jordan.  Trump Says Joke Postal Service Should Boost Rates for Amazon.
 Bloomberg.  24 April 2020. Committee on Oversight and Reform. Postmaster General Warns Committee of Dire Consequences Without Congressional Action.
 Committee on Oversight and Reform. 9 April 2020. Congress.gov.  H.R.748  CARES Act.
  Accessed 28 April 2020. This report was updated on Aug. 19, 2020, to say the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act forced the USPS to add up what it expected to spend on the benefits over the next 50 years, not 75 years. Ball-Point Pens for the Astronauts When NASA started sending astronauts into space, they quicklyDiscovered that ball-point pens would not work in zeroGravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent aDecade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zeroGravity, upside-down, on almost any surface including glassAnd at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 C. The Russians used a pencil. Your taxes are due again  enjoy paying them. [The Moscow Times, 2000] There is a charming anecdote that roams from e-mail box to e-mail box around the world about how, at the height of the space race, the Americans and Soviets approached the same problem: how an astronaut (or cosmonaut) could use a pen to write in zero gravity. As the story goes, the Americans spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ambitious, gravity-immune ballpoint pen; they successfully developed such a pen; and this pen went on to become a massive commercial success in the private sector. The Soviets  with the simple elegance their scientists are so rightly famed for  opted instead to use a pencil. Thelesson of the infamous "space pen" anecdote related above, about NASA's spending a small fortune to develop a ballpoint pen that astronauts could use in outer space while completely overlooking the simple and elegant solution adopted by the Soviet space program (give cosmonauts pencils instead), is a valid one: sometimes we expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a "high-tech" solution to a problem, when a perfectly good, cheap, and simple answer is right before our eyes. As good a story and moral as that may be, however, this anecdote doesn't offer a real-life example of that syndrome. Both U.S. astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts initially used pencils on space flights, but those writing instruments were not ideal: pencil tips can flake and break off, and having such objects floating around space capsules in near-zero gravity posed a potential harm to astronauts and equipment. (As well, after the fatal Apollo 1 fire in 1967, NASA was anxious to avoid having astronauts carry flammable objects such as pencils onboard with them.) When the solution of providing astronauts with a ballpoint pen that would work under weightless conditions and extreme temperatures came about, though, it wasn't because NASA had thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars (inflated to $12 billion in the latest iterations of this tale) in research and development money at the problem. The "space pen" that has since become famous through its use by astronauts was developed independently by Paul C. Fisher of the Fisher Pen Co., who spent his own money on the project and, once he perfected his AG-7 "Anti-Gravity" Space Pen, offered it to NASA. After that agency tested and approved the pen's suitability for use in space flights, they purchased a number of the instruments from Fisher for a modest price. This is how Fisher themselves described the development of their Space Pen: NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed asafer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and development costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government. Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space: (NASA tested the pressurized Space Pens at -50C, but because of the residential [sic] heat in the pen it also writes for many minutes in the cold shadows.) Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965. Samples were immediately sent to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Manager of the Houston Space Center, where they were thoroughly tested and approved for use in Space in September 1965. In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space Pens to NASA for $2.95 each. Lead pencils were used on all Mercury and Gemini space flights and all Russian space flights prior to 1968. Fisher Space Pens are more dependable than lead pencils and cannot create the hazard of a broken piece of lead floating through the gravity-less atmosphere. Paul Fisher continues to market his space pens as the writing instrument that went to the moon and has spun off this effort into a separate corporation, the Fisher Space Pen Co.: Space Pen   Sightings:  This legend was referenced in an episode of NBC's The West Wing TV series ("We Killed Yamamoto"; original air date 15 May 2002): https://youtu.be/LQy1DH38E5g Curtin, Ciara.   "NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen That Would Write in Space."  
 Scientific American.   20 December 2008. Garber, Steve.  "The Fisher Space Pen."  
 NASA.gov. The Moscow Times.  "Pencil Us in for the Next Y2K Disaster." 
 14 January 2000. In late October 2023, the latest iteration of iCloud storage scam email messages circulated in users' inboxes. The subject line of one message that we reviewed read, "LAST ALERT: ALL YOUR PHOTOS WILL BE DELETED!" The message came from a dubious email address that did not end in @apple.com or @icloud.com. The email address showed the display name of "iCloud Storage."  The message began as follows: iCloudFailed to attempt payment when renewing yourCloud storage subscription0 GB 48.9GB /50 GB We failed to renew your iCloud storageYour photos and videos will be deleted!! Your payment method has expired: Update your payment information!If you don't have enough iCloud space, you can upgrade storage plan The link in the message led to a page on menoshold.com, a scam website without a homepage. The page read as follows: Your iCloud Storage Is Full! Your photos, videos, files and private data will be lost. As part of our loyalty program, you can receive an additional 50GB storage by paying $1.95 one time only before all the files are deleted. Answer the following 3 simple questions to claim your special offer now. After filling out a brief survey, the page then displayed the following text: You will be redirected to the next page to claim the 50GB iCloud Storage with $1.95 only. Fill in your basic information and pay $1.95 with credit card or debit card. The 50GB iCloud storage will be added to your current device. The scam then led to a final page on hyperimmunizing.com, also a scam website with no homepage. On the page, we noted that the terms and conditions indicated the entire ruse was a hidden subscription scam, meaning that scammers were attempting to fool users into signing up for recurring monthly fees for services they did not choose. The terms did not mention a specific monthly cost or the types of services that would be provided, but did say at least some users would be "automatically billed every thirty (30) days to the credit card you provided." For readers who might be looking for customer support information, the hyperimmunizing.com website showed the phone number (833) 282-4266 and the email address support@bigprizestoday.com. A representative reached by the phone number only told Snopes that they were a third-party company that was located in Southeast Asia and that they provide services for U.S.-based firms. We advise users who submitted their credit card information to contact their credit card companies to alert them of this activity. If iCloud users have questions for Apple about their storage subscriptions, we recommend visiting the official website for iCloud Support. Apple also published a page about how to recognize scams that impersonate the company. the official website for iCloud Support page Recognize and Avoid Phishing Messages, Phony Support Calls, and Other Scams. Apple Support, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204759. A popular meme in March 2019 questioned why Bill Clinton had "paid Paula Jones $850K to go away" yet the FBI hadn't raided his lawyer's office. The meme was an obvious reference to two completely unrelated issues separated by decades: a 1994 lawsuit involving Clinton and a search warrant executed by the FBI in April 2018 at the office of President Donald Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen.  In short, the major differences in the cases referenced by the meme  one of which involved an FBI raid on a lawyer's office and the other not  were as follows: Clinton openly paid Jones $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit well after he became president and well after Jones had had a chance to air her allegations to the public, press, and court system, while Trump secretly used an intermediary to pay hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels just ahead of a presidential election in order to keep her allegations that she had an affair with him from reaching the public and influencing the election results against him. Nothing Clinton did in settling Jones' civil lawsuit was illegal (or even potentially illegal), but Trump's payment of hush money to Daniels through his lawyer was possibly an illegal act on the part of Trump and/or Cohen, hence the raid on the latter's office but not the office of Clinton's lawyer. On 6 May 1994, Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton just days before the statute of limitations would have expired. In her lawsuit, she maintained that on 8 May 1991, she was working the registration desk at Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Third Annual Governor's Quality Management Conference was being held, an event Bill Clinton (then governor of Arkansas) attended to deliver a speech. Jones alleged that an Arkansas state trooper, Danny Ferguson, approached her at the registration desk, told her that Clinton would like to meet with her, and escorted her to a business suite in the hotel where Clinton was staying. lawsuit According to Jones, once she entered Clinton's hotel suite he complimented her on her physical appearance, put his hand on her leg, attempted to kiss her on the neck, asked her if she was married, and finally lowered his trousers to expose his erect penis and asked Jones to "kiss it." When Jones rebuffed Clinton's advances, she said, he told her to "keep this between ourselves" and suggested that, in her words, he "could damage her in her job and even jeopardize her employment." Jones did not publicly discuss the incident until The American Spectator referenced it in a January 1994 article, apparently based on information provided by Trooper Ferguson: The American Spectator account asserts that a woman by the name of "Paula" told an unnamed trooper (obviously Defendant Ferguson), who had escorted "Paula" to Clinton's hotel room, that "she was available to be Clinton's regular girlfriend if he so desired," thus implying a consummated and satisfying sexual encounter with Clinton, as well as a willingness to continue a sexual relationship with him. These assertions are untrue. The American Spectator account also asserted that the troopers' 'official' duties included facilitating Clinton's cheating on his wife ... Since Jones ("Paula") was one of the women preyed upon by Clinton and his troopers, including by Defendant Ferguson, in the manner described above, those who read this magazine account could conclude falsely that Jones ("Paula") had a sexual relationship and affair with Clinton. Jones' reputation within her community was thus seriously damaged. Several months later, Jones filed her lawsuit against Clinton and Ferguson, seeking a total of $750,000 in compensation for damages and attorneys' fees on counts of sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation. The issue of whether Jones could sue a sitting president went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, who upheld an appellate court decision that "the President, like all other government officials, is subject to the same laws that apply to all other members of our society," and allowed Jones' case to proceed. However, Judge Susan Webber Wright of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas dismissed the lawsuit on 1 April 1998, holding that "the governor's alleged conduct does not constitute sexual assault," that "plaintiff's allegations fall far short of the rigorous standards for establishing a claim of outrage under Arkansas law," that "plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that she has a case worthy of submitting to a jury," and that "there are no genuine issues for trial in this case." dismissed When it came to light a few months later that Clinton had lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky during proceedings in Jones' lawsuit, Jones filed an appeal to reverse the dismissal and have her claims reinstated. On 13 November 1998, Clinton settled the matter by offering to pay Jones $850,000 in exchange for her agreement to drop her appeal, without admitting to or apologizing for the conduct alleged by Jones. appeal Porn actress Daniels (the stage name of Stephanie Clifford) said she first met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada in July 2006. The two engaged in sex in Trump's hotel room, she claimed, and continued an "intimate relationship" into the following year. Daniels discussed her relationship with Trump in a 2011 interview for In Touch magazine, but the interview was not published at that time, reportedly because Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue over it when the magazine reached out to ask for comment. threatened In January 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's personal attorney, Cohen, had arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 just weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement related to her alleged 2006 affair with Trump. reported The following month, Cohen confirmed that $130,000 had been paid to Daniels, but he maintained that he had used his personal funds for the payment, and that "Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly." On 5 April 2018, Trump denied to reporters that he knew about the payment to Daniels. When pressed about why the payment had been made, Trump replied, "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen" and asserted he didn't know where the $130,000 had come from. Four days later, acting on a warrant from federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District obtained in part on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller's office, FBI agents seized a variety of material from Cohen's New York City office, home, and hotel room, including documents related to Cohen's payment to Daniels and to Karen McDougal, another woman who had alleged an affair with Trump. denied A month later, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a member of Trump's legal team, said that Trump had personally repaid Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels, and that the reimbursement had been "funneled through a law firm." The following day, Trump contradicted his earlier claim that he didn't know about the payment by acknowledging that he had repaid Cohen, but he asserted the money "had nothing to do with the campaign." Rudy Giuliani contradicted In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a financial institution, one count of being a "willful cause" of an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution, the latter two stemming from the "hush money" payments made to Daniels and McDougal. Prosecutors held that the payments made by Cohen violated federal campaign finance laws because they were meant to benefit the campaign but did not come from campaign contributions and were not reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The payments therefore constituted illegal in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign that violated laws limiting such donations to $2,700 and requiring their disclosure to the FEC. Whether Trump himself could be charged with engaging in a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws for his involvement in the hush money payments is still a matter of legal debate, but the issue took a dramatic turn in February 2019 when Cohen revealed before Congress that he was paid reimbursement for the hush money directly from Trump's personal bank account after Trump became president. legal debate revealed "Cohen's public testimony directly implicates Trump in serious campaign finance violations," former FECGeneral Counsel Lawrence Noble told the Washington Post. "Assuming Cohen is telling the truth about the purpose of the checks, the checks are documentary evidence supporting the allegation that Trump had Cohen pay Daniels $135,000 in hush money and then reimbursed Cohen." Washington Post All in all, events proved the FBI had good reason to raid Cohen's office, as they gathered evidence of multiple federal crimes (beyond just campaign finance violations) to which Cohen pleaded guilty. Bill Clinton's payment to Paula Jones was a settlement of a civil lawsuit that did not involve any criminal matter or criminal wrongdoing, and thus it was of no legitimate interest to law enforcement. The only commonality between the two cases was that they involved payments by politicians to women, but for very different reasons and circumstances. federal crimes Dowd, Katie.  "Are These the Checks Donald Trump Gave Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels Payment?"   San Francisco Chronicle.  27 February 2019. Goodman, Ryan and Andy Wright.  "Mueller's Roadmap: Major Takeaways from Cohen and Manafort Filings."   Just Security.  December 8, 2018 Rupar, Aaron.  "What's illegal About Trump's Hush Payments to Women, Briefly Explained."   Vox.  12 December 2018. Kelly, Matthew.  "In-Kind Contributions Are Boring ... Until Stormy Daniels Gets Involved."   OpenSecrets.org.  3 April 2018. Lord, Debbie.  "Michael Cohen Plea Deal: How Were Campaign Finance Laws Broken?"   The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  22 August 2018. Associated Press.  "A Timeline of Key Moments in Trump-Stormy Daniels Saga."   4 May 2018. Kirby, Jen.  "A Timeline of Trumpworld's Changing Story on Stormy Daniels."   Vox.  4 May 2018. Samuels, Brett.  "Timeline: Trump, Cohen, Stormy Daniels and $130,000."   The Hill.  4 May 2018. Theobald, Bill.  "Why Hush Money Michael Cohen Paid Stormy Daniels Was an Illegal Campaign Donation."   USA Today.  14 December 2018. Kirby, Jen and Andrew Prokop.  "Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty to 8 Federal Crimes."   Vox.  21 August 2018. Stewart, Emily and Dylan Matthews.  "The Michael Cohen-Stormy Daniels Subplot, Explained."   Vox.  27 February 2019. Chalfant, Morgan.  "Prosecutors Submit Redacted Cohen Raid Documents Under Seal, Teeing Up Public Release."   The Hill.  28 February 2019. Reuters.  "Trump Says He Did Not Know About $130,000 Payment to Stormy Daniels."   5 April 2018. In his Democratic convention address, former President Bill Clinton took a shot at President Donald Trumps economic record during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the 45th president has botched his handling of the twin health and economic crises. Donald Trump says were leading the world, Clinton said. Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple. Using the most clear-cut multi-nation comparison  comparing January to June 2020  Clinton is right. But its worth noting some differences in how countries address unemployment. We turned to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank whose members are advanced industrialized countries. The group collects economic statistics for all its members, including unemployment rates. We chose 20 countries for which data was available, including most of the countries in western Europe, plus Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Israel. For consistencys sake, we compared January to June because only two of the countries reported data for July. As the following chart shows, the United States was among the few countries to show a dramatic increase in the unemployment rate between January and June. The U.S. is the peach-colored line with the steep climb; you can see each country highlighted if you hover over the list of countries at the bottom. The United States saw its unemployment rate increase from 3.6% to 11.1%. That works out to a little under 3.1 times higher in June than January. No other country saw such a big increase. The only other nation that saw its unemployment rate more than double over that period was Canada, which saw its rate increase 2.2 times. Canada actually had a higher unemployment rate in June than the U.S. did, at 12.3%, but the scale of Canadas increase was more modest than the United States because Canada had a higher rate to start, at 5.5%. Using U.S. data for February instead of January doesnt change the picture much. The U.S. unemployment rate in February was 3.5%, making the increase through June about 3.2 times. There are a couple asterisks to Clintons statement. If you compare January to July, a month for which data isnt available for most of the OECD nations, the increase in the United States was still substantial, but just short of three times higher. The unemployment rate rose from 3.6% in January to 10.2% in July, meaning an increase of 2.8 times. Its also worth noting that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen for three straight months, amid a zigzagging reopening and a volatile economy. So the unemployment rate is likely to bounce around a bit before it settles down. Finally, the OECD itselfnotessome differences across countries. Some nations have used more aggressive efforts than the United States to subsidize workers to remain on payrolls. And some countries, such as the United Kingdom, do not count temporarily laid-off workers as unemployed, while the United States does count such workers as unemployed. Clinton said the United States is the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple since the coronavirus pandemic began. Thats accurate for the broadest comparison  a 20-nation selection of OECD nations between January 2020 and June 2020. The rate in the U.S. was 3.1 times higher in June than in January. Only Canada came close, with the unemployment rate 2.2 times higher over that period. However, extending the U.S. data to July showed that the increase fell slightly below three times, and there are some complications in making cross-country comparisons. We rate the statement Mostly True. UPDATE, Aug. 20:This article has been updated with additional context about the complications of making cross-country comparisons of unemployment rates. The rating remains the same. On 7 February 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, introduced a five-page nonbinding resolution to the U.S. House of Representatives for federal government to recognize its duty to establish a "Green New Deal." resolution The controversial proposal incorporated seven goals previously articulated by Ocasio-Cortez for the U.S. to realize within ten years: Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources; building a national, energy-efficient, smart grid; upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country; eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to ensure universal access to clean water; funding massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases; making green technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal. The broader proposal also called for sweeping social measures such as "a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one," "basic income programs" and "universal health care programs." proposal On 26 March 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced a preemptive vote in the U.S. Senate on a procedural motion to take up a binding form of the resolution, deriding the Green New Deal as a plan for basically outlawing the only sources of energy that working-class and middle-class families can actually afford" that would kill off entire domestic industries and eliminate millions of jobs. Democrats criticized McConnell's move as a "sham" intended to "quash debate by blocking public hearings and expert testimony about the consequences of inaction on climate change" and to hasten a vote in order to force Senate Democrats to commit to either supporting or rejecting the proposal at a very early stage: criticized Republicans ... set up this vote to highlight potential splits in the Democratic caucus and force lawmakers to splinter from a high-profile, progressive idea. As the thinking goes, if only part of the Democratic caucus wound up backing the idea, Republicans could argue that it didnt actually have enough support from the party ... Additionally, the move was aimed at putting Democrats from more moderate states in a tough position, forcing them to choose between backing a popular liberal idea and potentially turning off some of their constituents. The Senate vote is a perfect example of that kind of superficial approach to government, Ocasio-Cortez said. What McConnells doing is that hes trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups, without working through committee  because he doesnt want to save our planet. Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned. In the event, most Democrats didn't bite. All 53 Republicans in the Senate voted against the plan, but they were joined by just three Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine (who caucuses with Democrats). The remaining 43 Democratic senators all declined to commit and merely voted present in protest of the GOPs action. The procedural motion was thus voted down by a 57-0 margin. voted down A meme circulated online afterwards offensively portrayed Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as a "100% retard" for failing to "even vote for [her] own bill":  The implications of that meme were wrong on two counts: 1) The Senate was not voting on whether to accept or reject Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" resolution. What the Senate voted on was a different form of the resolution, and what they voted against was not the resolution itself but a motion for cloture, the step of agreeing to end debate on a bill so that Senate consideration of it can move forward: not voting cloture This was not the non-binding Green New Deal resolution introduced by Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Feb. 7. Instead, this was a version that McConnell himself introduced, and it was a binding resolution. Instead of voting on whether "it is the sense of the Senate" that the government has a duty to create a Green New Deal, senators would have been skipping ahead to vote on whether the Green New Deal should become "the policy of the United States," without so much as a hearing. a version Under Senate rules, making it binding was the only way McConnell could hold a show vote without the usual process of assigning the legislation to the appropriate committees for discussion and debate. That would put a public spotlight on experts testifying and debate over climate solutions, something McConnell is seeking to avoid. Technically, the Senate voted on whether to end debate on McConnell's motion to proceed to consideration of his version of a Green New Deal resolution. This "cloture" vote wasn't on the substance of the Green New Deal. McConnell's aim was not to actually consider the Green New Deal, which he describes as a "socialist" plan that would "uproot life as we know it." He was hoping the vote would kill talk of a Green New Deal in its infancy, while putting Democrats on the spot. 2) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, not a member of the U.S. Senate, and thus she had no opportunity to vote on the cloture motion at all. In short, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez didn't "neglect" or "forget" to participate in the referenced Green New Deal vote: she wasn't eligible to take part in it because she isn't a member of the Senate. Nor was the vote that took place in the Senate one that directly addressed the merits or deficiencies of her Green New Deal resolution. Daly, Matthew.  "Senate Shuns Green New Deal Amid Claims of Bad Faith."
  Associated Press.  26 March 2019. Nilsen, Ella and Li Zhou.  "Senate Democrats Broadly Shut Down Republican Trolling on the Green New Deal."
  Vox.  26 March 2019. Grandoni, Dino and Felicia Sonmez.  "Senate Defeats Green New Deal, As Democrats Call Vote a Sham."
  The Washington Post.  26 March 2019. Amadeo, Kimberly.  "The Green New Deal and Why It's Happening Now."
  The Balance.  2 April 2019. Lavelle, Marianne.  "Senate's Green New Deal Vote: 4 Things You Need to Know."
  Inside Climate News.  26 March 2019. Claim:  Zuccotti Park is owned by Brookfield Properties, which has other political connections.  OF AND  INFORMATION Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, October 2011] Whaaaaaaaaaaaat a coincidence! Hey, this is great! Imagine the odds of this happening. Do you know the park in NYC that the Wall Street protesters are occupying? Zucotti Park. DId you know this park is not owned by the city? It is owned by Brookfield Properties. Who was just hired by Brookfield Properties as an attorney? Vice President Joe Biden's son. Who sits on the board of Brookfield Properties? Mayor Bloomberg's live-in girlfriend. Now, guess what company just recieved some of the last of the Obama Stimulus $$$$$$$. Thaaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, Brookfield Properties. Isn't life great! Hey, on a completely unrelated note, Wisconsin is shaping up to be the swing state in the 2012 presidential elections. Not Florida. Not Ohio. But Wisconsin. Now, guess who owns the company that will be tabulating the electronic votes in Wisconsin. Thaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, the biggest contributor to Obama, George Soros. Whaaaaaaaat a coincidence! Remember what Stalin said. "He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power".  Origins: Between Broadway, Trinity Place, Liberty Street and Cedar Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, sits 33,000 sq. ft. Zuccotti Park.  Created by U.S. Steel, it was originally named Liberty Plaza Park.  After undergoing renovations in 2006, the park was renamed by its current owners, Brookfield Office Properties, to Zuccotti Park in honor of John Zuccotti, the U.S. chairman of Brookfield Properties, who was also the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York, former first deputy mayor of the City of New York, and former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. Brookfield Office Properties Zuccotti Park In mid-September 2011, "Occupy Wall Street" protesters began using Zuccotti Park as a rallying area and campground in part because it held the desirable combination of being a public plaza required to stay open 24 hours a day yet also a privately owned park not subject to the same curfew restrictions as New York's other public parks.  Thus the protesters could occupy the park around the clock and could not be removed by the NYPD except at the behest of the park's owners, Brookfield Office Properties. removed  Robert Hunter Biden, the son of Vice-President Joseph Biden, is an attorney who was a founding partner of Oldaker, Biden & Belair (now known asOldaker Law Group), a law and government relations firm, and who is now a partner at Rosemont Seneca Partners, an alternative investment and market advisory firm, as well as counsel to the Boies, Schiller, Flexner law firm. Oldaker Law Group Back in 2002 and 2003, Oldaker, Biden & Belair was retained to undertake some lobbying efforts on behalf of Brookfield Office Properties.  However, we could not find evidence of any professional or business connection between Hunter Biden and Brookfield Office Properties since 2003.  Biden quit working as a federal lobbyist in 2008, and we found no connection between Brookfield Office Properties and either of the firms with which he is currently associated. 2002 2003 lobbyist  Diana L. Taylor is often described in the press as being the "girlfriend" or "domestic partner" of New Yorks mayor Michael Bloomberg (a former Republican who ran for a third term as mayor in 2009 as an independent candidate).  Ms. Taylor is a managing director at Wolfensohn & Company, an investment and advisory firm, and also sits on the board of directors of Brookfield Office Properties. girlfriend board  In September 2011, the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office finalized a partial guarantee (80%) of a $168.9 million loan to Granite Reliable Power for the development of a wind turbine farm (windpark) in New Hampshire "consisting of 33 Vestas V90 3.0-MW turbines, said to be enough to power 20,000 homes and offset 124,000 tons of carbon annually." guarantee Granite Reliable Power windpark The Granite Reliable Power  wind farm project is headed by Brookfield Renewable Power and Freshet Wind Energy.  The former outfit is wholly owned by Brookfield Asset Management, which is also the parent company of Brookfield Office Properties. Brookfield Renewable Power Brookfield Asset Management  The state of Wisconsin utilizes a variety of electronic voting systems, including those provided by Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems, Populex, and Vote-PAD.  Financier George Soros holds no ownership stake in any of these companies Wisconsin Election Systems & Software Dominion Voting Systems Populex Vote-PAD  The quote about voting attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is most likely an apocryphal one. apocryphal  On 15 November 2011, a New York judge upheld the city's dismantling of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, ruling that the protesters' first amendment rights didn't entitle them to camp out indefinitely in the plaza. Last updated:  15 November 2011    Hoppock, Julia.  "Hunter Biden Quits Lobbyist Work."   ABCNews.com.  13 September 2008.    Taylor, Kate.  "Diana Taylor, Bloomberg's Girlfriend, Criticizes Obama."   The New York Times.  30 September 2011.    [New York] Daily News.  "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Stripped of Their Power."   28 October 2011. 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. On Oct. 11, 2023, a user on X named Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) posted a video with a caption that claimed it showed the U.S. military "sending huge planes full of heavy-duty equipment to Israel," apparently to be used in its war against Hamas.  However, the video in the post showed clips that were at least four years old. In other words, the video had nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas war. post Israel-Hamas war As we previously reported, the account bearing Wallace's name is known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories following massive tragic events. He has even bragged about making money on X based on promoting such false rumors. reported baseless conspiracy theories bragged He was warned not to post this video from Maui, Hawaii, which it turns out is actually an explosion in Macul, Chile, in May. It got 20,000 retweets, 54,000 likes and 10 million views before being Community Noted. He's making money from viral false posts like this. pic.twitter.com/SjtJmNHm0X pic.twitter.com/SjtJmNHm0X  Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 14, 2023 August 14, 2023  The video in question showed a C-5M Super Galaxy taxiing and taking off from a runway. During the taxiing process, several aircraft, possibly CV-22 Osprey and other helicopters, were visible on the ground. The video consisted of three total clips. We traced the first and third clips to a YouTube video that was uploaded on Oct. 5, 2019. It looked to have been recorded on the day before it was uploaded. The number on the side of the airplane appeared to be "7030." YouTube video The second clip in the video showed an airplane with the number "7045." That clip was at least months old, according to another YouTube video that showed the exact same shot at the 4:42 mark. In other words, Wallace's video showed two different aircraft, not one. YouTube video In Wallace's upload of these clips, the shots were mirrored horizontally. This mirroring made the words and numbers appear backwards. Sometimes, misinformation and disinformation purveyors mirror images and videos in order to try to avoid reverse-image search detection. We reached out to Wallace to ask if he was aware that the video was old. We also asked him if he was the person who horizontally mirrored the shots. This story will be updated if we receive answers to our questions. While the video itself was unrelated to the war, the rest of Wallace's post contained genuine reporting from The Associated Press that was published days following Hamas' surprise terrorist attack in Israel. That story read as follows: The Associated Press Hamas' surprise terrorist attack A plane carrying advanced armaments designed to facilitate significant military operations landed Tuesday evening at the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said. We are grateful for the US backing and assistance to the IDF, and to the State of Israel in general, during this challenging period. Our common enemies know that the cooperation between our militaries is stronger than ever, and is a key part in ensuring regional security and stability, the IDF said in a statement. Further, on Oct. 10, the U.S. Department of Defense published specifics of the kind of equipment being sent to Israel: U.S. Department of Defense [U.S. President Joe] Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today and Biden assured him that the U.S. response to the events will be swift, decisive and overwhelming. "My team has been in near constant communication with our Israeli partners and partners all across the region and the world from the moment this crisis began," the president said. "We're surging additional military assistance, including ammunition, and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome. We are going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens." For more details about the war, including the most recent death toll figures, we recommend referencing live updates from ABC News, The New York Times and The AP. ABC News The New York Times The AP Al Lawati, Abbas, and Nadeen Ebrahim. Israel Is at War with Hamas. Heres What to Know. CNN, Oct. 9, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/09/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-war-explained-mime-intl/index.html. C-5M Super Galaxy Takeoff (2019). YouTube, Gung Ho Vids, Oct. 5, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqY7YVqrytc. Haworth, John, et al. Israel-Gaza Live Updates: 22 Americans among the Dead.ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/International/live-updates/israel-gaza-hamas/?id=103804516. Kingsley, Patrick, et al. Israel-Hamas War: Israel Agrees to Unity Government as War With Hamas Intensifies.The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/11/world/israel-news-hamas-war. Liles, Jordan. Biden Did Not Fall Asleep While Meeting with Maui Fire Victims, C-SPAN Video Confirms. Snopes, Aug. 22, 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-asleep-maui-video/. Powered Vertical Takeoff with a Payload of 120 Metric Tons: C-5M Super Galaxy. YouTube, Future Machine Tech, May 4, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNwHumNej-w. The First Plane Carrying US Armaments Lands in Israel, IDF Says. The Associated Press, Oct. 10, 2023, https://apnews.com/live/israel-hamas-war-live-updates#0000018b-1d0b-d13a-a5af-ffab53b50000. U.S. Flowing Military Supplies to Israel, as Country Battles Hamas Terrorists.U.S. Department of Defense, Oct. 10, 2023, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3553040/us-flowing-military-supplies-to-israel-as-country-battles-hamas-terrorists/.