Detroit's impoverished urban areas
Claim:  Photograph shows Detroit slums with downtown skyscrapers in the background. REAL PHOTOGRAPH; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2009] Several website list this photograph as Detroit. The skyline looks likely, but the slum in front looks more like a composite of the edge of a Brazilian city with the modern Detroit skyline. Is this photo legitimate? Ive only been to Detroit once, and while I wanted to kill myself after driving through, I dont remember it being this bad.    Origins:  Just as the recent financial woes of the "Big Three" U.S. automobile manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) have been held up as exemplars of the decline of American industry, so has their home base  Detroit, Michigan  been offered as symbolic of the decay of the "rust belt" manufacturing-industrial cities of the northeastern United States. Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the U.S., a booming industrial metropolis that in 1950 boasted a population of 1.85 million.  By 2009 it was home to less than half as many people (770,000), the median household income of its remaining residents was $28,370 (about half the national average), and the median home price was a minuscule $7,100.  The news magazine The Week described Detroit's modern status thusly in October 2009: Outside the city's downtown core of office buildings, Detroit looks like a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The collapse of the auto industry, political dysfunction, and epidemics of crime, drugs, and arson have battered Detroit like a slow-motion hurricane,  leveling entire neighborhoods and causing a major chunk of the population to flee. Nearly 30 percent of the city, an area almost the size of San Francisco, has been abandoned to "urban prairie"  vast depopulated stretches of high grass and shattered asphalt. An Asian plant species sometimes called "ghetto palm" sprouts from the remains of abandoned buildings, where wild pheasants are occasionally sighted. The torched skeletons of homes are commonplace. In the 1980s and '90s, demolition permits outnumbered building permits by more than 10-1. Nearly 30 percent of the city's remaining housing stock  more than 100,000 units  lies vacant. Although the above-displayed photograph of a shantytown juxtaposed against the background of a gleaming, skyscraper-filled downtown core might superficially match a description of modern Detroit, elements of the picture don't match that location.  (It's unlikely, for example, that either residents of the thin wood and tin-sheet shacks or palm trees could survive the harshly low wintertime temperatures common to that area.) This type of picture is one that, unfortunately, could have been snapped in any number of places around the world.  Specifically, it's a photograph of Makati, which is part of the greater metropolitan area of the Philippine capital city of Manila and is an international financial and commercial hub.  It's not uncommon for news stories to feature photographs of Makati as a way of illustrating growing economic disparities found within some rapidly developing countries and regions:   Shanty houses are cramped in the foreground while construction of new high rise buildings rise in the background at Manila's financial district of Makati. Asia is broadly on track to reduce extreme poverty by half by 2015, reflecting the positive impact of its dynamic economy in the lives of its nearly four billion people, according to a joint report released by the Asian Development Bank and the UN Development Programme in Manila. Another photograph of Makati taken from a similar vantage point can be seen in a 2006 BusinessWeek article about squatter cities. photograph article Last updated:  8 September 2013    The Week.  "Detroit: A City on the Brink."
An image purportedly showing a screenshot from a Russian state TV news program featuring eight Republican U.S. senators -- Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Burr (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and John Thune (R-SD) -- made its way online in January 2019, along with the claim that the pictured American lawmakers were being "honored" or "thanked" for lifting sanctions against three companies controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska:   This image has been posted to social media accompanied by a variety of descriptive captions: posted social media This image is a genuine screenshot from the news program "60 " (60 Minutes) aired on Channel 1 Russia on 17 January 2019. The graphic featuring the 8 GOP lawmakers originally appeared on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (the MSNBC logo is visible in the bottom right hand corner of the graphic) the day prior during a segment concerning the lifting of sanctions that had been imposed on three companies controlled by oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska. sanctions The graphic appears at the 9:30 mark of the following video, while a transcription from Maddow's report on these sanctions appears below the video: transcription  Shortly before Christmas, the Trump administration quietly released plans to lift U.S. government sanctions on companies connected to Deripaska. Deripaska is sanctioned because of the U.S. -- because of the Russian government interfering in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Now, the sanctions on Deripaska's companies are consequential. The companies linked to Deripaska happen to be huge companies. So, even if you set aside the sanctions' effects on Deripaska personally, unsanctioning these huge Russian companies will also be really substantially economically beneficial to the Russian economy as a whole. Under American law governing sanctions like this, Congress has 30 days to review any decision by the administration to lift these kinds of sanctions. Within that 30-day window, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer brought forward legislation to in fact challenge that decision by the Trump administration, to block the lifting of the Deripaska-related sanctions. As we reported last night, every Democrat in the Senate chamber voted with Schumer on this, as did 11 Republican senators, a heterogeneous bunch of Republican senators, who broke ranks with Mitch McConnell and sided with the Democrats to stop the Trump administration from lifting these Deripaska-related sanctions. That's a big number of Republican senators breaking ranks, especially after the Trump administration lobbied the Senate and the House really aggressively on this issue. Well, today, this afternoon, despite those 11 Republican senators breaking ranks and being willing to side with the Democrats on this, it turned out to be not enough because today there was a crucial vote on this matter which came with not a 50-vote threshold, but a 60-vote threshold to stop the Trump administration from lifting these Deripaska-related sanctions. Schumer and the Democrats and the breakaway Republicans were able to put together 57 votes, but 57 isn't 60, and so you can thank top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell. You can thank all of these other Republican senators who get all of this public credit for supposedly being so hawkish and so realistic on Russia. You can thank them all for voting today to give Vladimir Putin's government in Russia a huge big economic present and voting to give Oleg Deripaska the biggest break of his life, even while his potential role in the Russian attack on our election remains a critical matter that is under ongoing investigation related to multiple criminal cases. Julia Davis, an investigative journalist and Russian media analyst, was one of the first to notice Maddow's graphic being featured on Russian State TV. Davis shared this screenshot on Twitter along with a brief message explaining its context. Twitter Davis wrote: "#Russia's state TV reports that for the first time since 2014, the US is lifting sanctions from Russian companies [#Deripaska's Rusal et al.] The host laughs out loud about the Democrats not getting enough votes to block the effort, expresses hope that this is just the beginning." We've included the relevant segment below from the "60 " broadcast, which starts around the 31-second mark (00:31) below: A rough translation of the video via Google shows that the host says at one point: "Thank all these people who have always been known for their irreconcilable attitude towards Russia. Thank them all, for today they voted and made big economic gift to the government of Putin."  A rough translation of the video via Google shows that the host says at one point: "Thank all these people who have always been known for their irreconcilable attitude towards Russia. Thank them all, for today they voted and made big economic gift to the government of Putin." MSNBC.  "Transcript: 1/16/19, The Rachel Maddow Show."
  16 January 2019. Vogel, Kenneth.  "Democrats Fall Short in Russia Sanctions Vote."
  The New York Times.  16 January 2019. On Nov. 11, 2020, Bloomberg reported that strategists at Deutsche Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, recommended levying a tax against people who plan to continue working from home, arguing that "remote workers should pay a tax for the privilege. At least on Twitter, this was a poorly received take. One particularly viral response alleged that the bank "funded Auschwitz, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and ISIS." reported response     As we show below, the tweet is a largely accurate recounting of history, though the assertion that the bank funded ISIS overstates what is publicly known at this time. In 1999, during negotiations to merge with the New York-based Bankers Trust, the Germany-based Deutsche Bank disclosed that it had helped finance the construction of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. As reported by Reuters at the time, Deutsche Bank's historian, Manfred Pohl, described the bank's loans to companies involved in multiple aspects of Auschwitz, including loans for construction of the camp and its incineration units, as well as to a company involved in the production of the deadly Zyklon-B gas, which the Nazis used to murder millions: reported Manfred Pohl, head of Deutsche Banks historical institute, said newly uncovered documents showed the bank had links with firms that built the camp in Poland. It also had credit links to one company that made incineration units and funded another whose subsidiary made the Zyklon-B gas used in the camp. On examination of credit records, we determined that branches . . . had credit links to local companies which were active at the construction site . . . in Auschwitz, Pohl said at a media briefing in Frankfurt. Pohl told reporters that the existence of these loans would have been known to high-ranking managers of the bank. "It is clear that this was known as high up at the main office in Katowice. It is not certain whether it was known in Berlin," Pohl said, though he added these loans would have had to be approved in Berlin to go ahead. Deutsche Bank has had a relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump since 1998. As reported in The New York Times, "Over the course of two decades, the bank lent him more than $2 billion  so much that by the time he was elected, Deutsche Bank was by far his biggest creditor." Speaking to Reuters in November 2020, one bank official said that the Trump Organization currently has around $340 million in outstanding debt from the bank: reported Reuters Deutsche Bank has about $340 million in loans outstanding to the Trump Organization, the presidents umbrella group that is currently overseen by his two sons, according to filings made by Trump to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in July and a senior source within the bank. The three loans, which are against Trump properties and start coming due in two years, are current on payments and personally guaranteed by the president, according to two bank officials. According to that Reuters report, the bank is looking to distance itself from the president moving forward. Their relationship with Trump "cemented Deutsche Banks reputation as a reckless institution willing to do business with clients nobody else would touch," they wrote. "It has made the company a magnet for prosecutors, regulators and lawmakers hoping to penetrate the presidents opaque financial affairs." Regardless, Trump's history with Deutsche Bank is factual and well known. Reuters According to a 2019 report by the New York State Department of Financial Services, "the relationship between Deutsche Bank and Mr. Epstein officially began on August 19, 2013" and eventually involved his opening and funding "more than 40 accounts at the Bank." 2019 report Controversially, they entered into business with Epstein after his 2008 arrest for the solicitation of a minor and after other media revelations about Epstein's alleged trafficking of underage women for sex. Some of these Deutsche Bank accounts were involved in suspicious transactions including, according to The New York Times, "suspiciously large cash withdrawals and 120 wire transfers totaling $2.65 million to women with Eastern European surnames and people who had been publicly identified as Mr. Epsteins co-conspirators." according In July 2020, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $150 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services "to settle allegations that it maintained weak internal controls, including processing hundreds of transactions for Jeffrey Epstein despite the billionaires troubled history." The bank has since apologized for its association with Epstein. apologized In the banking world, Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are notifications made by financial institutions to the United States government about potentially suspicious or illegal activity. A transaction labeled suspicious in these reports does not necessarily indicate illegal activity, however. SARs issued about transactions involving Deutsche Bank have been used to link them to ISIS in multiple investigations. made In December 2017, BuzzFeed News reported on SARs showing that Deutsche Bank had been engaged in business with a corrupt Cyprus bank named FBME that "served as a major conduit to terrorism, organized crime, and chemical weapons." The SARs revealed that "Deutsche processed hundreds of millions of dollars of suspicious transactions for FBME clients  including a Kremlin-linked network of Russian slush funds funneling money to financiers of the Syrian regime and a businessman trading oil with ISIS." The reports do not indicate, however, that Deutsche Bank knowingly participated in illegal activity. reported In September 2020, the existence of an even larger trove of SARs obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was announced. The collaboration  a project named the FinCEN files  led to hundreds of stories in newsrooms across the world. One story, published by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), identified further transactions that could point to a potential involvement of Deutsche Bank in the movement of funds to, from, and within ISIS held territory. FinCEN files story The files, ARIJ said, "reveal suspicious money transfers of at least $4 billion flagged by Deutsche Banks US branches and Bank of America to a number of Iraqi banks between June 15, 2014 and June 30, 2015." Though the files do not indicate which bank branches were used, they reported, "the transactions were sent and received during the height of the Islamic States reign and its control over several Iraqi bank branches." The report notes that "many of the banks in northern Iraq were in areas of IS [Islamic State] influence, and such transfers could be the proceeds of the illicit oil and gas trade that the organisation largely relied on in its areas of control." said While suggestive of an at least unwitting role for Deutsche Bank in ISIS related finances, these reports are not strong enough evidence to support the statement that Deutsche Bank "funds" ISIS. Because there is some truth to the ISIS claim, and because the other assertions are true, we rank the overall claim made in the viral tweet as "true." In March 2020, the prospect of the U.S. government's sending out $1,200 stimulus checks to individual taxpayers as part of a $2 trillion emergency economic package for dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic created a prime opportunity for grifters who engage in scams that involve luring victims by mailing checks to them. In particular, one several-year-old, check-scam warning was widely recirculated via social media:  Such warnings served a useful purpose in alerting many viewers to be wary of receiving checks in the mail from unexpected sources. However, they also poorly served audiences in misstating how the underlying scams connected with those checks work. It is not the case, as claimed in the warning reproduced above and in the following news clip, that the scammers who mail out these checks "do this in hopes of getting your account information when you deposit the check," and then using that information to clean out your bank account:  A little common sense would be relevant here: If your simply depositing a check provided the sender of that check with the means to obtain your personal banking information and drain your bank account, it would be unsafe for any bank customer to ever deposit any check  and clearly that is not the case, as millions of people maintain checking accounts without regularly falling victim to scammers. All such check scams have two essential components: 1) Scammers mail out counterfeit checks (often made out in the names of real organizations) to lure their victims into believing they are receiving money. 2) Scammers instruct their victims to send back some of the funds they supposedly received from depositing the fake checks (usually via wire transfer, Western Union, PayPal, or gift cards). The scammers count on the fact that funds from deposited checks are often made available to bank customers before the banks can confirm that the checks are authentic and have cleared. The victims of these scams, mistakenly believing they have received "free money" once they have deposited their fake checks, are then usually receptive to sending some of that money back to the scammers for some legitimate-sounding purpose. But by the time the victims' banks discover the deposited checks were bad, the scammers already have the money their victims forwarded to them, and the victims are stuck paying all of those funds back to their banks: deposited checks The person running the scam convinces a victim to cash a check and then send, via wire transfer, a portion of the money to another location. The portion kept by the victim can be called payment for a job, part of a commission, or a prize. However, the check turns out to be a very convincing fake. Banks in the United States are required to make funds available within a few days, but it can take weeks for a fraudulent check to be discovered. This means the wire transfers will happen long before the bank, or the victim, discovers that the initial check was fake. This scheme is effective because many consumers aren't fully aware of how the check-clearance process works: check-clearance Unfortunately, the term clear sometimes gets used prematurely. An item has cleared only after your bank receives funds from the check writers bank. Bank employees might tell you that a check has cleared, and your banks computer systems might show that you have those funds available for withdrawal, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can spend the money risk-free. In many cases, when a bank employee tells you an item cleared, they are saying you can spend that money with your debit card, withdraw cash from an ATM, or set up a payment online. Most of the time, this informal terminology is fine because funds typically arrive as expected. Most of the confusion around checks comes from bank policies and federal laws that allow you to spend money before a check really clears. Banks are required to make a portion of your deposit available quickly -- usually the first $200 or, on certain official checks, $5,000 -- and they might need to release the remaining funds after several business days. But that policy might prematurely provide access to the money. It does not mean the funds successfully arrived from the check writers bank. If a check bounces, the bank reverses the deposit to your account -- even if you already spent some or all of the money from that deposit. If you don't have enough money in your account to cover the reversal, you end up with a negative account balance, and you could start bouncing other payments and racking up fees. Ultimately, you are responsible for deposits you make to your account, and youre the one at risk. The lures that scammers use to dupe their victims into sending them the illusory proceeds from the depositing of counterfeit checks are many and varied: o Mystery Shopping Scam: Scammers engage victims to act as "mystery shoppers" by making purchases from various vendors in order to rate their service. The scammers then send out counterfeit checks to their victims, instructing them to keep a portion of the funds to cover the costs of purchasing and returning the goods and to compensate them for their time, then wire back the rest of the money. o Reshipping Scam: Scammers engage job-seekers to act as work-at-home re-shippers, receiving (possibly stolen) goods and sending them on to other locations. Then the counterfeit checks those re-shippers are sent to compensate them for their efforts and to reimburse them the shipping charges they incurred bounce, and they're left holding the bag. o Payment-Processing Scam: Scammers hire job-seekers to work as payment processors. The victims are instructed to open business accounts in their own name, deposit (counterfeit) checks sent to them into those accounts, then disburse the deposited funds as directed by the scammers. When the business account overdraws because the deposited checks are fake and bounce, the victim is on the hook for making restitution to the bank. o Windfall Scam: Scammers send out counterfeit checks that they declare are the proceeds from an inheritance, lottery win, or some other type of prize giveaway. Recipients are instructed to deposit the checks and return a share of the money to cover processing fees, shipping and handling charges, legal fees, taxes, or other charges. o Online Sales Overpayment Scam: Scammers agree to purchase items that have been advertised for sale or auction online, then send out counterfeit checks for greater than the sale price and ask the victims to refund the overpayments. o Rental Scams: Scammers respond to ads seeking roommates or tenants, send a check to cover the rent plus a little extra, then ask that the overpayment be forwarded to another party to cover moving expenses. As the U.S. Federal Trade Commission succinctly describes such scams: describes Fake checks drive many types of scams  like those involving phony prize wins, fake jobs, mystery shoppers, online classified ad sales, and others. In a fake check scam, a person you dont know asks you to deposit a check  sometimes for several thousand dollars and usually for more than what you are owed  and wire some of the money back to that person. The scammers always have a good story to explain the overpayment  theyre stuck out of the country, they need you to cover taxes or fees, you need to buy supplies, or something else. But by the time your bank discovers youve deposited a bad check, the scammer already has the money you sent, and youre stuck paying the rest of the check back to the bank.  The best way to avoid falling victim to such scams is not to cash or deposit checks for people you do not know, not to wire money to people you do not know, and not to spend funds from large checks you have deposited until you have verified with your bank that those checks have fully cleared. Brunelli, Laureen Miles.  "How to Recognize a Fake Check Scam."
  The Balance.  11 November 2019. Pritchard, Justin.  "Did That Check Really Clear?"
  The Balance.  24 February 2019. Tressler, Colleen.  "Anatomy of a Fake Check Scam."
  Federal Trade Commission.  5 September 2018. Loftsgordon, Amy.  "Fake Check Scams Target Job Seekers."
  Lawyers.com.  Accessed 2 April 2020. Its not cheap to build anything in California. Land and labor is expensive and the state has some of the strictest environmental permitting rules anywhere. Those factors all drive up the cost of building homes, stores and even roads. Republican candidate for governor John Cox has pledged that, if elected, hell hack through Californias thicket of regulations, in an effort to reduce expenses. Specifically, Cox wants to reform the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, an agency he has described as overstaffed and wasteful. Recently, he claimed Caltrans spends an exorbitant amount to build and maintain each mile of roadway compared with other states. It costs nearly five times as much in California to build and maintain a mile of road as it does in the rest of the nation, Cox said in an interview published on thePolitical Vanguard websiteon Oct. 19, 2017. Cox made a similar claim in aSan Francisco Chronicleop-edon Oct. 18, 2017: California spends 4.7 times the national average for every mile of roadway we build and maintain, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI is a libertarian think tank which sourced the statistic to the Reason Foundation, another free market think tank. Following both statements, Cox went on to advocate for greater reliance on private construction to reduce expenses. Theres a debate about why its so expensive to build roads in California. But were not fact-checking that debate. Instead, were zeroing in on Coxs specific claims that California's road spending is nearly five times per mile compared with other states. Background on John Cox On his campaignwebsite, Cox describes himself as a Jack Kemp-style Republican who grew up on Chicagos south-side. Today, hes a San Diego businessman who founded an organization that repairs the homes of low-income seniors and individuals with disabilities. His priorities, as listed on his website, include lowering Californias taxes and fighting the influence of special interests. Cox is the chairman of Give Voters a Voice, an effort to repeal Californias recent gas tax increase, which was signed into law this year to raise money for road repairs. The increase includes a 12-cent per gallon gasoline tax increase, which went into effect this week. Our research We asked Coxs campaign for evidence supporting his claims. It pointed to recent reports by the Reason Foundation, which studies transportation spending. In 2013, the foundation published its20th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems. That report shows California spent nearly $680,000 per mile in 2009 on roadways. That was 4.7 times as much as the national average of approximately $144,000 per mile spent in other states. That matches Coxs claim of nearly five times as much. But our research shows, and Coxs campaign has acknowledged, the information from 2009 is outdated. Anupdated 2016 Reason Foundation studyshows California spent about $420,000 per mile in 2013 compared with the national average spending of about $160,000 per mile in the same year. That data places Californias spending at about 2.5 times the national average, far less than Coxs claims. We asked Coxs staff about the discrepancy. David Kersten, a policy analyst with the campaign, said the candidate didnt have the most up-to-date figures. When he wrote that (San Francisco Chronicle) op-ed, he didnt have that new number, Kersten told us in an interview. Everybody was using the older report. Matt Shupe, Coxs campaign spokesman, said he and Kersten would update Cox on the new figure and use it in future statements. High admin costs Coxs staff noted that one category of Californias road spending, administrative costs, totals nearly five times as much the national average, even in the 2016 report. We checked and the report does show that, though Coxs staffers acknowledged thats not the same statement the candidate made in the op-ed or in his Political Vanguard interview and at the center of this fact check. Caltrans, the agency targeted by Cox, disagrees with the methodology of the Reason Foundation studies. A Caltrans spokesman said much of the studies roadway data is from local streets and roads not built or maintained by the state. The spokesman also noted that Californias state roadways are larger and more congested than in other states, making them more expensive to build and maintain. Representatives for the Reason Foundation did not respond to our interview requests. Our ruling Republican candidate for governor John Cox recently claimed it costs nearly five times as much in California to build and maintain a mile of road as it does in the rest of the nation. A study using 2009 data shows California spent 4.7 times as much per mile as the national average on roads. Updated data from 2013 shows the states spending still far above the national average at about 2.5 times the cost per mile, but far lower than Coxs figure. Coxs campaign staff told us the candidate relied on outdated information and would be updating this figure in future statements. While the candidates larger point about higher road spending in California appears to be correct, his specific claim about it being nearly five times as much per mile is outdated and wrong. We rate it False. FALSEThe statement is not accurate. Click here formoreon the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. Governors race John Cox is among several candidates competing to succeed Jerry Brown in the 2018 California governor's race. Others include Republican state AssemblymanTravis Allen, Former Los Angeles MayorAntonio Villaraigosa; California TreasurerJohn Chiang;Delaine Eastin, the states former superintendent for public instruction; andGavin Newsom, the states current lieutenant governor. PolitiFact California is fact-checking claims in this race. See ourTracking The Truthgovernors race fact-checkshere. Tracking the Truth: Hear a claim you want fact-checked? Email us at[email protected], tweet us@CAPolitiFactor contact us onFacebook. Claim:  The New Orleans Public Library is soliciting book donations. Status:  Multiple:  New Orleans libraries are accepting book donations from the public:   True.   Donating books is the best way to help the New Orleans libraries rebuild:   False. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2006] Seeking Book DonationsThe New Orleans Public Library(New Orleans LA) The New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina.  The staff will assess which titles will be designated for its collections.  The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising.  Please send your books to: Rica A. Trigs, Public RelationsNew Orleans Public Library219 Loyola AvenueNew Orleans, LA 70112 If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate. Origins:  The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf area included serious harm to the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) system. Katrina damaged the main library and all 12 branches in the system, and as of March 2006 only the main library and four branches are open, and even those for only five hours a day. Until just recently, only 19 of the former 216 NOPL employees remained on the job, the rest having been laid off (partly because of city budget cuts). While another 21 workers have since been rehired (bringing the total up to 40), the libraries are not only physically damaged but are also badly  understaffed. Which brings us to this March 2006 appeal for used books with which to restock the New Orleans Public Library system. While the NOPL will accept donated books, potential contributors should take into account the enormous staffing problem the NOPL is attempting to cope with. While on the surface it might seem a brilliant plan to ship off all one's unwanted volumes to answer the need for books to replace those lost or hopelessly damaged by the flooding, the public libraries in that beleaguered city haven't the staff to adequately receive, sort through, catalogue, and place on the shelves all of the public's kindhearted offerings. With so many of that area's libraries still physically unfit to be opened to the public, it's fair to say they currently lack even the shelves to put the books on. In response to this widely e-mailed appeal, the New Orleans Public Library has created a FAQ to aid those persons desirous of lending a helping hand to that institution. In a nutshell, they ask the public to donate money over books: FAQ Does the library accept book donations? Yes. However, due to storage and staff limitations, we ask that donors consider a few suggestions:  If you are a publisher, please contact us in advance at wmascari@gno.lib.la.us before shipping large quantities of books.  If you are an individual sending your own used books, please consider making a cash donation instead. As the NOPL states: What is the best way to help New Orleans Public Library? Monetary donations are the best way to help the library rebuild (link here to donate online). If you would rather mail your donation, please make your check payable to NOPL Foundation and send it to New Orleans Public Library Foundation, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112. (link here to donate online) While packaging up your old books and mailing them off might seem the perfect solution to the NOPL's problems, do trust that the library better knows its own needs. Keep in mind that a great many books donated to libraries everywhere prove to be non-useful to those institutions; so, if you are moved to help, send money instead. If you want to support the New Orleans libraries with your old books, you can best do so by selling them yourself and giving the proceeds to the NOPL. Barbara "send cash, not cache" Mikkelson Last updated:  18 March 2006    Sources:   Associated Press.  "Library Journal, American Library Assn Fixing Two N.O. Libraries."   11 March 2006. Collected via email, 2013: A Country Founded by Geniuses but Run by Idiots Attributed to Jeff Foxworthy: If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you have to get your parents permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If, in the nations largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is "cute," but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class ingrade school is perfectly acceptable  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the governments plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldnt be found  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more "safe" according to the government  you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. What a country! How about we give God a reason to continue blessing America! The above-referenced list of entries detailing "A Country Founded by Geniuses But Run by Idiots" was widely circulated via the internet in early 2013 with an "Attributed to Jeff Foxworthy" tag at its head, leading many to believe it was actually the work of that nationally famous comedian. Jeff Foxworthy However, othen than its basic "If you ... you might be ..." pattern that mimics Jeff Foxworthy's popular "You might be a redneck" routines, this item bears little resemblance to anything produced by Foxworthy: his comedic material is typically affectionate and self-deprecating and involves poking fun at his own milieu; his brand of humor is much more apolitical and non-partisan than the list reproduced above. (Nonetheless, Jeff's name has been falsely attached to other similar political pieces that have little in common with the tenor and substance of his comedy material.) attached Jeff's brother, Jay, confirmed for us that this material was not written by his sibling. The original compiler of this list appears to be Fritz Edmunds, who posted it to his "Politically True" blog back on Feb. 3, 2013 (albeit with a disclaimer noting that "some of the ideas were from an email that did not contain any copyright"). Politically True As usual, the list has seen numerous alterations in the process of being passed around the Internet, and several of the entries appearing in earlier versions have since dropped off: If the only school curriculum allowed to explain how we got here is evolution, but your government stops a $15 million construction project to keep a rare spider from evolving to extinction  you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If your government believes that using steroids or other drugs will ruin your life, but throwing you in prison for years will not  you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them with spankings while children of addicts are left in filth and drug infested homes  you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If your government believes that the way to make a school of unarmed children safe is to pass another law, this time with the illusion that three 10-round magazines in a rifle is safer than a 30-round magazine  you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. The phrase "founded by geniuses and run by idiots" appears to be a variant of a similar statement that appeared in Herman Wouk's 1951 novel "The Caine Mutiny": "The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots." In the 1954 film of the same name, the line was rendered, "The first thing you've got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots." <!-- Sources:    Metz, Ken.  "It's Never Wise to Insult the Police Officer."   The Bath County News-Outlook.  30 August 2007.--> Update [Aug. 2, 2022]: Updated SEO and title. In late September 2019, the anti-Muslim hate site Frontlines News published a bogus story reporting that "Muslims in Switzerland are demanding that the white cross be removed from the Swiss national flag because as a Christian symbol it 'no longer corresponds to todays multicultural Switzerland.'" bogus story The story contains a thumbnail image of men holding up a flag and burning it.The image was not taken recently and it wasn't taken in Switzerland  in fact, the flag being burned is Danish, not Swiss. The photograph in question was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Rizwan Tabassum in February 2006 in Karachi, Pakistan. According to the picture's caption, it depicts men burning a flag in response to outrage over cartoons in European newspapers depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the central figure of Islam. Generally, depicting Muhammad in images and statues is forbidden for observant Muslims.  photograph forbidden Frontlines News quotes and links to a story that was originally published by the Gatestone Institute, an anti-Muslim, non-profit organization that, as NBC News reported in April 2018, "promoted misleading and false anti-Muslim news, some of which was amplified by a Russian troll factory" in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Gatestone Institute reported The Gatestone story cited by Frontlines News quotes only one source, Ivica Petrusic, who was the vice president of the Swiss social justice advocacy group Second@s Plus. Petrusic was quoted saying the cross should be removed from the flag to reflect a separation between church and state and the country's growing cultural diversity. Petrusic makes no mention of Muslim people making that demand. The only element of the story linking to Muslims is Gateway's unfounded assertion that Second@s "represents mostly Muslim second-generation foreigners in Switzerland." Because the image took place at a different time and in a different place than Frontlines News reported, and because the underlying story originated in 2011 from an already-unreliable source, we rate this claim "False. Przybyla, Heidi."John Bolton Presided Over Anti-Muslim Think Tank."
NBC News.23 April 2018. McManus, John."Have Pictures of Muhammad Always Been Forbidden?"
BBC.15 January 2015. On April 5, 2021, former aide to U.S. President Trump Stephen Miller shared a photo on Twitter of the two in Trump's post-presidency, Mar-a-Lago office. As numerous publications and social media users have pointed out, one of the many items seen in the photo is a statue of Trump himself: a photo As numerous publications   Indeed, it is hard to come to the conclusion that the statue partially hiding behind Miller's right arm is anything other than a figurine or small statue of Trump: behind Miller's right arm   According to Politico, which analyzed several of the items contained in the former president's office, nobody they spoke to was sure where exactly the statue came from: According No sources knew the provenance of this mini-bust of Trump, and a Trump spokesperson didnt share any details about it when asked about it. A former senior White House official said it was most likely a gift that was sent in. Wed get tons of those  paintings, statues, etc. Because the statue is present in his office in Mar-a-Lago, we rate this claim as You knew it wouldn't take long for the hug to get some love during Sunday's debate between Republicans Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist. Minutes into the 40-minute Florida Senate Showdown, Rubio made a case that he'll stand up to President Barack Obama's agenda and Crist won't.Everyone knows that you won't stand up to the Obama agenda because just a year ago you were campaigning for it, the former House speaker said, referring to Feb. 10, 2009, when Crist embraced the president at a Fort Myers campaign event for the federal stimulus package.We've fact-checked several claims about Crist's support for the stimulus. Indeed, he earned a Pants on Fire rating for sayinghe didn't endorse it.So it was a Rubio comment later in the program that drew our attention.FOX News Sundayhost Chris Wallace asked Rubio, Why is $8 billion and 87,000 jobs bad for a state that has 12 percent unemployment?Well ... if it's bad for America, it can't possibly be good for your state, Rubio said. Let me tell you why the stimulus has failed. The stimulus has failed because since that famous day in February where the governor campaigned with Barack Obama on behalf of the stimulus program, 211,000 Floridians have lost their jobs.211,000 is a big number, so we wanted to check Rubio's facts.Conveniently, the state'sAgency for Workforce Innovationreleased areporton state employment figures just two days before the debate. In it, Florida's record 12.2 percent unemployment rate is announced, along with many statistics on the state's jobs picture, including year-over-year numbers from February 2009, the month Crist campaigned with Obama.The report shows Florida had 8,356,000 jobs in February 2009 and 8,125,000 in February 2010, the difference being 231,000. These are the seasonally adjusted numbers for the civilian population.However, if you look at seasonally adjusted nonagricultural employment --- a less-inclusive number --- you see the basis for Rubio's claim. There the job loss in a year's time is 211,500.It's the latter number that the Rubio campaign points to. Spokesman Alberto Martinez also shared a report from House Way and Means Republicans that seeks to highlight the stimulus as a job-killer, rather than a job creator, where Florida is said to have lost 240,400 jobs since the stimulus passed.Like any statistics, these are easily sliced and diced to make the key point. But Rubio is very close to the precise number, and in fact, he underestimates it slightly when his point is that Florida has lost a lot of jobs. So we rule this one True. In January 2016, a Facebook trend most commonly referenced as "Be Like Bill" swept the social network. During that time, users initially posted comics wherein a character named "Bill" served as a reinforcer of social media etiquette, before "Be Like Bill" generators enabled users to create personalized versions of the meme:  As is often the case with items like "Be Like Bill" that appear seemingly from the ether and go Facebook-wide, it wasn't long before folks became suspicious of this Bill character and his purpose on their News Feeds. Soonafter Bill became the meme of the day, a backlash against the meme was started: one that first simply decried the "scolding" nature of the trend, then followed up with rumors that the ubiquitous comic was a vector for malware, information theft, or other undesirable outcomes: scolding   Bill proved so popular and omnipresent that multiple local news outlets carried reports about the potential dangers of creating a "Be Like Bill" meme. Missouri TV station KFVS, Kansas City station KCTV (clip below), and Washington, D.C., station WTTGran some concern-generatingcoverage about the specific comic, typically lumping it into the general category of "clickbait" and associating it with the risk of all unvetted apps: KFVS KCTV WTTG It's known as 'clickbait', and if you haven't read the terms and conditions on the creator's website, the details may shock you. The company originally said in its terms of privacy, "You will allow us to use, edit your content with our service permanently, no limit and no recover." KFVS-TV also says, in some cases, content can contain viruses that can damage your computer, use your Facebook profile in ways you might not know, or even attempt to steal your credit card or bank account numbers. KCTV5 KCTV5 As the above-quoted material stated, Facebook has indeed presented a handy way for bad actors to engage in all sorts of unpleasant activities using compelling content. However, the "in some cases" outcomes described apply to malicious apps in general and not specifically to any known vulnerabilities linked to the "Be Like Bill" meme. Many articles cited extantBetter Business Bureau warnings about rogue apps that antedated "Be Like Bill" and referenced "clickbait," but the term was applied exceptionally broadly and not specifically to malware. In short, whether an item is clickbait itself has no bearing on its potential to cause harm to computers or accounts, and plenty of clickbait exists just to drive traffic to various web sites. clickbait Of additional interest (in bold) was a widely-reproduced excerpt from the Terms of Service of publisher Blobla's (who offered a mechanism for customizing "Be Like Bob" memes) that purportedly stated end users agreed to "allow [Blobla] to use, edit your content with our service permanently, no limit and no recover." We were unable to verify such language ever appeared in the agreement in question, and no such wording was in the their agreement as of 27 January 2016. Blobla's On 27 January 2016, Chicago station WMAQ published an article which reported that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) didn't suggest "Be Like Bill" posed any specific threat at all to social media users and added that the President and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois Steve Bernas had confirmed only that the BBB was looking into the meme (and keeping an eye out for impostors). article According to the outlet, Blobla clarified that the generator didn't require Facebook authorizations of the sort generally associated with malware or rogue apps: However, the Better Business Bureau has not yet definitely ruled whether the generated memes pose a risk to you or your computer. The sensation's creator, Bloba, on the other hand says they don't collect any data from users and their terms are the same as any others you see on Facebook. "First, our game Be Like Bill doesn't require users to authorize a Facebook app," a spokesperson for Bloba wrote in response. "Of course if users want to share the results to Facebook, they must be logged in Facebook. However we use Facebook share dialog for users to share their results. It's a very common ... This doesn't allow us to collect any data from user's Facebook account." Blobla's creators also explained that the now-elided, widely-cited verbiage ("permanently, no limit and no recover") was poorly composed and pertained to unrelated functions which might have ended up on their web site: "Second, we do not store any information of users on our servers, as stated in our ToS," Bloba continued. "Third, the Terms about our right to users' content is about posts on our website (a post may be a game like Be Like Bill, or a quiz, a video...). Because our website has a function for normal users to create a post in other languages. We have removed that term to avoid misunderstanding." On 29 January 2016, BBB communications director Katherine Hutt clarified the bureau's stance on "Be Like Bill," due to themultiple news reports conflating their earlier "clickbait" warnings withthat particularmeme and generator: We don't issue warnings about a specific company without investigating first. Finally, outlets devoted to more detailed reporting on online security (such as Sophos' Naked Security blog) haven't issued any warnings about "Be Like Bill" or the popular comic generator. No widespread reports of adverse outcomes have substantiated news affiliate speculation, and the bulk of "Be Like Bill"-themed reports focused on the general ability for malware to spread through apps, not any reports definitively (or anecdotally) related to that meme specifically. While users might tire of seeing Bill across their feeds, he doesn't pose a threat to anything more than annoyance-free browsing. blog