Can You Exchange Used Candles at Bath & Body Works?
For years, retail company Bath & Body Works has made headlines for its generous return policy. On Sept. 17, 2021, social media user Kristen Peden appeared to take advantage of that policy when she claimed in a series of Facebook posts that she exchanged three used items, including one used candle, at a Tennessee Bath & Body Works for new items. At the time of this writing, the post had garnered 90,000 shares. posts    Questions surrounding the policy have made social media rounds since at least 2018, and appeared in coverage by publications like The List and was posted to Reddit in 2019: The List posted 2019 "Is it true that you can return used candles and swap them out for new ones? Ir is it a YMMV [your mileage may vary] situation" Most of the reports claimed that if a customer keeps the receipt, they can return anything for any reason. And even without the receipt, customers could expect to receive store credit at the very least. At Bath & Body Works, you can return anything you buy, at anytime, for any reason. If you have your receipt, you may get a refund. If you don't, you'll likely get store credit, wrote Good Housekeeping in 2018. But does that apply to used items? Likely not. A look at the Bath & Body Works return policy showed that an empty product cannot be return solely on the grounds that it has been used. We just want you to love it! Return anything, anytime for any reason. 100% Guaranteed, wrote the company. If at any time you're not completely satisfied with the quality of our products, you may return them to any of our Bath & Body Works or White Barn Stores in the US for a full refund, subject to the terms of our Return Policy. wrote In a subsequent post, Peden corrected the post to note that the warranty extended to ANY EMPTY CONTAINER FROM THIS STORE. PERFUMES SOAPS LOTION CANDLES!!!! An update posted the same day said that she had gone to the store in question with her mother and successfully exchanged several items. subsequent post  In the above post, Peden shared a photo of what appears to be Pedens receipt (number 81217003463409172021) that showed three items returned without their original receipt and exchanged for three differently named items, including a candle, of the same value. The location listed on the receipt was for a store located at 373 W. Jackson Street in Cookeville, Tennessee. photo receipt  Screengrab/Facebook  Facebook Snopes sent the receipt to Bath & Body Works, and a company spokesperson confirmed that the customer returned a body cream, a fine fragrance mist, and a candle and received the same items in return. They were not able to determine whether any of the products had been used, but did refer our team to a return policy that noted Bath & Body Works only accepts products that do not perform properly. noted Our return policy is intended to help customers who have issues that are related to poor product performance or unsatisfactory customer experience and is not intended to be taken advantage of when a product performs as expected. If a product has been fully used, it would seem that it has met its performance expectations, read the policy. While it is true that Peden returned three items to a Bath & Body Works location in Tennessee in exchange for three items of equal value, we were unable to confirm whether that one candle exchanged was actually completely used. Snopes followed up with the company to further confirm the condition of the exchanged items but until we hear back, we have rated this claim Unproven.
As so-called undocumented immigrants in the U.S. struggled to avoid deportation and risked their health during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, government agencies created potential new challenges for them. In July, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) department announced they would be offering a six-day Citizens Academy training starting in September in Chicago, which would allow civilians and ICE officers to engage with each other. struggled risked their health announced Snopes readers shared the following letter from ICE, reportedly sent to potential participants across Chicago, and asked us if it meant the agency would be training civilians to assist in the apprehension of undocumented people. The answer is complicated. letter   We found that this was an actual letter sent by ICE. Although they said they were planning to conduct trainings in September and would show civilians how they made arrests, the notion that this would lead to civilians actually apprehending undocumented people was disputed by the agency. Immigration advocates, however, were skeptical.  In order to understand the actual nature and likely outcome of these trainings, we reached out to ICE, as well as immigration advocates, and looked at past examples of such academies.  According to an ICE press release, the interactive program would occur once a week over six weeks. Participants would learn about ICE policies and procedures from ERO officers, while officers would hear participants perspectives and debunk myths about ICE. press release The curriculum will include, but is not limited to, classroom instruction, visiting an immigration detention center, learning more about the health care ICE provides to those in its custody, and examining ICEs role in ensuring dignity, respect and due process of an immigration case from start to finish. Many in Chicago received letters from ICE inviting them to apply. The letter said, attendees will participate in scenario-based training ... including, but not limited to defensive tactics, firearms familiarization, and targeted arrests. received Nicole Alberico, an ICE spokesperson, responded to Snopes' request for more information about the training (emphasis ours): ...the academy is not to train members of the public to do the work of trained, federal law enforcement officers. ICE ERO Citizens Academy is modeled after other law enforcement community outreach programs  including ICEs Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), FBI and local police departments  all with the goal of directly engaging and educating the public. Chicago ERO is looking for a diverse set of influential community leaders  regardless of their stance on ICE  to apply. The spokesperson said that they also had not determined whether media would be permitted to attend the training, as they were considering health precautions because of the pandemic and privacy concerns.  In sum, according to their own descriptions, ICE plans on showing civilians how they as an agency carry out arrests but will not be training civilians to do arrests themselves.  According to one report, such a Citizens Academy has already taken place in Los Angeles for years, with participants simulating drug busts, arrests, and stakeouts. According to one graduate, the course immersed people in what the agents do. While the Chicago program was to be run by ERO, the Los Angeles Academy was being run under ICEs Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) department.  one report simulating The goal of such training appeared to be to get more people to understand ICEs perspective, see how they operate, and eventually construct a positive image of the agency in various communities. There is no available evidence that such trainings led to civilians participating in actual arrests.  Testimony from activists, human rights organizations, and reporting show ample proof of ICEs history of violating detainees rights, inhumane arrests of undocumented immigrants, separating children from their parents, and the lack of accountability surrounding their operations. ICE has also used civilian informants before. violating detainees rights arrests lack of accountability civilian informants The Citizens Academy announcement faced swift backlash from activists and government officials, including Chicago's alderman, Rossana Rodriguez, who labeled it a vigilante academy. In July, Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley put forward an amendment to the Homeland Security spending bill, barring agencies like ICE from using government funds to run Citizens Academy courses. vigilante academy forward Immigration activists said these classes were at best propaganda and at worst would train civilians to "snitch" on undocumented immigrants. Lam Nguyen Ho, executive director of Beyond Legal Aid, an organization that provides legal services to immigrants in Chicago, spoke to Snopes about the dangers of such academies:  said propaganda ... the best case scenario for this training is ICE doing a marketing campaign to justify continuing to deport undocumented immigrants indiscriminately and separating families inhumanely ... We have immigrants afraid of opening their doors and applying for immigration rights to which they are actually eligible due to the fears and violence they see ... I cant imagine the misinformation and fears that will be created when an agency of our government is basically sanctioning and coordinating neighbors surveilling, profiling, or worse against each other. (Update: The Chicago Citizen's Academy was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic, and a new date had not been announced. According to a statement from an ICE official, it will be tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2021.) In sum, ICE confirmed that the Citizens Academy course will take place, but denied they will train civilians to carry out arrests. Based on ICEs history of abuses against immigrant populations, the fears surrounding this particular training aren't unreasonable, but the exact nature and outcome of the training remains to be seen. Based on all of the above factors, we rate this claim a Mixture. Da Silva, Chantal.  "DHS Spending Bill Amended to Ban Funding for ICE's Citizen's Academy."
 Newsweek. 15 July 2020. Da Silva, Chantal.  "ICE Offering 'Citizens Academy' Course with Training on Arresting Immigrants."
 Newsweek. 9 July 2020. Gonzalez, Christina."ICE Citizen Academy Causing Uproar in Chicago, Has Been Going on in Los Angeles - for Years."
 Fox11 Los Angeles. 11 July 2020. Human Rights Watch.  "US: Stop Using Untrained, Abusive Agencies at Protests."
 5 June 2020. Kaplan, Emily.  "What Isolation Does to Undocumented Immigrants."
  The Atlantic. 27 May 2020. Katz, Ryan. "Play to Stay."
 The Intercept. 24 September 2018. McFarling, Usha Lee. "Fearing Deportation, Many Immigrants at Higher Risk of Covid-19 Are Afraid to Seek Testing or Care."
  StatNews. 15 April 2020. Mejia, Brittny. "At Citizen Academies, Devoted Participants Get Their Law Enforcement Fix."
 Los Angeles Times. 3 December 2018. Tashman, Brian. "Congress Needs To Hold ICE Accountable for Abuses."
 ACLU. 2 February 2018. Torres, Adry. "ICE Is Offering a Six-week Course on How to Arrest Immigrants - Including 'Firearms and Defensive Training' - as Critics Warns They Are Using Private Citizens As Their Eyes and Ears."
 The Daily Mail.8 July 2020. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "ICE Offers First Citizens Academy for Public to Learn More About Agencys Mission in Chicago."
 13 July 2020. Zamudio, Maria Ines. "ICE Citizens Trainings May Be a 'Vigilante Academy,' Chicago Alderman Warns."
 NPR. 10 July 2020. Just about any unsourced list of witty observations about our politics and social mores gets credited to humorist George Carlin these days, even when it doesn't really sound like anything he would write. George Carlin I'm Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD Republican. I like big cars, big cigars and naturally big racks. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid-level governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies. I don't care about appearing compassionate. I think playing with guns doesn't make you a killer. I believe its called the Boy Scouts for a reason. I think I'm better than the homeless. I am not the real Slim Shady, so I think that Im gonna stay seated right here in this damn comfy chair. I don't think being a minority makes you noble or victimized. I don't care if you call me a racist, a homophobe or a misogynist. I am not tolerant of others because they are different. I know that no matter how big Jennifer Lopezs toilet gets, Ill still want to see it. I don't celebrate Kwanzaa. I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, you do it in English. I like my porn without silicon. I don't use the excuse "it's for the children" as a shield for unpopular opinions or actions. I want to know when MTV became such crap. I think getting a hummer is sex, and every man is entitled to at least one extremely sloppy one per month. I know what the definition of is is. I think Oprah's eyes are way too far apart. I didn't take the initiative in inventing the Internet. I thought the Taco Bell dog was funny. I want them to bring back safe and sane fireworks.  I believe no one ever died because of something Ozzy Osbourne, Ice-T or Marilyn Manson sang. I think that being a student doesnt give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster. Ive never mourned a dead goldfish. I dont want to eat or drink anything with the words light, lite or fat-free on the package. I believe everyone has a right to pray to their God or gods, while I pray that the test results come back negative. I think the Clippers should play in the WNBA. My heroes are Abraham Lincoln, Orson Wells, Ronald Reagan and whoever canceled Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I think creative violence makes movies more interesting and Iraqis more dead. I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor. I know wrestling is fake, but I still think The Rock could kick my butt. I think global warming is junk science. Ive never owned or was a slave, I didn't wander forty years in the desert after getting chased out of Egypt, I havent burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you, so shut-the-f-up already. South Park still makes me laugh. I think you can respect and admire women while mentally undressing them. I believe a self-righteous liberal with a cause is more dangerous than a PlayStation. I want to know which church is it exactly where the Rev. Jessie Jackson preaches. I think explosions are cool. I don't care where Ellen puts her tongue. I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass if youre running from them. I thought Spinal Tap was great, but Rob Reiner can still kiss my backside.  I worry about dying before I get even.  Ive discovered that DVD is better than Laserdisc. I like the convenience of buying oranges while I'm waiting at a stop-light, and I'm pretty sure the Latina midget selling them to me is glad she no longer lives in a refrigerator packing carton outside Ensenada. I figured out Bruce Willis was dead midway through The Sixth Sense but enjoyed it anyway. I think turkey bacon sucks. I want somebody to explain to me exactly why it's wrong to point out that when I watch a freeway chase, I know the losers the police eventually pull out of the car are gonna be a gang-banging hommies or vatos. I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes a parent. I think tattoos and piercings are fine if you want them, but please dont pretend they are a political statement.  I want to know what the hell is going on when Geena Davis has a sitcom. I like hard women, hard liquor and a hard bowel movement first thing in the morning. I believe you dont have to speak with a lisp to pick out a couch for your living room. I'll admit that the only movie that ever made me cry was Field of Dreams. I didn't realize Dr. Seuss was a genius until I had a kid. I will not conform or compromise just to keep from hurting somebody's feelings. Sometimes I throw my soft drink can in the trash, even when the recycle bin is just a few more steps. Making love is fine, but sometimes I wanna get laid. I'm neither angry nor disenfranchised, no matter how desperately the mainstream media would like the world to believe otherwise.  Yes, I'm a bad Republican. And I vote... even if it rains.  Yes, I Guess I am A BAD American. I like big cars, big boats, big houses, and naturally  big tits. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid-level governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies. I don't care about appearing compassionate. I think playing with toy guns doesn't make you a killer. I believe it's called the Boy Scouts for a reason. I think I'm doing better than the homeless. I don't think being a minority makes you noble or victimized. I have the right not to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird or piss me off. I know what SEX is and there are not varying degrees of it. Hell, just ask my wife. I don't celebrate Kwanzaa. But if you want to that's fine; just don't feel like everyone else should have to. I believe that if you are selling me a Dairy queen shake, pack of cigarettes, or hotel room you do it in English. As of matter of fact, if you are an American citizen you should speak English. My father and grandfather shouldn't have to die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come disrespect ours. I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you're running from them after they tell you to stop. If you can't understand the word freeze or stop in English, See the previous line. If I received a blow job from one of my subordinate employees in my office, it wouldn't be a private matter or my personal business. I would have been FIRED immediately. I know how to count votes and I feel much safer letting a machine with no political affiliation recount when needed. I know what the definition of lying is. I don't think just because you were not born in this country, you qualify for any special loan programs, gov't sponsored bank loans, etc., so you can you can open a hotel, c-store, trinket shop, or any damn thing else. I thought the Taco Bell dog was funny. I want them to bring back safe and sane fireworks. I believe no one ever died because of something Ozzy Osbourne, Ice-T or Marilyn Manson sang, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to that crap from someone else's car when I'm stopped at a red light.But I respect your right to. I think that being a student doesn't give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster or Jack In The Box. I don't want to eat or drink anything with the words light, Lite, or fat-free on the package. I did not go to some foreign country and risk my life in vain and defend our constitution so that decades later you can tell me it's a living document ever changing and is open to interpretation. I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor. I know wrestling is fake. I've never owned or was a slave, and a large percentage or our forefathers weren't wealthy enough to own one either. I think you can respect and admire women while mentally undressing them. I believe a self-righteous liberal with a cause is more dangerous than a Hell's Angel with an attitude. I want to know which church is it exactly where the "Rev." Jesse Jackson preaches; and besides what exactly is his job function. I don't care where Ellen puts her tongue. I own a gun, you can own a gun, and any red blooded American should be allowed to own a gun, but if you use it in a crime then you will serve the time. A rubber band and a paper clip is a dangerous weapon in the hands of someone with malicious intent. I worry about dying before I get even. I didn't take the initiative in inventing the Internet. I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it pisses you off, invent the next operating system that's better and put your name on the building. Ask your buddy that invented the Internet to help you. I don't believe in hate crime legislation. Even suggesting it pisses me off. You're telling me that someone who is a minority, gay, disabled, another nationality, or otherwise different from the mainstream of this country has more value as a human being that I do as a white male. Hell, if someone kills anyone, I'd say that it's a hate crime. I like the convenience of buying oranges from a sidewalk vendor or while I'm waiting at a stop-light, and I'm pretty sure the Latin midget selling them to me is glad she no longer lives in a refrigerator box in East LA or is sleeping in the streets of her home country. We don't need more laws! Let's enforce the ones we already have. I think turkey bacon, turkey beef, turkey fake anything sucks. I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes a parent with the balls to stand up to the kid and spank his butt and say "NO". I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are a political statement. I'll admit that the only movie that ever made me cry was Ole Yeller. I didn't realize Dr. Seuss was a genius until I had a kid. I will not be frowned upon or be looked down upon or be made to keep silent because I have these beliefs and opinions. I thought this country allowed me that right I will not conform or compromise just to keep from hurting somebody's feelings. I'm neither angry nor disenfranchised, no matter how desperately the mainstream media would like the world to believe otherwise. Yes, I guess by their definition, I'm a bad American. Carlin may sometimes use the format of stringing together a few dozen pithy comments about a wide variety of topical subjects, but the tone of his humor is nothing like this reactionary piece.  If any doubt remained, Carlin himself swept it away by announcing on his web site that he is not the author of the article. web site If not Carlin, then who did write it?  This piece has also been credited to a number of decidedly conservative, outspoken media figures, such as rock star Ted Nugent, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, and other comedians, such as Denis Leary, but the even if the article might seem to echo the political opinions of these men, it doesn't quite match any of them, nor does the language used sound quite right for any of these figures.  (Leary, like Carlin, has been credited with creating some other Internet favorites, such as a vituperative discourse on e-mail chain letters and the "Are You Man Enough?" essay.) Ted Nugent Rush Limbaugh Denis Leary chain letters Are You Man Enough? The essay quoted at the head of this page appeared in the FreeRepublic.com on-line forum back in September 2000 under the title "I Am a Bad Republican" (picking up title changes and additions since then as it was forwarded around the Internet), and the person who posted it there has taken credit for it in a another message in that same forum, stating that he wrote it in response to list sent to him by a Democrat friend about how to be a "good Republican." FreeRepublic.com message Last updated:  2 October 2005  <!--  Sources:   Rooney, Andy.  "My Name's Been Stolen."   Sacramento Bee.  24 July 2003.--> Claim:  Photographs show a high-rise construction site flooded by waters from a nearby marina. Status:  True. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, May 2007] Nearly 100 workers at the site of the Infinity Tower escaped as excavation work on the 80-floor building was nearing completion. The incident happened as the workers were assisting the project owners and the piling contractor with the foundation works on site 20 meters below ground level. The supervision team noticed a slight movement and cracks in the diaphragm wall adjacent to the Dubai Marina and alerted management, who ordered an immediate evacuation of the site. The diaphragm wall collapsed and crumbled within 2 minutes from being noticed as the workers were scrambling over safety ladders up to the ground level. The whole site was totally flooded within 4 minutes. The construction of the tower will continue to be suspended until the site can be totally dewatered. A special diving team has been brought in to assess the situation.            Origins:  Construction projects, both large and small, can be delayed or set back for any number of reasons  labor problems, material shortages, budget overruns, economicreversals, bad weather, faulty planning, etc.  But not often do we see construction delayed in as spectacular a fashion as happened with the Infinity Tower project, an 80-story, helix-shaped high-rise building currently being erected within the Dubai Marina district of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Infinity Tower Dubai Marina The pictures displayed above illustrate a February 2007 accident in which a wall holding back the waters of the Dubai Marina was breached, completely flooding the construction site.  As the Gulf News reported of the accident: Nearly 100 workers at the site of the 'tallest building with a twist' had a lucky escape as a wall holding back the Dubai Marina waters breached and flooded the foundation site.  Excavation work on the 80-floor Infinity Tower was nearing completion when there was a sharp and loud sound, said a worker.  "We then saw sand pouring down the sides," he said.  The workers were ordered to evacuate immediately, said the foreman.  According to a manager of Arabtec, the incident is under investigation. Additional post-accident photographs of the Infinity Tower site can be viewed at the Dubai News Online web site. photographs Last updated:  7 June 2007    Sources:   Gulf News.  "Lucky Escape for 100 Workers."   8 February 2007. In December 2020, Twitter users enjoyed what appeared to be a delightfully weird coincidence when the author of an article debunking claims about alien life emerged as "Hugh Mann."  In a widely shared Dec. 14 tweet, @mmastrac included a screenshot of the article headlined, "There is No Secret Underground Base on Mars," along with the author's name highlighted in red. @mmastrac added the caption, "Nice try aliens": tweet     The screenshot was not digitally manipulated or faked and showed part of an article that appeared on the website Slate earlier in December 2020. However, the article itself was clearly intended to be humorous. All in all, the piece presented the author as an alien clumsily emphasizing their thoroughgoing "humanness" while desperately, and ineffectively, attempting to cover up evidence of alien life and operating under a blatantly fake pseudonym that sounds exactly like "human": Slate Like all humans, my light-sensing organs nearly popped out of their orbits when I heard that a retired Israeli military commander had given an interview claiming that space aliens made contact with Earths leaders years ago. According to Haim Eshed, who served as the head of Israels space security program for three decades, representatives of the Galactic Federation traveled to our solar system to conduct research into the fabric of the universe, and, with the help of a local political faction known as the United States of America, have constructed an underground base on Helios IV, which we humans call Mars. given an interview As a respected human journalist, I think I speak for our entire species of only-recently-sentient bipeds when I say, Thats ridiculous! Haim Esheds carbon-based neurological organ is simply malfunctioning as he nears the end of his pitifully short biological life cycle, and there is absolutely no reason to look into his story any further. The joke may have been obvious to many readers and Twitter users, but the screenshot shared by @mmastrac didn't include the body of the article itself, which would have made it clearer. Even with the benefit of the full text of the piece, some readers appear to have mistaken "Hugh Mann" for a real Slate contributor and responded to the article in earnest. On the website News Break, which republished the Slate article, commenters wrote, "There are numerous people who claim this that have served in the military just saying"; "Your [sic] a fucking reporter with no knowledge past the end of your pencil! its [sic] ignorant morons like you that keep the truth in the shadows"; and "This reporter is a [sic] asshat." republished wrote In May 2016, syndicated talk radio host Sean Hannity aired an item claiming that Donald Trump had sent a plane to give 200 stranded U.S. marines a much-needed ride home after Operation Desert Storm in 1991: item When Corporal Ryan Stickney and 200 of his fellow Marines prepared to return to their families after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, a logistics error forced them to turn to a surprising source for a ride home: Donald J. Trump. Today, Stickney would like to say "thank you." Stickney (left), was a squad leader in a TOW company of a Marine reserve unit based in Miami, FL and spent approximately six months in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War between 1990 and 1991. Upon his units return to the United States, the former Marine says the group spent several weeks decompressing at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before heading back to Miami. Stickney recalls being told that a mistake had been made within the logistics unit and that an aircraft wasnt available to take the Marines home on their scheduled departure date. This  according to Stickney  is where Donald Trump comes in. "The way the story was told to us was that Mr. Trump found out about it and sent the airline down to take care of us. And thats all we knew ... I remember asking 'Who is Donald Trump?' I truly didn't know anything about him," the former Marine said. Corporal Stickney snapped a photo to remember the day by:   The story came up several times during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign (Cpl. Stickney even told it in person at a Trump rally), but skeptics questioned its validity despite a statement from the Trump campaign allegedly confirming it: "The Trump campaign has confirmed to Hannity.com that Mr. Trump did indeed send his plane to make two trips from North Carolina to Miami, Florida to transport over 200 Gulf War Marines back home. No further details were provided." told confirming The few details we do have about Trump's alleged participation don't, in fact, add up. We can confirm, based on military records, that the 209-member Anti-Tank (TOW) Company, part of the 8th Tank Battalion for Operation Desert Shield, deployed to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, from their home base in Miami on 26 November 1990. And we can confirm that the company deployed from Camp LeJeune to Saudi Arabia on 22 December, served throughout the combat phase of Operation Desert Storm (from 17 January to 28 February 1991), and returned to North Carolina in April. A command chronology of the deployment notes that a "Cpl. Stickey" was among those receiving certificates of commendation. deployed command chronology We can also confirm, via a 23 April 1991 article from the Sun-Sentinel, that a series of flight delays stalled the company's homecoming to Miami on 22 April, but that they finally did arrive home after split across two separate flights. Stickney's photograph shows that he arrived on a plane marked "Trump," but it also proves something else: that even if Trump did send the plane, it wasn't his private jet. article That Trump didn't send the pictured plane at all was something noted by a sharp-eyed reader, who wrote to us to note: First, thats not Trumps private 727 jet; its one of the jets in the Trump Shuttle fleet. I wondered if maybe Trumps jet back in those days was painted differently, so I researched his private jet as of April 1991. I found that Trump was deep in the red, financially, and having to liquidate assets, one of which was his personal 727. The sale of that jet was finalized in the first week of May 1991, making it highly unlikely he was also flying reservists around while discussing the sale at the end of April. jet Shuttle The markings of the plane in Stickney's photo match those of the Trump Shuttle fleet, so the question becomes: Did Trump himself send a Trump Shuttle to retrieve the stranded Marines, or was it procured some other way? To arrive at an answer, it's necessary to go into a bit of the history of Trump Shuttle. A July 2015 article in NYC Aviation detailed Trump's short-lived airline industry involvement, beginning with an entirely separate carrier, Eastern Air Shuttle, which he immediately rebranded with his own name: article carrier rebranded CEO Frank Lorenzo ... began selling off assets including the prized Shuttle operation. Donald Trump placed a winning bid for the Shuttle, its aircraft and landing slots at LaGuardia and National for $380 million dollars that was financed through no less than 22 banks. The newly branded Trump Shuttle took the skies on June 7, 1989. Timing is everything in business, and unfortunately for Trump he entered the airline game at the wrong time. The US entered an economic recession in the late-80s leading many corporations to cut back on business travel. In addition, tensions in the Middle East leading up to the first Gulf war caused oil prices to spike. This 1-2 punch was devastating for the airline industry and led to the demise of a number of airlines including Eastern and Pan Am. Given these circumstances, the Trump Shuttle lost money, and with Trump continuing to accumulate debt in his other ventures it was becoming increasingly difficult to pay back the loans taken to purchase the airline. In September of 1990 Trump defaulted on his loan and control of the airline went back to the banks led by Citibank. Given that the bankers, not Donald Trump, owned Trump Shuttle from September 1990 until it was sold to U.S. Air in 1996, Trump wasn't in a position to send the planes anywhere, much less on a spur-of-the-moment Marine transport mission. So who did? As it turns out, the U.S. military itself chartered the flights -- a common practice in the day, according to an 11 August 2016 report by The Washington Post: Lt. Gen. Vernon J. Kondra, now retired, was in charge of all military airlift operations. He said that relying on commercial carriers freed up the military cargo aircraft for equipment transport. Vernon J. Kondra Kondra's notes on the flight are declassified and available online and show a contract for Trump Shuttle to "move troops in [the] continental United States" during the 1990-91 timeframe: online There are several references to a 1990-91 contract for Trump Shuttle to carry personnel across the United States, between the East and West Coasts, on a standard LaGuardia-Dover-Charleston-Travis-Chord-Kelly-Dover-LaGuardia run.   "It worked very well, and the crews loved it, and really thought that we'd done something special for them," Kondra recalled in the oral history. "It was a helluva lot better than using 141s [cargo craft], which we could use for something else." But Kondra said that the notion that Trump personally arranged to help the stranded soldiers made little sense. "I certainly was not aware of that. It does not sound reasonable that it would happen like that. It would not fit in with how we did business. I don't even know of how he would have known there was a need." So the real story underlying the claim that Donald Trump personally sent his jet to pick up stranded soldiers and return them to the U.S. is that the military paid to charter a plane from an airline Trump no longer owned in order to bring those service personnel home. Kessler, Glenn.  "Too Good to Check: Sean Hannitys Tale of a Trump Rescue."
  The Washington Post.  11 August 2016. Reed, Ted.  "Trump: I Ran a Great Airline."
  The Globe and Mail.  26 September 2011. Rodriguez-Florido, Lourdes.  "Grand Homecoming Welcomes War-Weary Marine Reservists Company Looks Forward to Settling Into Life's Regular Routines."
  Sun-Sentinel.  23 April 1991. CNN.  "Inside Donald Trump's Private Jet."
  10 November 2009. GulfLINK.  "8th Tank BN Command Chronology 8th Nov 90 to March 91."
  12 April 1991. In early March 2022, we reviewed several reader emails that inquired about purported voucher offers for Olive Garden and Chick-fil-A on Facebook. The posts on multiple Facebook profiles and pages showed pictures of food at both restaurants and claimed to provide a "meal for two with drinks" for "everyone." Olive Garden Chick-fil-A Facebook However, these were not legitimate offers. The fake voucher offer for Chick-fil-A appeared on facebook.com/ChickFans as well as other profiles and pages. This page is not managed by the fast food chicken chain: Chick-fil-A facebook.com/ChickFans  This was the first step of a scam. We recommend reporting posts like these to Facebook.  The post read as follows: Hello everyone Im Michael Gorham. I am very happy to announce Im the new CEO of Chick-Fil-A. Id like to start my new job off with a good deed for everyone as I know recent times have been tough which is why Im going to be rewarding everyone who shares&comments in the next 24 hours with a voucher to get meal for two at any Chick-Fil-A for lunch or dinner. To be clear, Andrew Truett Cathy is the CEO of Chick-fil-A, not someone named "Michael Gorham." Andrew Truett Cathy Chick-fil-A Several helpful readers sent in screenshots of the purported voucher offer for Olive Garden. It was similar to the posts for Chick-fil-A, and had been going around since at least September 2021: Olive Garden Chick-fil-A  This did not come from a legitimate Facebook page.  The scam Facebook posts with the fake "meal for two with drinks" voucher offer for Olive Garden read as follows: Olive Garden Meal for two with drinks voucher offer for everyone! I'm Dave George, the president of Olive Garden. I know times have been tough so to help everyone out I have a special surprise for everyone who shares&comments then. Every person who does this by Sep 28th can get a voucher. Each voucher can be used at any Olive Garden restaurant to get a meal for two with drinks! Olive Garden Olive Garden Not only was there no voucher since it was a scam, but also Dave George hasn't been with Olive Garden since he retired in 2020. As of early 2022, the company's president was Dan Kiernan. Olive Garden he retired in 2020 Dan Kiernan After users commented on the above posts, the scammers directed them to other posts that looked like the one below:  These scams have been going around since at least 2021.  Notice that the post pictured above has photographs for Olive Garden but also a Chick-fil-A profile picture in the top-left corner. This indicated that the Facebook accounts that were involved had managed scams for both restaurant chains. The post read: Olive Garden Chick-fil-A #CONGRATULATIONS For those of you who have received comments from us, you have a chance to win them.To Enter???Step 1 = Like and ShareStep 2 = Enter here ? (link removed) ?Step 3 = coment DONELike and share our page below??????god bless you Upon clicking the link in the posts  something we advise readers against doing  we were led to rewardgiantztesters.com and then promotionsonlineusa.com. These websites appeared to lead to endless offers and surveys. Similar websites can also potentially lead to attempts for phishing, identity theft, or other similar outcomes. According to multiple pages we found that were pushing the same scams, these pages and profiles that promised the fake offers for Chick-fil-A and Olive Garden may have been managed from Vietnam and Indonesia. multiple pages we found same scams Chick-fil-A Olive Garden Several of the profiles named "Olive Garden Fans" that are linked in the paragraph above appeared to have switched profile pictures from Olive Garden to Chick-fil-A to run one or both scams. Olive Garden Chick-fil-A Some of the profiles and pages that displayed the scams showed other businesses as well. The scammers appeared to also push fake voucher offers for Costco, Texas Roadhouse, and KFC. appeared to also push fake voucher offers Costco Texas Roadhouse KFC In sum, no, Chick-fil-A and Olive Garden were not giving away vouchers, gift cards, or anything else on Facebook that included a "meal for two with drinks voucher offer." This was a scam. The official Facebook pages for Chick-fil-A and Olive Garden feature blue verified badges. This symbol is an indication that a page is genuine. Chick-fil-A Olive Garden Chick-fil-A Olive Garden verified badges Sen. Marco Rubio defended past support of a cap-and-trade bill in the Florida House by saying it was an attempt to protect the state from future federal regulations. Fox News moderator Bret Baier asked Rubio about the issue at a Republican presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 28, 2016. Baier said Rubio had wanted Florida to get ahead of other states and establish a cap-and-trade system while he was House speaker in 2008, and asked why Rubio had changed his mind. Rubio denied he backed a popular plan supported by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, claiming he was looking to insulate Florida from restrictions a future president might impose. I have never supported cap and trade, and I never thought it was a good idea, and I was clear about that at the time, Rubio said. Rubio has been very outspoken during this campaign abouthis opposition to cap and trade, which lets businesses trade pollution credits if they don't meet emission caps. But is his retelling of what happened in 2008 accurate? Cap and trade mission We literally went to the tape to find out, because the key evidence in this claim is a snippet from aMarch 13, 2008, appearanceRubio made on WFSUsFlorida Face to Face. Rubio was discussingHB 7135, an energy and climate change billchampioned by Cristthat included the Florida Climate Protection Act. That part of the law allowed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to formulate a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse emissions from electric utilities. Florida should position itself for what I believe is inevitable, and that is a federal cap-and-trade program. Florida should do everything it can to be an early complier so it can access early compliance funds and so that it can help influence what that cap-and-trade looks like at the federal level, Rubio said on the show, which ran during the legislative session. And so Im in favor of giving the Department of Environmental Protection a mandate that they go out and design a cap-and-trade or a carbon-tax program and bring it back to the Legislature for ratification some time in the next two years. Crist used a portion of this clip during his 2010 Senate primary campaign against Rubio in an attempt to show Rubio favored a cap-and-trade program. WFSU, which operates The Florida Channel covering state government, demanded Criststop using footage of the showbecause of a law barring use of its footage in political campaigns. This limited portion of the show has been resurrected online during the presidential primary, leading someconservative sitesto question Rubios stance on the issue. But wait, as they say, theres more. Rubios campaign had complained the clip was out of context, and it appears it really was. They havepointed to a longer edit of the footagethat shows Rubio going on to say: Im in favor of them designing it. Im not in favor of them designing it and implementing it. Im in favor of them designing it and then bringing it back to the Legislature. The way were going toclean up our environment, the way were going to lower carbon emissions, is not through government mandates. That certainly changes the context of his statement. Rubios campaign did not respond to PolitiFacts questions about his potential support of cap and trade, but they haveaddressed this issue before. In 2007, Rubio wrote anop-ed for theMiami Heraldthat said Crist should be applauded for his efforts, but the government mandates he has proposed will not only fail to achieve their desired result, they carry actual negative consequences. Rubio did cite proposals from his book100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Futureto increase ethanol production, develop bio-fuels and provide tax incentives for better fuel efficiency. But he concluded that instead of adopting measures that will have little if any impact on our environment and make life in Florida more expensive, we need a strategy that encourages environmental conservation, fuel efficiency and energy diversity, while continuing to stimulate our economy. Rubio also said in aMarch 2007 speechthat Florida was ripe to change energy policy because it was both environmentally sound and potentially lucrative. This nation, and ultimately the world, is headed towards emission caps and energy diversification, he said. Those changes will require technological advances that make those measures cost effective. The demand toward such advances will create an industry to meet it. Florida should become the Silicon Valley of that industry. Rubio did seem to change his tune a bit by 2009, when he was being criticized for his full-throated opposition of cap and trade after presiding over the passage of HB 7135. Environmentalists and scientists noted Rubio had shepherded the entire process as House speaker. The legislation was passed to move forward on cap-and-trade policy, and certainly Marco Rubio didn't stand in the way of that legislation passing and my understanding was that he was supportive of the process, John Reilly, a leading climate change expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hired by Rubio to advise lawmakers,told theMiami Herald. He certainly seemed to accept the science of climate change. Rubio argued then that he wanted to take executive authority away from Crist, although the DEP countered they would have always needed legislative approval. Cap and trade planning fell by the wayside as Crist waged a losing Senate primary battle against Rubio. It has worked out as it was designed to work out, which was to stop a cap-and-trade system in Florida, Rubio said in 2009. Some critics at the time doubted that was Rubio's true plan, as it was a big gamble that the Legislature would shut down any proposed DEP cap and trade proposal. But a2015 article in theNational Journalsaid that while the bill passed (and it passed the House and Senate unanimously), Rubio did add wording that prevented the plan from being implemented. The final bill indeed only allowed DEP to develop a potential plan, and required legislative approval to become practice. TheNational Journalquoted former House minority leader and state Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, who said, I fully credit him with the gutting of the bill. Our ruling Rubio said, I have never supported cap and trade. As House speaker in Florida, Rubio did preside over the unanimous passage of an energy bill that allowed the state to develop a cap-and-trade plan for electric utility emissions. But it appears his comments on the bill have been taken out of context, and that there may have been some legislative craftiness afoot. Rubio said he wanted Florida to cook up a plan of its own before federal regulations were imposed on the state. He also voiced opposition to government mandates and inserted a roadblock to letting any plan actually be implemented, details that get left out when Rubio is accused of supporting the measure. He now is much more vocal in his opposition of cap and trade, but it looks as if he has always favored a largely hands-off approach from government. We rate Rubios statement Mostly True. On 8 June 2016, the Facebook page "The Bern Report" shared a document authored by researchers Axel Geijsel of Tilburg University in The Netherlands and Rodolfo Cortes Barragan of Stanford University suggesting that "the outcomes of the 2016 Democratic Party nomination contest [are not] completely legitimate: That social media share described the document as "a fantastic research piece put together by a couple of college students, Rodolfo Cortes Barragan & Axel Geijsel." That document (properly termed a "paper," not a "study," as the latter term implies some form of professional vetting) concluded with the statement that the data examined by its author "suggest that election fraud is occurring in the 2016 Democratic Party Presidential Primary election" and that "this fraud has overwhelmingly benefited Secretary Clinton at the expense of Senator Sanders": document Are the results we are witnessing in the 2016 primary elections trustworthy? While Donald Trump enjoyed a clear and early edge over his Republican rivals, the Democratic contest between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernard Sanders has been far more competitive. At present, Secretary Clinton enjoys an apparent advantage over Sanders. Is this claimed advantage legitimate? We contend that it is not, and suggest an explanation for the advantage: States that are at risk for election fraud in 2016 systematically and overwhelmingly favor Secretary Clinton. We provide converging evidence for this claim. First, we show that it is possible to detect irregularities in the 2016 Democratic Primaries by comparing the states that have hard paper evidence of all the placed votes to states that do not have this hard paper evidence. Second, we compare the final results in 2016 to the discrepant exit polls. Furthermore, we show that no such irregularities occurred in the 2008 competitive election cycle involving Secretary Clinton against President Obama. As such, we find that in states wherein voting fraud has the highest potential to occur, systematic efforts may have taken place to provide Secretary Clinton with an exaggerated margin of support. In an appendix, Geijsel and Barragan stated that their research was still in progress and had not yet been subject to peer review, but since the information was highly topical they believed it better to pre-release their findings due to the ongoing primary ballot count in California (among other factors): Statement on peer-review: We note that this article has not been officially peer-reviewed in a scientific journal yet. Doing so will take us several months. As such, given the timeliness of the topic, we decided to publish on the Bern Report after we received preliminary positive feedback from two professors (both experts in the quantitative social sciences). We plan on seeking peer-reviewed publication at a later time. As of now, we know there may be errors in some numbers (one has been identified and sent to us: it was a mislabeling). We encourage anyone to let us know if they find any other error. Our aim here truly is to understand the patterns of results, and to inspire others to engage with the electoral system. The post-introduction portion of the paper began with a comparison of outcomes in "primary states with paper trails and without paper trails," holding that potentially inaccurate results led the researchers to "restrict [our] analysis to a proxy: the percentage of delegates won by Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders." After identifying via the Ballotpedia web site 18 states that use a form of paper verification for votes compared to 13 states without such a "paper trail," they concluded that states without "paper trails" demonstrated a higher rate of support for Hillary Clinton: Analysis: The [data] show a statistically significant difference between the groups. States without paper trails yielded higher support for Secretary Clinton than states with paper trails. As such, the potential for election fraud in voting procedures is strongly related to enhanced electoral outcomes for Secretary Clinton. In the Appendix, we show that this relationship holds even above and beyond alternative explanations, including the prevailing political ideology and the changes in support over time. The information included in the Appendix didn't explicate exactly what those alternative explanations might be: Are there other variables that could account for our main effect (states without paper trails going overwhelmingly for Clinton)? We conducted a regression model and included the % of Non-Hispanic Whites in a state as of the last Census, the states electoral history from 1992 to 2012 of favoring Democratic or Republican nominees for President (i.e., the blueness of a state), and our variable of interest: paper trail vs. no paper trail. As expected, race/ethnicity and political ideology played a role: The Whiter and more liberal a state, the less it favored Clinton. However, the effect for paper trail remains significant. States with paper trails show significantly less support for Clinton. As such, even beyond the potential for other likely factors to play a role, the potential for fraud is associated with gains for Clinton.  Dependent variable: Percent support for Clinton in the primaries  In the paper's second portion, the researchers examined discrepancies between exit polls and final results by state, a subject of debate (hashtagged #ExitPollGate on social media) that antedated the publication of their paper and was addressed in a Nation article disputing the claim that exit polls revealed fraud. The Nation's analysis held that fraud detection exit polling varied significantly from the type of exit polling typically carried out in the United States: While exit polls are used to detect potential fraud in some countries, ours arent designed, and arent accurate enough, to accomplish that purpose. [A polling company VP], who has conducted exit polls in fragile democracies like Ukraine and Venezuela, explained that there are three crucial differences between their exit polls and our own. Polls designed to detect fraud rely on interviews with many more people at many more polling places, and they use very short questionnaires, often with just one or two questions, whereas ours usually have twenty or more. Shorter questionnaires lead to higher response rates. Higher response rates paired with larger samples result in much smaller margins of error. Theyre far more precise. But it costs a lot more to conduct that kind of survey, and the media companies that sponsor our exit polls are only interested in providing fodder for pundits and TV talking heads. All they want to know is which groups came out to vote and why, so thats what they pay for. As well, standard exit polling conducted in the U.S. can be very inaccurate and systematically biased for a number of reasons, including: including o Differential nonresponse, in which the supporters of one candidate are likelier to participate than those of another candidate. Exit polls have limited means to correct for nonresponse, since they can weight only by visually identifiable characteristics. Hispanic origin, income and education, for instance, are left out. o Cluster effects, which happen when the precincts selected arent representative of the overall population. This is a very big danger in state exit polls, which include only a small number of precincts. As a result, exit polls have a larger margin of error than an ordinary poll of similar size. These precincts are selected to have the right balance of Democratic and Republican precincts, which isnt so helpful in a primary. o Absentee voters arent included at all in states where they represent less than 20 percent or so of the vote. As the New York Times put it, "[N]o one who studies the exit polls believes that they can be used as an indicator of fraud in the way the conspiracy theorists do." Nonetheless, Geijsel and Barragan contended in their paper that: Anomalies exist between exit polls and final results Data procurement: We obtained exit poll data from a database kept by an expert on the American elections. Analysis: On the overall, are the exit polls different from the final results? Yes they are. The data show lower support for Secretary Clinton in exit polls than the final results would suggest. While an effect size of 0.71 is quite substantial, and suggests a considerable difference between exit polls and outcomes, we expected that this difference would be even more exaggerated in states without paper voting trails. Indeed, the effect size in states without paper voting trails is considerably larger: 1.50, and yields more exaggerated support for the Secretary in the hours following the exit polls. The expert whose numbers were utilized for the paper wasn't expressly cited by name, but his moniker appeared on the linked spreadsheet: Richard Charnin. Charnin indeed lists some impressive statistical credentials on his personal blog, but he also appears to expend much of his focus on conspiracy theories related to the JFK assassination (which raises the question of whether his math skills outstrip his ability to apply skeptical reasoning to data). spreadsheet conspiracy theories Geijsel addressed questions about exit poll numbers in a subsequent e-mail to a blogger who was highly skeptical of his research: skeptical In short, exit polling works using a margin of error, you will always expect it to be somewhat off the final result. This is often mentioned as being the margin of error, often put at 95%, it indicates that there's a 95% chance that the final result will lie within this margin. In exit polling this is often calculated as lying around 3%. The bigger the difference, the smaller the chance that the result is legitimate. This is because although those exit polls are not 100% accurate, they're accurate enough to use them as a reference point. In contrast to the idea that probably 1 out of 20 results will differ. Our results showed that (relatively) a huge amount of states differed. This would lead to two possibilities, a) the Sanders supporters are FAR more willing to take the exit polls, or b) there is election fraud at play. Considering the context of these particular elections, we believe it's the latter. Though that's our personal opinion, and others may differ in that, we believe we can successfully argue for that in a private setting considering the weight of our own study, the beliefs of other statisticians who have both looked at our own study (and who have conducted corroborating studies), and the fact that the internet is littered with hard evidence of both voter suppression and election fraud having taken place. That blogger passed the anlysis on to his father ("a retired Professor Emeritus in Mathematics and Applied Statistics at the University of Northern Colorado"), Donald T. Searls, Ph.D., for comment: comment I simply asked him to review it in full and send me his comments as to its methodology and his view as to its validity. For the record, he has been a Republican for as long as I can recall and has no interest in voting for the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be. I received his response via e-mail today. Here is what he wrote: I like the analysis very much up to the point of applying probability theory. I think the data speak for itself (themselves). It is always problematic to apply probability theory to empirical data. Theoretically unknown confounding factors could be present. The raw data is in my mind very powerful and clear on its own. My personal opinion is that the whole process has been rigged against Bernie at every level and that is devastating even though I don't agree with him. I called him after receiving his response to [ask him to] clarify his remarks on the application of probability theory to the data. His comment to me was that he did not believe it was necessary for the authors to take that step. If he had done the study himself, he would not have bothered with doing so. As he said, the data speaks for itself. Although Geijsel cited a number of sources to substantiate the claim that fraud was well-documented in the 2016 primary season, most of those citations involved persons with an interest in the overall dispute (such as groups party to lawsuits). That factor doesn't necessarily cast doubt on the researchers' findings, but it highlights that not much independent and neutral verification of their conclusions has occurred yet.  Cohn, Nate.  "Exit Polls, And Why The Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders."
  27 June 2016. Geijsel, Axel and Rodolfo Cortes Barragan.  "Are We Witnessing a Dishonest Election?"
  7 June 2016. Holland, Joshua.  "Reminder: Exit-Poll Conspiracy Theories Are Totally Baseless."
  The Nation.  7 June 2016. Booman Tribune.  "My Dad's View of Election Fraud Study."
  11 June 2016. Booman Tribune.  "Election Fraud Study Authors Respond."
  13 June 2016. 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. It is wisely said there are three activities a married couple should never attempt to undertake together: play bridge, hang wallpaper, or learn how to drive. The disagreements so provoked can all too often prove to be murder. Literally, as in the case of the infamous Bennett Bridge Murder. play bridge On the evening of 29 September 1929, John and Myrtle Bennett of Kansas City were hosts to their friends Charles and Myrna Hofman for a friendly game of rubber bridge. (A mere 1/10th of a cent a point was at stake.) The Bennetts were well-to-do and lived in a large apartment with Mrs. Bennett's mother. The Hofmans lived in the same apartment building. rubber bridge Like so many married couples who are fool enough to play as bridge partners, the Bennetts formed a far from ideal partnership. They were a far from ideal married couple as well, John Bennett being in the habit of slapping his wife during moments of frustration. That night, these factors would combine to bring about Bennett's undoing. For the first hour or two, the Bennetts were trouncing the Hofmans. As the evening wore on, however, the Hofmans managed to catch up, and at the time of the fatal hand were leading by a small margin. The tables had been turned; the commanding lead of earlier in the evening had evaporated like dew before the morning sun, leaving the two couples locked in a sprint for the wire. Although the precise composition of the fatal hand was not remembered, the bidding was recalled in a consistent manner by all the surviving parties: John Bennett opened one spade, Charles Hofman overcalled two diamonds, and Myrtle Bennett ended the auction with a jump to game in spades. After Mr. Hofman made the opening lead, Mrs. Bennett spread as dummy a collection of cards Myrna Hofman later would term "a rather good hand."   Though Myrtle Bennett clearly believed the dummy she'd laid out, added to the values her husband had to have had for his opening bid, should easily have produced game, Mr. Bennett managed to fail in his contract by two tricks. During the finger-pointing that followed, Mr. Bennett was revealed to have opened on less than full values.  Non-bridge players may fail to appreciate this point, but in the pasteboard jungle it is well understood that if one is in the habit of opening light, one had better be able to play the spots off the cards. To both open light and fail to make the resulting contract adds up to a bridge crime just a cut below trumping partner's ace or raising one's own pre-empt. After Bennett played the hand to its inglorious conclusion, his wife gave voice to her opinion of his play by calling him "a bum bridge player." Then, according to the testimony of Myra Hofman: He came right back at her. I don't remember the exact words. This kept up for several minutes. We tried to stop the argument by demanding the cards, but by this time the row had become so pronounced that Bennett, reaching across the table, grabbed Myrtle's arm and slapped her several times. We tried to intervene, but it was futile. While Mrs. Bennett repeated over and over in a strained sing-song tone "Nobody but a bum would hit a woman," her husband jumped up and shouted, "I'm going to spend the night at a hotel. And tomorrow I'm leaving town." His wife said to us: "I think you folks had better go." Of course, we started to go. John Bennett went off to the bedroom and began to pack his suitcase. Myrtle dashed to her mother's room to fetch her mother's loaded gun.  Charles Hofman had turned back to have a word with John Bennett before departing and thus was standing near him when an armed Mrs. Bennett came upon them. Upon seeing the gun, Bennett immediately hurried into the bathroom, bolting the door behind him. Mrs. Bennett was not to be deterred by a closed door: she shot through it twice, each time missing her husband. Bennett hastily exited the bathroom through another door which opened onto a small hallway. He fled down the hallway, out into the living room, and was trying to open the front door of the apartment when his wife felled him with two more shots. The police were summoned, and Myrtle Bennett was charged with first degree murder for the shooting death of her husband in what became known as the Bennett Bridge Murder. The trial of Myrtle Bennett did not go down in the annals of jurisprudence as one of the more fair and even-handed examples of justice in action. Mrs. Bennett wept copiously throughout the proceedings, at one point avowing that she'd "rather have been dead" than to have caused the death of her husband. (This line of defense was much facilitated when the judge declined to admit into evidence Mrs. Bennett's original statement to the police, in which she had told a rather different story.) At the trial, a new spin was placed on the events of that night. Bennett's "... and tomorrow I'm leaving town" was transformed from an "I'm leaving you forever" statement into an announcement that he had business the next day in St. Joseph, Missouri. According to Mrs. Bennett's testimony (supported by her mother's testimony about what Mrs. Bennett had said when she came to fetch the gun), Mr. Bennett had instructed his wife to bring him the pistol.  Mrs. Bennett claimed that he routinely carried it with him on out-of-town business trips. Mrs. Bennett further claimed that while bringing the gun to her husband, she stumbled into a chair, causing the pistol to go off accidentally, wounding Mr. Bennett. Bennett then grabbed her arm, either to help her regain her balance or to take the gun away from her, at which time the gun went off again, mortally wounding him. Mrs. Bennett was acquitted. The jury chose to ignore the physical evidence of two bullet holes found in the bathroom door, and of Bennett's body lying by the front door without a suitcase in sight. Despite having chased her husband through the apartment, having shot at him four times, and having hit him twice, Mrs. Bennett was acquitted on the grounds that her shooting of her husband was accidental.  Myrtle Bennett then collected on her husband's $30,000 life insurance policy, a far from insignificant sum in those Depression years. Although some now recall the case being ruled one of justifiable homicide based on John Bennett's bidding and play, in truth his death was deemed to have been brought about by accidental discharge of a firearm. Though Myrtle Bennett had succeeded in getting off scot-free for the murder of her husband, she failed to set the precedent that would have made the shooting of a bridge partner justifiable in the eyes of the law  provided it could be proved the victim's play had provoked a murderous response. In his 1934 collection While Rome Burns, drama critic and essayist Alexander Woollcott had this to say of the fair murderess in her post-acquittal years: Myrtle Bennett has not allowed her bridge to grow rusty, even though she occasionally encounters an explicable difficulty in finding a partner. Recently she took on one unacquainted with her history. Having made an impulsive bid, he put his hand down with some diffidence. "Partner," he said, "I'm afraid you'll want to shoot me for this." Mrs. Bennett, says my informant, had the good taste to faint. The famed Bennett Bridge Murder Hand will forever remain a mystery. None of the three survivors remembered its exact composition, and the cards themselves were sent flying during the altercation between the Bennetts, making it impossible that any of the police called to the scene would have had a chance to view it. As such, the hand widely believed to have been Mr. Bennett's Waterloo is likely as much a fiction as the tale told by his wife on the stand. Nevertheless, a "reconstruction" of the infamous hand began to circulate in periodicals shortly after the crime: The bidding, as you will recall, had gone one spade by Bennett, two diamonds by Hofman, and four spades by Mrs. Bennett. Four spades was a makeable contract on the layout shown above. (Only bridge players are likely to care about this part, but the opening lead against this fictional hand was the ace of diamonds, followed by a shift to the jack of clubs at trick two. According to lore, after winning the king of clubs, Bennett was supposed to have misguessed the location of the trump queen and from there have gone on to establish but cut himself off from dummy's good clubs, ending up down two. It was a badly played hand, but I've seen many a layout butchered much worse by declarers who lived to tell about it.) At the time of the Bennett murder, America was a country gone crazy over bridge. That someone sooner or later was going to get shot over it was a given; it was just a question of when. That the first bridge murder happened in the heartland of America with a wife shooting her husband seemed only right  countless spouses had by that time dreamed of doing the same thing to their loved-one-turned-bridge-partner-monster. Just as Lorena Bobbitt would decades later be seen as having struck a blow for the wives of cheating husbands everywhere, so was Myrtle Bennett placed on a similar pedestal by beleaguered bridge players across the land. Notice had been served that mishandling the dummy might lead to more than one stiff being dropped at the bridge table. Speculation over what the layout of the cards had actually been (and thus how deserving Bennett had been of his fate) quickly gave way to dueling analyses of the hand as touted in the newspapers. Several bridge authorities (most notably Sidney Lenz and Ely Culbertson) were called upon to analyze the bidding and the play. In the final analysis, though Bennett was deemed to have not played the cards as well as he could have, nothing in his line of play was so seriously flawed that his locating the errant queen of trumps wouldn't have overcome it. "My kingdom for a horse," said Richard III. "My life for a queen," was what Bennett should have said. Daniels, David.  The Golden Age of Contract Bridge.
  New York: Stein and Day, 1980.  ISBN 0-8128-2576-4  (pp. 179-184). 
 Chicago Tribune.   "Slaps Wife in Bridge Game; She Kills Him."
  1 October 1929  (p. 1).

 The New York Times.   "Wife Kills Husband in Bridge Game Spat."
  29 September 1929  (p. 5).

 The New York Times.   "Says Bennett Murder Followed Bridge Row."
  27 February 1931  (p. 3).

 The New York Times.  "Wife Is Acquitted in Bridge Slaying."
  7 March 1931  (p. 5).