Charles Krauthammer's perspective on President Obama
Claim:  Message accurately summarizes Charles Krauthammer's talk at the Center of the American Experiment.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, June 2009] A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in a closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st. You would do well to read and pass this along to EVERYBODY that loves his country. This is VERY serious for the direction of our country. The ramifications are staggering for us & our children. To my Friends & Associates: Last Monday was a profound evening, hearing Dr. Charles Krauthammer speak to the Center for the American Experiment. He is brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fearmonger nor an extremist in his comments and views. He is a fiscal conservative, and has a Pulitzer prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.  The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have shared this with many of you and several have asked me to summarize his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not 'drunk the Kool-Aid', feel free. A summary of his comments: 1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a 'cool customer' who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's 'behind the mask'. Taking down the Clinton dynasty from a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time. 2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES! 3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling  capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to 'level the playing field' with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada. 4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, & NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada. God forbid. 5. He's surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they're going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama's not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says. 6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies! 7. He's now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not 'come due' until after he's reelected in 2012. He'd like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Mr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist. 8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. We're 'pining' for another Reagan, but there'll never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she's to be a serious candidate in the future. We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and states' rights. 9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We're spending trillions that we don't have. This could lead to hyper inflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package . These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above. 10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of 'change' caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising is was as close as it was. 11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it'll be a dogfight. It'll all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There's a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late. Origins:  Dr. Charles Krauthammer is a political commentator and syndicated newspaper columnist whose work earned a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1987.   The article quoted above supposedly provides a second-hand accounting of the substance of remarks Dr. Krauthammer made regarding President Obama during a 1 June 2009 talk at the Annual Dinner of the Center of the American Experiment. Pulitzer Prize Annual Dinner No transcript or recording of Dr. Krauthammer's remarks on that occasion is available to compare against the above-quoted summary, as Dr. Krauthammer "does not disseminate comments made at private events," so it's difficult to objectively determine how much of  the e-mailed account conforms to what Krauthammer actually said and how much of the account reflects the subjective viewpoint of its anonymous author.  Dr. Krauthammer himself said, in a statement posted to the Center of the American Experiment's web site, that: statement This account is neither accurate nor authoritative. My views on Obama are well known. I've explained them in a series of five columns.   This email is somebody putting his own ideological stamp and spin on my views.  One giveaway of the superimposition of someone else's views on mine is the rather amusing use of phrases that I never use. To take just a few examples randomly: "God forbid," "far left secular progressive," "this is the first president ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!" "no country had ever spent themselves into prosperity," and, the real doozy, "states rights."  My views are clearly spelled out in that series of columns and subsequent writings. Anyone who wants to know my views should consult those and not this email. Articles by Charles Krauthammer that directly explicate his views on President Obama are listed below: Obama: The Grand Strategy  April 24, 2009 Obama: The Grand Strategy  April 24, 2009 The Sting, In Four Parts  April 17, 2009 The Sting, In Four Parts  April 17, 2009 Obamas Ultimate Agenda  April 3, 2009 Obamas Ultimate Agenda  April 3, 2009 The Great Non Sequitur  March 6, 2009  The Great Non Sequitur  March 6, 2009  The Obamaist Manifesto  February 27, 2009 The Obamaist Manifesto  February 27, 2009 Last updated:  29 June 2009
Critics of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas health care law, have assembled a long list of complaints about the law. One provision thats getting increasing scrutiny these days is the penalty on employers who dont provide their workers with health insurance. For workers who are on the job at least 30 hours per week, companies must offer health coverage or be hit with a financial penalty. The Obama administration twice delayed enforcement of this requirement, but it finally took effect this month for companies with at least 100 workers, and it is set to start next year for companies with between 50 and 99 workers. (The rule will not apply to small businesses with fewer than 50 workers.) Some Republicans have urged changing the rule so the cutoff is 40 hours a week, rather than 30. The House has passed a bill to do that; its now heading to the Senate, though the White House has pledged to veto it. A reader asked us to check out a Jan. 13 column on this topic in theWall Street Journal.It was written by Andy Puzder, the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, which is the parent company of Carls Jr. and Hardees. In the column, Puzder explained his companys thought process about whether and how it should provide health coverage to its employees. Puzders column makes clear that hes no fan of the Affordable Care Act, particularly the employer mandate: So what does Obamacares 30-hour rule accomplish? Some would argue that it does a lot, pointing to the previously uninsured who now have employer-sponsored health insurance. In our company, that would be 2 percent of total employees and 6 percent of eligible employees. For results like that, Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time, imposed a tax on lower-income workers who cannot afford it, forced millions of people out of insurance they liked, restricted access to doctors for millions of others, and created an enormous bureaucracy that discourages our doctors and nurses while suppressing health-care system innovation. Here, well take a look at just one of these claims -- that Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time. The bottom line, we found, is that there isnt enough data to state a number with any specificity. Suggesting that its millions, as Puzder did, is speculative -- something he acknowledged to PolitiFact. At the same time, the number of people experiencing a cut in hours isnt trivial, with informed estimates putting it into the low hundreds of thousands of people. Puzder elaborates When we reached out to Puzder, he sent us a detailed response. (Weve posted the full text of ithere, but well excerpt it in this article.) Puzder acknowledged that there is no definitive data available on the question. That said, there is also nothing definitive to the contrary of which I am aware, he added. Puzder noted -- and other economists agree -- that employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is imperfect for answering this question. The BLS threshold in hours per week for full-time employment is different than it is for the Affordable Care Act. In addition, BLS counts someone who works two 20-hour-a-week part time jobs as one full-time worker. Both of these factors complicate any calculations using BLS data. The available evidence is also murky for another reason: Its impossible to tell whether any changes actually stem from the Affordable Care Act, as opposed to the labor-market dynamics of the recovery to the Great Recession. However, Puzder provided some anecdotal evidence from his own sector -- restaurant chains -- that suggests a plausible case for millions. Many restaurant chains, he noted, are operated as franchises. In his own companys case, 230 franchisees own 73 percent of the companys 2,920 restaurants in the United States; the company itself owns the rest. While the parent company employs about 20,000 people, its domestic franchisees employ many more -- about 55,000. And industry leaders like McDonalds and Burger King have more franchises and franchise employees. The disparate nature of franchise ownership makes it difficult to calculate the number of workers who may have had their hours cut. Based on his own experience at his company and the conversations hes had with other industry CEOs, Puzder thinks its reasonable (but, he acknowledges, unscientific) to assume that 20 percent to 25 percent of their operational employees have had their hours cut to under 30 per week due to the employer mandate. And if thats the case, the math adds up quickly. TheInternational Franchise Associationcounted nearly 8.1 million employees in 2012, working at 750,000 franchise establishments. If these franchise employers lowered the hours of 20 percent of these employees, that would equal 1.6 million employees. Adjusting the hours for 15 percent would impact 1.2 million. And this number doesnt include employees of the parent company; nor does it include the employees of retail companies that do not franchise. Puzder also referenced adata setbeing compiled by Jed Graham, a journalist withInvestors Business Daily. (Editorially, Grahams publication has argued firmly against the Affordable Care Act, but several of the economists we checked with said Grahams information is valuable.) When we accessed Grahams database in January 2015, he had documented just over 450 employers that had made cuts to work hours or staffing levels as a result of Obamacare. However, this list by itself doesnt get to millions, and because it has been compiled anecdotally rather than using scientific sampling, it cant simply be scaled up to estimate a national figure. (Well also note that a full 81 percent of the employers that made cuts documented by his list are government entities; the share of private companies, which were the the focus of Puzders op-ed, accounted for just 19 percent of his list.) What all this means is that its easy build a scenario in which millions of workerscouldsee their hours cut. But neither Puzder nor our own research has produced incontrovertible evidence that it has actually happened. What the data shows That said, its likely that the law is having some impact on part-time hours, albeit a smaller one than millions. Onestudy-- authored by Bowen Garrett of the Urban Institute and Robert Kaestner of the University of Illinois and published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation -- found a modest (0.6 percentage-point) increase in the share of employees working part-time during the first seven months of 2014 compared to what would typically be expected based on previous economic recoveries. However, the authors attributed this finding to the dynamics of the recovery from the Great Recession, rather than to the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, they found little change during the run-up to the implementation of the employer mandate -- an indication that the provision wasnt having a big effect on pushing workers involuntarily into part-time work. Anotherstudy, by Helene Jorgensen and Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, did find a small rise in the share of employees working 25 to 29 hours a week during the first half of 2013 -- but this bump came at the expense of those working fewer than 25 hours a week, not at the expense of those working 30 or more hours a week. Thats not the dynamic one would expect if Obamacare was pushing employers to cut hours. Neither of the previous two studies offered hard estimates of how many workers saw their hours cut. But one analysis did -- one written by Ben Casselman, the chief economics writer at the website fivethirtyeight.com. When Casselman looked at the data, he found that the proportion of part-time workers working just below 30 hours a week had been rising for about two years, while the share working just over 30 hours was falling. Thats consistent with the trend Puzder pointed to. Heres a chart that accompanied his story:  Overall, Casselman concluded that the health law has likely led a few hundred thousand workers to see their hours cut or capped. Thats small in the context of an economy with 150 million workers. But it isnt a minor issue for those workers. Most of them are among the economys most vulnerable: low-wage, part-time workers who likely have few other options. Several economists we checked with said Casselmans estimate of a few hundred thousand was more plausible than Puzders millions. I think we can safely say that at this point it's clearly not millions, because that size shift would be noticeable in the aggregate data, said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist. A few hundred thousand seems a lot more plausible. Its worth noting that Casselmans a few hundred thousand and Puzders millions are not apples-to-apples figures. Casselman included employees who were already working part-time when their hours were cut, not just those who (as Puzder wrote) saw their full-time jobs shrink to part-time jobs. So Casselmans figure may actually overstate the number of employees who saw their jobs specifically shift from full-time to part-time. That makes it even harder to reach the millions threshold. Possible benefits Finally, several of the economists told us that focusing only on the negative aspects of Obamacare-inspired changes in working hours painted an incomplete picture. While its true that the law hurts employees who would like to work longer hours, the law also aids unemployed workers who are only too happy to work in newly created part-time jobs, as well as older workers who would like to retire but havent yet reached Medicare age and individuals who prefer part-time work and no longer have to take full-time jobs in order to secure health insurance. Indeed, the law makes it easier for Americans to start businesses on their own, since they are able to leave jobs where they work for someone else and still be able to secure affordable health care for themselves and their families. And it may be having that effect: Baker noticed that during the final quarter of 2014, the number of self-employed Americans rose by a whopping 400,000 compared to the previous years fourth quarter. Those 400,000 jobs are not counted in the widely reported BLS job-creation numbers, which only survey companies with payrolls. Our ruling Puzder said that Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part-time. The statistics, in this case, are inadequate to either prove or disprove that millions of Americans have seen their job go from full-time to part-time due to the law. That number is possible, but unsupported. That said, theres evidence suggesting that hundreds of thousands of workers may have seen their hours cut as the laws impact began to be felt. Thats not millions, but its not insignificant either. On balance, we rate the claim Half True. Claim:  During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama said, "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." Status:  False. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2008] Well, Barack has finally decided to step up and tell us what he has in mind for us with his promises of 'change.'  Just a few short days ago, he had an interview with the Wall Street Journal to further discuss his economic plans/policies for the future and he spelled it out quite clearly.  As you can see from the excerpt quote from that interview (below), he plans on officially doing away with capitalism and replacing it with his much favored system of socialism.  Many of us already knew of his strong socialist tendencies in the past, but he has now put it out there officially on record.  It is amazing that this article, and specifically this quote, is getting overlooked, especially when he is so direct and brazen about his plans.  Every single American who works for a living should be absolutely scared spitless.   Pass this along to everyone you can. Quote from Wall Street Journal: "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." Barack Obama, WSJ, 6/17/08 If this doesn't scare Republicans to get out the vote, I don't know what would!! Origins:  This item comes from a 17 June 2008 Wall Street Journal article about Senator Barack Obama's economic plans for the U.S., some of which was based on an interview Senator Obama gave to that publication.not article Sen. Obama cited new economic forces to explain what appears like a return to an older-style big-government Democratic platform skeptical of market forces. "Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers," he said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably. (The phrase "a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably" also does not appear in the Wall Street Journal's transcript of Senator Obama's interview.) transcript As for whether the phrase in question is a fair summary of Senator Obama's economic philosophy (whether or not he actually uttered those words), here is what he  said during the portions of the interview apparently summarized by that phrase: I do believe the tax policies over the last eight years have been badly skewed towards the winners of the global economy. And I do think there is a function for tax policy in making sure that everybody benefits from globalization or at least the benefits and burdens are shared a little more easily. If, as some talk about, we've  got a winner-take-all economy where the highly skilled, highly educated are reaping huge rewards and the unskilled or even semi-skilled are getting a much smaller share of the economy, then our tax policies can help cushion some of the blow through providing health care. So if people lose their jobs they're not losing their health care as well. That actually makes a more flexible work force that makes workers more mobile and less resistant to change. If we've got investments in education, that will make us more competitive in the long run. We've got to pay for that like anything else. But it would be a mistake to say I view our tax code only as a distribution question. I also think that our tax code has come to distort a lot of economic decision making so I'd like to see simplification as part of an overall tax agenda. On the corporate side, for example, one of the things I've asked my folks to look at is: Are there ways we can close existing loopholes in tax havens at the same time as we're lowering overall rates? We've got this new problem: The biggest problem with our tax code when it comes to the business side is that we have one of the highest tax rates  corporate tax rates  on paper but our effective tax rate is one of the lowest ... You know, how much you pay in taxes as a corporation a lot of times is going to depend on how good your lobbyist is, as opposed to any sound economic theories. So those distorting effects I'd like to actually remove and eliminate from our tax system, but obviously that's a complicated and difficult task. The last time we did it was in 1986. We're going to have to, I think, revisit that.  I say that the combination of globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers. I would add an anti-union climate to that list. But all weakens the position of workers, particularly blue-collar workers, in the economy, and some of it is just historical. You know after World War II,we were in this unique position where Europe was decimated, Japan was decimated. China was off the grid because of Mao. And so we didn't have a lot of competition out there, and now other countries are rising and automation has supplanted a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers. We have drastically increased productivity since 1995, and there was the theory that if you increase productivity enough some of these problems of living standards would solve themselves. But what we've seen is rising productivity, rising corporate profits but flat-lining or even declining wages and incomes for the average family. What that says is that it's going to be important for us to pay attention to not only growing the pie, which is always critical, but also some attention to how it is sliced. I do not believe that those two things  fair distribution and robust economic growth  are mutually exclusive. You get to a point, I think, if you have a participatory income tax, for example, where you might be discouraging work because marginal rates are so high. You might undoubtedly get to a point where the capital gain and dividend taxes are so high that they distort investment decisions and you're weaker economically. But you know if you've got a sensible policy that says, we're going to capture some of the nation's economic growth ... and reinvest it in things we know have to be done, like science and technology research or fixing our energy policy, and then that is actually going to be a spur to productivity and not an inhibitor. Last updated:  17 August 2008    Sources:   Davis, Bob and Amy Chozicks.  "Obama Plans Spending Boost, Possible Cut in Business Tax."   The Wall Street Journal.  17 June 2008  (P. A1).    Davis, Bob and Amy Chozicks.  "Barack Obama on Economics: 'We're Going Through a Big Shift.'"   The Wall Street Journal.  17 June 2008. In late December 2023, a video was circulated on Reddit, alleging "the ribbon worm, one of the most outlandish creatures we've ever discovered, spits a living, tree-like proboscis to hunt it's prey." was circulated   (Reddit u/NeverEndingWalker64) We used Google reverse-image search to investigate the video's origins. The results showed that it had been shared on various platforms such as Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Reddit X YouTube TikTok Instagram Probably one of the most 'alien-like' species, the ribbon worm spits a living, tree-like proboscis to hunt it preypic.twitter.com/s71zUbNkvH pic.twitter.com/s71zUbNkvH  Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 23, 2023 October 23, 2023  The earliest instance of the video being shared we found was a re-post of a TikTok video by @thatcherisdeadding Reddit user from 2021. re-post and what is it doingbyu/thatcherisdeadding inwhatsthisbug and what is it doing u/thatcherisdeadding whatsthisbug  Unfortunately, the @_pharouque TikTok account credited in the above-mentioned post was not active as of this writing. account Therefore, to assess the video's authenticity, we started by researching whether ribbon worms even existed. For reference, here's Encyclopaedia Britannica description of a "ribbon worm," also called a "proboscis worm." Encyclopaedia Britannica Ribbon worm, any member of the invertebrate phylum Nemertea (sometimes called Nemertinea, or Rhynchocoela), which includes mainly free-living forms but also a few parasites of crustaceans, mollusks, and sea squirts. The majority of the approximately 900 known nemertean species are found in marine habitats. Some, however, live in freshwater or on land. The name proboscis worm derives from the muscular eversible proboscis, which is housed in a fluid-filled chamber above the gut. This tube-shaped organ, which in many aquatic forms has a needlelike stylet, is typically used to trap prey. The stylet may also be used for burrowing; in land-dwelling species it may be used for rapid movement. What's more, we found other similar videos showing a ribbon worm and its proboscis: similar A Ribbon Worm expelling an organ called its proboscis, it uses it to capture and digest prey up to three times larger than its size.byu/rAwIsDeatH innextfuckinglevel A Ribbon Worm expelling an organ called its proboscis, it uses it to capture and digest prey up to three times larger than its size. u/rAwIsDeatH nextfuckinglevel The footage attached to the above post was featured, for instance, in Science Channel's video shared in January 2016 with the title, "The Proboscis Worm's Mouth of Horrors." video  Moreover, Nature's article on the topic of ribbon worms, titled, "A poisonous shield, a potent venom: these worms mean business," read: article The wriggling creatures called ribbon worms protect themselves with toxin-laden mucus and subdue their prey with venom that they inject through a retractable proboscis. But scientists have had a limited understanding of the toxic compounds deployed by the more than 1,300 ribbon-worm species (phylum Nemertea). Finally, we found another similar video showing a ribbon worm that went viral back in 2015. viral  Mental Floss, an online magazine, in an article titled, "Meet This Bizarre and Mysterious Ribbon Worm," discussed the video above, citing biologist Sebastian Kvist, who "specializes in Nemertea, the phylum of ribbon worms this creature belongs to." Kvist explained to Mental Floss that, "The worm also throws out its proboscis as a defensive strategy  and thats what were seeing in the video," underscoring that, What were seeing is a very stressed worm thats doing everything it can to try to get away from the situation that its in. article All in all, although we did not find the original poster of the in-question video, we found other, very similar-looking footage of the ribbon worm "spitting a tree-like proboscis." Because of that, we have rated the claim as  We will update this article if/when new information comes to light on the video's origins. A Poisonous Shield, a Potent Venom: These Worms Mean Business. Nature, vol. 606, no. 7913, June 2022, pp. 230230. www.nature.com, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01484-7. Meet This Bizarre and Mysterious Ribbon Worm. Mental Floss, 20 May 2015, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/64186/meet-bizarre-and-mysterious-ribbon-worm. Ribbon Worm | Anatomy, Habitat & Adaptations | Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/animal/ribbon-worm. Accessed 27 Dec. 2023. The Proboscis Worms Mouth of Horrors. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZCzIPPSxqY. Accessed 27 Dec. 2023. The Sad Facts behind That multiplying Ribbon Worm Video | Oceans | Earth Touch News. Earth Touch News Network, 2016, https://www.earthtouchnews.com/oceans/oceans/the-sad-facts-behind-that-multiplying-ribbon-worm-video. As memes of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing hand-crafted mittens at Joe Biden's presidential inauguration plastered the Internet in early 2021, rumors surfaced alleging that the creator of the mittens had stopped selling recycled wool products because of high federal taxes. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Snopes received numerous inquiries to investigate the validity of the claim, which attempted to expose hypocrisy of people who support the Vermont senator's goals of imposing new taxes to pay for various proposals, including free universal health care. imposing new taxes   Here's some background: Jen Ellis, a Vermont elementary school teacher, said she made the mittens out of discarded wool sweaters and gifted them to the senator after he lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. "I sent him these mittens kind of as a shoutout to who he is, and I put a note in that said something to the effect of, 'I hope you run again,'" she told Slate. Hillary Clinton Slate  (Photo by JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)  The viral image of Sanders wearing Ellis' gift and sitting with his arms and legs crossed made the teacher famous by the viral standards of 2021. She gave multiple interviews to news outlets including NPR and Slate in which she discussed her support for Sanders and reaction to the memes; social media users and other websites republished those comments, in part to harness the virality of the moment. teacher famous NPR Slate republished those comments Among the latter group was The Federalist, an online hub of articles with a conservative bent. Two days after the inauguration, the website published a page with the headline, "Woman Behind Bernie Sanders' Iconic Mittens Quit Making Them Because High Taxes Killed Her Business," reading: page The Vermont school teacher who made Bernie Sanders mittens, featured in the most recent viral meme, said she had to stop making them after the federal government taxed her too much. viral meme To support the claim, The Federalist cited a portion of Ellis' interview with Slate. According to a transcribed version of that conversation, which Slate published on Jan. 21, the elementary school teacher indeed told writer Rachelle Hampton: interview with Slate Hampton: Speaking of bittersweet, you supported Bernie. How did you feel about watching Biden be sworn in as president? Ellis: Oh my gosh, I cried. Im 42 and Ive waited four decades of my life  Im tearing up just thinking about it to see a woman be vice president. I wish that she was president, although I think Biden is pretty great. [...] And then there was this little side nagging thing of every five minutes I was getting several hundred more emails about the mittens. A year ago, when Bernie was on the campaign trail, he was wearing those mittens and Twitter buzzed about it then. Im not really on TwitterI have an account, but I dont really participate  but a lot of my younger colleagues do and they were like, 'Youve gotta check this out.' [...] So I put it out there that I made the mittens, they were a gift, and theyre not knitted, theyre sewn from repurposed and up-cycled sweaters. At that time, I had 30 or 40 mittens for sale and being a little nave about Twitter, I put my Gmail account on that, which someone picked up yesterday and retweeted it. People have been contacting me thinking that they can get mittens, and actually they cant. I dont have any more, and I dont have much of a mitten business anymore because it really wasnt worth it. Independent crafters get really taken for a ride by the federal government. We get taxed to the nth degree, and it wasnt really worth it pursuing that as a business, even as a side hustle. I mostly just make them as gifts. 30 or 40 mittens for sale In other words, Ellis said she did not "have much of a mitten business anymore," or that she previously sold the handmade items for a price and then mostly stopped. She implied that federal taxes were a leading factor in her decision to make that change. On Jan. 20, as social media lit up with the memes following the inauguration, she confirmed on Twitter that she was not selling mittens like the senator's. confirmed on Twitter   Snopes reached out to Ellis to learn more about her history of trying to sell mittens for profit and paying federal taxes as a self-described independent crafter. We have not yet received a response, but we'll update this report when or if we do. All of that said, the size of Ellis' former business was unknown, as well as how long or via what methods she sold the handmade mittens. U.S. tax code requires all independent contractors  no matter if they use online marketplaces such as Etsy to sell handmade products  to pay local and federal taxes based on net profits. U.S. tax code Etsy Also, we should note here: Sanders' proposed changes to the country's tax system would repeal aspects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act so that taxpayers who earn between about $9,500 and $250,000 would pay about 4% more, and taxes on the country's top earners would generate the majority of revenue. Additionally, he wants to impose a new payroll on businesses that earn more than $2 million annually, a change that intends to protect ventures like Ellis' from paying more. (See here for a detailed breakdown of Sanders' tax proposal by Forbes.) 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act here So while it was true that taxes played a role in Ellis' decision to stop charging people money for mittens prior to her viral fame, it was false to claim that she "quit" making them all together, like The Federalist headline alleged. Between Jan. 23 and 24, she said in a series of tweets that she made three more pairs of "Bernie mittens," two of which she donated to Passion 4 Paws Vermont and Outright Vermont for fundraising and one that she was auctioning off to benefit her daughters college fund. Passion 4 Paws Vermont Outright Vermont daughters college fund   After that, Sanders' official campaign began selling merchandise with the senator's meme-worthy image that Ellis made possible. The so-called "Chairman Sanders" sweatshirts, T-shirts, stickers, etc. helped raise $1.8 million for charitable organizations in Vermont over the course of five days, The Associated Press reported. The Associated Press reported On Jan. 24, Ellis tweeted that the senator called her to tell her that "the mitten frenzy" had raised "an enormous amount of money" for the charities. Besides that evidence, it was unclear how, or to what extent, the teacher was involved in the making or selling of the campaign-official products featuring her mittens. tweeted campaign-official products   As further proof to debunk claims that she had ceased all mitten-making, the teacher on Jan. 27 announced that she had partnered with entities including Darn Tough Socks to make socks inspired by the viral mittens, and the following day she said she was in the process of another project "to get Bernie Mittens for ALL." announced Darn Tough Socks she was "Im not opening a mitten factory or quitting my job as a second grade teacher! However, I am going to choose a new adventure on the side," Ellis said on her official website and GoFundMe page. "Never fear  I will make more mittens, but I won't be selling them for myself. I will be donating them to Vermont Charities to help them fundraise and make up for the funds lost due to the pandemic." official website GoFundMe page In sum, while it was true that, prior to her viral fame, Ellis mostly stopped charging people for handmade mittens due to costs including federal taxes, she was still creating the recycled wool products and people were spending money on them, as of this writing. For those reasons, we rate this claim a "Mixture" of truthful and misleading information. In late February 2022, a rumor went viral on TikTok and Twitter that said Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, had imposed a cash withdrawal limit that would be equivalent to $20 in the U.S. The rumor began to spread just after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. TikTok Twitter Russia Russia invasion Ukraine On Feb. 25, the person behind the @bantg Twitter account tweeted: "Sberbank, Russian largest bank, has limited cash withdrawals to $20." tweeted  The tweet cited no sources.  Another tweet posted on Feb. 26 claimed: "JUST IN: Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, has limited cash withdrawals for its customers to $20 ? #PutinWillFeelThePainSoon." The hashtag referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin. tweet Vladimir Putin  Replies under the tweet asked for a source for the information, but @nick82gh did not respond to them.  While this second tweet didn't receive many engagements, it was shared the same day to TikTok as a screenshot. Within 48 hours of being posted, that TikTok video received 80,000 likes and was viewed more than 1.4 million times. The person speaking in the video said: "The bank run has started. Russia is going bankrupt. This is the end of [the] Russian economy completely." video   Here are the facts: It's true that Sberbank is Russia's largest bank by its amount of assets, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, at the time, we found no reporting or evidence of any kind that backed up the claim that the Sberbank had limited cash withdrawals to $20. We also found no data about anything related to Sberbank causing the entire country of Russia to go bankrupt, as mentioned in the TikTok video. The Wall Street Journal By email, a spokesperson for Sberbank told us: "This information contradicts reality. Sberbank continues to fulfill all of its obligations in full, including the withdrawal of funds from accounts. All funds are available to customers at any time." On Feb. 28, ABC News and The Associated Press reported that Sberbank had been hit with "tough U.S. sanctions," leading to some limits on cash withdrawals: ABC News Associated Press Sberbank and VTB banks are Russias two largest state-run banks and own roughly half of the assets in the Russian banking system. They were targeted last week by tough U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting their businesses internationally and over the weekend barred from the international SWIFT payment system. SWIFT In both Slovenia and Croatia, Sberbank temporarily closed its branches or limited cash withdrawals following a rush by its clients last week. In Croatia, the banks clients will be allowed to withdraw a maximum of about 1,000 euros per day over the next two days. In Slovenia, the branches will be closed for the next two days and then the withdrawals will be limited to 400 euros per day. At the time that this news was published, 1000 euros was equivalent to $1,121, while 400 euros converted to $448. Neither of these figures was anywhere close to a $20 limit. We asked Sberbank for information on cash withdrawal limits for other countries but did not receive a response before this story was published. While we found no evidence regarding Sberbank branches having a $20 cash withdrawal limit, the conflict in Ukraine did lead to fears that the bank could fail, according to a report from Reuters, which cited a warning from the European Central Bank. Ukraine report Also, on a similar subject, The National Bank of Ukraine imposed cash withdrawal limits after the invasion began, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, again, those limits were reported to be nowhere near $20. Instead, the reporting said the limit was "100,000 Ukrainian hryvnia a day, equivalent to about $3,339.13." according to The Wall Street Journal This story will be updated if we receive further information. Snopes is still fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and you can help. Find out what we've learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation. Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.  fighting Find out Read Submit Become a Founding Member CDC WHO As the U.S. federal government and states clashed over how to respond to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, workers on the frontlines of helping virus patients reported widespread shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including N95 masks and gowns. Hospital and state leaders described a chaotic and highly competitive market for securing supplies from vendors  disarray that critics of President Donald Trump blamed on his ad-hoc approach to addressing the shortfall. COVID-19 ad-hoc shortfall Meanwhile, several news reports surfaced, claiming federal officials seized PPE shipments from local agencies or stopped the deals between vendors and states by offering higher bids. Snopes received numerous inquiries from readers about the validity of the assertion.    To get to the root of the claim, we first researched from where the news reports originated. From The New York Times to the Boston Globe to The Intelligencer (a blog within New York magazine), several media outlets highlighted the experience of Dr. Andrew W. Artenstein, an infectious disease physician in Springfield, Massachusetts, who said the pandemic has forced him into PPE supply-chain work. On April 17, 2020, he published a letter in a peer-reviewed medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, about his apparent travails of getting a large shipment of face masks and respirators from a warehouse in a mid-Atlantic state. (He told The New York Times he would not publicize the location of the transaction out of fear of jeopardizing his relationship with the supply vendor.) The letter read: The New York Times Boston Globe The Intelligencer letter Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health systems urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.  It is unclear why federal officials may have targeted the Massachusetts delivery or where they would have allegedly redirected the supplies. Citing a policy of not confirming or denying specific investigations, the FBI declined to comment on Artenstein's account in an April 20 New York Times story, saying only that the agency had been working to ensure that PPE "is not being unlawfully distributed or hoarded" during the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, the Boston Globe could not reach the Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses FEMA, to comment on the doctor's story. story Though widely circulated online, Artenstein's story was not the only report of federal interference in the procurement of PPE in spring 2020. On April 7, the Los Angeles Times reported health care officials in seven states said the federal government seized their shipments and did not give guidance on how or if the local agencies would someday get the supplies they ordered. "Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We dont know," one unidentified official told the LA Times. "And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.  reported Additionally, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The New York Times that FEMA stepped in at the last minute of a deal the city had with "one of its usual suppliers" to buy 1 million masks; a New Jersey county official told local media an order of 35,000 N95 and other masks were "commandeered" by the federal government; and a leader of the private health care company Kaiser Permanente told staff members that the company had found 20 million masks to purchase, "but the feds actually seized that shipment before we were able to acquire it," the Times reported. The same news story said: local media Kaiser Permanente In Massachusetts, state leaders said they had confirmed a vast order of personal protective equipment for their health workers; then the Trump administration took control of the shipments. In Kentucky, the head of a hospital system told members of Congress that his broker had pulled out of an agreement to deliver four shipments of desperately needed medical gear after the supplies were commandeered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado thought his state had secured 500 ventilators before they were swept up by FEMA. Adding to those reports are worries by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker that if he publicly discusses how he's obtaining masks and gloves for his state, federal officials may catch wind and seize the materials, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. "The supply chain has been likened to the wild West, and once you have purchased supplies, ensuring they get to the state is another herculean feat," a spokesperson for the governor told the news outlet.  Chicago Sun-Times likened to the wild West, The reports began surfacing around the time the Trump administration launched a new public-private partnership to quickly distribute mass shipments of protective gear to the U.S. from factories overseas. The so-called Project Airbridge initiative (championed by Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser) came after repeated requests from the president for states to handle the supply issue themselves, allegations from some local leaders that the federal government was distributing the equipment unfairly, and Trump choosing FEMA to replace the Department of Health and Human Services as the leading agency to respond to the crisis, a move that changed how states submit formal requests for supplies from the national stockpile. some local leaders national stockpile. Explaining the spring 2020 initiative, FEMA said in a statement that the agency redirects roughly half of each international shipment to U.S. locations it has deemed in highest need, using COVID-19 data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Simultaneously, the agency said it is sending the remainder of orders to businesses, health care facilities and counties that have placed orders in the past. statement Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  Yet despite the claims from state and hospital leaders, the federal government has not explicitly said it is confiscating or blocking PPE orders at the local level  nor explained why it would. It also has not outlined a long-range plan for the alleged intervention efforts, or how the supplies would be divvied up. FEMA officials' response to the allegations include, in chronological order: Gov. Charlie Baker confiscated masks Given the amount of reports from state officials and health care leaders claiming that federal officials seized or blocked PPE orders, and those accounts' level of specificity and apparent validity, we rate this claim "true"  with the caveat that the intervention efforts appear to be a part of a broader distribution plan that purportedly aims to get supplies to regions with the most urgent needs. Arango, Tim, et al.  Doctors and Governors Vie for Masks in Cloak-and-Dagger Deals.
 The New York Times.  20 April 2020. Artenstein, Andrew.  In Pursue of PPE.
 New England Journal of Medicine.  17 April 2020. Rosen, Andy.  Mass. hospital executive says he was questioned by FBI while buying equipment.
 Boston Globe.  19 April 2020. Healy, Beth.  Miscommunication, Missing Supplies Strain COVID-19 Coordination Between Mass. And FEMA.
 WBUR.  11 April 2020. Wallace-Wells, David.  The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals from Getting Coronavirus PPE.
 New York Intelligencer.  19 April 2020. FEMA.  FEMA COVID-19 Supply Chain Task Force: Supply Chain Stabilization.
 8 April 2020. WCVB.  3 million masks ordered by Massachusetts were confiscated in Port of New York, leading to creative alternative.
 2 April 2020. Main, Frank.  Pritzker arranging secret flights from China to bring millions of masks and gloves to Illinois.
 Chicago Sun-Times.  14 April 2020. Bowman, Bill.  Feds Take All Of Countys 35,000 Mask Order Targeted For Health Care Workers.
 Franklin Reporter and Advocate.  3 April 2020. Nicas, Jack and Kanno-Youngs, Zolan.  Swept Up by FEMA: Complicated Medical Supply System Sows Confusion.
 The New York Times.  6 April 2020. Olorunnipa, Toluse, et. al.  Governors plead for medical equipment from federal stockpile plagued by shortages and confusion.
 The Washington Post.  31 March 2020. Rose, Joel.  A War For Medical Supplies: States Say FEMA Wins By Poaching Orders.
 National Public Radio.  15 April 2020.

 DePillis, Lydia.  Heres Why Florida Got All the Emergency Medical Supplies It Requested While Other States Did Not.
 ProPublica.  20 March 2020. Levey, Noam.  Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies without a word.
 Los Angeles Times.  7 April 2020. A persistent rumor in the summer of 2021 was that somewhere buried in United States President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan was a hidden tax that was about to make driving much more expensive. In September, for example, the following messages were posted on social media claiming that Biden was implementing a new mileage tax:   A screenshot from a broadcast on the conservative news channel Newsmax was also circulated on social media:   Biden's Build Back Better plan does not impose a new mileage tax. These rumors appear to be based on a misinterpretation of a section of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that is currently (as of October 1, 2021) making its way through Congress. The infrastructure bill does not impose a mileage tax. Rather, this bill proposes a "national motor vehicle per-mile user fee" pilot program to study the impacts of a mileage tax.  Build Back Better plan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act In other words, this bill will does not implement a new mileage tax. This bill provides funding to study the impact of such a tax. A mileage tax may or may not be implemented after this voluntary pilot program concludes in 2026. Andy Winkler, director of infrastructure projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told The Associated Press: It is not a tax, it is not on everybody and it is voluntary." The Associated Press One of the purposes of this pilot program to explore alternative revenue streams to fund surface transportation programs. At the moment, the Highway Trust Fund is largely funded by taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel purchases. With the rise of electric vehicles, cars with better miles per gallon, and decreased personal travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, revenue from the gas tax has declined.  Highway Trust Fund revenue gas tax has declined One solution to this funding problem is to raise taxes on gasoline purchases. The state of Missouri, for example, just increased the state's gas tax for the first time since the 1990s. Another option would be to shift the burden of funds from the amount of gas a person uses to a person's actual mileage. Back in March 2021, Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said:  for the first time since the 1990s Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said: If we believe in that user-pays principlethe idea that how we pay for roads is based on how much you drivethe gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it. Its not anymore. A so-called VMT tax or mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be a way to do it. While proponents of a mileage tax argue that it's a fair tax, as it will tax people based on how much they use the roads, opponents have argued that this tax could impact people in rural areas more as they typically have to drive longer distances. Others have also raised privacy concerns, questioning how a person's mileage use would be calculated. opponents have argued For the moment, the Biden administration is not implementing a new mileage tax. However, the infrastructure bill does include a pilot program to study the impacts of a mileage tax.  Boesen, Ulrik. Gas Tax Revenue to Decline as Traffic Drops 38 Percent. Tax Foundation, 31 Mar. 2020, https://taxfoundation.org/gas-tax-revenue-decline-as-traffic-drops/. Fact Check: Infrastructure Bill Wouldnt Impose driving Tax of 8 Cents per Mile. Usatoday, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/30/fact-check-no-driving-tax-8-cents-mile-infrastructure-bill/5928257001/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. Franck, Thomas. Vehicle Mileage Tax Could Be on the Table in Infrastructure Talks, Buttigieg Says. CNBC, 26 Mar. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/buttigieg-says-white-house-is-weighing-mileage-levy-to-fund-infrastructure.html. Friedman, Zack. Infrastructure Package Includes Vehicle Mileage Tax Program. Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2021/08/11/infrastructure-package-includes-vehicle-mileage-tax-program/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. Its Been 28 Years Since We Last Raised the Gas Tax, and Its Purchasing Power Has Eroded. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/its-been-28-years-since-we-last-raised-the-gas-tax-and-its-purchasing-power-has-eroded. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. Mileage Tax Study, Not Actual Mileage Tax, Proposed in Infrastructure Bill. AP NEWS, 29 Sept. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-907285011746. Missouris First Gas Tax Increase since the 1990s Goes into Effect Friday. FOX 2, 30 Sept. 2021, https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouris-first-gas-tax-increase-since-the-1990s-goes-into-effect-friday/. Status of the Highway Trust Fund | Federal Highway Administration. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwaytrustfund/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. The Build Back Better Agenda. The White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/build-back-better/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. The Gas Tax Was Already Broken. The Pandemic Could End It. Smart Cities Dive, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/the-gas-tax-was-already-broken-the-pandemic-could-end-it/587653/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021. On 11 September 2018, our readers asked for verification of a meme circulating on social media that reported Donald Trump had helped with search-and-rescue efforts in the rubble of the Twin Towers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks 17 years prior: "2 days after the September 11th attacks Donald Trump was at ground zero with hundreds of workers that he payed for to help find and identify victims. Share this photo to remind people exactly what kind of American our President is!"   Although the image used in the meme above was taken on 18 September 2001 outside the New York Stock Exchange, the meme reflects comments Trump made two days after the attack, when he told an interviewer for a German television station about his efforts to help: taken Well I have a lot of men down here, right now. We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming. So we'll have a couple of hundred people down here. And they are very brave and what they're doing is amazing. And we'll be involved in some form in helping to reconstruct.   Trump made similar remarks to an NBC News reporter: NBC News Trump: I have hundreds of men inside working right now and we're bringing down another 125 in a little while. And they've never done work like this before. And they're hard-working people but they've never seen anything like it. And they've never done work like this before, it's terrible. Reporter: Have you spoken to any of your men? Do you know how they're reacting to this, because emotionally this must be so incredibly difficult. Trump: Well there are a lot of them but they've never seen bodies like this -- bodies all over. The great thing is when they find somebody that's alive like the five firemen that they just found a little while ago. So that's the great thing, and that's what they were all striving for. But generally speaking that's not the case. So, they are working very, very hard, but it's a very depressing situation for these folks.  President Trump described it a little differently during a speech at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2019, saying he went down to Ground Zero on the day of the attacks "with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could." described it a little differently Trump's statements were vague, so they didn't provide any specifics that would help verify who the men he referenced were, what their relationship to him was, and whether he "paid for" their labor, making it difficult to tease out the accuracy of what he said. His claims about what he did and witnessed on the day terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center buildings have been sources of confusion or consternation since the real estate mogul launched his bid to seek the presidency in 2015. Richard Alles, a retired deputy chief with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), who now serves as director of 9/11 community affairs for the law firm Barasch McGarry Salzman and Penson, told us that in all the hours, days and months he spent at Ground Zero as an FDNY battalion chief starting 20 minutes after the buildings collapsed, he never witnessed a large group of workers hired by Trump at the site helping with search and rescue. "This is the first Im hearing of it," Alles told us by phone. "There would have been no need for that. Between police, fire and the construction crews, we had it all covered." Alles added that the construction crews he saw at Ground Zero who came to help rescue workers were from the trade unions and were not hired by Trump. John Feal, founder of the 9/11 first responder health advocacy non-profit the FealGood Foundation, responded to Ground Zero on 12 September 2001 as a construction demolitions expert. He also told us he didn't see evidence of hundreds of workers hired by Trump at the site, and added that by 15 September 2001 the area was on lock down. "There was no way anyone could get in and out of there without a [government-issued] badge," he told us. (Feal was forced off the site as of 17 September 2001 when he suffered a life-threatening injury caused by a 4-ton piece of steel falling on his foot, crushing it and resulting in a major infection.) non-profit forced off According to the New York Times, the entire Trump organization didn't even encompass enough people in 2001 to have assisted in the manner described: New York Times [Timothy] OBrien, the author [of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald], said the size of the Trump Organization at the time was a little bit over a dozen people, which would have made it impossible to send hundreds of people to participate in the relief effort. At the time, Mr. Trump had a large number of casino workers based in Atlantic City, but there is no documented evidence of him marshaling his resources to aid in the relief effort. Hes very comfortable propagandizing that event for political purposes, Mr. OBrien said. Even in the face of tragedy, he cant help but self-promote and self-aggrandize. We reached out to the White House Press Office and the Trump Organization asking for corroborating evidence of these claims but received no response, although we don't know of anyone who raised questions about the veracity of his statements at the time they were made. But now that Trump is president, his political opponents seized on the opportunity to proclaim that he was lying about having helped in the aftermath of 9/11: Heres video of @realDonaldTrump claiming he helped look for survivors & clear rubble on 9/11. He didn't. He was lying. #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/gvc3MsbaJZ @realDonaldTrump #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/gvc3MsbaJZ  Scott Dworkin (@funder) September 11, 2018 September 11, 2018 It's not the first time Trump's accounts of his experiences in New York related to the 11 September terrorist attacks have been called into question. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, some critics cited a TIME magazine report that placed Trump in Chicago at the time of the attacks -- but that was due to an error in the report. For his part, Trump claimed at a campaign rally in 2015 that he watched from his apartment in Trump Tower as people jumped from the burning WTC buildings to their deaths, but multiple news organizations pointed out that would have been an impossibility because Trump Tower is four miles away from Ground Zero: some error pointed out I have a window in my apartment that specifically was aimed at the World Trade Center, because of the beauty of the whole downtown Manhattan. And I watched as people jumped, and I watched the second plane come in Trump also famously but falsely claimed repeatedly that he witnessed Muslim Americans in New Jersey celebrating as the WTC buildings came down: falsely claimed Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. Keneally, Meghan and Liz Kreutz.  "Where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Were on 9/11."
  ABC News.  9 September 2016. Waldman, Paul.  "Trumps Long History of Lying About 9/11 and Exploiting It for Personal Gain."
  The Washington Post.  11 September 2018. Hind, John.  "21 Awful Truths About 9/11."
  The Telegraph.  5 September 2001. Neilan, Terrence.  "Hopes Are Raised, And Dashed, About Rescue of Firefighters."
  The New York Times.  13 September 2001. Balsalmo, Michael and Nancy Benac.  "Trump's Claims About 9/11 Don't Hold Up to Scrutiny."
  Associated Press.  20 April 2016. Rogers, Katie.  "Fact-Checking Trumps Claim He Spent a Lot of Time With 9/11 Responders."
  The New York Times.  29 July 2019. Claim:  The plastic strip embedded in U.S. bank notes enable the Feds to tell how much money you have on you.  Examples:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] This past weekend, a friend visiting our house told us that the anti-counterfeiting strip put in newly printed paper money can be used to determine how much cash you are carrying.  She said that the ever-present "they" at the airport have a machine that can determine how much cash you have on your person or in your luggage, and if you are carrying a sufficiently large amount of cash, you will be detained by the police and interrogated until you confess your guilt as a drug smuggler.  [Collected on the Internet, 2003] I did not get this in an e-mail but my bank teller in Kirksville, MO told me this one.  Evidently there is an urban legend floating around that the new "security strip" in the new $20's can be read by satellites with the implication being the Govt. can beam a satellite on you and eventually, when all the bills in circ. will have these, be able to tell how much $ you are carrying around.  This teller told me that she has had customers come in requesting "no new $20s" for this reason! We had a good laugh about it and we both agreed that the Govt. is going to be sorely disappointed if they turned this hypothetical satellite on us! Origins:  The ongoing effort to stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters has led to the inclusion of a number of security features in U.S. currency. One countermeasure in particular has come to be the focus of a widely-believed bit lore: the embedded inscribed security thread. According to scuttlebutt, the purpose of the thread isn't really to make it more difficult for the ill-intentioned to introduce   worthless currency into circulation by fooling its recipients into thinking it genuine, but instead to allow the government to know exactly how much money anyone is carrying at any particular moment. With the use of special scanners, or possibly a beam from a distant satellite, the Feds can quickly count the value of all bank notes being carried on or about one's person and thus track how much money is entering or leaving the country, and with whom. This knowledge, says the behind-the-hand whisperings, is used to finger drug dealers and smugglers. The rumor is bunk. The strip's sole purpose is the foiling of counterfeiters. It, along with a number of other security features worked into the nation's bank notes, make it far harder on the criminal element to produce phony bills that will be mistaken for the real thing. Other features include the microprinting of "The United States of America" within the rim surrounding the portraits on bills, a watermark displayed elsewhere on the bill of the figure in the portrait, and optically variable ink (OVI) which changes from green to black in the number in the lower right-hand corner of the bill when viewed from different angles. As for the suspect strip, it is made of polyester and is inscribed with the denomination of the bill. Nothing about the composition of these strips renders them detectable by scanner or satellite. In 2004, the false belief attaching to this security feature was enhanced by the claim of these bands containing RFID tags. As technology advanced, so did the rumor, leading many to microwave their $20 bills into ashen submission by falling for the canard that nuking their currency would disable these  RFID tags transmitters. Yet the belief about governmental detection of concealed sums via a subterfuge worked into the currency even predates the polyester security threads. In the 1980s, those similarly worried about being tracked by Big Brother fretted over the ink with which bank notes were printed, muttering to themselves that the "magnetic ink" they believed to have been used rendered the bills somehow magnetic and thus detectable by machine. Back then, the concern was more that this magnetic money would serve to pinpoint the location of the person carrying it rather than it give away how much of it was being ported, but it is another form of the same belief. One confirmation that nothing in and of itself is detectable about the polyester strips embedded in bank notes arises out of the news about security technologies now used at some U.S. airports, including Chicago's O'Hare. Were caches of greenbacks already being ferreted out via their embedded threads, descriptions of the BodySearch scanner, a device that uses special "backscatter" X-rays to produce images of items that might be concealed under passengers' clothing, would not always impart the glad tidings that this gizmo reveals the presence of currency as well as narcotics, plastic explosives, and plastic weapons.  While in the main, the "sneakily embedded technology allows for the surreptitious tracking of people or their assets" rumor attaches to currency and blames the government for the supposed spying, the belief also carries to other items and points fingers at other parties.  [Kamradt, 2003] Some students have not picked up their new ID cards through the re-carding project, which ends today, because of a rumor that there is a locator chip inside the IDs so Purdue can track their whereabouts. "To dispel the transponder rumors, I was closely involved in developing the requirements for production of the ID cards and I can ensure students that no secret electronic devices were embedded in these cards," said Terry Schroeder, project manager for the Purdue ID Re-carding Project. "From my understanding, most of the group that met to discuss this issue (as a result of distributed flyers) were wearing aluminum foil beanies."  [Mulkins, 2000] I heard that a person carrying a large number of $100 bills, going through the PikePass readers, could be detected and the exact amount of money determined. The authorities are using PikePass to detect drug dealers and then confiscating the money, even confiscating the money of innocent persons. (PikePass is a prepaid toll device containing a battery and a radio-frequency modulator placed on the windshield of a vehicle.  As a car bearing one travels under a transmitter overhanging a turnpike lane, the device intercepts the signal being broadcast and returns a signal exclusive to that particular PikePass customer. The signal is read, and the toll is subtracted from the customer's account.) PikePass Whereas student ID cards and prepaid toll signalers do at least have a whiff of the enigmatic to their technology, which works to encourage belief that some of that incomprehensibility might be of nefarious intent (we mistrust what we don't understand, after all), this next expression of the rumor is even farther afield: [Collected on the Internet, 1999] I recently received an email telling me that I need to take the labels off my canned good and mark the bare cans with a marker, or at least black out the UPCs. Why? Well, it seems the government has helicopters equipped with scanners that can read the UPCs of the food you have stored. Ostensibly, the government is doing this so they can confiscate food for redistribution in the up coming Y2K breakdown of society. When asked to verify, the poster informed me she was told this by a 'family friend" who flies one of these scanner-equipped helicopters. Of course he doesn't want to be named for his own safety, but he risked telling his dear friends because he loves them. While most folks will laugh off the thought of their soup cans spying on them, the same cannot be said of the belief that their long green is being counted by surveillance satellites sent into orbit by a government intent upon keeping tabs on its citizens  a great many appear to believe that.  Barbara "watch your money, don't worry about your money watching you" Mikkelson Sightings:  In a first-season episode of television's The X Files ("E.B.E.," original air date 18 February 1994), a member of a group that believes the government is up to any number of monstrous conspiracies takes a $20 bill from Agent Scully, holds it up to the light, rips the left side off, and pulls out its security strip, saying, "They use this magnetic strip to track you. Whenever you go through a metal detector at an airport, they know exactly how much you're carrying." Additional information:        Inscribed Security Thread   (Secret Service)        Money Design Features   (Secret Service)        The Redesigned $20 Note   (Bureau of Engraving)   Last updated:  19 May 2011   Garber, Andrew.  "New Airport Gadgets Strip, Sniff, Scan."  The Seattle Times.  23 October 2001  (p. A1).   Kamradt, Kori.  "Officials Dismiss Rumors About New IDs."  The [Purdue University] Exponent .  14 November 2003.   Mulkins, Phil.  "PikePass Can't Count Dope Dealers' Money."  Tulsa World.  28 July 2000.   Webb, Tom.  "U.S. Currency to Get Makeover."  The Denver Post.  14 July 1994  (p. A4).   Zane, Maitland.  "Counterfeit-Proof Cash Makes Its Debut."  The San Francisco Chronicle.  26 July 1991  (p. A1).   The Associated Press.  "O'Hare Officials Install Scanner, Hoping to Replace Body Searches."  St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  23 November 1999  (p. B2). On a scale of politically controversial topics, airline tickets might rank near the bottom, perhaps somewhere just above Roberts Rules of Order and a quorum call.And yet plane tickets have been part of some curious claims taken on by PolitiFact: Every time you buy an airline ticket, the federal government runs a background check on you -- PolitiFact Texas:Mostly False You can use food stamps for a plane ticket to go to Hawaii -- PolitiFact National:Pants on Fire Now coming down the runway is a claim byGary Kelly, chief executive officer of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines. Southwest carries themost domestic passengersin the U.S. and themost passengersat Milwaukees Mitchell International Airport.Kelly made his statement in a column he wrote for the February 2013 issues of the in-flight magazines of Southwest and of AirTran Airways, which Southwestacquiredin 2011.Taxes and fees amount to about 20 percent of a typical $300 round-trip domestic ticket, he stated. Thats higher than taxes on products like alcohol, tobacco and firearms.With spring break around the corner, and alcohol, tobacco and firearms always in season, lets see if Kellys claim takes flight.Cost of an airline ticketKellys opinion column focused on federal taxes on airline tickets and other products. His source for the taxes on an airline ticket isAirlines for America, the trade group that advocates for the airline industry. It spent $6.37 million in federal lobbying in 2012,accordingto the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.org.In December 2012, Airlines for Americaannounced detailsof a campaign it would undertake in 2013 to persuade lawmakers to reduce federal taxes on airlines and take other steps to help the industry.Just how high are those taxes?Southwest Airlines spokesman Brad Hawkins usedfiguresprovided by Airlines for America to give a breakdown of the four major federal taxes and fees on a ticket with a base price of $300. His example includes one connecting flight each way -- in other words, a ticket that includes two flights on the departure segment of the trip and two flights on the return. Based on Hawkins calculations, the $66.10 equals 22 percent of the cost of the $300 ticket, exceeding the 20 percent that Kelly claimed.As for the size of the taxes and fees, we found a Federal Aviation Administrationdocumentconfirming the excise tax and segment fee amounts; theyhelp fundthe FAA, which coordinates air traffic control and other aspects of the aviation system. (Anexcise taxis somewhat like a sales tax, in that it is paid on a purchase, but its often included in the purchase price. )Another FAAdocumentconfirms the passenger facility charge, which is collected by public agencies that run commercial airports and is used for FAA-approved projects at the airports. And a Transportation Security Administrationdocumentconfirms the Sept. 11 fee, which helps fund the TSA.We ran Kellys statement and his itinerary by Joakim Karlsson, a researcher with theAirline Ticket Tax Projectat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the project studies ticket taxes and user fees added directly to airline tickets. He called Kellys statement mathematically correct, but fundamentally misleading.Karlsson noted that fares are usually quoted with taxes and fees included. So, a $300 ticket would include a base fare of about $239.Karlsson calculated that would trigger $61 in taxes and fees, which would still amount to 20 percent of the ticket cost, the same amount Kelly claimed.But more importantly, Karlsson said, the sample ticket that Kelly uses is not typical: So, a $418 non-stop ticket would include $54 in taxes and fees, or just under 15 percent of the total. (The taxes and fees in Kellys $300 ticket example, if the trip were non-stop, also would equal just under 15 percent. )That means the first part of Kellys claim is accurate, but leaves out important details.Taxes and fees on other productsAs for the second part of Kellys statement, the Southwest Airlines spokesman cited a 2011opinion columninThe Wall Street Journalby the chief executive officer of Airlines for America, the airlines trade group. The column argued that the taxes paid by airlines are at the same excessive levels as sin taxes imposed on alcohol, tobacco and gambling.But the column provided no figures to show how the various tax rates compare.We found the followingfiguresfrom the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a division of the Department of Treasury. They represent only the federal taxes on these products. Some brands of beer cost more than others, some wine costs more in one part of the country than another, buying in bulk costs less, etc.But, to consider some examples, if a: None of this takes into account state and local taxes on the various products, but Kellys claim focuses on federal taxes.So, the tax rate on an airline ticket -- whether its 20 percent, as in the example Kelly cited, or the more typical 15 percent as cited by the MIT program -- is generally higher than the federal tax rates on the other products Kelly cited.One might argue that taxes and fees on airline tickets, which help fund aviation operations, are fundamentally different from sin taxes on things like cigarettes, which are meant to hold down consumption. But thats not an argument central to this claim.Our ratingKelly said: Taxes and fees amount to about 20 percent of a typical $300 round-trip domestic ticket. Thats higher than taxes on products like alcohol, tobacco and firearms.The first part of the claim is technically accurate, but misleading, given that the tax rate on a typical flight -- which costs more than $300 and doesnt include connecting flights -- is 15 percent. The second part of the claim, although it doesnt take into account price variations on various products, appears generally accurate.On balance, since the thrust of the claim was which had more taxes and which had less, we rate the statement Mostly True.