9 'Facts' About Slavery 'They Don't Want You to Know'
One of the less well knownaspects of the history of slavery is how many and how oftenpeople of color owned and traded slaves in earlyAmerica. Free Black slave holders could be found at one time or another "in each of thethirteen original states and later in every state that countenanced slavery," historian R. Halliburton Jr. observed. That Black people bought and sold other black people raises "vexing questions" for 21st-centuryAmericanslikeAfrican American writerHenry Louis Gates Jr., who writes that it betraysclass divisions that have always existed within the Black community. For others, it's an excuseto deflect the shared blame for the institution of slavery in America away from white people. Henry Louis Gates Jr. In the latter vein, a "9 Facts About Slavery They Don't Want You to Know" meme laysouta mixture of true, false and misleading historical claims. We'll address each one in turn below:   The first legal slave owner in American history was a Black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson. Possibly true. The wording of the statement is important. Anthony Johnson was not the first slave owner in American history, but he was, according to historians, among the first to have his lifetime ownership of a servant legally sanctionedby a court. sanctioned A former indentured servant himself, Anthony Johnson was a so-called "free negro" who owned a 250-acre farm in Virginia during the 1650s, withfive indentured servantsunder contract tohim. One of them, a Black man named John Casor, claimed that his term of servicehad expired years earlier and Johnson was holding himillegally. In 1654, a civil court found that Johnson in fact owned Casor's services for life, an outcome historian R Halliburton Jr. calls "one of the first known legal sanctions of slavery other than as a punishment for crime." John Casor North Carolina's largest slave holder in 1860 was a Black plantation owner named William Ellison. False. William Ellison was a very wealthy Black plantation owner and cotton gin manufacturerwholivedin South Carolina (not North Carolina). According to the 1860 census (in which his surname was listed as "Ellerson"), he owned 63 Black slaves, making him the largest of the 171 Black slaveholders in South Carolina, but far from the largest overall slave holder in the state. William Ellison census American Indians owned thousands of Black slaves. True. Historian Tiya Miles provided this snapshot of the Native American ownership of Black slaves at the turn of the 19th century forSlatemagazine in January 2016: snapshot Miles places the number of enslaved people held by Cherokees at around 600 at the start of the 19th century and around 1,500 at the time of westward removal in 1838-9. (Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, she said, held around 3,500 slaves, across the three nations, as the 19thcentury began.) "Slavery inched its way slowly into Cherokee life," Miles told me. "When a white man moved into a Native location, usually to work as a trader or as an Indian agent, he would own [African] slaves." If such a person also had a child with a Native woman, as was not uncommon, the half-European, half-Native child would inherit the enslaved people (and their children) under white law, as well as the right to use tribal lands under tribal law. This combination put such people in a position to expand their wealth, eventually operating large farms and plantations. In 1830 there were 3,775 free Black people who owned 12,740 Black slaves. Approximately true, according to historian R. Halliburton Jr.: There were approximately 319,599 free blacks in the United States in 1830. Approximately 13.7 per cent of the total black population was free. A significant number of these free blacks were the owners of slaves. The census of 1830 lists 3,775 free Negroes who owned a total of 12,760 slaves. Many Black slaves were allowed to hold jobs, own businesses, and own real estate. Somewhattrue. There were exceptions, but generally speaking especially after 1750, by which time slave codes had beenentered into the law books in most of the American colonies  Black slaves were not legally permittedto own property or businesses. From theOxford Companion to American Law (2002): Under these early codes, slaves had virtually no legal rights IN most areas they could be executed for crimes that were not capital offenses for whites. Their testimony was restricted in legal cases and could not be used either for or against whites. Trials of slaves were usually by special courts. Slaves could not own property, move about without consent of their owners, or legally marry. Brutal Black-on-Black slavery was common in Africa for thousands of years. True, in the sense that the phenomenonof human beings enslaving other human beings goes back thousands of years, but not just among Blacks, and not just in Africa. Most slaves brought to America from Africa were purchased from Black slave owners. Sort of true. Historian Steven Mintz describes the situation more accurately in the introduction to his bookAfrican-American Voices: ADocumentary Reader, 1619-1877: Apologists for the African slave trade long argued that European traders did not enslave anyone: they simply purchased Africans who had already been enslaved and who otherwise would have been put to death. Thus, apologists claimed, the slave trade actually saved lives. Such claims represent a gross distortion of the facts. Some independent slave merchants did in fact stage raids on unprotected African villages and kidnap and enslave Africans. Most professional slave traders, however, set up bases along the west African coast where they purchased slaves from Africans in exchange for firearms and other goods. Before the end of the seventeenth century, England, France, Denmark, Holland, and Portugal had all established slave trading posts on the west African coast. Yet to simply say that Europeans purchased people who had already been enslaved seriously distorts historical reality. While there had been a slave trade within Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans, the massive European demand for slaves and the introduction of firearms radically transformed west and central African society. A growing number of Africans were enslaved for petty debts or minor criminal or religious offenses or following unprovoked raids on unprotected villages. An increasing number of religious wars broke out with the goal of capturing slaves. European weapons made it easier to capture slaves. Slavery was common for thousands of years. True, as noted above though how "common" slavery has been and what the specific nature of that slavery was has varied according to time and place. White people ended legal chattel slavery. It's rather self-serving to claim that "white people" ended legal chattel slavery in the United States (much less ended chattel slavery, period), given that the overwhelming majority of Blacks in the U.S. could not vote, could not run for political office, and, in every other way conceivable, were excluded from institutional power. Moreover, even as some white people were laboring to put an end to slavery, many other white people were fighting to preserve it. Slavery was eliminated in America via the efforts of people of various ethnicities, including white people, who took up the banner of the abolitionist movement. The names of the white leaders of that movement tend to be better known than those of the Black leaders, among whom were David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Dred Scott, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, and many others. When Congress passed (and the states ratified) the 13th Amendment in 1865, it was the culmination of many years of work by that multi-racial movement. efforts abolitionist 13th Amendment work  Davis, J.B. "Slavery in the Cherokee Nation."   Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 11, No. 4.  December 1993. Gates Jr., Henry Louis.  "Did Black People Own Slaves?"   The Root.  4 March 2013. Gates Jr., Henry Louis.  "How Many Slaves Landed in the U.S.?"   The Root.  6 January 2014. Hall, Kermit L.  The Oxford Companion to American Law.   New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2002. ISBN 0-195-08878-6. Halliburton Jr., R.  "Free Black Owners of Slaves: A Reappraisal of the Woodson Thesis."   The South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 76, No. 3.  July 1975. Johnson, Michael P. and Roark, James L.  Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South.   New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. ISBN 0-393-30314-4. Mintz, Steven.  African-American Voices: A Documentary Reader, 1619-1877.   New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.  ISBN 1-444-31077-1. Onion, Rebecca.  "America's Other Original Sin."   em>Slate.  January 2016. Rodriguez, Junius P.  The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery.   Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1997.  ISBN 0-874-36885-5. Russell, John Henderson.  The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865.   Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913.  ISBN 1-480-03049-X. Walton, Hanes and Smith, Robert C.  American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom.   London: Routledge, 2015.  ISBN 1-317-35045-6.
President Donald Trump took a victory lap on the job market during one of his periodic Cabinet meetings. Unemployment is at a 17-year low,he saidon Dec. 6, 2017. Very shortly it's going to be at a 19-year low. We think the numbers are going to continue to go down. And we're also getting into the pool of the 100 million people that are not working. That pool is now coming back. As you know, that's not considered in the low employment numbers, which means we have a lot of people that want to get to work, and that will be working. The unemployment rate is indeed at its lowest point since December 2000. But we were curious about Trumps other assertion -- that would-be workers from a pool of 100 million are coming back into the workforce. President Donald Trump at a cabinet meeting on Dec. 6, 2017. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images) First off, Trump is in the ballpark when he says that there are 100 million people not working. There are currently 95.4 million people above the age of 16 who are out of the labor force -- meaning neither working nor actively looking for work -- and another 6.5 million people who are unemployed. If you look at the raw number of Americans who are not in the labor force -- people who are not working or looking actively for work -- that figure has risen by 1.02 million since January 2017, an increase of about 1 percent. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate -- or the percentage of people age 16 and up who are either working or actively looking for work -- has been bouncing around in a narrow band since Trump took office -- between 62.7 percent to 63.1 percent -- with no clear trend. While neither of these measures supports Trumps assertion, each presents an imperfect view of the labor pool by including everyone 16 and up. Those totals are shaped by demographic changes. Demographic trends such as the aging of the baby boomer cohort have been the primary drivers for the decline in labor force participation, said Chris Lafakis, a director at Moody's Analytics. We simply have more retirees now because our population is older. If you drill down using statistics that are more targeted to working-age Americans, Trumps assertion looks more credible. Consider the employment-to-population ratio for Americans age 25 to 54. During Obamas last 12 months, this measurement rose by half a percentage point. (Rising, for this statistic, is good -- it means a larger percentage of Americans are employed.) But in the first 10 months of Trumps tenure, the statistic rose by six-tenths of a percentage point. Thats not a radical improvement, but its better than his predecessor managed in his final year. Heres the full chart (with Obama months in blue and Trump months in red): If you look at the raw numbers, the number of non-workers in the 25 to 54 age range has declined by about 691,000 since January 2017. Another statistic also puts the improvement in 2017 in a favorable light. That would be the unemployment rate known as U-6. This statistic uses a more generous definition of unemployment than the most commonly used measure. The U-6 rate includes not just workers who are officially unemployed but also those who are employed part-time when they would prefer a full-time job, and those who want to work but who havent looked for work in the preceding four weeks. In Obamas final year, this measure dropped by half a percentage point. (A drop is a good sign.) But under Trump, it has dropped by 1.5 percentage points -- three times faster in a shorter period of time. Heres the full chart: This statistic is an important one for judging Trumps assertion, because the people who would be driving the declines would specifically be those who find jobs after being unemployed by conventional definitions, plus those who had been forced to work only part time and those who had not looked for work for several months. President Trump is correct that the pool of non-workers continues to shrink, said Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless, though he added that it has done so fairly steadily since the last quarter of 2011. Jed Kolko, the chief economist for the job site Indeed.com, puts significant stock in the two statistics that support Trumps statement. Our view is that the labor market is entering 2018 with strength and momentum, with some room to grow, Kolko said. Finally, its worth noting that no president can take full credit for the economys achievements (or take full fault for its shortcomings). Many other factors, including the health of the rest of the world economy and changes in demographics and technology, play a role as well. Our ruling Trump said that were  getting into the pool of the 100 million people that are not working. That pool is now coming back. The statistics that shine the most direct light on working-age Americans support Trumps point. Both the working-age employment-to-population ratio and the U-6 expanded unemployment rate have improved on Trumps watch. Its worth noting that they also improved during Obamas final year, so Trump was fortunate to take office at a time when the economy was already going in the right direction. But the scale of the increase has been bigger under Trump. We rate this statement Mostly True. Since as early as 2013, a photo of Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix apparently smoking marijuana and sharing a bong repeatedly goes viral on various social media platforms: as 2013 repeatedly viral  This picture has been manipulated. The original photo, taken in August 1968, contains no bong: original photo  The caption provided by Getty Images explains the context behind the photograph, which occurred during a relief concert for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War: caption Folk singer Joan Baez and rock singer Jimi Hendrix chat between acts at a Biafran Relief Benefit show at a place in Manhattan called Steve Paul's Scene. Both Miss Baez and Hendrix performed free of charge and Hendrix contributed $500 cash to the fund. The benefit was to raise food and money for refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War. It is unlikely that Baez would be photographed smoking marijuana, as she has publicly stated her distaste for drugs. In discussing her short-lived relationship with Bob Dylan with Rolling Stone Magazine, for example, Baez referenced her lack of interest in drugs: discussing By 1965, though, Dylan's desire to move toward rock and his waning interest in protest songs helped drive them apart. Baez thinks her distaste for drugs distanced her from Dylan in the Sixties and later, during their reunion on the 197576 Rolling Thunder Revue. "I was the only one who didn't do drugs," she says of those shows. "It was the same as that trip to England," she adds, referring to the 1965 Dylan tour documented in Don't Look Back. "I couldn't connect with what their brains were doing." In a 2021 interview with CBS, Baez said that she did "zero" drugs during her heyday as a musician in the 60s, though she has, periodically, tried marijuana more recently. "I try periodically because people say it's a great way to relax or whatever," she said. "It doesn't work for me." 2021 interview Because the image is photoshopped to add a bong and marijuana smoke that were not there in the original photo, we rate it Fake.  alihamzah23023. "Joan Baez & Jimi Hendrix Sharing a Bong before a Performance, Early 1970." R/OldSchoolCool, 7 Apr. 2016, www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/4dpoo4/joan_baez_jimi_hendrix_sharing_a_bong_before_a/. Browne, David. "Joan Baez's Fighting Side: The Life and Times of a Secret Badass." Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/joan-baezs-fighting-side-the-life-and-times-of-a-secret-badass-129051/. "CBS Mornings on TikTok." TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@cbsmornings/video/6969232037899275526?lang=en. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023. "Folk Singer Joan Baez and Rock Singer Jimi Hendrix Chat between Acts..." Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/folk-singer-joan-baez-and-rock-singer-jimi-hendrix-chat-news-photo/515448732. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023. insanepuma. "Hits from the Bong with Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez." R/OldCoolSchool, 24 Feb. 2017, www.reddit.com/r/OldCoolSchool/comments/5vxope/hits_from_the_bong_with_jimi_hendrix_and_joan_baez/. https://www.instagram.com/p/iMxB20P_RD/?hl=af. Accessed 31 Aug. 2023. Since at least January 2021, actor Anthony Hopkins was featured in an online advertisement about the height of Hollywood celebrity men. The ad read: "Some of the Shortest Men in Hollywood Today."   Readers who clicked the online ad were led to a 95-page story on Cleverst.com. Its headline read: "These Short Male Celebrities Remind Us That Height Doesn't Matter In Hollywood." The lengthy article began with a picture of actor Dave Franco, who is purported to be 5 feet 7. We clicked "next page" 95 times until we realized we had clicked "next article" at the end. Hopkins didn't even show up in the story. Anthony Hopkins' height is listed at 5 feet 9 on various sources, including on his IMDb page. The actor is anything but "short." his IMDb page Hopkins is perhaps best known for his work in the 1991 classic, "The Silence of the Lambs." He won the best actor Oscar for playing the role of the terrifying cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. The long story of "short male celebrities" also featured a 6-feet-tall Vin Diesel, a 5 feet 10 Jason Statham, and 5 feet 9 actors Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hardy. This was hardly a list of "some of the shortest men in Hollywood today." The Cleverst.com story appeared to be a strategy known as advertising "arbitrage." The goal was to make more money on ads that were displayed on all 95 pages than it cost to display the original Hopkins clickbait picture. The Hopkins photograph lured the readers. Readers then clicked "next page" in a search for Hopkins, who never appeared. The business and technology blog Margins defined "arbitrage" as "leveraging an inefficient set of systems to make a riskless profit, usually by buying and selling the same asset." They also called it "the mythical free lunch that economics tells us does not exist." Margins The same strategy employed for Hopkins' height was used by other advertisers in the past who placed an ad about Pierce Brosnan's net worth. The ad claimed that "Pierce Brosnan's final net worth left his family in tears." Not only was Pierce Brosnan still alive, but he also did not appear in the lengthy slideshow story that resulted. Pierce Brosnan's net worth Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising "arbitrage." The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. submit ads to us On Jan. 9, 2023, a Twitter user tweeted that "Sony owns a patent that would force viewers to exclaim the brand name during commercials [in order] to end them." The tweet, which went viral, was accompanied by a "meme-worthy" patent illustration: meme-worthy  Snopes readers asked us if this was a genuine patent truly owned by Sony and if its purpose is accurately described in the viral tweet. In short, the answer to both questions is yes. More broadly, the patent  tracked down by TechRadar editor Lance Ulanoff  describes a "system for converting television commercials into interactive networked video games." The verbal commercial-ender is just one of several advertising solutions outlined in the patent. The patent is, indeed, owned by Sony. the patent The viral image comes from Figure 9 in this patent. The interpretation of the comic matches the technical notes for this figure: technical notes  In [the] first capture of the sequence, a user is watching [a] movie. Progress pointer in progress bar shows that [the] content display corresponds to a movie and that [a] break is approaching. On second capture, progress pointer shows that the movie has progressed to break for placing the IC [Interactive Commercial]. IC is interactive and instructions from the display ask the user to 'Say "McDonalds" to end [the] commercial.' On third capture, the user is saying "McDonalds!" The client device includes a microphone that captures the user's words and voice recognition on the device [that] determines that the user has responded. The system then proceeds to skip the rest of the commercial, as shown on fourth capture, where the user goes back to watch the movie. What's the point? The patent provides one example of a motivation for both advertiser and viewer: patent In one embodiment, the user gets rewarded with some points or a coupon from the sponsor [for shouting out the brand]. The rewards can be collected by the user in a variety of ways, such as receiving a coupon in the mail or via email, getting a text message in a mobile phone with the coupon, collecting points toward collecting [prizes] in a web site, etc. This, it bears highlighting, is not the only McDonald's-based interactive commercial technology described in the Sony patent. Figure 8 describes a scenario in which a viewer could "speed up" a commercial by "throwing a pickle" into a burger:  In the embodiment of FIG. 8, the instructions are "Throw the pickle to speed up commercial." The user, which is holding a one-handed controller with motion detection, swings his arm to simulate the act of throwing a pickle. As a result, the flying interactive pickle is placed in the burger, and the commercial message "Make it your way" is displayed briefly before the commercial ends and the user returns to watching the streaming media. Because this is a genuine patent owned by Sony that describes a system for skipping commercials that involves yelling brand names out loud, the claim is   Lance Ulanoff. "Sony Patent Would Have You Yell at Your TV to Skip Commercials." TechRadar, 11 Jan. 2023, https://www.techradar.com/news/sony-patent-would-have-you-yell-at-your-tv-to-skip-commercials. Zalewski, Gary M. System for Converting Television Commercials into Interactive Networked Video Games. US8246454B2, 21 Aug. 2012, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en. While evangelical leader Franklin Graham has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, his father Rev. Billy Graham publicly warned against the prospect of religious figures becoming too attached to a political stance. Several readers contacted us in January 2018 seeking to confirm a statement attributed to the elder Graham: I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it. The statement was also circulated online in meme form:   In this case, the quote is authentic, and taken from the 1 February 1981 cover story in Parade magazine; it was part of Billy Graham's account of conversations with fellow reverend Jerry Falwell, who helmed the conservative politcal group the Moral Majority. Graham said: I told him to preach the Gospel. That's our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the '60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the '80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it. The statement was featured early on in the story and was also highlighted below a picture of Falwell and then-President Ronald Reagan:     In the story, Graham admitted that he no longer thought of Communists as being "disciples of Lucifer," contrary to his own rhetoric from earlier in his career. He also cast himself as having no part of Falwell's organization, which became a key conservative constituency before dissolving in 1989. He said: It would be unfortunate if people got the impression all evangelists belong to that group. The majority do not. I don't wish to be identified with them. I'm for morality. But morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak out with such authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future. While the elder Graham has had relationships with several U.S. presidents spanning decades, he told Christianity Today in 2011 that, given the chance to do anything differently in his life, "I also would have steered clear of politics." told His son, on the other hand, has positioned himself as a Trump supporter since 2011, when he contributed to the debunked "birther" conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In October 2016, the younger Graham published a social media post (misattributed to his father) urging evangelical voters to vote for Trump. contributed misattributed More recently, Franklin Graham has refused to criticize the president for reportedly calling African countries "shitholes" or for alleged extramarital affairs -- drawing criticism from Graham's own niece -- and claimed that the U.S. was "in a coup d'etat" perpetrated by political enemies of Trump who were using the media against him. refused criticism claimed Bailey, Sarah Pulliam.  "Q & A: Billy Graham on Aging, Regrets, and Evangelicals."
  Christianity Today.  21 January 2011. YouTube.  "Interview with the Rev. Franklin Graham," uploaded by ABC News.
  https://youtu.be/lx2E286GAcE  24 April 2011.  Vales, Leinz.  "Evangelical Leader Franklin Graham Says Trump is a 'Changed Person.'"
    CNN.   24 January 2018. Allen, Bob.   "Franklin Graham Asserts That Trump Could be Toppled in a Coup."
    Baptist News.   30 January 2018. Delk, Josh.   "Billy Graham's Granddaughter: Trump Needs to Ask for Forgiveness."
    The Hill.   27 January 2018. FACT CHECK:Did a Special Assistant to President Obama, Barvetta Singletary shot at a police officer in an incident of gun violence ignored by the media?  Claim: A Special Assistant to President Obama, Barvetta Singletary, shot at a police officer in an incident of gun violence ignored by the media.    WHAT'S  White House staffer Barvetta Singletary was arrested and charged with assault after discharging a gun during a domestic dispute with her boyfriend (a Capitol police officer) in August 2015. WHAT'S /UNPROVEN:  Singletary shot at a police officer because he was a cop, was trying to kill the victim, reported directly to President Obama, and her arrest was ignored by large media outlets. Examples:  [Collected via e-mail and Twitter, October 2015]  Assistant to president Obama shoots at boyfriend. Barvetta and her bad ass Beretta!  Kicking ass ghetto style! Don't hold your breath waiting to read about this in the mainstream media. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wondering if it is true that an Obama assistant resigned after firing a gun a police. Her name is Barvetta Singletary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A special assistant to the president the president who recently lamented that an inability to pass gun control was one of the great failures of his administration was arrested after she allegedly fired a pistol at her boyfriend during a domestic dispute. Barvetta Singletary, 37, didn't help advance her boss' crusade against gun violence when she invited her boyfriend, a Capitol Hill police officer, over to her house for sex. Afterwards, she accused him of seeing another woman and demanded to see the texts on his cellphones. When he refused, Singletary reached into her boyfriend's bag, according to the arresting documents, and pulled out the two cellphones and his service weapon, a .40 caliber Glock 23. She demanded he tell her the passwords to the phones. He refused. "Your phone is more important than me holding the gun on you," she said, shooting the couch where he was sitting. Singletary is the Obama administration's House legislative affairs liaison and was paid $125,000 a year. Let's just say she wasn't a low-level staffer. Her purposeful gun crime while working for this gun-hostile administration is more important than the time Dick Cheney accidentally shot a friend  while Dove hunting. But which one received more news coverage? Obama Special Asst Barvetta Singletary Resigns, Charged Shooting At Cop | @bob_owens | #2A | https://t.co/edXK2l9Uks pic.twitter.com/9LPguvQO5j @bob_owens #2A https://t.co/edXK2l9Uks pic.twitter.com/9LPguvQO5j  Hank Quinlan (@Quinlan_Hank) September 5, 2015 September 5, 2015   Barvetta Singletary, a special assistant to the President and the House legislative affairs liaison, was arrested last Friday after the  Berwin Kleinstein (@hakylulamupe) September 5, 2015 September 5, 2015   Origins: In early August 2015, 37-year-old White House staffer Barvetta Singletary was arrested and charged with first-degree assault, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment following a domestic dispute with her boyfriend. As Washington television station WRC reported, during an 7 August 2015 domestic dispute Singletary allegedly fired one shot towards the sofa on which her boyfriend was sitting (hitting the floor) after he refused to disclose the passwords to his cell phones: reported According to charging documents, Barvetta Singletary sent her boyfriend a text, asking him to come to her Upper Marlboro home for sex. After they had sex, Singletary confronted her boyfriend about the other woman he was dating. Investigators say Singletary asked her boyfriend to step outside, and they both went to his car. Once inside the car, Singletary asked to see her boyfriend's cellphones, police said. When he refused, Singletary reached into his bag and retrieved two cellphones and the victim's .40-caliber Glock 23 service weapon, charging documents state. Singletary  pulled the gun out of its holster, pointed it at the victim and said, "You taught me how to use this. Don't think I won't use it," the arrest warrant said. Once inside, she demanded the passwords to his phones, yanking the Glock from its holster and pointing it at him when he didn't cooperate, the documents said. Your phone is more important than me holding this gun on you? she allegedly said to her boyfriend, who was glued to her sofa 10 feet away. When he still refused to give up his passwords, Singletary fired one round at him that hit the floor, sending the officer running, police said.   E-mails and social media rumors about Singletary that were circulated months after the fact commonly claimed the altercation had occurred "last Friday," an ambiguity that lent plausibility to the rumor's claim the "mainstream media" suppressed reporting of the arrest (since it hadn't appeared in recent news). However, the incident was covered at the time it occurred by major mainstream news outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, the Daily Mail, the Washington D.C. Sun Times, Fox News, and the New York  Daily News. Washington Post USA Today Daily Mail Sun Times Fox News Daily News The fact that the complainant was a police officer was incidental to the story; Singletary shot at him because he was a boyfriend with whom she was involved in a romantic dispute, not because he was a cop.  And given that various news reports stated that Singletary fired a single round in the direction of the couch where her boyfriend was sitting but hit the floor, it isn't clear whether she actually intended to harm him but missed, or whether she deliberately sent the round into the floor in order to scare her boyfriend (without injuring him). Rumors commonly referred to Singletary as a "Special Assistant to President Obama," a term which is technically correct but which caused many social media users to incorrectly infer that Singletary reported directly to the President and served him personally in some sort of secretarial or administrative capacity prior to her September 2015 resignation. Senior White House staffers are granted the title "Assistant to the President," second-tier staffers are called "Deputy Assistant to the President," and third-tier staffers (of which Singletary was one) are termed "Special Assistant to the President." According to the White House's most recent staffer salary disclosure  report, there are approximately 21 employees serving in the first-tier capacity, 19 in the second-tier of White House assistants, and 59 with the title "Special Assistant to the President." disclosure Singletary had served as a as deputy chief of staff in the House of Representatives before being named as a White House staffer in June 2014: named SINGLETARY GOES TO 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE: Barvetta Singletary is moving from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. Shes leaving Capitol Hill to join the White House legislative affairs team, an administration official confirms to PI. She comes to the White House from Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburns office, where she most recently served as deputy chief of staff and policy director. She has depth on a range of issues, including: transportation, appropriations, health care, energy, ag and budget issues. She is deeply respected by members and staff on both sides of the aisle for her policy knowledge and focused but even keeled nature. She is a team player in every sense, a senior White House official said. That official added: Fun fact: She also happens to have an amazing singing voice, which she puts to use at church and among friends, when she can be convinced. On 10 August 2015, a White House spokesperson released a statement regarding Singletary's arrest: We are aware of the matter and have temporarily placed the employee in question on unpaid leave and revoked her access to the complex until we have more information. We will take additional actions as needed. For further questions, I would refer you to the Prince Georges County Police Department. Singletary resigned her White House position the following month.   Last updated: 14 October 2015 Originally published: 14 October 2015 As controversy raged over racially motivated violence and law enforcement policies in the United States, a persistent rumor regarding the origins of 21st-century policing appeared online. It showed up, as such things tend to do, in meme form:   But how accurate is this? And where did the concept of police as de facto executors of justice (rather than peacekeepers) originate? Law enforcement has always existed in one form or another. The first constables (from the Roman comes stabuli, or "head of the stables") with duties very similar to today's sheriffs, were around at least since the 9th century, and traveled to the Americas from Europe to supplant the systems that existed there at the time in the 1600s. The Encyclopedia of Police Science delves into the history of constables in the colonies:  history In the American colonies the constable was the first law enforcement officer. His duties varied from place to place according to the needs of the people he served. Usually, the constable sealed weights and measures, surveyed land, announced marriages, and executed all warrants. Additionally, he meted out physical punishments and kept the peace.  The informal and communal system known as "the Watch" worked (more or less efficiently) on a volunteer basis in the early colonies; there were also private policing systems for hire that functioned on a for-profit basis. As populations grew, so did demands for more functional system of policing towns and cities. Volunteers would often show up to their posts drunk or not at all, and the systems were disorganized or hopelessly corrupt.  posts According to Gary Potter, a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University, a centralized, bureaucratic police system did not emerge until well into the 1800s, but was quickly adopted by cities around the country: Gary Potter It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place. These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980). More than a hundred years earlier, in 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the fledgling United States' first slave patrol. The patrol consisted of roving bands of armed white citizens who would stop, question, and punish slaves caught without a permit to travel. They were civil organizations, controlled and maintained by county courts. The way the patrols were organized and maintained provided a later framework for preventive (rather than reactive) community policing, particularly in the South:  courts Policing had always been a reactive enterprise, occurring only in response to a specific criminal act. Centralized and bureaucratic police departments, focusing on the alleged crime-producing qualities of the "dangerous classes" began to emphasize preventative crime control. The presence of police, authorized to use force, could stop crime before it started by subjecting everyone to surveillance and observation. The concept of the police patrol as a preventative control mechanism routinized the insertion of police into the normal daily events of everyone's life, a previously unknown and highly feared concept in both England and the United States (Parks 1976). Patrols in the northern U.S. also became useful for breaking up labor strikes before they became too destructive (Marxist political historian Eric Hobsbawm referred to the mechanisms of violence and destruction of property to agitate for better working conditions as "collective bargaining by riot") and these services became increasingly utilized as the country became more populated and conditions simultaneously grew more difficult for the United States' restive economic underclasses.  labor strikes Eric Hobsbawm destruction In fact, police duties since the 1800s can be easily traced along the ebb and flow of political pressures as well as social issues:  issues In 1822, for example, Charleston, South Carolina, experienced a slave insurrection panic, caused by a supposed plot of slaves and free blacks to seize the city. In response, the State legislature passed the Negro Seamen's Act, requiring free black seamen to remain on board their vessels while in Carolina harbors. If they dared to leave their ships, the police were instructed to arrest them and sell them into slavery unless they were redeemed by the ship's master.  Similarly, patrols such as the Mounted Guards (forerunners to what eventually became the Border Patrol) were put in place to maintain minority quotas, among other things:  minority quotas Mounted watchmen of the U.S. Immigration Service patrolled the border in an effort to prevent illegal crossings as early as 1904, but their efforts were irregular and undertaken only when resources permitted. The inspectors, usually called Mounted Guards, operated out of El Paso, Texas. Though they never totaled more than seventy-five, they patrolled as far west as California trying to restrict the flow of illegal Chinese immigration. In March 1915, Congress authorized a separate group of Mounted Guards, often referred to as Mounted Inspectors. Most rode on horseback, but a few operated cars and even boats. Although these inspectors had broader arrest authority, they still largely pursued Chinese immigrants trying to avoid the Chinese exclusion laws. Modern law enforcement evolved out of complex brew of a larger population, shifting sociopolitical class boundaries, and other external issues (such as the labor pressures that created an unhappy underclass) and a shift in the way policing was regarded by business owners and the population at large: proactive rather than reactive.  However, it is important to note that "the police" do not consist of a homogenous block of the American population, and while the early days of modern-day police forces are undeniable and under-covered facets of its history, the focus and perspective of policing is a complicated and fraught subject. It would be a mistake to assume that police in 2016 are the same as police in the 1870s, and to conclude that the profile of law enforcement in the United States  and around the world  has not changed throughout its existence. It would also be a mistake to assume that law enforcement cannot or will not be changed again in response to popular pressure, given that its focus has varied dramatically since its inception.  Greene, Jack R. (ed.)
 The Encyclopedia of Police Science, Third Edition.   Routledge: New York. 2007. Harring, Sidney L., and McMullin, Lorraine M.  "TheBuffalo Police18721900: Labor Unrest, Political Power and the Creation of the Police Institution."
 Crime and Social Justice 4: 5-14. 1975. Kelling, George L. and Moore, Mark H.  "The Evolving Strategy of Policing."
 National Institute of Justice.  November 1988.
  Potter, Gary. "The History of Policing in the United States, Parts 1-6."
  Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online.  July 2013. Williams, Hubert and Murphy, Patrick V.  "The Evolving Strategy of Police: A Minority View."  National Institute of Justice. January 1990. On April 29, 2020, a large asteroid is expected to fly by earth at a distance of approximately 4 million miles. That may be of interest to stargazers, but the previous sentence isn't very alarming or attention-grabbing. Yet many media outlets wrote headlines about this incoming asteroid as if it posed an immediate and catastrophic threat to the planet. An article in the Daily Express, for instance, was headlined: "Asteroid warning: NASA tracks a 4KM asteroid approach - Could end civilisation if it hits." The site used a similar message when promoting this article on Twitter:  headlined   While these headlines may bring clicks, they also may lead readers to falsely believe that this asteroid poses an immediate threat to life on Earth. That isn't the case. While Asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2) will approach Earth in April 2020, the asteroid is not expected to come within 3.9 million miles of the planet.  NASA is constantly monitoring the skies for asteroids and meteors that pose a potential threat to Earth. When these near-Earth objects (NEOs) are discovered, NASA monitors them to find out when they will approach Earth, how fast they will be traveling, how large they are, and how close they will get. All of this data is publicly available on the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) website.  Center for Near Earth Object Studies Asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2) was first discovered (as its name implies) in 1998, so this asteroid isn't making a sudden and scary appearance above Earth. NASA has been monitoring it for more than two decades and has learned quite a bit. For instance, the asteroid is relatively large with a diameter between 1.1 and 2.5 miles, and it will be traveling at just under 20,000 mph when it makes its closest approach to Earth.  discovered While an asteroid of this size would cause catastrophic damage if it hit Earth, there's practically no chance that will happen in April 2020. According to NASA, this asteroid won't come within 3.9 million miles of Earth. In other words, it will approach no closer than about 16 times the distance between us and the moon. Asteroid Watch, the official Twitter account of the CNEOS, attempted to quell fears about this asteroid, writing that it will "safely pass" Earth and that NASA did not issue a "warning" about a possible catastrophic collision. Asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2) is not currently listed on NASA's list of potential future Earth impact events.  Twitter account  potential future Earth impact events CNEOS writes (emphasis ours):  CNEOS  On a daily basis, about one hundred tons of interplanetary material drifts down to the Earths surface. Most of the smallest interplanetary particles that reach the Earths surface are the tiny dust particles that are released by comets as their ices vaporize in the solar neighborhood. The vast majority of the larger interplanetary material that reaches the Earths surface originates as the collision fragments of asteroids that have run into one another some eons ago. With an average interval of about 10,000 years, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 100 meters would be expected to reach the Earths surface and cause local disasters or produce the tidal waves that can inundate low lying coastal areas. On an average of every several hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a kilometer could cause global disasters. In this case, the impact debris would spread throughout the Earths atmosphere so that plant life would suffer from acid rain, partial blocking of sunlight, and from the firestorms resulting from heated impact debris raining back down upon the Earths surface. Since their orbital paths often cross that of the Earth, collisions with near-Earth objects have occurred in the past and we should remain alert to the possibility of future close Earth approaches. It seems prudent to mount efforts to discover and study these objects, to characterize their sizes, compositions and structures and to keep an eye upon their future trajectories. [...] No one should be overly concerned about an Earth impact of an asteroid or comet. The threat to any one person from auto accidents, disease, other natural disasters and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from NEOs. Over long periods of time, however, the chances of the Earth being impacted are not negligible so that some form of NEO insurance is warranted. At the moment, our best insurance rests with the NEO scientists and their efforts to first find these objects and then track their motions into the future. We need to first find them, then keep an eye on them. NASA is currently tracking about 20,000 NEOs. While these objects routinely pass by Earth without incident, every now and again a media outlet will write an outlandish story about how one of these objects is posed to wipe out life on earth. While we've seen several of these fear-mongering rumors over the years, these "doomsday" asteroids never seem to arrive.  fear-mongering rumors years Kettley, Sebastian.  "Asteroid Warning: NASA Tracks a 4KM Asteroid Approach - Could End Civilisation if it Hits."
  Daily Express.  4 March 2020. Strickland, Ashley.  "Large Asteroid Will Fly by the Earth Next Month, But Won't Hit Us, Reassures NASA."
  CNN.  3 March 2020. One of the forms of political expression that frequently arrives in our inbox for verification is the "evil plan" warning, items which present the notion that some malevolent entity (ranging from Communists to Satan himself) not only expressed an intent to destroy our society from within, but outlined a specific plan for doing so. A quote attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that a reader emailed us in November 2011 exemplifies the genre: Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."   The specifics of these plans (no matter how long ago they may supposedly have been formulated) generally relate to current events, and the political purpose of circulating them is to make readers aware that trends which threaten the health of our society are currently in place (i.e., "This is EXACTLY what is happening now!"), and to warn them that we must be vigilant about holding our course and stopping or reversing the encroachment of these socially unhealthful trends. This form has been expressed in such widely circulated items as Paul Harvey's "If I Were the Devil" essay, an (apocryphal) quotation by Karl Marx about the perils of consumer debt, and an (also apocryphal) warning from Abraham Lincoln about the accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of a few. If I Were the Devil Karl Marx Abraham Lincoln The putative quotation from Stalin referenced above is another item of this genre, one which presents the concept that Communist enemies of the U.S. viewed patriotism, morality, and spirituality as America's greatest assets and cannily plotted that the U.S. could be made to collapse from within if these values were sufficiently undermined (and which, of course, serves as an admonition to American readers to be attentive in maintaining these values). Whatever level of truth one might find in this sentiment, however, it's highly unlikely that Stalin ever spoke these words. Proving a negative is often an uncertain proposition, but our reasons for believing this quotation to be of dubious origin are: Josef Stalin Internet Archive Stalin documents letter Cummings, Jeanne.  "Gingrich Out to Save America."The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 16 January 1994 (p. G1). "Readers Respond to 'The Day After'."Lawrence Journal-World. 23 November 1983 (p. 9). Stalin Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/subject/index.htm. Accessed 15 Sept. 2022. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 | The Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Stalin%2c%20Joseph%2c%201879-1953. Accessed 15 Sept. 2022. Updated [Sept.15, 2022]: Sources and links refreshed. On the heels of a disappointing jobs report, Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Barack Obama, shined the best light he could on the administrations economic record during the June 5, 2011, edition of ABCsThis Week with Christiane Amanpour.Two days before his appearance, the government announced that the economy had created a net of only 54,000 jobs in May -- a number well below expectations, and also below the number of jobs created in the previous few months.Amanpour pressed Goolsbee on the issue:What would you do to get this off the slow burner? she asked.Goolsbee responded, Well, I would say two or three things. The first is, the president has never stopped talking about jobs. For him, the growth strategy is the No. 1 issue. Now, we must live within our means. We have a moment that we can talk about long-run deficit reduction. And the vice president's leading an effort to do that, that the president has asked him to. But the president is getting up every day -- on Friday, he's going out to Ohio to talk about jobs in manufacturing, (and) manufacturing is having its best employment year in almost 15 years.We thought wed check whether Goolsbee was right about manufacturing employment.We turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the governments official source for employment numbers. There are two ways to look at the issue. One is to look at manufacturing jobs for the first five months of the year over the past decade and a half. The other is to look at the full-year totals for manufacturing jobs, which means determining the total for 2011 by extrapolating a full year from the first five months data.First, well look at the January-to-May figures.For 2011, the manufacturing sector has gained 76,000 jobs. To find gains that robust, you have to go back to 1994, when manufacturing gained 107,000 jobs from January to May.So by this standard, its 17 years, and Goolsbee actually understates his point.Now the full-year figures.For 2011, manufacturing jobs -- if they continue at their current pace -- would increase by 182,000. Thats the most for any year going back to 1997, when 288,000 jobs were created over the full year. And that was 14 years ago, which fits Goolsbees statement of almost 15 years.At this point, we should note three bits of context.First, despite the gains for the year, manufacturing jobs fell by 5,000 during the previous month, as Amanpour pointed out in the interview. (Goolsbee countered that durable goods manufacturing jobs went up, and they did, by 8,000. Durable goods are those designed to last for multiple years, such as cars and dishwashers. )Second, despite the recent gains, over the past decade and a half, the manufacturing sector has shrunk -- consistently and inexorably.Since January 1994, the manufacturing sector has shed 5,160,000 jobs, leaving todays number of manufacturing jobs 31 percent lower than it was at the start of 1994.And the actual shrinkage is even more stark than this statistic shows. Since January 1994, the labor force has grown by 18 percent. That means that simply maintaining its share of American employment would have required the manufacturing sector to increase by almost one-fifth since 1994, when in fact it declined by nearly one-third.The continual slide means that when you look at figures for the past decade and a half, most periods have shown a net loss of jobs. Since 1994, manufacturing jobs only showed a net increase six times for the January-to-May period, and only five times for the full-year period.In other words, it didnt take much for the manufacturing job gains under Obama to stand out. On the other hand, it also means that the administration has some justification for citing the accomplishment.Third, manufacturing jobs have increased for two years running (and two January-to-May periods running) -- but the combined gains havent come close to canceling out the manufacturing jobs lost during Obamas first year in office.In 2009, the economy lost more than 1.1 million manufacturing jobs. Counting the projection for 2011, the manufacturing sector will have rebounded by the end of this year by only 282,000 jobs, replacing only about a quarter of those lost since the start of 2009. While Obama isnt solely to blame for this hemorrhaging -- the recession did start under his predecessor, George W. Bush -- this does make the overall assessment of the sector under Obama more downbeat than Goolsbee indicated on the show.On balance, we feel that Goolsbees decision to highlight manufacturing jobs may be aimed at  downplaying the otherwise disappointing jobs numbers for May, but his facts are mostly on target, though he didn't provide the context of the large manufacturing job losses in 2009. Since assigning responsibility for the 2009 losses is a complicated business, well lower Goolsbee just one notch and rate his statement Mostly True.