Leticia Van de Putte "voted to give illegal immigrants in this country free health care--not emergency health care but total free health care.

Explanation: Patrick said Van de Putte "voted to give illegal immigrants in this country free health care--not emergency health care but total free health care." The 2003 proposal in question didn’t provide immigrants free across-the-board health care. Rather, the measure permitted (and didn’t require) local governing bodies to provide (or, it appears, resume providing) non-emergency services to residents regardless of immigration status, an action that was predicted to improve outcomes and head off costly emergency care to which all residents were already entitled per federal law. Significantly, too, the proposal envisioned patients sharing costs. Diagnosis: False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

Immigration, Health Care, Public Health, Texas, Dan Patrick,

In the only debate between major-party candidates for Texas lieutenant governor, Republican nominee Dan Patrick stood by his objections to a Texas law authored by his Democratic opponent that enables some children living in the state without legal authorization to qualify for in-state college tuition. Patrick, a Houston state senator, went on to say Sept. 29, 2014, that after the tuition proposal passed into law in 2001, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, the Democratic nominee, supported another questionable move. "She voted to give illegal immigrants in this country free health care -- not emergency health care but total free health care," Patrick said. "That was about seven years ago and that bill didn’t pass." We were curious about the described vote. By email, Patrick spokesman Alejandro Garcia said Patrick was referring to Van de Putte’s vote for a proposal that cleared the Senate in 2003, Senate Bill 309. Garcia said the legislation required "local hospitals to provide emergency care to patients regardless of immigration status. Opponents claimed the bill would drive up the costs of health care and increase taxes to provide care to illegal immigrants. Van de Putte supported this measure knowing that it would benefit illegal immigrants at a cost to taxpayers," Garcia wrote. We’d been down this path with Patrick before. In May 2014, we rated  his claim that the Senate had earlier approved free health care for illegal immigrants. Let’s unspool afresh. Senators including Van de Putte on May 5, 2003, gave voice-vote approval to the proposal, which a May 5, 2003, Senate Journal entry summarized as "providing health care services without regard to a person's immigration status." At the time, Patrick, a talk-radio host, wasn’t yet a senator. The legislation said a city, county or public hospital "may use money from local sources to provide health care services to a person without regard to the person's immigration status and shall establish a cost-share system for persons receiving health care services." At an April 2003 committee hearing, authoring Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, said it permitted hospitals to draw on local revenue to provide preventive services to residents regardless of a patient’s immigration standing. Sylvia Garcia, then a Harris County commissioner, testified the proposal would hasten outpatient services, heading off health problems early and saving money thanks to fewer emergency-room visits. Proponents described the legislation as vital after the then-Texas attorney general (and future U.S. senator), John Cornyn, issued an advisory opinion in July 2001 stating that unless lawmakers allowed the Harris County Hospital District (and others, presumably) to deliver preventive services to patients regardless of immigration status, the district couldn’t give such care without violating the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which required state legislatures to intervene if states wanted hospitals to go ahead and do so. Notably, Cornyn’s letter made it clear some health services already were provided to patients regardless of immigration status--as mandated by federal law. Cornyn’s letter said the district was required by law to provide emergency care to residents regardless of their legal status. Lance Lunsford, spokesman for the Texas Hospital Association, which describes itself as the political and educational advocate for more than 430 hospitals and health systems statewide, told us a federal law from the 1980s, the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, made free emergency care available to illegal immigrants. According to a federal website, that act required Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical exam when a request is made for an emergency condition, including active labor, regardless of an individual's ability to pay. Cornyn’s letter also said federal law permitted public health services including immunizations and testing and treatment of symptoms of communicable diseases. Still, he wrote, the 1996 law specified that any other state or local health benefit could be provided only if a state law "affirmatively provides for such eligibility." Mike Stafford, the Harris County attorney, reacted to Cornyn’s letter by advising the local hospital district to stop giving discounted preventive care because it violates federal law, according to a July 12, 2001, Associated Press news story. "It's up to the Texas Legislature to step in now and, if they want to create an exception for this, it's allowable," Stafford said. In 2003, Senate Bill 309 died in the House, though advocates including Lunsford said the permission to provide such services ended up in House Bill 2292, a major 2003 overhaul of health care agencies. Section 285.201 of the Texas Health and Safety code "affirmatively establishes" the eligibility of undocumented residents to receive non-emergency public health benefits funded locally by public hospital districts. And in the end, did the legislation expand free health care for illegal immigrants? When we inquired, King Hillier, a vice president of the Harris County Hospital District, said by phone that "basically" the district had already been providing non-emergency services when the issue reached lawmakers. Hillier stressed the permissive quality of the proposal; funding and delivery of services was left up to local governments. Finally, Hillier noted the Senate version of the law envisioned a system of patients sharing costs, which has resulted, he said. Our ruling Patrick said Van de Putte "voted to give illegal immigrants in this country free health care--not emergency health care but total free health care." The 2003 proposal in question didn’t provide immigrants free across-the-board health care. Rather, the measure permitted (and didn’t require) local governing bodies to provide (or, it appears, resume providing) non-emergency services to residents regardless of immigration status, an action that was predicted to improve outcomes and head off costly emergency care to which all residents were already entitled per federal law. Significantly, too, the proposal envisioned patients sharing costs. Diagnosis: . – The statement is not accurate.


Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was disqualified from the Vietnam-era draft due to a pilonidal cyst.

Explanation: There is, of course, a huge difference between draft evasion (or “draft dodging”) and draft avoidance: The former involves the use of unethical or illegal means (e.g., bribing a doctor to falsify a medical report, fleeing the country) to escape military service; the latter involves taking advantage of established legal means (e.g., college deferments, conscientious objector status) to avoid or delay military service. The issue discussed here is clearly not one of draft evasion, and the matter of who is justified in criticizing whom for not serving in Vietnam is a gray area to be hashed out in the public arena. The only conclusions drawn here are that Rush Limbaugh was ineligible for the draft due to a physical condition, that he had a pilonidal cyst, and that if there’s an explanation for his draft status other than the cyst, he has yet to offer it.

Vitriolic “hawk vs. dove” debates are a standard feature of modern American politics whenever war is in the offing. Generally pitting Republicans against Democrats, the argument (at its lowest level) boils down to hawks criticizing doves as cowards who don’t understand the military because they never served in it and are too timid about using military force, while the doves maintain that their detractors are cowardly hypocrites who avoided military service themselves while others fought the wars they advocated. From the latter side comes the term “chickenhawk,” defined (by The New Hampshire Gazette, which maintains a Chickenhawk Database) as “a term often applied to public persons who tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who advocate, military solutions to political problems, and who have personally declined to take advantage of a significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime.”   As men of America’s “Vietnam generation” started to become predominant figures in American politics at a national level in the 1990s, service in the Vietnam War was often applied as a “litmus test” issue in political debate. And since talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was one of the most popular media proponents of the conservative political viewpoint and a vociferous critic of a young Bill Clinton’s efforts to avoid the Vietnam-era draft, it was not surprising that the question of Limbaugh’s own military status also became a common subject of interest:  There are similar stories [of avoiding service in Vietnam] about almost every other prominent rightwing Republican of recent vintage. Newt Gingrich, ex-Speaker of the House, went the Cheney route [of obtaining deferments]; Kenneth Starr, Clinton’s legal nemesis, had psoriasis; Jack Kemp, Dole’s running mate in 1996, was unfit because of a knee injury, though he heroically continued as a National Football League quarterback for another eight years; Pat Buchanan had arthritis in his knees, though he soon became an avid jogger. The best story concerns Rush Limbaugh, the ferociously bellicose radio personality, who allegedly had either “anal cysts” or an “ingrown hair follicle on his bottom”. It is not my custom to mock others’ ailments, but anyone who has listened to Limbaugh’s programme can imagine the dripping scorn he would bring to the revelation that a prominent Democrat had skipped a war over something like that. Also, in his case, a pain in the arse is peculiarly appropriate.1  When Rush Limbaugh first came of draft age he held a 2-S (college deferment) Selective Service System classification as a student at Southeast Missouri State University in 1969-70, but after he dropped out of college at the end of his first year he no longer qualified for a student deferment and was subject to being reclassified as 1-A (available immediately for military service) and drafted. Selective Service System records show that Limbaugh was reclassified as 1-Y (qualified for service only in time of [declared] war or national emergency) on 24 November 1970, which effectively ended his draft eligibility and ensured that he would not be called for service. What was the basis of Limbaugh’s 1-Y classification? The Selective Service System records still available indicate that the classification was not assigned on psychological or moral grounds, but because of a physical problem. Since no extant records indicate that Limbaugh was ever examined by a physician at an Armed Forces Entrance Examining Station (i.e.,a pre-induction physical), it’s possible his 1-Y classification was assigned based on a report his own doctor prepared and submitted to his draft board. What was the physical problem that disqualified Rush Limbaugh from the draft? Limbaugh biographer Paul D. Colford noted that “Limbaugh himself … stated that he was not drafted during the Vietnam War because he had been classified 4-F after a physical found that he had an ‘inoperable pilonidal cyst’ and ‘a football knee from high school.’ He added: ‘I made no effort to evade it or avoid it. '”2 (Technically, Limbaugh’s classification during his primary year of draft eligibility was 1-Y, not 4-F; he was only reclassified as 4-F after the 1-Y classification was abolished on 10 December 1971.) Which of the two stated medical reasons was the primary one behind Limbaugh’s 1-Y classification is difficult to determine directly, since individual medical files held by his draft board have long since been destroyed. Some commentators, such as Limbaugh biographer Paul Colford, implied that Limbaugh’s knee injury was minor or non-existent, writing: “Asked about Limbaugh’s ‘football knee from high school,’ [Ryland] Meyr, the coach during his lone year of play, said he did not remember any injury.”2 However, that Limbaugh did indeed have a pilonidal cyst seems indisputable, as he himself, his mother, and his brother all maintained that he did:  Yet, for all his father’s patriotism, and deep-rooted fear of Communism, Rusty (Rush) did not enlist to preserve those ideals. The official explanation, David Limbaugh said, is that Rush had a student deferment and, like his father, had a pilonidal cyst on his ass which qualified him for a medical deferment.3 Limbaugh’s mother said in 1993 that she did not know if her son had a physical or not, but she added that he did have a pilonidal cyst like his father.2  Limbaugh critics have maintained that his pilonidal cyst was a “simple-to-treat condition” easily corrected through minor surgery and not a legitimately debilitating condition that precluded his serving in the armed forces — rather, it was simply an excuse he seized upon to avoid military service. However, in general a pilonidal cyst could indeed be a legitimately disqualifying condition:  According to the Military Entrance Processing Command, a pilonidal cyst was then and is today a so-called “disqualifying condition” for induction. It’s a congenital incomplete closure of the neural groove at the base of the spinal cord in which excess tissue and hair may collect and cause discomfort and discharge. The malady can be corrected by surgery, but short of that it is viewed by the military as a needless risk amid unsanitary conditions in the field.2  That the disqualifying condition was a pilonidal cyst and not a bad knee seems to be borne out by Limbaugh’s own comments on his draft status:  Limbaugh’s draft status arose during a 1992 appearance at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in Manhattan. ABC newsman Jeff Greenfield, acting as moderator … posed to Limbaugh a written question from the audience about whether he had ever served in the military. In response, Limbaugh chose his words slowly and cautiously. He seemed to be saying that he had not known ahead of time that whatever physical condition he had in 1970 would free him from draft consideration. “I had student deferments in college and, upon taking a physical, was discovered to have a physical — uh, by virtue of what the military says, I didn’t even know it existed — a physical deferment and then the lottery system came along, when they chose your lot by birthdate, and mine was high. And I did not want to go — just as Governor Clinton didn’t.”2  It’s highly unlikely that Limbaugh only “discovered” he had a high school football knee injury several years after the fact or was unaware that a bad knee was reason for a physical deferment, so the pilonidal cyst is the more probable explanation. (The lottery issue is largely irrelevant since Limbaugh’s 1-Y classification precluded his being drafted no matter how high or low his birthdate came up in the lottery. In the event, Limbaugh’s birth date was selected 152nd in the 1970 draft lottery, and since the highest lottery number ultimately called for that group was 125, he wouldn’t have been drafted in 1971 no matter what his classification.) When asked about this issue in more recent years, Limbaugh has dismissed it as “Internet BS,” as in this excerpt from a transcript of a December 2002 call to his radio program:  CALLER: And Rush you never mentioned how you dodged the Vietnam draft. LIMBAUGH: I didn’t. CALLER: Yes, you did. You claimed you had a boil on your butt … LIMBAUGH: No, you see, that’s part of popular mythology that is out there that I have not whined nor complained about, Greg. But that is just a bunch of internet BS and hyperbole. Never happened. Was not the cause, wasn’t the case. These kinds of responses, provided by Limbaugh on his show and available on the rushlimbaugh.com web site, sounded unconvincing. Why not just give a straightforward answer to the question? After all, “I had a knee injury” is a simple explanation (and hardly an embarrassing one), but dismissing the issue as “Internet BS” and railing against “Internet conspiracy theories” sound too much like the response of someone who is evading the question. Instead, Limbaugh provided non-responsive “answers” when queries about his draft status were posed by quickly steering the focus away from himself and claiming that “the message is that unless you’ve been a member of the military, you have no right to support it.” Of course, that wasn’t the message at all: the message was about whether it’s hypocritical for those who themselves avoided the draft to criticize others who also did.


Immigration authorities are taking rosaries away from immigrants at the border.

Explanation: What's true: Immigration authorities confiscate personal belongings of immigrants when they are arrested. What's false: Authorities do not specifically target rosaries, but the religious beads are among other belongings confiscated when immigrants are taken into custody.

In late May 2018, amid controversies over “zero tolerance” positions on immigration taken by the administration of United States President Donald Trump, social media users began sharing an image of rosaries taken by immigration authorities at the border: Rosaries confiscated from undocumented migrants by US border patrol agents. From a story in the @NewYorker https://t.co/lmVmPzM04f pic.twitter.com/n7iABgKFbY — Michael J. O’Loughlin (@MikeOLoughlin) March 20, 2017  The image went viral amid swelling outrage over the ongoing treatment of migrants in the United States and those seeking refuge and asylum within its borders. In April 2018, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new policy in which the government would pursue criminal charges against any migrant caught making an unauthorized border crossing and take their accompanying children away from them. Since then, readers have been angered by stories of the federal government failing to account for hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children, and reports that hundreds of children — including dozens under age 4 — had been removed from their parents’ care by immigration agents. However, this was not a new image as of 2018. It was taken from a gallery published along with a 12 March 2017 story in The New Yorker and depicts the work of photographer Thomas Kiefer, who used to work as a janitor for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Ajo, Arizona. The rosaries, he explained, were taken from immigrants along with other personal effects when they were arrested by border agents. Kiefer, who quit his CBP job in 2014, fished the unclaimed items out of trash cans as he cleaned. They would later become part of a photography collection he called “El Sueño Americano”: Spending time with the confiscated items — collecting them, curating them, looking at them, photographing them — changed Kiefer’s relationship to his job. Before, he’d been punching the clock so that he could get back to photography; now he felt awakened to hundreds of human dramas playing out around him during each shift. He’d always known, technically, about the C.B.P.’s strict confiscation policies, which were posted on bilingual signs and applied to all items classified as either “non-essential” or “potentially lethal.” But he hadn’t spent much time thinking about these policies, and he hadn’t realized how broadly they were applied, or just how many of the confiscated items — including cell phones and wallets, many still containing I.D.s, prepaid debit cards, and cash — were ending up in the trash, never to be returned. Increasingly, Kiefer felt uncomfortable at work: angry at the system that employed him, sad for the people being “processed,” and afraid that he would be caught making off with government property. But he kept sneaking out what he could, kept building his piles, and kept taking pictures, which at first he showed to no one. CBP spokesman Carlos Diaz told us that items taken away from immigrants upon arrest can be returned if the owner retrieves them — but according to immigrant advocacy organization No More Deaths, many never see their belongings again. According to a 2014 report authored by the organization: The failure to return peoples’ belongings upon deportation represents one more way that ICE and CBP have failed to uphold basic law enforcement standards and human rights norms in their rush to expand the United States’ detention and deportation apparatus. Items taken may include religious effects, but as No More Deaths points out, they include almost anything but the clothing being worn. Generally, personal property is held for 30 days after an arrest and then destroyed. In 2016, David Hill, a volunteer for No More Deaths who is tasked with helping reunite deported migrants with property taken by authorities described to the publication Vice a wide range of confiscated items: “weddings rings, rosaries, and children’s artwork” along with identification cards, money, cell phones and medication: Due to the 30-day rule and the potential for belongings to be lost between agencies involved, immigrants are regularly deported with only the clothes on their back. No cellphones, no ID, no cash. We asked CBP for more detail on their policy on confiscation of personal belongings and how items are returned but did not receive a response.


Explanation: Meek accuses Rubio of wanting government out of health care

The day before the U.S. House of Representatives approved the health care reform bill, Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who is running for the U.S. Senate, fired off this accusation about the Republican frontrunner: "Marco Rubio thinks that government shouldn't be in the health care business at all. "Meek made that statement on his campaign Web site March 20, 2010 -- the day before the historic vote. Here is the full quote: Rubio's "ideas on health care could jeopardize Medicare and veterans' care, programs which cover more than 5 million Floridians. Marco Rubio thinks that government shouldn't be in the health care business at all. That means these programs could be shut down. Moreover, his obstruction of the current health care bill means we could lose our best chance ever to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions and to close the Medicare prescription drug coverage 'donut hole.' That's what he stands for. If he were in the Senate he would lead the charge to scrap health care reform. If elected, he has sworn to do everything he can to repeal it. "Meek has leveled a sweeping claim that Rubio thinks government should get out of the health care business entirely -- in a state where millions of voters depend on government health care such as Medicare and veterans programs. We know that Rubio is against the Democratic-led health care reform plan that the House approved March 21, but is it fair to say he wants government out of health care entirely?Meek's e-mail cites two sources: an article "Scrap Obamacare Today" written by Rubio on March 15, in Human Events, a conservative publication, and a blog item in The Buzz, a St. Petersburg Times politics blog. Both quote Rubio criticizing the health care proposal. "The President’s health care proposal is a deeply flawed plan that should be scrapped entirely in favor of a truly bipartisan approach that pursues step-by-step reforms,'' Rubio wrote in Human Events March 15. Meek's campaign also cited a March 3 press release from Rubio in which he spoke against "government-run health care. ""Unfortunately, my opponent [Charlie Crist] disagrees and has said he would not scrap this bill and process. It underscores why, fundamentally, this campaign is about trust. It’s about who Floridians can trust to go to Washington to unapologetically stand on principle against ideas like the stimulus, cap-and-trade and government-run health care," Rubio said in the press release. The Meek campaign's logic is that Rubio's use of "government-run health care" in that paragraph has a broader meaning that indicates he's not just against the Obama reform plan, he's against all government health programs.Meek's campaign also cited Rubio's vote in the Florida House of Representatives April 6, 2006, against a Democratic amendment to an appropriations bill that reduced contract services by $5 million and included funding for a dental program for veterans. The Meek campaign also cited three Rubio votes on the Cover Florida state health care initiative requiring coverage for prenatal care and prostate screening and mammograms. All three amendments, introduced by Democrat Dan Gelber, ultimately failed and Rubio voted against them. Rubio voted in favor of the overall bill. But we find those citations are flimsy evidence for a big, sweeping claim that could alarm Florida voters, particularly senior citizens. In our view it's clear that "government-run health care" was referring to the Obama plan and it doesn't prove that Rubio is against programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.Rubio's campaign also provided us with some evidence that he does believe government has a role in health care:* Rubio wrote an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel Dec. 3, 2009, about the proposed health care bill that indicated he was concerned about cuts in Medicare: "The bill also would expand a financially unsustainable Medicaid entitlement program that is already straining state budgets. And it would fundamentally hurt Medicare by taking away access to Medicare Advantage plans and installing a new government bureaucracy to oversee Medicare reimbursements. "* In 2000, Rubio was part of a unanimous vote in favor of hearing screening for newborns and a unanimous vote related to expanding Kidcare, a health program for poor children. In 2004, Rubio voted in favor of changes to Kidcare. He also voted for changes to the Kidcare program in 2004 fought by Democrats because of changes to eligibility requirements.Our own search turned up a few other examples that showed that Rubio has supported certain health care programs or proposals.In a Feb. 19 interview on Morning Joe, Rubio said Medicare "needs to be reformed," but did not provide details.Rubio supported expanding Florida's controversial Medicaid reform, which was initiated by former Gov. Jeb Bush in an effort to allow private companies to compete to provide serves for the poor, with the hope that it would slow growth in costs.Rubio was quoted in a March 6, 2008, Miami Herald article about the rising costs of Medicaid and the need to save it: "Florida simply cannot afford to continue doing business like we are currently. In order to save the Medicaid system, continuing reform is vital. Expanding Medicaid Reform into Miami-Dade County is an important step in creating a system that can survive and is a step that we should enact this session. "In addition, Rubio supported a budget in 2008 that included an estimated $15.7 billion for Medicaid from federal and state sources, according to Florida's Medicaid expenditure estimating conference. Here is a list that shows Medicaid expenditures over several sessions when Rubio was in the House. Someone who believed government "shouldn't be in the health care business at all" wouldn't be supporting Medicaid.Another piece of evidence: A budget list compiled by the governor's office shows Rubio supported money for Jackson Memorial Hospital, a public hospital. "The budget list also links Rubio to a $20 million special line item for Jackson Memorial Hospital in 2008. Months later, Rubio established a consulting firm with a former aide and scored an $8,000 monthly consulting contract with the hospital,'' the Miami Herald wrote in a March 10 article.The Meek campaign has failed to prove its claim. Rubio clearly has spoken against the federal health care bill, which he has repeatedly referred to as a "government takeover" of health care (a characterization we've repeatedly rated ). But Rubio's votes and his comments indicate he has supported government health programs such as Medicaid. Lambasting a health care reform bill isn't the same as declaring that "government shouldn't be in the health care business at all."


5 convicted in meningitis outbreak case; 1 acquitted.

Explanation: Four former employees and an owner of the Massachusetts facility responsible for a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that has killed more than 100 people and sickened hundreds were convicted Thursday of fraud and other offenses.

Meningitis, Health, Boston, North America, Massachusetts

A Boston jury acquitted another employee, pharmacist Joseph Evanosky, of all charges after several days of deliberations. The defendants were among 14 people charged in 2014 following an investigation into the outbreak, which sickened almost 800 people. The CDC put the death toll at 64 as of October 2013. Federal prosecutors say more than 100 people have now died. The outbreak was blamed on contaminated injections of medical steroids made at the now-closed New England Compounding Center in Framingham, given mostly to people with back pain. Prosecutors said the New England Compounding Center made drugs in unsanitary conditions, sent untested products and deceived regulators. The workers convicted Thursday were not accused of producing or sending the injections that caused the outbreak, but of sending and approving other contaminated and substandard drugs. “Over the course of years, the defendants callously disregarded patient health by cutting corners and prioritizing profits over safety. And they got away with it by defrauding federal and state regulators,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement. Evanosky, who worked in one of the compounding pharmacy’s so-called clean rooms, where the drugs were made, was cleared of racketeering and other offenses. “He was an innocent man who never should have been charged in the first place,” said his attorney, Mark Pearlstein. Among those found guilty was part owner Gregory Conigliaro, who was charged with conspiring to defraud the Food and Drug Administration. His lawyer declined to comment. Pharmacist Gene Svirskiy was the only defendant convicted of the most serious charge of racketeering. An email requesting comment was sent to a lawyer for Svirskiy, who was also found guilty of mail fraud charges. Other defendants, including pharmacist Christopher Leary, were acquitted of several counts but convicted of others. Leary’s attorney, Paul V. Kelly, said the legal team plans to file post-trial motions and will appeal if necessary. Attorney John Cunha Jr. blasted prosecutors for bringing what he called an “outrageous” case against his client, pharmacist Alla Stepanets. Stepanets, who was accused of approving drug shipments with fake patient names like “Donald Trump,” was found guilty only of misdemeanor charges. “The number of not guiltys shows you how severely overcharged this case was,” Cunha said. So far, 11 people charged in the meningitis outbreak investigation have been convicted. Two other pharmacists are scheduled to go to trial next year. In January, Glenn Chin, a supervisory pharmacist, was sentenced to eight years in prison after he was convicted of racketeering and mail fraud. He was cleared of second-degree murder charges, which could have brought a life sentence. Co-Owner Barry Cadden is serving a nine-year prison term for his role in the outbreak. He was also acquitted of second-degree murder. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect that more than 100 people have died as of December 2018, not 76. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/aedurkinricher


A list compiles Andy Rooney's wry observations on a variety of topics.

Explanation: So, to whom should this be properly attributed? Although we might swear that at least of few of these items are things we’ve heard Andy Rooney say, this isn’t his work. Nor is it the work of humorist George Carlin (another personality commonly given credit for political humor of uncertain origin), to whom these witticisms are also often attributed. Everything here (except the first two jokes) springs from the creative mind of comedian Sean Morey, who has performed all of these bits during several appearances on the Tonight Show and in radio and live shows across the U.S.

Politics Soapbox, andy rooney, misquotes

Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly commentator who closed every Sunday broadcast of television’s 60 Minutes news magazine with a (typically sardonic) essay about some aspect of everyday life, was — thanks to the Internet — as well-known for what he didn’t say as he was for what he really did say. One compilation of various political observations we previously covered was a prime example of widely-circulated Andy Rooney apocrypha, as was the following example from 2003:  Andy Rooney on Monica:Can you believe it? Monica turned 28 this week. It seems like only yesterday that she was crawling round the White House on her hands and knees. Andy Rooney on Vegetarians: Vegetarian — that’s an old Indian word meaning “lousy hunter.” Andy Rooney on Prisoners: Did you know that it costs forty-thousand dollars a year to house each prisoner? Gee, for forty-thousand bucks apiece, I’ll take a few prisoners into my house. I live in Los Angeles. I already have bars on the windows. I don’t think we should give free room and board to criminals. I think they should have to run twelve hours a day on a treadmill and generate electricity. And if they don’t want to run, they can rest in the chair that’s hooked up to the generator. Andy Rooney on Fabric Softeners: My wife uses fabric softener. I never knew what that stuff was for. Then I noticed women coming up to me, sniffing, then saying under their breath, “Married!” and walking away. Fabric Softeners are how our wives mark their territory. We can take off the ring, but it’s hard to get that April fresh scent out of your clothes. Andy Rooney on Morning Differences: Men and women are different in the morning. We men wake up aroused in the morning. We can’t help it. We just wake up and we want you. And the women are thinking, ‘How can he want me the way I look in the morning?’ It’s because we can’t see you. We have no blood anywhere near our optic nerve. Andy Rooney on Phone-in-Polls: You know those shows where people call in and vote on different issues? Did you ever notice there’s always like 18% “I don’t know”. It costs 90 cents to call up and vote . . . They’re voting “I don’t know.” “Honey, I feel very strongly about this. Give me the phone. (Into phone) I DON’T KNOW! (hangs up, looking proud) Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe you’re not sure about.” This guy probably calls up phone sex girls for $2.95. (into phone) “I’m not in the mood.” Andy Rooney on Cripes: My wife’s from the midwest. Very nice people there. Very wholesome. They use words like ‘Cripes’ — ‘For Cripes sake.’ Who would that be; Jesus Cripes? The son of ‘Gosh’ of the church of ‘Holy Moly’? I’m not making fun of it. You think I wanna burn in ‘Heck’? Andy Rooney on Grandma: My grandmother has a bumper sticker on her car that says, ‘Sexy Senior Citizen.’ You don’t want to think of your grandmother that way, do you? Out entering wet shawl contests. Makes you wonder where she got that dollar she gave you for your birthday. Andy Rooney on Answering Machines: Did you ever hear one of those corny, positive messages on someone’s answering machine? “Hi! It’s a great day and I’m out enjoying it right now. I hope you are too. The thought for the day is ‘Share the love. '” Beep. “Uh, yeah . . . this is the VD clinic calling . . . Speaking of being positive, your test is back. Stop sharing the love.” There were some quick giveaways that not everything on this list came from the pen of Andy Rooney: making risqué jokes about Monica Lewinsky and “morning arousals” just wasn’t his style; he wouldn’t have written “I live in Los Angeles” since he was a long-time east coast resident; and was well into his 80s at the time this piece began to circulate, so he was not likely to have been speaking of his grandmother in the present tense. (Of course, Mr. Rooney did have a lengthy career as a writer, so some of these items could conceivably have come from his older pieces.) Like most items of this ilk, this list circulated for many years, with new items being added and others dropped off as it trudged from inbox to inbox. The first two entries (about Monica Lewinsky and vegetarians) are common jokes tacked on much later; at other times the list included some or all of the following additional entries:  Award Shows: Can you believe how many award shows they have now? They have awards for commercials. The Cleo Awards. A whole show full of commercials. I taped it and then I fast-forwarded through the whole thing. Pregnancy: It’s weird when pregnant women feel the baby kicking. They say, “Oh my God. He’s kicking. Do you wanna feel it?” I always feel awkward reaching over there. Come on! It’s weird to ask someone to feel your stomach. I don’t do that when I have gas. “Oh my God … give me your hand … It won’t be long now …” Ads in Bills: Have you ever noticed that they put advertisements in with your bills now? Like bills aren’t distasteful enough, they have to stuff junk mail in there with them. I get back at them. I put garbage in with my check when I mail it in. Coffee grinds, banana peels … I write, “Could you throw this away for me? Thank you.” Life Cycle: The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. And what do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, then you got to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, get laid, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating in warm liquid … and you check out as a gleam in somebody’s eye!


“The flu killed 80,000 Americans last year according to the CDC.”

Explanation: Two years ago, the CDC initially reported 80,000 deaths during the 2017-18 influenza season, the most in four decades   The CDC later revised its estimate down to 61,000 deaths for that season, though news headlines still include the higher figure    Last year, the CDC reported 34,000 deaths for the 2018-19 influenza season

Economy, Health Care, Public Health, California, Tom McClintock,

Republican Congressman Tom McClintock has expressed a lot of skepticism over the threat of COVID-19. He’s also described stay-at-home orders intended to slow the novel coronavirus as "profoundly un-American." "The more data we receive, the more questions come up over this policy, including how severe is this disease actually?" McClintock, who represents a large swath of rural California east of Sacramento, said on CapRadio’s Insight program on April 29. "Does it justify destroying the jobs of millions of Californians? How many poverty-related deaths have we set into motion by plunging Californians into unemployment?" McClintock then claimed: "The flu killed 80,000 Americans last year according to the CDC." Similar statements about the flu are circulating on social media, in apparent efforts to downplay or question the threat of COVID-19. There’s a lot that’s still unknown about the coronavirus, and plenty of time to judge whether California’s actions helped or not. But the data on how many Americans died from the flu is pretty clear. We decided to take a look and fact check McClintock’s claim. Our research A spokesperson for McClintock initially pointed to a September 2018 Associated Press article headlined "CDC: 80,000 people died of flu last winter in U.S., highest death toll in 40 years." The article cited Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the source of the information. It described the disease’s death toll as the highest in at least four decades. That total referred to the 2017-18 influenza season, which was two years ago. Notably, the CDC revised it down to 61,000 deaths, though many news articles still have the now out-dated 80,000 figure in their headlines. The CDC explained on its website the lower number is "based on more recently available information," and said there’s "a trade-off between timeliness and accuracy," when it publishes its initial estimates. Last year, the CDC tallied 34,000 deaths during the 2018-19 influenza season, nowhere near McClintock’s figure. McClintock's spokesperson said the congressman, at the time he made his statement, had not noticed the date of the news article. She said "it has since been brought to his attention that the CDC later revised its number to 61,000." In early March, PolitiFact National spoke with infectious disease experts who cautioned against comparing the flu and COVID-19. McClintock’s claim about flu deaths suggests he believes the coronavirus threat is overblown. "The prevalence of flu is higher at this moment in time," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, in the March 10 article. "[But] pound for pound, if you had both viruses, the one that’s more likely to make you die is the coronavirus." Experts told PolitiFact in early May that COVID-19 still appears more lethal than the seasonal flu, noting that infection fatality rates that may seem small can lead to mounting death tolls. As of May 5, COVID-19 had killed 70,847 Americans, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker. Our rating Rep. Tom McClintock claimed "the flu killed 80,000 Americans last year, according to the CDC." In reality, 34,000 Americans died of the flu during the 2018-19 influenza season, according to the federal agency. McClintock said he relied on a 2018 news article, which cited the CDC’s initial estimate of 80,000 deaths for the 2017-18 influenza season, a figure the agency later revised down to 61,000 deaths. The outdated figure remains in many 2018 news headlines. In the end, the congressman cited the wrong year and failed to note that a significant downward revision had been made, making his claim misleading at best. The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.


Taiwan's 'holy pig' festival cruel, says rights group.

Explanation: The winner of Taiwan’s “holy pig” ceremony on Thursday defended the lunar new year tradition against critics who argue the fattened animals are raised under cruel conditions.

The ceremony harkens back to a time when early Chinese settlers to Taiwan used to pray to mountain gods and local deities for protection against wild animals and other threats. Each new year, the fattened pigs are slaughtered and the carcasses decorated and paraded through the streets of Sanxia, a traditional district in northern Taiwan, to the temple. The owner of the biggest pig wins the competition and with it an auspicious sign that the year to come will be a lucky one. “This is a custom at our Tzu Shih Yeh (founder ancestor) temple in Sanxia. We cannot abolish this tradition,” said Liu Ching-sheng, owner of this year’s winning pig. Animal protection groups say the process of fattening the animals — a pig raised for the ceremony can weigh more than 800 kg (1763 lbs) compared to a normal weight of 120 kg — is cruel. “Just like for us humans, obesity in animals is a disease,” Chen Yu-min, director of the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan, told Reuters Television. She said the pigs’ movements are restricted while they are fattened and the additional weight puts a strain on their internal organs. “In addition to the inhumane process of fattening is the last moment when they are about to be slaughtered. This moment is actually very cruel and inhumane,” she said.


For thousands of public employees, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill would "take away any say they have in the workplace, and eliminate their union.

Explanation: Wisconsin AFL-CIO says Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill would take away all rights in the workplace for public employees

Labor, State Budget, Wisconsin, AFL-CIO,

Labor experts agree that Gov. Scott Walker’s move to curtail collective bargaining rights for public employees is a dramatic departure from Wisconsin’s labor-friendly past. The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO has launched TV and radio spots condemning the plan while the Wisconsin Club for Growth is airing a TV ad supporting the changes. We’ll look at the Club for Growth ad in a separate item. The TV ad from the AFL-CIO centers on this message, delivered by a narrator:  "There’s now a move under way in Madison to take away the rights of thousands of teachers, nurses and other trusted public employees. A bill to take away any say they have in the workplace, and eliminate their union." The visual backdrop includes lines from news articles about Walker’s plan. Among the snippets: A  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story that reads Walker’s plan would eliminate "any say on benefits and work rules" and an Associated Press story that reads "all collective bargaining rights would be removed for state and local public employees." Is the ad correct that the plan would "eliminate" union representation for thousands and wipe out "any say" they have through collective bargaining. When asked to back up the claims, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale cited a Wheeler Report analysis that summarizes the budget-repair bill. Let’s take a deeper look at claim. Most of the debate has focused on what bargaining rights will be curtailed and the overall effect of the plan. Digging deeper, the bill does eliminate all bargaining rights -- wages, benefits, working conditions -- for specific categories of public employees. It would roll back the rights to organize unions and bargain for benefits for 30,000 University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff. Those rights were approved by Democrats in the 2009-'11 budget. Not all of the 30,000 have joined a union, though. So far, under those rights, faculty at two universities, UW-Superior and UW-Eau Claire, have formed unions. The measure would also repeal collective bargaining rights for some 5,000 home health care workers and for 2,800 employees of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, including nurses. It would also eliminate current collective bargaining rights of licensed child care providers. All of that is also discussed in summaries of the bill and a letter from Walker to state employees. As for the other public employees -- a much larger group that includes schoolteachers, local government workers and about half of 76,000 state employees -- the bill would allow collective bargaining only on a base pay rate (not overtime or special pay issues), and on raises only within the rate of inflation. That means no bargaining on fringe benefits, working conditions, outsourcing, safety and other issues. So, the TV ad is correct on many of its main points. But it also overreaches. For instance, it suggests that the outright elimination of bargaining rights would cover all public employees. But they would not be completely eliminated for teachers outside of higher education, one group cited. Or for all "other trusted public employees." Indeed, the ad does not mention that there would be no change for firefighters, police and state trooper unions -- a fact that has drawn its own criticism. (Firefighters are part of AFL-CIO; police are not.) That incomplete information is underlined when the ad flashes a portion of a Feb. 10, 2011, Associated Press story, highlighting the words: "All collective bargaining rights would be removed for state and local public employees." That’s a selectively edited version of the AP story, which added a significant phrase to that line: "except when it comes to wages." The effect is to make Walker’s sweeping plan look even bolder. Let’s look at the rest of the message as presented in the ad. Would workers "take away any say" in the workplace, as the ad claims? Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said public employees would continue to have a say on working conditions -- not through unions, but through civil service laws. He noted those laws contain ways to file workplace grievances, and ensure employees are hired based on merit and experience, and are fired only for just cause. But civil service systems are not in place at all Wisconsin municipalities and leave a lot of workers uncovered, according to Andrew Phillips, general counsel for the Wisconsin Counties Association. For instance, about one-third of counties have no civil service system, and of the two-thirds that do, many only apply to deputy sheriffs, he said. The Legislature was considering changes to address this. What about the question of whether the unions would be eliminated? Clearly, some workers would have the right to organize directly eliminated, while many others would not. Bloomingdale, the AFL-CIO official, acknowledges that the bill before the Legislature does not directly eliminate all subjects of collective bargaining -- but nearly all of them. She argues the bill’s provisions overall discredit the unions’ role and therefore endanger them. One example she cites: Raises for unionized workers would be capped at inflation, but pay for nonunion employees is not. That disparity would hurt union membership, Bloomingdale said. Other aspects of the bill: As Walker noted in his letter, employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues on behalf of the unions, members of collective bargaining units will not be required to pay dues, and there would have to be a vote every year on the status of the union. We asked experts including academics and lawyers on both sides of labor-management talks about the assertion that  -- on a practical basis -- the plan would mean the death of public employee unions. James Scott, a management-side attorney who represents Milwaukee County, said the changes are dramatic, but not unprecedented. He said nine states totally prohibit collective bargaining for public employees, and 10 others restrict it to police/fire, or teachers or state employees. His view of how life would be under the proposal:  "There isn’t much utility in belonging to a public sector labor union other than perhaps the social side of it," Scott said. He said calling it a death knell for unions might be "a little bit" too strong, but not much. Timothy Hawks, whose law firm represents municipal and state employees, said if the bill goes through as drafted "you have busted every (public employee) union in the state." A state official with a stake in both sides of labor disputes, Peter Davis, general counsel at the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, said it was a "fair prediction" public sector workers would walk away from paying dues. Cheryl Maranto, chairman of the management department at Marquette University’s College of Business Administration, said the bill would have the effect of "totally eliminating public sector bargaining in the state" by rendering the unions "irrelevant and powerless." In the historical view, she said Walker’s Democratic predecessor, Jim Doyle, overreached with pro-union moves and now Walker is going too far in the opposite direction. Let’s get to the bottom line. The AFL-CIO ad claims "thousands" of workers, including teachers, would lose all say in the workplace and see their union eliminated under Walker’s budget-repair bill. The measure would eliminate bargaining rights for some groups of public employees, including nurses and teachers in higher education. That total tallies out to "thousands," but the ad presents the question as if all public employees would lose all bargaining rights. It even selectively shortens a news account to underline this point. That is an overreach, at least as an immediate consequence of the bill. As for the future, three of our four experts agreed with the union contention that it could be the end result in the future. The fourth felt it was only a small stretch. The PolitiFact definition for  is: The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. That’s what this ad does. And that’s the ruling: .


An image shows reported cases of "flesh eating bacteria" in 2019.

Explanation: 2019 ‘Reported Cases of Flesh Eating Bacteria’ Map on Facebook

On July 17 2019, a Facebook user shared a post (archived here), claiming an image of a map plotted the locations of “reported cases of flesh eating bacteria” that summer.In the status update, the user wrote:I will no longer be going to the beach or on the sand. *There also asking woman not to shave there legs for 2 days before they go to the beach because if u have any type of cut u will get it.A lady got it just on the sand.This stuff is Horrible!A number of people responded with similar vows to avoid beaches based on the alarming map.We searched to see if the map originated with any news stories about dangerous levels of “flesh eating bacteria” at Gulf Coast beaches, and found versions of the same map shared as early as 2010. Both TinEye and Google Image Search returned a mixture of results.However, earlier iterations of the map were attached to content related to a British Petroleum oil spill in April 2010. Google suggested “flesh eating bacteria Florida 2017 map” as a name for the image, indicating that the map was mislabeled as early as 2017:It is true that some counties in Florida have experienced an uptick in cases of an illness mislabeled as “flesh-eating disease,” and public health officials attributed the infections to water pollution:Vibrio vulnificus infections aren’t the type of thing the region’s paradise promoters necessarily want to talk about, yet there were more potentially deadly cases documented in Lee and Collier counties last year than anywhere else in Florida.It’s commonly called flesh-eating disease, a not-quite-accurate nickname that makes public health officials cringe, because the microbes that cause it don’t really eat people; the toxins they produce can destroy soft tissue, and, in serious cases, cause death. Symptoms after contact include: chills, fever, swelling, blistering, skin lesions, severe pain, low blood pressure and discharge from wound. Without treatment, death can occur in just a few days.Since 2008, Vibrio vulnificus has infected 346 people in Florida, killing 99 — more than 28 percent of those who contracted the disease. Last year, the bacteria infected 49 people in Florida, killing 11 of them, which is one more death and three more infections over 2016.However, officials also noted that the risk of infection remains extremely rare for most people:Even though the chance of getting a Vibrio infection is about the same as getting hit by lightning, some environmental advocates worry it might become even more common if water pollution isn’t curbed.The Facebook map indicated numerous cases of the illness ranging from Florida’s coasts across to Texas, including Louisiana. On August 1 2019, People reported on the grand total of cases in the United States that year:Of the reported cases [in 2019], seven occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, where flesh-eating bacteria, especially the vibrio species, have thrived for years because of the year-round warm waters. In April, a man fishing in Ozona, Florida, contracted the bacteria. Two months later, the same thing happened to a 12-year-old girl vacationing in Destin, Florida. Just a few days later, a 77-year-old woman died after walking along Coquina Beach on Anna Maria Island in the same state.After the Fourth of July weekend, five people developed flesh-eating bacteria — a man in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, a woman in California, and two men who died from necrotizing fasciitis, one in Okaloosa County, Florida and another on Magnolia Beach in Texas.Cases from other areas include one in Waterloo, Alabama, along the Tennessee River, another at Ocean View Beach near Norfolk, Virginia, one at Colonial Beach in Virginia, on the Potomac River, one on Ocean City, Maryland’s bay side and another from the Green River in Kentucky.The “reported cases of flesh eating bacteria” map spreading in 2019 was a map created in 2010 in relation to the BP oil spill. Cases of the bacterial infections were reported across the United States, but they were far fewer in number than the map suggested. Officials indicated that chances of contracting an infection from the water for most people remain very low.


Some grocery store receipts contain chemicals linked to infertility and hormone-related cancers.

Explanation: To determine the extent of BPA and its chemical cousin, bisphenol S (BPS), in thermal paper, a team of researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) analyzed more than 100 receipts and tickets collected from Brazil, Spain, and France — an admittedly small sample size. More than 90% of the receipts collected in the former two countries were shown to contain BPA, compared with about half of those obtained in France. However, many receipts in France contained higher concentrations of BPS, which may also impact the endocrine system.

Grocery store receipts are rumored to contain chemicals that may disrupt the endocrine system and have been linked in scientific studies to hormone-related cancers and other health concerns. This claim is true. Three-quarters of receipts made from thermal paper are thought to contain bisphenol A (BPA), a known endocrine disrupter that has been linked to infertility and hormone-related cancers, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Environmental Research.


FDA advisory panel backs Merck's blood clot-preventing drug.

Explanation: Merck & Co Inc’s experimental blood clot-preventing drug vorapaxar should be approved to reduce the risk of further heart problems in people who have suffered a recent heart attack, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded on Wednesday.

The panel voted 10-1 in favor of the drug, which would, if approved, be sold under the brand name Zontivity. The FDA is not bound to follow the advice of its advisory panels but typically does so. Results from a trial known as TRA 2P were “robust,” panelists said, and justified approval for patients who had suffered a heart attack. They agreed with the company that the drug should not be used in patients with a history of stroke, since there was an increased risk of bleeding in the brain in this group of patients. “I think this drug addresses a real unmet medical need,” said Dr. Philip Sager, consulting professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. The vote followed a positive analysis by reviewers for the FDA, whose report, published on Monday, also recommended the drug be approved. Vorapaxar works by preventing blood cells, or platelets, from clumping together and forming clots in the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. Other anti-platelets include aspirin and Plavix, which is made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Merck’s drug works in a different way, by inhibiting a receptor known as PAR-1. The drug increased the overall risk of bleeding in clinical trials, though the risk in patients who had not had a stroke did not outweigh the drug’s benefit, panelists said. Still, Dr. Sanjay Kaul, a cardiologist and professor at UCLA School of Medicine who voted in favor of approval, urged the FDA to “do its due diligence” around the bleeding risk. Each year about 190,000 Americans have a second heart-related event, according to Merck. Standard therapy to prevent a second episode often includes treatment with aspirin and Plavix. Vorapaxar would be given in addition to standard treatment. “The results of today’s advisory committee mark an important milestone in our effort to bring vorapaxar to appropriate patients with a history of heart attack,” Dr. Daniel Bloomfield, who leads Merck’s cardiovascular research, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the FDA as it completes its review.”  Merck has proposed that the drug’s label urge caution when prescribing the drug for patients who weigh less than 60 kilograms (132 lbs) since the risk of bleeding in these patients appears to be higher than in heavier patients. Panelists could not reach a consensus recommendation on how lower-weight patients should be treated. Representatives from the FDA said they will continue to discuss the matter before making their final ruling.


Over a dozen arrests in SC following 4th Poor People’s Rally.

Explanation: Protesters with the Poor People’s Campaign were back at South Carolina’s Statehouse on Monday, this time blocking a major road while demanding universal health care.

Columbia, Health, Universal health care, Arrests, Medicaid, South Carolina

About a dozen people were arrested. Nearly two dozen people participated in a “lie-in,” calling for a “moral revival” of the health care system and an immediate expansion of Medicaid. Following that protest, about a dozen demonstrators blocked U.S. Highway 1 in front of the capitol and were arrested by Columbia police. Those arrested were holding two signs, one of which read “Death Runs the Statehouse,” while the other read “Our Blood Your Hands!” Columbia minister Charles Rhodes, one of the arrested protesters, said it’s time for clergy and citizens alike to take a stand against what he called moral wrongs. “There are people who are burdened by the cost of medical care,” Rhodes said. “One party has tried to destroy Obamacare and that impacts poor people, the elderly, a whole variety of people.” At the rally, physician David Keely of Rock Hill told protesters to question their local lawmakers about their stance on health care and demand answers before the June 12 primaries and November general elections. “In my 40 years of primary care medicine, I’ve taken care of many individuals that if we were able to keep them on preventative medications, we would have prevented heart attacks or strokes,” Keely said. The public health professional said South Carolina has an “incredible waste” in the health care system that is benefiting people with higher income. There are significant health disparities compared to people with a lower income, Keely said. The Rev. William Barber, campaign president and co-chair, told The Associated Press ahead of last week’s rally in North Carolina that South Carolina lawmakers are creating “policy violence.” “When you have a legislature and governor that is blocking living wages and health care expansion, those policies produce death,” Barber said. Monday’s rally was the fourth recent one in Columbia and one of several held at state capitols nationwide. The 40-day nonviolent national campaign will conclude in two weeks with a rally in Washington.


The Black Panther Party created the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program that provides supplemental food assistance to single mothers and their children.

Explanation: It is a fact, in any case, that the number of meals served to children in the federal school breakfast program quadrupled between 1968 and 1972. It’s not implausible to suppose that the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Children program played at least an inspirational role in that effort.

History, african american history month, black history month, black panther party

The Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (known as WIC for short), a federal program that provides nutritional assistance to malnourished mothers and children, was enacted in 1972 as an amendment to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966. Initially funded as a two-year pilot program, WIC was permanently reauthorized by Congress in 1975 and today offers federal grants to states for “supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.” The program is administrated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Impetus for the legislation is usually credited to an accumulating body of research in the 1960s identifying hunger and malnutrition as a major national problem. A 1969 report by the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health concluded that hunger and poverty existed on a “disgraceful scale” across the United States, and urged the federal government to take immediate action to close the “hunger gap” among poorer Americans. After some pilot programs launched by the Nixon administration failed to produce the desired results, a bill containing the WIC amendment and improvements to existing school nutrition programs was passed by Congress in 1972. There is an alternative account of how WIC came about, however. According to this narrative,  the program grew out of (or was at least inspired by) organized efforts by the Black Panther Party (BPP) to help feed single mothers and their children in predominantly African-American communities in the late 1960s. Here it is in meme form, as posted in February 2017 recognition of Black History Month: Black Panthers Women Infant & Child – #BlackHistoryMonth –> https://t.co/ySsVWT2Jwo pic.twitter.com/ihT5riFDiK — AFROPUNK (@afropunk) February 13, 2017  One also finds the claim repeated on web sites such as Counter Current News and Urban Intellectuals, who cite as evidence a list of 65 community programs allegedly created by the Black Panthers during their heyday, including a “WIC (Women Infants, and Children) Program.” But though it’s easily corroborated that the Panthers launched a community food program in 1968 called Free Breakfast for Children, an effort some believe provided inspiration for the federal government’s school breakfast program (if not for WIC itself), we could find no evidence that the Panthers ever operated a program called WIC, or which bore any close resemblance to the USDA program. The roll-out of the Free Breakfast for Children program marked a turning point, however short-lived, in the Black Panthers’ public image. From its inception as an armed, revolutionary organization in 1966 (J. Edgar Hoover called BPP “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”), press coverage of the Panthers was overwhelmingly negative, focusing exclusively on their militant rhetoric and violent confrontations with police. The breakfast program provided the opportunity to show a kinder, gentler side of the party, albeit still fraught with revolutionary politics. The New York Times reported in June 1969: In the Bay Area, every chapter of the Black Panther Party is involved in providing free breakfasts for children. The project involves at least six cities in the state. “Right now,” Bobby Seale, chairman and co-founder of the party said last week, “we are feeding over 1,000 kids every day right here in the Bay Area.” Seale added that the program, which was also operating in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles, Kansas City and other major cities, feeds 10,000 children daily. […] In addition to what they can collect at the rallies and demonstrations, the Panthers also make the rounds of business establishments in the area. Their demand that merchants doing business in the black communities make contributions is firm. One large supermarket, Safeway, is now the target of a Panther-led boycott because, according to Seale, it refused to contribute $100 a week to the breakfast program. While the Panthers say that the program was initiated “to feed hungry children,” they make no effort to mask its political side. Most of the church basements and halls where the breakfasts are served have huge posters and pictures of Black Panther leaders and heroes of the black nationalist movement pasted on the walls. The “Free Huey” shouts are almost constant. “Free Huey” is a Panther slogan that refers to Huey Newton, one of the founders of the organization and its minister of defense who was jailed last year after a manslaughter conviction arising from the fatal shooting of an Oakland policeman. That it was partly a public relations effort doesn’t change the fact that the Panthers were providing a sorely needed service to impoverished children which could very well have provided the impetus for the federal government to step in. There is no doubt, moreover, that members of Congress charged with solving America’s hunger problem were aware of the free breakfast program. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs in May 1969, California legislator Jesse Unruh said, “The Black Panthers are supplying more free breakfasts to California school children than the federal government does.” It was intended (and no doubt heard) as a wake-up call. Still, it’s hard to make the case that the Panthers’ program served as an exact prototype for Sen. Hubert Humphrey’s WIC legislation, which was still three years away from being introduced in Congress. There were few real similarities between the programs. Although the Panthers launched other initiatives (including free medical clinics) to help people in various communities, the free breakfasts were for children alone. As its name implies, the federal government’s Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children was much broader in scope. Plus, it had nothing to do with serving breakfast. There was a separate USDA program for that. The federal School Breakfast Program was established under the Child Nutrition Act in 1966, and it had already been in operation for three years by the time the Black Panther Party instituted its community-based programs. That’s not to say that school breakfasts were an unqualified success, however. Partly because it met with political resistance and funding constraints, it took years for the federal program to ramp up to the point where it even came close to meeting the needs of the population it was meant to help. The Panthers helped expose the many shortcomings of that and other government food assistance programs. Historian Susan Levine, author of School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program, gives the Panthers their due in that regard, but noted in an interview with Eater.com that lobbying groups such as the Committee on School Lunch Participation likely had a greater effect on federal policy: “The Panthers were part of the general context in the late 1960s,” Levine says. “But I think CSLP was probably more specifically influential, because they actually went to Congress and testified, and their report got a lot of attention in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death.”


A photograph shows a dead man whose unwitting co-workers arranged a "funny selfie," believing he was just sleeping.

Explanation: Did a Man’s Co-Workers Inadvertently Pose with a ‘Sleeping’ Corpse?

On September 20 2019, a Facebook page shared the following screenshot of a purported headline: “Man suffers heart attack, dies at work, coworkers gather for group selﬁe thinking he’d fallen asleep”:In an appended status update, the page just commented “BRUH,” and no links to any related article were included. A search for the elusive headline turned up an iFunny.co post published on the same day as the Facebook status above.If the original headline (“Man suffers heart attack, dies at work, coworkers gather for group selﬁe thinking he’d fallen asleep”) ever existed, it didn’t return any search results and was likely quite old.But the attached image was a different story. On February 2 2016, it was shared to Reddit’s photoshopping subreddit r/PSBattles, with a title encouraging users to creatively edit “this man sleeping in the office in front of his co-workers”:PsBattle: This man sleeping in the office in front of his colleagues. from photoshopbattlesOn the same day, the same image appeared on Reddit’s r/TIFU (“Today I Fucked Up“), but that post has since been deleted:TIFU by falling asleep at the job on my second day from tifuOn February 3 2016, the Huffington Post covered what was at the time a viral news sensation. Two days later, CBC identified the sleeping man as an intern in Montreal, Canada:A Montreal intern woke up to a burst of laughter on his second day at a new job Tuesday after his co-workers had gathered around to take a now viral photo of him – with his mouth wide open, asleep at his desk.Eduard Paraschivescu has been undergoing training at a company called Gsoft that afternoon. He has a slight anemia, so when he felt tired, he leaned back in his chair and about 20 minutes later he realized he’d dozed off.One of the reasons he knew this was because his co-workers were around him when he woke up, laughing, and taking pictures and videos.He also found a message saying he should bring in doughnuts in the next day. He said he did, and that he hasn’t lost his job.But it was Paraschivescu himself who took the extra step of posting a photo on Reddit, where it was picked up by the PhotoshopBattles subreddit.A “Man suffers heart attack, dies at work, coworkers gather for group selﬁe thinking he’d fallen asleep” headline screenshot offers an object lesson in a common trajectory for “fake news” items and how they come to be. At some point in time, someone paired the viral “sleeping intern” photograph from 2016 with an outlandish and untrue headline reflecting an old urban legend about an office worker who had once remained dead and unnoticed at their desk for five days.In 2000 and 2001, that similar (and also false) claim circulated, reflective of fears that we are quite literally only “warm bodies” to employers — so much so that desk deaths could conceivably have no effect on whether our workplaces carry on without us. Its previous virality showed that the image itself is eye-catching and shareable, more so when paired with a compelling headline. However, a quick image search showed that the original photograph moved from one subreddit to another before becoming a viral hit on its own in 2016.


Swiss police arrest "healer" accused of infecting 16 with HIV.

Explanation: Swiss police have arrested a self-styled healer after he stopped attending a trial where he stands accused of infecting 16 people with HIV using acupuncture needles.

Swiss police said on Friday that they stormed the home of the 54-year-old man, who had barricaded himself inside, was armed with a knife and had issued repeated threats. An unidentified woman with him was also arrested. The man had been free on bail since August. His trial began on March 6, but he stopped turning up in court on Thursday. The case came to the attention of the Swiss authorities after an HIV-positive patient told a Berne hospital he had traced his infection back to acupuncture treatments carried out by the accused. The man has denied the charges. According to Swiss media, the majority of the infected individuals were students of a music school run by the man, who also ran an acupuncture practice. In accordance with Swiss criminal proceedings, the suspect’s identity has not been released.


A photograh showing a body of water with two distinct colors is a permanent location where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

Explanation: What's true: A photograph shows a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico created by the proximity of the Mississippi River. What's false: The two distinct colors in the photograph are not a natural or permanent fixture along the border of different bodies of water.

On 23 April 2016, a photograph purportedly showing “where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico” started circulating on Facebook along with the claim that these “two bodies of water never mix.” Subsequent postings of the image included an additional (misspelled) claim, that this lack of mixing is proof of God’s existence:  The Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. The two bodies of water never mix with each other; allowing the Gulf of Mexico to retain its clear, blue color. Simply amazing! That just proves that their is a GOD!!!! Who else can let WATER meet and touch but NEVER mix together???? #illwait   Although some viewers proclaimed that this visual effect was a beautiful creation of God, this image actually shows a man-made hypoxic event that is harmful to the environment. The image was actually taken from a video originally published by Marlin Magazine in November 2015:  This video captured a fluctuating dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused when high-nutrient water full of nitrogen and phosphorus from the Mississippi River pours into the Gulf. That leads to large algae blooms, altered food chains, and hypoxic (oxygen deficient) waters: Forty-one percent of the continental United States (1.2 million square miles) drains into the Mississippi River and then out to the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the land in Mississippi’s watershed is farm land. Seventy percent of nutrient loads that cause hypoxia are a result of agricultural runoff caused by rain washing fertilizer off of the land and into streams and rivers. Additionally, 12 million people live in urban areas that border the Mississippi, and these areas constantly discharge treated sewage into rivers. The farm and urban discharge includes nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous that is very important for the growth of phytoplankton. About 1.7 million tons of these nutrients are deliverd by rivers into the Gulf of Mexico every year. This huge influx of nutrients causes massive phytoplankton blooms to occur, this in turn leads to a large increase in zooplankton that feed on phytoplankton. Large amounts of dead phytoplankton and zooplankton waste then accumulate on the bottom of the seabed. The decomposition of this matter depletes the oxygen in the area faster than it can be replaced. This leads to large hypoxic areas called Dead Zones. These dead zones tend to occur in the summer and fluctuate in size. According to a fact sheet published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average size of the dead zone is around 6,000 square miles. While the above-quoted Facebook posts claim that these waters do not mix, they do — and the water from the Mississippi River has a major effect on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico: Nutrient overloading and algal blooms lead to eutrophication, which has been shown to reduce benthic biomass and biodiversity. Hypoxic water supports fewer organisms and has been linked to massive fish kills in the Black Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico is a major source area for the seafood industry. The Gulf supplies 72% of U.S. harvested shrimp, 66% of harvested oysters, and 16% of commercial fish (Potash and Phosphate Institutes of the U.S. and Canada, 1999). Consequently, if the hypoxic zone continues or worsens, fishermen and coastal state economies will be greatly impacted. The image at the top of this post also doesn’t show a static line drawn between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. While the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium called this dead zone a recurring environmental problem, the distinct color differences are not a permanent year-round fixture. While the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is man made, a similar aesthetic is achieved naturally in other parts of the world, such as the Gulf of Alaska, where glacial rivers mix with the ocean.


NASA and NOAA faked climate data in the GISTEMP global temperature record to exaggerate global warming.

Explanation: To suggest — 14 years after the fact — that identifying publicly discussed adjustments to raw data whose methods have been published in peer-reviewed journals represents catching scientists “red-handed” in “the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered” exposes only the ignorance of the author, not some nefarious sleight of hand by climate scientists. As such, the claim is rated “False.”

Since 2014, climate-change deniers have squeezed millions of views, Facebook shares, and Twitter retweets by retelling a story alleging the discovery of “faked” NASA data designed to “fit a climate change narrative.” Though copied almost wholesale from a blog post, the version of the story that has had the most online traction was published on the one-stop conspiracy theory/supplement shop that goes by the name Natural News. The article suggested: In what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a “climate change narrative” that defies reality. […] We now know that historical temperature data for the continental United States were deliberately altered by NASA and NOAA scientists in a politically-motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing U.S. temperatures to trend upward. There is a lot to unpack here, but the first thing you need to know is records of global surface temperatures are constantly refined based on the addition of new data, fresh statistical analyses, or new historical insight into the history of a specific source of data. Reporting on such a shift as something to “uncover” betrays a potentially willful ignorance of how climate science operates. These changes are publicly reported, based on stated scientific criteria, and subjected to rigorous internal and external peer review. The “smoking gun” concerns a climate record known as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). These records are based on a massive global dataset of temperature stations from around the world, combining several collections of data originally collected by individual weather stations. The record provides “a measure of the changing global surface temperature with monthly resolution for the period since 1880, when a reasonably global distribution of meteorological stations was established.” To argue for evidence of “faked” data, Natural News, as well as the original blog post, highlighted a version of the GISTEMP record for the United States first published in 1999, comparing it to one published later, in 2012. The record, these sources point out, has shifted:  (These charts plot how far off each year’s average U.S. temperature differs from the average temperature for the entire period 1951–1980; the frame labeled “a” is from 1999.) It should be no shock that the data shifted following 1999, as illustrated graphically in the above diagram, because NASA published multiple papers in 1999 and 2001 about these changes and why they were made. Links to these papers can be found on the NASA website, which also publicly summarizes the changes in several other places. Writing for the climate information website Skeptical Science, Berkeley Earth research scientist Zeke Hausfather, whose work (in part) independently analyzes adjustments made by government agencies’ climate records, explained the need for making adjustments to such datasets in general. A primary misconception, he argues, is that an “unadjusted global temperature record” — which necessarily has to take into account not only the temperature reading at a given recording station, but also how to translate that data spatially to come up with a single annual or monthly number — is not really a thing that exists to begin with: There are a number of folks who question the need for adjustments at all. Why not just use raw temperatures, they ask, since those are pure and unadulterated? The problem is that … there is really no such thing as a pure and unadulterated temperature record. Temperature stations in the U.S. are mainly operated by volunteer observers (the Cooperative Observer Network, or co-op stations for short). Many of these stations were set up in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of a national network of weather stations, focused on measuring day-to-day changes in the weather rather than decadal-scale changes in the climate. Nearly every single station in the network in the network has been moved at least once over the last century, with many having 3 or more distinct moves. Most of the stations have changed [the type of instruments used]. Observation times have shifted from afternoon to morning at most stations since 1960, as part of an effort by the National Weather Service to improve precipitation measurements. So what were the issues that led to changes between the 1999 record and the later record? According to NASA’s GISTEMP website, “Starting in the 1990s, the methodology took into account documented non-climatic biases in the raw data and eliminated or corrected unrealistic outliers.” The goal of these adjustments is to remove shoddy data from the dataset using pre-established methodologies, not to fit a “climate change narrative.” These “non-climatic biases” include things like stations taking temperature measurements at different times of day, stations physically moving locations (sometimes to a different elevation), and other artifacts that produce change in a record not attributable to climate or weather. These non-climatic biases were identified and their method of adjustment described in a publicly available 2001 paper found, among other places, on NASA’s website. They included: Additionally, post-1999 GISTEMP records employ models to fill in areas with missing data to make a more complete record from a spatial perspective. The methods used and their effect on the data are all disclosed online. However the issues described above are largely moot at the time of this writing in 2019. The GISTEMP analyses at issue above concern a formulation of the dataset (GISTEMP v3) that has been replaced by an improved model named GISTEMP v4, which includes a much larger set of data and a whole other set of adjustments. All told, the most significant effect of all these changes came from the time-of-day adjustments. Collectively, the adjustments served to produce a slightly increased warming trend in the United States record compared to the earlier records. The largest adjustments are the time of observation debiasing and station history adjustment, each of which increases the mean warming over the United States by about 0.15ºC over the 100 years. The net of all five adjustments to the … record is a warming of about 0.3ºC


A photo shows Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posing and smiling in front of a Trump 2020 sign.

Explanation: This is a digitally altered image. The sign is not in the original version.

Fake news, Facebook Fact-checks, Viral image,

Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is known to feud with President Donald Trump, really pose – and smile – in front of a Trump 2020 sign? Nope. An altered version of a real photo of Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Ca., with the sign added behind the congresswomen, is going around social media. Text near the top of the manipulated photo says, "This is so funny. Keep it posted on Facebook and other social media. And along the bottom, "Please, please keep this picture going!!" The image was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) A reverse-image search led us to the original photo, which doesn’t include the sign, and was shared by Waters in a tweet on Feb. 17, 2018: Last week, the @american_heart and Congressional Caucus for Women hosted the annual congressional wear red day photo! pic.twitter.com/AXewJPPU3S Pelosi and Waters were wearing red as part of the American Heart Association’s "Go Red For Women" movement, which aims to increase women’s heart health awareness and end heart disease and stroke in women. This photo is doctored.


Terrorism, Taxes, Pennsylvania, Rick Saccone,

Are loosies a terrorist revenue stream? State Rep. Rick Saccone thinks so. During a session ahead of a vote on the state budget’s revenue package last week, Saccone, a Republican from Allegheny County, objected to a proposed $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase Wednesday. The new tax, which Governor Wolf signed into law later that day, raises the state’s levy to $2.60 per pack. Saccone viewed this as earning revenue off the backs of the poor, but also he was wary that price hikes might encourage smuggling rings that send money to violent extremists. "We as a legislature are not only ready to trample on the poor, who disproportionately bear the burden of that tax," he told the body, "we’re prepared to disregard the ugly consequence that driving the price too high nurtures illegal tobacco sales, which have been connected to funding terrorism against us. I’ll say that again, folks: Illegal tobacco sales, price driven too high, has been connected to at least several cases of funding terrorism against us in multi-year investigations over the last decade and a half." Saccone wasn’t the only representative to raise such concerns. "Interstate 81 is a smuggler’s alley. Now Pennsylvania will be a stop on Smuggler’s Alley," State Rep. Russ Diamond, a Republican from Lebanon County, said earlier in his remarks. "And what kind of folks are in the cigarette smuggling business and what else do they do with their money? Are they also involved in other illegal activities? Are they involved in human trafficking? Are they funding Hezbollah or ISIS? We don’t know." Later, in an interview with PolitiFact PA, Saccone pointed to a noteworthy 2015 State Department report, "The Global Illicit Trade in Tobacco: A Threat to National Security." "Internationally, it fuels transnational crime, corruption, and terrorism," the report’s authors wrote. "The illicit trade in tobacco products remains a lucrative revenue stream for many criminal actors and illicit networks." Is it fair to consider price hikes drivers? David Merriman, a University of Chicago researcher who studies how consumers react to cigarette taxes, said in an email, "There is high quality scientific evidence that relatively high cigarette taxes/prices are associated with increased illicit sales." Saccone said the while many details may be classified, the links from reported probes are clear. "We know that these terrorist organizations are branching out and they’re using multiple activities to fund their operations, especially in foreign countries," he said. "I’m not saying the sale of cigarettes is the only source… but we know we can tie, according to these government reports and some of these operations, at least some of cigarette smuggling to the funding of terrorism." Many of the examples in the State Department report, and many of the examples we found through broader research, were not domestic. One-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, also known as the "Marlboro Man," has entered the realm of legend not only for his prowess as a cigarette smuggler across Northern Africa, but also because U.S. intelligence has yet to confirm whether he’s actually dead or not. In 2004, an anti-terrorism law passed that prohibits importing missiles made specifically to blow up planes. The first person convicted under this law was Yi Qing Chen, a top smuggler in a Chinese crime ring that was busted in two connected probes: Operation Smoking Dragon and Operation Royal Charm, the latter being a FBI-staged yacht wedding where the lucky couple were actually undercover agents, and the suspects were invited guests. Chen, who was the arrested in Operation Smoking Dragon, had smuggled counterfeit money, military-grade weapons, methamphetamines, cigarettes and missiles, among other items. It’s not extraordinary to say that internationally, organized crime rings have developed far-reaching black market networks, illicit cigarettes being one of the industries. But how common is the case Saccone described— a black market growing thanks to the higher cigarette prices found in a particular state, and that market funnelling money to violent extremists? According to Understanding the U.S. Illicit Tobacco Market: Characteristics, Policy Context, and Lessons from International Experiences, 226-page National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study, not that common: "Overall, given the total number of terrorism-related tobacco investigations in the United States (keeping in mind that smuggling cases are likely to receive priority if they can be linked to terrorism), as well as the dollar amounts involved in those cases, the link between the U.S. illicit tobacco market and terrorism appears to be minor." From the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years, the report states, out of nearly 300 tobacco cases at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), only eight were "linked to terrorism." As the report notes, the underground market evades a good deal of statistical reporting. And while many investigations may look at both terrorist affiliations and illicit tobacco, both charges don’t always stick. Take the Knoxville man who pleaded guilty to cigarette smuggling in 2010. The FBI began investigating him after wiretapping conversations in which he seemed like an Al Qaeda recruiter. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, the terror charge fell to the wayside after a lie-detector test backed his explanation: that on the phone calls, he was merely kidding. We reached out to ATF for cases that had led to convictions on both counts. ATF pointed to the 25 indictments resulting from Operation Smokescreen, which focused on an interstate cigarette smuggling ring. This group of illegal tobacco traders in North Carolina and Michigan operated primarily in the late ’90s, led to multiple arrests and convictions for cigarette smuggling and assisting Hezbollah. (One of the men, according to the Village Voice, donated $3,500 to the combatant group.) Arrests were made from 2000 to 2002. We found another example. Reportedly, a cigarette smuggler helped the Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni-American friends who were Al-Qaeda trainees, finance their trip to training camp in Afghanistan. Some of the men allegedly had smuggled cigarettes themselves. They were arrested in 2002, the magic number in both investigations -- which means 15 years is not out of the realm of possibility. These are the most high-profile examples of domestic cigarette smuggling connected to terrorism financing post-2001. We weren’t able to find more recent cases. "[T]here is also no systematic evidence of sustained links between the global illicit tobacco trade and terrorism," according to the report. Our ruling Rep. Saccone said in a house session, "Illegal tobacco sales, price driven too high, has been connected to at least several cases of funding terrorism against us in multi-year investigations over the last decade and a half." Most of the trouble with this statement are its implications: American cigarette smuggling does not have strong presence in terrorism financing. Saccone himself admitted that he had heard of no such incidence in Philadelphia, where a cigarette tax bumped prices up in 2014. But, there have been cases, as he mentioned. In our research and from our correspondence with ATF, we were only able to find two groups that had financed terrorist activities through illicit tobacco sale, the Lackawanna Six and an interstate North Carolina-Michigan smuggling ring, both leading to multiple convictions.