Ninety-three percent of U.S. households with residents considered their neighborhood to be safe, according to 2003 Census data.
Source: Census Bureau
Month: November 2009
Clunker Claims and Cadillac Plans
The AFL-CIO is running a print ad this week arguing that "the House bill gets it right" on health care. The Senate bill? Not so much, says the labor federation.
Its beef is with the tax in the Senate Finance Committee bill on high-cost (a.k.a. "Cadillac") health care plans. Unions have come out against the tax, saying many of their middle-class members would be affected. The proposal calls for a 40 percent tax on the value of insurance benefits that exceed $21,000 a year for a family or $8,000 for an individual.
Using H1N1 to Sway Health Care Debate
The American Future Fund, a conservative advocacy group, has released a new ad that uses the H1N1 vaccine as the crux of its argument against health care overhaul legislation.
The ad asks: "If the government can’t run a flu program, can we trust it to run America’s entire health care system?" But the question assumes a false premise. The health care proposals that are nearing full chamber votes are not empowering the government to run an entire health care system,
The “Government-Run” Mantra
The claim that the House bill would amount to "government-run health care" suffered a blow last week, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the so-called "public plan" in the revised bill wouldn’t offer much in the way of competition to private insurers. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from repeating the claim.
For several months, we’ve been debunking assertions that Democratic health care bills call for a Canadian or British-type system in which everyone is insured,
November 6, 2009
Americans consumed 23.8 pounds of candy per capita in 2008.
Source: Census Bureau
Swine Flu Emergency?
Q: Did President Obama declare a national state of emergency because of H1N1?
A: Yes, but claims that this is an effort to instill panic in the American population show a misunderstanding of what such a declaration actually means.
November 5, 2009
The World Series began as a best-of-9 championship in 1903, but was changed to a best-of-7 in 1905. It reverted to a best-of-9 briefly, in 1919-1921.
Source: MLB.com
November 4, 2009
In a 2008 survey of teenagers on their cell phone use, 42 percent of respondents said they could text while blindfolded or without looking at the keypad.
Source: Harris Interactive
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Oct. 27-Nov. 2
This week, readers sent us comments on cap and trade, "Obama phones" and insurance coverage for abortions.
In the FactCheck Mailbag we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
November 3, 2009
The first words stored on a hard drive were: "This has been a day of solid achievement."
Source: Computerworld