Questions tagged [government]
Use this tag for questions regarding "government" as a concept. DO NOT USE in lieu of "United States".
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Is the Japanese government encouraging the young to consume more alcohol?
In many western countries governments have been issuing advice on how much alcohol should be consumed as medical opinion about safe consumption levels has become more stringent (see NHS advice here). ...
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How could Donald Trump have kept that many classified "Presidential Records" after leaving office?
FBI agents seized 11 sets of classified documents from former President Trump’s residence earlier this week, including some so sensitive they could only be stored in special government facilities, ...
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Did female majority electorate result in higher government spending compared to WW2?
An inflammatory infographic frequently shared online claims that women voting is directly responsible for increase of government spending which it argues overshadows the effects of ww2. I would like ...
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In 1984, was the top income tax rate lowered from 70% to 28%,and was Social Security then taxed for the first time?
I saw this image on social media. There a few claims here that I'm curious about the accuracy of. Of course, the President can't unilaterally alter tax laws, but regardless, did these things happen?
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Did the Voice of America become more critical of the US after the end of the Cold War?
In a speech given to Voice of America (VOA) staff towards the end of the Trump presidency, Mike Pompeo (who was Secretary of State at the time) stated that after the end of the Cold War VOA (like ...
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Did Pik Botha Lobby For The Release Of Nelson Mandela?
In a 2013 interview from Al Jazeera, long-time South African Foreign Minister, Pik Botha claims that he long lobbied for the release of the future President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela who spent ...
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Did the French government print posters explaining COVID-19 vaccination passport policy already in January 2020?
We see this poster, for example from the official site of the city of Toulon:
(Explaining that citizens now either need to show a certificate for having 1. covid-vaccination 2. covid-test negative ...
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Did Milton Friedman say that nothing was so permanent as a temporary government program?
According to the Adam Smith institute (and numerous other pages):
Milton Friedman used to say that nothing was so permanent as a temporary government programme.
Did he actually say this? And if so, ...
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Does the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission require weatherized pipelines and equipment (but Texas's doesn't)?
The Houston Chornicle writes:
Texas has the only American electricity grid with no rules for resiliency. Instead, the GOP majority argued that a system that pays higher prices when demand goes up ...
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Does insect repellant protect against Covid-19? [closed]
The Guardian reported on 26 August 2020 that :
Citriodiol-based spray can help protect against Covid-19, says MoD lab
Citriodiol sprays were made available to the army in the early phases of the ...
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Have "government handouts" increased the suicide rate in Alaska?
Wikipedia's biography of Don Young, the U.S. Representative for Alaska's at-large1 congressional district, says among other things that:
When asked about the fact that the state of Alaska has the ...
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Did state actors set fire to buildings during the George Floyd riots? [closed]
A Minnesota protestor made the following claim:
"Media, you need to cover the undercover cops who have been breaking these windows and breaking into businesses. We have evidence of buildings that ...
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Was the U.S. government responsible for Popeye's dependance on spinach?
Whenever the cartoon sailor is on the verge of a fight, he squeezes open a can of spinach, pours the greens down his throat, and uses his muscles to pummel his opponent.
Some sources claim that this ...
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Are the "DHSC Communications Team" using bots to flood social media with posts showing NHS workers supportive of government policy?
The image below seems to be circulating on Facebook along with a text
To give you an idea of the times we are living in, Twitter has been
flooded with hundreds of new accounts today.
All ...
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Were Canadian politicians targeted by an Indian intelligence covert influence operation?
Global News reported that Canadian politicians were targets of Indian intelligence covert influence operation.
Indian intelligence agencies attempted to use money and disinformation to “covertly ...
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Does using yellow paper hide the yellow tracking dots that commercial printers put on anything you print? [closed]
I just learned about those yellow dots printers put on paper that the government uses to track you in case it doesn't like what you're printing. Does anyone know if using yellow paper like this in ...
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Did the US government classify the Whaley House as haunted?
I noticed in Lonely Planet's book on Los Angeles, San Diego, & Southern California, page 400, the description for the Whaley House says that it is "officially certified as haunted by the US ...
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Is "US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128" real?
The Red House Report — Wikipédia describes "US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128":
Is this actually a declassified document, or a clever fake?
US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128
...
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Did Scotland spend $250,000 for the slogan "Welcome to Scotland"?
A 2007 Digital Journal article claims
Scotland spent six months of research and $250,000 to create a new slogan to boost tourism. What did they come up with? “Welcome to Scotland” is the new slogan,...
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Does the USDA burn food every week?
In this recent Big Think video, The colossal problem with universal basic income, the presenter, Douglas Rushkoff, made a claim, at about the 40 second mark, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture ...
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Are US workers legally required to pay income taxes?
In the 2006 film America: Freedom to Fascism, several interviews are shown which claim that American workers do not need to pay income tax. Specifically, this clip claims that
There is no law which ...
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Do the "Presidential Alerts" give the government full access to all phone functionality?
John McAfee, libertarian politician and former computer programmer, tweeted this:
The "Presidential alerts": they are capable of accessing the E911 chip
in your phones - giving them full access ...
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Are people with a high IQ not allowed to become police officers in New London?
This 2000 ABC News report says:
A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.
[.....
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Is Gina Haspel wanted in Europe? [closed]
In a tweet from Randy Kennedy, then shared on Facebook by Girl du Jour (and then others) it is claimed that President Trump's pick to head the CIA - Gina Haspel - is wanted in Europe for "war crimes". ...
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Were the BOSS Linux update servers hacked in 2015?
The Hackology Blog claims that update servers for BOSS Linux were hacked in 2015, eventually allowing access to Indian military and government servers.
This website claims that:
Hackers infected the ...
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Can governments destroy the value of Bitcoin, if they wanted to?
Note that this is a question about Bitcoin that is separate from my other question, which had asked whether Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, claims that the governments ...
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Is the US federal government still paying Civil War survivor benefits?
I read an article claiming that the US federal government is still paying out a Civil War survivor pension today, over 150 years after the Civil War ended. Is this accurate?
In 1924, Mose Triplett,...
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Entire GOP voted against letting senators read the new tax bill?
Following the passing of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the U.S. Senate on December 2nd 2017, this photo has been making the rounds on social media (facebook in my case). The tweet by Jesse Lehrich claims
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Has Trump's administration been making more human trafficking arrests than the Obama administration?
I come across this image below circulation on the internet.
The image is comparing the human trafficking arrests during Trump's and Obama's administrations. Are these figures true?
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Did 60% of polled South Africans say the country was better run during apartheid?
I have found several sites claiming that a study shows that over 60% of polled South Africans said the country was better run under apartheid - most notably, a 2002 Guardian article:
In a rebuke to ...
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Does the fossil fuel industry benefit from trillions of dollars of subsidy from governments every year?
This IMF working paper claims that the fossil fuel industry benefits from trillions of dollars of government subsidies every year. It is a working paper intended to "promote discussion" and not the ...
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Was there a Soviet anti-motorcycle-helmet campaign in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
Lessig (1995, pp. 964–965) writes:
Before the 1960s, motorcyclists in Soviet Russia did not wear helmets. In part this was because of a lack of any perceived need to wear helmets; in part it was ...
user17967
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Did Harry Harlow's "monkey love" experiments cost $50M?
Did the government spend $50 million (or more) to learn "how much monkeys love their mothers"?
From Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
Vol. 45(3), 193–218 Summer 2009:
It is also ...
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Did Brock Chisolm, the first director of the United Nations WHO, say this anti-individualism quote about a "world government"?
Did Brock Chisolm, first Director General of the United Nations World Health Organization, say this quote?
To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their ...
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Does Shell get $2 billion a year in subsidies from the US government?
While browsing reddit, I saw the following graphic from the Late Stage Capitalism subreddit:
(Two stick figures are shown, the second one with Shell's logo for a head)
This is Bob.
Bob gets $...
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Are Swans in UK property of Queen?
Is it really true that all Swans in UK are property of Queen? What is reason behind it (if any)?
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Did the amount of bureaucrats increase in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union?
David Graber says in this interview on The Real News,
My favorite example is Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 10 years between, I think it was 1991 or two, and 2002, the total ...
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Has Kuwait banned several Muslim-majority countries from entry?
From Kuwait issues its own Trump-esque visa ban for five Muslim-majority countries
Citizens from five Muslim-majority countries will no longer be able to obtain Kuwaiti visas, after reports the Gulf ...
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Has there been a dramatic expansion of the U.S. federal workforce in recent years?
This claim was used by the White House to justify an executive action that can affect the operations of a wide range of federal government agencies.
In his first official White House press briefing ...
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Is this pie graph describing US government spending accurate?
This graphic is doing the circuit on Facebook. Is the pie chart an accurate depiction of US government spending?
Look closely at this chart of federal spending.
Military 57%
Education 6%
...
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Did Paul Combetta ask for advice on reddit on how to strip emails for Hillary Clinton?
A reddit user has several archived posts showing questions about stripping emails for a "VIP" customer.
Some people have attributed those posts to Paul Combetta, an employee in charge of Hillary ...
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Was the Australian Bureau of Statistics website "attacked"?
Last night (August 9th) was census night in Australia. Conveniently, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have a website where you can enter your household's statistical information.
If you ...
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Did Nazi Germany use the German census in its targeting of minorities
From 2016 is census year! But you can stick your census in your ear, you won't get any data here
Did you know
Hitler used the German census to target minorities
Doing a brief search came ...
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Are countries that have kings and queens empirically freer and more socially just than countries that don't?
Just listening to some thinking kind of stuff on YouTube and came across an interview with Stephen Fry, a highly respectable man in the "empiricist" and "rationalist" circles. I found most of what he ...
user11643
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Is the CDC engaged in a coverup regarding the Haiti cholera epidemic?
In The Killer Hiding in the CDC Map, it's alleged the CDC knows what caused the Haiti cholera outbreak but is covering it up:
What caused Haiti’s cholera epidemic? The CDC museum knows but won’t say.
...
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Did the Special Virus-Cancer Program (SVCP) exist?
Rense.com has a 2005 essay describing an AIDS conspiracy theory. In particular, it describes the "Special Virus-Cancer Program":
The Virus Cancer Program had it roots in 1964 when Congress provided ...
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Are there around S$800 billion unaccounted for in Singapore's public finances?
Christopher Balding, an associate professor at Peking University, claims in this note that
Given publicly available economic data on Singaporean finances, there is an expected asset gap of more ...
user17967
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Did the FBI not require assistance from Apple to unlock the San Bernadino terrorist's phone?
Edward Snowden's official Twitter account posted the following tweet:
The first 4 points are not in contention, but the 5th point states that the FBI does not require Apple's assistance to unlock the ...
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Were these 'Communist Rules for Revolution' written in 1919?
Please disregard the website on which this is found. Were these "rules" actually found in 1919?
From: http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/newspaper-clipping-from-oct-13-1975/104739
A ...
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Is the Chinese “Sesame Credit” system a government propaganda tool?
The Sesame Credit system recently announced in China is making the rounds on social media, being touted as a tool of gamified government thought control.
For example, this privateinternetaccess.com's ...
