Questions tagged [united-states]
Use this tag for questions about claims based in the United States, or limited to the United States.
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Does the H-1B visa program cause a net decrease in the employment prospects of skilled U.S. job applicants in STEM fields?
It is widely claimed that the H-1B program "takes away jobs from Americans." For example, here's a message posted in the Academia chat room by SSimon not long ago:
The way I understand it when H-1B'...
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Is the U.S. Tea Party astroturf or a genuine grassroots movement?
According to The Wikipedia article on the United States Tea Party movement (emphasis mine), TeaParty.org defines the Tea Party as "a grassroots movement that calls awareness to any issue which ...
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Was John F Kennedy accidentally shot by a secret service agent?
In the book Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, Bonar Menninger argues that the third shot that hit John F Kennedy was fired by accident by a secret service agent. The book's Wikipedia page ...
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Is the US Army Field Manual 30-31B a forgery?
Wikipedia describes content of the US Army Field Manual 30-31B:
It identifies a strategy of tension involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince ...
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Are fat people kidnapped less frequently?
This has been on T-shirts, in a Minions meme, and even some Q&A sites:
Fat people are hard to kidnap.
While the B-flick method of kidnapping (knock 'em unconscious and then carry the mark) is ...
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Was Ross Capicchioni shot by a friend as part of a gang initiation?
Ross Capicchioni was a teenager who was shot several times and required emergency surgery.
He reported that he had been shot by someone he knew who was undergoing a gang-initiation. He claims the ...
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Does the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provide higher quality, cheaper care than most other US health systems?
The VHA is the integrated health system providing healthcare to US military veterans managed by the Department of Veteran Affairs. It is currently regarded by by some other health systems as a model ...
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Were all but one of the US presidents descended from King John of England?
The Daily Mail says:
A 12-year-old girl created family tree linking 42 of 43 U.S. presidents to King John of England, who signed the Magna Carta in 1215.
Only the eighth president, Martin Van ...
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Does California have a dress code for drivers?
Many "crazy law" sources claim that California motor vehicle law contains a bizarre sartorial proscription.
On CNN.com, the article "Do you know why I pulled you over?" by Craig ...
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Did Comcast attempt to coerce Netflix by slowing down its traffic?
In 2014, a news story erupted over a dispute between Netflix and Comcast over connectivity and distribution.
Comcast was accused of deliberately blocking or restricting Netflix traffic.
For example, ...
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Did more more Pilgrims die from drowning after getting drunk than were killed by Native Americans?
Joy Browne's 2011 book Dating For Dummies says:
Alcohol has been, is now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future the major drug of abuse in this country. (More Pilgrims drowned in the ...
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Are half of the donations to Democratic Party from Jewish sources?
I've encountered this claim in a number of sources, both respectable and not, but ultimately seems to stem from an article in Jerusalem Post attributing it to Gil Troy:
The reason for such intense ...
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Did Saddam Hussein have a secret torture chamber in New York City?
The NY Post reported this week that Saddam Hussein had a secret torture chamber in New York City between 1979 and 2003.
The sources the paper cites are two "anonymous officials". The paper does not ...
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Does Bernie Sanders have more individual donors than any candidate in history?
This NPR / article has the headline
"Bernie Sanders Now Has More Donors At This Point Than Any Other Candidate In History"
I am skeptical that this is true especially in the latter part of the ...
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Does ignoring the extent of death caused by medical error distort the public perception of the quality of US healthcare?
Despite comparative evidence that US healthcare is very expensive and not particularly good by international standards, Americans seem to love it as evidenced by the debate on Obamacare and questions ...
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Are insulating window films worth it?
I'm curious if tests have been conducted to evaluate the energy efficiency gains and resultant savings produced by insulating window films like these 3M Window Insulator Kits. (There are also films ...
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Do for-profit prisons lobby against early childhood education?
This popular reddit comment claims that for profit prisons "...literally lobby against things like early child education..."
I can't find any evidence for or against this claim. I've found ...
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Did the US Park Police have a definition of tear gas that excluded OC prior to the clearing of Lafayette Square?
US Park Police have disputed reports claiming “tear gas” was used on peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square on the basis that they used “oleoresins capsicum” (OC), rather than 2-...
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Did ISP "pocket" $400 billion that was supposed to be dedicated toward fiber cable infrastructure?
Bruce Kushnick, author of "The Book Of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal And Free The Net," makes some pretty major claims. The most prominent article, an ad for his book written by ...
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Can you eliminate La Guardia Airport and still move same amount of NYC passengers by air, but faster?
Joel Spolsky (I think) made this claim on latest Stack Exchange Overflow podcast that you can eliminate La Guardia airport in NYC, and even if 100% of La Guardia flyers started using the remaining two ...
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Were there cases of protesters starting violence at Trump rallies?
During the CNN GOP Debate, Donald Trump gave two explanations for the repeated violent reactions of some of his supporters to protests at Trump rallies. The first one being love for their country and ...
tim♦
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Are contraceptives unaffordable for female students at Georgetown Law?
At a hearing before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Sandra Fluke said:
"Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. ...
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Was Columbia University fined for animal cruelty due to experiments run by Mehmet Oz?
This SourceWatch article is being publicized in connection to Mehmet Oz:
In 2004, complaints about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s dog experiments were cited in a report from an internal investigation into ...
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Did Lyndon Johnson spy on Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign using CIA and FBI assets?
An article by Lee Edwards on the Heritage Foundation website claims so with quite some level of detail, e.g.
In the fall of 1964, the White House turned to the CIA to get advance inside information ...
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Did three people turn down a meeting in Zuckerberg's dorm room about founding Facebook?
I've seen this posted to Linkedin:
Now this makes you think!! .....10 years ago, a student at Harvard
invited 5 people over to his dorm room to discuss a business
opportunity. Only 2 of the 5 ...
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Are democrats more likely to commit crimes then republicans in the United States?
Ted Cruz during in interview with Hugh Hewitt claimed that democrats are more likely to commit violent crime than republicans.
He apparently is getting this statistic from a study on three states ...
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Did a Michigan jewellery store keeper successfully scare off his attackers with a shotgun in 1995?
In an answer to another question, there is a reference to this 2012 Natural News article, which in turn cites this NRA-ILA article, which cites "The Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, 8/23/95":
Plans to slay ...
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Are Jim Rogers, George Soros, Warren Buffet converting their stocks into cash holdings?
According to the article “Buffett's $55 Billion Gamble is a Bet on
U.S. Collapse, Warns CIA Economist”, a number of billionaires have taken a cash position on their holdings at the expense of stocks.
...
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Are/were US broadband internet service providers making 90%+ profit margins?
A 2012 blog article from Stop The Cap quotes the Wall Street Journal (without a link) as saying:
Cable executives and analysts say that about 90% of the money cable operators charge for broadband ...
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Would the Green New Deal cost 600k per household?
A recent Fox News report uses numbers provided by a self-proclaimed "center-right" American organization which details the predicted costs of the Green New Deal, totaling up to 93 trillion dollars, or ...
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Is instructing a subject to crawl forward with crossed ankles standard arrest protocol?
A December 2017 CNN article by former FBI-agent, James Gagliano, about the death of Daniel Shaver claims:
To those speculating as to why he would have been asked to cross his ankles, this is standard ...
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Are 55,400 people injured or killed by US police every year?
An article has been circulating around social media, claiming
approximately 55,400 people were injured or killed by [US] cops during legal stop and search incidents in one year. Of this number, ...
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Are 1 in 5 pieces of software in the US unlicensed?
This BSA form claims that
1 in 5 pieces of software in the US are unlicensed.
How true is it?
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Has the Federal Reserve been propping up stock prices since March 23 2020?
I happened upon this r/askeconomics post that hasn't been answered.
In The Hill, Thomas Lyns of Northwestern Univ and Daniel Taylor of UPenn's Wharton proclaim
So, where does all the Fed money go if ...
user16959
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Does the average American watch 5,000 movies in their lifetime?
Here is a snippet from an article on the Utah Statesman:
According to a Redbox study, Americans watch more than 5,000 movies in their lifetimes, an average of about seven per month.
I cannot find ...
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Has Trump freed hundreds of children per month and broken up trafficking rings?
Roseanne Barr just tweeted this to explain her support for President Trump:
President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over this world. Hundreds each month. He has ...
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Does Toomey's amendment to the GOP Tax Bill only benefit Hillsdale College?
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer just said this on the Senate floor, regarding the Republican Tax Bill:
One college, Hillsdale College, has been exempted from taxes on colleges with large ...
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Do financial institutions specially approve loans to pay the Church of Scientology?
This is about claims made by Steven Mango (who appeared also in the "My Scientology Movie", directed by John Dower) between the 1:00 - 2:30 points in this video titled "Top 5 Craziest Experiences I ...
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Are Lottery Quick Picks independently and uniformly distributed?
Let's set aside the argument that computers have a pseudo-random number generator.
I'm interested in knowing if a lottery terminal generates each quick pick independently from all previous picks and ...
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Is the number of "ghost guns" in the US increasing?
The White House and media have recently claimed the following:
Law enforcement officers across the country increasingly find there is no way to trace certain guns they recover from crime scenes. [...
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Are US Marines deliberately kept under-supplied so that they would be more combat aggressive?
I watched a TV series named Generation Kill based on the experiences of an embedded reporter during the invasion of Iraq in the 2003.
The US Marines in the series often complain about lacking ...
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Is Walter Reed not able to handle the number of Havana Syndrome patients?
Journalist Julia Ioffe just said this in a Puck News article:
Meanwhile, the number of government employees suffering from Havana Syndrome has jumped from a couple dozen to a couple hundred. Some ...
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Are there actual cases of school libraries refusing to lend books to children that are outside their determined reading level?
In the article Three Myths About “Reading Levels” (Feb 28, 2017) published by Psychology Today, it is asserted (emphasis mine):
Unfortunately, though, the ubiquity and precision with which these ...
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Is climate change already killing people and costing billions in the USA?
According to Gizmodo:
Climate change will make our lives worse in the years to come, but a new report out last week highlights the stark costs people are already paying across the Atlantic. In 2012 ...
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Is the US saving enough money from the USMCA to pay for the Wall?
President Trump just tweeted this:
I often stated, “One way or the other, Mexico is going to pay for the Wall.” This has never changed. Our new deal with Mexico (and Canada), the USMCA, is so much ...
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Was the NAACP slow in acting for the rights of Sherman Ware?
In What the NAACP can learn from George Zimmerman, George Zimmerman's brother Robert Zimmerman Jr. claimed that the organization was slow to act on the beating of homeless African-American Sherman ...
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Did voter registration rates exceed 100% in many counties for the 2020 US election? Did this lead to voter fraud?
Judicial Watch* reported in October 2020 that 353 U.S. Counties in 29 States with Voter Registration Rates Exceeding 100%.
Judicial Watch announced today that a September 2020 study revealed that 353 ...
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Does an HHS proposal to modify Obamacare policies allow doctors to discriminate against LGBT patients?
This article claims that
The Trump administration is moving to scrap an Obama-era policy that protected LGBTQ patients from discrimination.
However the proposal in question claims it would only be ...
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Is Iran recovering debris of the shot-down Global Hawk in its own coastal waters?
There is currently contradicting information regarding to the location where the USAF RQ-4 Global Hawk was shot down by Iranian forces, with the US claiming it happened over international waters and ...
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Does a citizenship question on the US census affect participation?
There is currently a legal battle over changing the US census to include a citizenship question.
The plaintiffs argued that participation in the census will be depressed by the addition of the new ...
user11643