Those "hair-on-fire" emails.

I received an email this morning from one of our WNY retired teachers. It contained an email that had been sent to her by someone else. In fact, she said she had received it twice in recent days from other retired teachers. She wondered if I could check it out.

The basis of the email was that:"

President Obama's finance team is recommending a transaction tax. His plan is  to sneak it in after the November election to keep it under the radar. This is a 1% tax on all transactions at any financial institution i. e. Banks, Credit Unions, etc.. Any deposit you make, or move around within your account, i. e. transfer to, will have a 1% tax charged. If your pay check or your social Security or whatever is direct deposit, 1% tax charged. If you hand carry a check in to deposit, 1% tax charged, If you take cash in to deposit, 1% tax charged. This is from the man who promised that if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax. Keep your eyes and ears open, you will be amazed at what you learn.

It also claimed:

I checked this out on Truth or Fiction and it is true.  The bill is HR-4646 introduced by US Rep Peter DeFazio D-Oregon and US Senator Tom Harkin D-Iowa.  It is now in committee and will probably not be brought out until after the Nov. elections.

And went on to claim:

His plan is to sneak it in after the November election to keep it under the radar.   See what Nancy has to say about this wonderful idea!http://tinyurl.com/24dn5ud

Whenever I receive one of these "hair-on-fire" emails asking me to play Paul Revere by "passing it on to everyone I know," I immediately ask myself whether I have heard anything about this in the newspapers or the electronic media. Surely something as important as this would be covered by the media. ("Well, " the originator of this email might say, "the left-wing, liberal lamestream media is hiding this from us." OK, can you find confirmation of this on the Fox News website. Oops, no you can't!)

By the way, you may have noticed that most newspapers and TV networks are now owned by large corporations, which have anything but a "liberal" point of view. Here's an interesting research project: Count the number of conservatives appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows in the last 6 months, then compare it with the number of "liberals" appearing. 

My "goto" site for the real scoop on things like this is snopes.com. Snopes.com is a well-known site whose purpose is to separate truth from "urban legend" on the web. The April 2009 edition of Readers' Digest had this article about Snopes.com. You can go to their site at www.snopes.com/snopes.asp to check out the latest "pass it on" email you received. Chance are if you got it, so did lots of other folks, and it will be listed under the "Hot 25" tag. They will explain what is true, partially true and downright untrue.

I looked for it on the "Hot 25," but couldn't find it so I searched the Snopes.com site for "financial transaction tax" and it took under a minute to locate the real story on this piece of junk email. Click here to go to the full story. (Turns out it was #3 on the "Hot 25" but it was listed as "Debt-Free America Act" so I didn't recognize it. That term did not appear in the email.

For those of you who don't want to bother to click the link to the Snopes site, here's a rundown of the misstatements in the email:

1) This is a bill that has been introduced every year since 2004 (well before President Obama) by Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania. It's his pet idea to reduce the national debt. HR-4646 has no co-sponsors. Neither Rep. DeFazio nor Sen. Harkin are co-sponsors of the bill, nor have they ever supported it. This bill annually dies in committee. It has never had any support from the White House or Nancy Pelosi.

2) Snopes goes on:" The included link that supposedly shows Nancy Pelosi endorsing the Debt Free America Act antedates the introduction of that bill to Congress; her comments actually refer to a different, earlier transaction tax proposed in December 2009 by Rep. Peter DeFazio. That bill, known as the "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street" Act (HR 4191) called for the funding of investment in middle class jobs by levying small percentage value taxes on the buying and selling of stocks, futures, swaps, options and securities. (Although Rep. DeFazio's bill had 31 co-sponsors, it too has since languished in committee without being brought to a vote.)"

Oh, and that reference to "I checked it out on Truth or Fiction and it is true"? Only if you cannot understand English. Click here to go to that site and read for yourself. 

What is most depressing about this is that teachers could send out such drivel with their name attached. We would be ashamed of seventh-grade students who could not determine within minutes that this email was full of errors.