Biden's Claims in His State of Union Address

The Associated Press is fact-checking President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union speech as he grapples with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a stalled domestic agenda and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of the claims we’ve examined:

The pandemic

BIDEN: “Severe cases are down to a level not seen since July of last year.”

THE FACTS: Biden overstated the improvement, omitting a statistic that remains a worrisome marker of the toll from COVID-19.

While hospitalizations indeed are down from last summer, deaths remain high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID tracker shows 289 deaths on July 1, 2021. This past Monday, the CDC tracker reported 1,985 deaths.

Ohio factories

BIDEN, on Intel’s plans for new factories in central Ohio: “Up to eight state-of-the-art factories in one place. 10,000 new jobs.”

THE FACTS: His statement is premature. That many factories are not imminent and may or may not ever be built.

Earlier this year, Intel announced it would open two factories expected to employ 3,000 people. The other 7,000 positions the project is slated to create are temporary construction jobs. It is also planning a chip foundry business that makes chips designed by other firms. Construction is expected to start this year.

Intel has raised the possibility of constructing up to six more factories over the next decade, which could bring the total number of factory workers to 10,000. But that is only a prospect, years away.

Inflation

BIDEN: “The pandemic also disrupted the global supply chain. … Look at cars last year. One-third of all the inflation was because of automobile sales. There weren’t enough semiconductors to make all the cars that people wanted to buy. And guess what? Prices of automobiles went way up. … And so we have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drag down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs and not your wages. Folks, that means make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America. More goods moving faster and cheaper in America. … Instead of relying on foreign supply chains let’s make it in America.”

THE FACTS: It’s dubious to suggest that more domestic manufacturing means less inflation.

Manufactured products made overseas, particularly in countries such as China or Mexico where wages are lower, are generally cheaper than U.S.-made goods.

Biden also places too much weight on supply chain disruptions from overseas as a factor in the worst inflation in four decades. Although those problems indeed have been a major factor in driving up costs, inflation is increasingly showing up in other areas, such as rents and restaurant meals, that reflect the rapid growth of the economy and wages in the past year and not a global supply bottleneck. Those trends are likely to keep pushing up prices even as supply chains recover.

Gun violence

BIDEN, asking Congress to pass measures he said would reduce gun violence: “Repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued, the only one.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. While gun manufacturers do have legal protections from being held liable for injuries caused by criminal misuse of their weapons thanks to the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, they are not exempt or immune from being sued. The law includes six exceptions where manufacturers or dealers can be held liable for damages that their weapons cause, including defects or damages in the design of the gun, negligence, or breach of contract or warranty regarding the purchase of a gun.

Families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, sued gunmaker Remington, alleging “wrongful marketing” of firearms, and last month agreed to a $73 million settlement.

Infrastructure law, part one

BIDEN on the infrastructure bill: “The single biggest investment in history was a bipartisan effort.”

THE FACTS: No, it wasn’t that historic.

Biden’s infrastructure bill was big, adding $550 billion in fresh spending on roads, bridges, and broadband internet over five years. But measured as a proportion of the U.S. economy, it is slightly below the 1.36% of the nation’s gross domestic product that was spent on infrastructure, on average, during the first four years of the New Deal, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. It is even further below the roughly 2% spent on infrastructure in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Infrastructure law, part two

BIDEN, promoting his $1 trillion infrastructure law: “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks. We’re now talking about an infrastructure decade. … We’ll build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.”

THE FACTS: Not so fast.

The bipartisan legislation approved by Congress ended up providing just half of the $15 billion that Biden had envisioned to fulfill a campaign promise of 500,000 charging stations by 2030.

Biden’s Build Back Better proposal aimed to fill the gap by adding back billions to pay for charging stations. But Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in December declared that bill dead in its present form because of the cost.

Administration officials now say the infrastructure law will help pave the way for up to 500,000 charging outlets by 2030. That’s different than charging stations, which could have several outlets. They say private investments could help fill the gap. Currently there are more than 100,000 EV outlets in the U.S.

The Transportation Department’s plan asks states to build a nationwide network of EV charging stations that would place new or upgraded ones every 50 miles along interstate highways. The $5 billion in federal money over five years relies on cooperation from sprawling rural communities in the U.S., which are less likely to own EVs because of their typically higher price.

States are expected to start construction as early as fall.

Republican response

IOWA GOV. KIM REYNOLDS, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and boasting about Republican governors’ attention to the issue: “We’ve actually gone to the border — something that our president and vice president have yet to do since taking office.”

THE FACTS: Not true. Vice President Kamala Harris visited the border last year. Biden hasn’t gone yet.

Harris toured a Customs and Border Protection processing center in El Paso, Texas, and met migrant children there. She also stopped by an intake center on the border and held a discussion with local community organizations.

The half-day trip in June came after months of criticism from Republicans and some in her own party over her absence and that of Biden from the border at a time when immigration officers have logged record numbers of encounters with migrants attempting to cross into the U.S.

US Weekly Jobless Claims Fall; Fourth-quarter GDP Growth Revised Slightly Up

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly more than expected last week, indicating that the labor market recovery was gaining traction.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 232,000 for the week ended Feb. 19, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 235,000 applications for the latest week.

Claims had risen in the week ending Feb. 12, which economists blamed on week-to-week volatility in the data and the delayed impact of winter storms early in the month.

With a near record 10.9 million job openings at the end of December, layoffs are minimal and economists expect claims to fall back below 200,000 in the coming weeks. They were last below this level in early December.

Many Federal Reserve officials view labor market conditions as being already at or very close to maximum employment.

Claims have dropped from a record high of 6.149 million in early April 2020. The tightening labor market conditions are boosting wage growth, which is contributing to high inflation.

Rising wages and better job security should, however, help to underpin consumer spending and sustain the economic expansion even as the Fed starts raising interest rates to tamp down inflation, and government money to households and businesses dries up. The U.S. central bank is expected to start raising rates in March, with economists anticipating as many as seven hikes this year.

A separate report from the Commerce Department on Thursday confirmed that economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter as the drag from a resurgence in COVID-19 infections over the summer, driven by the Delta variant, eased.

Gross domestic product increased at a 7.0% annualized rate last quarter, the government said in its second GDP estimate. That was slightly up from the previously reported 6.9% pace. The economy grew at a 2.3% growth pace in the third quarter.

The economic momentum, however, appeared to have faded by December amid a strong headwind from coronavirus infections fueled by the Omicron variant. But activity has since picked up as the winter wave of infections subsided.

Retail sales surged in January and business activity rebounded in February, data showed this month. That has created an upside risk to GDP growth estimates for

the first-quarter, which are mostly below a 2.0 rate.
The United States is reporting an average of 80,131 new COVID-19 infections a day, sharply down from the more than 700,000 in mid-January, according to a Reuters analysis of official data.

young man claims his right to have sex in the privacy of his apartment - Other Cities - Colombia

A young woman from Cartagena, and her sentimental partner, demand their rights to have sex in the privacy of their apartment and ensure that the neighbors and administration of the building where they live persecute them for express your sexual passion on the privacy of your home.

This mess of horizontal property is presented in the apartment 704 of the Gemini buildingfrom the exclusive sector of sky seain Cartagena de Indias.

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In dialogue with this newspaper, the young woman, who asks to reserve her name, assured that last Saturday she came to live with her sentimental partner in the Gemini building, due to the beautiful view that offers the Caribbean Sea and the swamp of the virgin.

public ridicule

What the administration did with this public ridicule without a previous legal process of co-ownership, that violates due process and violation of human dignity and the good name of the person

“Last Tuesday night, after 8 pm, in the privacy of our home, we made love to my partner, as we always have. But suddenly the security guard calls us to tell us that a neighbor is upset because hear screams and moans”, says the young woman, who put the case in the hands of her lawyer.

But the claims of this young woman go further and assures that from the administration of the building they have pointed her out to others residents of the Gemini building.

“First they shouldn’t have called to interrupt us. But also, the next day the administrator came up, with several employees, which is demeaning, to scold me because according to her I couldn’t be intimate with my boyfriend in my room and told me that I ‘I have to control‘”, adds the young woman.

“They can’t make me feel guilty for enjoying my sexuality“, adds the young woman.

According to the complainant, her neighbors have been recording audios with the sexual expressions of the couple.

“The most delicate thing is that there is a neighbor who records our intimacy, she is spying on us and share the audios by WhatsApp“, he maintains.

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In dialogue with this newspaper, Viviana Navarro, administrator of the building, assures that the only thing that is required of the young couple is that they measure their sexual expressions so as not to interrupt the peace and rest of the families, with children, of the 105 apartments of the property. private.

“This is an exclusive set and we have never experienced scandals of this nature. And I have the duty to mediate between the residents, and if this occurs in the first week of coexistence of these people, what can we expect from the entire year of contract that this couple signed? “said Navarro.

violation of human dignity
and the good name of the person

The most delicate thing is that there is a neighbor who records our intimacy, she is spying on us and they share the audios on WhatsApp

According to the young today he is the target of stares, ridicule and malicious comments from neighbors and building officialsreason for which he resorted to a lawyer to defend his rights to the intimacy, honor and good name.

“Today we will file a written complaint with the co-ownership council of the building, because the administrator violated due process: when you live in co-ownership there is a regulation that governs everything that must happen in that co-ownership. The administrator could not have made a reprimand and less in front of witnesses in a matter as sensitive as the sexual intimacy of people, “says Joaquín Torres, the young woman’s lawyer.

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According to the lawyer, the regular conduct in this type of situation is to inform the co-ownership council, so that an investigation can be carried out in accordance with the co-ownership statutes and regulations, and a sanction be established.

“What the administration did with this public ridicule without a prior legal process of co-ownership, that violates due process and violation of human dignity and the good name of the person, and it is about fundamental rights,” concludes attorney Torres.

Cartagena

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US Jobless Benefit Claims Edge Down

WASHINGTON — 

New claims for jobless benefits fell in the United States last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as many employers hung on to the workers they have and searched for more.

The agency said 238,000 unemployed workers filed for compensation, down 23,000 from the revised figure of the week before. The new total was in line with the claim figures from recent weeks as the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, continues to recover from the havoc inflicted on it by the advance of the coronavirus pandemic that swept into the country nearly two years ago.

Analysts now are awaiting the government’s release Friday of January’s employment picture in the U.S., the number of new jobs created last month and the unemployment rate, which was 3.9% in December.

The U.S. economy added a modest 199,000 new jobs in December, and analysts say January’s figure may not be much different, perhaps even smaller, as the number of new omicron variant coronavirus cases surged early in January and then waned, after the employment data was collected at mid-month.

Many employers are looking for more workers, despite about 6.9 million workers remaining unemployed in the U.S.

At the end of November, there were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S., but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.

But overall, the U.S. economy is surging, advancing by 5.7% in 2021, the fastest full-year gain since 1984, the Commerce Department reported last week.

The sharp growth in the world’s biggest economy showed its resiliency, even as the U.S. struggled to cope last year with two new coronavirus variants that hobbled some industries, caused supply chain issues for consumer goods that at times left store shelves empty, and led to a 7% year-over-year surge in consumer prices that was the highest in four decades.

But for the year, a record 6.4 million jobs were created, and most of the jobs lost at the outset of the pandemic in early 2020 have been recovered.

Some economic analysts say that even if the January jobs number is weak, it may be a temporary setback because the number of new coronavirus cases has been dropping sharply in the U.S. to under 400,000 new cases a day, about half of what it was just weeks ago.

The country’s robust economy pushed Federal Reserve policymakers last week to announce they could boost their benchmark interest rate as early as March after keeping it near 0% since the coronavirus first swept into the United States in March 2020.

The Fed could increase the rate several more times this year, which could have a broad effect on borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

Legal Experts Question Hong Kong Chief Justice’s Independence Claims

BANGKOK — 

Criticism of Hong Kong’s judicial independence has no “value” according to the special administrative region’s chief justice, but law experts say many questions remain.

Since Beijing imposed a national security law on the region 18 months ago, Hong Kong has endured major changes to its political system and media environment.

Now, attention has turned to whether Hong Kong’s judiciary can remain freestanding as Beijing tightens its grip.

In December, Britain released a six-month report about Hong Kong that outlined the city’s eroding freedoms after the implementation of the security law. The report included the accusation that Hong Kong’s “judicial independence is increasingly finely balanced.” The Hong Kong government rejected the finding.

Concerns remain, though, as to whether Hong Kong will maintain its British-style justice system or eventually replace it with China’s opaque system.

Speaking at the opening of the legal year Monday, Hong Kong’s Chief Justice Andrew Cheung said the territory’s judicial independence is “fact,” RTHK reported.

“Criticisms of court decisions, which are made without first ascertaining the facts in a case or reading and understanding the reasons for the court’s decision, are as meaningless as they are hollow – so is any unsubstantiated doubt over the court’s independence. Judicial independence in Hong Kong exists as a fact. And we are here today to bear witness to this fact.”

But one lawyer formerly of Hong Kong, who chose to remain anonymous, told VOA that Cheung hasn’t taken into account criticism of the judiciary.

“The Chief Justice’s comments at the opening of the legal year are thoroughly underwhelming. (The) dismissal of critics of Hong Kong’s rule of law as being motivated by ‘surmises, political stances or geopolitical considerations’ also smacks of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) propaganda. I would expect a Hong Kong judge to stick to analytical reasoning, and weigh these criticisms for their merits, rather than attack the critics for ulterior motives,” the lawyer said.

The national security law prohibits acts deemed as secession, subversion, foreign collusion and terrorism, with punishments of up to life in prison. Critics of the security law – including pro-democracy opposition and Western governments – have said the legislation threatens Hong Kong’s unique autonomy, promised when Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997.

Out of at least 150 people who have been arrested under the security law, five have been convicted and three have been sentenced to jail.

Those sentenced include former waiter Leon Tong Ying-kit, 24, who received nine years in prison following his conviction for terrorism and secession in July. November saw pro-democracy protester Ma Chun-man sentenced to nearly six years in prison for inciting secession, and pro-independence youth activist Tony Chung sentenced for secession and money laundering.

For Hong Kong’s national security law cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has handpicked judges to oversee the proceedings, a move that has angered legal experts.

“What about the existence of the appointment system in the first place? Why should there be national security law judges? How does that serve the rule of law or ensure a fair trial?” asked the lawyer who was formerly in Hong Kong.

Eric Yan-ho Lai, a law analyst and fellow at Georgetown University, also questioned the way judges are selected to preside over national security cases and whether there are any checks on the chief executive’s power to choose them.

Cheung said Monday the impartiality of the courts was not affected because all designated judges are bound under judicial oath to pass justice without fear or favor, self-interest or deceit.

But Yan-ho Lai told VOA, “Andrew Cheung could not explain why the chief executive picking the national security law judges would not affect impartiality, especially when Cheung himself visited the chief executive for a meeting just before the Court of Final Appeal hearing on Jimmy Lai’s bail appeal.”

Media mogul Jimmy Lai is in jail facing a slew of criminal charges and facing the possibility of life in prison. Reports said Lam met with Cheung ahead of a bail hearing for Lai in February. Lam denied discussing court cases with Cheung, reiterating her commitment to judicial independence, the South China Morning Post reported.

Since the security law has been in force, Hong Kong authorities have arrested pro-democracy activists, journalists and former lawmakers with the crackdown paving the way for a political revamp in the city.

Last month, Hong Kong’s mini parliament, the Legislative Council, saw its first-ever “patriots only” elections in which all but one of the seats were won by pro-Beijing candidates.

Beijing restructured the legislature last year by reducing the number of directly elected seats voted on by the public. A vetting committee comprising Beijing loyalists also has been installed to determine whether political candidates are loyal to China. No member of the pro-democracy opposition ran in the elections.

Those arrested under the security law include dozens of pro-democracy political figures who remain in pre-trial detention after being charged under the law in February.

“Although Andrew Cheung shared his beliefs, he could not explain why fair trial can be upheld when dozens of national security law defendants are being remanded in pre-trial detention for almost a year. When Cheung’s words and deeds are not consistent, the public might be less convinced that the integrity of the court in Hong Kong can be upheld in the post-national security law era,” Yan-ho Lai added.

Additionally, Hong Kong’s media have taken a downward turn since pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily closed in June when several of its executives were charged under the security law and authorities froze the company’s financial assets.

And pro-democracy news outlet Stand News closed its doors on Dec. 29 as part of a sedition investigation. Independent news sites Citizen News and Mad Dog Daily also decided to fold, citing uncertainty in the region.

At least 50 civil society groups also have disbanded in Hong Kong since last year.