But in a speech at the Virginia Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Saturday, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley turned the American love of the potato chip on its head, using it to make an argument that maybe — just maybe — our priorities are a little messed up.

“As a nation, we now spend more on potato chips than we invest through our government into energy research and development,” he said.

O’Malley isn’t the first figure to use this talking point. Groups that support increased federal government spending on the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — have been using it for a while. The American Energy Innovation Council -- a group of big name business leaders and CEOs who are lobbying for increased spending on energy research -- cited it in a report from last summer, as did a group of educators and business leaders assembled by the National Academies of Science.

The Snack Food Association — a trade group for producers of the favorite snack food — said there were $3.477 billion in sales of potato chips last year, according to a third-party firm it hired to gather data. But that only includes supermarkets, drug stores and other mass market retailers. It doesn’t include sales at Walmart, convenience stores or a bevy of other places consumers might buy a bag of Ruffles.

But citations elsewhere (including the one an O'Malley spokesman e-mailed to us) point to numbers assembled by Snack Food and Wholesale Bakery magazine. In the June 2010 issue, it says Americans spent close to $8 billion on potato chips during the 365-day period ending March 21, 2010. (That's an 11 percent increase from 2009.)

That $4 billion gap seems large, but Chris Clark, the snack food association's vice president for operations and management, said that sales doubling once you add Walmart and convenience stores to the mix wouldn't be surprising.

"It doesn't strike me as absurd or ridiculous," he said.

For fiscal year 2012, President Barack Obama’s budget request asks for $5.4 billion.

Of course, the comparison is naturally a little lopsided. Potato chips are consumer spending, while the energy research and development money comes from federal coffers. So when you buy some Lays, it's not like that money would otherwise go to groundbreaking electric-car research or the development of wind power. Still, O'Malley was right as rain and gets an Honest Abe.

At a rally last week, the executives of Maryland’s two largest counties — Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker — rallied in support of the tax, pushing it as a modest burden that could help their counties' precarious fiscal situations.

"That's a modest increase, and for those who drink modestly throughout the state of Maryland, it will mean about $10 to your drink bill for the rest of the year," Leggett said, according to WTOP.

The actual cost of the proposed tax increase to the average consumer is contested. Retailers and restaurants have charged that the true increase would be much higher, 700 percent or more, depending on the drink.

A Leggett spokesman referenced statistics provided by Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, one of the leading groups pushing the alcohol tax. A fact sheet put out by the group says the costs for moderate drinkers will be $10.83 a year. A staffer there referred us to Johns Hopkins public health professor David Jernigan, who helped them with policy research and has studied alcohol taxes nationwide.

Jernigan says the $10.83 figure was based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's standard for low-risk drinking. On their website, the CDC references the Agriculture Department’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommends no more than one drink a day for women and no more than two drinks a day for men as a standard of moderation. Assuming each average man or woman drinks the maximum, the proposed tax would cost $73 a year for men and $36.50 a year for women.

That’s obviously much higher than $10.83 for either gender. But as Tim Naimi, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and former CDC official explained, that's the upper bound for low-risk drinkers. Most people don’t drink all seven days of the week, and plenty of men may only have one drink a day.

According to a different CDC report, 31 percent of Marylanders would fall into the low-risk, $10 category. Another 44 percent don’t drink at all. The remaining quarter are high-risk or binge drinkers. Jernigan estimates heavy drinkers would pay an average of an additional $158 per year.

So even Jernigan concedes some Maryland drinkers would see a dramatic increase in the price of alcohol. But, he argues, that's only because the current rates are so low. The legislation would increase the tax "from $1.50 to $10.03 per gallon for distilled spirits, from 40 cents to $2.96 per gallon for wine, and from 9 cents to $1.16 per gallon for beer." Those are increases of 569 percent, 640 percent and 1,189 percent, respectively. And the current rates are so low because they haven't been hiked in decades. Maryland hasn’t increased the tax on beer and wine since the 1970s, and hasn’t increased it on spirits since the 1950s.

"If you pay your son a penny a week, then you increase it to a dime, your son's not going go around saying he got a 1,000 percent increase in his allowance," Jernigan said.

Leggett was citing an advocacy group's numbers, but their study was backed up by official government statistics. His portrayal of the relatively low cost of the alcohol tax for modest drinkers earns an Honest Abe.

In her opening statement, Collins said that if the program ended, “93 percent of the children [enrolled] would be returned to schools that do not measure up.”

And when the senators -- they appeared to be the only two members of the 17-person Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in attendance for the hearing -- were questioning Mayor Vince Gray and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown about the program, Lieberman said that D.C. eighth graders were the worst in the nation at reading and math.

Eventually, Collins threatened to withhold funding from D.C. Public Schools if the voucher program -- formally named the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program -- wasn’t continued. After all, if D.C.’s public classrooms are as wretched as our congressional overlords claim, it would be the only appropriate thing to do. Are they that bad?

Lieberman’s claim comes from a relatively simple source: the Nation’s Report Card. The National Assessment of Educational Progress ranked D.C. last among the fifty states for eighth graders in both reading and math.

As Gray pointed out in response to the Connecticut senator’s remark, D.C. is as much a city as a state. But the schools don’t cover themselves in glory when judged vis-a-vis other large cities either. In reading, the District ties Fresno and beats only Detroit. In math, DCPS ties with Milwaukee’s public schools and beats only Detroit.

As for Collins’ remark, her spokesperson pointed us to a document tracking 2010-2011 enrollment from the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation, which administers the program. Without the program, according to the document, 93.3 percent of the program’s 1012 students would be returned to public schools judged to be “In Need of Improvement”, “Restructuring”, or “Corrective Action” under the No Child Left Behind act. To us, that qualifies as "not measuring up.”

The Collins-Lieberman tag team might be meddling in the District's affairs, but at least they're accurate while doing it. (Other congressman haven't been.) The two senators receive Honest Abes.

But while the Democratic primary is taking shape, a Republican one is already going on. Well, sorta. Former senator and governor George Allen has announced he’s running to reclaim his old seat, while Tea Party activist (and former Allen staffer) Jamie Radtke has announced her candidacy. Others (including Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart and Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William) could soon join them. For now, though, Virginians looking for some statewide political bloodsport will have to sate themselves with Radtke’s attacks on her former boss. (Allen, acting like the frontrunner he is, hasn’t deigned to respond.)

Webb’s decision not to run for re-election gave Radtke a reason to launch this gem at Allen:

Twelve years ago George Allen ran for U.S. Senate pledging to work for a balanced budget, to reduce spending and to reduce the debt. Then Mr. Allen went to Washington and voted for spending measures that increased our national debt by $3.1 trillion and voted for $90 billion in earmarks. Now, 12 years later, George Allen is making the same promises again.

Allen’s rhetoric has remained consistently opposed to big government spending. Did he really have a big-spending record in the Senate? Did he vote “for spending measures that increased our national debt by $3.1 trillion” and “for $90 billion in earmarks?”

Let’s look at the debt first. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, on the day Allen was sworn in -- January 3, 2001 -- the debt stood at a little more than $5.7 trillion. Six years later, on his last day in his office -- January 2, 2007 -- the debt was close to $8.7 trillion. That’s a little less than $3 trillion, not $3.1 trillion, but the amount is close enough for our purposes.

As for the "spending measures" that drove up that debt, a late 2006 report from the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities identified two rounds of tax cuts proposed by then-President George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the major drivers of the debt increase during the 2001-2006 time period. (Whether the tax cuts count as “spending measures” is a different debate for a different day.) Conservative groups would point to the Medicare Part D expansion, which gave new prescription drug benefits to seniors, as another major driver of the debt.

On these five votes -- the Afghanistan War, Medicare Part D, the Iraq War, and the two tax cuts -- Allen voted yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

As for the earmarks, we asked a Radtke spokesman to provide backup, and he pointed us to data from the Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that has long fought against and tracked earmarks. From 2002 to 2006, there were a total of $121 billion in earmarks included in federal appropriations. (Radtke's spokesman said they reduced the total amount to make sure the number was accurate.) Allen voted for all of the appropriations bills during that time frame except for the 2005 Homeland Security appropriations bill.

Subtracting the $1.7 billion in earmarks included in the 2005 Homeland Security appropriations bill from the total, that’s about $119 billion in earmarks.

That doesn’t mean Allen was always supported the earmarks. Most of the bills were passed by overwhelming margins. The closest vote one passed by was 54-39. Many others passed with margins like 98-0. And the Senate doesn’t hold an up-or-down vote on every earmark.

“A lot of fiscally conservative members of Congress end up voting for the appropriations bills” even if they don’t support earmarking, said Leslie Paige, the media director from Citizens against Government Waste, later adding that earmarks are a “tiny” percentage of appropriations legislation. The appropriations bills provide the backbone of the federal operating budget and keep worthwhile programs running.

Still, a yes vote is a yes vote. Allen voted for the major policies that drove up debt during the Bush years and he voted for appropriations bills containing more than $90 billion in earmarks. Radtke gets off to a good start and earns an Honest Abe.

O’Malley did drop one nugget we’d never heard him use before: “Together, we’ve reduced the size of state government — already the 8th smallest government among the 50 states.”

Is Maryland, a traditional stronghold for Democrats, a paragon of small government?

In this helpfully footnoted version of the speech, O’Malley attributes the small government statistic to a report from RBC Capital Markets titled “US Municipal FOCUS: State and local Government employment – How Significant?” The report shows that Maryland's state and local government workforces, when combined, are the eighth smallest in the republic.

But it's questionable whether the size of the state's workforce is the best way to measure the size of state government. You could also look at the state budget or at state government's share of gross domestic product. In 2008, state and local governments in Maryland made up 8.5 percent of the state's GDP, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By that measure, Maryland's government is the 16th smallest in the nation.

But both the BEA data and the data cited by O'Malley suffer from two fatal words: "and local." O'Malley mentioned only state government in his speech. But the fact that the report he cites doesn’t back up his statement doesn’t necessarily make the governor wrong.

It is true that since taking office in 2007, O'Malley has cut the size of the state workforce, although many of the positions he eliminated were vacant. More recently, he offered buyouts to veteran state employees, and almost 1,400 employees were willing to take him up on his offer.

The RBC Capital Markets report didn’t break out state employment separately, so we looked for other government statistics. The U.S. Census Bureau has state government employment totals current as of March 2009, and we compared those with Bureau of Labor Statistics total employment numbers from the same time frame.

Under this measurement, about 3.7 percent of Maryland's workforce is employed by the state government. Nationally, that's the 13th smallest share, not the 8th.

If O’Malley was speaking off the cuff, he could be forgiven for slipping up on the difference between “state” and “state and local.” But when he’s giving the biggest speech of the General Assembly session, there’s no such wiggle room. Even though, relatively speaking, Maryland’s state government has fewer employees than a lot of states, O’Malley still earns a Total Malarkey.

During an interview on ESPN 980's The John Thompson Show this afternoon, Snyder said the following: “Someone calls you a criminal, someone makes fun of your wife who's battling breast cancer, shame on you.”

He repeated the claim during an interview with ABC7's Britt McHenry.

"When someone calls you a criminal and someone makes fun of your wife, who's fighting breast cancer and is a national spokesperson for the National Football League on breast cancer awareness, you sit there and you say, 'Enough is enough. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong,'" Snyder told McHenry.

The “someone” in question is Washington City Paper sports writer Dave McKenna, who wrote “The Cranky Redskins’ Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder,” the article that prompted Snyder’s lawsuit and is a general thorn in the side of the Redskins' owner.

The Facts Machine is lookingat the second half of Snyder's two part accusation --- that McKenna made “fun of [Snyder's] wife.”

Tanya Snyder is battling breast cancer, and her work in raising awareness is admirable. It's also not an issue in either the story or the lawsuit.

Here’s what McKenna’s story said about Tanya Snyder:

His wife, Tanya Snyder, is out selling the transformation, too. Last week she went on local TV [TBD's SportsTalk] to tell an interviewer that he is now surrounded by “better people,” and that he’s “grown and he’s evolved.”

Well, maybe his wife can find evidence of Snyder’s growth and evolution. I can’t.

Those are from the first and second paragraphs of the story. Tanya is not mentioned again during the piece. Does that qualify as making fun of Tanya Snyder? No. Does it qualify as making fun of Dan Snyder. Yes.

What aboutthe rest of McKenna’s Snyder-centric ouevre at City Paper? An online search of City Paper’s archives shows the owner’s wife cropping up three other times: in a letter to readers about the lawsuit, in a lament by a City Paper writer who happened to shareTanya Snyder'snameand whose Google search results are corrupted by the overlap,and as an aside in an article about the benching of Donovan McNabb. The aside is difficult to criticize: McKenna notes that proceeds from Tanya Snyder's promotional campaigns with the NFLcouldhelp raise money for cancer research.

Over at D.C. Sports Bog, Dan Steinberg covered some similar territory when Redskins PR guru Tony Wyllie made similar comments Thursday. He points out, correctly, that breast cancer was never mentioned in the interview referenced by McKenna (which aired on TBD’s SportsTalk).

With Snyder repeatedly citing his wife in interviews today, they're doubling down on a falsehood. Maybe by bringing her up, Snyder hopes the public will believe he's defending his wife's honor rather than just filing a SLAPP. He's not. Her honor was never threatened. It’s as flimsy as his legal complaint appears to be. It’s Total Malarkey.

“My hispanic cab driver complained about his regs today,” he wrote. “I don't know what's happening to this country, the regs are getting worse than cuba.”

Did the Cuba reference come from Cuccinelli’s Republican rhetorical playbook? Not likely, according to Brian Gottstein, a spokesperson for Cuccinelli. The driver of the attorney general’s cab was “very likely” Cuban, since he spoke with knowledge of Cuban cabbing practices, says the spokesman. Since Cuccinelli is a limited government guy, by "worse," he naturally means "more."

Cuccinelli’s digital outburst would appear to fit into something of a trend. Pepco is already providing Third World-level service in D.C. The U.S. soccer team lost to Ghana at the World Cup. China has larger casinos than we do. Has the U.S. even fallen behind in the freedom we grant to our taxi drivers? Are our taxi regulations actually more onerous than those crafted by a bunch of commies in Havana?

Though Cuccinelli was clearly satisfied in sourcing such a contention to one possibly Cuban taxi driver, that’s not good enough for La Maquina de los Hechos.

As a lawyer, Cuccinelli doubtless appreciates that a scientific comparison of taxi-related regulatory rigor between Cuba and the United States of America is tough to pull off. Here in the land of Apple Pie and the Hummer, after all, the expectation is for a free market with relative minimal government interference. In Cuba, the state has a monopoly on legitimate economic activity.

Recently, Raul Castro -- the brother of the island’s long-time dictator, Fidel -- has been liberalizing Cuba’s economy. One of the first steps he took, back in January 2009, was to allow for private taxis to return to the nation’s streets. The result is a three-pronged taxi system

• There’s a thriving mercado negro for taxis. The island’s transportation system is pathetic, and Cubans without cars often have to hitchhike or pay those who own cars to get them to work or to other appointments.
• There’s a state-run taxi system that’s aimed at tourists. These are modern cabs under non-American brands. According to the travel guide Frommer’s, the taxi companies are combined under the auspices of Cuba’s Ministry of Transportation. These taxis are metered like cabs in the United States, with an initial charge of $1.10 and an additional cost of between 55 and 90 cents per kilometer.
• Lastly, there are the private taxis, which were legalized in January 2009. Drivers pay the state about $21.50 a month for the right to drive their taxis, and they are allowed to drive only other Cubans, not extranjeros. An AP article from September 2009 said Cuban officials were expected to announce a price ceiling at some point but that most drivers expected to charge about 50 cents. These drivers use their own cars, most of which are classic models from the U.S. imported before the embargo.

(There are also horse drawn taxis and motorcycle-powered taxis, but we’re sticking to automobiles for this one.)

In the United States, cabbies are regulated by localities, so there’s no single set of rules. So let’s just default to Cuccinelli’s home county of Fairfax as a point of comparison.

To drive a cab in Fairfax, you need a hacker’s license. (The regulations are all listed here.) The requirements are generally reasonable -- you need to be 21 years old and have a clean criminal and driving record. Applying costs $25, and there’s an issuance and yearly renewal fee of $40. If a driver doesn’t provide good service, the license can be revoked.

Rates, meanwhile, are set by the county’s Consumer Protection Commission based on a relatively complex formula, and rate changes have to be approved by the county’s Board of Supervisors. The number of taxis operating in the county is set by the supervisors annually. The process to obtain the certificate to operate a cab -- which is separate from a hacker’s license -- involves public hearings and applications. (Generally, taxi companies own the operator’s certificates.) Operators are required to have a certain level of insurance and can also have their certificates revoked for bad behavior. They have to keep numerous records, including their revenues, how many taxis are operating at a given point, and how many calls for service they’re receiving.

And while operating a cab, drivers must comply with many requirements. They can work a maximum of 13 hours a day, can pick up only a certain number of passengers, can charge only an additional 25 cents for each grocery bag and aren’t allowed to smoke or use cell phones while driving a passenger.

The cabs have to meet certain EPA fuel mileage standards or use state-approved alternate fuels. They’re also subject to regular inspections. Violations can result in criminal charges.

In all, the county’s taxicab regulations are well over 10,000 words.

Do Cuba’s cabbies face page after page of regulations? Well, no. But they are a rare departure from a Communist norm, and the state has completely shut down the industry once in the past. Baruch University Professor Ted Henken, who examined the black market for cabs in Cuba as part of his doctoral dissertation, explained in an e-mail:

In the US, the state sets the rules of the game with lobbying and pressure from stakeholders and constituents - but isn't the only employer, producer, or service provider. In fact, Cuba is only nominally "socialist." Instead, I like to think of it as a state monopoly or state capitalism.

This is a FAR different context than even the most regulated "socialistic" sectors of the US economy where workers, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and corporations have far more legal rights and ability to lobby, pressure, and influence laws and regulations.

In a follow-up phone interview, he said that “the cabbies are completely at the mercy of the government, the police and inspectors and often get hit up for bribes.” Ultimately, he said, regardless of the toughness of American cabbie regulations, he'd rather ferry customers here than in Havana.

Regulations can have limited impact in Cuba, since most Cubans are masters at finding ways around the state’s rules and regulations. A legal privatized cab could easily act as a black market cab simply by turning off the meter, and it’s unlikely anyone would complain, Henken said. But if they’re caught, they could easily lose their car -- owning one requires government permission -- and could also be hit with a stiff fine.

So we have a pretty easy call here. Though Cuccinelli appears to have been thumbing some random thoughts on a social media site, he is right. The number of legal restrictions taxi drivers face in Cuba is slimmer than those faced by their hermanos in the United States.

A point of order here: It is not the job of the Maquina de los Hechos to point out that extensive cabbie regs in the U.S. were written to protect the consumer from proven instances of racial prejudice, fatal accidents, verbal and physical abuse, unwanted sexual advances, other categories of depraved hacker conduct, and charging a two-zone fare for a one-zone ride. Nor that the relative lack of regulatory rigor in Cuba may have more to do with that country’s lack of technological and economic development than with its governing ideology.

No, we here at the Maquina de los Hechos exist to judge the narrow, factual parameters of what our public officials say. And so we bequeath to Cuccinelli’s cabbie tweet an Honest Abe.

The outrage resulted from remarks Moran made during an interview with the U.S.-backed Arab news network Alhurra after last week's State of the Union. Here’s what he said:

[Democratic losses in the midterms] happened because of the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. The Civil War happened because the Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery. In this case a lot of people in this country, I believe, don't want to be governed by an African American, particularly one who is inclusive, who is liberal, who wants to spend money on everyone and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society.

Disregarding the comparison between a midterm election and the Civil War, we’re zeroing in on the core of Moran’s remarks: that Democrats lost dozens of seats in November because “a lot of people in this country … don't want to be governed by an African American.”

Moran is no shrinking violet, and Anne Hughes, his spokeswoman, defended his comments in a statement:

With nearly 1,000 identified hate groups in the U.S. and recent studies showing a majority of Americans believe racism is still widespread against African-Americans, it is no secret that our country has and continues to struggle with racial equality. The Congressman was expressing his frustration with this problem and the role it played in the last election. Rather than ignore this issue or pretend it isn't there, the Congressman believes we are better off discussing it in order to overcome it.

The relationship between voting behavior and race can be difficult for political scientists to measure. For one thing, people generally aren’t willing to discuss their views on race with a pollster. For another, the role of race in voting behavior is often found at the subconscious level.

In his remarks, Moran implied a direct causal relationship between Obama’s race and the Democrats’ midterm losses. Clearly, it’s not that simple.

“I think it’s irresponsible to dismiss out of hand what Moran said,” says Michael Fauntroy, a professor at George Mason University who studies race and politics. Fauntroy says a portion of the electorate -- although not a majority -- clearly wasn’t amenable to having a black man as president. “It’s more important a factor than people give it credit for.”

Fauntroy also pointed out that the history of conservative politics in the U.S. shows politicians willing to use “dog whistle” tactics to win over white voters. This ranges from Ronald Reagan’s allusion to “strapping young bucks” buying steaks using food stamps to allusions to “state’s rights” in the years after the civil rights movement.

While history is there, these effects have been muted in recent years. A CBS News poll from June 2008 -- after Obama had won the Democratic nomination -- showed that 68 percent of Americans thought the United States was ready for a black president. The same poll also showed that 22 percent of white Americans said race would play a role in their vote.

Fauntroy also noted that Obama is generally thought to be a conciliatory figure between the races, and is less "scary" than some other black politicians. Former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder had a similar effect, he said.

A clear racial divide exists nonetheless. White voters went 62 percent to 38 percent for Republicans in 2010.

In the end, is race the reason Democrats lost? While Fauntroy says race was "more important a factor than people give it credit for," he also notes that it "is not something that's quantifiable."

And there were other significant factors in the Democrats' midterm losses: The president's party typically loses seats in midterms; the national unemployment rate was stuck at 9.8 percent, leading many voters to believe that Democrats had failed to deliver on the issue voters said was the most important -- getting Americans back to work; and there was still significant opposition to Obama's 2010 health care law.

Two recent presidents who came into midterms with sputtering economies also saw their parties lose big time. Reagan's Republicans lost 26 of their 192 House seats in 1982. In 1994, the Democrats lost 54 seats out of 258 under Bill Clinton. Obama's losses? Democrats held 256 seats and lost 63 of them. That's a scale generally comparable to Clinton's.

Another factor that made the losses so large was that the Democrats picked up so many swing seats in wave elections of their own in 2006 and 2008.

And Moran ignores the fact that Congress itself was broadly unpopular. At the beginning of the lame duck session in December after the elections, Congress' approval rating was a record-low 13 percent, according to a Gallup poll. While the president has coattails, the anti-incumbent nature of this midterm election almost certainly played a role.

Moran said that Democrats lost seats in the midterms because "a lot of people in this country … don't want to be governed by an African American.” There, he's implying a direct causation, and one that is impossible to measure. While race has undeniably played a large role in the history of American politics, it's clear that number of factors, including the economy, policy differences, and anti-incumbent sentiment played significantly larger roles in the Republican wave. Moran is willing to acknowledge these factors, and Hughes said creating jobs his top priority. But in his remarks to Alhurra, Moran clearly overstated the role Obama's race played in Democrats' midterm losses, and provided no evidence to support a claim that is largely immeasureable. So Moran gets a Total Malarkey.

Host Bruce DePuyt asked Mooney if it was fair to call the health care overhaul a government takeover. (PolitiFact, for one, has said it’s not.)

Mooney said it was, and argued that government should instead increase choice and decrease regulation. “One of the problems in Maryland, we have so many government mandates on health care, which is government pushing it toward a certain way, where you have to cover in vitro fertilization, hair loss, all sort of things that are not considered basic health care needs. So the government causes the problem, in a sense, by all these mandates.”

Opponents of government involvement in health care often seize on what they perceive as questionable insurance coverage areas to make their case. But are health insurance companies really required to help you get pregnant or regrow your hair?

Maryland is one of fourteen states that requires coverage in vitro fertilization, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, although there are a bevy of limitations. For example, there must be a two-year history of infertility and there’s a maximum $100,000 lifetime benefit. This is covered by Maryland Code, specifically § 15-810.

The coverage of hair loss isn’t as clear-cut. Maryland Code, specifically § 15-836, does require coverage of “hair prosthesis,” or a wig. But it only applies for patients whose hair loss “results from chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer.” And the prosthesis (which cannot cost more than $350) must be prescribed by an oncologist. That's not for your average hair loss. It's certainly not picking up the tab for a vain 40-year-old going through a midlife crisis at the Hair Club For Men.

Of Mooney's two claims, one is legitimate, but the other is significantly distorted. That's a 50/50.

Normally, Dominion Power is held up as the good twin to Pepco. But today, with close to 200,000 Virginia residents without power, it’s taking a beating of its own. In a press release Thursday, the company tried to explain what was taking it so long to repair power lines. One of its reasons? Wednesday night’s snow was ‘Heavy, sticky snow that was twice as wet as typical snow.’ It sounded like non-scientific gibberish to us.

Fortunately, the ABC7 Stormwatch team set us straight. Yesterday’s snow was actually twice as wet as your average snowfall. An average snowfall uses about one inch of liquid to generate 10 to 12 inches of snow. Wednesday’s snow used about one inch of liquid to generate 5 inches of snow. That’s exceptionally wetter and heavier than your average flake.

The wet snow is stickier than the dry stuff, which made it harder to drive through and more difficult to clear from power lines.

“If it was a normal snowfall, it would have generated much more snow,” said ABC7 meteorologist Doug Hill.

What made the snow wetter? The temperature as it falls. The temperature in most of the atmosphere was close to the freezing mark, which meant not all the water froze. At the same time, the temperature wasn’t so warm that snow couldn’t form at all.

In a bold step forward for corporate personhood, Dominion Power is the first company to receive an Honest Abe.

Lopez, for one, is explicitly pushing this angle and is asking Mayor Vince Gray (who has endorsed Biddle) to drop the “interim” before interim Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s title. Henderson, a former Rhee deputy, is considered the best hope to carry on her reforms. (Mara has made the same request.)

“Chancellor Henderson needs to be given the job on a permanent basis,” Lopez said in a press release. “She is the last hope for the continuation of the progress we have made in education.”

In the release, Lopez — the only candidate with enough signatures already to make the ballot — made an eyebrow-rising claim. “Gray ... received a majority of his campaign contributions from the Washington Teachers’ Union.”

Wow. Forget about (D-D.C.)? How about (D-Washington Teachers' Union)?

Not quite. The teachers’ union itself didn’t actually give any money to Gray’s campaign. Its only direct donation during the 2010 election cycle was to Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas in the amount of $500, according to online records from the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance.

Teachers’ unions — and labor in general — did work to defeat Fenty, who they loathed. (One local union leader called him "the most arrogant individual I’ve ever met.") Ben Smith of Politico reported a day after the election that the American Federation of Teachers (of which the Washington Teachers’ Union is a part) spent around $1 million to defeat Fenty. But they spent the money as part of an independent campaign, not in direct donations to Gray. By law, the unions’ effort was separate from his campaign:

[T]he consultant said that most of the money went to unlimited and unregulated communication with union members, intense outreach to the union's more than 2,000 members in the district and to the between 30,000 and 40,000 AFL-CIO members in Washington, D.C. Each group received three mailings and several live calls; the union also did its own polling on the race.

As of the week before the primary, Gray had raised $1.15 million (he raised more after the primary, but at that point, his election was fait accompli). That shows the amount the AFT spent wasn't chump change. But it wasn't in direct campaign contributions.

Lopez presented this explanation to us as his reasoning for the statement, while adding that individual members of the WTU made contributions as well. "The bulk of the total money spent on his campaign came from those unions," he said.

The union endorsed Gray, and made little secret of its dislike of Fenty, but they didn’t provide the majority of the bankroll for Gray’s race. In fact, they didn't provide any direct money at all. Independent expenditure campaigns and the Gray campaign are totally separate, an important distinction Lopez completely ignores and it's Total Malarkey.

“The federal health care mandate alone will cost Virginia about $2 billion by 2022,” he declared.

On Wednesday, it was time for Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, to be sworn in for the second time. His second-in-command, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, had a different opinion on the fiscal impact of health care reform. In his inaugural address, Brown said Maryland had developed a model for implementing reform “that will save Maryland $830 million … by 2020.”

A spokesman for Brown sourced the $830 million figure to the state’s Health Care Reform Coordinating Council, a reform panel that Brown chaired.  A spokesman for McDonnell attributed his figure to Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance Services.

Both numbers come from reputable sources. Maryland and Virginia are different states, and Brown and McDonnell are using different years as their endpoints, but it’s hard not to see some contradiction between the two statements. One of them must be lying, right? Nope.

Turns out, the fiscal impact of the health care overhaul isn’t close to standard from state to state. A report from the National Association of State Budget Officers last year noted: “The net fiscal impact on states will vary depending on many factors including the number of newly eligible, the enrollment of those currently eligible though not enrolled, and the impact of the prescription drug rebates.”

If that explanation is a touch opaque, just think Medicaid. After all, most state spending on healthcare comes in the form of Medicaid, a federally subsidized program that provides health care for the poor and is a big and growing part of state budgets.

In fiscal 2009, states spent 21 percent of their total budgets on Medicaid. Different states have different standards for Medicaid eligibility, and the number of people covered and the amount spent can vary. According to statehealthfacts.org, a project of the Kaiser Family Foundation, Virginia and Maryland have disparate generosity levels when it comes to Medicaid payouts. 

Virginia will cover only adults who make less than one-third of the federal poverty level, while Maryland will cover only adults who make up to 116 percent of the poverty level---meaning that Maryland covers a larger percentage of its indigent residents for health payments. Virginia doesn’t cover childless adults, Maryland does. In 2007, Virginia ranked 48th in Medicaid spending per capita.

There are other differences between the two states' health care policies. Maryland, for example, was one of 35 states that operated a high-risk pool for health insurance that covered people who normally would not have been able to get insurance. This is expensive, but once insurance companies are no longer allowed to prevent people with pre-existing conditions in 2014, it’ll no longer be necessary.

“A lot of this stuff is very state-specific,” said Charles Milligan, the executive director of The Hilltop Institute, a group from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County that helped Brown's panel calculate the state's cost estimate. In the case of Maryland, Milligan said, health care reform actually imposes $1.85 billion in new costs over the next decade, but the savings wash those costs out. “A lot of those dollars are federal dollars replacing state dollars where Maryland had created a pretty strong safety net.”

Virginia’s costs mainly come from a required expansion of Medicaid. Virginia may need to add as many 400,000 more people to its Medicaid rolls as part of a required expansion of eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty line. While the federal government will pick up much of the tab for this, the costs are still high.

We were expecting a liar, but didn't find one. Both Brown and McDonnell receive a grade of Honest Abe.

One of the arguments Republicans make for repeal is that the American people oppose the health care law and want them to do so. According to Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), that argument doesn’t hold water. On Wednesday's TBD NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt, Edwards, who represents parts of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, made the case that most Americans thought health care reform took the county in the right direction.

“It’s true that the majority of Americans either think we should do more with health care or are really satisfied with where we’re going,” said Edwards, who has always been a staunch supporter of the law. "Where the GOP is going right now actually doesn't match where the American public is."

Democrats have long insisted that the legislation would become more popular as people began to realize the benefits of its consumer protections. So, where do Americans really stand on the health care law and its repeal?

The Facts Machine located five polls by national news outlets or well-known polling organizations on health care reform released since the beginning of the year. The polls are from Gallup, the Washington Post/ABC News, the Associated Press, Rasmussen and CNN. Here’s what each found:

Rasmussen: Fifty five percent of likely voters support repeal of the health care law, while 40 percent oppose repeal. However, only 40 percent strongly support repeal, “matching the lowest level found since the health care bill became law.” Caveat: Rasmussen is thought by some to have “exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.”

Washington Post/ABC News: Like Rasmussen, the Post/ABC poll shows an advantage for opponents: 50 percent of those polled opposed the law, while 45 percent  supported it. But when opponents were asked if they bill should be repealed, only one-third of them supported a full repeal. Thirty five percent wanted a partial repeal and 30 percent wanted a “wait-and-see” approach.

And, most importantly, a quarter of those who opposed the bill “say the legislation is faulty because it did not go far enough, not because it pushed change too far.”

Associated Press/GfK: According to a spokesman for Edwards, this is the poll she was referring to. It found that 40 percent support the law, while 41 percent oppose it. Among all Americans, only 25 percent want to repeal the law entirely and 43 percent want it to do more to change the health care system.

CNN: This poll, like Rasmussen's, is binary. Half of those polled would want to see all the law’s segments repealed, and 42 percent want to see them kept in place.

Gallup: Gallup's poll shows 46 percent want their congressman to support repeal, while 40 percent want to keep it intact.

When given two options: repeal or no repeal, Americans decidedly choose repeal. But in the two polls -- the Post's and the AP's -- where people surveyed are given multiple options, the results show that Edwards is right: more people are either satisfied with the law, or think that doesn't go far enough, than favor total repeal.

According to the AP poll, only a quarter of Americans support total repeal, while 43 percent want it to do more to change the health care system and a little less than a fifth want it to stay the same. That's exactly how Edwards portrayed it.

The Washington Post/ABC shows something similar. While half oppose the law, a full quarter of that group didn't think the legislation went far enough. And only one-third of those who opposed the law wanted a full repeal.

If you give Americans a yes or no option, they want to see health care repealed. But a deeper look at the crosstabs shows opposition to bill softens, and that many people either wish the legislation had been more expansive, or that people like certain segments of the law and hope it is not entirely repealed. Given that, Edwards was Mostly On Point.

Yet for someone who's gone viral so often, perhaps Milloy should learn a thing or two about e-mail.

Or maybe not, given the columnist's know-nothing stance on tech. Have a look at the column that kicked off the hot streak. It ran the day after the. D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray defeated incumbent Adrian Fenty in the Democratic mayoral primary, and it's heavy on digital sneering:

Watch them at the chic new eateries, Fenty's hip newly arrived "creative class" firing up their "social media" networks whenever he's under attack: Why should the mayor have to stop his work just to meet with some old biddies, they tweet. Who cares if the mayor is arrogant as long as he gets the job done?

Myopic little twits.

And lordy don't complain about Rhee.

She's creating a "world-class school system," they text.

The Facts Machine is betting that no one has ever texted about Rhee's "world-class school system." (If they did, it would be "wrld clss schl systm.") People generally use texting for less weighty communications.

For more Milloy bashing of the social media-using masses, check out this excerpt from the City Paper cover story:

Talk to Milloy about the state of the media and his cranky-old-uncle schtick becomes even more apparent. “Sounds perverted,” he gripes when asked about Twitter, his voice suddenly mockingly high: “Follow me on Twitter, and watch me tweet...”

The Twitter logo and "tweeting" evoke birds.

Shortly after his "social media" column, Milloy wrote about the "caldron of hatred" boiling in D.C., citing anonymous comments posted on the Washington Post website about the election. The piece repeated some nasty comments, like this one: 

"All the wonderful progress made by Fenty is wiped out by one stupid move by the D.C. electorate. For the first time D.C. has professional managers working for D.C. . . now they will all be fired or be asked to leave, simply because they aren't African-American,"

Milloy assumes that all of the negative (and often racist) comments originated in Washington, D.C. — though many of them refer to D.C. voters in the third person, seemingly indicative of coming from outside observers. And the Washington Post, as a newspaper with national credibility, gets a tremendous amount of its traffic from around the country (not to mention that the population of the D.C. suburbs dwarfs the population of the District itself.)

Whatever the merits of his attacks on computers, Milloy simply plows ahead, as readers of this morning's offering learned. In a discussion of the Tucson tragedy, Milloy writes about our collective callousness:

For most of us, the lives of the Morenos of the world aren't worth so much as a blip on our emotional radar. We discount their deaths as easily as we do those of civilians in Afghanistan who get killed by our missiles, fired from drones as easily as we fire off nasty anonymous notes via e-mail.

Now, most of Milloy's work remains strictly off-limits to The Facts Machine, which resides in the rigid world of the verifiable. But in the passage outlined above, our worlds intersect.

We're not going to challenge the factual basis for sweeping sociological conclusions about "emotional radar" or anything of the sort. But:

Anonymous e-mail? E-mail cannot be anonymous. It has an identity attached to it. It can be pseudonymous, but not anonymous.

Let's go through the process of signing up for a Gmail account. It asks for your name, the answer to a personal security question and your birthday. (It'll turn that information over to the government if asked.) This lets you create a screen name that is attached to a specific identity. This identity doesn't have to match up with your real-life one, but it is consistent for every time you send an e-mail. This is a pseudonym, not anonymity.

It's a minor mistake, but indicative of a larger trend: Milloy seems to hate something he knows very little about and is too dismissive of to explore.

Milloy makes plenty of good points in his recent columns, as provocative as they've been. Those points just happen to not be the ones about technology. Let's return to the City Paper story:

But like all columnists, he’s struggled with a world changing around him. He hasn’t lived in the District since moving from 8th Street NE to Prince George’s County in 2005, and at times, it shows. Standing outside Children of Mine in Anacostia, Milloy marvels at seeing two white people walk by. “Do you know how many homicides I covered just down the street?” Sometimes, even an oracle is confounded.

And sometimes, when they're confounded, they end up writing Total Malarkey by suggesting e-mail is anonymous.

And, McDonnell added, it would create jobs.

“Building now will produce another benefit for our Commonwealth: road building means job creation,” McDonnell said. “It is estimated that every $100 million spent on construction generates 3,000 new jobs.”

McDonnell wants to spend $4 billion over the next three years on transportation, a significant part of it on road construction, so we were wondering: Will all this building actually put tens of thousands of Virginians back to work?

A McDonnell spokeswoman said the source of the jobs claim was a report by  the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that uses 2007 data from the Federal Highway Administration. The report "estimates that a total of 34,779 jobs ... would be supported by each $1.25 billion in highway capital investment." Do the math, and that turns out to be 2,782 jobs for every $100 million spent.

FHWA - Employment Impacts of Highway Infrastructure Investment

But the report comes with plenty of caveats. The most important to us is the following: "The FHWA analysis refers to jobs supported by highway investments, not jobs created." McDonnell said the spending would "generate ... new" jobs, but the report only says jobs will be supported, not created. That could mean saving jobs that might otherwise disappear, creating new ones, or continuing to fund existing jobs not at risk.

The report also states that annual highway funding would support the same jobs year after year, but an increase in funds would create new ones.  McDonnell's argument is based on a burst of spending. "This would be an immediate infusion of funds the likes of which our Commonwealth hasn't seen in decades," he said in the speech.

The study from AASHTO notes that with the exception of certain projects, "highway funds spend out slowly, with only 27% of a project, on average, outlaying in the first year." In fact, the report makes a point to caution against using the numbers to argue for including highway spending in economic stimulus packages, as many had done in the case of President Obama's 2009 legislation.

McDonnell is right that road construction has been linked to job growth, but the relationship is more complex than he made it seem in his address. He makes it sound like spending $100 million on road construction will instantly move 3,000 Virginians directly from the unemployment line to work. That's not how it works. What he said is Only Kind of True.

Capitals, Wizards and Verizon Center owner Ted Leonsis is already the most-beloved franchise owner in D.C. The Lerner family's Nationals have yet to prove themselves, D.C. United has slipped under Will Chang, and Dan Snyder, well... is Dan Snyder.

And why wouldn't Washingtonians love Leonsis? The Capitals are the city's best team, and he's managed to keep the Wizards (somewhat) interesting by promising to do the Dougie if the team sells out a game. Heck, he's even keeping the city budget afloat.

Huh? At a Washington Post conference featuring all of the local owners Tuesday, Leonsis said 10 percent of the city's revenues were generated in the area around the Verizon Center.

Downtown D.C. has been revitalized over the past decade, and that the Verizon Center and other major developments played a role in the turn-around. But is one-tenth of the money in the city’s coffers really coming from the area surrounding the sports arena?

Leonsis, who also owns the Capitals and made his fortune as a top executive at AOL, didn’t exactly define what area he was referring to and a spokesman for his company, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, never clarified his remarks and never sent us an ultimate source for Leonsis' claim. (We'll update this item if we hear back.)

The logical government source for the data didn’t know where it was. “The only taxes that can be determined by area are real estate taxes,” said David Umansky, a spokesman for the office of the chief financial officer. “I don’t want to say it’s made up, but we don’t know where they’re getting it.” Looking at property taxes wouldn’t give much of a picture either -- according to Umansky, they make up less than a third of the district’s revenue.

The District’s Downtown BID does know. In their 2009 State of Downtown report, the nonprofit (which is funded by business owners within its boundaries) said that 15 percent of the city’s tax revenue came from the area included in the BID -- about 2 percent of the District’s total land. Is that the “area surrounding the Verizon Center?” The BID’s territory stretches from Massachusetts Avenue NW to Constitution Avenue NW and from 16th Street NW to New Jersey Avenue NW, which seems too large.

Karyn LeBlanc, the communications director for the BID, also sent us an internal study it did estimating that in 2011, economic activity within seven blocks of the Verizon Center would generate $355 million in taxes. That comes out to only 7 percent of the District’s projected $5 billion in revenue for 2011.

Keep in mind, the Downtown BID exists to promote economic activity downtown, so they have incentive to make things look as shiny as possible. The reports are based on work done in-house and by two consulting firms -- Economic Research Associates and Aecom. That said, there’s no official government data to contradict them, either.

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, who represents the area that includes the Verizon Center and chairs the committee on finance and revenue, didn't have hard numbers, either, but said Leonsis' point held.

"The construction of the Verizon Center has produced a wealth of taxes for the city," Evans said. "I think he's not off-base in saying that."

There’s a second question here. How much did the Verizon Center have to do with any revival of downtown? The economic impact of stadiums is a much-contested topic. While downtown might be thriving, the area around Nationals Stadium has entered a much-hoped for Renaissance just yet. The general consensus among researchers seems to be that when coupled with a true urban renewal plan, a sports stadium can have a big, positive impact. (The Verizon Center's neighborhood has seen plenty of other development, including a new convention center near Mount Vernon Square.) If it's built solo, it often ends up just replacing other entertainment spending.

Evans -- who also wants to lure the Redskins back to the District -- said the Verizon Center stands as a counterpoint to studies indicating sports arenas don't spur economic development. Unlike office buildings or other types of development, the Verizon Center made a "living downtown" that has people coming and going on nights and weekends.

Let's sum up: There's no official data backing up or disputing Leonsis' statement. A larger area around the stadium generates 15 percent of the city's tax revenue, while a smaller one generates only 7 percent. And those numbers come from a group with an interest in promoting downtown business. Without clarity on what area he was referring to from Leonsis, we don't have much choice other than to admit we have Insufficient Evidence to Rule.

Washington, D.C. and Prince George’s County probably look the same from Idaho.

On Meet the Press a day after the tragic mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., host David Gregory was leading a discussion among several members of Congress about how the shooting of one of their colleagues and the murder of several others might change the American political scene. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., suggested the permissibility of Arizona’s gun laws might deserve a closer look.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who was just elected to Congress with the backing of the Tea Party (and is so new to Congress his office website doesn't appear to be set up yet), was having none of this.

“We have to be careful of this debate a little bit. Washington, D.C., last week had seven murders, and they have some of the most — strictest gun laws in, in the United States,” Labrador said, according to a transcript. “So I don't know that it's the gun laws that are going to make the differences. It's the responsibility that each individual has to, to carry guns safely.”

Now, there are plenty of differences of opinion regarding the impact gun laws have on gun crimes. But what can't be argued with is that it was Prince George's County that had seven murders last week (they’re now up to nine for the year), not the District. D.C. has had four murders so far this year. And homicides in both areas fell last year, with the District reaching a historic low point.

That doesn't change Labrador's point much. Maryland's gun laws are aren't as strict as D.C.'s, but they won't be winning praise from the National Rifle Association anytime soon. Looking at these charts from the NRA, it's easy to see that Arizona is much friendlier to gun owners than the Old Line State. And Arizona does have a lower murder rate than Maryland, according to FBI data. But correlation doesn't equal causation.

Washingtonians don't expect representatives from elsewhere to embrace the city's laws, but we do expect them to be able to read a map. A spokesman for Labrador didn’t immediately return a voicemail message. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Labrador's spokesman gave the following statement to NBC Washington:

“I apologize the congressman misspoke earlier today in regard to the number of homicides in the District of Columbia this year,” his spokesman Phil Hardy said later. “He was trying to make the point that senseless acts of violence have no place in American society. Regardless of where we live, we should all work together to put an end to such acts and the sadness and tragedy they inflict upon our society.”

And he told his local paper, the Idaho Statesman, that he was actually referring to the number of shootings in Washington.

Labrador meant to say there had been seven shootings in Washington during that time period, not murders, said Labrador's chief of staff, former National Rifle Association lobbyist John Goodwin. Labrador has corrected his statement with "Meet the Press."

But it still seems like Total Malarkey.

"It's about $90 million of cost for transporting these students, and in fact, you could basically buy every student taking advantage of that transportation a BMW every year with what we currently pay," Mara said during an appearance earlier this week on TBD's NewsTalk.

Is this alarming statement accurate?

According to data provided by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, yes.

In fiscal year 2010, which ended Sept. 30, D.C. spent $93,286,476 on transportation for 3,682 special education students, or $25,335 per student.

Is that enough to prove Mara's statement true? We'll get to the luxury cars, but first, some background.

As the District struggles to get its special education system out from under federal oversight, it is spending a lot of money transporting special education students to places that can meet their educational needs. If their local school isn't up to snuff, these students can enroll at a public or charter school elsewhere in D.C. If no school in D.C. works, they can go to private schools and the District will pick up the cost.

About one-in-five D.C. special education students fall into this category. Most of them go to private schools in the Washington area, but some are as far away as Colorado. Cost-cutters have long targeted this program as a place where the District can find budgetary savings. (Mayor Vince Gray frequently mentioned it when he was running for office.)

Why so expensive? Kelly Brinkley, the COO of the Office of State Superintendent for Education, said a federal court order and individual education plans for each student complicates matters far beyond your standard ride to school. Some students have nurses or attendants that need to be transported. Students can be transported to Baltimore or downstate Virginia, and the city has a limited time to get them there. So even if multiple students go to one school, if a bus can't pick all of them up and get them in a certain time frame, multiple buses might be used. All these complexities add up pretty quickly.

"You aren't transporting regular students," Brinkley said. "Because we do transport so many kids outside of the city, those costs really add up."

Brinkley said the costs should decrease when D.C. gets out of the federal court order, which will allow them to simplify the transportation process.

So, now to the cars. Is Mara right in his assertion that D.C. might as well just hand out luxury cars?

According to the Kelly Blue Book, the cheapest BMW is a 2011 BMW 1 Series 2-door 128i Coupe, which costs $29,424. That leaves us about four grand short per child.

Is there any luxury vehicle this could buy for every D.C. special education student? Lexuses were out of the question, as were Mercedes-Benzes. But Ford, Mitsubishi, Dodge and Chevy all had multiple models within the price range.

A few other data points on what you could get, car-wise, for $93 million:

• 3,034 2010 Hummer H3Ts
• 11,631 2003 Toyota Corollas in good condition (The official car of The Facts Machine)
• 28,225 2000 Volkswagen Beetles in good condition
• 377 2011 Rolls Royce Ghosts

The District would come up a little short in its quest to buy every special education student a BMW, but Mara did add the qualifier "basically," so he deserves some slack. After all, the District could definitely buy every student a nice car, so he's Mostly On Point.

During an appearance Tuesday on TBD NewsTalk, Moran was more than willing to explain exactly why this was a terrible idea. Among his reasons: "The fact is that when you cover another 40 million people so that we and localities and so on don't have to pay for uncompensated care -- we pay for more than $100 million of uncompensated care through tax bills just in the 8th district alone -- the fact is that when you cover another 40 million people, that's hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the private sector for health professionals."

The section between the dashes seemed hard to believe. Are federal taxpayers forking over more than $100 million for uncompensated care in just the areas of Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax that are represented by Moran?

To start off, uncompensated care is care hospitals are forced to give those who don't have insurance or otherwise can't pay their bills. Every year, for example, untold numbers descend on emergency rooms to address often preventable ailments. To provide such emergency care, the federal government, states and localities pick up the tab through Medicare. Other times, people simply don't pay their bills, and the costs are passed along to everyone else through higher insurance rates.

Health care reform's provision that forces everyone to buy insurance would cause the problem of uncompensated care to shrink somewhat. Governments would still have to subsidize care for those who couldn't afford it, but with more people paying into the system, its costs would decline. One study by the Urban Institute Health Policy Center estimates that health care reform will cause the total amount of uncompensated care to decline from $62.1 billion in 2009 to $46.6 billion in 2019. Without the reform bill, it would have skyrocketed to between $107 and $141 billion in the same timeframe.

Uncompensated care also forms a key plank of the Obama administration's legal defense of the law, which Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and others argue is unconstitutional. A USA Today article explains:

At the core of the legal dispute is whether a person's decision not to buy health insurance can be considered economic activity that affects commerce.

Government lawyers contend that it is and stress that the uninsured affect costs throughout the system. They argued in a filing that the uninsured consume "tens of billions of dollars in uncompensated care each year." Those costs — $43 billion in 2008 — are borne by doctors, hospitals, insured individuals, taxpayers and small businesses.

"Make no mistake: Individuals who choose to go without health insurance are actively engaged in economic decision-making — the decision to pay for health care out-of-pocket or to seek uncompensated care," Cutter said.

So now that we understand why this is so important, is Moran right? Yep. A spokeswoman for the congressman pointed us to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It shows that hospitals and providers in the district spent $102 million on uncompensated care in 2008, the most recent year for which data was available.

Moran gets an Honest Abe.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is no exception. A news release put out by the governor's office after a Monday jobs and economy forum at the National Institute of Standards and Technology stated:

“This year, Maryland has created 36,100 new jobs, a rate that is twice the rate of job growth as the rest of the nation.”

Maryland may have a lower unemployment rate (7.4 percent), but is the Free State really adding jobs that quickly?

An O’Malley spokesman pointed us to the widely accepted numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The most recent data available shows 2,530,700 Marylanders were employed in November. In December of last year, 2,494,600 state residents had jobs. That’s a gain of 31,600 jobs, and an increase of 1.47 percent.

So how does that compare to the national rate of job growth? Nationally, 138,888,000 people were employed in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase from 137,792,000 last December. That’s an increase 0.8 percent.

So O'Malley is on target with his claim that Maryland's growth is more than double the national average.

Of course, there's also the question of how the question is framed. O'Malley's picking a good start date for himself. December 2009 had Maryland's highest unemployment rate in a decade. If he had started at the beginning of his term, Maryland would have a net job loss. Unemployment has doubled since he took office for the first time. So while 31,000 jobs sounds like a lot, the state's unemployment rate has only moved from 7.5 percent to 7.4 percent in that time frame.

And then there's the matter of whether or not O'Malley deserves credit for Maryland's job growth. During his successful run for re-election, Republican former governor Bob Ehrlich hammered him for over-regulating business and for taxing high-income earners (a group Ehrlich called "job creators"). Even at his own summit, a call to loosen regulations drew cheers from the crowd.

in the last legislative session, O'Malley sponsored a package of tax credits that gave employers $5,000 for every unemployed Marylander they hired. As of September, the program had few takers -- only 350 people had been hired. At the time, the governor and business leaders said businesses were simply unaware of the credit.

And while Maryland's unemployment rate is lower than the 9.8 percent national rate, and ranks 15th among all states, the 7.4 number is actually closer to the middle of the pack. Its neighbors are also doing well: Virginia's unemployment rate is 6.8, while Delaware and Pennsylvania have 8.4 rates.

We can't ultimately decide how much credit O'Malley should get for Maryland's relatively strong beginning to the economic recovery, we can judge the truth of his statement: he got the number of jobs right, and was spot-on in saying Maryland's jobs picture was better than the national average. But it wasn't quite twice as high, as he stated. Overall, he was Mostly On Point.

Earlier this year, Cuccinelli asked the University of Virginia to turn over documents related to research done by climate scientist Michael Mann (Mann now teaches at Penn State). Mann’s research was involved in the “Climate-gate” controversy, and although he has since been cleared of wrongdoing by academic boards, Cuccinelli wanted to see if Mann had fraudulently used or obtained state or federal grants.

In response to a listener’s question during an appearance on WMRA's Virginia Insight last week -- one of seemingly dozens of interview on radio and television -- Cuccinelli tried to portray the university as merely wanting to prevent the public release of potentially embarrassing documents, arguing that they weren’t trying to uphold any higher ideal.

“About academic freedom, in the Albemarle court room and in their briefs, while they’re a little bit schizophrenic about it, UVA conceded there’s no issue of academic freedom at stake here,” Cuccinelli said in response to a listener's question. “It’s a university, but that doesn’t mean the issue we’re dealing with has anything to do with academic freedom.”

Considering how hard they've fought to protect Mann's work from Cuccinelli's investigators, has UVA really “conceded there’s no issue of academic freedom at stake here?”

For background's sake, Mann is the scientist responsible for the "hockey stick graph" which shows a sudden increase in global temperatures in recent decades. Cuccinelli is a noted skeptic of the wide scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change. (He's challenging the EPA's stance that global warming is harmful to humans.)

Mann and Cuccinelli's stances on opposite sides of the climate divide have led scientific groups and others to condemn Cuccinelli's investigation as a witch hunt. Cuccinelli, meanwhile, has simply said he's doing his job by making sure taxpayer money wasn't obtained through or spent on fraudulent activities.

The university, for its part, argues that Cuccinelli doesn't have enough evidence to suspect any fraud occurred, and says the investigation could have a "chilling effect" on professors working on politically controversial research. And the very first words of its May request to dismiss Cuccinelli’s original two civil investigative demands (essentially a fancy term for "subpoena") are “Academic freedom.”

“Academic freedom is essential to the mission of our Nation’s institutions of higher learning and a core First Amendment concern,” the request begins, later adding: “The Civil Investigative Demands issued to the University by the Office of the Attorney General threaten these bedrock principles.” A list of reasons to dismiss the demand includes the item “CIDs Impermissibly Interfere With Academic Freedom.”

Similarly, a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, the American Association of University Professors and the university-affiliated Thomas Jefferson Center for The Protection of Free Expression argues that the documents Cuccinelli seeks are protected by the First Amendment because he's violating the academic freedom of the university and of Mann. The words ‘academic freedom’ appear in their brief more than two dozen times.

A later brief filed by the university sounds similar notes.

"While nominally issued in support of a purported investigation under Virginia's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, the latest CID ... constitutes an unprecedented and improper governmental intrusion into ongoing scientific research," the university's lawyers wrote. "More specifically, this CID ... targets a University professor for investigation because the Attorney General disagrees with his academic research regarding climate change."

But Cuccinelli didn't limit his statements to the briefs. So what happened in the "Albermarle court room?" Chris Mann, a spokesman for the attorney general, pointed us to the transcript of the Aug. 20 argument.

"We don’t maintain that there is a strict First Amendment constitutional right at issue here. And there are exceptions that would permit if there was fraud for the state to inquire," university attorney Chuck Rosenberg said. "There’s no question about that."

At the same time, Rosenberg said, "academic freedom in some ways has to inform this debate."

In this part of the trial, the university isn't totally conceding that "there's no issue of academic freedom at stake here," as Cuccinelli said. They are conceding that academic freedom isn't an ultimate protection from a fraud investigation, while at the same time maintaining that Cuccinelli's actions need to be viewed as potentially infringing on academic freedom.

And when Albermarle County Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross ultimately dismissed the first two investigative demands in late August, it wasn't because of academic freedom. His order doesn't directly address that claim, instead focusing on whether Cuccinelli had the legal standing to obtain the information he requested and whether or not the attorney general had "reason to believe" the information was relevant to a fraud investigation.

On Sept. 28, Cuccinelli's office announced that he would appeal the original ruling to the state Supreme Court. The next day, it filed a new, narrower civil investigative demand with the university.

Peatross is still considering the third investigative demand, and the state Supreme Court is considering Cuccinelli's appeal of the dismissal of the first.

While the university isn't relying on academic freedom to form the backbone of its defense, it also hasn't thrown the argument by the wayside has Cuccinelli implied -- in their briefs, it comes up again and again and again. His statement is Only Kind of True.

Current County Executive Jack Johnson was just arrested, as was his wife Leslie, an incoming member of the county council. The federal corruption investigation that snared them looks likely to take down some other officials soon. The implications go beyond civic embarrassment.

The federal agents who've taken up temporary quarters in Prince George's homes and offices are sending signals to prospective employers around the region: Don't come here. And if you're the incoming county executive who promised to revive the economy and job growth, you can't have that.

Rushern Baker, who in early November won the race to succeed Johnson, finally commented on the scandal on Monday afternoon. In his statement, he avoided demonizing his predecessor and focused on rebuilding the county’s battered self-esteem.

“Prince George’s County remains the greatest jurisdiction for economic growth in this region,” he proclaimed.

Is much-maligned, often-mocked P.G. -- which sets its standard to simply be a ‘county of livable communities’ -- really tops in economic growth?

After his appearance on TBD NewsTalk yesterday, The Facts Machine quizzed Baker about the basis for such happy talk. He said his statement was based on the county’s potential.

“It’s the best place to come if you want to start a business,” Baker said. “The place that has the greatest to potential to grow in the region is Prince George’s County.”

On a purely rhetorical level, Baker should watch himself. That sound bite translates loosely as something you'd say about a winless football team---Nowhere to go but up.

Yet Baker, to his credit, has some legitimate-sounding talking points to go with the optimism. He cited the county’s high number of undeveloped Metro station sites as one reason businesses that move to the county have explosive growth potential.

Potential is really all Baker can base his claim on. If you look at traditional economic indicators like unemployment or gross county product, Prince George’s lags. In 2009, Prince George’s average unemployment rate was 6.9. Its more prosperous Maryland neighbor, Montgomery, had an unemployment rate of 5.3. In Virginia, Fairfax County’s unemployment rate was 4.7, and the District’s was 10.2.

The county’s per capita personal income is also lower than both the state and national averages.

“Seems like a political statement and not an economic one,” Stephen Fuller, a professor at George Mason who heads the university’s Center for Regional Analysis, wrote in an e-mail.

So where Prince George’s is and where it’s been aren’t so great. What about its future?

The same things that have held it back in the past are still around, Fuller said in a follow-up interview.

Prince George’s does have advantages. To start with, it’s in the Washington region, which, because of federal spending, is in a much better economic position than basically any other metropolitan area. It has good housing stock, better-than-average traffic and a substantial population of high wage earners, who support a growing retail sector.

The problem? Those high wage earners tend not to work in the county. Many in the county’s southern half commute across the Wilson Bridge to Alexandria, while those in the northern half head to D.C. or Montgomery County.

So, Prince George’s hasn’t managed to attract all the high-wage employers its nearby neighbors have. And its inside-the-Beltway portion has problems with crime and poverty that Montgomery and Northern Virginia don’t have to grapple with.

But all that can change, right? After all, Baker’s point about all the undeveloped land near Metro stations is correct.

Not quite.

Fuller points out that Northern Virginia will soon be getting Metro stations in undeveloped areas of its own as the Silver Line extension is built toward Dulles. And since Northern Virginia is more attractive than Prince George's to begin with, those sites will be more enticing.

"Generally, just having Metro there isn't enough," said Fuller, who has also served on several government advisory boards in Virginia. "Prince George's County needs more than just green fields around a Metro station."

In general, Northern Virginia's economy is more vibrant and has more growth potential than suburban Maryland's, Fuller said. Forty-seven percent of the region's economic activity occurs in those parts, compared to 53 percent divided between Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Virginia attracts more businesses because it has a more business-friendly reputation. Prince George's, in particular, has a pay-to-play image that can scare businesses away. And the Johnson arrest isn't going to help.

Things aren't all bad. "Prince George's has substantial growth potential," Fuller said. "It's not impossible, but they have a long way to go."

Maybe Baker can pull off the unlikely.

"I think under new leadership, that’s what we’re going to see is a business friendly atmosphere — not one that ignores consistency, but one where there’s honesty and trust in the system," Jim Estepp, the leader of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable, told the Washington Business Journal. "That has to be rebuilt."

"[Baker's] talking the right stuff," Fuller said. "It's a tough job."

And what should Baker be expected to say? That Prince George's is unfriendly to business? Using a little hyperbole to woo an employer is an expected part of the game for the leader of a jurisdiction.

Normally when politicians spew Total Malarkey like this, they don't have their constituents' best interests in mind. That doesn't seem to be the case here, but it also doesn't make his statement any more accurate.

If you've been waiting for a Taiwanese animation company to reenact the Jack Johnson case, your wish has been granted.

Next Media Animation, the same folks who brought you Adrian Fenty wielding a machine gun, have this take on the corruption probe sweeping Prince George's County. Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson, his wife, incoming District 6 Councilmember Leslie Johnson and FBI agents all make appearances.

But their education reform video had some accuracy issues. Does this reenactment have the same problem?

Not really, beyond what appear to be a few translation issues. The video says Johnson was a "county commissioner," not a county executive. It also labels Prince George's County a "neighborhood." At almost 500 square miles, Prince George's would be one hefty neighborhood.

But the video's reenactment of events closely resembles what federal prosecutors allege happened in an affidavit unsealed when they charged the Johnsons last week.

The one major caveat here is that the Johnsons are innocent until proven guilty in a court of a law. The video depicts things the couple are alleged to have done, but that depiction matches up with federal charges.

For the time being, that's good enough for the Facts Machine. The video earns an Honest Abe.

The site features a black-and-white clip of Sen. Jim Webb (D) praising Obama during a 2008 campaign rally interspersed with headlines from Virginia papers about the Republican wave. It also contains several attack lines the Republicans are are rolling out against the first-term Democrat. One in particular caught our eye: “Jim Webb voted in favor of a Value Added Tax which would have placed an additional tax on almost every item we buy.”

A value added tax, or VAT, which is common in Europe, is like a sales tax, except the funds are collected as value is added to the item along the chain of production instead of being levied at the end. In the United States the tax is usually proposed as part of a package that includes cutting income tax or other taxes.

The Facts Machine was surprised. Wouldn’t a proposal to adopt a VAT in the United States have attracted a lot of attention? Why hadn’t we heard about this?

Because the adoption of a value-added tax never came before the Senate. The Republican Party of Virginia says it is referencing an April 15 vote on an anti-VAT amendment sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), which the Senate approved overwhelmingly. This is the text of the amendment:

“Expressing the sense of the Senate that the Value Added Tax is a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery and the Senate opposes a Value Added Tax.”

Webb was one of 13 senators who voted against the amendment. Does this mean he supports a value added tax?

Not necessarily, his office says. Will Jenkins, a spokesman for Webb, says the senator doesn’t believe in ruling out any options when it comes to dealing with the nation’s ever-growing deficit.

"As this economy recovers, we must work to achieve significant deficit reduction," Webb said in an e-mailed statement. "I believe that over the long run, fiscal discipline and balanced budgets form the best foundation for a strong economic future. I believe that the tax code needs to be reformed in order to create a fairer, easier-to-understand system of taxation. As a member of the Senate, I will work to implement a tax structure that promotes fairness for hardworking families, reduces the national debt, and ensures that corporations pay their fair share."

That's not good enough for the Republicans, who want to know why he wouldn't rule it out altogether.

"The Sense of the Senate was an absolutely painless way for him to add his voice to that of other Senators and say the VAT is a bad idea, and that he does not support it," party spokesman Garren Shipley wrote in an e-mail. "And yet he voted no. If he won't say he's against it even when the resolution is non-binding, what does that say about his intentions when the vote will actually take money out of taxpayer's wallets?"

Shipley also points out that the party never said Webb voted for the tax, just that he voted in favor of it. The Facts Machine views that as some serious parsing, particularly considering the second half of the state GOP's claim. Webb's vote never would have "placed an additional tax on almost every item we buy." It wasn't even affirmatively supporting a VAT.

It's fair for the Virginia Republican Party to suggest Webb is open to VAT -- that's a damaging line of attack by itself -- but it's not fair to portray him as an active supporter, or to imply he voted for one. And so the Virginia GOP earns the first Total Malarkey of the 2012 campaign season.

Ousted D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and departing D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee recently made a cameo appearance in one of those animated Taiwanese news recaps. The entire video is comical — Rhee chases teachers out of a classroom with a broom, poor teachers are depicted wearing a clown outfit and makeup, and the daughters of U.S. President Barack Obama are depicted attending "Ye Olde Tony Private School."

Of course a cartoon is going to take visual liberties. And it’s not like NMA, the Taiwanese company that produces the videos, is some indomitable force that needs to be held accountable.

But the video pushes a simplistic narrative about the D.C. mayor’s race, teachers’ unions and education reform — a narrative that has come to dominate national media coverage of the issue. And as Vince Gray is about to win the general election, it's worth revisiting.

The opening is accurate, giving the basic details of the situation: Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim made a documentary called Waiting For "Superman" that examines the flaws of the U.S. education system. “Most Americans can not afford private schools,” it says, according to the translation. That’s true. The average private school tuition is $8,549, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For most Americans. that's a significant chunk of their family income.

The scene being shown here — of a lottery to get into a charter school — is the defining part of the movie, which tracks the efforts of three students across the nation to escape poor public school systems.

The next bit — “Only a lucky few get in to a chartered school” — is where things get misleading. Most Americans don’t apply to get their children into charter schools. Most don’t even have that option.

“Everyone else will go to public schools,” the announcer says, according to the translation. “The quality of teaching in public schools can be uneven, hindering the education of American kids.”

The words are innocent enough, but the imagery is a tad inflammatory. The teacher is depicted as a clown who writes "1 + 3 = 5" on the board and kids are shown throwing objects at him.

The next scene shows a group of children heading down a conveyor belt as a representation of a “dropout factory.” “Some students graduate to jail rather than get a degree,” the translation says as a student is shown being conveyed into a jail cell.

As a clown-teacher juggles, he’s protected by a giant bubble. “But schools are powerless to fire teachers if they are protected by the Teacher’s Union.” The capitalization here suggests there’s one teacher’s union in the United States, when obviously there are hundreds. Not all unions are behaving as impediments to reforms. The District’s union signed an innovative contract that gives up tenure protections in exchange for higher pay and bonuses for good teachers. Other unions have taken similar steps.

“Even suspended teachers are paid their salary not to teach,” the narrator says, as a group of clown-teachers sits in a “Rubber Room.” This is a reference to the so-called rubber rooms of New York City, where suspended teachers can wait for years while their cases are sorted out in arbitration. (The process was memorably chronicled in this New Yorker piece.)

This is where things get really good. “Supported by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, education councillor” — it’s actually schools chancellor — “Michelle Rhee was determined to reform the system. She fired hundreds of teachers in D.C." Rhee's drive was legendary and she did fire hundreds of District educators. She did not, however, do it while wearing a bandanna that said "REFORM." And while she once wielded a broom on the cover of TIME, there's no evidence she ever chased after bad teachers with it.

And there's no evidence Adrian Fenty has ever used an automatic weapon, as he's shown doing in the next scene. Or that teachers somehow survived his waves of bullets and physically beat him up.

"But Fenty and Rhee were overwhelmed by forces against education reform," the translation declares. "They both lost their jobs. Unions were not fond of Fenty and Rhee. The American Federation of Teachers reportedly spent $1 million to defeat the mayor. Most local observers, however, would say Fenty lost because of a harsh personal style and that many voters liked his education reforms.

In the next scene, clown-teachers are shown handing cash to President Barack Obama. "The teacher's union is a big contributor to the Democratic party. It's hard to expect President Obama to spearhead reform," the translation says.

No one denies the major role teachers unions have historically played in the Democratic coalition, supplying votes, volunteers and campaign funds. But President Obama has still bucked them at times, and with the federal government's Race to the Top program, is actually playing a leading role in a lot of reforms.

The animation then shows Obama getting into car, passing a few hopeless students and then dropping his daughters off at 'Ye Olde Tony Private School.' They actually attend Sidwell Friends, which is old, tony and private.

The video ends with American students embarrassing themselves in front of their Chinese counterparts and the translation questioning if America can succeed with a poor education system.

In this video, public school teachers are clowns and public school classrooms are anarchy. Charter and private schools are the only hope for America. Devilish teachers unions stand in the way of reform at every turn. They were the reason Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid.

Of course, there are good public schools and bad public schools, just as there are good charter schools and bad charter schools. Some teachers unions try to stonewall reform efforts, other unions work with reform-minded administrators. And while the unions didn't help Fenty, he lost mainly because he's a jerk.

The video isn't the only outlet to present this version of the truth. See articles in TIME, Reason, and The Daily Beast for a sampling. Or just look at David Gregory's open embrace of Rhee last week.

Those articles, and this video, are all Only Kind of True.