Sharyl Attkisson

Untouchable Subjects. Fearless, Nonpartisan Reporting.

Sharyl Attkisson

POLL: Most people say U.S. troops should leave Iraq

The Iraqi parliament recently voted to expel all U.S. troops from Iraq. The majority of respondents in the latest unscientific poll at SharylAttkisson.com agree our troops should exit Iraq.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of respondents say we should bring our troops home. Twenty-three percent (23%) said that we should not leave.

Read the full results below. Meantime, be sure and vote in our latest poll at SharylAttkisson.com on the home page. Look for the black box in the right sidebar or scroll way down on the mobile site!

Iraqi parliament voted to expel U.S. Should we go?

61% Yes

23% No

16% I don't know/unsure

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POLL: 41% of voters say U.S. heading in right direction

Forty-one percent (41%) of likely U.S. voters say the country is headed in the right direction. That's according to the latest numbers from Rasmussen Reports. During most of 2016, President Obama's last year in office, fewer than 30% said the country was headed in the right direction.

Also, Rasmussen Reports finds voters say they trust President Trump on economic issues more than they trust the average member of Congress or reporter. However, they trust their own judgment most of all.

Meantime, President Trump's job approval rating for December was at 49%, up two points from November, despite the House impeaching him.

Joe Biden is still the leading potential Democratic presidential nominee but his support levels are the lowest they have been to date.

Positive outlook for the coming year is up dramatically from last year, with 72% of American adults saying that 2020 will be at least a "good" year. That compares to 54% a year ago. Many of those say 2020 will be "excellent" or one of the best years ever.

Click on the link below for a summary of recent Rasmussen reports:

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/weekly_updates/what_they_told_us_jan04

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CNN settles Covington Catholic student's defamation suit

Nicholas Sandmann (left), January 2019

CNN has settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student, Nick Sandmann. The case was over CNN's coverage of Sandmann's videotaped interaction with an Omaha Tribe elder, Nathan Phillips, at the Lincoln Memorial early last year.

According to reports, Sandmann and his classmates were waiting for a bus after an anti-abortion event in Washington D.C. in January 2019. Phillips was attending the Indigenous Peoples March.

Sandmann and Phillips were seen on videotape facing one another; Sandmann, wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, was smiling at Phillips; Phillips was beating a drum and chanting.

Widespread media reports accused Sandmann of engaging in a confrontation with Phillips. Sandmann said he was trying to defuse the situation. Later, fuller context showed that a group of black men had taunted the high school group with racial slurs and disparaging comments. Some commentators apologized for mistakenly blaming Sandmann for the confrontation.

Sandmann sued CNN for $275 million, alleging that its coverage of the interaction falsely attacked, vilified, and bullied him. Details of CNN's settlement were not made public.

Sandmann still has defamation suits against several other media outlets, including NBC and The Washington Post.

Read the full story as reported by CNN and the USA Today by clicking on the links below:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/nick-sandmann-cnn-confirms-settlement-covington-catholic-student/2837478001/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/media/cnn-settles-lawsuit-viral-video/index.html

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POLL: Majority polled say they trust President Trump

Over 90% of respondents in the latest unscientific poll at SharylAttkisson.com say they definitely trust President Trump.

Ninety-two percent (92%) of the respondents replied "Definitely yes", to the question: Do you generally trust President Trump?

Five percent (5%) polled answered "Absolutely not", with another 3% answering that they were unsure or didn't care.

Read the full results below. Meantime, be sure and vote in our latest poll at SharylAttkisson.com on the home page. Look for the black box in the right sidebar or scroll way down on the mobile site!

Do you generally trust President Trump?

92% Definitely yes

5% Absolutely not

3% Not sure/don't care

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Uncovering the "secret door" to free tax filing

The following is a transcript of my investigation into the free filing program offered by the Internal Revenue Service on “Full Measure.” Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Earlier this year, The IRS announced new changes in a program that was supposed to provide free tax preparation to millions...a deal the IRS cut years ago with big tax firms. If they’d offer free help, the IRS agreed not to build its own software to do it. Turns out the free help has been too hard to find and often steered people to paid services. Paul Kiel of Propublica investigated.

Sharyl Attkisson: By way of background, has there been a lot of discussion over the years that the IRS ought to make it easier and provide a free way for people, especially of lower incomes to file?

Kiel: Yeah, I mean, so this goes back to the 1990s, you know, everybody used to file on paper. And there was a big push to get people to file electronically cause the IRS saved a lot of money. Those types of proposals have been something Intuit has viewed as a threat and have tried to stop.

Sharyl: What power do companies like Intuit have or TurboTax have to try to prevent something like this? What do they do?

Kiel: Well, they, they have an army of lobbyists. And we counted this year, they have over 40 lobbyists on Capitol Hill. You know, they spread their contributions around Congress. And also I think they're able to make the arguments that people find persuasive in part because the IRS is not a popular agency. So they're able to make arguments like, do you want the IRS unit preparing your taxes and also auditing you?

Sharyl: On its face, it sounds like a good thing that Turbo Tax and Intuit would come up with a program to let you file for free if you go to their website under certain conditions. But it sounds like you're saying that it's sort of an end run around the notion of really making it easier and free for people?

Kiel: Right. Well, I mean the main thing to know about this program, which goes back to 2002 is that very few people actually know about it. So last year under 3 million people used this program, which is you have to find sort of like a secret door on the IRS’ website. It's called the free file program. And if you may get to that page and then you file a link back to TurboTax, then you'll absolutely have a free tax return filing. Both federal and state is what they're offering right now. But very few people find that secret door. One reason for this is that intuit and H and R Block have these free offers that they make. So if you Google on the Internet free tax prep, what's going to come up usually is like TurboTax and H&R block saying hey, free. But it's a marketing ploy. Both Intuit and H and R block stop Google from indexing their pages because they didn't want people, if you googled “free tax prep,” they didn't want the government program coming up.

Sharyl: How can they stop Google?

Kiel: You can, you can put language on like, you know, basically code on your website that says “Google: no, don't read this.”

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Sharyl: Were you able to find out how many people do use the free program that's available through the IRS?

Kiel: So it's under 3 million people, which, 100 million people are eligible, you know, supposedly. But no more than 5 million have ever used it in the whole history of the program. But nevertheless, the IRS claims that this is a successful program.

Sharyl: Can you quantify how much that industries, the tax filing industry spends on lobbyists lobbying and political contributions?

Kiel: I think we total those over $30 million that Intuit is used on, spent on, you know, lobbying over the last decade or so. It's an enormous return on an investment given, you know, the billions of dollars that they've made in profit. So it's, you know, it's a good investment.

Sharyl: Can you tell is whether one party political party or another political party is sort of pushing it? A lot of times it's one against the other

Kiel: Well, they've spread around their money pretty well in Congress and they've gotten bills introduced by both members of both parties.

One study found five of 12 companies that partnered with the IRS used coding that hid their free services from many online searches.

Watch the video investigation by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/tax-conspiracy

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

To tap, or not to tap...your shaken beer can

Tap or not?

The burning question of whether tapping on the side or bottom of a shaken beer can before opening it lessens the fizz and associated beer loss has been addressed by a Cornell University study.

A group of twelve Cornell University researchers recently published their findings in a seventeen-page report. The group randomly placed 1,000 cans of beer into one of four groups: unshaken/untapped, unshaken/tapped, shaken/untapped, shaken/tapped. Each can in the two "shaken" groups was shaken to simulate a 10-minute bicycle ride. (Do bicycle riders commonly transport their beer on shaky bike rides?)

The researchers then weighed the unopened cans, tapped the cans in the "tapped" groups three times on the side with a single finger, opened the cans, soaked up the overflowed beer with paper towels, and re-weighed the cans.

Here's the answer you've been waiting for!

The report concludes that tapping the can before opening it does not prevent beer loss, stating that "the only apparent remedy to avoid liquid loss is to wait for bubbles to settle before opening the can."

Additional documentation from Cornell study

The report detailed the methodology used to maintain the integrity of the experiment, including the use of a butter knife to open the cans, to avoid "finger and nail-bed pain for researchers who were opening cans." It also addressed the "broader social implications" of the study, such as minimizing the potential for "tapping-related finger injuries", and the health benefits of slowing drinkers down by convincing them to wait for a shaken can to settle, rather than tap and drink more rapidly.

Now you know.

You can read the Cornell study and report for yourself by clicking on the links below:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01999

https://sharylattkisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Shaken-beer-study.pdf

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson's work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Who were they? Identifying illegal immigrant remains in the Arizona desert

The following is a transcript of my story on "Full Measure" about efforts to identify the remains of illegal immigrants found in the Arizona desert. Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

We are approaching the 20th anniversary of a spike in illegal immigrant remains found in the southern Arizona desert. Today, we look at a special effort to identify them also entering its 20th year. Dr. Greg Hess has led the effort for the past dozen or so years. He’s a forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner for Pima County in Tucson, Arizona.

Dr. Hess: This is an example of a skeletal remains that you knew we'd find out in the environment that we've been talking about. And the only property that we found with the remains is, these pair of shoes, right?

Sharyl: When did this come in?

Dr. Hess: This came in this year. Probably about two months ago.

Sharyl: Is there a way to know if it's a man or a woman by looking at the bones?

Dr. Hess: Yeah, so essentially the pelvis, this is one of the pelvic bones. So the shape of the pelvis will tell us about 99% of the time if it's a man or woman. This looks very much like a man. DNA will tell us 100% of the time, once we get that result back if the person has a Y chromosome or not.

Dr. Hess: Most of the people over here are unidentified, that tag is unidentified, so anything that says John or Jane or unidentified. Hess: We’re in the room where we keep some of the property. So this is an example of the stuff that we would keep in the sleeves, right? We know the person was found in 2019, because the number starts with that. And then stuff like identification cards, and money, and things that may or may not be distinctive. Remember we talked about distinctive property items-

Sharyl: The belt buckle?

Dr. Hess: Yeah, we would have them here. So this is a belt buckle with two kind of crossed guns on it and it's sort of has some scroll work done to it. So somebody might know this is so and so's favorite belt buckle, right? And that's just one. I mean you can thumb through here and see some of these we have identification cards for, rings, this wallet. Another one, here was a cell phone that we probably sent to the sheriff's department to see if they could retrieve information from it. Here's a little kind of this weathered book of some kind. Maybe it looks like a little bible or something. It was found with these remains.

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Dr. Hess: So in the 1990s we would have a few every year where we would find remains in a desert area and we believed it to be somebody that's from Mexico or Central America and they died in the attempt to enter the United States without permission from the government to do so. And then in the year 2000 that really jumped up about five fold from again about an average of 15 a year to 70 some a year. And then in 2002 it was 146. And then to just kind of summarize 2002 through the end of last year, 2018, we average about 150 a year. So we recovered 127 remains last year in 2018 and 90 so far year to date in 2019.

Sharyl: There's a little more complication with figuring out sometimes who these people are than normal because if you find a wallet and an ID on that person, I guess you can't just assume that's who they are.

Dr. Hess: No, people travel with false identifications or they may have an incentive to use someone else's name, even if it's their photo. A whole host of reasons why people may not use the correct ID or some type of identification.

Sharyl: What are some typical causes of death that you find?

Dr. Hess: Really, it's exposure. So we would lump being too hot, potentially being too cold, and dehydration, which could come in both of those cases into that category.

Sharyl: Do you find people who have been murdered? Shot?

Dr. Hess: Yeah, we do. It's not very common. I think it's about 3% of the total number of remains that we've examined. We're close to 3000 remains since the year 2000 of this group of people. So it's not common but yes, sometimes people do get shot.

Sharyl: Looking back when this spike started in 2000, what could you say has been learned through this effort?

Dr. Hess: The way you document where people are located and where they're found has changed. You know, GPS is very prevalent now. And so if you look at some of our old location data of where remains are found, it would just be a mile post on the road. But we know that that wasn't exactly where those remains came from. Like everybody has a cell phone now, so even if you find remains of somebody you believe to be a migrant, there's often evidence that they had some type of electronic device with them, a charging cord or a cell phone that we can now try to get information from that phone to help figure out who they are or that wasn't there when this started so some of those things have changed.

Sharyl: You're a scientific guy, you're fairly non-emotional when you describe these things. But on a human level, what are some of your reflections having worked in this effort for 12 13 years?

Dr. Hess: Really, kind of the emotional aspect is when you do identify someone and you are in contact with family members and they are usually quite grateful that some kind of resolution has been reached in regards to, you know, somebody they may have been looking for for a long time.

Sharyl: If there comes a day in the next 10 years and you're still here and the number of remains found goes way back down again, maybe a handful instead of 150, what would you think about that?

Dr. Hess: Well, kind of the end of a period of time, right? So I'm sure people will look at this aspect of this wave of migration from Mexico and Central America and it certainly won't last forever, right? So if you look back in time, it was waves of people from Europe coming to the United States and now it's not quite that way. So will it be replaced by something else? And how will that look? I'm sure people will write about it in the future and just to declare that period over.

Hess’s office works with third parties and nonprofits to help connect to family members to see if their loved one has been found.

Watch the video report by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/the-unknowns

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Gallup: Trump and Obama tie for 2019's "Most Admired Man in the World"

Trump and Obama share the top spot for "Most Admired Man in the World"

President Trump and former President Barack Obama came out tied in a Gallup poll as 2019's "most admired man in the world."

President Trump's ranking has increased from the previous two years in office, with a 45% job approval rating, according to Gallup.

This makes Trump's first time to make the top of the list, while it is Obama's 12th time in the top spot.

Votes are predictably divided along party lines, with independent voters splitting fairly equally between the two men.

Gallup.com chart on "Most Admired Man"

The late Evangelist Billy Graham has won more top 10 finishes of Gallup's "most admired" polls than any other person, with his number of top 10 finishes almost doubling the person's who has earned the honor the second most number of times: President Ronald Reagan.

Meantime, former First Lady Michelle Obama won "most admired woman" for the second year in a row. Ten percent (10%) of people polled named her as the woman in the world they admire most, down from 15% in 2018.

Melania Trump came in second place as the most admired woman of 2019, earning 5% of the votes, just ahead of Oprah Winfrey, former First Lady Hillary Clinton and teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

Below is Gallup's chart of how many times the same women and men have ended up with top 10 "most admired" finishes over the years.

Click on the link below to read the full Gallup report:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/273125/obama-trump-tie-admired-man-2019.aspx

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