Obama in Texans’ sights

Obamacare depends on a real estate tax–and the Obama administration is using treaties to ban all U.S. weapons.

Mark these statements as flawed and, perhaps, reminders that the Democratic president remains in the sights of Texans.

But another recently checked claim–that veterans’ disability claims doubled in Obama’s term–held up.

That originated in a tweet by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who, it turns out, understated how much claims bulged, only in part because the government tightened its definition for backlogged claims.

And those other Obama-tied claims?

A South Texas legislator opposed to the federal health care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama doesn’t like how the law came to be. State Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, said during a Nov. 26, 2012, Texas Tribune event that “today we’re finding out you have real estate taxes being placed to pay for” Obamacare.

We found this an incomplete characterization, potentially leaving the misimpression we’ll all be ponying up for health care every time we sell a property. In reality, the tax helping to fund the law is an investment tax solely affecting the country’s very wealthiest taxpayers and then only touched off by super-sized profits from any of a variety of investment types. Real estate (including rents) fits into the big mix, giving the claim an element of truth. We rated it as Mostly False.

The other Obama-to-blame claim appeared in a chain email stating that the president recently “took the first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States.”
   
The email, sent to us by a curious Austin reader, continues: “The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for U.S. citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the U.S. State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress.”
   
We found no evidence of such plans, instead some consistent indications to the contrary. Seeing smoke, we rated the claim as Pants on Fire!

What else?