Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Paragraph: "Bounciest Democrat on November's statewide ballot? It might be Hank Gilbert, making his second hard charge for state agriculture commissioner versus Todd Staples, the Republican who topped him four years ago. Gilbert, ever prowling for issues, recently trumpeted that the Texas Department of Agriculture is looking at buying thousands of stress balls -- squeezable toys. He said in a Sept. 24 press release: ""Make no mistake, Texans love their balls: footballs, baseballs, basketballs, and soccer balls. But 300,000 stress balls? It seems a little extreme, but that's the quantity of grape, barbell, and book-shaped polyurethane stress balls the Texas Department of Agriculture could be spending taxpayer dollars on...""  Really? To our inquiry, Gilbert's campaign provided Web links to the agriculture agency's June request for bids as well as a September post on a state website indicating that a $99,000 contract to provide promotional materials was awarded to a Massachusetts company, Oceans Promotions. We downloaded the June 29 bid-request package from a site for state requisitions overseen by the state comptroller's office. The package shows the department was seeking bids to provide up to 300,000 stress ""relievers,"" which we're guessing are not balls because they're not round. Precisely, the package says, the agency sought bids to make ""promotional items with logo imprints to follow through on (the) TDA Food and Nutrition Texans Bring It Campaign,"" with the items to include grape-shaped stress relievers with ""Texans Bring It"" written on them or ""Eating Right,"" which would be made of polyurethane and be two inches high by three inches wide. The package says a second set of stress relievers, each one called ""Dumbbell,"" would be imprinted ""Texans Bring It"" and ""Exercise"" and be five inches high by 1.8 inches in diameter. A third stress reliever would be imprinted ""Book"" and ""Texans Bring It,"" according to the bid package, while other promotional items would include pencils, buttons and bumperstickers. The package says the bids were sought for various quantities, starting from 2,500 and topping out at 100,000 each. It electronically links to a Branders.com site showing what the agency wanted the stress relievers to look like (our interpretation: bunches of purple grapes). Is all this a real deal? To our inquiry, Bryan Black, Staples' spokesman, replied via e-mail: ""An invitation for bid was issued for these federally funded educational items to reduce the $5.8 billion avoidable health care expenditures, paid by taxpayers, associated with overweight and obesity health problems."" We followed up with Black, asking if it's accurate to conclude that up to 300,000 of the stress relievers are being purchased. We also wondered why the purchase was being made. Black said he'd limit his comment to his e-mailed statement. Surely the agency would pipe up if Gilbert got its purchase plans wrong." Claim: Hank Gilbert Says the Texas Department of Agriculture seeks to purchase up to 300,000 promotional stress balls.
Hank Gilbert says Texas Department of Agriculture could be buying up to 300,000 stress balls

Paragraph: KTWO-AM reports Carbon County School District No. 2 canceled classes Thursday at the elementary schools in Hanna, Elk Mountain and Medicine Bow, as well as the high school in Hanna. Classes will resume Monday after the campuses are disinfected. Kim Deti, a spokeswoman for the Wyoming Department of Health, says meningitis has not yet been confirmed and there is no public health threat. Superintendent Jim Copeland says student involved attends Hanna Elementary, and the other schools were closed as a precaution. The child has since been hospitalized. Meningitis is an infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. ___ This story has been updated to correct that meningitis has not been confirmed. ___ Information from: KTWO-AM, http://www.k2radio.com/ Claim: 4 Wyoming schools close after possible meningitis case.
A school district in southern Wyoming has closed four of its campuses over fears that a fourth-grade student might have contracted bacterial meningitis.

Paragraph: "On Nov. 27, 2013, a Madison-based liberal advocacy group used a mass email to promote protests that were planned against Walmart stores for two days later -- Black Friday. The demonstrations aimed to ""expose Wal-Mart’s shameful labor practices and support workers,"" according to One Wisconsin Now, which then made this claim: ""The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined."" That reminded us of a March 2011 claim by filmmaker and liberal activist Michael Moore. He said in a Madison speech that 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Based on online hits, it became one of our most popular fact-checks ever. So we wondered about the Walmart claim. Wealth, not income In the days before and after Black Friday, leaders no less prominent than President Barack Obama and Pope Francis decried the extent of income disparity in the United States and around the world. Obama called the growing income gap a ""defining challenge of our time."" The pope said that while the earnings of a minority ""are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few."" Walmart, of course, is a big target. According to Forbes, as of May 2013 the international retailer had $469 billion in sales and 2.2 million employees, including 1.3 million in the United States. The corporation has been criticized for low wages; and in December 2012, PolitiFact National rated as Mostly  a claim that more Walmart employees are on Medicaid and food stamps than other companies. But let’s be clear up front: Although income and wealth are related, they’re not the same. Wealth is commonly measured in terms of net worth -- the value of a person’s assets minus liabilities. So, things like savings and retirement accounts, minus what is owed on a home mortgage, credit cards, etc. That means a person with heavy debt can have little wealth, or negative wealth, even while earning a six-figure income. One more point before we get to the wealth figures. Walmart was founded by the late Sam Walton, who opened the first store in Arkansas in 1962. Walmart incorporated in 1969 and became a publicly traded company a year later. So, Wal-Mart is not family owned, but rather owned by its stockholders; on the other hand, according to Bloomberg and other news reports, the Walton family members still have control of the company, owning about half of the shares. Group's evidence Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now's executive director, told us his evidence to back his group’s claim is a July 2012 article by economist Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the liberal Economics Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Bivens wrote that in 2010, the wealth of six Walton family heirs was $89.5 billion, 22 percent higher than in 2007. Meanwhile, the median wealth of American families in 2010 was $77,300, nearly 39 percent lower than three years earlier. (Median wealth refers to the American family that is exactly wealthier than half of all families and less wealthy than half.) As for measuring one against the other, Bivens said the Walton family wealth in 2010 was as large as the wealth of the bottom 48.8 million families in the United States, or 41.5 percent of all American families. Rounded up, 41.5 percent would be 42 percent, the figure One Wisconsin Now claims. But let's keep shopping around a little. Similar claim It turns out that a statement nearly identical to the one made by One Wisconsin Now was uttered in July 2012 by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats. Sanders said the Walton family owns ""more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America,"" a claim PolitiFact National rated . Our colleagues found that Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, compared the Waltons’ cumulative net worth with that of the overall population, as cited in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. That survey was published in August 2012. Allegretto found that the Waltons’ wealth in 2010 was valued at $89.5 billion -- equal to the entire bottom 41.5 percent of American families. The 2010 figures are the latest available for doing comparisons with the net worth of the overall population. But we found, using the Forbes 400 list for 2013, that the wealth of six of Sam Walton’s descendants has continued to grow. Here are their rankings and their wealth: No. 6 Christy Walton (daughter-in-law), $35.4 billion No. 7: Jim Walton (son), $33.8 billion No. 8: Alice Walton (daughter), $33.5 billion No. 9: S. Robson Walton (son), $33.3 billion No. 95: Ann Walton Kroenke (niece), $4.7 billion No. 110: Nancy Walton Laurie (niece), $4 billion Total Walton family wealth: $144.7 billion. A note before we close: Allegretto told us the housing crisis is a key reason that the gap between the Walton family wealth and the wealth of other American families has grown. More Americans were left with ""negative wealth"" because they lost their biggest asset -- their home -- and often significant amounts of their savings, as well, she said. Our rating One Wisconsin Now wrote: ""The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined."" For comparison purposes, the latest data available, for 2010, the figure is 41.5 percent. To comment on this item, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's website." Claim: The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.

"One Wisconsin Now wrote: ""The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined."" For comparison purposes, the latest data available, for 2010, the figure is 41.5 percent."