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pomt-15014 | Today, the deficit is "below the average deficits over the past 40 years." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/06/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-deficit-now-below-its-40-year-av/ | During an Oct. 2 press conference dominated by discussion of a mass shooting in Oregon and the ongoing civil war in Syria, President Barack Obama took time out for a victory lap on the federal budget. "I want to repeat this because the public apparently never believes it," Obama said. "Since I took office, we’ve cut our deficits by two-thirds. The deficit has not been going up; it has been coming down -- precipitously. We’ve cut our deficits by two-thirds. They’re below the average deficits over the past 40 years." We have previously rated Obama’s claim that "we've cut the deficit by two-thirds" as Mostly True. But we hadn’t heard the other claim -- that today, the deficit is "below the average deficits over the past 40 years." So we took a closer look. Economists tend to make long-term comparisons using a measurement of the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product. (The gross domestic product, or GDP, is a measure of the overall size of the U.S. economy.) Looking at the deficit as a percentage of GDP takes account of the economy’s dramatic growth since 1975. A larger economy can sustain a larger budget, and thus a larger deficit. Using that yardstick, Obama’s claim is on target. We calculated the current deficit as a percentage of GDP by dividing the Congressional Budget Office’s $426 billion deficit estimate (which was released in September) by the nearly $18 trillion estimate for GDP in 2015 (which was released in August). That works out to a deficit that’s 2.4 percent of GDP. So how does that figure compare? We looked at historical data for the deficit as a percentage of GDP going back to 1975, as published by the Office of Management and Budget. When we averaged those annual percentages, the average worked out to be a little under 3.2 percent. That would make Obama’s claim correct. Indeed, the percentage has fallen from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 2.4 percent today. This may be easier to visualize through the graph below. The blue line shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP, year by year, for the last 40 years, with the red line denoting the 40-year average. Though the percentage has been quite a bit above-average for most of Obama’s tenure, it has fallen significantly and has now fallen below the 40-year average, at least based on current-year estimates. And even if you keep unusually high percentages during the Obama years out of the calculation and limit the comparison to 1975 to 2008, the current level (a deficit that’s 2.4 percent of GDP) is still slightly lower than the average going back to 1975 (2.5 percent). In our previous fact-checks of Obama’s claims on the deficit, we’ve noted that Obama has glossed over the long-term outlook, which is not as rosy. Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will become increasingly expensive as the Baby Boom generation ages. This can be seen in the following graph from the Congressional Budget Office. Over the next decade, the deficit as a percentage of GDP is set to push closer and closer to 4 percent, which is above the average level for the past 40 years. (In this graph, deficit percentage figures are shown as negative, rather than as positive in the graph above.) Our ruling Obama said today’s deficit is "below the average deficits over the past 40 years." He’s correct when measuring the deficit as a percentage of GDP, which is the yardstick most economists tend to use when making deficit comparisons over long periods of time. Still, Obama didn’t specify that he was talking about deficits as a percentage of GDP, and the comparison’s accuracy depends on the absence of major budgetary and economic changes between now and time the fiscal 2015 data are finalized. The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2015-10-06T18:00:00 | 2015-10-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-15246 | Austin is "effectively" imposing "a ban on barbecue restaurants." | pants on fire! | /texas/statements/2015/aug/04/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-says-austin-effectively-banning-barb/ | Conservative Rush Limbaugh told listeners that liberal Austin has moved toward wiping out local barbecue joints. On his July 28, 2015, program, the commentator read from a web post stating the Austin City Council in April 2015 "passed a preliminary plan" restricting smoke from barbecue restaurants. Limbaugh said the web post went on to say the contemplated requirement that restaurants install costly devices to diffuse smoke led a business expert to tell council members "these restrictions will certainly kill all but the largest barbecue restaurants in Austin." "It is effectively a ban on barbecue restaurants in a town known for its barbecue," Limbaugh echoed. What "kind of an absurd requirement is this anyway?" he added. Smoke pouring from commercial barbecue smokers has been a hot Austin topic, in particular pitting a new South Austin restaurant against nearby homeowners who say its smoke wafting their way has reduced the value of their homesteads. And did the council adopt a plan amounting to a ban on ‘cue restaurants? Citing a website Limbaugh, according to a transcript of his program, recited as fact a July 25, 2015, web post on IAmATexan.com, headlined "Austin City Council Votes to Ban BBQ Restaurants." That post said the council had passed a preliminary plan to restrict smoke from barbecue restaurants, continuing: "The city council’s current proposal will require smoke diffusers and will also limit the amount of time that restaurants can smoke. These restrictions will require at least $100,000 in extra investments for most barbecue restaurants as they will be forced to buy extra smokers along with severely expensive diffusers, and in some cases will have to lease or purchase more property. "One business expert told council members that these restrictions will certainly kill all but the largest barbecue restaurants in Austin. "It is effectively a ban on barbecue restaurants in a town known for its barbecue." We didn’t connect with the unnamed authors of that post. Nor did our query to Limbaugh draw a reply. But Austin American-Statesman news stories, City of Austin documents and responses by a city spokeswoman indicate that after the council talked about imposing controls to reduce unwanted smoke from restaurant smokers, members directed the city manager, Marc Ott, to gather public input and make recommendations. As of late July 2015, city spokeswoman Alicia Dean said, one City Council committee had recommended no citywide restrictions while another council panel, slated to reconvene Aug. 3, 2015, had not made a recommendation. Limbaugh’s claim, Dean said, is not true. Blowing smoke in Austin Let’s scrape up the details--which extend to the city pulling together this 2015 document delivering a breakdown of Austin barbecue trailers and restaurants and the hours each one operates a smoker (around the clock to three times daily "for flavor" to not at all). After Terry Black’s Barbecue opened, on Barton Springs Road just south of Lady Bird Lake, nearby neighbors objected to smoke from its pit blowing into their yards and homes--not every day, residents initially said, but often enough depending on prevailing winds. Mike Black said in a January 2015 statement to the American-Statesman that he intended to work with residents to address concerns. In July 2015, residents filed a lawsuit against the restaurant. Credit for publicly suggesting the city regulate smoke from restaurants belongs to Austin City Council Member Sabino "Pio" Renteria, whose idea to require smoke mitigation wasn’t embraced by pitmasters who said purchasing expensive "smoke scrubbers" could kill barbecue stands inside the city limits. "It will force 99 percent of Austin BBQ places to either close or move out of town," John Mueller of John Mueller Meat Co. said in a statement. In March 2015, Renteria said he was revising his original proposal to have it apply only to restaurants and mobile food vendors within 100 feet of residential property—down from 150 feet. He also said he wanted to look at other smoke-mitigating options besides scrubbers. At a March 31, 2015, work session, council members questioned how regulating smoke emissions would affect small businesses and longtime businesses, and whether there might be a way to target regulations at new businesses or ones that had been the subject of complaints. The Statesman reported that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2014 received two complaints about odor and smoke coming from Terry Black’s Barbecue, and one complaint in 2014 and another in 2015 about an East Austin establishment, la Barbecue. In all cases, the agency determined the odor and smoke were not nuisances subject to state intervention, commission spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said, adding that a nuisance would have to "be injurious to or adversely affect human health, welfare, animal life, vegetation or property" or "interfere with normal use and enjoyment of animal life, vegetation, or property." On April 2, 2015, council members voted 9-2 to gather input from neighbors and businesses in the lead-up to a "possible" writing of smoke-control rules. The issue was to go first to the Economic Opportunity and Health and Human Services committees, both consisting of council members. Specifically, the council’s resolution said members were initiating a possible amendment to the city code to address smoke from cookers, restaurants and trucks and their impact on residences with provisions to be considered including a requirement that restaurants and mobile vendors using a wood- or charcoal-burning stove or grill and located within 100 feet of a property used or zoned as a residence "take appropriate action to mitigate the impact of smoke emissions" on the lives of nearby residents "by relocating smoke-emitting equipment" or "installing smoke-mitigating devices." The resolution also directed Ott to gather input from affected residents, business owners and others before presenting recommendations to the committees by July 31, 2015. Committee recommendations On May 11, 2015, the Economic Opportunity committee voted 4-0 to not pursue a city ordinance either requiring establishments to install smoke-clearing devices or to regulate nuisances. Instead, the members said that city officials, in conjunction with the state commission, should review concerns case by case. Members acted after taking public comments and fielding a May 4, 2015, city presentation indicating that none of 54 restaurant barbecue smokers in the city already had smoke scrubbers. The other council committee also gathered. But it hadn’t made a recommendation by the day Limbaugh suggested Austin barbecue was about to vamoose. Then again, Ora Houston, the Austin City Council member who chairs the Health and Human Services panel, earlier made the motion against the city limiting barbecue smoke by ordinance that was adopted by the Economic Opportunity committee. By phone, Houston responded to our inquiry by saying she continues to prefer that the city address smoke concerns one by one. "I would not be a supporter of a motion to have a citywide ban on barbecue smoke," Houston said. "That’s what the city is known for, music and barbecue." Our ruling Limbaugh said Austin is "effectively" imposing "a ban on barbecue restaurants." In early 2015, there was worry that a mandate that barbecue restaurants limit smoke from smokers would have that impact. However, the council didn’t adopt such a regulation and we sniffed out no factual indication it’s poised to do so. Before Limbaugh spoke, the latest panel to make a recommendation suggested city staff tackle complaints one by one--without a change in law. When a claim is not so and seems ridiculous, we see smoke. Pants on Fire! PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Rush Limbaugh | null | null | null | 2015-08-04T09:49:41 | 2015-07-28 | ['None'] |
chct-00055 | FACT CHECK: Are Suicide Rates Rising Across The US? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/09/16/fact-check-suicide-rates-us/ | null | null | null | Brad Sylvester | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 10:08 AM 09/16/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06304 | The job [of correctional officer] lowers your life expectancy . . . Metropolitan did a study in, I believe it was 1998, and the life expectancy was 58. | false | /rhode-island/statements/2011/nov/16/david-mellon/rhode-island-corrections-union-president-david-mel/ | Life expectancy has been a key element in the pension overhaul debate playing out in Rhode Island, in part because retirees are living longer, requiring more money to fund their retirements. Public safety workers -- police, firefighters and correctional officers -- have been characterized as an exception. For example, in July we examined a claim that law enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than the general population. We found it to be False because studies showed that they lived nearly as long, or perhaps a bit longer, than other public employees. During an Oct. 27, 2011, General Assembly hearing on pension reform, David Mellon, president of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers, made a similar claim. "The job lowers your life expectancy," he said, adding later that "Metropolitan did a study in, I believe it was 1998, and the life expectancy was 58 from that study." A lower life expectancy seems plausible, but age 58 seemed extraordinarily low when a 35-year-old male is predicted to live to age 77. We decided to track down the truth. It turned out to be as easy as handcuffing a ghost. We called Metropolitan Life to ask about the table. They couldn't find it and suggested we contact the Society of Actuaries. But the society doesn't keep that kind of data on life expectancies for various professions. A Google search uncovered other cases in which people made the same assertion, but they also offered no documentation. For example, William Hepner of the New Jersey Department of Corrections, during testimony before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons in 2005, said he was citing Metropolitan Life Actuary Statistics from 1998. Corrections spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer said Hepner was retired and not reachable. We found a similar pattern when we followed a separate thread -- a comparable claim that correctional officers typically died at age 59. Articles and websites would incorrectly credit another author or website with doing the research to back up the claim. The source appears to be an unnamed report, supposedly written in 1982 or earlier, from a union we couldn't find: New York State Council 80 of the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees. (Council 82 currently represents correctional officers in New York, but that union couldn't find a copy of the report.) We also contacted the National Institute of Corrections, part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the American Correctional Association. They had no definitive data either. At this point, Mellon's statement appears to be an urban legend -- a plausible but unfounded "fact" that is repeated so often it comes to be regarded as gospel. "That's exactly what we found," said Joshua Stengel, program manager for NIC's information center, who tried unsuccessfully to track down the source of the statistic in June 2010. "My concern was that it was being cited by somebody like a union as a bargaining chip. And if they created it, they were essentially citing themselves." Stengel and Council 82 subsequently directed us to an Oct. 17, 2011, Florida report -- published on a police union website and done by Brevard County Sheriff J.R. "Jack" Parker -- that concludes that law enforcement and correctional officers typically die at age 62.5, 12 years earlier than all Florida residents. Parker used the report to argue for a rollback of the minimum age and length of service requirements for the pension benefits of law enforcement and correctional officers. The most obvious flaw in the report is that it compared the average age of death in those male-dominated professions to the age of death among both men AND women in Florida, failing to take into account the fact that women outnumber men in the Sunshine State and tend to live six years longer. And while Parker's report also claims that scientific studies show that law enforcement officers have shorter life spans than the general public, some of the evidence cited in his report shows the opposite, as we found in our earlier PolitiFact analysis. The truth may be far less ominous. In 1993, the Correctional Service of Canada released an analysis of 148,850 active and retired public service workers, 1,422 of whom were retired correctional officers. The analysis, by Daniel J.K. Beavon and Paul S. Maxim, modified in 2009, found that male officers had an average life expectancy of 77.5 years. That's just a year less than the longevity for all male Canadian public service employees and at least two years longer than the overall life expectancy of Canadian males. After adjusting for factors such as starting age of employment, age of retirement, length of service, class and reason for retirement, the researchers concluded that the longevity difference was not statistically significant. When we asked Mellon about his original statement, he said it made sense because "We don't have a lot of old correctional officer retirees." Of the 177 former correctional officers collecting retirement benefits, "we have nobody collecting in their 80s," 22 are in their 70s and 97 are in their 60s. That means that two-thirds of the retirees are 60 or older, but those numbers only reflect who is living. The issue is the age at which they die. "Over the years, unfortunately, I have been to many funerals of correctional officers under 55 and many retirees under 60. I think the numbers speak for themselves," he said. Our Ruling David Mellon testified that the life expectancy for correctional officers is 58, and he said he got the information from Metropolitan Life. But he did not actually get that statistic from the insurance company. He was citing an often-quoted number that, as far as we could tell after nearly two weeks of looking for its source, has no real documentation to back it up. A similar claim still making the rounds is actually 30 years old and comes from a questionable source. The most recent report we could find, from Florida, failed to make even the most basic adjustment -- for gender -- that would make it a valid study. And the only thorough analysis we could find concluded that male correctional officers actually live longer than the general population. We don't doubt that working as a correctional officer is hazardous and stressful, and we can understand how the funerals Mellon is attending could give him the impression that his coworkers are dying prematurely. But the hard evidence cited to back up such claims turns out to be unreliable, ethereal or contradicts his testimony. We rule Mellon's statement False. (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.) | null | David Mellon | null | null | null | 2011-11-16T00:00:01 | 2011-10-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-10443 | A gas tax holiday "would at best provide 30 cents a day for three months for a grand total of $28." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/may/06/barack-obama/obamas-per-car-number-is-reasonable/ | Sen. Barack Obama says that the gas tax holiday promoted by Sen. Hillary Clinton will save people $28 over the course of the summer. Clinton, meanwhile, claims it will save $70. Who's right? Obama's campaign cites a number from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a group that opposed Sen. John McCain's version of the gas tax holiday because it feared the holiday would wipe out $8.5-billion for highway programs. Clinton proposes a windfall tax on oil company profits to make up the difference. A spokesman for the highway association walked us through its estimate: The average vehicle drives about 12,000 miles a year. The proposed gas tax holiday would last from Memorial Day to Labor Day, about three months. Assume that people drive 3,000 miles during that time, and assume an average mileage rate of 20 miles per gallon, which comes to 150 gallons of gas. The tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents, so multiply that by 150 gallons, and you get $27.60. Purists could quibble with a few assumptions here. The estimate doesn't account for diesel fuel, which is taxed at a higher rate of 24.4 cents a gallon. Cars and other two-axle, four-tire vehicles get about 20 miles per gallon on average, but mileage for large trucks is a lot lower, so those drivers would save more. Historical seasonal data also indicates that people drive more in the summer, so the 3,000 number is likely a little low. And another complicating factor is that some individuals own more than one car. On the other hand, this calculation makes the generous assumption that drivers will reap 100 percent of the tax reduction. Many transportation experts and economists believe that consumers will see only a fraction of that amount, or even none of it. Certainly, oil companies and retailers could decide to keep part of the money for themselves. But a cut in prices will also stimulate demand by making people more willing to use their vehicles. Increased demand is likely to send prices up, eating away at the 18.4 cents a gallon. "I'm saying no more than half. Some pessimists are saying a lot less than half," said Lee Schipper, an energy expert and visiting fellow at University of California at Berkeley. "Maybe something will come back to consumers, but it's not a big number." The Tax Policy Center, for example, published an analysis that says consumers should expect a gas tax holiday to save them only $5 or $10 per vehicle . Also complicating matters is that the government no longer collects complete data on the public's driving habits, relying instead on estimates. Schipper has found gaps between estimates and actual fuel sales data, as well as uncertainties for both the number of automobiles in use and the distance each is driven. "We're condemned to endless arguing because there's no good data," he said. Clinton, on the other hand, arrives at a higher number by calculating savings for a family of four with an average of 2.3 vehicles per household. We examined her claim in detail and concluded it was False . Obama's statement that a gas tax holiday "would at best provide 30 cents a day for three months for a grand total of $28" is in line with estimates we have for average fuel consumption. The back-of-the-envelope calculation is clearly based on a few assumptions, but the assumptions are reasonable. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-05-06T00:00:00 | 2008-05-05 | ['None'] |
goop-00885 | Keanu Reeves No Longer “Morose” Now That He’s Dating Halle Berry? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/keanu-reeves-halle-berry-dating-romance/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Keanu Reeves No Longer “Morose” Now That He’s Dating Halle Berry? | 2:51 pm, June 4, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
chct-00358 | CNN Fails To Mention Antifa Violence In Explainer Piece | none | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/08/15/cnn-fails-to-mention-antifa-violence-in-explainer-piece/ | null | null | null | Holmes Lybrand | Fact Check Editor at The Daily Caller News Foundation | null | null | 1:15 PM 08/15/2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14014 | The Chicago Bears have had more starting quarterbacks in the last 10 years than the total number of tenured (UW) faculty fired during the last two decades. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/jun/03/robin-vos/robin-vos-takes-aim-chicago-bears-quarterbacks-and/ | It can be hard for Green Bay Packers fans to remember a time without consistency at the quarterback position. For the past 24 seasons, the Packers have had two primary quarterbacks — Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. Combined, they have a total of 5 MVPs and two Super Bowl wins. One was just voted into the Hall of Fame, the other seems headed there. The Chicago Bears? Well, that’s a different story. They’ve had Jay Cutler in the spot since 2009, but that came after years of churning through quarterbacks. In a May 26, 2016 column published on the Right Wisconsin website, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, used the Bears’ quarterback situation to make a point about the University of Wisconsin System’s tenure policy. In his view, changes to relax the tenure system — ones harshly criticized by some faculty members — give the UW System more flexibility to deal with budget issues and other matters. In noting that under the old system, few faculty members with tenure ever lost their jobs, he invoked the Bears: "The Chicago Bears have had more starting quarterbacks in the last 10 years than the total number of tenured faculty fired during the last two decades." He also claimed under the former policy a tenured a tenured faculty member was less likely to get fired than someone is to hit a hole in one in golf. But we’re more familiar with quarterback turnovers, er, the quarterback turnover on the Bears. The analogy used by Vos may seem trite, but it gets at a central issue in the tenure debate — how secure faculty are in their positions. Is Vos right? What the details show Here’s the easy part, assuming you’re not a Bears fan. Since the 2006 season, the Chicago Bears have had nine different starting quarterbacks: Rex Grossman started 16 games in 2006, seven in 2007 and one in 2008; Brian Griese started six games in 2007; Kyle Orton started three games in 2007 and 15 in 2008 Jay Cutler started 16 games in 2009, 15 in 2010, 10 in 2011, 15 in 2012, 11 in 2013, 15 in 2014 and 15 in 2015; Todd Collins started one game in 2010; Caleb Hanie started four games in 2011; Josh McCown started two games in 2011 and five games in 2013; Jason Campbell started one game in 2012 and Jimmy Clausen started one game in 2014 and one in 2015. (The Green Bay Packers, by contrast, had a total of nine games started by quarterbacks other than Favre or Rodgers during the same period.) Now for the trickier part. Vos said the Bears had more starting quarterbacks in the past 10 years than the number of faculty members fired in the past two decades. Kit Beyer, Vos’ communications director, defined "fired" as "dismissed for just cause." Under UW’s tenure policy, tenured faculty members have always had the potential to be dismissed for just cause such as misconduct. (We rated Gov. Scott Walker’s claim that tenure at the UW amounts to a "job for life" Half True.) By this measure, a total of six faculty members were fired since 1996, according to both Beyer and data provided by the UW System. UW System spokesman Alex Hummel said this number is extremely low in large part because the "weeding out process" of employees happens both in the hiring stage and during the probationary years of employment before professors are granted tenure. At most institutions, 40% of professors are not granted tenure, he said. By the time faculty members are tenured, they have already been tested. "Termination of tenured faculty anywhere you go in the United States is pretty rare," he said. Hummel also said a faculty member faced with the possibility of being fired might choose to resign instead, which would make the number lower than it would be if it included these cases. He did not have data on how many times this happened in the past 20 years. But Vos specifically used the word "fired," which means faculty dismissed for just cause. That doesn’t include resignations. Our rating Vos said the Chicago Bears have had more starting quarterbacks in the past 10 years than the number of UW faculty members who have been fired in the past 20 years. Six faculty members have been fired in the past two decades, while there have been nine different starting quarterbacks for the Bears in the past decade. We rate his claim True. | null | Robin Vos | null | null | null | 2016-06-03T05:00:00 | 2016-05-26 | ['Chicago_Bears'] |
afck-00106 | “…our people’s access to electricity has increased from 58% to 85%.” | mostly-correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/sas-secret-ballot-debate-6-anc-achievements-scrutinised/ | null | null | null | null | null | SA’s secret-ballot debate: 6 ANC achievements scrutinised | 2017-08-17 08:52 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00477 | World’s largest dog? Truth! & Fiction! | none | https://www.truthorfiction.com/hercules/ | null | animals | null | null | null | World’s largest dog? Truth! & Fiction! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09553 | We cut property taxes by one-third. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2010/feb/03/rick-perry/perry-says-he-cut-property-taxes-one-third/ | Talking about tax cuts can score a candidate big points, and Gov. Rick Perry didn’t let that opportunity sail by during the Jan. 14 GOP gubernatorial debate. When his record on jobs was attacked by both of his challengers, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Wharton businesswoman Debra Medina, Perry struck back. "We cut property taxes by one-third," he said. That sounds like a lot. We decided to check the numbers. First, some history. In 2006, the Legislature passed and Perry signed a tax overhaul that was intended to reduce property taxes paid to school districts. To help offset the revenue lost by the districts, lawmakers restructured the state’s business tax and raised the cigarette tax. During the debate, Perry's reference to cutting property taxes left out some key facts. For one, the cut applied only to school taxes, which means that all the other property taxes paid by Texans — including those going to cities and counties — were unaffected. Secondly, the Legislature reduced the tax rate, not Texans' total tax bills, by 33 percent. And thirdly, only one portion of the school property tax rate was affected — the part used for maintenance and operations. True, most of every dollar in school taxes goes for maintenance and operations. According to a 2008 report from the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a nonprofit business group, that accounted for about half of all property taxes levied in Texas in 2005, the year before the cuts began. But Perry’s shorthand statement that property taxes were cut by a third, which has been repeated by other politicians, is an oversimplification. Overall, school tax collections did decline 6.4 percent between 2005 and 2007, the year the cuts were fully implemented. And the portion collected for school maintenance and operations dropped $2.2 billion, a 12.5 percent decrease, according to the Texas Education Agency. However, most taxpayers focus on the bottom line of their tax bill. That's where we looked, too. We found that the total amount of local property taxes paid by Texans — to all the different taxing entities — actually rose nearly 5 percent from 2005. When all was said and done, taxpayers paid $1.6 billion more in 2007. We did find some support for Perry's claim in the 2008 report from the TTARA, titled "Property Tax Relief: The $7 Billion Reality." The report compared those 2007 property taxes with what it calculated Texans would have paid without a rate cut. The savings amounted to about $7 billion, it said. "The average Texan's total property tax bill in 2007 was 20 percent lower than what it likely would have been had there been no tax relief initiative," the report concludes. That still didn't get us to Perry's 33 percent (one-third) claim. Next, we went to the Texas Education Agency. It offered data showing that collections for school maintenance and operations taxes were indeed 30.2 percent lower in 2007 than the state projected they would have been without the tax cut. The problem is, taxpayers don't compare their tax bills to what they might have paid but to what they actually paid last time. Why didn't school taxes fall more between 2005 and 2007? Dale Craymer, president of the TTARA, said there are two major reasons. The first was a provision in the 2006 tax overhaul that gave school boards the option of voting to raise the maintenance and operations rate by a few cents for enrichment purposes. By 2007, more than 1,000 Texas school districts had done so, according to the TTARA report. That lessened the impact of the mandatory 33 percent rate reduction in those districts. Craymer said the second — and the most powerful — factor was rising property values. If values rise proportionately more than tax rates are cut, savings are negated and tax bills go up. In both 2006 and 2007, the total taxable value of property in Texas rose more than 10 percent each year. The association's report identified other reasons that the overall reduction in property taxes did not meet expectations: increases in the portion of school taxes dedicated to bond debt, as well as increases in taxes paid to cities, counties and other taxing districts. Summing up: In the debate, Perry failed to accurately characterize the tax cut passed in 2006 and its impact on Texans. Total property tax collections rose, not fell. And though it's estimated that Texans did receive significant tax savings compared with what they would have paid without the cuts, those savings were probably closer to 20 percent than 33 percent. We rate Perry's claim as Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2010-02-03T17:29:42 | 2010-01-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-09889 | The health care reform bill -- on Page 16 -- outlaws private insurance. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/22/ibdeditorialscom/private-health-insurance-page-16-house-bill/ | We got several e-mails from readers asking if new health care legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives bans private health insurance for individuals. We tracked the statement back to its source, an editorial from Investor's Business Daily. "It didn't take long to run into an 'uh-oh' moment when reading the House's 'health care for all Americans' bill," the editorial says. "Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." The editorial continues, "Under the Orwellian header of 'Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,' the 'Limitation On New Enrollment' section of the bill clearly states: 'Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day' of the year the legislation becomes law." The editorial, published July 15, 2009, adds, "So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers." Since then, the allegation about Page 16 has been repeated in many blogs and by at least one member of Congress. We read the section of the bill to which Investor's Business Daily referred, as well as a summary of the legislation provided by the House Ways and Means committee. While the quotation is correct, it's taken out of context. Individual private health insurance means coverage that someone buys on his or her own from a private company. In other words, it's for people who can't get coverage through work or some other group, and the rates tend to be much higher. Under the House bill, companies that offer insurance to individuals will do it through an exchange, where the government sets minimum standards for coverage. The new regulations require insurance companies to accept people even if they have previously existing conditions and to provide a minimum level of benefits, among other things. To be sure we were reading the bill correctly, we turned to an independent health care analyst at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. The foundation has analyzed the major health care proposals, including those of the Republicans, providing point-by-point analysis . Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation's principal policy analyst, told us that Page 16 doesn't outlaw private insurance. "There will be individual policies available, but people will buy those policies through the national health insurance exchange," she said. The House bill allows for existing policies to be grandfathered in, so that people who currently have individual health insurance policies will not lose coverage. The line the editorial refers to is a clause that says the health insurance companies cannot enroll new people into the old plans. The IDB editorial has caught the attention of some of the bill's most direct supporters. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who is guiding the legislation through Congress, wrote a letter to the publication saying the editorial was "factually incorrect and highly misleading." The conservative Heritage Foundation also said the editorial misread the legislation, writing on its Foundry blog, "So IDB is wrong: individual health insurance will not be outlawed." Heritage believes that the new regulations will be so onerous as to drive private insurance out of business "which is effectively the same thing." But that is a substantially different argument than what the editorial said. President Barack Obama had the chance to personally quash the IDB editorial himself when asked about it in a conference call with left-leaning bloggers. He said he wasn't familiar with the provision, before reiterating his general commitment to not forcing people out of health insurance that they like. (Impress your friends at parties by referring to the proper section on page 16 of the bill: It's Section 102.) In response to Waxman's letter, Investor's Business Daily says it's sticking to its guns. In a follow-up editorial, it said that private insurance offered on the exchange will be too regulated to be considered true private insurance, hence its original editorial is correct that the bill bans private insurance. This seems like a creative way of covering up a factual error, though. Many private companies are highly regulated but are still considered to be private. The original editorial said, "Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." That's not what the legislation says. When the error was pointed out, a subsequent editorial said it was still true. For perpetuating misinformation and then standing by it in the face of facts, we rate the Investor's Business Daily editorial Pants on Fire! | null | Investor's Business Daily | null | null | null | 2009-07-22T18:31:42 | 2009-07-15 | ['None'] |
goop-01413 | Jennifer Lopez “Bride-To-Be,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-lopez-bride-ring-alex-rodriguez-engaged-wrong/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Lopez NOT “Bride-To-Be,” Despite Ring On Date Night With Alex Rodriguez | 4:20 pm, March 10, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04182 | In recent years, menhaden numbers along our coast have plummeted by 90 percent. | mostly false | /rhode-island/statements/2012/dec/14/pew-environment-group/pew-environment-group-says-atlantic-menhaden-popul/ | The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to vote today, Dec. 14, on whether to cut the catch limit for Atlantic menhaden. Environmentalists say the menhaden population, a crucial part of the Atlantic ecosystem, has dropped to dangerous levels. Menhaden are an important food source for tuna, cod, striped bass, whales, dolphins, ospreys and eagles. Opponents of a strict limit, mostly from the fishing industry, say there are enough fish and the size of the population rises and falls naturally. The fish are used for fertilizer, bait, and fish-oil supplements. On Dec. 11, three days before the meeting, the Pew Environment Group ran a large ad in The Providence Journal headlined, "Governor Chafee: When this little fish disappears we're in big trouble." It talked about the importance of the species, adding, "But in recent years, menhaden numbers along our coast have plummeted by 90 percent." Fish counts are a contentious topic. After all, it's tough to do an inventory of undersea life, most of which you can't see. We wondered whether Pew’s number was accurate. We asked Pew for its source. Spokesman Jeff Young referred us to the 2011 Stock Assessment Report by the fisheries commission, a compact of 15 states that deals with fishing issues on the East Coast. Table 7.5 offers a complex calculation -- using lots of different data sources -- of the number of menhaden at the start of the year. The estimates go from 1955 to 2008. Young said biologists focus on the number of fish that had survived their first year, when they're more likely to be caught. We will do that as well. The estimates over the years show two peaks and two valleys. The population was high in the 1950s. It dropped precipitously and remained low in the 1960s. Then it started rising significantly, peaking from 1976 to 1989 before falling back to the 1960-ish range during the last two decades. Whether the population declined by 90 percent, as Pew asserts, depends on where you want to start calculating and when you want to stop. The Pew ad says the 90-percent decline was "in recent years." It gives no time frame. If you think of "recent" as the last 10 years, the drop from 1999 to 2008 has been 43 percent, far from 90 percent, according to the chart Pew referenced. Over the last 20 years, it's been 76 percent. To show a drop close to 90 percent, you have to start at 1982, when the estimated number of menhaden was 20.2 billion, the second-highest ever reported, and compare it with 2008, when the population was about 2.4 billion -- a drop of 88 percent. If you started with the first year of data -- 8.3 billion fish in 1955 -- and compared it with 2008, you’d have a decline of 71 percent. We found smaller percentages when we looked at the more recent commission report, from 2012, because it gives a higher number for the menhaden population for 2011, the most recent year the report looks at. Using that estimate, the decline since 1982 has been 82 percent. But Pew Environment's chief scientist Jud Crawford said the most recent report is considered less reliable because questions have been raised about the way the estimates were calculated. We also consulted with Mark Gibson, deputy chief of the marine fisheries division of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. "There's no question there's been a decline downward," he said. "But when you have a fish stock that varies up and down across time, you can cherry-pick your window across time, say it declined and get a whole bunch of people alarmed." Our ruling The Pew Environment Group said that "in recent years, menhaden numbers along our coasts have plummeted by 90 percent," a very specific number. It says overfishing must be halted to rebuild the population. The estimated number of menhaden is clearly well below the estimated population for the late 1980s. But it's currently at levels seen in the 1960s. If you want to claim a 90-percent drop, you have to compare the 2008 population to a very specific -- and very exceptional -- year, 1982. We don't consider a 30-year-old benchmark to be "recent." Because the statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Pew Environment Group | null | null | null | 2012-12-14T00:01:00 | 2012-12-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-10230 | I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/03/sarah-palin/she-killed-it-but-it-was-nearly-dead/ | In a speech to the Republican National Convention on Sept. 3, 2008, Gov. Sarah Palin portrayed herself as a reformer who had cut waste in government. "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere," Palin said, echoing comments she made five days earlier when she was named John McCain's running mate. She was talking about a nearly $400-million Alaska bridge project that became the subject of national ridicule and a symbol of federal pork-barrel spending. The bridge was to connect the city of Ketchikan (population 8,200) to Gravina, an island with just 50 residents but also an airport, and only accessible by a five-minute ferry ride. The project came into national prominence when a government watchdog group tagged it as an extreme example of wasteful pork-barrel spending. Its national notoriety was cemented with a Parade magazine cover story that ran Nov. 6, 2005, under the headline, "Are Your Tax Dollars Being Wasted?" The project also raised bitter debate in Congress, and several attempts were made to yank funding for the project. In the fall of 2005, Congress removed the language specifically directing the money to the bridge, but it kept the money in place and left it up to Alaska to decide which transportation projects the state would like to spend it on. By the time Palin pulled the plug on the Gravina bridge project in September 2007, much of the federal funding for the bridge had already been diverted to other transportation projects. The bridge would cost $398-million, Palin said then, and Alaska was $329-million short. "Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398-million bridge is not the answer," Palin said. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329-million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island." Lois Epstein, director of the Alaska Transportation Priorities Project, which opposed funding for the Gravina bridge, said while it's true that Palin formally put an end to the project, "It wasn't really a bold move when she did it." Although the project had local support in Ketchikan, Epstein said, it was not a popular project around the state. And had Palin decided to continue forward with the bridge project, she said, it would have required either a lot more federal funding - which there clearly was no support for - or for the state to pick up the bulk of the tab at the expense of other more urgent road projects. Keith Ashdown, a spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense, the government watchdog that first drew attention to the project, believes Palin has "hyperinflated her role" in killing the project. "She put the final stake in the project," Ashdown said. "But there was already tremendous momentum for the project to be scrapped. She gets credit for saying that they were not to go forward with the bridge, but it was at death's door." (We'll also note that Palin wasn't always a foe of the Bridge to Nowhere. In our Flip-O-Meter ruling, we conclude that her decision to kill the bridge was a Full Flop from the position she had taken while running for governor.) Today, when Palin says "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that Bridge to Nowhere," it implies Congress said, "Here's a check for that bridge" and she responded, "No thanks, that's wasteful spending; here's your money back." That's not what happened. Fact is, Alaska took the bridge money, and then just spent it on other projects. Palin did make the final call to kill plans for the bridge, but by the time she did it was no longer a politically viable project. We rule Palin's claim is Half True. | null | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2008-09-03T00:00:00 | 2008-09-03 | ['United_States_Congress'] |
pomt-03183 | Says Ken Cuccinelli supported a law that could allow people to carry missile launchers into airports. | mostly false | /virginia/statements/2013/sep/03/terry-mcauliffe/mcauliffe-says-cuccinelli-fought-law-banning-missi/ | In Republican Ken Cuccinelli’s Virginia, people could walk through airports with loaded missile launchers. So says Terry McAuliffe, Cuccinelli’s Democratic opponent for governor. "In 2004, Ken Cuccinelli voted against making it a misdemeanor to carry a missile into an airport terminal," McAuliffe tweeted on Aug. 23. The tweet contains a picture of an airport sign with the silhouette of a loaded missile launcher. The sign says: "Attention Passengers Passengers are now permitted to carry missiles in Virginia airports. Your safety is our priority. --Gov. Ken Cuccinelli." Underneath the sign, McAuliffe wrote, "This is Cuccinelli’s Virginia." We checked whether Cuccinelli really has voted to allow armed missile launchers in airports. McAuliffe is not the only Democrat making this explosive claim. It began Aug. 19 when American Bridge 21st Century, a pro-Democrat PAC, tweeted, "Missiles in Airports? In 2004, Ken Cuccinelli voted against legislation to ban missiles and guns in airports in Virginia." That same day, an entity called Terry4Gov tweeted a doctored picture of a smiling, dark-haired, man with a heavy beard carrying a launcher on his shoulder in an airport terminal while a missile rises to his right, tailing smoke. Terry4Gov describes itself on Twitter as an "unaffiliated grassroots group." We tried to reach a spokesperson, but group does not offer any contact information. Brian Coy, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, said he does not know anything about Terry4Gov, other than it is not affiliated with the party or McAuliffe’s campaign. The basis for all the claims -- including McAuliffe’s tweet, four days after the others -- is a 2004 bill that banned bringing a "gun or other weapon designed or intended to propel a missile or projectile of any kind," into an airport terminal. That included any "frame, receiver, muffler, silencer, missile, projectile or ammunition designed for use with a dangerous weapon." Passengers checking firearms, law enforcement officials and approved airline employees were exempted. "Critics of the legislation fought unsuccessfully to exempt holders of concealed weapons permits," the Roanoke Times said in a March 13, 2004 article. That’s exactly where Cuccinelli, then a state senator, took issue with the legislation. He was concerned that the bill could prevent people with concealed carry permits from possessing their firearms at airport drop-off areas, according to Anna Nix, a spokeswoman for Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign. Despite Cuccinelli’s opposition, the legislation passed the Senate on a 23-16 vote and was signed by then-Gov. Mark Warner. There are a few points to make about the bill. First, the state has limited jurisdiction over airports. It can legislate items that may be brought into a terminal, but once a person gets to security checkpoints, federal laws take over. According to Transportation Safety Administration rules, travelers may only transport unloaded firearms in a locked, hard-sided container as checked baggage. All firearms, ammunition and firearm parts, including firearm frames and receivers, are prohibited in carry-on baggage. Another point: The sign in McAuliffe’s tweet implies that state law defines "missile" as a warhead that’s fired from a rocket launcher. But Virginia’s code offers no definition of the term. State laws ban shooting or throwing missiles at vehicles, at or inside buildings and pointing or holding a weapon, including missiles, to induce fear. It also illegal to carry weapons, including missiles, into courthouses unless the person is a law enforcement official on duty. In 2007, Jessica Hall of Jacksonville, N.C. spent two months in a Virginia jail after angrily hurling a large McDonald’s cup filled with ice into the open window of another car in stalled traffic on I-95. Although no one was hurt, a Stafford County jury convicted Hall of maliciously throwing a missile into an occupied vehicle. According to an article in The Washington Post, the jury was instructed that "any physical object can be considered a missile. A missile can be propelled by force, including throwing." Finally, it should be noted that automatic firearms and other destructive devices, such as grenades and military-style missiles, are tightly regulated and difficult for individuals to acquire. Such weapons require registration under the National Firearms Act. The size of those weapons are restricted and someone interested in owning automatic firearms or any form of rocketry would need to find a registered dealer, undergo an extensive background check and pay federal taxes to do so. Our ruling McAuliffe, in a tweet bearing a picture of a loaded missile launcher, says "Cuccinelli voted against making it a misdemeanor to carry a missile into an airport." In 2004, Cuccinelli was one of 16 people in the 40-member state Senate that voted against a bill barring people from entering an airport terminal carrying a "gun or other weapon designed or intended to propel a missile or projectile of any kind." It can be argued that the description does encompass missile launchers, but that’s an interpretation that doesn’t weigh the debate at the time the bill was considered. A 2004 news article said Senate opponents were concerned that the bill undercut the rights of some gun owners. The article made no mention of missile launchers. McAuliffe’s tweet focuses on the term "missile" and suggests that the bill’s purpose was to ban warheads from airports. But the term "missile" is undefined in state law and could mean bullets, rocks, or even a cup of soda if it’s thrown maliciously. So there’s a trace of truth to a deeply distorted and inflamed statement by McAuliffe. We rate his claim Mostly False. | null | Terry McAuliffe | null | null | null | 2013-09-03T05:00:00 | 2013-08-23 | ['Ken_Cuccinelli'] |
pomt-05428 | Some "20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions" as a result of "political favoritism and backroom deals." | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2012/apr/30/michael-turner/michael-turner-says-political-favoritism-and-backr/ | Editor's note: We updated this ruling in September 2013 after a report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program issued a report that revealed more about the Treasury Department's involvement. The claim now is rated Half True. The 2009 bailout of General Motors and Chrysler still resonates in political campaigns. President Barack Obama and his supporters say it helped revive the economies of states like Ohio. Critics including Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, say it saddled taxpayers with loans that still have not been paid back fully, and that market forces, not government intervention, should have been allowed to play out. We won’t attempt to settle that here. But there is another still-ripe issue from the bailout, concerning retiree pensions from a major parts supplier. Rep. Michael Turner, a Republican from Dayton, brought it up April 23 while speaking in support of Romney and responding to claims by the Obama team that the auto bailout was a success. Part of Turner’s rebuttal was this: "In the process" of the $80 billion auto rescue, "20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions. Governor Romney will make decisions based on what’s best for the economy and for American workers, not based on political favoritism and backroom deals." Did 20,000 Delphi salaried employees lose part of their pensions, some as much as 70 percent? The short and general answer is yes. But tacked onto Turner’s statement was a claim of blame: While salaried and managerial employees of Delphi, a major parts supplier to General Motors, lost part of their pensions, unionized employees did not. The unions got a pension rescue -- which is what Turner, like other critics, meant by "political favoritism and backroom deals." This is a raging complaint among retirees of Delphi, which until 1999 was a GM division. It has turned into a political complaint as well, with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holding hearings and federal agencies investigating. Turner is a member of the House committee. To understand the issue, it helps to have some background. GM spun off Delphi as an independent company in 1999. It was risky and the unions, particularly the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), knew it, so GM agreed to a guarantee. If Delphi faltered and the union pensions got cut, GM would "top up," or supplement, those smaller pensions so Delphi retirees could have the retirements they’d always expected. Not every union had this deal, nor did Delphi’s salaried workers. By making such a promise, GM bought a degree of labor peace and certainty, which was important because of the number of car components Delphi provided. A disruption by Delphi could bring GM production to a halt. Besides, Delphi’s pension plan for salaried workers was fully funded at the time, while it’s plan for hourly workers was not. Delphi did stumble financially, filing for bankruptcy protection in 2005. Because the company failed to make minimum contributions to its pension plans, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that insures pensions, placed liens to protect the pension plan assets. But a few of the unions still did not have to worry about reduced pension payments because of those earlier "top up" agreements, and in 2007, Delphi, GM and the unions signed agreements continuing the deals. As the Government Accountability Office noted in a detailed chronology of events, salaried workers still had no such deal. Delphi at this point was trying to find a buyer, and GM agreed to take control of $3.4 billion in net liabilities from Delphi’s hourly pension plan. But by 2008, the entire auto industry was struggling, and both Delphi and GM were in trouble. GM sought bankruptcy protection June 1, 2009. The Treasury Department by now was deeply involved, helping GM restructure with the use of government money (and taking stock in the restructured company as collateral). The Obama administration, like GM, wanted Delphi to survive because of its key role as a parts supplier. And both GM and Delphi needed buy-in from the UAW. So with consent from Treasury, a restructured GM agreed to continue the top-up agreement with Delphi’s UAW workers. By this point, Delphi had turned its pension plans over to the PBGC. One problem remained. GM also had top-up agreements with two other Delphi unions from the spin-off: the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers (IUE); and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). Delphi needed consent from those two unions to finalize the sale of its assets to new owners and emerge from bankruptcy. And GM needed a solvent Delphi to keep parts coming to its factories. After reviewing court filings, testimony and other documents in order to provide what is arguably the most dispassionate analysis of the situation, the GAO said: Treasury wanted to assure the "sanctity" of GM’s supply chain with a post-bankruptcy Delphi (which itself was getting new owners). Failure to extend the top-up agreement to the other two unions would have stood in the way. And all three unions had long-standing top-up agreements, which salaried workers never had. So on Sept. 10, 2009, GM agreed to keep the top-up agreements of all three unions. Salaried workers who spent their careers at Delphi got no such deal, and they have seen their pensions cut. They have been fighting in court ever since, with lawmakers, including Turner, on their side. Was this political favoritism for the unions? A backroom deal? In researching this matter, PolitiFact Ohio read congressional testimony, news reports, government studies and websites with claims from all sides. We read allegations about coziness, or lack thereof, of certain players, such as GM and the UAW. But the evidence to date is thin when it comes to claims of unfairness from the Obama administration. The PBGC, the federal agency that rescues failing pension plans, played no role in influencing the GM decision to support the Delphi pensions through the three unions, according to testimony in November by agency’s deputy director, Vincent K. Snowbarger. But what about Treasury, which played a central role in negotiations? The most impartial answer we found was a GAO report from December 2011. It concluded that GM had strategic reasons to keep unionized auto parts workers happy, namely, the need for on-time parts delivery without disruption. But the GAO concluded that the Treasury Department, representing the Obama administration in the bailout, did not unduly influence this portion of the deal. Said the GAO: "As GM’s primary lender in bankruptcy, Treasury played a significant role in helping GM resolve the Delphi bankruptcy in terms of GM’s interests. Treasury’s guiding principle was to see the bankruptcy resolved with the least possible amount of investment by GM while still preserving GM’s supply chain. However, with regard to GM decisions about the Delphi pension plans — their sponsorship and the decision to honor existing top-up agreements — court filings and statements from GM and Treasury officials support that Treasury deferred to GM’s business judgment." This is unlikely to be the end of the matter. The inspector general for the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program is conducting its own audit to determine Treasury’s role in the top-up decision. It wants to know whether the administration or its automotive task force pressured GM to provide additional funding for the union pensions. That report is expected this summer. Meantime, we return to Turner’s claim: "In the process, 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions. Gov. Romney will make decisions based on what’s best for the economy and for American workers, not based on political favoritism and backroom deals." His statement contains some element of truth. The bad deal for the salaried retirees is not in dispute. Whether it resulted from political favoritism, however, is. And the GAO, the one truly nonpartisan entity to opine so far, suggests otherwise. That’s a critical fact that Turner’s claim ignores. We may return to this if warranted after the TARP inspector general’s work is done, but right now Turner leaves us with a statement that is accurate only in part. Based on what is known now, Turner’s claim It suggests a government role that neither he nor anyone else has nailed down. It’s his job to on the House oversight committee to get at the truth, but as a proxy for a presidential campaign, he reached conclusions that the Truth-o-Meter cannot support. On the Truth-O-Meter, his statement rates Mostly False. | null | Michael Turner | null | null | null | 2012-04-30T06:00:00 | 2012-04-23 | ['None'] |
para-00186 | Voters have a choice of two methods when voting for senators; ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’. | half-true | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/sep/07/australian-electoral-commission/Voters-own-preference-Senate/index.html | null | ['Voting'] | Australian Electoral Commission | David Humphries, Alix Piatek, Peter Fray | null | Voters can exercise their own preference in the Senate | Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 8:30 a.m. | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13612 | Donald Trump is "against marriage equality. He wants to go back." | true | /new-york/statements/2016/aug/14/sean-patrick-maloney/donald-trump-against-same-sex-marriage/ | U.S. Rep. Sean Maloney, D-N.Y., called out Donald Trump during a speech to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia for the Republican nominee's position on same-sex marriage. Maloney, who is openly gay and married, said Trump has opposed same-sex marriage and wants the Supreme Court to reverse its 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States. "It matters who’s leading the country, and it matters if they care," said Maloney, whose Hudson Valley congressional district includes all of Putnam and Orange counties, part of northern Westchester County and the southwest section of Dutchess County. "America, we have a choice. Donald Trump doesn’t care about some families. He’s against marriage equality. He wants to go back." Trump has been criticized for flip-flopping on social issues. Is Maloney right about the Republican candidate’s stance on same-sex marriage? Trump through the years The earliest reference from Trump on the issue that we could track down is an interview in The Advocate in 2000. At the time Trump was rumored to be considering a run for president. "I think the institution of marriage should be between a man and a woman," Trump said during the interview. He said he would favor a domestic partnership law that afforded same-sex couples the same benefits as married couples. Fast-forward to 2011 when Trump was again considering a run for the White House. He sat down for an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News and talked about his position on same-sex marriage. "I just don't feel good about it," Trump said. "I don't feel right about it. I'm against it, and I take a lot of heat because I come from New York. You know, for New York it's like, how can you be against gay marriage? But I'm opposed to gay marriage." And, last year Trump said in an interview on CNN that he supported ‘traditional marriage.’ ‘He wants to go back’ Maloney’s claim was made in the context of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision on same-sex marriage. Trump does not agree with the decision. He has said efforts to overrule the court through an amendment to the U.S Constitution are not realistic. He has said in interviews that he would have preferred the court leave the decision on same-sex marriage at the state level. Trump also suggested in at least one interview that he would consider appointing Supreme Court justices who would support reversing the ruling. Our ruling Speaking at the Democratic National Convention, Maloney said Trump is "against marriage equality" and "wants to go back" on the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision. Trump has consistently opposed same-sex marriage in interviews since 2000. He also said he would consider appointing justices to the Supreme Court who would favor reversing the decision and leave the issue of same-sex marriage to the states. We rate this claim as True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Sean Patrick Maloney | null | null | null | 2016-08-14T22:56:02 | 2016-07-28 | ['None'] |
goop-02579 | Britney Spears Did Say World Is “Ruled By Pedophiles,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/britney-spears-not-say-world-ruled-pedophiles/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Britney Spears Did NOT Say World Is “Ruled By Pedophiles,” Despite Claim | 4:07 pm, August 14, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06136 | Scott Walker’s school-aid cuts were so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2011/dec/23/greater-wisconsin-political-fund/greater-wisconsin-committee-says-cuts-school-aid-l/ | Highlighting $800 million in school aid cuts in Wisconsin’s 2011-’13 budget, critics of Gov. Scott Walker are attacking what they view as serious side effects from his fiscal medicine. A TV ad by the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee uses interview clips to hammer Walker for backing business tax breaks while reducing state support for local schools. The speakers -- unidentified by name or position, but described by the group as teachers, parents or grandparents -- make claims about school staffing cuts and larger class sizes. Their claims are presented as more than random anecdotes; one source listed on the screen is a report issued by the state Department of Public Instruction, which oversees public education in Wisconsin. A few of the statements caught our attention -- and that of many readers: "My daughter has not enough tables and chairs in her room and she has kids sitting on the floor," a man says, sitting with a woman and two young girls in a restaurant. A citation flashes on the screen: the state budget bill. Then a young man standing outside says: "Forty-seven in a room, they don’t get much attention." An onscreen graphic reads, "Classes are overcrowded," and cites the aforementioned report issued by the Department of Public Instruction -- a widely publicized report summarizing a statewide survey of schools following the budget cuts. Together, they essentially make the same point: Walker’s school-aid cuts were so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom. Is the Greater Wisconsin Committee right? First, viewers may have seen slightly different versions of the Greater Wisconsin Committee ad -- at least three were produced and they all vary a bit. And we can’t show them to you here: The group does not post its ads online but released a script. We’ll test the specific anecdotes but also look at the statewide situation. The group argues the ad does not suggest that the anecdotes are representative of the situation statewide, but we disagree. The "not enough chairs" anecdote is presented as one family’s experience, but the "47 in a room" line is presented as a broad statement of fact, bolstered by the "classes are overcrowded" tagline and citation of a statewide survey as proof. And the GWC is paying for the ad, so it is responsible for the message that the individuals are conveying. When asked for backup, the group’s leader, Michelle McGrorty, cited the statewide survey published in November by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators in conjunction with the state DPI, which is independent of the governor’s office. Previously, we rated two claims from that survey. We found False a statement by Walker that "the overwhelming number" of school districts reported their staff stayed the same or grew after the 2011-’13 state budget. And we also rated False a claim by the state’s largest teachers’ union that state budget cuts for schools resulted in nearly 4,000 educator layoffs. Let’s study up. Both sides have used the survey to argue their case on class sizes. The survey covered most schools, so it has value. At the same time, its conclusions have to be treated with caution because a district is counted as having higher class sizes even if only one grade was affected. There is no doubt that at least one class size went up in a significant number of cases. In elementary school, 42 percent of districts reported at least one class size increased. The middle school and high school data was more specific; 21 percent to 24 percent of core subject-area classes saw an increase in class sizes. Cutbacks in teaching staff in the wake of the state aid cuts played a role in increased class sizes, the survey found. Nearly two out of three districts (63 percent) reported a net loss of teachers. That’s what we know. What we don’t know -- and what the GWC cannot establish from the report -- is the size of the classes to bolster its "overcrowding" view. The survey did not ask how many kids were in classrooms, or how many more students were added to classrooms. It simply asked whether any class sizes had increased. Nowhere in its analysis of the survey does DPI describe the resulting class sizes as "overcrowded." According to WASDA and DPI officials, the survey did not attempt to get at whether school officials viewed their classes as overcrowded -- in part because it is a subjective term. The survey does not document any shortage of desks or chairs in classrooms either. Asked about the survey, McGrorty said the findings "definitely" mean there will be some overcrowding. But we contacted DPI and WASDA and another trade association and found no one claiming overcrowding or any specific increase in class size averages. WASDA has long tracked increased class sizes -- and says they are not a new phenomenon. Twenty years of state limits on school taxation have driven up class sizes for years, said Miles Turner, executive director of the group. He and others noted particularly that "specials" classes such as art and music have been combined as districts have laid off some of those teachers. Another statewide association, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said class size increase have not risen to "troublesome" levels. Judging whether a class is overcrowded depends on the grade level, the type of students, the subject and other factors, Turner and several school superintendents and administrators told us. We have none of that information from the ad. So the claim has plenty of problems. That leaves us with fact checking the specific anecdotes, but Greater Wisconsin -- which is funded by labor, Democratic Party groups and wealthy individual donors -- refuses to name the people or even cite the districts involved. McGrorty told us the group is concerned about potential harassment or threats of violence against the speakers. She also said the group was told that a school had to combine two classrooms because a teacher was laid off, and it lacked enough chairs. In the claims of classes increasing to 47, McGrorty contends it was a high school English class. We were not able to identify the districts. The statewide teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said it couldn’t identify them either, but said it had received reports from members about increased class sizes. We also contacted schools in Milwaukee and Janesville, two districts hit hardest by budget cuts because they had teachers’ contracts in place and could not take advantage of health insurance and pension savings that Walker’s budget provided. Janesville told us class sizes were limited to 30 for most grades by school board policy. The board in December 2011 bumped that up to 32. A district spokesman could cite no overcrowding. In Milwaukee, the president of the teachers union, Robert Peterson, told us no survey had been done there but he was receiving numerous reports of larger class sizes -- more than 40 in some. District spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin concurred in part: Class sizes vary from 17 to 41 depending on the type of class and students. But she said no comparable data was available for the year before. Class sizes did jump in schools that lost special funding due to budget cuts, she said. We heard that a gym class at Burroughs Middle School in Milwaukee had almost 50 kids. True, St. Aubin said, but two aides assist the teacher. We read a comment on a Fox Valley TV news story, apparently posted by a teacher, that claimed she lacked enough chairs for a kindergarten class. The district in question was Oshkosh, best we could tell. An official there said the classes had enough chairs; the teacher who apparently posted the comment did not return calls. Our conclusion In trying to show that Walker’s budget has caused school overcrowding, the Greater Wisconsin Committee misuses a survey of schools, cloaks its anecdotes in anonymity and provides no verification of its assertions. In our view, the ad’s message is that school crowding is common and dramatic, assertions not backed up by key school officials or the research cited. Class sizes have increased, and Walker’s budget is partly responsible, but that trend began before Walker, and other factors play in. In any case, that is not the same as "overcrowding" -- a description not even school and union officials are using. We may revisit this item if new evidence emerges, but these claims -- as presented -- are thin and misleading. We rate the claim False. | null | Greater Wisconsin Committee | null | null | null | 2011-12-23T09:00:00 | 2011-11-30 | ['None'] |
hoer-00084 | Holiday Horrors Are Common Seasonal Decorations Toxic? | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/poinsettias-toxic-warnings.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Holiday Horrors Are Common Seasonal Decorations Toxic? | December 10, 2012 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07829 | The Muslim Brotherhood has "openly stated they want to declare war on Israel." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/15/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-says-muslim-brotherhood-wants-declare-w/ | One of the thorniest questions to emerge from the tumult in Egypt has been what to make of the Muslim Brotherhood. Western observers have characterized the enigmatic group -- also called Al-Ikhwān -- as everything from democratic reformers to Islamic Socialists bent on global dominion. On his Fox News Channel program for Feb. 4, 2011, Glenn Beck wrapped up five days of frightening Egypt forecasts with this blunt assessment: "We told you this week how if (President Hosni) Mubarak does step down, however, the Muslim Brotherhood would be the most likely group to seize power. They've openly stated they want to declare war on Israel and they would end the peace agreement with Israel and they would work towards instituting something we told you about, a caliphate." That’s a lot to unpack. We decided to check Beck’s claim that the Brotherhood has "openly stated they want to declare war on Israel," because so much of the debate in the United States revolves around the Muslim Brotherhood's intentions toward the main U.S. ally in the region. Beck neglected to name a source in that Feb. 4 broadcast, so we took a look through the rest of his transcripts for the week. Sure enough, three days earlier he informed viewers that "a top official in the Muslim Brotherhood has just said that … ‘The people should be prepared for war against Israel.’" Who was that top official? Beck’s website pointed to a Feb. 1, 2011, item in the Jerusalem Post that had a "leading member" of the Brotherhood, Muhammad Ghannem, declaring that "the people should be prepared for war against Israel." The next day a Washington Times editorial picked up the quote, saying it "succinctly summed up" the Muslim Brotherhood's foreign policy. Then Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., repeated the fiery words in a floor speech. The Jerusalem Post piece cited an interview Ghannem gave to an Arabic-language Iranian network, Al-Alam. With deft use of Google Translate we were able to verify that Ghannem was quoted saying something along those lines in a Jan. 31, 2011, piece on Al-Alam’s website. The key question then becomes whether Ghannem can speak for the sprawling Muslim Brotherhood. "I have never heard of him," said Dr. Jason Brownlee, an associate professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas and a scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "It’s a big organization, and there may be people who say things like that, but that doesn’t mean it’s policy. It doesn’t jibe with my experience visiting Egypt and doing research on the Muslim Brotherhood for over a decade." Three other experts on the Muslim Brotherhood all agreed. "The MB is a massive organization with many different ideological trends within it," explained Dr. Joshua Stacher, a political scientist at Kent State. "I have never heard anyone on or off the record say they ‘wish to declare war on Israel.’ " None were familiar with Ghannem, who we confirmed is not among the the Brotherhood’s policy elite, the 16-member Guidance Bureau. Still, there’s no doubt that the Brotherhood officially condemns Israel, its neighbor across the Sinai Peninsula. According to a report on the group’s own website, a controversy erupted in 2007 when spokesman Essam El-Erian was quoted in London-based paper Al-Hayat saying that the Brotherhood would recognize Israel if it came to power. In response, then-Supreme Guide Mohamed Mahdy Akef clarified that "the Brotherhood does not and will never recognize Israel. ... Israel does not exist in the Brotherhood’s dictionary." El-Erian maintained that he had been misquoted and was only calling for a referendum on the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. That’s still the official line since the protests in Tahrir Square began. At a press conference in Cairo on Feb. 9, 2011, El-Erian and Mohammed Musri -- both of whom do sit on the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau -- declared that the group respects the treaty and any changes would be up to a democratically elected government. Brownlee pointed out that many Egyptians believe the 1979 treaty lacks legitimacy; it passed with nearly unanimous approval in what was seen as a fraudulent vote. Opinions vary as to how it would fare today, but, as George Washington University professor Nathan Brown pointed out, revoking a peace treaty is a far cry from declaring war. In a Feb. 2 interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, El-Erian confirmed that view. He called again for revising the terms of the treaty but, asked what that would mean, dismissed fears of armed conflict. "Oh, no threat of war," El-Erian told Robert Siegel. "The people are not pushing for war. But it is not our duty to protect Israel from Palestinians. We are not guards for Israel." So some members of the Muslim Brotherhood may be calling for war. But the ones who say that don’t speak for the group; and the ones who do speak for the group, don’t say that. We rate Beck’s claim False. | null | Glenn Beck | null | null | null | 2011-02-15T11:12:56 | 2011-02-04 | ['Israel', 'Muslim_Brotherhood'] |
pomt-14625 | When a Gallup poll asked about presidential candidate characteristics, "When they get to the question on, 'Would you vote for a socialist,' it is even less popular than voting for atheists." | true | /punditfact/statements/2016/jan/29/jennifer-granholm/jennifer-granholm-says-americans-would-rather-elec/ | Is Democrat Bernie Sanders going to suffer in the polls because he calls himself a socialist? Jennifer Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan and a Hillary Clinton backer, thinks so. During the Jan. 24 edition of ABC's This Week, she said "the word socialist is a really hard word" for voters. "Now, I love Bernie Sanders, really, I appreciate the fact that he's bringing out young people. But when you look at that word ‘socialist,’ the Gallup poll did an analysis of what are the characteristics that people would vote for in a president. 'Would you vote for a Mormon?' 'Would you vote for a Jew?' 'Would you vote for a Catholic?' When they get to the question on would you vote for an atheist, it is -- or, excuse me, a socialist, it is even less popular than voting for atheists," Granholm said. "That is why it's an issue." Because the polls say that Sanders is giving Clinton a run for her money, we wondered whether calling yourself a socialist really carries the type of stigma that Granholm described. We contacted Granholm's office but didn't hear back. The Gallup poll in question is a survey of 1,527 adults in June 2015. The survey found 47 percent of respondents would vote for a socialist presidential candidate nominated by their party even if the candidate was "generally well-qualified." Fifty percent would not. An atheist candidate would be tolerable to only 58 percent, with 40 percent saying they would not vote for any atheist candidate. Here's the list: Willingness to vote for a qualified candidate who is . . . a Catholic 93% Jewish 91% a Muslim 60% a woman 92% a Mormon 81% an atheist 58% black 92% gay or lesbian 74% a socialist 47% Hispanic 91% an evangelical Christian 73% Survey taken June 2-7, 2015 In a similar vein, a 2010 Fox News survey found that while only 39 percent of Americans would be comfortable with having an atheist on the Supreme Court, support for a socialist was even lower — 31 percent. Yet if Americans have such antipathy to socialists, why is Sanders, a self-declared socialist, doing so well? For one thing, Sanders makes it clear that he's not a socialist in the old Soviet Union sense. He often calls himself a democratic socialist who talks about the type of socialism seen in the Scandinavian countries, where the political system is democratic. His socialism is often in line with what would be considered strong liberal beliefs. PolitiFact explored the issue in detail in August 2015. Scott Clifford, a political scientist as the University of Houston, said it's important to remember that each person surveyed was "asked not about support for atheists/socialists in general, but in the context of their own party nominating one." So Democrats will be more open to socialist ideas because the party tends to be liberal, "home to secular Americans," he said. The Republican Party tends to be home to more evangelicals and other religious traditionalists, Clifford said by email, so Republicans would be naturally wary of a nominee who is a socialist. "After all, a Republican socialist is effectively an oxymoron in modern American politics," he said. That was clear when Gallup broke the results into party lines. Willingness to vote for Democrats Republicans Difference An evangelical Christian 66% 84% 18 points An atheist 64% 45% 19 points A gay or lesbian 85% 61% 24 points A Muslim 73% 45% 28 points A socialist 59% 26% 33 points John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, said there are a lot of misunderstandings about the term socialist, "so the survey questions you have in Gallup are probably not very indicative of the amount of support socialists might have." The term "socialist" may lose some of its sting because Sanders offers it as a solution to voters’ concerns, such as income inequality, he said. He is also highlighting the idea that other industrialized countries that have embraced socialism are doing better on matters such as health care, "and people are giving him high marks for dealing with the (socialist) question directly and not trying to hedge," Geer said. Whether Sanders can change the country's aversion to actually voting for a socialist remains to be seen. Our ruling Granholm said a Gallup survey found that the idea of voting for a socialist for president is even less popular than voting for an atheist. That's precisely what was found in the poll, the first time Gallup has asked about socialist presidential candidates. We rate the claim as True. | null | Jennifer Granholm | null | null | null | 2016-01-29T10:00:00 | 2016-01-24 | ['None'] |
pomt-08972 | Providence has "the lowest crime rate in three decades." | true | /rhode-island/statements/2010/jul/19/david-cicilline/cicilline-says-providence-crime-rate-lowest-30-yea/ | Providence Mayor David Cicilline has made Providence's falling crime rate one of the key selling points in his campaign in the 1st Congressional District. He repeated it during the July 13 debate with his three Democratic challengers, saying the city now has "the lowest crime rate in three decades." In addition, the mayor's website says, "Under his leadership, Providence has seen crime drop to its lowest rate in 30 years." We asked the campaign for numbers to support that assertion. They provided statistics collected by the Providence Police Department on various crimes going back to 1960. Cicilline is basing the claim on the sum of all reports of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft, which the police call the "crime index." Those numbers show that in 2009, there were 9,252 such crimes reported in the capital city. The last time the number was that low was in 1965, when 8,521 crimes were logged in those categories. That's a span of 44 years. So by that measure, Cicilline's claim is understated. The annual number of reported crimes hasn't been this low in more than four decades, not three. But is the mayor's leadership responsible for that decline? When we invited Karen Watts, the mayor's director of communications, to address that issue, she responded in an email that, "I think I'll just let the facts speak for themselves." We compared the rise and fall of crimes in Providence to the national pattern, using numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Justice. Over the years, the Providence trends have been very similar to the U.S. numbers. The number of crime reports rose steadily, except for some sporadic dips, throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Around 1990, things began to change. Nationally, the numbers began a gradual decline. Chris Menton, a professor of criminal justice at Roger Williams University, said there are lot of theories for the trend, but one of the most solid holds that when there are more young people in a population, the crime rate is higher. Beginning in the 1960s, the Baby Boomers were of an age where they were more likely to get into trouble and, in reaction, "our tolerance for deviant behavior went down." That upward trend changed after the early '90s because the population was older and a booming economy meant more jobs, which helps keep younger people out of trouble. Locally, the numbers fell dramatically, beginning around the time then-Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. began his second administration. Then, during Cianci's final three years, before he went to prison on a federal corruption charge, crime made a sharp spike upward again, a trend that was far more muted on the national level. It was after this 2001-2002 peak that Cicilline took over and - with the exception of a bump in 2008 when the number of incidents went up by 6 percent over the previous year - the number of reported crimes has fallen steadily. So the decline in the number of crimes reported in Providence coincides with a similar, although much less steep, decline nationally. In other words, whatever effect Cicilline or his administration might have had on the crime rate, national forces were likely at work as well. A few other issues complicate this analysis. For example, Cicilline is talking about the crime rate when the number his administration is using is the total number of crime reports, which is different. But when we looked closely, we found that those issues didn't actually affect the conclusion. For a discussion of those factors, CLICK HERE. In the end, the number of incidents of crime in Providence has declined since Cicilline took office and the number of incidents reported in 2009 is the lowest in 44 years, which makes the mayor's claim seem modest. Even though the ebb and flow of crime reports roughly mirrors what's been going on in the rest of the nation, and it's not clear how much he or his administration is directly responsible for a rate that began dropping during the second Cianci administration, we rate his statement as True. | null | David Cicilline | null | null | null | 2010-07-19T00:01:00 | 2010-07-13 | ['None'] |
chct-00011 | FACT CHECK: Does Russia Kill Journalists 'Every Day?' | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/29/fact-check-russia-journalists-killed-every-day/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 3:02 PM 10/29/2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03774 | Placing a bar of soap between your bedsheets will help prevent leg cramps. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/soap-dope/ | null | Medical | null | David Mikkelson | null | Soap in Bed Combats Leg Cramps? | 25 May 2005 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01421 | Katie Holmes Pregnant, Having Baby Girl With Jamie Foxx? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/katie-holmes-jamie-foxx-pregnant-baby-girl/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Katie Holmes Pregnant, Having Baby Girl With Jamie Foxx? | 6:06 pm, March 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04446 | The Wharton School wrote an open letter to Donald Trump explaining that the Republican Presidential candidate does not represent his former school. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/open-letter-to-donald-trump-from-wharton-university/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Open Letter to Donald Trump from Wharton School | 15 July 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Wharton_School_of_the_University_of_Pennsylvania'] |
tron-03241 | The Writings of Thomas Jefferson | truth! & unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/jefferson-quotes/ | null | politics | null | null | null | The Writings of Thomas Jefferson | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04886 | A video shows a group of whales coming to the surface after hearing an orchestra playing music. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/orchestra-whale-video-fake/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Orchestra Music Brings Whales to the Surface | 21 April 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13291 | Says Hillary Clinton "viciously" attacked women abused by Bill Clinton. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/10/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-hillary-clinton-viciously-attack/ | Donald Trump said at the second presidential debate that his lewd 2005 comments were "locker room talk," but what Bill and Hillary Clinton did was much worse. "If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse," Trump said Oct. 9, 2016. "Mine are words, and his was action. His was what he's done to women. There's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women." Trump then criticized Hillary Clinton. "Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously. Four of them here tonight." Here we’re fact-checking Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton "viciously" attacked women who say they were abused by Bill Clinton. What we found is that Hillary Clinton has been accused of threatening or shaming accusers of Bill Clinton. But all the accusations remain unproven, as do the specific allegations against Bill Clinton. In most cases, evidence Hillary Clinton intervened in any significant way doesn’t exist. An error in Trump’s counting Before we explain the case with each accuser, a small note. While Trump invited four women to the debate at Washington University in St. Louis, only three of them -- Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones -- accuse Bill Clinton of sexual assault. The fourth woman, Kathy Shelton, was a victim in a rape case. Hillary Clinton defended Shelton’s attacker while working at a University of Arkansas legal aid clinic. You can read our fact-check related to that incident here. Hillary Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick In 1978, Juanita Broaddrick managed a nursing home in Arkansas. During the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Broaddrick came forward to say that he had raped her in her hotel room in 1978. Broaddrick also said that she believed Hillary Clinton knew about the rape and tried to intervene. She described an encounter to the conservative website Breitbart. Broaddrick said that soon after the alleged event took place, she went to a Democratic fundraiser that the Clintons attended. Broaddrick said Hillary Clinton approached her. Clinton said, "I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him. Do you understand? Everything you do," Broaddrick recounted. Broaddrick told Breitbart, "What really went through my mind at that time is ‘She knows. She knew. She’s covering it up and she expects me to do the very same thing.’" Broaddrick did not go public with her story, even going so far as to deny that the rape occurred in a sworn deposition (as part of the Paula Jones case). Two decades later though, investigators with independent counsel Ken Starr approached her and she told it all. Ultimately, Starr’s team decided there was "inconclusive evidence" to press charges. We found no evidence of Hillary Clinton viciously attacking Broaddrick, as Trump claimed, nor is there independent confirmation of the exchange at the fundraising event. Also, in a 1999 interview with NBC News, Broaddrick was asked if Bill Clinton or anyone close to him had ever done anything to keep her silent. Broaddrick said, "No." Kathleen Willey In 1993, Kathleen Willey was a Clinton supporter and a volunteer at the White House. Willey said that when she went to the president to ask for a paid position, he groped her. Willey, now a Trump supporter, has said that Hillary Clinton "wrote the book on terrorizing women." Willey described what she believed to be efforts to intimidate her in an interview with the conservative website Daily Caller. That list included "a dead cat found on her porch, a man she saw at night under her deck, and a stranger in her remote neighborhood inquiring threateningly about how her children were doing." Willey also mentioned being told that Clinton insider Sidney Blumenthal said about her, "She may look good today … she’s not going to look good by Friday." In the course of responding to a lawsuit in 1999, Blumenthal did say Hillary Clinton played some sort of role in the White House response to Willey’s allegations. She approved the public release of letters Willey had sent after the alleged event. The letters were characterized as "friendly" and, according to Blumenthal, Clinton thought they would undermine Willey’s credibility because the tone was at odds with the episode she described. We reached out to Willey to get more details but have yet to hear back. Paula Jones In 1994, Arkansas state worker Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of making an unwanted sexual advance. Clinton ultimately paid $850,000 to settle with Jones without admitting guilt. Jones has harsh words for Hillary Clinton. She said Clinton was out to discredit her. "She don’t care nothing about women. Because if she did she would believe what I had to say," Jones told Breitbart. Jones said Clinton was an enabler of her husband’s transgressions. After Jones sued Bill Clinton, his legal team questioned her and looked into her background. But, again, we found no evidence Hillary Clinton attacked Jones. The closest was in 1998 when Clinton said she felt that Jones’ lawsuit was part of a larger political agenda. Other allegations Long-time Washington journalist Carl Bernstein wrote in his biography of Hillary Clinton A Woman in Charge that in the 1992 campaign Hillary Clinton directed a special "defense team" to deal with allegations about "Bill’s history with the Selective Service System, women claiming to have had affairs with him, and other personal aspects of the Clintons’ lives." One aide was sent to Little Rock, Ark., to dig for facts about the most worrying revelation from Gennifer Flowers, a woman who claimed to have had a long affair with Bill Clinton. The campaign hired a detective to look into the backgrounds of any women who had come forward. The Trump campaign pointed to a New York Times article that described the work of that detective. The newspaper reported that in a memo, the detective said he would impugn Flowers’ "character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition." Importantly, however, while Flowers claimed she had an affair with Bill Clinton, she did not claim she was abused. In a 1992 interview, Clinton herself called Flowers "some failed cabaret singer who doesn’t even have much of resume to fall back on." And on another occasion, she said if she had the chance to cross-examine Flowers, she "would crucify her." But the same New York Times article quotes a statement provided earlier this month by the Hillary Clinton campaign from James Carville, the 1992 campaign’s top strategist. "Hillary wanted us to defend the governor against attacks," the statement said. "It’s just ridiculous to imagine that she was somehow directing our response operation. That was my job, not hers." ABC News host George Stephanopoulos served as the communications director in Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Stephanopoulos wrote in All Too Human, that when Connie Hamzy, one of the first women to claim a sexual encounter with Bill, came forward Hillary said, "We have to destroy her story." Hamzy said Bill Clinton propositioned her, but she didn’t object. Lastly, no account of Bill Clinton’s transgressions would be complete without mentioning one-time White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky aimed to get the attentions of the president and succeeded. When Lewinsky’s story came to light through the Starr investigation, Hillary Clinton forcefully rejected that there was any truth to it. Clinton basically wrote it off as part of "this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president." When Hillary Clinton said that, Lewinsky was still publicly denying her affair with the president. Our ruling Trump said that Hillary Clinton "viciously" attacked women who accused Bill Clinton of abuse. Bill Clinton certainly has been accused of sexual assault and having affairs. The record shows Hillary Clinton played a role in defending her husband, and that the Clintons’ first presidential campaign deployed tough tactics to defend against stories of consensual sex. But in the cases of alleged abuse by Broaddrick, Willey and Jones, Hillary Clinton was largely silent. The words she allegedly had with Broaddrick are subject to interpretation. Approving the release of Willey’s letters does qualify as an attack, but using a person’s words against them is a fairly tame tactic. And Clinton did not attack Jones directly. Overall, we rate the claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-10T12:45:17 | 2016-10-09 | ['Bill_Clinton'] |
snes-05562 | An official movie poster shows Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the cartoon character Johnny Bravo. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/johny-bravo-the-rock-powerpuff-girls/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Are Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls Films on the Way? | 20 October 2015 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01012 | Get Free Aer Lingus Tickets | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/get-free/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Get Free Aer Lingus Tickets Facebook Survey Scam | May 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00786 | Door To Hell Gas Fire Photographs | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/door-to-hell.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Door To Hell Gas Fire Photographs | November 2008 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04899 | Says Congressman Jon Runyan does not want to cut taxes for the middle class, but only for millionaires. | mostly false | /new-jersey/statements/2012/aug/05/democratic-congressional-campaign-committee/dccc-ad-campaign-targets-house-republicans-wanting/ | Between images of a supermarket employee and a wealthy guy sitting in a robe outside his mansion, a new Democratic ad campaign goes after House Republicans for apparently supporting tax breaks for millionaires, but not the middle class. With a series of videos posted on YouTube last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 23 GOP House members, including New Jersey’s Jon Runyan (R-3rd). Runyan is seeking reelection in November against Democratic challenger Shelley Adler. The campaign aims to "expose" the representatives "who are about to vote for another tax cut for millionaires at the expense of the middle class and seniors," the committee said Monday in a news release. Each online ad starts off like this: "Good news! Republicans want to cut your taxes. Not you," the narrator says as an image of the supermarket employee appears on the screen. "You!" the narrator continues, as the ad shifts to an image of the wealthy guy outside his mansion, followed by images of a yacht, private jet and waterfront home. "And you deserve a break -- after all, these things are expensive." Returning to images of middle-class folks, the narrator later adds: "This guy? Her? They don’t need it. They’ll just buy groceries and pay the mortgage." The ad targeting Runyan ends with this on-screen message: "Tell Congressman Jon Runyan -- Stop putting millionaires over the middle class." Here’s the problem with these ads: the proposal from House Republicans would extend tax cuts for all income levels -- not just millionaires. This Democratic campaign centers on the pending expiration of federal income tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush, and commonly known as the "Bush tax cuts." The lower income tax rates were originally set to expire at the end of 2010, but President Barack Obama and Congress later extended them through the end of 2012. Democrats have been pushing a bill that extends the tax cuts through 2013 for individuals with income below $200,000 and married couples earning less than $250,000. Republicans want to extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans. In a 256-171 vote on Wednesday, the GOP-controlled House approved a Republican bill that extends all of the tax cuts through 2013. Runyan and the other 22 representatives targeted by the DCCC campaign voted for the bill. Higher-income households would see greater tax savings under this Republican proposal, compared with other households. Still, it’s wrong for the DCCC to suggest the GOP only wants to cut taxes for millionaires. In response to our findings, DCCC spokesman Josh Schwerin said in an e-mail: "If Congressman Runyan wanted to give the middle class a tax cut he wouldn’t be holding it hostage in order to get more tax cuts for millionaires." But unlike the Democrats’ plan, the House Republicans’ bill would not extend five other tax policies benefiting lower-income households, which are separate from the Bush tax cuts. Those provisions -- which were first included in the economic stimulus bill approved by Obama in 2009 -- include an income tax credit worth up to $2,500 to offset higher education costs. "The (House) GOP bill would continue most of the tax cuts scheduled to expire at the end of the year but would allow the Obama tax cuts enacted in 2009 and extended in 2010 to expire," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. "The latter would raise taxes on some families, mostly those with low income." Our ruling In an online ad campaign, the DCCC suggests Runyan and other House Republicans support a bill that cuts taxes for millionaires, but not the middle class. It’s true that the House Republicans’ bill would not extend certain tax benefits originally included in the stimulus package, but the legislation would extend the Bush tax cuts across all income levels, thereby giving all taxpayers a break. We rate the statement Mostly False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee | null | null | null | 2012-08-05T07:30:00 | 2012-07-30 | ['None'] |
snes-03900 | Donald Trump stiffed the caterer he hired for his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-stiffed-his-wedding-caterer/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Dan Evon | null | Donald Trump Stiffed His Wedding Caterer? | 2 October 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12864 | The language that's part of the president's National Security Council memo "is identical to the language" used by President George W. Bush in 2001 and President Barack Obama in 2009. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/31/sean-spicer/spicers-misleading-claim-trumps-national-security-/ | Following outcry over a reported shakeup of the National Security Council, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said stories about demoting the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence were "utter nonsense." President Donald Trump has been criticized in the media for politicizing the council by adding chief strategist Steve Bannon. Spicer, in his daily press briefing on Jan. 30, 2017, pushed back by claiming that the presidential memorandum announcing the makeup of the council hadn’t really changed dramatically. "The language that's part of the president's memo is identical to the language for Presidents Bush's 2001," Spicer said, holding up copies of the various memos (around the 6:55 mark of this video). "The only thing that's changed in this is the addition of the Director of National Intelligence as a position that didn't exist in 2001. For what it's worth, it's the same as Obama's, save for the word ‘also.’ " For those who don’t know, the National Security Council was established in 1947 and gathers foreign and domestic policy and military officials to advise the president on national security. The two issues with Trump’s restructuring concern the makeup of the full council and its principals committee, a subset of senior officials that is also "literally 100 percent the same," according to Spicer. So is Spicer right that the Bush, Obama and Trump memos are nearly "identical"? We read Bush’s 2001 memo, Obama’s 2009 memo and Trump’s 2017 memo, and found that Spicer’s claim is misleading. The regular council Spicer is right about the makeup of the full National Security Council, albeit in a limited way. This sentence — "The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as statutory advisers to the NSC, shall also attend NSC meetings" — appears pretty much verbatim in each president’s memo. (The Director of National Intelligence was a position created in 2004, so Bush’s memo says the CIA Director instead.) But in a broader sense, Spicer is off the mark. Each president has invited different government officials to sit on the council, but neither Bush nor Obama added his chief strategist. Trump appears to be the only president since the establishment of the council to include his, Bannon, according to a Congressional Research Service report. By statute, the members of the council are the president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense and, as of 2007, secretary of energy. As noted in the memos, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor are statutory advisers. Here are the additional members each president has requested to join the council (positions unique to each president are bolded): Bush 2001 Obama 2009 Trump 2017 "Regular attendees" or "members" • Secretary of treasury • National security adviser • Secretary of treasury • National security adviser • Secretary of homeland security • Homeland security adviser • Representative to the United Nations • Chief of staff • Deputy national security adviser • Secretary of treasury • National security adviser • Secretary of homeland security • Homeland security adviser • Representative to the United Nations "Invited to attend any meeting" • Chief of staff • Economic adviser • Counsel to the president • Chief of staff • Chief strategist (Bannon) • Counsel to the president • Deputy counsel for national security • Director of the Office of Management and Budget Invited when appropriate • Counsel to president • Attorney general • Director of the Office of Management and Budget • Secretary of commerce • U.S. Trade representative • Economic adviser • Chair of Council of Economic Advisors • Homeland security adviser • Director of the Office of Science and Technology • Secretary of commerce • U.S. Trade representative • Economic adviser The principals committee Similarly, Bannon’s addition to the principals committee undercuts Spicer’s claim that the senior interagency group, first established by former President George H.W. Bush in 1989, is "literally 100 percent the same." Trump’s memo reads: "The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed." Again, barring the inclusion of the Director of National Intelligence, that is verbatim the language of Bush’s 2001 memo: "The Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed." But Obama’s 2009 memo makes clear that Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are "regular members" of the committee. And again, the chief strategist was not a member in either Bush’s or Obama’s committees (or George H.W. Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s). Here’s a breakdown of the organization of the principals committee under each president (positions unique to each president are bolded): Bush 2001 Obama 2009 Trump 2017 "Regular attendees" or "members" • Secretary of state • Secretary of treasury • Secretary of defense • National security adviser • Chief of staff • Secretary of state • Secretary of treasury • Secretary of defense • National security adviser • Chief of staff • Secretary of homeland security • Representative to the United Nations • Director of the Office of Management and Budget • Director of national intelligence • Chairman of the joint chief of staff • Secretary of state • Secretary of treasury • Secretary of defense • National security adviser • Chief of staff • Secretary of homeland security • Chief strategist (Bannon) • Homeland security adviser Invited to or shall attend all meetings • Vice president • Deputy national security adviser • Deputy national security adviser • Deputy secretary of state • Counsel to the president • National security adviser to the Vice President • Deputy national security adviser • Counsel to the president • National security adviser to the Vice President • Director of the Office of Management and Budget • Deputy counsel for national security • Executive secretary Invited when appropriate • CIA director • Chairman of the joint chief of staff • Attorney general • Director of the Office of Management and Budget • Counsel to President • Secretary of commerce • U.S. Trade Representative • Economic adviser • Secretary of Agriculture • Secretary of commerce • U.S. Trade representative • Economic adviser • Chair of Council of Economic Advisors • Homeland security adviser • Director of the Office of Science and Technology • Director of national intelligence • Chairman of the joint chief of staff • Secretary of commerce • U.S. Trade representative • Economic adviser • Representative to the United Nations • Intergovernmental and technology initiatives adviser Our ruling Spicer said, "The language that's part of the president's memo (on the National Security Council) is identical to the language for Presidents Bush's 2001" as well as President Obama’s 2009. We reached out to the Trump administration but did not hear back. Spicer is right in a limited sense: each memo specifies that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence are statutory advisers to the regular council. While both the Bush and Trump memos stipulated they attend principals committee meetings when appropriate, both were regular members of the subcommittee under Obama. Trump also includes one major departure from both Bush and Obama: adding the position of chief strategist as a member of both the regular council and principals committee. Spicer’s claim that the memos are identical rates Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/3b66fd71-c0f3-4b31-863b-eefc0a689f2e | null | Sean Spicer | null | null | null | 2017-01-31T16:59:16 | 2017-01-30 | ['George_W._Bush', 'Barack_Obama', 'United_States_National_Security_Council'] |
pomt-05212 | We spend in tax loopholes annually $1.1 trillion. That's more than we spend on our defense budget in a year, on Medicare or Medicaid in a year. | mostly false | /new-hampshire/statements/2012/jun/08/jeanne-shaheen/jeanne-shaheen-says-tax-loopholes-total-11-trillio/ | Military and entitlement spending may be among the country’s biggest expenses. But, with more than $1 trillion in tax revenue sacrificed each year, cutting expenses may not be the only way to solve the country’s deficit woes, according to U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. "We spend in tax loopholes annually $1.1 trillion," Shaheen said during a May 31, 2012 meeting with The Telegraph editorial board. "That’s more than we spend on our defense budget in a year, on Medicare or Medicaid in a year. … So we’ve got to deal with the revenue side because we just can’t get there (with spending cuts alone)." Tax loopholes have generated a lot of discussion during the election season, which has been dominated by discussion of the wealthiest 1 percent versus the other 99 percent. But, the premise that the U.S. gives away $1.1 trillion in loopholes is an intriguing concept. PolitiFact decided to take a look. To start, we reached out to Shaheen’s office, which pointed us to the White House. As part of its Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget keeps a spreadsheet of tax expenditures, which includes all tax exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits, among other revenue losses, do match Shaheen’s $1.1 trillion figure, adding up to $1.172 trillion to be exact. That number does exceed the entire defense budget. For Fiscal Year 2013, the White House projects $700 billion in defense spending - down from $709 billion in FY2012 and up from 699 in FY2011, according to the President’s 2013 budget proposal. The $1.1 trillion figure also beats out the numbers for Medicare and Medicaid, as Shaheen claimed. According to the budget proposal, the country will spend $528 billion on Medicare in 2013, along with $283 billion on Medicaid. So, the numbers line up. But, does the language? Do the tax expenditures meet Shaheen’s characterization of loopholes? That leaves more room for debate. According to the White House, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 defines tax expenditures as "revenue losses attributable to provisions of the Federal tax laws which allow a special exclusion, exemption, or deduction from gross income or which provide a special credit, a preferential rate of tax, or a deferral of tax liability." In short, expenditures include all deductions, exemptions, credits and other programs that lead to revenue losses from the tax system. But are those really loopholes? For example, can the popular home mortgage deduction -- a key part of most families' 1040s -- be considered a loophole? Contacted later, Shaheen's office referred to the Webster’s Dictionary definition of "loophole," which defines the term as "a means of evading an obligation," according to Jonathan Lipman, her communications director. "All tax expenditures, by definition, allow taxpayers to avoid paying the full tax rate," Lipman wrote in an e-mail to the Telegraph. But, some tax analysts take a different view. The list of tax exemptions certainly includes many ways for individuals and businesses to evade their tax obligations. But they also include many basic elements of our tax system, according to Donald Marron, director of the Tax Policy Center, an analyst group led by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. These include exemptions for social security benefits, state and local taxes, veterans pensions and employee benefits, among hundreds of others. To do away with these expenditures would be to rewrite major facets of the federal tax structure, said Marron, former interim director of the Congressional Budget Office, who wrote the article "How Large Are Tax Expenditures? A 2012 Update." "Some tax expenditures are loopholes, but a lot of them are very broad economic or social policies," he said. "They’re fundamental choices about how we choose to define our tax system." For example, removing the tax exclusion for employer health insurance contributions could take more from workers’ paychecks, and eliminating the deduction for interest on student loans could drive students deeper into debt. "(Loophole) is a very common term used on both sides, but I think, when people look behind what those expenditures were, that's not what comes to mind," added Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Our ruling: The official definition aside, we think loophole conjures images of a narrow tax break that gives a special -- and, in many cases, unfair -- advantage to a specific constituency. But we don't think the entire list of tax deductions, exemptions, credits fits that definition. She's right about the total cost of those "expenditures," but her definition of loophole is a big stretch. We rate Shaheen’s claim Mostly False. | null | Jeanne Shaheen | null | null | null | 2012-06-08T16:22:24 | 2012-05-31 | ['Medicare_(United_States)'] |
pomt-14313 | The EPA has tried to define a puddle or a drainage ditch on your farm to be navigable waters and thus subject to massive environmental regulations. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2016/mar/31/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-says-epa-tried-regulate-puddles-and-drain/ | Ted Cruz says the Environmental Protection Agency has gone overboard in regulating farms by regulating even puddles and ditches. "They're hurting from a federal government whose policies have been making it harder and harder for farmers to survive. They're hurting from an EPA who is imposing massive burdens on farms," Cruz said in a March 29 CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wis. "For example, the Waters of the United States Rule (is) where the EPA has tried to define a puddle or a drainage ditch on your farm to be navigable waters and thus subject to massive environmental regulations." Are puddles and drainage ditches regulated by the EPA? We’ll wade through the research to find out. A Cruz spokesman did not answer our questions for this fact-check. What a water rule said about puddles The Clean Water Act passed in 1972 after high-profile disasters and pollution problems, including the Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio and fish kills at Florida’s Lake Thonotosassa in 1969. The goal of the act was to regulate discharges into water, but for years industry groups and environmental advocates debated which bodies of water should be included. U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2006 created uncertainty about the law’s reach. In May 2015, the EPA announced a new rule intended to clarify which bodies of water fall under the act. But within months it was put on hold nationwide pending litigation and remaind on hold as of the writing of this fact-check -- a key point that Cruz omitted. The crux of the rule wasn’t the size of the bodies of water, but whether a body of water could carry pollution into other larger waters. The EPA wants to regulate tributaries, ponds, streams and wetlands to prevent businesses, farms or other entities from dumping waste into the water. Before the rule was finalized, the EPA invited public comment and the regulation of puddles became a talking point for conservatives and business advocates who bashed the rule as federal overreach. To clear up matters, the final rule explicitly addressed the question of puddles: "The proposed rule did not explicitly exclude puddles because the agencies have never considered puddles to meet the minimum standard for being a 'water of the United States,' and it is an inexact term. A puddle is commonly considered a very small, shallow, and highly transitory pool of water that forms on pavement or uplands during or immediately after a rainstorm or similar precipitation event. However, numerous commenters asked that the agencies expressly exclude them in a rule. The final rule does so." The American Farm Bureau Federation has argued that the rule language was so broad that it could ultimately include something not much larger than a puddle. Spokesman William Rodger says that puddles could be classified as "vernal pools" or "wetlands" and then fall under the EPA’s jurisdiction. "We stand by our assertion that puddles – as commonly understood by the average person – can be regulated under the Waters of the United States rule," he said in response to our questions about Cruz’s statement But multiple environmental experts have told PolitiFact Florida that they were skeptical that the EPA would end up regulating puddles. "It is an absurd assertion," William L. Andreen, University of Alabama law professor, told PolitiFact Florida in October. "There are no cases on point because the agencies have never asserted jurisdiction in such fantastical situations." What the water rule said about ditches The EPA had previously interpreted the Clean Water Act to include jurisdiction over ditches but sought to provide clarity with the new rule, which also contained the puddle exclusion. The rule does not regulate most ditches, according to the EPA. Here is what it does say about ditches: "The rule continues the current policy of regulating ditches that are constructed in tributaries or are relocated tributaries or, in certain circumstances drain wetlands, or that science clearly demonstrates are functioning as a tributary. These jurisdictional waters affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of downstream waters. The rule further reduces existing confusion and inconsistency regarding the regulation of ditches by explicitly excluding certain categories of ditches, such as ditches that flow only after precipitation." Farmers feared that ditches that flow only during or after a rain would be classified in a way that would put them under enforcement. U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, raised that concern in a March 22 congressional hearing. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that even if it rains hard and looks like there’s streams everywhere, those don’t count, she said. "It only has to be something that is constructed or natural that really can impact the downstream water. After that, there's no connection," McCarthy said. The EPA wrote in a response to comments about ditches: "The agencies do not intend to increase the number of ditches that are jurisdictional. In fact, by clarifying and expanding the specific exclusions for ditches, the agencies anticipate that more ditches will be clearly excluded in comparison to previous regulations and guidance related to waters of the U.S." Our ruling Cruz said, "The EPA has tried to define a puddle or a drainage ditch on your farm to be navigable waters and thus subject to massive environmental regulations." The EPA’s water rule specifically excludes puddles. It only applies to ditches that are constructed out of streams or ditches that function like streams and could carry pollution to downstream waters. Cruz omits that the water rule was put on hold by the courts in 2015 pending litigation. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Ted Cruz | null | null | null | 2016-03-31T12:00:00 | 2016-03-30 | ['None'] |
pomt-11549 | Richard Corcoran has a plan to divert even more of our tax dollars to unaccountable private schools. | half-true | /florida/statements/2018/feb/09/florida-education-association/attack-house-speaker-richard-corcoran-hb-7055-need/ | The state’s largest teachers’ union released a 30-second ad, saying that the House’s massive education is taking tax dollars and giving them to private schools with no oversight. The ad, posted on YouTube on Feb. 5 by the Florida Education Association, takes specific aim at House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, who has made Florida schools a top priority in 2018. The bill in question — HB 7055 — contains many education provisions and provides funding for the "Hope Scholarship" program, a top priority for Corcoran. The program would allow public school students who are bullied to transfer to other private schools with discounted tuition. "House Bill 7055 is another Tallahassee assault on our local public schools," the narrator says in a voiceover. "Political insider Richard Corcoran has a plan to divert even more of our tax dollars to unaccountable private schools." We wondered about this claim. Does Corcoran have a plan to "divert tax dollars to unaccountable private schools?" We found there is some truth to this claim, but getting there requires a lot more context. ‘Richard Corcoran has a plan to divert even more of our tax dollars’ Florida Education Association communications director Sharon Nesvig said that the the Legislature has repeatedly increased and expanded a 2001 program known as the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. HB 7055 adds a new "voucher" for a similar program, the Hope Scholarship. Here’s how those programs work: The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was established in 2001 under Gov. Jeb Bush in order to give scholarships to poor children to attend private schools. The program provides dollar-for-dollar income tax credits for corporations that give money to organizations that give the scholarships. The tax credit cap for the 2017-18 fiscal year is almost $700 million and has increased every fiscal year. The Hope Scholarship is a voucher-like program that would be funded through motorists making voluntary contributions when they purchase cars. In return, car buyers would get a credit on the taxes they would normally have to pay on the purchases. Tax credit opponents, including the Florida Education Association, argue that the money used on these credits would have been state revenue if the Legislature had not diverted it. "Those tax dollars would have gone into general revenue and been available to fund our neighborhood schools and pay for the books, curriculum, equipment and programs our students desperately need," Nesvig said. There is no way to know for certain that money would end up being spent on schools, but education experts agreed with the general idea. Kevin G. Welner, the Director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, said that the word "diverted" is "just about the best word choice they could have used." "The tax payment is diverted from the state to a system that funds the private schools," he said. It’s important to note, though, that the programs create new revenue streams. They don’t literally move money from traditional sources of public school revenue. What about those ‘unaccountable’ private schools’? Nesvig pointed to an Orlando Sentinel months-long investigation about Florida private schools that receive these scholarships. It found that some schools "hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records. Experts agreed there is a huge difference in oversight, transparency, and accountability between public schools to voucher-receiving private schools. The schools do not have to hire teachers with state certification or college degrees, and they don’t have to follow the state’s academic standards. In addition, local public schools and charter schools are evaluated every year and assigned labels based on tests and other evidence, but that accountability system does not apply to private schools that accept vouchers, however. But the word "unaccountable" does not address all of the nuances of the situation. Although experts said they are largely ineffective, private schools that receive vouchers do have to conform to accountability laws. "If the ad included a footnote saying that the schools are ‘subject to weak and ineffective regulatory accountability,’ they might lose the punch of the statement, but it would be on more solid footing than flat out saying that the schools are ‘unaccountable.’" Welner said. It’s also worth noting that there has been some legislation to fix this issue. In response to the investigation, Florida lawmakers took steps to increase accountability. SB 1756 would require private school to employ teachers who hold a bachelor's degree or higher from a "regionally or nationally accredited college or university in the United States or from a recognized college or university in another country." Our ruling The FEA said that "Richard Corcoran has a plan to divert even more of our tax dollars to unaccountable private schools." This claim requires some explanation. The plan for diverting dollars refers to the Legislature’s decision to expand the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program and the Hope Scholarship proposal, which is included in HB 7055. The bill does create a new funding stream, but it doesn’t literally move money from traditional sources of public school revenue. And while there are some rules that govern private schools that receive vouchers, experts said there is a huge difference in oversight between those schools and public school. With everything considered, we rated this claim Half True. | null | Florida Education Association | null | null | null | 2018-02-09T10:52:43 | 2018-02-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-12163 | Undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than the native born. | mostly true | /california/statements/2017/aug/03/antonio-villaraigosa/mostly-true-undocumented-immigrants-less-likely-co/ | Candidate for California governor Antonio Villaraigosa jumped into the nation’s heated debate on immigration reform during a recent interview on MSNBC. The Democrat and former Los Angeles mayor rejected the idea that deporting undocumented immigrants was a sound strategy for reducing crime. His statement followed President Trump’s speech about combatting MS-13 gang members. The gang started in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods where many refugees from civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua lived in the 1980s. It’s grown into an international criminal organization with more than 30,000. Trump campaigned on the promise to deport millions of undocumented residents, often describing them as threats to public safety. Here’s what Villaraigosa said on July 31, 2017 on MSNBC. "I think we all agree that people that commit violent crimes ought to be deported. But going after the undocumented is not a crime strategy, when you look at the fact that the National Academy of Sciences in, I think it was November of 2015, the undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than the native born. That’s just a fact." Watch the interview here. We decided to examine this last point as part of our Tracking The Truth series, which fact-checks claims in the 2018 California governor's race. We interpreted Villaraigosa’s statement to mean undocumented people commit crimes at a lower rate than the native born. But we wondered whether this was really a settled matter. We set out on a fact check. Our research We started by checking out the 2015 National Academy of Sciences study Villaraigosa cited. It found: "Immigrants are in fact much less likely to commit crime than natives, and the presence of large numbers of immigrants seems to lower crime rates." The study added that "This disparity also holds for young men most likely to be undocumented immigrants: Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men." It continued: "Today, the belief that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes is perpetuated by ‘issue entrepreneurs’ who promote the immigrant-crime connection in order to drive restrictionist immigration policy." The academy is a nonprofit research organization charged with providing independent advice to the nation. It is funded largely by the federal government. Findings in a March 2017 study by the libertarian Cato Institute also support Villaraigosa's statement: "Illegal immigrants are 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives. Legal immigrants are 69 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives. Legal and illegal immigrants are underrepresented in the incarcerated population while natives are overrepresented." The Cato study used information from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey for immigrants aged 18 to 54 who are incarcerated in the United States. To examine Villaraigosa's claim, we also relied on research into similar claims by our partner national PolitiFact. In July 2016, it rated Mostly True a statement by Libertarian candidate for president Gary Johnson that Mexican immigrants "are more law-abiding than U.S. citizens and that is a statistic." PolitiFact found several studies that back up this claim by citing incarceration rates. It also found groups that challenged those studies or said more research is needed. PolitiFact’s findings PolitiFact pointed to a July 2015 report by the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant nonprofit in Washington. The council analyzed data from the Census’ 2010 American Community Survey and found that about 1.6 percent of all immigrant males (Census does not specify legal status) between 18 and 39 years old were incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born population. Looking at California prisons, immigrants are also underrepresented. U.S.-born men are incarcerated in the state at a rate of more than two-and-a-half times greater than that of foreign-born men, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California. The American Immigration Council also reported that 2010 Census data shows incarceration rates of young, less educated Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan men — which comprise the bulk of the unauthorized population — are "significantly lower" than incarceration rates of native-born young men without a high-school diploma. Specifically for Mexican men ages 18 to 39, the incarceration rate in 2010 was 2.8 percent, compared to 10.7 percent for native-born men in the same age group, the council’s report said. Immigrants come to the United States to build better lives for themselves and their children, said Walter A. Ewing, a senior researcher at the American Immigration Council and one of the report’s authors. "They are very motivated to not blow that opportunity by getting in trouble with the police," he told PolitiFact. "This is especially so for unauthorized immigrants, who can be deported at any time for unlawful presence." Crime trends PolitiFact also noted that as the immigrant population has increased, crime has gone down, citing Ewing’s report. Between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population increased from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent, and the number of unauthorized immigrants went up from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. At the same time, the violent crime rate (murder, rape and aggravated assault) decreased 48 percent and property crime rate fell 41 percent, the report said, citing FBI data. Bianca E. Bersani, an assistant professor and director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, says her research also shows that crime involvement among foreign-born residents is lower than that of U.S.-born citizens. "The rhetoric of the ‘criminal immigrant’ does not align with the bulk of empirical research," Bersani said. According to Bersani’s research, while first-generation immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born population, the second generation (individuals born in the United States to at least one foreign-born parent) more closely resemble patterns of their native-born peers (three or more U.S.-born generations). "This does not suggest that the second generation is uniquely crime prone, but instead that they are acting in ways that are no different from the rest of the U.S.-born population," Bersani said. Datasets with information on both crime and immigrant status are rare, Bersani said, though more research and data are becoming available. More research needed? The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports stricter immigration policies, in a 2009 study said that overall understanding of immigrants and crime "remains confused" due to lack of data and contrary information. Unless inmates are identified as immigrant or native-born, incarceration rates are a poor way to measure links between immigrants and crime, the study said. As PolitiFact reported in 2015, there isn’t exact data on how many undocumented immigrants are currently incarcerated. PolitiFact California spoke about this critique with Ewing of the American Immigration Council, whose research supports Villaraigosa’s claim. He said he’s confident in the work that’s been done and said critics have used anecdotes, rather than full-blown research, to try to make their points. Ewing added that the studies backing up Villaraigosa’s statement are "from such a wide range of researchers using so many different methodologies and sources of data -- not everyone can be wrong." Our ruling Villaraigosa said "undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than the native born." He cited a 2015 study by the National Academy of Sciences that backs up this claim. In a fact check last year, PolitiFact rated a similar claim Mostly True. It cited additional studies by scholars and partisan groups that show that the foreign-born population is less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. It also found that researchers agree more data is needed to get a better understanding of immigration and crime. It said this was a needed clarification. PolitiFact California agrees with these findings. We rated Villaraigosa’s claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. UPDATE: We have added information to the ‘Our research’ section of this fact check from a March 2017 study by the libertarian Cato Institute. The study’s findings provide additional evidence backing up Villaraigosa’s claim that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native born. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com PolitiFact California is fact-checking claims in the 2018 California governor's race through our Tracking The Truth series. Hear a claim you want fact-checked? Email us at politifactca@capradio.org, tweet us @CAPolitiFact or contact us on Facebook. | null | Antonio Villaraigosa | null | null | null | 2017-08-03T16:04:54 | 2017-07-31 | ['None'] |
pomt-07260 | Says the United States is "the Saudi Arabia of coal." | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2011/may/27/eric-cantor/us-king-coal-cantor-says/ | American politicians, it seems, love to talk about Saudi Arabia. During the 2010 election season in Georgia, several Democrats and Republicans separately proclaimed that the Peach State was "the Saudi Arabia of pine trees." We looked at that claim in July 2010 and rated it as Barely True. One of the latest comparisons to that oil-rich Middle East nation came from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, one of the most powerful politicians in Washington. Cantor, a Republican congressman from Virginia, made a stop at the Atlanta Press Club last week during a two-day visit to Georgia. During the question-and-answer part of the program, Cantor took several verbal swipes at President Barack Obama, a Democrat. The criticism included that Obama hasn’t done enough to promote more sources of energy, specifically coal, as motorists fume over high gas prices. "We are the Saudi Arabia of coal," Cantor said. More than 90 percent of U.S. coal production goes to generate electricity in the United States, according to the National Mining Association. Cantor explained his point about coal. "We ought to be able to figure out a way to use that resource so that we can continue to compete," he said. We wondered in what way was Cantor attempting to make the comparison to Saudi Arabia. John Murray, Cantor’s deputy chief of staff, said the congressman was attempting to be "illustrative." Murray added more in an email. "Coal is an abundant domestic resource that remains critical to meeting our country's energy needs," Murray said."While we wait for the administration to present a realistic national energy strategy, we need to harness our existing assets -- like coal -- to generate the power required by American businesses and families." So let’s look closer at this comparison between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Even Obama has repeated the phrase, during a 2009 television interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Co. Saudi Arabia exports more oil than any nation in the world, 8.7 million barrels a day, according to one U.S. government estimate. Saudi Arabia also has a larger oil reserve than any other country, the U.S. says. The U.S., by the way, ranks 13th and 14th, respectively, in those categories. Saudi Arabia, the numbers show, is the king of oil exports and reserves. Now, is the U.S. the king of coal? The U.S. leads the world in the amount of coal in its reserves, according to data kept by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Russia was second, but about 50 percent behind the U.S., the EIA data show. But is the former Cold War foe playing coy with its numbers? Some experts believe Russia and China are not releasing the complete estimates of their coal reserves. The U.S. is producing and exporting less coal than some other nations. The U.S. produced nearly 1.1 billion short tons of coal in 2009, second to China, according to the most recent data available from the EIA. A short ton of coal equals 2,000 pounds. America’s annual coal production has been about the same since 2000. China, whose economy has boomed during the past decade, has increased its coal production from nearly 1.3 billion short tons in 2000 to nearly 3.4 billion short tons in 2009, EIA data show. For eight of the past 10 years, the United States has exported an average of 50 million short tons of coal each year. The U.S. currently exports less coal than Australia, Colombia, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The U.S. has the world’s most comprehensive and strongest coal mining regulations, the National Mining Association says. Hal Quinn, the association’s president, told a congressional committee Tuesday that the federal government has placed "high hurdles" on the industry’s efforts to access land where much of the nation’s coal reserves are held. The association represents about 325 corporations in the mining industry. Others question how minable those reserves are. West Virginia University law school professor Patrick McGinley said much of America’s coal is in places that are more difficult to mine. He noted recent research that concludes that the world’s coal production (its highest quality and reasonably minable coal) will reach its peak this year. "It’s not realistic to equate the coal reserves in the United States with the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia," said McGinley, who served on a panel that investigated the coal mine explosion in West Virginia that killed 29 people in April 2010. Cantor’s argument is supported by data that show the United States currently has the world’s largest coal reserve. America has fallen far behind China in terms of coal production, and the United States is behind several other nations in exporting coal. The congressman’s statement leaves out some details concerning America’s standing in coal. Since the United States is still the Saudi Arabia of coal reserves, we rate Cantor’s claim as Mostly True. | null | Eric Cantor | null | null | null | 2011-05-27T06:00:00 | 2011-05-20 | ['United_States', 'Saudi_Arabia'] |
tron-02069 | Marines applauded by passengers on delayed flight | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/marineapplause/ | null | inspirational | null | null | null | Marines applauded by passengers on delayed flight | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11894 | Abortion in the U.S. "is at an all time legal low." | half-true | /new-york/statements/2017/oct/25/kevin-cahill/abortion-all-time-low-us/ | Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, said abortions are less common now than ever before in the U.S. Cahill claimed the number of abortions has decreased to the lowest point in history four decades after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. "After the right was expanded, there was a rise in the number of abortions," Cahill said in a radio interview. "But that number has subsided tremendously. It is at an all time legal low." Most Democrats in the state legislature, Cahill included, support a bill that would guarantee access to abortion services in New York state if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark decision. Cahill believes having that access would keep the number of abortions low in New York state. But is he right that there are fewer abortions now than ever in the U.S.? Abortion data Abortion was not universally legal in the U.S. until the Supreme Court decision in 1973. Earlier national data on legal abortions does not exist, and the number of illegal abortions performed before the decision is impossible to know. Cahill was talking about the number of abortions in the U.S. in his claim, according to his office. Two organizations have statistics on abortion that date back to 1973: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health policy and research organization. Data from the Guttmacher Institute is considered more comprehensive than CDC data. The CDC relies on numbers reported from states while the Guttmacher Institute does its own census of known abortion providers in every state. Number of abortions There were 744,610 abortions in the U.S. in 1973, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Cahill’s right that the number of legal abortions increased immediately after Roe v. Wade. The Guttmacher data shows the number peaked in 1988, when 1,590,750 abortions were recorded. That number has since decreased, aside from two small increases in 1996 and 2008. The Guttmacher data does not show each year’s count, instead tracking it every two to three years. The number of abortions decreased to 926,190 in 2014, the latest reporting period. That’s still higher than when the institute starting tracking the data in 1973. The abortion rate Measured another way -- abortions per capita -- the rate is at an all-time low. There were about 54 million more women living in the U.S. in 2014 than in 1973, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1973, there were 16.3 abortions for every 1,000 women, and the 29.3 rate in 1980 remains an all-time high. There were 14.6 abortions for every 1,000 women in 2014, according to the Guttmacher Institute. New York state data In New York state, both the count and the rate fell to an all-time low in 2013 before increasing slightly in 2014. There were 119,940 abortions in New York state in 2014, compared with 212,700 in 1973. The rate has decreased from 54.5 abortions for every 1,000 women in 1973 to 29.6 in 2014. Our ruling Cahill said abortion "is at an all time legal low." That's true if you consider the rate. The 14.6 abortions for every 1,000 women in 2014 is an all-time low. But his statement is false when counting the number. The number of abortions has gone down since its peak in 1988, but has not dropped below the 1973 count. The statement is partially accurate. We rate it Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Kevin Cahill | null | null | null | 2017-10-25T00:00:00 | 2017-10-11 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-13659 | The poverty rates in America today aren’t much better than when we started the War on Poverty. | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/aug/05/paul-ryan/paul-ryan-right-poverty-rates-havent-changed-much-/ | Speaker of the House Paul Ryan rallied the Wisconsin delegation at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, highlighting his ideas to address some of the country’s biggest issues. First on Ryan’s "A Better Way" list: Poverty. "We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced," Ryan said at the delegate breakfast. "It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty." In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched what became known as the War on Poverty, declaring: "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it." Johnson wanted to expand the federal government’s role to reduce a poverty rate that at the time was about 19 percent. A few major initiatives passed, including measures to establish Medicare and Medicare, give permanency to food stamps and boost funding for primary and secondary education. In January, PolitiFact National checked another claim from Ryan on poverty. He said, "today, if you were raised poor, you’re just as likely to stay poor as you were 50 years ago." An analysis of income and educational-attainment data backed up Ryan’s point showing that "intergenerational mobility" has "remained extremely stable." The claim was rated True. Is Ryan right with this claim too? Measuring poverty The federal poverty rate, calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, compares pre-tax cash income against the poverty threshold. The threshold is based on three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation. For 2016, the poverty threshold is $24,300 for a family of four. Anyone falling under that threshold is considered in poverty. In 2014, the last year for which data is available, more than 46 million Americans were living in poverty. With a population of more than 315 million, that means the poverty rate was 14.8 percent. That’s a decrease of about five percentage points from when Johnson declared the War on Poverty. It’s not a huge drop, but it’s not insignificant either. Most of the drop came in the first few years of the War on Poverty. By 1967, the official poverty rate dropped from 19 percent to 14.2 percent -- slightly lower than today. Some of the drop can be attributed to general economic expansion in the 1960s following a recession in 1960 and 1961. Since 1967, the rate has fluctuated between 15 and 11 percent. Shortcomings in the data Some issues exist with the official poverty rate, as it doesn’t take into account efforts to reduce poverty. For example, income is defined as the total pre-tax income of all family members. Assistance programs like tax credits for low-income workers or food-purchasing assistance benefits are not included, so it does not capture all the income of a family from programs aimed at addressing poverty. Rachel Sheffield, a policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, said Ryan is on target saying the poverty rate is nearly unchanged in the last 50 years. "Part of the reason the poverty rate is nearly the same today as it was 50 years ago is that most welfare spending is not accounted for when measuring poverty," she said. Christopher Wilmer, co-director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, said the official poverty rate does not paint a full picture. "It’s misleading to use trends in the official poverty measure when it’s not including measures taken to address poverty," Wilmer said. An alternative measuring stick Another metric, the supplemental poverty rate, was created by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010 to give deeper understanding of economic conditions and policy effects. It takes information about what people spend on basic needs like food, clothing and shelter to calculate a poverty threshold. The measure adds non-cash benefits from the government such as the school lunch program or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Wilmer and other researchers used the supplemental poverty rate to show historical trends in poverty, finding results more favorable than the official measure suggests. The team found that with government programs, poverty fell from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012, a 10 percentage point drop. So government spending has had an effect -- and a larger one than Ryan suggests. Our rating Ryan said, "the poverty rates in America today aren’t much better than when we started the War on Poverty." The official poverty rate has dropped from 19 percent in 1964 to about 15 percent today. Another measure, the supplemental poverty rate, suggests the rate of poverty decreased 10 percentage points over roughly the same time period. So, over time living conditions have improved with government assistance, but the measure of self-sufficiency has been relatively stagnant. For a statement that is partially accurate, we rate Ryan’s claim Half True. | null | Paul Ryan | null | null | null | 2016-08-05T10:15:00 | 2016-07-18 | ['United_States'] |
snes-04610 | Fox News host was about to be fired in June 2016 over comments he made about Muslims. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sean-hannity-fired-muslims/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Sean Hannity to be Fired for Comments About Muslims | 14 June 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15095 | Says Mexico doesn't have birthright citizenship, and Americans are the "only ones" to have it. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/17/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-mexico-doesnt-have-birthright-ci/ | Donald Trump confused several facts about birthright citizenship — a 150-year-old practice he has pledged to end — in the second GOP presidential debate. CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Trump to explain why this is part of his platform to foe Carly Fiorina, who has said Trump is pandering on the issue. Trump brought up a scenario of a pregnant woman crossing the border and having a baby in the United States, "and we take care of the baby for 85 years. I don’t think so." "And by the way, Mexico and almost every other country anywhere in the world doesn't have that," he said. "We're the only ones dumb enough, stupid enough to have it." We know from a previous fact-check that the United States is somewhat of an outlier in offering birthright citizenship, especially compared its peers. From the same fact-check, we also know the United States is one of 33 countries with such a policy, despite what Trump said about it being the only one "dumb enough, stupid enough" to have it. (We should note that later in this response, Trump slightly corrected himself, saying, "We’re the only country -- one of the only countries -- we’re going to take care of those babies for 70, 75, 80, 90 years? I don’t think so.") Trump’s claim about Mexico not offering birthright citizenship didn’t sound right, so we wanted to look it over. Our hunch proved correct. Mexico does offer birthright citizenship, even if it’s not an exact copy of the American model. Birthright citizenship in the United States was first established by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, primarily to grant legal status to emancipated slaves. The amendment stipulates that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The Mexican Constitution says the Mexican "nationality" is obtained by birth if the person is born "within the Republic’s territory whatever their parents’ nationality might be," among other circumstances. Our colleagues at FactCheck.org noted a technical difference between the Mexican and American constitutions. In Mexico, someone does not become a "citizen" — regardless of whether the person is born to Mexican parents or just in Mexico — until he or she turns 18. At that age, he or she can vote, hold public office or join the military. In addition to being Mexican and 18, he or she must also have "an honest way of life." A Mexican-born child is still considered Mexican even without voting rights, FactCheck.org found, similar to American children who also do not have access to voting until they turn 18. Article 37 adds that Mexican nationality by birth "shall never be revoked." Birthright citizenship also exists in Canada, Brazil and nearly every other country in Central and South America, according to a list of nations with birthright citizenship maintained by Numbers USA, which supports reduced immigration levels. Countries that offer birthright citizenship are located almost exclusively in the Western Hemisphere. No country in Europe or East Asia, for example, has a similar citizenship policy. Our ruling Trump defended his pursuit of ending birthright citizenship by saying not even Mexico has it, adding the United States is alone on this right. But that’s not true, no matter how many times Trump repeats this line. Anyone born on Mexican soil is considered Mexican by nationality, regardless of whether their parents are Mexican. No one in Mexico, even if a person’s parents are Mexican, is considered a "citizen" by the country’s Constitution until he or she turns 18. The United States and Mexico are joined by more than 30 countries around the world, predominantly in the Americas, that offer birthright citizenship. We rate the claim False. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2015-09-17T00:28:48 | 2015-09-16 | ['United_States', 'Mexico'] |
pomt-04063 | Says Virginia economic development officials "decided they didn’t want to bid on" his company's electric automobile plant. | false | /virginia/statements/2013/jan/24/terry-mcauliffe/terry-mcauliffe-says-virginia-officials-decided-no/ | Terry McAuliffe, the only Democrat running for governor this year, is pledging to use his experience as an entrepreneur to create jobs in Virginia. At a news conference on Dec. 5, he was asked why he decided to locate the manufacturing plant of the electric car company he bought in 2009 in Mississippi instead of Virginia. The company, GreenTech Automotive, has promised to bring at least 1,500 jobs to Mississippi. McAuliffe replied that he wanted to bring the factory and jobs to the Old Dominion, but officials at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership -- the state’s business recruitment agency -- weren’t interested. "They decided they didn’t want to bid on it," he said. "We had sites, we had meetings and they chose that they weren’t going to bid on it," McAuliffe, chairman of GreenTech Automotive, added. "I have to go where obviously they’re going to put incentives, but the only incentives are if I create jobs, then I get incentives." McAuliffe said Virginia has not been aggressive in recruiting large manufacturers in recent years. "They’ve gone to all of our Southern neighbors. Hundreds of thousands have been created. I think its been a decision (by Virginia) not to go after these types of manufacturing facilities. I’ve always said we should go after these manufacturing plants. You cannot drive through Southside and Southwest Virginia and see those empty furniture and textile (plants) and not say we need manufacturing jobs." McAuliffe’s criticism of Virginia’s economic development efforts is likely to become an issue in this fall’s election. So we decided to see whether he is accurate in claiming that VEDP rejected GreenTech’s efforts to locate its car plant in Virginia. We asked McAuliffe’s campaign for evidence supporting the candidate’s claim and received this email reply from spokesman Josh Schwerin: "As Terry said, although GreenTech supplied extensive documentation to support their project, VEDP repeatedly made clear in meetings and correspondence that they did not want to pursue this project." The campaign declined to provide additional comments or proof. So we turned to VEDP. The agency, complying with our request under the Freedom of Information Act, furnished hundreds of pages of emails and documents detailing its dealings with GreenTech. Specific information GreenTech furnished about the cost of the plant, investors, key employees, product information and payroll estimates were blacked out. The documents and emails trace Virginia’s communications with GreenTech under the two most recent governors, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Bob McDonnell. They show that economic development officials were interested but wary about GreenTech’s ability to carry out the project. GreenTech deepened those concerns by not responding to some of the state’s questions, according to the emails. The story begins in 2009. McAuliffe lost a three-way Democratic primary for governor that spring. Shortly afterwards, he bought a Chinese electric car company, moved its headquarters to Northern Virginia and tried to set up a manufacturing base in the United States. That August, GreenTech officials approached the Kaine administration about opening a car plant in Virginia. After that point, there were many emails between Michael Lehmkuhler, vice president for business attraction at VEDP, and Gary Tang, GreenTech’s chief operations officer. On Sept. 11 and Sept. 14, 2009, Lehmkuhler asked a series of "standard diligence questions" about the company’s business plan. Tang replied on Sept. 16 -- his answers were heavily redacted -- and six days later, officials from VEDP and GreenTech toured a potential plant site. The emails show that a major part of GreenTech’s financial plan relied on a federal immigration program called EB-5. It allows foreigners who invest $500,000 into new enterprises in rural or struggling region, or $1 million in new enterprises in any region, to receive U.S. residency if at least 10 full-time jobs are created within two years as a result of the investment. The EB-5 program had never been used in Virginia. To set it up, federal laws required the establishment of a "regional center" that would administer the program on a state or regional basis. The center finds suitable EB-5 projects, interacts with potential investors and handles legal and reporting requirements to ensure the investors receive their residency. A regional center can be run by a state or local government or by a private business. GreenTech wanted to run Virginia’s program and asked Kaine to support that goal. The governor in September 2009 asked VEDP to weigh in, but officials there said they needed until at least the end of October to consider the plan. Meanwhile, Lehmkuhler arranged for GreenTech to tour potential sites in Danville, Martinsville and Waverly on Oct. 7 and 8. But then there was a surprise. On Oct. 6, GreenTech announced plans to build a plant in Tunica, Miss., where it had a regional center. McAuliffe’s company promised to initially employ 1,500 with a $1 billion investment and produce 150,000 vehicles annually in its first phase, the Memphis Business Journal reported. Watchdog.org later said that Mississippi and Tunica pitched in more than $8 million in public loans and grants, with more added in tax exemptions and rebates. The public investments will be taken back if the company fails to attract $60 million in capital and hire 350 full-time workers by the end of 2014, Mississippi’s Economic Development Authority said. VEDP officials learned about the plan through media stories published on the morning of the announcement. Lehmkuhler asked Tang for an explanation. "We will talk about (Mississippi) in a different occasion when our (Virginia) operations are on more solid ground," Tang replied in an email that same day. "(Mississippi) is moving fast, so we need get (Virginia’s regional center) up running quickly." Lehmkuhler, in an email to other development officials that day, wrote: "They’ve never indicated a second project until now. (Tang) confirmed this morning that there will be an announcement today, but in his words ‘our plan has always been doing some in MS but bigger one in Va.’" That same day, Lehmkuhler sent an email to Secretary of Commerce and Trade Patrick Gottschalk expressing concern about GreenTech. The "group has no demonstrated ability to run an automotive company," he wrote. "In my opinion, the Mississippi announcement today was prompted by the need to quickly establish an alternative for Chinese investors who are growing tired of waiting for Wang to get the EB-5 process started in earnest somewhere," he wrote. "After telling them about Mississippi for so long, (CEO and President Charles) Wang has told prospective investors that Virginia will now be their primary focus. He needs to have a Virginia EB-5 regional center up and running asap to accommodate those still willing to wait a little longer for the ‘best’ opportunity." During the next two days, GreenTech leaders made the scheduled site visits in Virginia. A week later, they told VEDP officials which site they preferred. On Oct. 22, Lehmkuhler sent an email to Tang detailing his concerns about the project. "After a second review of the business plan, we still do not see a direct value proposition that explains how GreenTech will reach forecasted sales that equal 100 percent of planned capacity, both at the start of construction in 2012 and after a major expansion occurs through 2015," he wrote. Lehmkuhler asked Tang to explain how GreenTech, with no car manufacturing experience, would compete with popular hybrids being marketed by major automobile companies. He asked GreenTech to justify its "overstated" estimate of the number spin-off jobs that would created by other companies servicing the auto plant in Virginia. In November 2009, McAuliffe, who suggested the project be referred to by the code name Project Go Clean Green, visited Gottschalk and Kaine separately to talk about GreenTech’s plans for a Virginia plant. Around the same time, VEDP finished its evaluation of GreenTech’s request for regional center support from the state. The blunt conclusions were laid out in a Nov. 19 memo that Jeffrey Anderson, executive director of the agency, sent to Gottschalk, the secretary of commerce and labor. Anderson wrote, "we have grave doubts about the business model presented to us" by GreenTech. He mentioned several times that the company had not answered key questions that had been raised by the agency. And he warned that Virginia could be sullied by linking a new EB-5 program to the fortunes of a startup company. "We are concerned that the financing plan does not fit the rules for the EB-5 Program," Anderson wrote. "If the rules of the EB-5 Program are not followed, the investors will not receive the visas that they thought they would receive. If all, or any significant portion, of the investors were to not ultimately receive the visas, that would give the commonwealth a black eye, in the view of other companies or investors looking for possible business connections with the commonwealth." Anderson was also troubled by GreenTech’s desire to run the regional center for an EB-5 program in Virginia. Foreigners would look to the center to steer them towards "reasonable business investments," he wrote. "We believe that having the principals of the regional center be the same as the principals of the company benefitting from the investment creates a conflict of interest." On the same day, Tang sent an email to Lehmkuhler suggesting that GreenTech was focusing on one state. "We have been under lots of pressure to move forward in MS..." Tang wrote. "Your expedited process and support is greatly appreciated... If we do not move the project soon in either place (not in both), our project momentum will be damaged." Several months of email silence ensued. In February 2010, Anderson asked Lehmkuhler if there was "any news" on GreenTech. Lehmkuhler replied that there wasn’t. GreenTech purchased a prototype vehicle in May 2010 when the company bought EuAuto, a Chinese company that developed MyCar. MyCar is an electric vehicle that can drive 115 miles on one charge and reaches top speeds of 45 mph. In the U.S., dealers can’t sell those types of vehicles if they go faster than 25 mph. Most state restrict the cars to roads with maximum speed limits of 35 mph. After the announcement, Lehmkuhler was asked for an update by Jim Cheng, secretary of commerce and trade for Gov. Bob McDonnell. Lehmkuhler, in a heavily redacted email, replied that the project was "stuck in neutral." Elizabeth Povar, director of business development at VEDP, added to the reply, "Bottom line, we have no reason at this point to believe there’s validity to the job creation numbers (or inferred project)." McAuliffe told Bloomberg News in October 2010 that the first 100,000 cars produced would sell for $8,500 apiece after federal and state tax credits reduced the price from $10,000. In articles written in 2012, the price escalated to $15,500, according to Torque News, and $18,000, according to the Memphis Daily News. In August 2011, GreenTech announced plans to build an assembly plant in Inner Mongolia to serve the Chinese market. A month later, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling’s office asked Lehmkuhler about the project. Lehmkuhler shared his October 2009 due-diligence email with Randy Marcus, Bolling’s chief of staff. Lehmkuhler added, in a note, "Never received an answer to any of these observations, despite a promises (sic) 9 to the contrary." He also wrote Marcus that the Mississippi plant and product is not what the company originally shared with VEDP. Lehmkuhler wrote that GreenTech "keeps talking about doing this in Virginia but VEDP will not take another step" until the company produced "a qualified business plan and evidence of adequate financing." Lehmkuhler added that that Green Tech was receiving "no different treatment than any other prospect we deal with." GreenTech opened a manufacturing plant in a temporary location in Horn Lake, Mississippi in July 2012, surrounded by political luminaries such as former President Bill Clinton and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. McAuliffe said at the opening that the plant would make the innards of the vehicles destined for China, with assembly completed in the Chinese plant. But the Associated Press reported that work on the original plant in Tunica has not progressed beyond site work and Watchdog.org adds that the workforce runs just more than 100. The company says it has orders from some Domino’s pizza franchises and a Danish company. A recent story from The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., said early exports are planned for Europe. A final flurry of conversations between GreenTech and VEDP occurred last summer. VEDP’s call center, which periodically contacts business prospects, dialed Wang, who said GreenTech would be interested in opening a plant in Virginia and moving engineers to the state. Lehmkuhler followed up with a phone call and emails to Wang. The GreenTech executive replied on July 23. "We always have interest to do projects in Virginia," he wrote and promised to follow up in August. No further emails between the two are recorded. In November, the McDonnell administration asked for another update on the project. "I reconnected with Gary Tang a few months ago because they expressed a further interest in Virginia when contacted by the call center (now marked as Do Not Contact)," Lehmkuhler wrote to Carrie Roth, deputy secretary for commerce and trade. VEDP officials declined to be interviewed for this fact check, saying the emails speak for themselves. For perspective, we spoke to Greg Wingfield, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, which recruits and promotes business locally. Wingfield said the partnership and VEDP investigate companies seeking help move into the Richmond region. For publicly traded businesses, that means reading reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and learning about the leadership of the company. For privately held companies or startups, the partnership asks for the information. "If a privately held company won’t provide it, that sends up red flags and we can’t really go much further," Wingfield said. "There are numerous examples of startups that were playing one state off another state and Virginia has a philosophy that it’s not a pay up-front state. They pay out after a company has performed." Our ruling McAuliffe blamed VEDP for his company’s decision to locate an electric car plant in Mississippi rather than Virginia. "They decided they didn’t want to bid on it," he said. Records showed VEDP staff were interested in the project and were in the process of its due diligence when GreenTech moved ahead with a plant in Mississippi. VEDP had "grave concerns" about GreenTech’s business plan. The agency said GreenTech Agency officials had no "demonstrated experience" in manufacturing cars. It doubted the company’s job estimates. It questioned the ethics of GreenTech’s plan to raise money from foreign investors in exchange for U.S. residency. The record shows that VEDP asked GreenTech to address its concerns and waited in vain for replies. Without those answers, VEDP would not negotiate monetary support for that, or any, project. Contrary to McAuliffe’s claim, there is no evidence the state agency decided not to bid on the project. Emails show VEDP took GreenTech officials on a tour of potential sites and contacted the company about coming to Virginia almost two years after GreenTech announced it was building a plant in Mississippi. We rate McAuliffe’s statement False. | null | Terry McAuliffe | null | null | null | 2013-01-24T10:49:23 | 2012-12-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-15042 | Unlike virtually every other campaign, we don't have a super PAC. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/30/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-only-presidential-candidates-withou/ | It’s no secret that Bernie Sanders isn’t a fan of billionaires and, according to Sanders himself, he’s practically the only 2016 presidential candidate to refuse their money as well. The democratic socialist senator from Vermont has long criticized campaign finance law and offered legislation to flush big money out of the political arena. His campaign prides itself on its small donations. Speaking at the University of Chicago on Sept. 28, Sanders vowed to nominate Supreme Court justices who will overturn Citizens United, the landmark 2010 decision that opened the floodgates for unlimited donations to political fundraising organizations known as super PACs. That same day, Sanders took to Twitter to demonstrate his consistency. "Unlike virtually every other campaign, we don't have a super PAC which collects money from billionaires and corporations," he tweeted. We wanted to look at which 2016 candidates have a super PAC. Is Sanders really the only candidate out of the 15 Republicans and six Democrats without one? A who’s who of outside spending We compiled data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance research group, and a Washington Post analysis. We found that Sanders’ claim largely checks out, albeit with some caveats. Sanders and Donald Trump are the only major candidates without an affiliated super PAC, the type that are typically campaign surrogates. But he and Trump both have unaffiliated super PACs backing them. We’ll get to the distinction in just a bit. Here’s a breakdown of various super PACs connected to the 2016 candidates. The data comes from the July 2015 quarterly filing to the Federal Election Commission. New quarterly reports are due in October 2015: Candidate Affiliated super PACs Unaffiliated super PACs Total raised (as of July 15, 2015) Jeb Bush, R-Fla. • Right to Rise • Millennials Rising • Vamos for Jeb $103,224,384 Ben Carson, R • One Vote PAC • National Draft Ben Carson for President • For a Better Tomorrow $6,844,986 Chris Christie, R-N.J. • America Leads • Ready for Christie $11,003,305 Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. • Priorities USA Action • Faith Voters PAC • Balance of Power • BillForFirstLady2016 $15,674,490 Ted Cruz, R-TX • Keep the Promise • Keep the Promise I • Keep the Promise II • Keep the Promise III • Crusaders PAC • Jruz PAC • Take DC Back • Stand for Principle $38,425,747 Carly Fiorina, R • Carly for America • Unlocking Potential $3,492,728 Jim Gilmore, R-Va. • Growth PAC $193,094 Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. • Security Is Strength • West Main Street Values $2,897,457 Mike Huckabee, R-Ark. • Pursuing America's Greatness $3,604,987 Bobby Jindal, R-La. • Believe Again $3,685,919 John Kasich, R-Ohio • New Day for America 2016 $0 Martin O’Malley, D-Md. • Generation Forward $289,443 George Pataki, R-N.Y • We the People, Not Washington PAC $859,244 Rand Paul, R-Ky.. • Concerned American Voters • America's Liberty • Purple PAC • Forever Free PAC • Human Action • Rand PAC 2016 • OnlyRand.com $5,057,783 Marco Rubio, R-Fla. • Conservative Solutions PAC • Students for Rubio • Americans for Marco Rubio $5,057,783 Rick Santorum, R-Pa. • Working Again $0 Donald Trump, R • Make America Great Again • Hispanic Citizens for Donald Trump $0 Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. • Collective Actions PAC • BillionairesForBernie $8,795 Surrogates versus supporters The difference between unaffiliated and affiliated super PACs "gets to the core issue of coordination and non-coordination in the post-Citizens United era," said Robert McGuire, a research analyst with the Center for Responsive Politics. Affiliated super PACs are often created or staffed by the candidate's political allies and act as extensions of the official campaigns. Though these independent groups are not allowed to donate directly to or coordinate with campaigns, they’ve have found ways to toe the line. A few examples: Jeb Bush’s longtime strategist and friend Mike Murphy heads his Right to Rise super PAC, which has advertised on his behalf. Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager Guy Cecil is at the helm of the pro-Clinton Priorities Action USA, while her current campaign manager has met with potential PAC donors. Martin O’Malley’s Generation Forward super PAC, established by his former press secretary, has run attack ads against Sanders. Unaffiliated super PACs are different. The two pro-Sanders super PACs -- Collective Actions PAC and Billionaires for Bernie -- have no ties to Sanders or his campaign. In fact, Sanders team has asked the unaffiliated super PACs to cut it out. Sanders’ lawyers "have told them to stop," said Michael Briggs, communications director for the Sanders campaign, referring to a cease and desist letter sent to one that formed recently. (That group didn’t file with the FEC until mid September, but received a $50,000 donation from Daniel Craig, the actor who portrays James Bond.) But because anyone can register a super PAC (this fact-check would be remiss to not mention Stephen Colbert’s Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow), candidates can do little to stop one from forming and declaring its support. The distinction between an affiliated super PAC and an unaffiliated one is significant, said Anthony Corrado, a professor who studies campaign finance at Colby College. "Sanders has been clear in disavowing any such efforts and noting that he does not want the support of such groups," he said. "So I do not believe the mere existence of a registered committee renders his point invalid." Ahead of the PACs We should note that Sanders isn’t the only presidential candidate without an affiliated super PAC. The same could be said of Democratic rivals former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (who’s polling at 0.8 percent), former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (who’s polling at 0 percent) and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig (who doesn’t appear in the polls at all and who, before declaring his candidacy, famously started a super PAC dedicated to ending all super PACs). But among the more prominent candidates, Sanders is indeed the odd man out. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has more affiliated super PACs than anyone else (four), while Bush’s Right to Rise has raised the most money by far: more than $103 million. In Sanders’ own party, the pro-Clinton Priorities USA Action has raised $15.6 million. Donald Trump, who repeatedly touts his financial independence from donors, seems to be friendly with a super PAC created in his honor. While Trump’s not coordinating with the group on the same level as Bush or Clinton, the connections are certainly stronger than Sanders’ with his backers and "worth noting," said McGuire. The billionaire attended a New York fundraiser hosted by the Make America Great Again PAC in July and said he’s grateful for their support, reports Politico. The group also received a $100,000 donation from the in-laws of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, according to Politico. Our ruling Sanders tweeted, "Unlike virtually every other campaign, we don't have a Super PAC which collects money from billionaires and corporations." Out of the 21 presidential candidates, Sanders is one of five who doesn’t have an affiliated super PAC. Sanders’ qualifier -- "virtually" -- makes his claim more accurate. If we narrow the count to major candidates, only Sanders and Trump can claim that, but both have two unaffiliated super PACs backing their candidacy. Trump has appeared at a fundraiser for one super PAC that’s also received donations from his in-laws. Sanders, meanwhile, has disassociated himself with these groups, through statements and legal action. We rate Sanders’ claim Mostly True. | null | Bernie Sanders | null | null | null | 2015-09-30T16:35:34 | 2015-09-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-08159 | In "the fall of 2009, only 21 percent of Texas high school graduates enrolled in a four-year public university." | half-true | /texas/statements/2010/dec/03/todd-staples/todd-staples-says-21-percent-2009-texas-high-schoo/ | Who says campaigns fade in import after Election Day? On Nov. 11, for instance, we came across a statement about Texas high-school graduates that would be notable any time. Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, making a case for workforce training, writes on the "issues" part of his campaign website: "Preparing our students for a global economy means more and more of them will require college degrees, yet in the fall of 2009, only 21 percent of Texas high school graduates enrolled in a four-year public university." One in five hustled to college? Staples' posted statement includes a link to a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board website, "High School to College Linkages." With advice from Staples' spokesman Bryan Black, we isolated a spreadsheet on the site indicating the percentage of public high school graduates who went on to higher education the fall after their spring graduations from 2000 through 2009. And according to the spreadsheet, 21 percent of the state's more than 264,000 2009 graduates enrolled that fall in four-year public institutions of higher education, with 28.5 percent enrolling in public two-year institutions and 4.4 percent marked as attending an in-state private or independent college or university. Dominic Chavez, senior director for external relations at the coordinating board, confirmed the figures for us. But we noticed a difference between the board breakdown and Staples' statement. The board's 21 percent refers solely to graduates who enrolled in Texas institutions, while Staples' statement refers to graduates who went to any four-year public university. Also, the board breakdown gives no information for many graduates. Nearly 42 percent of the 2009 graduates are categorized as "not found," meaning the students' identifying numbers -- usually Social Security numbers -- did not show up in enrollment records of state higher education institutions that fall, according to a footnote on the chart and Chavez. Another 4 percent of graduates are listed as not trackable; those graduates had non-standard ID numbers "that will not find a match at Texas higher education institutions," a footnote says. We wondered too about 2009 graduates who went to college out of state. Chavez told us the board did not research that because its research reach extends to Texas colleges only. Chavez said, though, that the board earlier paid for such information from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that describes itself online as the nation's "trusted source for student degree and enrollment verification." Board spokesman Andy Kesling later told us that 4 to 5 percent of 2003 Texas high-school graduates enrolled that fall in out-of-state institutions of higher education; the clearinghouse's data set did not include colleges in Oklahoma, which attracts some Texas graduates, and did not specify the types of schools the graduates were attending. The same year, the board says, 20 percent of Texas high-school graduates enrolled that fall in a Texas four-year public institution. Kesling said it would be fair to conclude that more than 24 to 25 percent of graduates enrolled in a four-year college in or out of Texas (counting the unknown share of students who hitchhiked to Oklahoma) in fall 2003. Black, Staples' spokesman, said by e-mail that Staples' statement was in a column focused on Texas. "It's clear, both because of the context of the article" and that the coordinating board is the cited source, Black said, that Staples is commenting on graduates enrolled in Texas four-year public universities. We don't see that clarity. Upshot: Staples said that only 21 percent of Texas high school graduates in 2009 went on to a four-year public university, without noting that the statistic only applies to public universities in Texas. While the state has no data on the number of 2009 graduates who enrolled in out-of-state colleges, it stands to reason that more than 21 percent of graduates went to four-year public universities across the country. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Todd Staples | null | null | null | 2010-12-03T06:00:00 | 2010-11-11 | ['Texas'] |
pose-00174 | Barack Obama will prioritize security investments in our refineries and pipelines and power grids. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/187/-prioritize-security-investments-in-refineries-pi/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Prioritize security investments in refineries, pipelines and power grids | 2010-01-07T13:26:50 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11294 | British Intelligence Seizes Clinton Foundation Warehouse, $400 Million In Cash. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/apr/20/blog-posting/no-british-intelligence-didnt-sieze-400-billion-cl/ | The Clinton Foundation, established by former President Bill Clinton, has long been a favorite subject for sites looking to spread questionable news on the Internet. Here’s the latest example making the rounds. It was flagged as possibly providing false information, as part of Facebook’s effort to combat fake news. A website called NRTONLINE posted an article on April 14, 2018, headlined, "BREAKING: British Intelligence Seizes Clinton Foundation Warehouse, $400 Million In Cash." Here are the opening paragraphs: The Clinton Foundation is once again trying to distance itself from a scandal surrounding something they’re involved in. This time, the warehouse they use in the UK to store food and toiletries to make ready for shipping to Africa and Indonesia was raided by MI6. The warehouse, which is leased by the Foundation and one other tenant, is owned by a man known for shady arms deals and exploiting cheap Asian labor for counterfeit goods. The Brits took down his office and storage space, finding 400 Million in US Dollars. Maleek Bin Shalakta has been on the UK terrorist watch list for some time. The problem: None of this ever happened. The article was lifted wholesale from the website Reagan Was Right, which -- before the site was taken down earlier this year -- described itself as a "whimsical playland of conservative satire." Another disclaimer read: "Everything on this website is fiction." You can’t find the Reagan Was Right article on its original web page any more, but a version of the article dated Nov. 10, 2017, is available on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Reagan Was Right was affiliated with Christopher Blair, a Maine man we’ve written about previously. Blair told us his websites are a carefully curated social experiment designed to "feed the Hoverounders their daily need for hate and their undying urge to blame everything in the known universe on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama." Among the dubious elements of both the original Reagan Was Right article and the NRTONLINE facsimile is a reference to the nonexistent country of Latkavia, as well as a stray reference to a correspondent for "LLOD." The article doesn’t explain the acronym, but fake news cognoscenti will recognize it as one of Blair’s other fake (and now shuttered) sites, the Last Line of Defense. Meanwhile, the photograph that accompanies the post was published in June 2017 by the Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom to illustrate an entirely different article -- one about police evicting a group of trailer-home residents who had seized a warehouse for 24 hours. As for the publisher of the most recent version, NRTONLINE, a quick click into the site’s "About Us" page shows not an explanation of the site’s background but rather an un-filled-in web page template. So, unlike the Reagan Was Right version, NRTONLINE offered no indication that this article was "satire." The Clinton Foundation confirmed to PolitiFact that the article is "totally false." "We don’t rent a warehouse in the U.K., the quote from ‘Chelsea Clinton’s assistant’ is made up, and nothing in this story seems to be based in reality," spokesman Brian Cookstra told PolitiFact. Fake Clinton Foundation raids are a staple of dubious web posts. For instance, in May 2017, some of our fellow fact-checkers debunked an Internet claim that a Clinton Foundation cargo ship had been caught smuggling people from Syria, drugs and illegal fruit. The source of that claim? The Last Line of Defense. Social media posts linked to an article headlined, "British Intelligence Seizes Clinton Foundation Warehouse, $400 Million In Cash." But that never happened -- the tall tale originated with a self-described satirical post. We rate it Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-04-20T16:24:46 | 2018-04-14 | ['None'] |
hoer-00814 | Pink Dolphin Near Cameron Ferry Photographs | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/pink-dolphin-cameron-ferry.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Pink Dolphin Near Cameron Ferry Photographs | July 2007 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00202 | Many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton\'s hacked emails. | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/09/trumps-remarkable-suggestion-that-clintons-emails-led-to-an-iranian-defectors-death/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Glenn Kessler | null | Trump's remarkable suggestion that Clinton's emails led to an Iranian defector's death | August 9, 2016 | null | ['United_States', 'Iran'] |
pomt-12945 | Says a celebrity praises locals for their help after an automotive breakdown. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/jan/06/blog-posting/celebrity-praise-helpful-locals-are-fake-stories-c/ | According to a raft of faux news websites, Bill Murray sure does appreciate the people of Rochester, N.H., for helping him after his rental car broke down. If you believe the Internet, he’s also fond of the residents of Marion, Ohio. And Shakopee, Minn., too. And Hays, Kan.; Porterville, Calif.; Prescott Valley, Ariz.; Bay City, Mich.; and even Toowoomba, Australia. All for the same reason, none of which is true. A website called NewsDaily12.com said it had the story from Rochester, in which Murray is quoted from an unidentified radio interview as saying he was leaving the New England town when his rental car "overheated or something." Facebook flagged this story and others as part of its efforts to identify fake news. They’re right. It’s fake. Murray’s undated anecdote continues that while on the phone with the car company, a couple of locals lent a hand, calling a family member with a tow truck and taking the car to get repaired. While waiting, one of the Samaritans offers to take Murray to lunch, the story goes. "So we drove to the finest dining spot in Rochester — some place called Wild Willy’s — and get a burger. Great freakin’ burger too," Murray is quoted. "These guys had no idea who I was either which made my day, honestly. I’m telling you, these people in Rochester are the real deal. I’m gonna move there after I retire." The stories, which again, are fake, are part of a chain of websites that appear to bank on readers clicking on particular versions of the post to generate advertising revenue. These sites carry names that sound like official media outlets, like "KMT 11 News" or "16 WMPO." The sites are also known for including various versions of stories that falsely claim an event has happened. Other stories include that a celebrity is moving to a certain town or, say, that the next Star Wars movie is being filmed nearby. None of the stories specifically say the article is fake. But each site has a disclaimer (if you know where to look) that says the articles "are simply works of satire meant for entertainment purposes" and shouldn’t be considered true. (Claiming that these articles are somehow satire is bogus, too.) Each site says readers may submit concerns to a contact email, and the administrators "will offer you our condolences and provide you with a safe space where you can be shielded from any sort of satire in the future." We emailed them looking for condolences, but so far have received none. Every version of the story on each site is almost identical, with the name of a different town. The lunch destination is either changed or omitted altogether, depending on the version. (To the fake news purveyor’s faint credit, the name of the restaurant used is of an actual place in the specific town — there really is a burger joint called Wild Willy’s in Rochester, for example.) Something that also changes in the stories is the name of the celebrity having the experience. It’s not always Bill Murray. It also turns out that Adam Sandler had the same problem in Pflugerville, Texas. And Billings, Mont.; plus a flat tire in Reynoldsburg, Ohio; and a whole host of other towns. Tom Hanks got a flat tire in Kennewick, Wash.; Harrison Ford’s car overheated in Mandan, N.D.; Miley Cyrus broke down in Hollister, Calif. Other celebrities helped by gentle townsfolk after some bad luck include Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Adam Levine, Matthew McConaughey and Bruce Willis. There are scads of small towns and suburbs named as the location of these hapless incidents. Needless to say, there is no evidence that any of these celebs had car trouble in any of these places or subsequently praised locals for help. We rate these claims Pants on Fire! https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/d72ba974-deb9-4960-9a65-65ed166f50ab | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-01-06T14:30:57 | 2017-01-05 | ['None'] |
snes-01822 | Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling exacted revenge on a Twitter critic by monitoring his finances for two years and then buying his home. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jk-rowling-house-troll/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did J.K. Rowling Buy a Twitter User’s Home as Revenge for His Criticism? | 28 August 2017 | null | ['J._K._Rowling', 'Harry_Potter'] |
tron-03067 | Lynne Patton Defends Donald Trump, Trump Family | commentary! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/lynne-patton-defends-donald-trump-trump-family/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Lynne Patton Defends Donald Trump, Trump Family | May 6, 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump'] |
pomt-09301 | Says Crist campaign website "has eliminated all references to our Republican Party." | false | /florida/statements/2010/apr/21/tom-grady/charlie-crist-website-republican-independent/ | Now that Gov. Charlie Crist is openly flirting with an independent run for the U.S. Senate, many of his old Republican friends are dashing for the exits. Crist's mentor, former Florida U.S. Sen. Connie Mack, yanked his support on April 15, 2010. House Speaker Larry Cretul, who had been neutral, didn't just endorse Crist's rival Marco Rubio on April 20, 2010, but openly bashed Crist in the process. State Rep. Tom Grady, R-Naples, became the latest Crist backer to jump ship in an e-mail to Crist dated April 20, 2010. Grady, who said Crist convinced him to run for the Legislature, said he was resigning from Crist's statewide finance team and would no longer be the Southwest Florida regional chairman of Crist's campaign. "This evening, as I reviewed your updated campaign website, I noticed a disheartening fact," Grady wrote in an e-mail. "Your website has eliminated all references to our Republican Party, or as you frequently refer to it, the party of Lincoln. "As a long-time personal friend, I suspected you were considering a break from the party when my recent calls went unanswered. This comes at a time when we clearly differ on what it means to be a conservative with a firm belief in less government, less taxing, less spending and more freedom." Crist has said he hasn't made up his mind whether he will continue to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, or as an independent candidate with no party affiliation. (He has to decide by April 30th). But is Crist's campaign website already tipping his hand? Indeed, the website, http://CharlieCrist.com, is largely devoid of mentions that Crist is a Republican. That's not unusual -- candidates often don't emphasize their party in hopes that they can attract more broad support. But it's not hard to figure out what party he represents -- at least for now. His homepage has a link to the "Charlie Crist Conservative Record," and his official biography describes his as a "common-sense conservative" who was "Florida's first elected Republican Attorney General." The website includes an electronic button for people to download that says "Conservatives for Charlie Crist": And it still includes a press release from April 8, 2010, in which campaign manager Eric Eikenberg says Crist would run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, not an independent. The Palm Beach Post went back and found other press releases referring to Crist speaking at Republican events and Lincoln Day dinners, and also commenting on the resignation of his hand-picked Republican Party of Florida chairman, Jim Greer. In a Jan. 5 press release, Crist said: "I call on Florida Republicans to unite behind our common values of less government and more personal freedom and sincerely hope that we can move forward together to ensure statewide Republican victories in 2010." Crist campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul told the Palm Beach Post that "no Republican references have been scrubbed from our website, period." The St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald also asked Crist about Grady's comments. Q: Did you remove any references to the Republican Party from your website, as alleged by Rep. Tom Grady and other Republicans who have withdrawn their support? A: "No." Q: What's your reaction to Grady’s repealed endorsement? A: “So be it.” Looking for additional proof, PolitiFact Florida went to a website called Internet Archive, which stores versions of old websites. But that site hasn't created a moment in time snapshot of CharlieCrist.com since July 30, 2008. Post reporter Michael Bender used another website, ChangeDetection.com, that tracks changes to specific websites and e-mails people when a change occurs. Bender, who says he has been following changes to CharlieCrist.com "for the past couple years," said no reference to “Republican” has been eliminated from the site. We couldn't independently verify Bender's claim because we just started following Crist's website on ChangeDetection.com. But what's even more critical is that Grady, himself, said he has no proof Crist “eliminated” anything from his website. He said it was fair to make the accusation, according to the Post. “This wasn’t a trial,” he said. By contrast, the front page of Marco Rubio's website has images of Rubio and 2008 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and features the endorsements of U.S. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, Cretul and has the message "Will Charlie Abandon the GOP again? Marco is the only Republican we can trust to stand up to Obama, and trust to stay a Republican." But Rubio's campaign biography does not say that he's a Republican. Back to Grady's statement. In rescinding his endorsement, Grady said Crist removed Republican references from his U.S. Senate campaign website. No, there's not a prominent picture of Crist hugging Ronald Reagan on the site, or a big splashy "R" next to Crist's name, but there is still considerable talk about Crist's conservative credentials. It's in his biography, detailed in press releases and on issue statements, and available for viewing on a computer near you. Plus, if you were going to remove reference to the GOP, you would likely also remove the press release promising not to run as anything other than a Republican. There's no evidence the website has changed. We rate Grady's statement False. | null | Tom Grady | null | null | null | 2010-04-21T18:06:50 | 2010-04-20 | ['None'] |
tron-02494 | Incredible catch by a ball girl! | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/ball-girl/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Incredible catch by a ball girl! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
clck-00025 | Melting of Arctic sea ice and polar icecaps is not occurring at ‘unnatural’ rates and does not constitute evidence of a human impact on the climate. | incorrect | https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/heartland-institute-report-incorrectly-claims-no-evidence-human-impacts-melting-ice/ | null | null | null | null | null | Heartland Institute report incorrectly claims no evidence of human impacts in melting ice | [' Fred Singer, Robert Carter, Heartland Institute, 2016 \xa0 '] | null | ['Arctic'] |
hoer-00756 | Fish With Hands and Legs Email Forward | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/fish-hands-legs.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fish With Hands and Legs Email Forward | November 2009 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15135 | Trump proposed enacting the largest tax increase in American history. | true | /florida/statements/2015/sep/02/jeb-bush/did-donald-trump-propose-biggest-tax-hike-history-/ | Republican candidates continue to attack Donald Trump on his past positions, claiming he is not the conservative he says he is today. Jeb Bush picked up the attack by taking on Trump over tax policy. "I cut taxes every year," Bush said at an Aug. 20 rally in New Hampshire. "He’s proposed the largest tax increase in mankind’s history, not just our own country’s history." The next day Bush repeated the basic claim in a fundraising email: "Trump proposed enacting the largest tax increase in American history." Seems like something worth fact-checking. Trump’s tax plan in 1999 A spokesman for Bush told us that the former Florida governor was referring to Trump’s 1999 proposal to raise taxes on the rich. Trump, who at the time was considering a run for president under the Reform Party, proposed a one-time tax on individuals and trusts with a worth of $10 million or more. Trump said the one-time tax of 14.25 percent would raise $5.7 trillion and wipe out the debt. Trump said if the rich were having trouble liquidating their assets they could pay off their tax over 10 years. The New York Daily News featured a photograph of Trump with the words, "SOAK THE RICH." Experts at the time bashed Trump’s plan as economically and politically unviable. "I don't think the plan makes much economic sense," said Stephen Moore, director of fiscal policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute told the New York Times in 1999. "The fact is that most people's wealth that has been built up over 10, 20 or 50 years is wealth that has already been taxed." Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in 1999 said of Trump’s plan at the time, "The lunacy of this idea is almost indescribable." He raised concerns about the economic consequences including that households would shift assets overseas to try to avoid confiscation. Trump calculated that 1 percent of Americans would pay the Trump tax. He proposed that half the savings would go toward middle-class tax cuts and the other half for Social Security. A spokeswoman for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Hope Hicks, wouldn’t tell us if Trump still supports that plan and said that he will release his current tax plan later in September. But in 2011, talk show host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump if he still supported that tax, and Trump said it was no longer viable. "Well, at a time, it would have paid off the deficit. I mean, you wouldn't have a deficit, at that time," Trump said (though he confused debt and deficit). "Unfortunately, the world has changed, today you can't do it. Today, and I'm very strongly against tax increases. And the reason I'm-" "So, you're no longer for that tax?" Stephanopoulos asked. "No, no. I'm no longer for that tax, no," Trump said. Would Trump’s tax have broken records? Many tax experts told us that indeed Trump’s plan would have been record-breaking in terms of revenue, but they said it was never going to happen and lacked major details. "It certainly would have been the biggest ever simply because of its sheer size -- it was trillions of dollars," said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. However, "it’s a totally crazy idea. ... I don't think anybody was taking it seriously -- it was Donald Trump being Donald Trump." The United States’ gross domestic product in 1999 was $9.7 trillion, so if Trump’s tax had raised $5.7 trillion, that would have been 59 percent of GDP, said Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute. Federal tax hikes typically are no more than 1 percent of GDP, Edwards said. "The Bush 1990 hike and Clinton 1993 hike were less than 1 percent of GDP over 5 years — whereas Trump’s tax would have been 59 percent one time in one year," Edwards said. PolitiFact previously has looked into the largest tax increases as a percentage of GDP. Topping the list from 1940-2006 was the Revenue Act of 1942, which was about 5 percent of GDP. Richard Phillips, an expert at the Citizens for Tax Justice research group, which aims to require the wealthy to pay their fair share, said that Trump’s one-time tax proposal can’t be compared to conventional tax reform, which typically refers to taxes collected annually. "His estimate was based on a back of the envelope calculation of total wealth of individuals with over $10 million in assets multiplied by the 14.25 percent rate," he said. "There are very real questions as to whether you could plausibly tax all forms of wealth and whether wealthy individuals would be able to take action to shield large swaths of their wealth from taxation." Additionally, Trump proposed repealing the estate tax and enacting other tax cuts using the revenue that the federal government would save by no longer paying interest on the national debt. It’s not clear how much those tax cuts would have cost and how much of the tax they would offset over time, Phillips said. Our ruling Bush said, "Trump proposed enacting the largest tax increase in American history." Yes, in 1999, Trump proposed a historically large one-time tax increase. Trump said the tax would have raised $5.7 trillion and wiped out the national debt. It would have applied only to the wealthiest Americans. This claim rates True. | null | Jeb Bush | null | null | null | 2015-09-02T16:10:48 | 2015-08-21 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-05499 | The bulk of the people who are shot with a weapon — other than these drug gangs taking on one another — end up being shot with their own weapon. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/16/joe-biden/biden-says-most-shootings-happen-victims-own-gun/ | In an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President Joe Biden was asked about the Trayvon Martin killing in Sanford, Fla. "Do you, on balance, think these laws are good laws?" host Bob Schieffer asked in the April 1, 2012, program, referring to Florida’s "stand your ground" self-defense law and others around the country. Biden said he thinks it’s important to protect Second Amendment rights but expressed skepticism of laws that could result in people putting themselves in harm’s way. He said he’s "not so sure of" the idea that owning and carrying guns makes people safer. He also threw out this claim about gun violence: "You know, the bulk of the people who are shot with a weapon — other than these drug gangs taking on one another — end up being shot with their own weapon." We decided to check that out. Biden’s office pointed us to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which shows that the majority of firearm deaths in the U.S. are by suicide, and most suicides are committed with the deceased's own gun. David Hemenway, a public health professor at Harvard University, looked at 2009 specifically and noted that the CDC figures show 18,735 firearm suicides; 11,493 firearm homicides; and some 554 unintentional firearm deaths. "The large majority of firearm suicides use their own (or the family gun), while the large majority of firearm homicides are shot with someone else’s gun," Hemenway said. So Biden’s statement, in Hemenway’s estimation, is "very likely true" if Biden was talking only about firearm deaths. Statistics that include non-fatal shootings paint a different picture, with more resulting from assaults than from suicides. "The estimates of non-fatal shootings are very rough (estimated from under 100 emergency departments), but the CDC estimates from 2009 are only 3,000 plus non-fatal suicide shootings, compared to over 44,000 assault shootings," he said. Including non-fatal shootings in the study group, Hemenway said, makes Biden’s statement "very likely untrue" because people don’t typically become the victim of assaults with their own guns. Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University, also said the statement is "probably technically true but also misleading as most gun fatalities are suicides." "Biden's claim implies that people are having their weapons turned against them by someone else when, in fact, the modal gun death is probably a debt-ridden farmer," Braman wrote in an email. We agree that Biden did not seem to be talking about suicides. He was answering a question about self-defense laws and the danger of people putting themselves in harm’s way. And certainly the Martin killing was unrelated to suicide. "What Biden seems to be saying," Braman wrote, "is that the likelihood that you will shoot someone with a gun you buy in self-defense is smaller than the likelihood that you (or someone in your household) will be shot with that same gun. That is technically true unless you start excluding suicides, etc. -- then I don't know -- and he's got a point: guns most often injure people in the gun owner's household, not an intruder or stranger. "But it is also potentially misleading in two ways. First, it suggests that people who buy guns are more likely to be harmed than protected by a gun they buy. We just don't have good data on that. … Second, it suggests that the harms people are suffering are at the hands of others, when (as I pointed out before) most of the time it is a suicide or suicide attempt." Our ruling Biden said "the bulk" of people who are shot with a weapon are shot with their own weapon. The numbers that back up that statement refer only to fatal shootings, including a high proportion of suicides. CDC figures show, and our experts verified, that the majority of gun deaths are suicides, and the majority of suicides are committed with a person’s own gun or a gun owned by someone in the household. Although the numbers for non-fatal shootings are rough, such assaults typically don't involve the use of the victim's gun, experts told us. Biden cited a true statistic but left out the important detail and context that he was talking only about fatal shootings, which would include suicides. That meets our definition of Half True. | null | Joe Biden | null | null | null | 2012-04-16T11:57:15 | 2012-04-01 | ['None'] |
snes-04810 | Newt Gingrich wrote an essay entitled "Understanding Donald Trump." | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gingrich-donald-trump-essay/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Newt Gingrich Wrote an Essay Called ‘Understanding Donald Trump’ | 4 May 2016 | null | ['Newt_Gingrich', 'Donald_Trump'] |
hoer-01164 | Yet Another Qantas Like-Farming | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/yet-another-qantas-like-farming-scam-hitting-facebook/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Yet Another Qantas Like-Farming Scam Hitting Facebook | March 1, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00402 | Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/sep/04/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-tweet-collins-hunter-i/ | President Donald Trump attacked his attorney general on Twitter, blaming the nation’s top lawyer for bringing charges against two Republican lawmakers ahead of the midterm elections. Trump claimed the investigations, which culminated recently in a pair of federal indictments, began during the presidency of his predecessor Barack Obama. "Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department," Trump tweeted. "Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Trump did not identify the lawmakers by name. He didn’t have to. In the past several weeks, the department has issued indictments against Republican Reps. Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of California. The two men were among Trump’s earliest supporters on Capitol Hill during the 2016 campaign. Trump’s tweet has been criticized as an attack on both the rule of law, as well as the Justice Department’s generally apolitical posture. Here, we’re interested in whether the recent indictments stem from investigations that began under Obama, as Trump claimed. (We’re not examining the popularity of the congressmen in question.) The Justice Department does not typically confirm the timeline of grand juries, and the department declined our request for comment on this story. Our research is limited to the indictments themselves, as well as public reporting. So far, the available evidence suggests one investigation began during Trump’s presidency. The timing of other is less clear. Chris Collins investigation All public evidence suggests Collins’ investigation began under Trump, not Obama. What’s more, the charges he faces stem from a phone call made in June 2017, months after Trump took office and his pick to lead the Justice Department, Sessions, was confirmed. Collins is accused of insider trading. The charges stem from a phone call he made to his son Cameron to relay closely-held details about an Australian biotech company. Both men held stock in the firm. As a board member of the company, Innate Immunotherapeutic, Chris Collins learned — before it was publicly known — that the company had failed a pivotal drug trial. Had the drug passed the test, it would have offered a lucrative treatment for a certain form of multiple sclerosis. Instead, the public announcement of the negative results caused the stock price to plummet by 92 percent. But before the results became public, Collins called his son, a shareholder, so that he could dump the stock, the indictment says. Timely trades by the father and son, along with a third defendant, allowed them to avoid losses totaling more than $768,000. That phone call took place in June 2017 — months after Trump succeeded Obama. The defendants were indicted Aug. 8 in the Southern District of New York. All three pleaded not guilty. Preet Bharara, who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017, until he was fired by Trump, would almost certainly know if the Collins investigation started under the previous administration. "Chris Collins was not an Obama era investigation," Bharara tweeted in response to Trump. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Duncan Hunter investigation The start date of Hunter’s investigation is a bit trickier. Hunter and his wife have been charged with misusing $250,000 in campaign funds to finance personal expenses like family trips. The couple also is alleged to have filed false campaign finance records. Hunter’s behavior generated some attention prior to Trump taking the White House. The Office of Congressional Ethics, a government watchdog established by the U.S. House of Representatives, asked the House Committee on Ethics to look into allegations about Hunter in August 2016. Some of the misconduct he’s since been indicted for also predates the 2016 election. That said, the first news reports that Hunter was under criminal investigation appear to have surfaced in March 2017, during Trump’s presidency. "The Hunter one has probably been pending longer (than the Collins investigation)," said Lisa Kern Griffin, a law professor at Duke University. "Though it’s hard to say whether DOJ ‘opened’ it before or after the election or transition." Hunter’s charges indicate they were issued by a "September 2016 Grand Jury." So is that when the grand jury began investigating Hunter’s case? Not necessarily, say legal experts. "A grand jury usually will work on a lot of matters, and even if this grand jury started in September 2016, it might have been working on other things until the last several months," said Andrew Leipold, a law professor at University of Illinois College of Law. In other words, it’s possible the grand jury began working on Hunter’s case after the election. "You just can’t tell from the indictment," Leipold said. Our ruling Trump said the investigations of two Republican congressmen began under Obama. The jumping-off point for the Collins insider-trading investigation was a phone call that began months after Obama left office. The start date of Hunter’s investigation is a bit trickier. A congressional watchdog looked into campaign finance allegations prior to Trump’s presidency, and some of the misconduct he’s since been indicted for also predates the 2016 presidential election. But the first public reports that Hunter was under criminal investigation appear to have surfaced in March 2017, during Trump’s presidency. We rate this Mostly False. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-09-04T17:47:36 | 2018-09-03 | ['Barack_Obama', 'Dana_Rohrabacher'] |
goop-00584 | Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott Headed For Split? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kylie-jenner-travis-scott-split-breaking-up/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott Headed For Split? | 11:30 am, July 25, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01353 | Moving forward Rick Kriseman will "pay a $15 by 2020 minimum wage for city employees." | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/krise-o-meter/promise/1445/increase-minimum-wage-15-city-workers/ | null | krise-o-meter | Rick Kriseman | null | null | Increase the minimum wage to $15 for city workers | 2018-01-02T12:08:00 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02137 | Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson is a "liberal" who voted with Nancy Pelosi to "fund sex study programs of San Francisco prostitutes" and "to regulate the sale of firearms." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/07/madison-action-fund/are-mike-simpson-and-nancy-pelosi-politically-alig/ | We’ve seen plenty of Democrats called out for voting records that closely align with President Barack Obama and other party leaders. But it isn’t every day that a conservative super PAC claims that an eight-term Republican congressman is closely aligned with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The Madison Action Fund is claiming just that, running an ad in Idaho linking GOP Rep. Mike Simpson to Pelosi, a frequent target of Republican ire. Here’s what the ad says: "How liberal is congressman Mike Simpson? Simpson voted with Nancy Pelosi to bail out Wall Street. That wasnt enough spending for Mike Simpson, so he joined Pelosi in voting to take more of your money to fund sex study programs of San Francisco prostitutes. Simpson also joined Pelosi in voting to regulate the sale of firearms." (We should note that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander: A group backing Simpson is also running ads tying his Republican primary opponent, Bryan Smith, to Pelosi. We checked that claim separately here). Simpson did in fact vote for the Wall Street bailout, as Pelosi did. But beyond that, the ad gets more dubious. Is Simpson a "liberal"? Despite what the ad suggests, Simpson and Pelosi have very different voting records. In the current Congress, spanning 820 votes, Simpson and Pelosi have voted the same way just 29 percent of the time, according to OpenCongress.org, a website created by the pro-transparency Sunlight Foundation. Still, 29 percent isn’t nothing and some may say, if Simpson was a real conservative, he would vote with Pelosi 0 percent of the time. Maybe, but not every congressional vote is polarized, and even some of the most conservative members of Congress have voted with Pelosi at least on some issues. For instance, no one would confuse Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for a liberal, yet Bachmann and Pelosi have voted the same way 24 percent of the time since January 2012. Simpson has voted with his party 95 percent of the time. Calling him a liberal and insinuating ideological coziness between him and Pelosi is simply inaccurate. Did Simpson and Pelosi both vote "to fund sex study programs of San Francisco prostitutes"? This is an exaggeration. The Madison Action Fund’s ad cites a House vote from July 10, 2003. (You read that right — this happened 10 years ago.) On that day, the House of Representatives voted to pass an appropriations bill to fund the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which included money for the National Institutes of Health. An amendment to the bill offered by then-Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., sought to strip funding from five National Institutes of Health research grants. Toomey said one of those grants was a "study on San Francisco's Asian prostitutes and masseuses." Simpson voted against Toomey’s amendment. Pelosi (who represents San Francisco) did as well, and it narrowly failed. But Toomey’s description of the research grant might have warranted a ruling from the Truth-O-Meter were it around back then. The grant was awarded to the University of California San Francisco, the home of the AIDS Research Institute, and studied ways to reduce HIV risks among Asian women. Researchers pinpointed commercial sex workers at massage parlors as a key source of the large increase in HIV prevalence among Asian and Pacific islanders in the Bay area, for whom AIDS was the second-leading cause of death among those aged 25 to 44 in San Francisco in 2001. The researchers interviewed sex workers about their background, education, history of violence from customers, and sexual health, in order to develop programs to improve awareness of drug abuse and STD prevention among at-risk Asian-American popuations. Whether this research should have been selected for funding given the limited pool of money available is a reasonable question to debate, but saying it was to "fund sex study programs of San Francisco prostitutes" fails to factor in the public-health concerns at stake. Did Simpson and Pelosi vote together "to regulate the sale of firearms"? This claim goes even further back. The Madison Action Fund singles out Simpson’s votes on the Mandatory Gun Show Background Check Act, a 1999 bill that emerged in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting. While on the surface the bill added some background check provisions for gun shows, the measure was more complicated. It included an amendment that actually eased restrictions on firearm purchases at gun shows. That measure, which had strong backing from the NRA and was harshly criticized by President Bill Clinton, passed the House with help from 45 Democrats. Simpson voted for it; Pelosi did not. Clinton called the vote "a great victory for the NRA." But it also included an amendment that was added to require safety locks to be sold with all handguns. The amendment had overwhelming bipartisan support, including from a majority of Republicans. Simpson voted for it, as did Pelosi, and it passed 311-115. The National Rifle Association ultimately urged Republicans to back the entire bill on final passage. Simpson followed the NRA’s lead and voted for the bill. Pelosi didn’t. And it failed 147-280. So ultimately, Simpson and Pelosi were mostly on opposite sides of the fight over this bill. Most importantly, when it came on votes to "regulate the sale of firearms," Simpson voted to loosen restrictions while Pelosi wanted to maintain the status quo. They only voted on the same side on a measure to require safety locks on handguns. Our ruling The ad cherry picks a handful of votes to create the impression that Simpson and Pelosi are in ideological lockstep. But the votes chosen are old, cherry-picked and deeply misleading. Suggesting any substantial alliance between Simpson and Pelosi is ridiculous. We rate the claim Pants on Fire! | null | Madison Action Fund | null | null | null | 2014-05-07T14:34:56 | 2014-04-30 | ['Nancy_Pelosi', 'San_Francisco', 'Idaho'] |
pose-00423 | Will "require 10 Percent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2012. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/443/require-10-percent-renewable-energy-by-2012/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Require 10 percent renewable energy by 2012 | 2010-01-07T13:26:58 | null | ['United_States', 'Joe_Biden', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-04168 | Says the Portland Children’s Levy holds its "administrative expenses to less than 5 percent." | true | /oregon/statements/2012/dec/19/dan-saltzman/are-administrative-costs-capped-5-percent-portland/ | CORRECTION APPENDED: RACC has a 3 percent cap on programming at schools, not for arts grants administration. This does not change the ruling. Advocates of new taxes for programs know that voters want the money to go to the people the tax is supposed to serve. So, when supporters of a tax levy for children pitched the program in 2002 and in 2008, they made sure to tell voters that administrative costs would be capped at 5 percent of all money received from an increase in property taxes. That means 95 percent of the money goes toward direct services for low-income and at-risk children, or at least, to the programs that serve those children. Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman made the same point on KGW’s "Straight Talk" recently. (The statement is about 10 minutes into the interview.) The City Council has voted to put the property tax levy on the May 2013 ballot. In singing the levy’s praises, he said, "And we hold our administrative expenses to less than 5 percent." We wanted to know if the figure is accurate, and if so, what that means. We noticed that the campaign pitching a Portland arts tax this fall also stated that administrative costs would be capped at 5 percent, after startup costs. So clearly it’s trendy number. (Jessica Jarratt Miller, executive director of the Creative Advocacy Network, said in an email that they borrowed the figure from the Portland Children’s Levy.) W e checked the annual audits of the Portland Children’s Levy and confirmed that levy administrators have consistently met the standard of keeping costs at or below 5 percent. For a sense of the dollars, the latest progress report shows that in 2010-11, the fund brought in $12.9 million, bringing the total available to $19.1 million. Of that, $560,000 was spent on administration. That’s 4.3 percent of $12.9 million. Now, we should point out that the administrative cap doesn’t work on an annual basis, according to the levy. If fund administrators don’t use up the entire 5 percent in one year, they can the following year. Which is why in fiscal year 2011-12, revenue was $10.8 million but administration expenses were $565,000, or 5.2 percent. Levy administrators look at the cumulative figure: Spokeswoman Mary Gay Broderick reports that from July 1, 2003, through June 30, 2012, total revenue was $95.7 million, with $4.5 million of the money spent on administration. That comes out to 4.7 percent. Grants totaled nearly $90.2 million. What is an administrative cost? Broderick explains they include all the costs associated with allocating, negotiating and monitoring grants. This includes salaries and benefits for staff, office lease, outside audit, computer costs, office supplies and general overhead, such as access to payroll and city attorney services. Other groups may define administrative costs differently. (The groups that receive grant money from the Children’s Levy use a different marker and the rates are negotiated separately. Generally, administration costs cannot exceed 15 percent of program expenses.) Finally, is a 5 percent cap a norm? We don’t know, and neither does Saltzman. He does not recall how early advocates settled on the figure. "I think the 5 percent came from my belief that we had a pretty high bar to gain public support for investing in kids, and they need to be assured that most of the dollars are going not for our administration but to the programs," he said. We hunted around for some context. The Portland Development Commission, which is the city’s economic development arm, granted $158,000 last year as part of its "Green Features Grant" program. Total staff time to manage the program was $17,000. That’s about a 10 percent administrative rate. PDC granted $569,000 through its "Community Livability Grant" program, with $87,000 to administer the program. That’s about 13 percent of costs. The Oregon Department of Justice tracks charities and nonprofits in Oregon. Management expenses and fundraising made up of expenses in 16 percent in 2009 and 13 percent in 2010. So 5 percent spent on issuing and tracking grants sounds reasonable. Portland’s Revenue Director Thomas Lannom said comparing administrative caps may not even be the most accurate way of gauging efficiency. An outfit like the Portland Children’s Levy needs little to no resources to collect revenue -- it comes out of property taxes -- while the new arts tax will require bodies to collect what is basically a head tax of $35 per adult worker. Lannom explained that voters authorized his office to spend up to 5 percent of revenue to collect the money. The Regional Arts and Culture Council has a separate 3 percent cap on coordination costs. PolitiFact Oregon can’t judge what is the proper amount for administrative costs, but we can say that Saltzman is accurate when he says the Portland Children’s Levy holds its "administrative expenses to less than 5 percent." The statement is True. | null | Dan Saltzman | null | null | null | 2012-12-19T06:00:00 | 2012-11-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-14223 | The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private-sector employer in Charlotte. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/17/pat-mccrory/nc-gov-pat-mccrory-defends-hb2-meet-press/ | North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory defended a law striking down a local LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance as a move against government intrusion Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. The city council of Charlotte, N.C., passed the ordinance in late February outlawing discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people in the city. Even though the protections were wide-ranging, the law has been dubbed the "bathroom ordinance" because it prohibited businesses from denying transgender people access to the bathroom consistent with the gender they identify with. In response, the North Carolina Legislature held an emergency session a month later and quickly sent a bill repealing the Charlotte ordinance — and prohibiting ones like it — to McCrory’s desk. McCrory’s signature prompted a national backlash from the gay community, businesses such as PayPal and celebrities including Bruce Springsteen. From the beginning, McCrory has characterized the now-defunct ordinance as extreme government overreach in statements, videos and most recently his national interview with NBC host Chuck Todd. "The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private-sector employer in Charlotte, N.C," McCrory said April 17. "It's not government's business to tell the private sector what their bathroom, locker room, or shower practices should be. Not only the private business, but also the Y.M.C.A. and other non-profit organizations." When Todd pressed McCrory to explain the lack of dialogue ahead of the Legislature’s one-day special session to pass the law, he returned to his talking point: "But again, I don't think government should be telling the private sector what their restroom and shower law should be, to allow a man into a woman's restroom, or a shower facility at a YMCA, for example." Is it true that the Charlotte ordinance would have dictated the bathroom practices of the entire private sector? "The Charlotte ordinance was clearly a mandate on every private business open to the public," Josh Ellis, McCrory’s communications director, told PolitiFact. Unlike his spokesman, McCrory didn’t specify that the "mandate" applies to businesses "open to the public." The distinction is important for this fact-check. Broadly speaking, the Charlotte ordinance expanded existing protections for race, color, religion and national origin to also cover marital and familial status, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression. The ordinance also struck down a section exempting the YMCA, YWCA and similar dormitories from a law ensuring equal access to services and facilities based on sex. Under the ordinance, it would have been illegal: 1. for the government of Charlotte to do business with anyone who had discriminated against those categories; 2. to deny "the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation" based on those categories; 3. and to make and circulate any statements or signs indicating that public accommodation will be refused based on those categories. Key to this fact-check are the words "place of public accommodation," which refers to any business offering services or goods to the public, per Charlotte’s municipal code. The definition is broad, but not as all-encompassing as McCrory makes it sound. It would have been illegal for places such as stores, hospitals, movie theaters, restaurants and hotels to prohibit transgender customers from using the bathroom or locker room with the gender he or she identifies with, according to a factsheet forwarded to us by city attorney Bob Hagemann. Hagemann also noted that the ordinance only protected customers, not employees. (The ordinance did not include protections for firing or hiring based on sexual orientation or gender identity.) In other words, the ordinance wouldn’t have really impacted businesses that don’t typically deal with customers or patrons in person, such as call centers, manufacturing plants, distribution centers and self-employed workers without office space. What’s more, the ordinance would have specifically exempted establishments closed to the public like private clubs, advocacy and religious organizations with strongly held beliefs like churches or charities, and nonprofits like homeless shelters, according to the factssheet. So what about the YMCA? Hagemann wasn’t sure if the YMCA, as a Christian charity, would have been exempted under the ordinance. "I don’t know enough about how they operate to know whether they would fall under one or more of the exceptions," Hagemann said. Ellis, McCrory's spokesperson, told PolitiFact the governor's office disagrees with Hagemann's interpretation of the ordinance. "The definition does not specifically exclude 'charities' or 'nonprofits.' In fact, the YMCA makes entertainment and recreation (and probably other services) available to the public, which would put it under the definition of a place of public accommodation," Ellis said. "Bottom line, we see the ordinance as applying to the YMCA." The YMCA of Charlotte did not respond immediately to calls or an email for comment. The YWCA of Central Carolinas, meanwhile, currently has a policy of allowing members to use the "the bathroom/locker room that is appropriate for them based on their gender identity" and supports the repeal of HB2. Our ruling McCrory said, "The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private-sector employer in Charlotte." This is an exaggeration. The ordinance would have applied to place of public accommodation, like hotels and stores and other places selling goods and services to the public. While that is a big category, the ordinance would not have applied to private clubs, nonprofits or organizations with viewpoints that would have been at odds with the law, nor would have it really impacted business that don't deal with customers. The talking point contains an element of truth but exaggerates the scope of the law. We rate his statement Mostly False. Update: After we published this fact-check, we heard back from Josh Ellis, McCrory's spokesman. It has been updated to include his comments. The ruling remains unchanged. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2d1960bf-248e-4286-ac92-d47880bff82d | null | Pat McCrory | null | null | null | 2016-04-17T18:58:00 | 2016-04-17 | ['Charlotte,_North_Carolina'] |
goop-01564 | Kristen Stewart Adopting With Stella Maxwell? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kristen-stewart-stella-maxwell-adopting/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kristen Stewart Adopting With Stella Maxwell? | 3:17 pm, February 15, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04428 | Signs letter saying Consumer Product Safety Commission is acting "without consultation or input from the company" to stop the sale of Buckyballs. | false | /tennessee/statements/2012/oct/15/marsha-blackburn/blackburn-letter-claims-consumer-commission-stoppi/ | Buckyballs and Buckycubes, tiny rare earth magnets manufactured in China and sold by the Maxfield & Oberton Co. of New York, are intended to be adult desk toys. They’re marketed as "the amazing magnetic desk toys you can’t put down," and have received rave reviews in magazines like Maxim, Wired, Esquire and People. They’ve also been swallowed by children and have been the cause of emergency surgeries. In July, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in filing only its second administrative complaint in 11 years, charged that their design poses a "substantial risk of injury to the public." U.S. Reps. Marsha Blackburn and Phil Roe, both R-Tenn., and five other members of Congress, wrote to President Obama on Oct. 1, saying the CPSC "is penalizing our nation’s brightest innovators and job creators through excessive and selective enforcement." The congressmen go on to say that they learned of the Buckyballs case during a recent hearing. They say CPSC "overreach and lack of flexibility has virtually eliminated these products and the jobs associated with their sales and distribution." They ask the president to review the case and for the CPSC to continue to work cooperatively with the company. They point out that 2.5 million of the small magnetic cube and ball toys have been sold in the past three years. Then they say that the "CPSC is working, without consultation or input from the company, to eliminate this product by stopping the sale of their products by directly approaching its retail partners and requesting a recall." We asked Blackburn’s communications director, Mike Reynard, for supporting evidence that the agency was acting without consultation or input from the company. After conferring with staffers, Reynard sent a USA Today story indicating the CPSC has been intervening with retailers to end sales of the magnets as it pursues its lawsuit. He said the lawsuit itself showed the agency is "done working with the company." In a followup email message, Reynard wrote: "You can't say you're working with someone when you are actively suing them to kill their product. That might be the administration's idea of a cooperative working relationship but it isn't for most Americans and business owners. CPSC should be working with Buckyballs to resolve any concerns around these limited cases when compared to the 2.5 million units sold. Clearly they have pushed to get this product off shelves as the USA Today story confirms specific vendors who have pulled the product." Roe spokeswoman Tiffany McGuffee said Roe takes the same position. Then we looked at the lengthy letter from Maxfield & Oberton CEO Craig Zucker laying out its case against the CPSC’s actions. It notes the "extraordinary lengths" the company has taken to prevent misuse of its products, including "warnings, education, labeling, retailer sales restrictions and continuous cooperation with the CPSC – right up until literally the moment they turned on us." Zucker’s letter explains the toys went on sale in March 2009 and were originally labeled for use by those 13 and older. When the federal rules for children’s games changed to include those 14 and older, the company entered into a May 2010 voluntary recall of all the toys with the original labeling. It went on to create a "comprehensive safety program" and began labeling the toys with a warning: "Keep Away From All Children." The company also required retailers to agree to rules for placement of its products in their stores, with new signs. It designed a "Magnet Safety" website in March and met with three CPSC commissioners and staff in April to discuss the expanded safety program. The company also created a medical advisory group and, along with its competitors, created the Coalition for Magnet Safety. But on July 10, the commission voted 3-1 to file the administrative complaint after, it said, "discussions with the company and its representatives failed to result in a voluntary recall plan that CPSC considered to be adequate." The CPSC said that, despite the warnings and labeling, people were still ingesting the magnets, sometimes after placing them on tongues or on cheeks to resemble piercings. The CPSC warned that when two magnets are swallowed, they can be attracted to each other through stomach or intestinal walls, resulting in serious injury requiring surgery. CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said in an interview that gastroenterologists have said the injuries often resemble "a gunshot to the gut" but without entrance or exit wounds. Wolfson noted that both Maxfield & Oberton and a Denver-based company, Zen Magnets, were sued after they failed to provide adequate suggestions for making their products safer. They were the first such complaints since the Arkansas-based Daisy BB gun company was sued in 2001. "Due to the number of ingestion incidents received by CPSC staff since the 2010 recall announcement and 2011 safety alert, CPSC staff seeks the remedies outlined in the complaint to stop further incidents and injuries to children," the agency said in a statement. Those remedies include stopping the sale of the toys and providing consumers with refunds. Our ruling Blackburn, Roe and their fellow letter writers are concerned that the "nation’s brightest innovators and job creators" are being penalized by an overzealous consumer protection agency. We’ll leave it to others to determine whether the sellers of Chinese magnetic balls qualify as the nation’s "brightest innovators," and will also decline to determine the truth of the letter writers’ assertion that the agency’s first administrative complaint in 11 years suggest "excessive and selective enforcement." Those are opinions, but it is possible to see whether the CPSC failed to consult or seek input from the company. The lengthy record laid out by the company’s CEO establishes there was, in fact, much consultation leading up the agency’s conclusion that the toys are inherently unsafe. We rule the Congress members’ statement False. | null | Marsha Blackburn | null | null | null | 2012-10-15T03:00:00 | 2012-10-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-11387 | Homelessness has skyrocketed across California. We have the nation’s highest homelessness rate and the nation’s highest homeless population. | mostly true | /california/statements/2018/mar/27/travis-allen/has-californias-homeless-population-skyrocketed-an/ | As California’s affordable housing crisis deepens, so does the state’s related and often intractable problem: homelessness. Candidates for governor made numerous assertions about the scale of California’s homeless population on March 8, 2018 during a housing forum in Sacramento. Here’s how GOP candidate and Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen portrayed the depths of California’s human emergency: "Homelessness has skyrocketed across California. We have the nation’s highest homelessness rate and the nation’s highest homeless population." The state has wrestled with this topic for decades, but has homelessness really "skyrocketed"? And how does its per capita and overall homeless population compare with other states? We set out on a fact check. Our research We found answers in a December 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: The 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress. It includes a state-by-state comparison of homeless populations based on a one-night count in each state in January 2017. The report tallies per capita homeless rates and total homeless populations along with comprehensive sets of demographic data. Sharon Rapport, associate director for California policy at the Corporation for Supportive Housing, described the report as "the most authoritative" resource on the topic. CSH is a national organization that develops housing policy and makes housing loans. She noted the HUD report is a snapshot of how many people are homeless at any given time. Her organization estimates the number of people who are homeless for at least part of a year is two to three times higher than any point-in-time tally. Has homelessness ‘skyrocketed’ in California? The report shows California’s homeless population jumped nearly 14 percent from 2016 to 2017 — to a total of more than 134,00 people. It rose nearly 9 percent over the previous seven years. That’s much different than the national picture. While the national homeless population ticked up about 1 percent in 2017, it remained 13 percent lower than in 2010, according to an NPR analysis following the report’s release. Notably, the rise statewide and nationally in 2017 was attributed to a surge in the number of people living on the streets in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities, at least in part due to a shortage of affordable housing. Compared to the nation’s relatively small increase, Allen is on track when he says California’s homeless population has "skyrocketed." How would Allen tackle the problem? "We need more state run mental institutions," the lawmaker said at the forum. The institutions would offer the homeless substance abuse and psychiatric services, he said, "so they can get back on their feet and re-enter the workforce." This Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 file photo Eddie, 51, a homeless man who would only give his first name and lives in a tent on the street in downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel) Does California have the nation’s highest homelessness rate? On this point, Allen is slightly off target. While the 2017 HUD report shows California’s per capita homeless rate is high, it’s not the highest. California has the third highest rate nationally with 34 in every 10,000 people in the state experiencing homelessness. Two states are worse off: New York and Hawaii. New York ranks second with 45 homeless people per 10,000. Hawaii, meanwhile, ranks first with 51 per 10,000. Does California have the highest homeless population in the nation? Allen is again correct on this part of his statement. The HUD report lists California’s total homeless population at 134,278. That’s about one quarter of the national homeless population of 553,742. New York was a distant second with 89,503 followed by Florida with 32,190. "California does have the highest homeless population in the nation according to the (HUD report), but not the highest rate of homelessness. As a state, our per capita rate is amongst the highest, but it is not the highest," Rapport, of Corporation for Supportive Housing, summarized in an email. Our ruling Candidate for governor and state lawmaker Travis Allen recently claimed homelessness has "skyrocketed" in California and that the state has "the nation’s highest homelessness rate and the nation’s highest homeless population." A December 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is considered the authority on state-by-state homeless counts, and shows Allen got two of his three points correct. California’s homeless numbers jumped nearly 14 percent in 2017 as nationwide levels remained nearly flat, giving credence to his first point. Meanwhile, the report showed two other states, Hawaii and New York, have a higher per capita homeless rate than California’s. Finally, it shows California, indeed, has the highest total homeless population at 134,278, far more than second place New York. Looking at Allen’s statement in sum, he was on the mark twice and only slightly strayed from the facts on the per capita claim. For that reason, we rate his overall statement Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. UPDATE: After publication, we received an email from a spokeswoman for Travis Allen. To support the statement, she cited an Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee Analysis of AB 2161 showing "California experienced the largest increase in the number of residents experiencing homelessness – over 16,000 individuals" from 2016 to 2017. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Travis Allen | null | null | null | 2018-03-27T15:23:29 | 2018-03-08 | ['California'] |
snes-00718 | President Donald Trump was labeled as either the best or the worst president ever on the cover of "Time" magazine. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-trump-best-worst-president-time/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Was Trump Labeled ‘Best President’ or ‘Worst President’ on a ‘Time’ Cover? | 25 April 2018 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Time_(magazine)'] |
pomt-10400 | Casualties and deaths are at (their) lowest point since literally the beginning of the war. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/06/john-mccain/mccain-overstates-good-news-out-of-iraq/ | At a town hall event in Nashville, Tenn., Sen. John McCain told the crowd that casualties and deaths in the Iraq war had reached a new low. "So the war in Iraq has been long and hard and tough and the sacrifice that's been made by brave young Americans has broken all of our hearts," McCain said June 2, 2008. "And we know that the war was terribly mismanaged for nearly four years. And I stood up and was called disloyal by Republicans and attacked by Democrats, Republicans and others because I said that strategy didn't work. And I advocated this new strategy (the troop surge), which obviously, according to news reports that casualties and deaths are, are at its lowest point since literally the beginning, and the success is remarkable." Indeed, there were 19 military deaths related to Operation Iraqi Freedom in May 2008, fewer than any previous month of the war, according to casualty reports issued by the Defense Department. We also checked with two independent organizations that track military deaths, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count and GlobalSecurity.org . The former agreed there were 19 deaths in May; the latter had it at 20, but that included a soldier on leave from Iraq who died in a car accident in Chicago. The month with the next-fewest deaths was February 2004, when 21 military personnel died, according to the Defense Department. So McCain was correct about deaths. But what about casualties? Dictionaries define "casualty" as a member of the armed forces lost to service through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment or capture. The military's monthly casualty reports , however, include only those lost to service through death and combat-related wounds. Statistics on noncombat injuries and illnesses are not available because the military's medical stations are not required to report them, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Les Melnyk said. We stuck to the military's definition of a casualty, because it keeps the statistics, and found McCain to be incorrect. There were 214 U.S. casualties in May 2008. In three prior months of the war, there were fewer: February 2004 (171), May 2003 (92) and June 2003 (177). By "casualties," McCain also might have meant those wounded in action, excluding deaths. By that standard as well he was off — the 195 wounded in May 2008 exceeded the number in February 2004 (150), January 2004 (187), August 2003 (181), June 2003 (147) and May 2003 (55), according to the Defense Department. McCain left himself wiggle room by attributing the claim to "news accounts." However, we could find no news account prior to McCain's statement that said casualties in May were a new low for the war. It's possible that when McCain said "casualties" he was referring to war-related deaths of Iraqis, another common measure of how the war is going. He may have seen one of the many news reports that said Iraqi deaths were down sharply in May. But as far as we could find, no news organization or independent group reported that the number of Iraqi deaths in May was a record low for the war. Iraq Coalition Casualty Count's total was 506, which exceeded the number of Iraqi deaths in both March and April of 2005 (the site does not have monthly statistics prior to 2005). No U.S. government agency tracks Iraqi deaths, Melnyk said. So by any reasonable measure, McCain was wrong to say casualties were at their lowest point since the beginning of the war. But he was right to make that claim about U.S. military deaths. We rate his claim Half True. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-06-06T00:00:00 | 2008-06-02 | ['None'] |
farg-00022 | Claimed that former President Obama once said, “President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP.” | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/trumps-bungled-twitter-attack-on-obama/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Eugene Kiely | ['gross domestic product'] | Trump’s Bungled Twitter Attack on Obama | September 10, 2018 | 2018-09-10 22:17:28 UTC | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-04459 | We confer more PhDs each year than any other university in America except Berkeley. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2012/oct/10/bill-powers/bill-powers-says-each-year-university-texas-falls-/ | In a recent speech, the president of the University of Texas boasted the Austin campus is annually close to first in the nation in bestowing very advanced degrees. Bill Powers said in his Sept. 27, 2012, "State of the University" address: "On the teaching side, a key indicator of our ‘business plan’ is the number of undergraduate and graduate degrees we confer each year. We confer more PhDs each year than any other university in America except" the University of California, Berkeley, he said. Nearly No. 1 every year? UT spokesman Gary Susswein and Allison Danforth, a campus expert on reporting and analysis, told us UT-Austin’s conferral of 857 doctoral degrees in 2009-10 placed it second nationally to Berkeley, which bestowed 891. Susswein pointed out the counts are available to the public on a website at the National Center for Education Statistics, based on information collected from institutions by the U.S. Department of Education. Susswein said that for its count, the university did not fold in degrees in law and medicine. "The reason is very simple," Susswein said in a voice-mail message. "There is no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison. We don’t have a medical school" at UT-Austin. And, he said, Texas A&M University "doesn’t have a law school. Texas A&M has a veterinary school. The University of Illinois has a medical school and a law school. "Within the realm of PhDs," Susswein said, "we’ve all got liberal arts colleges, we’ve all got engineering schools, we’ve all got science schools. So, it’s a more appropriate way to do an apples-to-apples comparison." Minnesota-based Capella University, which provides online offerings, placed third, awarding 841 doctorates, the tabulation indicates. Traditional universities rounded out the top 10: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; University of Florida; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the main campus of Ohio State University; University of California-Los Angeles; University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Stanford University, where 703 doctorates were awarded. Susswein said, too, that two days before Powers gave his speech, the national center posted information reflecting the results in 2010-11. UT-Austin bestowed 801 PhDs that year, placing third nationally behind Berkeley (920) and Capella (819). So, UT was second to Berkeley one year and third the year after. And how about "each" year, as Powers said? At our request, UT followed up by checking the database for the PhDs given out by each institution each year starting in 2003-04 through 2008-09, the year before the one initially stressed by UT. Over the six earlier years, Berkeley ranked first or second nationally in PhDs granted. In 2005-06, UT-Austin placed first nationally, besting Berkeley. In each of the other years, UT’s count placed it third to sixth nationally in PhDs awarded. For outside perspective, we reached Michael McLendon, a Southern Methodist University professor expert on higher education. McLendon said it’s not out of line for any university to compare its total PhDs granted to those given out by other institutions. He said, too, he was unaware of another measure that would give a meaninful glimpse into the productivity of universities at that level. McLendon said a mission of the nation’s public research universities is to create the next generation of scientists, scholars and researchers.The volume of students who achieve PhDs, he said, is an important indicator. UT-Austin, he said, "looks very good." Our ruling Powers said that each year, UT-Austin confer more PhDs than any other U.S. university except Berkeley. That was so in 2009-10 -- and in another recent year, UT awarded even more PhDs than Berkeley. In other years, however, UT ranked third, fourth, sixth, third and fourth nationally in PhDs bestowed as Berkeley ranked first or second. In the end, this speech claim misrepresents the results for each year by cherry-picking how the two public universities finished in one year, and those results were (narrowly) not even the latest available count. UT annually awards many PhDs. But each year of late, its total PhDs awarded has gone up and down compared to outcomes at Berkeley and a few other institutions. Put another way, UT fell short of this proclaimed finish in six out of eight recent years. We rate the statement, incorrectly making UT's tally out to be consistently second-best in the land, as Mostly False. | null | Bill Powers | null | null | null | 2012-10-10T15:00:00 | 2012-09-27 | ['United_States', 'Berkeley,_California', 'Doctor_of_Philosophy'] |
pomt-13290 | Says "Rob Portman voted for the bipartisan bill to affirm climate change is real, humans significantly contribute to it and it needs to be addressed." | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2016/oct/10/clearpath-action-fund/response-politifact-ohio-super-pac-takes-down-its-/ | ClearPath Action Fund, a conservative clean-energy and environmental PAC, cheered U.S. Sen. Rob Portman in a digital ad, calling him a "clean energy champion." The ad said of the Republican senator, "Rob Portman voted for the bipartisan bill to affirm climate change is real, humans significantly contribute to it and it needs to be addressed." PolitiFact previously looked into how many Republicans in Congress say they believe that climate change is real, and caused by human activity. The Republican lawmakers we identified who affirm climate change included Rep. Michael Grimm, N.Y.; Sen. Susan Collins, Maine; Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn.; Sen. Mark Kirk, Ill.; Rep. Chris Smith, N.J.; Sen. Bob Corker, Tenn.; Sen. John Thune, S.D.; and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J. Portman didn’t make PolitiFact’s list, so we wanted to clarify his climate change stance. We asked ClearPath Action Fund for the sources they used to champion Portman’s position, and a spokesman sent us three links. The first two were votes on amendments to the Keystone XL Pipeline Act in January 2015 (which was after PolitiFact did its roundup of Republicans who believe in climate change). The climate change amendments were only symbolic gauges of the "sense of the Senate." Portman voted "yea" on the first, introduced by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, "to express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax." That amendment passed. Portman also voted in support of a second amendment by Republican Sen. John Hoeven, a Keystone bill sponsor, which said that human activity affects climate change, but still supported the passage of the pipeline bill. That amendment fell short of the required 60 by one vote, and Hoeven himself voted against it. So far, so good for ClearPath Action Fund. Here's how one wrong word — "significantly" — pulls the PAC's praise for Portman's record into negative territory. A Democrat, Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, inched the global warming language a step further, calling for a vote on an amendment that stated "human activity significantly contributes to climate change." The adverb represents the crux of the partisan divide over climate change. The word "significantly" was significant enough for Portman to vote against that amendment, along with almost all of his fellow Republicans. Collins, Kirk, Alexander, Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) broke party lines and voted in favor. Portman has explained in interviews that he doesn’t want to qualify the impact that human activity has on the climate because "scientists have different views on that." These word gymnastics are necessary for Portman because of his large constituency in Ohio coal country. Coal-burning power plants provide 44 percent of the electricity used in the U.S., but are the biggest contributor to air pollution, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Sense of the Senate resolutions are done for messaging reasons, either in an attempt to move the policy debate, or to provide political cover of some sort. I think you had both types in play with the Keystone vote," said David Jenkins, president at Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. More recently, Portman voted for an amendment proposed by Graham that stated, "Climate change is real; human activity contributes to climate change," and that "the United States should be a world leader in addressing climate change…(and) Congress has a responsibility to take actions that reduce emissions and combat climate change..." Absent, again, is the word "significantly." But it is in the language of the ClearPath Action ad: "Rob Portman voted for the bipartisan bill to affirm climate change is real, humans significantly contribute to it and it needs to be addressed." ClearPath Action’s communications director, Darren Goode, responded immediately to PolitiFact via email, and said the group had made an "honest mistake" by including the s-word. "We have already pulled that video down and will fix it to reflect that," Goode wrote. While ClearPath Action confers "clean energy champion" status to Portman, at least two other environmental groups beg to differ. The National Resources Defense Council has regularly hammered Portman for sponsoring such measures as a budget amendment to allow states to opt out of the 1970 Clean Art Act and Clean Power Plan requirements for cutting carbon pollution. Likewise, the League of Conservation Voters gives Portman a low rating on their scorecard for his voting record on environmentally impactful measures. Our ruling An ad by ClearPath Action said, "Rob Portman voted for the bipartisan bill to affirm climate change is real, humans significantly contribute to it and it needs to be addressed." While Portman did vote for a bipartisan bill recognizing climate change as a threat in need of action, that bill did not include the word "significantly." Portman has voted against other amendments when they include the word "significantly," and has voted for amendments that do not quantify how much human activity affects climate change. ClearPath Action has since discontinued the ad, admitted the mistake and pledged to release a corrected version. We rate the original version of the ad Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/67974c57-e2bb-4327-a497-e2db21a126f0 | null | ClearPath Action Fund | null | null | null | 2016-10-10T14:20:12 | 2016-09-28 | ['None'] |
tron-01077 | Facebook Drug Task Force Now Monitoring All Posts | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/facebook-drug-task-force-now-monitoring-all-posts/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Facebook Drug Task Force Now Monitoring All Posts | Sep 28, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03568 | The IRS is "going to be in charge of our health care." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/20/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-irs-going-be-charge-our-heal/ | Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. is one of a number of Republican lawmakers who have recently sought to link the two longtime targets of conservatives -- the Internal Revenue Service and President Barack Obama’s health care law. In a May 15, 2013, interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Bachmann invoked an inspector general’s report critical of the IRS’ scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. She said, "So now we find out these people are making decisions based on our politics and beliefs, and they're going to be in charge of our health care. There's a huge national database that's being created right now. Your health care, my health care, all the Fox viewers’ health care, their personal, intimate, most close to the vest secrets will be in that database, and the IRS is in charge of that database? So the IRS will have the ability potentially -- will they? -- to deny health care, to deny access, to delay health care? This is serious! Based upon our political beliefs? That's why we have to repeal Obamacare. And I still think it's possible." We’ll be looking at a few claims from this exchange. In this item, we’ll look at whether there’s support for her claim that the IRS is "going to be in charge of our health care." The IRS has a number of roles in implementing the health care law -- the agency has posted a list that includes everything from levying additional payroll taxes on certain high-income Americans to taxation of medical devices and brand-name drugs. Its best known role, beginning in 2014, is to confirm that a taxpayer has health insurance and to assess a financial penalty if they do not. (The penalties start at $95 per adult in 2013 and rise to $695 per adult in 2016.) In another fact-check, we discussed another key role for the IRS -- approving subsidies for Americans seeking insurance on the newly created health exchanges. To do this, the IRS will need to check its databases to make sure an applicant is eligible to receive subsidies. But while we noted that any technical failures in carrying out this task could be problematic, it would be a huge stretch to say that this power puts the IRS "in charge of our health care." For one thing, most Americans will not see any dramatic change in how they obtain insurance, since the law leaves in place the existing system of health coverage provided by employers. In fact, in 2010, we chose the claim that the law amounts to a "government takeover of health care" as our Lie of the Year. To claim that one portion of the government -- the IRS -- is going to run health care is even more far-fetched. The IRS will have nothing to do with the nuts-and-bolts provision of health care to Americans. Even among federal agencies, the law puts far more responsibility in the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services. The department’s Web page on the health care law says that "HHS is responsible for implementing many of the health reform changes included in the Affordable Care Act," including "significant roles" for an alphabet soup of HHS offices, including the Administration on Aging, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The duties of the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the health care law is expansive enough to fill a 5-foot by 10-foot chart, according to an op-ed by Mike Leavitt, who held the office under President George W. Bush. "It puts more power than is prudent in the hands of one person," Leavitt wrote. Dan Kotman, a spokesman for Bachmann, explained her comment by saying that "the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare only meets the constitutionality standard as a tax, and the entity in the United States that enforces tax policy is the IRS. If you don’t comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate, you will be answering to the IRS. That is clearly the context she’s talking within because she had just said, ‘The IRS, Greta, is the chief enforcer of Obamacare.’" But several health policy experts agreed that’s not the same as the IRS being "in charge of our health care." William McBride, an economist with the business-backed Tax Foundation, said the IRS has been tasked with "a tremendous amount" and that the agency is in "uncharted territory," but he added that he doubts the IRS "will effectively control much of anything related to health care." Other health policy specialists were even more blunt. "Not accurate," said Gail Wilensky, who headed Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush and who is now a health policy consultant. It’s a "ludicrous statement," said Jonathan Oberlander, professor of social medicine and health policy and management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Our ruling Bachmann said the IRS is "going to be in charge of our health care." The IRS does play a number of key roles under the health care law, but it’s wrong to say it would "be in charge" of any American’s health care. The IRS won’t oversee interactions between doctors and patients, nor will it play any more of a role than confirming that exchange purchasers qualify for subsidies. Even within the government, HHS plays a much bigger role. We rate Bachmann’s claim False. | null | Michele Bachmann | null | null | null | 2013-05-20T12:02:13 | 2013-05-15 | ['None'] |
tron-02560 | Andy Rooney write about Older Women | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/rooney-older-women/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Andy Rooney write about Older Women | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02246 | Caitlyn Jenner “Livid” She’s Not Part Of New ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ Deal? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/caitlyn-jenner-keeping-up-with-kardashians-deal-kuwtk-contract/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Caitlyn Jenner “Livid” She’s Not Part Of New ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ Deal? | 2:51 pm, November 5, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12012 | Says the Austin metro region "will lead" the nation "with population growth over 50%" over the next 30 years. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2017/sep/20/john-thomaides/john-thomaides-san-marcos-mayor-says-austin-region/ | San Marcos Mayor John Thomaides floated big numbers in a tweet suggesting the Austin area is on pace to outgrow all other places nationally in coming decades. "Metro population will grow by 67 million people over the next 30 years," Thomaides wrote in June 2017. "Austin metro will lead with population growth over 50%." Watch out San Antonio and parts between, Austin's about to bulge worse than the perilous interstate that splits Texas. But hold on: We can’t fact-check whether predictions will come true. In this instance instead, we focused on whether Thomaides, who was elected mayor in 2016, had a solid factual basis for his claim about the Austin metropolitan area’s likely population. Mayor cites economist For starters, Thomaides told us by email that he jotted the information in his tweet while attending a panel discussion including economist Jim Diffley during the 2017 United States Conference of Mayors in Miami Beach. Diffley, who works for IHS Markit, a consulting firm that says it gives clients including governments and banks "next-generation information, analytics and solutions," later confirmed that he’d delivered the numbers--including the firm’s expectation that from 2016 to 2046, metro regions nationally will gain 66 million added residents. Diffley emailed us a May 2017 IHS Markit report presenting the firm’s population-growth forecasts for metro areas coast to coast--including a chart in the report’s appendix stating that from 2016 to 2046, the five-county Austin-Round Rock area’s population will grow 87 percent--surging from 2,059,500 to 3,858,800. The five counties are Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell. That 87-percent forecast shouldn’t seem a shock. In 2014, we rated True a claim that the population of Austin alone had basically doubled every 25 years since its founding. Notably too, the report projects the greater Austin area will grow considerably more than what Thomaides said. As the report headed to print, Diffley told us by email, the firm acted on fresh U.S Census Bureau figures by reaching a new, slightly lower projected 2046 population for the Austin region of 3,780,000 residents, which it lately predicts would be up 83 percent from a new estimate of the region’s 2016 population, 2,064,000. Austin-Round Rock predicted to grow faster than every region? We kept our sights on the report behind Thomaides's claim. That report, we noticed, indicates the Austin area's population increasing far faster than other regions nationally--though not all other regions. Among big Texas metro areas, the report chart suggests the San Antonio area will grow 53 percent, from 2,431,700 residents to 3,727,100 people. Other big Texas metros and their projected 30-year growth rates: Dallas-Fort Worth, 57 percent; Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, 56 percent; McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, 59.8 percent; and El Paso, 30 percent. Nationally, the chart indicates, only three less-populous Florida metros will grow at a greater clip than the Austin area. Per the chart, The Villages will see 96.5 percent population growth, reaching 245,400 residents; Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island will see 88 percent population growth, reaching 694,300 residents; and Cape Coral-Fort Myers will experience 84 percent growth, becoming home to 1,339,000 people. We further inquired how the firm reached its regional projections. By phone, Karl Kuykendall, an IHS Markit regional economist, said that the company maintains econometric models for states and metro area that take into account historical growth including births, deaths and domestic migration--also factoring in economic determinants such as jobs and income changes. Kuykendall, noting the Austin region’s population about doubled from 1990 to 2010 in going from 856,000 to more than 1.7 million, said: "Austin has been one of the fastest-growing areas over the last two to three decades." And, he said, as long as key drivers drawing people to the region "don’t fundamentally change, you can have a lot of confidence" in its 2046 projections. He cited as factors the region’s "highly educated" workforce, attractive cultural amenities and its reputation as a hotbed for technology start-ups and expansions. Geographically too, Kuykendall said, "there’s still a lot of room for growth." Alternate growth scenarios We queried a pair of Austin experts on growth for takes on the IHS Markit projections. By email, Beverly Kerr of the Austin Chamber of Commerce called IHS Markit a solid source. "I don’t think the projection that Austin will be at 3,858,800 by 2046 is too out there," Kerr said. Kerr otherwise noted that Ryan Robinson, the City of Austin demographer, has separately projected the Austin-Round Rock area having a 2045 population of more than 4.3 million, more than doubling an estimated 2 million residents in 2016, a forecast Robinson reaffirmed to our emailed inquiry. Kerr wrote that Robinson assumes the region’s rate of growth decreasing over time, which she said offers "a reasonable middle ground between the aggressive and conservative versions of the state projections." Kerr otherwise pointed out that the state demographer, Lloyd Potter, has said that assuming migration continues at the pace set in 2000-2010, the Austin-Round Rock metro area would be home to 4,651,780 people in 2046--for more than a doubling in residents. If that’s too aggressive an assumption, Kerr noted, the Potter-led Texas Demographic Center also provides a forecast of 3,081,305 residents in 2046, assuming a migration rate half the 2000-2010 rate. That would still be a 60 percent bump from this more conservative scenario’s estimate of 1,930,408 people living in the region in 2016. We also asked the census bureau about forecasts of regional population changes. By email, spokeswoman Virginia Hyer said the agency doesn’t produce metro-level population projections. Our ruling Thomaides said the Austin metro region "will lead" the nation "with population growth over 50%" over the next 30 years. That "over 50%" is actually an understatement, based on what experts including the Texas state demographer predict. And while the report behind the mayor’s claim showed Austin No. 1 in projected growth among similar-sized metro areas, less populous metro areas in Florida were projected to grow at even faster clips. We rate this claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | John Thomaides | null | null | null | 2017-09-20T18:42:15 | 2017-06-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-02268 | Says U.S. Reps. Phil Gingrey and Jack Kingston have "even changed votes to what I voted, multiple times." | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2014/apr/09/paul-broun/broun-says-campaign-rivals-following-his-lead/ | To hear one Georgia congressman tell it, he’s the pied piper of some of his colleagues in the U.S. House. "It’s become a joke in Congress how Dr. (Phil) Gingrey and Mr. (Jack) Kingston have been following my votes," U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, told The Daily Beast, a news and lifestyle website. "They’ve even changed votes to what I voted, multiple times. Members of Congress are laughing about it." Broun, Gingrey and Kingston, veteran Georgia Republicans serving in the House, are vying for the same seat in the U.S. Senate this year, along with several other candidates. PolitiFact Georgia wanted to find out if Broun is correct or not about Gingrey and Kingston following his lead. All three have attempted to claim title as the most conservative candidate in the crowded GOP field. They have voted the same way all but a handful of times since 2013. Broun, though, has been the most vocal of the three men against some GOP initiatives, usually arguing they are not conservative enough. Since 2013, Broun is the only Republican House member from Georgia who has voted with his party less than 95 percent of the time, according to the website Open Congress. Broun has voted along party lines 87 percent of the time. Gingrey and Kingston have both voted along party lines at a 95 percent clip. Broun directed us to a handful of votes among the more than 700 votes taken by the House since the beginning of 2013 to make his case. Through spokesmen, both Gingrey and Kingston said Broun’s claims were absurd. But this fact-check really got interesting when we interviewed another member of Congress who told us a story about a recent vote concerning Broun and Kingston. On March 6, the House was preparing to vote on an aid package for Ukraine when Broun told his seatmate, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., about his plan to play cloak and dagger in the U.S. Capitol. "I’m voting no on this, but I’m going to wait until the end to see if (Gingrey and Kingston) change their votes once I vote," Massie said, quoting Broun. Gingrey and Kingston voted in favor of the legislation early during the voting period, Massie recalled. With one minute left, Broun followed through with his vote against the bill. As time expired, Massie said he looked up at the electronic board tracking how each member voted and noticed that Kingston voted against the legislation, House Resolution 4152. "Hey, look at the board!" Massie said. "I told you so," Broun replied. Massie said he decided to share his story about the March 6 vote with PolitiFact Georgia after Gingrey and Kingston said that Broun was wrong in his assertion. "To say Paul Broun is misleading would be false," Massie told us. Broun and Kingston did vote no, records show. Gingrey voted in favor of the legislation that day. Video is not allowed of the electronic board that records the votes, so there is no way to see if Kingston first voted in favor of the legislation. Video of the vote tally is permitted, and it shows the Republican vote count changed as the time expired from 195 in favor of the bill and 21 against it to 194 to 22. One more no vote was added to the Republican total after time expired. Massie said Broun’s prediction makes a strong argument about Kingston’s motives. "I cannot tell you why (Kingston) changed his vote, but I can tell you he changed it after Paul Broun voted and Paul Broun predicted it would happen," Massie said. Kingston campaign spokesman Chris Crawford said Massie may have been looking at the vote change of another congressman. "I don’t ever recall him voting for it," Crawford said of Kingston. "I think Congressman Massie is mistaken. Perhaps he mistook something but Jack never voted for that bill." Former Georgia congressman George "Buddy" Darden said some members will change their votes during the 15 minutes they have to vote on legislation. Sometimes, he said, they’ve voted on the wrong legislation. Sometimes, they’re unsure which way they want to vote. Sometimes, they’ll change their vote if an extra vote or two is needed for a bill to pass. Darden, a Democrat, stressed that a member’s vote is not official until it is recorded in the Congressional Record. So did Kingston switch his vote on HR 4152 and did he do it because Broun voted no? "The only person who knows for sure is Jack Kingston," said Darden, senior counsel at the law firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge. About four weeks later, on April 1, the House took another vote on the Ukraine legislation. Records show Broun again voted no, Gingrey again voted yes but Kingston did not vote. Kingston, though, did not vote on other legislation that came before the House afterward, records show. The Broun campaign also directed us to news coverage to support his argument. The first was an article on the popular Washington, D.C., news site, Politico. It was written in March 2013, before Kingston announced he was running for the U.S. Senate. The article was about Broun "yanking much of the congressional delegation to the right and throwing their votes and the support of leadership into a daily flux." The Politico article reported that Kingston admitted that Broun’s rightward leanings were changing his voting pattern. Crawford, the Kingston spokesman, noted that the article "doesn't provide a quote from Mr. Kingston but the impression of the reporter." Politico reported in that article, Broun voted against a procedural motion concerning legislation to keep the government running. The article reported that the "dominoes then began to fall. Kingston and Gingrey ended up voting against both the procedural motion and the resolution itself." Broun’s case against Gingrey focused on news coverage such as the Politico story and a 2013 vote on raising the federal debt ceiling. Broun’s campaign shared a couple of tweets from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Washington bureau account that suggest Gingrey flip-flopped on the debt ceiling vote in 2013 after Broun voiced his opposition to the plan. The first tweet, on Jan. 22, 2013, showed that Gingrey was prepared to vote yes while Broun was the only Georgia lawmaker in the tweet who was planning to vote no. The second tweet, posted on Jan. 23, 2013, showed Broun and Gingrey voted against raising the debt ceiling. Gingrey spokesman Cameron Harley said the congressman’s votes were not being manipulated by Broun’s votes. "The votes Congressman Gingrey takes on the House floor have always been driven by the conservative Georgia values embodied by his constituency and to suggest that they are driven by Congressman Broun is simply false," Harley said. "There are myriad occasions where their votes have differed, including votes on policy critical to protecting Americans from Obamacare's most egregious provisions while Republicans work toward a full repeal. Furthermore, Congressman Gingrey has voted countless times not to raise the debt ceiling -- a hard stance he took long before announcing his candidacy for U.S. Senate. The will of his constituency has always been, and will always be, the only bellwether for his judgement as a public servant." To sum up, Broun said in the article that fellow congressmen Gingrey and Kingston have "even changed votes to what I voted, multiple times." Broun’s case against Gingrey is a matter of perception. In Kingston’s case, it boils down to who do you believe? Broun, Massie or Kingston? It’s a case of "he said, he said." In general, the three candidates have voted the same way all but a handful of times since 2013. Broun needed more examples to prove this has happened multiple times. He may be correct about what happened concerning Kingston and the Ukraine vote, but there’s no way to know for sure. And if Kingston and Gingrey changed votes, there’s no way to know whether they did it because of Broun. Thus, his evidence is thin. Therefore, we rate Broun’s claim Mostly False. Under PolitiFact’s rating system, Mostly False means the claim contains some element of truth, but doesn’t tell the whole story. | null | Paul Broun | null | null | null | 2014-04-09T06:00:00 | 2014-03-25 | ['United_States'] |
goop-00585 | George Clooney, Amal Getting “$1 Billion Divorce,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/george-clooney-amal-divorce-announcement-one-billion/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | George Clooney, Amal NOT Getting “$1 Billion Divorce,” Despite Report | 10:11 am, July 25, 2018 | null | ['George_Clooney'] |
tron-00811 | Thoughts on Aging from Comedian George Carlin | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/carlin-on-aging/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Thoughts on Aging from Comedian George Carlin | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08606 | Washington politicians "run Social Security like a Ponzi scheme." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2010/sep/23/ron-johnson/senate-candidate-ron-johnson-likens-social-securit/ | It’s not often that a key platform of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal is compared to Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. But 2010 is anything but a typical election year. Like numerous Republicans, U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson has been likening Social Security -- created 75 years ago to provide retirees with a steady income -- to a Ponzi scheme. It’s an eye-catching comparison that has been made by Senate candidates Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharon Angle in Nevada, among others. Where does Johnson fit in? In a move to head off criticism from his opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, Johnson put his Ponzi comparison at the center of TV and radio ads that began running Sept. 15, 2010. "I'm going to tell you what Senator Feingold and his allies' next attack against me will be," Johnson says in the radio ad. "They're going to tell you I said Washington politicians have run Social Security like a Ponzi scheme. Johnson goes on to say: "I did say that, and it's true. During his 18 years in the Senate, Russ Feingold and politicians from both parties have raided $2 trillion from the Social Security trust fund. They spent your savings. The money is gone. And what did we get? Bigger government, wasteful spending and an IOU." The television ad is similar, with Johnson instead saying "Washington treats Social Security like a Ponzi scheme." A $2 trillion Ponzi scheme? Now that would be a big-time crime, especially since Social Security affects virtually every American. Indeed, at that size, even Madoff would be green with envy. Let’s start with what the phrase "Ponzi scheme" means. The scheme was named after Charles Ponzi, the Boston con man who in 1920 bilked investors out of about $10 million by promising returns of up to 100% in just 45 days. Ponzi invested little of the cash. Instead, he used it to finance his lavish lifestyle. He kept the scheme afloat by using new money to pay off older investors Think robbing Peter to pay Paul. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers a simple definition: "A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors." On one level, that sounds like Social Security, which uses taxes on today’s wage earners to fund the retirement checks of millions of Americans. But remember: The SEC also notes that a Ponzi is an "investment fraud." Let’s look deeper, at how Johnson applies the characterization to the Social Security system. Is he going beyond superficial similarities? Here’s what Johnson said at a July 26, 2010 luncheon sponsored by Wispolitics.com, when he was asked about the Ponzi comparison. "What is the most famous Ponzi scheme we most recently heard of?" Johnson asked. Audience members responded Madoff. Johnson went on to say: "What did Bernie Madoff do? .... He took money in from investors. He paid some of the older investors off and he spent the rest of the money. The money was spent, it’s gone." In the next breath he moved on to Social Security and said: "You just tell me how that’s different from a Ponzi scheme." So, Johnson takes it beyond simply saying Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. He’s invoking Madoff’s name to make his point. Johnson’s campaign manager, Juston Johnson, said neither he nor his boss is "saying the Social Security Administration is a fraud" -- pointing out the candidate wants to fix the system. Asked why the candidate used Madoff’s name, if it wasn’t meant to imply criminal wrongdoing, the spokesman declined to answer. The issue, according to Juston Johnson, is the more than $2 trillion the Senate candidate says was raided from the Social Security Trust Fund. While the Social Security Administration objects to politicians saying the trust fund was raided, spokeswoman Dorothy Clark said in an e-mail that "The Social Security Trust Funds currently holds over $2.5 trillion in interest bearing Treasury securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government." In other words, a giant IOU. The IOU part echoes what Johnson said, but the candidate misses a huge point -- and one that undermines his own statement. A Ponzi scheme is based on a lie. There is a promise that participants will get their money back plus a whole lot more. But the bulk of the money isn’t invested -- it’s generally blown by the swindler. The IOU to the fund, on the other hand, is backed by the full credit and faith of the U.S. government. It must be repaid, with interest -- though doing so may cause the government to borrow even more. Eugene Steuerle, a Social Security expert at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research think tank, said the $2 trillion in debt came about because the Social Security system used to run a surplus -- which helped encourage bigger spending by the rest of the government. Said Steuerle: "To the extent that the candidate is arguing (that Social Security) is run like a Ponzi scheme, in the sense that there’s really no significant savings in the system, that’s right." To combat the Ponzi comparisons, the Social Security Administration created a web page in 2009 that looked at Ponzi’s scheme and its own operation. The site acknowledges "a superficial analogy" between a Ponzi scheme and pay-as-you-go programs such as Social Security. But, it argues the "structure, logic, and mode of operation (of Social Security has) nothing in common with Ponzi schemes or chain letters or pyramid schemes." The agency’s conclusion: "The American Social Security system has been in continuous successful operation since 1935. Charles Ponzi's scheme lasted barely 200 days." We figured there were two people who could truly sort out the comparison. Unfortunately, Ponzi died in 1949. And the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not expect the 72-year-old Madoff to be available for public appearances until Nov. 14, 2039. So, we went to the next best person -- Mitchell Zuckoff, who, in 2005, wrote the book "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend." He doesn’t buy the comparison. "The important difference and the fundamental difference is that there is no secret to how Social Security is run," said Zuckoff, who researched the question for a 2009 article in Fortune Magazine. "No one is being misled, no one is taking the money and running, which are fundamental aspects of a true Ponzi schemes." Comparing the two "is a common, and I think deeply misleading suggestion, that is openly used more as scare tactic than to truly illuminate the real issues," Zuckoff said in an interview. In his Fortune piece, Zuckoff wrote: "Social Security is morally the polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme and fundamentally different from what Madoff ... did." So, let’s come back to Johnson’s original statement. The candidate says politicians "run Social Security like a Ponzi scheme." On a superficial level, that is true -- money is taken in from current workers (new participants) and used to pay off obligations to retirees (old participants). The operative word is "superficial." Unlike a Ponzi, Social Security is obligated to pay benefits, a commitment the shysters who run Ponzi schemes do not share. As for those IOUs, the government is required to make good on the money borrowed from the fund -- and to pay it back with interest. What’s more, participants are aware of how the system is operating. It’s all public. In a Ponzi, investors have no clue where their money is going and are told lies by the promoters. We rate Johnson’s claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Ron Johnson | null | null | null | 2010-09-23T09:00:00 | 2010-09-15 | ['None'] |
snes-05324 | KFC and McDonald's are giving away free lifetime passes to Facebook users who like and share a post. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lifetime-passes-kfc-mcdonalds/ | null | Inboxer Rebellion | null | Kim LaCapria | null | FALSE: Lifetime Passes for Free Fast Food | 24 January 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03629 | An electoral map based on Facebook analytics shows Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election in a "clean sweep." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-analytics-electoral-map-shows-trump-sweep/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Dan Evon | null | ‘Facebook Analytics’ Electoral Map Shows Trump Sweep | 4 November 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Facebook'] |
farg-00333 | California State Assembly passed a bill that would ban the sale of the Bible. | misleading | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/04/california-bill-wouldnt-ban-the-bible/ | null | askfactcheck | FactCheck.org | Angelo Fichera | ['Bible'] | California Bill Wouldn’t Ban the Bible | April 25, 2018 | 2018-04-25 21:45:02 UTC | ['None'] |
hoer-01090 | I Just Saw My Ex is Still Stalking My Profile | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/i-just-saw-my-ex-is-still-stalking-my-profile-facebook-scam-post/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | I Just Saw My Ex is Still Stalking My Profile Facebook Scam Post | October 7, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00582 | Will make "a 35 percent reduction in workers' compensation costs." | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/606/lower-workers-compensation-costs-by-35-percent/ | null | scott-o-meter | Rick Scott | null | null | Lower workers' compensation costs by 35 percent | 2010-12-21T09:36:20 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04942 | A patron paid the restaurant tab for seven different families and left his server a $1,500 tip at a Denny's. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/today-i-met-an-angel/ | null | Glurge Gallery | null | David Mikkelson | null | Today I Met an Angel | 10 April 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01595 | IRS refund checks are not what we think | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/taxadvance/ | null | government | null | null | null | IRS refund checks are not what we think | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01167 | Actress Demi Moore proclaimed that she doesn't want Trump supporters for fans. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/demi-moore-trump-supporters/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Demi Moore Say ‘I Do Not Want Trump Supporters for Fans’? | 21 January 2018 | null | ['Demi_Moore'] |
pomt-14357 | Says there are no political prisoners in Cuba. | false | /global-news/statements/2016/mar/22/raul-castro/are-there-political-prisoners-cuba/ | Cuba President Raúl Castro criticized the United States’ human rights record — and defended his own — in a joint press conference with President Barack Obama in Havana. At the first official meeting between leaders of the two countries in 50 years, Castro dinged the United States on the lack of universal access to health care, free education and equal pay before he fended off a CNN reporter’s question about political prisoners on the island. "President Castro, my father is Cuban. He left for the United States when he was young. Do you see a new and democratic direction for your country? And why (do) you have Cuban political prisoners? And why don’t you release them?" asked CNN’s Jim Acosta. (He then asked if Castro prefers Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.) "Give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately," Castro said, according to the White House translation of his remarks. "Just mention a list. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names. After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners. And if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends." A Miami Herald translation put his response in slightly different words, though Castro’s message is not in dispute: "Give me the list now of political prisoners to release. If there are political prisoners, they’ll be free before nightfall." We thought we’d oblige. The task is complicated, given that human rights groups and dissidents themselves disagree on the definition of a political prisoner and just how many there are. But the notion that Cuba doesn’t have any at all — a notion that the regime has stuck by for decades — is doubtful. A common understanding of the term is people imprisoned for exercising their beliefs peacefully. "If you ask any autocrat in the world, they’re going to say the same thing. If you ask Maduro in Venezuela, if you ask Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Russia, they’ll all say nobody is in jail for political reasons," said Carlos Ponce, director of Latin America programs at the watchdog group Freedom House. Making a list, checking it thrice A few hours before Obama landed on the island on March 20, Cuban authorities arrested more than 50 Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in White) dissidents who were demanding increased human rights. This round of crackdowns was actually part of a weekly ritual — arrest, release and repeat — and part of the reason why tallying the exact number of political prisoners is so difficult. We compiled counts from several human rights and activist groups, as well as one vetted by Spanish-language network Univision. All together, the groups list 97 current political prisoners, 54 of whom appear on more than one list. On the low end, the human rights group Cuban Democratic Directorate counts 17, Univision named 19. Liudmila Cedeño, an activist with Unión Patriótica de Cuba, the country’s largest opposition group, told PolitiFact that 22 of its members are imprisoned. On the high end, the exile group Cuban American National Foundation lists 47 and the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba 51. International human rights groups have murkier tallies. Human Rights Watch pins the number at "dozens," citing Cuba-based human rights groups. Amnesty International, meanwhile, recognized seven "prisoners of conscience" who were released in 2015, but none today. (More on this later.) Some experts contend that the lists are bogus, as some include people who would not normally be considered political prisoners. In 2010, for example, the Associated Press vetted a list of 167 political prisoners by Elizardo Sanchez, the head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. About 50 people on the list "were convicted of terrorism, hijacking or other violent crimes, and four are former military or intelligence agents convicted of espionage or revealing state secrets," according to the AP. Even for those who are traditionally recognized as political prisoners, Cuba rejects the term, Salim Lamrani, a Cuba expert at the University of Paris, told PolitiFact. "Cuba’s point of view is the following: People condemned to jail sentences were not imprisoned because they expressed ideas against the authorities but because they accepted money from the U.S. government," he said, adding that he agrees with Castro that Cuba has no political prisoners. Nonetheless, in 2015, Cuba released 53 people the United States named as political prisoners as part of the deal to normalize trade relations, even though the regime had denied their existence for decades, said Ponce of Freedom House. Out of the 97 people in our aggregate tally, here are examples of a few who are most in line with the traditional definition of political prisoner: • Yoelkis Rosabal Flores: A member of the Unión Patriótica de Cuba, he was arrested in May 2014 for staging a protest calling for the release of a fellow UNPACU member. Flores was charged with public disorder and sentenced to four years in jail. • Mario Ronaide Figueroa Dieguez: A member of the Unión Patriótica de Cuba, he was arrested in 2012 for staging a protest and told that he would be released if he left the union. Dieguez did but was rearrested in December 2014 (for reasons that aren’t clear) and sentenced to three years in jail. • Emilio Serrano Rodríguez: A member of the Unión Patriótica de Cuba, he was arrested in February 2015 for alleged "illegal commercial transactions" and currently waiting for a trial. According to the union, Rodríguez had participated in a protest. • Ricardo González Sendiña: A member of Frente de Acción Cívica Orlando Zapata Tamay and the son of Barbara Sendiña, a human rights activist with Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), Ricardo Sendiña was arrested in 2015 for an alleged crime of theft and slaughter of livestock. He was sentenced to six years. Ghosts of gulags past Gone are the days when people were explicitly jailed in Cuba for political opposition. The crackdown is manifesting in different ways on the island today. "Nobody has a clue what is inside the jail system. It’s not clear," Ponce said. Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division, noted the regime also cracks down on opposition preemptively by "blocking access to the websites of independent journalists, threatening and detaining people to prevent them from participating in peaceful protests and political meetings, and using an Orwellian law to imprison critics for ‘pre-criminal dangerousness.’ " Ponce and Marselha Gonçalves Margerin, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Americas, emphasized that the penal code discourages political opposition indirectly by criminalizing contempt of public officials, public disorder and resistance to officials. Margerin told PolitiFact that just because Amnesty doesn’t list prisoners of conscience in Cuba currently doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The practice is rare as the burden of proof is high and often impossible to meet in a country that Amnesty hasn’t been able to access since 1990, she said. Take Amnesty’s last recognized prisoner of conscience. Danilo Maldonado, a 32-year-old graffiti artist known as "El Sexto," was arrested in early 2015 after painting "Fidel" and "Raul" on two pigs. Amnesty declared him a prisoner of conscience because his court records showed that the nonviolent artists was imprisoned "for the sole reason of his beliefs," said Margerin. For months, Maldonado was detained without any charges against him and released in October 2015. This practice of arbitrary arrests and temporary or short-term detention has become the new way of stifling dissent on the island. "How can you dispute a detention if there are no charges or if the person disappeared for a short period of time?" asked Margerin. The independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported about 8,600 politically motivated detentions in 2015 and 2,500 from the beginning of the year to March 4, 2016. Why are authorities more prone to short-term crackdowns than long-term imprisonment? For one, it’s cheaper and it’s easier, said Ponce of Freedom House. For another, more and more people are willing to demonstrate. "Every Sunday, they take all the (Damas de Blanco) and all the other groups protesting. They arrest them and keep them for 48 hours and then release them. Then they do it again next Sunday," Ponce said, adding that this is the case for a lot of prominent activists like El Sexto. Activists and experts are cautiously optimistic that Obama’s visit could loosen things up, at least for a couple of days on the island. "(Castro) would be re-enacting a ritual we’ve seen for decades when foreign leaders visit Cuba: A few jail cell doors swing open, but neither the laws nor the system changes," said Vivanco. "Unless the government makes meaningful reforms, the regime can always resume jailing people for their speech and political activity once the visitor is wheels-up." Our ruling Castro said there are no political prisoners in Cuba. Numerous activists and human rights groups beg to differ. While it is impossible to get an exact count, given the opaqueness of Cuba’s criminal justice system and the variations in definitions, there are at least a handful of political prisoners in the country. Castro is really downplaying his regime’s weekly crackdowns on demonstrators who want free expression. We rate Castro’s claim False. | null | Raúl Castro | null | null | null | 2016-03-22T17:05:12 | 2016-03-21 | ['Cuba'] |
tron-01830 | New Stroke Indicator Can Help Save Lives | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/new-stroke-indicator-can-help-save-lives/ | null | health-medical | null | null | ['Trending Rumors'] | New Stroke Indicator Can Help Save Lives – Fiction! | Apr 15, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
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Healthcare Related Entries
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