claimID stringlengths 10 10 | claim stringlengths 4 8.61k ⌀ | label stringclasses 116 values | claimURL stringlengths 10 303 | reason stringlengths 3 31.1k ⌀ | categories stringclasses 611 values | speaker stringlengths 3 168 ⌀ | checker stringclasses 167 values | tags stringlengths 3 315 ⌀ | article title stringlengths 2 226 ⌀ | publish date stringlengths 1 64 ⌀ | climate stringlengths 5 154 ⌀ | entities stringlengths 6 332 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
pomt-05282 | Says new figures he released showing Wisconsin job gains for 2011 are "the final job numbers." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/may/24/scott-walker/recall-battle-wisconsin-gov-scott-says-new-figures/ | A day after Gov. Scott Walker announced statistics indicating Wisconsin had gained jobs in 2011 -- not lost them, as earlier numbers showed -- he touted the new figure in a TV ad, saying: "The government just released the final job numbers. And, as it turns out, Wisconsin actually gained -- that's right, gained -- more than 20,000 new jobs during my first year in office." We’ve rated Mostly False Walker’s claim in the ad that 33,200 jobs have been added during his watch when you add the new 2011 figure to monthly numbers for 2012. While both sets of numbers are the most up to date, they are gathered differently and cannot be added in this manner, and they were presented without critical facts. We’ve also rated False a claim by Democrat Tom Barrett -- Walker’s challenger in the June 5, 2012 recall election -- that Walker was "cooking the books" and had "dreamed up" the 20,000 figure. It’s a real number the state submitted to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. But there is another question tied in to both statements: Are the 2011 figures Walker announced three weeks before the election "the final job numbers" as he said in the ad? His claim suggests, despite the controversy that ensued after his announcement, that the new figure has been reviewed by the federal government and is complete. The 20,000 figure -- a precise figure of 23,321 appears on the screen in the ad -- comes from a quarterly jobs count involving about 95 percent of Wisconsin employers done by the state. The day Walker announced the figure the state reported job numbers for the final quarter of the year to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the official jobs scorekeeper. But just submitting the count does not make it final. BLS will review the quarterly count and possibly adjust it before releasing a figure in late June 2012, some three weeks after the recall election. That’s when an official jobs lost or added figure for 2011 will be, well, official. Walker himself has acknowledged it’s unusual for a state to release its quarterly job count before BLS does it officially, although BLS has said states are free to do so. Walker didn’t respond to our request for comment on his claim. But his own Department of Workforce Development, which submits the jobs data to BLS, notes that BLS won’t issue an official figure for 2011 until the end of June. Our rating Walker said new figures he released indicating Wisconsin added more than 20,000 jobs in 2011 are "the final job numbers." But the count won’t become final until after it is reviewed by the federal government. We rate Walker’s statement False. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2012-05-24T19:02:00 | 2012-05-16 | ['Wisconsin'] |
pomt-13185 | Wikileaks also shows how John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling Democrats, a voter suppression technique. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/25/donald-trump/trump-absurd-claims-podesta-rigged-polls/ | Two weeks away from the Nov. 8 election, Donald Trump is behind in the polls. According to him, it’s because the Hillary Clinton campaign tampered with them. "Wikileaks also shows how (Clinton campaign chairman) John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling Democrats, a voter suppression technique," Trump said at a Oct. 24 rally in St. Augustine, Fla. "And that’s happening to me all the time. When the polls are even, when they leave them alone and do them properly, I’m leading. But you see these polls, where they’re polling Democrats -- ‘how’s Trump doing’ ‘oh he’s down’ -- they’re polling Democrats!" We were curious about Trump’s charge of bogus polling. Trump is wrong that Wikileaks shows Podesta rigging the polls against him. He’s referring to an email obtained by the hacker group from Clinton’s 2008 (not 2016) campaign on what appears to be internal polling (not public ones published by media organizations). And oversampling in this instance means polling more people in a specific demographic group for analysis -- not ignoring Republican voters to suppress their votes. In short, oversampling is a common polling technique and not, as Trump says, one of "voter suppression." The email, one of thousands of Podesta emails released by Wikileaks, is a January 2008 exchange between Democratic strategists and employees of the Atlas Project, a political polling and data firm. Atlas sent over 98 pages of polling and media recommendations that includes several recommendations to oversample minorities, independent voters and Democrats in certain states. Experts told us the technical term for this is "stratified disproportionate sampling," but most pollsters use "oversample" as a shorthand. It’s done not to skew the polls, but to gauge the attitudes of specific demographic groups, who would not be a statistically large enough group to analyze if sampled randomly. For example, in a national sample of 1,000 eligible voters, only 12.5 percent, or 125, would be black. To accurately gauge black attitudes on certain issues, a pollster may oversample 500 black eligible voters (four times more than the random sample). Then, in analyzing the full sample, the sample of blacks would be assigned a weight of 0.25 to represent the overall population. "If the analysis of the group is done separately, it is simply a large sample of that group. If combined with all respondents the oversample is weighted down proportionately so that the overall sample is representative of the population as a whole," said Charles Franklin, the director of Marquette Law School Poll. "This is a standard procedure and does not mean the weighted sample gives disproportionate weight to the oversampled group." The Pew Research Center explained that it, for example, oversampled Hispanics for an in-depth look at the U.S. Hispanic population in June 2016. Analysts then weighted Hispanics when looking at the overall population to have both "more precise estimates when looking at Hispanics specifically" and also "the correct distribution when looking at the sample as a whole." Roger Tourangeau, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, pointed out that monthly federal surveys on unemployment do the same. To get an accurate understanding of joblessness in Wyoming, pollsters would need to call a number of Wyoming residents disportionate to the number of people in the entire country. Trump’s overall charges of skewed polls is "nonsense," Tourangeau said, "Nobody wants to produce a biased assessment and look like an idiot (on Election Day). Why would people deliberately get it wrong? It’s business suicide." Our ruling Trump said, "Wikileaks also shows how John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling Democrats, a voter suppression technique." A leaked email shows the Clinton campaign of 2008 consulted data firm that suggest oversampling in what is likely internal polling. The term refers to a common technique used by pollsters to analyze demographics groups more precisely than possible in a random sample. We rate Trump’s claim Pants on Fire. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a2406c00-0c22-4ea9-80cf-47ef7e301b30 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-25T17:01:42 | 2016-10-24 | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
goop-01061 | Did Beyonce Get Lip Injections? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/beyonce-lip-injections-false/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Did Beyonce Get Lip Injections? | 8:05 am, May 4, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15090 | Pediatricians have cut down on the number and proximity of vaccines because they recognize there have been "too many in too short a period of time." | pants on fire! | /florida/statements/2015/sep/17/ben-carson/ben-carson-says-pediatricians-realize-need-cut-dow/ | CNN’s Jake Tapper noted that a backlash against vaccines was blamed for a measles outbreak in California. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has linked childhood vaccines to autism despite the medical community debunking that myth. During the second GOP debate, Tapper asked Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon who now lives in West Palm Beach, if Trump should stop making such a claim. Carson said Trump should look at the evidence, noting that there is "extremely well-documented proof that there’s no autism associated with vaccinations." Carson then turned the subject to the scheduling of vaccines: "But it is true that we are probably giving way too many in too short a period of time. And a lot of pediatricians now recognize that, and I think are cutting down on the number and the proximity in which those are done, and I think that’s appropriate." Are pediatricians cutting down on the number and proximity of vaccines? As for Trump’s claim about autism, as PolitiFact has noted before, decades of epidemiological research have demonstrated autism rates do not increase when vaccines are introduced to a population. We contacted Carson’s campaign to ask for his evidence and did not get a reply. Vaccines Doctors follow a childhood vaccination schedule prepared by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Children may receive as many as 24 immunizations by their second birthday and may receive up to five injections during a single doctor’s visit, according to a 2013 paper by The Institute of Medicines of the National Academies. That vaccine schedule is also supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control. More than 90 percent of children entering kindergarten have been immunized with recommended vaccines in accordance with this schedule. But some parents have sought to delay vaccines or reduce the number given per visit, while others have rejected them entirely, despite recommendations by the scientific community. That’s not a good idea, according to the report. "Delaying or declining vaccination has led to outbreaks of such vaccine-preventable diseases as measles and whooping cough that may jeopardize public health, particularly for people who are under-immunized or who were never immunized," wrote researchers. The researchers also concluded that there is "no evidence that the schedule is unsafe." The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a press release in 2013 stating that it agreed with the paper’s conclusion. After the Republican debate, it issued a new statement in support of vaccines: "Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature. It is dangerous to public health to suggest otherwise," wrote Karen Remley, executive director of the academy. Despite the scientific consensus, pediatricians are facing pressure from parents to delay vaccines. A survey of 534 pediatricians done for the American Academy of Pediatricians in 2012 showed that 93 percent reported that within a typical month some parents asked to spread out the vaccinations. The vast majority thought these parents were putting their children at risk for disease but thought they would build trust with the families if they agreed to the request. While there is anecdotal evidence that some pediatricians have acquiesced to parents’ requests to delay vaccinations, that decision is not rooted in public health or science. "There is no evidence that pediatricians 'recognize' that we give too many vaccines in too short a time," said Mark Schleiss, division director of pediatric infectious diseases at University of Minnesota. "Far from it. ... There is no evidence at all that spacing vaccines out or changing the schedule would improve health or help children." Eugene R. Hershorin, chief of the division of general pediatrics at the University of Miami, pointed to what happened a decade ago when England and Japan delayed the DTaP vaccine, a combination vaccine used to prevent diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. "There was a tremendous increase in the incidence of pertussis in both countries, leading them to re-institute the schedule immediately," he said. Our ruling Carson said pediatricians have cut down on the number and proximity of vaccines because they recognize there have been "too many in too short a period of time." Leading medical organizations have concluded that the scheduling of vaccines -- including multiple ones at once -- is safe. While there is evidence that some parents ask pediatricians to delay vaccines, that’s a decision based on parents’ wishes and isn’t based on scientific evidence. There is no evidence that pediatricians are cutting down the number and proximity of vaccines based on any conclusion by them that there have been too many in too short a period of time. Carson has provided no evidence to support his claim. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. | null | Ben Carson | null | null | null | 2015-09-17T14:43:40 | 2015-09-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-03669 | Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your flight? FAA could cut other spending. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/26/eric-cantor/eric-cantor-says-faa-could-cut-funds-avoid-furloug/ | With frustrated travelers tapping their feet in the nation’s airports this week, politicians responded with alarm to flight delays brought on by federal budget cuts. Beginning Monday, April 22, 2013, furloughs of air traffic controllers began to take effect under sequestration, a deficit-reduction measure that bluntly cuts federal agency budgets. The furloughs triggered flight delays around the country as the FAA scaled back the number of planes that could take off and land because the agency had fewer controllers to direct them. U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., joined the criticism that the FAA is maximizing the budget cuts’ inconvenience on travelers. "Why is President Obama unnecessarily delaying your flight? FAA could cut other spending," Cantor tweeted on April 23, 2013. The FAA has said it made all the cuts it could but sequestration still leaves no option but to furlough employees. So who’s right? We decided to check it out. Cuts & furloughs We looked into a similar claim from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood before the sequester took effect. The Obama administration and federal agencies were warning that flight delays would result. Sequestration is forcing the FAA to carve $600 million from its budget, and LaHood said furloughing air traffic controllers was the last step after every other cut has been made. But air traffic controllers make up a big chunk of the FAA’s workforce: 15,000 of its 47,000 employees. "We’re looking at everything possible; and everything possible that’s legal, we will do," he said at the White House. That includes cutting travel, cutting overtime, freezing hiring, canceling conferences and reducing contracts. So what exactly is legal to cut? The Budget Control Act of 2011, the law authorizing the sequester, says "each non-exempt account within a category shall be reduced by a dollar amount calculated by multiplying the baseline level of sequestrable budgetary resources in that account at that time by the uniform percentage necessary to eliminate a breach within that category." (That clause comes from a similar deficit control law from 1985, the first time "sequestration" was implemented.) It means, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget, that sequestration "must be applied equally at the program, project, and activity level within each budget account." That’s why officials and politicians call sequestration a blunt instrument. "The sequester language does not allow us to move funding from account to account, and we simply can’t make the required cuts without facility closures and furloughs," DOT spokesman Justin Nisly told PolitiFact in February. A $474 million FAA grant? Cantor’s tweet included a link to a Wall Street Journal editorial criticizing the Obama administration for flight delays and spending decisions. It pointed to a $474 million grant program posted this week on DOT’s website that promises to "make communities more livable and sustainable." "How about awarding grants to the control towers at Hartsfield and O'Hare?" the editorial said. Nisly said the grant program "was specifically designed by Congress as a rigorous competition to fund projects that have a significant impact on the nation, a region or metropolitan area. The program has been wildly popular, and the DOT has received more than $105 billion in applications for only $3.1 billion available. Each round of TIGER involves a detailed application and a thorough review of the merits of each project." Merits aside, FAA grant programs are entirely excluded from sequester cuts. "Under the rules of the sequester, the airport grant program was exempted, as were all grant programs ... of the Department of Transportation. What that means is that it falls disproportionately on the operating side of the budget," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told a House subcommittee this week. The editorial also mentioned $500 million the agency is spending on consultants. But FAA officials have said that money pays, not for consultants, but for contracts that support the air traffic control system, including telecommunications and weather radar. As we were working on this report, the earth moved a little under this issue. Five days into the furloughs, the Senate unanimously passed a bill allowing the FAA to move funds around and end furloughs. The House approved the legislation a day later. (Cantor voted for it.) As of this writing, it awaits Obama’s signature; he is expected to sign it. "Congress just passed legislation that now enables the FAA to have the flexibility it needs to make less disruptive changes, so clearly there was something in the law that was posing a problem," said Clifford Winston, an economist with the Brookings Institution. Our ruling Cantor said flights were being delayed unnecessarily because the FAA could have cut other funds before furloughing air traffic controllers. But the law authorizing sequestration states that cuts must be applied equally. Given that the FAA is a huge federal agency tasked with cutting $600 million, to say there is no wiggle room is a stretch. But sequestration does not allow elimination of entire programs or departments to spend the money on in other areas, such as paying air traffic controllers. What’s more, the fact that Congress was compelled to act to give the FAA that flexibility undercuts the argument that the agency could have moved funds around all along. We rate Cantor’s statement Mostly False. | null | Eric Cantor | null | null | null | 2013-04-26T17:44:09 | 2013-04-23 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-00485 | Is McDonald’s Replacing All Cashiers with Robots to Avoid a Minimum Wage Increase? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-robot-cashiers/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is McDonald’s Replacing All Cashiers with Robots to Avoid a Minimum Wage Increase? | 10 June 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12044 | Paul Ryan doesn't know what the minimum wage is in Wisconsin. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2017/sep/11/tweets/tweets-mislead-saying-wisconsins-paul-ryan-doesnt-/ | Twitter users skewered the speaker of the U.S. House with this attack: Paul Ryan doesn’t know what the minimum wage is in Wisconsin. Numerous tweets, made on Sept. 11, 2017, and more so over the previous several days, suggest the Janesville Republican has no idea what the minimum hourly rate of pay is in his home state. But that’s not really what went down. Live interview On Sept. 7, 2017, Ryan was on a live webcast interview with the New York Times before an audience in Washington, D.C. The newspaper described it as "the first in a provocative new TimesTalks D.C. series." At one point, Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor for the Times, asked: "What’s the minimum wage in Wisconsin right now?" Ryan immediately said, "Seven --" then looks upward, apparently trying to recall the rest. Then he says: "What is it? Seven and t--." Perhaps he was starting to say twenty-five, or some figure in the twenties. At that moment, there’s a response from the audience, Ryan looks to the audience and correctly says: $7.25. So, if Ryan didn’t know the rate exactly at that moment, he certainly was in the ballpark. Wisconsin’s $7.25, by the way, is the same as the federal minimum wage, both of which have been in place since 2009. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of July 1, 2017, Wisconsin and Iowa were among 14 states with a minimum wage at $7.25 per hour. Twenty-nine states, plus the District of Columbia, had higher rates, with D.C.’s being the highest, at $12.50. The federal rate applies in states that have minimum wage laws at rates below the federal rate, or that have no minimum wage law at all. For the record, a Times news article said Ryan made it clear in the interview that he opposes legislation to change the federal minimum wage, saying: "For every wage you raise, you actually end up losing jobs. You end up destroying jobs." Our rating Tweets say: "Paul Ryan doesn't know what the minimum wage is in Wisconsin." Asked the amount in an interview, Ryan didn’t give a complete answer until he heard what a member of the listening audience said. But he had immediately started his answer by saying "Seven," and seemed on the verge of adding 25 cents, or some figure in the twenties, before the audience member interjected. That’s when Ryan correctly said $7.25. For a statement that contains only an element of truth, our rating is Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tweets | null | null | null | 2017-09-11T15:55:52 | 2017-09-11 | ['Wisconsin'] |
farg-00396 | Lisa Page Squeals: DNC Server Was Not Hacked By Russia | no evidence | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/no-evidence-lisa-page-blamed-hacking-on-china/ | null | fake-news | FactCheck.org | Angelo Fichera | ['2016 elections'] | No Evidence Lisa Page Blamed Hacking on China | July 20, 2018 | 2018-07-20 21:20:46 UTC | ['Russia'] |
snes-01514 | British pub chain JD Wetherspoon banned remembrance poppies due to "multiculturalism". | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-british-pub-chain-ban-remembrance-poppies/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did a British Pub Chain Ban ‘Offensive’ Remembrance Poppies? | 26 October 2017 | null | ['United_Kingdom'] |
pomt-13288 | Says "Hillary Clinton set aside environmental and labor rules to help a South Korean company with a record of violating workers’ rights set up what amounts to a sweatshop in Haiti." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/11/donald-trump/trump-mangles-facts-clinton-and-haiti-jobs-project/ | Hillary Clinton is facing criticism for her role in facilitating the creation of an industrial park in post-earthquake Haiti that has been accused of displacing farmers and failing to live up to rosy job creation projections. Among the charges, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Clinton pushed aside regulations to create sweatshop-like conditions. "Hillary Clinton set aside environmental and labor rules to help a South Korean company with a record of violating workers’ rights set up what amounts to a sweatshop in Haiti," Trump said Sept. 6, 2016. Clinton, as secretary of state, certainly lauded the project as part of a plan to revitalize Haiti following the devastating earthquake in 2010, and the U.S. government financially supported it. But did she help a company create a sweatshop? The evidence is thin. The Caracol Industrial Park In 2010, Haiti’s leaders unveiled a plan to spur growth beyond the capital city of Port-au-Prince. One project that emerged was to build an industrial park on the country’s northern coast a little over a mile from Caracol Bay. It was going to bring tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, government officials said. Getting it off the ground took a collaboration among the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the government of Haiti, and a South Korean clothing maker, Sae-A Trading. Sae-A, under the name of S&H Global, would be the anchor tenant of the new industrial park, producing clothes for clients such as Target and Walmart. Bill and Hillary Clinton, champions of that vision, came to the park’s grand opening. In fact, both of them lobbied hard for the project. Bill Clinton in his role as special envoy to Haiti pushed for expanded garment making. Sae-A said Clinton herself invited the company to build a factory at the industrial park. The U.S. Agency for International Development allocated $170 million to support the industrial park by building a power plant and improving the port. "What is happening here in Caracol is already having ripple effects that will create jobs and opportunities far beyond this industrial park," Hillary Clinton said at the Caracol opening ceremony. But that really hasn't happened. The industrial park has been beseiged by criticism of millions of dollars wasted, displaced farmers and sluggish job growth. Today, four years, later, total employment is about 8,100. (The State Department told us after publication that new data show the facility now employs about 9,400 people.) That's the background. Now, we'll look at the specifics of Trump's claim. Clinton's role in environmental and labor rules Trump said Clinton "set aside environmental and labor rules" to make the project a reality. The Trump campaign pointed to an article that appeared in the New York Times. That report cited environmentalists decrying the placement of the industrial zone near a sensitive marine habitat. The U.S. Treasury Department abstained from voting on the project due to concerns over the limited environmental impact studies that had been prepared. That's not the same as Clinton setting aside rules, and people involved with the project said Clinton played no role. Charles Krakoff, managing partner of the consulting firm Koios Associates, created the environmental impact report in an assessment for the government of Haiti and the Inter-American Development Bank. Krakoff told us that the Haitians, the development bank and USAID pressed for a quick turnaround, and he agrees that his firm did not produce a full long-term analysis. But he said he did address the immediate impacts and laid out the sort of studies needed later. The Inter-American Development Bank followed through. It commissioned a more comprehensive study in 2014, which was completed in August 2016. "Environmental standards were not changed for this project," Krakoff said. USAID produced a separate environmental impact study for the power plant alone. Importantly, Krakoff said the key decision to place the industrial park in Caracol was made by the government of Haiti not Clinton. Whatever environmental issues that raised flowed from that point forward and Clinton played no role. "We told them two other locations would be better, but the government wanted it in Caracol," Krakoff said. "The Haitians and the Inter-American Development Bank had more say in this project than the United States." Sae-A's record on workers' rights Clinton, as we already said, did play a part in getting Sae-A to Haiti, and Sae-A does not have a perfect record with workers. The company had a significant dispute with the union at a factory in Guatemala. The AFL-CIO accused it of anti-union repression including "acts of violence and intimidation." Sae-A ultimately abandonned that Guatemalan factory. But, in 2008, the International Trade Union Confederation highlighted the company as one of only three in Guatemala that had unions at all and met with union representatives weekly to discuss working conditions. We found an academic article that accurately described an episode when Sae-A managers at one plant in Guatemala used police to intimidate union organizers. The researcher cited a WikiLeaks cable from 2005 as proof, but failed to note that the cable went on to say that when the government and the company found out what happened, it fired all the managers involved and reinstated the workers with back pay. In Nicaragua, a 2013 investigation of a clash between union supporters and non-union workers found that Sae-A did nothing to prevent the unrest. So, the evidence that Sae-A violated workers rights is limited. The company had a dispute with its unions in Guatemala and allowed a fight to break out between union and non-union workers in Nicaragua. Is Sae-A running a sweatshop? Many factories in Haiti are subject to six-month inspections by Better Work Haiti, a project of the International Labor Organization. The latest assessment raises a few points of concern, but nothing that would in any way meet the definition of sweatshop conditions. On the contrary, the report lists several strengths, including providing "free, first-class education to the workers’ kids." The company provides paid sick and maternity leave, which according to the company, has been used in 6,336 and 220 cases respectively in 2016. There are three unions in the factory representing about 30 percent of all workers. Safety and health conditions passed muster in the assessment. The issues raised were isolated, or due more to workers not using safety equipment (ear plugs) that the company gave them (and trained them on why they should use them.) Inspectors and the company have a dispute on the legal definition for holiday, sick and maternity leave pay that has been referred to the government for resolution.Of workers who are paid based on how much they produce, only 41 percent make the government’s target minimum wage, which suggests much improvement is needed, although the inspectors did not say this made the company non-compliant with the law. Pay is a point of broader concern. The advocacy group Worker Rights Consortium issued a report in 2013 that accused Sae-A of "ongoing theft of legally-earned wages." But when we asked the executive director if this met the criteria of operating a sweatshop, he declined to comment. The AFL-CIO also failed to respond to questions about Sae-A. Our ruling Trump said Clinton "set aside environmental and labor rules to help a South Korean company with a record of violating workers’ rights set up what amounts to a sweatshop in Haiti." There is no evidence that Clinton set aside environmental and labor rules and Trump exaggerated about the record of the South Korean company in question. We rate this statement Mostly False. Correction Oct. 12, 2016 Sae-A closed the Guatemala factory where it had a dispute with a union. A previously version of this fact-check incorrectly said Sae-A left the country entirely. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/4e6663b3-a536-4892-b9a6-79688568959f | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-11T09:00:00 | 2016-09-06 | ['South_Korea', 'Haiti'] |
pomt-06192 | A database police use to look up wanted suspects excludes certain warrants issued by Atlanta Municipal Court. | true | /georgia/statements/2011/dec/12/city-atlanta/city-criminal-database-lacks-some-warrants/ | The handling of a police traffic stop involving Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s brother raises questions about power, politics and ethics. What has the Truth-O-Meter spinning is a more practical concern: crime databases. When police stopped Tracy Reed on Oct. 28, he had an open warrant for failing to appear at a traffic court hearing three weeks earlier. Reed could have been arrested on the spot. Yet when an officer ran his name in the Atlanta Police Department’s criminal database, the warrant never popped up. A police major let Reed go. This was no fluke, according to a recent city of Atlanta news release about its internal investigation on the stop. Police may rely upon the Atlanta Criminal Information Center database to find out whether someone has a warrant, but in certain cases, it can’t tell them. "Atlanta Municipal Court bench warrants are not included in the Atlanta Criminal Information Center [ACIC] database," the Nov. 28 release said. Bench warrants are arrest warrants initiated by a judge, often when people fail to appear in court. We PolitiFact Georgia scribes squinted our eyes and read the sentence twice. If these arrest warrants aren’t in the system, how do police know whom to haul to jail? We talked to Atlanta police, reviewed existing policies and statutes, contacted court officials, and looked at investigative reports to find some answers. And yes, there is a hole in the city’s criminal database. In case you missed the controversy, Reed ran into trouble Oct. 28 after an Atlanta police officer stopped him for driving with an expired tag, according to a city internal investigation. Even though Reed drove with a license suspended since 2006, the patrolman’s superior let the mayor’s brother go. Running a criminal history database is a complex operation. The information is sensitive and the stakes are high. If the people who enter the data get it wrong or don’t enter it in time, an officer might come face to face with a dangerous felon and not even know it. A person could be jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. That means police can’t do something as simple as make a phone call or send an email to put a warrant in the system, state and local law enforcement officials told us. Only specially certified employees may enter the information into the computer, and they may do so only after receiving the proper documentation. When Atlanta police obtain warrants as part of their investigations, agency policy gives investigating officers 12 hours to hand-deliver the paperwork to the APD team that updates the criminal database. But when an Atlanta municipal judge issues a warrant because someone fails to appear in court, no one hands this paperwork over for entry in the city’s database, police spokesman Carlos Campos told PolitiFact. In fact, these bench warrants are not entered into any local, state or national database, according to the city’s investigative report. Georgia law doesn’t require it, said Shirley Andrews, who helps run the state’s criminal database for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The state attorney general designates what minor offenses must be in the system. Bench warrants for failing to appear in Municipal Court are not on it. This is a problem, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner told investigators. "[T]he truth is, there are thousands of folks that are warranted by Municipal Court warrants. But there’s no way, not to my knowledge, on how to deal with it," Turner said, according to a transcript of his interview. The head of a state professional organization for prosecutors said he has heard that other jurisdictions are wrestling with the issue. Officers or dispatchers could telephone the Atlanta court to check for open warrants, Turner told investigators, but it’s closed on Friday, the day Reed was stopped. Police and court officials told PolitiFact they’ve been working on this problem for months but need funding to solve it. Atlanta Municipal Court bench warrants are not included in the ACIC database, as the city’s news release said. In fact, Atlanta’s police chief estimates that thousands of people with open warrants aren’t in there. We find the city’s claim True. | null | City of Atlanta | null | null | null | 2011-12-12T06:00:00 | 2011-11-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-08783 | Seventy bills [Kendrick Meek] authored, not one of them has passed. | half-true | /florida/statements/2010/aug/20/jeff-greene/greene-says-meek-0-70-bills/ | UPDATE: We first published this item on Aug. 13, 2010, and rated Greene’s claim Half True. We received a number of complaints urging us to take a second look. We assigned a new reporter and editor and re-reported the claim with additional research on all the bills and resolutions Meek has proposed. In the end, we reached the same conclusion on the rating, Half True, and are posting the newer version of our report. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene says the poster child of the do-nothing Congress is a do-nothing congressman named Kendrick Meek. "Since he has been in the House the last eight years, his track record in authoring bills is 0 in 70. ... 70 bills he authored, not one of them has passed," Greene said during a televised Orlando debate on Aug. 10, 2010. Meek, a member of the U.S. House for eight years, said his ideas have been incorporated into laws and it's misleading to consider only the bills he sponsored as a scorecard of his time in Congress. We'll explore Meek's retort in a moment. But first, is he really 0-for-70 in passing bills like Greene claims? First a little Schoolhouse Rock moment. Greene, in his claim, is talking about bills. Bills, as you know, become laws. A member of Congress proposes a bill. That bill is then usually referred to a series of committees or subcommittees, where it is debated and possibly altered. If it passes out of committee, it is heard by the House or Senate, depending on who authored the bill. If it passes one full chamber, it then goes to the other. More debate. Maybe more amendments or alterations. More votes. If it passes both houses of Congress, it then goes to the president. You can probably guess, but most bills don't get this far. The president can then sign the bill into law, or veto it. If a bill is vetoed, Congress can come back and override the president's veto by a two-third's vote of both chambers -- making the bill law without the president' signature. We're not trying to go all fourth grade on you here, but we need to make the distinction about bills, because Congress passes things all the times that aren't bills. End Schoolhouse Rock moment. The Library of Congress tracks federal legislation (meaning bills and other things) through a system called Thomas. The site also allows users like us to search each session of Congress for legislation Meek sponsored. The website includes information about whether or not the legislation came to a vote and was signed by the president. In his four terms in the U.S. House, Meek sponsored a total of 80 pieces of legislation, according to Thomas -- 35 in the current Congress, the 111th, 23 in the 110th Congress, 12 in the 109th Congress, and 10 in the 108th Congress. Of the 80 pieces of legislation, none were specifically enacted into law. Two Senate versions of Meek bills were signed by the president. The bills were both non-controversial. H.R.1361 and Senate companion S.111 directed the Secretary of Interior to conduct a resource study of the Miami Circle archaeological site. It was signed into law on Oct. 3, 2003. H.R.2538 and Senate companion S.1904 renamed a courthouse in Miami after Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. It was signed into law on May 7, 2004. Another 71 bills, designated appropriately with an H.R. prefix and a number are not law, and are either awaiting action or died in committee. The other seven pieces of legislation are called simple resolutions, designated with the prefix H. Res. and a number. Simple resolutions are not laws. They are adopted by the House and included in the Congressional Record. That's it. Of those seven simple resolutions, we should note that Meek sponsored three that passed, a resolution recognizing the armed service response in Haiti, a resolution commemorating Haitian soldiers who fought for American independence, and a resolution recognizing Rafael Jose Diaz-Balart. So out of 73 bills Meek sponsored, two are now law. The Greene campaign contends, however, that Meek shouldn't get credit for the two Senate versions that passed instead of the House version, hence their 0-for-70. The Meek campaign says Meek simply took up the Senate versions out of expediency or for some other reason. We think the overall difference of opinion is minor -- neither bill was controversial and whether Meek was 0-for73 or 2-for-73 isn't all that critical. What we think is worth noting is the collaborative way that bills become law. Any single bill is often the collective work of many. In some cases, entire bills become amendments to other bills that pass. Bills also must be reconciled between the Senate and the House -- the courthouse bill and the Interior study being a perfect example. PolitiFact has looked at bill sponsor figures before, after Barbara Boxer was accused of passing only three bills in 18 years. Back then, Norman Ornstein, a Congressional expert and a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the metric meaningless. "There is no good, strong, objective, consistent way to measure productivity as a legislator," Orstein told us. Agreed, said Clay Shaw, a Republican who represented a South Florida Congressional district for nearly 25 years. A lot of times a chairman of a committee will take another member's bill and rewrite it and put his own name on it, Shaw said. "If you have an appropriation, you try to get the appropriations committee to do it for you," Shaw said. Meek's campaign said many of his ideas were incorporated into other bills that became law. For instance, Meek filed a bill to accelerate the income tax benefits for charitable cash contributions for the relief of victims of the earthquake in Haiti. His bill was referred to a House committee in January 2010. A related bill with the same goal, filed by Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Charles Rangel, was passed into law later that same month. And in 2005, Meek filed a bill that would allow duty-free treatment for apparel assembled in Haiti. The Tax Relief and Health Care Act passed with similar language the following year, though Meek was not a sponsor. We looked into a few different accounts of Meek's legislative accomplishments. CQ's Politics in America 2010 edition noted that Meek has become "one of the House's swiftest-rising young Democrats," and noted his prominent assignment to the Ways and Means Committee, which handles health care, tax and trade policy. CQ said Meek previously served on the Armed Services panel, where he pushed for a deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. And, "in February 2009, he responded to the public furor over Bernard L. Madoff -- who pleaded guilty to a vast Ponzi scheme that bilked investors of billions of dollars -- by introducing a bill to provide tax relief to individuals harmed by the investment scam based on paying early investors money from later ones," CQ wrote. The bill never made it out of committee, but the Internal Revenue Service changed some of its rules in March to provide victims some tax relief. A July 25 profile of Meek in the St. Petersburg Times described Meek's record this way: "He has been the primary sponsor of more than 70 bills and nothing major has passed. ... And yet, most House members toil for years without passing a substantial piece of legislation. Victories are achieved by attaching ideas to other bills, usually bearing the names of committee chairs, or plying other channels." Ruling on a statement like Greene's can be tricky. He said: "Since (Meek) has been in the House the last eight years, his track record in authoring bills is 0 in 70." Of the 73 bills we found through the Library of Congress' Thomas website, Meek either passed none or two out of the 73 depending on whether you count the Senate companion bills. That, by itself, might rate a ruling of True or Mostly True. But the claim neglects to properly detail how Congress works and might give voters an unrealistic impression of Meek's time in Congress. While Meek may have not passed significant legislation, that's not necessarily a measure a Congressman's effectiveness. We define Half True as a statement that is "accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context." We think that's about right in this case. Greene has his number just about right, but leaves out those Schoolhouse Rock details of how a bill becomes a law. We rate Greene's claim Half True. | null | Jeff Greene | null | null | null | 2010-08-20T17:19:31 | 2010-08-10 | ['None'] |
thet-00048 | FFS explains: the GERS report and Scotland’s deficit | none | https://theferret.scot/ffs-explains-gers-report-scotland-deficit/ | null | Fact check | null | null | null | FFS explains: the GERS report and Scotland’s deficit | September 14, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00269 | German Automaker Develops First Salt Water powered car | truth! & misleading! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/german-automaker-develops-first-salt-water-powered-car/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | German Automaker Develops First Salt Water | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00089 | “Despite record low oil prices, this administration was able to invest an additional US$500 million into the [Sovereign Wealth] Fund.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/hit-or-miss-taking-stock-of-5-claims-in-buharis-2018-budget-speech/ | null | null | null | null | null | Hit or miss? Taking stock of 5 claims in Buhari’s 2018 budget speech | 2017-11-29 11:15 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01416 | In the last year, Wisconsin ranked third in Midwest job growth. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2014/oct/09/scott-walker/walker-sticks-to-claim-on-Midwest-jobs-growth/ | On Aug. 25, 2014 the Scott Walker campaign launched a TV ad that featured the governor saying this about the July employment numbers: "Well, the latest job numbers are in and Wisconsin created more private-sector jobs than Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, and Illinois. That means we ranked third in the Midwest." We rated that Mostly True. The ranking among the 10 states was right, but only if you use the raw number of jobs added instead of the more revealing percentage growth. Well, now that summer has turned to fall, there’s a new batch of monthly jobs numbers out, with August being the latest month available. And a new Walker TV ad makes the same claim comparing midwestern states over the last 12 months: "The truth? In the last year, Wisconsin ranked third in Midwest job growth." Is the ranking still right? No. The ad sent us back to the best source of federal employment data, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Walker is using the monthly data for his comparison. This time around, Wisconsin has dropped a spot. Wisconsin ranks fourth out of 10, not third, both in raw jobs growth and in percentage change from August 2013 to August 2014. In the new rankings, based on preliminary August numbers, Wisconsin (1.2 percent growth for the year) trailed North Dakota (No. 1 rank nationally with 5.3 percent growth), Indiana and Minnesota on percentage change. Same story on the increase in the raw number of jobs over the year: Wisconsin came in fourth among 10 states. That put Wisconsin’s rank nationally at 32nd. In the new ad, Walker discloses in an on-screen graphic that he’s using the July-to-July figures. But that text runs counter to his spoken claim of "in the last year." Defending the new ad, the Walker campaign said that the July data is final, revised estimates in contrast to the preliminary August data. But we note that in the campaign’s earlier ad, Walker didn’t hesitate to use the preliminary July data and use it to round out the "latest" one year period when it showed the ranking was third. Rating switch Walker himself clearly knew better. On Sept. 19, the governor sent out this tweet from his personal account after the new numbers came out: "WI is 4th in the Midwest for private sector job creation & % growth (CES BLS Aug 2013 - Aug 2014)." His campaign, which is airing new TV ads frequently, had plenty of time to absorb the August jobs report (released Sept. 18, 2014) before putting out his new ad (released Oct. 8, 2014). We’ve taken a similarly dim view of numerical maneuvering by Democrat Mary Burke’s campaign. In August, we rated True a Burke claim that Wisconsin was "dead last" in the Midwest based on a three-year time span coinciding with the first three years of Walker’s term. But when Burke made a similar statement in September and framed it around the latest numbers showing the drop, we rated her claim False -- a rating Walker highlights in his new ad. She cited accurate data -- Wisconsin ranked last in the Midwest from March 2011 to March 2014. But that period was out of sync with the start of Walker’s term. In her claims, Burke has been using quarterly jobs data, which is more reliable than the monthly data but lags significantly. Notable in that rating: For the most recent 12-month period by that measure, Wisconsin no longer ranked last of 10 states. It ranked 8th of 10 states. Our rating In a new TV ad, Walker says "the truth" is that "in the last year, Wisconsin ranked third in midwest job growth." That’s old news. The updated ranking is fourth, closer to middle of the pack, something the governor knew before his ad aired. We rate the claim False. (Read our tipsheet on five things to watch for when you hear jobs claims) | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2014-10-09T05:00:00 | 2014-10-08 | ['Midwestern_United_States', 'Wisconsin'] |
pomt-03518 | On restoring voting rights to non-violent felons. | full flop | /virginia/statements/2013/jun/03/ken-cuccinelli/cuccinelli-u-turns-restoring-voting-rights-non-vio/ | For years, Virginia Democrats have been trying to make it easier for non-violent felons to regain their civil rights after they’ve paid their debts to society. But Democrats cried foul last week when Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican nominee for governor, endorsed the cause. "Like many other legislators, I fought...for years on automatic restoration of rights legislation while Ken Cuccinelli and his extreme allies opposed us," said state Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico. "Now it has become convenient for him to suddenly do an about face on this issue." Charniele Herring, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said Cuccinelli, as a state senator last decade, consistently opposed legislation that would have allowed the automatic restoration of voting rights for non-violent felons who completed their sentences. "If Ken Cuccinelli really believed in automatic restoration of rights for people who pay their debt to society, he had every opportunity to prove it with his vote," Herring said. Cuccinelli, during a May 28 news conference, acknowledged his position has evolved. We pulled out our Flip-O-Meter to gauge the scope of his change. Virginia felons face one of the toughest laws for restoring civil rights in the nation. Under the state constitution, the only way for them to regain voting rights is to get permission from the governor. As a senator, Cuccinelli opposed four resolutions and one bill that would have allowed Virginians to vote on a constitutional amendment that would have empowered the General Assembly to automatically restore voting rights to non-violent felons. Cuccinelli voted "no" in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009. Now, let’s return to this year. On Jan. 14, the attorney general testified in favor of a constitutional amendment for automatic voting restoration that was subsequently killed by a House subcommittee. On May 28, Cuccinelli called on Virginia to make it easier for non-violent felons to regain voting rights and released a report, put together by an advisory group he appointed, on ways to do that. "Many people in our communities have committed certain lower level, non-violent offenses in the past that are felonies; they completed their sentences; paid their fines, their court costs, their restitution, served their time and gone on to live law-abiding lives," Cuccinelli said during a news conference. "I believe we need a simpler way for those individuals who want to return to their place in our society to be given a second chance and regain their civil rights that were lost through a felony conviction." Cuccinelli acknowledged, "When I was in the Senate, I wasn’t very supportive of the restoration of rights. I thought of it as a part of the punishment for being a felon." But the attorney general said he has grown increasingly concerned about what he called "felony creep" -- the trend of state politicians passing laws that elevate to felonies non-violent crimes that should remain as misdemeanors. He questioned, for example, whether someone stealing $200 should be charged with a felony as mandated in Virginia. Brian Gottstein, spokesman for the attorney general, said while in the Senate, Cuccinelli voted for two unsuccessful bills that would have raised the dollar amount at which a theft becomes a felony. Cuccinelli also gave another reason for his change. "...I felt rights restoration was good for society overall, because it could potentially reduce recidivism and because I’m looking for ways to make re-entry work." So the record shows Cuccinelli changed his position on voting rights restoration and the attorney general acknowledges it. We rate it a Full Flop. | null | Ken Cuccinelli | null | null | null | 2013-06-03T06:05:00 | 2013-05-28 | ['None'] |
goop-02207 | Jay-Z Did Call Jesus “Fake News,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jay-z-jesus-fake-news/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jay-Z Did NOT Call Jesus “Fake News,” Despite Report | 3:57 pm, November 13, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01205 | Chelsea Clinton's 2010 wedding was paid for by the Clinton Foundation. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-foundation-paid-for-chelseas-wedding/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Did the Clinton Foundation Pay for Chelsea’s Wedding? | 15 January 2018 | null | ['Chelsea_Clinton', 'Clinton_Foundation'] |
pomt-04649 | $16 trillion (the national debt) in $1 bills would cover the entire state of Ohio nearly 1.5 times. | true | /ohio/statements/2012/sep/12/rob-portman/rob-portman-says-national-debt-1-bills-would-cover/ | The U.S. government has carried debt since 1790, according to the Treasury Department, but the national debt didn't top $1 trillion until 1982. When it hit $16 trillion for the first time on Sept. 4, 2012, Sen. Rob Portman called it "a dangerous milestone" and "troubling evidence that our nation is headed in the wrong direction." In an attempt to put $16 trillion in terms everyday people can get their arms around, he also released a list of items showing how that much money stacks up -- such as "$16 trillion in $1 bills would cover the entire state of Ohio nearly 1.5 times." Sixteen trillion is a lot of kapusta -- but is it enough to carpet the countryside and turn Ohio green? Just for fun, PolitiFact Ohio decided to survey the landscape We got data from Portman staff's and checked the math. Here’s how it works out. A dollar bill has 16.0254 square inches. (It measures 2.61 inches by 6.14 inches.) Sixteen trillion dollar bills multiply to an area of 256,406,400,000,000 square inches. That translates to 1,780,600,000,000 square feet (after you divide by 12 squared, or 144). The area in square footage equals 63,870 square miles (after you divide by 5,280 squared, or 27,878,400). That would cover Ohio's total area of 44,825 square miles 1.42 times -- or nearly 1.5 times. We ran the numbers again, using the land area of 40,860 square miles that the federal Census Bureau gives Ohio. Sixteen trillion singles would cover that area almost exactly 1.5 times. On the Truth-O-Meter, Portman's statement rates True. | null | Rob Portman | null | null | null | 2012-09-12T06:00:00 | 2012-09-06 | ['Ohio'] |
snes-05768 | The NRA banned the carrying of guns at their own national convention. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-convention-gun-ban/ | null | Guns | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did the NRA Ban Guns at Their Own Convention? | 8 April 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03167 | An Answer from Dr. Orly Taitz to Nancy Pelosi | confirmed authorship! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/taitz-pelosi-response/ | null | politics | null | null | null | An Answer from Dr. Orly Taitz to Nancy Pelosi | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00279 | “Pneumonia incidence decreased from 89 per 1 000 of the under-five population in 2012-2013 to 84.7 in 2013-2014.” | mostly-correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/crisis-what-crisis-africa-check-tests-free-state-health-claims/ | null | null | null | null | null | Crisis? What crisis? Africa Check tests Free State health claims | 2015-06-12 05:45 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12678 | There’s not one public study, and by public study I mean a study available to the public, that has looked at using the product Kaput to poison feral hogs. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2017/mar/16/will-herring/feral-hog-meat-businessman-says-there-are-no-publi/ | A Texas meat processor who questions a government-approved bait that kills feral hogs charges there’s no public research on the product. Will Herring, owner of the Hubbard-based Wild Boar Meat Company, which makes hog meat into pet food, has said he fears the product’s active ingredient--warfarin, long known as a rat poison and human blood thinner--will damage his business. Also, Herring said: "There’s not one public study, and by public study I mean a study available to the public, that has looked at using the product Kaput to poison feral hogs," a comment we spotted in a March 6, 2017, news story in the San Antonio Express-News. A note: Public studies of particular pesticides don’t appear to be mandatory. An Environmental Protection Agency web page about registering pesticides says only that the "company that wants to produce the pesticide must provide data from studies that comply with our testing guidelines" without mention of whether the studies must be public or, say, conducted independently. That web page also says that before registering a product, EPA develops risk assessments evaluating the potential harms to humans, wildlife, fish, and plants, including endangered species and non-target organisms plus any possible contamination of surface water or groundwater from leaching, runoff and "spray drift." Still, Herring persuaded a state district judge to issue a temporary order putting a hold on state rules approving Kaput’s use by state-licensed pesticide applicators and state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, filed a proposal barring the state from registering any lethal pesticide, including warfarin, for feral hog control unless a state agency or university performs and publishes a scientific study weighing the pesticide’s environmental and economic effects. Both moves happened after Sid Miller, the Republican state agriculture commissioner, announced the Texas Department of Agriculture would issue rules limiting Kaput’s sale and use to licensed individuals. When we inquired, the state agency emailed us a spreadsheet indicating that Colorado-based Scimetrics, the company poised to vend Kaput, fielded $136,854 in research grants from TDA from 2013 into 2017. All told in 2016-17, the sheet indicates, the agency awarded $802,500 to fight feral hogs; that counts funds awarded to counties, universities and other agencies. Feral hogs can be fearsome nuisances. Nationally, as many as 750,000 are harvested annually, yet how they ravage rural and suburban lands remains a problem--and Texas is home to more than 2 million of them. No public study? We asked Herring how he reached his conclusion about no public studies. By phone, he told us that he didn’t find specific studies of the product in online searches nor, he said, did Genesis Laboratories, the Colorado-based company that developed the product, provide a study at his firm's inquiry. We also reached Richard Poché, Genesis Labs' president, who conceded that no Kaput study has been formally published. He said, though, the company completed a study in Texas in 2015 submitted under the title "Field efficacy of a warfarin bait used to control feral hog populations" for consideration by the Wiley-published Wildlife Society Bulletin, which describes itself as a journal for wildlife practitioners that effectively integrates cutting-edge science with management and conservation, and also covers important policy issues, particularly those that focus on the integration of science and policy. By email, the bulletin’s editor, Kansas State University’s David Haukos, confirmed that study was submitted. In March 2017, Haukos told us: "The manuscript is currently undergoing peer-review; therefore, no decision has been made concerning publication." Poché said by phone the 2015 study was followed up by another in 2016 with a third study underway in 2017, each one based on feeding the Kaput product to feral hogs. Both of the first two studies, he said, decimated exposed hog populations in North Texas study areas; he noted too the bait uses only one-fifth of the warfarin found in conventional rat and mouse baits. We asked for a copy of the 2015 study. By email, Poché said that remains "confidential business information," and that releasing it before publication would leave his company with no control of where it ends up. Poché otherwise provided two of his own March 2017 PowerPoint presentations on Kaput along with the printed program for the April 2016 International Wild Pig Conference program in Myrtle Beach, S.C. A section of the program, "Feral hog control using a new bait," evidently describes a Scimetric study. It opens: "An EPA Experimental Use Permit was obtained to conduct a field trial using a novel bait to control feral hogs. The product, 12-years under development, was used to determine the efficacy against feral hogs on test sites 50 miles east of Plainview, Texas. Two paraffin bait formulations were tested, containing 0.005% and 0.01% warfarin. Hog activity was monitored pre- and post-treatment using trail cameras near feeders, VHF and GPS transmitting equipment, and bait consumption." Next, the summary says: "Bait was applied in modified commercial feeders with heavy lids. Baiting initiated on June 1 and terminated June 30, 2015. After the 30-day exposure period efficacy on the 5-km treatment plot baited with 0.005% warfarin was 100%, 98.6%, and 97.8% using radio-tracking, trail camera images, and bait consumption. Efficacy on the 0.01% warfarin bait plot was not as effective. Ninety-seven non-target searches were conducted during the treatment and post-treatment phases to examine for mortality, for which none were found," an indication other animals weren’t killed by the bait. The text closes: "The low warfarin concentrate bait proved effective in eliminating wild hogs while posing minimal exposure to non-target wildlife." The longer of the PowerPoint presentations includes a slide stating that warfarin was approved as a rodent-killer in 1948 and as a human drug six years later. The presentation also has several slides titled: "Field Efficacy of a Feral Hog Bait Containing 0.005% Warfarin," with a subtitle indicating the slides refer to research in North Texas from 2015 into 2017. Images include feral hogs wearing GPS collars or tagged for tracking by radio. One slide summarizes the research results by different methods of making hog counts: SOURCE: Presentation, "Where we’ve been and where we’re going with Warfarin for controlling wild pigs," March 1, 2017, Richard Poché, Genesis Labs (received by email from Poché, March 9, 2017) Company: No independent research ‘necessary’ Poché, asked if independent research makes sense before Kaput goes commercial, emailed: "Not necessary. We do research under what is called Good Laboratory Practices, which is required by the EPA. No one can match the quality and integrity of the work." According to an EPA web page, the agency conducts audits to ensure companies developing pesticide products comply with those practices. EPA registration Our search of EPA’s web site led us to a Jan. 3, 2017, agency document indicating that on Jan. 3, 2017, Kaput Feral Hog Bait was registered with the agency under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. "Registration is in no way to be construed as an endorsement or recommendation of this product by the Agency," the document further states. "In order to protect health and the environment, the Administrator, on his motion, may at any time suspend or cancel the registration of a pesticide in accordance with the Act." Also, the document says, the product is "conditionally registered" in accord with section 3(c)(7)(a) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the section says the EPA administrator may conditionally register a pesticide if the pesticide is "identical or substantially similar" to a registered pesticide and approving the registration wouldn’t "significantly increase the risk of any unreasonable adverse effect on the environment." Another agency web page says: "If EPA finds that the pesticide meets the standard for registration, but there are outstanding data requirements, the Agency may, under certain circumstances, grant a ‘conditional’ registration pursuant to FIFRA section 3(c)(7). However, before granting a conditional registration, EPA must determine that, although an application lacks some of the required data, use of the pesticide would not significantly increase the risk of unreasonable adverse effects on people or the environment during the time needed to generate the necessary data." We asked Poché about "outstanding data requirements" with Kaput, as mentioned generally by the EPA. By email, Poché said a "1-year storage stability study" for Kaput has been submitted to the EPA. Poché unpacked: "An EPA-registered pesticide requires stability of the chemical in the formula available to the public. The product is stored in the marketing container on the shelf at room temperature over a one-year period. The bait is analyzed every 3 months for the warfarin concentration. That analysis is done at the beginning and at 3, 5, 9, and 12 months after manufacturing. The goal is to ensure the bait is good after 1 year and the concentration of warfarin is plus or minus 10% of what the EPA label requires. In our case the concentrations were within 1% of the label requirements," Poché said. Over a couple days, we did not draw an EPA response to Herring’s claim. Otherwise the National Pesticide Information Center, which partners Oregon State University with the EPA, responded to our inquiry by pointing out a 1991 EPA "fact sheet" on warfarin that states the EPA evaluates pesticides by obtaining from producers a "complete set of studies showing the human health and environmental effects of each pesticide. The Agency imposes any regulatory controls that are needed to effectively manage each pesticide's risks," the sheet says. State intends limits Miller, the state agriculture commissioner, is a former legislator who authored the Texas law enabling hunters to shoot at feral hogs from helicopters. At the TDA, spokeswoman Jennifer Dorsett responded to our inquiry about the absence of public studies of Kaput. Dorsett said by email: "Kaput is an entirely proprietary product, so studies on the Kaput Feral Hog Bait are owned by the company and you would have to contact them directly to see if they will release them to you." Also by email, TDA spokesman Mark Loeffler stressed that while the state agency helped fund Kaput research, its role is generally limited to cataloging pesticides approved by EPA, including Kaput, though Miller applied his authority to make Kaput "state limited use," to be sold by licensed dealers and used by licensed applicators, Loeffler said. "We do not do state-paid studies of proposed pesticides," Loeffler wrote. "We are not required to do lengthy study of a product because we have little discretion to reject or deny" registrations, he said. Dorsett otherwise provided a document listing a dozen reports on poisoning feral hogs, issued from 1987 through 2002, including seven titles specifying "warfarin," we tallied. Dorsett said the agency’s toxicologist, Michael Hare, used the reports as references in evaluating Kaput as a state-limited-use pesticide. Dorsett told us relevant research also has involved the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, which says it has officials in nearly every county demonstrating "the latest technology and best practices to improve the state’s food and fiber system." We didn't hear back from the service. Loeffler added that Miller has personally drawn on a 1995 post about warfarin’s history as a rat poison and its toxicity to animals put out by universities teamed in the Extension Toxicology Network. Excerpt: "Warfarin is only slightly dangerous to humans and domestic animals when used as directed, but care must be taken with young pigs, which are especially susceptible." Also, the post says, warfarin--which is insoluble in water--poses no threat to aquatic organisms and is "practically non-toxic" to game birds, with chickens "relatively resistant." Our ruling Herring said there’s no public study of Kaput, the product that might soon be available in Texas to attack feral hogs. There’s no public study of that EPA-registered product, we confirmed. But a 2015 study submitted to a science journal would become public if it’s accepted for publication. Also, the effects on feral hogs of warfarin, Kaput’s active ingredient, has been explored in published studies. We rate this 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. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/79f1a70f-3245-4ee8-ae8a-b94980d9c72f | null | Will Herring | null | null | null | 2017-03-16T18:06:59 | 2017-03-06 | ['None'] |
goop-00231 | Katie Holmes Chose Wedding Dress, Venue For Jamie Foxx Wedding? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/katie-holmes-jamie-foxx-wedding-dress-venue/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Katie Holmes Chose Wedding Dress, Venue For Jamie Foxx Wedding? | 10:39 am, September 23, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02409 | When it comes to transportation funds, Georgians spend more in taxes and on red tape than they get back from the federal government. | half-true | /georgia/statements/2014/mar/07/tom-graves/congressman-pitches-new-plan-transportation-fundin/ | A Georgia congressman says there’s one major roadblock to states having more money to fund transportation projects: Uncle Sam. U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, a Republican from North Georgia, believes some federal regulations are driving up the costs of transportation here and across the nation. One part of his argument put PolitiFact Georgia on the road in search of whether his complaint is true. Georgia, like most states, is a "donor" state when it comes to federal transportation funding, the congressman said. "They spend more in taxes and on red tape than they get back," Graves said in his speech, explaining his definition of donor states. Graves says Georgians pay more money in gas taxes than the state receives from the federal government for transportation projects once you figure in the "red tape" from two key federal regulations that have an impact on road construction costs. In the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2012, records show Georgia paid nearly $1.2 billion into the Federal Highway Trust Fund Highway Account and received nearly $1.27 billion from the fund. That would appear to put Georgia in the plus category. But Graves says the irksome regulations of the Davis-Bacon Act and the National Environmental Policy Act add huge costs for the state. Those costs turn the positive into a negative, he said, moving Georgia into the donor category. Graves and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, have put together a solution they call the Transportation Empowerment Act. It would gives states greater authority to determine transportation needs. The legislation would also lower the federal gas tax over the next five years from 18.4 cents per gallon to 3.7 cents per gallon. The states, then, could make up the difference in any way they like — replace the gas tax, put in toll roads, create a new consumption tax such as T-SPLOST. The federal highway act is up for reauthorization this year, and the two lawmakers hope to race past competing plans with their proposal and get enough votes for adoption. Graves said in a recent speech that Georgia is projected to get an 84 percent rate of return this budget year for transportation projects because of these policies. John Donnelly, a spokesman for the congressman, said Graves’ 84 percent estimate is conservative. "It is important to note that our calculation is actually generous because it includes the general fund subsidies as well. If we simply calculated the rate of return without a subsidy in play (i.e. gas taxes paid in vs. transportation spending attributable to gas taxes going back to Georgia), we'd be closer to 70 percent. If we then accounted for red tape in that calculation, we'd be closer to 56 percent," Donnelly said. So are the Davis-Bacon Act and NEPA a drain on federally funded transportation projects? The Davis-Bacon Act has long been a source of angst amongst conservatives and some business groups. It requires contractors and subcontractors to pay laborers and mechanics working on nearly all federally funded projects at least the locally prevailing wages. It was created in 1931 to prevent employers from hiring cheaper labor during the Great Depression, and it has been amended several times. The wages are determined by the U.S. Department of Labor. A team of four researchers from Suffolk University looked at the impact of the Davis-Bacon Act. In 2008, they released a study that found it costs U.S. taxpayers an additional $8.6 billion annually and adds 9.9 percent to construction costs. The study found federal officials calculated the prevailing wages by using numbers "dictated" from construction unions that are "biased upwards." "Union workers earn a median weekly income of $833, compared to $642 for nonunion workers. The practice of basing the prevailing wage on a small minority of workers who have, on average, weekly earnings that are almost 30 percent higher than other workers guarantees that the reported wage is anything but the prevailing wage," the study found. U.S. Labor Department officials have said independent studies show the Davis-Bacon Act does not increase government contracting costs. "The prevailing wage reflects the wage paid to construction workers in the local area — union or non-union. Moreover, Davis-Bacon Act designation does not inherently increase government contracting costs, as shown by a number of independent studies," Nancy Leppink, who was head of the Wage and Hour Division for the United States Department of Labor, wrote in a blog post in 2011. Our inquiries to the Labor Department were directed to an official who did not respond to telephone calls and emails for comment. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service wrote in a 2012 report that wages for highway and heavy construction projects under the Davis-Bacon Act were higher than federal employment statistics about 60 percent of the time. The report did not calculate the difference. The report did note that the salary gap between union and non-union workers has decreased in recent years. It also noted the percentage of union workers in construction had decreased between 2000 and 2008. The CRS also noted another point: Federal projects may require workers to have more advanced skills. Thus, they may earn higher salaries. The National Environmental Policy Act, which became federal law in 1969, requires an environmental review for all highway and construction projects under the purview of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Critics say NEPA slows construction, raising project costs. Graves’ office sent us a 1997 report by researchers at North Carolina State University who found NEPA increased construction costs by 9 percent. Federal officials found several problems with the report. First, they said only 19 of 50 state transportation departments responded to it. Second, of the states that replied, the additional costs were less than the 10 percent. We also wondered whether the study, more than 16 years old, was too old to be considered for serious discussion. Graves’ camp followed up by sending us a 2006 Federal Highway Administration report that environmental costs for some construction projects averaged 4 percent and averaged 8 percent in some case studies. Our conclusion: Again, Graves says Georgia spends more in gas taxes and red tape than it gets back from the federal government. He says wage and environmental regulations add huge costs for the state. And studies show he has an interesting argument. Do these regulations result in Georgia getting a net result of less money back than it collects from gas taxes? It could be, but there’s no definitive data that show what the specific impact is in Georgia. Until we see some research specific to Georgia, we believe Graves’ claim requires some caution. With these caveats, we rate the Graves' claim Half True. | null | Tom Graves | null | null | null | 2014-03-07T06:00:00 | 2014-03-07 | ['None'] |
pomt-05921 | Savannah is home to "the fastest-growing port in the nation." | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2012/jan/31/casey-cagle/lt-gov-makes-big-claim-about-savannah-port/ | For more than a year, Georgia leaders have spoken about the importance of deepening the Port of Savannah as a way to boost the state’s economy. The state has invested $136 million toward such work in the past three years, and leaders are lobbying the federal government for additional funds to deepen the Savannah port to prepare for the megasized container ships that will traverse the Panama Canal by 2014 and look for ports along the East Coast to dock. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle offered up a piece of information to emphasize the importance of this effort during a speech to the Atlanta Press Club. Savannah, he said, is home to "the fastest-growing port in the nation." True? PolitiFact Georgia set sail to find out whether Cagle is right. Others, including U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, have made similar claims. But PolitiFact Georgia found news reports stating that the port in Wilmington, N.C., is the nation’s fastest-growing port. Cagle’s office sent us a graphic from the Georgia Ports Authority showing the Savannah port is receiving more imports and exports than 10 large American ports. Unbeknown to us, there are all sorts of annual reports and statistics about the approximately 360 ports in the United States. Some track the annual value of items that come through the ports. Some track it by the amount of containers that are imported and exported at the ports, measured in 20-foot equivalent units, or known as TEUs. There is also port data measured in metric tons (about 2,200 pounds) or short tons (2,000 pounds). The Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics, a state agency that works to find solutions to challenges encountered by shipping and transportation entities, measures growth by TEUs, saying it is the standard used internationally. It provided us a chart showing the average annual growth rate at the Savannah port between 2000 and 2010 has been 11.5 percent, more than any of what they said are the nation’s 10 largest ports. Houston’s port was second at 5.5 percent. Overall, the numbers show Savannah is home to the nation’s fourth-largest port. "The Port of Savannah, from container volume, is the fastest-growing in the United States," said Page Siplon, a spokesman for the center. The Georgia center’s number is similar to TEU data compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration, or RITA. Savannah’s average annual growth rate was 11.5 percent between 1995 and 2009, the data show. Its chart included the top 10 ports. Savannah had the highest percentage growth between 1995 and 2009 and since 2000. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration also keeps port data in metric tons. Between 2003 and 2010, the Norfolk, Va., port had the fastest average annual percentage growth rate among midsize and larger ports. Savannah was second. Between 2006 and 2010, Norfolk was first again. Wilmington was second among ports with more than 5 million metric tons. Ah, but that’s the problem, Siplon says. While Wilmington’s port handled 6.1 million metric tons in 2009, Savannah’s port handled 29.7 metric tons that year. There’s no reasonable way to compare some ports, he says. "It’s not a fair representation," Siplon told us. The American Association of Port Authorities, an Alexandria, Va.-based organization that helps promote ports in the Western Hemisphere, said the RITA data does not include military containers or containerized cargo shipped domestically between U.S. ports. The AAPA also collects container data on ports, through TEUs, and shared it with us. It showed Savannah with the highest percentage annual growth rate in the past five and 10 years among the 16 ports that currently handle more than 500,000 TEUs a year. Several ports that handled smaller annual TEUs -- such as Boston, Mobile, New Orleans and Wilmington -- had higher percentage growth at times in recent years. The AAPA numbers show the Savannah port had the largest container increase in TEUs of any U.S. port since 2006. The largest U.S. ports, such as New York/New Jersey and Los Angeles, had larger container increases since 2001 and in the U.S. DOT data. We note that the ports in Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey are already two or three times larger than Savannah’s. "Savannah is the fastest-growing port among larger ports," said Jeff Humphreys, director of the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth, who frequently tracks data on ports. "Obviously, there are smaller ports that will have the biggest change." Among the big dogs of American ports, it appears the Savannah port is the nation’s fastest-growing port. But some smaller ports could argue that they are growing at a faster rate. Experts are also careful to say Savannah is the nation's fastest-growing container port. PolitiFact Georgia thinks the lieutenant governor has a strong argument, but we must include the caveat of some of these smaller ports. We rate Cagle’s statement as Mostly True. | null | Casey Cagle | null | null | null | 2012-01-31T06:00:00 | 2012-01-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-10020 | I don't do earmarks. I've never done one. I'm not going to do one. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/16/john-boehner/rep-john-boehner-earmark-free/ | When House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, urged President Obama to veto the $410 billion omnibus spending bill because of all the earmarks in it, he spoke from particularly high ground on the issue. "I don't do earmarks," Boehner said in a news conference on March 12, 2009. "I've never done one. I'm not going to do one." Indeed, that's what he promised back in 1990 when he was first running for Congress. He often says he told voters, "If you are electing me to raid the federal treasury on your behalf, you're electing the wrong guy." For eighteen years, Boehner says he hasn't wavered. A strict earmark-free record would put him in rare company, so we decided to check it out. "He hasn't taken any," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy group that doggedly tracks earmarks. "He has bragged about that long before this ever became a big deal, and he's right." We reviewed press coverage of Boehner since he was elected and couldn't find any either. We did find several instances where local officials pushing for various highway projects ran up against Boehner's hard line. In an article in the Dayton Daily News in 2002, one official lamented that his area would have difficulty getting federal money for a highway project because of the congressman's policy. "If you're looking for a congressman to go after a bunch of earmarks, he's not your guy,'" said Bryan Bucklew, vice president of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. It's a principled stance that hasn't always sat well with fellow Republican legislators who believe in earmarks, either. But Boehner has stuck to his pledge. In May 2008, he told the Wall Street Journal, "It might have been the best decision I ever made." Yet despite his personal ban, Boehner has never argued for earmarks to be eliminated completely. "I don't think I want to hold all my colleagues to that same standard," Boehner said in a Fox News Sunday interview on Feb. 5, 2006. "There's an appropriate place for some of these earmarks, but we need less numbers of earmarks and more transparency and more accountability. Members' names ought to be associated with them. They ought to be visible. And members ought to have a chance to see these before they become law." This year, Boehner was joined in eschewing earmarks by other House Republican leaders: Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana. But in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., sponsored or cosponsored 53 earmarks worth $75.5 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. All told, TCS counted more than 8,500 disclosed earmarks in the omnibus bill, coming to $7.7 billion. Together with $6.6 billion in disclosed earmarks in the three 2009 spending bills that passed in the fall, earmarks for the year come to $14.3 billion, which is $500 million less than earmarks last year. As is the custom, Republicans, as the minority party, got about 40 percent of them. Of the 178 Republican House members, only 39 did not have earmarks in the omnibus, according to TCS. Three Democrats did not accept earmarks. As for Boehner, he can rightfully claim he hasn't ever asked for or taken an earmark. We rule his statement True. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2009-03-16T15:23:42 | 2009-03-12 | ['None'] |
pose-00770 | Deal's plan would allow students to progress to higher levels without having to complete unnecessary hours…"We will no longer tie the hands of students and teachers by imposing arbitrary 'seat time' requirements." | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/georgia/promises/deal-o-meter/promise/800/allow-students-to-progress-to-higher-levels-witho/ | null | deal-o-meter | Nathan Deal | null | null | Allow students to progress to higher levels without having to complete unnecessary hours | 2011-01-06T16:27:46 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15328 | Says because of his actions, Wisconsin "property taxes today are lower than they were four years ago." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2015/jul/15/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-wisconsin-property-taxes-are-low/ | In announcing his run for president, Gov. Scott Walker made a boast about property taxes that both highlights his record in Wisconsin and contrasts it with other governors who are competing for the Republican nomination. "We lowered taxes on individuals, on employers and property owners," Walker said a few minutes into the July 13, 2015 speech (fact-checked here). "Property taxes today are lower than they were four years ago. "How many other governors can say that?" Walker made the property tax claim again the next day in Nevada and it seemed destined to become a talking point in South Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire and Iowa as he made his first campaign swing as an announced candidate. Implicit in Walker’s statement is that not only are property taxes down, but they are lower as a result of his actions. So let’s see if that’s accurate. An earlier claim Walker made a similar claim during his State of the State speech in January 2014. He said that because of "tax controls" he and the GOP-run Legislature had put in place, property taxes on a typical home in 2014 would be lower than in 2010, which was the year before he took office. We found the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau had projected that the 2014 property tax bill for a median-valued home taxed at the statewide average property tax rate would be $2,954. That was $9 lower than in 2010. (Actual tax bills weren't sent out until December 2014.) The fiscal bureau regularly does such estimates, and they are routinely cited by politicians of both stripes. But it’s important to note they are an illustration -- some people's property taxes went down, some went up. Even if your home value was right at that statewide average, your tax bill might have been higher due to various factors, including levies in individual communities. In the earlier fact check, we found that tax and spending restraints Republicans put on local governments and schools were crucial in the decrease in the hypothetical tax bill, but that a drop in home values also played a role. We rated that claim Mostly True. So, Walker's earlier claim was based on a projected figure for 2014. We now have the tax collection numbers for 2014, as well as fiscal bureau projections for 2015 and 2016. New claim -- one measure In Wisconsin, according to the fiscal bureau, local governments rely on property tax revenue more than the U.S. average. And in comparison to other states, Wisconsin property taxes have been among the highest in the nation since at least 1970 (ranking 13th in 2012). We went to the fiscal bureau’s latest tally of the estimated property tax bills, which was produced in May 2015. Tax year Estimated property tax bill for a median-valued home 2010 $2,963 2011 (Walker takes office) $2,953 2012 $2,943 2013 $2,926 2014 $2,832 2015 (projected) $2,824 2016 (projected) $2,821 So, there have been four straight years of declines in the hypothetical example during Walker's first four years in office. (The projections for 2015 and 2016 indicate it will be six straight years). The 2014 bill -- the most recent year for which property tax bills have been issued -- was $131 lower than in 2010. That’s more than the $9 reduction that had been projected when we last looked at this topic. As we noted in the earlier fact check, while the decreases are modest, they represent a significant turnaround. From 2006 to 2010, the typical bill increased by $230. But there are other ways to evaluate Walker’s claim. Other measures The nonprofit Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance provided us net property tax levies (the amount of property taxes levied after all credits were provided), as well the net levies as expressed as a percentage of personal income; the percentage is sometimes referred to as the tax burden. Tax year Net property tax levy Net property tax levy as percentage of personal income 2010 $9.34 billion 4.24% 2011 (Walker takes office) $9.35 billion 4.02% 2012 $9.43 billion 3.88% 2013 $9.54 billion 3.84% 2014 $9.32 billion 3.63% The figures show that although the net property tax levy increased during each of Walker’s first three years in office, it dropped in 2014 to lower than it was four years earlier. And considering net property tax levy as a percentage of personal income, the rate in 2014 was lower than in each of the previous four years. The alliance told us that the 3.63 percent figure for 2014 is the lowest since 1946. The reasons As we found in our earlier fact check, the main reason property taxes are down is the limits Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature put on school districts and other local governments to levy taxes. Since then, in 2014, the Republicans boosted state aid to technical colleges by $406 million, resulting in the schools reducing their property tax levies by the same amount. At the same time, housing values continue to be a factor in holding down property taxes. The fiscal bureau has noted that housing values statewide, after declining from 2009 through 2013, rose by 1.7 percent in 2014. But the recovery in the housing market isn’t complete. Our rating Walker said that because of his actions, Wisconsin "property taxes today are lower than they were four years ago." Measured three different ways, the statistical part of the claim is numerically accurate. And Walker’s measures to limit local property tax increases have played a major role. But the lower taxes are due in part to declines in housing values that have only partially recovered. We rate Walker’s statement Mostly True. More on Scott Walker Go here for an in-depth look at Walker’s record on the Truth-O-Meter and the Flip-O-Meter. And here for each of the fact checks we’ve done on claims by, and about, the Wisconsin governor. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2015-07-15T10:03:40 | 2015-07-13 | ['Wisconsin'] |
pomt-02580 | Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/29/barack-obama/obama-says-every-four-minutes-another-american-hom/ | President Barack Obama touted his energy strategy during his State of the Union speech. He called for safe extraction of natural gas, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and setting new standards for trucks -- and he shined a spotlight on solar power. "It’s not just oil and natural gas production that’s booming; we’re becoming a global leader in solar, too," Obama said. "Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar; every panel pounded into place by a worker whose job can’t be outsourced." That timetable sounded like a rapid expansion of solar: Does a home or business go solar every four minutes? We’ll shed a little light on this claim. Solar expansion Obama’s claim came from Greentech Media (GTM), which published the statistic in August in its Solar Market Research Report, a project with the Solar Energy Industries Association. GTM provides quarterly and annual reports that contain solar-specific analysis and forecasts for industry professionals. A GTM chart shows how solar installations have rapidly increased in recent years from one every 80 minutes in 2006 to one every four minutes in 2013. "A lot happens in America every four minutes," wrote GTM in an August blog about their research. "During that short time period, 30 babies are born, 4,080 McDonald's Big Macs are consumed, and 48,000 tons of CO2 are emitted. And as it turns out, the U.S. is now installing one solar photovoltaic (PV) system every four minutes as well. If market growth continues at its current pace, the American solar industry could be installing a system every minute and twenty seconds by 2016." Every quarter GTM collects the number of solar installations from utilities and state agencies. Researchers get data from 28 states (including Florida ) which represents about 97 percent of the market and devise an estimate for the remaining states, said Shayle Kann, senior vice president of research. GTM has been tracking the solar market since 2009 and collected this particular detailed data since 2010. (Kann said that the U.S. Energy Information Administration has some data on solar installations but not to the level of detail that GTM requires for quarterly reports.) In 2013, there were about 132,000 installations, and there were 525,600 minutes, so the math works out to about one installation every four minutes. GTM is finalizing the number of installations in 2013 -- GTM says it’s possible it could have been higher. Part of the reason for the rapid growth is that the cost of solar panels and installation has dropped, Kann said. Experts on alternative energy generally agreed with GTM’s research but offered some caveats. "Solar is growing, but from a very small number...," said Christopher Bronk, director of the Program on Energy and Cybersecurity at Rice University. According to the November electric power monthly report from the Energy Information Administration, "PV solar energy accounts for about 1.5 percent of all electricity generated from renewable sources and .2 percent percent of all the electricity generated." And not surprisingly, solar is more common in some states than others. "As you move to places with a lot more cloud cover, let’s say Washington, D.C., then solar energy isn’t going to work as well," said Stephen P.A. Brown, an expert in energy economics at the University of Nevada. "Unless there is some huge change in technology it’s not projected to be the dominant form of energy any time soon or in fact ever." Our ruling During the State of the Union, Obama said, "Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar." Obama obtained that figure from an August report from Greentech Media. Solar has been expanding, but it remains a small slice of the overall market. We rate this claim True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2014-01-29T17:45:09 | 2014-01-28 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-04802 | Says an appointed board created under Obamacare "will have the ability to come between you and your doctor in determining the best treatment options for you!" | false | /texas/statements/2012/aug/21/john-carter/john-cornyn-says-board-comes-you-treatment-options/ | Saying he’s committed to repealing Obamacare, U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, told constituents: "You may not be aware of one of the most frightening provisions in the president’s healthcare plan -- the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board." Carter’s July 31, 2012, letter continues: "This board, comprised of 15 unelected, unaccountable people hand-picked by the president, will have the ability to come between you and your doctor in determining the best treatment options for you!" After readers asked us to look into Carter’s claim about the board’s intrusive powers, we emailed Carter’s office for backup information -- and didn’t hear back. The board mentioned in the 2010 law has been singled out before, having figured into several Truth-O-Meter articles including a July 2012 False rating of Mitt Romney’s claim that the law "puts the federal government between you and your doctor." Romney offered no evidence for his claim; PolitiFact concluded that the law leaves intact the private sector delivery of health care. The board mentioned by Carter, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, is to focus on reducing the rate of growth in per-capita Medicare spending, but it is prohibited under the law from suggesting anything that leads to rationing or reductions in either benefits or eligibility. Generally, in contrast, the board might recommend that every discharged hospital patient get guidance on wound care or that they drink plenty of cold water. They might find that surgery to install certain medical devices – like hip replacements – should not be done on Medicare beneficiaries over the age of 105. The goal is cost-savings, not micro-managing patient care. Also, Congress has the power to overrule the panel’s recommendations. In February 2012, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a press release: "Instead of giving patients control of their health care decisions, the president and his allies in Congress chose to delegate this power to a commission of 15 unelected bureaucrats in Washington." That’s False, PolitiFact Tennessee said, because the board would not control decisions made at the individual patient level. With Carter’s wording in mind, we read the relevant portion of the law. Section 3403 indeed states that the board is to include 15 members appointed by the president. Each appointee also would face Senate confirmation. As far as we can tell, the law does not give the board the power, or permission, to regulate any individual’s treatment options. For an August 2011 Truth-O-Meter article, PolitiFact Georgia asked four health experts about a congressman’s claim that "a bunch of bureaucrats" would "decide whether you get care." All four said that’s incorrect. A scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank usually at odds with Democratic positions, said the assertion that the board would be controlling patients’ health-care decisions is "not even close to correct." Cato scholar Michael Tanne said the board "has nothing to do with individual care at all. It’s not making decisions on individuals." Our ruling Carter’s claim has no factual foundation. We rate it False. | null | John Carter | null | null | null | 2012-08-21T10:00:00 | 2012-07-31 | ['None'] |
pomt-14810 | The United States has "10,000 IRS agents making sure that you don't take an improper charity deduction," but to fight terrorism, it has "less than two dozen people focusing on countering violent extremism at home." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2015/nov/25/martha-mcsally/10000-irs-agents-only-2-dozen-people-focused-viole/ | Four days after the Paris terror attacks, House Speaker Paul Ryan led a news conference to discuss a bill that would require President Barack Obama to develop a plan for defeating the Islamic State. The Janesville Republican was joined Nov. 17, 2015 by U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, who made a claim -- comparing the number of Internal Revenue Service agents to the number of people "countering violent extremism" in America -- that we want to check. "This administration needs to step up," said McSally, an Arizona Republican. "We do not have a strategy. We do not have a focus. There are over 200,000 social media tweets and posts per day by ISIS, in a very sophisticated social media campaign. They are acting at the speed of broadband while we are acting at the speed of bureaucracy." She added: "We have 10,000 IRS agents making sure that you don't take an improper charity deduction and less than two dozen people focusing on countering violent extremism at home. It’s time for this administration to step up its game, take this seriously. It is a generational conflict and we must lead now more than ever." McSally greatly understated what the IRS’ 10,000 revenue agents do. And to conclude there are only two dozen people who focus on countering violent extremism in the country, she defined that group very narrowly. Let’s take a closer look. Checking charitable deductions On the IRS part of McSally’s statement, her office asked the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service how many revenue agents the IRS has, according to emails forwarded to us by her staff. The IRS told the research service there were 10,840. A revenue agent, the research service told McSally, "typically is an accountant who audits and examines the tax returns of individuals, businesses, and tax-exempt entities to determine whether they are meeting their tax obligations." In other words, the work of the 10,000 IRS agents is much broader than merely checking whether a taxpayer improperly claimed a tax deduction for making a charitable donation. It’s also not necessarily surprising the number is as high as it is, given that millions of people and entities file federal income taxes. And only a federal agency, not state or local authorities, would be involved in auditing federal returns. That’s in contrast to the approach taken in countering violent extremism. Countering violent extremism Now for the second part of McSally’s claim -- that there are fewer than two dozen people "focusing on countering violent extremism" in America, which isn’t exactly the same as fighting terrorism. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, citing a White House strategy document on countering violent extremism, says violent extremists are "individuals who support or commit ideologically-motivated violence to further political goals." So, countering violent extremism is an effort to prevent such violence. We asked for more clarification from Amy Pate, research director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. She said: Think of a 20-year-old, marginalized, radicalized American who one day shows up at the airport with a ticket to fly to Turkey and join ISIS. Countering violent extremism is aimed at preventing that sort of thing from occurring. It’s done through a variety of outreach and education programs, social media and other efforts, aiming to get down to the local and even the individual level -- such as showing parents how to spot whether a son or daughter might be becoming radicalized. "The more local it is, the more successful it’s going to be," Pate told us. Indeed, the White House strategy document, issued in 2011, outlines how the federal government will "support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism." The White House also said, in February 2015, that "communities provide the solution to violent extremism; and CVE efforts are best pursued at the local level, tailored to local dynamics, where local officials continue to build relationships within their communities through established community policing and community outreach mechanisms. The federal government’s most effective role in strengthening community partnerships and preventing violent extremism is as a facilitator, convener, and source of research and findings." In other words, unlike auditing federal tax returns, which is done at the federal level, countering violent extremism has a federal component but is designed to be an effort that is spread out throughout the country. To back McSally’s statement on the two dozen federal workers, her office cited a statement made at a July 2015 congressional hearing by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He said: "Our committee asked the top agencies responsible for (countering violent extremism) how much money and how many people they have assigned to the problem. They could only identify around $15 million being spent and around two dozen people working full-time to combating domestic radicalization. That’s it." The four primary federal entities for countering violent extremism are the departments of Homeland Security and Justice, the FBI and the National Counter-Terrorism Center. But McSally and McCaul are counting only the number of full-time federal employees in those agencies whose work is dedicated solely to countering violent extremism. Pate told us that ignores the many other employees from the four entities that spend least part of their time on countering violent extremism -- as well as countless other people across the country, including local law enforcement, community groups and individuals. Our rating McSally said the U.S. has "10,000 IRS agents making sure that you don't take an improper charity deduction," but to fight terrorism, it has "less than two dozen people focusing on countering violent extremism at home." There are 10,000 IRS revenue agents who examine and audit tax returns -- a much broader scope of work than merely checking for an improper deduction. And there’s an indication that as of mid-2015, strictly speaking, perhaps two dozen federal employees were focused solely on countering violent extremism. But that effort involves more federal employees who do at least some work on countering violent extremism, as well as people in local communities across the country who are involved. We rate McSally’s statement Mostly False. More on homeland security Rand Paul in Milwaukee: 40 percent of illegal immigrants "had a visa and then became illegal," mostly because "they changed jobs." Half True. In Context: What Scott Walker said about a Canada wall. Ron Johnson: Some 8.1 million of the estimated 11 million to 12 million people "in this country illegally are working." Mostly True. | null | Martha McSally | null | null | null | 2015-11-25T05:00:00 | 2015-11-17 | ['United_States'] |
vees-00447 | On Sunday, at the PICC Grounds in Pasay City, during the 35th Anniversary of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP)-Laban, Duterte said: | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-unlike-chinese-filipinos-not-adept-mat | Is Duterte correct in saying language plays a role in being good at mathematics? | null | null | null | fact-check,Fact check | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Unlike Chinese, Filipinos not adept at math because of language, says Duterte | March 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00085 | FactCheck: You asked, we answered - how does Irish politicians' pay compare to Europe? | none | http://www.thejournal.ie/politicians-salaries-europe-ireland-3149607-Dec2016/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: You asked, we answered - how does Irish politicians' pay compare to Europe? | Dec 28th 2016, 10:30 PM | null | ['None'] |
vees-00035 | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Uson leaves gov’t with three cases before Ombudsman | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-sheet-uson-leaves-govt-three-cases-ombudsman | null | null | null | null | Mocha Uson,drew olivar,sign language,ASL,FSL | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Uson leaves gov’t with three cases before Ombudsman | October 03, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01911 | The platform of the Republican Party says deport everybody and to hell with it. | false | /texas/statements/2014/jun/30/gilberto-hinojosa/texas-republicans-oppose-legal-status-us-illegal-i/ | The chairman of the Texas Democratic Party predicted delegates to its state convention in Dallas would endorse a platform favoring paths to citizenship for hard-working, tax-paying illegal immigrants in the country and legal residency for children of illegal immigrants who came here through no choices of their own. In advance of his party’s gathering, where he won a fresh two-year term, Gilberto Hinojosa went on to suggest the Republican Party of Texas recently settled on an approach to immigration with a decidedly negative vibe. Hinojosa told KERA, the Dallas public radio station: "The party platform of the Republican Party says deport everybody and to hell with it. And that’s just not what America’s all about. So that’s going to be a big contrast, and I think it’s going to affect substantially the attitude a lot of Hispanics have toward Republicans." It’s been widely reported that Texas Republicans, who met in Fort Worth in early June 2014, removed platform language from 2012 endorsing a federal guest-worker program. Also, as the Austin American-Statesman noted in a June 7, 2014, news story, the platform was stripped of "any provision that would create an opportunity for immigrants living and working in the United States without legal sanction to receive provisional visas." Did the party also say "deport everybody," as Hinojosa said? The word "deport" isn’t in the 2014 Republican platform, which has a two-page section on immigration that opens by saluting the importance of immigrants in the nation’s history. It goes on to say: "It remains imperative to create fair and consistent procedures that will enable freedom-loving, hard-working and law-abiding immigrants to join us, by providing them an efficient, practical method of legal entry, so they can lawfully take positions where their labor is needed, without exploitation or harassment. "Our national interests are poorly served by our broken, embattled, and outdated immigration system, and patchwork attempts to mend its deficiencies will not prepare us to continue to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex global economy that demands the legal movement of people to fill jobs at all skill levels." Among other elements, the immigration plank calls for more officers on the border, an end to the possibility of in-state college tuition for certain illegal residents and protection of the ability of law officers to ask into the immigration status of someone in custody. The closest the plank comes to deportation is a line stating no form of amnesty should be granted, "including the granting of legal status to persons in the country illegally." Such individuals, we suppose, would remain subject to deportation at any time. For a slightly longer perspective, we looked next at the state Republican Party platform adopted by delegates to its June 2012 convention. The 2012 immigration plank opens: "Because of decades-long failure of the federal government to secure our borders and address the immigration issue, there are now upwards of 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States today, each of whom entered and remain here under different circumstances. "Mass deportation of these individuals would neither be equitable nor practical," the 2012 platform says, going on to oppose "blanket amnesty" while endorsing a temporary guest-worker program "to bring skilled and unskilled workers into the United States for temporary periods of time when no U.S. workers are currently available." To our email request for the basis of Hinojosa’s claim, Emmanuel Garcia, spokesman for the state Democratic Party, said Hinojosa was "referring to the emotions that many Latinos and immigrants feel with the rhetoric at the" 2014 "GOP convention and the changes in the GOP platform. You are correct those exact words are not there." Our ruling Hinojosa said the Republican Party platform "says deport everybody and to hell with it." The heck you say. The Texas GOP platform opposes illegal immigration and any legal status for unauthorized U.S. residents, which leaves deportations a possibility. But the platform doesn’t venture as far as the chairman said. It doesn't call for deporting everybody living here illegally. We rate this claim as False. | null | Gilberto Hinojosa | null | null | null | 2014-06-30T15:47:16 | 2014-06-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-10466 | Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA and permanent China trade. Pennsylvania lost thousands of jobs. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/21/barack-obama/a-distinction-without-a-difference/ | In an attempt to draw distinctions where there are, in fact, very few, the Obama campaign sent around a mailer in Pennsylvania last week attacking Sen. Hillary Clinton on foreign trade. Over a picture of people standing in an unemployment line is this headline: "Here's the Truth: Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA and permanent China trade. Pennsylvania lost thousands of jobs." PolitiFact has addressed the NAFTA issue before, concluding that in the past, Clinton has, indeed, energetically promoted NAFTA, while noting that more work needed to be done. In June 2007, she said NAFTA had some positive effects "but unfortunately it had a lot of downside." And at a debate in December 2007, she announced her intention to review and reform NAFTA if she were elected. The other claim in Obama's political ad about Clinton's support for permanent China trade relates to a bill that passed Congress in 2000 to enter the United States into a Permanent Normalized Trade agreement with China. Clinton was campaigning for the U.S. Senate when the bill passed (just seven Democrats opposed), and Clinton was asked at a CNN-sponsored forum in April 2000 what she thought about it, in light of China's history on human rights. Said Clinton: "I share the concerns that many of my supporters in organized labor have expressed to me, because I do think we have to make sure that we improve labor rights, we improve environmental standards in our bilateral and our multilateral trade agreements. "But on balance, I've looked at this, I've studied it, I think it is in the interests of America and American workers that we provide the option for China to go into the WTO (World Trade Organization). Right now, we are trading with China. We have a huge trade deficit with China. The agreement that has been negotiated between our two countries would open their markets to us in a way that they are not yet open, and in fact, for many large manufactured products, like automobiles, we would have the first chance to really get in and compete in that marketplace." Obama says he would have opposed the legislation. In a forum sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) on April 15, 2008, Obama said the Permanent Normalized Trade agreement with China "didn't do enough to ensure fairness and compliance." "Now, you can have a debate about whether my position is right or wrong," Obama said. "But here's what you can't do. You can't spend the better part of two decades campaigning for NAFTA and PNTR for China, and then come here to Pennsylvania, and tell the steelworkers you've been with them all along." But when Clinton and Obama addressed the AAM, separately, on April 15, 2008, their stated positions on foreign trade were "virtually identical," said AAM director Scott Paul. Both pledged to step up enforcement of current trade laws. Both promised to crack down on China's practice of manipulating its currency to give its products an unfair advantage. Both said they opposed the Chinese government subsidizing industry to the detriment of U.S. competitors. "China must stop manipulating its currency because it's not fair to American manufacturers, it's not fair to you, and we are going to change it when I am president," Obama said. Said Clinton: "I'm calling for changing our laws to send China a message. If you subsidize your exports and hurt our manufacturers, you'll pay a price." Which led Paul to conclude: "There is not a lot of policy difference moving forward." The debate comes amid a campaign initiated by AAM called "China Cheats. Pennsylvania Loses." Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonpartisan business-labor alliance, commissioned a study by the Economic Policy Institute that concluded that trade deficits with China have cost the United States 1.8-million jobs since 2001 (78,200 in Pennsylvania). Another study by EPI concluded Pennsylvania lost another 44,173 jobs between 1993 and 2004 due to NAFTA. But while the Obama campaign mailer tries to make it seem as though the two Democratic candidates are far apart on trade issues, in substance they are not. It is true that Clinton has in the past verbally supported NAFTA and permanent trade with China. Yet it is also true that she has spoken forcefully about the need to reform NAFTA and to much more stringently enforce trade agreements with China. So we rate the claims in the mailer to be Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-04-21T00:00:00 | 2008-04-17 | ['China', 'North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement', 'Pennsylvania', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
tron-02290 | Navy to Name Ship After Harvey Milk | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/navy-name-ship-harvey-milk-truth/ | null | military | null | null | null | Navy to Name Ship After Harvey Milk | Aug 15, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01074 | A Greenpeace activist had his arm bitten off when he tried to hug a shark. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenpeace-activist-get-arm-bitten-off-hugging-white-shark/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Did a Greenpeace Activist Get His Arm Bitten Off After Hugging a Shark? | 2 February 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03405 | Donald Trump owns Carrier, or a significant stake in its parent company, United Technologies. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-carrier-stock/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does Donald Trump Own Carrier or Its Stock? | 6 December 2016 | null | ['United_Technologies_Corporation', 'Donald_Trump'] |
pomt-03921 | Knopp says he upheld a campaign promise not to join the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS). | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2013/feb/23/tim-knopp/did-tim-knopp-honor-his-pledge-eschew-pers/ | Freshman Oregon Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, is clear that lawmakers need to fix the Public Employees Retirement System this year, and that they themselves should not be part of the system. He pledged during his campaign to decline membership in PERS. Earlier this month, Knopp’s office issued a press release saying that along with being sworn into office, "he upheld a campaign promise not to join the state retirement program known as the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS)." "It is very important to me to honor the promises that I’ve made," Knopp is quoted as saying in the release. "If we don’t fix PERS now there will be fewer firefighters protecting our communities, fewer police officers on the streets, and fewer teachers in the classroom." PERS is contentious. Lawmakers reformed the system in 2003, curbing benefits for new employees going forward. Some lawmakers say it’s still too generous. Public employee unions are firm that the benefits were bargained for and are fair. Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, wants to find savings in the system, as do Republicans; House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, is lukewarm to the idea. Public employees generally favor Democrats with campaign help and money, so it’s not surprising to hear that Knopp, a Republican, promised to opt out. But PolitiFact Oregon also recalled that before he joined the Senate this year, Knopp was a three-term member of the Oregon House. In fact, he was House majority leader when lawmakers tackled reform in 2003. We were pretty sure he had been a member of PERS. Knopp’s office confirmed what we thought to be true. He joined the system in 1999, when he was first elected to the House, and remained an active member until 2005, when he left office. As a member for six years, he was vested in the system. The money continued accruing until 2010. What happened in 2010? Knopp needed money for a family medical emergency, so he cashed out his account. The total gross amount was $8,167.07, which we acknowledge is not an astonishingly high figure. Retirement benefits are calculated based on pay, and length of service, and legislators don’t earn much, about $20,000 a year. Still, we think his previous membership is a relevant detail curiously missing from an otherwise glowing press release. If PolitiFact Oregon were in office and had made public employee retirement a major part of our platform and had promised to opt out, we think we’d make it explicit that we had once been part of PERS, in the interest of full and complete disclosure. In any case, Knopp had three options when he was sworn into office this year: Join the Oregon Public Service Retirement Plan, which is the pension system he’s complaining about; join the Oregon Savings Growth Plan, which is like any other deferred compensation plan; or decline to join a retirement plan. Knopp chose the deferred compensation plan. The state -- his employer, the taxpayers -- contributes 6 percent to his plan. The state does not "pick up" the additional 6 percent of salary on behalf of employees, as it would under PERS. We had two questions for the senator from Central Oregon: One, why not publicize the fact that he was a member -- for more than a decade -- of the system he is now criticizing? And two, why take a retirement option at all? Let’s take the retirement question first. Knopp told PolitiFact Oregon that he’s not opposed to compensation for legislators. He just doesn’t want them to vote on a system in which they have a stake. To that end, he has co-sponsored a bill to prohibit future legislators from joining PERS or the deferred compensation plan, because they shouldn’t "be forced to be in the system," as he was. "Actual or perceived, there needs to be somebody who completely represents citizens and taxpayers, without a conflict," he said. As to the first question, Knopp said he disclosed his previous membership on the campaign trail. When his Democratic challenger said Knopp was a PERS member at an October 2012 candidates’ forum, he said, "I closed my account years ago, honestly, to pay some medical bills when my daughter had two brain surgeries." We get that the retirement system in 1999 was not the legislative issue that it was in 2003 or that it is in 2013. But why didn’t he close his account before 2003, when it was clear he’d have to vote on PERS reforms? He said it wasn’t clear at the time whether he could.. Why not close the account in 2005, after leaving office? He said he co-sponsored a bill in 2003 that offered a financial incentive for people with inactive accounts to close their accounts. He thought it unseemly to benefit from that legislation -- although we checked, and he wouldn’t have qualified. Then why wait until 2010 to close his account? Knopp didn’t have a clear answer. He acknowledges that had he not needed the money in 2010, he would have continued to be a member. Knopp has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the Public Employees Retirement System. He served as the House chairman of the committee to reform PERS in 2003. He promised voters that he would not accept PERS this year and he followed through on the promise. What Knopp failed to mention is that he was a member of PERS who closed his account in 2010 because his family needed the money. Knopp could have closed his account in 2003 -- and avoided the conflict then -- or he could have closed his account when he left office in 2005. None of that takes away from the accuracy of the statement -- he honored his pledge to stay out of PERS -- but it is additional information that we deem missing from his press releases. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Tim Knopp | null | null | null | 2013-02-23T03:00:00 | 2013-02-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-07445 | Says that in 41 states, government workers "are better paid than the taxpayers who support them." | false | /texas/statements/2011/apr/21/mitch-daniels/mitch-daniels-says-government-workers-41-states-ma/ | Count Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels among skeptics of government workers having collective-bargaining rights, the issue that cleaved Wisconsin this year. Daniels, a Republican presidential prospect, told PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley March 28 that government workers are better off than others: "There may have once been a time, Tavis, in the old days of patronage and so forth, where government workers were put upon and vulnerable, but that's a long time ago. Now, in 41 states out of 50, they are better paid than the taxpayers who support them. In the federal government they're almost twice as well paid. This doesn't even count the benefits and the almost complete job security they have." Never mind that government workers are taxpayers too. We note also that in November, PolitiFact Ohio rated False a claim that average federal workers make double the pay of average private-sector workers. The fact check cited a statement placed online by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis noting the private-sector workforce includes a broader range of jobs than the federal government, from minimum-wage positions to CEOs, while federal civilian jobs focus on professional areas like law, accounting and economics that require higher education. We’re focusing here on whether state and local government workers are better compensated than private-sector counterparts. To our inquiry, Daniels’ office pointed us to a March 2 news article in USA TODAY. The story, citing figures obtained from the bureau, says state and local government employees in 41 states earned higher average pay and benefits than private workers in those states in 2009. The national average for the government workers was $57,775, $2,511 greater than private-sector counterparts. But not in Texas, which ranked last among states in benefits for public employees. Its average compensation to state and local government workers, $51,310, placed the state 30th nationally, according to the article, but its government workers trailed private-sector Texans by $3,580. For more Texas-centric information, we turned to the latest comparison of state government and private-sector positions by the Texas State Auditor’s Office. The August report says that in fall 2009, nearly three quarters of 150,000-plus state workers were paid 10 to 20 percent less than private sector employees and another 19 percent fared worse. "Some states that limit the right of public employees to unionize — such as Texas, Georgia and Virginia — pay less in compensation than the private sector," the article says. "Massachusetts and New Hampshire generally permit unions but pay less than the private sector in those high-income states." The story says the newspaper’s analysis included full and part-time workers and did not adjust for specific jobs, age, education or experience. It says that in an earlier job-to-job comparison, USA TODAY found that state and local government workers make about the same salary as those in the private sector but get more generous benefits. The article also quotes economist Jeffrey Keefe of the liberal Economic Policy Institute saying the analysis is misleading because it doesn't reflect factors such as education that result in higher pay for public employees. For our part, we consulted Austin economist Stuart Greenfield, a retired state worker who has long advocated on state employee issues. Greenfield guided us to a Texas Watchdog article playing off the USA TODAY story and a 2010 study commissioned by two Washington-based groups. The March 3 Watchdog article says the $10,760 average benefits package for the average public worker in Texas compares to the $9,190 average benefits that average private employees receives, according to the federal bureau’s figures. The 2010 study, comparing worker earnings and benefits across and between private, state and local sectors, was written by Keith Bender and John Heywood, economists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The study was undertaken by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, whose mission is to "help state and local governments become knowledgeable and competitive employers so they can attract and retain talented, committed, and well-prepared individuals to public service," and the National Institute on Retirement Security, which says it was established to foster understanding of the value of retirement security to employees, employers, and the economy. "Public and private workforces differ in important ways," the authors write. "For instance, jobs in the public sector require much more education on average than those in the private sector. Employees in state and local sectors are twice as likely as their private sector counterparts to have a college or advanced degree. "Wages and salaries of state and local employees are lower than those for private sector workers with comparable earnings determinants (e.g., education). State employees typically earn 11 percent less; local workers earn 12 percent less," they write. In Texas, the gap was even greater for local government workers, who made nearly 18 percent less between 2000 and 2008. "Over the last 20 years, the earnings for state and local employees have generally declined relative to comparable private sector employees," they say. In the study, the economists air what they refer to as Simpson’s Paradox: "The average state worker appears to earn more only because the state hires more of those in the highly educated categories that tend to earn more, not because workers with the same education earn more in the public sector." They say too that compensation specialists "repeatedly show that the typical state and local public sector worker has more education, more tenure, and greater responsibilities... the fact that public sector workers receive greater average compensation than private sector workers should be no more surprising than the fact that those with more skills and education earn more." In fact, the study says, "if we limit our data to college-educated workers, those in state government earn 13 percent less than those in the private sector, while those in local government earn 11 percent less than those in the private sector." The study also isolated benefits, including pension, insurance and paid leave differences, finding that from 2004 to 2008 benefits comprised a larger portion of compensation in state and local government "although not dramatically different, particularly when compared to larger private sector firms." Incorporating "benefits makes state and public workers appear somewhat less poorly compensated, but our estimate suggests they still receive less total compensation than similar private sector workers," the study says. "Benefits should be expected to be higher if the public sector workers are more highly educated and doing jobs that command higher earnings." Big picture: "Although a comparison of unadjusted average earnings will show that wages are higher among jobs in state and local government, this result is largely due to the fact that the workers in those sectors have more education. Holding education and other characteristics the same, typical state and local workers earn an average of 11 percent less and 12 percent less, respectively, than comparable private sector workers," the study concludes. "Workers in the state and local sector receive a slightly larger share of their compensation in benefits, but it is not dramatically larger." Next, we wondered if there was an inherent weakness in the USA TODAY analysis Daniel cites. If most government jobs are of the professional, white-collar variety -- with requirements and compensation to match -- that would skew comparisons with the private sector, with its larger share of low-wage and service-sector jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.5 percent of private sector workers in 2010 were paid at or below the minimum wage, compared to 2.8 percent of government workers. As we closed out this review, we asked the Wisconsin economists if they’d compared government to non-government workers in every state. By e-mail, Bender said the "data for our study were such that we were uncomfortable reporting results for any but the largest 10 (states) or so because of sample sizes," but he guided us to a Feb. 25 New York Times’ state-by-state comparison breaking out employees with and without college degrees. Based on median salaries, state workers lacking college degrees fared better than their counterparts in the private sector in 30 states. But private-sector workers with such degrees earned more than degreed state workers in all but four states. Bender also called the method employed by USA TODAY inaccurate. "Both earnings AND benefits vary greatly by educational level (and other personal characteristics) and without explicitly taking this into account, the vast majority of economists would think that these numbers are essentially meaningless," he said. "If one group of workers has more education or experience than another group, it makes economic sense that that more highly educated and experienced group get paid more on average... "In sum, do I know whether there are 41 states where earnings plus benefits are greater in the public sector once you compare similar workers? No -- the number may be lower or higher. I haven't seen any research that does this convincingly. What I do know is that the analysis in the USA TODAY doesn't come close." Daniels’ message, that government workers are better paid than those in the private sector, traces to an egregiously simplistic comparison, ignoring meaningful differences in the public and private sector workforces largely due to education. Factoring those in, many state and local government workers lag behind their private-sector counterparts. We rate his statement False. | null | Mitch Daniels | null | null | null | 2011-04-21T06:00:00 | 2011-03-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-08679 | Proposed tax changes are a "handout" to BP. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/10/national-taxpayers-union/national-taxpayers-union-ad-blasts-tax-proposal-ha/ | On Sept. 2, 2010, the National Taxpayers Union -- a conservative advocacy group -- announced that it would be spending $4 million on an advertising campaign that targets higher energy taxes. Here's the narration of the TV ad: "Our economy's hurting, but some senators want to weaken an industry creating jobs. America's energy industry supports 9 million jobs, but Congress may double-tax U.S. energy companies, helping foreign companies owned by China and Venezuela, even BP. New taxes will raise your gas prices, make us more dependent on foreign oil, and cost 600,000 American jobs. Tell Congress BP doesn't deserve a handout. No new American energy taxes." At first, we thought this was an ad decrying the Democratic cap-and-trade proposal, a legislative effort to cap greenhouse gases that Republicans have consistently criticized as a tax on ordinary energy consumers. But that's not what the ad is about. Instead, NTU says the ad is about two changes under consideration by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress -- rules for "dual capacity" taxpayers, and the Section 199 deduction. The ad is correct that the modifications being considered would primarily affect oil and gas companies. Even by the byzantine standards of tax law, these rules are highly arcane. So bear with us as we try to explain how they work and investigate whether the ad portrays them fairly. Our aim is to gauge whether the ad is accurate when it says that making these changes would amount to a "handout" to companies like BP. Let's start with the "dual capacity" rule. This rule stems from a tax code provision that lets U.S. taxpayers receive credit for taxes paid on income derived overseas, so income is not taxed twice. Say you're a U.S. oil company. You go to a foreign country to extract oil. You pay a 20 percent tax to that country on what you extract. When your U.S. taxes are calculated, you'll get a dollar-for-dollar credit for the taxes paid overseas. Where it starts getting complicated is that some foreign countries charge oil extractors a single payment that includes both the tax and a payment for the right to drill in the first place. So, rather than paying 20 percent tax on what's extracted, the company will have to pay more, because the rights to drill are included in the same levy. (The dual nature of these payments is the origin of the term "dual capacity.") Whether the company considers this a tax or a royalty payment matters quite a bit for the U.S. company's tax bill because amounts considered to be foreign taxes provide dollar-for-dollar reductions in tax liability, whereas a royalty only permits a deduction, which is a significantly smaller tax benefit than dollar-for-dollar. So, the greater the amount that's considered a foreign tax, the larger the sum that can be deducted from U.S. taxes. Current U.S. tax law deals with this by trying to determine what part is the true tax (and thus eligible for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit) and what is being paid by the company for a specific economic benefit, such as the right to drill (which is only deductible as a business expense). This is a fairly easy process if the foreign country has a straightforward corporate tax structure. But it gets complicated if the country either taxes "dual capacity" taxpayers at a different rate than other corporate taxpayers or if it has no basic corporate tax rate at all. In such cases, U.S. companies have more flexibility to call the payments they've made "taxes" -- too much flexibility for some critics, who argue that it's an unnecessary loophole that drains the U.S. Treasury of taxes. That's why President Barack Obama, in his fiscal year 2011 budget, and some senators have proposed tightening the rules. We won't get into the guts of the proposed changes here, but the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress' official, non-partisan arbiter of tax policy changes, found that Obama's proposal would collect an additional $8.2 billion between 2010 and 2020. Oil and gas companies aren't the only sector that would be affected, but they are the main companies that will. Now for the second proposal -- eliminating oil and gas companies as beneficiaries of Section 199 of the tax code. Section 199 is a deduction for companies that produce goods or software or undertake construction projects in the U.S. Passed in 2004, it replaced a previous tax benefit extended specifically to U.S. exporters, struck down as an illegal trade subsidy by the World Trade Organization. Under section 199, U.S. oil and gas companies can take advantage of a lower tax rate. According to Treasury Department testimony in 2009, making oil and gas ineligible is projected to increase federal revenues by $13.2 billion from 2010 to 2019. We won't address the ad's claim that these proposals could result in the elimination of 600,000 jobs, higher gasoline prices or greater dependence on foreign oil, since such estimates are speculative and ultimately not provable. Instead, we'll focus on whether the ad is justified in calling such changes a "handout" to BP or other foreign companies. In the ad's defense, the changes would only affect U.S.-based companies, and by taking away a benefit from a U.S. firm, the government could, in a sense, be advantaging foreign-based firms. Pete Sepp, NTU's executive vice president, said that the two tax provisions were created to take the sting off the U.S. corporate tax code. Because many of the United States' competitors do not tax the foreign earnings of domestic firms -- but we do -- deductions and exemptions like the two in question here help U.S. competitiveness. "Taking away one or both these provisions for oil companies -- provisions that exist for a wide variety of firms -- will, in our opinion, necessarily increase the overhead of oil and gas firms (based) here. That means higher costs for those firms -- costs which foreign-based competitors like BP don't have to shoulder." Still, "handout" is a pretty strong word to describe what's being proposed. In Webster's New World Dictionary, the relevant definition of "handout" is "a gift of food, clothing, etc., as to a beggar." Allowing for some artistic license to exchange "BP" for "beggar," we think the accuracy of "handout" depends on whether the government is affirmatively providing a direct benefit to BP. And it's not clear that the government would be doing this if it made these changes. If the government were to pass these two policy proposals, it would certainly be taking away a benefit granted to U.S.-based oil and gas companies. But would taking away the two benefits from U.S. companies be equivalent to giving a handout to BP? We're not so sure. Mitchell Kane, a professor at New York University Law School who specializes in international corporate taxation, said the use of the term "handout" in this context is "highly misleading," noting that there would be no change at all to BP's tax liability. "There could be competitive effects, but this is a highly speculative claim, and in any event is not what most people think of as a handout," Kane said. "If your co-worker loses her job, and there is therefore less competition in the company for promotions and future raises, does this mean you have received a 'handout?'" There's another reason to question whether BP's British owners are the only ones who would benefit if these provisions were to pass. In a globalized economy, some Americans would actually benefit, since foreign companies employ, do business with and pay quarterly dividends to lots of U.S. taxpayers. According to BP's website, it is the largest oil and gas producer and one of the largest gasoline retailers in the United States, as well as the largest non-U.S. company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And U.S.-based subsidiaries of foreign companies, including BP's U.S. subsidiaries, qualify for Section 199 credits, which weakens the argument that BP would be a clear winner if these changes were made. It's certainly understandable that U.S. oil companies doing business overseas would be opposed to these proposals -- and perhaps feel picked on, since both changes specifically target their industry. Still, we think the term "handout" in this context is questionable -- even hypocritical, since the tax policy the oil companies want to keep in place could easily be described as involving longstanding "handouts" for them. On balance, we rate the statement Half True. | null | National Taxpayers Union | null | null | null | 2010-09-10T11:16:10 | 2010-09-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-01766 | We know how to stop AIDS: persuade men not to have sex with men. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2014/jul/30/bryan-fischer/american-family-association-radio-host-says-aids-c/ | Some of the 298 passengers who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were HIV/AIDS researchers and advocates headed for the 20th International AIDS Conference in Australia, a fact President Barack Obama mentioned after the plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Obama also said in July 18 comments about the crash that "the United States of America is going to continue to stand for the basic principle that people have the right to live as they choose." That touched a nerve with Bryan Fischer, director of issues analysis of the conservative American Family Association. Fischer claimed that Obama was using the MH 17 downing as a platform to legitimize gay relationships. "Obama politicizes deaths of AIDS researchers on Malaysian plane. We know how to stop AIDS: persuade men not to have sex with men," Fischer said in a message on Twitter that was retweeted 66 times and attracted national attention. His comments were lambasted by writers of The Daily Beast, Salon and Patheos. Still, Fischer doubled down in another tweet and column. We wanted to dig into the facts behind his claim that the way to stop AIDS is to "persuade men not to have sex with men." Fischer’s evidence Experts say Fischer’s idea of an AIDS solution is highly flawed. But Fischer stood by his claim in an interview with PunditFact, citing a report from UNAIDS that the rate of HIV is 19 times higher among men who have sex with men than the adult population. Also, he said that while his tweet isolated on men having sex with men, he made a somewhat broader argument on his radio show. "We know how to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Persuade men not to have sex with men," he said on his radio show Focal Point. "Persuade prostitutes to go straight, and persuade people not to shoot up with drugs. If we can get everybody persuaded to do that, then the epidemic begins to diminish overnight." Dr. Stefan Baral, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health epidemiology professor and director of the Key Populations Program of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights, said Fischer’s post on Twitter reveals a misunderstanding about human nature and societal behavior. "His recommendation is akin to making recommendations for people not to drive cars for fear of car accidents or riding a bike for fear of falling," Baral said in an email. "In other words, this is a natural and healthy normal practice that in the context of an additional determinant induces risk. It would not be dissimilar from saying that there would be no cervical cancer if heterosexual people didn’t have sex." HIV/AIDS overview There is no cure for AIDS or HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS and ravages the body’s immune system if untreated. The statistics are staggering. About 35 million people have HIV in the world, including about 3.3 million children and 1 million Americans, according to the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR. Among Americans, about 50,000 are newly infected each year, and 18 percent do not know they have the virus. In 2012, 1.6 million people died from AIDS, which was a 30 percent drop from 2005, according to UNAIDS. In the United States, gay men contract the virus at disproportionate rates to their share of the American population. In 2010, men who have sex with men comprised 78 percent of new HIV infections among men -- 63 percent of all new infections -- even though they made up just 4 percent of the male American population, according to the CDC. Still, preventing men from having sex with men (if that were even feasible) will not end HIV/AIDS in the United States. About 20 percent of Americans infected with HIV in 2010 were women, mainly through heterosexual sex, according to the CDC. HIV is carried through body fluids. The virus is passed when HIV-infected fluids enter the bloodstream of someone else, such as through contact with a cut or sore, sharing needles or syringes, or through the vagina, rectum, mouth, or tip of the penis. In the United States, anal sex is the highest-risk behavior for spreading HIV, followed by vaginal sex, sex with multiple partners and sharing needles with someone infected with HIV. Mother-to-child transmissions are not common in the United States thanks to widespread HIV testing of pregnant women and drugs that prevent the virus from affecting a child. Neither is getting the virus through blood transfusions and organ donations and transplants, which are intensely tested for HIV. But what’s true for Americans is not true for other people in the world. World picture About 70 percent of all people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, about 24 million people. This region is also home to the most children living with HIV whose infections originated during pregnancy, childbirth of consuming breast milk, according to AIDS.gov. Globally, the dominant form of transmission is heterosexual sex, said Sophie Barton Knott, UNAIDS spokeswoman. Nearly half of people with HIV are female, and most were infected through heterosexual sex. Most of the 50.9 percent of men with HIV got it through heterosexual sex, too, she said. The highest rates of AIDS among 15- to 24-year-olds is among women in many parts of the world, said Seth Faison, spokesman for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. And in Eastern Europe, the highest transmission rates of AIDS are among people who inject drugs. "Men who have sex with men are a high-risk group, but not the only one," he said. The bottom line? Preventing men from having sex with men will not end AIDS. Faison said the criminalization of same-sex activity actually can increase transmission rates. Being gay is a crime in at least 76 countries, and in those places, gay men are less likely to receive treatment, testing and prevention. The CDC also says stigma and homophobia are likely one factor behind the rise in HIV infections among young gay men in the United States. "In effect, efforts to ‘persuade men not to have sex with men’ is counterproductive," Faison said. "It will not stop AIDS." Our ruling Fischer said, "We know how to stop AIDS: persuade men not to have sex with men." Though men who have sex with men are at the highest risk of contracting HIV/AIDS in America, this is not a serious solution to ending a pandemic disease. Not in the United States, and certainly not worldwide. Women, children, and men who don’t have sex with men are also at risk, and women make up about half of people worldwide who have HIV/AIDS. Fischer’s claim is ridiculous. It rates Pants on Fire. | null | Bryan Fischer | null | null | null | 2014-07-30T10:11:12 | 2014-07-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-13841 | In 2016, Dallas, Texas, has fewer "police officer-related shootings than any large city in America." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/12/mike-rawlings/does-dallas-have-fewest-police-shootings-america-i/ | The morning after the ambush killing of five Dallas police officers, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the police department has cultivated positive relationships with the Dallas community. The agency, he said, has trained in de-escalating encounters and community policing. "I want to brag just for a second if anybody hasn't heard us say this," he said at a news conference July 8. "This year, we have the fewest police officer-related shootings than any large city in America." Rawlings made a similar claim on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that same day. Even though his statement is unclear, a spokesperson confirmed the mayor was referring to shootings by, not directed at, officers. We wanted to know if there was support for his statement. The best data we have suggests the mayor might be right, but we can’t know for sure. No nationwide data There is a major stumbling block with claims like these: There is no national database of police shootings. The FBI does collect some data on justifiable homicides by law enforcement, but it’s not broken down to the city level. The agency also issues a Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report, but it only goes up to 2014 (and it doesn’t cover people killed or wounded by officers). To make matters more complicated, the FBI’s numbers are provided voluntarily by law enforcement agencies. (Only a small fraction of the 18,000 agencies who voluntarily participate in the program provide deadly force data.) "Some cities would only report certain types of shootings," said Jonathan Maskaly, a criminology professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "Others would report everything. Cities with problems would tend to obfuscate." Maskaly said verifying Rawlings’ claim — especially the "all large cities" component — is difficult without a comprehensive database. That said, we were able to find officer-related shooting data for specific police departments, as well as documentation of lethal force from media sources. These accounts, while limited, do show Dallas has a low number of shootings by police compared to other cities. Dallas vs. the rest of Texas The Washington Post tracks fatal police shootings nationwide, as does The Guardian. Both recorded the same incidents — five lethal shootings in Dallas in 2015, and one in 2016. A Dallas Police Department spokesperson pointed us to online officer-involved shooting data. The department’s "officer-involved shooting" data included lethal shots, shots that injured, and shots that missed. As a result of the broader parameters, the police department’s data shows 11 shootings in 2015, but still just one for 2016. There’s just one problem — the one shooting the newspapers found in 2016 is different from the one in Dallas’ data. The Guardian and Post included a shooting by a Mesquite Police Department officer in Dallas, whereas the police department data only counts its own officers. We did our own count using these three sources plus a Google News search. The result revealed one additional shooting by a Dallas officer. The numbers vary depending on if the data includes shootings by non-Dallas police officers that happened in Dallas (such as by the Mesquite Police Department) or just those by Dallas officers. Including non-DPD officers, there were 12 officer-involved shootings in Dallas in 2015 and three in 2016. Counting only the Dallas Police Department, however, there were 11 in 2015 and two in 2016. This is what Rawlings was referring to. What about other major Texas cities? We defined "large city" using the Census Bureau, looking at cities comparable to Dallas’ estimated 1.28 million people. Houston had 16 officer-involved shootings this year and 32 in 2015. San Antonio police reported five such incidents in 2016. Austin didn’t have available data, but an April news report counted five officer-involved 2016 shootings by the Austin Police Department as of that time. In total, there were two police-related shootings by Dallas police in 2016 — less than Houston, San Antonio and Austin. A broader look Rawlings said Dallas had fewer officer-related shootings than "any large city" in 2016, not just any large Texas city. So we looked around the country to see if any large departments reported fewer than the two police-related shootings we found by Dallas police. Data for the San Diego Police Department, captured by the county district attorney, show eight officer-involved shootings in 2015. We spoke to a county spokesperson, who told us there were three officer-involved shootings by the San Diego police in 2016. Officers of the Los Angeles Police Department shot 38 people in 2015. Data for 2016 wasn’t available, but scrolling through the LAPD’s press releases, we counted 11 officer-involved shootings. We also counted six officer-involved shootings in Las Vegas in 2016, at least 24 in 2015 for Chicago, and 21 in Phoenix for 2014. The list of "large cities" could go on indefinitely, and there is no guarantee we wouldn’t eventually find one with less than the two officer-involved shootings from Dallas police. To keep it simple, we checked eight cities in addition to Dallas — including San Antonio, Houston, Austin, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and Phoenix. From what we could find, Dallas police had the lowest number (two) of officer-involved shootings in 2016. Other measures Experts agreed that Dallas had a low number of officer-involved shootings compared to other cities. "If the data is correct — I would agree that Dallas has a low number of police shootings especially when compared with similar size cities," said David Hurley, assistant professor of criminal justice at Texas A&M University. However, counting the number of police shootings is the wrong metric to consider, said John Worrall, professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas. He and Maskaly both pointed to shootings-per-officer or shootings-per-capita as more informative measure. However, there is no available data for strictly 2016 on that point. The Better Government Association published a July 2015 study of fatal police shootings in major cities between 2010-2014. Looking at that data, which is compiled via public records requests from police departments, Dallas had 34, more than San Antonio (28), San Diego (17) and San Jose (11). Dallas also had higher fatal shootings-per-capita than several cities during that period, including those with more fatal shootings overall such as Chicago and New York City. Our ruling Mayor Rawlings said Dallas had fewer officer-related shootings in 2016 than any other large city. There is no national database to compare Dallas with every single other large metropolitan area, so it is nearly impossible to verify that side of the claim. However, numerous sources suggest Dallas does, in fact, have a low number of officer-involved shootings compared to cities of similar sizes with available data. For that reason, we rate Rawlings’ statement Half True. Editor's note: This fact-check was updated July 13 with correct information from the San Diego Police Department to show three police-involved shootings for 2016, not two as originally reported. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ae42a763-78c9-44fc-9d7c-725105a8be16 | null | Mike Rawlings | null | null | null | 2016-07-12T15:02:27 | 2016-07-08 | ['United_States', 'Texas', 'Dallas'] |
pomt-02948 | Nearly 6 in 10 uninsured Americans "can get health insurance for what may be the equivalent of your cell phone bill." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/28/barack-obama/obama-says-some-can-buy-health-insurance-cost-mont/ | As President Barack Obama has taken a lot of heat for healthcare.gov, the website where people can buy health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, he has turned to his same talking points time and time again. In response to residents’ concerns that Obamacare isn’t affordable, Obama says: "One study shows that through new options created by the Affordable Care Act, nearly 6 in 10 uninsured Americans will find that they can get covered for less than $100 a month. Think about that. Through the marketplaces you can get health insurance for what may be the equivalent of your cell phone bill. Or your cable bill. And that’s a good deal." We got to wondering if he was right. If you had to choose one, is it more affordable to visit the doctor for your symptoms or punch them in on your WebMD mobile app? (We shouldn’t need to tell you which would be more effective for your health.) Cell phone bills Let’s start by pinpointing the easier number: the average monthly cell phone bill. J.D. Power, a consumer research company, released a study Oct. 17 saying the average individual phone bill is $79 per month, while a family’s runs about $149. There’s a lot of wiggle room in there. Obviously, smart phone bills are higher because of required data plans. Different carriers have different options for text messaging, data and minutes. That’s in the ballpark of what Obama was referencing. The White House sent us a 2012 Coupon Cabin study indicating that 46 percent of cell phone owners pay more than $100 per month. Average marketplace costs Now we’ll switch gears to the trickier subject. Are the health insurance plans offered on the marketplace in that same ballpark? The marketplaces offer consumers a number of different pricing options for plans. "Unless you and I are both the same age with the same number of people in the household and the same income in the same county, we’re not going to get the same data back," said Elena Marks, a Rice University health policy professor. As an example, the New York Times recently reported that, under the new law, health insurance costs are going up in rural areas, where there aren't a lot of marketplaces competing for consumers and driving down costs. Due to the complexity of pricing and the tax credit system for the plans, it’s difficult to tabulate a straightforward average to pit against an average cell phone bill. But let’s see what coverage costs could look like for some people. There are different levels of plans: catastrophic (only for people under 30), bronze, silver and gold. As premiums get pricier, they have lower out-of-pocket maximums, which means when people get sick, the plan covers more of their expenses if they have a gold plan as opposed to a bronze. Aside from the different levels, consumers pay different amounts based on how their income compares to the poverty level. For example, an individual who earns annual income at the U.S. poverty line ($11,490 this year) or up to 400 percent of that could get a tax credit of hundreds of dollars toward a plan. The law specifies they’d be expected to pay 9.5 percent of their income on insurance. At 400 percent of the poverty level, that breaks down to a maximum monthly payment of $363.85. But many people would pay less than that. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the Department of Health and Human Services published a report the White House referred us to indicating that 56 percent of the marketplace-eligible uninsured could pay $100 or less for a plan in 2014. That’s based on the costs of the second-cheapest silver plan, which is the benchmark for tax credits stipulated in the law. The ASPE study makes sense, said Boston University health policy professor Alan Sager. Many of the people applying for Obamacare, who don't have insurance through their employers, tend to be lower income, which means they'd qualify for subsidies that could put their premiums under $100 per month. "That'd really tend to favor the ASPE assertion," Sager said. Marks, another health policy expert, also referenced the study as a reliable average of premium costs. Because there’s a wide range of both insurance plans and phone bills, it’s not hard to see that an insurance plan could be cheaper month-to-month. However, that’s all assuming the plan holder doesn’t get sick. Health care isn’t all about affording the monthly premiums. When policyholders go to the doctor, they usually pay a fraction of the costs with deductibles and co-pays. The money consumers shell out at the doctor’s office doesn’t count as money they pay through the marketplaces, as Obama specified, but it’s easy to see how his audience could get tripped up by that distinction. The law does specify the maximum amount a policyholder would have to pay out in a given year: $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. Divide those figures by 12 and you get $529.17 and $1,058.33, respectively. Clearly, those numbers are greater than what anyone should be paying toward a cell phone bill. Granted, most won’t come close to hitting their maximums unless they get sick, but the possibility’s there. Our ruling Obama said under the Affordable Care Act, some U.S. residents could get health insurance for the same price as a monthly cell phone bill. There’s a wide range of plan costs, many of which are comparable to phone bills, especially for those who qualify for tax credits. A credible study indicates that about 56 percent of marketplace-eligible people could pay $100 or less. Obama was particularly careful in his phrasing, citing that precise study. Still, health insurance isn't the same thing as a cell phone bill. It's insurance, so people who get sick will face additional costs in the form of co-pays and deductibles. Policyholders who get sick could be shelling out thousands of dollars each year for health care, much more than any cell phone bill. Overall, we rate Obama’s claim Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2013-10-28T17:49:46 | 2013-10-21 | ['United_States'] |
vogo-00086 | Statement: “No city in the state of California has a higher barrier” (to recall an official than San Diego), attorneys James P. Lough and Kenneth H. Lounsbery wrote in a July 31 request that the county grand jury issue an accusation against Mayor Bob Filner. | determination: mostly true | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-the-rules-of-recall/ | Analysis: Ousting Mayor Bob Filner isn’t easy. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: The Rules of Recall | August 13, 2013 | null | ['California', 'Bob_Filner', 'San_Diego'] |
pomt-08898 | Today almost half our debt is owned by foreigners. | true | /texas/statements/2010/jul/30/jeb-hensarling/rep-jeb-hensarling-says-nearly-half-us-debt-owned-/ | Speaking July 8 in Terrell, east of Dallas, U.S. Rep Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, focused on the federal debt, according to a July 12 recap in The Terrell Tribune. "Today," Hensarling said, "almost half of our debt is owned by foreigners. There is an old saying that whoever owns your debt may one day own you." We wondered if Hensarling got the level of foreign ownership right. Some perspective: The level of foreign ownership of the debt started inching up decades ago. According to a Forbes magazine article published in March, until the early 1970s foreigners owned less than 5 percent of the national debt. This started to change, columnist/economist Bruce Bartlett wrote, "after the big run-up in oil prices." Bartlett continued: "As oil exporters suddenly acquired vast financial resources they found it convenient to park them in Treasury securities, which provided liquidity and safety. By 1975 the foreign share of the national debt rose to 17 percent, where it stayed through the 1990s, when China began buying large amounts of Treasury bills . . . At the end of last year, foreigners owned close to half of the publicly held national debt." Hensarling’s office pointed us to a U.S. Treasury website stating that by June, more than 30 other countries -- China topped the list -- owned nearly $4 trillion in U.S. debt, which the government defines as all federal debt held by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments, and other entities outside the U.S. government, less federal financing bank securities. According to another Treasury site, the federal government’s total debt as of June 1 was nearly $8.6 trillion—making the share owned by foreigners about 46 percent. We encountered a wrinkle, though. That $8.6 trillion in debt didn’t count nearly $4.5 trillion in "intragovernmental holdings," which would have brought the total U.S. debt to $13 trillion -- lowering the percentage of foreign-held debt to 30 percent. The government defines intragovernmental holdings as Government Account Series securities held by government trust funds, revolving funds, and special funds; and federal financing bank securities, including money owed to Social Security. Debt is debt, regardless of who's owed, no? So we wondered if it makes sense to consider the entire federal debt, as we just did, before calculating how much has been snapped up by foreigners. Hensarling spokesman George Rasley conceded Hensarling didn’t take into account all the government’s debt before making his statement. Rasley pointed out, though, that it’s not the Texan’s idea to separate intragovernmental holdings from publicly held debt; that’s the government’s approach. Rasley speculated in an e-mail: "I assume that it is (separated that way) because the government differentiates between debt we SELL to investors," debt purchased by members of the public as well as foreign nations, " and debt the government owes itself between accounts . . .which are owed by one arm of the federal government to another arm of the federal government." Sandy Leeds, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas, frequently delves into federal spending issues. Leeds echoed Rasley, telling us government officials, such as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke almost always ignore intragovernmental debt in their references to U.S. public held debt. "There are two reasonable ways to approach this," Leeds said. "One, we've got $8.6 trillion of debt and we also have no money for Social Security other than what we take in each year. Or you could say we have got $13 trillion of debt" including intragovernmental debt such as money owed to Social Security. Leeds said: "I really couldn't argue that one is right and one is wrong." "There is certainly nothing misleading," Leeds said, about Hensarling's statement. Leeds added in an e-mail: "Dividing the foreign debt by the publicly held debt is fair. One way of thinking about this is to think of all of the debt that we had to go to the outside markets to finance. Foreigners financed 50 percent." We rate Hensarling's statement True. | null | Jeb Hensarling | null | null | null | 2010-07-30T06:00:00 | 2010-07-08 | ['None'] |
snes-00387 | Betsy DeVos miscounted the number of words in a poorly-worded "#AmericaIn3Words" tweet. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/betsy-devos-america-tweet/ | null | Junk News | null | Bethania Palma | null | Did Betsy DeVos Tweet ‘It’s Is My Favorite Country’ About America? | 2 July 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07980 | Between 2000 and 2006, "health insurance company profits quadrupled." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/19/chris-van-hollen/rep-chris-van-hollen-says-insurance-company-profit/ | As the debate over a Republican effort to repeal the health care reform law kicked into high gear on Jan. 18, 2011, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., argued against repeal and began by citing a couple of statistics to set the stakes. "I'm interested to hear my colleagues say that they can identify with all the problems in the health care system," Van Hollen said from the floor of the House. "Between the year 2000 and 2006, premiums in this country doubled, health insurance company profits quadrupled, and this Congress did nothing." This statistic is nothing new in the health care debate. In fact, we first visited a very similar claim when Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., wrote a Sept. 21, 2009, opinion piece for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in which he said, "Insurance companies have seen their profits soar by more than 400 percent since 2001, while premiums for consumers have doubled." As we did then, we'll break this into two fact-checks. We'll deal with the claim about premiums in a separate item. Here we'll address Van Hollen's claim that health insurance company profits quadrupled between 2000 and 2006. And we'll borrow heavily from our fact-check of that similar claim made by Rockefeller in September 2009. Rockefeller took his numbers about insurance company profits from a study sponsored by Health Care for America Now. Researchers for HCAN looked at financial data submitted by 10 large, publicly held health insurers to the Securities and Exchange Commission, covering the years between 2000 and 2008. The 10 companies are Aetna, Amerigroup, Centene, CIGNA, Coventry, Health Net, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, Universal American Group and WellPoint. HCAN is a liberal group that supported the Democratic health care reform efforts, so we checked a few of HCAN's numbers by looking at some of the original disclosure forms on the SEC website and found no notable discrepancies. So the study appears sound. The researchers found that the collective profits of these 10 companies rose from $2.41 billion in 2001 to $12.87 billion in 2007 — a 466 percent increase, meaning that, over that period of time, they more than quadrupled. We dinged Rockefeller a bit for cherry-picking years, because, if you used, instead, the years 2001 through 2008, the data show that profits rose from $2.41 billion to $8.40 billion — a 249 percent increase. That's still a whopping jump, but it's not as high as the increase Rockefeller cited. The general dropoff in the economy had a lot to do with the lower profits in 2008, said Alex Lawson, a health care researcher for Campaign for America's Future, a liberal group, who co-authored the HCAN study, in a 2009 interview with PolitiFact. Meanwhile, there's another caveat for HCAN's study. The group didn't adjust the profit statistics for corporate takeovers. When big companies absorb smaller ones, the net effect may be to enlarge the profits of the biggest companies (including many of the 10 giants in HCAN's study) even as the total size of the health insurance industry — the broader entity that Rockefeller seemed to be referring to — stays roughly the same. While doing such adjustments would have been logistically difficult, and maybe even impossible, the fact that they weren't done puts limits on how this data can be interpreted. A health industry analyst, Steve Shubitz of Edward Jones, told us in 2009 that consolidation is "a very large part of this overall increase" in the higher profits by the remaining 10 companies. "Of course, these companies have increased profits, too, outside of acquisitions, but nowhere near to the extent that's implied by those stats," Shubitz said. Lawson acknowledged that the HCAN chart on profits does not address how much of an impact consolidation had on profits. But he added that the table actually comes from a study that specifically addressed the harm to competition caused by consolidation, so the group hardly ignored that issue. In addition, he defended the decision to use numbers unadjusted for consolidation. "That's what the market reacts to, and that's what they put in their annual report," Lawson said. The insurance industry, for its part, argues that total health plan profits are less than one penny of the total national health expenditure dollar. "The data is clear that profits are not what is driving rising health care costs," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the leading health insurance trade group. Back in 2009, we rated Rockefeller's claim Half True, noting that if he had carried the data forward to 2008 — an admittedly somewhat atypical year — the increase fell short of his stated quadrupling. But Van Hollen had a clearer reason to set the parameters between 2000 and 2006. Democrats regained control of the House in 2007. So it's fair for him to stop short of the 2008 figures. But as we noted when Rockefeller made a similar claim, the numbers Van Hollen used reflect 10 of the biggest companies as opposed to "insurance companies" in general. And the study did not adequately account for consolidation. But on balance, we rate Van Hollen's statement Mostly True. | null | Chris Van Hollen | null | null | null | 2011-01-19T10:54:34 | 2011-01-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-11344 | The omnibus bill "does not designate a single dollar for Planned Parenthood." | half-true | /north-carolina/statements/2018/apr/06/robert-pittenger/pittenger-says-bill-doesnt-designate-money-planned/ | The recent federal spending bill has become a point of contention in the Republican primary for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District seat. Incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger faces a challenge from Rev. Mark Harris, who lost the 2016 primary against Pittenger by only 134 votes. The duo has traded barbs over Pittenger’s voting record, whether Harris worked to stop Donald Trump from becoming president and now over the omnibus bill that Congress passed and Trump signed in March. Harris thinks Pittenger should’ve opposed the bill since it didn’t fully fund a border wall, among other reasons. Pittenger, meanwhile, has touted its benefits. One of the bill’s positives, Pittenger said in a recent newsletter, is that the bill "does not designate a single dollar for Planned Parenthood." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com When asked about the newsletter, Pittenger’s staff pointed to a breakdown of the omnibus bill that was circulated by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference. Her summary of the bill, emailed to House Republicans, says "there has never been a line item for Planned Parenthood in the Labor, HHS, Education appropriations bill." The Pittenger campaign also pointed out a congratulatory letter he received from the National Right to Life organization – which the campaign included in its statement about Planned Parenthood funding. National Right to Life is an anti-abortion group that has endorsed Pittenger and gives him a 100 percent "pro-life" voting record. Funding remains The group’s letter supports Pittenger’s claim that the bill doesn’t include any "line item" money specifically for Planned Parenthood. But, the NRL letter notes that Planned Parenthood affiliates "are able to tap into funds from the various long-standing health programs." "The greatest amount of federal money to Planned Parenthood flows through so-called ‘mandatory spending programs,’ mostly Medicaid," the letter says. Indeed, recent estimates show that the organization about 40 percent of its funding from the government. Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million in combined state and federal government funds. If a Medicaid patient comes to Planned Parenthood, the organization can bill the organization for services the patient chooses. Another portion can come through the government’s Title X Family program, which subsidizes birth control and tests for sexually-transmitted diseases. But Congress and President Donald Trump last year passed a law that allows states to withhold that funding for groups like Planned Parenthood. Pittenger voted for that law. Lawrence Shaheen, a spokesman for the Pittenger campaign, argued that the newsletter isn’t deceptive because it included the National Right to Life letter explaining that Planned Parenthood still receives funding through other means. Some tried to cut all funds So the omnibus bill doesn’t end funding for Planned Parenthood, even if the health organization isn’t specifically mentioned as a funding recipient. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying by some Republicans in Congress. Some House Republicans – including several from the House Freedom Caucus – tied their support for the spending bill to cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood, according to Politico. However, the effort died largely because the bill wouldn’t garner enough support in the Senate to pass, according to Vox. Planned Parenthood's continued eligibility for federal funding prompted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to tout the bill as a victory for Democrats. "We don’t have the House. We don’t have the Senate. We don’t have the presidency," Schumer said, "but we produced a darn good bill for the priorities that we have believed in." While the omnibus bill gives no new funding to Planned Parenthood and doesn’t designate money for the organization by name, it does allow Planned Parenthood to continue receiving money from the federal government. Our ruling Pittenger said the spending bill "does not designate a single dollar for Planned Parenthood." Technically, in the very literal sense of the word "designate," Pittenger is right. The bill doesn’t specifically direct funding to Planned Parenthood by name. But the federal government continues to pay for Planned Parenthood’s services through Medicaid and other programs. And since voters are more likely to care about whether their tax dollars go to an organization – not whether the organization is specifically named in legislation – we rate Pittenger's claim Half True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Robert Pittenger | null | null | null | 2018-04-06T13:00:52 | 2018-04-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-03988 | Three in four low-income workers don’t have any paid sick days available. | true | /ohio/statements/2013/feb/11/sherrod-brown/sen-sherrod-brown-says-three-quarters-low-income-w/ | Typhoid Mary was a cook. Working at that job made her single-handedly responsible for multiple outbreaks of typhoid fever, in and around New York City, about a century ago. PolitiFact Ohio couldn't help recalling that bit of history recently after reading advice for the flu season from the Centers for Disease Control, which urged sick people to stay home from work and school to avoid the spread of illness. The history was freshened by last week's news that a college cafeteria worker in Indiana had been diagnosed with typhoid fever, and it came to mind when we saw a release from Sen. Sherrod Brown saying that he is co-sponsoring the Healthy Families Act, which is being reintroduced in Congress. Also called the earned sick time initiative, the legislation would allow workers at businesses with 15 or more employees to earn paid sick days. Workers could earn up to one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to a total of seven days. "For far too many Americans, a day home from work means a day without pay," Brown said. "Some 40 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. don’t have any paid sick days at all. It’s worse for low-income workers — three in four don’t have any paid sick days available." We wondered about the numbers. Brown's staff said the source was last year's National Compensation Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its chart for paid leave benefits shows that 61 percent of all workers in the private sector have paid sick days -- meaning about 40 percent don't have them. Among the lowest-paid 25 percent of workers, the chart shows that 29 percent have paid sick days, meaning more than 70 percent don't have them. Among the lowest-paid 10 percent of workers, 18 percent have sick days, so 82 percent do not. (Three in four, the figure used by Brown, is 75 percent.) We found other figures as well:. More than three in four food service and hotel workers (78 percent) don’t have any paid sick days, according to an analysis by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Workers without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. And a 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick leave helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the outbreak of 2009. Critics of the sick leave initiative, including the National Association of Independent Businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, say paid sick days add costs to low-margin businesses, are burdensome to business and result in lost jobs. In a recent survey of businesses by the Employment Policies Institute, "Roughly 70 percent of respondents said that Connecticut’s sick leave law was not good for business," the group said. PolitiFact Ohio is not rating the legislation, however -- only Brown’s statement on the numbers of workers who don’t have access to paid sick days. We rate it True. | null | Sherrod Brown | null | null | null | 2013-02-11T06:00:00 | 2013-02-04 | ['None'] |
afck-00087 | “Handwashing can reduce the risk of communicable diseases by up to 59%.” | exaggerated | https://africacheck.org/reports/handwashing-101-dettols-disease-busting-claims-microscope/ | null | null | null | null | null | Handwashing 101: Dettol’s disease-busting claims under the microscope | 2017-12-11 06:20 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00928 | A photograph shows a jumping baby elephant. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-jumping-baby-elephant/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This a Jumping Baby Elephant? | 5 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14895 | Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/08/ben-carson/ben-carson-said-no-one-who-signed-declaration-inde/ | Ben Carson -- currently the top-polling Republican presidential candidate -- posted a message on Facebook on Nov. 4 to rebut critics who say his lack of experience in elected office would be a serious obstacle to his serving as an effective president. Soon after it was posted, we began hearing from readers asking us to check one of his claims. "You are absolutely right — I have no political experience," Carson wrote in the initial version of his post. "The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King. They were willing to risk all they had, even their lives, to be free." After our friends at the Washington Post Fact Checker reviewed Carson’s claim that "every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience" and gave it Four Pinocchios -- the column’s worst rating -- the quote was changed. It now reads, "Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience" (emphasis added). We were already looking into Carson’s initial Facebook comment when the wording change was made. We’ll address both versions here. The signers had 'no elected office experience' Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held elective office before joining the Continental Congress, which produced the declaration. We found a long list, so take a deep breath before you start reading. They include: • John Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1770; attended First Continental Congress, 1774-1776. • Thomas Jefferson. Represented Albemarle County as a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-1775 • Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia councilman, 1748; elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1751. • John Hancock. Elected to the Boston Assembly, 1766; president of the provincial congress of Massachusetts, c. 1773; elected to the Continental Congress, 1774, and then president of the congress in 1775. • Samuel Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1765; delegate to the First Continental Congress, 1774. • Elbridge Gerry. Elected to Massachusetts Legislature, 1773; provincial Congress, 1774. • Roger Sherman. Elected to Connecticut General Assembly, representing New Milford, 1755-1758 and 1760-1761; elected to various offices representing New Haven in the 1760s and 1770s; elected to the Continental Congress starting in 1774. • Caesar Rodney. Elected to Delaware Colonial Assembly, 1758-1770 and 1771-1776; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; elected to the Continental Congress, 1774. • George Taylor. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1764-69; elected to Continental Congress, 1775. • John Morton. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1756-1775; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; president of the provincial assembly, 1775. • George Ross. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1768-1776; Elected to Continental Congress, 1774. • James Wilson. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial congress, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1775. • Thomas McKean. Member of the Delaware Assembly, 1762-79; Delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1774. • Matthew Thornton. Member of the New Hampshire provincial assembly, 1758-1762. • William Whipple. Elected to New Hampshire provincial congress, 1775 and 1776. • Stephen Hopkins. Speaker of the Rhode Island Assembly,1750s; member of the Continental Congress beginning in 1774. • Lewis Morris. Member of New York provincial legislature; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1775. • Philip Livingston. Alderman, New York City. • Carter Braxton. Virginia House of Burgesses, 1770-1785; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1774-75. • Thomas Nelson Jr. Member of the House of Burgesses, 1774; Virginia provincial convention, 1775. • Francis Lightfoot Lee. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1758-1775; elected to Continental Congress, 1775. • Benjamin Harrison. Elected to Virginia House of Burgesses, 1764; member of the Continental Congress, 1774. • George Wythe. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1755-65. • William Hooper. Elected to general assembly of North Carolina, 1773; member of Continental Congress, 1774-1776. • Joseph Hewes. Member of the colonial assembly of North Carolina, 1766-1775; member of new provincial assembly, 1775; elected to Continental Congress, 1774. • John Hart. Member of the New Jersey Assembly, 1761-1771; member of provincial assembly, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1776. • William Williams. Town clerk, selectman, provincial representative, elected state legislator, delegate to colonial conferences, 1770s. • William Paca. Delegate to the Maryland Legislature, 1771; elected to Continental Congress, 1774. That’s at least 28 of the 56 signers -- about half, and we were conservative in who we counted. The real number may be higher. Either way, Carson’s original claim, that "every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience," is way, way off. The signers had 'no federal elected office experience' The edit Carson made to the Facebook post doesn’t help his case, since there was no federal government before the Declaration of Independence was signed. This makes his entire claim illogical, experts say, "Of course they did not have federal elected office experience because there was no federal government at the time -- we were a British colony," said Michael Gerhardt, scholar in residence at the National Constitution Center and professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina. "It does not make sense to use the term ‘federal’ when no federal government existed," agreed Danielle Allen, a political theorist and author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. "The signers of the declaration very often had leading political experience in their colony or, as they called them, in their ‘countries.’ " Jan Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, finds Carson’s claim ridiculous. "It makes about as much sense as saying none of them had been to the moon," Lewis said. "Of course they hadn't, because it was an impossibility at that time. No one could possibly serve in the federal government before there was a federal government, at least in the absence of time travel." Carson’s staff did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Our ruling Both the initial and the revised versions of Carson’s claim are far off base. About half or more of the declaration’s signers had held elective office previously, a reality that severely undercuts Carson’s overall point that the drafting of the Declaration of Independence showed how a lack of political experience can produce landmark political achievements. As for his later addition of "federal" to the comment, this makes the claim nonsensical, since there was no federal government prior to the signing of the declaration. We rate Carson’s claim Pants on Fire. | null | Ben Carson | null | null | null | 2015-11-08T10:30:24 | 2015-11-04 | ['None'] |
pomt-01510 | Says Rick Scott cut education by over a billion dollars, meaning thousands of teachers "lost their jobs" and "class sizes went up." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2014/sep/22/charlie-crist/charlie-crist-blames-rick-scott-teacher-layoffs-an/ | Charlie Crist has upped the ante on one of his favorite talking points: attacking Gov. Rick Scott for K-12 education cuts. In a Crist TV ad praising public school teachers, the narrator says: "They don’t fly in private jets or float on fancy yachts, but the job Florida teachers do couldn’t be more valuable. And when Rick Scott cut education by over a billion dollars, thousands of them lost their jobs, class sizes went up, our kids paid the price." A visual shows a 2014 Miami Herald article that cited a $1.3 billion cut to public schools. "Why did he do it?" the ad continues. "To pay for millions in handouts to big corporations. Tax cuts here, budget cuts there. Thousands of teaching jobs gone." The ad gives no indication of when those education cuts took place, but the answer is that the $1.3 billion K-12 cut came in 2011. We have already fact-checked whether Scott cut education to pay for tax breaks; we rated it Half True. Here, we will fact-check the allegation about the consequences of the budget cut. Did thousands of teachers lose their jobs? Did class sizes go up? Teacher layoffs amid budget cuts Scott entered office in 2011 facing a $3.6 billion shortfall in the state’s $70.5 billion budget. His first budget proposal, released at a tea party rally, included steep spending cuts, including reductions in education spending. After a contentious session, the Legislature passed -- and Scott signed -- a budget that included $1.3 billion in cuts to education. The reduction ended up being about $540 per student, working out to a 7.9 percent cut in funding. (We’ve broken down some of those dollar figures before.) After he faced a backlash over the cuts, Scott went on in subsequent years to back increases to K-12 education, though his high point for per-pupil spending still lags behind the high-water mark under Crist. So did "thousands" of teachers lose their jobs as a result of the 2011 budget cuts? We found no definitive source that shows the precise number of teacher layoffs statewide. The Crist campaign points to layoffs in a single school district: Broward. The campaign cites a June 2012 Sun-Sentinel article that stated that the district "eliminated about 1,500 teachers" in 2011 -- but then was poised to add 678 positions in 2012. So that figure falls short of the "thousands" cited by the campaign. A spokeswoman for Broward schools told PolitiFact that in June 2011, a total of 1,431 annual and probationary teachers were not reappointed, but 583 were later rehired. Additionally, 117 teachers were placed on a layoff list, but 97 were rehired. That brings the total to 868 in Broward. A caveat about Broward: State budget cuts are not the only reason for the district’s budget woes. A major factor was that the county faced rapid enrollment growth followed by a decline. Though the Crist campaign only cited an article about layoffs in a single district, layoffs occurred in other counties, too, including 315 teachers in Pasco County. (In Miami-Dade, nearly all of the teachers kept their jobs, except for some temporary teachers who received poor performance reviews.) School districts report to the state Department of Education the number of teachers they have each year. That data shows that the number of teachers between the fall of 2010 and the fall of 2011 declined by 1,405, or about 1 percent. This came as the number of students was increasing by about 24,000 between the 2010-11 school year and the 2011-12 school year. By the fall of 2012, the number of teachers exceeded the 2010 level. This data doesn’t include how much of the decline was due to layoffs, retirements or terminations -- but it’s fair to assume at least some were layoffs. The initial drop of 1,405 teachers falls short of the "thousands" cited by Crist. Crist, a Democrat, and Scott, a Republican, have accused each other of causing teacher layoffs. In an ad, Scott blamed Crist for "3,000 teachers laid off" during his tenure as governor. That claim was based on a September 2009 report about possible layoffs. Scott’s ad omitted that Crist accepted federal stimulus money that preserved thousands of teacher jobs and that the Republican-controlled Legislature shared responsibility with Crist for cuts that occurred amid a national recession. We rated Scott’s claim Mostly False. Class sizes The second part of the claim about class sizes increasing due to budget cuts is tricky to evaluate because many factors shaped class sizes. Florida voters approved a class-size amendment in 2002, but the state phased it in over several years. The first year schools had to meet the rules at the classroom level was 2010-11. Until that point, class sizes were averaged schoolwide, and a 2010 referendum to keep the school averages failed. The cap limited 18 students between kindergarten and third grade, 22 in fourth to eighth grades, and 25 students in core high school classes. But changes made by the Legislature during Scott’s tenure make it less than meaningful to compare compliance rates from year to year. For example, in 2011, the Legislature reduced the number of courses under the mandate by two-thirds, only requiring core classes needed for graduation to follow the standard. In 2013, the Legislature changed the law so that districts could designate schools as "schools of choice" to get around classroom counts. That’s what Pasco did for its entire district, for instance. The Crist campaign cited only one piece of evidence on class sizes: a 2011 Miami Herald article that cited some anecdotes about very large classes in Miami-Dade, including 54 students in a college-prep world history class. According to the Florida Department of Education, here are the percentage of classes that were out of compliance: * 2010-11 (Crist) 5.48 percent * 2011-12 (Scott) 6.56 percent * 2012-13 (Scott) 4.22 percent * 2013-14 (Scott) 2.59 percent So there was a small increase -- about 1 percentage point -- from the last year of Crist to the first year of Scott. But then the numbers went back down. By December 2011, about half of the state’s school districts were in violation of the cap, including Broward and Miami-Dade and Pasco counties. Districts faced fines for violating the mandate. In Broward, more than half of the classes were not in compliance compared to a 97 percent compliance rate the year before. The Tampa Bay Times wrote that in Pasco, "shrinking local, state and federal revenue caused the board to eliminate several hundred teaching positions in order to balance the budget. The administration and board knew that could mean some classes would exceed the state caps." To get fined for such a budgetary storm is "extremely frustrating," Pasco School Board member Steve Luikart said at the time. "It's stand up and get whipped." Nearly all of Miami-Dade’s classes complied with the class size rule in 2011, but the district determined it was cheaper to pay the penalty than hire more staff to meet the cap. "It did not make economic sense at that time to comply at 100 percent," said Antonio Cotarelo, spokesman for the district. State law requires schools to be compliant regardless of funding, and the amount of funding specifically directed toward class size never decreased, according to a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education. That means it is "pretty hard to make a direct link between less total education funding and higher class sizes," said Cheryl Etters, Department of Education spokeswoman. If the number of teachers statewide declined by 1,400 without being replaced, "it’s fair to assume that class sizes increased," said Ruth Haseman Melton, director of government relations for the Florida School Board Association. However there are a number of factors that influence class sizes, and state budget cuts are only one of them. Student enrollment is a major factor. A district may suddenly have a spike in students due to immigration or migration from other states. A district negotiating with a teachers' union might have decided to increase pay as a tradeoff for larger classes. "There are many explanations for why a district would struggle with class size one year and not the next...," Melton said. "It’s never as simple as a single sentence to explain almost anything with regard to education funding. There are always a number of factors that affect these things -- there is a not a single reason in one district or another that you could say, ‘Ah, this is the culpable element for why things went in the wrong direction.’ " We sent Crist’s claim to a spokesman for Scott’s campaign, who responded with claims promoting Scott’s track record on education funding after his first session. For example, Greg Blair pointed to "record" K-12 funding under Scott -- which is accurate in terms of the total amount but not for per pupil. Our ruling Crist said that Scott cut education by over a billion dollars, meaning thousands of teachers "lost their jobs" and "class sizes went up." The kernel of truth to this claim is that the number of teachers did decline and the percentage of classes out of class-size compliance rose in 2011. But this is outweighed by a long list of omissions -- and it doesn’t reflect Scott’s complete tenure. The first problem is it glosses over the fact that the cut took place in 2011, and was later followed by increases. In addition, it is an overstatement to suggest that "thousands" of teachers lost their jobs due to the 2011 state budget cuts. Statewide data shows the number of teachers dropped by about 1,405, but that includes departures for any reason, not just layoffs. The percentage of class sizes out of compliance with the mandate increased by about 1 percentage point between Crist’s last budget and Scott’s first budget. However, there are multiple district and state factors that influence class size and the compliance rules have repeatedly changed in recent years. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Charlie Crist | null | null | null | 2014-09-22T12:30:00 | 2014-09-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-10894 | I've always voted for keeping the government open. I’ve never cast a vote to shut down the government. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/aug/06/kevin-cramer/kevin-cramer-distorts-shutdown-record/ | U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said he would oppose a measure to close the government following President Donald Trump’s tweet about a possible government shutdown over immigration. Cramer, running to unseat Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, touted a clean record without any support for shutdowns. "I've always voted for keeping the government open," Cramer told Robert Port on July 31. "I’ve never cast a vote to shut down the government." We took a closer look. Actually, there’s no such thing as a formal "shutdown vote," said Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University. Rather, failure to pass appropriations bills by the start of a fiscal year or by the time temporary spending authority expires results in a shutdown. And Cramer has cast votes that indirectly resulted in a shutdown. The votes in question are from 2013, when Republicans in Congress fought the implementation of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act by refusing to fund it. As a minority party, Republicans didn't have the numbers to change the law, and Obama and his fellow Democrats refused to agree to gut it. Following a 16-day shutdown in October 2013, lawmakers voted to fund both the government and the Affordable Care Act. "He has voted for bills he knew would force a government shutdown because they defunded Obamacare and had absolutely no chance of passing the Senate or being signed by the president," said Josh Ryan, a political scientist at Utah State University. Essentially, Republicans would bring a bill to the floor to fund a narrow program or agency, Democrats would offer a motion to change the bill, and Republicans, including Cramer, would reject some of those. Most of these were procedural votes, and Cramer voted along party lines. There’s an element of the blame game here, too. "Sure, Republicans may have advanced a bill that would fail and shut down the government, but then again, Democrats could vote for the bill and keep the government open," said Ian Ostrander, a political science professor at Michigan State University. Cramer’s office presented the same argument. "The votes you reference were all procedural gambits to try and reopen the government that Democrats attempted to institute because they did not want to vote on the funding bills Republicans were offering, which would have funded vital parts of the government," Tim Rasmussen, Cramer’s campaign spokesman. This question is a little easier to answer when it comes to the U.S. Senate, because its rules structure allows for more obvious delaying tactics. We rated Sen. Ted Cruz’s claim he opposed a shutdown Pants on Fire, for example, because he voted against cloture (needed to break a filibuster) on a vote to fund the government. A senator can vote for cloture and still oppose the bill at hand, but by opposing even that, Cruz favored a shutdown over compromise. But with no filibuster in the House, it’s harder to disentangle policy positions from efforts to directly cause a shutdown. Our ruling Cramer said, "I've always voted for keeping the government open. I’ve never cast a vote to shut down the government." We found multiple instances where Cramer indirectly helped to cause a shutdown by voting for bills that defunded Obamacare -- these bills had no chance of survival in the Senate or of being signed by then-President Obama. While Cramer's actions were not direct votes on keeping the government open, they encouraged the 2013 shutdown. We rate this statement Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Kevin Cramer | null | null | null | 2018-08-06T16:01:04 | 2018-07-31 | ['None'] |
tron-02383 | President Obama Hesitated to Give Order to Kill Osama Bin Laden | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-hesitated/ | null | military | null | null | null | President Obama Hesitated to Give Order to Kill Osama Bin Laden | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02694 | Forty percent of the country is going to be in states that are tolerant of gay marriage or at least civil unions. | true | /punditfact/statements/2014/jan/05/neera-tanden/head-liberal-think-tank-says-four-10-americans-liv/ | There’s no denying 2013 saw a sea change for same-sex couples who sought government recognition of their relationships. Both court decisions and legislative action meant that 10 additional states recognized gay marriage. Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, speculated Dec. 29 on CNN’s State of the Union that changing views toward the gay community will continue in 2014. "This will be a wedge issue on the Republican side. I mean 10 years ago, we had Republicans pushing a federal marriage amendment in the Senate to ban gay marriage," she said. "Forty percent of the country is going to be in states that are tolerant of gay marriage or at least civil unions. And that number is only going to grow." We wanted to see if Tanden’s number — that four in 10 Americans now live in states that recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions — is accurate. We contacted the Center for American Progress to see how Tanden reached her number. They pointed us to a year-end round up from the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals. According to the organization, 38.37 percent of the population lives in states that allow same-sex marriage. (Note that this does not include civil unions, which we will address in just a bit.) That figure was released before a federal judge in December overturned a Utah ban on same-sex marriages. In the days since that decision, hundreds of gay and lesbian couples were married in Utah, though the state has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt further ceremonies while the ruling is appealed. Adding Utah to the mix, the Human Rights Campaign told PunditFact, would bring the total population living in states that allow gay marriage to 39.27. That was calculated by taking U.S. Census data from 2010 and comparing it with a list of states where same-sex marriage has been legalized, either through the courts or by legislative action. We wanted to double check the math ourselves. Gay marriage is now legal in 18 states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington — plus the District of Columbia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan advocate for state legislative bodies. Civil unions or domestic partnerships between gay couples are allowed in Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. Using the most recent U.S. Census data estimates from 2013, here’s how the population breaks down in states that allow same-sex marriage or civil unions: State Population Percent of total population California 38,332,521 12.13 Colorado 5,268,367 1.67 Connecticut 3,596,367 1.14 D.C. 925,749 0.29 Delaware 646,449 0.20 Hawaii 1,404,054 0.44 Illinois 12,882,135 4.07 Iowa 3,090,416 0.98 Maine 1,328,302 0.42 Maryland 5,928,814 1.88 Massachusetts 6,692,824 2.12 Minnesota 5,420,380 1.71 Nevada 2,790,136 0.88 New Hampshire 1,323,459 0.42 New Jersey 8,899,339 2.82 New Mexico 2,085,287 0.66 New York 19,651,127 6.22 Oregon 3,930,065 1.24 Rhode Island 1,051,511 0.33 Utah 2,900,872 0.92 Vermont 626,630 0.20 Washington 6,971,406 2.21 Total 135,745,923 42.94 The total is about 43 percent. If you exclude the states that allow civil unions or domestic partnerships but not same-sex marriage, it comes out to about 39.15 percent of the population. By either measure, Tanden appears to be right. We should note that the Illinois General Assembly and the governor last year moved to legalize gay marriage in the state, but licenses won’t be available until June 2014. We also ran these numbers by opponents of same-sex marriage. Tanden’s figure was not disputed by Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. But he said a better measure might be to compare the number of states where voters have approved ballot initiatives in opposition to same-sex marriage against states where residents voted in favor of it. Thirty states have approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Those states make up two-thirds of the population and include California and Utah, where courts overturned voter referendums, and Colorado, Nevada and Oregon, where civil unions are legal. Only Maine, Maryland and Washington have held referendums that approved same-sex marriage laws. (We should point out that most states pass laws through the legislative branch, not via referendum.) Courts also played a heavy role in allowing gay marriage in California, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New Jersey and Utah. During her remarks, Tanden suggested that the number of individuals living in states that allow same sex marriage is "only going to grow." As recently as 2010, only seven states recognized gay marriage, comprising just 17 percent of the country. But of the 29 states that don’t allow for same-sex marriages or civil unions, 25 have constitutional amendments that define marriage as between man and a woman. Many of those amendments "require popular votes, usually alongside legislative action," to change them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. "Efforts to overturn constitutional prohibitions have begun in several states and litigation has also been initiated in several states" but the NCSL also notes "the scope for continued legislative change is limited." Our ruling Tanden said, "Forty percent of the country is going to be in states that are tolerant of gay marriage or at least civil unions." Both expert sources and independently verified statistics back up those numbers if we define "tolerant" as states where same-sex marriage or civil unions are legal. Subsequent court decisions could raise or lower that number, and opponents note many of those states allowed same-sex marriage only after court intervention. But at the time she spoke, her statement was accurate, and we rate it True. | null | Neera Tanden | null | null | null | 2014-01-05T08:30:00 | 2013-12-29 | ['None'] |
pomt-06567 | Members of the public are being charged $50 to hear Gov. Scott Walker and a dozen members of his administration talk about jobs and the economy at Lambeau Field. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/sep/30/one-wisconsin-now/one-wisconsin-now-says-gov-scott-walker-charging-p/ | Gov. Scott Walker tried to take the edge off the latest dreary employment report -- issued on Sept. 16, 2011 -- by announcing a series of "job creation forums" around the state. Small, invitation-only forums were held in September in La Crosse, Milwaukee and in Green Bay. The highest profile one is a second Green Bay one, a day-long event Nov. 1 at Lambeau Field. The agenda features welcoming remarks from Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and a keynote speech at noon from the governor. The panels are made up of more than a dozen Walker Administration cabinet secretaries and appointees. Two business people -- both winners of awards from Walker’s administration -- are given slots on a panel at the end of the day. When that event was announced, some people got the impression it was an opportunity for thousands of unemployed state residents to connect with hiring employers. (When discussing unemployment, Walker frequently mentions a state web site listing thousands of job openings.) But the event isn’t aimed at helping individual unemployed people find work. It’s not a job fair. And that caught the attention of the liberal One Wisconsin Now group, which criticized the event and the admission fee. Walker is charging "the public $50 to attend a state-sponsored ‘jobs summit,’" the group said in a news release. Such pay-for-access claims have become familiar in the recent months. We looked into a similar complaint raised by the Wisconsin Democratic Party that said three Republican members of Congress were shutting down town hall meetings and charging constituents for access. we rated that claim Pants on Fire, in part because the fees in question were for Rotary lunches and other routine civic meetings and there were many other opportunities to meet with them. So, is One Wisconsin Now right about the governor’s office and the Lambeau event? Asked to support the claim, Scot Ross, executive director of the group, cited the announcements themselves. He said it looked like the public was being forced to pay for access to state officials: "They’re going to charge people to hear their ideas. How is that going to help us?" The event was characterized differently by the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s offices. Walker’s news release labeled the events "Job Creation Forums," including in Green Bay. Four days later, Kleefisch’s office announced greater detail about the Lambeau event and called it a "Small Business Summit." The Lambeau event is an opportunity for the administration to meet with business people, said Jeanne Taratino, Kleefisch’s chief of staff. She said the liberal group "misconstrued" the press releases announcing the events. "It’s not a jobs summit. It’s a small business summit," she said. "We’re not asking unemployed people to pay $50 to come to a jobs summit." She noted that there were expenses related to holding the event in meeting rooms at Lambeau (not in the stadium itself) and that breakfast and lunch were included. Tarantino said the administration hopes about 200 people will attend. The Lambeau event is open to all and those interested in attending can register on the web site of the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. "We’ll take all comers," Tarantino said. "But it’s like every conference -- there’s a targeted audience." The breakout sessions will include comments from each cabinet secretary and than a chance for attendees to ask questions "about issues of importance to small businesses," she said. For example, a business owner might "have a problem with an audit," and want to know "how you can get an answer in a timely fashion," she said. Walker held smaller scale "jobs forums" in La Crosse on Sept. 22, 2011 and Milwaukee Sept. 27, and Green Bay Sept. 29. Those were two-hour, invitation only events, with no charge. In the case of the Milwaukee and Green Bay events they were announced one day in advance and did not appear to break much new ground. At the La Crosse forum, Walker was told that improvement to the local job market hinges on "limiting regulations and developing a skilled workforce," according to the La Crosse Tribune. Two employers -- the owner of a screen printing shop and a builder -- said that younger workers often lacked proper training and motivation. Our conclusion One Wisconsin Now claimed the Walker administration is charging people to hear elected and appointed officials talk about jobs and the economy in a day-long event in Green Bay. They are. But you also get to visit Lambeau (at least the meeting rooms) have two meals and listen to a lot of speeches. Then again, you could get yourself invited to one of the smaller events. Or you could send an email or make a call to the state’s jobs "hotline" (1-855-854-JOBS) -- for free. But the statement was limited to the Lambeau Field event. We rate it True. | null | One Wisconsin Now | null | null | null | 2011-09-30T09:00:00 | 2011-09-20 | ['Scott_Walker_(politician)', 'Lambeau_Field'] |
tron-01967 | The body of a SCUBA diver found in a California forest fire | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/firediver/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | The body of a SCUBA diver found in a California forest fire | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['California', 'Scuba_diving'] |
snes-00913 | JUULing, or use of a JUUL e-cigarette, has caused cancer in four students. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-juuling-cancer-young-people/ | null | Medical | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Has ‘JUULing’ Caused Cancer in High School and College Students? | 9 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01162 | Members of Congress continue to get paid but military personnel do not during a U.S. government shutdown. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/congress-paid-military-not-shutdown/ | null | Military | null | David Emery | null | Does Congress Get Paid While Military Personnel Do Not During a Government Shutdown? | 22 January 2018 | null | ['United_States', 'United_States_Congress'] |
snes-00865 | The Trump administration appointed Walter Palmer, famed for killing Cecil the Lion in 2015, to a newly-formed wildlife conservation council. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cecil-lion-wildlife-conservation-council/ | null | Critter Country | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did President Donald Trump Appoint the Man Who Killed Cecil the Lion to a Wildlife Conservation Council? | 21 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00152 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report on Recto calling Duterte a 'crazy dog' | false | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-report-recto-calling-duterte-crazy-dog | null | null | null | null | false news | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report on Recto calling Duterte a 'crazy dog' OLD and FALSE | July 05, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01612 | A Detroit firefighter was fired for behavior deemed offensive and racially insensitive after bringing a watermelon to work on his first day on the job. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/detroit-firefighter-watermelon-fired/ | null | Racial Rumors | null | David Emery | null | Was a Detroit Firefighter Fired for Bringing a Watermelon to His Station? | 9 October 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01816 | There are fewer wars, there are fewer people dying in wars "now than there have been in quite some time." | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2014/jul/21/stu-burguiere/fewer-wars-fewer-people-dying-wars-now-quite-some/ | Armed conflict has been in the news this year: Syria, Iraq, Ukraine-Russia, and now Israel-Palestine. But on July 15’s Glenn Beck Program, head writer Stu Burguiere suggested that on the whole, the modern world is particularly peaceful. A caller got Beck gushing on the United States’ decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima to bring about the end of World War II and the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. "I love that it’s probably stopped a war between the United States and Russia," Beck said. "We had a cold war instead of a hot war because we both knew, oh, if you push that button I’ll push that button." Beck put the number of lives saved by the nuclear bomb at potentially "hundreds of millions." Burguiere chimed in, acknowledging that nuclear weapons are still plenty dangerous. Even so, he continued, "so far, I don’t think you can look at it as anything other than a positive." "Violence around the world is dropping. There are less wars, there are less people dying in wars than there have been in quite some time. It’s odd to think about, but it’s true." With violence making newspapers’ front page almost every day, we were surprised enough to check: Are the number of wars and the number of deaths from wars on the downswing? The big picture Burguiere was a little vague with his time frame, so we’re going to start broad and zoom in. Compared to prehistoric, pre-state, and even Medieval man, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker argues, the world has become incredibly peaceful. "Violence has been in decline for thousands of years," Pinker said in the Wall Street Journal, "and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species." "The rate of documented direct deaths from political violence (war, terrorism, genocide and militias) in the past decade is an unprecedented few hundredths of a percentage point." In his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker attributes our species’ decline in violence to the creation of states, trade interests, the Enlightenment and the dearth of major interstate war since World War II. It’s worth noting that even though rates of violence are down, the exponential increase in population means that the absolute number of violent crimes and deaths every year is nowhere near an all-time low. "Think about the vast loss of life in World War II," said Robert Epstein, professor of psychology at the University of the South Pacific. Epstein compared violent deaths to AIDS insofar as both were causes of death that were strictly behavioral. "If we use the same logic with, let’s say malaria or polio or any other cause of death, that relatively speaking we’re doing better, I don’t think a lot of people would accept that. They’d want to know, is it possible to eradicate that." Battle deaths After World War II -- and after the nuclear bombings Beck and Burguiere were discussing -- both the absolute number of direct deaths from war and the per capita rate of direct deaths dropped. Battle deaths are difficult to pin down precisely, but the Uppsala Conflict Data Program puts the number of battle deaths in 2013 at about 30,000. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, which produced the graph above, there were between 557,000 and 851,000 battle deaths in 1950, the highest since the end of World War II. Despite some peaks and troughs, there have been fewer battle deaths over the last decade than any other 10-year average since World War II. "The number of people killed in wars is close to its lowest point since 1946," Pinker said. "There was a slight uptick in 2012, and I expect it will continue to rise a bit in 2013 and 2014 because of Syria and Iraq, but not nearly enough to bring us to the levels seen during the Chinese Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Iran-Iraq, USSR-Afghanistan, and the many now-quiescent regions of Africa." The experts we spoke to generally understood deaths due to war to mean direct battle deaths, as applying a consistent standard to war deaths outside of battle is difficult. "Direct deaths are the only ones that can be counted with confidence," wrote Pinker in Better Angels. By most measures, war deaths are lower now than they’ve been for most of the post-World War II period, even as burgeoning conflicts in the Middle East have driven the number of battle deaths up in 2012 and 2013. Defining war Burguiere said fewer people today are dying in wars, but what constitutes a war is somewhat up for debate. The definition of war that most political scientists use is a conflict with at least 1,000 battle casualties in a year, according to Joshua Goldstein, author of Winning the War on War. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program -- which Goldstein called "the expert on battle deaths" -- refer to conflicts that kill 25-999 people as "armed conflicts," not wars. "Interstate wars, between regular armies, have dropped to zero currently and have become much less frequent and also shorter over recent decades," Goldstein said. He acknowledged, though, that "the world has slipped backward a bit in the last 5 years, mostly because of the war in Syria." Armed conflicts have also seen a slight dip in recent years, although they’ve generally risen in frequency since World War II, even as they’ve become less fatal. There are other ways, though, to define war. Mark Harrison, in his paper "Frequency of Wars," took an inclusive definition of war that includes even displays of force between countries. Based on this definition, as the number of countries has increased from less than 50 in 1870 to more than 180 today, the number of wars has also steadily increased. "One way to think about this could be the difference between fire and friction," Harrison said. "Burguiere says there are fewer fires and fire deaths, and this is true. Our work shows that there is increasing friction." Pinker, Goldstein and Harrison all attributed the decrease in major armed conflict to factors other than nuclear deterrence, although they acknowledged it’s an open debate. In Winning the War on War, Goldstein attributes the decline to the United Nation’s international peacekeeping and the fall of Communism, and in Better Angels, Pinker points out that Democratic countries have never fought in a war against each other. Neither, too, have capitalist countries. Commerce is "a game in which everybody can win," Pinker said. "Though the relationship today between America and China is far from warm, we are unlikely to declare war on them or visa versa. Morality aside, they make too much of our stuff, and we owe them too much money." Our ruling In the course of praising nuclear deterrence, Burguiere said, "there are less wars, there are less people dying in wars than there have been in quite some time." According to the most common definition of war -- an armed conflict with more than 1,000 battle deaths annually -- Burguiere is right, although other definitions exist. Battle deaths are also down since World War II. However, they have begun creeping up in the last couple of years, mostly because of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The record when it comes to "people dying in wars" generally is less clear, as is the role of nuclear deterrence. Those caveats -- that "war" and "people dying in wars" are fraught terms, and that recent Middle Eastern conflicts are increasing the number of battle deaths -- don’t detract much from the overall point that violence is down. We rate Burguiere’s claim Mostly True. | null | Stu Burguiere | null | null | null | 2014-07-21T13:41:06 | 2014-07-15 | ['None'] |
goop-00949 | Sarah Jessica Parker, Andy Cohen Friendship Making Matthew Broderick Jealous? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/sarah-jessica-parker-andy-cohen-matthew-broderick-friends-jealous/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Sarah Jessica Parker, Andy Cohen Friendship Making Matthew Broderick Jealous? | 6:07 pm, May 23, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08983 | Dan Gelber's employment by BP's law firm "could disqualify him from representing Florida against BP as Attorney General." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2010/jul/15/dave-aronberg/dan-gelber-and-his-ties-bp-questioned-opponent/ | If Florida winds up suing BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a newly elected Attorney General Dan Gelber may have to sit the case out, according to his rival for the Democratic nomination. Dave Aronberg says that Gelber could be disqualified from representing the state in a case against BP because the private law firm he worked for until recently, Akerman Senterfitt, signed BP as a client in oil spill matters. The relationship between BP, Akerman Senterfitt and Gelber could create a conflict of interest too big for a judge to ignore, Aronberg says. "As one of the leading critics of BP, you will never have to worry which side I'm on," Aronberg, a state senator from Greenacres, wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "Our next Attorney General needs to be the people's attorney -- and not the polluter's attorney. "I'm not angry at my opponent. He and I served in the legislature together. The fact remains, however, that his employment by BP's law firm could disqualify him from representing Florida against BP as Attorney General." The accusation is significant, especially in a down-ballot state primary featuring candidates who have few policy disagreements. But is it true? First, the germane facts. Gelber was indeed an "of counsel" lawyer for Akerman Senterfitt, working in the Litigation Practice Group in the firm's Miami office (Akerman also has Florida offices in Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Tampa and West Palm Beach, and is Florida's largest law firm). And Akerman Senterfitt was hired to represent BP in all of its Florida civil litigation. The two events -- Gelber's work for Akerman, and Akerman's relationship with BP -- overlapped for at least about a month. We don't know exactly when BP hired Akerman, and an Akerman spokesman didn't return our call for comment, but it happened before May 24. We'll explain how we know that in a second. Gelber, meanwhile, announced he was resigning from the firm in an e-mail on June 24. (Read it here). The e-mail says Gelber planned on leaving the firm in early July, but Gelber said his resignation became official by June 28. So Gelber was a lawyer for a firm representing BP for about a month. Now the question is would that by itself disqualify him from handling a case against BP as attorney general? Florida Bar rules The Florida Bar sets quite specific rules for determining conflicts of interest. The bar, in rule 4-1.9, says that a lawyer who has formerly represented a client cannot "represent another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person's interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent." Another rule deals more specifically with public officers, which Gelber would be if elected attorney general. Bar rule 4-1.11 says that a lawyer currently serving as a public officer or employee cannot "participate in a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially while in private practice or nongovernmental employment, unless the appropriate government agency gives its informed consent." Aronberg pointed us to additional bar regulations (4-1.10) that say that a firm of lawyers is essentially one lawyer for purposes of the rules governing loyalty to the client. There are all kinds of buzz words there for us to ferret out. In one sense, the key is whether Gelber represented BP, in another it's whether he participated personally and substantially. Looking at it another way, it's crucial perhaps to know what work Akerman did for BP in the month that Gelber was still employed at the firm. We asked Gelber, a state Senator from Miami Beach, to explain his role in any litigation related to BP. "Everything I heard about it, I read through the newspaper," Gelber said. Q: Were you part of any privileged conversations? A: No. Q: Did you see any privileged or confidential material? A: No. "I can list all the things I didn't know, but the easiest thing to say is that I knew nothing," Gelber said. To his point, Gelber said he didn't even have a conversation with his supervisors after learning that BP retained Akerman. He didn't want to ask when BP hired Akerman. He didn't want to ask why no one told him. He just didn't want to ask. There's also the matter of a letter written by another state legislator and Akerman lawyer, Alex Villalobos, specifically requesting Villalobos, Gelber and other Akerman lawyers who are also members of the state Legislature not be part of the BP litigation or privy to any BP information. That letter was written on May 24, the first record of BP being represented by Akerman Senterfitt. "We specifically request that we remain walled off and isolated from any discussions, documents or activities of any kind between the firm and BP," Villalobos wrote in a letter that was copied to Gelber. (Gelber says that he actually didn't see a copy of the Villalobos letter until weeks after it was written). Legal opinions With all that in mind, we turned to a cadre of legal experts to see if there is or could be a conflict. Most thought it would be difficult to have Gelber removed. "It seems to be quite unlikely," said John Steele, who runs the Legal Ethics Forum and has taught legal ethics classes at Stanford, University of California-Berkeley, Santa Clara, and Indiana University. "The devil is in details we probably don't have access to and never will." It's not enough, in most cases, for a judge to declare a conflict simply because Gelber worked for a firm for one month that simultaneously did work on BP's behalf. The question, Steele said, is did Gelber hear something in the halls of Akerman Senterfitt, or see an e-mail that might make BP uncomfortable should he sit as an opposing counsel. Also, Steele said, BP would have to raise the objection to have Gelber disqualified. Trying to get Florida's attorney general tossed off the case could have damaging political impacts for BP, Steele notes. Three other law professors we spoke with -- W. Bradley Wendell, a professor at Cornell Law School, Stephen Gillers, the Crystal Eastman Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law and Roberta K. Flowers, Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the Stetson College of Law -- agreed with Steele's assessment. "The claim is false," said Gillers. "If Gelber did not do work for BP on the spill while at the firm, Florida conflict rules, and those in all U.S. jurisdictions, permit him to represent the state against BP as Attorney General." Added Wendell: "Lawyers, ironically, are sometimes not very knowledgeable about the law governing lawyers." Yet other lawyers we talked to focused on Aronberg's use of the word "could" in describing Gelber's potential conflict. "I do feel comfortable saying that his statement is potentially true, depending on the existence of certain facts," said Andrew Perlman, a professor at Suffolk University Law School. (We should note that Perlman is an acquaintance of Aronberg's from law school. PolitiFact Florida contacted him through the Legal Ethics Forum, however, and without knowing of his relationship with Aronberg.) Richard W. Painter, the S. Walter Richey Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, said "the ball is in Gelber's court to establish that he would not be disqualified under the Florida rule, for example because he had no access to confidential information from BP about the oil spill." "I didn't just willy-nilly make this up," said Aronberg, who said he spoke with Antonacci and former state Attorney General Richard Doran about Gelber's potential conflict. "And there's a reason I said 'could.' We don't know, this is a complicated thing and only a judge can make the final decision." Our ruling Legal experts and law professors are clear that for Gelber to ever be removed in a case against BP, he needs to have had access to confidential information while working at Akerman Senterfitt. Put another way, it's not enough that he worked at Akerman for a month or so while the firm represented BP to disqualify him from pursuing a case against the oil giant. What evidence is there that Gelber received confidential or privileged information? None. We couldn't find it. Neither could Aronberg. Nor has it been reported somewhere else. That brings us to Aronberg's use of the word "could" in his claim -- Dan Gelber's employment by BP’s law firm "could disqualify him from representing Florida against BP as Attorney General." We have to acknowledge that anything is possible. New information could come to light significantly tying Gelber to the BP case, and that indeed could lead to his disqualification. But it isn't here yet, and in the absence of that information, Aronberg's claim sounds more like a scare tactic than rooted in some finding of fact. We rate his statement 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 | Dave Aronberg | null | null | null | 2010-07-15T17:47:17 | 2010-07-02 | ['BP'] |
pomt-15001 | Says Republican Rep. Charlie Dent wants to kick the Freedom Caucus out of the Republican conference "for voting our conscience." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/11/dave-brat/understanding-freedom-caucus-divide-house-republic/ | Encapsulating the divide and chaos in the GOP, the conservative who defeated former Majority Leader Eric Cantor and a moderate Republican duked it out on NBC’s Meet the Press. Following Cantor’s defeat and John Boehner’s announcement that he would step down as speaker, the insurgent wing of the party claimed their third victory when California Rep. Kevin McCarthy withdrew from the race to replace Boehner. Republicans, however, have yet to agree on a new leader as the infighting continues. Rep. David Brat of Virginia, Cantor’s replacement and a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, blasted the establishment for caving to Democrats and President Barack Obama, while Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn., expressed frustration that the hard right refuses to govern. ("A pox on both your wings!" chimed in conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.) Here’s a part of their Oct. 11 exchange: Brat: "I follow the American people. Charlie here wants us to follow, like a caucus or whatever. He wants to kick us out of our conference for voting our conscience." Dent: "I don’t want to do that." Brat: "You’re on the record last week saying it." CROSSTALK Brat: "I’ve got quotes. ..." Dent: "That’s an outrageous thing to say." Brat: "No, it’s absolutely true." Dent: "That’s not true." Brat: "You said we ‘need to be punished,’ end quotes." Dent: "No, I said we should marginalize people who don’t want to govern." We were curious about Brat’s claim that Dent wants to give the Freedom Caucus the boot. "Members of Congress should be able to vote their conscience and cast a vote that represents their constituencies without fear of retribution or political punishment," Jack Minor, Brat’s spokesperson, told us. To prove Brat’s point, Minor sent us a few examples of Dent criticizing the insurgent conservatives, as well as articles in which anonymous sources say leadership allies and members of the Tuesday Group — an informal caucus of moderate Republicans led by Dent — are considering excommunication. But that’s not the same thing as Dent saying "on the record" that he wants to kick the Freedom Caucus out of the conference for "voting their conscience" or that they "need to be punished." Dent told us he never made such a statement, but suggested Brat may have been confusing him with California Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican and Boehner and McCarthy ally. "I would strongly encourage those who don’t want to be part of a caucus structure in our own party — they should go form their own party," Nunes told Breitbart. Dent, for his part, said he’s never endorsed that position. "I don’t think that’s a good idea. My view on this is you have to work around them," Dent told us in an interview. "I have said the leadership should try to marginalize those individuals, not by excommunicating them or by punishing them. You negotiate a bipartisan agreement and you make them less relevant. That’s what we’ve done." The record supports Dent. We searched three databases — Lexis Nexis, CQ and Google News — and couldn’t find any instance of Dent saying he wants to expel or punish the Freedom Caucus. That doesn’t mean Dent is a fan of the Freedom Caucus. He repeatedly calls them "rejectionists" and calls for the party to marginalize them and not "appease" their "unreasonable demands." He said they "fragged" Boehner and McCarthy. And he insinuated that they’re part of the reason why Republicans "don't have 218 votes for a bathroom break." Here’s a round-up of comments made by Dent this past week: • Oct. 9 News Max: "The Freedom Caucus, typically, does represent the more rejectionist wing of the party." • Oct. 9 CNN: "The Freedom Caucus has used tactics that I believe have undermined conservative principles. • Oct. 9 CNN: "What I've said all along is simply marginalize those members up front. Go out and negotiate your -- negotiate what you have to negotiate just like we did on the Medicare reimbursement to physicians, the SGR." • Oct. 8 MSNBC: "We also have the Freedom Caucus. ... I said before John Boehner stepped down, the same people who are trying to take down John Boehner were gonna try to frag the next guy. And that’s what happened today. • Oct. 8 CNN: "In my view, sometime to marginalize those members, you know, who don't want to be part of the governing majority. … And I don't think that any of our leaders should make accommodations to those who are going to make unreasonable demands." • Oct. 8 MSNBC: "Same members who wanted to take down John Boehner just fragged Kevin McCarthy. … Whoever’s going to be the next speaker should not appease this group of rejectionists, who have no interest in governing. They can simply not get to yes. The perfect will always be the enemy of the good to them, so we just have to deal with the reality as it is." • Oct. 8 NPR: "I mean, it was pretty clear there were a group of members — some said as many as 50 — you know, who were not going to support (McCarthy) on the House floor. … The same thing could happen for speaker, where we may need to assemble a bipartisan coalition to elect the next speaker." • Oct. 6 Rolling Stone: "There are a lot of folks in our conference who have a very difficult time getting to 'yes' on anything. ... On any issue of great consequence around here, we on the Republican side don't have 218 votes for a bathroom break! So we always need a bipartisan coalition." So it’s clear that there’s no love lost between Dent and the Freedom Caucus, but Brat takes the claim a bit too far, an expert told us. "Mr. Brat exaggerates what Mr. Dent said, as he doesn't literally advocate ‘kicking them out’ of the Republican conference," said Kathleen Kendall, a professor of political communication at the University of Maryland. "This exchange between Reps. Brat and Dent illustrated the sharp divide between two wings of the Republicans in the House." Despite his differences with the Freedom Caucus, Dent told us he wants the party to be open to everybody and he doesn't object to people "voting their conscience," as Brat put it. He noted, however, that Freedom Caucus members "talk a big game" as they sometimes side with Democrats as part of their obstructionist tactics. "Yes of course they should be able to vote their conscience," he said. "I understand conscience votes — I get that, I understand and respect it. But some point that seems to me that you want to be part of a governing majority or you don’t." Our ruling Brat said, Republicans like Dent want to kick the Freedom Caucus out of the Republican conference "for voting our conscience." Dent is critical of the Freedom Caucus but he told us he does not want to excommunicate them, nor could we find evidence that he’s expressed the desire to in the past. Brat may have been getting his moderate Republicans mixed up. It was Rep. Devin Nunes who suggested on the record that dissatisfied hardliners form their own party. We rate Brat’s claim False. Editor’s note: Shortly after we published the story, we received additional information from Brat’s spokesperson that we have added to the story. Brat's office also challenged our hearing of part of his back-and-forth with Dent. As such, we've removed a portion of Brat's quote in this fact-check. The changes do not affect our ruling. Here is a statement sent from Brat's office: "In Congressman Brat’s exchange with Congressman Dent, he clearly did not use the foul language that PolitiFact insisted but said, 'I’ve got quote for days.' "PolitiFact has engaged in the fabrication of a quote that Brat did not say. It discredits their entire publication and demonstrates that they are not in the business of publishing facts, but publishing false partisan attacks. It is dishonest, disgraceful and shameful. "On Sunday afternoon, the office was given only a few hours to refute a falsehood and a political attack. After sending 6 references supporting the statements of Congressman Brat, PolitiFact insisted that the references were not enough to support the claims and chose not to highlight them appropriately. "It is disappointing to see these actions out of a publication that claims to seek the truth." | null | Dave Brat | null | null | null | 2015-10-11T17:00:46 | 2015-10-11 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-02491 | A 31-year-old Cincinnati woman was taken to the hospital after the 14-month-old toddler she was babysitting got stuck in her vaginal cavity. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/babysitter-transported-to-hospital/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Babysitter Transported to Hospital After Inserting a Baby in Her Vagina? | 4 May 2017 | null | ['Cincinnati'] |
pomt-06564 | Says the private sector in Texas created 1 million jobs over the past decade. | half-true | /texas/statements/2011/sep/30/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-private-sector-texas-created-1-mil/ | On the CNBC morning show Squawk Box, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry made a claim on Texas job growth that sounded a lot like something we’ve checked before, with a twist. Noting that Perry has said on the campaign trail that government doesn't create jobs, interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin told the Texas governor that over Perry's 10-plus years as governor, his state's total number of government jobs had increased 19 percent, while the private sector saw only a 9 percent bump. "How do you square that circle?" Sorkin asked. Perry responded: "Well, our teachers in Texas are public employees, so we've had a huge influx of people into the state of Texas, so you have to have more teachers obviously to do that as well. But the private sector job creation over the last … 10 years has been 1 million jobs created, while this country lost 2.5 million. So we square that rather well with the rest of the country." Perry made a similar claim about Texas job gains during the Sept 7, 2011, Republican presidential debate at the Reagan presidential library in California, although he didn't say he was talking specifically about the private sector. "When you look at what we have done over the last decade, we created 1 million jobs in the state of Texas," Perry said. "At the same time, America lost 2.5 million." We rated that Perry claim Half True. His figures — on the change in job numbers between December 2000, when Perry took office, and July 2011 — basically held up, but his statement had weaknesses. For instance, more than 20 states enjoyed net job gains over the same period, so the governor of any one of them could make a similar boast, leaving the misimpression that only his or her state gained jobs while the rest of the country lost jobs. For example, using the Perry campaign's methodology, Alaska created 43,700 jobs during Perry's time in the governor's office while the rest of America lost 1.4 million. Also, the Texas economy was rocking before Perry became governor. And, generally, many are skeptical about how much influence governors have over their state's economy. For this article, we wondered whether the roughly 1 million net increase in jobs in Texas during Perry's tenure all occurred in the private sector, as Perry told Sorkin. Precisely, the number of jobs in Texas increased by nearly 1.1 million between December 2000 and July 2011. In the period, government sector employment grew by 286,000, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data and agency economist Cheryl Abbot. The BLS data on government workers contains federal, state and local employees, including postal workers but excluding military personnel. The Texas breakdown: Federal government: Increase of 19,900 jobs State government: Increase of 51,000 Local government: Increase of 215,100 Private industry was responsible for the rest of the state's net increase in jobs, or about 790,000 positions, 73 percent of the total. According to the BLS data, the private sectors that experienced job increases during the 128-month period were education and health services (404,900 increase), categories that do not sweep in jobs in public schools or hospitals; leisure and hospitality (215,200); professional and business services (196,800); trade, transportation and utilities (107,300); mining and logging (99,200); financial activities (57,500); construction (17,600); and other (18,400). Two sectors saw job decreases: manufacturing (233,400 drop) and information (91,100). Our ruling Perry cited a figure for private-sector jobs that he's previously used to describe total employment gains. That could lead close followers of his campaign with the misimpression that nearly all the job gains were in the private sector. To the contrary, government jobs represented about 27 percent of the total. But even though Perry was off by 200,000, he was in the neighborhood on his million-jobs statement. We rate his statement Half True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2011-09-30T19:26:30 | 2011-09-29 | ['Texas'] |
goop-02110 | Christina Aguilera, Matt Rutler Secretly Married, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/christina-aguilera-secretly-married-matt-rutler-wedding/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Christina Aguilera, Matt Rutler NOT Secretly Married, Despite Report | 5:50 pm, November 30, 2017 | null | ['Christina_Aguilera'] |
pomt-02090 | At the mere request from Putin, President Obama withdrew the plans for a missile defense program based in Poland and the Czech Republic. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2014/may/19/dick-cheney/cheney-mere-request-putin-obama-ditched-eastern-eu/ | As the unstable situation in Ukraine continues, former Vice President Dick Cheney was asked Sunday what he thought of President Barack Obama’s handling of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Cheney said Putin has taken advantage of what he sees as weakness in Obama, and that Obama had sent the wrong signals as early as 2009. "At the mere request from Putin, President Obama withdrew the plans for a missile defense program based in Poland and the Czech Republic," Cheney said on Fox News Sunday. Here, we’re fact-checking whether Obama withdrew plans for a missile defense program at Putin’s request. The Bush plan In 2006, on advice from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, President George W. Bush pushed for an initiative to install 10 interceptor missiles on the ground in Poland and an advanced radar system in the Czech Republic, to counter the potential threat of long-range missiles from Iran. Russia did not like the idea one bit. Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov told the Russian news organization Ria Novosti that Russia was opposed and that the plans did not make "political sense, much less military sense." During the 2008 election, candidate Obama said he supported the installations in Poland and the Czech Republic but also said he was open to rethinking them. When Obama took office in 2009, he spoke of making U.S. relations with Russia less confrontational. The symbol of this was a photo-op of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presenting her Russian counterpart with a "reset" button. Three years after Bush announced his missile defense proposal, Obama changed course. On Sept. 17, 2009, Obama announced that the United States would pursue a new missile defense policy focused on knocking out short- and medium-range Iranian missiles. The new plan relied on missiles based on American warships and eventually sites closer to Iran. The response at home and overseas Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, released statements suggesting that Obama was being soft and letting down American allies. Pundits like John Bolton, whom Bush had appointed as ambassador to the United Nations, said Russia and Iran came away as "big winners" in a "bad day for American national security." Meanwhile, Israel and most NATO countries in Western Europe approved of the move, news stories show, because they thought the missile system provoked Russia. Polish and Czech leaders expressed disappointment. Obama left it to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to explain the shift. In a New York Times op-ed, and later in his 2014 book Duty, Gates said that Defense Department officials realized the Iranian government was putting more stock into building short- and medium-range missiles over long-range ones. The agency wanted to uproot the old plan to better counteract that threat, and the new tactic Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Obama was cheaper and took less time to implement. Lance Janda, chairman of the Department of History and Government at Cameron University, added that the full U.S. strategy included deploying potentially hundreds of interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe starting in 2018. Lost in the GOP fury, Gates wrote, was that the Russians found Obama’s new approach to be even more worrisome than the Bush-era plan. They worried that those missiles could easily be configured to thwart them as well as Iran. Our ruling Cheney said Obama dropped a missile defense plan based in Poland and the Czech Republic on the "mere request" of Putin. While Putin strenuously objected to the plan, a Pentagon reassessment of the nature of Iran’s capabilities was the actual reason for the change. The Pentagon saw a greater danger from Iranian short-and-medium-range missiles than the long range missiles that were targeted in the original plan. NATO allies and Israel also favored the new approach, which included steps to install a missile defense system in Poland in 2018. So, Obama did forgo the Bush-era plan, but he didn’t do it at the "mere request" of Putin. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | Dick Cheney | null | null | null | 2014-05-19T16:38:56 | 2014-05-18 | ['Czech_Republic', 'Poland', 'Barack_Obama', 'Vladimir_Putin'] |
pomt-04839 | Says Josh Mandel bet against Ohio families | pants on fire! | /ohio/statements/2012/aug/14/workers-voice/workers-voice-ad-says-josh-mandel-bet-against-ohio/ | It is time for some basic finance: When interest rates rise, Treasury bond prices fall. We could go on (buy low, sell high, etc.) but there is only one more financial fact you really need to know for purposes of understanding a new ad attacking Ohio Treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel. That fact is that at some point during 2011, a trust that invests for the benefit of his wife, Ilana Shafran Mandel, held shares in an exchange traded fund that deals in Treasury bonds. That investment now is being used by a group called Workers’ Voice, affiliated with the AFL-CIO, to claim that Josh Mandel was "betting against Ohio families." To understand the attack, you must understand the investment. This fund, or ETF, is not a traditional ETF (a fund that in many ways is similar to a mutual fund) that buys and sells stocks and bonds and performs with the ups and downs of the market. Rather, this ETF, called ProShares Ultra 20+ Year Treasury, deals in long-term Treasury bonds in a manner that acts as a hedge against falling Treasury bond prices. It is a "short" fund, in financial parlance, and it performs inversely to the regular market for Treasuries. When prices on Treasuries fall, the value of this ETF goes up. You could say that it bets on falling Treasury prices. Put another way, it is betting on rising interest rates. But if you wanted to criticize a politician, you might say, as Workers’ Voice did in an ad appearing on cleveland.com (the website affiliated with The Plain Dealer) and other newspaper websites, that this ETF was betting on a government default. After all, if the government couldn’t pay its bills, the value of its bonds would dive and this ETF could soar. That, however, is an extreme and hypothetical example. Workers’ Voice didn’t put it exactly that way, but it made clear that is what it meant. Its ad said that "The more your family struggles, the more money Josh Mandel stands to make." Its rationale, explained in a link it provided for readers, was that by investing in this ETF, Mandel, through his wife, was betting on the government defaulting on its obligations. The ad’s sponsor suggested that this was especially egregious because Mandel wasn’t just any investor but was, rather, a potential driver on the road to default. Although it is not known precisely when Mandel’s wife bought or, perhaps, sold this ETF, it is known that in August 2011, Mandel stated that he opposed a congressional bill (which passed) to raise the government’s debt limit. A higher debt limit was necessary to borrow more money and keep the government operating. Without it, the government might have defaulted on some obligations, likely devaluing formerly iron-clad government investments such as Treasury bonds. In a default, the government might stop providing some services to Ohio families. Put these together and you get a portrait of a candidate who, if elected to the Senate, would let the potential of a personal windfall stand in the way of doing the right thing for the country, or so the ad implies strongly. That’s a powerful claim, so PolitiFact Ohio asked AFL-CIO/Workers’ Voice spokesman Michael Gillis for its basis. Gillis pointed us to an article, which is also linked prominently in the Ohio ad, that appears on the website of Think Progress, an arm of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. The web article, dated July 27, 2012, was headlined, "Exclusive: GOP Senate Nominee Shorting U.S. Treasury Bonds, Would Profit from Default." The article noted that a trust that invests for the benefit of Ilana Mandel, called the JMS Trust, owned shares in this ProShares short ETF during 2011. According to a financial disclosure form filed by Josh Mandel last November and cited by Think Progress, the JMS Trust owned between $1,001 and $15,000 of this fund. On a different page, the financial disclosure form listed what appeared to be an additional investment in this ETF, also held by the trust, worth less than $1,001. The Think Progress article stated, "If a default were to occur, the desirability of Treasury bills would plummet and Mandel’s ETF would skyrocket in value. That precise scenario could become more likely if Mandel wins his race against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). One of the top issues Mandel lists on his website is to ‘Stop increasing the debt ceiling.’ Similarly, when Congress was embroiled in the debt ceiling fight last year, he stated that he ‘would have voted against the debt deal’ that narrowly staved off a default." At least in theory, this single part of the claim -- that Treasury bills would be less desirable and the ETF’s value would rise if the government defaulted -- is accurate. Yet that scenario is unlikely, and it oversimplifies the reason people invest in this ETF. Consider that the government has never defaulted. Yet people keep investing in this ETF, according to financial websites including Morningstar and Bloomberg, and did so even when default wasn’t in the public vocabulary. In fact, it appears to PolitiFact Ohio, based on a more recent financial disclosure filed by Josh Mandel in May 2012, that Ilana Mandel’s trust bought even more shares of this ETF -- up to an additional $15,000 worth -- even after the threat of default passed. ProShares declined to comment to PolitiFact Ohio, but it makes clear that this ETF is not an investment for amateurs. Investment advisers and active investors buy its shares as a hedge against changes in interest rates, a gamble referred to in columns and blogs that cover high-stakes finance. ProShares recommends in its marketing and disclosure materials that investors watch this fund daily, as it is subject to volatility. It is not a casual buy-and-hold investment. Ilana Mandel is not a professional investor. According to Josh Mandel’s financial disclosure and his campaign spokeswoman, Nicole Sizemore, the ETF and other investments are owned through the JMS Trust. When those trust assets are put together with her husband’s far more meager holdings, the couple’s worth runs in a range between $1.95 million and $7.1 million, according to financial disclosure filings. Ilana Mandel inherited the money; her grandmother was a founder of Forest City Enterprises, the real estate and development company. "Neither Josh nor his wife have control over Ilana's family's trust so neither of them are making any investment activity decisions on it," Sizemore said. "These decisions are made by the investment manager and presumably the trustees who oversee her family's trust." Josh Mandel has steadfastly refused to discuss his wife’s holdings, other than to report what is required by disclosure rules for public officials and candidates. His campaign said it was unable to discern why the investment manager or trustees bought this particular ETF but reiterated that neither Josh nor Ilana Mandel had a role in it. As noted in a number of financial blogs and columns, other investors buy shares in this ETF as a hedge against rising interest rates. Not being investment professionals, however, PolitiFact Ohio turned to Jack Bao, an assistant professor of finance at Ohio State University and an authority on bonds. "I guess that if the government did default, the short ETF would rise in value," Bao said when we told him of the Workers’ Voice scenario. But that is extremely unlikely, he said, adding that other options might have been possible to avoid default, such as printing more money, even if Congress had not raised the debt ceiling. "To believe that somebody was buying $15,000 worth of a short ETF and betting on the government defaulting seems a little far-fetched to me," Bao said. What happens in most cases, he said, is the investor buys this ETF as a bet on interest rates. He or she thinks they’ll go up and the value of Treasuries will go down -- but not necessarily tank. Before we rule on the Workers’’ Voice claim, it’s important to point out that Mandel never said he wanted the government to default. Like a number of other Republicans, he said that government spending needed to come down before Congress raised the debt ceiling. By playing this game of chicken, some Republicans said they hoped to force a more frugal solution that fell short of default. Democrats cobbled together a big enough coalition to raise the debt limit anyway. Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman joined them. The storm blew over. That leaves us with an extreme claim -- that Mandel was betting against Ohio families and hoping to fatten his family wallet. While we cannot say why his wife’s trust chose that particular ETF, we know that investors have plenty of rationales besides betting on default. In fact, Bao, the OSU professor, disclosed that he too invested in a short Treasury ETF. We realized that he and Ilana Mandel’s investment adviser had chosen, in fact, the very same ProShares ETF. So an OSU finance professor was betting on default, too? " I wasn’t betting on the government defaulting," Boa said. "I was betting on interest rates going up." In all the world’s possibilities, default was one. In probabilities, it was not. As we noted, the JMS Trust appeared to buy additional shares of this ETF subsequent to last August’s debt-ceiling showdown. That’s an additional factor that makes the ad’s claim -- that Mandel was betting against Ohio families -- far-fetched. The claim relies on one extreme possibility -- a possibility that has never occurred -- and runs with it, ignoring the other reasons why a trust fund or even a finance professor might choose this investment. That’s just ridiculous. Pants on Fire! | null | Workers' Voice | null | null | null | 2012-08-14T06:00:00 | 2012-08-08 | ['Ohio', 'Josh_Mandel'] |
snes-05948 | Monster brand energy drink uses a Hebrew version of 666 in their logo. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/monster-energy-drink-666/ | null | Business | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does the Monster Energy Drink Logo Include the Number 666? | 10 November 2014 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00996 | Will “Restructure the Department of Economic and Community Development by decentralizing the home office and pushing leadership and support to the regional level.” | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/tennessee/promises/haslam-o-meter/promise/1063/decentralize-the-department-of-economic-and-commun/ | null | haslam-o-meter | Bill Haslam | null | null | Decentralize the Department of Economic and Community Development | 2012-01-18T15:26:36 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06249 | Several actors have kicked the bucket in front of an audience. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/died-onstage/ | null | Entertainment | null | David Mikkelson | null | Died Onstage | 22 August 2006 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09759 | There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/05/barney-bishop/offshore-oil-drilling-has-cost-tourism-industry-st/ | A leading advocate for oil drilling off the west coast of Florida is making his case by saying drilling has never been bad for tourism. Ever. "There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed," said Barney Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida, a statewide business lobbying group. "High energy costs and high unemployment kill tourism more than anything. Without affordable gas, we can't get tourists to Florida." Can oil and tourism mix? Bishop's statement is focused on offshore drilling and not spills in general. It's an important distinction. Large-scale oil spills are more likely to be caused by tanker and barge crashes, not offshore drilling, according to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. So while Florida beaches and tourism were affected by a three-barge collision that sent 330,000 gallons of oil and jet fuel into Tampa Bay area waters in 1993, it wasn't as a direct result of offshore drilling. To get to the root of Bishop's claim, then, offshore oil drilling itself has to be the culprit. The record there is thin, but not bare. An oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico 600 miles south of the Texas coastline malfunctioned in June 1979, sending oil pouring into gulf waters. According to estimates, the well, called Ixtoc 1, spewed 3.3 million barrels of oil before being capped in March 1980. The oil traveled north to soil 200 miles of Texas beach. Did that spill, one of the worst in history, hurt Texas tourism? "Sure it did," said Tony Amos, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute. "Because vast amounts of tar came up on our beaches." Private groups and people connected with the tourist trade filed more than $300 million in lawsuits after the Ixtoc spill, saying the damage cost them that much in business, according to a 1980 Associated Press article. On South Padre Island, the mayor at the time, Glenn McGehee, said the spill cost his area $15 million. After the spill was cleaned up, the island's tourism bureau spent $200,000 on a new ad campaign: "Come on down, the coast is clear." Tourism in other parts of south Texas was reported down anywhere from 30 to 60 percent, according to newspaper accounts, and several communities said they lost millions of dollars as a result from the spill. And a 1982 study conducted for the U.S. Interior Department found that Texas beaches in the South Padre Island area lost tourism revenues between $3.98 million and $4.44 million. "The Ixtoc well spill pretty much shut down tourism," said F. Charles Lamphear, a retired University of Nebraska at Lincoln professor who co-authored the 1982 study. Lamphear did point out that some of the losses were offset by cleanup-related funding. Another oft-discussed incident, a 1969 oil drilling accident off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., also affected tourism in that community, according to Santa Barbara County officials. The U.S. Coast Guard estimated that 100,000 barrels of crude oil spilled during the accident. "The tourist industry suffered in 1969; however, tourism recovered in subsequent years," county officials in Santa Barbara write on their government Web site. "A class-action lawsuit awarded nearly $6.5 million to owners of beachfront homes, apartments, hotels and motels." A public relations firm representing Bishop provided a six-page brief to PolitiFact to support his comments. The brief acknowledges direct impacts on tourism, but calls them somewhat rare and short-lived. One synopsis of a study of the Santa Barbara spill notes that the region lost "only" $3.15 million in recreational activity dollars. In 2008 dollars, that translates to almost $18.5 million. Another study said that while losses by beachfront businesses in Santa Barbara may have suffered, other businesses farther inland benefited. Using superlatives and absolutes might make for the best sound bite, but it also makes it more difficult to be right. Bishop said, "There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed,” and the record shows otherwise. Though infrequent, incidents of offshore drilling directly and adversely affecting an area's tourist economy do exist. For that, we rate Bishop's statement False. | null | Barney Bishop | null | null | null | 2009-10-05T10:58:33 | 2009-08-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-08324 | Blames Mike McIntyre and Nancy Pelosi for the second straight year of no cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/oct/29/national-republican-congressional-committee/nrcc-targets-mike-mcintyre-over-social-security/ | Scaring voters about what could happen to Social Security if your opponent wins the election is a time-honored tradition in political ads, especially when Democrats are making the accusation. But in something of a twist, the National Republican Congressional Committee -- the campaign arm of House Republicans -- is using Social Security as a cudgel against a Democrat, seven-term Rep. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina. Here's the transcript of the ad: Narrator: "Mike McIntyre and Nancy Pelosi are not being honest with North Carolina seniors." McIntyre: "I'll never risk your Social Security." Narrator. "But McIntyre and Pelosi's big spending is robbing our Social Security trust fund. Social Security is billions in debt, and this year will be operating in the red. And now for the second year in a row, there's no cost-of-living increase for North Carolina seniors. Mike McIntyre and Nancy Pelosi: Their spending is putting our Social Security at risk." We've written at some length about the question of whether Social Security is "billions in debt" and "operating in the red." So this time, we thought we'd tackle the notion that McIntyre and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- the ad's boogeyman and boogeywoman -- are responsible for the fact that "for the second year in a row, there's no cost-of-living increase for North Carolina seniors." We'll begin by pointing out that North Carolina seniors aren't alone in this fate. Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are calculated on a national basis, not by individual state. But how are they calculated? Here's the long answer. Until 1975, it took an act of Congress to adjust Social Security payments for inflation. But a law enacted in 1972 and signed by President Richard Nixon created a formula to automatically calculate the increase every year. The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment was tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The government compares that index in the third quarter (July, August and September) of the current year to the third quarter of the previous year. Until recently, every year since the formula was put into effect, that calculation led to a cost-of-living increase. In fact, high oil prices in the summer of 2008 helped produce a sizable COLA increase in January 2009 of 5.8 percent -- the highest increase in more than a quarter century. But lower energy prices and the effects of the recession combined to reduce the CPI-W during the period used to calculate the 2010 Social Security increase. So in a break with tradition, there was no upward adjustment for Social Security recipients for this year. When we last looked at this question in January 2010, we reported that for someone with a $3,054 monthly benefit -- a comparatively generous amount, based on what a steady earner at the maximum level would get every month if he or she had retired in 2009 at age 70 -- the amount forgone this year was $1,099 over the course of the year compared to what would have been added with a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment. Most recipients would take a much smaller hit, according to Social Security Administration tables. And earlier this month, the Social Security Administration announced that there will be no increase for Social Security recipients in 2011, either. So the ad is correct that Social Security beneficiaries will go without an inflation bump for the second straight year. But that's not the whole story. First, there may not be an increase in benefits for next year, but it's because on the whole, seniors' cost of living isn't increasing. (That's the idea anyway; individual circumstances can and do vary.) And beneficiaries had already received a big bump for 2009. If current patterns hold, seniors should finally be due for a new bump in benefits for 2012. Second, some people contributing to Social Security will actually benefit from not having a Social Security increase. When benefits don't go up, neither does the $106,800 limit on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax. Third -- and most important for analyzing the ad -- McIntyre and Pelosi had nothing at all to do with eliminating the COLA for 2010 and 2011. As we indicated, whether or not Social Security hands out an increase is determined by a mathematical calculation -- not by Congressional prerogative. Short of changing the decades-old law, there's nothing McIntyre or Pelosi could have done to provide beneficiaries with an increase in either of the two years. However, there's one more factor worth noting. Pelosi and other Democrats have proposed giving seniors a one-time $250 payment in lieu of a cost-of-living adjustment, as was done after the first non-COLA announcement. But nothing g can be done until after the election. It is this proposal that the NRCC uses to back up the claim. In an interview, an NRCC spokesman argued that the proposed COLA "fixes" may not win passage because of recklessly large spending by Congressional Democrats. The NRCC has a point, but Pelosi's office says that a vote is planned for November, and in any case, it strikes us as a bit of a convoluted explanation for the ad's claim. The simpler explanation -- and the one that we think most viewers would take away from the ad -- is that McIntyre and Pelosi had something directly to do with eliminating a cost-of-living increase for two consecutive years in the first place. Even though the ad carefully avoids an explicit accusation that McIntyre and Pelosi voted to eliminate the COLA, we think the ad implies otherwise. So we rate this part of the ad 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 | National Republican Congressional Committee | null | null | null | 2010-10-29T10:58:22 | 2010-10-23 | ['Nancy_Pelosi'] |
pomt-08162 | The American people spoke pretty loudly. They said stop all the looming tax hikes.... | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/02/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-american-people-spoke-pretty-lou/ | The Jan. 1, 2011, expiration of George W. Bush's tax cuts is approaching, and the parties are working feverishly to win public support for their position. Republicans have taken a firm stance in favor of extending the tax cuts for everyone, while President Barack Obama and many congressional Democrats want to extend them only for families earning less than $250,000. Following a Dec. 1, 2010, meeting between congressional Republican leaders and newly elected Republican governors, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, who is poised to become House speaker early next year, said the Democrats were out of touch with public opinion. "I don't know what my colleagues across the aisle didn't hear during the election -- the American people spoke pretty loudly," Boehner said. "They said stop all the looming tax hikes and to cut spending." Our friends at NBC's First Read noticed a discrepancy between Boehner's comment and national exit poll data. "Actually," First Read wrote, "here’s what the public said about the Bush tax cuts, according to the exit polls last month: 40 percent said to continue ALL of the cuts, 36 percent said to continue them for families who earn less than $250,000 a year, and an additional 15 percent said to expire them for all. So a majority -- 51 percent -- backed either the Democratic position or wants all the cuts to expire." We thought we'd expand upon First Read's research and look at additional polls. We found four taken since the election that address the question of what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts. (We're keeping the focus narrow by not addressing the question of whether the American people support spending cuts; we found a wide variety of different questions on that issue in these polls, making it a harder question to gauge.) Here are the questions on the Bush tax cuts in each survey: USA Today/Gallup poll, Nov. 19-21, 2010 What do you think Congress should do about the income tax cuts passed under George W. Bush that are set to expire at the end of this year? Keep the tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income: 40 percent Keep the tax cuts but set new limits on how much of wealthy Americans' income is eligible for the lower rates: 44 percent Allow the tax cuts to expire: 13 percent A follow-up question clarified where Americans would draw that income line, using some widely discussed income thresholds. Keep tax cuts for all: 40 percent Keep tax cuts up to $1 million income: 5 percent Keep tax cuts up to $500,000 income: 12 percent Keep tax cuts up to $250,000 income: 26 percent Let tax cuts expire: 13 percent Associated Press-CNBC poll, Nov. 18-22, 2010 The tax cuts that were passed in 2001 will expire this year if they are not continued. Which of the following best describes what you think Congress should do about the tax cuts? Continue the tax cuts for everyone: 34 percent Allow the tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 to expire, but continue them for other people: 50 percent Allow the tax cuts to expire for everyone: 14 percent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Nov. 11-15, 2010 Congress will soon decide whether to keep in place the existing tax cuts enacted during President Bush’s time in office, or allow them to expire. Which one of the following options would be your preference for what they should do? Keep in place the tax cuts for everyone permanently: 23 percent Keep in place all the tax cuts for everyone for another year to three years: 23 percent Eliminate the tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 per year, but keep them for those earning less than that: 39 percent Eliminate all the tax cuts permanently: 10 percent Quinnipiac poll, Nov. 8-15, 2010 How should Congress vote on the Bush-era tax cuts: continue them for all, continue them only for families who earn less than $250,000 a year, or let them expire for all? Continue for all: 35 percent Continue for those below $250,000: 43 percent Expire for all: 14 percent How about if this was the choice on tax cuts; continue them for all, continue them only for families who earn less than $500,000 a year, or let them expire for all? Continue for all: 33 percent Continue for those below $500,000: 40 percent Expire for all: 18 percent While each poll asked the question with slight variations, some general patterns emerge. It's true that overwhelming majorities favor extending some of the tax cuts -- greater than 80 percent in every poll. But Boehner said Americans want to "stop all the looming tax hikes," and the polls don't support such a sweeping claim. The percentage of people who favor extending the tax cuts for every income level -- which is the formulation Boehner used in his comment -- ranges from 23 percent to 40 percent. That is quite a bit short of a majority. More important for our analysis, in the three of these polls that asked the question the same way, Boehner's position didn't even achieve a plurality from poll respondents. Instead, the highest level of support for any specific course of action was actually the Obama position -- extending tax cuts for those below $250,000 and not for those above that line. Support for this position ranged from 39 percent to 50 percent. When pollsters widened the range of policy options, the pattern broke down somewhat. In the USA Today/Gallup poll, for instance, a significant minority of those who favored an income cutoff for the tax cut extension wanted that cutoff to be higher than Obama's preferred $250,000. And when NBC/Wall Street Journal pollsters asked about a instituting a temporary tax-cut extension for another one to three years -- a widely discussed compromise option for the White House and Congress -- it won the support of about one-quarter of poll respondents. Still, the general pattern we see in these polls is that Americans are more likely to side with the Obama position than with the Republican position, though neither view won a clear majority. When we contacted Boehner's office, a spokesman said that the poll results were shaped by the wording. "The question should be, 'Do you think taxes should go up on January 1?'" the spokesman said. "In the real world, if I make the same salary next year and I pay more taxes, that’s a tax hike. If I pay less, that’s a tax cut." We don't doubt the results would have been more favorable to the GOP position if the wording had been changed, but we're not convinced by that argument. It is not an all or nothing choice. In fact, it's a choice between Democrats who propose letting the tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250,000, and Republicans who want to extend the cuts for everyone. The wording in the polls seems like a perfectly accurate reflection of those options. So we find that Boehner is wrong to claim the public supports his position. The polls show that while many Americans oppose an across-the-board expiration of the Bush tax cuts, it is not accurate to say the public spoke "pretty loudly" that Congress should "stop all the looming tax hikes." A plurality of the "American people" actually support what amounts to a tax hike for the wealthiest Americans. So we rate Boehner's comment False. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2010-12-02T16:46:29 | 2010-12-01 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-13807 | Hillary Clinton is for open borders. | false | /florida/statements/2016/jul/18/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-wrongly-says-hillary-clinton-open-bo/ | Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Donald Trump’s plan to secure the border and said that Hillary Clinton would take the opposite approach. "You know Donald Trump will secure our borders," Giuliani said at the Republican convention July 18. "His opponent has had her chance to do this, and she has failed. Hillary Clinton is for open borders." Claiming that Clinton would create "open borders" suggests she would allow undocumented immigrants to travel freely or with very few restrictions between two countries. That’s not what Clinton has proposed. Clinton supported legislation in 2013 that included a path to citizenship (with conditions) and heightened border security. However, some experts argue that "open borders" doesn't necessarily mean no enforcement at all, but rather making it far easier for undocumented immigrants to stay here. Clinton does want to make it easier for many undocumented immigrants, but that’s not the same as getting rid of enforcement or allowing people to enter and leave the United States without border control. We were unable to locate a Giuliani spokesperson Monday night. Clinton’s proposal Clinton and Trump have taken vastly different approaches on immigration, although they have both said they favor secure borders. During this campaign, Clinton has called for addressing immigration laws including a path to citizenship within her first 100 days. But she has also called for protecting borders and deporting criminals or those who pose threats. "We need to secure our borders. I’m for it, I voted for it, I believe in it, and we also need to deal with the families, the workers who are here, who have made contributions, and their children," she said in November. "We can do more to secure our border, and we should do more to deal with the 11 or 12 million people who are here, get them out of the shadows." This is pretty consistent with her view as a New York senator and secretary of state. In her 2014 book Hard Choices, Clinton praised the 2013 immigration bill co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of senators including Marco Rubio of Florida. That bill included billions for border enforcement over a decade for new surveillance equipment and fencing along the Mexican border, as well as adding 20,000 border agents. That bill passed the Senate but never reached a vote in the House. Clinton’s immigration platform does not amount to open borders, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, previously told PolitiFact Florida when we fact-checked a similar claim by Trump that we rated False. Open borders existed before 1875, when there were no federal restrictions on emigrating to the country, he said. The United States had immigration restrictions from 1875 to 1924 without a border patrol, which was created in 1924. It’s wrong to conflate "open borders" with anything less than perfect enforcement of immigration laws, he said. It’s also wrong to "claim Clinton is for open borders while she has also supported massive increases in border security to better enforce our restrictive immigration laws." But Clinton has said she wants to limit deportations to violent criminals, not deport children and end raids and round-ups and go further than President Barack Obama for DREAMers and their parents if legally possible — although that is in legal limbo after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked. That greatly expands who could avoid deportation in a Clinton White House. Those policies amount to less enforcement to supporters of reduced immigration, including Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, and Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA. Beck has told PolitiFact that the term "open borders" is imprecise. However, if undocumented immigrants can "stay as long as you don’t commit a violent crime, that is pretty close to open borders. You don’t have to give amnesty -- you can just not have a threat of deportation, and it allows people to stay." Our ruling Giuliani said, "Hillary Clinton is for open borders." Clinton supported a 2013 bill that would have invested billions in border security in addition to a path to citizenship. As a presidential candidate she has called for securing the border and targeting deportation to criminals and those who pose security threats. While her plan would make it easier for many undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation, that’s not the same as allowing a free-for-all at the border and ending enforcement. We rate this claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/cbe27e82-8435-4872-8e49-12f87464cb98 | null | Rudy Giuliani | null | null | null | 2016-07-18T22:59:04 | 2016-07-18 | ['None'] |
tron-00591 | Sandra Bullock to Hillary Clinton: If You Don’t Like Our President, You Can Leave | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/sandra-bullock-to-hillary-clinton-dont-like-president-leave/ | null | celebrities | null | null | ['celebrities', 'donald trump', 'hillary'] | Sandra Bullock to Hillary Clinton: If You Don’t Like Our President, You Can Leave | Nov 21, 2017 | null | ['Sandra_Bullock', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
snes-00941 | HUD Secretary Ben Carson bought a $31,000 dining set and billed taxpayers for it. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-ben-carson-purchase-a-31000-dining-set-and-charge-it-to-hud/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Did Ben Carson Purchase a $31,000 Dining Set and Charge It to HUD? | 1 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00943 | As governor, Bob McDonnell will work with the health care community to identify and execute incentives to promote increased use of electronic medical records and electronic Medicaid submissions. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/virginia/promises/bob-o-meter/promise/977/provide-incentives-for-electornic-medical-records/ | null | bob-o-meter | Bob McDonnell | null | null | Provide incentives for electronic medical records | 2011-09-09T12:56:22 | null | ['Bob_McDonnell'] |
pomt-11586 | We have the highest graduation rate of basketball players in the history of the NCAA. We have the highest graduation rate of African-American basketball players in the history of the NCAA in basketball. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/feb/01/john-calipari/college-basketball-graduation-rate-all-time-high-j/ | College basketball has been in the midst of soul-searching since federal investigators uncovered an alleged black market for top high school prospects and college players. The federal probe into bribery and corruption, which led to 10 arrests in 2017, raised fresh questions about a system where young men generate billions in television and marketing revenues but are prohibited from being paid. The NCAA — college sports’ regulatory body — has long maintained that compensating players would undermine its goal of placing education ahead of athletics. "In the collegiate model of sports," the NCAA states, "the young men and women competing on the field or court are students first, athletes second." In theory here’s the basic bargain: College athletes, especially Division I football and men’s basketball players, collectively form a highly profitable commercial enterprise, and in exchange they receive a quality education. In a recent interview, John Calipari, who coaches the powerhouse University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, defended the NCAA model by emphasizing that student-athletes are earning college degrees at historically high rates. "I go back to this: We have the highest graduation rate of basketball players in the history of the NCAA," Calipari said during a Jan. 20 broadcast of ESPN's College Gameday. "We have the highest graduation rate of African-American basketball players in the history of the NCAA in basketball." The NCAA's official numbers back up Calipari's claim, but those numbers are manipulated to make graduation rates appear more positive. Meanwhile, a debate rages about whether college basketball players get a quality education from the current system, or if academics for big-time athletes are a distant priority. Not historic highs based on federal data One of the ways the NCAA monitors the academic outcomes of college athletes is by looking at the graduation data colleges report each year to the federal government. In general, a graduation rate is found by taking the number of graduates in a cohort and dividing it by the total number of students in that cohort. The federal graduation rate for the 2014-17 cohort of Division I men’s basketball players is 47 percent, according to the NCAA’s 2017 report. That’s just shy of the 48 percent rate of the 2001-04 cohort. The NCAA did not respond to our request for a broad sample of its federal dataset. But we found six NCAA reports of Division I men’s basketball graduation rates from the last 14 years. The eight years for which we were unable to find data are left blank in the chart below. According to the available data, the rate appears to have been stagnant for some time. It’s also not the highest it’s ever been. All-time highs under NCAA’s ‘graduation success rate’ An aide to Calipari indicated that the coach based his claim on a different measurement known as the "graduation success rate" — an alternative formula developed by the NCAA. The NCAA’s model differs significantly from the federal graduation rate, and paints a sharply contrasting portrait of student-athletes’ academic achievement. Specifically, the two measurements take very different approaches to students who leave school before graduating. Under the federal formula, when a student leaves college for any reason they are counted negatively against a school’s graduation rate. That’s the case even if the student ultimately transfers and graduates from another college. The NCAA has long complained the federal calculation understates the true graduation rate of athletes, and that it takes an overly rigid approach to its handling of transfer students. "It only measures persistence at a student’s first school when approximately one-third of all students nationwide transfer at some point in college," said Meghan Durham, an assistant director of public and media relations at the NCAA. The NCAA’s formula makes an entirely different accounting of students who leave school before graduating. Student-athletes who leave in poor academic standing (typically below a 2.0 grade-point average) are counted negatively against a school’s graduation rate. But players who leave school in good academic standing are simply removed from the NCAA’s graduation rate calculation. Because of their good academic standing, this latter group is considered still eligible to play college sports at the time they leave school, hence they’re referred to as "left eligibles" in NCAA parlance. In effect, when left eligibles depart college for any number of reasons — whether to pursue an NBA career, or because they were cut from a team and lost their scholarship — the NCAA simply drops them from their graduation rate tally. "They are treated as neither a success nor a failure but rather as if they were never in that school’s cohort," reads an NCAA explainer titled "Why the GSR is a Better Methodology." For its part, the NCAA says its treatment of left eligibles is fair. According to the NCAA’s estimate, the vast majority end up transferring elsewhere. But watchdogs note the NCAA does not track left eligibles after they leave school, so their academic outcomes are unknown, including the number of college dropouts who never graduate. While the NCAA does include incoming transfers in its graduation rate, this number is consistently far below the number who leave. "Thus, the NCAA system is not held accountable for a significant number of recruited athletes," wrote the authors of a recent article titled "The Hoax of NCAA Graduation Rates." "Even for those included in the GSR cohort as transfers, the original recruiting school is absolved of responsibility for failing to retain them." Using its alternative measure, the NCAA’s rates are currently at all-time highs for Division I men's basketball (82 percent) and African-American players in particular (78 percent), since this accounting method was introduced in 2002. "In the sport of men’s basketball, the overall rate increased 2 percentage points to 82 percent. The rates for African-American student-athletes in the sport rose 1 percentage points to 78," the NCAA wrote in its latest graduation trends report. "Both of these rates represent all-time highs." Woody Eckard, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Denver and an expert on student-athlete graduation data, said the steep climb of the NCAA’s rate could be the result of more left eligibles, instead of an actual graduation rate increase. But so long as the NCAA's data is not publically available, he said, this hypothesis cannot be tested. Issues with both models Eckard said both the federal and NCAA models have a flawed approach to players who leave before graduating. The federal rate understates the true graduation rate, because it effectively assumes none of the athletes who leave school before graduating will transfer and graduate from another school. But the NCAA’s formula makes the opposite error, he said. "The federal rate undershoots, and the NCAA’s rate overshoots," he said. "The truth lies somewhere in the middle, between the two." Richard Southall heads up the University of South Carolina’s College Sport Research Institute, one of the more vocal critics of the NCAA’s graduation success rate. He contends the NCAA inflates graduation rates by removing left eligibles, or "eligible dropouts," from its calculation. "If you remove all the eligible dropouts, who else is left in your athlete graduation cohort? Really those who make it to their senior year," Southall said. "If the sample — after removing these eligible-dropouts/transfers — only includes athletes who make it to their senior year, then the ‘graduation success rate’ really measures how many athletes left school ineligible or flunked out, which should not be very many." Eckard and Southall are among several NCAA critics who say the graduation success rate was engineered to deflect public scrutiny of consistently low federal graduation rates among Division I football and men’s basketball players. In 1984, for example, the graduation rate of men’s basketball overall was 38 percent, and 29 percent for African-American male players, which clashed with the NCAA’s preferred image as an institution with a dedicated educational mission. "Athletes were increasingly viewed as commercial chattel, whose value was based on their ability to produce revenue for universities and provide entertainment for fans," Eckard, Southall and Gerry Gurney of the University of Oklahoma wrote in their article "The Hoax of NCAA Graduation Rates." In response to mounting pressure, the authors argue, the NCAA launched a decades-long rebranding strategy to discredit federal graduation rates while holding up its own graduation success rate as a superior methodology. "More likely, however, the NCAA’s rates are ‘alternative facts’ (i.e., propaganda) designed to obfuscate its members’ exploitation of their most valuable assets: big-time football and men’s basketball players, and deflect attention from a shameful litany of academic-fraud scandals," the authors wrote. Another metric paints a different picture The College Sport Research Institute proposed its own model for tracking the academic outcomes of student-athletes. Their formula is based on federal data, but differs from the federal graduation rate in one significant way. The federal formula lumps together full-time students and part-time students. This causes trouble when comparing the graduation rate of the student body as a whole to that of a cohort of student-athletes, because virtually all athletes are full-time students. Take the NCAA’s latest report on Division I graduation trends, for example. It suggests black male basketball players graduated at a 9 percent higher rate than the African-American male student population at large. But the College Sport Research Institute’s formula paints a very different picture. Their calculation, known as the adjusted graduation gap, filters out part-time students, which they say allows a more accurate comparison of full-time students to their full-time student-athlete peers. While this data doesn’t exactly contradict the NCAA, it certainly tells another story. The institute’s most recent data shows graduation rates for men’s Division I basketball players lag behind those of full-time male students, with African-American players showing substantial gaps. In major conferences, the full-time all-male graduation rate was 78 percent. The rate for African-Americans was 41 percent, a 37 percentage point gap. (Major conferences include the American Athletic, Atlantic 10, Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Conference USA, Mountain West, Pacific-12, and Southeastern conferences.) Southall said the biggest gaps exist at schools in the "Power Five" conferences (the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern ), which he described as the "premier academic and athletic conferences." He noted that it’s easy to overlook that athletes in big-time sports programs are essentially working full-time jobs — spending 40 hours a week or more on their sport — while also trying to go to school full-time at rigorous academic universities. "The NCAA was aware of the problem in the late 1980s," Southall said. "But instead of addressing the problem, they created the ‘graduation success rate’ to rebrand academic success." ‘Eligibility is not education’ Critics say a singular focus on graduation rates masks serious concerns about the quality of education players receive. Mark S. Nagel, a professor of sport and entertainment at the University of South Carolina, said schools with big-time sports programs commonly make less rigorous classes available to athletes. "To keep the athlete’s mind focused almost exclusively on sports, easier classes and majors are selected, and ‘friendly faculty’ are targeted," Nagel said. "There is no doubt that in the age of ‘graduation means everything,’ many schools have ‘easy’ paths to graduate." Academic advisers are often assigned to make sure athletes who play on revenue-generating teams remain eligible, and in some cases advising turns into "doing the work for the athlete," said Nagel, who is an associate director at the College Sport Research Institute. "Most advisers are not evaluated by the post-college enrollment outcomes for former players; they are evaluated on if the current athletes are eligible to compete," he said. "In theory, having these academic resources for athletes is helpful, but it can easily spin out of control." At the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, for example, around 1,500 athletes were enrolled in and got credit for so-called "phantom classes" between 1993 and 2011. According to a report the university released in 2014 following an internal review, the classes "had played a large role in keeping underprepared and/or unmotivated players eligible to play." When schools funnel athletes into easier majors and classes in order to keep them eligible, their graduation rates exaggerate the educational value their athletes received, said Eckard of University of Colorado Denver. "I worked in college athletics for years and many ‘graduated’ without requisite skills and many could barely read — but they stayed eligible," said B. David Ridpath, professor of sports business at Ohio University. "Eligibility is not education." Ridpath is a member of the Drake Group, an NCAA watchdog, which has called on big-time sports programs to disclose student-athletes’ entrance exam scores, majors, professors, advisers and post-graduation employment. "Considering most institutions guard these things like state secrets and claim privacy, I don’t think what Calipari is saying is remotely close to the truth," Ridpath said. Not everyone believes academic skullduggery at big-time sports schools is a problem, at least when it comes to college athletes bound for the pros. "Some students, especially elite athletes, are not interested in an education," said Warren K. Zola, a professor at Boston College University and sports law expert. "Rather, they use the NCAA or their institution as a means by which they can play in the NBA." "If one accepts the premise that the purpose of college is to help students enter the workforce," he added, "then students who play for one year and then progress into the NBA could be considered a success." But a relatively small share of college athletes end up going pro. Some argue that to the extent there’s exploitation in college basketball, the vast majority of cases cut in favor of schools and against players, particularly African-Americans. "It’s simple," said Victor Kidd, a doctoral student who works with Southall and Nagel at the University of South Carolina. "Black players are being taken advantage of. Period." Maureen Weston, co-director of the Entertainment Media & Sports Law Program and a law professor at Pepperdine University, said schools are under intense pressure to track grades, academic progress and graduation success rates. But she believes most schools are diligent about educating student-athletes, even if some fall short. "My experience with student athletes in the classroom is excellent," she said. "I’m convinced the discipline it takes to excel at sports transfers to the classroom in most cases." "But the pressures to win and meet standards with jobs and funding on the line can cause temptations to fudge numbers," she added. Our ruling Calipari said, "I go back to this: We have the highest graduation rate of basketball players in the history of the NCAA. We have the highest graduation rate of African-American basketball players in the history of the NCAA in basketball." According to available data, the federal graduation rate appears to have been stagnant for some time. It’s also not the highest it’s ever been. The NCAA’s own formula shows remarkable growth in graduation rates since 2002 when its metric was introduced. Indeed, under the NCAA’s measure, graduation rates are at an all-time high. However, experts we spoke to believe these numbers are exaggerated. Some believe the growth is due to an increase in transfer students, not a higher rate of graduates. For context, we looked at an independent metric that compares the graduation rates of full-time men’s Division I basketball players to those of other full-time students. Under this measure, student-athletes graduate at lower rates, and have lost ground to their non-athlete counterparts since 2011. Critics also note that an overemphasis on athletes’ graduation rates as a mark of academic achievement masks serious concerns about the quality of education players receive. We rate this claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | John Calipari | null | null | null | 2018-02-01T11:23:47 | 2018-01-20 | ['National_Collegiate_Athletic_Association'] |
tron-00196 | Charlie Daniels song “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s a Flag.” | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/charliedaniels/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Charlie Daniels song “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s a Flag.” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00108 | “Life expectancy [has] increased [by] 6 years.” | understated | 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'] |
snes-02260 | A photograph shows President Trump with balloons stuffed into his shirt. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/balloon-breasted-trump/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Balloon-Breasted Trump? | 6 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02351 | Soldier Takes Self Portrait in Car While Ditching Evening Colors | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/sheffey-selfie-flag/ | null | military | null | null | null | Soldier Takes Self Portrait in Car While Ditching Evening Colors | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00511 | Statement: The county has “18 unmanned (fire) stations,” Stephen Whitburn, a community health advocate and candidate for county supervisor, wrote in a press release Sept. 22. | determination: false | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-lots-of-unmanned-fire-stations/ | Analysis: Along the campaign trail, Whitburn has called for greater funding of fire protection to improve the county’s response to wildfires. On Sept. 22, Whitburn outlined his first proposal in a press release and it included this excerpt: | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Lots of Unmanned Fire Stations? | October 5, 2010 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00193 | White people are so 1960’s. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the fact that they will be blended out by the time I am 30. Imagine a world without white people. —Malia Obama’s midterm speech exam | pants on fire! | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/oct/18/blog-posting/there-no-evidence-malia-obama-said-white-people-sh/ | Scrutiny hasn’t ceased for Malia Obama since her family left the White House. Now, a recycled lie that she’s on a warpath against white people is again making the rounds. "White people are so 1960’s," starts a quote attributed to Obama’s midterm speech exam. "Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the fact that they will be blended out by the time I am 30. Imagine a world without white people." The statement appears over a picture of the eldest daughter of former President Barack Obama along with a question. "What do you think of Malia Obama’s belief that white people should not exist? 1 like = 1 arrest" One such post shared on Facebook this week has already garnered more than 100 likes, and it’s been shared more than 1,000 times on the social media platform. We found an identical Facebook post from April 6 that was shared more than 36,000 times. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We found no news reports that Obama made such a statement. And Harvard media relations did not respond to an email seeking comment about the claim. But back in April, PolitiFact checked a similar claim that Obama had been suspended after writing a paper imagining a "world without white people." Then, the claim merited a rating of Pants on Fire. Six months later, with the quote recirculating, the only place where we find any trace of this statement attributed to Obama continues to be on a website run by a noted purveyor of fabricated news stories: a website formerly known as AmericasLastLineofDefense.org that now appears to be housed at dailyworldupdate.us. The website states on its "About" page that, "Everything on this website is fiction." Also embedded in the original April story is the same picture and false quote that is being circulated again on Facebook and fact-checked here. We rate this post Pants on Fire! | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-10-18T13:53:02 | 2018-10-18 | ['None'] |
tron-02887 | Facebook Hires George Soros to Help Moderate Elections | mostly fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/facebook-hires-george-soros-fiction/ | null | politics | null | null | ['elections', 'facebook', 'fake news', 'george soros', 'russia'] | Facebook Hires George Soros to Help Moderate Elections | May 24, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02924 | Elizabeth Warren Pays Female Staffers Less than Men | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/elizabeth-warren-pays-female-staffers-less/ | null | politics | null | null | ['congress', 'equal pay'] | Elizabeth Warren Pays Female Staffers Less than Men | Apr 6, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09049 | Georgia has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country.” true /georgia/statements/2010/jul/02/mary-n/norwood-says-georgia-has-most-restrictive-ballot-a/ Mary Norwood often said during last year’s unsuccessful run for Atlanta mayor that she was not red or blue, but purple. In other words, Norwood claimed she was not a strict disciple of either the Democratic or the Republican parties. So when Norwood jumped into the race earlier this year for Fulton County Commission chairman, she decided to run as an independent. So far, her toughest battle is not with the incumbent, John Eaves, but getting on the Nov. 2 ballot. “Georgia has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country,” Norwood, a former two-term Atlanta city councilwoman, said during a television interview Tuesday evening. That claim was too juicy for PolitiFact Georgia to resist checking out. We began by asking the Norwood camp for details. Anne Fauver, her campaign manager, explained. Georgia requires independent candidates running for countywide offices to get at least 5 percent of all registered voters eligible to vote in the last election in that jurisdiction to sign a petition supporting their placement on the ballot. “I didn’t know how restrictive it was in comparison to other states,” said Fauver, who served with Norwood on the City Council. Norwood needs about 22,700 signatures to get on the ballot. Thus far, she is “more than halfway” to her goal, Fauver said. Norwood has until July 13 to reach the magic number. Norwood has taken Eaves to court over what she calls a “hypertechnical interpretation” of the law to discount about 3,000 of the signatures she has collected. The Eaves campaign says each petition signer must write “Fulton,” along with their address, on the form. Norwood says Fulton election officials told her she could pre-type “Fulton” on the form. A judge dismissed Norwood’s complaint on this point Thursday, saying, in part, that any ruling before the deadline “would constitute an advisory opinion.” As for the 5 percent rule, we reached out to Richard Winger, the California-based editor of Ballot Access News. He has studied ballot issues for more than four decades. Winger was called a “savant” on the topic by Columbia University professor Nate Persily and “the nation’s encyclopedia on this stuff” by Capital University Law School professor Bradley Smith. “That is the toughest such law in the country,” Winger said of Georgia. Until 1943, any political party could gain across-the-board ballot access by registering a slate of officers with the secretary of state. State leaders changed the system that year, primarily to discourage Communist Party candidates from getting on the ballot, Winger said. Some Southern states also used such rules to ensure that a white candidate would win, Smith said. The laws gradually changed over the years for some offices, Winger said. Statewide independent candidates now need the signatures of 1 percent of registered voters to get on the ballot. The rules stayed the same for independent candidates seeking a municipal or countywide office, or seats in Congress or the Georgia Legislature. Why hasn’t the law changed? For some reason, Winger said, state lawmakers couldn’t agree in the 1980s on several proposed bills that would have made it easier for people to get on the ballot to potentially run against them. A bill that would have removed the requirement that independent candidates gather signatures on a petition to run for office did not pass earlier this year. Winger ranks North Carolina as having the second-most-restrictive ballot access guidelines for independent countywide candidates. The Tar Heel State requires those candidates to get the signatures of 4 percent of registered voters in the county to get on the ballot. Winger ranked Illinois as third, but it’s worth noting that state also requires independent countywide candidates to get 5 percent of the signatures of voters who cast ballots in the 2008 election. As for her claim on Georgia’s rules about ballot access, the Peach State and Illinois both have similar ballot access guidelines. Therefore, we rate Norwood’s statement as True. None Mary Norwood None None None 2010-07-02T06:00:00 2010-06-29 ['None']
vees-00023 The Youtube channel BITAG OFFICIAL uploaded Oct. 12 a 9-minute clip of Tulfo’s BITAG Live episode that day with the title, “UN chief, pabor sa Drug War ni PDu30! CHR, sampal sa inyo (UN chief, in favor of PDu30’s drug war! CHR, this is a slap to your face)!” misleading http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-ben-tulfos-report-claiming-un-chief-fa Both the title of the clip and Tulfo’s report are misleading. None None None United Nations,war on drugs,Benjamin Tulfo,António Guterres VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Ben Tulfo’s report claiming UN chief ‘in favor of Duterte’s drug war’ MISLEADING October 18, 2018 None ['None']
pomt-02757 Says Rep. Steve Stockman basically wants gun-filled zones in schools." | true | /punditfact/statements/2013/dec/13/howard-fineman/howard-fineman-steve-stockman-wants-gun-filled-sch/ | Texas politics took an unexpected turn when Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman filed just before the deadline to run against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. Assessing the matchup of two conservative candidates, Huffington Post columnist Howard Fineman said Stockman’s world is all about guns. "This is a guy who not only doesn't want gun-free zones around schools. He basically wants gun-filled zones in schools," Fineman said on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. We decided to check Fineman’s assertion. At the start of this year, a few weeks after the Newtown, Conn., shootings, Stockman introduced the Safe Schools Act of 2013. The bill was very simple. It would repeal a federal law that bans everyone except law enforcement from bringing a weapon inside a school. The bill’s stated purpose was "to restore safety to America's schools by allowing staff, teachers, and administrators to defend the children and themselves." There is no question that Stockman envisioned more people with firearms at schools. "Stockman clearly likes that scenario," said David Kopel, an associate policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute and a proponent of Second Amendment rights. Where Kopel differs with Fineman’s rhetorical flourish is on the point of whether the schools would be full of guns. "When I think of a gun-filled zone, I think of a gun show or going to the annual meeting of the NRA (National Rifle Association) where you know that you are never more than 50 feet from someone with a conceal carry permit and a gun," Kopel said. So, Kopel says Fineman engaged in a bit of exaggeration. The other supporters of gun rights we reached said the whole point of Stockman’s bill was to give principals, teachers and staff the ability to defend themselves and their students. We asked Stockman’s office for evidence that more guns would yield more security and did not hear back. But Kopel and Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun Owners of America, both pointed to the example in Pearl, Miss., where a student opened fire in 1997. An assistant principal ran out to his car where he kept a gun and successfully apprehended the shooter. Pratt also said a Centers for Disease Control study found that the number of times a gun was used defensively was much greater than the number of times a gun was used to kill someone. The actual words from the report, which was a survey of past research, were a bit more nuanced. The authors noted that there was much debate about the data and said "defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals." The report added that gun-using crime victims have lower injury rates than victims who use other defensive strategies, however it noted that we don’t know if that protective benefit outweighs the deaths and injuries associated with gun ownership in general. The gun debate is fueled by conflicting values and studies. David Hemenway, professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health, said he knows of no report that shows that armed civilians provide a protective factor. In his view, the evidence speaks to quite the opposite conclusion. "Studies do show that where there are more households with guns, all other things equal, there is more homicide because there is more gun homicide," Hemenway said. Our experts could not point to research on whether armed school personnel would afford the students greater safety, largely because most states don’t allow guns inside schools and episodes of gunmen opening fire in schools are rare. "It’s hard for social science to do studies of such low frequency events," Kopel said. Our ruling Fineman said that Stockman "basically wants gun-filled schools." Stockman did introduce a bill that would make it easier for states to allow school personnel to carry firearms. The bill’s stated purpose was to allow those people to defend themselves and their students from an armed intruder. Our experts agreed that Stockman’s goal was to see more firearms inside schools. We did not hear from Stockman’s office so there is no way to know if he envisioned an upper limit to that increase. Based on his bill itself, there would be none. We rate the claim True. | null | Howard Fineman | null | null | null | 2013-12-13T17:38:06 | 2013-12-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-05141 | Rhode Island has the "worst maintained bridges in the United States of America . . . and we have the second worst maintained roads [behind] Alaska." | true | /rhode-island/statements/2012/jun/22/michael-chippendale/state-rep-michael-chippendale-says-rhode-island-ha/ | State Rep. Michael W. Chippendale rose on the House floor earlier this month to steer his colleagues away from a bill mandating more studies before any future road projects are completed. The bill (H7352) required the state Department of Transportation -- whether it was constructing a new highway or putting in a crosswalk -- to use "complete street design principles" that considered the "mobility needs of all users." The department would then have to issue a report showing it had considered, for example, the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians "of all ages." Chippendale, a Republican from Foster, called the bill arduous and costly. He said he’d rather see the money that would go toward design studies used to improve the state’s roads, because, he said, the state has the "worst-maintained bridges in the United States of America . . . and we have the second-worst maintained roads only to Alaska." The poor condition of the state’s bridges and roads has been a focus of attention for years. Rhode Island, like many other states, just doesn’t have enough money to repair and rebuild all those needing attention. But we wondered whether we really have among the worst roads and bridges in the nation. On the House floor, Chippendale attributed his information to the National Highway Safety Association, a transportation entity we searched in vain to find. But Chippendale might be forgiven for mixing up the name, considering the multitude of groups that have weighed in on state road conditions. Among them: The Governors Highway Safety Association; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials; the Surface Transportation Policy Project; TRIP, a private transportation research nonprofit; U.S. PIRG, the federation of state public interest research groups; the Reason Foundation -- the list goes on. All the groups use the same basic data that state highway agencies submit each year to the Federal Highway Administration on road and bridge deterioration and spending. Researchers for the groups then choose their own various criteria from the data to study and compare, to suit their objectives. When we contacted Chippendale, he acknowledged that he attributed his statement incorrectly on the House floor. He said the basis of his claim came from a report he had filed away with information from his 2010 campaign. He then e-mailed us a copy of the 19th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems, issued in September 2010 by the Reason Foundation, a Libertarian research group that monitors government spending and efficiency. Chippendale said he had also seen other reports, as well as newspaper stories that supported his statement. The Reason Foundation report is based on 2008 data compiled by the Federal Highway Administration. It indeed rated Rhode Island’s bridges and roads the worst overall in the country. (The state Department of Transportation doesn’t dispute the findings. It says the problem is an issue of money.) Alaska came in right behind us at 49th. (By the way, Massachusetts was ranked 44th and Connecticut, 41st. New Hampshire was the best ranked New England state, at 27.) The states that ranked best -- North Dakota and Montana, for example -- had roads that were in good condition and had small transportation budgets. The foundation reported that "Rhode Island is spending about two to three times the national average, per mile, on its state road system . . ." Other recent reports have offered similar findings about the Ocean State’s roads and bridges. In 2009, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that sets standards for road design and construction, ranked Rhode Island the third worst state in the country for "poor" roads, with only New Jersey and California having worse roads. In 2010, the consumer group U.S. PIRG, a federation of consumer activist groups from around the country, issued a report that said Rhode Island had the highest percentage of "structurally deficient" bridges (27 percent) in the country. The group, using Federal Highway Administration data, defined structurally deficient as meaning "a bridge has a major defect in its support structure or its deck is cracking and deteriorating." That percentage has since dropped to around 22 percent -- the fourth worst in the country -- because the Route 195 relocation project eliminated about a dozen of those bad bridges, a state DOT spokesman says. The findings are also in a report from Transportation For America, another coalition of road budget watchdogs. Our ruling State Rep. Michael Chippendale turned down a path familiar to Rhode Island motorists when he described the Ocean State as having the "worst maintained bridges in the United States of America" and " the second worst maintained roads only to Alaska." Rhode Island’s rankings may go up or down a few notches depending on which report you look at and what year it came out. But every one we’ve seen shows the Ocean State is clearly at the bottom when it comes to road and bridge conditions. Chippendale might have incorrectly attributed his statement on the House floor, but his figures were accurate. We rate his claim True. (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.) | null | Michael Chippendale | null | null | null | 2012-06-22T00:01:00 | 2012-06-11 | ['United_States', 'Alaska', 'Rhode_Island'] |
pomt-13857 | More people now die in Wisconsin from drug overdoses than car crashes. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/jul/08/brad-schimel/do-more-people-die-wisconsin-overdoses-car-crashes/ | More than a month after Prince died at the age of 57, toxicology tests determined the visionary musician’s cause of death: fentanyl, a synthetic opiate up to 50 times more potent than heroin. On June 6, 2016, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel penned a guest column in the Wisconsin State Journal connecting Prince’s overdose to the state’s opiate epidemic. He sought to end to the stigma around drug addiction — and urged people to lock up prescription painkillers in their homes. Painkillers are often the starting point for people who develop opiate addictions. "We must alter our view of opiates," Schimel wrote. "More people now die in Wisconsin from drug overdoses than car crashes." Is Schimel right that drug overdoses have not always outnumbered car accident fatalities in Wisconsin but do now? If accurate, it would strengthen his case that drug addiction has become an increasingly urgent issue. We decided to look at the numbers. Checking the figures In support of Schimel’s statement, state Department of Justice spokesman Johnny Koremenos provided a report issued in September 2015 by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. "Deaths from drug poisoning, also called ‘overdose,’ have doubled since 2004 and surpassed motor vehicle traffic deaths in 2008," the report said. The sentence doesn’t refer to the total number of deaths, but to age-adjusted death rates. That approach is used to better make comparisons across years, when the age structure of a population changes. An accompanying age-adjusted chart showed that 4 out of every 100,000 people died from a drug overdose in 1999 while 16 out of 100,000 did by 2013. The death rate from car crashes moderately declined during the same period, from around 13 out of 100,000 people to 9. Beginning in 2008, the death rate from drug overdoses surpassed the death rate from car crashes in the chart. We asked the Department of Health Services what the unadjusted numbers show. According to Jennifer Miller, spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, 2009 was the first time that deaths from drug overdoses outnumbered deaths from car crashes in Wisconsin. And overdose deaths have outnumbered car crash deaths every year since. In 2014, the most recent year available, 843 people in Wisconsin died of drug overdoses while 558 died in car crashes. So both age-adjusted and raw numbers show that beginning in 2008 or 2009 (depending on which numbers you use) more people in Wisconsin died from drug use than from car crashes. Nationally, the total number of drug-related deaths surpassed the number of motor vehicle deaths in 2008 -- about the same time the numbers flipped in Wisconsin. Our rating Schimel said more people now die in Wisconsin from drug overdoses than car crashes. The most recent data available from 2014 supports his statement -- 2009 was the first year when more people died from drug overdoses than in car crashes. We rate his statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/aec3f423-e513-4993-8901-9298e5a88b46 | null | Brad Schimel | null | null | null | 2016-07-08T10:30:00 | 2016-06-06 | ['Wisconsin'] |
afck-00039 | “Rice importation from other countries has been cut down by 90%” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/buharis-2018-democracy-day-speech-7-main-claims-under-scrutiny/ | null | null | null | null | null | Buhari’s 2018 Democracy Day speech: 7 main claims under scrutiny | 2018-05-29 01:51 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04844 | Says state Senate candidate Aaron Bean voted to give health care subsidies to illegal immigrants. | false | /florida/statements/2012/aug/13/floridians-ethics-and-truth-politics/outside-group-claims-aaron-bean-voted-give-health-/ | A third-party group in the middle of an ultra-competitive Republican state Senate primary is continuing to make illegal immigration a centerpiece of the campaign. The group, Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics, is targeting former state Rep. Aaron Bean for past votes. Bean is running for a Jacksonville-area seat against current state Rep. Mike Weinstein. Previously, we looked at the claim that Bean voted for "in-state tuition breaks for illegal immigrants." We examined the facts and rated the claim Mostly True. Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics is doubling down with a different claim in a new TV ad, accusing "Mr. Bean" (a reference to the dimwitted British character played by comedian Rowan Atkinson, perhaps?) of voting to "also give health care subsidies to illegal aliens" in 2007. We decided to see if the new attack has merit. As evidence, the group cites HB 7189, a proposal considered during the 2007 legislative session about Florida KidCare, which houses federal and state subsidized health care programs for children. The goal of this bill was to fulfill a plan by now-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who was Florida House speaker in 2007 and 2008, to expand access to health care coverage for children. (It was Idea No. 86 in his 2006 book 100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future.) HB 7189 would have allowed anyone who is under 19, a Florida resident and uninsured to be enrolled in KidCare. The bill made a number of administrative tweaks to ease the application process. More pertinent to our fact-check, the bill would have expanded premium assistance to two types of children, if the Legislature appropriated money for them: children of state employees, and "noncitizens" or "not qualified aliens." The inclusion of "noncitizens" and "not qualified aliens" is the basis of the claim from Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics. But that’s in error. Non-qualified aliens and noncitizens isn’t code for "illegal immigrant." States commonly use the terms to refer to other noncitizens who are lawfully present in the U.S. Arizona’s Medicaid administration agency, for instance, breaks down three groups of noncitizens like this: qualified aliens, undocumented aliens (aka illegal immigrants), and non-qualified aliens, who are admitted legally for a limited time and include foreign students, business visitors, and temporary workers on visas. Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, who sponsored the KidCare reform push in 2007 and is running for state Senate this year, told PolitiFact Florida the bill was not written to subsidize illegal immigrants’ health insurance. "Certainly the intent of the bill was not to expand KidCare to illegal aliens," Galvano said. "The thrust of the bill was ultimately to lessen the fiscal impact on the taxpayer while at the same time providing health care to those in need." Like most bills, this legislation was written without the kind of detailed rulemaking delegated to state agencies. Had the bill become law, those rules might have been more explicit so that the subsidized premiums would not apply to illegal immigrants, though they are already banned under federal law from receiving government assistance. To be fair to Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics, what "noncitizens" and "not qualified legal aliens" actually meant got lost on the Legislature as well. During debate on the House floor, Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Port St. Lucie, introduced a late-filed, one-line amendment: "The Florida Kidcare Program shall not provide premium assistance for enrollees who are illegal aliens." Her amendment spawned impassioned, and confused, debate, with some conservatives saying undocumented children should be eligible, too. "This is not about illegal children. It’s not about legal children. It’s about children in the state of Florida," said Rep. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, according to a couple news accounts. Harrell did not have the support needed to bring the amendment for a floor vote. The bill passed the House 98-14, with Bean and Rubio among conservatives voting in favor (Bean, then House Healthcare Council chairman, voted for it in committee too). But drama over the amendment slowed the bill’s momentum in the final days of session, and the Senate decided not to bring the proposal to a vote. "Unfortunately, some people thought the bill would have impacted undocumented kids," said Karen Woodall, executive director of the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy, who pushed for the bill in 2007. "That whole debate -- while it was in my opinion morally correct and good -- it made it seem like it was going to impact those kids, and that’s why it didn’t pass in the Senate." Our ruling Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics says Bean voted to give health care subsidies to illegal immigrants. The group, however, misrepresents the bill’s intent by saying "not qualified legal aliens" is the same as "illegal immigrants." That’s not true. The bottom line is HB 7189 -- which never passed -- would have applied to children legally allowed to be in the United States. We rate the claim False. | null | Floridians for Ethics and Truth in Politics | null | null | null | 2012-08-13T15:03:31 | 2012-08-13 | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.