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snes-00597 | Rep. Debbie Dingell is introducing a bill that would lead to widespread gun confiscations. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-rep-dingell-gun-confiscation-bill/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Is Rep. Debbie Dingell Introducing a ‘Gun Confiscation’ Bill? | 14 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03382 | Star Wars: Rogue One was re-shot to add an anti-Trump scene. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/star-wars-anti-trump-scene/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Did a ‘Star Wars’ Film Include an Anti-Trump Scene? | 9 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11772 | Saudi Arabia to Behead 6 School Girls for Being With Their Male Friends Without Parents or a Guardian | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/nov/29/religionmindcom/fake-news-girls-saudi-arabia-will-be-beheaded-danc/ | Don’t listen to the fake news that a group of girls in Saudi Arabia will be killed for dancing at a birthday party. "Saudi Arabia to Behead 6 School Girls for Being With Their Male Friends Without Parents or a Guardian," stated the headline on religionmind.com on Oct. 23. That’s not true. We found the story after Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. Religionmind.com is a fake news website about various religions. We attempted to contact someone at the website but did not get a reply. The "about" section of the website states that it tries to keep the content correct, "yet we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability ... ." Here’s what the fake news story said: Fathima Al Kwaini was celebrating her birthday at a friend’s house. Tipped off by an assistant of an Imam, police arrived to find the girls dancing with their friends including males. Police arrested the girls. The article then states that the girls were detained for more than a year and that a male-only Sharia panel concluded that they need to be "executed in accordance with the Sharia law." A photo in the article does not back up the narrative. It appears to be the same as a photo by Reuters/Pajhwok News Agency on Aug. 31, 2015, showing an Afghan judge hitting a 22-year-old woman with a whip in front of a crowd in Ghor province, Afghanistan. The article attributed some of the information to "HRW" without explaining what the acronym stands for. We thought it might have been a reference to Human Rights Watch, an organization that tracks human rights abuses across the globe. A researcher at Human Rights Watch, Adam Coogle, told PolitiFact that the story is a fabrication. "Gender mixing in Saudi Arabia can lead to criminal penalties but never the death penalty," he said. So far in 2017 there have been 133 executions in Saudi Arabia, nearly all for murder or drug smuggling. "In terms of executions of children, unfortunately Saudi Arabia is one of the only countries in the world that continues to sentence child offenders to death, and some have eventually been executed, but I’ve never seen an execution of anyone who is under 18 at the time of the execution," he said. In the case of this headline, there is no evidence that these girls were beheaded for being with their male friends. We rate this Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | religionmind.com | null | null | null | 2017-11-29T11:53:58 | 2017-10-23 | ['Saudi_Arabia'] |
pomt-14725 | Only nine coalition nations with the U.S. "are truly actively involved" in fighting the Islamic State. | mostly true | /virginia/statements/2015/dec/22/rob-wittman/rob-wittman-mostly-right-about-few-nations-fightin/ | Although dozens of nations have pledged to fight the Islamic State, few actually have joined the U.S. in taking military steps against the group, says U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-1st. During a recent interview on C-SPAN, Wittman said the U.S. could use some help in the air campaign against the Islamic State. "Of the 65 coalition partners, only nine are truly actively involved in these efforts," he said. "This will not be successful if we don’t have those coalition partners involved." We wondered if Wittman is correct that only nine nations have joined the U.S. in taking military action against the Islamic State. Farahn Morgan, Wittman’s spokeswoman, said the congressman got the figure from a Nov. 30 article in The Washington Times. Morgan pointed to a comment in the article from Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who criticized the White House approach to the air campaign and said, "This is a ‘65-country coalition’ of which only about nine are doing something." The U.S. State Department does indeed count 65 countries as members of a broad coalition aimed at eliminating the Islamic State threat. The department says those nations are participating in different ways: providing military support, stopping the Islamic State’s financing, impeding the flow of foreign fighters into the area, dealing with humanitarian crises, and exposing the "true nature" of the militant group. A Nov. 18 report from the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan fact-finding arm of Congress, offers examples of non-military contributions. They include Switzerland’s $9 million of aid to Iraq -- where the Islamic State is present -- and Japan’s $6 million of aid to help refugees in northern Iraq. The military component of the coalition is Operation Inherent Resolve, and 22 nations have pledged to take part in it, according to CRS. About two-thirds of those countries have provided military personnel to help train local forces to battle the Islamic State. A smaller group of a dozen countries have provided aircraft to take part in airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq since the military campaign started in August 2014, according to the Department of Defense. Those countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. As of Dec. 9, the U.S.-led coalition had conducted 8,783 airstrikes, according to the Pentagon. The U.S. conducted 6,846 of those attacks, or about four-fifths of them. It’s difficult to get an exact read on the current number of allies still active in the campaign for a couple of reasons. Participation in the military campaign ebbs and flows depending on each nation’s interests, the Congressional Research Service noted in its report. For example, Belgium stopped its airstrikes at the end of June due to budget constraints. Incoming Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in October that his government would withdraw its combat aircraft, but it’s unclear if that has happened yet, the research service said. Airwars.org, a non-profit that tracks the air war in Iraq and Syria, reported in October that Denmark recalled the seven F-16s it used against the Islamic State, although they may return. The New York Times reported on Nov. 7 that some Arab countries in the coalition, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have shifted most of their aircraft away battling the Islamic State and instead focused them on the fight against a rebel uprising in Yemen. Allied officials told the newspaper that the United Arab Emirates hadn’t carried out strikes in Syria since March and Jordan hadn’t done so since August. Qatar flies patrols over Syria, but "its role has been modest," The Times said. Wittman hardly is the first to complain the U.S. isn’t getting enough coalition support in battling the Islamic State. Our colleagues at PolitiFact National recently examined a similar claim by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and rated it Mostly True. David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told PolitiFact that of the dozen allies the Pentagon says actually have conducted airstrikes, "some of those are only symbolic or largely out of date." Weinberg said the countries with the best case for taking a "serious" role in the air campaign, outside of the U.S., are France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia. Chris Woods, the director of Airwars.org, said some coalition members are providing auxiliary assistance to the campaign even if they are not taking part in airstrikes. Italy, for example, provides aircraft for in-air refueling, and Germany has said it will provide six Tornado fighter jets for aerial reconnaissance. Michael O’Hanlon, co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, told us that the figure Wittman uses to tally the number of allies taking part in military action against the Islamic State sounds correct. "I don’t have concrete data, but I’d say that the number nine is roughly correct if one is talking about military action," O’Hanlon wrote in an email. Our ruling Wittman, in arguing the U.S. isn’t getting enough help in the heavy lifting against the Islamic State, said just nine of our international coalition partners are "truly actively involved" in military efforts against the militant group. The figure is credible based on government data and media reports. Thirteen nations have taken part in airstrikes against the group during the past year, according to the Pentagon. There are indications that perhaps half of the countries have suspended their roles against the Islamic State, although they may resume in the future. The lack of transparency from some coalition governments makes it impossible define a precise number at any given time. Also, we should note that some countries are contributing to the military campaign in ways other than airstrikes - such as providing aircraft for refueling, reconnaissance and military personnel to train local forces. With those clarifications, we rate Wittman’s statement Mostly True. | null | Rob Wittman | null | null | null | 2015-12-22T08:13:07 | 2015-12-09 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-07486 | President Obama has "stopped using the phrase 'war on terror.' " | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/13/tim-pawlenty/tim-pawlenty-says-obama-has-stopped-using-phrase-w/ | In his book Courage to Stand, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential GOP presidential candidate, said President Barack Obama "needs to do a more forceful job of reminding people about the threat of global terrorism." And that needs to start with calling it by its real name, Pawlenty wrote. "Sadly, President Obama will not call this effort what it is," Pawlenty wrote. "He has stopped using the phrase 'war on terror.' His administration never makes pointed references -- or any references -- to the real problem: radical Islamic terrorism. Apparently that isn't politically correct. The fact is, radical Islamic terrorism exists. Pointing that out doesn't condemn all Muslims. But there is an element of Islam that is radical and that has terrorist intentions. We need to call it what it is. We need to confront it, and we need to defeat it." This isn't the first time Obama has been accused of ducking the phrase "war on terror" or for not attaching the words Islamic or Muslim when talking about violent extremists. Back in November 2009, we checked into a similar claim from Fox News' Sean Hannity that "Barack Obama won't even use the term 'war on terrorism.' " Back then, we did a word search of Obama's public statements and could not find that Obama has used the phrase "war on terrorism" as president, though he said it numerous times as a candidate. Early in his presidency, Obama used the phrase "war on terror," but only a couple of times. And it's true that Obama made a conscious and deliberate decision early in his presidency to avoid the phrase "war on terror" in favor of more precise language. Obama explained his reasoning in several interviews. During a Jan. 27, 2009, interview with Obama, Hisham Melhem of Arabic-language television news station al-Aribiya noted that Obama seemed to eschew President George W. Bush's phrase "war on terror" and "frame it in a different way, specifically against one group called al-Qaida and their collaborators." Said Obama: "I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name. "And so you will, I think, see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al-Qaida -- that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it -- and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians, and we will hunt them down. "But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship." The issue was again raised in a Feb. 3, 2009, interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper: Cooper: "I've noticed you don't use the term 'war on terror.' I think I read an article that you've only used it once since inauguration. Is that conscious? Is there something about that term you find objectionable or not useful?" Obama: "Well, you know, I think it is very important for us to recognize that we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations. But that those organizations aren't representative of a broader Arab community, Muslim community. ... You know, words matter in this situation because one of the ways we're going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds." Cooper: "So that's not a term you're going to be using much in the future?" Obama: "You know, what I want to do is make sure that I'm constantly talking about al-Qaida and other affiliated organizations because we, I believe, can win over moderate Muslims to recognize that that kind of destruction and nihilism ultimately leads to a dead end, and that we should be working together to make sure that everybody has got a better life. Based on those facts, we rated Hannity's claim True. But when former Vice president Dick Cheney took the meme a step further and alleged that Obama will not "admit we're at war," we rated Cheney's claim Pants in Fire. Here, Pawlenty's claim is closer to Hannity's. So first we checked Obama's public statements since our previous fact-check to see if he has stuck to this line and avoided the phrase "war on terror" or anything like "radical Islamic terrorism." And he has. In May 2010, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, addressed the topic in some detail: "The president’s strategy is absolutely clear about the threat we face," Brennan said in an address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Our enemy is not 'terrorism' because terrorism is but a tactic. Our enemy is not 'terror' because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear. Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenant of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. "Indeed, characterizing our adversaries this way would actually be counterproductive. It would play into the false perception that they are religious leaders defending a holy cause, when in fact they are nothing more than murderers, including the murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims." "Moreover," Brennan said, "describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie—propagated by al-Qaida and its affiliates to justify terrorism—that the United States is somehow at war against Islam. The reality, of course, is that we never have been and will never be at war with Islam. After all, Islam, like so many faiths, is part of America. "Instead, the president’s strategy is clear and precise. Our enemy is al-Qaida and its terrorist affiliates. For it was al-Qaida who attacked us so viciously on 9/11 and whose desire to attack the United States, our allies, and our partners remains undiminished. And it is its affiliates who have taken up al-Qaida’s call to arms against the United States in other parts of the world. "The president’s strategy is unequivocal with regard to our posture. The United States of America is at war. We are at war against al-Qaida and its terrorist affiliates. That is why the president is responsibly ending the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and why he has refocused our efforts on Afghanistan, where al-Qaida continues to plot from the tribal regions along the border with Pakistan and inside of Pakistan." More recently, in remarks at the Adams Center, a nonprofit that runs community centers and mosques, on March 6, 2011, Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser to the president, spoke about the strategy of the Obama administration's words. "President Obama recognizes that through our words and deeds we can either play into al-Qaida’s narrative and messaging, or we can challenge it and thereby undermine it," McDonough said. "We’re determined to undermine it." In his book, Pawlenty claims Obama has stopped using the phrase "war on terror" and his administration "never makes pointed references -- or any references -- to the real problem: radical Islamic terrorism." We found several instances in which Vice President Joe Biden has talked about "radical extremism" or "radical fundamentalism" and the need to aggressively confront "violent extremism and radical ideologies." But he never attaches the words "Islamic" to those phrases. And neither has Obama. As Obama and members of his administration have repeatedly explained, this is a very conscious decision to be more precise about the enemy, al-Qaida and other terrorist affiliates and not to feed into the al-Qaida message that America is somehow at war with Islam. You may agree or disagree with Obama's word choices, or with Pawlenty's, but Pawlenty is correct about Obama's deliberate decision not to use the phrases "war on terror" or "radical Islamic terrorism." We rate his statement True. | null | Tim Pawlenty | null | null | null | 2011-04-13T13:39:57 | 2011-01-11 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-00011 | A photograph shows a dog named Captain who slept next to his owner's grave for 7 years. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dog-sleep-by-his-masters-grave/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Did This Dog Sleep by His Master’s Grave Every Night for 7 Years? | 5 October 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00631 | Famous Stagecoach Driver Charley Darkey Parkhurst Was Born a Woman | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/famous-stagecoach-driver-charles-darkey-parkhurst-born-woman/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Famous Stagecoach Driver Charley Darkey Parkhurst Was Born a Woman | May 3, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03982 | Hanan al-Hroub, whose husband was jailed for providing chemicals used in making bombs that killed Israelis, was invited to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative dinner. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/palestinian-terrorists-wife-to-address-clinton-foundation/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Palestinian Terrorist’s Wife to Address Clinton Foundation | 21 September 2016 | null | ['Clinton_Foundation'] |
goop-02239 | Brad Pitt Worried Kids Are In Danger Over Angelina Jolie’s Plot To Capture Joseph Kony, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-joseph-kony-angelina-jolie-kids-danger-capture/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Brad Pitt NOT Worried Kids Are In Danger Over Angelina Jolie’s Plot To Capture Joseph Kony, Despite Report | 12:34 pm, November 7, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03928 | The United Nations (UN) ruled that the United States must pay slavery reparations to black Americans. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/un-demands-slavery-reparations/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Kim LaCapria | null | UN Demands U.S. Pay Reparations for Slavery | 28 September 2016 | null | ['United_States', 'United_Nations'] |
snes-02079 | Lil' Wayne announced that he was diagnosed with skin cancer and has one month to live. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lil-wayne-one-month/ | null | Junk News | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Does Lil’ Wayne Have One Month to Live? | 12 July 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04692 | A photograph shows eight rainbows over Lehigh, Pennsylvania. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eight-rainbow-photo/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does a Photograph Show Eight Rainbows? | 29 May 2016 | null | ['Pennsylvania'] |
pomt-02973 | As a result of Obamacare, we are becoming something of a part-time employment country. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/22/maria-bartiromo/bartiromo-says-obamacare-turning-us-part-time-empl/ | Among the many problems that critics of Obamacare like to highlight, one of the more common is that the health care law undermines jobs and the economy. This was Maria Bartiromo’s theme when she was on NBC’s Meet the Press. Bartiromo, anchor of CNBC’s Closing Bell, said the glitches that have beset the rollout of Obamacare are not the only issue. "Businesses have changed their plans as a result of Obamacare," Bartiromo said. "We are becoming something of a part-time employment country. We're seeing some groups moved off of health care from business because business is complaining that it's too expensive." If we boil that down, we have this claim to check: "As a result of Obamacare, we are becoming something of a part-time employment country." Our research finds Bartiromo’s claim flawed. Not because we don’t have a lot of part-timers. We do. But the overwhelming driver is a lackluster recovery, not Obamacare. And when you look at the past, the percentage of part-timers has been even higher than it is today. A closer look We contacted CNBC and they pointed us to a couple of articles on Bartiromo’s behalf. One from Red Alert Politics, a website affiliated with the Weekly Standard and Washington Examiner, gave examples of companies that have said they will shift or might shift to using more part-time help. They said they would do this to avoid the Obamacare rule that firms of 50 or more employees must offer health insurance to anyone working 30 hours or more. The list included White Castle, the hamburger chain, and Trig’s, a Wisconsin supermarket chain. (The rule, which was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2014, has been delayed by one year.) Another item was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. The CEO of a company that owns several fast-food chains, among them Hardee’s, made the claim that the "numbers show" that Obamacare is affecting hiring. The proof? The job numbers that came right after the administration announced in early July a one-year delay of the requirement that all larger employers offer health insurance. "Full-time job creation rebounded and part-time employment subsided," the CEO, Andrew Puzder, wrote. "In July and August, the economy lost 20,000 part-time jobs and added 132,000 full-time jobs." But that's a historical trend that coincides with the American summer; not necessarily a statement on Obamacare. Between June and August, historically, part-time employment falls and full-time employment increases -- partly because better weather boosts seasonal work in the construction and tourism industries. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that between 2003 and 2007, the average drop in part-time work was -.28 percent from July to August, while the average rise in full-time employment was 0.2 percent. It’s also worth noting that the firms that have announced plans to reduce hours for part-timers tend to be in fast food and retail. These industries might have a special reason to keep an eye on the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act. They tend to use part-timers more than other sectors of the economy. The average hours worked per week by non-supervisory staff in fast-food restaurants was 25.7 in 2012 and in retail, the figure was 31.6. But for financial services, it was 37.4, manufacturing was 40.7 and construction was 38.8. For fast-food and retail, increasing the use of part-time work could be a viable strategy. That doesn’t mean they represent the entire job market. It’s the economy A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco puts the current situation into context. The recession drove up the fraction of part-time workers from about 17 percent in 2007 to a peak of 19.7 percent in 2010. It has declined since then. As of the latest data, it stands at 19 percent. The study’s bottom line is that recessions drive up the fraction of the workforce who are in part-time jobs when they would rather be working full-time. The 1983 recession pushed the share of part-timers to 20.3 percent. That’s significantly higher than the peak for the 2008 recession. What’s different this time though is that the part-time employment rate has remained higher for many more months than in past recessions. The authors put the cause squarely at the feet of the overall economy. "The U.S. labor market has recovered only about three-fourths of the jobs lost during the recession and its aftermath, which leaves finding a full-time job still challenging for many workers," they said. "General labor market slack remains the key factor keeping part-time employment high." The report considers whether the Affordable Care Act could be shaping employers' hiring decisions, but concludes that other factors -- including long-standing IRS rules -- suggest the ACA has not made a significant change. "Before the law was passed, most large employers already faced IRS rules that prevented them from denying available health benefits to full-time workers. These rules gave employers an incentive to create part-time jobs to avoid rising health benefit costs." Our ruling Bartiromo said under Obamacare "we are becoming something of a part-time employment country." There is anectdotal evidence that some companies are or will reduce the hours of some employees. But those individual instances fail to make a case of moving to a "part-time employment country." Government numbers actually show that the fraction of part-timers in the workforce has declined since 2010 and in a longer historical perspective, the share of part-timers was less during this recession than in the downturn of 1983. The argument that the delay of the employer mandate boosted full-time hires is suspect. We see the same trend in previous years well before President Barack Obama was elected. An independent analysis suggests that the lack of full-time work is the most significant explanation for a persistently high share of part-time work in the labor force. We rate the claim False. | null | Maria Bartiromo | null | null | null | 2013-10-22T14:31:47 | 2013-10-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-04167 | Thanks to actions by the Milwaukee County Board on the 2013 budget, the amount of county taxes on the average home in the city of Milwaukee "would be a $19 decrease." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/dec/19/marina-dimitrijevic/Milwaukee-County-Board-chairwoman-touts-decrease-i/ | When the Milwaukee County Board completed its work on the 2013 budget in November 2012, the property tax levy was about $4 million higher than it was for the current year. Supervisors overrode 22 of 24 budget vetoes from County Executive Chris Abele, thwarting his effort to create a budget that included no increase. The final 2013 budget tallied $1.3 billion, with $279.3 million coming from property taxes. That’s an increase of 1.4 percent. County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic defended the board’s budget in a Nov. 14, 2012, interview on WTMJ-AM (620), noting the budget boosted public safety. But then she touted the tax levy increase as a decrease for City of Milwaukee taxpayers. Huh? Here’s how Dimitrijevic explained it: "If you live in the City of Milwaukee, the City of Milwaukee our largest municipality, the 1.4 percent that we increased taxes this year -- lower than inflation, like the city of Milwaukee, like Ozaukee County – in the city of Milwaukee on the average home, would be a $19 decrease. And I think that’s a small price to pay for enhanced public safety." With property tax bills landing in mailboxes, time for a refresher course on how this all works. County Board fiscal and budget analyst Steve Cady said the claim was based on City of Milwaukee property revaluations, which were set in spring 2012. These are done annually to keep up with changes in the housing market. The average Milwaukee house had an assessed value of about $106,000. The tax rate set in the county budget is about $5.25 per $1,000 of assessed value. That’s up 54 cents. (On the tax bill, the county tax rate is lumped together with the rate to support the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, but that group’s portion of the bill is tiny.) How much you owe is determined by the value of your house. In the 2012 reassessment, the average home in the city fell from $122,793 to $106,000. That means even though the tax rate went up, the bill for the county share of taxes went down on that home by about $19. So in dollars and cents terms, Dimitrijevic is correct. But there’s a lot more to the story. Across the country the value of residential property got hammered in the real estate bust, and Milwaukee was no exception. Between the beginning of 2008 and 2012, total assessed residential property value in Milwaukee fell by about 30 percent, said assessment commissioner Mary Reavey. Of course, it depends on your neighborhood and condition of your home -- some losses could be much higher (or lower) than others. "Most people don’t cheer when their major asset goes down in value," noted Paula Hogan, a certified financial planner who operates her own firm in Glendale. But, in effect, that is what Dimitrijevic is suggesting Milwaukee property owners do. What about the reverse? Should homeowners want their house values and tax bill to increase? Not necessarily, said Michael Arnow, a certified financial planner with Menomonee Falls-based Sattell, Johnson, Appel Financial Advisory LLC. "A higher assessment is a double-edged sword," he said. "If your tax bill goes up, you pay more taxes. Who wants to pay more taxes? If the value of your home goes up and you are a retiree on a fixed income you can be priced out of your neighborhood." In the case of this year’s bills, property owners may be paying somewhat less in taxes but the long-term loss is more serious, experts said. For that average City of Milwaukee homeowner, the total tax bill for all taxing units this year would be $3,175, down about $107 from a year ago. That’s a small amount compared with the $16,000 in lost property value. Said Hogan: "If taxes are going down because the assessed value is going down, that’s not a good thing." Our rating Dimitrijevic said the average city of Milwaukee homeowner would pay $19 less in county property taxes next year. She is correct on the bottom-line number. But by highlighting it as a piece of good news, she is leaving out critical information that would give a different impression. Namely, tax bills aren’t down because spending was cut by the County Board. The bills are down in the City of Milwaukee because property values have fallen. Had there been no change in city property values, that bill would be $84 higher -- just to pay for the County Board’s decisions. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | Marina Dimitrijevic | null | null | null | 2012-12-19T09:00:00 | 2012-11-14 | ['Milwaukee'] |
goop-00300 | Blake Lively Warning Anna Kendrick To Stop ‘Flirting’ With Ryan Reynolds? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/blake-lively-anna-kendrick-ryan-reynolds-flirting/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Blake Lively Warning Anna Kendrick To Stop ‘Flirting’ With Ryan Reynolds? | 3:00 pm, September 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
bove-00029 | Viral Image Of PM Modi With AIIMS Doctors Creates A Stir: A FactCheck | none | https://www.boomlive.in/viral-image-of-pm-modi-with-aiims-doctors-creates-a-stir-a-factcheck/ | null | null | null | null | null | Viral Image Of PM Modi With AIIMS Doctors Creates A Stir: A FactCheck | Aug 18 2018 9:06 am | null | ['None'] |
snes-03585 | Counterfeit packs of fake cigarettes found in Detroit are lethal. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fake-cigarettes-are-being-sold-and-killing-people/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Fake Cigarettes are Being Sold and Killing People | 10 November 2016 | null | ['Detroit'] |
pomt-10059 | In Chicago, school is never canceled because of winter weather. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jan/28/barack-obama/obama-says-chicago-schools-never-close-snow/ | A veteran of many frosty winters in the Windy City, President Obama was incredulous to find out that classes at his daughters' new schools in Washington, D.C., had been canceled due to icy road conditions. "Can I make a comment that is unrelated to the economy very quickly?" Obama told reporters in a light moment at a gathering with business leaders on Jan. 28. "And it has to do with Washington. My children's school was canceled today. Because of, what? Some ice?" "As my children pointed out, in Chicago, school is never canceled," Obama said. "In fact, my 7-year-old pointed out that (during a winter storm) you'd go outside for recess. You wouldn't even stay indoors. So, I don't know. We're going to have to try to apply some flinty Chicago toughness." According to an AP report, Obama was asked if he meant the people of the national's capital are wimps, to which Obama responded: "I'm saying, when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things." Chicago gets an average of about 3 feet of snow a year. Is it possible they don't need snow days? Turns out it's been 10 years. "The last time we had a snow day was on Jan. 4 and 5 of 1999," said Malon Edwards, spokesman for the Chicago Public Schools. That's when the Windy City got socked with 22 inches of snow, at the time the second-largest snowstorm in Chicago history. "We very rarely cancel for snow days." In mid January of this year, when temperatures dipped into negative numbers (sans wind chill), the school district told parents if they felt it was unsafe to send their kids to school that day, it'd be okay to keep them at home. But school stayed open. We should note that D.C. public schools weren't actually closed on Jan. 28. They opened two hours late. But Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, attend the private Sidwell Friends School, which canceled classes. Most school districts in the Washington suburbs also closed. Obama is right that snow days are amazingly rare in Chicago — there haven't been any in the last decade — but we'll cruelly ding him for saying "never." Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2009-01-28T17:03:51 | 2009-01-28 | ['Chicago'] |
snes-02219 | Dr. Robert Gallo admitted to "inventing" the HIV virus in a plot to "depopulate humanity." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/robert-gallo-invented-hiv-aids/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did the Man Who Discovered the HIV Virus Confess to ‘Inventing’ It? | 12 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12697 | ShopRite will lose about 300 employees "voluntarily and through layoffs" due to the beverage tax. | half flip | /pennsylvania/statements/2017/mar/13/jeffrey-brown/did-shoprite-owner-say-philly-soda-tax-would-mean-/ | Philadelphia soda distributors and supermarkets have said the beverage tax that went into effect Jan. 1 has caused significant decreases in beverage and total sales, forcing them to either drastically cut hours or lay off employees. Pepsi recently announced its plans to lay off up to 100 employees over three distribution plants within the city after experiencing a 40 percent dip in sales apparently from the new tax, and Canada Dry Delaware Valley also blamed recent months’ low sales for new layoffs. But the most significant reaction so far comes from Jeffrey Brown, owner of six ShopRite stores in Philadelphia and 10 in the Delaware Valley, who told Philly.com last month that he expected to lose about 300 employees "voluntarily and through layoffs" this spring. Two days after the article was published, though, on Fox 29, he ditched the part about layoffs and said he expects some attrition as his stores are forced to cut hours. "There will be some attrition, what happens when people don’t get enough hours, we’re unionized, so it goes by seniority, so when the new people, people that have been with us for like less than a year they get their hours cut. And when it gets cut beyond a certain point it’s not really worth their while to have the job and they start looking for other employment and the ones that don’t, we have to balance the numbers overtime," he told Fox 29. It wasn’t clear in that interview whether Brown had just forgotten to mention the layoffs he previously claimed were coming, or if he purposely steered in a different direction. But, in a follow up Philly.com article published Feb. 23, he referenced layoffs again, saying, "There’s no way of knowing the layoff number, but 280, 300 jobs will be gone one way or the other. If a person quits or goes on unemployment, or I lay them off, the jobs will be gone." The city has insisted businesses have been overreacting in their opposition to the tax, noting that the American Beverage Association last year spent over a million dollars in advertisements opposing Mayor Kenney’s plan to tax sugary beverages to pay for Philadelphia children to attend pre-K. Kenney's spokesperson, Lauren Hitt, noted, "Brown is part of the same industry that spent ten million dollars and made plenty of misleading claims trying to kill the tax last year." She also said via e-mail: "We feel that Philadelphians should be skeptical of any unverifiable numbers that Brown or any other members of the soda industry put out." Marc Stier, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, is also skeptical of Brown's claim that there's been a 40 to 50 percent drop in ShopRite's beverage sales, and a 15 percent dip in overall sales. He said he doubts the drop in beverage sales could account for that high a level of overall losses, referencing Progressive Grocer's 2016 Annual Consumers Expenditure Study that shows soda makes up only four percent of nationwide grocery store sales. But John Stanton, a St. Joe’s professor who’s specialized in food marketing for decades, asserts that Brown's numbers make sense. He said it's unlikely shoppers will substitute their sugary beverages with healthier options. "I just think that’s kind of a ridiculous conclusion to draw," he said, "Now, is it possible that someone is going to say, ‘Let’s buy just two liters of coke?’ It’s not like they’re going to say, ‘Let’s buy fresh carrots with the money we’re going to save,' because the two liters of coke taxed are going to cost as much as the three liters of coke untaxed, so it’s not like they have a lot of extra money." He also says the beverage section is, in general, the most important section for a supermarket. Stores usually display soda and drink products in several areas throughout the store. Their sales tend to make up a large amount of total sales revenue. And, aside from the profit made when shoppers buy the product, supermarkets also make revenue through promotional allowances. That’s when a distributor (say, Pepsi) pays the store to display its product on an end cap, which is the small, outward facing section on the end of an isle. If shoppers at a supermarket start buying less Pepsi, Pepsi gives the supermarket less money in promotional allowances. So, by selling less of a product like Pepsi, the store not only loses sales revenue, but it sacrifices even more revenue from lost promotional allowances. Soda is generally a common product displayed on end caps and thus often contributes to a store's promotional revenue. "Supermarkets rely on these promotional payments," Stanton said. Karen Meleta, a spokesperson for Brown, emphasized that the stores aren't only selling less soda, but they're also selling less of other products the tax covers: some sugary syrups and dairy alternatives like cashew and almond milk. "If all people just stopped buying Coke and Pepsi, we probably would have been fine," she said. But, because of the variety of products now taxed, she said the ShopRite stores are losing thousands of customers to stores outside the city, where the same products are now less expensive. Kenney has insisted sales will rebound to normal levels in time, citing examples from tobacco and liquor taxes, but Stanton objects to that claim, too. He said shoppers are habitual. Once they create a routine, they tend to stick to it. "I have a feeling [Kenney's] not a very good food marketer," he said. And Meleta said though she doesn't know whether sales for beverages not included in the soda tax have increased, if they have, it hasn't leveled out the overall losses. This all explains how the tax may contribute to revenue loss, but what about the discrepancy between layoffs and attrition? Though Brown did mention the possibility of layoffs, Meleta said no employees have been laid off. However, there has been up to a 6,000 hour reduction, and up to 300 employees have since left voluntarily, she said. Stanton said this is a reasonable result of significant decreases in beverage sales. He explained supermarket budgets are driven by revenue. If revenue goes down, there’s very little supermarkets can do other than cut hours. Ultimately, it’s up to management to decide how to distribute hours, whether to decrease hours for a large number of employees or to let some people go in order to pay others a "livable wage." "To me, cutting people’s hours and letting people go, they’re the same thing," Stanton added. Our Ruling What we're judging here isn't the possibility of the beverage tax costing ShopRite stores 15 percent of their total sales or whether that necessitates substantially cutting hours. We're just checking to see if Brown has remained consistent in his explanation of how he is losing employees. Though Brown has distanced himself from his early use of the word "layoff," a Philly.com article from Feb. 23 directly quotes him using it. He never definitively said layoffs were going to happen, but he mentioned the possibility. And on Fox 29, he didn’t deny the possibility of layoffs, he just didn’t use that word. In both cases his explanation was ambiguous. However, when we reached out to Brown to clarify his statements, a spokeswoman for him, Karen Meleta, said he had not made any reference to possibly laying off employees, and that there have been no layoffs to date. So, even if the tax is responsible for reduced profits in Brown's supermarket, causing him to have to cut hours and lose employees, he has clearly been inconsistent in citing layoffs or attrition. We rate the claim a Half-Flip. | null | Jeffrey Brown | null | null | null | 2017-03-13T11:00:00 | 2017-02-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-12021 | Susan Rice arrested for criminal ‘unmasking’ of Trump officials. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/sep/19/thelastlineofdefenseorg/troll-site-makes-story-susan-rice-arrested-unmaski/ | A fake news story that said former national security adviser Susan Rice had been arrested for her "failed attempt to stage a coup" against President Donald Trump is actually a post by a self-described liberal troll looking to fool conservatives. The headline on a Sept. 18, 2017, post on TheLastLineOfDefense.org read, "Breaking: Susan Rice arrested for criminal ‘unmasking’ of Trump officials." The post was flagged by Facebook users as part of the social media website’s efforts to combat fake news. The story said "federal officers" raided her office in Provo, Utah, to gather evidence, and Rice was escorted out in handcuffs. "Rice is expected to be charged with multiple felony counts of espionage and other high crimes, and will be lucky if she ever sees the outside of a prison cell again in her life," the post read. Rice isn’t under arrest, because the story is fake. Every story on TheLastLineOfDefense.org is fake. The site is the creation of a man named Christopher Blair, a liberal troll who has told PolitiFact that he created the fake news outlet in order to post absurd stories that would trick conservative readers. A note at the bottom of the website revealed that "everything on this site is a satirical work of fiction." Its About Us page carried a disclaimer that read, "We present fiction as fact and our sources don’t actually exist." The site has been the source of dozens of claims that get reposted on other sites with no indication the articles are fake. The hook to the story is the real news that Rice had asked the National Security Agency to reveal the names of several senior Trump officials in intelligence reports about the presidential campaign and transition. Rice told U.S. House of Representatives investigators she did so to determine why Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of of United Arab Emirates, had visited New York in December 2016, CNN reported. The prince met with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former strategist Steve Bannon at Trump Tower. United Arab Emirates officials did not tell President Barack Obama’s administration the prince was visiting, which broke with diplomatic practice. The country later tried to set up back-channel communications between the Trump White House and Russia. Trump in April had accused Rice of possibly committing a crime by seeking the names of the Trump officials involved, but there’s no evidence that’s the case. In any event, the post about Rice’s arrest is a bogus report concocted by a prolific online troll. We rate the statement Pants On Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | TheLastLineOfDefense.org | null | null | null | 2017-09-19T15:32:39 | 2017-09-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-14364 | North Carolina spends $855 less per student than it did before the Great Recession, and we have one of the lowest per pupil spending levels in the nation. | mostly true | /north-carolina/statements/2016/mar/21/roy-cooper/cooper-says-north-carolinas-education-spending-stu/ | Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has won the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, unveiled his education plan March 8. Education is a large chunk of the state budget, and it’s a hot topic for both Republicans and Democrats. Cooper’s plan lays out eight basic goals, and it slams McCrory and the Republican-led General Assembly for cutting taxes rather than putting more money into public schools. The Great Recession began in December 2007 and forced states to slash budgets. North Carolina cut many areas, including K-12 education, and Cooper says funding still hasn’t bounced back. "North Carolina spends $855 less per student than it did before the Great Recession, and we have one of the lowest per pupil spending levels in the nation," Cooper’s plan reads. The question of whether higher per-pupil spending generates better academic results is another debate entirely. For now, we’ll just focus on the numbers. So does Cooper ace this math problem? Or will his former teachers want to dock him points for his statement? It turns out that like many claims about education funding, it’s complicated – especially the part about "$855 less." One of the country’s lowest spending levels First, the easy part. Does North Carolina spend less per student than most states? The National Education Association, a teacher’s union that has been tracking all sorts of public school funding data for 70 years, says yes. It reported North Carolina’s per-pupil spending was $8,615 in 2007 (compared with a national average of $9,663). It was $8,867 in 2008 (national average $10,259), and $8,632 in 2014 (national average $11,355). Those numbers show North Carolina has been falling further behind the national average. NEA’s 2015-16 report isn’t out yet, but in 2014-15 it ranked North Carolina 46th out of 51, counting all the states and Washington, D.C., in per-pupil expenditure. That backs up Cooper’s claim that "we have one of the lowest per pupil spending levels in the nation." A U.S. Census Bureau report on 2013 per-pupil funding also ranks North Carolina as one of the lowest states. However, the Census hasn’t released more up-to-date numbers. Face value versus inflation However, those NEA numbers show North Carolina’s per-pupil spending is actually higher than it was in 2007 and only slightly lower than in 2008, certainly not $855 lower. So what about Cooper’s claim that North Carolina spends $855 less per student than before the recession? First let’s define two terms: real dollars and nominal dollars. Nominal value refers to a number’s face value. Real value is the inflation-adjusted figure. Cooper appears at first glance to reference nominal dollars. In that case, he would be wrong. But even though he didn’t mention inflation, the numbers Cooper cited did account for it. And that’s important, because inflation has risen by about 10 percent since the recession began, according to the federal government’s CPI Inflation Calculator. For example, if you made $40,000 in 2008 and didn’t make at least $44,034.14 in 2015, you’re facing the same type of hurt that Cooper is talking about here – not a cut per se, but a loss of purchasing power nonetheless. Cooper’s campaign pointed us to the source of his claim, a report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that did find an inflation-adjusted drop of $855 per student since the recession. But that report was from October 2014 – about 17 months ago. There’s an updated report from this January which shows that in the past year, North Carolina has been moving closer to pre-recession numbers. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said North Carolina’s increase from 2014 to 2015 was the fifth-largest in the country in terms of percent change. Other numbers and sources Unsatisfied with the report from 2014, we looked at some more recent numbers. It turns out that depending on whether you count total funding or just state funding, Cooper’s claim – though based on outdated numbers – is still right in the middle of the range. Using state numbers from the Department of Public Instruction and combined state, federal and local numbers from the National Education Association, we adjusted the 2008 numbers for inflation. Then we compared it with the most recent available data, which was 2015 for the state and 2014 for all sources combined. The combined per-pupil spending is down $1,118. State spending by itself is down $481. So Cooper’s claim of "$855 less" is right in the middle of that range. Our ruling Cooper is right that North Carolina is one of the states that spends the least per student. When citing the actual amount he used a report that, while not inaccurate, was outdated. And more context and transparency would’ve been helpful. But Cooper is still right in the general sense that North Carolina’s public schools have less purchasing power than before the recession, and that almost every other state spends more money on education per student than North Carolina. We rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Roy Cooper | null | null | null | 2016-03-21T16:38:23 | 2016-03-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-01468 | We have a goal of 10 percent of [City of Providence] contracts going to women and minority businesses. In reality, less than 1 percent of contracts go to women and minority businesses. | mostly false | /rhode-island/statements/2014/oct/01/jorge-elorza/elorza-says-less-1-providence-contracts-go-women-m/ | During a debate last month on Latino Public Radio with Michael Solomon, then his opponent for the Democratic nomination for Providence mayor, Jorge Elorza said that if elected he would do more to support minority- and women-owned businesses in Rhode Island’s capital. "We have a goal of 10 percent of city contracts going to women and minority businesses," he said, referring to a City of Providence initiative. "In reality, less than 1 percent of contracts go to women and minority businesses." Elorza’s statement came on Aug. 28, before he went on to beat Solomon in the Sept. 9 primary. He now faces independent Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. and Republican Daniel Harrop in the November general election to succeed Angel Taveras as mayor. Elorza has made the awarding of city contracts an issue in his campaign. He first made a claim about the lack of contracts going to minorities and women in an April 16 post to his campaign website that announced his "Equity in Business Opportunity" proposal. In that statement, he said the figure stood at "approximately 1%." Has Providence really fallen so far short of its goal in awarding contracts to minorities and women? While we waited for Elorza’s campaign to provide the basis for the claim, we found the city ordinance from 1990 that set goals for minority and women contracts. The ordinance is actually more ambitious than what Elorza described. It has goals of 10 percent of contracts for minorities and 10 percent for women, or 20 percent total -- double the percentage Elorza cited. Charles Newton, of the Rhode Island Minority Business Enterprise, pointed this out to us. Taveras’s office confirmed it. The ordinance notes that in 1990 and in the two previous years, less than 1 percent of contracts went to such firms. (In the Providence Code of Ordinances, see Chapter 21, Article II, Section 21-52.) When John Taraborelli, a spokesman for Elorza, got back to us, he said Elorza’s statement about the low percentage of contracts awarded to minorities and women was based on a 2013 GoLocalProv story. That story reviewed minutes of all the meetings held by the Providence Board of Contract and Supply from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2012. Of $185.8 million awarded in contracts in 2012, only $1.6 million -- less than 1 percent -- went to companies owned by minorities, according to the story. Taraborelli also said the campaign followed up with Brian Hull, Providence’s Director of municipal and intergovernmental affairs. Hull said the analysis of the 2012 numbers was accurate, according to Taraborelli. We spoke with Hull ourselves and he brought up several caveats when trying to analyze city contracts and also gave us more up-to-date figures. First, the caveats. Not all city contracts go before the Board of Contract and Supply. The board reviews and authorizes city purchases of $5,000 or more. Anything less than $5,000 is put out to bid by city departments, so those smaller contracts aren’t included in the records of the board. In addition, for businesses to be considered as owned by minorities or women they must be certified by the state. However, not all businesses that could qualify decide to go through the certification process, which can be lengthy, said Hull. If those non-certified firms get city contracts, they aren’t counted as owned by minorities or women. Now for the updated number. After Mayor Taveras took office in 2011, his administration formed a task force to bump up the number of contracts awarded to minority firms and studied innovative purchasing programs in other cities, including San Antonio, Texas and Bridgeport, Conn. The efforts resulted in an increase. For 2013, the share of contracts awarded by the Board of Contract and Supply to minority- or women-owned businesses stood at 2.3 percent of the $208 million in purchases that year, according to an analysis done by Hull’s office. That’s about triple the equivalent figure of 0.8 percent for 2012. To put the Providence number in perspective, we talked to Newton, the assistant administrator of the Rhode Island Minority Business Enterprise, the state agency that certifies minority businesses. The state has a requirement of 10 percent of all purchasing going to minority or women businesses. That share currently stands at between 4.5 and 5 percent, according to Newton. Our ruling Jorge Elorza said that Providence has a goal of awarding 10 percent of city contracts to businesses owned by minorities or women, but that in reality less than 1 percent of contracts go to such firms. Elorza got both parts of the claim wrong. The goal is actually 10 percent for minorities and 10 percent for women, for a total of 20 percent. And the latest figures show that, in 2013, 2.3 percent of city contracts went to minorities, more than double the outdated 2012 figure Elorza cited. The difference in the 2012 figure and the 2013 figure is large when the numbers are considered in relation to each other. However, even though there has been an increase, 2.3 percent is still well short of the 20-percent goal. Elorza’s larger point -- that the city needs to act aggressively if it wants to meet policy goals in how it awards contracts-- may be valid, but the numbers he uses to support that claim are way off. We rule his statement Mostly False. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Jorge Elorza | null | null | null | 2014-10-01T00:01:00 | 2014-08-28 | ['None'] |
tron-00097 | Thousands of Fraudulent Clinton Votes Found in Ohio Warehouse | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/thousands-of-fraudulent-clinton-votes-found-in-ohio-warehouse/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | ['2016 election', 'dnc', 'donald trump', 'hillary clinton'] | Thousands of Fraudulent Clinton Votes Found in Ohio Warehouse | Oct 3, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03138 | President Obama trademarked the name 'Obamacare' and receives royalties every time the term is used. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obamacare-royalties/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Did President Obama Make Millions from ‘Obamacare’ Royalties? | 15 January 2017 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-03242 | Congress has approved the creation of a taxpayer-funded network called "Trump TV." | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/republican-congress-approved-trump-tv/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Republican Congress Approved ‘Trump TV’? | 28 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00573 | Use "inmate labor to grow prison food." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/596/use-inmate-labor-to-grow-prison-food/ | null | scott-o-meter | Rick Scott | null | null | Use inmate labor to grow prison food | 2010-12-21T09:36:20 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00785 | Jesse Jackson’s Poetic Admission to an affair? | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/jackson/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Jesse Jackson’s Poetic Admission to an affair? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09196 | Bill McCollum on the Arizona immigration law. | full flop | /florida/statements/2010/may/27/bill-mccollum/bill-mccollum-sends-mixed-signals-arizonas-immigra/ | Arizona's controversial immigration law has proven problematic for Florida Republicans, who in large part appear wary of fully endorsing a proposal that's supported by a majority of Floridians but one that also could cost votes among Florida's Hispanic population. The tightrope-walking act is perhaps no more apparent than when it comes to Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican running for governor. McCollum's primary opponent , Rick Scott, unabashedly supports the law, which will require local law enforcement officials, once police stop a person, to verify the immigration status of those they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally. The law is also supported by a 58 percent of Floridians, according to a May 2010 St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9/Central Florida News 13 poll. We decided to rate McCollum's statements on the Arizona law using our Flip-O-Meter, which measures how consistent someone has been when taking a position on an issue. Before we get to that, though, we need to give you a quick history of how the Arizona law came to pass. The bill in question originally was signed into law on April 23, 2010, by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. An amended version of the bill -- one to lessen the prospects that racial profiling could occur -- passed and was signed into law on April 30. The new version of the law says: "A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution." The prior version had said that an official "may not solely consider race" in such circumstances. The change in the bill -- though its impact can be debated -- is important to note when discussing McCollum's position, since his first comments refer to the first version of the bill, while later comments refer to the second version. McCollum's first published comments about the Arizona law came on April 27, after the original bill had passed. He was asked whether he would like a Florida version of Arizona's law. "I think Arizona has its own unique problems," McCollum said. "I don't think Florida should enact laws like this -- quite that far out." Then in stories on May 13 and May 14 -- after the amended version of Arizona's law passed -- McCollum about-faced and said he would support a Florida version. "As state and local law enforcement officials in Arizona begin to implement the state's aggressive new border security law to crackdown on illegal immigration, I applaud Gov. Brewer and the Arizona Legislature for stepping up their enforcement efforts at a time when President Obama's administration has let states down," McCollum said. "I support Arizona's law as amended, and if the federal government fails to secure our borders and solve the problem of illegal immigration, I would support a similar law for Florida." And he also said: "Arizona leaders recently made needed changes that address concerns I had that the law could be abused and misused to perform racially profiled stops and arrests. I do not support any measure that would result in racial profiling or other unintended consequences for law-abiding American citizens.'' Then, on May 16, came another comment to a television reporter in Port St. Lucie. This time, McCollum said he didn't think an Arizona-style immigration law was needed in Florida. "I didn't change my position, but Arizona changed its law after they passed a law that was very bad (and) that had that the potential for racial profiling," McCollum said. He was then asked if it was realistic that a similar law might be passed in Florida. "We don't need that law in Florida," he said. "That's not what's going to happen here." McCollum's most recent comments were picked up on by the Scott campaign, which highlighted the quote in a television ad. McCollum called the original version of the Arizona immigration law far out, but then said he would support the amended law being adopted in Florida. Since there's a debate over how much difference the amendment ultimately will have in how the law is enforced, it's hard for us to properly measure whether McCollum's position shift in this instance is a complete flip-flop. But what does strike us are McCollum's comments on May 13 and May 16 -- both in reference to the amended version. On May 13, McCollum said he would support implementing the Arizona law in Florida. Then on May 16 he said Florida doesn't need that law. Which is it? McCollum spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said McCollum's position since the final version of the law passed has been consistent. She says McCollum supports the law Arizona passed, in large part because of failures at the federal level. However, McCollum thinks an Arizona-style law is not currently needed in Florida because of the state's unique issues dealing with immigration. But McCollum's statements to the media on May 13 and May 16 are just too different to us, and warrant a rating of Full-Flop. | null | Bill McCollum | null | null | null | 2010-05-27T12:57:35 | 2010-05-16 | ['Arizona'] |
pomt-04405 | Says Barack Obama began his presidency "with an apology tour." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/17/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-barack-obama-began/ | The notion that President Barack Obama started his presidency with an "apology tour" is a persistent and false Republican talking point that we have debunked a number of times. Mitt Romney is sticking to it. The Republican presidential nominee repeated it during his second debate against Obama at Hofstra University on Oct. 16, 2012, in response to an audience member’s question about the September 2012 Libya attack. "The president's policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes," he said. We checked Romney’s "apology" attack when he used it at the Republican National Convention and in his 2010 book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. The tour, he wrote, is Obama’s way "of signaling to foreign countries and foreign leaders that their dislike for America is something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable. There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe; President Obama's words are like kindling to them." "In his first nine months in office, President Obama has issued apologies and criticisms of America in speeches in France, England, Turkey, and Cairo; at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the United Nations in New York City. He has apologized for what he deems to be American arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision; for dictating solutions, for acting unilaterally, and for acting without regard for others; for treating other countries as mere proxies, for unjustly interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, and for feeding anti-Muslim sentiments; for committing torture, for dragging our feet on global warming and for selectively promoting democracy." An early apology tour? Romney labels seven separate Obama speeches as apologies in his book. (We've compiled those passages in a separate document.) We noticed Obama tended to acknowledge American mistakes or bad impressions, but he countered it with praise of American ideals and the need to come together. At a town hall meeting in France in 2009, for example, Obama encouraged Europe to work with the United States, and admitted that the United States "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But he immediately said that Europe has been guilty of a "casual" and "insidious" anti-Americanism. At a major address to the United Nations, Obama said, "I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. And this has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction." At a speech in Cairo on relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, Obama got very close to regretting decades-old U.S. actions in Iran. But then he immediately countered with criticism of Iran. He suggested both countries simply "move forward." Throughout those speeches, Obama was most conciliatory when talking about torture and detention at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama typically said the U.S. must always stay true to its ideals, and that's why he "unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year." Apologies or diplomacy? We asked several experts in 2010 if Obama had apologized. Here’s a recap of their thoughts (read more here): • Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst with the the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Obama was definitely apologizing. He co-wrote an analysis on the topic: "Barack Obama's Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower." "Apologizing for your own country projects an image of weakness before both allies and enemies," Gardiner said. "It sends a very clear signal that the U.S. is to blame for some major developments on the world stage. This can be used to the advantage of those who wish to undermine American global leadership." • John Murphy, a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studies presidential rhetoric and political language. He said Obama used conciliatory language for diplomatic purposes, not apologizing. "It's much more a sense of establishing of reciprocity," Murphy said. "Each side says, okay, we haven't done great, but we have a new president and we're going to make a fresh start and move forward. I don't think that's an apology." • Lauren Bloom, an attorney and business consultant, wrote the book, The Art of the Apology, advising businesses and individuals on when to apologize and how to do it. She said Obama's words fell short of an apology, mostly because he didn't use the words "sorry" or "regret." "I think to make an effective apology, the words 'I'm sorry' or 'we're sorry' always have to be there," Bloom said. Obama's remarks were really non-apologies, and they're not good in business or personal relationships, Bloom said. The one area where they can be useful: international diplomacy. "Gov. Romney is trying to appeal to the inner John Wayne of his readers, and that has a certain emotional appeal," Bloom said. "For the rest of us, a level assessment of less-than-perfect human behavior is perfectly reasonable." • We spoke with Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, a professor who tracked international human rights issues via the website Political Apologies and Reparations. Many of the apologies in the database relate to genocide or slavery. "To say the United States will not torture is not an apology, it is a statement of intent," Howard-Hassman said. "A complete apology has to acknowledge something was wrong, accept responsibility, express sorrow or regret and promise not to repeat it." Obama's Cairo address in particular was a means of reaching out to the Islamic world, not an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, she said. "Whether he's apologizing or not, he's saying 'I respect your society and I respect your customs.' Maybe that's what Romney considers an apology, that gesture of respect," she said. "But a gesture of respect is not an apology." We should note that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have offered two apologies to foreign leaders during the latter half of Obama’s term -- once to Afghanistan President Harmid Karzai for the accidental burnings of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and another to Pakistan for the death of Pakistani troops, respectively. However, these 2012 and 2011 gestures do not fit Romney’s claim that Obama’s presidency "began with an apology tour." Our ruling Once again, Romney has accused Obama of beginning his presidency "with an apology tour." Our reviews of Obama’s 2009 foreign travels and speeches showed no such thing. While he criticized past U.S. actions, such as torture practices at Guantanamo, he did not offer one apology. It’s ridiculous to call Obama’s foreign visits and remarks "an apology tour." We rate this statement Pants on Fire! | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2012-10-17T00:35:41 | 2012-10-16 | ['None'] |
tron-01471 | Three Democratic Victories Overturned Due to Voter Fraud | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/democratic-victories-overturned-voter-fraud/ | null | government | null | null | ['elections', 'states', 'voter fraud'] | 3 Democratic Victories Overturned By Courts Due to Voter Fraud | Nov 9, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12665 | Says Airbnb "decreases real estate values and increases costs for workforce housing." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2017/mar/20/philip-levine/does-airbnb-decrease-housing-values-and-increase-w/ | Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine went on a Facebook rant against Airbnb after a conservative publication criticized city officials for supporting fines against the short-term rental company. Airbnb posted the article by Sunshine State News on social media. Levine, a potential Democratic candidate for governor in 2018, fired back in the comments. Levine wrote that Miami Beach commissioners aren’t the only opponents of Airbnb, which allows property owners to rent out houses and apartments, or a bedroom, to visitors across the world. The city generally bans short-term rentals except in limited multi-family areas. He said officials in New York, San Francisco and Miami also don’t support Airbnb. Why? "Because it destroys neighborhoods, buildings, decreases real estate values and increases costs for workforce housing!!!!!" he wrote in a March 2 Facebook comment. We decided to tackle two of Levine’s attacks: that Airbnb decreases real estate values and increases costs for workforce housing. (By workforce housing, Levine was referring to homes for people who earn 60 to 120 percent of an area’s median income.) Airbnb does remove some units from the regular supply of rentals; however, it’s questionable about whether that can be defined as "workforce housing" since many units are in expensive areas. The evidence that Levine presented does not show that Airbnb decreases real estate values. Several factors influence housing costs, even in areas with Airbnb and where rents are rising. Jack McCabe, a South Florida real estate analyst, said it’s premature to make broad claims about the impact of Airbnb because it hasn’t been around for long and only represents a slice of the residential market. "It's still too soon to really have data for a long enough period of time to make these types of assumptions or assertions," he said. Some real estate experts said that Airbnb is the latest scapegoat for the lack of available affordable rentals — a problem that predated the home-sharing company. Levine’s evidence largely anecdotal Definitive, independent analysis about the impact of Airbnb is generally lacking. Most of the research we found focused on one city, or ones that were already plagued by housing crunches. For example, a San Francisco official said that "illegitimate rentals" took out 1,900 long-term housing units off the market, but it isn’t clear how many of those were affordable for people earning median incomes or less. Levine sent us multiple articles about the impact of Airbnb on housing — some of the articles were anecdotal, speculative or general news reports about Airbnb’s growth in Miami Beach. We will focus on the evidence he sent that included studies based on data. A 2015 study by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocacy group for working families, concluded Airbnb was exacerbating the lack of affordable rental units in Los Angeles. The group also did a 2014 study that found rents were growing faster in Los Angeles neighborhoods with the highest Airbnb listing density. Roy Samaan, the author of the studies, told PolitiFact that he couldn’t definitively say that Airbnb was the cause of rents increasing. Several factors influence rental costs. There was a strong correlation, he said, between rising rents and increased Airbnb listings when the vacancy rate was really low. Since Airbnb doesn’t make its booking information fully public, it’s difficult to fully assess the impact. Another piece of evidence Levine cited stemmed from a report commissioned by affordable housing activists in New York City. It concluded that short-term rentals are reducing the vacancy rate, which causes increases in rental prices. The study zeroed in on a subset of about 8,000 Airbnb listings in New York City and concluded if those units were put back on the regular market, the vacancy rate would rise from the current 3.4-3.6 percent to 4 percent. Richard K. Green, a real estate professor at the University of Southern California, told PolitiFact those 8,000 units would be absorbed quickly in a rental market of more than 2.2 million units. "I am skeptical that the local vacancy rates would move as much as the authors of the New York study would suggest," he said. Airbnb fires back It did not come as a surprise when Airbnb argued through its own packet of articles and studies that its listings don’t hurt real estate values or supply. Again, we will focus on the citations based on data. A FiveThirtyEight analysis concluded that "Airbnb’s impact is probably still small in most cities," although it could grow. The statistics-based news website used Airbnb booking and revenue data to examine how many units Airbnb could be taking off the rental market nationwide. Stockton Williams, executive director of the Terwilliger Center for Housing at the Urban Land Institute, told FiveThirtyEight that the Airbnb units don’t add up to much as a percentage of total rental units in big cities in the United States. Other factors, such as the increasing demand for urban living, have played a much larger role in driving up prices in big cities, he said. "There is a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence that they may be occurring in a relatively small number of individual neighborhoods and properties — and therefore quite real to affected residents and owners," Williams told us. Murray Cox, owner of Inside Airbnb, a website that analyzes data about Airbnb listings, told Business Insider that Airbnb can’t entirely be blamed for housing issues in cities that were already expensive. Cox told PolitiFact the research reflects a mixed bag: Some homes have been removed from the housing supply, but the additional revenue for property owners can increase the property value for owners. Airbnb rentals that become "party houses" could reduce neighboring values, but Cox said he hadn’t seen detailed analysis about that. Additional real estate experts argued that short-term rentals, while displacing long-term renters, could increase cash flow for owners and therefore increase their property value. Green, the real estate professor at the University of Southern California, said that focusing on Airbnb doesn’t get to the heart of the matter — "that cities are making it more and more difficult to build housing." Our ruling Levine says Airbnb "decreases real estate values and increases costs for workforce housing." Some research and news articles have argued that Airbnb has decreased the rental supply and therefore is driving up prices, but it’s questionable whether all of those units can be described as "workforce housing" in already expensive areas with a lack of affordable housing. Levine did not point to evidence proving that Airbnb has decreased real estate values. It’s too soon to fully assess the impact of Airbnb on housing markets, and that’s difficult to do when it only represents a small fraction of the housing supply in any city or region. We rate this claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Philip Levine | null | null | null | 2017-03-20T17:32:50 | 2017-03-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-14664 | One in every three women has an abortion during her lifetime. | half-true | /texas/statements/2016/jan/19/wendy-davis/flawed-wendy-davis-claim-1-3-women-has-had-abortio/ | Former Fort Worth state Sen. Wendy Davis, the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, wants the Supreme Court to reverse the Texas law that critics say will make it harder for far-flung Texans to access abortions. Republicans who carried the changes into law said their goal was to improve women’s health by requiring abortion doctors to gain admitting privileges in a nearby hospital and requiring abortions to be performed in hospital-like settings. Abortion providers sued, arguing the regulations — impossible for many clinics to meet — were unnecessary because they offered no health benefits for a relatively low-risk procedure. Davis, joined by women with legislative experience who, like Davis, have revealed decisions to terminate pregnancies, said in the Jan. 4, 2016, brief that the law could affect women in need if it’s allowed to be enforced by leaving about 10 clinics operating in the state’s largest cities—down from more than 40 when House Bill 2 was signed into law in 2013. In the brief, the women say they’re "grateful that they were able to exercise their rights in nearby doctor’s offices and abortion clinics without the burdens of travel, delay and additional expense that would be imposed on Texas women if HB 2 were to remain in force." Generally, the brief says, false "stereotypes persist in society and in state legislatures regarding women who exercise their right to choose. The reality is that approximately one out of every three women in this country has had an abortion in her lifetime." The brief later says: "One in every three women has an abortion during her lifetime." A reader asked us to check that "lifetime" statement. Nationally in 2011, an estimated 1.1 million abortions were performed, down nearly 14 percent from 2008, according to a March 2014 article by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes reproductive health and abortion rights. The 2011 estimate broke out to 16.9 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15-44, the researchers wrote. To our inquiry, Davis told us by email that Linda Goldstein, among lawyers who drafted the brief, had advised that, as footnoted in the brief, a 1998 Guttmacher study was the basis of the one-in-three statement. In a follow-up email, Davis said the 1998 study was a precursor to a more recent estimate, in a 2011 Guttmacher study, that one in three women will have an abortion by age 45. Separately, Michael New, a visiting associate professor at Florida’s Ave Maria University who has questioned the prevalence of abortions, responded to our inquiry by pointing out a September 2015 story by the FactChecker at The Washington Post that found flaws in a claim that one in three women will have an abortion "by the age of 45." The Post story explains the purpose of the 2011 Guttmacher report was to update older estimates that 43 percent of women of reproductive age would have an abortion by age 45. The abortion rate had declined over intervening years, the story notes, and researchers hypothesized that the proportion of women who will have an abortion during their lifetime also probably declined. The study used abortion rates (the number of abortions per 1,000 women) for subgroups of women (including age, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity) who responded to the institute’s 2008 Abortion Patient Survey of nearly 9,500 women, the Post summed up. Next, researchers used survey data to find the first abortion rate for age subgroups, multiplied the rate by the number of years in each age group and added up the number of first-time abortions that had taken place by the time women were 45. This was called the "cumulative first abortion rate," through which they came up with the "lifetime incidence" of abortion, or the "one in three" figure, the Post reported. To grasp the basis of Davis’s claim, we turned first to the 1998 study footnoted in the brief and then the 2011 follow-up. 1998 study The December 1998 study, "Unintended Pregnancy in the United States," by Stanley K. Henshaw, then the institute’s deputy director of research, offers estimates for the incidence of abortions in 1994--more than 20 years ago. A Guttmacher summary says Henshaw drew on national surveys of women taken in 1982, 1988 and 1995 plus other data to estimate 1994 rates and percentages of unintended birth and pregnancy and the proportion of women who had experienced an unintended birth, an abortion or both. The study itself describes the cited National Surveys of Family Growth as a "periodic fertility survey" that collects detailed reproductive and contraceptive histories and related information from women of reproductive age. "Forty-eight percent of women aged 15-44 in 1994 had had at least one unplanned pregnancy sometime in their lives," Henshaw wrote, "28% had had one or more unplanned births, 30% had had one or more abortions and 11% had had both." Put another way, then, the study suggested that as of 1994, nearly one third of women of childbearing age had had an abortion. The likelihood of women having had an abortion varied by age. A chart indicates some 40 percent of women aged 30-34 in 1994 had had one or more abortions; at the low end, 7 percent of women aged 15-19 had had one or more abortions. SOURCE: Study, "Unintended Pregnancy in the United States," S.K. Henshaw, the Guttmacher Institute, December 1998 (accessed Jan. 12, 2016) The summary continues: "At 1994 rates, women can expect to have 1.42 unintended pregnancies by the time they are 45, and at 1992 rates, 43% of women will have had an abortion." The study says "14% of women can expect to have had an abortion before age 20, 37% by age 30 and 43% by age 45." 2011 study notes declining abortion rate Rebecca Wind, a Guttmacher spokeswoman, responded to our request for elaboration with an email stating: "The stat Wendy Davis cited was correct a few years ago; as abortion rates have declined, so have lifetime incidence rates." Wind guided us to the 2011 study, "Changes in Abortion Rates Between 2000 and 2008 and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion," which notes the U.S. "abortion rate has declined since 1992, and the proportion of women who will terminate a pregnancy in their lifetime has probably declined as well." The authors analyzed abortion rates from 2000 through 2008 and estimated the proportion of women of reproductive age "who will have an abortion by age 45." Women "aged 40 and older had" an abortion "rate of 300.9 per 1,000 women," the study says. "Put differently, an estimated 30.1% of women aged 15–44 in 2008 will have an abortion by age 45 if exposed to prevailing abortion rates throughout their reproductive lives," it says. "Similarly, an estimated 8.3% of U.S. women would have had an abortion by age 20 and 25.1% by age 30." Broadly, the study notes, the "proportion of women expected to have an abortion by age 45 declined substantially, from 43% in 1992 to 30% in 2008 and this pattern parallels the substantial decline in abortion rates during that time period. "Still, that almost one-third of women are anticipated to have an abortion by age 45 suggests that it is not an uncommon procedure," the study says. The study closes by saying that if "current" abortion rates hold, "almost one-third of American women will obtain an abortion in their lifetime." To our inquiry, Guttmacher scientist Rachel Jones told us by email that Davis’s statement referring to all women was incorrect "because it implied that a random sample of women in 2016 would find that 30% of them would have had an abortion. Our stat is the projected lifetime incidence of abortion among women in 2008 by the time they turn 45. (That is, lots of women currently aged 15-44 have not had abortions but many will before they exit their reproductive years.)" Jones added: "We know that the abortion rate has dropped substantially since 2008, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the lifetime incidence has. There also have to be concomitant changes in age-specific first-abortion rates." She said that until 2014 data is analyzed, likely in 2017, it’s only appropriate to say that given 2008 abortion rates, "an estimated 30% of women will have an abortion by age 45." Other analyses We heard back from a couple of activists opposed to abortion including New, who emphasized Guttmacher’s 2011 analysis was retrospective, drawing on 2008 abortion data, while there may continue to be fewer U.S. abortions year by year. "The abortion rate," New said by email, "has been falling consistently since the early 1980s and continues to fall," especially among teens and young adults, he emailed, which might mean, if trends continue, that women in general will be less likely to have an abortion. Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, an organization dedicated to ending abortion, provided a statement by email noting that a physicist, William Johnston, has estimated that as of 2008, about 28 percent of U.S. women aged 15-64 had had abortions--up from 2.8 percent in 1973, the year the Supreme Court established a woman's constitutional right to end a pregnancy. Our ruling Davis said: "One in every three women has an abortion during her lifetime." That statement is a bit misleading in that it sounds like it is based on hard data showing one in three women have had abortions. Of late, the statistic is based on extrapolations of 2008 data analyzed by the Guttmacher Institute in an effort to estimate how many women will have an abortion during their reproductive years. Meantime, abortion rates have generally declined so it’s possible such estimates don’t reflect reality. We rate this claim, which is missing important qualifications, Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Wendy Davis | null | null | null | 2016-01-19T11:55:27 | 2016-01-04 | ['None'] |
pomt-03633 | Metro on whether it could use bond money for restoration. | full flop | /oregon/statements/2013/may/04/metro/did-metro-flip-flop-whether-it-could-use-bond-mone/ | The voters of Washington, Multnomah and Clackamas counties will decide May 21, 2013, whether to approve a 5-year operating levy for Metro, the regional government that oversees growth and also runs the Oregon Zoo. Measure 26-152 would raise approximately $10 million a year from an increase in property taxes, half of which would go toward restoration of natural areas. Metro officials say the measure is necessary because general obligation bond measures approved by voters in 1995 and in 2006 allowed the government to purchase land, but didn’t provide money to restore and maintain the new land. "Twice in two decades, Metro voters approved measures to acquire thousands of acres of natural areas throughout the tri-county region," reads the Voters’ Pamphlet summary of this spring’s Measure 26-152. "Past measures could not include money for maintenance and restoration." Which got PolitiFact Oregon thinking. We remembered how the 2006 measure was pitched to voters. The language of Measure 26-80, also in the Voters’ Pamphlet, was clear: "This measure directs Metro to buy and restore natural areas for the protection of water quality and preservation of fish and wildlife habitat ..." Metro officials wrote both statements in the Voters’ Pamphlet. Voters overwhelmingly approved the $227 million bond measure in 2006, probably thinking that the money would go toward both purchase and actual restoration, because that’s what supporters said they’d do. Did Metro use the promise of restoration to sell the 2006 measure? Why is it now saying that the 2006 money couldn’t be used for restoration? Has Metro flip-flopped on what the 2006 bond could and could not do? We shot off an email to Metro spokesman Jim Middaugh and started digging. For people who don’t follow the scintillating world of public finance, just know that government can sell general obligation bonds -- and take on debt -- to pay for capital projects and improvements. Governments do it all the time. Governments do not, however, tend to incur long-term debt for operational expenses, such as routine maintenance or payroll. That’s poor fiscal policy, and that is the distinction Metro is making with the different measures. So the first question for us is: Can money from bonds be used for restoration, despite what Metro now says? This description of general obligation debt -- found on the state Treasury website -- indicates that the answer is yes. "Under ORS 287A.050 - 287A.145 general obligation debt can be incurred for capital construction and improvements having an expected useful life of more than one year. This does not include maintenance and repair (the need for which could be reasonably anticipated), supplies, and equipment that are not intrinsic to a structure." PolitiFact Oregon can see how restoration of purchased property could count as an improvement lasting for more than year. And certainly, Metro officials saw it that way because they sold it that way. Still, Metro draws a distinction between restoration spending then and restoration spending now. Middaugh said that despite the state description, the agency has its own guidelines on how to spend bonded money. For example, Metro used bonded money for the initial "stabilization" part of restoration, defined as "one-time activities performed during the first two to five years after" land purchase. Mowing grass, killing weeds and removing trash is OK so long as the activities take place during this phase -- but afterward, those actions are considered maintenance. Why wasn’t this distinction called out in public materials? The description was too wonky, he said, so they went with the more conversational "restoration" and "protection." Half of the money from this operating levy would go toward operations and education, and the other half to continued restoration of natural areas. Out of curiosity, we asked if Metro had planned all along to come back to voters for more money. The answer was yes, and the proof is on page 9 of the resolution authorizing the 2006 measure, stating that Metro would only have enough money to manage new lands for a limited time. All we can say to these disclosures is that we wish Metro had been utterly transparent and upfront -- both about long-term funding plans and definitions -- with voters from the beginning. PolitiFact Oregon loves nature and we love good governance. We don’t want public bodies borrowing money recklessly, and we trust our elected officials to make that distinction. But here we have a government that sold an earlier measure as a way to buy and restore natural areas and that now says officials couldn’t use that money for restoration. Yet there is no legal prohibition on using bond proceeds for restoration. In fact, Metro has spent nearly $5 million to do so, even if staffers call it something else. The bottom line is that both statements come from the Voters' Pamphlet and both were written by Metro officials. And both statements can’t be right. Metro wants more money to further nurture its new natural areas. Metro wants money for boat ramps and better playgrounds that should improve use of visitor areas. We don’t fault the wishes. But we do fault Metro for saying one thing, then another, about whether restoration was part of the plan in 2006 and why more money is needed in 2013. This is a reversal of position by Oregon’s tri-county regional government. We rule this a Full Flop. | null | Metro | null | null | null | 2013-05-04T03:00:00 | 2013-04-24 | ['None'] |
pomt-14289 | Says Bernie Sanders "fundamentally changed the lives" of Immokalee farm workers in Florida for the better. | half-true | /florida/statements/2016/apr/05/bernie-sanders/did-bernie-sanders-fundamentally-improve-lives-tom/ | Bernie Sanders says he successfully changed the lives of exploited tomato workers in Florida. In an ad for Sanders, which ran nationally on Univision, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., praises Sanders for taking up the plight of Immokalee tomato workers. "He went and visited personally. Then he came back and convinced Ted Kennedy to hold some hearings, and it fundamentally changed the lives of those workers." There is no dispute that Sanders, a Vermont senator, was a passionate defender of the tomato workers from Central Florida in 2008. A coalition representing those workers successfully reached an agreement with the growers about two years later to improve pay and working conditions. But how much credit does Sanders get, and has the agreement "fundamentally changed" the workers’ lives? Sanders’ advocacy on behalf of Immokalee farm workers in 2008 In 2008, Sanders traveled to meet with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which represented thousands of tomato workers. "The conditions here are a disaster. People are being exploited ruthlessly," Sanders said. Since the coalition couldn’t reach an agreement with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange directly, it negotiated with purchasers of tomatoes, asking them to pay a penny-per-pound increase. Yum Brands -- parent of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC -- signed on in 2005, and McDonald’s in 2007, and more would later follow. Sanders, along with a few other senators, sent letters to food chains and grocery stores urging them to join the campaign, said Warren Gunnels, a spokesman for Sanders’ presidential campaign. Sanders also met with a representative of the growers’ exchange. On March 13, 2008, Sanders held a press conference on the U.S. Capitol grounds to support a nationwide petition drive on behalf of farm workers. He invited the coalition to testify before a Senate committee in April 2008. "In the United States of America, millions of workers are being forced into a race to the bottom," Sanders testified. "What we have in the tomato fields of Florida are workers who are living on the lowest rung of the ladder in that race to the bottom." About two and a half years after the hearing -- in November 2010 -- the coalition and the growers’ exchange reached an agreement. It included the penny-per-pound premium and other steps intended to improve working conditions, such as a system to resolve complaints about sexual abuse as well as a health and safety program. Those involved in the process say Sanders should get some credit for the publicity. The agreement "probably would have occurred anyway at some point, but we think it is fair to say that Sen. Sanders’ efforts accelerated the process," coalition spokesman Steve Hitov told PolitiFact Florida. Reggie Brown, a vice president with the growers’ exchange who met with Sanders in 2008, said, "I think he can be fairly given some credit for having had a role." Giev Kashkooli, political and legislative director at United Farm Workers of America, a group which endorsed Hillary Clinton, says that "it's likely that (Sanders') visit and subsequent work did bring attention to farm workers in Immokalee who deserved support." Impact of agreement There is evidence that the agreement between the coalition and the growers has led to some improvements for workers, but there are differences of opinion about the extent of those improvements. According to the coalition’s most recent annual report, since 2011 the agreement has resulted in nearly $20 million in premiums paid by buyers. Other gains include efforts to reduce sexual assault, the creation of health and safety committees, and resolution of more than 1,000 worker complaints. "The Fair Food Program has brought about unprecedented levels of compliance with human rights standards in the fields," said Laura Safer Espinoza, a retired New York Supreme Court justice who serves as the executive director of the Fair Food Standards Council, which monitors the agreement and audits the growers. The average bucket rate has increased from 40 cents before the agreement to 55 to 65 cents today. But we found no independent research about what that translates to on average per worker, although the coalition cites a range of $30 to $60 per week. Pay is variable due to changing crop conditions and other factors. Greg Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, has raised some criticisms of the program. He has sued fast food chains on behalf of pickers who he said didn’t get the premium. Since only some purchasers of Florida tomatoes have agreed to pay the premium, not all of the tomatoes a worker picks will include the premium. "The short answer is that the hearings changed nothing whatsoever in Immokalee," he said. "The hearings did provide a national forum for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which has for the past 20 years pressed for higher wages for the tomato workers. However, despite immense publicity for its efforts, the coalition’s efforts have resulted in very minimal wage increases to the workers." Schell sent us a pay stub of a worker showing the premium was only $1.21 one week while the coalition sent us a pay stub showing $101.06 for another worker. Both are extremes, says coalition attorney Steve Hitov. A reporter from the Naples Daily News described the tough lives of tomato workers in an article in March. She said "they earn $10 an hour, and that the salaries have changed only a few cents an hour in the past five years." Workers barely earn enough to support their families and live together in trailers. There is no dispute that picking tomatoes remains a tough job, but "there is no comparison between what existed before and what exists now," says Janice Fine, a labor professor at Rutgers, who has interviewed the workers and has met with the coalition and the growers. "In my interviews with farmworkers, they talk about a radical transformation in their work lives," she told PolitiFact Florida. Our ruling Sanders’ ad says he "fundamentally changed the lives" of Immokalee farm workers in Florida. Sanders helped give national publicity to the struggles of Immokalee tomato pickers in 2008. He visited with the workers, wrote letters to tomato purchasers urging them to join a program to pay workers more, met with a representative from the growers exchange and held a Senate hearing in 2008. About two years later, the workers reached an agreement with the growers. The coalition and the growers’ exchange both say Sanders should get some credit, although it’s likely that the agreement could have been reached without his efforts. Whether the agreement "fundamentally changed the lives" of the workers is difficult to quantify. The agreement included an increase for purchasers which goes toward pickers, but it’s unclear on average how many dollars more each picker earns per week as a result of it. There have been other successes in the agreement, including the resolution of worker complaints. We rate this statement Half True. | null | Bernie Sanders | null | null | null | 2016-04-05T10:57:39 | 2016-03-19 | ['Bernie_Sanders'] |
snes-04945 | Bruce Springsteen cancelled a show in Greensboro, North Carolina, over the state's so-called 'bathroom law.' | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bruce-springsteen-bathroom-law/ | null | Entertainment | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Bruce Springsteen Cancels North Carolina Concert Over ‘Bathroom Law’ | 8 April 2016 | null | ['Greensboro,_North_Carolina', 'North_Carolina', 'Bruce_Springsteen'] |
snes-01368 | First NFL Team Declares Bankruptcy Over 'Take a Knee' Protests? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-nfl-team-declare-bankruptcy-protests/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | First NFL Team Declares Bankruptcy Over ‘Take a Knee’ Protests? | 6 December 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02249 | Videos show tornadoes in Cape Town, South Africa. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tornadoes-in-cape-town/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does Footage Show Tornadoes in Cape Town? | 7 June 2017 | null | ['Cape_Town', 'South_Africa'] |
tron-00731 | My Twilight Years by Clint Eastwood | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/my-twilight-years-clint-eastwood/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | My Twilight Years by Clint Eastwood | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05546 | Singer Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by a doppelgänger. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/avril-lavigne-dead-conspiracy-theory/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Conspiracy Weary | 5 November 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01959 | By 2006, the American people were overwhelmingly against the Iraq War. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jun/20/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-2006-americans-were-overwhelm/ | In her recently published memoir Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton acknowledges that "she got it wrong" when she voted to authorize the Iraq War in 2003. As Iraq once again becomes a big news story, as Islamic militants take over large portions of the country’s north and threaten the capital in Baghdad, we thought it would be worth checking one of Clinton’s claims about the American public’s perceptions of the Iraq War. In the seventh chapter of her memoir, Clinton writes that, "by 2006, the American people were overwhelmingly against the Iraq war." Is that correct? We looked at polling data about the war between 2003 and 2006, archived at PollingReport.com. (Here are the ones that fit the criteria for this fact-check.) Initially, Americans felt favorably about the war. While the wording changes somewhat from poll to poll, the level of support for the war was usually at or above two-thirds in mid- March 2003, right before the war began. That month, support hit 70 percent in a Newsweek poll, 64 percent in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 65 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll and 71 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll. In the first few weeks after the attack was launched, support levels went as high as 77 percent in CBS News and Los Angeles Times polls, 78 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll and 81 percent in a Fox News poll. However, as the war continued, support began to soften. Eventually, support turned negative in some polls. By mid-May 2004 -- a little over a year after the start of the war -- Time and CNN asked, "Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?" and found 44 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval. The numbers were similar when the pollsters asked, "In general, do you approve or disapprove of current military policy in Iraq?" Even the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll -- which as late as June 2004 found support at 60 percent -- found by February 2005 that a plurality of respondents, 49 percent, said going to war was the "wrong thing" to have done, compared to 46 percent who said it was the "right thing." Disapproval of Bush’s handling of the war reached 58 percent in August 2005 in an Associated Press/Ipsos poll, and it remained roughly the same in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in February 2006 and a CNN poll in May 2006. Finally, in the second half of 2006, opposition the war began to hit 2-to-1 margins over support for the war. In July 2006, when CBS and the New York Times asked, "Do you think the result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?" 63 percent said it was not worth it, compared to just 30 percent who said it was worth it. Then, in November 2006, Time asked about approval of Bush’s handling of Iraq and found 65 percent disapproval and only 31 percent approval. Disapproval continued to rise slightly into 2007. AP found 68 percent disapproval of Bush’s handling of Iraq in January 2007, and CNN/Opinion Research Corporation found 69 percent. So the polling generally tracks with time timeline Clinton offered. The only question is whether disapproval rates in the low-to-mid 60 percent range qualifies as "overwhelming." We were a little skeptical, so we asked some polling experts. "That is an awfully subjective call," said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll and co-founder of Pollster.com. "I’d be surprised if there were any consensus where that line falls." Mark Blumenthal, the senior polling editor of the Huffington Post and the founding editor of Pollster.com, said the use of "overwhelming" strikes him as subjective, and depends on the context. "What seems like an 'overwhelming' victory margin in a competitive electoral contest might not seem quite as 'overwhelming' in the context of attitudes about a particular policy issue," he said. "I’d guess I’d be OK with 2-to-1 for the former, but 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 for the latter." Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Clinton, emailed us to say, "In public opinion, if you’re talking about 50-percent-plus opposition on an issue, I think most people would call that ‘overwhelming.’" Vietor added that "the 2006 elections, which went massively in the Democrats’ favor, were viewed as a response to the war." Our ruling Clinton said that, "by 2006, the American people were overwhelmingly against the Iraq war." Polling data shows that roughly 65 percent of the public opposed the war by the second half of 2006, but while that qualifies as strong opposition, the definition of "overwhelming" within the polling profession is more uncertain. On balance, we rate Clinton’s claim Mostly True. UPDATE, June 20, 2014, 11:45 am: This article has been updated to include a response from Clinton's staff received after the story was published. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2014-06-20T10:45:41 | 2014-06-10 | ['United_States', 'Iraq_War'] |
afck-00212 | “Midvaal [has] the lowest unemployment rate in Gauteng.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/does-the-da-create-change-that-moves-sa-forward-we-weigh-up-key-claims/ | null | null | null | null | null | Does the DA create ‘change that moves SA forward’? We weigh up key claims | 2016-06-02 06:07 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04147 | John F. Kennedy Jr. was a frontrunner for a U.S. Senate seat from New York just before he was killed in a suspicious plane crash in 1999. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jfk-senate-frontrunner/ | null | Conspiracy Theories | null | Bethania Palma | null | JFK Jr. Was a U.S. Senate Frontrunner Before Suspicious Plane Crash? | 29 August 2016 | null | ['United_States', 'New_York_City'] |
pomt-08863 | Because of violence spreading from Mexico, "you’ve got bullets hitting the city hall in El Paso. You’ve got bombs exploding in El Paso." | half-true | /texas/statements/2010/aug/05/rick-perry/perry-says-violence-mexico-reaching-el-paso-bullet/ | Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has called for President Barack Obama to dispatch more troops to the Texas-Mexico border, told a national TV audience last week that violence in Mexico has seeped into El Paso, across the Rio Grande from troubled Ciudad Juarez. "You’ve got bullets hitting the city hall in El Paso," Perry said in a July 28 interview with Greta Van Susteren of the Fox News Channel. "You’ve got bombs exploding in El Paso." Two days later, Perry spoke in a similar vein during a visit to Laredo. "When a car bomb goes off in El Paso ... we know there's a (security) problem," said Perry, according to KGNS-TV, a Laredo station. The threat of border spillover violence is a simmering topic. In June, for instance, PolitiFact Texas found Barely True U.S. Sen. John Cornyn's statement that spillover violence was "real and escalating." But bullets and bombs in El Paso? Indeed, bullets fired on the Mexico side of the border struck El Paso City Hall on June 29. According to the El Paso Police Department, one bullet traveled through a ninth-floor window and an interior wall before lodging in a picture frame. Stucco walls of the government building were struck by an additional six rounds, the police said. Nobody in El Paso was hurt. "Investigators believe that the rounds may be related to (a shooting incident) that occurred in Juarez," a police department press release said. "El Paso City Hall does not appear to be the specific target of these rounds." Darrel Petry, spokesman for the department, told us the Juarez incident involved an attack on Mexican federal agents. We asked Petry if, as Perry says, bombs are exploding in El Paso. Petry replied: "I am not aware of any bomb going off in El Paso." If that had happened, he said, "I think I would have put the press release out." Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger, responding to our request for information, said in an e-mail that violence in northern Mexico has continued to escalate "and presents a clear and present threat to border communities." She noted that, in the interview with Van Susteren, Perry also mentioned the assassination of a Tamaulipas gubernatorial candidate this summer. Rodolfo Torre Cantu was shot and killed near the airport in that state's capital, Ciudad Victoria, about 200 miles from the Texas border city of Brownsville. As for bombs, Perry "also made reference to a car bomb that was detonated by cartel members a few weeks ago in Juarez just across from El Paso," Cesinger said. On July 15, a car bomb was set off in Ciudad Juarez's downtown, killing several people. The Associated Press quoted authorities saying the July 15 explosion was in retaliation for the arrest of a top leader of the La Linea gang, which works for the Juarez drug cartel. The bomb, which blew up a parked car, was described by the AP as bringing "a new dimension of terror" to the Mexican drug wars. The Washington Post reported: "The assailants drew police and medical workers to the scene by leaving a bound, wounded man in a police uniform near an intersection and then calling in a false report that an officer had been shot." The Post and other news outlets said the bomb was then set off by a cell-phone signal. The Juarez-based U.S. consulate's office closed July 30 "to review its security posture," according to a message posted online by the office. "American citizens are advised avoid the area around the Consulate General until it reopens." In March, a consulate employee and her husband were gunned down as they drove in their car about a block from the U.S.-Mexican border bridge on a major Juarez thoroughfare. All in all, Perry’s correct that bullets coming from across the border hit El Paso’s seat of city government. No bombs have exploded in El Paso, however, though one went off in Juarez. We rate Perry’s statement Half True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2010-08-05T06:00:00 | 2010-07-28 | ['Mexico', 'El_Paso,_Texas'] |
goop-01542 | Fergie’s National Anthem Result Of “Drug Relapse,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/fergie-national-anthem-drugs-relapse/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Fergie’s National Anthem NOT Result Of “Drug Relapse,” Despite Report | 5:59 pm, February 19, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00115 | Claim: The last government did not cut the One-Parent Family Payment | mostly false | http://www.thejournal.ie/one-parent-family-payment-changes-ireland-facts-2997502-Sep2016/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: Did the last government cut payments to lone parents? | Sep 27th 2016, 7:07 PM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12502 | All charter schools are not-for-profit. | half-true | /florida/statements/2017/apr/27/bob-cortes/are-all-florida-charter-schools-not-profit/ | Florida lawmakers who support the expansion of charter schools have adopted a single talking point to explain how the schools are managed. Rep. Bob Cortes, R-Altamonte Springs, faced a series of questions from Rep. David Richardson, D-Miami Beach, after introducing HB 7101, one of several measures under consideration in the legislative session that would increase access to charter schools. Like public schools, charter schools receive state funds. The key difference is they are privately managed. Richardson was curious about the bill’s provision that specifies that a charter school operator may use assets of their charter school for K-12 educational purposes in "other schools." "These other schools, would they also have to be a not-for-profit or could they be a for-profit?" Richardson asked. Cortes said, "They would have to be a school within their own network. So part of the charter school system itself." "So does that mean the other schools would have to be a 501(c)(3)?" Richardson asked. "All charter schools are not-for-profit," Cortes said. Cortes’ bill passed in the House by an 81-39 vote. The same argument resurfaced in debate of "schools of hope" legislation that would create a $200 million fund to lure charter schools to under-performing districts. Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, said, "Under Florida state statute, a charter school is a non-profit organization, so there is no such thing in Florida as a for-profit charter school." The statements jumped out to us because there have been problems with charter schools being used to benefit people privately. Florida law technically requires charter schools to be nonprofits. But the system is largely run by for-profit companies, which Cortes' statement leaves out. Not-for-profit, or not? The charter-school solution was originally touted as a way to give families — particular those in low-income areas — another option for schooling. Critics say too many taxpayer dollars have been shifted to the private companies that run charter schools to the detriment of traditional public schools. So, are all charter schools in Florida not-for-profit? Technically speaking, a not-for-profit is a type of organization that does not earn profits for its owners. Cortes cited a provision of a Florida statute (1002.33 sec 12(i)) as evidence of this claim, which mandates that a charter must organize as, or be operated by, a nonprofit organization. The Florida Department of Education echoed Cortes’ evidence. Audrey Walden, the agency’s press secretary, said the defining document that sets the academic, financial and organizational performance benchmarks for a charter school is determined by the local school district and the nonprofit charter school board. The charter governing board can choose to enter into contracts with private entities to provide services and support. "But, ultimately, performance and accountability rests with the nonprofit governing board -- which, when it enters into a charter agreement with its local school district, is subject to the same Sunshine Laws and School Accountability System that pertains to all public schools in Florida," she said. More to the story Not all charter schools operate in the same way. And sometimes nonprofit charter governing boards enter into contract with for-profit companies. The management company does not manage the governing board, but rather it handles certain aspects of the operations of the school under a contract with the governing board. The Miami Herald’s examination of South Florida’s charter school industry found several instances of for-profit management companies controlling charter schools’ day-to-day operations. The Herald found examples of charter schools relinquishing total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies. In Miami-Dade County, the Life Skills Center paid 97 percent of its income to cover fees incurred by a management company. Then, the governing board of two affiliated schools tried to "eject" the management company’s managers. As a result, the management company withheld money from the school and threatened to press charges against people within the school from trying to get it back. The Herald also found that some owners of the management companies also control the land and buildings used by the charter school. Owners of Academica Corp., the state’s largest charter school management company based in South Miami, collected almost $19 million a year in lease payments on school properties. In other cases, it found that the school’s nonprofit board were full of people with ties to the for-profit management companies. This trend continues across the nation. ProPublica reported that several charter schools around the country funneled all of their revenue to a for-profit company hired for day-to-day operations including schools in New York and Ohio. A spokesman for the state's largest teachers union, the Florida Education Association, sent us a report that summarized the agency’s arguments against "schools of hope" legislation. The FEA isn’t completely against charter schools, but its website says, "While some charters adhere to the original idea, and have shown some success, many charters have become for-profit drivers for large corporations bent on taking over our public schools." Our ruling Cortes said that all charter schools are not-for-profit. A Florida provision requires charter schools to be operated or controlled by a nonprofit organization. This technical talking point omits that many nonprofit charter school boards enter in to contracts with for-profit companies. Some for-profit charter school management companies have drawn increasing scrutiny over the years for how they’ve controlled the school’s money. This statement leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bob Cortes | null | null | null | 2017-04-27T12:22:28 | 2017-04-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-11382 | The United States is 3rd in murders throughout the world. If you remove Chicago, Detroit, Washington, St. Louis and New Orleans, the United States is then 189th out of 193 countries in the entire world. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/28/viral-image/united-states-third-murders-outlier-cities/ | A viral meme shared on social media following the Parkland, Fla., shooting claimed the United States has the third-highest count of murders worldwide, a ranking that would drop dramatically if five major cities were excluded. The image has been circulating since at least 2015. We decided to take a closer look. Is the United States third in murders, and are a few outlier cities responsible? That’s false by any standard. The main study of intentional homicides is performed by the United Nations’ Office of Drug Control. The UN warns against cross-national comparisons because of the differences in legal definitions of intentional homicides and recording practices. Our count of the UN’s data placed the United States ninth in intentional homicides. We used the most up-to-date count for each country and territory, which included data anywhere from 2007 to 2015. As the country with the third-highest population size, however, experts told us the number of people killed is not a very useful metric. Controlling for population size, most criminologists use the per 100,000 metric. By that standard, we found the United States ranked 94th. When we counted only the countries for which the UN had 2015 data, the United States ranked 73rd. That’s still far from the top ten. Outlier cities The meme argues that a few outlier cities with stringent gun control legislation are responsible for the United States’ high homicide count. But that’s not true, either. Chicago, Detroit, Washington, St. Louis and New Orleans have homicide rates well above the national average, but that’s typical for large urban cities. While Detroit, St. Louis and New Orleans are consistently among the top five American cities by homicide rate, the cities with most per-capita murders vary from year to year. Neither Washington, D.C., nor Chicago make the top five. Chicago has a high number of homicides because of its population, but its homicide rate is middle of the road for large U.S. cities, according to Jay Corzine, a sociology professor at the University of Central Florida. Specific reasons for the cities’ high murder rates largely remain a mystery for criminologists, but all are cities with "high poverty levels, inequality, significant segregation, and an entrenched drug trade," Corzine said. Dropping them from the U.S. total has little substantive impact on the U.S. homicide rate or count. The cities cited in the meme accounted for 1,568 of 17,250, or 9.1 percent, of all homicides reported to the FBI in 2016, Tom Kovandzic, a criminologist at the University of Texas, Dallas, calculated for us. And without those cities, the homicide rate (per capita) would only decline by 7.73 percent, or from 5.34 to 4.93. When we applied those reductions to the UN data, the United States barely budged in its international standing. It moved down four spots in per capita murders and stayed the same in total murders. That’s inconsequential compared with the 186-spot jump the meme concocted. Gun control Gun control laws are mostly controlled by state legislatures. Washington, D.C., is the only listed city able to enact strict ordinances, while Chicago can do some things, according to Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. We’ve previously rated the claim that Chicago has the strictest gun laws Pants on Fire. "The other lie in this claim is that all five of the named cities have stringent gun regulation. Louisiana, Michigan and Missouri would be very surprised to hear that!" said Philip Cook, a sociologist at Duke University. The states didn’t impress the Giffords Law Center, a pro-gun control group. Missouri ranked 48th, Louisiana 43rd, and Michigan 16th on a scale that gives higher rankings to restricted gun ownership and use. Our ruling The image said, "The United States is 3rd in murders throughout the world. If you remove Chicago, Detroit, Washington, St. Louis and New Orleans, the United States is then 189th out of 193 countries in the entire world." By no measure is the United States third in total homicides or homicide rates. Excluding the named cities from the count had little to no impact on the United States’ international standing. Three of the cities named in the meme are consistently the top cities for intentional homicides in the United States, but the other two are not. They are by no means outliers, either. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Viral image | null | null | null | 2018-03-28T11:47:37 | 2018-03-20 | ['United_States', 'Detroit', 'New_Orleans', 'Washington_University_in_St._Louis', 'Chicago'] |
pomt-13229 | What the District of Columbia was trying to do (with its handgun ban) was to protect toddlers from guns. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/19/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-supreme-court-gun-decision-de/ | Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that her opposition to the 2008 Supreme Court case of District of Columbia vs. Heller was due to a desire to protect toddlers from firearms. Clinton said in the third presidential debate that she supported an individual’s right to bear arms but disagreed with how the court interpreted the Second Amendment because it didn’t accept "reasonable regulations" on gun ownership. "What the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns," Clinton said. There’s been a lot of discussion over how Clinton views the Second Amendment, but we were curious if she was accurately describing the rationale behind the case. The Heller case itself was a challenge to the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, a broad ordinance passed by the Washington, D.C., city council that largely banned residents from owning handguns, automatic weapons and the possession of unregistered firearms, as well as requiring firearms kept in a home to be "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device." The handgun ban and subsequent gun control measures were widely considered to be one of the stricter rules on firearm ownership throughout the United States, though members of the D.C. council at the time said it seemed like the right thing to do. "Handgun crimes were just getting out of sight," said Sterling Tucker, a D.C. Council chairman when the ban was enacted. "We had to isolate and contain the problem. We thought a handgun law would do that." Passed in the mid 1970s, the ordinance continued with several legal challenges until 2007, when a federal court invalidated the law. That decision was upheld in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that the handgun ban and "trigger lock" provisions of the ordinance violated the Second Amendment. Before the Supreme Court ruling, city leaders fought hard to keep the ban, saying that its continued implementation reduced the number of stolen firearms and guns used in other crimes. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the city government filed a petition with the court specifically citing the dangers posed to children if the gun ban was lifted. "The smaller the weapon, the more likely a child can use it, and children as young as three years old are strong enough to fire today’s handguns," the petition stated (page 25). The same petition also addressed the history of the ban, saying that in 1976 that the Council determined existing law didn’t sufficiently address gun violence and specifically cited the "chilling regularity with which handguns were taking the lives of children." But protecting children isn’t the only reason cited by the 30-page petition filed by the city’s government — the city also addressed general violent crime trends and other legal arguments in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case. And the court’s decision in Heller went far beyond just overturning the city’s gun ban, as it broadly affirmed for the first time an individual right to private gun ownership. Clinton’s campaign referred us to a gun control group claiming that gun locks and child access prevention laws help prevent unintentional firearm deaths for young children. PolitiFact has previously looked into whether the city’s gun ban had any effect on violent crime, finding that violent crime levels varied year-to-year and that other social and demographic factors played a larger role than gun laws. Our ruling Clinton said her opposition to the 2008 Heller case was because "what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns." City leaders did specifically cite the danger posed to children in trying to keep in place gun regulations, but the regulations were also a widespread ban on unregistered weapons, not just gun safety measures. Child safety wasn’t the sole topic cited by defenders of the city’s gun control ordinance, and the Heller decision dealt with a much broader issue than protecting toddlers from firearm deaths or injuries. We rate the statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a1279632-b0c9-4856-8bc2-c64555f9f78f | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2016-10-19T22:52:05 | 2016-10-19 | ['None'] |
goop-01102 | Prince William, Kate Middleton Baby Name Prince Louis “Inspired” By ‘The Princess Diaries | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/prince-louis-baby-name-inspiration-william-kate-middleton-princess-diaries-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Prince William, Kate Middleton Baby Name Prince Louis NOT “Inspired” By ‘The Princess Diaries’ | 9:59 pm, April 27, 2018 | null | ['Prince_William,_Duke_of_Cambridge', 'Catherine,_Duchess_of_Cambridge'] |
pomt-10333 | We now have a pro-American president in France, which shows if you live long enough, anything can happen in this world. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jul/23/john-mccain/you-didnt-actually-have-to-live-that-long/ | Yes, it's a joke. But it's a favorite of Sen. John McCain's on the stump, and it includes a couple of serious claims worth checking. A recent iteration of the gag came during a McCain speech at the Maine Military Museum & Learning Center in South Portland, Maine, after a reference to how the French approach nuclear power. "And by the way, in case you missed it, we now have a pro-American president in France," McCain said July 21, 2008. "Which shows if you live long enough, anything can happen in this world. So — and we're grateful to him." It's a self-deprecating poke by McCain at his own age. But it's also a jab at France, and it rests on the twin assumptions that the country's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is pro-American, and that it is new or unusual for the president of France to feel that way. We know where McCain's coming from. There has long been in France, especially in the intellectual class, a resistance to American culture. They like their boulangeries, or bakeries, a lot more than the McDonald's we're exporting to them, for example. Sarkozy is different, in some respects. "He likes American culture more than any other former president of France," said Jean-Philippe Mathy, French studies professor at the University of Illinois and author of French Resistance: The French-American Culture Wars. "He's taking a lot of flak because he's kind of nouveau riche and he likes to wear expensive watches and things like that." He's got a little Hollywood in him. Just check out his wife . Sarkozy's open admiration for America has earned him the nickname "Sarko l'Amricain." That said, he's not quite as pro-American as McCain implies, nor are past French presidents as anti-American. Sarkozy is an ardent proponent of U.S.-style free-market capitalism — a philosophy that in Europe is called "liberalism" but resembles what we call conservatism. He is intent on dismantling portions of France's prodigious welfare state and social security system. But with respect to the most notable policy difference between France and the United States in recent years — the split over the decision to invade Iraq — Sarkozy is only somewhat different from his predecessor, Jacques Chirac. Chirac opposed the invasion before it took place, and in November 2004 said it had "made the world more dangerous." Sarkozy has accused Chirac of being "arrogant" for the manner in which he voiced his opposition, but Sarkozy did not support the war either, and has let it be known that he too would have declined to send troops to Iraq. In a speech at Columbia University in 2004, Sarkozy said France's opposition stemmed from its violent colonial history in Algeria and Vietnam. "Please don't be angry with us because we remember what happened to us," he said. "Is there ever a single country of the world, at any time of history, that was able to maintain itself in a sustained way in a country that was not its own, uniquely by force of arms? Never, not a single one, even the Chinese." That follows in a long tradition of French presidents who, while maintaining a close alliance with the United States, have resisted certain aspects of our foreign policy to varying degrees. Franois Mitterrand, a socialist who was president of France from 1981 to 1995, leaned toward the hostile end of that spectrum. On the other hand, his predecessor, Valry Giscard d'Estaing, a probusiness, center-right politician who was president from 1974 to 1981, was widely regarded as very friendly to the United States, experts said. Charles de Gaulle, president from 1959 to 1969, was famously resistant to American influence, and is probably the main source of the stereotype to which McCain was referring, according to Edward Berenson, director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University. He pulled France's troops out of NATO's command structure to signal independence from Washington in 1966, though ultimately he leaned sharply away from the Soviet Union and toward the United States in the Cold War. So yes, a strain of anti-Americanism runs through French foreign policy and culture, flaring up at times and mellowing out at others. But French presidents have long been pro-American in the most important sense, maintaining their alliance with the United States. And if it's France's objection to the invasion of Iraq that McCain's audience is concerned about, he's misleading them to suggest Sarkozy is very different. But Sarko is Amricain in some respects, so we find McCain's claim to be Half True. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-07-23T00:00:00 | 2008-07-21 | ['France'] |
pomt-02442 | Federal government reneging on Medicaid payments to Wisconsin caused about $240 million in extra costs in the 2013-’15 state budget. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2014/feb/28/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-federal-government-reneged-medic/ | One of Gov. Scott Walker’s explanations for rejecting a full expansion of Medicaid under the federal "Obamacare" health care law was this: The feds won’t be good for the money. And for more than a year, the Republican governor has cited a piece of recent state budget history as evidence. Most recently, Walker made his case to a national cable audience in a Fox News Sunday appearance on Feb. 23, 2014, telling interviewer Chris Wallace he doubted the federal law’s promise to cover 100 percent of the expansion for three years and no less than 90 percent thereafter starting in 2020. State taxpayers pick up the rest. "That commitment is not going to be there and taxpayers all across America will be on the hook," Walker said. "They are not going to be on the hook in Wisconsin." That’s a prediction, but it was followed by this piece of evidence stated as fact: "Even before the Medicaid expansion I had (provided) $600 million more to Medicaid. Almost 40 percent of that was to fill in the federal government reneging on commitments they've already made even before the Medicaid expansion." In other words, they’ll break their promise because they’ve done it before. With Walker’s decisions on Obamacare and Medicaid poised to become 2014 campaign issues let’s look at this one. Did "federal reneging" on Medicaid payments to Wisconsin pile approximately $240 million in extra costs onto the 2013-’15 state budget? How it works The biggest component of the broken promise, in Walker’s view, is a recent drop in the federal government’s share of what Wisconsin spends on Medicaid, which has covered children and parents with children under 19 in low-income households as well as people who are disabled or over 65 and impoverished." The federal share was 60.21 percent in 2010, but by 2014 fell to 59.06 and is projected to drop further, to 58.27 percent, for the 2015 fiscal year. That has raised costs to Wisconsin taxpayers, but there’s a major problem in Walker’s contention. The federal share -- known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP -- fluctuates annually and varies from state to state based on a formula dating to Medicaid’s inception in 1965. That formula is "designed so that the federal government pays a larger portion of Medicaid costs in states with lower per-capita incomes relative to the national average (and vice versa for states with higher per-capita incomes)," a Congressional Research Service paper noted in 2013. In other words, the standard federal share of Medicaid costs is not promised or guaranteed to hold steady; it must only stay between the statutory minimum of 50 percent and maximum of 83 percent. It has gone up notably in some recent years as well. In fact, Wisconsin saw its federal rate rise from 2009 to 2010, and also got a big additional bump to more than 70 percent for almost three years under the federal stimulus law and a subsequent legislative action -- both of which applied nationally. Another major cost increase Walker has cited to back up his claim in the last year relates to hikes in the cost of premiums, deductibles and copayments that Medicaid pays for so-called "dual eligibles" who qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. No reversal Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said these and other cost increases are evidence of reneging by Washington. But neither the fluctuations in federal help or the dual-eligible cost changes are due to any changes in federal Medicaid law or policy, according to the independent, nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau. It made this note in a November 2013 memo to state Rep. Jon Richards (D-Milwaukee). The federal cost-sharing formula has not been changed to reduce matching rates since President Reagan and Congress enacted a temporary reduction for 1982-1984, said Edwin Park, a health-policy expert at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And the cost increases for "dual eligibles" are routine, reflecting rising health care costs, Park said. Finally, Walker cites new costs states will have to pick up under Obamacare. They are real, but two experts told us they do not represent a broken commitment. Conservative health economist Stephen Parente at the University of Minnesota shares Walker’s skepticism about future federal funding of the Medicaid expansion, especially given Obama’s pull-backs in putting the health-care law into full effect. And he said governors are rightly frustrated by swings in Medicaid payments from Washington. But Parente said it’s not accurate to call those swings "reneging." Jon Peacock, research director at the left-leaning Wisconsin Council on Children & Families, agreed. His view is Walker could have made the state less vulnerable to declines in federal help if he had taken the additional federal money available for the Medicaid expansion. "If we took advantage of the Medicaid expansion funds," Peacock told us, "we would get a much higher matching rate that is locked in (under the law.)" Our rating Explaining his rejection of federal money to fully expand Medicaid coverage, Walker said on Fox News Sunday that "federal government reneging" on Medicaid payments to Wisconsin caused more than $200 million in extra costs in the 2013-’15 state budget. But typical cost-sharing fluctuations, based mainly on a longstanding formula, explain the extra state burden -- not any reversal of course or pulling back on a commitment by Washington. We rate Walker’s claim False. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2014-02-28T05:00:00 | 2014-02-23 | ['Wisconsin'] |
goop-02801 | Kanye West Did Skip Met Gala Because Of New Breakdown, | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kanye-west-real-reason-skip-met-gala-new-breakdown/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kanye West Did NOT Skip Met Gala Because Of New Breakdown, Despite Report | 9:53 am, May 12, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13502 | The Clinton Foundation gives less than 10 (percent in direct aid). In 2013, they raised 140 million bucks, gave $9 million to people in direct aid. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2016/sep/06/alex-castellanos/trump-surrogate-repeats-wrong-talking-point-clinto/ | Surrogates for Donald Trump continue to make the argument that the Clinton Foundation is a "slush fund" for Bill and Hillary Clinton, and they keep repeating an inaccurate talking point. While discussing on Meet the Press why Trump has yet to release his tax returns, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos turned the tables, saying that the nonprofit bearing Clinton’s name doesn’t do much except enrich her family. "Because that idea that somehow the Clinton Foundation is this wonderful thing that helps people, most charities give 75 percent of their money in direct aid. The Clinton Foundation gives less than 10 (percent). In 2013, they raised 140 million bucks, gave 9 million to people in direct aid," Castellanos said. We’ve heard various versions of this claim (from former GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and RNC chairman Reince Priebus). It’s misleading. Castellanos’ numbers don’t take into account the bulk of the foundation's work. The foundation does spend a lot of money on charity, not through grantmaking, but through its own programming. Tax returns show the Clinton Foundation raised just under $143 million and spent about $85 million, including $9 million in grants to other organizations. But that does not include all of the foundation's charitable work "Grantmaking is not part of its mission, and that creates confusion — since many people imagine that foundations are engaged in giving away money," writes David Callahan, editor of Inside Philanthropy. Despite its name, the Clinton Foundation is not actually a private foundation (like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Donald J. Trump Foundation) that solely gives to philanthropic causes. Rather, it’s a public charity, like United Way or the Salvation Army, that runs its own in-house projects and hires staff to carry out the work. Clinton Foundation programs include providing women in Peru with the tools and equipment to launch their own businesses, installing solar panels and grids in Haiti after the earthquake, helping farmers in Tanzania boost yields and turn a profit, and using market mechanisms to reduce the cost of HIV/AIDS medicine. All together, these programs cost $68 million in 2013 (page 10 of the foundation’s tax documents for that year), or about 80 percent of all of the foundation's expenses that year. In 2014, programs were 87 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s expenses, according to Charity Navigator, giving it a score of 10 out of 10 on that metric. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the foundation’s 2013 expenses: In sum, Castellanos’ claim is "totally wrong," Callahan of Inside Philanthropy told PolitiFact. "The vast majority of the money raised goes to support program work in the field, as anyone can tell from looking at the Clinton Foundation’s annual finances." Castellanos did not respond to requests for comment. Our ruling Castellanos said, "The Clinton Foundation gives less than 10 (percent in direct aid). In 2013, they raised 140 million bucks, gave $9 million to people in direct aid." Castellanos is cherry-picking one line-item that doesn't include all of the foundation's spending on charity. While outside grantmaking made up about 10 percent of its expenses in 2013, the foundation spent about $68 million, or about 80 percent, on in-house charitable programs to help those in need. We rate Castellanos’ claim Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f2b4836b-114e-453b-a297-7ceb2b7159fe | null | Alex Castellanos | null | null | null | 2016-09-06T17:08:38 | 2016-09-04 | ['Clinton_Foundation'] |
pomt-06362 | Says "the City of Portland alone has 84 public relation representatives on payroll which cost taxpayers over $6.2 million (a year)." | false | /oregon/statements/2011/nov/04/taxpayer-association-oregon/does-portland-really-have-84-pr-people-staff/ | Nobody likes hearing about government waste -- especially not when lawmakers spend most of their time talking about which programs to cut. So, naturally, we read with interest the Taxpayer Association of Oregon's Fall 2011 "Government Waste Watch Report." We weren’t a paragraph in and already something had caught our attention. The report noted that "The City of Portland alone has 84 public relation representatives on payroll, which cost taxpayers over $6.2 million." The Oregonian had just published a story pegging the number of state employees working in communications at 125, or 220 if you include managers and people in design shops. Sure, Portland is the state’s largest city by far, but 84 for the city alone? The report cited the source for the number as a Willamette Week story from May. We did some googling and found the original article. Just a few paragraphs in and you get the salient info: "There are a lot of them (public relations employees) — 94 in the Portland area — and their paychecks add up to nearly $7 million a year … these public-relations people work for the City of Portland, Metro, Portland Public Schools, Multnomah County, the Port of Portland, Portland State University, TriMet and Oregon Health & Science University." Just a couple sentences further and the writer, James Pitkin, addresses Portland specifically: "The biggest PR team belongs to the City of Portland. It spends $2.1 million paying its 28 PR people." That’s sizable, but it’s hardly the 84 that the Taxpayer Association cited in its critique. Willamette Week also posted a list of the folks that they identified as being on the payroll in communications positions. We called Portland’s Bureau of Human Resources to see if we could confirm the names. The Bureau sent us a copy of a public records request dated July 14, 2011 that listed 25 employees. We reconciled the two lists and found that Willamette Week included the Portland Development Commission, bumping their figure of 28 employees. With the PDC, their salaries were closer to $2.1 million, not $6 million. We called the Taxpayer Association to see what was up. Jason Williams, the executive director, said the mistake was theirs. While typing up the newsletter, they confused the city’s figures with the Portland-area figures. Still, he said, even 28 public relations employees was too many. "Eighty-four is even too much even for the whole state. If government is doing its job, it doesn't need a press agent." The fact that Williams admitted their mistake gets the association some brownie points, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were misinforming the 10,000 people who receive their watch reports. And it doesn’t change our ruling. We give this claim a False. Return to OregonLive to comment on this statement and ruling. | null | Taxpayer Association of Oregon | null | null | null | 2011-11-04T06:00:00 | 2011-10-31 | ['None'] |
pomt-03283 | A Republican housing finance reform bill "would eliminate a person’s ability to obtain 15- and 30-year mortgages." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/04/gwen-moore/gop-bill-would-put-traditional-home-mortgages-out-/ | After the real estate market collapsed during the Great Depression, the federal government created entities to encourage families to buy houses and banks to make home loans. The Federal Housing Administration, founded in 1934, issues mortgage insurance to guarantee banks they will get their money back even if a homeowner doesn’t make payments. That made it easier for banks to approve mortgages for people who don’t have a lot of money or have mediocre credit. Fannie Mae and later Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, were created to buy up, bundle and sell mortgages as mortgage-backed securities on the open market. That gave lenders more money to make home loans. But by 2008, Uncle Sam had to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the recession took hold. And several years later, FHA was also in financial straits. Those developments helped precipitate a move in July 2013 by Republican leaders of the House Financial Services Committee. They announced they would introduce the Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act (PATH), aiming at largely removing the government from the financing of home purchases. That prompted U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a member of the committee, to go on the attack. "This radical bill would push the dream of home ownership further and further out of reach for Wisconsin families. The so-called PATH Act is, in actuality, the PATH to Nowhere," the Wisconsin Democrat charged in a July 24, 2013 news release. The bill, Moore continued, "would eliminate a person’s ability to obtain 15- and 30-year mortgages – the cornerstone of our housing finance system." Let’s see if that’s so. Moore's evidence Moore spokeswoman Staci Cox told us that when Moore referred to "a person’s" ability to obtain a traditional fixed-rate mortgage, she meant the "average American." To back the statement, Cox highlighted testimony made to the House Financial Services Committee by Mark Zandi, chief economist for the Moody's Analytics economic research firm. He said the PATH bill would put 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loans "out of reach for most Americans." Without the government guarantees, mortgage rates would increase, adding $130 per month to the cost of a mortgage for the typical borrower, Zandi said. And while three-quarters of mortgage loans currently are fixed rate, that would drop to 20 percent to 25 percent, he said. Moore also cites opposition to aspects of the bill from several major players in housing. The National Association of Home Builders, for example, said the bill would "greatly limit homeownership" for "many qualified Americans"; and the Credit Union National Association said it feared the bill could not "ensure continuation of long-term fixed-rate mortgage products." So, Moore doesn’t have hard evidence that the PATH bill would eliminate the ability of a person to get a traditional mortgage; that remains to be seen. But experts say such mortgages could become unavailable or unaffordable for many people. GOP response The PATH bill, pushed by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in five years and limit the focus of the FHA's mortgage insurance to first-time home buyers with moderate incomes. Jeff Emerson, a staff member of the House Financial Services Committee, gave us a response to Moore's claim. Emerson cited a Washington Post editorial that rebutted the assertion that 30-year mortgages would go away. The editorial noted that 30-year fixed-rate loans known as jumbo mortgages "already exist without government help," saying: "Presumably private-sector innovation could create loan products, with 30-year terms or otherwise, appropriate for smaller borrowers as well." But current jumbo mortgages require a borrower to have a higher income, a good credit score and typically a 30 percent down payment, according to Realtor.com. Emerson also said PATH "is designed to create more opportunities for more choices, including the 30-year fixed rate loan. The market will respond to customer demand, as it always does." So, while there is no indication that traditional mortgages would cease to exist, neither of Emerson's points are evidence that they would remain as available as they are with today's government guarantees. Other evidence Other experts, while disagreeing on the overall impact of PATH on traditional fixed-rate mortgages, acknowledge that the elimination of government guarantees or subsidies inevitably means that the terms of such mortgages would change. Georgetown University law professor Adam Levitin, whose specialties include housing finance, agreed with Zandi. He testified to House Financial Services Committee that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is "heavily a function of federal backing of the housing finance system" and that if PATH became law, "it would be difficult for most American families to obtain 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages." Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum, and Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, testified that affordable fixed-rate mortgages would still be offered, but they weren’t specific. Calabria noted the current availability of fixed-rate jumbo home mortgages, as well as fixed-rate auto loans. In a New York Times opinion column, University of Maryland public policy professor Phillip Swagel, who is also a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, praised the PATH bill. But he acknowledged that without government guarantees, mortgage interest rates would rise, though "it is hard to know quite how much." He also stated the housing market "is in an upswing and affordability remains high, so it seems likely that the housing sector would continue to recover even with higher rates." Our rating Moore stated that a Republican bill to largely privatize the nation’s housing finance system "would eliminate a person’s ability to obtain 15- and 30-year mortgages." It's unknown how exactly the effects of the bill would play out. But there is reason to believe that without government guarantees, traditional home mortgages would become less available, less affordable, or both, for many Americans. Our definition of Half True is a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details. That fits for this one. | null | Gwen Moore | null | null | null | 2013-08-04T05:00:00 | 2013-07-24 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-13258 | Hillary Clinton said gun confiscation "would be worth considering." | mostly false | /virginia/statements/2016/oct/17/national-rifle-association/nra-weakly-claims-clinton-said-gun-confiscation-wo/ | A National Rifle Association flier shows the jaws of a crane dumping hundreds of rifles into a landfill. "What did Hillary Clinton say when she was asked about gun confiscation in America?" it asks in capital letters. The flier answers the question with this Clinton quote: "I think it would be worth considering doing it on a national level, if that can be arranged." Next to the quote is a photo of a strident-looking Clinton speaking into a microphone. We examined whether Clinton really did say that U.S. gun confiscation is "worth considering." The flier was issued by the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. It says Clinton made the statement during a town hall campaign event in Keene, N.H., on Oct 16, 2015. She was asked whether she’d support a national gun buyback program similar to one Australia instituted in 1996 after a mass shooting in Tasmania left 35 dead. A month later, Australia banned semi-automatic and self-loading rifles as well as shotguns. The government offered a one-year grace period during which it would buy back the firearms at fair-market prices. After that, people possessing the weapons would subject to strict penalties. The buyback program resulted in more than 640,000 prohibited weapons being turned in - roughly one-fifth of all the guns then estimated to be in Australia. Now, let’s go back to the New Hampshire town hall meeting. A tape shows a man asked Clinton this question: "Australia managed to take away tens of thousands - millions - of handguns and in one year they were all gone. Can we do that and why? If we can’t, why not? (The questioner was wrong in saying the buyback pertained to handguns; it didn’t.) Clinton replied that several nations have tightened their gun laws after experiencing mass shootings. "In the Australian example, as I recall, that was a buyback program," she said. "The Australian government, as part of trying to clamp down on the availability of automatic weapons, offered a good price for buying hundreds of thousands of guns and then they basically clamped down going forward in terms of, you know, more of a background check, more of a permitting approach. "But they believed, and I think the evidence supports them, that by offering to buy back those guns they were able to, you know, curtail the supply and set a different standard for gun purchases in the future." "Now (U.S.) communities have done that; communities have done gun buyback programs. But I think it would be worth considering doing that on the national level if that could be arranged." Clinton mentioned "cash for clunkers," the nickname of a 2009 voluntary program in which the U.S. government briefly offered payments to people wishing to trade in old, gas-guzzling vehicles. "So I think that’s worth considering," Clinton said. "I don’t know enough details to tell you how we would do it or how it would work. But certainly, the Australian example is worth considering." The NRA and other pro-gun groups instantly seized on Clinton’s comment, saying the buyback program Clinton lauded is tantamount to a confiscation program, because it backed many gun owners into a corner: They either could sell their firearms to the government or risk prosecution for keeping them. It was, the NRA says, "an offer gun owners could not refuse." Three days after the New Hampshire event, the Clinton campaign said the candidate opposes gun confiscation and accused the NRA of distorting her comments. "Of course Hillary does not support national mandatory gun buyback programs, including those modeled after Australia's program," spokesman Josh Schwerin wrote to us in an email. "She was discussing voluntary buyback programs, which are drastically different than what occurred in Australia and are regularly run by cities across the America." We asked the NRA if it had any other evidence that it believes shows Clinton is open to gun confiscation. A spokeswoman for the gun group’s lobbying arm questioned whether that was "relevant" to our fact-check and didn’t provide an answer. Our ruling The NRA says that when Clinton was asked about gun confiscation, she said "I think it would be worth doing it on a national level, if that can be arranged." Clinton made that statement last year at a New Hampshire campaign stop, when she was asked a vague question about an Australian program that gave gun owners one year to sell certain firearms to the government before those weapons became illegal. She left the NRA some room. But the NRA stretches her words to an almost unrecognizable form. Clinton focused her comments on voluntary buyback programs similar to those some U.S. communities have instituted for guns and the federal "cash-for-clunkers" program. She was ambiguous about how a U.S. guns buyback program might be structured, saying "I don’t know enough details to tell you how we would do it or how it would work." And her campaign since has said she opposes gun confiscation. So there’s an element of truth to the NRA’s statement, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. That makes it Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/9e238568-ad07-4375-9b74-3a07ed468f3c | null | National Rifle Association | null | null | null | 2016-10-17T00:02:00 | 2016-10-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-08987 | Phoenix is the kidnapping capital "of the Western Hemisphere." | false | /rhode-island/statements/2010/jul/15/helen-glover/helen-glover-says-phoenix-kidnap-capital-western-h/ | After Republican congressional candidate John Loughlin returned from a trip to Arizona to get a firsthand look at the illegal immigration problem there, he was a guest on WHJJ's Helen Glover show. Loughlin told the story of a couple who live in Casa Grande, near Phoenix, who told him that they had stopped going biking because they were afraid of being kidnapped. "Phoenix is now the kidnapping capital of America," Loughlin declared. Glover agreed, but then insisted that the distinction extended beyond the United States. "Exactly. Of the Western Hemisphere. Yes. It includes the Western Hemisphere," she said. If you listen to the program you can hear Loughlin hesitate, showing some uncertainty over Glover's emphatic statement. With good reason. PolitiFact Texas addressed this issue in detail on June 18 when it examined a claim that Phoenix "is now the No. 2 kidnapping capital of the world, right behind Mexico City." It looked at it again when John McCain repeated that claim. It appears to originate from a Feb. 11, 2009, report from ABC News, which has not responded to a request from PolitiFact to document its assertion. PolitiFact Texas made its own inquiries to determine how Phoenix ranks on a worldwide scale. They were unable to find any hard numbers to back up the claim. It's clear that Phoenix has a serious kidnapping problem, which the police say is mostly related to illegal border crossings and the drug trade. There were 358 cases reported to the police in 2008, 318 in 2009 and 105 between January and May of this year. To put those numbers in some context, Philadelphia, which is comparable in population, reported just 9 kidnappings in 2009 -- 309 fewer than Phoenix. There is no easy source for comparable figures from other U.S. cities; kidnapping numbers are not routinely listed on annual FBI crime reports. There is also no reliable source of kidnapping data from foreign countries. But experts from international private security firms said cities in several Western Hemisphere countries, including Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala, have more kidnappings than Phoenix. Glover took an apparently made up statistic and took it a step further from the facts, making Phoenix the hemisphere's worst for kidnapping. We emailed Glover late Friday, July 9, and asked for her source. She responded by email the next day, saying she would look for the source and invited us to do a Google search as well. Monday morning, July 12, at 6:22 a.m. she sent another email. "You are right, I was wrong," she responded, and said she was "remembering wrongly what I had read. According to an ABCNews report from '09, Phoenix is #1 in the U.S. for kidnappings, with Mexico City being #1 in the Western Hem. Shame on me for remembering wrongly." (The ABC News article makes no mention of the Western Hemisphere.) So did Glover take a few seconds to set the record straight for her listeners later that morning? We listened to all three hours of her Monday show, available as a podcast on the WHJJ website. She touched on immigration, but never corrected the record. So we'll do it for her and give her a False. | null | Helen Glover | null | null | null | 2010-07-15T15:41:03 | 2010-07-09 | ['None'] |
pose-00197 | In order to increase the incomes of subsistence producers, decrease the pressure on shrinking arable lands, and minimize the vulnerability of commodity exports to global price shocks, an Obama administration will launch the AVTA Initiative. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to spurring research and innovation aimed at bringing about a Green Revolution for Africa, by partnering with land grant institutions, private philanthropies and business to support agricultural processing through increased investment in research and development for improved seeds, irrigation methods, and affordable and safe fertilizers. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/212/launch-an-international-add-value-to-agriculture-i/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA) | 2010-01-07T13:26:51 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'Joe_Biden', 'Africa', 'Green_Revolution'] |
snes-05273 | Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-nominated-nobel-prize/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Donald Trump Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? | 3 February 2016 | null | ['Nobel_Peace_Prize', 'Donald_Trump'] |
tron-02350 | Pres. Bush Comforts Fallen Soldier’s Family | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/value-of-service/ | null | military | null | null | null | Pres. Bush Comforts Fallen Soldier’s Family | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04805 | Donald Trump suggested he'd use nuclear weapons against Mexico if they refused to build and pay for a wall. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-to-nuke-mexico/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Trump to Nuke Mexico if They Don’t Build Border Wall | 5 May 2016 | null | ['Mexico', 'Donald_Trump'] |
snes-05141 | Nike didn't sign Steph Curry because the NBA star insisted on putting a Bible verse on his sneakers. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/steph-curry-nike-bible/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Steph Curry Was Supposedly Spurned by Nike Over Bible Verses | 29 February 2016 | null | ['National_Basketball_Association', 'Stephen_Curry_(basketball)', 'Bible'] |
pomt-09598 | Health care reform: "Everything about it is going to raise costs, raise taxes and lower the quality of health care." | false | /texas/statements/2010/jan/20/kay-bailey-hutchison/hutchison-says-health-care-bill-will-raise-costs-t/ | A day after Senate Democrats released their version of the health care reform bill on Nov. 18, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who's seeking the GOP nod for governor, debuted a TV ad attacking the legislation. "Everything about it is going to raise costs, raise taxes and lower the quality of health care," Hutchison says in the ad. Everything? This kind of sweeping claim is often hard to back up with evidence. Hutchinson said everything in the bills would raise costs, raise taxes and lower quality. So if we can find anything that lowers costs, lowers taxes or raises quality, that would undermine the accuracy of her claim. Hutchison's campaign told us the senator was criticizing all Democratic proposals. Her campaign sent us about 20 excerpts from documents seemingly supporting her claim, attributing most of it to to the Republican Policy Committee and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, both in Washington. We don't dispute any of the projected costs and taxes her campaign sent us. But like many parties to the health care debate, Hutchison appears to have cherry-picked numbers to prop up the points she wants to make. Let's talk about tax increases first. Hutchison notes that the bill includes a "$149 billion tax increase on private health insurance plans." She fails to mention that the levy, known as the "Cadillac tax," is one measure the federal government expects to generate revenue by taxing high-priced insurance plans (not all private policies). That is, most people, about 75 percent, won't see an additional tax. Hutchison cites "$43 billion in new taxes and fines levied on individuals and businesses," an abbreviated interpretation of how much the CBO has projected the federal government will generate in penalty payments from people and businesses who choose not to enroll in an insurance plan. She doesn't note that those increases are among the measure's features intended to offset costs. And she also fails to note that a good chunk of taxpayers — those who make up to 400 percent of the poverty level — will get a tax credit from the government to buy health insurance. So those people won't get a tax increase and in fact get a material benefit from the plan. Next, we looked at projected costs. Hutchison's campaign pointed us to total projected federal health care expenditures: $234 billion, according to a report by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Unnoted by Hutchison's camp: The $234 billion reflects how much national health care expenditures would increase by 2016 — including the cost of providing coverage for 33 million people who were previously uninsured — about 10 percent of the population, most of whom (we'll suppose) would see the new benefit as a boon. Also unnoted by Hutchison: The CBO projects that under the Senate's health care plan, most insured people would see their premiums drop slightly by 2016. The CBO also concluded that through 2019, the Senate approach would reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion and slow the rate of federal spending growth due to new taxes and provisions to reduce spending over time. Spending cuts have also been proposed to save money — Hutchison notes $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, among others. We learned that's what she's referring to when she says quality will suffer. Yet the Senate plan separately has features intended to enhance quality such as pilot programs rewarding doctors for improving patients' outcomes and aimed at curbing unnecessary medical tests. We looked too at the impact of the plan on American taxpayers. The bottom line, according to the CMS and CBO projections, is that most people's taxes would not increase and most people's premiums wouldn't either. Summing up, Hutchison is correct that the Senate plan is projected to increase costs — at the onset — and to add taxes. But she she overlooked CBO projections stating the plan would slow long-term federal spending thanks to its provisions designed to offset costs. Hutchison stretches too far by saying everything in the bill would raise taxes, drive up costs and conceivably diminish quality. As we've described, several parts of the bill are intended to lower costs, and most people won't see a tax increase. We rate her overreach False. | null | Kay Bailey Hutchison | null | null | null | 2010-01-20T16:36:32 | 2009-11-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-05460 | In the past three years, "we've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/23/barack-obama/obama-says-new-miles-pipeline-could-stretch-around/ | President Barack Obama kept up the drumbeat for his "all of the above" energy strategy with a speech in the White House Rose Garden. Addressing criticism that he has stood in the way of domestic production, in the April 17, 2012, speech Obama said the opposite is true. "There are politicians who say that if we just drilled more, then gas prices would come down right away. What they don’t say is that we have been drilling more. Under my administration, America is producing more oil than at any time in the last eight years. We’ve opened up new areas for exploration. We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some," Obama said, with a nod to middle-school science class. We've been hearing a lot about oil production recently and have checked several statements from Obama and Republicans on the matter. Here, we decided to check something we haven't heard before -- that the United States has added enough oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth since Obama took office. First, it's important to note that it's unusual for presidents to become involved in decisions about pipeline construction, which is largely driven by whether the oil and gas industry is willing to make the large investment, an expert told us. Obama rejected an expedited plan pushed by Republicans to build the Keystone XL pipeline, but he has also emphasized the importance of pipeline construction. He has said that domestic production exceeds current pipeline capacity and in March signed an executive order streamlining the permitting and construction process of a new crude oil pipeline to Gulf Coast refineries. For this item, we’re not addressing whether Obama deserves credit for the pipeline because of the limited role presidents have. But we can check whether that much pipeline has been added. To back up Obama's claim, the White House pointed us to statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which regulates pipelines. The DOT figures were last updated in April 2012 with mileage figures through 2010. So they do not include pipeline that was added last year or this year. Here's a comparison of the mileage at the end of 2008 (right before Obama took office) and the end of 2010: Crude oil 2008: 50,963 miles 2010: 54,728 +3,765 Petroleum products 2008: 61,599 2010: 64,752 + 3,153 Natural gas transmission 2008: 303,182 2010: 304,691 + 1,509 Natural gas distribution 2008: 2,074,513 2010: 2,095,690 + 21,177 That adds up to 2,490,257 oil and gas pipeline miles in 2008, and 2,519,861 in 2010. So that's 29,604 additional miles of pipeline. According to NASA, the equatorial circumference of the Earth is 24,873.6 miles. Obama's comparison is accurate, and given that the latest figures only cover through 2010, the real, current figure is likely higher. We asked two experts if the year-to-year comparison of pipeline miles is a valid measure and if anything else should be considered. Jay Hakes, former director of the Energy Information Administration under President Bill Clinton, said the data are reliable and "as near as I can tell, the assertion is well documented and correct." Tadeusz Patzek, chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, pointed out that many miles of those pipelines are "field/project gathering lines of small diameter and small throughput" -- not large transmission lines many of us think of. He's right. According to the DOT numbers, 21,177 miles of the new pipeline are listed as natural gas distribution lines. Still, such lines are "a necessary piece" of the whole system. Said Patzek: "Without the small stuff you’re not going to increase the flow rate through the large." Is 29,604 miles over three years a lot? For some perspective, we looked at the miles added during the last three years of George W. Bush's presidency. They tell a wholly different story: 63,243 new miles of small natural gas distrbution lines -- more than Obama's overall total. But crude oil? Just 756 miles. Petroleum products: 808 fewer miles in 2005 than in 2007. We're not suggesting Obama has done better than Bush in this regard. The comparison simply reinforces the point that oil and gas supply and demand, and the industry's response to it, results from decisions made far from the White House. Our ruling Obama said the U.S. has added enough pipeline in the last three years to circle the Earth "and then some." He is right about the mileage, though it includes not just large interstate transmission lines but also small pipes that collect gas from groups of wells and feed to the larger lines. But those pipelines are a link in the grid, and Obama didn't specify only large transmission pipeline. The statement is accurate. We rate it True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-04-23T16:47:08 | 2012-04-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-10741 | Edwards says if Congress won't pass universal health care, he'll tell Congress: "I'm going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/nov/07/john-edwards/prez-cant-snatch-congress-health-care/ | A television ad shows John Edwards giving a campaign speech and vowing to fight for universal health care coverage. "When I'm president I'm going to say to members of Congress and members of my administration, including my cabinet: I'm glad that you have health care coverage and your family has health care coverage," Edwards says. "But if you don't pass universal health care by July of 2009 – in six months – I'm going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you." Cue the wild applause. The problem with this statement is that the president can't just "take away" health care from Congress. "Health care for Congress and the administration is passed by statute. The president can't repeal a law on his own," said Don Ritchie, associate historian of the Senate Historical Office. "Congress has the power of the purse and passes legislation. It's the president who's dependent on Congress to get legislation passed," he said. If we broaden our view from the 30-second ad, Edwards fleshed out his idea in a September 2007 speech he gave in Chicago. During that speech, he explained that his plan was to "submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 -- unless we have passed universal health care reform." That's a more realistic scenario, and there's nothing to stop a president from submitting legislation if he can find a member to introduce it. But count us dubious on Congress voting away its own health care coverage. In the meantime, we find Edwards' lordly pronouncement in his TV ad to border on the absurd. As a former member of the U.S. senate, he should know better. For that reason, we give him the rare Pants on Fire ruling. | null | John Edwards | null | null | null | 2007-11-07T00:00:00 | 2007-11-12 | ['United_States_Congress'] |
snes-02111 | Crystal Pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crystal-pyramid/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Crystal Pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle? | 10 May 2013 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06391 | Bride-to-be sends over-the-top list of instructions to her attendants. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bridezilla/ | null | Embarrassments | null | David Mikkelson | null | Bridezilla | 8 October 2002 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10635 | You've got a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 corporations. That's either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/09/barack-obama/yes-but-its-not-illegal/ | Thousands of subsidiaries, many from U.S. corporations, have indeed set up shop — or more precisely, hung a nameplate — at the five-story Ugland House and other financial centers in the Cayman Islands. They include Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Intel, FedEx and Sprint. But while Sen. Barack Obama is right on the general point, calling the practice "the biggest tax scam on record" is questionable. From the quote itself, it's hard to tell if Obama is taking issue with the way companies use the Caymans as a tax shelter, or if he's objecting to the U.S. tax code that makes it possible. "There's nothing better than to beat up on a tax haven on a beach," said Douglas Shackelford, a professor at the University of North Carolina's business school. "It sounds crooked, but if one really thinks about the facts, I don't see the grounding." Weather isn't drawing the corporations, of course. The Caymans do not have a corporate income tax. The United States taxes corporate income at 35 percent, higher than most countries. As long as profits are not brought back to the United States, or "repatriated," no tax is due. Federal law allows the taxation of "passive income," meaning the interest earned on profits of those subsidiaries. But typically the companies reinvest the money elsewhere, Shackelford said. Obama is the co-sponsor of legislation that would crack down on offshore activities by corporations and individuals. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act would target an estimated $100-billion annually, including $30-billion from corporations. According to published financial reports, Coca-Cola alone saved $500-million in U.S. taxes in 2003 through foreign subsidiaries. Its Cayman company controls syrup-producing facilities in Ireland. The subsidiary pays taxes in Ireland at 12.5 percent, still far less than in the United States. So, Obama is right that thousands of corporations, and some do say more than 12,000, are in one building in the Caymans, but he goes too far when he implies it's an illegal scam. We rule his statement Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-01-09T00:00:00 | 2008-01-05 | ['Cayman_Islands'] |
pomt-14211 | The Colorado caucus system for selecting Republican delegates is "rigged." | false | /colorado/statements/2016/apr/19/donald-trump/trump-calls-colorado-caucus-system-rigged-theres-n/ | After Ted Cruz completed his sweep of all 34 delegates at the Colorado Republican convention, Donald Trump branded the state GOP’s caucus system "rigged" and "crooked." Trump told Fox & Friends that rank-and-file Colorado Republicans are "going absolutely crazy because they weren't given a vote, this was given by politicians. It's a crooked deal. ... It's a rigged system." Trump implied that he didn’t bother speaking to the Colorado convention because state "politicians" controlled the process and there’s "no voting." Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth asked Trump, "Isn't it just fair to say, These are the rules, Ted Cruz is organized, and you're just flat-out being out-organized?" Trump disagreed, saying, he has "out-organized" Cruz because "I have millions of more votes" and more delegates. Like many state caucuses, Colorado’s is a complex and arcane maze for newcomers to navigate. But was the Colorado system "rigged" and a "crooked deal" that deprived people of their vote, as Trump claimed? Confusing as they are, the rules for the caucus were changed in August 2015, two months after Trump entered the presidential race. And there’s no evidence the tweaks were made to disenfranchise Trump. Let’s dig deeper. Trump has performed better in states with primary elections, where his supporters can simply vote at their regular neighborhood polling place. But the Republican frontrunner’s campaign has struggled in state caucuses because it has lacked a strong ground game to shepherd voters through bewildering caucus gatherings that are rife with rules. When Trump said there was "no voting" at the Colorado caucuses, he was referring to an August 2015 decision by the state GOP's executive committee, which unanimously voted to abandon a presidential preference poll at this year’s precinct caucuses. The committee said it was reacting to the national party changing its rules to bind state delegates to the caucus winner — potentially leaving delegates tied to a candidate who later dropped out of the race. Yet, Trump is wrong in saying there was "no voting" at the caucuses. About 60,000 Republicans attended the state precinct caucuses. People voted at every level of the delegate selection process. The multistep Colorado GOP caucus process began March 1, when party members selected delegates at precinct caucuses. Those delegates moved on to higher-level gatherings before delegates for the Republican National Convention were selected at district assemblies and the April 9 state convention. Cruz, whose campaign had been building an organization in Colorado since January, was the only GOP presidential candidate to address the state convention. He grabbed all 34 delegates. Trump supporters, however, describe a problem-plagued process at the state convention. At a protest outside the Colorado Capitol building on Friday, April 15, about 200 Trump backers said their votes were "stolen." Some claimed they were misinformed and even lied to during the caucuses. The confusion continued at the state convention. Party organizers left about 30 delegates off the ballot and had to send out a correction sheet just before the convention vote. At least one Cruz delegate was entered twice on the ballot, replacing a Trump delegate, said Gabriel Schwartz, a Trump backer and state convention veteran. "Very obvious there was gross incompetence at the state (GOP) level," Schwartz told KMGH-TV. State GOP officials called the snafus a few "clerical errors" that didn’t impact the convention’s outcome. A Denver Post editorial said the Colorado Republican Party’s process for selecting presidential delegates "ranked among the least representative of all states." The editorial based its finding on the caucuses’ delegate-to-voter ratio — roughly 1 to 1,714 — and a national analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com. "In short, Colorado Republican leaders got what they wanted when they abandoned a presidential preference poll at the caucus. An extremely narrow base of activists and insiders chose the delegates in a process that ranked among the least representative and democratic in the country," the editorial said. However, the editorial still concluded, "Not that Donald Trump and his supporters have any ground for their complaints. As we've said before, they knew the rules." Even some Trump backers were disappointed by the campaign’s weak effort in Colorado. Trump delegate Larry Lindsey posted a YouTube that went viral of him fuming about being denied entrance to the state convention and burning his Republican party registration paper. Lindsey said he later learned that he was ineligible for the convention because he’d missed a county caucus vote. Yet, he said, someone told him the meeting was postponed. "The (Trump) organization here in Colorado was definitely lacking. I have to admit that, reluctantly," Lindsey told PolitiFact. University of Denver political scientist Peter Hanson said Cruz’s win in Colorado is a reminder that a good ground game matters. "Organization is key," Hanson told KMGH-TV. "It's one thing for a candidate to give a speech to a rally and think that their work is done. That's just not the way it works." U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio, issued a sharp rebuttal to Trump’s criticism of the state caucus system. "Donald Trump, who has known the rules since last August, he decided not to show up. Elections are won by those who show up and Ted Cruz showed up," Gardner told Fox News. Our ruling Trump said the Colorado GOP’s caucus system is "rigged" and "crooked." There are plenty of problems with Colorado’s caucus system. The delegate selection process is dominated by party activists and insiders, and this year’s caucuses were hampered -- at best -- by confusion and technical glitches. But Trump is complaining about rules that were in place eight months ago, when the Republican presidential race was clogged with 17 candidates. There is no evidence the rules were designed to favor a specific candidate. His campaign took a pass on the Colorado caucuses, focusing instead on the delegate-rich New York primary, while Cruz ran an exhaustive ground game in the Centennial State. We rate his claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/10e606f7-fc56-4d69-9c82-562b82fdb45b | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-04-19T18:20:59 | 2016-04-11 | ['Colorado', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-03462 | Worldwide credit card transactions, the credit card fraud rate is 0.04 percent, compared to almost 8 percent, 9 percent, 10 percent of Medicare fraud. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/17/peter-roskam/rep-roskam-says-medicare-fraud-rate-8-10-percent/ | Fraud by its very nature tries to hide from view. So when Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., talked about how big the problem is for the Medicare program, he gave himself some wiggle room. Roskam was talking to Fox News about a bill he has that would borrow tools used in the credit card industry to pare down the tens of billions of dollars that criminal gangs and unscrupulous operators pocket from the federal government’s health care program for the elderly. "Worldwide credit card transactions, the credit card fraud rate is 0.04 percent," Roskam told Fox News. "Compared to almost 8 percent, 9 percent, 10 percent of Medicare fraud." When PolitiFact checked the size of Medicare fraud five years ago, we quickly discovered that hard and fast numbers are hard to come by. In this fact-check, we’ll examine Roskam’s estimate of 8 to 10 percent and see what sources he relies on. Before we dive into Medicare fraud, a review of credit card studies shows that Roskam is pretty much on the mark when he speaks of a 0.04 percent rate. A 2010 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City gives a fraud rate of 0.05 percent for U.S. issued cards, both debit and credit. Roskam’s office pointed us to a trade publication, the Nilson Report, that cites an international rate of 0.04 percent rate. On Medicare, Roskam’s office cited a Government Accountability Office report, a watchdog website created by an executive order from President Barack Obama, and an article from the U.S. Administration on Aging. All three give us rates that range from 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent for the largest Medicare program, and up to 11 percent for a smaller program, Medicare Advantage. While the fraud rates fall into Roskam’s range, none of them is talking about fraud alone. Rather, they address the much broader category of improper payments. If a doctor orders too many tests, or provides a service but submits the wrong payment code, those come under the umbrella of improper payments. Out and out fraud is not as large as improper payments, but it can be egregious. The FBI recently charged 25 people in Miami for allegedly bribing Medicare beneficiaries and then using their account numbers to bill for services that were unnecessary or never provided. The government says the scheme netted the conspirators about $44 million. Malcolm Sparrow, professor of public management and a specialist in corruption control at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told us that fraud and improper payments are far from identical. "There is a serious problem with conflating these different types of overpayment," Sparrow said. "They are quite different in origin and require very different types of control mechanisms." When we raised this with Roskam’s office, his staff sent us several examples where Roskam has spoken collectively of fraud, waste and abuse. On Fox News, however, he spoke only of fraud. PolitiFact also found a study that restores a measure of credibility to Roskam’s estimate. Donald Berwick, a former head of the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS, the agency that runs Medicare, collaborated with an analyst at RAND to produce a landmark paper in 2012 in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. That paper offers three estimates of fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs: a low of 3 percent, a medium of 6 percent and a high of 10 percent. CMS told us they have no official estimate of fraud but pointed us to this study, and they cited FBI figures that mirror the numbers in this paper. If it turns out that the high end of the range in the JAMA article is correct, then Roskam is in the right ballpark. Of course, nobody knows for sure because fraud is a crime, and criminals don’t advertise their work. Two caveats for policy makers The JAMA article doesn’t stop at Medicare and Medicaid. It also looks at fraud in the health care sector as a whole, both public and private. The fraud rates don’t change much when the private sector is included. For Sparrow at Harvard, this is no surprise. "The systems and structures they use for control are the same, across public, private, and not-for-profit programs," Sparrow said. "They all tend to share the same strengths and weaknesses, and are roughly equally vulnerable." Put another way, the nature of the American health care system lends itself to a certain level of fraud, and the Medicare program is no more and no less susceptible to this type of crime. Sparrow says this also suggests the comparison to the credit card industry might be less useful than might appear. In the first place, the transactions are much simpler. When a thief tries a scam with a credit card, the card holder tends to notice by the next bill. In general, this kind of fraud is more easily detected and tracked. But Sparrow says there’s a bigger difference. "The losses are borne by banks," he said. That creates a powerful incentive, in real time, to control the problem. In health care, the incentives are "more diffuse and ambiguous." Our ruling Roskam said the Medicare fraud rate is 8 to 10 percent. His office pointed us to various documents that analyzed the problem of improper payments, an issue that mixes fraud together with nominally legal activities such as referring patients for more tests than are necessary. This suggested Roskam was using an inflated estimate of fraud. However, a recent study tends, in the worst-case analysis, to support Roskam’s figures. Roskam’s comparison to credit cards overlooks many key differences between the structures of the health care and credit card industries, and it tends to obscure the systematic nature of fraud in health care, whether public or private. But Roskam is right that credit card fraud is a tiny percentage of all transactions. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Peter Roskam | null | null | null | 2013-06-17T15:53:24 | 2013-06-12 | ['None'] |
goop-02040 | Kate Middleton Having Twin Girls, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/palace-not-confirm-kate-middleton-twin-girls/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kate Middleton NOT Having Twin Girls, Despite Report | 10:41 am, December 13, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08879 | During the recession, "the consumer in his native perversity has begun to save. The savings rate is now 6.2 percent." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/02/george-will/george-will-says-personal-saving-rate-has-increase/ | During the Aug. 1, 2010, roundtable on ABC's This Week, host Christiane Amanpour asked panelists about the current levels of slow growth in the United States economy. "Growth is happening," Amanpour said, "but at 2.4 percent, which is slower than most people wanted. I see you shaking your head in this debate. The Financial Times is basically saying that the deficit talk is a phony, rhetorical war and that actually stimulus has had some effect." She turned to George Will, the conservative columnist, who had been shaking his head. "Well, the recovery is now more than a year old, and we know two things about it," Will said. "It's unusually weak for a recovery after a severe downturn, and, B, starting weak, it's getting weaker, for two reasons. First of all, the stimulus is running out. ... Cash for Clunkers has come and gone. The homebuyer's tax credit for purchasing new -- particularly new homes, come and gone. Second, the growth so far has been largely driven by inventories, businesses rebuilding their inventories in anticipation of the consumer -- 70 percent of business activity in a normal time -- coming back to the malls. The trouble is, the consumer in his native perversity has begun to save. The savings rate is now 6.2 percent. So what you have is what I think Keynes called the paradox of thrift. ... It's a virtue until it isn't a virtue." We thought it would be worthwhile to check whether the savings rate has in fact risen to 6.2 percent during the recession. Checking the number itself was easy. We looked to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, which tracks the personal saving rate, which it defines as the percentage of personal disposable income that is saved. The data shows that during the second quarter of 2010, the personal saving rate was about 6.2 percent, just as Will had said. Will is also right to suggest that the rate has risen. The current rate is the second highest it has been in any quarter since at least 2004, which is the earliest data BEA offers on the chart we found. Prior to the start of the recession in 2008, the saving rate was typically below 4 percent, and much of the time it was below 2 percent. In other words, consumers today are hoarding significantly more of their income than they were during the go-go days of high real estate values, easy credit and a steadily growing economy. So Will is right on the facts. But we were also intrigued about whether the higher savings rate has hampered the nation's economic recovery, as he suggests. Let's begin by explaining the "paradox of thrift" that Will cited. The major tenet is that when people save a lot of money, rather than spend it, they help their own bottom lines -- but that if everyone follows that approach, then everybody loses. According to the theory, the money saved doesn't get injected into the economy, where it would boost production and profits and help create jobs. In other words, a higher personal savings rate, like the one Will is talking about, can actually hurt the economy even as it helps individuals live within their means and hedge against personal economic setbacks. We checked with a cross-section of economists to see whether they thought this theory -- which was popularized by left-of-center economist John Maynard Keynes -- is generally considered accurate today. The experts we talked to said that it has broad, but not universal, approval. Most of the skepticism about the paradox of thrift has come from the right. Conservative economist Dan Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute said that free-market economics doesn't dispute that higher saving leads to lower consumption, but it places less importance on that shift. Free-marketers say that as long as the national income is growing, then the displacement of consumption by savings doesn't matter that much. J.D. Foster, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that when Keynes popularized the concept in the early 20th century, the money that was "saved" was actually stuck in the proverbial mattress, at which point it really did leave the economic system. By contrast, there are many relatively safe options for parking one's money today, even accounting for the shakiness in the financial sector since 2008. And if a higher savings rate means that people are putting their money into banks or other safe investments, that money makes its way back into the economy as capital available to lend. In turn, greater availability of loans can help juice the economy. That said, there are still many defenders of the original Keynesian view of the paradox of thrift. They cite real-world evidence from the past few years, in which investment has fallen compared to pre-recession levels despite historically low interest rates. "Businesses and households evidently do not want to invest as much in 2010 as they did in 2007" because they're not confident those investments will pay off, said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution. "Of course, one reason for their lack of confidence is the very slow growth in household consumption, which is a byproduct of the rise in household saving rates. On the surface, then, the facts tend to support the broad version of the paradox of thrift. The jump in the household saving rate has thus been harmful to economic growth, at least in the short run." We'll acknowledge that there's a difference of opinion in how economists view the impact of the saving rate's growth during the recession. But on Will's core factual assertion -- that the savings rate has climbed during the recession -- he's correct. So we rate his statement True. | null | George Will | null | null | null | 2010-08-02T16:13:52 | 2010-08-01 | ['None'] |
tron-03486 | Jet Airliner With Disabled Landing Gear Saved by Pick Up Truck | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/airliner-nissan-truck/ | null | space-aviation | null | null | null | Jet Airliner With Disabled Landing Gear Saved by Pick Up Truck | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01648 | We’ve seen highway fatalities actually decrease in Colorado since marijuana use was legalized. | half-true | /oregon/statements/2014/aug/22/anthony-johnson/have-colorado-highway-fatalities-decreased-marijua/ | Oregon voters will have the chance in November to join only Colorado and Washington as states where recreational use of marijuana is legal. Not surprisingly, the issue is already heating up, with those for and against staking out positions they hope will sway voters on Measure 91. The claim: Anthony Johnson, the measure’s chief petitioner and director of the advocacy group New Approach Oregon, made his pitch recently when the City Club of Portland met to debate the merits of nine political issues, legal marijuana among them. When an opposition speaker questioned why Oregon should follow the lead of Colorado and Washington into the relatively uncharted territory of legal pot, Johnson noted the pluses of regulation and taxation. Addressing opposition predictions that driving accidents would spike in those states, he added, "We've seen highway fatalities actually decrease in Colorado" since recreational use of marijuana became legal there in January. Since the effect legalization might have on impaired driving is a big topic in Oregon in the lead up to November, PolitiFact Oregon checked the numbers. The analysis: Colorado’s medical marijuana law took effect in 2002, giving the Centennial State a relatively long history of dealing with the drug in an other-than-illegal capacity. However, recreational use has been in effect for only seven months, making any numbers suspect in terms of how longer-term trends might play out. That said, we figured that comparing the number of traffic fatalities recorded during the first seven months of this year with the first seven of 2013 would the fairest way to evaluate Johnson’s claim. We called Emily Wilfong, a Colorado Department of Transportation spokeswoman. As of Aug. 22, 2014, she said, 295 people had died in motor vehicle crashes in the state. That compared with the 313 deaths reported as of the same time a year ago. A difference, yes, but one of less than six percent. But even so, Wilfong added, those two figures don’t reveal a useful picture when it comes to assessing traffic deaths in the age of legal marijuana. For starters, neither figure includes the icy dangers of Colorado’s winter driving season, which begins around mid- to late-October, she said. Hazardous conditions could easily skew the number of traffic fatalities dramatically. For another, neither includes an analysis of exactly how the deaths occurred. "There could well be a big decrease in the number of pedestrian fatalities," Wilfong said. "There’s nothing in these figures to show that impaired driving has been reduced to any measurable degree." Muddying the numbers further is the fact that toxicology reports showing what drivers had in their systems may not come back for months, she said. "So we have some numbers," Wilfong said, "but we’re not at all certain what they mean at this point. It’s way too early to tell." Trooper Josh Lewis, Wilfong’s Colorado State Patrol counterpart, agreed. "Statistically, we’re essentially neck and neck with last year," he said. "But there’s nothing to say that marijuana use is reducing the number of fatalities or that there’s any correlation between the two. It could well be months or years before we have gathered that sort of data." We tried to reach Johnson, but were told he was out of the office. The Yes on 91 campaign referred us to Art Way, senior drug policy manager of the Drug Policy Alliance (Colorado). Over the past decade, he said -- or roughly the time that Colorado began loosening its marijuana laws -- total highway fatalities are down. Statistics bear that out, but the margin is slim and there are other factors such as improvements in vehicle safety and trauma medicine. The ruling: Anthony Johnson, chief petitioner for Measure 91, which would legalize recreational marijuana use in Oregon, pointed to Colorado’s brief seven-month experience with legal pot and noted that traffic fatalities have decreased there over that stretch. Colorado’s most recent statistics show that 18 fewer people have died so far this year in fatal traffic accidents than did during that same time period in 2013. Nothing in those numbers, however, supports any contention that legal marijuana had anything to do with a drop that’s as much as a blip as anything. Johnson’s statement is true, but it omits important details and context. We rate it Half True. Thoughts on our ruling? Click on over to OregonLive/politics.com and leave your comments. (This fact-check has been edited. An earlier version mischaracterized one of Anthony Johnson's arguments regarding driving and recreational marijuana. It did not change the ruling.) | null | Anthony Johnson | null | null | null | 2014-08-22T15:43:36 | 2014-08-20 | ['Colorado'] |
tron-02713 | Intel Officer: Obama Could Be First President With Felony Indictment | outdated! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/intel-officer-obama-could-be-first-president-felony-indictment/ | null | obama | null | null | ['2016 election', 'barack obama', 'donald trump', 'fbi'] | Intel Officer: Obama Could Be First President With Felony Indictment | Nov 27, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01010 | Murderous 1960s Cult Leader Charles Manson Died at 83 in November 2017 | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/charles-manson-died-83-november-2017/ | null | crime-police | null | null | ['charles manson', 'criminal justice'] | Murderous 1960s Cult Leader Charles Manson Died at 83 in November 2017 | Nov 20, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02907 | Fox Cancels All NFL Games Until Players Respect the Flag | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/fox-cancels-nfl-broadcasts-respect-flag/ | null | politics | null | null | ['donald trump', 'National Anthem', 'nfl', 'protests'] | Fox Cancels All NFL Games Until Players Respect the Flag | Sep 26, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02947 | CIA Investigating Madonna “Blow Up the White House” Comment | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/cia-investigating-madonna-blow-white-house-comment/ | null | politics | null | null | ['celebrities', 'donald trump', 'national security'] | CIA Investigating Madonna “Blow Up the White House” Comment | Jan 23, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03320 | The Republican-authored state budget includes a provision "forcing people earning as little as $12,000 to buy private health insurance that could cost them as much as $4,000 per year." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2013/jul/26/dave-hansen/wisconsin-sen-dave-hansen-says-state-budget-forces/ | Work on the Republican-authored state budget is all over, capped by Gov. Scott Walker’s signature June 30, 2013. But the shouting continues. State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) protested after the Associated Press reported that a GOP real-estate agent wrote to Walker about buying state office buildings while the Legislature considered Walker’s budget -- which ended competitive bidding for such sales. "The ink on the budget wasn’t even dry," Hansen claimed in a July 19, 2013 news release, "before one of these wealthy Republican donors was angling for a sweetheart deal from a political party that appears all too eager to reward their friends." Hansen included an income-tax break and an expanded voucher-school program among the "rewards," but it was a health-care claim on Hansen’s list that caught our eye. The GOP budget, he said, included a move "forcing people earning as little as $12,000 to buy private health insurance that could cost them as much as $4,000 per year." So, by Hansen’s calculation, the state budget means low-income people will be pushed into the private market and find themselves spending fully one-third of their income on health care. Hansen is talking about Walker’s controversial decision to reject the federal Medicaid expansion and instead require some 90,000 poor people to get coverage from the new private insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, under Obamacare. Critics, including Democrats such as Hansen, said that despite federal subsidies a chunk of those people would not be able to afford private insurance from the exchanges. Currently, those people have very limited out-of-pocket costs under the state’s BadgerCare Plus health program. Hansen, in his blast at the budget, puts a hard number on the challenge facing some people with his $12,000/$4,000 scenario. The two numbers are familiar to experts who track how the Obamacare exchanges will work in Wisconsin. At an income of $12,000 -- just above the federal poverty line of $11,490 -- an individual will no longer be eligible for state BadgerCare coverage and will have to move into the federal exchanges. The $4,000 is a worst-case scenario figure for out-of-pocket costs in the exchanges for a family of two with a household income of up to 200 percent of the official federal poverty level, notes Jon Peacock, research director at the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, a liberal advocacy and research group. But Hansen muffs the illustration using the two figures. One big problem is he mixes an income level for one person with the costs facing a household of two. A single person with an income of $12,000 would pay about $240 a year in insurance premiums, and if serious health problems arise could pay up to an additional $2,100 in out-of-pocket costs (deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance), said Peacock and Sonya Schwartz, a member of the research faculty at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. That adds up to a possible total outlay of almost $2,400 -- one-fifth of the cited income -- not the $4,000 or one-third that Hansen says. No small change in either case, but it makes for a big difference. A couple of final notes. The $4,000 cost figure Hansen cites could come into play for married couples, for instance, but only if their combined income was above $15,510 -- higher than the $12,000 Hansen cites. Most of the people who would be moved from BadgerCare, though, would be single parents with custody of a child. The child would stay on BadgerCare, however. The maximum costs for a parent who is right at the poverty level would be around $2,400. They jump up to over $4,000 for a single parent making $30,000, Peacock said. So, Hansen’s specific example is significantly off the mark -- and that’s especially problematic because he’s talking about the worst-case scenario to begin with. Our rating Hansen sought to highlight the biggest impact on a group of poor people when he said the Republican move will have the effect of "forcing people earning as little as $12,000 to buy private health insurance that could cost them as much as $4,000 per year." But Hansen errs in the example and significantly overstates the effect. We rate his claim False. | null | Dave Hansen | null | null | null | 2013-07-26T05:00:00 | 2013-07-19 | ['None'] |
goop-02763 | Brad Pitt Having “Breakdown” Or “Relapse,” | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-breakdown-relapse/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Brad Pitt NOT Having “Breakdown” Or “Relapse,” Despite Report | 3:07 pm, May 31, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05636 | How Are Baby Carrots Made? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/baby-carrots/ | null | Food | null | Snopes Staff | null | How Are Baby Carrots Made? | 11 March 2008 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00410 | Strange Sea Creatures Washed Up From the Tsunami | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/tsunamifish/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Strange Sea Creatures Washed Up From the Tsunami | Mar 20, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00223 | You know what was wrong with Paris [Accord] ... China and India got away, the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free. They didn’t have to take steps until 2030. | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/pruitt-paris-accord/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Scott Pruitt | Vanessa Schipani | ['SciCheck', 'carbon dioxide'] | Pruitt on the Paris Accord | March 28, 2017 | [' Interview on ABC\'s "This Week." – Sunday, March 26, 2017 '] | ['China', 'India', 'Paris'] |
thal-00125 | Claim: Ireland is the most globalised country in the world | unproven | http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-worlds-most-globalised-country-fact-check-2954572-Aug2016/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: Is Ireland actually the world's "most globalised" country? | Aug 30th 2016, 8:03 PM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02452 | Travis County now has the highest urban county tax rate in Texas. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2014/feb/26/andy-brown/travis-countys-tax-rate-ranks-among-very-highest-a/ | It’s not unusual for a candidate to bemoan taxes. Still, Andy Brown’s claim in a mailer stopped us short: "Travis County now has the highest urban county tax rate in Texas." Brown, an Austin lawyer running for Travis County judge, aired his statement under an arrow suggesting county tax bills steadily escalated while his Democratic primary opponent, Sarah Eckhardt, served on the Travis County Commissioners Court. We’re focusing here on whether the county has the highest tax rate of the state’s urban counties. By email, Brown’s campaign manager, Jim Wick, told us the campaign compared the 2012 total tax rate for Travis County with the rate in other counties that are home to the state’s five largest cities. Wick included a chart indicating that in this subset, the Travis County rate of $0.5001 per $100 property valuation exceeded the rates in Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and El Paso counties. El Paso County, Brown’s chart indicates, had the next-highest rate, $0.40887 per $100 valuation. "Since there is no statutory definition of an urban county, we defined it as a county that has a ‘big city’ in it that is often compared to other big cities around Texas," Wick wrote. By phone, he said: "We were trying to compare apples to apples." We took our own, broader look. Online, the Texas Association of Counties drew on data collected by the state comptroller’s office to create a chart listing the "general fund property tax rates" for every Texas county for 1996 through 2012. Among the 15 most populous counties, the chart and our own web research suggested that in 2012 and 2013, Travis County had the second-highest total property tax rate--topped only by Hidalgo County, which is home to McAllen near the Texas-Mexico border. Hidalgo County’s rate of $0.59 per $100 valuation in 2012 and 2013 compared with Travis County’s respective rates of $0.5001 and $0.4946 per $100 valuation. Among these 15 counties, Travis-neighboring Williamson County had the third-highest 2013 rate, $0.49029 per $100 valuation. Travis County’s rates in 2012 and 2013 far outpaced the total rates in the state’s four more populous counties. In this subgroup, the next-closest 2013 rate--$0.40021 per $100 valuation--was levied by the most populous county, Harris. The other more populous counties and their total tax rates: Dallas ($0.2431 per $100 valuation); Tarrant ($0.2640 per $100 valuation); and Bexar ($0.296187 per $100 valuation). MOST POPULOUS TEXAS COUNTIES TOTAL PROPERTY TAX RATE in DOLLARS PER $100 VALUATION, 2012 TOTAL PROPERTY TAX RATE in DOLLARS PER $100 VALUATION, 2013 Harris 0.40021 0.40021 Dallas 0.2431 0.2431 Tarrant 0.264 0.264 Bexar 0.326866 0.296187 Travis 0.5001 0.4946 El Paso 0.40887 0.43 Collin 0.24 0.2375 Hidalgo 0.59 0.59 Denton 0.282867 0.284914 Fort Bend 0.48076 0.48476 Montgomery 0.4838 0.4838 Williamson 0.49029 0.49029 Cameron 0.384291 0.384291 Nueces 0.355259 0.340999 Brazoria 0.48586 0.43202 Sources: Web page, "Texas Total County Property Tax Rates 1996 - 2012," Texas Association of Counties; Web page, "Harris County, Truth in Taxation Summary;" Document, "2013 AD VALOREM TAX RATES FOR DALLAS COUNTY;" Web page, "Tarrant County, Rates and Exemptions;" Web page, "2013 Official Tax Rates & Exemptions," Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector; Web page, "Truth in Taxation Summary," Travis County; News story, "El Paso County Commissioners Court adopted a 2-cent tax increase," El Paso Times, Sept. 24, 2013; Chart, "TAX RATE HISTORY," Collin County Tax Assessor-Collector; Chart, "41 HIDALGO COUNTY TAX OFFICE 2013 TAX RATE SCHEDULE," Hidalgo County; Telephone interview, Stacey Dvoracek, chief deputy, Denton County Tax Assessor-Collector, Feb. 24, 2014; Web page, "2013 Fort Bend Tax Rates," Fort Bend County; Web page, "Tax Rate Information," Montgomery County; Web page, "Tax Rate Information," Williamson County; Chart, "2013 Jurisdiction Tax Rates," Cameron County Appraisal District; Chart, "2013 Nueces County Tax Rates," Nueces County; Chart, "Brazoria County Tax Rates," Brazoria County Appraisal District We noticed another wrinkle in that Travis County has long had one of the highest tax rates among the urban counties. There wasn’t a change in this respect in Eckhardt’s time as a commissioner. According to the information compiled by the counties’ association, Travis County had the highest total rate among the five most populous counties every year from 1996 through 2012. Travis County’s total rate even exceeded the Hidalgo County rate from 1996 through 1999, the chart indicates, though Hidalgo has had a higher rate every year since. When we pointed this out, Wick told us the mailer’s use of "now" was intended to mean at "this very moment." Finally, it’s worth noting that however the county’s tax rate compares to others, it would take more research to tell whether Austin-area residents pay more in property taxes than other Texans. Each local resident’s tab includes taxes collected by governmental entities including, perhaps, the city of Austin and a school district. Our ruling Brown said Travis County now has the highest urban county tax rate in Texas. Travis County had the second-highest total property tax rate of the state’s 15 most populous counties in 2012 and 2013, we found, also levying the highest rate of the state’s seven most populous counties. But in contrast to Brown’s message, Travis County's tip-top ranking isn't new. The county’s rate has exceeded the rates of more populous counties every year since 1996. We rate this claim, which lacked these clarifications, as 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. | null | Andy Brown | null | null | null | 2014-02-26T10:49:52 | 2014-02-17 | ['Texas', 'Travis_County,_Texas'] |
pomt-07950 | As many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/25/barack-obama/barack-obama-state-union-says-quarter-us-high-scho/ | In his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 2011, President Barack Obama advocated investments in both physical and human capital. But he said the nation’s rates of educational achievement were falling short. "Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree," Obama said. "And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school." We looked at this question last year, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan offered a similar statistic on the Aug 29, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour during a discussion of education policy. "In this country, we have a 25 percent dropout rate," he said. "That's 1.2 million students leaving our schools for the streets every single year. That is economically unsustainable, and that is morally unacceptable." We wondered whether it was really true that one of every four American high school students drops out before graduating. We concluded that while Duncan used a commonly cited statistic, education experts we contacted cautioned that it's an imperfect measurement. First, a bit about the complex world of measuring dropout rates, drawing liberally from a prior article by our colleagues at PolitiFact Texas. Researchers and governments have many different ways of measuring how many students leave school before graduating. "A dropout rate seems like it should be the most intuitive thing in the world, but it’s not," said David Bills, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Education who specializes in comparative statistics. "There are almost as many ways of calculating state dropout rates as there are states." One way to calculate it is to track individual students as they progress from freshman year of high school until graduation. This provides the most accurate data, but tracking students this way requires a lot of effort, so many school districts do not do it. The main alternative is to track the decline in enrollment between freshman year and graduation. This is known as the AFGR, or averaged freshman graduation rate. It's much easier to do -- and it's the most consistent "apples to apples" statistic across the 50 states -- but it is undermined by a greater risk of error. That's because AFGR does not necessarily distinguish between students who actually dropped out and those who left for other reasons, such as moving to a school in another state, leaving to follow one's parents to a new military assignment, graduating early or graduating late. "If a kid leaves one school but is never tracked if he enrolls in another school, that can count as a dropout," Bills said. "Also, a lot of kids who leave high school but later get GEDs are often counted as dropouts. And sometimes dropout rates are calculated as the number of people aged 16-24 not in school and without a degree, which can also inflate the number." Students who leave for other reasons can be excluded, but this is not always done, and not doing it tends to inflate the apparent number of dropouts. Standardization mandated by provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act has reduced these errors over time, but the statistics are not yet perfect, our experts said. And, needless to say, analyzing different data with different methods will inevitably yield varying results. To add to the confusion, any of the measurements cited above might be termed the "dropout" rate in public discourse. At the Education Department, we spoke to Tracy Dell'Angela, director of outreach and communications with the Institute of Education Sciences, which oversees the department's National Center for Education Statistics, which among other things calculates AFGR. She said that when Duncan talks about the dropout rate, he tends to subtract the AFGR (nearly 75 percent for the last available year, 2007-2008) from a full student universe of 100 percent to get a 25 percent dropout rate. In one sense, Duncan was on solid ground -- his calculation is certainly a common way to use the statistics. But the numbers require some important caveats. In addition to the issue of transfer students cited earlier, the statistics do not necessarily treat home schoolers accurately (they may be counted as dropouts if they begin home schooling after 9th grade and eventually graduate from home school). In addition, Education Department data has sometimes left out entire states, including South Carolina in 2007-2008. Also, the AFGR statistics only refer to public school students. In fact, there is no comprehensive data on graduation and dropout rates from private schools, which account for about 8 to 9 percent of high school students. Since parents paying tuition are likely to be especially motivated to see their children finish school, the true national dropout rate reported probably overstates the actual percentage of American children failing to graduate from high school. We ended up rating Duncan’s comment Half True, noting that while we understood the need for simplicity in a televised interview, Duncan could have easily said the dropout rate "may be as high as 25 percent." In fact, Obama in his State of the Union address did essentially that, prefacing the statistic by saying that "as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school." We still think the 25 percent statistic is undermined by a variety of problems, but we give Obama credit for offering a range. So we find his claim Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2011-01-25T21:44:34 | 2011-01-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-12674 | Wisconsin is "the most -- if not Number 1, number 2 -- gerrymandered state in the country" for state legislative boundaries. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2017/mar/17/dave-hansen/attacking-republicans-democratic-state-senator-say/ | A federal court has ruled that boundaries drawn by Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 for state legislative districts were so excessively partisan as to be unconstitutional. Two months later, in January 2017, the three-judge panel ordered Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature to redraw the districts (the state is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court). Understandably, Democrats have cried foul. One of them, state Sen. Dave Hansen of Green Bay, went so far as to declare in a March 5, 2017 TV interview: "We are the most -- if not Number 1, Number 2 -- gerrymandered state in the country." Is he right? The court case Boundaries for the state Assembly and state Senate (as well as for Wisconsin’s congressional districts) are redrawn every 10 years -- by the state Legislature itself, which can lead to problems. As the Harvard Political Review has observed generally about redistricting, which is done by the legislature in most states: "Allowing partisan legislators to redraw their own districts creates a clear conflict of interest, and historically the temptation to game the system has proven too great to resist for the majority party." The federal court said the Wisconsin state legislative maps drawn in 2011 by Republicans were among the most heavily skewed to one party of any plan in the country going back more than 40 years. One of the goals, the court concluded, "was to secure Republican control of the Assembly under any likely future electoral scenario for the remainder of the decade, in other words to entrench the Republican Party in power." The Washington Post’s "The Fix" blog called Wisconsin one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, noting that in 2012, Democratic candidates for the state Assembly received more votes than Republicans, but won just 39 of 99 districts. The blog said the court’s ruling was the first time in a decade that a court has thrown out legislative maps because they favored voters of one party over another. The new boundaries have been reflected in election results. As Craig Gilbert, author of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Wisconsin Voter blog, has reported: 2012: Republicans got only 46 percent of the presidential vote in Wisconsin, but won 60 percent of the seats in the state Assembly. 2014: Republicans got just over 52 percent of the vote for governor, but captured 63 percent of the Assembly seats. 2016: Donald Trump won 50.4 percent of the vote for president, but won 64 percent of the Assembly seats. Viewed another way, according to political scientists at Binghamton University: Wisconsin Democrats probably have to win about 55 to 56 percent of the statewide vote to win control of the state Assembly, while Republicans need only win 44 to 45 percent. And Theodore Arrington, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, agreed that depending on how gerrymandering is measured, Wisconsin is among the worst states. So, the Wisconsin state legislative maps stand as an outlier. How Wisconsin compares to others isn’t a precise calculation, but it stands out in that way, too. Ranking states To back Hansen’s claim, his office pointed us to a column that reported on a 2015 study by Simon Jackman, who at the time was a political science professor at Stanford University. (He is now CEO of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.) Jackman was hired by the plaintiffs in the federal court case. He studied 41 states, not all 50, and ranked Wisconsin’s map as the fifth-worst: North Carolina Virginia Michigan Florida Wisconsin Wisconsin ranked higher, however, in a 2014 study we found that was led by University of Chicago law professor and redistricting expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos: Wyoming Wisconsin Oklahoma Virginia Florida Both studies used a measure called the "efficiency gap," a number that is arrived at through an equation. That is, the difference between each party's "wasted" votes in an election -- where votes are wasted if they are cast for a losing candidate, or for a winning candidate but in excess of what the candidate needed to win -- divided by the total number of votes cast. Stephanopoulos told us Wisconsin’s ranking differs in the two studies because the studies treated uncontested races differently. But whether Wisconsin ranks fifth or second "is just a matter of a percentage point or two, and is substantively irrelevant," he said. There are some caveats, though, as other redistricting experts noted. Charles Hampton, an emeritus professor of mathematical sciences at Wooster College in Ohio, said he thought the second study was too dependent on vote totals in its analysis and not on the redistricting plan itself. Michael Li, who is senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program at New York University School of Law, told us the "partisan biases" found in the studies can be largely but not completely explained by gerrymandering. But he said political geography -- for example, Democrats tending to live in big cities -- also explains some of the disparity in Wisconsin. Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who maintains a website on redistricting, cautioned that "there are no universally agreed-upon rankings, in part because gerrymandering usually describes an unfair drawing of the lines, and there's no universally agreed-upon sense of what's fair, or what's fair for what purposes." Our rating Hansen says Wisconsin is "the most -- if not Number 1, Number 2 -- gerrymandered state in the country" for state legislative boundaries. A federal court has said maps drawn in 2011 by Wisconsin Republicans were among the most heavily skewed to one party of any plan in the country going back more than 40 years. And, with the caveat that there isn’t a universally accepted definition of gerrymander, two studies put Wisconsin at or near the top. We rate the statement Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Dave Hansen | null | null | null | 2017-03-17T05:00:00 | 2017-03-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-05050 | Says Mitt Romney "has a corporation in Bermuda (but) failed to disclose that on seven different financial disclosures." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/10/robert-gibbs/democrats-say-mitt-romney-failed-disclose-offshore/ | In the Democratic playbook, the more attention paid to Mitt Romney’s wealth, the better. Over the past few days, many Democrats questioned whether Romney used offshore holdings to dodge U.S. taxes and pressed him to release more of his personal financial information. Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs took the occasion during CNN’s State of the Union to say, "Nobody knows why he has a corporation in Bermuda, why he failed to disclose that on seven different financial disclosures." We wondered if Gibbs had his facts right. Does Romney currently have a stake in a Bermuda corporation? And did he fail to disclose it seven times? Reporting by the Associated Press and Vanity Fair teed this up. Both news organizations explored one of Romney’s overseas accounts, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, Ltd. The firm is described in SEC filings as "a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." (For more details, check out the AP's interesting account.) In his 2010 tax return and his 2011 estimated filing, Romney includes Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, Ltd. The beginning balance is pegged at $10,432. He and his wife Ann are the sole owners. According to the Associated Press, Romney ran his investments in other Bain Capital deals through this offshore corporation. Democrats have pounced on the issue. Offshore holdings might be perfectly legal, but they also might paint Romney as one of the super-rich who may be using an offshore tax shelter. Romney’s ownership of Sankaty is not in doubt, at least not as recently as this past December, according to Romney’s 2011 estimated tax return. So Gibbs appears to be on solid ground that Romney has the company now. We asked the Romney campaign if they could give us more current information on the status of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, but they did not respond. In an interview with Radio Iowa on Monday, Romney deflected the issue, saying his foreign investments are in a blind trust. "I don’t manage them. I don’t even know where they are," Romney said. "That trustee follows all U.S. laws. All the taxes are paid, as appropriate. All of them have been reported to the government. There’s nothing hidden there." As for Gibbs’ other assertion that Romney has failed to disclose his stake in Sankaty seven times, that also is largely accurate. We counted six disclosure forms where Romney made no reference at all to the Bermuda corporation. Those include his filings in Massachusetts when he was running for governor or holding office and his federal disclosures for his presidential bids. The seventh appears to be his 2001 disclosure, which lists Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors LLC. Note the slight difference in those three letters -- LLC instead of Ltd. The LLC, a limited liability corporation he named on the form, is based in Delaware. The offshore corporation by the same name ends in Ltd. and there is no mention of it until Romney’s lawyers began amending his disclosures this year. There is some question whether he was required to disclose this asset. In 2003, on the eve of running for governor, he put Sankaty into a blind trust. Thereafter, he disclosed the presence of the trust and might not have been required to say what was in it. It is also unclear whether the nominal value of Sankaty would be high enough to warrant disclosure. In 2011, its value was $10,432. However, as the Associated Press pointed out, that could well ignore the potential income that might flow through the fund. It is possible for investments made many years ago to produce over $1 million in payoffs that suddenly appear on the books. Our ruling Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said Romney owns a Bermuda-based corporation and that he failed to disclose his ownership seven times. The documentary evidence indicates Gibbs is right that Romney owned it when he filed his estimated tax return in December and that he did not disclose it earlier. The Romney campaign has not said the statements are wrong. We rate Gibbs claim True. UPDATE -- We may have had the lyrics to Kokomo in our heads ("Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama...") because twice in this article we referred to the Bahamas when we meant Bermuda. We've corrected the mistakes, although we still can't get the song our of our head. | null | Robert Gibbs | null | null | null | 2012-07-10T15:59:40 | 2012-07-08 | ['None'] |
tron-00657 | Casey Anthony Has Been Found Dead | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/casey-anthony-has-been-found-dead-fiction/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Casey Anthony Has Been Found Dead | Sep 24, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00044 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report on DotA 2 ban in the Philippines | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-report-dota-2-ban-philippines-prank | null | null | null | null | fake news | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report on DotA 2 ban in the Philippines a PRANK | September 27, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03155 | The Libertarian Party "is the third-largest political party in the U.S." | false | /florida/statements/2013/sep/09/libertarian-party-broward-county/libertarians-say-theyre-third-largest-political-pa/ | In politics -- or any blood sport -- it’s rare to hear a team proudly chant, "We’re No. 3! We’re No. 3!" But that’s what we heard from Libertarians in the purple state of Florida. We spotted a claim about the numbers and growth of libertarians in an announcement about a Libertarian event in Broward County: "The Libertarian Party is the third-largest organized political party in the United States and has seen tremendous growth over the last two years as many Democrats and Republicans have become disenchanted with their respective parties." (The article was written by Karl Dickey who serves on the Libertarian Party of Florida’s executive committee and represents Broward, Palm Beach and Hendry counties.) We found a similar claim on the Libertarian Party of Broward website that the party is "the third-largest political party in the U.S." We wanted to explore the numbers and the power of the Libertarian Party. Is it the third-largest party in the country? We’ve looked at the numbers of Libertarians in the past. But as Sen. Rand Paul -- a Kentucky Republican with a libertarian outlook -- makes headlines as a potential 2016 presidential contender, it seemed like a good time to revisit the numbers. Counting libertarians Libertarian activists and political scientists we contacted suggested the same source: Richard Winger, a Libertarian in California and editor of a monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, which includes data on party registration that Winger researches. His December issue showed there were 325,807 registered Libertarians nationwide. (About half the states tally Libertarians, Winger’s data shows.) The number of registered Libertarians was higher than other national third parties including the Green, Constitution or Reform parties. But with Democrats’ registration at 43.5 million and Republicans at 41.3 million according to Winger’s data, that puts any third-place finisher trailing way behind. Also, the number of Libertarians was substantially lower than two catch-all categories which Winger calls "indp. misc" at 26.8 million and "other" at 2.9 million. The miscellaneous category includes states that have a miscellaneous category, as well as voters who write in answers (such as "birthday party") on their registration. Winger’s "other" includes a combination of actual parties. Since those catch-all categories were large, we picked a couple of states to look in more detail at third-party registrations. In California, there were 477,129 registered with the American Independent Party. In New York, there were 430,072 registered with the Independence Party as of November 2012. But Winger said those groups in California and New York aren’t "nationally organized parties. Those are one-state parties." That’s why when Winger talks about Libertarians’ voter registration he includes the phrase "nationally organized" -- something the Libertarians in Broward omitted. We’re not suggesting that those state parties in California or New York are powerful players nationwide -- or even in their own states. Some New York voters wrongly think they are registering as independents, according to the New York Daily News. Markham Robinson, a leader with the American Independent Party, told PolitiFact in an interview that he did a survey of AIP voters and of the 200 who responded, one-third didn’t realize they had registered with a party. Still, Robinson said he’d give that third ranking to his own group based on voter registration. Robinson suggested another way to measure third-party influence: a group’s registration as a percentage of total voters. By that method, he gave a shout-out to the Independent American Party in Nevada -- they garnered almost 5 percent of the state’s registration as of October. Libertarians do have a point when they say they are growing. Ballot Access News showed in 2008 there were 240,328 Libertarians, compared with 325,807 in 2012, an increase of about 36 percent. But their power lies not in electing Libertarians but more in the libertarian philosophy making inroads with the GOP. And some experts told us to examine votes received or the number of candidates who ran as signs of party strength rather than just voter registration. In 2012, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson received about 1.3 million votes -- more than any other third-party candidate. Johnson's tally, amounting to about 1 percent, is the largest for a non-major-party candidate since Ralph Nader's Green race in 2000, said J. David Gillespie, author of a book on third parties. "Libertarians always run far more people for congressional and state legislative seats across the nation than do the Greens, Constitution Party, or any other third party," he said. Some libertarians choose not to register with the Libertarian Party, either because they don’t like party labels or so they can participate in the nominating contests held by the major parties. Libertarians "do have influence beyond their size, because libertarian ideas appeal to people on both left and right," said Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at the University of California. Our ruling The Libertarian Party in Broward said on its website that the Libertarian Party "is the third-largest political party in the U.S." Quantifying the number of Libertarians is tricky; some states don’t track the affiliation. As for those officially registered with the Libertarian Party, it’s about 326,000. Some state-based parties -- most notably the Independence Party in New York and the American Independent Party in California -- have more people registered to their party than that, though. We rate this claim False. | null | Libertarian Party of Broward County | null | null | null | 2013-09-09T16:34:11 | 2013-08-22 | ['United_States', 'Libertarian_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-01874 | A worker at a Pepsi or Frooti plant has contaminated those beverage products by injecting HIV-infected blood into them. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pepsifrooti-contaminated-with-hiv/ | null | Food | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is Pepsi Contaminated with HIV? | 15 July 2011 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03666 | Be Sure to Press “Clear” at the Gas Pump to Prevent Being Overcharged | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/atm-terminals/ | null | warnings | null | null | null | Be Sure to Press “Clear” at the Gas Pump to Prevent Being Overcharged | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10068 | The Capitol was built by slaves. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jan/19/nancy-pelosi/legend-slaves-building-capitol-correct/ | Every now and then, a fact goes viral. Current case in point: that slaves helped construct the U.S. Capitol, where the son of an African man is set to be sworn in as the nation's 44th president. Pundits and politicians have mentioned this dozens of times in the past few days, wielding it as potent shorthand for all the historical import of the moment. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, mentioned it in her remarks at the Dec. 2, 2008, dedication of the Capitol Visitors Center: "The Capitol was built by slaves," Pelosi said. "Today, I want to talk about the fact that it's so appropriate that, though long overdue, this Capitol Visitors Center is ready for 2009, which is the 200th anniversary, the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator." We wanted to find the details behind the assertion and give it more context. It turns out there's far less in the historical record on the subject than one might expect. Early historians of the Capitol's construction were largely indifferent to the work of common laborers, both paid and slave. Records from the time are spotty. Only in the past 15 years or so has attention been trained on the role slaves played in constructing perhaps the nation's most important building — and the work has been led not by professional historians, but by individuals who developed a personal interest in the subject, such as retired Washington television reporter Ed Hotaling and freelance writer Bob Arnebeck. In 2005, Congress appointed a task force to research the subject, which issued a report in conjunction with the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, finally bringing a measure of scholarly rigor to bear on the topic. The task force acknowledged it was not able to tell the full story. "No one will ever know how many slaves helped to build the United States Capitol Building — or the White House," says the 2005 task force report, entitled History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol. But the task force did find plenty of evidence of slave involvement in the Capitol's construction. Perhaps the most compelling evidence were records of payments from the commissioners for the District of Columbia — the three men appointed by George Washington to oversee the construction of the Capitol and the rest of the city of Washington — to slave owners for the rental of slaves to work on the Capitol. The records reflect 385 payments between 1795 and 1801 for "Negro hire," a euphemism for the yearly rental of slaves. Slaves were likely involved in all aspects of construction, including carpentry, masonry, carting, rafting, plastering, glazing and painting, the task force reported. And slaves appear to have shouldered alone the grueling work of sawing logs and stones. Slave crews also toiled at the marble and sandstone quarries that provided the stone to face the structure — lonely, grueling work with bleak living conditions in rural Virginia and elsewhere. "Keep the yearly hirelings at work from sunrise to sunset — particularly the Negroes," the commissioners wrote to quarry operator William O'Neale in 1794. The commissioners' use of slave labor was unremarkable for the time. When the Capitol was constructed, from 1793 to 1826, the building trades in almost every colony augmented the work force with slave labor. This would have been especially true in the Potomac region — the home of about half the 750,000 African-Americans living in the United States, according to the 1972 book Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, by Letitia Woods Brown. Most of the slaves who worked on the Capitol are known by first name at best — the records refer to a payment of $13.00 to slaveholder Teresa Bent for "Nace," for example, and $23.00 to Elizabeth Brent for "Harry" and "Gabe." But one particular slave, Philip Reid, achieved some renown as an individual. He was a slave laborer for Clark Mills, who was hired to cast the Statue of Freedom, the Capitol's crowning feature. The government paid Reid $1.25 a day for his work. The statue, a draped female figure holding a sheathed sword in one hand and a laurel wreath in the other, stands atop the Capitol dome, 288 feet above the site of Obama's swearing in. Pelosi might have specified that slaves were only part of the work force, but they were involved with almost every aspect of construction for at least the first several years. We find her statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2da6e075-066e-45e7-a519-4da507b38695 | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2009-01-19T19:11:52 | 2008-12-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-03648 | The Dolphins stadium renovation will "create more than 4,000 new local jobs." | half-true | /florida/statements/2013/may/01/friends-miami-first/miami-dolphins-pac-says-stadium-renovation-will-cr/ | As Miami-Dade residents begin to vote on whether to help finance a $350 million stadium for the Miami Dolphins, project boosters distributed mailers promising that the project will deliver thousands of new local jobs. One mailer stated: "The plan will not only create more than 4,000 new local jobs, it is critical for attracting more sporting and entertainment events to a world class Miami facility which increases tourism, supports local businesses and pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into our community." The mailer was paid for by the stadium’s political action committee, Friends of Miami First, which has raised $1 million since April 1. The contributions came from the Dolphins and South Florida Stadium LLC, team owner Stephen Ross’ company. The 4,000 jobs figure has been repeated multiple times in recent months as the Dolphins sought financing from the state and county. A separate mailer states "support over 4,000 new jobs for Miami-Dade" and shows a photo of a construction worker. Here we are fact-checking the mailer’s claim that the renovation of the Sun Life stadium will "create more than 4,000 new local jobs." (Read our related Dolphins stadium fact-checks here and here.) Goal includes local hires The job creation figure is a selling point for the Dolphins, as they work at record speed to convince state legislators who conclude their session May 3 to sign off on a plan for $90 million in sales tax rebates and to allow an increase in the mainland Miami bed tax to generate about $289 million. The mailer omits those amounts, but it does state that the team would repay the state and county about $159 million. If the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott give the go-ahead, Miami-Dade voters will be asked if they want to designate annual tourist room taxes for the project in a May 14 referendum. (Early and absentee voting started April 29.) The agreement requires private funding, which is expected to come from the Dolphins and the NFL to pay for more than half the project. By May 22, the NFL will decide whether to award the 50th Super Bowl in 2016 to Miami or San Francisco. The team’s agreement with the county says that the team will "aspire" to hire at least 70 percent of the workers from Miami-Dade with 10 percent from Miami Gardens -- the city where the stadium is located -- and at least 20 percent from low-income areas. The team will also "aspire" to hire at least 35 percent of the subcontractors from Miami-Dade. There is no financial penalty if the team doesn’t meet those local hiring goals and there is no goal or requirement regarding the sheer number of jobs, county spokeswoman Suzy Trutie said. Study used to come up with job figures The mailer didn’t provide details about its numbers, so we asked Dolphins spokesman Eric Jotkoff to elaborate. Jotkoff allowed a PolitiFact Florida reporter and a Miami Herald business reporter to review -- but not retain -- a copy of a study paid for by the Dolphins that the team used to arrive at that figure. The study, prepared by the Washington Economics Group in 2010, was about a possible $225 million stadium renovation which assumed some hotel bed tax participation by Broward County, so it includes job projections for Miami-Dade and Broward combined. It concluded the project would produce 3,740 jobs, which assumes at least one year of employment per person. That includes 1,550 direct jobs and the remainder are indirect jobs in related industries and induced jobs generated by the economic activity. The jobs included 39 percent in the "knowledge based sector," which includes information technology, finance, real estate and other areas; 34 percent construction; and the remainder were government related or "other." But the Dolphins have not produced a study of the current project to show it will create more than 4,000 local jobs. Instead, the team is using cocktail napkin estimates here: If a $225 million project would create 3,740 jobs, then a $350 million project would create at least 4,000, they say. "It’s a conservative estimate of jobs that this will create," Jotkoff said. These 4,000 jobs are associated with the 25-month construction project. Jotkoff said some of the jobs will continue beyond the 25 months but he had no details as to how many. The same firm did a separate study in 2013 that concluded there are 14,503 permanent current jobs at the Sun Life Stadium, mostly with the Dolphins. That study was prepared for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, which endorsed the stadium proposal, and a related entity the South Florida Progress Foundation. Experts weigh in on jobs claim We sent the Dolphins’ jobs claim and a summary of the 2010 study to multiple economists, including some who specialize in the business of sports. They raised several caveats about the job growth figures. First, these aren’t permanent jobs. (Jotkoff said some jobs would extend beyond 25 months, but he had no details as to how many.) These are "4,000 jobs we are talking about during the construction phase," said University of Florida economics professor Roger Blair, who teaches a class on the business of sports. "Why is that something get excited about? (These are) jobs that people will have for a couple of years and then they will disappear." And, those jobs aren’t coming here for free -- the public is paying for them through the hotel bed tax and the state sales tax. Economists say that you have to factor in the spending that won’t happen elsewhere in the state, due to the public money earmarked for this particular project. The majority of sales taxes go into the state’s general fund, which pays for law enforcement, education, environmental programs and other areas. The bed tax would be an increase, so the Dolphins can argue that’s new money and wouldn’t be spent elsewhere, since it is being created for them. Tourist taxes can only be spent on certain uses such as stadiums, convention centers and museums. "The problem is that these jobs have to be financed," said Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist. "Would it create jobs if the county hired 1,000 workers to dig a big hole and then a 1,000 more to fill it up? If so, then no city would ever have any unemployment." (Zimbalist is a consultant for Major League Baseball but told PolitiFact he does not consult for the NFL.) The jobs wouldn’t be significant for the county, economists told PolitiFact. "I certainly don’t want to disparage any job creation figures, as those are real jobs for real people, but payroll employment in Miami-Dade County is over 1 million, so this wouldn’t be an economic game changer," said Chris Lafakis, senior economist at Moody’s who analyzes Florida’s economy. "The best way to judge the economic merits of this project are how will this project be paid for and how else would that funding be spent? These are very important questions in order to determine the net benefit to the Miami Dade economy." Also, one expert pointed out that the study was paid for by team, so that’s not an independent analysis. "The organizations that often provide these economic impact studies have something to gain or have a vested interest," said Robert Baade, a professor who specializes in the economics of sports at Lake Forest College. "Certainly if the team commissioned the study that would be true ... They are going to put the project’s best foot forward ... They realize there is a skeptical and reluctant public and they’ve got to make the project look good. That doesn’t make them evil -- it does mean they are erring on side of optimism rather than taking a more conservative approach." Our ruling The mailer distributed by Miami First said that the Dolphins stadium renovation will "create more than 4,000 new local jobs." The Dolphins based the number on a 2010 study of a $225 million project that concluded 3,740 jobs in Miami-Dade and Broward. They haven’t shown any study of the current project to support their claim that it will create more than 4,000 local jobs. Instead, they tacked on an extra 260 jobs to the new $350 million project and say that’s conservative. The key omission here is that these are jobs associated with the 25-month stadium renovation project and include temporary positions. The Dolphins say that some jobs would continue, but they have provided no details as to how many of those 4,000 jobs would extend beyond the construction phase. To get those jobs, the team would receive $379 million from the state and county over about three decades, and eventually pay back about $159 million. As to whether the jobs will be local, the team has set a goal to hire the vast majority of the workers from Miami-Dade County but there is no financial penalty if they fail to do so. We rate this claim Half True. | null | Friends of Miami First | null | null | null | 2013-05-01T16:21:06 | 2013-04-23 | ['None'] |
tron-01772 | Take action by July 1 to prevent your personal information from being sold by financial institutions | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/opt-out/ | null | government | null | null | null | Take action by July 1 to prevent your personal information from being sold by financial institutions | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00497 | Kit Harington, Rose Leslie Having Marriage Problems Over ‘Game Of Thrones’ Ending? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kit-harington-rose-leslie-marriage-problems-game-of-thrones-ending/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kit Harington, Rose Leslie Having Marriage Problems Over ‘Game Of Thrones’ Ending? | 5:44 pm, August 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05410 | Over the history of Austin, it’s always gotten more expensive. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2012/may/03/mike-martinez/mike-martinez-says-austin-has-always-grown-more-ex/ | In an interview aired April 19, 2012, Austin City Council Member Mike Martinez was asked by Matt Largey of Austin’s KUT, 90.5 FM whether the council could do more to make Austin affordable. Yes, Martinez replied, adding a beat later: "Over the history of Austin, it’s always gotten more expensive. And that’s not going to change." Martinez continued: "What we do as a council is to try to manage that economic growth to where it doesn’t negatively impact our residents as much as it could. If we didn’t involve ourselves, if we didn’t insert ourselves, I dare say it would be a whole lot worse." Setting aside the council’s role and impact, has Austin always gotten more expensive? Of course, Martinez told us in a telephone interview. Saying he’s been an Austin resident since 1988, Martinez said that gas prices, property values, property taxes and utility costs have all gone up. He added: "I don’t think you need to do a study. You’re not paying the same price for a gallon of milk that you paid 20 years ago." (Wise-guy response: You are if you don’t drink milk.) "Always" is a powerful characterization; Austin was established in 1839. And Martinez did not provide, nor did we find, information specifically showing Austin growing more expensive every year through history. Seeking the long view, we queried David C. Humphrey, who wrote the entry for Austin in the Handbook of Texas Online. He replied by email: "Over the years, Austin's economy has had its downs as well as its ups. In the latter 1980s, for example, starting in 1986, housing prices tumbled and Austin's office vacancy rate jumped to No. 1 in the nation... Austin's economy took a few years to recover but was sizzling again by the mid-1990s. The early 1930s, during the Great Depression, were certainly hard economic times for many Austinites. Wages and salaries fell (UT faculty members took a 25 percent pay cut), and unemployment grew acute, though Austin's economy held up better than that of many other towns and cities." Humphrey, summing up, said Austin prices haven’t always been on the rise, though prices have trended upward in recent years. We’ve poked into Austin’s affordability before, rating Mostly False a 2011 claim that Austin had lately experienced the highest cost of living of any large Texas city. At the time, we considered a composite cost-of-living index managed by the Virginia-based Council for Community and Economic Research. The council’s index is based on the costs of housing, utilities, grocery items, transportation, health care and miscellaneous goods and services, but it does not weigh the effect of property taxes, which is substantial in Texas. The index enables comparisons of the cost of living between cities at any given time but does not lend itself to gauging changes in a city over time, council spokesman Dean Frutiger recently told us. Frutiger forwarded Austin’s index for the first quarter of 1991 through 2011. In eight of those years, the index suggests, Austin’s cost of living was lower than the national average. In the first quarter of 1994, 1997 and 2004, Austin’s cost of living exceeded the national average. Mindful that Martinez spoke about Austin’s cost of living in itself, we turned next to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the Consumer Price Index, the government measure of the average change over time in the prices of consumer items — goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. James Howard, a Dallas-based bureau economist, told us by telephone that Austin is not among southern cities where prices are routinely checked by field staff. However, the bureau’s index research for some metropolitan areas of 150,000 to 1.5 million in population since 2002 included checks of prices in San Antonio, Beaumont-Port Arthur, Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito, Amarillo and Midland-Odessa. And according to that research, the CPI-U -- that is, the index for urban consumers -- went up nearly every year from 2002 to 2012, with the bumps ranging from 1.1 percent, in 2002, to 4.7 percent, in 2008. The index dropped slightly in one year, 2009, by 0.4 percent. It then increased 1.8 percent in 2010. Howard pointed out older bureau research for similar cities indicating that the CPI-U escalated every year from 1977 through 1997. Other experts pointed out other ways of gauging changes in Austin’s cost of living. Beverly Kerr, vice president for research at the Greater Austin Area Chamber of Commerce, applied a version of the CPI-U to average home prices as calculated by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. Based on 2011 dollars, Austin’s average 2011 home price of $251,600 was higher, by about $100,000, than Austin’s average 1990 home price of $149,762. Again calculated in 2011 dollars, the average home price dropped in six of the 21 years between 1990 and 2012, Kerr’s calculation suggests — in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2011. The biggest drop was $13,095 from 2007 to 2008, when the average home price was $253,787. Wondering about apartment rents, we checked with Dallas-based Laura Williams of ALN Apartment Data Inc. who guided us to its graph indicating that rents paid by Austin residents steadily climbed from late 2005 to early 2008, then dropped off to 2010 before mostly increasing to 2012. Separately, Kerr guided us to Hendricks & Partners, whose Austin spokesman, George Deuillet, told us average rents in Austin increased all but one year from 2006 through 2011, dropping 3.5 percent in 2009. A little more: Robin Davis of Austin Investor Interests, which has a website tracking apartment trends, told us that local apartment rents dropped from 2001 to 2004 before gradually climbing through 2008, dipping in 2009 and subsequently climbing. We recognized one more aspect to gauging how expensive Austin has been during a telephone interview of Bruce Kellison, associate director of the University of Texas Bureau of Business Research, IC² (Innovation, Creativity, Capital) Institute. Kellison counseled that any analysis of changes in the cost of living should try to account for wage changes. It’s possible, he said, that while prices increased, wages outpaced them. We asked Austin economist Stuart Greenfield to assess how average wages have tracked with the cost of living. Greenfield, drawing on information from state and federal agencies, said unadjusted annual pay in Travis County, which includes Austin, increased about 24 percent from 2001 through 2010, narrowly outpacing inflation which ranged from 23 to nearly 24 percent, according to different versions of the CPI. Put another way, he said, real annual pay increased about 1 percent -- a smidge. And does this suggest that life in Austin grew a little less expensive? On average, Greenfield replied, "one’s well-being improved" slightly. Nudged before we finished this research, an Austin consultant to Martinez, Mark Littlefield, pointed out that by the calculations of the the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the CPI was far greater in 2012 than it would have been at Austin’s founding. "There have been years of nominal decreases, like during the Great Depression, but over time things have obviously ‘gotten more expensive’ in Austin," Littlefield said by email. According to the bank’s calculation, though, the CPI stayed the same or decreased in about 70 of the years from 1840 through 1955. After that, it dropped in one year, 2009, by 0.4 percent. Our ruling In some ways, Austin has grown more expensive of late. Yet rents dipped in some years. And the area’s average annual pay outpaced inflation over a recent decade. Also, while we did not come up with precise pre-1990s information, it's reasonable to speculate that periods of economic difficulty through history included decreases in Austin's cost of living. This claim has a nowadays’ ring of truth, but its "always" element disregards times when costs dropped. We rate Martinez’s statement Mostly False. | null | Mike Martinez | null | null | null | 2012-05-03T10:00:00 | 2012-04-19 | ['Austin,_Texas'] |
pomt-10280 | The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.'' false /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/21/barack-obama/abortion-numbers-have-gone-down/ In his Aug. 16, 2008, appearance with megachurch pastor Rick Warren, Sen. Barack Obama asserted that abortions have not gone down'' in the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush, a strong abortion opponent. "I believe in Roe vs. Wade , and I come to that conclusion not because I'm proabortion, but because, ultimately, I don't think women make these decisions casually. I think they — they wrestle with these things in profound ways, in consultation with their pastors or their spouses or their doctors or their family members," Obama said. "And so, for me, the goal right now should be — and this is where I think we can find common ground. And by the way, I've now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform, is how do we reduce the number of abortions? The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down and that is something we have to address." But Obama's statement is directly contradicted by statistics that show legal abortions have fallen since the start of the 21st century. The New York-based Guttmacher Institute reported in January 2008 that in 2005 the country's abortion rate fell to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, continuing a trend that started after the abortion rate peaked in 1981 at 29.3. The institute, a think tank on reproductive health issues, reported that the number of abortions also fell, to 1.2-million in 2005, which it said was 25 percent below the record high of 1.6-million abortions in 1990. And the federal Centers for Disease Control reported in its latest Abortion Surveillance Report that in 2004 there were 839,226 legal abortions, down 1.1 percent from 2003. The abortion ratio of 16 per 1,000 women has been the same since 2000, it added. Rebecca Wind, spokesman of the Guttmacher Institute, said the difference in the two sets of numbers reflects differences in data collection. She said the CDC relies on state health departments, and not all states require abortion statistics reporting. Guttmacher does its own survey of all legal abortion providers and reports a fairly high response rate. In any case, she added, "There's no way to spin this one. The abortion rate is at its lowest rate since 1974.'' Obama made his comments to Warren in the context of cutting the number of abortions. He said he wanted to find "ways that we can work together to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, so that we actually are reducing the sense that women are seeking out abortions.'' In that context, his comment about abortions made sense. Guttmacher data showed that 49 percent of pregnancies were unintended in 2001, unchanged from 1994. Obama's campaign did not respond to an e-mail seeking an explanation for the senator's statement. But his comment about the abortion rate was wrong, so we rule this claim False. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-08-21T00:00:00 | 2008-08-16 | ['None'] | null | null | null |
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.