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snes-04710 | Americans are immune to the Zika virus. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/americans-immune-zika-virus/ | null | Science | null | Dan Evon | null | American Immunity to the Zika Virus | 25 May 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15350 | There’s now been three independent investigations (into the bridge scandal) all of which have said that Christie did not have prior knowledge of or involvement in the lane closures. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/09/chris-christie/chris-christie-bridgegate-investigations-back-my-s/ | Aside from the national media, no one cares about Bridgegate, says New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe July 6, host Joe Scarborough said he generally hasn’t noticed New Hampshire voters asking the Republican presidential candidate about the September 2013 bridge-closing scandal. "Nobody cares," Christie responded. "They don't care because they know that there’s now been three independent investigations all of which have said exactly the same thing I said the day after it happened. And so, at some point people just say well, you know, after three investigations -- two of them run by folks who were Democrats, Democratic legislature and Democratically appointed U.S. attorney -- you know, after a while people just say, ‘Okay, I guess he's telling the truth.’ " Multiple New Jersey officials close to Christie have been accused of devising a scheme to close parts of the George Washington bridge, under the guise of conducting a traffic study, causing a week of massive traffic jams in September 2013. The maneuver is widely believed to have been political retribution against officials in Fort Lee, N.J., which was most impacted by the lane closures. Since the week of the closures, Christie has consistently denied that he knew anything about the lane closures until after the fact. In the first few weeks after the lane closures -- before many details came to light -- Christie said the extensive press coverage was overblown. "I had nothing to do with this: No knowledge. No authorization. No planning," he said in a radio interview in February 2014, adding that he learned about the closures from media reports afterward. Have three investigations agreed with him? Christie’s campaign did not respond to our requests for comment. But we have a good idea who conducted the three investigations: A Manhattan law firm, the New Jersey legislature and the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. One of these investigations has shut the door -- saying Christie had no involvement -- but the other two left the question open-ended. Gibson Dunn and Crutcher Christie’s administration commissioned law firm Gibson Dunn and Crutcher to conduct an internal probe in January 2014, soon after it came out that members of Christie’s senior staff knew about or were involved in the lane closures. The results of that investigation support the contention that Christie himself had nothing to do with the scandal. "Our investigation found that Gov. Christie did not know of the lane realignment beforehand and had no involvement in the decision to realign the lanes," the report said. "He does not recall becoming aware of the lane realignment during the period the lanes were closed, but would not have considered a traffic issue memorable in any event." A Port Authority official -- who later pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the scandal -- said he told Christie about the closures while they were happening, when the two were together at a Sept. 11 memorial event. Christie said he didn’t remember the conversation. "Gov. Christie’s account of these events rings true," the report continued, noting that document reviews and witness interviews fully corroborated Christie’s story. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gibson Dunn attorney Randy Mastro said, "Our findings today are a vindication of Gov. Christie." New Jersey Legislature A December 2014 report out of the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee on Investigation came to a much less definitive conclusion on Christie’s involvement. The investigation found "no conclusive evidence" as to whether Christie knew about the lane closures in advance or while they were happening. The report said a lack of information from some key witnesses "leaves open the question of when the governor first learned of the closures and what he was told." The inquiry found no smoking gun implicating Christie, but the committee concluded that it is "not in a position currently to conclude what Gov. Christie himself knew about the lane closures or when and how his knowledge of these events developed." U.S. Attorney investigation A U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey investigation, made public in May 2015, did not find evidence that Christie was criminally involved in planning or concealing the bridge scandal. The investigation resulted in charges of conspiracy and other crimes against three state officials: Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former chief of staff; Bill Baroni, a Christie-appointed executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; and David Wildstein, another Port Authority executive and one of Christie’s political allies. Wildstein pleaded guilty. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t indict Christie. "Today’s charges make clear that what I’ve said from day one is true, I had no knowledge or involvement in the planning or execution of this act," Christie said following the indictments against his former staffers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some critics have suggested that because still more evidence could come forward, Christie is not yet fully in the clear. It’s possible that now under the pressure of criminal charges, Kelly and Baroni could reveal information that implicates Christie, wrote Tim Moran, editorial page editor of New Jersey’s Star-Ledger newspaper. At the time, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said, "We’re always going to be receptive to new evidence, what I will say is this though: Based on the evidence currently available to us, we’re not going to charge anyone else in this scheme." Fishman also declined to comment on whether others (including Christie) will continue to be investigated for involvement. Our ruling Christie said, "There’s now been three independent investigations (into the bridge scandal) all of which have said" that Christie did not have prior knowledge of or involvement in the lane closures. Christie has said since day one that he had no knowledge of the scandal before or during the closures themselves. Three investigations -- a law firm commissioned by Christie, the state legislature and the U.S. attorney’s office -- found no evidence to suggest otherwise. However, only the law firm investigation expressly stated that Christie had no knowledge of the lane closures. In contrast, the legislature’s investigation suggested that it’s still a possibility if more evidence emerges, and the U.S. attorney didn’t say the case is definitively closed. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important context, so we rate it Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2d659490-7a00-4208-9747-2a9f204e6f8e | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2015-07-09T11:31:52 | 2015-07-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-11803 | 80 percent of the (individual mandate) tax falls on those who make $50,000 a year or less. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/17/john-thune/sen-thune-individual-mandate-fine-falls-mainly-peo/ | Senate Republicans’ surprise move to repeal the requirement to have health insurance into their tax reform bill revealed numbers that few people had noted before. (The mandate says that everyone must have coverage or face a fine.) "80 percent of the tax falls on those who make $50,000 a year or less," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Nov. 15. "We’re taking a failed policy that punishes people with taxes -- low-income people. (We’re) taking that tax away, giving them tax relief there, and then ploughing that back into tax relief for middle-income families." This was no throw-away line. Thune is the third-ranking Republican in the party’s Senate leadership, and his colleagues delivered similar versions of the talking point throughout the day. In 2016, the fine for not having insurance stood at $695 for adults. The formula has a few wrinkles that brought the maximum penalty to $2,085 for a family, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever was larger. Going forward, it rises with inflation (unless of course, Congress repeals it). Not everyone without insurance has to pay the fine. The list of exemptions is long. It includes a family with income under $20,800; people who have suffered domestic violence in the household; anyone who has suffered the death of a close family member; someone who has received a utility shut-off notice, and more. Thune’s office said he got his information from 2015 data from the Internal Revenue Service. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com In one key sense, Thune is correct. Out of all the tax returns sent to the IRS that included a payment of the fine, 79 percent came from households making $50,000 a year or less. (Technically, the income is adjusted gross income, which understates actual income. But on average, the adjustment makes little difference for this check.) However, Thune didn’t specify that he was talking about the number of people. His description of the tax could just as equally refer to the dollars paid. The government collected a little over $3 billion from about 6.6 million households. Of that, about $1.8 billion, 60 percent, came from households with incomes under $50,000. So in dollar terms, about 60 percent of the tax fell on people in that income range, not the 80 percent that Thune said. Thune’s communications staff told us he was talking about the number of people and the number of returns. Paying by mistake We reached several health care and tax researchers, and none of them challenged the core numbers. Gordon Mermin with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center ran the numbers and found that as a percentage of income, the tax fell heaviest on the $25,000 to $50,000 group. On average, that group paid 3.1 percent of income. Mermin told us households in this range are more likely to lack insurance, and due to their incomes, are less likely to be able to claim an exemption from the fine. "People shouldn’t be surprised the $25,000 to $50,000 group is affected the most," Mermin said. But researchers found it odd that people making less than $25,000 had paid as much as they did. The $10,000 to $25,000 group accounted for 22 percent of the payments, and about 36 percent of the households. "Folks are just making a mistake," said Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare and an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Given the exemptions, there is no way such low-income folks should be paying." The IRS knows this has happened. It’s been sending out letters since 2015, telling filers "it appears that you may have reported owing too much Health Care Shared Responsibility Payment," the penalty’s formal name. "The IRS has reached out to some taxpayers to let them know they’ve overpaid the penalty, but they don’t have the capacity to do that in all cases," said Tara Straw at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank. Straw said the IRS targets people who automatically qualify for an exemption because of their income, a factor that is stronger in states that did not expand Medicaid to people making 138 percent of federal poverty. Where the IRS effort falls short, she said, relates to personal circumstances such as a death in the family or a utility service cut-off notice. Larry Levitt at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a neutral source of health care data, also agreed that "there certainly appear to be some low-income people paying the penalty who could be claiming an exemption." A just-released study from Kaiser suggests the number could be large. The report found that about 5 million uninsured people could get coverage for less than the cost of the penalty. Thanks to the subsidies in Obamacare, the lowest-level plans would be free to many of those people, or if not free, available at a very low cost. If everyone took advantage of those subsidies, the 6.6 million households paying the penalty because they lack coverage would fall significantly. We don’t know how the numbers would shake out because about 4 million people neither paid the fine nor told the IRS that they had coverage. Republicans offer the repeal of the penalty as a boon to working Americans, and for some it would be. But the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan analytic arm of Congress, has found that removing the penalty makes it less likely that people will seek out insurance, even if it would be free or very affordable. Our ruling Thune said that 80 percent of the individual mandate penalty falls on those who make $50,000 a year or less. In terms of the number of returns in which people paid the fine, that figure is correct. In terms of the dollars collected, it overshoots the mark. People in that income range account for about 60 percent of the payments. Still, an independent analysis showed that households in the $25,000 to 50,000 income range paid the highest percentage of income on the penalty. There’s strong evidence that many lower income people are paying the fine by mistake, and millions could both avoid it and gain health coverage for less than the cost of the fine. But as far as who is paying the fine, we rate this claim Mostly True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | John Thune | null | null | null | 2017-11-17T12:03:04 | 2017-11-15 | ['None'] |
pomt-06280 | Says Barack Obama said, "If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/22/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-obama-said-if-we-keep-talking-abo/ | On the eve of a presidential trip to New Hampshire on Nov. 22, 2011, Mitt Romney’s campaign released an ad targeting President Barack Obama. In the ad, the Romney campaign used a quote that prompted an immediate counterattack from the Obama camp, which argued that it had been taken out of context. The 60-second ad, called "Believe in America," is designed to contrast "candidate Obama from 2008 with President Obama of today," highlighting "his failures in between," according to the Romney campaign. The ad contrasts a 2008 campaign speech by Obama with text on the screen that criticizes Obama’s economic record, including, "Greatest Jobs Crisis Since Great Depression," "Record Home Foreclosures" and "Record National Debt." The ad then has a clip of Obama saying,"If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose." The clear implication is that Obama believes that his economic record is so bad that he will lose in 2012 unless he can steer the conversation away from the economy. But the Obama camp, among others, immediately charged that the clip was taken out of context. Was it? Here’s what Obama said in the October 2008 speech, which came about two weeks before he defeated Sen. John McCain: "Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time, even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent's campaign announced earlier this month that they want to ‘turn the page’ on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead," Obama said in the speech. "Sen. McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’" So the comment is drastically different than the way it's portrayed in the Romney ad. Obama was actually saying that his opponent’s campaign three years earlier had said, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." That context is not included in the Romney ad -- and leaving it out sends a profoundly different message. The Romney camp seems to have anticipated this complaint. In a blog post published around the time the ad was released, Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho acknowledged that, "Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent’s campaign for saying, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’" She went on to say Obama is trying to distract voters from his economic record. Our ruling We certainly think it’s fair for Romney to attack Obama for his response to the economy. And the Romney camp can argue that Obama’s situation in 2011 is ironic considering the comments he made in 2008. But those points could have been made without distorting Obama’s words, which have been taken out of context in a ridiculously misleading way. We rate the Romney ad’s portrayal of Obama’s 2008 comments Pants on Fire. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2011-11-22T13:34:24 | 2011-11-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-05760 | Says there’s no proven instance where hydraulic fracking has polluted groundwater. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2012/feb/29/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-theres-no-proven-instance-groundwa/ | Before he suspended his candidacy for president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry gave a spirited defense of fracking, a process that extracts natural gas from thousands of feet underground. "You cannot show me one place where there is a proven – not one – where there is a proven pollution of groundwater by hydraulic fracking," Perry told a college student who raised the topic at a December 18, 2011, stop in Decorah, Iowa, according to the Texas Tribune. Not one? Perry’s sweeping claim tracks with the November 2011 release of preliminary findings of a study by the University of Texas Energy Institute. A November 10, 2011, Austin American-Statesman news article quoted the study’s leader, UT geologist Charles "Chip" Groat, saying hydraulic fracturing "doesn’t seem to be of concern to groundwater." Groat said the study had looked at regulatory violations and frameworks in states with major shale drilling operations, including Texas, Louisiana, New York and Pennsylvania. "The violations that we've seen are of no, minor or small impact," he said. Perry’s claim also echoed more than 25 others made by regulatory officials, as compiled by a pro-drilling group, as well as a May 2011 assessment by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, was asked at a May 24, 2011, hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform whether hydraulic fracturing can affect aquifers and water supplies. Jackson replied: "There is evidence that it can certainly affect them. I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water." The "fracking process itself"? Fracking might be fun to say, but it’s a little slippery to define. Both Jackson and Perry were using a very specific definition of fracking, their spokeswomen told us by email, referring only to the step in the process where the shale rock is fractured. In high-pressure hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, a mix of water, sand and chemicals is shot down into the well, bursting out of holes in the pipe lining the well and cracking the gas-bearing shale rock. Gas then flows from the cracks back up the pipe for collection. The immense increase in fracking since the mid-2000s came about because companies began to use this process in horizontally drilled wells, which cost more but also reach more of the layer of shale that lies as deep as two miles below the earth’s surface. But the energy industry and environmental groups use the term fracking in very different ways. Fracking expert Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, mapped out the two positions for us. "Industry likes to restrict the use of the term hydraulic fracturing to just that process taking place underground during which time high-pressure water opens natural cracks or creates new cracks at the depths of the reservoir rock," Engelder told us by email. Conversely, Engelder said, opponents of drilling "consider fracking to encompass the entire process from leasing land through drilling and sending natural gas to market." PolitiFact Ohio acknowledged as much in a July 14, 2011, article. Evidence supported an Ohio lawmaker’s claim that state agencies had no proof of groundwater contamination from fracking, though the statement was rated Mostly True because in one case, a state panel found that a well’s cement casing allowed gas to seep into water wells (and up into homes, causing an explosion). Even by the narrow definition, some environmentalists say that EPA reports from 1987 and 2011 prove that fracking has contaminated water. The 1987 report (unearthed last year by the national nonprofit Environmental Working Group) said that "residual" fracking fluid "migrated" into a private water well after a nearby gas well had been fractured in West Virginia. The Dec. 8, 2011, preliminary report found fracking was a possible cause of groundwater contamination in Pavilion, Wyo., where a company was fracking inside an aquifer -- an unusual case, according to the report. EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara offered us no comment on the 1987 report, though an Aug. 4, 2011, news story by an independent nonprofit news organization, ProPublica, quotes an unidentified EPA official as saying the agency was reviewing that case. The 2011 report, Alcantara told us, "tentatively found a link between groundwater contamination in an aquifer with hydraulic fracturing. The report is not final and it will now go through independent scientific review." Also using the narrow definition, other regulatory officials said they did not know of groundwater pollution by fracking. The Texas Railroad Commission regulates fracking in Texas. Commission spokeswoman Gaye Greever McElwain told us, "Commission records do not indicate a single documented water contamination case associated with the process of hydraulic fracturing in Texas. Similarly, an official with the National Groundwater Protection Council told us in a telephone interview that fracking has not been proven to contaminate groundwater. Mike Paque, executive director of the council comprising groundwater regulators and oil/gas regulators from state agencies, said the depth at which shale is fractured makes contamination by fracking itself practically impossible. "There’s no water down there to drink," Paque said. "Private wells go a couple hundred feet down, and these are 11,000 feet down. So the fact that people say that, and that my state regulatory agencies say that, and the drinking water agencies say that, is correct, period." To get our own fix on possible water pollution by fracking, we examined lists of incidents that were described as fracking-related by EarthJustice, a nonprofit law firm; the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy nonprofit group; and ThinkProgress, a blog run by the American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think-tank. Because we were seeking "proven" groundwater contamination, we first eliminated claims not related to water pollution and accounts that did not include independent evidence, such as a state investigation or newspaper story. Of the remaining 56 claims of groundwater contamination, not a single one fit the "industry" definition of fracking -- the one Perry was using, his spokeswoman, Lucy Nashed, told us. Yet how close to that step in the process were they? We identified 11 incidents that appeared to be both substantiated by outside evidence and linked to an essential part of the process of hydraulically fracturing a well. The 11 included events such as fracking fluid leaking from wastewater pits or from pipe lining a fracked well. Several were "blowouts," which Engelder defined for us as the (normally controlled) process in which "high pressure gas blows fracking water out of the well to clear the way for natural gas production." A few examples: February 2008, Parachute, Colo. -- A ProPublica news story says a state agency confirmed a 200-foot frozen waterfall of fracking fluid that melted into the Colorado River. August 2008, Dimock, Pa. -- A Vanity Fair news story says that after fracking began nearby, the state shut down water wells and fined a company $360,000 for "contaminating Dimock’s groundwater and failing to fix the leaks that caused the problem." April 2010, Caddo Parish, La. -- A ProPublica news story says parish residents were evacuated and told not to drink their water after a blowout at a nearby fracking well. November 2011, Leroy, Pa. -- A (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader news story says an energy company confirmed that equipment failure allowed a 30,000-gallon spill of fracking fluid, some into a tributary of the Susquehanna River. The two views of fracking seem irreconcilable. Jason Pitt, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told us by email: "Fracking is just one small part of an overall industrial process to extract natural gas. When speaking about ground water contamination, it is very misleading to refer back to just the fracking process." He said there are many cases of water contamination "that have occurred as a result of natural gas extraction across the country." Engelder, the Penn State geologist, disagreed. "Anti-drillers," he said, "have lots of proof of spills and leaks and other stuff including noise pollution and so forth because they consider fracking to be the all-encompassing, creeping industrialization of rural areas." Attempts to tie events such as surface spills to hydraulic fracturing miss the point, he said. "Fracking is such a toxic word in the English language that Americans are blaming all sorts of bad things on it when, in fact, Governor Perry was using the term hydraulic fracturing correctly in his comment." Our ruling Perry’s comment, focused on "proven" incidents of groundwater polluted by the specific step of breaking the shale rock, holds up. However, the definition of fracking is debated -- and if we rope in all incidents that take place at such wells, there have been more than a few reported incidents of groundwater contamination. We rate the claim Mostly True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2012-02-29T15:28:19 | 2011-12-18 | ['None'] |
goop-01846 | Jennifer Lopez Upset Leah Remini’s One Year Younger? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-lopez-leah-remini-age-younger-frenemies/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Jennifer Lopez Upset Leah Remini’s One Year Younger? | 2:34 pm, January 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01238 | the Pope Has Endorsed Donald Trump For President | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/no-the-pope-has-not-endorsed-donald-trump-for-president/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | No, the Pope Has NOT Endorsed Donald Trump For President | October 14, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01185 | Districts that avail themselves of specialists in innovative digital instruction will be eligible for state aid to cover training costs | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1275/fund-training-teachers-wishing-improve-digital-lea/ | null | abbott-o-meter | Greg Abbott | null | null | Fund training for teachers wishing to improve digital learning | 2015-01-20T14:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04214 | Our race was the closest U.S. Senate race in Ohio in 36 years -- when Howard Metzenbaum defeated Robert Taft in 1976. | true | /ohio/statements/2012/nov/30/josh-mandel/josh-mandel-says-his-senate-contest-sherrod-brown-/ | Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but it can provide a bit of consolation in politics. Strategists like Karl Rove, whose two Republican-allied super PACs -- American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS -- were among the biggest spenders in the campaign season just ended, suggested that their spending kept a number of races closer than they otherwise might have been. Among the races, and one of the 10 Senate contests in which Crossroads GPS invested, was the match between Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown and the Republican state treasurer, Josh Mandel. Crossroads GPS contributed nearly $6.4 million to the unsuccessful effort to defeat Brown, making it the biggest third-party spender in a race that was one of the nation's costliest, according to figures gathered by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation. Mandel, in an email thanking his supporters, said one of them had pointed out "that our race was the closest U.S. Senate race in Ohio in 36 years -- when Howard Metzenbaum defeated Robert Taft in 1976." True? PolitiFact Ohio couldn't resist an excuse to dig into history. We looked first at current unofficial election results from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted. They show Brown defeated Mandel by 278,052 ballots, or 50.35 percent of the vote to Mandel's 45.06 percent. Then we checked the official record on the secretary's website. Of the 11 Senate races going back to 1976, none was as close as the Brown-Mandel match. Most were comparatively lopsided, in fact, including Brown's victory margin of more than 12 percent in 2006. In 1976, Metzenbaum defeated Robert Taft Jr., the Republican incumbent, by a margin of 117,339 votes, or 3 percent of the vote. Not only closer than the Brown-Mandel race, it was a reverse rematch of the 1970 election in which Taft reached the Senate, defeating Metzenbaum by a margin of 70,420 votes, or 2 percent. Taft was a congressman, father of the former governor and son of the famed three-term senator who was nicknamed "Mr. Republican." Before his two tight contests with Metzenbaum, he lost his first bid for the Senate in an even closer race. In 1964, the year of Lyndon Johnson's presidential landslide over Barry Goldwater, Taft lost to incumbent Democrat Stephen Young by just 0.5 percent. It was Ohio's closest Senate election of the last half century. PolitiFact Ohio found the history interesting. On the Truth-O-Meter, Mandel’s statement rates True. | null | Josh Mandel | null | null | null | 2012-11-30T06:00:00 | 2012-11-16 | ['Robert_Taft', 'United_States', 'Ohio', 'Howard_Metzenbaum'] |
tron-01098 | Shotgun Disguised as Super Soaker Water Gun | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/shotgun-disguised-as-super-soaker/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Shotgun Disguised as Super Soaker Water Gun – Truth! | Mar 28, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05716 | Callers pretend to be IRS fraud division employees and tell victims they owe tax monies that must be paid immediately to avoid arrest or other criminal penalties. | scam | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irs-impersonation-telephone-scam/ | null | Fraud & Scams | null | David Mikkelson | null | IRS Impersonation Telephone Scam | 7 May 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08351 | As a state representative, David Cicilline argued against Megan's Law and voted against mandatory registration of sex offenders. | mostly false | /rhode-island/statements/2010/oct/27/americans-commonsense-solutions/cicilline-argued-against-megans-law-and-voted-agai/ | A new round of attack ads in the race to replace U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy is not a product of one campaign or the other; it comes from a little-known political organization known as Americans For Common Sense Solutions. On its website, the group describes itself as a local operation run out of downtown Providence. Christopher Stenberg, named on the website as the group's executive director, did not return multiple calls, nor could we find any office affiliated with his name at several Westminster Street addresses. The group registered in July with the Internal Revenue Service as a 527 non-profit organization. It has not registered with the Federal Election Commission which would be required if it were supporting a particular candidate. But its strongly worded advertisements on TV and radio leave no doubt about the organization's disdain for Democrat David Cicilline, who is running for the seat against Republican John Loughlin. In the radio spot, a woman's voice says: "Even though Republicans and Democrats fight about almost everything, they didn't fight about this. Except David Cicilline. As a state representative, David Cicilline argued against Megan’s Law and voted against mandatory registration of sex offenders. "We don't know why David Cicilline took a position to protect sexual predators and we don't know if he will argue or vote against other common sense legislation if he becomes a congressman." Megan's Law is the colloquial name for state laws that require the police to provide information to the public about sex offenders. That includes mandatory registration of sex offenders and notification to residents when a sex offender moves into the neighborhood. The law was named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old who was raped and murdered in 1994 in New Jersey by a convicted sex offender who moved to her neighborhood after being released from prison. The statutes governing Megan's Law differ from state to state. In 1996, Rhode Island lawmakers took the existing sex offender registration law, which required convicted offenders to register with local police departments, and added language requiring police to notify the community. That vote took place while Cicilline, now the mayor of Providence, was still a state representative. So how did he vote? The short answer is, he was one of three representatives who voted against it. But Cicilline's campaign now says the candidate opposed the bill because it applied to teenagers as well as adults. In other words, "if a 13-year-old touches another 13-year-old, he could be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life," Eric Hyers, a Cicilline spokesman told us. To say Cicilline "argued against Megan's Law" is "a disgusting and vile claim" if you don't explain that his objections were limited to one particular section, Hyers said. It's difficult to verify what prompted Cicilline's no vote nearly 15 years ago. A Providence Journal story on the issue indicated that Cicilline indeed spoke up about his concerns that adolescent offenders would face long-term consequences. He was quoted as saying "I don't know that it will do anything to protect our children" from molesters. The General Assembly did not start videotaping its sessions until several years later and the legislative Journal from that day merely says Rep. Cicilline engaged in a debate about the bill, without providing details. The bill's journey did not end there. Three years later, in 1999, Megan's Law was amended to limit community notification to adult offenders, thereby carving out an exception for teenage offenders, the group Cicilline had concerns about. This time, the Providence representative voted in favor of it. When the law was further altered in small ways two more times during Cicilline's tenure in the legislature, in 2000 and 2002, he again voted in the affirmative. The record shows that Cicilline voted against Megan's Law when it first passed. But his later votes suggest that he either had a change of heart, or, as his spokesman tells us, he found the bill more palatable once teenagers were excluded. The ad from Americans for Common Sense Solutions is misleading. It doesn't mention what Cicilline's objections were to the original law, nor that he subsequently voted in favor of it three times. PolitiFact's definition of a Barely True statement says it "contains some element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression." That sounds right to us. Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Americans for Common Sense Solutions | null | null | null | 2010-10-27T09:41:05 | 2010-10-21 | ['None'] |
farg-00085 | West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, “refused to support Trump over Hillary.” | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/04/morrisey-didnt-deny-west-virginians-trump/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Rep. Evan Jenkins | D'Angelo Gore | ['2018 Election', 'Donald Trump'] | Morrisey Didn’t Deny West Virginians Trump | April 27, 2018 | [' TV ad – Wednesday, April 25, 2018 '] | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton', 'United_States'] |
pomt-07966 | Says the first word spoken from the moon was "Houston." | false | /texas/statements/2011/jan/22/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-first-word-spoken-moon-was-houston/ | Gov. Rick Perry praised Texans for their "resilience" and "resourcefulness" during his Jan. 18 inauguration speech, saying that "if something has never been done before, it's just because we haven't tried it." Among the accomplishments Perry credited to Texans was pioneering space. "Matter of fact," he said, "the first word spoken from the moon was 'Houston.' " That statement drew shouts and applause from the crowd — and our attention. We'd heard the boast before. Last year, for instance, Reagan Outdoor Advertising placed this message — "Houston" First Word Spoken On The Moon — on billboards in the Salt Lake City area. We saw them in Austin, too. We also read the statement in several articles, including a 2001 Philadelphia Inquirer travel story about Texas' largest city. All refer to the instantly historic line uttered July 20, 1969, by NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong to a worldwide television and radio audience and the folks in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston after he and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module, Eagle, on the moon: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." At first, we were confident that Perry had it right. However, research raised doubts — especially after we saw YouTube posts of video and audio from the landing that suggested some technical communications by the astronauts took place after the landing and before Armstrong said "Houston." We turned next to experts both in and out of NASA, including two authors of books on the Apollo 11 mission and the editor of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, an online resource that's featured on NASA's website. The Journal includes a transcript of everything said by the astronauts and NASA officials on the ground. What was the first word said by man on the moon? The experts' answers differed, with most agreeing it was not "Houston." David Harland — author of The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 — told us by e-mail: "Technically, the first utterance would have been Aldrin saying 'contact light,' which occurred when one of the probes projecting from ... the landing legs made contact with the surface." The light alerted the astronauts when the lunar module had touched the moon. According to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, the next word spoken — after "contact light" — was "shutdown" by Armstrong, who was alerting Aldrin that he had turned off the engine. Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, told us that he considers "shutdown" to be the first word uttered on the moon. Eric Jones — editor of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal — agreed. He told us that after consulting the transcripts and the November 1969 NASA report on the Apollo 11 mission, he concluded that "shutdown" was the first word spoken after the lunar module landed. The next words came from Aldrin, according to the Journal transcript: "Okay. Engine stop." At NASA, spokesman Joshua Buck said this was the key moment. "After checking online, it seems that the very first word on the moon was seconds after landing and said by Buzz Aldrin. It was 'OK,'" Buck told us in an e-mail. After "engine stop," there was a brief technical exchange between Armstrong and Aldrin that Jones said was part of the post-shutdown process. Next, mission control in Houston chimed in: "We copy you down, Eagle," said Charles Duke, who was Apollo 11's capsule communicator, the only person authorized to talk directly to the crew. According to the Journal's transcript, Armstrong then said to Aldrin, "Engine arm is off," before addressing mission control directly with: "Houston ..." About 20 seconds passed — and about 30 words were spoken — between Aldrin's "contact light" and Armstrong's "Houston." Facing all these different answers to the first-word question — none of which were "Houston" — we sought clarity from Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian. No luck: Barry told us that there are "a range of right answers." He said "contact light" was one possibility because those words were uttered the moment that the module touched the surface of the moon. "The next option," he said, is the first word spoken after all four of the module's foot pads came to rest on the moon. It's not clear exactly when that happened, Barry said, but it probably occurred as the astronauts were running down their post-shutdown "checklist" — "like the one you do every day, but probably don't say aloud, when you park your car." But Barry said that because the checklist was part of a long-rehearsed procedural script, he is "inclined toward saying that the first 'intentional' words spoken on the moon were Armstrong's report to Houston that they had landed." Keeping score? That's one vote for "Houston" and four for some other words. Barry offered yet another take on the issue, saying that if you start from the moment humans stepped on the lunar surface for the first time, the first words spoken on the moon would be Armstrong's most famous statement: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." We had one more question for Barry: How much of the procedural exchange between the astronauts did the millions of people hear as they listened to the moon landing on radio and television? Barry told us that they would have heard everything said by Aldrin, including "contact light" and "Okay. Engine stop," because he was making all his checklist calls and observations over the radio. Armstrong's communications were captured by the on-board recorder, Barry said, but were not broadcast on the radio unless he pushed a button — as Armstrong did when he announced, "Houston ... The Eagle has landed." We laid out our research for Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier, who responded by saying: "We stand by the governor's inaugural remarks." Now, to the Truth-O-Meter. We understand the everlasting appeal of Houston as the first word flung from the moon. However, we were surprised to learn, it's not so. Armstrong's call from the moon to mission control was preceded by various other and easy-to-overlook words. We rate Perry's statement as False. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2011-01-22T06:00:00 | 2011-01-18 | ['None'] |
snes-00889 | Did Abraham Lincoln Order the Execution of 38 Dakota Fighters? | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-dakota/ | null | History | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Abraham Lincoln Order the Execution of 38 Dakota Fighters? | 14 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02523 | Blake Shelton Did “Dump” Gwen Stefani, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/blake-shelton-not-dump-gwen-stefani-no-split/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Blake Shelton Did NOT “Dump” Gwen Stefani, Despite Tabloid Cover Story | 10:41 am, August 30, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00603 | State will "offer basic protection from unnecessary litigation to business owners who offer their services to first-responders in the aftermath of a disaster." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/627/provide-legal-protection-for-first-responders/ | null | scott-o-meter | Rick Scott | null | null | Provide legal protection for first-responders | 2011-05-09T10:49:48 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10919 | Says Sherrod Brown "votes 97 percent with Chuck Schumer, almost 95 plus percent with Elizabeth Warren." | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2018/jul/31/jim-renacci/ohio-senator-sherrod-brown-votes-elizabeth-warren-/ | Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci says his Democratic opponent Sen. Sherrod Brown votes in step with Democratic leadership and liberals. Renacci held a July 10 press conference in Cincinnati to call for term limits. "People start voting not for their state anymore but they start voting for their leadership," Renacci said. "And we have seen that with our Sen. Sherrod Brown who votes 97 percent with Chuck Schumer, almost 95 plus percent with Elizabeth Warren." Renacci was referring to the voting records of Schumer, who is the Democratic Senate leader and represents New York, as well as Warren, who represents Massachusetts and is a potential 2020 presidential contender to challenge President Donald Trump. We found that Renacci is largely correct on the numbers but we will add some context. In recent years, the average senator voted with his or her party about 90 percent of the time when a majority of Democrats took a position different from a majority of Republicans, said Steven S. Smith, Washington University political science professor. "In this context, a serious look at a senator’s record requires more digging. On what issues did the senator introduce legislation, offer amendments, address in public statements, or pursue on committee or in conference?" Brown’s voting record Renacci’s campaign pointed to vote data compiled by Congressional Quarterly, which showed that Brown voted with Schumer 96 percent of the time between 2007 and 2018. For the comparison with Warren, who joined the Senate in 2013, the Renacci campaign pulled CQ data showing Brown voted the same as Warren about 94 percent of the time. We used ProPublica’s public database which provides head-to-head comparisons, and found similar results. So the numbers aren’t in dispute. We have fact-checked several previous claims that Democrats voted with former President Barack Obama or their party the vast majority of the time and generally rated them Mostly True if the numbers were on target. Most Democrats and Republicans largely vote with their respective party, but using only the statistic doesn’t tell the full story about a senator’s record. The straight-up vote comparisons here between three Democratic senators don’t tell the full story about Brown’s voting record, either. Brown’s campaign spokesman Preston Maddock pointed to some key votes on which Brown opposed Warren. For example, in 2014, Brown voted to adopt the conference report on the farm bill and was tapped by leadership to reconcile differences between the House and the Senate. Warren was among Senate Democrats who opposed any cuts to food stamps and voted against the legislation. In 2015, Brown voted to adopt the conference report to reauthorize federal transportation programs and renew the charter of the Export-Import bank. Under the bill, Brown said Ohio was set to receive an increase in money for highway and transit projects. Warren opposed the legislation because she said it rolled back rules that protect consumers and our financial system. In 2016, Brown voted for the 21st Century Cures Act, which authorized $1 bill to states to combat the opioid crisis. Warren said the bill was "hijacked" by the pharmaceutical industry and opposed it. Brown also voted for some of Trump’s nominees in 2017 whom Warren opposed, including Ben Carson to head up Housing and Urban Development and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Brown supported U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer's confirmation, while Schumer opposed him. While Brown has criticized Trump on several fronts, Maddock pointed to some examples on which the Democratic senator has been in agreement with the president. For example, Brown supported the Interdict Act to make it easier for customs officials to block fentanyl from getting into the U.S. The law passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Trump signed the House version into law, while Brown was a cosponsor of the Senate version. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio’s Republican senator, also backed the bill, and both Portman and Brown attended a signing ceremony for the new law at the White House. Brown and Trump also share some views on trade. Brown has said Trump’s order on raising imported steel will help stabilize steel jobs in Ohio. Experts say members often vote along party lines Experts told us that it’s no surprise that senators from the same party often vote the same. "Democrats tend to vote with fellow Democrats, just as Republicans tend to vote with their party. The existence of parties and winner-take-all congressional primaries incentivizes party-line voting," University of Akron political science professor David Cohen said. The vote comparison among Democrats omits that the Senate reaches bipartisan consensus on some issues, for example, the recent unanimous vote in the Senate to express opposition to allowing the Russians to interrogate American diplomats, said University of Miami political science professor Gregory Koger. "There may be a lot of issues on which Brown disagrees with Schumer and/or Warren that do not come to the Senate floor, so their roll call voting record may overstate their actual policy agreement," Koger said. Using the ProPublica database of votes, we found that Renacci voted the same as House Majority Leader Paul Ryan about 89 percent of the time. Our ruling Renacci said Brown "votes 97 percent with Chuck Schumer, almost 95 plus percent with Elizabeth Warren." The numbers are largely correct and not in dispute. But it’s not unusual for members of the same party to vote together, and it doesn’t tell the full story about their voting record. We rate this claim Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Jim Renacci | null | null | null | 2018-07-31T10:00:00 | 2018-07-10 | ['Chuck_Schumer', 'Elizabeth_Warren'] |
tron-00575 | Dunkin’ Donuts is Closing Down | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/dunkin-donuts-is-closing-down/ | null | business | null | null | null | Dunkin’ Donuts is Closing Down | Sep 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02394 | A "leaked" photograph depicts President Obama in handcuffs, facing charges of wiretapping President Trump. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-in-handcuffs/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | ‘Leaked Image’ Depicts President Obama in Handcuffs? | 19 May 2017 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
hoer-00609 | Fogg Hill Wolf Kill Warning Poster | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/wolf-kill-warning-poster.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fogg Hill Wolf Kill Warning Poster | November 1, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06468 | Between 2000 and 2010, the illegal immigrant population of Texas increased by 60 percent, while California and Florida had "no increase." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/18/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-illegal-immigrant-population-rose/ | During the Oct. 18, 2011, Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sparred with one of his rivals, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, over immigration. Over the last 10 years, Romney said, California and Florida have had "no increase in illegal immigration. Texas has had 60 percent increase in illegal immigrants.... If there's someone who has a record as governor with regards to illegal immigration that doesn't stand up to muster, it's you, not me." We’ll start our analysis by noting that counting illegal immigrants is a notoriously tricky task. The U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t ask for the legal status of the people it interviews, so independent groups need to approximate the numbers of foreign-born individuals who are believed to be unauthorized, based on factors such as gender, age, country of origin and year of entry into the U.S. According to experts we contacted, there are two sources that produce credible estimates: the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics and the Pew Hispanic Center. Both of these organizations have produced numbers that are broadly similar to Romney’s claim. First, the numbers for Texas. The DHS estimated that Texas had 1,090,000 unauthorized immigrants in 2000, rising to an estimated 1,770,000 by 2010 -- an increase of 680,000, or about 62 percent, over the decade. Meanwhile, Pew estimated the numbers to be 1,100,000 in 2000 and 1,650,000 in 2010 (the midpoint of a range between 1,450,000 to 1,850,000). That’s an increase of 550,000, or exactly 50 percent. The difference between 50 percent and 62 percent is "well within the margin of error of any of these estimates," said Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior demographer at Pew who helped assemble the estimate. So the 60 percent increase Romney cited is broadly supported by the best estimates available. What about the numbers for California and Florida over the same period? According to the DHS figures, California had a 2 percent increase, while Florida had a 5 percent decrease. So Romney’s slightly off when he claims that California had "no increase," but he has a point that both states were broadly stable over the period. Meanwhile, when rating promises of these sort, we always try to look not only at whether the facts are accurate, but also whether the public official being credited or blamed for the statistic has significant authority over the issue. In the case of immigration, governors have limited influence. "There are certain trends with respect to illegal immigration that are beyond the ability of any single state policymaker to counteract," said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, which studies immigration issues. In addition, she said, "border enforcement is almost entirely in the federal realm, and only federal policymakers can set the parameters for who has legal status in this country." Still, Mittelstadt added, some states in recent years "have taken on a greater role in immigration enforcement and policymaking, and state and local executives play a significant role in determining how welcoming or hostile their jurisdictions are perceived to unauthorized immigrants." For instance, she said that under Perry, Texas has "asserted a growing role for itself at the border." Meanwhile, Ira Mehlman-- the media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that seeks to stop illegal immigration -- added that while Perry has focused on border enforcement in Texas, he has not gone as far as, say, Arizona in "removing incentives to come [il legally]," including access to jobs and benefits -- "the most important factors in controlling illegal immigration." Our ruling Romney is essentially correct on the numbers, but his strong implication that Perry is responsible is a significant stretch. On balance, we rate the claim Half True. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2011-10-18T23:15:30 | 2011-10-18 | ['Texas', 'California'] |
pose-00928 | My plan for dealing with the Transit Department includes: Working with the Transit Administration to fully resolve the current issues and restore federal grant funding. | in the works | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/carlos-o-meter/promise/960/restore-federal-grant-transit-funding/ | null | carlos-o-meter | Carlos Gimenez | null | null | Restore federal grant transit funding | 2011-12-29T17:52:14 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03246 | Says Matt Bevin has repeatedly failed to pay his taxes. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/14/mitch-mcconnell/mitch-mcconnell-tags-kentucky-primary-opponent-tax/ | The 2014 Kentucky Senate race will ultimately be a referendum on Republican versus Democratic policies, but before we get to that point, the state’s senior senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must first get through the GOP primary. He faces a challenge from well-to-do businessman and tea party activist Matt Bevin. In a state that elected Sen. Rand Paul, a magnet for the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, McConnell is treating this as a real challenge. McConnell’s latest ad is called "Delinquent" and it casts Bevin as a man who repeatedly fails to pay his taxes and then denies the habit. Here’s the key text from the ad: Announcer: Bevin says (video clip) "I have no tax delinquency problem, nor have I ever." Announcer: But Bevin’s business failed to pay taxes at least eight times. And was the No. 1 tax delinquent. Bevin also failed to pay taxes on his million-dollar home in Maine. Despite official documents, Bevin says (video clip) "I have no tax delinquency problem nor have I ever." Announcer: Bailout Bevin. How can you believe him on anything? We contacted the McConnell campaign, and they told us that the business that didn’t pay taxes is Bevin Brothers Manufacturing in East Hampton, Conn. Bevin Brothers makes bells -- cow bells, brass hand bells, door bells, sleigh bells and so on. It’s been making bells since 1832 and on its website, it speaks with pride of being the "only remaining company manufacturing just bells in the United States." The Bevin family has overseen the firm for six generations. Matt Bevin became wealthy managing the portfolios of institutional investors. An uncle in Connecticut owned and ran Bevin Brothers. According to a letter provided by the Bevin campaign, the factory foreman, Doug Dilla, contacted Matt Bevin in 2008 and asked him to intervene to save the company. The uncle was ill, and the firm "was in debt and not meeting its obligations," Dilla wrote. Dilla wrote that letter in July 2013 at the Bevin campaign’s request. The McConnell campaign sent us copies of tax records showing the bell maker had fallen behind on paying taxes eight times. The amounts ranged from $21 to over $74,000. That big bill was owed to the Internal Revenue Service, and the record shows that the company failed to pay what it owed in 2008 and in the second quarter of 2009. The question is, as our colleagues at the Washington Post Fact Checker pointed out in their analysis of this ad, can Matt Bevin be held accountable for those unpaid taxes? The IRS lien document is consistent with the storyline of a company facing hard times around 2008. There is no record of Matt Bevin having managerial control of the firm before that point and the extent of his involvement afterward is unclear. According to the Bevin campaign, he began putting money into the bell maker starting in 2008. His uncle remained in charge, at least formally, until August 2011 when the board elected him president and treasurer. The campaign provided an unsigned copy of the shareholder resolution; the signed original, they said, was lost in a major fire at the plant in 2012. The East Hampton town manager, Mike Maniscalco, told us that from what he and other town officials can tell, all those details are accurate. "The company was definitely struggling, and we are grateful that Mr. Bevin got involved," Maniscalco said. "After the fire, the company had offers from other communities to reopen elsewhere and thankfully, they made the decision to stay and are cranking out bells today." Maniscalco also affirmed that he wrote a letter to the campaign in which he described Bevin’s successful efforts to pay all back taxes. The ad’s claim that Bevin Brothers Manufacturing had become the area’s top tax delinquent is accurate but is due mainly to the town’s tax base. Residential property taxes account for over 90 percent of revenues; when the bell maker fell behind, the amount it owed stood out. The house in Maine The ad’s final assertion is that Bevin failed to pay taxes on his million-dollar home in Maine. That is accurate but incomplete. In 2007, Bevin did not pay $5,761.07 in property taxes on a home he bought for $1,250,000 in 2001. The house is in the town of Greenwood, Maine. The town’s tax collector, Kimberly Sparks, told us that Bevin had paid his taxes on time every year before 2007 and afterward as well. When Bevin bought the house in 2001, the lender was American Bank and Trust. Typically, along with a mortgage comes an escrow agent that pays the tax bill. Sparks said that sometime around 2007, the lender and escrow agent changed to National City Corporation. "A lot of times we see that when there’s a change in escrow agents," Sparks said, "property taxes don’t get paid. That’s a common occurrence." Sparks said the town sends the tax bill to the property owner, and it is up to the owner to forward it to the escrow agent. The McConnell campaign provided a copy of the tax notice sent to Bevin’s Louisville address and noted "the lien was sent to his house in Louisville, so it would have been hard to miss." In 2008, National City was collapsing in the sub-prime mortgage debacle and was purchased by PNC Financial Services. The extent to which that was a factor is unclear. According to a letter Sparks wrote at the request of the Bevin campaign, Bevin contacted the town in 2009 "concerned that his accounts were paid by his new mortgage company" and "was surprised to learn of two tax liens." By February 2009, National City Mortgage paid the back taxes. Our ruling The McConnell campaign ad paints a picture of Matt Bevin as a man with a track record of unpaid taxes. The claim is based on back taxes owed by a bell-making company in Connecticut that was owned by members of the Bevin family, and Bevin’s failure to pay taxes on a vacation house in Maine. With the bell maker, based on the paper trail and interviews, it’s reasonable to conclude that the company was in financial trouble before Bevin was deeply involved. We don’t know all the details of Bevin’s management role, but the town credits him for helping the firm pay its tax bills and later, keeping the business afloat. McConnell’s team says this was Bevin’s business and he was responsible for its failure to pay taxes. But the weight of evidence says he inherited the tax liabilities; the town doesn’t hold him responsible for the nonpayment of taxes, and in fact, regards him in exactly the opposite light. This makes it difficult to see where the McConnell claim holds up. As for the house in Maine, Bevin showed a lapse in overseeing the property tax payments, but the change in mortgage companies at a time when the lender was headed toward bankruptcy is a significant factor. According to local officials, Bevin took the initiative to correct the problem. In both cases, there is a slim element of truth but the rest of the facts paint a very different picture. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | Mitch McConnell | null | null | null | 2013-08-14T10:42:06 | 2013-08-05 | ['None'] |
wast-00044 | The White House staff secretary is essentially the inbox and outbox for the president of the United States. | not the whole story | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/15/fact-checking-bipartisan-spinfest-brett-kavanaughs-time-white-house/" | null | null | Charles E. Grassley | Salvador Rizzo | null | Fact-checking the bipartisan spinfest on Brett Kavanaugh's time at the White House | August 15 | null | ['United_States', 'White_House'] |
pomt-03094 | If the government shuts down, "all military personnel will continue to serve and accrue pay but will not actually be paid until appropriations are available." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/sep/24/cw-bill-young/rep-young-says-military-pay-would-be-delayed-durin/ | U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., and other House Republicans oppose Obamacare and recently approved a measure to fund the government only if President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, is defunded. But while addressing the House on Friday, the longest-serving Republican in Congress called the House plan a "painful and inefficient way to govern," and cautioned his peers against a government shutdown. Young included impact on the military in his list of examples of what would happen should the shutdown come to pass. "All military personnel will continue to serve and accrue pay but will not actually be paid until appropriations are available," he said. We wanted to see how soldiers’ wallets would be impacted if the government shuts down. First, let’s review shutdown logistics. If the president and Congress can’t agree on funding for the new fiscal year, federal agencies can’t operate, except in emergencies. The last shutdowns were in 1995 and 1996. In November 1995, the shutdown lasted five days, which was not long enough to affect military pay. From mid December 1995 to early January 1996, a 21-day shutdown occurred, which would have affected paychecks, if not for defense appropriations enacted on Dec. 1 that made funding available. This time around, however, no such budget appropriations have been passed, or at least not yet. Cmdr. Bill Urban, a U.S. Department of Defense spokesman, said there is still enough time for the government to pass them. Back in January, Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., introduced legislation that would allow both troops and civilians to get paid in the event of a shutdown, but the bill never made it out of committee. Urban said the Defense Department was making plans based on its past experience with government shutdowns. In April 2011, before Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown, the department announced that the military would continue to work but would be paid retroactively. That would likely be the same plan this time around. If the government shutdown does occur on Sept. 30, military members would receive their Oct. 1 paychecks on time, but Oct. 15 paychecks would be delayed. We should note that civilians who work for the Defense Department wouldn’t fare as well, based on the 2011 report. Many would go on unpaid furlough during a shutdown. "It would put a good bit of stress on an already stressed workforce," Urban said. Our ruling Though Young supported a House measure to defund Obamacare, he’s now urging the House to avoid a government shutdown, reminding fellow members of how that affects military pay. A Defense Department official said the department’s plan will be similar to plans from past threats of government shutdowns. That means the military would delay paychecks. Young’s claim is that the military cannot be paid without appropriations is correct. We rate his statement True. | null | C.W. Bill Young | null | null | null | 2013-09-24T17:12:38 | 2013-09-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-05588 | Last year, we produced 14 percent less oil on public lands than we did the year before. | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2012/apr/02/rob-portman/rob-portman-says-oil-production-public-lands-was-d/ | Everyone complains about gasoline prices. President Barack Obama says he’s trying to do something about them, including making the country less reliant on foreign oil. Republicans say he should do a lot more to spur domestic oil and gas production. PolitiFact has reviewed some of Obama’s energy measures before, including his claim that U.S. energy production is at an eight-year high. But there’s a counter-claim by many Republicans that was ripe for exploration when Sen. Rob Portman mentioned it on March 26, 2012. During a radio interview with Fox News Radio, Portman said: "The president says, you know, ‘we're doing more.’ Well, on public lands, we're doing less. Last year, we produced 14 percent less oil on public lands than we did the year before. We should be doing more on public lands, and that's the outer continental shelf and what's going on in Alaska and so on." Portman’s press secretary, Christine Mangi, steered us to an article published online by Greenwire, a news service that covers energy issues. The article, posted on March 14, was on the state of energy exploration and was based on testimony and statements U.S. Bureau of Land Management director Bob Abbey made before a panel of Senate appropriators. The article made its point in the first paragraph: "Energy firms face fewer costs and regulatory obstacles when drilling on state and private lands than they do on public lands, where oil production fell last year, a top Obama administration official said today," Abbey also told the lawmakers, according to the article, that oil exploration and drilling companies have migrated to nonpublic lands for economic reasons, not because of Obama policies. The article noted that, according to Interior Department statistics, oil production fell by 14 percent in fiscal year 2011 on federal lands and waters. That’s exactly what Portman said. "The dip in production occurred mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, where a moratorium on deepwater drilling stunted exploration for much of 2010 in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster," Greenwire reported. We wanted to drill down beneath the article. So we turned to transcripts of Abbey’s recent testimony in both the House and the Senate. There is no need to repeat it all here because Greenwire summed it up well, but we’ll point out one important part of the BLM chief’s testimony before Senate appropriators on March 14. From a transcript: "But no doubt the statistics would show that the U.S. oil and gas production is up and last year it's more -- last year more oil is produced in this country than any time since 2003 according to... (CROSSTALK) And the, you know, no doubt the aggressive development of shale gas and shale oil has led to a shift to private lands in the east and to the south where there is less amount of federal mineral estate in those sections of the country." He added that where oil and gas companies decide to develop "is up to them. For example, we have approved 7,000 applications for permits to drill that are not being drilled. We have over 25 million acres of lands that we've leased that are not being developed. So it's a decision that's being based and (CROSSTALK) by the market." As for the Gulf of Mexico, Abbey acknowledged the effect of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, and of safety measures taken that slowed the issuance of new permits. But he said permitting has speeded up -- that trend, too, has been documented -- and added that the "administration must strike the proper balance between the speed of processing and ensuring that industry is drilling responsibly and safely especially in the context of the largest oil spill in our nation's history which we saw with the Deepwater Horizon incident." Putting aside the reason for the decrease, it appeared that Portman was accurate when he said oil production was down on public lands last year. But there was one more thing we wanted to check: The actual number. For that, we turned to the Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. ONRR tracks royalties to the government for oil, gas and coal produced on federal lands, including oil from offshore wells. Using online records of royalty revenue, it is possible to estimate the amount of oil, gas and coal produced onshore and offshore on federal property in any fiscal year. Much more easily understood, and with similar results, is a recent report from EIA titled, "Sales of Fossil Fuels Produced from Federal and Indian Lands, FY 2003 through FY 2011." EIA worked with ONRR to produce the report. These numbers go directly to Portman’s claim. In 2010, EIA data show, 726 million barrels of oil came from federal lands, including offshore wells. In 2011, it was 626. That’s a drop of 13.77 percent, which can be rounded to 14 percent. This data, as well as a more complex measure (it involves royalties and British thermal units of energy, but we’ll spare you), would appear to render Portman’s statement accurate. Yet it’s worth noting that oil statistics can be used to make a somewhat different argument about drilling and exploration. From 2009 to 2010, offshore oil production rose by 14.9 percent. Prior to that, before Obama’s presidency, the offshore volume fell for several years, and it was erratic even during a phase in which it rose, EIA figures show. Yet onshore oil production generally rose on federally owned land -- and did again in 2011, by 3.7 percent. What does this say? To the White House, it says oil production on all public land is up; that it’s getting better and better on private land, where oil companies are chasing the boom in horizontal fracking; and that even last year’s drop on federal property, chiefly in the Gulf of Mexico, shouldn’t be regarded as a lack of commitment to offshore drilling Making this case more forcefully, the White House on March 15 issued a blog post (to which we were pointed by the Interior Department) that broke the figures for oil production on public lands and water into annual averages over three-year periods. The most recent average, during the Obama presidency, was 661.7 millions of barrels of oil. That compares with an annual average of 585.3 million barrels during President George W. Bush’s last three years. The point of presenting it this way? The White House was able to show a 13 percent improvement over the previous administration. So did the United States produce 14 percent less oil on its public lands last year, as Portman said? Yes. Was his statement made in a context of needing to do more, or more specifically, of this president not doing enough? Yes. He lent his voice to the ongoing debate of whether to allow more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, in Alaska, and off the intercontinental shelf of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Fair enough. The White House points to the broader measure of all oil production, including on private land, to show an improvement. That, too, is fair. But experts agree that most big boosts in production come from years of earlier exploration and drilling. Much of the current success was seeded under a different administration, just as Obama’s actions are expected to bear fruit later. And at least part of the drop on public lands last year was due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and oil spill and, according to BLM, an apparent shift by oil companies to private lands ripe for fracking. That leaves us here: Portman’s fact was accurate: There was a 14 percent drop on public lands. Everything else can be teased out and spun for either party’s purposes. Under PolitiFact guidelines, when a statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, it rates a Truth-o-Meter rating of Mostly True. | null | Rob Portman | null | null | null | 2012-04-02T06:00:00 | 2012-03-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-10857 | Senator McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now he's for them. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/sep/05/mitt-romney/mccain-switched-on-tax-cuts/ | Romney is right that McCain switched on the tax cuts. When the cuts were first proposed in 2001, McCain joined Democrats in voting against them. At the time, he said the tax breaks didn't do enough for the middle class, and because of a need for increased defense spending. In 2003, the phased-in cuts of 2001 were accelerated but McCain again voted no, saying taxes shouldn't be cut in time of war. But in 2006, when the cuts were extended, McCain voted yes because he said opposing the extension of cuts already in place would amount to a tax increase. Updated: This post has been updated to correct the reasons McCain gave at the time for opposing tax cuts in 2001. Our initial posting attributed his reasons to statements he made later about fiscal restraint. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2007-09-05T00:00:00 | 2007-04-26 | ['George_W._Bush', 'John_McCain'] |
pomt-04138 | The so-called doc fix in the fiscal cliff deal will cut payments "for treating illnesses disproportionately impacting minorities, including end stage renal disease and diabetes." | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2013/jan/04/marcia-fudge/marcia-fudge-claims-fiscal-cliff-deal-included-cut/ | If you read about the fiscal-cliff deal Congress made on New Year’s Day, one fact above others stood out. Through compromises -- more unsavory or unprincipled to some than to others -- America’s economy did not topple over. Neither side got everything it wanted, noted U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat who voted for the deal. One compromise in particular still leaves Fudge uneasy: the funding measures used to keep Medicare from cutting its pay to physicians by 26.5 percent. To avert the physician pay cuts, Congress diverted money from several other medical programs, Fudge said in a Jan. 1 news release. This took care of the so-called Medicare doc fix -- but it also happened to take money from programs that pay for "treating illnesses disproportionately impacting minorities, including end stage renal disease and diabetes," Fudge said. She said this must be addressed in the new session of Congress. Did Congress really get the money to keep paying doctors for treating seniors (via Medicare,) by cutting what it pays hospitals and others for treating diabetes and other diseases? PolitiFact Ohio took a look. It turns out that Fudge, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, was correct on the funding. Whether this will harm patients is a matter of debate. Government accountants have wanted some of these changes for some time. Hospitals say the bean counters miss the big picture -- the real cost of treating patients -- by focusing too narrowly on line items. To understand this, let’s start with a quick explanation of the doc fix. It is a remnant of laws, the most recent in 1997, designed to hold down federal spending by linking the nation’s rate of economic growth to government payments for providers in Medicare, the 1965 program that brought federal health insurance to retirees. The problem is, medical costs often rise much faster than the overall economy (measured by the gross domestic product). In recent, low-inflation years, the formula linking the two would automatically require payment cuts to doctors. Some doctors who serve seniors say they might get paid so little that they would stop accepting new patients or quit practicing. So Congress halts these reductions every year, though it keeps the law. This year’s cut would have been particularly deep because of the cumulative build-up of past deferrals. But as we said, Congress found a fix. It required coming up with about $30 billion to pay. Where did the money come from? According to the Kaiser Health News blog, Congress decided to cut the amount that Medicare pays to hospitals for inpatient or overnight care by reducing annual base payment increases. This would save $10.5 billion over 10 years, the Kaiser news service said. Congress found another $4.2 billion by reducing what are known as ‘disproportionate share" payments made by Medicaid, the government’s program for low-income Americans, to hospitals that treat an unusually high share of the poor. And it got $4.9 billion by changing the way it bundles payments for treating end-stage renal disease starting in 2014 There are other changes, including a requirement that companies start competing with bids to sell diabetes test supplies, ending what government auditors say are over-payments. But you get the idea. These and other cuts are detailed in reports by the medical trade press, including The Medicare NewsGroup and Becker’s Hospital Review. If this sounds like Congress took from Peter to pay Paul, the president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, Chip Kahn, might agree. He put it that way to Kaiser Health News: "It is not in the best interest of patients or those who care for them to rob hospital Peter to pay for fiscal cliff Paul." The American Medical Association also expressed its concerns. Outrageous? Consider the rationale: Congressional watchdogs maintain these programs were overpaid or abused in the past, and could function in the future with less money. According to several studies and audits by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative agency that reports to Congress, hospitals were overpaid while Medicare transitioned toward paying them a bundled sum for treatment based on a patient’s disease or diagnosis. The old system paid for individual services, treatments and tests, some of them poorly coordinated and duplicative. Overpayments occurred during the transition that started in 2008. Additionally, some ambulance services were overpaid for emergency transport of diabetes patients who did not need emergency or ambulance services, according to examinations by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. By cutting such payments by 10 percent, starting next October, Congress freed up additional money for the doc fix. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid for more dialysis-related drugs -- as much as $880 million in 2011 -- than patients with kidney failure actually used, according to a December, 2012, GAO report. This was due to a bundled-payment calculation that did not account for a significant drop in the usage of certain drugs -- 23 percent lower in 2011 than in 2007, the GAO found. The GAO specifically recommended that Congress tweak the law so CMS had clear authority to alter its dialysis payment calculations. Congress did so as part of the fiscal cliff and doc fix deal. But the medical industry is unhappy about this and the other cuts. It says that the GAO failed to factor in costs for which it is never reimbursed. "Making cuts of the magnitude GAO is recommending would impose great financial strain" on smaller dialysis organizations "and could lead to fewer choices and access to care problems for patients," Katrina Russell, president of the National Renal Administrators Association, told American Medical News in December. Fudge, too, does not like this change. Her district not only includes every major hospital system in Cuyahoga County, as her communications director, Belinda Prinz, told us, but also has a significant black population. African-Americans have a disproportionately high incidence of diabetes and are 1.8 times more likely to have diabetes than non-Hispanic whites, according to the American Diabetes Association. One in four African-American women over age 55 has diabetes, Prinz said in an email, citing this and other American Diabetes Association figures. Complications can cause blindness, kidney disease, heart attacks and strokes, and amputations sometimes result -- with African-Americans 2.7 times as likely to have lower-limb amputations, the association says. So where does that leave us with Fudge’s claim? Fudge did not specifically say minorities will be harmed by the spending cuts. Her statement was factually accurate. But she suggested that harm will result, saying that cuts will be made to programs that treat diseases disproportionately affecting minorities, including end stage renal disease and diabetes." The impact is unsettled for now. The GAO and inspector general have called out some of these programs for waste or unnecessary spending. Yet Fudge is in good company -- namely, the American medical community, although like any constituency, it too has its interests to protect. Because her claim requires this additional information to fully understand, we rate it Mostly True. | null | Marcia Fudge | null | null | null | 2013-01-04T06:00:00 | 2013-01-01 | ['None'] |
tron-01939 | Video of President Obama Kicking a Door | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-kicks-door/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | Video of President Obama Kicking a Door | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02069 | Is Hobby Lobby Closing All Their Stores? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hobby-lobby/ | null | Medical | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is Hobby Lobby Closing All Their Stores? | 30 September 2012 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00090 | I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That\'s their law. | false | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/14/recidivism-watch-trump-administration-again-blames-others-for-its-own-family-separation-policy/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Salvador Rizzo | null | Recidivism Watch: Trump administration again blames others for its own family separation policy | June 14 | null | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-12894 | Miami-Dade is "the first community in the world to break the cycle of local transmission of the Zika virus." | mostly true | /florida/statements/2017/jan/24/carlos-gimenez/miami-dade-no-1-leader-breaking-local-zika-transmi/ | Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said that in 2016 the county became a global leader in fighting the mosquito-borne Zika virus. "We were the first community in the world -- let me repeat that -- the first community and I believe the only community in the world to break the cycle of local transmission of the Zika virus," Gimenez said during his State of the County speech Jan. 18. However, Gimenez didn’t declare Zika dead forever -- he warned that the county must remain vigilant: "We may be in the off season, but that does not mean that our work is over." Gimenez, a Republican re-elected to his last term in November, has a point about local transmission. The last of the four local transmission zones were cleared in Miami-Dade by mid December 2016. However, he omitted some caveats about Zika transmission and Miami-Dade’s special circumstances compared with the rest of the world. Zika in Miami-Dade Zika has been around for decades. But the current outbreak started in 2015, when Brazil reported cases of more babies being born with abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly. That condition was connected to mothers infected with Zika. The Centers for Disease Control defines areas of active Zika virus transmission as having two or more locally acquired cases of Zika virus infection, within two weeks, within 1 square mile. Those cases must be in separate households, with travel and sex ruled out as potential causes. Using those guidelines, the Florida Department of Health declared active Zika transmission zones and then lifted them when 45 days passed without any new local cases in those zones. In July, the first local Zika cases were reported in Miami-Dade County. Over the next few months, the state declared four local Zika transmission zones. The state lifted the first zone, in Wynwood -- a trendy area near downtown Miami -- Sept. 19. That was the first community in the world to break local transmission, CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said. The state lifted the last of the four zones, in part of South Beach, on Dec. 9. But officials didn’t declare Zika entirely kicked to the curb forever; Miami-Dade remained a "cautionary area" according to the CDC. Officials warned that isolated cases could continue to appear -- the most recent one was Dec. 15. Let’s look at how Miami-Dade compared with some other areas in curbing Zika. In addition to Miami-Dade, only one other area in the United States had local Zika cases: Brownsville, Texas. Miami-Dade reported 257 cases of local transmission, while Brownsville reported six. The Texas Department of Health never declared a local transmission zone in Brownsville, but the CDC called it a "cautionary area." It’s difficult to compare Miami-Dade to other places where the Zika virus has been far more widespread. Brazil has had more than 128,000 cases and continues to battle Zika. Local transmission continues in Puerto Rico, which had more than 100 new cases this month and more than 37,000 since 2015. In Singapore, the government designated "Zika clusters" and announced that it had no more Dec. 15 after its last new case was reported Dec. 10. However, the "only place it really stopped is in Florida," said Daniel Epstein, a spokesman for the Pan American Health Organization. There were other areas in the world where Zika dropped off before it hit Miami-Dade. For example, the outbreak in French Polynesia affected an estimated 28,000 people and lasted until 2014, said Monika Gehner, a WHO spokeswoman. Some caveats While Miami-Dade got kudos from the CDC for efforts to curb Zika, experts caution that it can return, particularly when the temperature rises. It’s too early to claim elimination, said Duane J. Gubler, an emerging infectious disease expert at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. "The absence of reported cases for a few months does not confirm the transmission cycle is broken," she said. "After a year with active surveillance, I would probably accept it." Florida also has certain advantages compared with other places of the world that have been struck by Zika, including better access to testing patients to verify that the virus is actually Zika. Also, in South Florida, with air conditioning and screens and modest mosquito density levels, transmission is less likely than countries that have less of that protection, University of Florida biostatistics professor Ira Longini said. "There is no cycle to break," he said. "Sustained transmission is impossible, but you do get small outbreaks when introductions occur." Our ruling Gimenez said Miami-Dade is "the first community in the world to break the cycle of local transmission of the Zika virus." The CDC says that Wynwood, an area in Miami, was the first to break local transmission in September. The last of four local transmission zones was lifted Dec. 9. There are some caveats about Gimenez’s claim, including that only one other county in the United States had local cases, and a far smaller number. Some other places took a far greater hit from Zika than Florida did. Experts caution that Zika cases could return to South Florida, a point Gimenez also acknowledged in his speech. We rate this claim Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/9ab33f87-fe26-4053-9ae6-df8e1e1e40ad | null | Carlos Gimenez | null | null | null | 2017-01-24T13:35:33 | 2017-01-18 | ['None'] |
snes-01121 | President Trump's physician wrote a note declaring that the chief executive is not well enough to speak with Robert Mueller. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-doctor-mueller/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Trump’s Doctor Say the President Was ‘Too Sick to Talk to Mueller’? | 25 January 2018 | null | ['Robert_Mueller'] |
pomt-04545 | Had the online change of address been in place in 2008 an estimated 130,000 voters who cast provisional ballots could have changed their address online and voted a regular ballot. | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2012/sep/28/jon-husted/jon-husted-says-online-address-tool-would-have-cut/ | Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has found himself in the crosshairs of Democrats and concerned voting groups in recent months who worry the Republican officer wasn’t doing enough to open up greater access to voting. But there was one move Husted did this summer that pushed his critics back on their heels for a fleeting moment of agreement: when the secretary announced on Aug. 9 that his staff had made it possible for registered Ohio voters to now update and change their home addresses online through his office’s web site. The goal is ultimately have fewer Ohio voters using those sometimes unreliable and uncounted provisional ballots. People who want to vote on Election Day can be turned away if their address does not match the information in polling books. The backup plan for those people is to use provisional ballots, which are set aside for verification and don’t always end up being counted later. "If voters take advantage of this new tool and update their address online, it is likely that a lot fewer of them would have to vote a provisional ballot," Husted said at a news conference at his office the day he announced the change. Aside from a few reports of glitches in using the system, the news went over well. But at the news conference that day, Husted sought to sell his idea even more by declaring that had this system been in place during the 2008 presidential election about 130,000 Ohioans who used provisional ballots might not have had to. He backed it up by blasting a news release to the masses from his office later that day. "Had the online change of address been in place in 2008 an estimated 130,000 voters who cast provisional ballots could have changed their address online and voted a regular ballot," he said in the news release. He made an identical claim in another news release Sept. 17, 2012. That seemed like a fairly bold claim to PolitiFact Ohio. Consider that the state secretary of state’s office didn’t start tracking "wrong address" as a reason for having to use a provisional ballot in its routine post-election reports until 2011. So Politifact Ohio asked the Husted’s staff for an explanation. How can you say how many people would have changed their addresses and avoided a provisional ballot in 2008 had this online address change been in effect? After all, voters have always had the chance to change their addresses in-person. The answer is Husted’s office doesn’t know — for certain. Husted’s spokesman Matt McClellan noted that the key word in the statement uttered in August by the secretary and plopped in the the news releases is "estimated". "It is just an estimate assuming that voters would have taken advantage of the opportunity to change their addresses online," McClelland said. OK, so how did you arrive at such an "estimate"? Here’s McClelland’s explanation. Pay close attention or this might feel like a confusing mathematical equation. First, the office determined what percentage of voters using a provisional ballot in this year’s primary were forced to do so because they had a wrong address. That’s 11,912 wrong addresses out of 20,062 total provisionals for a rate of 59.4 percent. Second, the office determined what percentage of voters using a provisional ballot in the November 2011 general election were forced to do so because they had an incorrect address. That’s 51,404 out of 76,525 for a rate of 67.2 percent. Next, the office looked at the number of provisionals cast in November 2008 (206,859) and multiplied that number by 67.2 percent and 59.4 percent, for totals of 139,009 and 122,874 respectively. Lastly, the office then took the average between 139,000 and 123,000 and came up with its 130,000 estimate. Follow that? "I feel pretty good about it," McClelland said, after explaining the unscientific statistical analysis applied by the secretary’s office. We at Politifact Ohio have been called a lot of things, but brilliant statisticians isn’t one of them. We asked Case Western Reserve University professor and chair of the mathematics department, Daniela Calvetti, to please weigh in. "I think it is a reasonable way of estimating how many voters would be able to take advantage of this if everyone who had a provisional ballot due to incorrect address indeed went online and changes the address electronically we would have about 130,000 voters," Calvetti said. "There is no reason to believe that the percentages would vary much because 67 percent and 59 percent are not very far (apart) in particular since one was a primary and one was a general," she said. "I think it is a sound way of making the projection." So where does that leave Husted’s claim? An independent expert backed the methodology Husted used to come up with the figure of 130,000, and the statement describes that as an estimate. But the figure assumes all people would have taken advantage of the online address change, which is not certain. That’s additional information that provides clarification.. On the Truth-O-Meter, Husted’s claim rates Mostly True. | null | Jon Husted | null | null | null | 2012-09-28T10:00:00 | 2012-09-17 | ['None'] |
obry-00057 | The candidates vying for a seat in Wisconsin’s 94th Assembly District addressed state education funding late August. After incumbent Democrat Steve Doyle said in an interview with News 8 that a lack of state funding over the last six years was forcing schools to use referendums to cover costs, Republican challenger Julian Bradley, of La Crosse, said that funding for local districts had in fact increased recently. “People like to talk about the cuts, but we’ve actually seen increases. The La Crosse School District, the Onalaska School District, West Salem, Melrose-Mindoro, we’ve seen increases across the board in funding in all of those areas, I want to make sure those continue to happen,” said Bradley to News 8 reporters. Is Bradley correct? It depends on when you start counting. | mostly_true | https://observatory.journalism.wisc.edu/2016/10/27/state-funding-for-schools-in-the-94th-assembly-district-increasing-or-decreasing/ | null | null | null | Max Bayer | null | State funding for schools in the 94th assembly district: increasing or decreasing? | October 27, 2016 | null | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Wisconsin', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-02281 | By a two-to-one margin, Rhode Islanders want to ban assault weapons and we have a very small percentage of gun owners in this state, less than 13 percent. | mostly true | /rhode-island/statements/2014/apr/06/linda-finn/rhode-island-legislator-linda-finn-says-large-majo/ | During debate on any contentious issue, advocates will argue that the public is on their side. That was the case during a March 18, 2014, State House rally designed to encourage the Rhode Island General Assembly to adopt stronger gun-control laws. Rep. Linda Finn, D-Middletown, used that strategy at the end of her speech. "By a two-to-one margin, Rhode Islanders want to ban assault weapons and we have a very small percentage of gun owners in this state, less than 13 percent," she said. We decided to see whether support for an assault weapons ban is really that high and the level of gun ownership in Rhode Island is really that low. PolitiFact has looked at the issue nationally, giving a Mostly True to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's 2013 comment that "No poll done this year . . . shows less than a majority to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons." But Finn is claiming a much larger margin of support. When we contacted Finn, she sent us the results of a poll released in February 2013 in which 64 percent of Rhode Islanders said they supported banning assault weapons, 27 percent were opposed and 9 percent were not sure. Even with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, that's a 2-to-1 margin. The 24-question survey of 614 voters covered a wide range of issues and was done by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning survey firm based in North Carolina. Unlike most other polling services, PPP collects its data through robocalls, in which people hear a recorded message and are asked to respond by pressing a button on their telephone. That means a lot of people -- typically 9 out of 10 -- hang up without responding. After checking with area pollsters, we couldn't find a more traditional survey of Rhode Islanders on the assault weapons issue. Finn said she thought the PPP results were similar to the results of national polls. They're not. We found a compilation of assault weapons polls at PollingReport.com and discovered that the degree of support for a ban on assault-style weapons was much less pronounced. The split was 54-42 in a May 2013 Pew study, 56-42 in an April 2013 ABC News / Washington Post survey, 51-48 in an April 2013 CNN / ORC poll, and 59-36 in a March 2013 Quinnipiac University survey. Those national results don't come close to the 2-to-1 margin of support seen in the PPP Rhode Island poll, but that shouldn't be surprising when other parts of the United States have very different attitudes toward firearms. And what about Finn's statement about the rate of gun ownership in Rhode Island? A direct state-by-state tally of gun owners is not available. In fact, it is illegal in Rhode Island for the state to maintain a gun registry. We do know that in 2013, 3,280 active concealed carry permits were issued by the Rhode Island attorney general's office. But that's only a small fraction of owners. Also last year, Rhode Island gun dealers reported doing 21,793 BCI background checks for the purchase or transfer of at least one firearm. All but 145 were approved. But that number doesn't tell you how many gun owners there are in Rhode Island because that's only for one year, each purchase might involve more than one weapon, and the same owner might be counted multiple times if he or she makes more than one purchase throughout the year. So the best information comes from surveys. Finn sent us to a webpage at About.com which reports that 12.8 percent of Rhode Island's population owns guns, and the only states where gun ownership was lower were Massachusetts, New Jersey and Hawaii. About.com says the source is the website USACarry.com. But it’s actually from a from a survey done six years earlier -- in 2001 -- by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which tracks health risks in the United States and is billed as "the world’s largest telephone survey." In addition, that wasn't the percentage of the population owning guns. It was the percentage of adults who said there was at least one weapon in their household. We were unable to get more recent data from the BRFSS, which asked the question in 2002 and 2004. But we found it in two studies. A 2005 paper in the journal Pediatrics reported that the 2002 rate in Rhode Island was 13.3 percent, slightly higher than what Finn reported. A 2013 paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology looked at the data from 2004, reporting a rounded-off rate of 12 percent, which conforms with what Finn said. Our ruling Rep. Linda Finn said, "By a two-to-one margin, Rhode Islanders want to ban assault weapons and we have a very small percentage of gun owners in this state, less than 13 percent." Finn's statement about how Rhode Islanders feel about the issue comes from a recent robocall poll that has not been confirmed by any other Rhode Island polls. Her statement on the rate of gun ownership in Rhode Island is based on very outdated studies. But we have not been able to find any more recent data to suggest the number has changed. Because Finn's statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, we rate it Mostly True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Linda Finn | null | null | null | 2014-04-06T00:01:00 | 2014-03-18 | ['None'] |
snes-06287 | A famed college library is sinking into the ground because its architect failed to take the weight of the books into account. | legend | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinking-library/ | null | College | null | Associated Press | null | The Sinking Library | 4 May 2000 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03038 | For the first time since the Korean War, total federal spending has gone down for two years in a row. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/08/dennis-ross/rep-dennis-ross-says-us-spending-has-fallen-two-st/ | U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, is one of a small group of Republicans calling for an end to the government shutdown. After all, Republicans have succeeded in reining in government spending, Ross wrote in an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times (the parent of PolitiFact), on Oct. 7, 2013. "In the few years since I was elected to Congress in 2010, we have achieved huge savings and taken monumental steps. For the first time since the Korean War, total federal spending has gone down for two years in a row," Ross wrote, adding, "That is why I would support a continuing resolution that funds the government at sequestration levels for one year." A reader asked us whether Ross was correct that, "for the first time since the Korean War, total federal spending has gone down for two years in a row." We thought the claim was interesting, and we decided to check it out. By the most basic measure we found that Ross is right. The Korean War was an active conflict through the signing of a truce on July 26, 1953, so we counted starting in 1953. Between 1953 and 1955, federal spending fell each year, from $76.1 billion to $70.9 billion to $68.4 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. By 1956, spending had edged up again, to $70.6 billion. After that, spending almost always went up every year, at least until recently. It fell for one year between 1964 and 1965, and then once again between 2009 and 2010. But the only time it fell two years in a row was between 2011 and 2013. In 2011, federal outlays were $3.60 trillion. Outlays fell to $3.54 trillion in 2012, and the Congressional Budget Office projects the figure to fall to $3.46 trillion in 2013. We should note that this is not the only way to measure a claim like this. Sometimes, raw dollars aren’t an especially useful measurement for analyzing long periods of history, especially when talking about things that are growing. Inflation, population growth and economic expansion almost inevitably make the most recent year the largest ever. However, in this case, we think that using raw dollars is an acceptable measurement. That’s because reductions in spending mean swimming against the tide of inflation and growth. Our rating Ross said that, "for the first time since the Korean War, total federal spending has gone down for two years in a row." Since the 1950s, spending fell one year between 1964 and 1965, and then once again between 2009 and 2010. But the only time it fell two years in a row was between 2011 and 2013. We rate the statement True. | null | Dennis Ross | null | null | null | 2013-10-08T16:20:17 | 2013-10-07 | ['None'] |
snes-00733 | Does Mike Pence’s Brother Make Engines for the Russian Military? | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pences-brother-russian-military/ | null | Politics | null | David Emery | null | Does Mike Pence’s Brother Make Engines for the Russian Military? | 23 April 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03992 | Says "right now, we have more military spending than the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined." | true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/feb/10/cory-booker/cory-booker-says-us-military-spending-greater-next/ | The United States must have a prepared military, but it’s not unpatriotic to say the country is spending too much money on its defense, according to Newark Mayor Cory Booker. How much money? It’s more than the military spending of up to the next 12 countries combined, the Democratic mayor said. Booker made that point on the Feb. 1 episode of HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher" during a panel discussion about the recent Senate hearing on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be U.S. Defense Secretary. "The reality is we have to make sure that we have a military that’s prepared, but right now, we have more military spending than the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined, and we’ve got to start realizing that we can secure and protect ourselves, but also be responsible in the way that we do that," Booker said. "And it’s not unpatriotic to say that we’re spending too much money," the mayor added. "In fact, to me, that’s the patriotic thing to say." Booker’s claim is on target: The United States spent more on defense in 2011 than the combined total of other high-spending nations, according to data from two organizations considered to be leading authorities on worldwide military spending. The first set of figures comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. The institute maintains an online database of military expenditures since 1988 for 172 countries. In 2011 -- the most recent year available -- the United States led the world in military spending at $711 billion, marking 41 percent of the world total, according to the institute. The next top 12 spending nations accounted for a combined total of $670.9 billion, according to the institute. U.S. expenditures were nearly five times higher than China, the second-highest nation with an estimated $143 billion in military spending. Russia was in third place with estimated spending of $71.9 billion. We found similar results when we reviewed the data released by The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank which tracks military spending in 170 countries for its annual "Military Balance" report. According to IISS figures released last year, the United States’ defense budget in 2011 was $739.3 billion, making it the largest in the world. The combined total of the next top 9 nations was $486.7 billion, according to IISS figures. Referring to U.S. military spending, Michael O’Hanlon, a defense expert with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, explained in an e-mail: "It is large because we have overseas interests all over the world, and we put a high premium on responsiveness and qualitative superiority." But the United States is poised to restrain its defense expenditures in the coming years. In addition to reduced costs from winding down the war in Afghanistan, the Budget Control Act of 2011 contains provisions that limit spending increases in defense and other areas over the next decade. It’s worth noting that calculating military expenditures for worldwide comparisons is inherently challenging, in part because there is no single definition of what constitutes military spending. As the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute points out on its website, "the lack of sufficiently detailed data makes it difficult to apply a common definition of military expenditure on a worldwide basis." Our ruling In a panel discussion on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher," Booker claimed that "right now, we have more military spending than the next 10, 11, 12 countries combined." The mayor’s statement is accurate, according to data from two leading authorities on worldwide military spending. One set of figures shows that, in 2011, military spending by the United States exceeded the combined total of the next 12 highest nations by roughly $40 billion. We rate the statement True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Cory Booker | null | null | null | 2013-02-10T07:30:00 | 2013-02-01 | ['None'] |
chct-00205 | FACT CHECK: Does The Federal Government Borrow $1 Million Every Minute? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/02/11/fact-check-does-the-federal-government-borrow-1-million-every-minute/ | null | null | null | Kush Desai | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 10:31 PM 02/11/2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03571 | Kohls Coupon $75 off $80 Purchase | scam! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/kohls-coupon-75-off-80-purchase-scam/ | null | virus | null | null | null | Kohls Coupon $75 off $80 Purchase | May 24, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00155 | FBI Director Comey: fmr. DNI Clapper right" to say no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump Campaign." | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/20/president-trumps-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-twitter-day/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Glenn Kessler | null | President Trump's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Twitter day | March 20, 2017 | null | ['Russia'] |
snes-06125 | Shouting "Andy's coming!" to Toy Story characters at Disney theme parks will cause them to stop and drop. | outdated | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/andys-coming/ | null | Disney | null | David Mikkelson | null | Andy’s Coming! | 27 March 2013 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00662 | Yacht Launch Mishap | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/yacht-mishap.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Yacht Launch Mishap | July 23, 2012 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00053 | Says Texas U.S. Rep. John Culberson "was caught using campaign cash on collectibles, including Civil War memorabilia and fossils." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/nov/03/environmental-defense-fund-action/did-texas-us-rep-john-culberson-use-campaign-money/ | As the 2018 campaign comes to a close, the political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund has sent a mailer to homes in Texas’ 7th Congressional District saying that John Culberson, a Republican congressman, is "wrong for Houston." As partial proof, it said he was "caught using campaign cash on collectibles, including Civil War memorabilia and fossils." "Caught" is an interesting word, since the nine-term incumbent, now challenged by Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, disclosed the memorabilia purchases, which he says he gave as gifts from his campaign. As for the fossils, his campaign insisted there were no such purchases -- and said it only bought books and maps from a business that happens to also sell fossils. Critics have made a false assumption, the Culberson campaign told us initially. We’ll look at both parts of the claim but will give away a bit of what we found right here: He bought fossil replicas. If you wonder why an environment group would care about fossils and Culberson, the group noted that Culberson said in late summer that his purchases were for research into such things as paleoclimatology, or the study of climates before instrumental records were widely available, to help him better understand climate change. Environmental Defense Fund Action says that for all this studying, Culberson still refuses to accept scientific research on the matter. Culberson has said humans played a role in climate change but, as he told the Los Angeles Times in 2015, "We just don’t have enough data or accurate data to say with certainty what that effect has been." Fossils Let’s take fossils first. The congressman’s critics based their claim on a mention in a 2012 campaign finance report that Culberson’s campaign made two purchases from a South Dakota organization, the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. The institute sells fossils, replicas and other things, and Culberson spent $309.66 altogether there, Federal Election Commission records show. The purchase was part of a broader set of Culberson expenses being questioned by Texas Democrats -- a set of questions we are not addressing fully here because we are looking specifically at campaign ads and claims. But for a bit of perspective, the Houston Chronicle wrote in August that Texas Democrats were challenging nearly $50,000 in Culberson campaign spending since 2004. Focusing just on fossils, PolitiFact asked Culberson’s campaign what it bought from the Black Hills Institute. We were told it bought books and maps, not fossils, the same explanation the campaign has given since August. "Only in politics does a person get attacked for trying to be better at their job," Culberson campaign spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said. "The mailer from the Environmental Defense Action Fund is factually wrong. The congressman never bought fossils with campaign contributions and all other purchases are acceptable under House and FEC rules." Culberson is a voracious reader, and has spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account for books and materials, including some on paleoclimatology, that his campaign says were related to his job. In just the 2011-12 campaign season, Culbserson’s campaign spent $9,848 on "research" or "research materials," most of it from vendors such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, FEC records reviewed by PolitiFact show. Culberson chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees spending on science and such agencies as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The research material helps him better understand the changing levels of carbon dioxide in the climate, his campaign says. Asked about records that would show he was buying books and maps, not fossils, from the Black Hills Institute, his campaign said the 2012 records for such specific purchases no longer exist. We’ve got the receipts PolitFact, however, called the Black Hills Institute. They pulled the invoices from Culberson's two separate orders and sent us copies. This is what the campaign paid for, excluding shipping charges: Three large wall charts showing extensive histories of the Earth and matter, dating back 4.5 billion years. The charts have columns showing tectonic maps, changes in the earth such as mountain formation, major volcanic eruptions, glacial epochs, craters from asteroids and comets and extensive information on fossils, invertebrates and vertebrate lifeforms, as well as their extinction. These cost $19.95 apiece. One desktop model of a Triceratops. It cost $84.05. Two lage -- 4.5 inches -- fossil replicas of a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth. Each cost $40. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com The FEC gives "pretty wide latitude" to the purchase of books and other materials that a candidate or officeholder might use in his or her official capacity, Brendan Fischer, an expert on campaign finance law at the Campaign Legal Center, told us. But what about a Triceratops model and replicas of a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth fossil? "I’d like to hear their explanation for it," he said. "It’s hard to see how it would pertain to their official duties." We told the campaign what we found, and it asked what our proof was. So we sent the campaign the invoices for the congressman’s purchases. The response from Kelly, the spokeswoman: "The invoices confirm that the congressman never bought actual fossils, and every purchase from the Black Hills Institute is considered acceptable under House and FEC rules." Asked why the congressman bought the replicas and the model at all, Kelly said, "While these purchases were more than six years ago and now being used as part of a coordinated partisan hit job, the congressman believes these particular purchases were gifts, which is completely acceptable under FEC and House rules." Collectibles The mailer from Environmental Defense Fund Action also mentioned Culberson’s use of campaign money to buy collectibles and Civil War memorabilia. This, too, originated from the Democrats’ complaint referenced in the Houston Chronicle. Culberson is a Civil War history buff, collector and sometime-seller of memorabilia. But when it comes to his campaign funds, the purchases were for items such as stamps and coins the congressman got in order to give out as gifts, his campaign said. Congress members frequently use campaign money to buy gifts for constituents and volunteers, and the Culberson campaign said the Texas Republican was doing nothing different from what House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has done when buying white orchids. The FEC allows candidates and officeholders to buy and give as gifts items of nominal value as long as they are not given to family members, Fischer said. FEC reports show only what a candidate or officeholder pays, not the value of the each item. For example, in 2014, Culberson’s campaign spent $3,631 on coins from an antique coin seller. In 2009 and 2010, the campaign spent $4,181 on antiques and coins for gifts, including hat stars (an emblem worn on soldiers’ hats) and Texas Centennial and Republic of Texas coins, FEC records show. Culberson’s campaign said the value of each coin was about $25, and the value of stamps was about $10. For a broader view, we downloaded FEC data showing all federal candidate purchases -- those for everyone with a federal campaign account -- of items listed as "gifts" just since January 2017. The total reached $1.8 million, for everything from model airplanes to a quilt to gift baskets. Our ruling Environmental Defense Fund Action said Texas U.S. Rep. John Culberson "was caught using campaign cash on collectibles, including Civil War memorabilia and fossils." "Caught" seemed strong to us at first, given the campaign’s denials. But with a phone call and email, it turned out that Culberson had in fact used campaign funds -- not for fossils, but for replicas and a desktop model. Our ruling comes down to perspective. The mailer’s spin seemed a little strong at first, especially knowing that gift purchases, whether for Civil War trinkets or not, are allowable if considered of nominal value. But the insistence of the campaign that Culberson did not buy fossils -- and that he had only bought books and maps -- is a factor as well. OK, he didn’t buy fossils. He bought fossil replicas. We rate the claim Mostly True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Environmental Defense Fund Action | null | null | null | 2018-11-03T14:09:12 | 2018-10-29 | ['John_Culberson', 'United_States', 'American_Civil_War'] |
tron-02427 | Letter from a U.S. Sailor about the USS Cole | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/usscole/ | null | military | null | null | null | Letter from a U.S. Sailor about the USS Cole | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-04580 | Democratic presidential candidates have only won the White House in years that an Eastern Conference team has also won the NBA Championship. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/democrat-white-house-nba/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Dan Evon | null | Presidential Elections Linked to Eastern Conference NBA Championships | 20 June 2016 | null | ['White_House', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'NBA_Finals'] |
tron-00136 | Donald Trump: Thousands of American Muslims Celebrated 9/11 | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/donald-trump-thousands-of-american-muslims-celebrated-911/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Donald Trump: Thousands of American Muslims Celebrated 9/11 | Nov 24, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
fani-00019 | CLAIM: Under an Alliance Minister of Justice, crime rates in Northern Ireland are lower. | conclusion: unclear | https://factcheckni.org/facts/is-crime-on-the-rise-in-northern-ireland/ | null | elections | null | null | null | Is crime on the rise in Northern Ireland? | null | null | ['Northern_Ireland'] |
goop-00911 | Khloe, Kourtney Kardashian “At War” Over Tristan Thompson? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/khloe-kourtney-kardashian-war-tristan-thompson-feud/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Khloe, Kourtney Kardashian “At War” Over Tristan Thompson? | 4:12 pm, May 30, 2018 | null | ['Kourtney_Kardashian', 'Khloé_Kardashian'] |
pomt-06641 | The majority last quarter of Sherrod Brown's campaign contributions came from outside of the state of Ohio. | false | /ohio/statements/2011/sep/15/josh-mandel/josh-mandel-chides-sen-sherrod-brown-out-state-con/ | If you’re looking for fun with numbers (and who isn’t?), you could do a lot worse than download campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission and sort it on a spreadsheet. But you won’t have to. Josh Mandel’s campaign has done it for you. We’ve done it too, and can confirm that the Republican U.S. Senate candidate’s staff knows its stuff. It also knows that Mandel got something wrong. During an interview with WKYC in Cleveland on Sept. 1, Mandel was asked about some campaign contributions that have raised some eyebrows. The generous contributions were from employees of a Canton direct mail firm, Suarez Corporation. Bloggers, the Ohio Democratic Party and news reporters have asked how those employees could afford to write such campaign checks. There has been no proof that someone else actually provided the money, which would be illegal. But the unusual appearance has led reporters to ask questions.. Thus, the question to Mandel by WKYC reporter Tom Beres: What do you say to people who are disturbed by these contributions? Mandel, who is currently Ohio’s treasurer, sidestepped the question, responding with a swipe at Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent he hopes to defeat in 2012. "Well, the majority last quarter of Sherrod Brown's campaign contributions came from outside of the state of Ohio," he said. "The majority of ours, came from inside of the state of Ohio." That provoked a new question: Really? There’s nothing improper about going out of state to raise campaign cash, unless an office holder is neglecting his duties. But while sidestepping the question, Mandel indirectly opened a new line of criticism: that Brown doesn’t have the faith of Ohio voters and contributors. The Mandel campaign says it intends to continue that line, saying it believes it is true. But Mandel was wrong in his statement. His spokesman, Joe Aquilino, shot us an e-mail while we were still sorting the data, saying, "Josh misspoke and meant to say that the majority this year of Sherrod Brown's campaign contributions have come from outside the state of Ohio. ("last quarter" vs "this year"). We'll keep using this talking point and it's actually much worse than what Josh said during the interview. We'll be using this statistic a lot to show Senator Brown's lack of support from people here in Ohio who actually know him and know his record." This brings us to the numbers. We downloaded data from CQMoneyLine, a subscription service that sorts FEC data, and then turned to the original FEC records to do more crunching, factoring in itemized contributions (those of more than $200, which by law must list the donor’s name and address) and donations from political action committees. The Mandel campaign sent us its numbers, too, and they too came from an FEC download. The numbers matched. They show that Mandel was wrong about the most recent quarter, which ended June 30. Brown got the majority of his contributions from Ohioans: $623,049 in state, compared with $609,506 out of state. The previous quarter, however, more money came to Brown from out of state. Putting the two quarters together, the totals tipped the balance to the out-of-state side: $1,098,899 from Ohio, compared with $1,225,202 from out of state. Does that make Mandel wrong in a narrow sense -- but right in a broader way? His campaign sees it that way. Yet data that includes Brown’s current term but also goes back to his days in the House of Representatives, crunched on a regular basis by the Center for Responsive Politics for every member of Congress, shows that a majority of Brown’s donations have always been from Ohio. That could change in the future, as it could for Mandel, who has only raised money during a single quarter so far in this race (and the majority of his donations were from Ohio). Both candidates must raise millions more. Both will look for deep pockets throughout the United States. But Mandel was wrong on his specific claim. And if adding in one more quarter renders him sort-of right, a long history involving years of Brown elections renders Mandel wrong. On the Truth-O-Meter, Mandel’s statement is simply False. | null | Josh Mandel | null | null | null | 2011-09-15T06:00:00 | 2011-09-01 | ['Ohio'] |
pomt-07998 | TriMet is "spending 4.2 million in fed funds to save $168K per year." | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2011/jan/15/lars-larson/larson-accuses-trimet-investing-too-much-prospecti/ | Federal cash giveaways always get close attention from pundits and politicians -- and PolitiFact Oregon. More often than not, the funds that go toward research in the form of scientific and technological grants (and particularly odd-sounding grants) usually get labeled as wasteful spending. (Does anybody remember the great ant debate?) Well, we’re on the case of another wasteful-spending accusation; this time radio personality Lars Larson is accusing TriMet of a particularly poor investment choice. On Dec. 21, 2010, he sent out a mighty tweet proclaiming: "(T)he brain trust at Tri Met just announced they are spending 4.2 million in fed funds to save $168K per year." To add a little insult to injury he also asked a question: "(C)an anyone down there do math?" By our calculation, anyway, an investment of $4.2 million being paid back at $168,000 a year wouldn’t be cleared for some 25 years. That’s a ways off, to be sure, so we figured it was worth looking into whether TriMet was investing wisely "in these hard economic times." First off, we needed a little context. What, exactly was this $4.2 million going to fund? We gave TriMet a call and Bekki Witt, the agency’s spokeswoman, e-mailed us a release. Here’s how it starts out and where Larson gets his $4.2 million figure: "TriMet has received a $4.2 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to expand the use of regenerative braking on MAX trains. The grant will allow TriMet to install 20 energy storage units on light rail vehicles, capturing much of the energy generated by the trains’ braking systems and storing that energy for immediate and future use." Sounds good. Now how about that $168,000 annual savings? Just read a little further: "The new units will release the stored energy to help power those trains as well as other trains on the system. The storage units, or energy capacitors, will capture and use nearly 100 percent of the power generated by braking trains, saving $168,000 a year in energy costs." Based on those two paragraphs, it seems Larson is on to something. TriMet is spending more than $4 million to upgrade its regenerative braking systems so that they can store the saved energy. That energy adds up to a savings of about $168,000 annually. But, as with most research, sometimes dollars are just the beginning when it comes to the returns. So, we gave Witt a call and asked her what she thought about Larson’s comments. The figures sound, right, we said. What gives? First, she said, it’s important to understand the scope of the grant program from which TriMet received the funds. According to the FTA website, the program was created when "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the federal stimulus) provided $100 million to be distributed as discretionary grants to public transit agencies for capital investments that will assist in reducing the energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions of public transportation systems." Witt elaborated: "TriMet is the first in the country to try this technology out. … We're kind of part of that research and development aspect of it." As it stands now, TriMet does recoup some of the energy the trains create while braking, but that energy must be used almost immediately, either by the train itself or by a nearby train (the rescued energy can be transferred short distances). With this new technology, that saved energy can be stored and used for broader purposes, she said. "It gives us that flexibility that we don't have right now," Witt said. "This is something we see as a valuable project that will pay off in the long term. it's kind of a pilot, if you will, to see how it might work for us and for other transit programs throughout the country." When we contacted the Federal Transit Administration, the director and an engineer there echoed Witt’s remarks. "In time, we’re confident this regenerative braking will reduce transportation costs significantly around the country — while also reducing our dependence on oil," wrote administrator Peter Rogoff in an e-mail comment. We wondered if any of this might convince Larson that the trade-off was not as stark as he initially believed. No, he said, it didn’t. TriMet’s press release was clear, $4.2 million to save $168,000 a year. "You don’t know what the value of research will be," Larson said. It’s clear then, that there are two competing views here. Larson is looking at this grant in the Portland vacuum. TriMet and the Federal Transit Administration are looking at it in a broader, national context: TriMet is spending $4.2 million to refine technology that might, eventually, offer a significant return. So what about the ruling? Well, it would be premature to offer up a figure for the return on research, just as Larson argued. That said, he certainly simplified the grant and the expenditure. To say it’s a simply case of spending ‘x’ to save ‘y’ seems somewhat disingenuous. As with most political statements, this one needs some context. We rate this claim Mostly True. Return to OregonLive to comment on this PolitiFact Oregon ruling. | null | Lars Larson | null | null | null | 2011-01-15T06:00:00 | 2010-12-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-04228 | Says because of Hurricane Sandy in Atlantic City "much of that boardwalk no longer exists -- just the pillars where the boardwalk used to be." | mostly false | /new-jersey/statements/2012/nov/25/frank-lautenberg/frank-lautenberg-says-after-hurricane-sandy-much-b/ | Hurricane Sandy washed iconic Jersey Shore landmarks into the sea, but despite what you may have heard -- from social media, television or maybe even a United States senator -- the historic boardwalk fronting Atlantic City’s casinos survived. Two weeks after the monstrous storm swept through New Jersey, devastating large swaths of the state’s coastline, Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, took to the Senate floor to describe the destruction and push for funding for recovery efforts. In his Nov. 13 speech, the senator mentioned damage across the state, but said, "the seashore community was hit especially hard." "The boardwalk is the defining image of the New Jersey shore. Many of us remember walking on that boardwalk in wonderment of the attractions. The boardwalk has been a constant in the lives of those who live there or visit the shore. But for communities like Belmar, Seaside Heights, the Atlantic City, and others, much of that boardwalk no longer exists -- just the pillars where the boardwalk used to be, as we see it here," Lautenberg said as he showed a photograph of damage to a section of boardwalk in Atlantic City. "It was a magnificent boardwalk and had people in cars that were -- in wagons that were pushed along, and you would view the sea and the attractions on the other side. And it was painful to see the destruction of the part of the boardwalk in Atlantic City firsthand that day." Lautenberg’s spokesman, Caley Gray, pointed out the senator did reference "part" of the boardwalk in his speech, but the senator omitted a critical detail: the section of boardwalk in Atlantic City that the storm washed away was in disrepair and much of it had been scheduled for demolition. The main promenade that runs in front of the city’s casinos remains intact and open for business. "It is factually accurate that a portion of the boardwalk was destroyed by Sandy," said Jeff Guaracino, chief communications and strategy officer for Atlantic City Alliance, but "it’s not the boardwalk that the average person would typically associate with a visit to Atlantic City." Atlantic City Alliance, a nonprofit group focused on increasing tourism, has launched a campaign to dispel the rumor that the city’s famed boardwalk was destroyed. Guaracino said some media outlets, particularly television stations, cut from stock images of the oceanfront boardwalk to the destruction of the dilapidated promenade, leaving viewers with the impression the commercial section of the boardwalk had washed away. But the walkway destroyed by Sandy stood in a primarily residential neighborhood near the Absecon Inlet. That area of the boardwalk had been deteriorating for decades. Portions of it had collapsed well before the storm and were closed to pedestrians. Now, Keith Mills, the city’s director of planning and development, said what remains are a "couple of ramps, couple of stairways, but at this point they are ramps and stairways to nothing but a series of pilings in the water." But that’s not the case for the commercial stretch of the city’s boardwalk. Gray said in a statement that Lautenberg walked the boardwalk after the storm and surveyed the damage in the inlet section. "The main drag in Atlantic City was fortunate to not have sustained more damage," he said, adding that Lautenberg is working to secure federal funding to fully restore the state’s coastline. Our ruling Lautenberg said that because of Hurricane Sandy in Atlantic City, "much of that boardwalk no longer exists—just the pillars where the boardwalk used to be." The storm washed away a dilapidated section of Atlantic City’s boardwalk -- much of which had been scheduled for demolition -- that runs along the Absecon Inlet. So there’s an element of truth to Lautenberg’s claim. But the stretch of the boardwalk in front of the casinos -- the area most tourists associate with Atlantic City -- fared the storm well. Lautenberg’s speech ignored those important details, so we rate this claim Mostly False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Frank Lautenberg | null | null | null | 2012-11-25T07:30:00 | 2012-11-13 | ['None'] |
tron-03629 | Beware of Car Jackers Who Leave a Piece of Paper on Your Rear Window | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/carjackers/ | null | warnings | null | null | null | Beware of Car Jackers Who Leave a Piece of Paper on Your Rear Window | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06303 | A photograph shows a panda in Japan hugging a policeman's leg after an earthquake. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/panda-huggin-policeman/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does a Photograph Show a Panda Hugging a Policeman in Japan? | 22 March 2011 | null | ['Japan'] |
pomt-01963 | Says 11 soccer players on the U.S. Men’s National Team are immigrants. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jun/19/nancy-pelosi/are-there-immigrants-2014-us-mens-world-cup-team/ | The United States is officially overcome with World Cup fever, and its inhabitants are showing support for the red, white and blue in many ways. Of course, for congressmen and women it means backing America with their thumbs by tweeting pro-U.S.A. rally cries to their followers and constituents. While the quadrennial event has generally united Democrats and Republicans, not all the social media cheering was free of politics. After the United States’ thrilling 2-1 victory on June 16, 2014, over Ghana, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made an immigration reform push by invoking the U.S. Men’s National Team. She tweeted: "Immigrants help drive America's success, even in the World Cup! Look at what #USMNT would be without them. #TimeIsNow." By Thursday evening, it had been retweeted and favorited almost 1,000 times. The below picture was included: As you can see, the graphic shows 11 U.S. players with minuses next to their pictures and names. Pelosi’s tweet reads that those 11 players are immigrants who would likely not be on the roster if they weren’t allowed in the country. Much has been made about the number of United States players who have dual citizenships, but is the U.S. World Cup team powered by immigrants? We went through the roster and researched the backgrounds of the 11 players highlighted in the graphic. Six of the players were actually born in America. So even though they may have parents who are from other countries, they are very much considered citizens, not immigrants. Jozy Altidore: Born in Livingston, N.J., to two Haitian-born parents. Alejandro Bedoya: Born in Englewood, N.J., to two Colombian-born parents Julian Green: Born in Tampa, Fla., to an American serviceman father and a German mother; moved to Germany with his mother as a young child. Tim Howard: Born in New Brunswick, N.J., to an African-American father and his Hungarian mother. Aron Johannsson: Born in Mobile, Ala., to Icelandic parents. Omar Gonzalez: Born in Dallas, Texas, to Mexican parents. The other five were not born in the United States but have at least one parent who is an American. (In four of the cases, their fathers were in the United States military serving abroad.) That entitles them to all to U.S. citizenship, meaning they did not have to go through the immigration process noncitizens do. John Brooks: Born in Berlin, Germany, to an American serviceman father and a German mother. Timmy Chandler: Born in Frankfurt, Germany, to an American serviceman father and a German mother. Mix Diskerud: Born in Oslo, Norway, to a Norwegian father and an American mother. Fabian Johnson: Born in Munich, Germany, to an American serviceman father a German-born mother who had an American father. Jermaine Jones: Born in Frankfurt, Germany, to an American serviceman father and German mother. So not only are none of these 11 individuals considered immigrants by the United States, they're all actually natural born citizens. Pelosi’s office told us the source of the graphic is a story posted on Business Insider from Global Post. The story noted that a number of far-right nationalist parties with anti-foreigner sentiments seem to be on the rise in Europe. Some countries are also considering anti-immigration legislation that would put stricter quotas on new inhabitants. Therefore, the author wanted to imagine what these teams would look like without immigrants. To do this, he singled out players with at least one foreign-born parent. As Vox’s Dara Lind points out, "That might make sense for other countries, where parentage is more important to citizenship. But it doesn't make any sense for the U.S., where nearly everyone has some sort of immigrant heritage, and where everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen from birth." Basically, in some countries, it doesn’t matter if you were born there; citizenship is more closely tied to lineage. That’s not the case in America, one of a small number of countries that grants citizenship at birth. We took all of this to Pelosi’s office. Spokesman Drew Hammill said they weren’t claiming these players were immigrants, rather, "We’re merely echoing the point made by the creators of the graphic about the contributions of these sons of immigrants." But not even all of the foreign-born parents are actually immigrants. Timmy Chandler, for example, stayed in Germany with his German mother after he was born. So by no definition is the United States represented by immigrants at the World Cup in Brazil. That’s not to say immigrants or immigration aren’t important to the makeup and heritage of the team. The United States is a country built on immigrants, and every player on the team can trace back at least half their lineage to another country (there is one half Native American on the team, forward Chris Wondolowski). But that’s not the message Pelosi was trying to give with her tweet. If it was, you could have whited out the entire team. Our ruling In a tweet pushing immigration reform, Pelosi posted a picture of the U.S. Men’s National Team missing 11 of its players and tweeted "Immigrants help drive America's success, even in the World Cup! Look at what #USMNT would be without them." In this instance "them" means immigrants. But none of those 11 players are immigrants. Some aren’t even the children of immigrants. We rate the statement False. | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2014-06-19T18:25:20 | 2014-06-17 | ['None'] |
snes-04095 | President Obama asked Americans not to hold 9/11 victim tributes because they are offensive to Muslims. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-no-911-tributes/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Obama Asks Americans Not to Hold 9/11 Victim Tribute Because of Muslim Protesters Being ‘Offended’ | 6 September 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'United_States'] |
tron-02190 | Facebook Donates $3 to Rose Prater Every Time a Photo is Shared | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/facebook-donates-3-to-rose-prater-every-time-a-photo-is-shared/ | null | internet | null | null | null | Facebook Donates $3 to Rose Prater Every Time a Photo is Shared | Aug 7, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01342 | Kanye West A Diva On The L.A. Restaurant Scene? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kanye-west-diva-la-restaurant-scene/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kanye West A Diva On The L.A. Restaurant Scene? | 4:37 pm, March 21, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00074 | Statement: “The pension payment is beginning to come down. That’s gonna continue to happen and that’s gonna provide more money that can be invested in our neighborhoods,” Nathan Fletcher said at an Oct. 19 debate. | determination: misleading | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/politics/fact-check-pension-savings-for-neighborhoods/ | Analysis: Five-year deals with city employees mean the city’s pension bills won’t be as high as they could have been but that doesn’t mean the city’s annual payment is on a downward spiral. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Pension Savings for Neighborhoods | November 4, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00934 | Carrie Underwood Pregnant With Twins, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/carrie-underwood-pregnant-twins-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Carrie Underwood NOT Pregnant With Twins, Despite Report | 2:04 pm, May 25, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00560 | '18 Million Birds Dead New Year's Eve' | statirical reports | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/18-million-blackbirds-dead-satire.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Satire - '18 Million Birds Dead New Year's Eve' | January 3, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
bove-00277 | Is UN Planning Biometric Identification For Humanity By 2030?: A FactCheck | none | https://www.boomlive.in/is-un-planning-biometric-identification-for-humanity-by-2030-a-factcheck/ | null | null | null | null | null | Is UN Planning Biometric Identification For Humanity By 2030?: A FactCheck | Apr 27 2017 12:53 pm | null | ['None'] |
tron-02563 | Michael Reagan’s Article About “The Butler” | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/michael-reagan-butler-092113/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Michael Reagan’s Article About “The Butler” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01483 | In an interview with a French radio station, Katy Perry revealed a preference for eating human meat. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/katy-perry-cannibalism/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Katy Perry Reveals Penchant for Cannibalism? | 3 November 2017 | null | ['France'] |
goop-00576 | Angelina Jolie “Pouring Her Heart Out About Brad Pitt” To Kate Middleton, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-kate-middleton-meeting-chat-brad-pitt-made-up/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Angelina Jolie NOT “Pouring Her Heart Out About Brad Pitt” To Kate Middleton, Despite Reports | 8:58 pm, July 25, 2018 | null | ['Brad_Pitt', 'Catherine,_Duchess_of_Cambridge', 'Angelina_Jolie'] |
snes-05461 | Idaho Governor Clement Leroy "Butch" Otter said that poor people were genetically inferior to rich people. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/otter-genetically-inferior/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | FALSE: Idaho Governor C.L. Otter Calls Poor People Genetically Inferior | 21 December 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14788 | The Milwaukee County executive can sell the public "museum, the airport and the zoo" -- all on his own, without County Board approval | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2015/dec/03/chris-larson/can-milwaukee-county-executive-sell-airport-zoo-an/ | The two Milwaukee Democrats sparring in the race for Milwaukee County executive are both busy talking about the incumbent, Chris Abele. The millionaire philanthropist, elected in 2011 to succeed Scott Walker, is touting his accomplishments -- claiming he balanced the county budget "without raising taxes five years in a row" (Half True), and that 1 million route-miles have been added to the bus system without a fare increase (Mostly True). Meanwhile, the leading challenger, state Sen. Chris Larson, has cast Abele as out of touch -- and too powerful. Larson, who was a member of the county Board of Supervisors before Abele took office, won election to the Senate in 2010 after defeating a Democratic incumbent. On the Nov. 22, 2015 "Upfront with Mike Gousha" public affairs TV show, Larson decried the power Abele he has gained at the expense of the County Board, which is essentially moving to part-time status as a result of a 2014 voter referendum. With the referendum, which Abele supported, salaries for the 18 County Board supervisors will be cut in half following the April 2016 elections. In addition, the supervisors’ health insurance will end and no additional pension benefits will be accrued. Gousha asked Larson whether a full-time County Board is better than a part-time board. Larson answered by making a claim we want to check, as well as a reference to rapper-producer Kanye West. "I do understand that there’s a lot of people who don’t like the County Board. I’d also understand that there’s people who don’t like Congress," Larson said. "The difference I have is that I don’t think we should abolish Congress, or abolish the legislative check and balance that we have in American-style democracy." Then Larson alluded to a recent change in state law that gives more power to the Milwaukee County executive, saying: "If anything, I think we've erred too far in giving all this power to one individual, including land sales. He has unilateral authority over the County Board -- or, the County Board has no oversight over land sales, including the museum, the airport and the zoo. That's just scary to think what he could do with that. And to paraphrase Kanye West: No one man should have all that power." So -- not that it's likely -- but does the Milwaukee County executive have the power, on his own, to sell the Milwaukee Public Museum, General Mitchell International Airport and the Milwaukee County Zoo. All without approval from the County Board? The law In July 2015, while making final adjustments to the 2015-’17 state budget, GOP lawmakers inserted a provision to eliminate the Milwaukee County Board’s oversight of sales of county-owned properties that are not zoned for park use. County Board members made power-grab allegations against Abele who, despite being a Democrat, has forged alliances with some Republicans. The budget provision helped clear the way for Abele to sell 10 acres of land that is envisioned as part of a downtown Milwaukee development coinciding with a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. Now to Larson’s claim. Under the change in state law, any sale of non-park land owned by Milwaukee County requires the approval of only one other person besides the county executive -- either the elected county comptroller or a real estate expert who lives in the community where the land is located and who does not hold public office. That expert is appointed by the Milwaukee County Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, which is made up of elected representatives from the various cities and villages in the county. In other words, the County Board doesn’t have a say, although the county executive alone couldn’t sell non-park land, such as the museum, the airport or the zoo. The county’s top attorney, Corporation Counsel Paul Bargren, confirmed in a memo to the County Board that county-owned land that isn’t zoned for parks can be sold without the board’s OK. "Specifically, the executive could lease, sell or convey any non-park county property regardless of board policy and without board approval," he wrote. Either the comptroller or the appointed real estate expert would have to determine that the sale "is in the best interests of the county." Bargren noted that counties are considered an arm of the state. And that the state Legislature can delegate or remove powers from county boards in all 72 counties and can, as it did in this case, treat one county differently than the others. "In effect, the Legislature has inserted itself in place of the (Milwaukee) County Board and, as a matter of county policy, has delegated administration of land sales and contracts and procurement to the executive," his memo says. Our rating Larson said the Milwaukee County executive can sell the public "museum, the airport and the zoo" -- all on his own, without County Board approval. A recent change in state law that applies only to Milwaukee County allows the executive to sell any county-owned land not zoned as park land without approval of the County Board. However, such sales would need the OK of at least one other person -- either the elected county comptroller or a real estate expert appointed by elected municipal officials who lives in the community where the land is located. We rate Larson’s statement Mostly True. More on Milwaukee County In Milwaukee County, juveniles arrested for car theft "get sent immediately home, because under the point system in juvenile court" on holding suspects, "a stolen car gets zero points." Mostly False. In Context: Which black people did Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke call uneducated, lazy and morally bankrupt? | null | Chris Larson | null | null | null | 2015-12-03T05:00:00 | 2015-11-22 | ['Milwaukee_County,_Wisconsin'] |
vogo-00374 | Statement: “In the last five years, I’ve had 345 officers leave the city of San Diego and go to other cities for better benefits, higher wages, and better vehicles and equipment. In that same five-year period I’ve had only 35 officers come to the city of San Diego,” San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne said at a law enforcement conference in April. | determination: false | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-police-chief-exaggerates-officer-exodus/ | Analysis: Lansdowne, speaking during the April conference in Seattle, boasted about the resilience of San Diego’s police officers in the face of economic turmoil and the public vilification of their pensions. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Police Chief Exaggerates Officer Exodus | June 21, 2011 | null | ['San_Diego'] |
pomt-13758 | Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/22/donald-trump/trump-nearly-180000-illegal-immigrants-have-crimin/ | Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told the American public that beginning Jan. 20, 2017, safety will be restored. That means putting an end to violence and crime afflicting the nation, he said. There are immigrants in the country illegally who are out endangering communities, Trump added. "Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens," Trump said in his nomination acceptance speech Thursday. We looked into that number to find out if that many convicted immigrants with deportations are out on the streets. Trump’s campaign said his statement came from a June 2016 report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors more strict immigration policies. The Center for Immigration Studies, in turn, relied on data obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to CIS, there were more than 925,000 immigrants who had been ordered removed but were still in the country as of July 2015. And an estimated 20 percent of them had at least one criminal conviction — nearly all of whom were at large. So Trump’s numbers are correct. But experts say there is some important context. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center, said the figure includes immigrants from countries that won’t accept them back. "In these cases, the immigrants have to be released after they have completed their sentences," Gonzalez-Barrera said. And in yet other instances, state and local jurisdictions have passed policies limiting cooperation with immigration authorities so they don’t notify them when a deportable noncitizen has completed a jail term or prison sentence, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director of the Migration Policy Institute. Jennifer Elzea, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says ICE makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, "considering all the merits and factors of each case while adhering to current agency priorities, guidelines and legal mandates." "Those who are not subject to mandatory detention and do not pose a threat to the community may be placed on some form of supervision as an alternative to detention while awaiting their immigration court hearing," Elzea said. Still, Center for Immigration Studies points to a February 2016 ICE report showing that from fiscal year 2010 through July 21, 2015, 124 criminal immigrants released from ICE custody were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes. Our ruling Trump said "nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens." According to federal data, 925,000 immigrants had been ordered removed but were still in the country as of July 2015. And an estimated 20 percent of them had at least one criminal conviction — nearly all of whom were at large. However, immigration officials say they make custody determinations on case-by-case basis and those who do not pose a threat to the community may be placed on some form of supervision as an alternative. Trump’s statement is accurate, but needs additional information, we rate it Mostly True. Update: We've added information from ICE saying they make custody determinations on a case-by-case basis. We also added a report showing that from fiscal year 2010 through July 21, 2015, 124 criminal immigrants released from ICE custody were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes. Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly said people seeking asylum and who do not appear before immigration judges are considered deported for criminal behavior. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/aa2fc627-324a-45ec-be8b-7632680d76c6 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-07-22T02:36:58 | 2016-07-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-12176 | Corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/aug/01/donald-trump/have-corporations-never-made-much-money-now-donald/ | In what has become a regular occurrence, Donald Trump took to Twitter to tout the nation’s economic performance on his watch. In a tweet on the morning of Aug. 1, 2017, Trump praised some of the commentary about the Trump-era economy on Fox & Friends: " ‘Corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now.’ Thank you Stuart Varney @foxandfriends Jobs are starting to roar,watch!" See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com We thought the remark about corporate profits was worth a closer look. The White House did not respond to an inquiry. Are corporate profits higher now than ever? The details of this are a bit complicated given the fact that Trump is implying he deserves some credit. That’s because the most recent data is from January 2017, which predates Trump taking office. In January 2017, corporate profits totaled $1.81 trillion on an annualized basis, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s the highest in history in raw dollars. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com But the high profits Trump is touting came during President Barack Obama’s tenure. And as we always point out in these cases, this is not due solely to Trump (or Obama). For better or for worse, presidents have a modest impact on the economy. Cyclical factors, the international economy, demographics and technology all play important roles, and they tend to be beyond the control of any president. Second, experts say measuring raw dollars is not as illustrative as analyzing corporate profits as a percentage of overall gross domestic product. That analysis, it turns out, paints Trump’s claim in a less impressive light. Corporate profits as a share of gross domestic product As the chart below shows, the January 2017 data point, while impressive, is far from unprecedented. That’s due in large part to the reality that the economy tends to grow over time, with corporate profits not necessarily outpacing the overall growth level. The current level of corporate profits as a share of GDP was exceeded once during Harry Truman’s presidency, five times under President George W. Bush, and a 14 times under President Barack Obama. In fact, that’s almost half of the quarters during Obama’s tenure (44 percent). See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com How important are corporate profits as an economic indicator? Now let’s take a step back. What do these numbers actually mean? Economists say that measuring corporate profits is useful -- up to a point. On the one hand, "prosperity is ordinarily good news for both business owners and workers," said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. "It is certainly fair to cite high business profits as an indicator the economy is doing well." However, Burtless added that when corporate profits are historically high, they might be crowding out wage or salary increases for workers, which ends up curbing how widely the prosperity spreads through the rest of the economy. Economists offer divergent views on how stark this tradeoff is. Dan Mitchell, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, agreed that "capital and labor compete for shares of income in the short run." Over the long term, however, "there is no tradeoff between corporate profits and labor income," he said. But Dean Baker, an economist with the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, countered that "high corporate profits are good for people who own lots of stock -- that’s about it." In fact, Baker said, the historical record suggests that high levels of investment -- in people and otherwise -- doesn’t necessarily move in tandem with high profits. Either way, one conclusion does seem clear: The share of the economy devoted to wages has been decreasing over the long term. Here’s a chart showing employee compensation as a share of gross domestic product since the end of World War II. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Our ruling Trump tweeted that "corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now." In raw dollars, corporations are making more money as of January 2017 than ever before. It’s worth noting that the data isn’t in for a Trump-only quarter. And as a share of the broader economy, corporate profit levels are not unprecedentedly high -- in fact, for almost half of the quarters under Obama, the share was even higher. We rate the statement Half True. See Figure 5 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-08-01T17:40:59 | 2017-08-01 | ['None'] |
goop-00562 | Gwen Stefani Worried Blake Shelton Is Too Unhealthy To Have A Baby? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-blake-shelton-unhealthy-baby/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Gwen Stefani Worried Blake Shelton Is Too Unhealthy To Have A Baby? | 1:26 pm, July 27, 2018 | null | ['Gwen_Stefani', 'Blake_Shelton'] |
pomt-12991 | Taxes for every New Yorker are lower today than when I started | half-true | /new-york/statements/2016/dec/16/andrew-cuomo/most-taxes-are-lower-cuomo-was-elected/ | Andrew M. Cuomo targeted high taxes when he announced his candidacy for New York governor. "We’re tired of seeing New Yorkers leave the state because they can’t pay their taxes anymore," Cuomo said at his May 2010 announcement. Now, more than halfway into his second term, Cuomo says he’s kept his promise to lower taxes. "I’ve spent less than every other governor and when you spend less you can cut taxes. Taxes for every New Yorker are lower today than when I started," Cuomo said during a recent speech in Fishkill. "Corporate taxes are down to the level they were at in 1968. Middle-class taxes are down to the level they were at in 1947. Manufacturing taxes are down to the level they were at in 1917." Is Cuomo right? Are taxes for every New Yorker lower? Personal income taxes Income taxes are lower for earners at all wage levels compared with 2010, according to the state Department of Budget. From the highest-income residents to couples earning less than about $40,000 annually, tax rates are lower, though not dramatically for the highest earners. A married couple making more than roughly $2.1 million is taxed at an 8.82 percent rate, down from 8.97 percent. In 2010, married couples making $500,000 were taxed at 8.97 percent. Now, married couples making between roughly $320,000 and $2.1 million are taxed at 6.85 percent. For couples earning less than about $40,000 annually, the tax rate has stayed the same since 2010, ranging from 5.9 percent to 4 percent for the lowest earners. The Department of Budget says deductions have increased for those earners despite the flat rate. Deductions have been indexed to inflation since Cuomo and the legislature passed new tax law in 2011. That means deductions should be larger for anyone in this wage category who earns the same amount in 2015 as in 2011. The same is true for single filers. The tax rate has decreased for anyone making more than about $20,000 annually. The rate has stayed the same for anyone making less than that, though deductions are indexed to inflation for these filers as well. Business income taxes Manufacturers were taxed on income at a rate of 5.9 percent in 2010. That same tax has now been reduced to 0 percent according to the Department of Budget. Manufacturers also receive a 20 percent real property tax credit if they own or lease property. Corporate taxes are also lower. In 2010, the corporate net income tax was 7.1 percent. Now, it’s 6.5 percent. Property taxes Property taxes statewide continue to rise despite a state imposed cap. Most municipalities are not able to raise property taxes more than 2 percent without voter approval. The Department of Budget says the property tax bill for a typical taxpayer is more than the state income tax amount. A report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows a resident's income level determines which tax hits the hardest. School taxes rose in the four years following the cap’s implementation in 2012, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy. School taxes are usually the largest part of a municipality’s property tax bill. The level of state aid to schools affects how much districts raise in property taxes. The rate at which these taxes increased is lower now than it was four years ago. Before the tax cap, the average property tax increase was 5.3 percent a year. The average increase was 2.2 percent in the first three years after the cap took effect, according to a report from the state. Sales tax The first 4 percentage points of sales taxes are levied by the state. Anything beyond that is levied by counties or cities. Increases in the local portion beyond 3 percent must be approved by the state Legislature and signed by the governor. The state portion of sales taxes has been unchanged since Cuomo took office. But the local portion has increased in seven counties, each time with state approval. The Essex County sales tax rate, for example, increased from 3.75 percent to 4 percent in 2013. Our ruling "Taxes for every New Yorker are lower today than when I started," Cuomo said during an event in Fishkill. If Cuomo had said income taxes for every New Yorker are now lower, he would have been right. It’s true that income taxes for individuals, corporations, and manufacturers are lower than when he took office in 2011. Although the Cuomo administration has slowed property tax growth through a state-imposed cap, property taxes continue to increase for residents. And the property tax takes a bigger bite than the income tax for many residents. Also, the state has also approved some sales tax increases at the county level since Cuomo took office. We rate this claim as Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2cd3f3ef-7aaf-49d3-983b-1d081b86368e | null | Andrew Cuomo | null | null | null | 2016-12-16T16:10:45 | 2016-11-16 | ['The_New_Yorker'] |
para-00048 | Since we were elected we've trebled the amount of wind power in Australia. | mostly true | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/28/mark-butler/youve-got-wind-power-it-thanks-labor/index.html | null | ['Carbon Tax', 'Environment'] | Mark Butler | Michael Koziol, Peter Fray | null | You've got the (wind) power! But is it thanks to Labor? | Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 4:18 p.m. | null | ['Australia'] |
clck-00024 | [climate models] systematically over-estimate the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide ... and modelers exclude forcings and feedbacks that run counter to their mission | incorrect | https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/heartland-institute-reports-claim-climate-models-sensitive-co2-not-reflect-evidence/ | null | null | null | null | null | Heartland Institute report’s claim that climate models are too sensitive to CO2 does not reflect evidence | [' Fred Singer, Robert Carter, Heartland Institute, 2016 \xa0 '] | null | ['None'] |
pose-00330 | Will promote cost sharing initiatives between government and industry to increase the state of the art in various technical areas, such as microelectromechanical systems, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Obama will establish multi-agency programs that focus on rapid maturation of advanced concepts and transfer to industry for commercialization. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/347/increase-commercialization-benefits-from-space-tec/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Increase commercialization benefits from technology | 2010-01-07T13:26:55 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-04070 | Wind powers nearly 13 million homes across the country. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2013/jan/23/jennette-gayer/environmental-group-makes-powerful-claim-about-win/ | While some complained about the fine print in the fiscal cliff deal, a local environmental activist was pleased with one portion of the bill and said something about it that seemed worthwhile to fact-check. Environment Georgia policy advocate Jennette Gayer sent out a news release thanking federal lawmakers for continuing key tax credits for wind power. "Wind powers nearly 13 million homes across the country and states like Texas, the number one wind energy producer in the country, generate a little over 30 million (megawatt hours per year)," Gayer wrote. PolitiFact Georgia wondered about Gayer’s claim that wind powers nearly 13 million homes in the United States. Is that true? Gayer pointed us to a couple of websites she used to back up her claim. PolitiFact Georgia was on its way down the windy road of wind energy. The development of wind energy, harvested by wind turbines, began in the 1970s. It’s grown in the decades since, but it is still a very small amount (3 percent) of the energy that’s produced in the United States, federal officials and researchers say. President Barack Obama talked energetically about wind power on the campaign trail last year, saying it’s creating jobs and it is an important alternative energy source. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had no plans to continue the tax credits. In 1992, the federal government began offering tax credits to individuals and companies for wind energy production as part of the Energy Policy Act. For every kilowatt hour of power from wind, the government gives the producer a tax credit worth 2.2 cents. At the time, the U.S. had 1.5 gigawatts of installed wind capacity. A gigawatt is the equivalent of 1 billion watts of electricity. A standard light bulb uses 100 watts. Most of the nation’s wind energy is produced in Texas, the Plains states and the West Coast, analysts say. Very little comes from the South. "It’s less windy in the Southeast, so there’s not a lot of technology to generate that energy," said Eric Lantz, a research analyst with the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Some organizations, such as the Institute for Energy Research, call the tax credits a "boondoggle." The institute, citing a study by the American Tradition Institute, says the costs of wind power is more expensive than other forms of energy generation, such as coal, natural gas and nuclear energy. By 1999, federal officials say they saw an increase in wind capacity. The American Wind Energy Association, a prominent group that supports the expanded use of wind energy, reported this past August that the U.S. had reached the 50-gigawatt milestone. The association’s estimate is, Lantz said, about a year ahead of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Lantz said he reviewed the EIA’s most recent numbers and believes the association’s 50-gigawatt claim is on target. So how many homes can 50 gigawatts power? Lantz looked at U.S. census data and other information on the EIA website. He concluded about 12 million homes. "I think their number is reasonable," Lantz said of Gayer’s estimate. EIA spokesman Jonathan Cogan agreed. The federal agency estimated the nation was on pace to generate anywhere from 125 million to 140 million kilowatts of wind energy in 2012. The average American home uses about 11,000 kilowatts of energy a year, Cogan said. "It seems to check out," Cogan told us. We wondered, though, whether that meant 12 million or so homes in the U.S. were actually being powered through wind energy. Lantz said there is no data detailing the number of homes that actually use wind energy. Some of that energy could be powering commercial or other nonresidential facilities. It’s not possible to say for sure how many homes actually use wind-generated electricity. But it is clear that there is enough produced to power millions of homes. To sum up, Environment Georgia analyst Jennette Gayer said wind powers about 13 million homes across America. From the people we interviewed and research we’ve seen, this claim seems to have some juice. We rate it Mostly True. | null | Jennette Gayer | null | null | null | 2013-01-23T06:00:00 | 2013-01-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-13633 | In Catherine Cortez Masto's last term as attorney general, Nevada murder went up 11 percent, robbery went up 28 percent, rape 51 percent. When Cortez Masto left office, Nevada ranked as America's third most dangerous state. | mostly false | /nevada/statements/2016/aug/10/national-republican-senatorial-committee/ad-blaming-cortez-masto-crime-upticks-ag-too-narro/ | Democratic Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto is taking fire from a new ad claiming crime increased in Nevada under her watch as attorney general. A new National Republican Senatorial Committee television ad (in both English and Spanish) blames the former state attorney general for increases in crime during her time in office. "In Catherine Cortez Masto's last term as attorney general, Nevada murder went up 11 percent, robbery went up 28 percent, rape 51 percent," the ad says. "When Cortez Masto left office, Nevada ranked as America's third most dangerous state." The ad seeks to undercut part of Cortez Masto’s résumé that her Senate campaign relies on, invoking her tough-on-crime record in tv ads and referring to herself as the state’s former "top law enforcement officer." The numbers are technically accurate, but the ad fails to prove what Cortez Masto had to do with them. Crunching crime stats The claims about increased mayhem trace back to a 2014 report of state crime numbers over the last decade, which overlaps with Cortez Masto’s eight years in the Attorney General’s office. The ad correctly reflects the statewide percentage increases over Cortez Masto’s last term (2011 to 2014): Reported murders increased from 151 to 168 (11.2 percent) Reported robberies increased from 4635 to 5,951 (28.4 percent) Reported rapes increased from 895 to 1,351 (50.94 percent) Cortez Masto’s campaign said focusing on the back half of her tenure as attorney general was misleading, and that crime actually went down during her time in office. Total crime decreased from Cortez Masto’s first year in office (116,814) to her last (92,376), and most major reported crimes with the exception of rape decreased over that eight-year period. (A spreadsheet of the cited crime figure is here) Bill Sousa, director of UNLV’s Center for Crime and Justice Policy, cautioned that criminologists should take heed of any crime upticks. However, he said, year-to-year crime statistics can be unreliably "volatile." "In terms of a couple of decades, a few years looking up isn’t evidence of a general trend," he said. The increase in reported rape is concerning, but there may be another explanation — the FBI broadened its definition of rape in 2012 (read more about the revision here). The bureau’s Uniform Crime Report saw subsequent increases in reported rape both nationally and in Nevada. Reported accounts of rape in Nevada have increased since the change in definitions, which was previously defined as "carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will." Plus, these figures only count the total crimes committed and aren’t adjusted for the roughly 300,000 population increase during Cortez Masto’s term. UNLV sociology professor Dr. Andrew Spivak said rates of murder, robbery and the previous "legacy" definition of rape per 100,000 people decreased under Cortez Masto’s tenure in office. Generally, experts say, Nevada’s crime numbers likely trend higher because of the state’s heavy reliance on the tourism industry bringing large numbers of people, which isn’t reflected in the state’s population. "If you could somehow control for tourism population, I’d expect that Nevada would drop on that list," Sousa said. NRSC spokesman Greg Blair said in an email that the ad focused on Cortez Masto’s second term to highlight her apparent political ambition outweighing other duties. That’s a serious charge, and there’s no concrete proof she had anything to do with the decline in crime in her first term or the subsequent increase in her second. Crime was at an historical low in 2011, and it’s hard to say why. The crime report itself cautions police agencies against drawing any conclusions about a specific department given the variety of factors that can affect crime trends. "Because of other assigned duties, the peculiar cycle of crime and clearances, and different community factors that normally affect crime statistics, no conclusions regarding individual departments should be made without consulting directly with the agency being analyzed," the report states. Spivak was more blunt. "I cannot even begin to imagine how states' attorneys general have much influence over crime rates," he said in an email. "I suppose some might think that an AG who establishes a culture of harsh prosecution and various law enforcement initiatives will theoretically deter future crime ... but the kind of data to establish such a link is just impossible to generate." Sousa said state-level crime policy is important, but changes in the raw numbers are more reliant on policing in individual neighborhoods and precincts. "A lot of what we know about crime occurs at a local level," Sousa said. "It points to the idea that what state-level policies do can have influence, can have an impact, but the impact is minimal." Danger, danger (High voltage!) Similarly, there is some truth that Nevada took the third spot in a ranking of the 10 most dangerous states. Again, however, it’s not proven what Cortez Masto had to do with it, and the source is not as credible as the FBI. The NRSC cites a list published in January 2015 from 24/7 Wall Street, a website that covers financial news. The list indeed ranks Nevada third, but the data relies on both crime data and socioeconomic factors, such as the poverty rate and the percentage of adults with a high school diploma. No attorneys general, in Nevada or elsewhere, play much of a role in setting educational policy or promoting programs to get people out of poverty. Other rankings of dangerous states are somewhat of a mixed bag, mainly due to differing methodology. Another list by Law Street called Nevada the second most dangerous state, but that blog based the ranking on violent crimes per 100,000 people. Another ranking from WalletHub puts Nevada as ninth most dangerous of 51 states (including Washington, D.C.) but with a more involved methodology than other surveys. Spivak said reading into the rankings to determine which states were dangerous is "utterly absurd," given variances in methodology and no standardization or weighted use of crime or socioeconomic indicators. Our ruling The NRSC ad says Nevada was ranked as the third most dangerous state by the time Cortez Masto left office, and that "murder went up 11 percent, robbery went up 28 percent, rape 51 percent" during her second term. The NRSC cherry-picks a handful of short-term crime statistics to portray Cortez Masto as weak on crime enforcement. But the argument is flawed. Experts agree that crime statistics are a crude way to measure safety, and Nevada has several quirks that inflate the numbers. The ad claims that Cortez Masto "couldn’t keep us safe," but crime statistics have more to do with local law enforcement agencies than the state's attorney general. The NRSC offers no proven link connecting her actions as attorney general to a swing in murder, robbery and rape. The statement contains an element of truth but leaves out important details. We rate the statement Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/20da9352-14b7-46e8-a972-54a48b43a59c | null | National Republican Senatorial Committee | null | null | null | 2016-08-10T11:46:10 | 2016-08-02 | ['United_States', 'Nevada'] |
abbc-00211 | The claim: Scott Morrison says people illegally enter Australia when they come without a valid visa and says the term 'illegal entry' is used in international conventions. | in-the-green | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/morrison-correct-illegal-entry-people/4935372 | The claim: Scott Morrison says people illegally enter Australia when they come without a valid visa and says the term 'illegal entry' is used in international conventions. | ['federal-government', 'federal-elections', 'scott-morrison', 'immigration', 'liberals', 'australia'] | null | null | ['federal-government', 'federal-elections', 'scott-morrison', 'immigration', 'liberals', 'australia'] | Scott Morrison correct on 'illegal entry' of people without a visa | Fri 13 Sep 2013, 2:22am | null | ['Australia'] |
vogo-00064 | Statement: “The biggest union that takes the most benefits is endorsing (Kevin Faulconer) and now he’s claiming that I have all of the support. That’s just nonsense. It’s not true,” mayoral candidate David Alvarez said during a Jan. 15 debate. | determination: misleading | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/politics/fact-check-big-union-backers/ | Analysis: Mayoral candidate Kevin Faulconer play ups David Alvarez’s union ties almost as often as he touts his own credentials. Last week, Alvarez fired back. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Big Union Backers | January 23, 2014 | null | ['David_Alvarez_(politician)'] |
pomt-09004 | Forty percent of the undocumented workers in this country entered the U.S. legally and "overstayed their visa." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/12/luis-gutierrez/democratic-rep-gutierrez-says-40-percent-illegal-i/ | On the July 11, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. -- a champion of immigration legislation that includes a path to citizenship -- faced off with Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., a leading lawmaker who favors prioritizing immigration enforcement. At one point, Gutierrez said, "Here's the problem, and here's the fact that Mr. Bilbray leaves out of this debate. The fact is that 40 percent of the undocumented workers in this country didn't cross that border. They came here legally to the United States. They came on a tourist visa. They came on a student visa. They came on a temporary worker visa, and they overstayed their visa." We thought that statistic was worth a fact-check. Quantifying the number and nature of illegal immigrants is tricky -- precisely because they are evading law enforcement. But we located estimates made by the Pew Hispanic Center which the experts we interviewed consider credible. In a 2006 report, the center estimated that "nearly half of all the unauthorized migrants now living in the United States entered the country legally through a port of entry such as an airport or a border crossing point where they were subject to inspection by immigration officials." Specifically, the estimate ranged from 38 percent to 50 percent. The report split the difference by proposing a figure of 45 percent. So based on this measure, Gutierrez is accurate. In fact, he's being cautious, sticking to the low end of the spectrum. However, we'll offer two caveats. First, the data in this report, in addition to being an estimate, is several years old, so it's possible that the figures have changed. Second, the data for overstaying visas varies quite a bit between nationalities. The Pew report noted that only 16 percent of Mexican illegal immigrants who arrived prior to 1996 were in violation because they overstayed their visa. The comparable number for Central American immigrants was 27 percent, while the percentage for immigrants from the rest of the world was 91 percent. Granted, these statistics are even older than the ones cited above. However, the underlying reason for the disparity has not changed: Compared to other nationalities, it is still "easier for Mexicans to make illegal entries and harder for them to get visitor visas," as the report put it. A big reason, said Judith Gans, an immigration specialist at the University of Arizona, is that burden of proof is on visa-seekers to demonstrate to U.S. consular officials overseas that they won't be overstaying their visa, through such indicators as having a large family, a job and significant assets in their native country. As a result, she said, "Mexican middle-class people can get temporary visas such as tourist visas fairly easily. The same holds for middle-class Central and South Americans. Mexican poor people generally can’t obtain visas, nor can poor Central and South Americans." So one can argue that Gutierrez's decision to use the 40 percent figure in a televised discussion that focused on the U.S.-Mexico border is somewhat misleading, since viewers could be led to conclude -- incorrectly -- that 40 percent of Mexican or Latin American immigrants were simply overstaying their visa. But when we contacted Gutierrez's staff, they said that the distinctions across nationalities highlight exactly the point they were trying to make -- that politicians and the media are putting a disproportionate focus on U.S.-Mexico border crossings when in fact the illegal immigrant population, and the issues that follow, are much more diverse. "The opponents of immigration reform would like to keep the immigration issue focused on Latin America, the U.S.-Mexico border, and those who enter the U.S. without inspection, but that is only part of the story," said Gutierrez spokesman Douglas G. Rivlin. "The congressman's point when using this statistic was that the problem is bigger than the U.S.-Mexico border, bigger than Latin America, Latinos, or Arizona and therefore requires a more comprehensive, federal, national solution." In fact, Gutierrez made precisely that point on the show. Immediately after the quote we checked, he said, "So what we do is we continue to focus on the border as if that were the exclusive problem that we have with our immigration system and those staying here." Rivlin added that Gutierrez is sponsoring a bill (H.R. 4321) that would, among other things, establish an entry-and-exit system to track who enters on a temporary visa and whether they leave when they are supposed to. Reasonable people can disagree over whether Gutierrez is justified in arguing that the U.S.-Mexico border shouldn't be the focus of policymakers' attention on immigration. But the fact that he raised this issue when mentioning the visa-overstay statistics mitigates the potential for confusion. When that is weighed against the uncertainties over the age of the data and the need to use estimates rather than hard statistics, we rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Luis Gutierrez | null | null | null | 2010-07-12T16:13:50 | 2010-07-11 | ['United_States'] |
snes-03200 | An x-ray image shows a snake that entered a woman's stomach by crawling through her vagina. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/woman-snake-xray/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does an X-Ray Image Show a Snake InsIde a Woman’s Body? | 5 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08144 | In Wisconsin, "6.2 percent of the population is black yet 24 percent of all state abortions are on African-Americans." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2010/dec/06/pro-life-wisconsin/pro-life-wisconsin-says-african-americans-make-abo/ | Using 13 billboards in Milwaukee, Pro-Life Wisconsin says it wants to raise awareness of what it calls the disproportionate abortion rate among African-American women in Wisconsin. According to the organization, which works to outlaw abortion, the billboards appeared Nov. 29, 2010, and will stay up for 30 days. They feature one of two messages: "Black children are in danger" or "Black & Beautiful." Each billboard shows a picture of an African-American infant and lists a website -- TooManyAborted.com/WI. That website, and an announcement about the billboards issued by Pro-Life Wisconsin, make the same claim: In Wisconsin, "6.2 percent of the population is black, yet 24 percent of all state abortions are on African-Americans." On the face of it, that seems like a large disparity. And it suggests race is a determining factor in abortion rates. We decided to take a look. Pro-Life Wisconsin’s claim is based on figures cited by the Georgia-based Radiance Foundation, which is co-sponsoring the Milwaukee billboards. The foundation accurately cites U.S. Census figures on the percentage of Wisconsin’s population that is African-American, and the state’s annual abortion report on the percentage of Wisconsin abortions that are performed on African-American women. But in doing so, it is setting up a false comparison. It compares the number of abortions obtained by black women to the entire black population. Obviously, only females in a certain age range can become pregnant. Nationally, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looks at abortions by comparing the number each year per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. The most recent CDC figures show the national rate abortion rate generally declined between 1997 and 2006. But the 2006 rate of 16.1 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 was up 3.2 percent over the previous year. The abortion rate for black women, meanwhile -- 33.4 abortions per 1,000 black women ages 15 to 44 -- was more than twice the overall rate. Abortion rates for black women have been higher for years, "and have been attributed to high unintended pregnancy rates," according to the CDC. In making its claim, Pro-Life Wisconsin is suggesting that race is somehow the determining factor in people seeking an abortion. Experts say there are many other factors at play. Like the CDC, Jacquelyn Paykel, an OB/GYN at the Medical College of Wisconsin, points to the higher unintended pregnancy rate among black women. She said unintended pregnancies tend tend to occur among women with less education, lower socioeconomic status and less access to reproductive health care. And those factors are more likely to be present among black women, she said. So, the construction of the statement can lead to another false impression. Now, on to the Wisconsin figures, which are more current than the national ones. In Wisconsin, the estimated overall abortion rate for 2009 was seven abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- less than half of what national figures have shown. The rate was the same in 2008, according to the state’s annual abortion report. That report doesn’t provide statistics by race for the 15-to-44 age group. But we were able to make calculations, for 2009, using abortion and population statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services: 88.3 percent of the women ages 15 to 44 in Wisconsin were white and white women accounted for 69 percent of the abortions performed in the state. 7.5 percent of the 15-to-44 women were African-Americans and African-Americans accounted for 24 percent of the abortions. Using this approach, which focuses on child-bearing years, the disparity among black women isn’t quite as large as what Pro-Life Wisconsin stated. We asked the group, which is based in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, the purpose of the billboards. They are located mainly on Milwaukee’s north and northwest sides, the areas of the city where the largest numbers of African-Americans live. Spokeswoman Virginia Zignego said the organization wants to publicize the disparity in the abortion rate among black women and highlight abortion alternatives such as adoption. The website listed on the billboards, which is run by the Radiance Foundation, mentions adoption, but most of the material criticizes Planned Parenthood and other organizations. Zignego said the campaign also aims to show that Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is racist because it locates many of its facilities -- some of which perform abortions -- in areas with the heaviest concentrations of African-Americans. Amanda Harrington, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said its services are geared toward pregnancy prevention -- and its sites are in areas where women need access to health care. Let’s return to the claim itself. The group accurately stated cited census and abortion numbers. But it used an approach that takes in the entire African-American population, not just women between age 15 and 44 -- the approach used by federal and Wisconsin authorities. By that measure, the actual disparity is smaller than what Pro-Life Wisconsin claimed. The group’s claim also leaves out important details -- namely, that socioeconomic factors, rather than race, have been identified as key contributors to the higher abortion rate among black women. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Pro-Life Wisconsin | null | null | null | 2010-12-06T09:00:00 | 2010-11-29 | ['Wisconsin', 'African_American'] |
pose-00054 | Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/57/expand-eligibility-for-medicaid/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Expand eligibility for Medicaid | 2010-01-07T13:26:46 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00041 | Justin Timberlake Spoiling Jessica Biel With Gifts Out Of Guilt For Being Less Involved In Son’s Life? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-timberlake-jessica-biel-son-silas/ | null | null | null | Gossip Cop Staff | null | Justin Timberlake Spoiling Jessica Biel With Gifts Out Of Guilt For Being Less Involved In Son’s Life? | 12:55 am, November 4, 2018 | null | ['Justin_Timberlake', 'Jessica_Biel'] |
pomt-10802 | I don't think that Rudy or Fred or John McCain support the marriage amendment. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/oct/05/mitt-romney/hes-right-that-others-have-hedged-/ | In an interview on MSNBC, Romney tried to turn the tables on his Republican rivals -- who have accused him of flip-flopping on various issues -- by saying he was more consistent on gay marriage than they have been. He said, "I don't think that Rudy (Giuliani) or Fred (Thompson) or John McCain support the marriage amendment. And I think they're in error on that one." Indeed, Romney is the only Republican front-runner unequivocally backing a constitutional gay marriage ban. Giuliani, Thompson and McCain share his opposition to same-sex marriage but they vary in how they would address the issue at the federal level. Romney is the only Republican front-runner to support an amendment to the Constitution, such as the one that failed in Congress last year, which would limit marriage to male-female unions. McCain, who actively opposed the 2006 amendment attempt on the grounds that it was unnecessary and would violate states' rights, says that he would only support such an amendment if the Supreme Court began to strike down state-level gay marriage bans. Thompson has proposed a constitutional amendment that would not ban gay marriages, but would free states from the obligation to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That provision was included in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which Thompson and McCain both supported, but it is still being challenged in the courts. A constitutional amendment would preempt any judicial challenge to the existing law. A spokesman for Giuliani said the former mayor "does not support a federal marriage amendment at this time." Giuliani told CNN's Larry King in February 2007 that he would not support a constitutional amendment, "unless all of a sudden lots of states do what Massachusetts does and kind of come at it from the other side and decide that the Constitution says that -- that you cannot have marriage between a man and a woman. If it stays the way it is, you don't need one." We find Romney's statement on his opponents to be True because he is accurately describing their positions. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2007-10-05T00:00:00 | 2007-09-14 | ['None'] |
goop-00306 | Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston Having Baby Together, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-jennifer-aniston-baby-together-wrong/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston NOT Having Baby Together, Despite Late And Wrong Claim | 10:25 am, September 7, 2018 | null | ['Brad_Pitt'] |
goop-00019 | Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer Saved Marriage By Working Together Again? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/anna-paquin-stephen-moyer-marriage-flack-new-tv-series/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer Saved Marriage By Working Together Again? | 5:04 pm, November 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00191 | A photograph shows a sign reading "Trump Made America the Best Country in the Nation." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-made-america-the-best-sign/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This ‘Trump Made America the Best Country in the Nation’ Sign Real? | 21 August 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15375 | Texas has "the nation's highest rate and highest number of uninsured." | mostly true | /texas/statements/2015/jul/01/donna-howard/donna-howard-says-texas-no-1-uninsured-residents-a/ | An Austin legislator stressed the number of Texans who lack health coverage after applauding the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding federal subsidies under the Obamacare law. On a positive note, Democratic state Rep. Donna Howard said in a June 25, 2015, press release that the share of uninsured Texans has decreased thanks to more people buying insurance, some with help from the subsidies written into Affordable Care Act of 2010. Now, she said, the Republican-led state should act to draw more federal money to insure more residents—perhaps a reference to Texas’ refusal so far to expand Medicaid to more adults with the federal government initially picking up costs. Inaction, Howard said, "has only left Texas with the nation's highest rate and highest number of uninsured." Whatever the reasons, does Texas lead the nation in its uninsurance rate and its count of uninsured residents? That wasn’t so before. In 2013, we rated Mostly False a declaration by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, that Texas had the nation’s most uninsured people, 6 million. As of 2011, then the latest year of survey data, Texas led the nation with its 24 percent share of uninsured residents. But more-populous California was home to about 1 million more uninsured residents. Also in 2013, we found True a claim that Texas had the most uninsured children. In 2012. According to federal survey results, Texas ranked first nationally with 1.1 million uninsured children, followed by California with 891,000. California is among states, unlike Texas, that expanded Medicaid access in accord with the Obamacare law. It stands to reason its uninsured population consequently shrunk. Another post-2013 factor: Key provisions of the Obamacare law—including the mandate that most Americans obtain coverage and the offer of subsidies for individuals to buy insurance—took effect in 2014, likely affecting who has a policy. Texas No. 1 in rate of uninsured Texas has evidently continued to rank No. 1 for its share of uninsured residents. To our inquiry, Scott Daigle, Howard’s chief of staff, noted by email a June 23, 2015, Austin American-Statesman story citing a national survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating Texas had a higher percentage of uninsured adults in 2014 than any other state. Nearly 26 percent of Texas adults were uninsured, the story said, down from about 28 percent in 2013. We wondered about all residents of the states at issue. Separately, the Kaiser Family Foundation, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau survey results, keeps up with how many residents of each state have health coverage. Its latest charts indicate that per the bureau’s 2013 Current Population Survey, Texas and Nevada were tied for No. 1 that year with 20 percent of residents lacking coverage. At the time, according to the survey, 15 percent of California residents lacked coverage. In raw numbers, 5,769,600 Californians were uninsured, compared with 5,357,700 Texans, according to the survey. We also reached out to bureau spokesman Robert Bernstein who suggested by email we consider its American Community Survey results for 2013, the latest available, indicating 22 percent of Texans and 17 percent of Californians were uninsured that year. According to this survey, Nevada had the nation’s No. 2 uninsurance rate, nearly 21 percent. In raw numbers, the survey suggested, 6.5 million Californians lacked coverage compared to more than 5.7 million Texans. California vs. Texas in uninsured residents In question: Whether California kept its raw-total lead in uninsured residents through 2014. Doesn’t seem so, experts told us, because far fewer Californians continued to lack coverage through the year, causing Texas to end up No. 1 for its uninsured rate and total residents without insurance. However, we fell short of landing governmental confirmation of such a shift. Responding to our request for backup information, Daigle in Howard’s office emailed us a link to a September 2014 Rice University press release stating Texas "has now surpassed California to become the state with the highest number of uninsured residents." But the related report, from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation, said only that Texas has "potentially surpassed" California in its uninsured count. According to quarterly surveys of Texans undertaken by the researchers, an additional nearly 379,000 Texans aged 18 to 64 had health coverage after the first Obamacare enrollment period, reducing uninsurance rates among such adults from 25 percent in September 2013 to 22 percent in May 2014. An April 2015 follow-up report by the institute and foundation said that thanks to more adults obtaining coverage, the share of uninsured Texans aged 18-64 as of March 2015 had dropped even more to 17 percent. The report said: "Despite this progress, Texas remains the state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents and, for the first time, Texas now has the largest number of uninsured residents." That report did not say how the researchers decided California no longer had the most uninsured. By email to our inquiry, co-author Elena Marks told us an undated web post on Wallethub.com, a personal finance website, fueled the conclusion. After the Obamacare law took effect, she noted, WalletHub projected that 14.26 percent of Californians and 24.81 percent of Texans lacked coverage. WalletHub also said its estimates were limited to beneficiaries under 64 years of age. Those state-by-state percentages, according to WalletHub’s post, were calculated in part from a June 2014 Kaiser Family Foundation look into insurance sign-ups during the first Obamacare enrollment period, which WalletHub described as "the best estimate to date of the proportion of private health plan enrollees under Obamacare who previously lacked health insurance and therefore would be gaining coverage under the new law." Marks told us the Texas researchers multiplied the WalletHub projections by each state’s population to estimate that more than 6.8 million Texans and 5.5 million Californians were uninsured once the Obamacare law had rolled into place. Other analysts Seeking other perspectives, we queried experts including Paul Fronstin of the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute, which says its mission is to enhance the development of public policy through objective research and education. In 2012, Fronstin wrote that the year before, California had the largest number of people under age 65 without health insurance of any state, at 7.1 million. But he also wrote that with Obamacare taking effect, the western state’s share of uninsured adults would likely drop. As it was, Fronstin told us at the time, his analysis of bureau research released in March 2012 showed more Californians than Texans were lacking coverage. That also held in Fronstin’s latest analysis, published in 2013, which said that nationally in 2010-12, Texas and California were among 14 states with 20 percent or more of residents lacking insurance. California had an average of 7 million uninsured non-elderly residents, according to a chart in the report, outpacing other states including No. 2 Texas, which averaged 6.1 million uninsured non-elderly. Still, those counts reflected conditions before the Obamacare law took fuller effect. By email, Fronstin told us this month that he believes California no longer leads the nation in uninsured residents, likely due to more people there taking advantage of coverage options thanks to the state expanding Medicaid and residents otherwise buying insurance with the subsidies offered thanks to the Obamacare law. Fronstin pointed out Gallup polls taken through 2014 indicating Texas that year had the nation’s greatest share of uninsured adults (24.4 percent) for the seventh straight year. That was a slight improvement from the 27 percent rate Gallup gauged in 2013. From 2013 to 2014, per Gallup’s results, California’s adult uninsurance rate fell from 21.6 percent to 15.3 percent. We considered multiplying the 2014 Gallup percentages by federal population estimates to approximate the number of uninsured adults in each state. But Howard referred to all uninsured residents. We sought the same broad focus. On this front, Anne Dunkelberg of the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for programs serving low-income Texans, guided us to a June 23, 2015, report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that according to its surveys undertaken through 2014, 11.5 percent of all Americans were uninsured. Also, a chart in the report indicates 19.4 percent of all Texans were uninsured at the time they were interviewed while 12 percent of Californians reported no coverage. We multiplied these percentages over July 2014 Census Bureau population estimates for each state, reaching estimates of 5.23 million uninsured Texans in 2014 and 4.66 million uninsured Californians. Next, we reached Gerald "Jerry" Kominski, director of UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research, who said by phone that results of its 2014 survey indicating the number of uninsured Californians at that time were to be released later this summer. Kominski otherwise said our calculation using the CDC study and federal population estimates seemed reasonable. "California has been very successful in reducing the number of uninsured," Kominski said, "because of its aggressive promotion of the Affordable Care Act." We also ran our calculation by the Kaiser foundation. Researcher Rachel Garfield cautioned by phone against reaching conclusions by making calculations using figures from different sources. Generally, she said, data is not yet available to assess how many people were uninsured in each state in 2014 though the census bureau is expected to release relevant survey results in September 2015. Our ruling Howard said Texas is No. 1 in its uninsurance rate and its total uninsured residents. Texas leads the nation in its percentage of uninsured. Also, it newly looks like Texas has the greatest raw number of uninsured residents, though that’s evidently backed up only by rough calculations like our own, a clarification missing from this claim. We rate Howard’s claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Donna Howard | null | null | null | 2015-07-01T10:00:00 | 2015-06-25 | ['None'] |
snes-02328 | President Trump 'slipped out of sight for a few hours' to visit pediatric cancer Patient Emilee Imbar. | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-israel-cancer-patient/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Did President Trump Visit a Pediatric Cancer Patient During Israel Visit? | 29 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03271 | News Article Said Vice President Biden’s Weekend Trips Cost Taxpayers $1 Million Annually | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/biden-million-trips/ | null | politics | null | null | null | News Article Said Vice President Biden’s Weekend Trips Cost Taxpayers $1 Million Annually | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01055 | Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/21/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-unemployment-rate-now-lower-fina/ | A significant theme of President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address was that the United States economy has come back from the brink. One of the metrics he used to make this claim was unemployment rate. During his address, Obama said that "our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis." We decided to check whether that’s correct. The most recent reported monthly unemployment rate was 5.6 percent for December 2014. The last time it was that low was in June 2008, when it was also 5.6 percent. The financial crisis occurred after June 2008 -- it’s generally dated to the implosion of the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers in September 2008. So Obama clearly has a point. That said, there are a few caveats. First, while we have no quarrel with Obama using the most basic version of the unemployment rate, it’s worth mentioning that there’s another version of the unemployment rate, known as U-6, that isn’t as favorable to the president’s case. The U-6 statistic tries to capture a broader picture of labor-market weakness than the more familiar unemployment rate. It takes into account not just people who are unemployed but also people working part-time who would rather have full-time work, as well as people who have stopped looking for work but would begin to look again if labor-market conditions improved. Because it includes these additional factors, the U-6 rate tends to track the official unemployment rate but is usually a few points higher. As it happens, the U-6 rate -- unlike the more basic unemployment rate -- hasn’t returned to its pre-financial-crisis level. The December 2014 U-6 rate was 11.2 percent, which is higher than the 11 percent rate in September 2008 and the 10.8 percent rate one month earlier in August 2008. Second, while economists cheer the clear improvement in the basic unemployment rate, they also fret that a portion of that improvement stems from Americans leaving the labor market rather than finding jobs after experiencing joblessness. (The unemployment rate can improve either if someone goes back to work, or if they leave the labor market entirely.) A way to measure this is by looking at a statistic called the labor force participation rate, which measures the number of people in the labor force divided by the civilian, noninstitutionalized population. The labor force shrinks whenever someone retires, voluntarily gives up working (such as when they become a full-time parent or go back to school full-time) or because they simply give up hope of finding a job. The labor force participation rate has decreased markedly since 2008. In September 2008, it stood at 66.0 percent, but that fell to 62.7 percent by December 2014, the most recent month available. It’s now at its lowest point since the late 1970s, a time when fewer women were working. Part of this is explained by the retirement of the large Baby Boom generation, but not all -- and the trendline worries many economists. So Obama has justification for celebrating the unemployment rate’s decline, but it’s worth remembering that that’s not the only important labor-market statistic out there. Our ruling Obama said "our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis." He’s correct when using the basic unemployment rate -- the most commonly cited figure -- but it’s worth noting that other measures of the labor market are not quite so rosy. The unemployment rate may be dropping, if only in part, because people have stopped looking for work. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2015-01-21T01:16:44 | 2015-01-20 | ['None'] |
pose-00358 | Will create a Social Investment Fund Network. This will be a government-supported nonprofit corporation, similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that will use federal seed money to leverage private sector funding to improve local innovation, test the impact of new ideas and expand successful programs to scale. The fund will operate through a network of funds that will be rooted in the private sector at the community level, with local decision-making informed by a shared network of best practices. For example, a successful nonprofit organization could apply for funding to study ways to improve or expand the organization to other locations. Or an angel investor could work with the fund to identify high-quality nonprofits that should be expanded to other locations and invest in that expansion. The network of funds would bring experts skilled at analyzing data, picking winners, measuring results, and building capacity to work. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/377/create-a-social-investment-fund-network/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Create a Social Investment Fund Network | 2010-01-07T13:26:56 | null | ['Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting'] |
hoer-00069 | Gun Owner Vehicle Tagging | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/gun-owner-vehicle-tagging-hoax.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Gun Owner Vehicle Tagging Hoax | March 26, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
faan-00079 | “There are lots of studies that show if you increase the payroll taxes, it leads to employers hiring less people.” | factscan score: true | http://factscan.ca/scott-armstrong-payroll-taxes/ | Research does show an increase in payroll taxes will reduce employment. This is expected to be a short-term impact and not severe. | null | Scott Armstrong | null | null | null | 2015-06-19 | May 26, 2015 | ['None'] |
snes-05284 | Germany created and distributed leaflets to curb sexual assault due to an incident in Cologne on New Year's Eve. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/germany-distributes-leaflets-discouraging-rape-cologne-incident/ | null | Immigration | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Germany Distributes Leaflets Discouraging Rape After Cologne Incident? | 1 February 2016 | null | ['Cologne', 'Germany'] |
hoer-01067 | Save-A-Lot Free $275 Grocery Coupon Giveaway | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/save-a-lot-free-275-grocery-coupon-giveaway-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Save-A-Lot Free $275 Grocery Coupon Giveaway Scam | November 22, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.