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pomt-12404 | I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/24/donald-trump/trump-goes-bit-overboard-icebreaker-claim/ | President Donald Trump told new graduates of the Coast Guard Academy that his administration is working hard to make the military branch’s job easier. In his speech at the academy’s commencement on May 17, Trump said his administration will be investing in icebreakers in a way the country hasn’t done in a while. "I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years," Trump said. Trump’s statement suggested his administration was the driver behind this project. He’s right about the four-decade gap, but it takes a long time to build a big ship (it’s just one -- not plural as he said) and the plan for this ship has been underway for some time. Assessing the fleet An icebreaker can carve a path through thick sheets of ice in frozen regions of the world or to access research stations in the Arctic. The bigger the ship, the thicker the ice it can handle. The United States has just one active heavy polar icebreaker, the Polar Star, which entered service in 1976. At a speed of 3 knots it can break through ice as thick as 21 feet. A similar ship was mothballed after its engined died in 2010 In addition to the Polar Star, the country has medium icebreaker, Healy, and the National Science Foundation operates a small icebreaker named Palmer. The construction of a new, heavy icebreaker would indeed be the first for the United States in four decades, said Magnus Nordenman, director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. In the works for a few years Trump left out a key fact: The process of building a new heavy icebreaker for the Coast Guard began before he took office. The U.S. Coast Guard told us the work began in earnest during President Barack Obama’s second term. "The time needed to build a new icebreaker can anywhere be between 5 to 10 years," said Sherri Goodman, a former defence official and senior fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Coast Guard included it in its 2012-13 budget submission, according to the Congressional Research Service. The project received about $15.6 million through FY 2016. In FY 2017, Congress gave the Coast Guard $25 million to manage the project and $150 million went to the Navy to start the design and construction process. Right now, actual building is slated to start in 2020 and if all goes well, the ship will launch in 2023. Our ruling Trump said, "I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years." He has a point that the heavy icebreaker being built is the first since the 1970s. If all goes according to schedule, construction will begin in 2020 with delivery in 2023. That puts the building phase within his first term, but as with any large project, the timeline can slip. Regardless, this has been an ongoing project that has been receiving funding from the government since 2013. Trump’s statement implied that the efforts to build the icebreaker came from his administration when in fact it was already in progress before he took office. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-05-24T09:50:10 | 2017-05-17 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-00668 | Once again, a police officer has been killed with an illegal gun from Georgia – a state that last year did the NRA’s bidding and weakened its already lax gun laws. | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2015/may/12/everytown-gun-safety/advocacy-group-overreaches-claim-nypd-shooting/ | The fatal shooting of New York City police officer Brian Moore has the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety again taking aim at Georgia and its gun laws. "Once again, a police officer has been killed with an illegal gun from Georgia -- a state that last year did the NRA’s bidding and weakened its already lax gun laws," Megan Lewis, the group’s vice president, said in a May 6 press release.. Moore, 25, was shot in the face May 2 and died two days later. Police took a convicted felon into custody 90 minutes after the shooting and later said the suspect’s weapon was one of 23 guns reported stolen in a break-in at Little’s Bait, Tackle & Pawn in Perry, south of Macon, in October 2011. Nine of those 23 stolen guns have since turned up at New York crime scenes, including the silver Taurus .38-caliber revolver seized in connection with Moore’s slaying, NYPD officials said. But have there been other police officers killed by illegal guns traced to Georgia as Everytown for Gun Safety’s statement suggests? PolitiFact decided to check. First a little background. Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and gun-control advocate Shannon Watts, contends that stolen and illegally trafficked firearms are making their way to cities such as New York from Georgia and other states, especially in the South, that have lax gun laws via the so-called "iron pipeline." Erika Soto Lamb, the group’s communications, said Everytown for Gun Safety can back up the statement. As evidence, she pointed to the killings of two NYPD police officers last December in a rampage by a convicted felon. The suspect was using a gun that was first sold legally by Arrowhead Pawn Shop in Jonesboro, she said. We asked: Is it fair to say that’s "an illegal gun from Georgia?" "The shooter in that event was a convicted felon -- which means he should not have been in possession of a gun and which makes that an illegal gun," she wrote in an email.. Tracing and tracking firearms The job of tracing guns falls to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the only agency authorized to track firearms made in the United States and abroad when law enforcement agencies request help. Police recover guns in various ways – as part of a criminal investigation, during regular patrols and even in buyback events. They can submit requests to the ATF’s National Tracing Center to track a weapon’s history, said ATF Agent Charles J. Mulham, the public information officer for the Bureau’s New York field division. Because a gun’s history can become evidence in a trial, the records are not public unless the requesting agencies disclosing them. The New York Police Department submitted such a request following the shooting of Moore in Queens. It later made the findings public in a press conference. Without required public disclosure of the trace records, the question of whether additional illegal guns from Georgia were used in the shooting deaths of other New York City cops becomes fuzzy to answer. Federal law requires only that guns stolen or lost from licensed gun dealers be reported to the ATF. The District of Columbia and another 10 states – including New York and neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut – require private citizens to report the theft or loss of at least some handguns or weapons. Georgia has no such requirement. That means those who aspire to make money by selling hard-to-come-by firearms in New York City for profit could, in theory, not even bother to steal them in Georgia. They could buy them here, sell them for high mark-ups in New York and, if the trace came back to a legal purchase, possibly face no penalty if they claimed the weapons had been stolen but not reported, Mulham said. In other words, it’s a tricky definition to term a gun "illegal" given the patchwork of state laws that govern their purchase. That complicates the definition of the gun used in the December shooting deaths of New York City officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos That gun, a Taurus 9 mm, was bought legally in 1996 from the Jonesboro pawn shop, said NYPD Lt. John Grimpel. The weapon’s history then becomes murky before convicted felon Ismaaiyl Brinsley ended up with it and shot the officers as they sat in their patrol car. It was illegal for Brinsley to have the gun, given restrictions on ownership by felons as well as New York law making it illegal for anyone to have a handgun without a permit. But the gun itself was officially legal because it was legally purchased. That history was uncovered when NYPD requested the gun be traced after the shootings. "After 1996, the whereabouts of the gun were unknown, until December 2014 when it was used in the murders of officers Ramos and Liu," Grimpel said. Our conclusion Police have seized a gun stolen from Georgia nearly four years ago and believe it was used in the recent, tragic shooting death of a young NYPD officer. But Everytown For Gun Safety overreaches in suggesting that an earlier fatal shooting of two officers involved an "illegal gun from Georgia." That weapon was sold according to federal law and therefore legal, until it found its way to someone who used it to commit a horrific crime. Such overreaches allow political debate to shape facts. We rate the statement Mostly False. | null | Everytown for Gun Safety | null | null | null | 2015-05-12T00:00:00 | 2015-05-06 | ['Georgia_(U.S._state)'] |
pomt-07862 | Foreign Trade Zones allow U.S. "land to be inhabited by Chinese communists -- communists straight from China! They are to set up little towns and live here." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/09/chain-email/chain-e-mail-claims-foreign-trade-zones-are-chines/ | In recent weeks, we’ve received a number of requests from readers to check a chain e-mail about Free Trade Zones. The full chain e-mail is too long to print, but you can read the full version here. Following is an excerpt: "This is an urgent message! Read this and spread the word! Subject: Foreign Trade Zones. This is unbelievable at first, but you will soon realize that there are several motives for the global communists to physically weave our United States territory together with communist China. Read On! Here's what is going on! "Each and every one of our state governors has approved and allocated a certain amount of acres of their U.S. state land to be inhabited by Chinese communists -- communists straight from China! They are to set up little towns and live here, supposedly for the purpose of producing Chinese products for sale in the U.S.A. The land the states are giving them for their little towns will be considered "foreign territory"!!! We are told that the laws of the state (in which these Chinese communists dwell) will apply to the communist Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ). Comment: If so, why are they allowed in here!??! Isn't the whole set up unlawful??? There are 257 of these little communist towns to be built all over the United States." There’s a lot to check in this excerpt, and even more in the parts we didn’t reprint. To keep to a reasonable length, we will only look at one part of it -- the idea that Foreign Trade Zones allow "land to be inhabited by Chinese communists -- communists straight from China! They are to set up little towns and live here." First, a little background about Foreign Trade Zones. In the United States, foreign-trade zones, or FTZs, date to a 1934 act of Congress. FTZs are secure areas located in or near U.S. Customs ports of entry but legally considered to be outside the Customs territory for the purpose of tariff laws and Customs entry procedures. Certain types of merchandise can be imported into the zones without paying import duties or excise taxes. Once there, the merchandise can be stored, assembled, sorted, processed or otherwise manufactured. But duties are paid only when the merchandise is transferred outside the zone and into the U.S. for sale or use. According to the federal board that oversees FTZs, the idea is to improve U.S. competitiveness by encouraging companies to maintain operations in the U.S. FTZs give foreign companies a good reason to locate here and thus use U.S. labor, services and materials. (U.S. companies, for their part, can use FTZs in many other countries around the world, with similar benefits.) So now let’s look at some of the claims in the e-mail. The idea that these "little towns will be considered ‘foreign territory’" is false. Aside from tax and tariff rules, FTZs must conform to U.S. laws, not those of the foreign country of the companies operating within them. Meanwhile, the notion that the "motive" behind FTZs is to "physically weave our United States territory together with communist China" is ridiculous. Not only are FTZs part of U.S. territory rather than that of a foreign country, but they were signed into law a full 15 years before the Communist Party took over the Chinese government. Most important for our fact check, it is false to say that Chinese communists "are to set up little towns and live here, supposedly for the purpose of producing Chinese products for sale in the U.S.A." If you look at the act governing FTZs, it reads: "No person shall be allowed to reside within the zone except Federal, State, or municipal officers or agents whose resident presence is deemed necessary by the Board." Nothing has changed that portion of the law in the nearly eight decades since. A fact sheet from the U.S. Commerce Department confirms that the "FTZ Act prohibits residence within a zone." So let’s sum up. Whatever one thinks of the policy benefits of FTZs, the idea put forth by the chain e-mail -- that Foreign Trade Zones allow "land to be inhabited by Chinese communists -- communists straight from China! They are to set up little towns and live here" -- is wrong. FTZs are U.S. territory, and subject to U.S. laws, in every way except for certain tax and duty laws, and in any case, "Chinese communists," and almost everyone else, are barred by law from residing in them. The e-mail takes a longstanding part of U.S. law and turns it into a communist plot to take over the country. We consider that ridiculous, and rate it Pants on Fire! | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2011-02-09T10:08:58 | 2011-02-07 | ['China', 'United_States'] |
pomt-11770 | The GOP tax plan "Sabotages the health care of 13 MILLION Americans." | half-true | /california/statements/2017/nov/29/nancy-pelosi/pelosis-problematic-claim-gop-tax-plan-sabotages-h/ | Many Democrats in Congress describe the GOP tax plan as a scheme to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. In recent weeks, their attacks have been expanded to say it would take away or damage health care for millions of Americans. That particular criticism started after Senate Republicans added a provision to their tax overhaul bill that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate — the requirement that Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has expressed concern over the inclusion of this provision in the tax bill, which needs approval from nearly all Republican senators to pass. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was the latest Democrat to lodge a comparable criticism of the bill. The GOP tax plan "Sabotages the health care of 13 MILLION Americans," Pelosi’s political team wrote on Twitter on Nov. 27, 2017 as part of a longer list of criticisms of the bill. PolitiFact New York and The Washington Post have fact-checked similar statements by Democratic leaders about the bill's impact on health care. They found those claims were partially accurate but ignored key facts. We’ll take a look at those and rate Pelosi’s statement. Similar claims Earlier this month, PolitiFact New York rated Half True the claim by Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo: Congressional Republicans "want to take health care from millions of Americans in order to pay for" a tax bill. It found Cuomo had a point: Ending the individual mandate would result in an estimated 13 million fewer Americans with health coverage by 2027, according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis. Pelosi’s spokesman pointed to the same CBO report when PolitiFact California asked for evidence backing up the congresswoman’s claim. In its analysis, however, PolitiFact New York pointed out that ending the individual mandate isn’t the same thing as stripping away health insurance for a large number of Americans. While some would lose access to health insurance due to increased premiums, many others would drop their coverage voluntarily. The Washington Post Fact Checker, meanwhile, gave Two Pinocchios — which it describes as its Half True rating — to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer when he said, "We’re kicking 13 million people off health insurance to give tax cuts to the wealthy." The Post described the first part of Schumer’s statement as "problematic." "CBO, in estimating the impact of repealing the individual mandate, is mostly describing a voluntary action of people choosing not to buy health insurance. That’s not the same as "kicking off" 13 million people. Granted, some people may feel they don’t have a choice because their premiums increased. Senate Democrats need to more accurately describe the CBO report," the Post concluded. Sabotage? Pelosi, through her political team’s tweet, claims the GOP tax plan "sabotages" the health care of 13 million Americans. We took this to mean it intentionally strips health care from millions. If healthy people leave the individual market, premiums will go up for the remaining and sicker enrollees. That could force some people to drop their plans due to cost. But, as with the claims from Cuomo and Schumer, the statement from Pelosi and her staff ignores the fact that a large portion of the 13 million people would voluntarily drop their plans and would not see a direct health impact. PolitiFact New York cited research from RAND Corp. that estimated roughly two-thirds of disenrollment would stem from voluntary choices and one-third would be involuntary. Other research has put the percentage at about 50-50, said Linda Blumberg, a health policy specialist at the Urban Institute. Our ruling Nancy Pelosi recently claimed the GOP tax plan "Sabotages the health care of 13 MILLION Americans." She has a partial point: Senate Republicans have proposed eliminating the ACA’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. By getting rid of this, the CBO estimates 13 million fewer people would have insurance a decade from now. Many would voluntarily leave the individual health care marketplace, driving up premiums for those who remain, forcing some who want to keep their insurance to drop it. But like other top Democrats, Pelosi left out much of the story. "Sabotaged" just doesn’t fit for the two-thirds of those researchers say would leave voluntarily. PolitiFact New York and The Washington Post examined similar claims and rated them the equivalent of Half True. They were partially accurate but omitted key information. We agreed with their assessments. We also rate Pelosi’s claim Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2017-11-29T14:44:25 | 2017-11-27 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
faly-00042 | Claim: More than 1 crore income tax payers linked their Aadhaar with PAN. | unverified | https://factly.in/fact-checking-government-claims-over-use-of-technology/ | Fact: Since it has been made mandatory, more than 16.84 crore PANs have been linked to Aadhaar but how many of them are paying tax cannot be verified. Hence, the claim is UNVERIFIED. | null | null | null | null | Fact Checking government claims over use of Technology | null | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13642 | Says in 2012 "Obama won in every state that did not require a photo ID and lost in every state that did require a photo ID in order to vote." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/09/viral-image/viral-post-claiming-voter-fraud-2012-election-errs/ | A viral post shared on several websites claims to offer evidence that President Barack Obama benefited from voter fraud during his 2012 reelection race against Mitt Romney. Headlined "Ever Wonder Why Republicans Want Voter ID?" the post offers factoids that seem to point to voter fraud in critical states. We've rated the Florida claims Pants on Fire! PolitiFact is also looking at the claims about Pennsylvania and Ohio in separate fact-checks. For this item, we'll look at the "fun fact" at the end of the meme: "Obama won in every state that did not require a photo ID and lost in every state that did require a photo ID in order to vote." It's clear from the context that the post is talking about the 2012 election, because it mentions Republican Mitt Romney twice. So did voter ID determine whether Obama won or lost in a state? Not at all. We checked with the National Conference of State Legislatures, the nonpartisan Washington-based organization that keeps track of which states have voter identification laws and rates the rigidity of those laws. The group made a tally of the mandatory photo ID laws in effect for the 2012 election. It's true that Obama lost in the states that had a strict photo-only ID requirement in 2012, but merely four states — Georgia, Indiana, Kansas and Tennessee — had that requirement, a salient fact the post neglects to mention. (A few more states have added a strict photo ID requirement that apply in the 2016 elections.) That a Democrat would lose in those states, regardless of a photo ID requirement, is not surprising. Georgia and Indiana have voted for Republican candidates in seven of the last eight presidential elections since 1984, Tennessee has done it in six out of eight, and Kansas has done it in eight out of eight. This trend pre-dated the photo ID laws, the first of which was implemented in 2008. The post is ridiculously wrong when it says Obama won in every state that did not require a photo ID. Obama lost in 20 of the 46 states without a strict photo ID requirement. If you include the seven additional states that asked for a photo ID but allowed other types of identification as well, such as a credit or debit card in the voter's name, Obama won four (Florida, Hawaii, Michigan and New Hampshire) and lost three (Idaho, Louisiana and South Dakota). The post does not identify who created it. Our ruling An anonymous, viral post claims that in 2012, "Obama won in every state that did not require a photo ID and lost in every state that did require a photo ID in order to vote." Obama did lose in the four states that had such a law in effect in 2012, but those states historically vote Republican in presidential elections anyway. The post is flat wrong about Obama winning states that do not require a photo ID. He lost in 20 states that lacked the requirement. On the whole, we rate the statement False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ae22eaa3-6b2d-4ae8-b909-e0b3d8f543fd | null | Viral image | null | null | null | 2016-08-09T10:00:00 | 2016-08-05 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-03674 | On allowing a vote on universal gun background checks in the U.S. Senate. | no flip | /georgia/statements/2013/apr/26/johnny-isakson/senator-consistently-favor-vote-gun-background-che/ | The recent legislation in the U.S. Senate to expand background checks on guns was one of the highest-profile votes this year. The measure eventually failed on a 54-46 vote. Senate rules required it to get at least 60 votes in order to succeed. But some gun advocates were angry the measure even came up for a vote. Some PolitiFact Georgia readers wrote to us, asking whether U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., flip-flopped on an earlier position when he voted to allow that vote to go forward in the Senate. Isakson voted against the actual background check bill. PolitiFact Georgia wanted to know whether Isakson staked out one position on a background-check filibuster and then reneged. President Barack Obama called for several new measures aimed at limiting access to guns to criminals and the mentally ill after the horrific killings in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. One proposal was universal background checks. Federal law currently requires federally licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks, commonly known as "universal background checks," before selling a firearm. There is no federal law that requires private gun dealers to do such background checks. A handful of states (Georgia is not one of them) require private dealers to conduct background checks. Gun control advocates want to require private dealers to conduct such a check. Earlier this month, two senators who’ve received high marks from the National Rifle Association (Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania), proposed an amendment they hoped would receive wide bipartisan support from their colleagues. The amendment would subject nearly all gun buyers to background checks. Isakson said during an interview April 9 with "CBS This Morning" that he had concerns about such legislation, including that background checks may "violate rights to privacy in terms of mental health." Isakson received an "A" rating from the NRA in his last campaign, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. But the senator, unlike many of his GOP colleagues, indicated he didn’t want a filibuster on the proposal. A filibuster allows unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue. "I think it deserves a vote up or down, " Isakson said in the CBS interview. On April 11, the Senate voted 68-31 in favor of the "motion to proceed" on the gun bill, allowing it to come to the floor and have amendment votes. Isakson voted in favor of moving forward. So, too, did Georgia’s other U.S. senator, Saxby Chambliss, a Republican. But Republicans could still have blocked the bill after it was amended by setting up another 60-vote hurdle to end debate. As a vote on the Manchin/Toomey amendment and others drew closer, the thinking on Capitol Hill was that the measure could not get 60 votes once the NRA announced its opposition. The Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, decided to allow votes on nine amendments, requiring a 60-vote majority in order for them to pass. Any of those amendments could have been filibustered on their own if the vote threshold was set at 51. In addition, it allowed Reid to control the action. "So, why didn’t Reid try to get the unanimous consent agreement to set all amendment votes at a 51-vote threshold?" The Post wrote. "Because to do that would have opened the bill up to the very likely possibility that amendments favored by gun rights advocates would be added to it." On April 17, Isakson and Chambliss voted against the actual amendment. The Senate voted 54-46 in favor. Again, it did not receive the 60 votes necessary for it to more forward. Georgia Gun Owners, a group that claims about 10,000 members, held a protest in front of Isakson’s home after he voted in favor of bringing the amendment to a floor vote. "He certainly didn’t flip-flop on the filibuster," said Patrick Parsons, the group’s executive director. "He never said he wanted to (support a filibuster)." Jerry Henry, executive director of Georgia Carry, a 7,300-member gun advocacy group, said he was not aware of Isakson supporting a filibuster on the amendment. "He voted to kill the filibuster and allowed it to get on the floor and then he voted against the bill," Henry said. "As far as I know, (Isakson) said he would not support a filibuster." To sum up, Isakson voted against a filibuster on the background check amendment, backing up his talk of desiring an up-or-down vote on the measure. Isakson did eventually vote against the legislation. The senator receives a rating of No Flip. Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Daniel Malloy contributed to this article. | null | Johnny Isakson | null | null | null | 2013-04-26T00:00:00 | 2013-04-09 | ['None'] |
afck-00071 | “The matric pass rate increased from 60.6 percent in 2009 to 75.1 percent last year.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/state-of-the-nation-address-1-president-cyril-ramaphosas-claims-weighed-up/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact-checked: Pres Cyril Ramaphosa’s first-ever State of the Nation Address | 2018-02-16 06:36 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05926 | A child dying of cancer wants you to send him cards so he can get into the Guinness World Book of Records. | outdated | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sick-child-christmas-card-request/ | null | Inboxer Rebellion | null | David Mikkelson | null | Sick Child Christmas Card Request | 20 July 2001 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00223 | Will nullify the Bush attempts to make the timely release of presidential records more difficult. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/239/release-presidential-records/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Release presidential records | 2010-01-07T13:26:52 | null | ['George_W._Bush'] |
goop-01011 | Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom Getting Married In September Wedding? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/katy-perry-orlando-bloom-getting-married-wedding-date-september/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom Getting Married In September Wedding? | 12:22 pm, May 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05831 | On resigning from the Texas Railroad Commission. | full flop | /texas/statements/2012/feb/17/elizabeth-ames-jones/did-elizabeth-ames-jones-flip-flop-resigning/ | Elizabeth Ames Jones’ resignation from the Texas Railroad Commission on Feb. 13, 2012, came weeks after state Sen. Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio began claiming that she was violating the Texas Constitution by remaining in her post while also running against him. A day after she resigned, Austin American-Statesman reporter Jason Embry on Twitter pointed to a January 2011 blog post he wrote in which Jones is quoted as saying that she would "never" leave her post on the commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas. We put Jones’ change of heart to our Flip-O-Meter. Embry’s Jan. 25, 2011, blog post was written as Jones was traveling the state to announce her candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison after this year. The post quotes Jones as saying outside the Texas Capitol: "The days of backroom deals, secret earmarks, wasteful pork-barrel spending will come to a screeching halt when I am elected." According to the post, Jones also said she would not resign her commission seat to concentrate on her campaign, though she wouldn’t seek re-election in 2012. Next, the post points out that Michael Williams, then Jones’ colleague on the commission and an expected Senate candidate, had already announced his resignation from the three-person commission, effective April 2, 2011. "I would never leave my post," Jones was quoted as saying. The Quorum Report’s Texas Energy Report included the same "never" statement from Jones in its story about her Austin campaign stop. "She’s not following colleague and fellow hopeful Michael Williams’ lead by resigning her seat on the three-member panel," says the story, before quoting Jones as saying she would "never" leave her post. About nine months later, Jones switched races, jumping into the Republican primary contest against Wentworth for this state Senate seat. Fourteen weeks after that, she quit the commission. We searched — on the Internet and in newspaper archives — and talked to representatives of the Wentworth and Jones campaigns for evidence that Jones had otherwise vowed not to leave the commission. We found no additional "never" proclamations from Jones, though the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News reported her saying during her January 2011 announcement tour that she would not resign from the commission. On Dec. 9, 2011, Wentworth, who faces Jones and Donna Campbell of New Braunfels for the Republican nomination, issued a statement suggesting that Jones could not legally fulfill a constitutional requirement that statewide elected officials live in the capital and also qualify as a resident of the San Antonio-rooted Senate district. Jones disputed his analysis, saying she had legal advice indicating that she could continue on the commission while pursuing the Senate seat. In a statement announcing her resignation, Jones noted that she had tried to resolve the legal dispute by asking Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott "to issue an opinion vindicating my right to finish my term on the Texas Railroad Commission." However, her statement suggested, that hope was dashed by a Feb. 6, 2012, lawsuit, which sought to stop Jones from receiving her state paycheck. She said any such suit would prevent the attorney general from issuing an opinion until its resolution. As we closed out this look, we asked Jones for an interview. She wasn’t immediately available. In an earlier telephone interview, Jones’ political consultant, Todd Olsen, argued that Jones had not flip-flopped by resigning from the commission after previously saying she would not quit it. Olsen noted that Jones’ January 2011 comment that she would "never leave" her post was made when she was running for a different office and under different circumstances. Olsen said that Jones spoke after Williams had announced his resignation and that if she had followed suit, the Railroad Commission would have been left inoperable with only one commissioner (until the governor named a replacement). Olsen also noted that Jones clearly could not have been speaking to whether she’d stay on the commission while running for the Texas Senate. Another facet, in Olsen’s view: In late 2010 and early 2011, lawmakers were discussing how to restructure the Railroad Commission, possibly reducing it to a single position from three, a proposal that Jones did not support. Olsen speculated that if the question Jones was answering related to that possible shrinkage, Jones would make the same "never" vow today. Our ruling Jones initially said she would never leave her post, meaning resign. She later did so, nearly 11 months before the term ends. It’s believable that the commission’s circumstances and other factors changed in the intervening year. Regardless, Jones’ resignation after saying she’d "never" quit the commission amounts to a Full Flop. | null | Elizabeth Ames Jones | null | null | null | 2012-02-17T10:30:00 | 2012-02-13 | ['Railroad_Commission_of_Texas'] |
snes-05991 | Forty Marines rescued kids from a Pentagon daycare facility on 9/11, then enclosed them in a protective corral of cribs. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pentagon-daycare-corral/ | null | September 11th | null | Snopes Staff | null | Pentagon 9/11 Daycare Corral | 26 May 2010 | null | ['The_Pentagon'] |
snes-05564 | A pair of memes accurately describes the benefits and downside of the social system in Denmark. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/denmark-social-memes/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Dueling Memes Debate Denmark’s Social Infrastructure | 20 October 2015 | null | ['Denmark'] |
tron-02909 | Unite the Right Organizer Jason Kessler Was Obama Supporter, Occupy Wall Street | truth! & misleading! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/jason-kessler-obama-supporter/ | null | politics | null | null | ['alt-right', 'donald trump', 'protests', 'race relations'] | Unite the Right Organizer Jason Kessler Was Obama Supporter | Aug 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12430 | Says "Karen Handel’s office budget increased a whopping 42 percent." | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2017/may/17/dccc-lgo/georgia-dem-attack-gops-handel-falls-wide-mark/ | The race in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District tests whether Democrats can turn anger toward President Donald Trump into votes, and whether Republicans can transcend that anger in a district that has long been safe GOP territory. With a little over a month before the June 20 special election, the Democratic ad campaign went on the attack. Both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- the electoral arm of House Democrats -- and the campaign to elect Jon Ossoff ran commercials targeting Republican Karen Handel. The DCCC ad cast Handel as a politician who enjoyed the comforts of office. "Georgia experienced the worst budget crisis since the Great Depression," the ad said. "For years, we saw cuts to education, cuts to law enforcement, and rising college tuition. Yet Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office budget increased a whopping 42 percent." Is that true? The answer depends on what you think when you hear the term "office budget." State budget experts at Georgia State University and the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute helped us work through the official budget documents. There was general agreement that the first budget Handel helped shaped was in early 2007. She stepped down as secretary of state in December 2009, so the last budgets she worked under fell in 2009 and 2010. We compared both to 2007. We found the administrative cost of running the secretary of state’s office rose by nearly 39 percent from 2007 to 2009, or 47 percent from 2007 to 2010 -- which is close but not quite what the ad claimed. However, the cost of the department overall actually fell by about 8 percent from 2007 to 2009, or 10 percent from 2007 to 2010. Here are the numbers: 2007 2009 Change from 2007 2010 Change from 2007 Office Admin. $4,882,454 $6,782,167 +38.9% $7,167,144 +46.8% Total $30,762,868 $28,381,868 -7.7% $27,730,509 -9.9% The key here is the distinction of administration costs versus the budget of the entire department. Evan Lukaske, DCCC spokesman, told us his group pulled the 42 percent figure from a 2010 Associated Press article, which said, "During her three years as secretary of state, the office's administration budget jumped by about 42 percent, according to state records." More recently, a local television station confirmed that figure. (The slight difference in numbers stems from the more conservative budget assumptions we used following the guidance of budget experts.) More to the story There’s an important backstory to the spending increase that puts the number in a different light. Between 2008 and 2009, there was a reshuffling of activities within the secretary of state’s office. It had investigators spread across three separate programs. Handel consolidated them. Handel spokeswoman Kate Constantini said the easiest way to do that was to add that work to an existing line in the budget. "That line item was part of the front office budget, which necessarily showed an increase, but was the result of moving personnel that were accounted for in other parts of the budget," Constantini said. The state budget brief for 2008-09 backs up Handel’s account. The rise in the administrative budget was offset by decreases in certain activities of other divisions within the department. As such, the spending increases are largely only on paper. In reality, money was shuffled around. Our ruling Democrats say Handel saw her office budget rise 42 percent. While some viewers might not spot the distinction between the administrative budget and the budget for the entire office, the raw numbers support the claim. But most of that increase came from moving around work -- and the money to pay for it -- inside the department. The rise in the administrative budget was offset by cuts elsewhere. The ad’s statement contains an element of truth, but leaves out critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | DCCC | null | null | null | 2017-05-17T10:20:01 | 2017-05-03 | ['None'] |
snes-01765 | During a Hurricane, Should You Store Important Items in Your Dishwasher? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dishwasher-hurricane/ | null | Inboxer Rebellion | null | Kim LaCapria | null | During a Hurricane, Should You Store Important Items in Your Dishwasher? | 8 September 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00224 | No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/240/tougher-rules-against-revolving-door-for-lobbyists/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials | 2010-01-07T13:26:52 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12263 | Western New Yorkers pay some of the highest property taxes in the state. | half-true | /new-york/statements/2017/jul/07/raymond-walter/where-are-property-taxes-highest-new-york/ | New York state has some of the highest property taxes in the country. But where in the state are property taxes highest? Assemblyman Ray Walter, R-Amherst, says Western New York ranks high. "Western New Yorkers pay some of the highest property taxes in the state," Walter said in a recent press release about Republican efforts to replace Obamacare. He supports a part of a congressional bill designed to reduce property taxes in New York state by shifting Medicaid costs from counties to the state. Walter said he was talking about property taxes as a percent of home value in Western New York. He defines the region as the eight counties west of the Finger Lakes: Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Allegany, Cattaraugus, Orleans, Wyoming and Genesee counties. "It’s off the charts as a percentage of home value," Walter told PolitiFact New York. "In real dollars it’s not as high just because our home values are not as high as other places in the state." Is Walter right that Western New York has some of the highest property taxes in the state? Percent of home value U.S. Census Bureau data shows how property taxes compared with home values in each county in 2015, the latest figures. It’s a better apples-to-apples comparison because some counties have higher home values but similar property tax bills. The home value in Brooklyn is more than triple that of Sullivan County, for example, but the property tax bills are within a few hundred dollars of each other. All eight counties in Western New York rank among the 18 highest counties in the state for property taxes as a percent of home value. • Orleans County ranks first out of the state’s 62 counties. Its median property tax of $3,055 is 3.35 percent of its $91,300 median home value. • Allegany County ranks second. The $2,320 median property tax bill is 3.3 percent of the $70,300 median home value. • Erie County ranks lowest in the region, but 18th highest in the state. Its median property tax bill is $3,499, which is 2.69 percent of its median home value of $130,000. The data is only reported for owner-occupied housing units. It does not include property taxes on businesses or rented units. Property taxes in dollars The ten counties with the highest median property tax in dollar amounts are in New York City, the lower Hudson Valley and on Long Island. Western New York counties are lower in this category. Four of them rank in the bottom half. • Erie County has the highest property tax in the region. The county ranks 21st in the state. • Niagara County, where the median property tax bill is $3,255, is second highest in the region but 26th in the state. • Allegany County has the lowest median property tax in dollars in Western New York. Only five other counties in the state are lower. Three counties tie for highest property taxes in the state — and the country. Nassau, Rockland, and Westchester counties each have median property tax bills that exceed $10,000. That’s the highest amount in the country as well. The Census Bureau does not report exact dollar amounts when the median tax exceeds $10,000. Percent of income Property taxes can also be measured as a share of median household income. The eight counties in Western New York rank in the middle in this category. • Wyoming County, where the tax bill is $2,871, is lowest in the region. Residents spend 5.29 percent of the median income of $52,564 on property taxes. Fifteen counties have lower property tax bills as a percent of median resident income. • Erie County is again highest in the region. Residents there pay 6.83 percent of the median income of $51,247 toward property taxes. Twenty-one counties are higher. Nassau, Rockland, and Westchester counties tie for first in this category. At least ten percent of the median income in each is spent on property taxes. Our ruling Walter said "Western New Yorkers pay some of the highest property taxes in the state." His statement might come as a surprise to homeowners on Long Island and other counties near New York City, where median property tax bills exceed $10,000. To them, Erie County's median property tax bill of $3,499 doesn't look too high. So, no, Western New Yorkers do not pay some of the highest property taxes in the state. But Western New Yorkers shoulder a heavier burden paying the property tax. Walter said he was talking about property taxes as a percent of home value. And in that sense, he’s right about the tax. Two Western New York counties lead the state in this category and all eight counties in the region are among the top third. We rate his claim Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Raymond Walter | null | null | null | 2017-07-07T15:18:41 | 2017-06-23 | ['None'] |
goop-02247 | Lady Gaga Addicted To Fibromyalgia Medicine? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/lady-gaga-addicted-medicine-pills-fibromyalgia/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Lady Gaga Addicted To Fibromyalgia Medicine? | 8:10 am, November 5, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02002 | Tom O’Malley: Letter from An American Working in Mexico | truth! & outdated! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/tom-omalley-letter-american-working-mexico-truth-outdated/ | null | immigration | null | null | ['illegal aliens', 'mexico', 'refugees'] | Tom O’Malley: Letter from An American Working in Mexico | Feb 14, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05890 | Fireball whisky is being recalled due to concerns over a dangerous ingredient. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/schnapp-judgment/ | null | Food | null | David Mikkelson | null | Fireball Whisky Recall | 28 October 2014 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00190 | Fifty-eight percent of your [African American] youth is unemployed. | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/24/trumps-misleading-claim-that-58-percent-of-black-youth-are-unemployed/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Michelle Ye Hee Lee | null | Trump's misleading claim that 58 percent of black youths are unemployed | August 24, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00595 | Is the ‘Blue Bow’ Trout Real? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blue-bow-trout-real/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is the ‘Blue Bow’ Trout Real? | 15 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12883 | Here in Philadelphia murder has been steady — I mean — just terribly increasing. | false | /pennsylvania/statements/2017/jan/26/donald-trump/donald-trump-falsely-tells-gop-philly-homicides-ar/ | Donald Trump made his first visit to Philadelphia as president today and at the beginning of his speech at the GOP Retreat said it was "great" to be in the city. Then things went south. Trump said, "Here in Philadelphia, murder has been steady — I mean — just terribly increasing." So what’s really happening with homicides in Philadelphia? In 2016, according to year-end data from the police department, 277 people were killed in the city. That number is down from 2015, when 280 people were killed; and up from 2014, when 248 people were killed. Homicides since the mid 2000s, however, are way down. In 2007, Philly had 391 murders. Go back to the 1990s, and Philadelphia’s murder rate was even higher. Five hundred people were killed in 1990. The murder rate decreased throughout the 1990s before going back up in the early 2000s and falling since then. The 277 people killed in 2016 is the third-lowest amount since 1990 and down about 45 percent from the 1990 peak. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com We reached out to White House spokesperson Steven N. Cheung for comment. We’ll update if we hear back. Mayor Jim Kenney released a statement Thursday afternoon saying the president’s comments were "insulting" to police. "Our police officers have worked tirelessly and with great personal sacrifice to get Philadelphia’s crime rate down to its lowest point in forty years, while also successfully implementing reforms to strengthen police-community relations and uphold the rights of all our residents," he said in the statement. He continued: "Our homicides are, in fact, slowly declining, and while we are not satisfied with even our current numbers, we are handicapped by Republican refusal to enact any kind of common sense gun control and by their obsession with turning our police officers into ICE agents — which will prevent immigrants from coming forward to report crimes or provide critical witnesses statements that can put dangerous criminals behind bars." Our Ruling President Donald Trump, while addressing the GOP Retreat at the Loews Hotel, said, "Here in Philadelphia murder has been steady — I mean — just terribly increasing." The murder rate was higher last year than it was in 2014 and 2013, but it was lower than in 2015 and the third-lowest it has been since 1990. The murder rate in 2016 was about 45 percent lower than in 1990, when 500 people were killed. We rule the claim False. Share the Facts Politifact 4 6 Politifact Rating: "Here in Philadelphia murder has been steady — I mean — just terribly increasing." Donald Trump President in a speech at the GOP Retreat Thursday, January 26, 2017 -01/-26/2017 Read More info | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-01-26T14:59:20 | 2017-01-26 | ['Philadelphia'] |
pomt-05003 | Says Debbie Wasserman Schultz "has these offshore accounts" like Mitt Romney. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2012/jul/18/mary-matalin/debbie-wasserman-schultz-had-offshore-accounts-mit/ | So Mitt Romney had a Swiss bank account. Big deal! That's the argument Republican pundit Mary Matalin deployed about Romney’s finances on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Responding to comments from fellow panelist George F. Will that Romney needed to be more forthcoming about his finances, Matalin said, "With deference and respect to my esteemed colleague here, people don't care where his bank accounts are. They care that they don't have much left in their bank accounts. ... "They don't care about his taxes. They care about their own taxes," she continued. "He's released 2010. He's releasing 2011. He has full disclosure. "There's no tax advantages to being offshore," she said. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the handpicked Democratic chairman by Barack Obama, has these offshore accounts." The mention of Wasserman Schultz -- the head of the Democratic National Committee and one of Florida’s more high-profile members of Congress -- caught our attention. Does Wasserman Schultz have offshore accounts similar to Romney’s? Before Romney became governor of Massachusetts in 2003, he had a long career managing Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, and that work made him wealthy. We fact-checked whether Romney had a Swiss bank account and found that accurate. The trustee for the Romney family’s investments -- Brad Malt of the law firm Ropes & Gray -- set up the account in 2003. There were no tax advantages to holding the Swiss account, said Malt in a conference call with reporters in January 2012, when the campaign released Mitt and Ann Romney’s 2010 tax returns. The account contained approximately $3 million, and it was held by Union Bank Switzerland, or UBS. "The tax is fully paid, just as if this were a U.S. bank account, nothing more complicated than that," Malt said then. And in our review, we found nothing to indicate Romney did anything illegal or improper with the account, just as Matalin said. Now, let’s look at Wasserman Schultz’s finances. As we researched, we found similar claims about Wasserman Schultz and offshore accounts that pointed back to the conservative magazine and website the Weekly Standard. The Weekly Standard combed through Wasserman Schultz’s financial disclosures, which are required from all members of Congress. It found several 401(k) funds listed there, then cross-referenced the funds with their published holdings. The Davis Financial Fund "is invested in the Julius Baer Group Ltd. and the State Bank of India GDR Ltd., as well as other financial, insurance, bank institutions," the Weekly Standard noted. Julius Baer is a Swiss private banking group. We went through the disclosure statements and found what the Weekly Standard described. To refresh your memory on 401(k) funds: They’re retirement savings accounts where workers can sock away money and defer paying taxes on it. Money managers then invest the savings in all sorts of ways, both in the U.S. and abroad. In some ways, the Weekly Standard’s point is fair and relevant: It’s a global economy, and many Americans have investments overseas through their own 401(k)s and pension funds. Some of the attacks on Romney suggest that his Swiss account had some nefarious function, and we haven’t seen any evidence to support that. Matalin sent us this statement, emailed from a spokesperson, that reiterated that point: "The attack from Obama wasn't about the size of the account but the very existence of it. There is nothing illegal or unique about these accounts. My response was two-fold: Obama is a hypocrite since his own appointees have the same arrangements and using a distraction tactic because he can't run on his record." Still, with all due respect to the globally interconnected economy, Wasserman Schultz’s "offshore accounts" have little in common with Romney’s. For one thing, the amounts of money in the accounts are of staggeringly different size. Wasserman Schultz’s 401(k) fund had less than $15,000. Romney had up to $3 million. Wasserman Schultz’s money was in a 401(k) account, the Davis Financial Fund, which is based in Massachusetts. It was purchased April 15, 2010, and sold on April 23, 2010. So it wasn’t held for very long. Romney’s money was in a cash savings account held from 2003 to 2010, according to his attorney. After hearing Matalin’s comments, we also wondered whether Wasserman Schultz and Romney are in the same league financially. They’re not. Wasserman Schultz’s net worth -- all her assets minus all her liabilities -- was somewhere between $235,000 and negative $290,000 in 2010, according to the most recent disclosure. In fact, Wasserman Schultz was one of the least wealthy members of Congress that year. The Center for Responsive Politics ranked her at No. 422 out of 440 House members. (The list is slightly larger than 435 seats in the House due to special elections.) Romney’s wealth, on the other hand, is somewhere between $85 million and $264 million. The Romney campaign told the Washington Post that a more accurate range would be between $190 million and $250 million. Our ruling Matalin said that Romney might have offshore accounts, but so do others. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the handpicked Democratic chairman by Barack Obama, has these offshore accounts," she said. Actually, Wasserman Schultz had a 401(k) account of less than $15,000, managed by an American company, that included some foreign investments. Romney’s account was a savings account of approximately $3 million held by a Swiss bank. Matalin does have a point that Romney’s account was entirely legal and he paid taxes on the earnings. It’s also true that many Americans have foreign investments through 401(k)s and pension funds. But Wasserman Schultz’s investments are not similar to Romney’s, neither in size nor in type. We rate Matalin’s claim Mostly False. | null | Mary Matalin | null | null | null | 2012-07-18T11:27:14 | 2012-07-15 | ['Debbie_Wasserman_Schultz', 'Mitt_Romney'] |
peck-00020 | Just How Much Public Debt Will Kenya Accumulate By 2019? | false | https://pesacheck.org/does-kenyas-budget-outlook-paper-predict-a-debt-ratio-of-63-by-2019-91df20259263 | null | null | null | George Githinji | null | Just How Much Public Debt Will Kenya Accumulate By 2019? | Aug 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00703 | Did a Virginia Newspaper Run a KKK Ad on the Front Page? | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kkk-ad-front-page/ | null | Politics | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Did a Virginia Newspaper Run a KKK Ad on the Front Page? | 28 April 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03762 | Says 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of National Rifle Association members support background checks of gun purchasers. | true | /texas/statements/2013/apr/04/lee-leffingwell/lee-leffingwell-says-polls-show-90-percent-america/ | Joining calls for criminal background checks prior to every U.S. gun purchase, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell said the idea is widely popular. Ninety percent of Americans and 74 percent of National Rifle Association members support universal background checks, Leffingwell said, the Austin American-Statesman reported in a news article posted online the day he spoke, March 28, 2013. Currently, background checks are required in sales by federally licensed gun dealers but not for gun sales by private sellers. President Barack Obama wants to require criminal background checks for all gun sales. The National Rifle Association, which opposes universal background checks, has suggested that an expansion would fail to rope in criminals. As noted in a January 2013 fact check by our colleagues in Washington, Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s organization, Luntz Global, conducted a May 2012 poll of 945 gun owners nationwide, half of whom were gun owners who were "current or lapsed" members of the National Rifle Association and half of whom were non-NRA gun owners. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Leffingwell aide Amy Everhart said by email that the mayor based his NRA reference on the same poll, as cited by the group that commissioned it, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Everhart said Leffingwell also drew his conclusion about other polls from the group, which consists of city mayors concerned with illegal guns and gun violence as helmed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, a Democrat. Its five Texas members include Leffingwell as well as the mayor of neighboring West Lake Hills, Dave Claunch, and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. A week before Leffingwell spoke, Everhart pointed out, Bloomberg delivered remarks in New York noting that polls in 41 congressional districts suggest an average of 86 percent to 89 percent of likely voters support universal background checks. "That’s in line with other recent polls that have found that more than 90 percent of Americans support background checks for all gun buyers," Bloomberg said before revisiting the May 2012 poll that reached current and former NRA members. That poll found that 82 percent of gun owners were in favor of required background checks, including 74 percent of individuals with current or former memberships in the NRA. Contacted previously by PolitiFact, the NRA offered no comment on the poll. But the group previously reacted to a 2009 poll taken by Luntz for the mayors’ group by noting that Luntz could not have had access to the association’s confidential membership roll. It also criticized Luntz, a widely quoted communications consultant for Republican politicians and Fortune 100 companies, with decade-old criticism from two polling organizations. The association did not directly challenge the poll results. PolitiFact identified two other 2013 polls of gun owners. A Pew Research Center poll taken of 1,502 adults from Jan. 9-13, 2013, found 85 percent of some 529 polled gun owners in favor of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks — nearly identical to the Luntz poll. The gun-owner results had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted of 1,110 adults from Jan. 11-15, 2013, showed that 85 percent of respondents living in a household with an NRA member supported universal background checks. More recently, according to the results of a national January 2013 poll presented in the March 21, 2013, New England Journal of Medicine, 84 percent of gun owners and 74 percent of NRA members supported requiring a universal background-check system for all gun sales. The poll was conducted by GfK Knowledge Networks for researchers led by Colleen L. Barry, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And what of Americans in general? The January Pew poll found 85 percent of all respondents in favor of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks, with comparable support from Republicans, Democrats and independents, Pew said. The margin of error for the entire sample was 2.9 percentage points. The CBS/New York Times poll indicated that 92 percent of all the respondents favor background checks for all potential gun buyers. The poll had an overall margin of error of three percentage points. PolitiFact Georgia, looking into a similar claim about support for universal checks, noted a Fox News poll conducted Jan. 15-17, 2013, of 1,008 registered voters. Ninety one percent of respondents said they favor "requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers, including those buying at gun shows and private sales." A Quinnipiac University national survey of 772 registered voters, taken Jan. 30 through Feb. 4, 2013, found 92 percent supporting background checks for all gun buyers. The survey, pointed out by Everhart, had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points. A subsequent Quinnipiac University survey, taken of 1,944 registered voters from Feb. 27, 2013 through March 4, 2013, found 88 percent in favor of background checks for all gun buyers. The poll had a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points. Our ruling Austin’s mayor said 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of National Rifle Association members support universal background checks for gun purchases. Polls taken in 2012 and 2013 support both figures, though one taken closest to Leffingwell’s press conference indicates support among all Americans possibly slipping a bit below 90 percent. Also, the 2012 poll he cited for NRA members rolled together responses of current and former/lapsed members. Then again, a 2013 poll similarly suggests that 74 percent of NRA members favor universal background checks. We rate this claim as True. | null | Lee Leffingwell | null | null | null | 2013-04-04T12:00:00 | 2013-03-28 | ['National_Rifle_Association', 'United_States'] |
snes-00961 | A photograph shows Carl Sagan holding a sign reading "No Billboards in Space." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-carl-sagan-holding-a-no-billboards-in-space-sign/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This Carl Sagan Holding a ‘No Billboards in Space’ Sign? | 26 February 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11746 | Says the concealed carry bill would allow residents of certain states to "travel to your community and walk right into a school zone with a loaded weapon, no matter what local laws say." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec/07/brendan-boyle/no-gop-concealed-carry-bill-does-not-block-states-/ | The House passed a bill Dec. 6 that would make permits to carry a concealed weapon issued in one state valid in all other states, similarly to how driver’s licenses are recognized across state lines. Republicans attached the concealed carry measure to a bipartisan bill to strengthen the national background check system, causing House Democrats to sour on the legislative package. On the eve of the vote, one Democratic lawmaker warned the expansion of concealed-carry rights would prevent states from keeping guns away from schools. "There are 12 states that don’t require permits for carrying guns. Under #HR38, someone from one of those states could travel to your community and walk right into a school zone with a loaded weapon, no matter what local laws say," Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., tweeted Dec. 5, referring to House Resolution 38. "This bill is a nightmare. #StopCCR." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com As the House-passed bill moves to the Senate, we decided to look at whether Boyle’s claim about the effects on state gun laws was correct. It turns out his read on the bill is misleading. Concealed-carry reciprocity Historically, each state has determined its own scheme for regulating concealed carry, which led to the current patchwork of varying laws and standards across the country. Thirty-eight states require gun owners to obtain a state-issued permit before than can lawfully carry a concealed weapon in public. A dozen states — as Boyle noted — require no permit. Traditionally, states have decided for themselves whether to honor out-of-state permits, a legal concept known as "reciprocity." Under the broad strokes of the House-passed Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, having a concealed-carry permit issued by one state makes it legal to carry in any state. And according to Boyle, the Republican measure would supersede state and local laws concerning the carry of concealed weapons in school zones. But a close reading of the interplay between the House-passed bill and state gun laws shows that’s not the case. The Gun-Free School Zones Act Before discussing what Boyle gets wrong, it’s worth noting that his claim would have been more accurate if he’d taken aim at federal law, not state law. The federal Gun-Free School Zones Act generally prohibits concealed carry in a school zone, which is defined as a distance of 1,000 feet from the grounds of a public, parochial or private school. But the law makes an exception for people who hold a concealed carry permit from the state in which the school zone is located, according to David Kopel, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. So under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, a permit issued by State A would allow you to legally carry in a school zone located in State A, but not a school zone in State B, Kopel said. But the bill the House voted on says that people with concealed-carry permits aren’t subject to the restrictions in the Gun-Free School Zones Act. In other words, Kopel said, if you had a permit from State A, and carried a gun into a school zone in State B, you would face no penalty under the Gun-Free School Zones Act. So Boyle would have been accurate to say the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act overrides federal law concerning the carry of concealed weapons in a school zone. But his claim was about state and local laws. Bill does not supersede state law Boyle specifically said the bill would allow residents of one of the dozen states that allow permitless concealed carry to "walk right into a school zone with a loaded weapon, no matter what local laws say." A large majority of states prohibit non-school employees from carrying in schools, even with a concealed carry permit. So if Boyle were correct, the House bill would stand to cancel out a great deal of gun regulation at the state level. But the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act clearly states that it does not supersede state law — the opposite of Boyle's claim. Under the bill, permit-holders would still be subject to any state or local laws that restrict the carry of a gun in a school or a designated zone around it. The bill reads: "This section shall not be construed to supersede or limit the laws of any state that permit private persons or entities to prohibit or restrict the possession of concealed firearms on their property, or prohibit or restrict the possession of firearms on any state or local government property, installation, building, base, or park." So if the bill becomes law, states would still be free to ban the carry of guns in school zones — and the federal law would also yield to any future laws passed by the minority of states that now generally allow concealed-carry permit holders to carry in schools. "That’s precisely the opposite of Boyle’s point, which was local laws are irrelevant," said Adam Winkler, law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University who specializes in federal and state constitutional law, agreed that Boyle’s statement is misleading. "If the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act passes, someone from a permitless state could walk into a school zone without violating any federal law, since HR 38 basically rescinds the Gun Free School Zones Act," he said. "But the part about ‘no matter what local laws say’ isn’t right." Our ruling Boyle said the concealed carry bill would allow residents of certain states to "travel to your community and walk right into a school zone with a loaded weapon, no matter what local laws say." While the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act would override a federal law concerning the carry of concealed weapons in a school zone, Boyle is wrong about how the bill would affect state and local gun laws. Concealed carry permit-holders — and residents of the dozen states that allow permitless concealed carry — would still be subject to any state or local laws that prohibit or restrict the carry of a gun in a school or a designated zone around it. We rate this False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Brendan Boyle | null | null | null | 2017-12-07T16:42:28 | 2017-12-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-05092 | New Jersey's citizens are working at the highest rate in three years. | false | /new-jersey/statements/2012/jul/01/jennifer-beck/ennifer-beck-claims-new-jersey-residents-are-worki/ | Legislators armed themselves with job statistics before dueling over tax cut proposals in the state budget last week. Some Democrats argued that the responsible course of action was delaying any tax cuts considering the state’s high unemployment rate. Gov. Chris Christie wanted a 10 percent income tax cut. Democrats had offered two plans focused on reducing the property tax burden but passed a budget that tied any tax cut to the state meeting Christie’s revenue projections. State Sen. Jennifer Beck, a Republican from Monmouth County, pointed to other labor data to show New Jersey’s economy is starting to recover. "New Jersey's citizens are working at the highest rate in three years. That's good news," she said in her June 25 speech on the state Senate floor. "We have more businesses expanding their footprint in this state. We've seen almost $8 billion in public-private investment over the last two and a half years. All of those are good signs and today in delivering this budget without a tax cut I think we’re giving a kick in the shins to our citizens because we have the revenue now to be able to deliver that relief and it should be our foremost and top priority." PolitiFact New Jersey checked Beck’s claim that residents are "working at the highest rate in three years." Beck cited labor data showing that roughly 4.17 million New Jersey residents were employed in May. "The last time that New Jersey had this many people employed was in February of 2009, more than 3 years ago," Beck said in an e-mail. PolitiFact New Jersey confirmed that’s accurate. But raw numbers are not a rate. Joseph Seneca, a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, agreed that the number of New Jerseyans working is the highest in three years, but said "the confusion would be the word rate." "Usually a rate is expressed per unit of something," Seneca said, as in per thousand or per unit of time. And when comparing the number of employed people to the labor force, the statistics tell a different story. The employment rate is essentially the opposite of the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is calculated by taking the number of people who are unemployed but looking for work and dividing it by the labor force. The labor force includes employed people and people who are unemployed but looking for work. People who are unemployed but aren’t looking for work are not included in the labor force. New Jersey’s unemployment rate -- and therefore the employment rate -- has fluctuated some in the past three years, but overall has remained relatively even. In May of 2009 the unemployment rate was 8.9 percent and the employment rate was about 91 percent. Since then both rates have varied, but in May of this year, the unemployment rate was 9.2 percent and the employment rate was 90.8 percent. So, as a rate, fewer New Jerseyans are working now than three years ago. In response, Beck pointed to the rate of employment compared to the total state population, but that includes individuals who are younger than 16, as well as people who are institutionalized and active duty service members. Excluding those groups of individuals, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does, about 61.4 percent of New Jersey’s population was employed in May 2009. In May 2012, roughly 60 percent of the population was employed. "What is unassailably true is that the employment level is the highest in 3 years. It is my belief that New Jersey is moving in the right direction," Beck said. Our ruling Beck said that "New Jersey's citizens are working at the highest rate in three years." To support her claim, Beck pointed to the number of employed residents, which is at the highest level since more than three years ago. But Beck said rate and the percent of employed residents ticked down slightly from May 2009 to May 2012. We rate this statement False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Jennifer Beck | null | null | null | 2012-07-01T07:30:00 | 2012-06-25 | ['None'] |
snes-01410 | The yolks of flamingo eggs are a bright pink color. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flamingo-egg-yolks-are-pink/ | null | Critter Country | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Are Flamingo Egg Yolks Pink? | 18 July 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03633 | A court ruling means priests in Louisiana don't have to report sexual abuse. | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/louisiana-priests-dont-have-to-report-sexual-abuse/ | null | Crime | null | Bethania Palma | null | Louisiana Priests Don’t Have to Report Sexual Abuse? | 3 November 2016 | null | ['Louisiana'] |
pomt-11275 | I am still waiting for someone to produce pieces of the alleged plane that caused the Twin Towers to collapse. | pants on fire! | /north-carolina/statements/2018/apr/25/lawana-mayfield/charlotte-city-councilor-pieces-911-planes-havent-/ | Never mind that TV stations aired live footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center on 9/11. Or that there are thousands of witnesses who also saw the planes strike the Twin Towers. Or that Osama Bin Laden took credit for the attack. LaWana Mayfield, a Democratic Charlotte city councilwoman, is apparently unconvinced that planes struck the towers and caused them to collapse. In fact, she’s skeptical that pieces of the plane exist at all. On Facebook, Mayfield recently posted a link to an obscure website promoting the idea that the towers in New York City may have fallen on Sept. 11, 2001, for some reason other than being struck by airplanes. "I am still waiting for someone to produce pieces of the alleged plane that opened the doors for US Citizens to loose all privacy rights (from the conspiracy theorist in me)," she posted. Mayfield later apologized for posting comments that caused "hurt and pain," but has declined to acknowledge that planes were responsible for the collapse of the Twin Towers. She appeared on the WCNC show "Flashpoint" to discuss the post. When asked directly about the post – "Do you believe the planes took down those towers?" – Mayfield dodged the question. "What I believe is that we lost Americans during this event. What I believe is that after this event, our nation identified a segment of our community and said this community is now terrorists. And from that moment, we have been saying 'terrorists, terrorists, terrorists,' " Mayfield said. But, she added, "white Americans who have committed mass killings since that time" were not called "terrorists." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com It’s unclear what, exactly, Mayfield believes happened on 9/11. She didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. When reached by phone Wednesday, Mayfield said the email likely went into a folder she created for 9/11-related emails and that she hadn’t seen it. She then declined to comment on her Facebook post, saying she was walking into a meeting. The "three-day news cycle" has passed, Mayfield said, adding "I’m trying to tackle this housing crisis." It is clear, however, that planes hit the Twin Towers and caused them to collapse. Let’s break this down as simply as possible. The plane There are eyewitnesses who saw the planes hit the towers. News cameras also captured footage of the second plane hitting the south tower. Large pieces of the airplanes were found around Ground Zero, as documented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2002. A piece – part of a plane wing – was found nearby in 2013. CNN uploaded video of the wing removal. A fragment of one of the planes is on display at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York. Researchers at Popular Mechanics Magazine published a book debunking theories that the planes weren’t actually planes, but missiles or something else. The collapse Conspiracy theorists have argued that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, so the Twin Towers couldn’t have fallen over due to the impact of a plane alone. But the fuel doesn’t need to melt the beams in order to damage their structural integrity. Furthermore, the World Trade Center was built with a load-bearing core in its center (as opposed to concrete columns). But that center, the Washington Post pointed out, was surrounded by a "thin exterior shell — a density of eight to nine pounds per cubic foot. That’s lighter than balsa wood." The Facebook post Mayfield paired her comments about 9/11 with a link to an obscure website, AwarenessAct.com. The site boasts about a feature in the July-August 2016 issue of Europhysics News magazine examining the likelihood that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of a controlled demolition. According to fact-checking website Snopes.com, the article was written by "a group of scientists who have long been involved with the promotion of 9/11 conspiracy theories." EDP Sciences, which produces Europhysics News, later released a statement on Twitter that downplayed the scientific legitimacy of the article. "EDP Sciences follows the most rigorous peer review standards for its journals of which [Europhysics News] is not one," the statement reads. "As a magazine, the editorial policy of EPN is to publish news and views, which are sometimes controversial. EDP Sciences recognizes that the article discusses some speculative and controversial issues," the statement continues. "However EPN and EDP Sciences believe that the best (and the most scientific) way to settle such issues is to publish them and have an open discussion with all due arguments in which the truth will finally emerge." Our ruling Mayfield described the planes that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 as "alleged" planes and said pieces of the planes had yet to be revealed to the public. Eyewitness accounts, video, plane debris and most credible science points to the fact that airplanes struck the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, causing them to collapse. We rate Mayfield’s claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | LaWana Mayfield | null | null | null | 2018-04-25T17:26:03 | 2018-04-16 | ['World_Trade_Center'] |
snes-06363 | A list circulating online contains 50 false statements by President Barack Obama | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obamas-50-lies/ | null | Politicians | null | David Mikkelson | null | Obama’s 50 Lies / Obama Not Exactly | 8 July 2009 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05087 | Singer James Hetfield left the band Metallica and has announced a new country music album. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/metallica-james-hatfield-country/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Dan Evon | null | Metallica Singer James Hetfield Isn’t ‘Going Country’ | 10 March 2016 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01479 | George Clooney, Amal Demanded Tables Near Them At Restaurant Be Vacated? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/george-clooney-amal-restaurant-demands/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | George Clooney, Amal Demanded Tables Near Them At Restaurant Be Vacated? | 2:21 pm, February 28, 2018 | null | ['George_Clooney'] |
pomt-02976 | Half of all CEOs say that the shutdown and the threat of shutdown set back their plans to hire over the next six months. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/21/barack-obama/half-all-ceos-say-shutdown-hiring-setback-six-mont/ | After a Senate deal brought the 16-day government shutdown to a close, President Barack Obama wanted to make sure the impact of narrowly avoiding a default wasn’t lost on the nation. "These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy," he said in a public address Thursday. As proof, he offered up specific claims including, "Half of all CEOs say that the shutdown and the threat of shutdown set back their plans to hire over the next six months." PolitiFact wanted to know whether Obama’s CEO statistic was accurate. The White House pointed us to a recent Business Roundtable survey. "Fifty percent of responding CEOs indicated that the ongoing disagreement in Washington over the 2014 budget and the debt ceiling is having a negative impact on their plans for hiring additional employees over the next six months," the report reads. On its face, that’s in line with what Obama said, but we wanted to see how Business Roundtable acquired their results. They would not disclose their exact question wording to us. Their report notes, "Responses were received from 134 member CEOs, 63 percent of the total Business Roundtable membership." Business Roundtable’s membership tends to be larger companies. Spokeswoman Amanda DeBard told us CEOs are invited based on revenue, industry and market capitalization, so it’s safe to say the poll responses don’t reflect a random sample of U.S. businesses. Since Obama often speaks to the Business Roundtable, we wanted to see what his relationship with the group was like. University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis, who specializes in lobbying, said there’s not much of a connection. "Many of them have long-term relationships with government (simply because of their size and the government’s size), but probably only a handful have any kind of even semi-close relationship with Obama," he said. We ran the poll results by another business group, the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Senior policy analyst Holly Wade said she saw a similar sentiment among the smaller business owners that the federation represents. "In September, there were more small business owners that were feeling pessimistic about business conditions six months out," she said. There wasn’t much opinion voiced about delaying employment specifically, though. But Wade said that could be because small businesses were already hiring less during the economic recovery compared to bigger corporations. Why would CEOs want to delay hiring? With another possible debt ceiling default looming Feb. 7, University of Maryland finance professor David Kass said it’s likely that a budget deal will lead to tighter fiscal policy, which would slow down the economy and cause CEOs to put off hiring decisions for a few months. Another factor that would contribute to CEO anxiety is consumer behavior. While day-to-day spending probably won’t change post-shutdown, consumers will likely postpone higher ticket purchases, like homes and cars. "On the demand side, there’s uncertainty on the consumers’ part, which in turn will have an impact on CEOs," Kass said. "They’re trying to predict their future sales and what the environment will look like. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone." In any case, Obama is trying to communicate that the shutdown had a significant financial impact on the nation, and he’s not wrong there. Independent forecasts agree that the shutdown was a setback for the U.S. economy, though they differ on exact figures. Our ruling Obama said 50 percent of CEOs are delaying hiring due to the shutdown, which accurately cites the results of a poll sponsored by the Business Roundtable. The survey’s limited sampling, though, means the responses aren’t necessarily representative of all U.S. businesses. But the idea that the shutdown affects how businesses think about hiring is more broadly applicable. Experts said it’s reasonable that CEOs would be hesitant to hire, given that uncertainty about government fiscal policy can affect consumer confidence. We rate Obama's claim Mostly True | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2013-10-21T16:22:06 | 2013-10-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-06380 | Says Measure 3-386 will cost a fortune for elections while Measure 3-388 will cost less. | false | /oregon/statements/2011/nov/02/ann-lininger/will-countywide-vote-urban-renewal-cost-taxpayers-/ | Voters love to save money. They also probably don’t want to spend "a fortune" on unnecessary elections. These are precisely the points being made by supporters of a Clackamas County board-backed measure on the Nov. 8 ballot. A campaign mailer in favor of Measure 3-388 urges voters to say no to county Measure 3-386, a competing proposal that would require a county-wide vote on future urban renewal project areas. "There are two measures on the ballot having to do with Urban Renewal. In one way they are the same: both require a vote of the people before any Urban Renewal Area can be established in unincorporated Clackamas County. But there are two very important differences:" The mailer says that 3-386 "Costs MORE money. An Urban Renewal Area affecting only a few hundred people would trigger a county-wide election covering over 200,000 voters, costing taxpayers a fortune." The mailer also urges a yes vote on Measure 3-388, which would require approval from a smaller number of voters who live in a proposed urban renewal district. This is the proposal backed by the Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners. The mailer says this measure "Costs LESS money. Smaller election = less cost." You guessed our burning question: Does the county-wide measure cost "a fortune" while smaller elections cost less? (A similar mailer went out just this week.) Measure 3-386 was put on the ballot by citizen petitioners who don’t like the county board approving new urban renewal areas without a county vote. If this measure passes, any new plan or substantial change to an existing plan would need to be approved by a majority of county voters in a primary or general election. In other words, commissioners would have two opportunities every two years. The competing measure put forth by the county board, Measure 3-388, would send the issue only to voters who live in a proposed or existing district. So there would be fewer voters voting, but this election could happen during one of four authorized elections a year. That’s eight opportunities every two years. At first blush, it sounds as if a countywide election would be just as cost effective. After all, how much could it cost to add a question to a general or primary election ballot that needs to go out anyway so people can vote on federal and state offices? County elections manager Steve Kindred says that an urban renewal question on a general election ballot wouldn’t cost more if it goes to more voters. The ballots would be the same size whether the question goes to 200,000 voters or 1,000 voters. The Voters’ Pamphlet is not zoned. Turnout would be high anyway in a general election so the issue probably wouldn’t boost processing costs. On the other hand, an off-year election strictly for an urban renewal question, no matter how small the voting pool, could cost an extra $10,000. We contacted Ann Lininger, a Clackamas County commissioner serving as one of the point people on the more limited proposal. She said the county-wide measure would cost more because it would require more notice and explanation to more voters who live in disparate parts of the county. There is a requirement in the county-wide measure that the county send notice to voters before an election. The notice must explain that there is an urban renewal measure on the ballot; that it would take away from other public services for x number of years; that the maximum amount of indebtedness would be x dollars; and that the maximum amount of interest would be x amount. The measure allows the county to include that information in the 500-word explanatory statement required by state law. But Lininger said that option is not feasible, given the complexity of a development plan and the need to make sure voters understand the issue. So the county would have to spend at least $45,000 on mailers, she said, and more on staff time for public meetings. "You would want to have the opportunity to make a case in the explanatory statement," she said. But Beaverton officials had no problem including that same information in their Voters’ Pamphlet statement for Measure 34-192, which proposes a new urban renewal area. Eric Winters, the attorney who drafted the citizen-approved measure in Clackamas County, said the Beaverton explanatory statement pretty much meets his test. And there was room to explain the plan. Measure 3-386 may very well cost more than 3-388 in the end, if you factor in all the time and resources commissioners and staff would need to promote an urban renewal measure or make a significant change to one. But that’s campaigning, not just providing basic information or holding an election. The statement in the mailer zeroes in on election costs. We find that the proponents of the smaller election option have not proved their case that their version would cost less or that a countywide election would cost a fortune. In fact, special elections could cost more. The statement is not accurate. We rate it False. Return to OregonLive to comment on this ruling. | null | Ann Lininger | null | null | null | 2011-11-02T06:00:00 | 2011-10-22 | ['None'] |
pomt-06973 | State agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking. | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2011/jul/14/kris-jordan/state-sen-kris-jordan-says-fracking-hasnt-contamin/ | As public debate across the country has bubbled up in recent months over environmental concerns related to hydraulic fracturing — or fracking as it’s becoming widely known — proponents of oil and gas drilling have come rushing to its defense. The process involves pumping millions of gallons chemical-laced water and sand deep underground into horizontal wells under high pressure to crack open shale, enabling natural gas extraction. On June 15, 2011, state Sen. Kris Jordan, a Delaware Republican, defended the process in a floor speech on behalf of legislation that would throw open state parkland to oil and gas drilling. During his speech, Jordan portrayed the growing concerns of the public — which have been fanned by "Gasland," a controversial documentary on the environmental issues related to the fracking process — as overblown as he pointed to a long track record of safe fracking in Ohio. "State agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking," Jordan said. With drilling likely coming soon to Eastern Ohio where the Utica and Marcellus shale formations await possible exploration, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check out Jordan’s claim. We started with Jordan, who stood by his statement. "From what I understand, none of the cases has come from fracking itself being involved in contaminating any water," said Jordan. "Any problems that have happened have been well construction issues." Jordan said he consulted with several people in Ohio’s oil and gas industry including Tom Stewart, a top official with the Ohio Oil and Gas Association for his information. Stewart and other oil and gas supporters directed us to several recent statements from state and federal EPA officials such as one made recently by Lisa Jackson, President Barack Obama’s top federal Environmental Protection Agency administrator. During a House committee hearing, Jackson said evidence was limited on whether hydraulic fracturing can affect water tables and aquifers. "There is evidence it can certainly affect them. I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself impacted water although there are investigations ongoing," she told lawmakers. The U.S. EPA began a study in January 2011 of possible environmental problems caused by fracking. The first findings from that study aren’t expected until late 2012. ODNR officials also said they haven’t seen water contamination from fracking in Ohio. "ODNR’s Oil and Gas Program has not identified any instances of groundwater contamination related to hydraulic fracturing since the technology was first used here in the early 1950s," ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans said in an email. When considering these statements, however, it’s important to understand exactly what they are saying—and also what they are not saying. What they are saying is that there are no documented cases of groundwater contamination directly from the process of pumping the chemical-laced water and sand into the ground to break the rock apart. They are not talking about the actual drilling of the hole that is fracked or the construction of the drilling well that is used for the fracking process. "There is definitely a lot of misinformation out there," said Hetzel-Evans. "I don’t think the general public understands that the drilling process isn’t fracking." And while there aren’t any groundwater problems due directly to fracking in Ohio, the drilling of wells to prepare for the fracking process has lead to water contamination in at least one case in Ohio. Meanwhile, the first study of its kind in the country is turning up similar evidence. In December 2007, a home exploded in a residential neighborhood in Bainbridge Township in Geauga County, Ohio. A panel assembled by ODNR ultimately found that a poorly-constructed well casing — think of it as a cement seal around the drill hole -- allowed gas to migrate upwards along the edge of the casing and up the pipe. Ultimately, this gas seeped into the home in Bainbridge and caused the explosion. Meanwhile, there is new evidence outside of Ohio that poorly constructed drilling wells used for fracking are leading to problems with groundwater. Duke University researchers found that methane levels were 17 times higher in water wells within one kilometer of hydraulic fracking sites in New York and Pennsylvania than in water wells farther away. The methane levels in those wells showed the same characteristics as methane produced from fracking, as opposed to naturally-occurring methane. Robert Jackson, the professor of environmental sciences who headed up the research, said that the "methane migration" was likely caused by problems with the casing around the drill hole rather than from the methane migrating thousands of feet through the rock from the fracking zone. But he wonders whether the new high-pressure water treatment used in fracking could be the cause. "What I haven’t seen anyone address is whether hydraulic fracturing makes it more likely to cause well casings to leak," he said. "It may be the high pressure involved in fracking makes leaks more common and bigger." Meanwhile, the gas exploration boom in Pennsylvania has begun turning up evidence that the shale gas exploration involving the fracking process could be contaminating groundwater supplies with methane. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection ordered Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to provide and maintain potable water and gas mitigation for residents in Dimock, Pa., who sued over wells polluted in 2009 with methane gas and other contaminants. Another group, from Lenox Township, Pa., sued Houston-driller Southwestern Energy Co. in 2010 claiming their wells were contaminated with fracking fluids. Both suits are tied up in court. So where does that leave Jordan’s claim that "state agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking." That statement squares with ODNR’s records. But regulators in Ohio have linked water contamination problems in at least one incident to other aspects of drilling such as the construction of the drilling wells. That’s additional information that provides clarification. On the Truth-O-Meter, Jordan’s statement grades out at Mostly True. | null | Kris Jordan | null | null | null | 2011-07-14T06:00:00 | 2011-06-15 | ['None'] |
pomt-11459 | Since 1990, production of metals in the U.S. has held roughly constant, but the number of people employed in the industry has fallen steadily. | true | /punditfact/statements/2018/mar/08/noah-smith/has-automation-driven-job-losses-steel-industry/ | As President Donald Trump weighed imposing tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, some commentators have warned that this would be a misguided approach. Noah Smith, a columnist for Bloomberg View and a former finance professor, wrote a column in which he noted, among other things, that a crucial issue facing metals-producing industries isn’t foreign competition — it’s automation. Tariffs, Smith wrote, won’t "bring back good jobs at steel and aluminum factories. Since 1990, production of metals in the U.S. has held roughly constant, but the number of people employed in the industry has fallen steadily." That’s due to technological improvements, he wrote: "Productivity has improved, even as demand has stayed more or less constant. Mathematically, that means fewer jobs for steel and aluminum workers. Tariffs won’t change that equation. If anything, by hurting downstream industries like car and equipment manufacturers, the new import taxes will probably kill more factory jobs than they save." We can’t predict what will happen in the future, but we wondered whether Smith is right about the trend lines for production and employment in the American metals-producing sector since 1990. And when we took a closer look, we found that he’s on target. We found data for employment in the primary metals-producing sector, which incorporates five subcategories: iron and steel mills, steel product manufacturing from purchased steel, aluminum production and processing, production and processing of metals other than iron and aluminum, and foundries. Employment levels in this sector have declined reasonably steadily since 1990, despite a period of stable employment during the late 1990s, a sharp but temporary fall during the Great Recession, and a modest uptick over the past year or two in which metals employment growth has outpaced that of the overall economy, said Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site Indeed.com. Overall, since 1990, employment has declined by about 42 percent. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com At the same time, production in primary metals has remained roughly the same since 1990 except for the Great Recession. For most of that period, production has ranged between 90 percent and 110 percent of the benchmark level (the amount produced in 2012): See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com If you put these two statistics together, the overall pattern becomes clear: As production stays roughly the same and as fewer workers make it happen, productivity rises over time. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com The idea that steel in particular has experienced a productivity revolution due to technology "is the same story I have been telling since the early 1990s," said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. "The basic story is that one person can produce a lot more metal today than he or she could produce" a few decades ago. Burtless said he has a brother who’s been working in the coke oven of a steel plant since the mid 1970s and who has "seen first-hand the dramatic reduction in person-power needed to keep integrated steel mills running at full capacity" — as well as improvements in quality. Michael J. Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, agreed that Smith’s analysis is on target. "I would agree that the most likely cause of the productivity gains are technology, though I would interpret technology broadly to include not just machinery but the way that factories organize production, such as internal logistics and the reduction of redundant operations that might be enabled by technology," Hicks said. And J. Bradford Jensen, a professor of international business at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, added that "imports did have something to do with the loss of employment in steel and aluminum, but the more important factor is technological change and productivity growth," he said. "Tariffs won't change that, much like relaxing regulations on coal and pollution will not bring back many coal-mining jobs," he said. Our ruling Smith wrote, "Since 1990, production of metals in the U.S. has held roughly constant, but the number of people employed in the industry has fallen steadily." His numbers are solid, and experts agree that automation has done significant harm to employment levels in the metal industry. We rate the statement True. See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com | null | Noah Smith | null | null | null | 2018-03-08T11:58:40 | 2018-03-07 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-13980 | Says Bernie Sanders "wins California landslide, But ⅔ of his votes aren’t counted." | pants on fire! | /california/statements/2016/jun/10/blog-posting/pants-fire-viral-rumor-bernie-sanders-won-californ/ | Polls showed Californians ‘Feeling the Bern,’ shortly before the state’s June 7 primary. Bernie Sanders had pulled even or surged slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race after barnstorming from Chico to Chula Vista. But early results on Election Day showed Clinton crushing Sanders by more than 20 percentage points. That gap closed steadily as officials tallied more votes (to 12.6 points as of midafternoon June 10, 2016), but remained large enough for media outlets and professional pollsters to declare Clinton the winner. Still, there are those who point to millions of uncounted ballots in the state, and say Sanders was robbed. Justice Gazette, a group that describes itself as a counter to traditional media, is one of them. "Bernie Sanders Wins California Landslide But ⅔ of his Votes Aren’t Counted," the Justice Gazette wrote in an eye-popping headline on June 7. The article added: "In view of the information from polling place workers about Sanders winning by more than a 2 to 1 margin and in view of the removal of 2/3 or more of his votes from the official results, the Justice Gazette declares Bernie Sanders the landslide winner of the 2016 California Primary Election." The Gazette article has been shared widely on Facebook and shows up prominently on web searches about Bernie Sanders and the California primary. Screen shot of Justice Gazette June 7, 2016 headline and article There’s no doubt Sanders ran a strong race in California. But the Gazette’s claim seemed outlandish and ripe for a fact check. Our research Three days after the election, Clinton had more than 2 million votes to Sanders’ nearly 1.6 million, for a lead of about 450,000 votes, according to the California Secretary of State’s website. If there’s any landslide victory, at this point, it’s by Clinton. Of course, the results are not official, as nearly 2.6 million ballots remained unprocessed as of Thursday, June 9, also according to the California Secretary of State. Most are expected to include votes in the Democratic presidential primary. Reports surfaced on Election Day about broken voting machines, incomplete voter rolls and confusion among unaffiliated voters over how to obtain a Democratic ballot. Many voters received provisional ballots that were not immediately counted. Once they are, pollsters expect the gap to narrow, but not close. Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, told PolitiFact California he does not think Clinton’s lead is in jeopardy. Clinton’s lead "might go down into the single digits, but it’s still going to be a Clinton win," DiCamillo said. The Field Poll surveyed voters who had yet to cast ballots shortly before Election Day and found Sanders had the edge, but only by one percentage point. DiCamillo estimated Sanders would have to win the remaining votes by roughly a 2 to 1 margin to overtake Clinton. "You’re smoking something if you think that’s going to happen," he added. Of the Justice Gazette claim of two-thirds of Sanders’ votes being uncounted, DiCamillo said "nobody can claim to know that." Neither during his speech in Santa Monica on election night, nor since, has Sanders protested the California results. A representative for the Sanders campaign said it had no affiliation with the Justice Gazette story. "No one’s questioning the fundamental integrity of the election," Ben Tulchin, Sanders’ national pollster, told PolitiFact California, in an interview on June 10, 2016. Tulchin added that the campaign believes California can do more to make it easier for independents to vote in a Democratic primary. The Sanders pollster said the campaign expects the California "race to close substantially," perhaps "to low single digits," once all the votes are counted. As for overtaking Clinton’s lead, Tulchin said "there’s a small chance. But it would be highly unlikely." A representative for the Gazette could not be reached. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a rally Tuesday, June 7, 2016, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher) Our ruling After early California primary results showed a big Clinton lead over Sanders, the Justice Gazette posted the headline on June 7: "Bernie Sanders Wins California But ⅔ of his Votes Aren’t Counted." Three days later, Clinton continues to lead Sanders by about 450,000. There are more than two million uncounted votes. But based on polling shortly before the race, showing Sanders even or slightly ahead with voters who had yet to cast ballots, professional pollsters and news outlets say Clinton’s lead could shrink somewhat but is not in danger. Sanders would have to win the remaining votes by a huge margin, something no polls showed in advance of Election Day. There is evidence that California’s complicated voting rules led to problems. That may have prevented some Sanders supporters from voting for him and, for that matter, some Clinton supporters from voting for her. But there’s no proof to back up the outlandish claim that Sanders won California or that two-thirds of his votes were not counted. We rate the Gazette’s claim Pants On Fire. PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2016-06-10T15:28:58 | 2016-06-07 | ['California', 'Bernie_Sanders'] |
tron-00755 | Political Comments by Comedian Don Rickles | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/don-rickles-comments/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Political Comments by Comedian Don Rickles | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04142 | The problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are small business owners. | false | /ohio/statements/2013/jan/03/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-half-wealthiest-americans-are-sm/ | As President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner dickered over how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the issue of who might pay more in taxes was a persistent stumbling block. The White House said there could be no deficit deal unless Republicans agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest households and proposed increasing rates on incomes greater than $250,000 a year for married couples ($200,000 for individuals). Republicans wanted to focus the talks on spending and entitlements. Ultimately a deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was approved. It allowed rates to rise on incomes above $450,000 for married couples. But during the negotiating, Boehner balked at increasing the maximum 35 percent tax rate on high-income taxpayers at all because of the effects for small business. "The problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are small business owners," Boehner said in a news conference. "Raising tax rates will slow down our ability to create the jobs that everyone says they want." PolitiFact has examined a similar claim Boehner made about small business owners before, and rated it False. FactCheck.org also has looked at the issue, calling it "an incorrect talking point" and a "bogus claim." But we wondered about current figures behind the claim, and several readers asked about its accuracy. We asked Boehner's office how he backed up the statement. His staff said the tax increases would hit half of all small business income, and they pointed us to a January 2012 report from the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The council's report states: "About half of business income now accrues to pass-through entities such as S corporations and partnerships; although the income of such pass-through entities is subject to tax at the individual level, it is excluded from the corporate tax." In other words, Boehner's staff said, many small businesses file their taxes as individuals, not corporations, and 53 percent of all business income is taxed through the individual code. Boehner's staff also cited a report by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress which said the tax hikes would affect roughly 940,000 small business owners. It, too, found that 53 percent of business income would be reported on tax returns in the top brackets on which Obama would raise taxes. That does show that some small business owners would see taxes go up. But it falls short of supporting Boehner's statement. While the JCT report found that 53 percent of business income would be reported in the top two tax brackets, that is not at all the same as saying that half of the earners are being taxed at that rate. In fact, the JCT estimated that just 3.5 percent of taxpayers with business income in 2013 would fall in the tax brackets that would rise under Obama's proposal. And the JCT said its figures "do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered 'small.' For example, in 2005, 12,862 S corporations and 6,658 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million." S corporations and partnerships are "pass-through" businesses in which profits pass from the business to individual shareholders for tax purposes. They include sole proprietorships and such partnerships as big law firms and financial funds. Goldman Sachs was classified as a partnership before it went public in 1999. So what is a small business? The Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department issued a study in 2011 that recognized the need for a clear definition. The authors acknowledge that defining a small business is a matter of setting some subjective parameters. The ones they set include a limit of $10 million in income or deductions to be counted as "small," and a minimum labor deduction of $10,000 to distinguish businesses that don’t have any employees. Other tests they applied excluded businesses on the very low end of the scale, such as those with $4,600 or less net annual income. They defined an "owner" as someone who gets at least one-fourth of income from a small business. Not surprisingly, by narrowing the definition, far fewer tax filers qualified as small businesses. The analysis found that: Only one-fifth of small businesses are employers, using their definition. Only 8 percent of small-business owners have income of $200,000 or more. So 92 percent of small-business owners wouldn’t have been affected by Obama’s proposal. Slightly more than half of small businesses reported total income of less than $50,000, and half of those businesses reported a tax loss for the year. Only 0.5 percent of small businesses reported a profit in excess of $1 million. For those businesses, investment and rental income comprised roughly half of their reported income. Of the taxpayers in the top two brackets that would be increased, only 11 percent reported any small-business income, and only 9 percent qualify as small business owners. Boehner's statement was: "The problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are small business owners." That is wrong on two points -- the "half" and the "small business owners." Of the business income reported on tax returns, half of it would have been taxed at the top two rates, the Joint Committee on Taxation found. But that doesn’t mean half of the earners are paying those rates. And it’s incorrect to call small business owners and millionaires who would see a tax increase one and the same. For top earners who report business income, it is often just a fraction of their total income. They are not the folks operating small manufacturing plants or neighborhood pizza parlors. In fact, only 0.5 percent of small businesses make that kind of money. More often, small businesses are small in every sense -- most have incomes of less than $50,000 and almost all have profits of less than $1 million -- and they wouldn’t be affected by the millionaires tax. Boehner’s statement is not accurate. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates False. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2013-01-03T06:00:00 | 2012-11-09 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-10256 | McCain "still thinks it's okay when women don't earn equal pay for equal work." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/27/hillary-clinton/no-hes-just-not-okay-with-one-bill/ | Democrats continue trying to drive a wedge between the Republican presidential candidate and female voters, and the equal-pay issue continues to be a theme. The party's most prominent woman, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, took her turn during her much-anticipated convention speech. Sen. John McCain, she said, "still thinks it's okay when women don't earn equal pay for equal work." That's flatly contradicted by statements McCain has made. On April 23 he said he is "all in favor of pay equity for women," then said in July, "I'm committed to making sure that there's equal pay for equal work." So how can Clinton argue the opposite? The answer lies in a Senate vote earlier this year on an issue involving Lilly Ledbetter, a former manager at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Alabama. Ledbetter discovered that she was being paid less than her male counterparts and sued for discrimination. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, and Ledbetter lost. The majority said a 180-day statute of limitations in the law had started from the first instance of discrimination, meaning that her suit about more than a decade of discrimination was untimely. Ledbetter became a folk heroine among Democrats (and spoke at the Democratic National Convention). Democrats in Congress responded quickly to the Supreme Court decision, putting together a bill that would allow employers to be sued for every paycheck stemming from a discriminatory pay system, not the discriminatory decision itself. The bill passed the House, and Senate Democrats tried to schedule a vote to pass it there, too. Under Senate rules, 60 votes were needed to consider the bill, and just 56 voted yes on April 23. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Clinton all voted yes. McCain missed the vote, which was not unusual during his presidential campaign. He later said he would have voted no. McCain was pressed further on the issue – by a 14-year-old girl who quizzed him at a town hall meeting a few weeks later. Here's what McCain said then: "I don't believe that this would do anything to help the rights of women except maybe help trial lawyers and others in that profession." It's a stretch for Clinton to argue that McCain thinks it's acceptable for women not to get equal pay for equal work, when McCain has said the exact opposite. He doesn't support a specific piece of legislation that could make wage-discrimination suits more painful to employers. It's an important bill, it's the most significant equal-pay issue under consideration right now and there's probably a fair way to phrase this attack and make it stick. But opposing that bill is not the same as thinking it's okay if women don't get equal pay for equal work, so we rate the claim False. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2008-08-27T00:00:00 | 2008-08-26 | ['None'] |
tron-03505 | Alabama Football Team Visits White House, Prays for Trump | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/alabama-football-team-white-house-prays/ | null | sports | null | null | ['donald trump', 'media', 'sports', 'white house'] | Alabama Football Team Visits White House, Prays for Trump | May 7, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04748 | A Gallup report recently said that nearly 50 percent of small business owners aren't hiring because of what they call ‘regulatory uncertainty.’ | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/29/sher-valenzuela/sher-valenzuela-says-regulation-big-factor-holding/ | At the Republican National Convention, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor of Delaware picked up a frequent complaint of Republicans -- that government regulation is hampering hiring by businesses, particularly small businesses. "A Gallup report recently said that nearly 50 percent of small business owners aren't hiring because of what they call ‘regulatory uncertainty," Valenzuela said. We wondered whether that was correct. We found a survey conducted by Gallup in January 2012 that addresses this point -- the Wells Fargo Small Business Survey, which interviewed 600 small business owners by phone. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Valenzuela can find some support for her comment in the poll results. One of the questions asked was, "Why are you not looking for new employees? For each of the following, please indicate if it is a reason why you are not looking to hire." When offered the option, "Worried about new government regulations," 46 percent of business owners surveyed said yes. That’s fairly close to half. However, that leaves out some important context. For starters, 53 percent -- a majority -- said they did not consider government regulations to be a barrier to future hiring. At least as important, government regulation ranked pretty far down the list of factors offered. Of the eight factors suggested (not counting "other"), concern about government regulations ranked sixth. More popular answers were "don't need any additional employees at this time" (76 percent), "worried revenues or sales won't justify adding more employees" (71 percent), "worried about the current status of the U.S. economy" (66 percent), "worried about cash flow or ability to make payroll" (53 percent) and "worried about the potential cost of health care" (48 percent). In its analysis of the survey data, Gallup took a middle-of-the-road analysis. "The debate over why U.S. small-business owners aren't hiring more aggressively tends to hinge on whether overall business conditions, including a lack of growth and revenue, are the primary culprit as opposed to the potential cost of healthcare and government regulations," Gallup wrote. "Apparently, both sides of the debate are correct. "Small-business owners hire when they need to respond to increased business activity and have the opportunity to grow. Although some small businesses in selected industries and markets have been growing, the weak economy of the past four years has limited overall small-business growth. ... "Given this difficult operating environment, it is not surprising that many small-business owners also worry about potential new health care costs and government regulations. While small businesses are always finding ways to deal with their changing operating environment, including government regulations and health care, these added challenges can be seen as exacerbating an already uncertain and difficult situation. In turn, they become additional reasons to hold back on hiring." Our rating Valenzuela is close to correct when she says that "a Gallup report recently said nearly 50 percent of small businesses owners aren't hiring because of what they call ‘regulatory uncertainty.’" (It’s a bit short of 50 percent, and it was a survey from nine months ago.) However, this claim leaves out some important context. Five other factors ranked higher on a list of eight factors that might be impeding hiring. Essentially, Valenzuela cherry-picked one of the factors to make her point, which suggested that it was the only, or main, reason for the lack of hiring. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Sher Valenzuela | null | null | null | 2012-08-29T15:46:40 | 2012-08-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-00852 | Says "Jeb Bush has released 10 percent of his emails." | false | /punditfact/statements/2015/mar/18/james-carville/jeb-bush-revealed-much-more-10-his-emails-governor/ | Hillary Clinton might be in a bit of hot water for using a private email account for official business as secretary of state, but Democrats eagerly point to similar email issues with presumptive Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. As governor of Florida, Bush burnished his tech and public access credentials by using a personal email account to supplement the one the state provided. Prior to Clinton’s troubles, Bush set up a special website for the public to browse any of those emails that dealt with official business. Like Clinton, Bush himself determined which ones were private and which would be made public, but the move was largely seen as a way to mark Bush as a candidate who walks the walk when it comes to transparency. This led Democratic activist James Carville to challenge how transparent Bush really is. "Jeb Bush has released 10 percent of his emails," Carville said on ABC’s This Week, March 15, 2015. "He had a private email server. He destroyed his emails." We decided to check Carville’s numbers. Carville’s assistant, Kees Nordin, gave PunditFact the underlying math. "The fact is that of Jeb Bush's 3 million emails (public and private) he's only released 275,000 or just under 10 percent," Nordin said. According to Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell, Bush posted nearly 280,000 emails from his personal email account on a website he set up, jebbushemails.com. Back in 2007, Bush gave an off-the-cuff estimate that during his eight years in office he received about 550,000 emails at his personal address jeb@jeb.org. We tried to confirm that number, but Campbell said "It’s immaterial as they are not subject to public records request and not required by law to be retained." In the same interview in 2007, Bush said an additional 2.5 million emails came through other email accounts run by the state. So this is how Carville gets to a grand total of 3 million emails. The question is, did Bush reveal just 275,000 -- or 280,000 -- of them? The answer is no, because most of them have been, and remain, publicly available. Under Florida law, most of Bush's emails to his government accounts are a public record and accessible to people who request them, said Barbara Petersen, president of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation. (The First Amendment Foundation advocates for government transparency and receives major support from foundations and Florida’s news organizations, including the Tampa Bay Times.) "Anything relating to public business is a public record in Florida," Petersen said. "If you comment on a policy, even if the rest of the email is personal, it will be subject to a public records request. It’s a fairly broad definition." Importantly, all of the emails sent to accounts run by the state would have been seen and vetted by state workers, not private staffers or lawyers employed by Bush. They remain the custodian of those records, and Petersen said she believes most of the Bush emails from his official accounts have been retained. The first stop for those emails would be the Citizen Services office, which fields all incoming communications to the governor. While some emails might be purely personal or otherwise exempt and would not be released, they were still part of the state’s public record. The point being, only the 550,000 emails sent to Bush’s personal account would have remained under his exclusive control. The rest remain housed with the state government. What's the point? We can confidently say that the 280,000 emails on the Bush website represent just a fraction of the total number of emails that are "public." While the precise figures are unclear, if 2.5 million emails went to one of the state-run email accounts then all of those were subject to a public records request. So in a rough sense, close to 90 percent of the universe of 3 million emails are public in some form. If you look at just Bush's private emails, about 50 percent are public. Neither number is close to the one Carville cited. We reached out to state officials to see if they can add any information about the number of official emails that are part of Bush's record. We will update this item if we learn further details. A few notes Carville said Bush had a private email server. According to press reports, Bush used a server located in the governor's office. He took the server with him when he left office. Carville also said Bush destroyed the emails he hadn’t revealed. We asked how he knew that and got no reply. Petersen had the same question and noted that Florida law presents a hurdle to destroying emails. "If you made a public record request of Jeb’s email and you thought you didn't get them all, you can file suit in civil court and request an in camera inspection by a judge," she said. Petersen said the state judges which records have archival value and which ones are trivial and can be disposed. Our ruling Carville said that Bush revealed 10 percent of his emails and he destroyed his emails. The numbers don’t add up. The numbers used by Carville himself include 2.5 million emails sent to state run accounts. Those emails are subject to a public records request. It is completely inaccurate to say that Bush only revealed 275,000 or 280,000 emails out of a total of 3 million. A more accurate reading would be that he revealed about half of the emails sent to his private account, and the rest were already available to the press, although some might be held back if they were strictly personal in nature. We rate the claim False. | null | James Carville | null | null | null | 2015-03-18T17:53:10 | 2015-03-15 | ['Jeb_Bush'] |
pomt-03870 | Florida is "second in the nation in the uninsured." | mostly true | /florida/statements/2013/mar/08/christopher-l-smith/chris-smith-says-florida-no-2-uninsured/ | Florida Democratic Senate leader Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale has found himself in unfamiliar territory lately: agreeing with Republican Gov. Rick Scott. "Medicaid expansion, Obamacare, teacher raises. Who is this guy?" Smith tweeted on Feb. 21 in response to Scott’s announcements that he would support Medicaid expansion and raises for teachers. Flash forward to March 5, when Scott gave his annual State of the State address. The former state budget slayer and foe of Obamacare gave a speech in which he called for helping the poor, the disabled and teachers. So how does a Democratic leader -- whose role is to attack the Republican Scott -- respond? By telling voters that while the Democrats believe Scott is now on the right track in some areas, the state still has far to go to help the middle class and the poor. Smith’s speech criticized Scott’s past education funding record and called for Scott to give state workers a raise, protect the environment and undo past changes to Florida elections law that contributed to long lines in November. Smith also called on Scott to work with the Legislature to ensure that it supports Medicaid expansion, despite opposition in the House. Scott announced his support for the expansion in February, but has said it isn’t one of his top priorities. Expanding Medicaid would give health care coverage to more of the poorest Floridians. Currently, the program is restricted to children, the elderly, the disabled and pregnant women. "We ask for you to provide true leadership, work with the Legislature and make sure that the House goes on with our Medicaid expansion. We are second in the nation in the uninsured. We need to make sure we expand Medicaid and use the federal dollars that will help our state budget," Smith said. Is Florida No. 2 in the nation for uninsured? Research ranking the number of uninsured We found there are a couple of different ways to account for the uninsured among the states. A spokeswoman for Smith cited an August 2012 article in the Huffington Post that ranked Florida at No. 2 in its share of uninsured residents based on 2010 U.S. Census data. Texas came in first with 26.3 percent, followed by Florida at 25.3 percent, and Nevada at 25.1 percent. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation keeps track of state health facts and also draws on research from the U.S. Census Bureau. Kaiser examines state populations up to age 64, since people who are 65 and older can get Medicare. By that ranking, the states with the highest percentages of uninsured in 2010-11 were Texas (27 percent) followed by Nevada (25 percent). For third, Kaiser showed a tie between New Mexico and Florida, but Florida was a pinch higher at 24.18 percent compared with 23.85 percent for New Mexico. When looking at only the sheer number of uninsured under the age of 65, Florida was third place with 3.7 million, behind California (7.1 million) and Texas (6.1 million). Finally, the polling organization Gallup interviews residents nationwide about their insurance. A 2011 Gallup poll placed Florida in third for its percentage of uninsured, at 22.9 percent, behind Texas (27.6 percent) and Mississippi (23.5 percent). Why Florida’s rate is so high Smith’s claim about Florida’s high uninsured rate raises questions about why it is so high. John Rother, President and CEO, of the National Coalition on Health Care, which supports health care reform, sent us a list of seven reasons: • The state has many small and low-wage employers who do not offer insurance. • Florida has many seasonal workers who tend to be uninsured. • Florida attracts many pre-Medicare retirees who have lost their workplace coverage but are not yet old enough for Medicare. • Many with pre-existing conditions cannot get coverage. • South Florida is an especially high-cost area in terms of medical claims. • The state has relatively weak and underfunded safety net programs for the uninsured. • Immigrants have a particularly hard time obtaining insurance due to paperwork requirements. Our ruling Sen. Chris Smith said "We are second in nation in the uninsured." There are different ways to measure the uninsured. In terms of sheer numbers, Florida is third. We found the most useful measure is to count Floridians under the age of 65, which includes only those not eligible for Medicare. That measure shows the state in third place in the percentage of uninsured, after first place Texas and second place Nevada. Smith is slightly off on his numbers, but his point is on solid ground. We rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Christopher L. Smith | null | null | null | 2013-03-08T14:21:53 | 2013-03-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-07912 | Says there have been 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade was decided. | true | /texas/statements/2011/feb/01/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-there-have-been-50-million-abortio/ | Gov. Rick Perry marked the 38th anniversary of what he called "the tragedy" of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision by speaking to fellow abortion opponents at the Jan. 22 Texas Rally for Life outside the Capitol building. Perry said that since the 1973 decision, which established abortion as a constitutional right, "50 million, 50 million children have lost their chances. That is a catastrophic number." PolitiFact Texas readers asked us to check Perry's statement. But before diving in, we noted two issues with Perry's use of "children" -- a flash point in the political, moral and scientific national debate over abortion. One, abortion rights supporters dispute calling unborn fetuses "children." Second, an unknown share of the 50 million aborted pregnancies referenced by Perry would not have resulted in live children, due to the natural risk of miscarriages and stillbirths. For our inquiry, we focused on the number of U.S. abortions since Roe was decided. The Roe v. Wade ruling, issued Jan. 22, 1973, struck down a Texas law prohibiting nearly all abortions and held that the right to privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." It said states could not prohibit a woman from having an abortion before viability, the time at which a fetus can survive outside a woman's body. It noted that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks." After fetal viability, the court said, states could limit abortions provided that their policies met certain requirements, including an exception to protect the life of the woman. Since then, other Supreme Court rulings have affirmed states' rights to approve further restrictions. During the early 1960s, every state except Pennsylvania allowed abortions when needed to protect a woman's life, according to a March 2003 article published by the universally respected Guttmacher Institute, which studies and advocates on issues related to reproductive health. At the time Roe was decided, 17 states allowed abortions in certain other situations such as when pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. In 1972, the year before the Roe ruling, about 587,000 legal abortions were reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a 2005 CDC report. And since 1973? Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier pointed us to a January 2010 report from the National Right to Life Committee, a Washington-based group that opposes abortion, that says about 52 million abortions took place from 1973 through 2009. According to the report, the group arrived at the total using figures from the Guttmacher Institute for 1973 through 2005; estimating a number for the next four years; and finally adding 3 percent to account for under-reporting. The National Right to Life publication says 3 percent is the under-reporting rate estimated by Guttmacher. Using a similar methodology, National Right to Life has since updated its numbers. The new report says that more than 53 million abortions took place from 1973 through 2010. Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, told us the institute doesn't adjust its numbers — which are estimates based on surveys of facilities where abortions are performed, including hospitals and clinics — for under-reporting. She said a 1994 Guttmacher study had found that some small facilities weren't included in the institute's survey, which indicated that the number of abortions in 1992 was actually 3 percent to 4 percent more than reported. Our attempts to reach officials at National Right to Life were unsuccessful. Next, we sought the most up-to-date abortion data from Guttmacher. Spokeswoman Rebecca Wind provided us with a 2011 report that includes annual data on abortions from 1973 through 2008. The total: 49.3 million. We also sought abortion numbers from other sources. Data from the CDC indicate that there were 37.8 million abortions from 1973 through 2006. However, according to the CDC's website, states are not required to report abortion information to the agency, so in some years, the numbers are incomplete. For example, the CDC's 2006 data do not include information on abortions in California, Louisiana or New Hampshire. Representatives of abortion rights organizations Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice Texas told us that the Guttmacher Institute is the best source for this information. Summing up: Perry's statement indicating that there have been 50 million abortions in the United States since 1973 appears to be on target. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that there were 49.3 million abortions in the U.S. through 2008 — 700,000 shy of 50 million. Considering that Guttmacher says there were more than 1 million abortions in both 2007 and 2008, it's reasonable to conclude that the United States has reached the 50 million mark. We rate Perry's statement True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2011-02-01T06:00:00 | 2011-01-22 | ['None'] |
pomt-02641 | San Antonio has seen "67% growth" in water customers "in the last 25 years, 0% more water used." | false | /texas/statements/2014/jan/17/robert-puente/san-antonio-water-customers-52-only-used-21-more-w/ | San Antonio’s growth was coupled with an eye-popping statistic during the latest Texas Tribune Festival public policy conference. Robert Puente, CEO of the San Antonio Water System, said during a Sept. 20, 2013, panel discussion that the city-owned utility has seen "67 percent growth in the last 25 years, 0 percent more water used." San Antonio has been called a "poster child" for water conservation. As it has risen to become the seventh-largest city in the United States, its leadership has used multiple approaches to tackle the water worries facing all of Texas, where the population is rocketing and the future looks dry. But did 67 percent more customers settle in without using more water? By phone, Puente said the percentages he aired "need to be updated." The water system’s vice president for public affairs, Greg Flores, told us by email that Puente’s rates covered 1984 through 2009. During that period, according to a chart Flores sent us, the population served by the utility rose from 800,627 to 1.34 million while water produced fell from 191,431 acre-feet to 186,112 acre-feet (an acre-foot is the amount needed to cover an acre to a depth of 1 foot, equal to 325,851 gallons). That’s a nearly 68 percent increase in population served and a 2.9 percent decrease in water produced. Then again, the cited period wasn’t the latest 25-year time span when Puente spoke. Flores said the chart was generated from the utility’s 2008 statistics. Flores sent a web link to the most recent edition, the utility’s "2011 Stat Book," and gave us the numbers for 2012, which we used to check the six most recent 25-year spans for which data is available. The 2012 data was not available when Puente spoke at the conference, Flores said, though data through 2011 was. "Compilation of data for a particular year is typically not completed until the end of the following year," he said. The 25-year spans showed fluctuations partly explained by the weather: Flores noted that 2011 was "the single hottest, driest year in Texas" and said water use remained atypically high through the 2011-13 drought. 2007 was a very wet year for San Antonio, he said. 25-year span Population served Acre-feet used 1987-2012* Up 55.2% Up 23.4% 1986-2011 Up 51.8% Up 21% 1985-2010 Up 55.6% Up 5% 1984-2009 Up 57.6% Down 0.6% 1983-2008 Up 59.9% Up 21.5% 1982-2007 Up 69.1% Down 7.3% *2012 data were unavailable when Puente made his claim. The oldest span we checked, 1982-2007, showed more dramatic change than Puente’s statement: 69 percent growth and a 7 percent drop in water use. But the most recent span for which data was available when he spoke, 1986-2011, saw a 52 percent increase in customers alongside a 21 percent increase in water used. That’s still not bad, a long-time Sierra Club leader told us by phone. Ken Kramer, water resources chairman for Sierra’s Texas chapter, told us, "It’s still very significant. Especially as compared to other major cities around the state. … It is great that San Antonio is doing this, and it does provide a model for other cities that haven’t had that success yet." The trend statewide is toward less water use, Kramer said. State and federal standards, with such requirements as water-efficient showerheads and toilets, have reduced Texans’ per-person water use. Texas as a whole averaged out to about 151 gallons used per person per day in 2007-11, according to the Texas Water Development Board, with the state’s nearly 26 million people using 169 gallons apiece a day during hot, dry 2011. Flores said, and the utility’s stats confirm, that San Antonians reduced per-person water use from around 200 gallons a day in the 1980s (the utility’s stats show the decade averaged out at 197 gallons per day, to be precise) to about 140 gallons a day now (2007-11 average out at 137 gallons per day). Daily water use per capita for 2011 in Texas’ six largest cities shook out this way, according to the water board: Houston, 191 gallons; San Antonio, 148 gallons; Dallas, 197 gallons; Austin, 156 gallons; Fort Worth, 166 gallons; El Paso, 143 gallons. What got San Antonio saving? "A big federal hammer," Puente told us. "Back in the early 1990s, a federal judge actually was going to lay down pumping rules, limit our ability to pump water out of our aquifer, and gave us till the end of the legislative session to pass certain rules that we would impose on ourselves," he said. San Antonio and nearby areas, he said, were hit by the federal deadline because of endangered species that relied on the Edwards Aquifer. Flores outlined some of the Alamo City’s approaches: Smarter use of water pulled from the Edwards, including the nation’s largest direct recycled water delivery system, routing treated wastewater to users such as golf courses, the River Walk and local industry. Pumping all the Edwards water it’s allowed to every year, and storing what it doesn’t use in the Carrizo Aquifer -- which isn’t porous like the Edwards, but hard-packed sand, Flores said. The Edwards water sits there, in fact barely commingling with the Carrizo water, and San Antonio has been extracting it as needed for the past three years. New sources such as a $145 million desalination plant set to start tapping a deeper, saltwater aquifer in 2016. Not pumping as much water in the first place, aka conservation. The water utility educates users and subsidizes ways to use less, both in residential and commercial systems. Flores said the utility has approved conservation projects based on the $400 price to buy rights to an acre-foot of Edwards water for a year. If the project was cheaper than buying the water, the utility implemented the plan. Giving away 325,000 low-flow toilets, even hiring plumbers to help low-income residents install them, cost less than the unsaved water would have, Flores said. Same for helping Coca-Cola retool to clean bottles with pressurized air. Last year, though, mindful of the rising cost of water from the Edwards and other sources, the utility raised the ceiling: Now a project has to save more than buying the water at $1,100 per acre-foot, he said. Outdoor water usage, Puente said, is the next area of focus, with the utility offering rebates to water customers who want to convert a parched part of their lawn to a deck or patio. Our ruling Puente said San Antonio has seen "67 percent growth in the last 25 years, 0 percent more water used." Those are cherry-picked, out-of-date stats, vintage 1984-2009. Up-to-date figures available when Puente spoke, covering 1986-2011, show that as the population served grew 52 percent, water usage increased 21 percent. San Antonio may outpace other cities in water conservation. This claim still washes out as False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Robert Puente | null | null | null | 2014-01-17T06:00:00 | 2013-09-20 | ['None'] |
hoer-00156 | Mini Lobster Contamination Warning | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/mini-lobster-warning.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Mini Lobster Contamination Warning | April 2008 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00045 | The claim: One Nation founder Pauline Hanson says that halal certification is a $3 trillion industry that funds Islamic organisations and terrorism. | in-the-red | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-14/fact-check-does-halal-certification-fund-terrorism/6383238 | The claim: One Nation founder Pauline Hanson says that halal certification is a $3 trillion industry that funds Islamic organisations and terrorism. | ['religion-and-beliefs', 'race-relations', 'australia'] | null | null | ['religion-and-beliefs', 'race-relations', 'australia'] | Fact check: Does halal certification fund terrorism? | Tue 21 Apr 2015, 8:16am | null | ['Islam', 'Pauline_Hanson'] |
snes-01834 | Bill Clinton was expelled from Oxford University for raping a British classmate named Eileen Wellstone. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-clinton-expelled-from-oxford/ | null | Crime | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Bill Clinton Was Expelled from Oxford Over a Rape Incident? | 10 October 2016 | null | ['United_Kingdom', 'Bill_Clinton', 'University_of_Oxford'] |
thet-00023 | Fact check: The SNP in Scotland vs Labour in Wales | none | https://theferret.scot/scottish-government-snp-scotland-labour-welsh-government-wales/ | null | Fact check Politics | null | null | null | Fact check: The SNP in Scotland vs Labour in Wales | March 1, 2018 | null | ['Scotland', 'Scottish_National_Party'] |
pomt-01492 | Says Mary Landrieu voted to fund benefits for illegal immigrants ahead of veterans. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/sep/25/bill-cassidy/bill-cassidy-says-mary-landrieu-put-illegal-immigr/ | Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Republican running for Senate in Louisiana, mixed two buzzwords of the 2014 campaign cycle — immigrants and veterans — in an ad attacking Democratic opponent Sen. Mary Landrieu. How are the two related? Cassidy said Landrieu chose to fund one but cut from the other. "What would you choose? To fund benefits for veterans or for illegal immigrants? I would never put illegal immigrants ahead of veterans. But Mary Landrieu did," Cassidy said in the ad. "Instead of fully funding veterans’ benefits, she voted to give benefits to those here illegally. No wonder she supports Barack Obama and his amnesty plan." That’s quite the charge, but is it accurate? We decided to take a look. Cassidy is referring to the budget agreement reached in December 2013 between Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. — the top budget negotiators for their respective chambers. The bill prevented another government shutdown and provided some relief from sequestration. (Forgot about the sequester? It’s the 10-year, across-the-board budget cuts that were supposedly so deep and detested by both parties that Congress was expected to reach a grand budget compromise to avoid them, but never did.) Under the agreement, budget caps for discretionary spending are set at $1.012 trillion for fiscal year 2014 and $1.014 trillion for fiscal year 2015. For 2014, that figure is $45 billion more than it would have been under sequestration, and it’s $18 billion more for 2015. How did Congress pay for that? In part, by reducing the cost-of-living adjustments for the retirement pay of veterans under the age of 62. That provision sparked immediate blowback from veterans groups and some members of Congress. But the budget agreement passed the House on Dec. 12, 2013, overwhelmingly, 332-94. Cassidy voted for it. When the bill moved to the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blocked any amendments so the fragile agreement could get an up-or-down vote as it passed the House (another government shutdown was looming in January). But Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tried to reopen the amendment process so he could introduce an amendment that would have restored the pension cost-of-living reduction for veterans. To pay for increased spending caps, Sessions wanted to instead close a loophole that allowed some undocumented immigrants with children to collect the Additional Child Tax Credit. Sessions' amendment never came up for a vote. The Senate did take up a procedural vote, however, on whether to reopen the amendment process so Session’s amendment, and possibly others, could be heard. However, that vote failed on Dec. 17 largely along party lines, 54-46, with Landrieu voting with her Democratic colleagues. The next day, the bill passed the Senate on a vote of 64 to 36. Cassidy spokesman John Cummins said Landrieu in the Senate could have voted to open the budget agreement to amendments and chose not to. Cassidy did not have that opportunity in the House because Republican leadership pushed it through under structured rule, meaning no amendments were allowed. (For what it's worth, we didn't see any statements from Cassidy lamenting this.) Even if we agreed with this line of reasoning — which we don’t — it doesn’t absolve Cassidy from voting for, and defending, the same reductions to veterans benefits. As both FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker noted, on the very day the Senate passed the budget agreement, Cassidy defended the cuts to military pensions on conservative commentator Laura Ingraham’s radio show. Ingraham: "You supported this budget deal and now we find out that military folks who have sacrificed so much are being asked yet again to sacrifice — this in terms of their pensions — and yet we can’t seem to close loopholes for welfare benefits going to illegal aliens and yet you supported this. Why?" Cassidy: "There are no benefit cuts to people who are retiring, there is an adjustment to their cost of living, which starts off not for all, but those who retire before age 62." Cassidy went on to further defend the cut to military pensions as logical reforms without really touching on the second aspect of Ingraham’s question about tax credits for undocumented immigrants. Finally, the House and Senate voted to restore those cuts to veterans benefits the following February. Under the restructured agreement, anyone who signed up for military service before 2014 would not see a change to their benefits. Both Cassidy and Landrieu voted for this, and Obama signed it into law on Feb. 15. Our ruling Cassidy said, "I would never put illegal immigrants ahead of veterans. But Mary Landrieu did." There are several problems with this statement. First is the false dichotomy that Landrieu had a choice between funding undocumented immigrants and veterans in the budget agreement. That amendment never actually came up for a vote. But even putting that aside, Cassidy suggests that his position is vastly different than Landrieu. In fact, they both voted in favor of the same budget agreement to reduce future cost-of-living adjustments for veterans benefits (they both also voted to restore them), with Cassidy going on conservative radio to defend these cuts. Cassidy ignores his own record to inaccurately criticize Landrieu’s. That extra level of hypocrisy bumps his claim to ridiculous, and we rate it Pants on Fire. | null | Bill Cassidy | null | null | null | 2014-09-25T17:28:47 | 2014-09-19 | ['None'] |
tron-01552 | 41 Senators Block Benefits for Veterans | truth! & outdated! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/41-senators-block-benefits-for-veterans-truth/ | null | government | null | null | ['congress', 'conservative agenda', 'government waste', 'veterans'] | 41 Senators Block Benefits for Veterans | Nov 23, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14775 | A Muslim immigrant in Michigan can list his second, third or fourth wives as "extended family" and qualify for welfare. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/dec/07/chain-email/youtube-video-says-michigan-muslims-can-list-multi/ | A widely shared YouTube video makes outrageous claims about Muslims, multiple wives and welfare. The year-old video, which is based on a chain email, says polygamous Muslim men who live in Michigan can receive welfare benefits for up to four wives through a loophole. "It's official. The camel's nose is in the governmental bureaucratic tent in Michigan, feeding on our hard-earned money we pay in taxes!" the video says. "Muslim men are allowed four wives. So when they immigrate to America, they simply list wife number two, three and four as ‘extended family,’ to qualify for welfare and a myriad of other taxpayer-funded government programs." A few readers wanted to know if the video has any truth to it. Are Michigan taxpayers actually paying for Muslims to rake in welfare benefits for up to four wives? Why Michigan? Why Muslims? The video seems to have originated from cleantv.com, which claims to offer "family-friendly television broadcasting and Video On Demand services…[and] Internet-ready television sets." The site’s YouTube channel features dozens of politically charged videos. (Check out Snopes for an in-depth look at the video’s entire narrative.) We can’t be sure why the video focuses on Michigan. The state does have one of the largest Arab populations in the country, and various Michigan state government agencies offer Arabic versions of documents to accommodate those residents. But there’s nothing unique about Michigan’s applications for welfare compared to other states. As for polygamy, it is illegal in the United States. The U.S. government only recognizes one legal spouse. There are no reliable estimates for the number of American Muslims living in polygamous families, though NPR quoted experts putting it between 50,000 and 100,000. Still, the idea that a Muslim man could simply bring himself and multiple wives through the American immigration system is off-base. The immigration process for spouses is lengthy and complicated. Even if a man successfully sponsors his wife for an immigrant visa, the State Department specifically outlines that "in cases of polygamy, only the first spouse may qualify as a spouse for immigration." Any other wives would have to apply for an immigrant visa on their own. When the immigrants legally settle in the United States, they can apply for welfare programs, such as cash through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food stamps or Medicaid, provided they meet requirements for residency, expenses and assets. A man could only claim one wife for purposes of welfare benefits, because multiple wives is a no-no. The video suggests that a Muslim man could register his second, third or fourth wives as "extended family" for extended benefits. Is that really how it’s done? It wouldn’t exactly work like that, experts said. "For cash assistance and Medicaid, as per federal rules, only one spouse can be included in a group for determining eligibility," said Bob Wheaton, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. "Any other non-related members of the household can’t be included." In a polygamous home, the other wives would not be recognized as legal family members. Food stamps However, a family doesn’t face those same requirements when applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Federal rules for SNAP eligibility depend on the number of household members. So it’s theoretically possible for a Muslim man, or any man, to collect food assistance for multiple wives. "Whether those household members are related or not does not matter under federal rules," Wheaton said. "What matters is whether they live in the same household and prepare food together." Of course, that would apply to any polygamous family, not just Muslim ones. A 2008 CBS report showed how fundamentalist, polygamist families in Colorado City, Ariz., receive big welfare checks: The man marries one wife legally and then weds and has kids with multiple other wives recognized by the church. Then, the other wives register for benefits as single women with children. (For reference, the maximum monthly allotment for food stamps is $1,169 for a family of eight. Each additional person in the household brings in an extra $146.) Michael Wiseman, a research professor at George Washington University, said this is legal under SNAP rules. "The SNAP benefit formula recognizes ‘economies of scale,’ so that breaking the subfamilies apart increases total benefits paid," he said. "Thus it is not fraud, as long as any contributions to the second family from the first are reported by the second family and included in benefits calculation." The states could theoretically crack down on these loopholes in the system, but Wiseman said it might not be worth the trouble. "The problem is, of course, deciding how to write rules that prevent this and yet ensure that some groups are subject to more intense investigation than others," he said. "My guess is the fiscal impact is minimal." Our ruling A viral YouTube video said that in Michigan, a Muslim man "lists one wife as his, and signs the other two or three up as extended family on welfare." The video and the chain email its based off of is highly misleading and ignores important realities of the U.S. immigration and welfare system in an attempt to drum up anti-Muslim sentiment. For one, the rules of the immigration system make it very hard for immigrants who may have multiple wives to enter the country, as the United States does not recognize polygamy. There is also no evidence that Michigan or any other state would allow or encourage Muslims to sign up extra wives as "extended family." For most welfare programs, it would not be possible for additional wives to qualify for assistance. However, a Muslim man with multiple wives (and meets the right income and residency requirements) could theoretically benefit through food stamps because it is based on the number of people in the household, not just legally recognized family members. But this would be true for any polygamist family, not just Muslims in Michigan. Flaws in the system don’t exactly mean the government is subsidizing polygamy. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2015-12-07T15:26:45 | 2014-08-26 | ['Michigan'] |
pomt-09719 | When White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Mao Tse-tung was "one of her favorite philosophers, only Fox News picked that up." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/27/bill-oreilly/oreilly-accuses-media-not-following-foxs-lead-anit/ | In a recent segment with conservative commentator Ann Coulter, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly slammed other media outlets for failing to cover a story — unearthed by Fox — that a senior aide to Barack Obama had told high school students that one of her "favorite political philosophers" was Mao Tse-tung, the late Chinese communist leader who is blamed for the deaths of millions of people. The O'Reilly-Coulter exchange, aired on Oct. 23, 2009, came amid a war of words between the White House and Fox. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director and a longtime Democratic operative, emerged this month as one of the leading figures in a White House push to discredit Fox News, telling the New York Times ' Brian Stelter, "We're going to treat [Fox] the way we would treat an opponent. ... We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave." Dunn's comments added heat to an already simmering feud, and it wasn't long before Glenn Beck — the conservative Fox host who frequently riles the White House and its allies — responded in kind. On the Oct. 15, 2009, episode of his Fox show, Beck aired a video of a speech Dunn made to high school students. In it, Dunn imparted a series of life lessons to the students, the third of which "actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say why not. You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before." Dunn then told an anecdote about how Mao triumphed as an underdog over his rival, nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, during the Chinese civil war. Asked how he would win, Mao said, according to Dunn, "You know, you fight your war, and I'll fight mine." Dunn continued, "And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, okay? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definitions define how good you are internally." Beck's discovery that a senior Obama White House official had said nice things about a Communist leader with a bloody place in history was catnip for Fox, and for a host of conservative bloggers. Let's explore whether O'Reilly is correct that "only Fox News picked that up. Nobody else picked that up." It's certainly true that Fox played the story to the hilt: In a 10-day span after the story broke, Fox shows mentioned the incident, either in depth or in passing, roughly two dozen times. As for other news organizations, we found they rarely treated it as a news story. But there was a fair amount of discussion about Dunn's remark, usually in commentaries or analyses of the Fox-White House feud: — In opinion columns . Two syndicated columnists based at the Washington Post wrote about Dunn's Mao comment. Kathleen Parker, a conservative with a maverick streak, wrote a pox-on-both-their-houses column, while Charles Krauthammer (a frequent panelist on Fox) penned one that was critical of Dunn and favorable to Fox. Both ran on the Post 's op-ed page and were reprinted in newspapers across the country. A handful of newspapers also wrote editorials that cited the episode. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman published a column in the paper (and later an expanded version online) that took Fox and Beck to task. "How helpful is Beck, after all, when he morphs into Joe McCarthy on Fox News, and attempts to red-bait a top Obama aide by painting her as a communist sympathizer in thrall to Mao Tse-tung?" Polman asked. "Last week, Beck characterized Anita Dunn as a 'fan of a guy who killed millions of people.' He then aired a video clip that showed Dunn quoting Mao during a June speech. Shocking! What Beck naturally neglected to tell his credulous viewers is that politicians of all stripes have been quoting Mao for years. Such as: 'In the words of Chairman Mao, it’s always darkest before it’s totally black.' (That was John McCain). Such as: 'Mao said politics is war without bloodshed. Clearly there are some metaphors that sit nicely with politics.' (That was Christian conservative leader Ralph Reed.)" — As media criticism . The Washington Post' s media critic, Howard Kurtz, made brief references to the Mao controversy as he dissected the Fox-White House feud in two of his daily Media Notes blog posts. — In remarks by TV commentators . On the Oct. 18, 2009, edition of CNN's State of the Union with John King , commentators discussed the war between the White House and Fox. Bill Bennett, a conservative, brought up the Dunn-Mao connection. Saying it "isn't a small thing — it's a big thing," Bennett told the panel, "Now, look, I am not a right-wing nut, and when people go after Obama and say 'socialism and Marxism,' I say, take it easy, you know, calm down. But when she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Tse-tung, that — I mean, that is crazy." Meanwhile, Lou Dobbs, on his nightly news show on CNN, gave a brief hat tip to Beck's story (adding that Mao may have been responsible for "as many as 100 million" deaths) before proceeding into a plug for his syndicated radio show, where viewers could "hear more of my thoughts on all the president's czars and their fascination with Mao Tse-tung." On CNN (which has had its own war of words with Fox, its longtime cable news rival), the Situation Room put resident curmudgeon Jack Cafferty on the Mao story, asking viewers what they thought. "T.J." wrote to Cafferty, "Enough already. Stop reporting anything about Glenn Beck. He is an insane nut job. His opinion is of no value to anyone, except other nut jobs. Stop enabling this psychotic fraud by constantly reporting what he has to say about, well, anything." "J.R. in Idaho" wrote, "When you report on the stories you have created, you have become illegitimate. Fox is 'balloon boy.'" Others were critical of the White House for taking on a fight it was unlikely to win. — Only rarely as straight news . The day after Beck aired the video, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Ed Hornick posted a Web story in which Dunn said that the Mao quote "is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me." She added that "the use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat — at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing." On Oct. 18, the Associated Press moved a story that recapped the controversy in a straightforward way. (It was written by the AP's television writer, David Bauder, not one of its national political writers.) A day later, the Los Angeles Times ' Top of the Ticket blog briefly mentioned the Mao-Dunn flap in an item about the larger Fox-White House conflict. And the New York Times ' Caucus blog took up the issue twice. The first time, on Oct. 16, 2009, Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote a post explaining the Dunn-Mao controversy, saying that "the war of words between the White House and Fox News is intensifying — and getting personal." Two days later, the blog offered an update on the Fox-White House war, adding the following quote from Dunn: "Let it be noted that I also quoted Mother Teresa, but no one is accusing me of being a saint!" So let's recap. If O'Reilly's point is that few media outlets played the story as worthy of straight news coverage, he's probably right. With only a few exceptions, the media coverage we found consisted either of opinion columns (both pro and con), purposeful mentions of it by TV commentators or as a subject for laughs. However, if we stick to his precise wording, O'Reilly is certainly incorrect that "only Fox News" picked up the story. While Fox beat the drum more heavily than anyone — not surprising, since it was the network's story to begin with — CNN and the blogs of several major newspapers also mentioned it. In addition, syndicated versions of two Washington Post columns appeared in many newspapers around the country. We rate his statement False. | null | Bill O'Reilly | null | null | null | 2009-10-27T19:02:47 | 2009-10-23 | ['Anita_Dunn', 'White_House', 'Fox_News_Channel', 'Mao_Zedong'] |
goop-01183 | Kristen Stewart, Drew Barrymore “Lesbian Lovers,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kristen-stewart-drew-barrymore-lesbian-lovers/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kristen Stewart, Drew Barrymore NOT “Lesbian Lovers,” Despite Claim | 9:00 pm, April 18, 2018 | null | ['Kristen_Stewart'] |
goop-01582 | Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Calling Off Divorce, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-angelina-jolie-divorce-off-renewing-vows/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie NOT Calling Off Divorce, Despite Report | 10:45 am, February 14, 2018 | null | ['Brad_Pitt'] |
pomt-03901 | Due to the sequester, "people are going to be unsafe. Homes are going to burn." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/mar/01/ami-bera/rep-ami-bera-says-due-sequester-people-are-going-b/ | With an across-the-board federal cut looming, Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., took to the House floor to sound a sequester fire alarm. "Mr. Speaker, the American public is tired of the blame game. They want to see real solutions. Irresponsible, across-the-board spending cuts are not a real solution. If we don't act to avoid these spending cuts, we threaten the very safety of our community and our country. "There will be $50 million cut from firefighting funding. In my own district, that's $1.5 million in SAFER grants. Let me translate that. My fire chief, Kurt Henke, says that's the equivalent of one engine company and slower response times. People are going to be unsafe, homes are going to burn. We have to act. "Mr. Speaker, I urge you to lock us in a room and cut a deal. Let's figure out how to avoid sequestration. This is devastating to our economy and our country." Really? Homes are going to burn because of the sequester? Let’s recap how the sequester works. Unless a deal is struck, most types of federal spending must be cut by a uniform amount -- tentatively 7.9 percent for most types of defense discretionary funding and 5.3 percent for non-defense discretionary funding. (Certain programs are shielded from sequestration cuts entirely, including Social Security, federal retirement payments, veterans compensation, Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and veteran's health programs. Medicare would be cut by 2 percent.) The uniform cuts must be applied to any "program, project or activity" that isn’t otherwise exempted. We found two main federal firefighting grants programs: Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response (or SAFER) Grants, which focus on personnel, and Assistance to Firefighter Grants (AFG), which focuses on non-personnel expenditures such as equipment. The Sacramento example The Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District, the one headed by Chief Henke, won grants from both in December 2012. including a $5.6 million SAFER grant for "hiring." (It also won an AFG grant worth $370,277 for "wellness and fitness programs," but we won’t factor that in since Bera didn’t mention it.) If all SAFER grants nationally were to be cut by an equal amount, then a 5.3 percent reduction in Sacramento’s SAFER funding would be roughly $300,000. That’s less than the $1.5 million Bera cited, and Bera’s office acknowledged to PolitiFact that the congressman may not have given the correct figure. Here’s a fuller explanation. In an interview, Henke said his department has lost millions of dollars because of a decline in property tax receipts. The fire department closed three firehouses and sidelined six engine companies, which led to "significantly longer response times," Henke said. To improve its response to calls, the department sought SAFER grants to cover the cost of two additional engine companies. Henke said they would help the department meet the "two in, two out" rule, which requires that two firefighters remain outside a burning building before two can enter it. Because $1.5 million is the ballpark estimate for the cost of one engine company, that’s where Bera got his number. But that’s speculation; that’s five-times the proportionate cut we calculated. So Bera’s number was a significant exaggeration. The national outlook Beyond Sacramento, is it accurate for Bera to say that, due to the sequester, "people are going to be unsafe. Homes are going to burn"? We spoke with experts who said there is some truth to that. They said cuts to firefighting grants will put more pressure on existing fire services and, on the margins, could result in greater damage or casualties, though the extent is certainly speculative. "In some cases, response will be affected," said James Pharr, a professor in the Eastern Kentucky University College of Justice and Safety who previously served as a firefighter, fire investigator, fire chief, fire marshal and emergency management director. "Slow or inadequate response can reduce the ability to prevent death or serious injury." Thomas J. Cova, director of the Center for Natural and Technological Hazards at the University of Utah, emphasized that sequester comes on top of budgetary strains caused by the recession. "Budgets have already been reduced in the last four years at all levels -- local, state, and federal -- to the point that more cuts could noticeably compromise response capabilities," Cova said. "All the obvious corners have already been cut, and that means, unfortunately, that further cuts could result in structures burning that otherwise wouldn’t, due to reduced response times, personnel, and equipment." Shawn S. Kelley, the director of strategic services for the International Association of Fire Chiefs Kelley, said rural departments stand to be hurt more than big cities because the rural agencies are more dependent on federal grants. Still, we see several reasons why Bera’s claim is exaggerated. • Federal funds are a small portion of most fire departments’ budgets. In Sacramento’s case, this year’s total budget is $153 million, meaning that the SAFER grant accounts for 3.6 percent of the budget. That means the sequester could hold back two-tenths of 1 percent of the department’s entire budget. We were unable to find specific data nationally, but several experts agreed that Sacramento’s case is not unusual. "Most municipal fire departments are locally funded," said William John Siembieda, who heads the city and regional planning department at California Polytechnic State University. "Federal dollars are not a large part of annual budgets." In other words, Bera didn't have enough justification to sound such a strong alarm. The kind of rhetoric Bera used "been rejected" by firefighter organizations in trying to fend off proposed cuts, said Anthony Brown, an Oklahoma State University professor who specializes in fire and emergency management. • Not every locality will be losing federal firefighting money due to the sequester. Both programs are competitive grants, meaning that a locality will apply for federal funds and, if it’s lucky, it will get a grant. Many localities will either decline to apply for the grants or fail to receive them. So while Sacramento may lose money due to sequester cuts, not every local fire department in the country will. Those departments that didn’t receive grant money in the most recent round won’t be directly affected by such sequester cuts at all. • It can be difficult to determine whether local cuts or sequester cuts are at fault for personnel decreases. SAFER funds are, in effect, responding to what is happening at the local level. If a firefighter is laid off, or is about to be laid off, and then sees his job restored by a SAFER grant, then sees that funding taken away due to the sequester, is that all the fault of the sequester, or is it partially the fault of the local budgetary situation? We think it’s a mixture of both, and thus it’s a stretch for Bera to blame the sequester. • The Obama administration proposed even bigger cuts for these programs in its fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. In its 2013 budget, the Obama administration proposed an amount 17 percent lower than its level two years earlier, an average of more than 8 percent per year. That’s a bigger cut than the sequester itself. So if the administration or its allies are going to cry foul at sequester cuts, the same charge could be leveled at the administration’s own policies. Our ruling Bera said that due to the sequester, "people are going to be unsafe. Homes are going to burn." The precise impact of sequester cuts on firefighting is speculative, but it’s safe to assume there will be some impact on the margins, at least in places that receive federal firefighting grants. Still, Bera’s language is overheated, both on Sacramento’s case in particular and in the overall picture. In the communities lucky enough to receive SAFER grants, such funds typically account for a small portion of the total departmental budget. In addition, firehouse woes do not begin and end with the sequester; local budgets and policies also deserve some blame. Finally, blaming the sequester obscures even larger cuts the administration itself proposed prior to the sequester. On balance, we rate Bera’s claim Mostly False. | null | Ami Bera | null | null | null | 2013-03-01T15:33:28 | 2013-02-26 | ['None'] |
chct-00309 | FACT CHECK: Does The Trump Tax Reform Plan Benefit The Wealthy At Everyone Else's Expense? | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/09/29/fact-check-does-the-trump-tax-reform-plan-benefit-the-wealthy-at-everyone-elses-expense/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 10:16 PM 09/29/2017 | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00337 | Statement: “Those 5,600 signatures were more people than [San Diego’s Redistricting Commission] heard from the entire eight to 10 months of testimony they’ve taken, emails they’ve received, written comments they’ve received and other petitions from other communities they’ve received,” Andy Berg, president of the Rancho Peñasquitos Town Council, told KPBS in an interview airing Aug. 26 on San Diego Week. | determination: false | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/neighborhoods/fact-check-the-loudest-neighborhood/ | Analysis: Two weeks ago, the seven-member commission charged with redrawing San Diego’s political boundaries approved its final map. The Redistricting Commission added a new ninth council district stretching from the College Area to Southcrest and adjusted the existing eight to account for population shifts. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: The Loudest Neighborhood | September 7, 2011 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03050 | “Trump Does the Unthinkable” by Liz Conklin | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/trump-unthinkable-liz-conklin/ | null | politics | null | null | null | “Trump Does the Unthinkable” by Liz Conklin | Jul 12, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00678 | Woman frightened by men on elevator who turn out to be superstars | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/womaononelevator/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Woman frightened by men on elevator who turn out to be superstars | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02062 | Modern products still sometimes bear labels and descriptions that include a color named for a racial pejorative. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hue-cry/ | null | Racial Rumors | null | David Mikkelson | null | Racist Product Color Descriptions | 22 April 2007 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04132 | A Kentucky food stamp recipient has more than $5,000 in unused food stamp benefits and is thus abusing the system. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kentucky-snap-recipient-is-abusing-the-system-with-high-balance/ | null | Food | null | Bethania Palma | null | Kentucky SNAP Recipient Is Abusing the System With High Balance? | 31 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05215 | In Galveston, Texas, they have allowed people to privatize part of their Social Security. And people are building wealth. | true | /virginia/statements/2012/jun/08/ew-jackson/ew-jackson-says-galveston-has-privatized-plan-lieu/ | When Republican E.W. Jackson extols free markets, he points to the gulf coast in Texas. "Right now, in our own country, in Galveston, Texas, they have allowed people to privatize part of their Social Security. And people are building wealth," he said in a recent debate between the four Republicans running in the June 12 primary for the U.S. Senate. We decided check out Jackson’s statement. It required two determinations: 1) Does Galveston have a private retirement plan in lieu of Social Security taxes and; 2) If so, how does the system build wealth? The Galveston Plan Greg Aldridge, a spokesman for Jackson’s campaign, pointed us to a number of news stories about Galveston’s alternative to Social Security. The plan has been considered as a potential model for changing the federal entitlement. The program is an oddity in American retirement-security policy. In 1981, municipal employees of three adjoining Texas counties -- Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria -- voted to withdraw from Social Security and initiate a system of individual accounts to provide retirement, survivor and disability benefits. In 1983, the federal government barred any more such moves by local governments. Today, there are about 10 million Americans in the workforce who do not contribute and will not benefit from Social Security. Most of them are employees of school districts and higher education institutions that opted out before the ban. Here’s how the Galveston plan works: Instead of paying into Social Security, county government workers contribute a similar amount to their investment accounts. The General Accounting Office wrote in 1999 that the plan made "very conservative" investments in bonds and preferred stocks. The investments are made through fixed annuity contracts with private firms that guarantee minimum annual rates of return. While each worker is assigned an individual account, the employee does not control all investment decisions. The interest earned on investments is deposited in each worker’s account. Employees can put extra money beyond the required amount into their accounts. The required retirement contribution is 9.7 percent of gross pay -- of which 6.1 percent is paid by the employees and 3.6 percent by the county. Social Security traditionally collects 12.4 percent in payroll tax on up to $106,800 in total salary, with workers and employers evenly splitting the levy. But under President Barack Obama’s FICA tax cut over the last two years, the federal government has collected only 10.4 percent -- of which 4.2 percent is paid by the worker. Social Security invests the contributions in government securities. When the Texas county employees retire, they may choose to take the entire account’s earnings in lump sum, take monthly payments for a specified number of years, or accept smaller monthly payments in a lifetime annuity. The Galveston plan does not offer cost-of-living increases to those receiving monthly checks. Social Security provides a lifetime annuity with annual cost-of-living adjustments. And, unlike the Galveston system, it also provides increased payment to beneficiaries with spouses and dependents. Does it build wealth? Jackson supports a Republican proposal that would create individual Social Security accounts and phase in investment options. He says on his website that the proposal would "allow participants to obtain better returns on the market" than they do under the current system. But Jackson, while extolling the Galveston plan during the debate, did not claim that it was outperforming Social Security. Aldridge said that Jackson, in saying the program was "building wealth," simply meant that individuals have ownership and some control over their retirement account. Galveston plan designer Rick Gornto, who is president of First Financial Benefits Inc., claimed that as the major advantage to the plan. "The key thing is you don’t have ownership in Social Security or a right to that except the right that they decide to give you, which can change," he said. Gornto could not provide an average annual return for plan investors because each chooses a mix of mutual funds to go along with the more stable bond investments in the fund. But, he said, retirement funds must, by contract, increase annually by at least 3.75 percent or 4 percent. During good times, Gornto said employees have seen annual returns of 10 percent or better. Does the Galveston plan outperform Social Security? The most recent studies of this question are 13 years old and provided a complicated answer. The GAO and the Social Security Administration each analyzed the Galveston plan in 1999. They generally agreed that the higher an employee’s salary, the more he or she would benefit from the counties’ system. But middle- and low-income earners would likely collect less from Galveston plan than they would from Social Security. We spoke to Eric Kingson, professor at Syracuse University’s School of Social Work and co-chairman of Strengthen Social Security, a group that wants to maintain benefits from the federal entitlement. He said the Galveston program is a "savings plan, not a retirement insurance plan" that best serves a small group of workers. "The only people who might do better are single persons who have higher incomes," he said. "Particularly for low and moderate income persons, they are not better off. If you are not married, not going to drop dead early, not leave widows or survivors and don’t want automatic life insurance for children, then it could be better." Our ruling Jackson is correct that Galveston, Texas, has a privately run retirement plan in lieu of Social Security. The program benefits municipal workers in Galveston County and two neighboring counties. It’s debatable whether the Galveston plan, overall, offers workers a superior financial alternative to Social Security; in some cases it does, in others it doesn’t. But, as Jackson said, the plan does build wealth because it allows workers to create individual retirement accounts that are guaranteed to earn interest each year. The employees have some control over their accounts and can leave them to their survivors. So we rate Jackson’s claim True. | null | E.W. Jackson | null | null | null | 2012-06-08T12:49:56 | 2012-05-11 | ['Texas', 'Galveston,_Texas'] |
pomt-06379 | Says "Essex County residents suffer the second highest property taxes in the nation." | half-true | /new-jersey/statements/2011/nov/02/joseph-chiusolo/essex-countys-property-taxes-among-highest-nation/ | Essex County residents have a second-place finish to marvel at -- only it’s not one they may be too happy about. In his bid to unseat county Freeholder Leonard Luciano, Republican candidate Joseph Chiusolo pointed to the county’s high property taxes in an Oct. 25 press release. In fact, according to Chiusolo, "Essex County residents suffer the second highest property taxes in the nation." PolitiFact New Jersey found that Chiusolo’s statistic was accurate to some degree. In terms of property taxes paid as a percentage of the median household income, Essex County ranks second in the nation. But when two other types of measurements are considered, Essex County is up there, but not second. "The bottom line is, if you’re sixth or two, the taxes are high," Chiusolo told us. "People out there are hurting." Let’s explain where Chiusolo received his numbers. Chiusolo, the deputy mayor of Cedar Grove, referred us to data compiled by the Washington, DC-based Tax Foundation, a business-backed group that studies tax policy. The data represents five-year averages for the period between 2005 and 2009. For that time period, the Tax Foundation ranked property taxes in owner-occupied homes in counties according to three measurements: median property taxes paid; taxes as a percentage of the median home value; and taxes as a percentage of the median household income. Each statistic comes with a margin of error. On that last measurement, Essex County ranked second among 2,922 counties with property taxes representing about 8.04 percent of the median household income. The only county above Essex was neighboring Passaic County, where property taxes were about 8.44 percent. So, Chiusolo is right on that point, but according to those two other measurements, Essex County didn't score as high. Essex County’s median property tax bill was about $7,489, ranking it sixth in the nation. At about 1.9 percent of the median home value, Essex County ranked 92nd. Thomas Ammirato, a consultant working on Chiusolo‘s campaign, pointed out how an earlier press release specified that the ranking refers to the percentage of income. But we told Ammirato that this fact-check is based on the Oct. 25 press release. Still, Chiusolo’s overall point is accurate that Essex County has some of the highest property taxes in the nation -- and as far as other New Jersey counties, it’s not alone. Among the top 10 counties for the five-year average of median property taxes paid, seven of them are in New Jersey: Hunterdon, Bergen, Essex, Somerset, Morris, Union and Passaic. One of the major factors behind the rankings is the high property values in New Jersey, according to Mark Robyn, an economist with the Tax Foundation. Kim Rueben, who directs the state and local program of the nonpartisan Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, added that part of the reason for high property taxes in the Garden State is that a lot of money to pay for local schools comes from property taxes. New Jersey also has more generous government services than other states, Rueben said. "It’s a high government-service state," Rueben said. "New Jersey has relatively high taxes and relatively generous public spending." Our ruling In a press release, Chiusolo claimed "Essex County residents suffer the second highest property taxes in the nation." That’s true if you’re looking at property taxes as a percentage of the median household income. But Essex County’s property taxes rank sixth and 92nd according to two other measurements. We rate the statement Half True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Joseph Chiusolo | null | null | null | 2011-11-02T07:30:00 | 2011-10-25 | ['None'] |
hoer-00071 | Warning White Transit Van 'RH57 WSU' Trying To Steal Dogs | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/white-van-dog-stealing.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Bogus Warning White Transit Van 'RH57 WSU' Trying To Steal Dogs | March 23, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00506 | Is Ariel Winter Pregnant? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/ariel-winter-pregnant-baby-bump/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Is Ariel Winter Pregnant? | 1:33 pm, August 7, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01605 | Hugh Hefner paid $75,000 to be interred next to Marilyn Monroe in a Los Angeles cemetery. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-hugh-hefner-pay-to-be-buried-next-to-marilyn-monroe/ | null | Entertainment | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Hugh Hefner Pay to be Interred Next to Marilyn Monroe? | 10 October 2017 | null | ['Los_Angeles', 'Hugh_Hefner', 'Marilyn_Monroe'] |
pomt-04674 | The auditor [for the city of Providence] was not locked out of access to the city's finances. | mostly false | /rhode-island/statements/2012/sep/07/david-cicilline/u-s-rep-david-cicilline-says-when-he-was-mayor-pro/ | U.S. Rep. David Cicilline is facing a tough reelection campaign, in part, because by the time he finished his tenure as mayor of Providence, the city was in horrible financial shape and Cicilline, during his 2010 congressional campaign, had characterized the city's fiscal status as "excellent." Making matters worse are allegations that Cicilline tried to hide the problems from Providence's internal auditor. Not surprisingly, the issue came up Sept. 4 when he debated his opponent in the 1st District Democratic primary, Anthony Gemma, on WPRO radio. "The fact of the matter is he locked out the city auditor," Gemma said of Cicilline. "So why would you lock out the city auditor, when the auditor needs to file for a Freedom of Information request to get in to do the very job that he was supposed to do, when you're not trying to hide something?" Cicilline called the allegation "absolutely false. The auditor was not locked out and so that is absolutely untrue." Cicilline's emphatic denial seemed ripe for an audit of its own. At the center of this dispute is James J. Lombardi III, who served as Providence's internal auditor and, as an employee of the City Council, had a sometimes contentious relationship with the Cicilline administration. He is now the city's treasurer. (The city also has an external audit done every year by an outside company. That report, dated January 2011, confirmed the financial problems.) In the fall of 2010, when Cicilline was winding down his tenure as mayor and in the middle of a tough race for the U.S. House, Lombardi was complaining that Providence's finances were in trouble and he was having trouble getting access to information. We found some justification for Gemma's assertion that Lombardi was "locked out." Two Providence Journal stories by two different reporters in March 2011 reported that Lombardi said the administration had canceled his computer access when he began to ask questions about the city's finances, forcing him to seek information by filing formal requests under the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act. Lombardi now says that he was never locked out of his computer. His computer access to city financial records was never canceled, he said, because he never had such access in the first place. Nor was he ever physically locked out of his office or anywhere else where he tried to get records. That would mean Cicilline is correct in the strictest sense of the phrase "locked out." But you can still be figuratively locked out if you are denied access to something you're legally entitled to. Providence's City Charter requires the City Council to appoint an internal auditor who "shall have access to the books and records of all offices, department and other agencies of the city." That section of the charter offers no limitation. The auditor reports to the council, not the mayor. Lombardi, whose complaints about his inability to get information from the mayor's office go back to 2004, told us that in this case the problem wasn't that he was denied the information. The problem was the timeliness of the responses he was getting. A key issue was whether the city's reserve fund -- sometimes called the rainy-day fund -- was being severely depleted. City records show that on Jan. 11, 2010, Lombardi had requested copies of all authorization forms transferring money in and out of the reserve fund in January 2010, which the Cicilline administration was tapping because of its budget problems. Three days later, he wrote to the city solicitor's office asking it to assist with the request because, if that request was treated like other requests he had made in the past, "I will never see it." Lombardi said if that couldn't be done, he would request the data under the state open records law, adding that he thought it was "ridiculous" that he would have to do such a thing. He did not get the information until October 2010, according to a report he filed with the City Council. That's nine months. When we asked the Cicilline campaign about the delay, spokesman Eric Hyers said "there was absolutely not any plan to delay him, to do anything secretly or to stonewall him." Hyers said Lombardi "had access to whatever he needed. He oftentimes had very unrealistic expectations as to what the turnaround time should be and how soon he should be provided with certain information. At times he assumed that City Hall officials were his own personal staff; they had their own jobs to do." Hyers said "this constant tug of war over what he was entitled to and when he should have it was not unique to 2010. It started several, several years ago." We saw two other examples. In May, according to city records, Lombardi requested a cash flow analysis and was told by the Cicilline administration that (a.) one didn't exist and (b.) the administration was not obligated to generate one just for him under the open records law. Also in May, he asked Bruce Miller, the city's finance director, for a schedule detailing how the Cicilline administration planned to balance the city's budget. He was told that, until the plan was finalized, he wasn't entitled to see it under the open records law. Lombardi said he ultimately received the information he wanted in October 2010. That was after the Democratic primary, where Gemma was one of Cicilline’s opponents, and before the general election, where Cicilline ran against Republican John Loughlin. Loughlin was able to use that information in a Channel 12 debate, during which Cicilline, while touting his accomplishments as mayor, made the now-infamous declaration that Providence was in "excellent financial condition." That record would become seriously tarnished after the election when an independent audit made the full extent of Providence's financial problems painfully clear. Our ruling Former Providence Mayor David Cicilline said that the internal auditor for the city "was not locked out" of access to the city's finances. The auditor now says that he was not locked out in the usual sense of the word. But there's a fine line between being locked out and stonewalled. Cicilline's spokesman emphatically says that "neither of those happened." But the record shows that Lombardi faced many months of delay in getting information he was entitled to by the City Charter. He was forced to use the state’s open records law to get information and waited months for it. And key information -- that Cicilline had been tapping the rainy day fund -- wasn’t provided until October 2010, after Cicilline’s primary victory. Whether it was part of a long-running political wrangle between the mayor and the City Council, which hires the internal auditor, is irrelevant. Open record laws require the release of information regardless of the motives of the person seeking it. The auditor was not locked out in the strictest sense. But the inability of the internal auditor to get information that might have led to a timely disclosure of the city's serious financial problems had the same effect. Because the statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False. (Get updates from PolitiFact Rhode Island on Twitter: @politifactri. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.) | null | David Cicilline | null | null | null | 2012-09-07T00:02:00 | 2012-09-04 | ['None'] |
farg-00044 | Trump says he has "recognized Russian Meddling MANY TIMES." | none | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/trumps-mixed-messages-on-russian-meddling/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Donald Trump | Robert Farley | ['Russia investigation'] | Trump’s Mixed Messages on Russian Meddling | July 23, 2018 | [' Twitter – Thursday, July 19, 2018 '] | ['None'] |
pomt-13786 | Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies. She is responsible for ISIS. | false | /florida/statements/2016/jul/20/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-blames-hillary-clinton-creati/ | Donald Trump and his vice presidential candidate Mike Pence gave their first joint interview to 60 Minutes and used the show to point the finger at Hillary Clinton for ISIS. Trump told CBS’s Lesley Stahl that the United States will have to declare war against ISIS -- and he vowed to do it with very few troops on the ground to wipe out ISIS. "Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies," Trump said in an interview that aired July 17. "She is responsible for ISIS." Trump has made this claim repeatedly. It’s wrong, and we’ll explain why. The roots of ISIS Trump was referring to Clinton’s actions related to Iraq, Libya and Syria, said Trump spokesman Stephen Miller, who referred us to a previous Trump speech on the topic. The sources of ISIS are complex and interconnected, said John Pike, an expert on defense and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website that provides information on defense. "She may ‘share some of the blame’ but there is more than enough share to go around. She was in no sense the singular author of the thing," Pike said. For starters, the terrorist group’s roots pre-date Obama’s presidency and Clinton’s role as secretary of state. It has gone by several names since 2004, when long-time Sunni extremist Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi established al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and more recently the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), according to the National Counterterrorism Center. After he was killed in a 2006 U.S. airstrike, the group became the Islamic State of Iraq. In 2013, the group was referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and then just the Islamic State in 2014. Given the timing, Democrats blame President George W. Bush for the creation of ISIS, because al-Qaida flourished after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Obama’s decision to leave Iraq after 2011 contributed to the security vacuum that gave ISIS the chance to put down roots there, said Michael O’Hanlon, a security expert at the Brookings Institution, a centrist-to-liberal group. (O’Hanlon is one of hundreds of voluntary advisers to the Clinton campaign but has a minor role.) You could say the blame touches both Bush, for creating a strong space for al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, and Obama, for giving the group a chance to regroup. As for Clinton, Trump’s campaign points to her vote as a senator to authorize force in Iraq in 2002. She later said she regretted that vote. Republicans have blamed Obama for not keeping 10,000 troops in place in Iraq, which they say could have deterred the opening for ISIS. However, Obama inherited a timeline to exit Iraq from Bush, and there was no agreement to leave a large force behind. Trump’s campaign also points to Clinton’s positions on Syria and Libya. In 2011, she echoed Obama’s support for regime change in Syria in 2011. "The transition to democracy in Syria has begun, and it's time for Assad to get out of the way," she said while secretary of state in August 2011. Regime change in Libya also gave ISIS an opening, said Christopher Preble, a defense expert at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Clinton's enthusiasm for regime change in Libya in 2011, which Obama endorsed, resulted in the collapse of order there, which ISIS and others have exploited," he said. "That is a fair criticism, in my opinion." It’s possible to argue that these factors -- withdrawing from Iraq, the administration’s lack of support to anti-Assad rebels in Syria and the decision to intervene in Libya -- contributed to the power of ISIS, said Austin Long, a Columbia University international and public affairs professor. "Then Sen. Clinton's vote for the Iraq war could also be seen as contributing the preconditions for the emergence of al-Qaida in Iraq," Long said. "So Trump's argument cannot simply be dismissed out of hand." However, Clinton was in favor of supporting Syrian rebels and was overruled by Obama and advocated strongly for maintaining a moderate troop presence in Iraq after 2011. "So on both of those points, I don't think it was Clinton leading Obama -- rather, it was the reverse," Long said. "The Libya intervention and the vote for the Iraq war are thus the only points in the argument that actually stand up to scrutiny." On her vote related to the Iraq war, Clinton was many of many in both parties who supported the intervention advocated by Bush. "On Libya while this clearly appears to have been a mistake in hindsight it was a fairly minor contribution to the emergence of ISIS, which grew out of the Iraq and Syrian conflict," Long said. Our ruling Trump said "Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies. She is responsible for ISIS." There were several factors that contributed to the growing power of ISIS, but it’s misleading to pin the responsibility solely on Clinton. For starters, the roots of ISIS trace back to 2004, when Bush was president and before Clinton was Obama’s secretary of state. She did vote to authorize force in Iraq in 2002 while a senator, but that was advocated by the Bush administration and the vast majority of senators. The intervention in Libya, which she supported, did give ISIS an opening, but Trump is overstating her role by saying she is responsible for ISIS. This claim is inaccurate. We rate it False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/10e1a530-108f-44ed-babe-6f9d5e5c9712 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-07-20T18:12:59 | 2016-07-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-06885 | Says that when he was governor of Utah, he worked with the state Legislature to create a flat tax that "cut income taxes by 30 percent." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/28/jon-huntsman/jon-huntsman-touts-record-enacting-flat-tax-how-ac/ | Every Republican candidate claims to be a tax-cutter, but former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman says he's done something that few other Republicans can claim: he simplified the state's income taxes and passed a flat tax. During a recent house party in Belmont, N.H., Huntsman responded to a voter's question about whether the aim of the federal tax system should be to raise revenue or influence behavior. "That's one of those trick questions, right?'' Huntsman asked. "Possibly,'' said Bill Goetz, a retired, manufacturing executive living in Belmont. Huntsman went on to describe his philosophy and pointed to his record in Utah. "We got a flat tax out of it, we cut income taxes by 30 percent, it was a cost-neutral affair where we took out the deductions, we took out the biases almost completely, some we didn't get out, and you know what? The state came to life in part because of that.'' Republicans frequently talk a good game about supporting a flat tax, but they often have difficulty getting political support to change the complicated tax laws. So we wondered if Huntsman and the Utah legislature had succeeded in overhauling the state law to the point where it can be considered a flat tax -- and whether they cut income taxes by 30 percent. The Huntsman campaign pointed us to published reports this spring and in 2007 that explained how Huntsman began pushing for the changes soon after he took office in January 2005. "We need a tax policy that is not only friendly to our citizens, but also creates a competitive environment for business. Business as usual will leave us behind our neighboring states," he said during his first State of the State speech in January 2005. Huntsman and the Legislature achieved their goal with two changes in tax law over two years. When Huntsman took office, there were six income tax brackets ranging from 2.3 percent to 7 percent. Ultimately, Huntsman and the Legislature approved a single rate of 5 percent. They created a much flatter tax, stripping away most of the deductions and credits. Utah taxpayers still adjust their income in ways such as counting interest earned on bond income or deducting from income the withdrawals they make from medical savings accounts. The research arm of the Utah Legislature maintains it was not a flat tax in the purest sense. "Although the new system has a single statutory rate of 5.0 percent, it is not a proportional or 'flat' income tax system. Rather, Utah’s new income tax system remains progressive through tax credits,'' said a January 2010 report of the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel. (A progressive tax system is one in which richer people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than poorer people do.) Roughly 90 percent of taxpayers get to claim as a credit from state taxes some of what they claim as deductions and tax exemptions under the federal tax code. The credit phases out and goes away from those making very high incomes in the state. This makes the effective tax rate about 3 percent for Utah taxpayers earning $70,000 a year in 2008 and 4 percent for a household with $100,000 in taxable income, according to the legislative group's analysis. "There's no question this is a single rate tax -- but with the credit, the overwhelming majority of taxpayers do not pay 5 percent of their income,'' said Phil Dean, the policy analyst who authored the 2010 study. Conservative groups give Huntsman high marks for the overhaul and have said they consider it to be a flat tax. The libertarian Cato Institute gave Huntsman the highest score of any governor on tax policy in 2006. Likewise, the Club for Growth praised Huntsman's tax reform while adding there were some "minor blemishes"' that included other tax increases during his tenure. (It's worth noting that both groups fault Huntsman for increases in state spending that occurred under his watch.) In general, most taxpayers ended up paying less in taxes. The Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel estimated that about 97 percent of taxpayers were paying the same or less compared to the 2005 system. As for Huntsman's claim that they "cut income taxes by 30 percent," we find that is a significant exaggeration. He is close to correct if you compare the statutory rate in the top tax bracketbefore and after the tax system changed. The top rate declined from 7 percent to 5 percent, which is a decrease of 28.6 percent. But there are two problems with this measurement. First, it doesn’t address the lower tax brackets. Remember, the lowest rate went up from 2.3 percent to 5 percent. So Huntsman’s 30 percent decrease in the statutory rate didn’t apply to them. That said, it’s worth noting that residents in the lowest tax brackets didn’t necessarily end up paying more in taxes, because under both approaches they got credits that reduced their tax bill. (In fact, about 97 percent pay the same or less in taxes than they did under the old system.) Which brings us to the second problem with Huntsman’s 30 percent description -- that just looking at the drop in the statutory rate, as Huntsman does, says very little about how a taxpayer actually fared after the change. Even after the imposition of the new system, a Utah resident’s tax bill is heavily dependent on their specific circumstances. The 2010 report found that very few taxpayers saved more than $300 on their tax bill, and those who did were mostly in the top 10 percent of earners. Instead, for the bottom 70 percent of earners, the typical savings was between zero and $200. And a $200 savings for someone earning $55,000 is about four-tenths of 1 percent. That’s a much more modest in-pocket savings than a listener would assume from hearing Huntsman’s 30 percent figure. "In dollars and cents, for single taxpayers the annual income tax cut worked out to between $25 and $100,'' Dean said. "Most married taxpayers got a tax cut of $50 to $200." Dean added that a cut in the sales tax effectively doubled the overall tax cut for most families. But even that wouldn’t make the savings approach a 30 percent tax-bill reduction for the vast majority of taxpayers. Our ruling Huntsman said he passed a flat tax and "cut income taxes by 30 percent." On the flat tax question, the changes under Huntsman certainly made it a flatter tax than the one it replaced, since the changes he oversaw combined several tax brackets into one. But the tax remains more complicated to calculate than a pure flat tax would be. In fact, Utah’s system of tax credits make the tax somewhat progressive in practice, which is something a true flat tax would not be. Meanwhile, Huntsman’s 30 percent claim is more misleading. It’s true that the statutory rates in the top bracket declined by almost that much, but the actual reduction in tax dollars paid was far smaller for the overwhelming majority of taxpayers -- usually less than 1 percent of a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income. We think most people hearing Huntsman's comment would believe he was touting a 30 percent cut in what people actually pay at tax time, and the numbers aren’t close to that. So we rate his claim Mostly False. | null | Jon Huntsman | null | null | null | 2011-07-28T17:20:24 | 2011-07-04 | ['Utah'] |
pomt-08445 | Says gas pumps in different parts of Texas are missing state inspection stickers and/or their inspections are out of date--and that's cheating consumers. | half-true | /texas/statements/2010/oct/16/hank-gilbert/hank-gilbert-says-gas-pumps-every-texas-department/ | Hank Gilbert, Democrat for state agriculture commissioner, stood outside a Tyler gas station in September, saying the station's pumps hadn't been inspected by the state to make sure they're working properly since July 1997. "All over the state, we found stations in every (Texas Department of Agriculture) region that either haven't been inspected in years or they have no inspection stickers on them," Gilbert said, according to the Sept. 16 video his campaign posted online. "If this was inspection stickers for vehicles and you had 20 percent of all the vehicles on the road without inspection stickers, it would be in the news media every day and the state would raising all kinds of Cain because of the revenue being lost to the state. But the revenue is not being lost to the state here, the only people here that are getting cheated are the consumers." Sticker-gate? Roll in the Truth-O-Meter. Background: State law requires each gas pump to be inspected at least every four years by a Texas Department of Agriculture inspector, or more often if a consumer makes an inquiry. The department says an inspector "will place an 'out of order' tag on any pump not dispensing the correct amount of fuel within the allowable tolerance." The pump must be repaired, then re-tested by a TDA inspector who will place a new seal on the pump before it can be used again. Agency spokesman Bryan Black told us in an e-mail that from 2007 to Oct. 4, 2010, the agency inspected 390,837 fuel pumps, with the time between inspections averaging 2.6 years, meaning some pumps have been inspected more than once. So, how often are inspection stickers missing from pumps? Also, how often does the state fail to inspect them in the required time? We came up empty on those questions, though a list of inspected stations posted online by the agriculture department shows that in each of the department's five regions, some pumps flunked inspections in the latest review period. From Aug. 5 to Oct. 4, 2010, the agency found 190 stations (including four in Austin) with pumps out of compliance. When we inquired about the number of stations around the state with pumps that have not been inspected, Black replied that the burden to seek inspections is on retailers that sell gas. He said in an e-mail that fuel retailers are required by law to register annually with the department and that violators are investigated and held accountable. Black said in an e-mail: "Since 2007, TDA has quadrupled the penalty for noncompliance with our state's weights and measures laws, created new consumer protections for fuel quality, begun posting violators on the agency website, implemented unprecedented market blitz inspections for those not complying with our laws, and heavily published a toll free hotline for all Texas drivers to use to report noncompliance to TDA." Next, we sought to interview Gilbert about the pumps he says lack inspections or have out-of-date inspection stickers. Gilbert's campaign manager, Vince Leibowitz, said in an e-mail that Gilbert wouldn't talk to PolitiFact Texas, which he said Gilbert considers slanted toward Republicans. Later, Leibowitz sent us e-mails listing 15 stores where he said Gilbert identified pumps out of compliance with the inspection law. In Amarillo, according to Gilbert, seven stores had pumps with no inspection stickers. In the Tyler area, the list shows two stores with pumps having expired stickers and two with pumps lacking inspection stickers. Gilbert's campaign says a store in Trinity has a sticker indicating it was last inspected in the second quarter of 2004 and most pumps at two stores in Round Rock, north of Austin, lacked stickers, meaning they had no proof they'd been inspected. Leibowitz said Gilbert also spotted a store in Weslaco with out-of-date pump stickers. Using a map of agriculture department districts, we confirmed that the identified stations are spread among all the agency's regions, as Gilbert said in Tyler. We lacked travel resources to eye most of Gilbert's proclaimed sightings, but Austin American-Statesman colleagues stopped by the two Round Rock stores. On an Oct. 9 visit by Jay Godwin, a Quix convenience store at Highway 79 and Interstate 35 in Round Rock had 2007 inspection stickers posted on three pumps, with seven pumps lacking stickers. Roger Ingram, general counsel for Strasburger Enterprises, Inc., which owns the store, later told us he didn't know why the pumps lack stickers. "They can be peeled off by just about anybody," Ingram said. On Oct. 11, the newspaper's Miguel Liscano checked a Wag a Bag store noted by Gilbert, on Interstate Highway 35 South; none of its six pumps had an inspection sticker. Cary Rabb, president of Wag a Bag, later told us the pumps were changed out about three months ago, and the company expects the state to inspect the replacement pumps. Separately, Black guided us to an agency website that displays the inspection status of stations county by county. On the site, we tried to check the inspection status of the stations identified by Gilbert, finding several--including the Round Rock stores--with inspections within the past four years, as the law requires. In other parts of Texas, five stores named by Gilbert had their pumps inspected within four years, according to the site, and two Tyler stores had pumps inspected after Gilbert aired concerns there, with some pumps not passing. We found no record on the state site of six Gilbert-identified stores. Gilbert's camp responded to our findings with a statement from Gilbert: "A pump that does not bear a current inspection sticker is, as far as the consumer knows when he or she fills up with gas, uninspected. If it was inspected at some point in the last four years and doesn't bear seals, it is still non-compliant." In an e-mail, Black confirmed that every gas dispenser should have a state inspection seal on it. Possible reasons a pump lacks a sticker, he said, include a flunked inspection, a replaced or refurbished "pump cabinet," someone peeling off the state sticker, a station shifting its pumps without notifying the state and a station opening pumps without registering them with the state. In a later e-mail, Black cautioned against concluding a pump without a sticker has not been inspected, saying any such claims would need to be verified in the agency's database. Scott Fisher, vice president for policy for the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, told us that it's "unrealistic" to think all of the hundreds of thousands of pumps across the state would always show inspection stickers. And Chris Newton, the association's president, pointed out in a subsequent e-mail that big ol' Texas leads the nation in pumps subject to regulation. Another factor in pumps lacking stickers, he wrote, is that "many pumps are re-manufactured devices that feature an older façade with an older (state) sticker. The device may in fact be properly registered, but may not have a new sticker." Our call? We're persuaded there are pumps in every TDA region missing inspection stickers, as Gilbert says. However, the absence of stickers doesn't always means pumps haven't been duly inspected, our peek into the state database suggests. Gilbert's grab-your-pocketbook punch line--that consumers are being cheated--isn't proved out. We rate Gilbert's statement Half True. | null | Hank Gilbert | null | null | null | 2010-10-16T06:00:00 | 2010-09-12 | ['Texas'] |
tron-03225 | Veterans Demanded That Flag With President Obama’s Face be Taken Down From Florida Democratic HQ | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-face-flag/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Veterans Demanded That Flag With President Obama’s Face be Taken Down From Florida Democratic HQ | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03141 | Nancy Pelosi on Taxing the Rich | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/pelosi/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Nancy Pelosi on Taxing the Rich | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Nancy_Pelosi'] |
pomt-14977 | The gun industry is "the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/16/hillary-clinton/clinton-gun-industry-wholly-protected-all-lawsuits/ | At the first Democratic debate of the 2016 presidential race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for supporting a 2005 law that shields the gun industry from certain lawsuits. Clinton voted against this law when she was a senator, and she has lambasted it several times on the campaign trail this month. "Probably one of the most egregious, wrong, pieces of legislation that ever passed the Congress when it comes to this issue is to protect gun sellers and gun makers from liability," she said in Iowa Oct. 7. "They are the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability. They can sell a gun to someone they know they shouldn't, and they won't be sued. There will be no consequences." Is Clinton right? Are gun makers and dealers "wholly protected" against any kind of lawsuit, and do no other industries have similar immunities? Short answer: No. The gun industry is susceptible to some lawsuits, and there are federal laws restricting liability for a number of other types of businesses. As support, Clinton’s staff sent us a public health journal article that argues the gun industry’s "broad immunity" against litigation inhibits safe manufacturing and distribution of firearms, though it does not directly address her claim. Exceptions The law at issue is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush and seen as a victory for gun rights advocates. The purpose of the law is to protect gun dealers and manufacturers from lawsuits when their products are misused. For example, if a person buys a gun legally and then uses the gun to intentionally kill someone, the gun dealer and manufacturer cannot be held liable for the crime under the law. While opponents argue that the law stops some victims from having their day in court, supporters say the law protects gun dealers and manufacturers from frivolous and expensive legal proceedings. In any case, Clinton goes too far in saying the gun industry is "wholly protected from any kind of liability." The law lists several situations that are not protected from liability. It does not protect gun dealers who transfer a gun knowing it would be used for criminal purposes, nor those who knowingly break state or federal law if the violation results in harm. Gun manufacturers can also be sued if the gun, when used properly, causes injury because the product is defective. "The statement is incorrect insofar as it suggests that gun makers are totally free from liability," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles who specializes in gun law. Some opponents of the law argue that the liability protection is so broad and ambiguous, and the exceptions so narrow, that some legitimate lawsuits won’t have a chance to appear in court. But this is different from saying the gun industry is wholly immune to all lawsuits. Clinton also said the gun industry is the "only" business in America with this total liability protection. We know that it doesn’t have total protection, but do other sectors have something similar? Not the only one The act "is not the first federal law to grant a particular industry immunity from tort liability," said Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University, who edited a book on gun industry litigation. Possibly the most analogous rule -- in that it protects a specific group of potential defendants from a specific liability theory -- is one that offers some immunity to online service providers, said John Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard University and an expert in tort law, in an email to PolitiFact. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act blocks victims of online defamation from suing service providers (like Comcast) and content providers (like YouTube) for failing to monitor or remove defamatory posts uploaded by customers. In a prior interview with NPR, Goldberg called the gun industry law particularly "aggressive" in terms of the liability protections granted. Most of the experts we surveyed also mentioned a vaccine manufacturer liability law passed in the 1980s. Under the law, victims of injuries that they say were caused by defective vaccines are not allowed to sue vaccine manufacturers. This differs from the gun legislation, however, because it established the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, through which alleged victims can make a claim and receive compensation. "By contrast, (the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) simply prohibits certain kinds of tort claims against the gun industry without providing plaintiffs any alternative means of pursuing their claims," Lytton said. There’s also some liability protection in the medical devices and airline industries, noted Walter Olson, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and expert in tort law. For example,the 1994 General Aviation Revitalization Act said small aircraft manufacturers cannot be sued for accidents involving aircraft more than 18 years old. "It’s not at all unique to the gun industry. It’s a version (of liability law) Congress developed for an industry that was under very heavy attack," Olson said, referring to the slew of litigation against gun sellers and makers that prompted Congress to pass the law. Our ruling Clinton said the gun industry is "the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability." Clinton is talking about a law that says the gun industry is protected from liability in certain instances, but the law also specifies several situations in which the gun industry is susceptible to lawsuits. Further, Congress has passed a number of laws that protect a variety of business sectors from lawsuits in certain situations, so the situation is not unique to the gun industry. We rate Clinton’s claim False. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2015-10-16T11:22:53 | 2015-10-07 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-09668 | The Senate health care bill "would leave 24 million people without insurance coverage." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/20/mike-enzi/se-mike-enzi-says-senate-health-care-bill-will-lea/ | Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, whom Democrats had once hoped to woo for bipartisan support of a health care bill, attacked the version put forth on Nov. 18, 2009, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Like the Pelosi bill, the Reid bill is government-centered, not patient-centered," Enzi said "It’s chock-full of new taxes and higher health care costs that would threaten jobs, weaken our economy, punish families and small businesses trying to make ends meet, and stick our children and grandchildren with the bill." That's all pretty standard fare from Republican opponents of the Democratic health care plans being debated in Congress. But we were intrigued by another criticism leveled by the Wyoming senator, that the Senate bill "would leave 24 million people without insurance coverage." That uninsured figure cited by Enzi comes from an analysis of the Reid bill by the Congressional Budget Office. The report concludes that under the Reid bill, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent. Specifically, the report estimated that the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 31 million by 2019, leaving about 24 million nonelderly residents uninsured. So who are those 24 million who would be left uninsured? About a third of them are illegal immigrants, the CBO report states. So who are the other two-thirds (16 million) left uninsured? We asked three health care experts: John Holahan at the Urban Institute; Leighton Ku, a professor of health policy at George Washington University; and Kathleen D. Stoll, director of Health Policy at Families USA. They said those people mostly fall into several main categories: • People who are deemed able to afford health insurance but simply decide the tax penalties are not high enough to persuade them to buy it. Some young, healthy people, for example, may decide it's cheaper to simply pay the tax penalty rather than purchase insurance, Stoll said. The same is true for some wealthy people who are self-insured. "These are basically people who say, 'It's not worth it to me,' " Ku said. • People exempt from tax penalties because the cost of health insurance comes to more than 8 percent of their income, even if they are getting federal subsidies. These are generally people with a lower income, but not so low as to qualify for Medicaid. Without a penalty, many of those people may decide to continue not to buy insurance. "These are people on the lower end of the income scale, but not the poorest of the poor," Ku said, generally people who make anywhere from 133 percent to 300 percent of the poverty level. • People who are eligible for Medicaid, but simply don't sign up. Some people just think it's a hassle to sign up for insurance, even when it's free, Ku said. About 60 percent of people eligible for Medicaid today simply don't sign up, Holahan said. "People with very low incomes don't always know how to navigate a lot of things in life. People don't necessarily value health care, and they don't take the time to fill out the necessary paperwork." • Then there are those who are in transitional stages of life -- perhaps a job change -- and don't take steps to close the insurance gaps between jobs. The CBO report found that the Senate bill was less effective in reducing the number of uninsured compared to the version of the health care bill that passed the House. While the Senate version was estimated to reduce the number of uninsured by 31 million (leaving 24 million uninsured), the House plan was estimated to reduce the number of uninsured by about 36 million, leaving about 18 million uninsured. That's largely because the House tax penalty for not getting insurance is a lot harsher. Under the House bill, people who refuse to purchase health insurance will be hit with a tax penalty equivalent to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income. The Senate plan calls for a tax penalty of $95 in 2014, going up to $350 in 2015, $750 in 2016, and graduated up in ensuing years based on inflation adjustments. Given differences between the House and Senate bills that cause the Senate plan to leave more uninsured, we certainly think it's fair for a senator to criticize the plan in that regard. But since this criticism comes from a Republican senator, we would be remiss if we did not point out several other political realities. A CBO analysis of the main Republican health care plan, which was put forward by House Republican leader John Boehner, concluded it would reduce the number of uninsured by only about 3 million people (as opposed to 31 million in the Reid plan). "It has not been a particularly high priority for the Republican Party to expand the number of people who get health insurance coverage," Ku said. Again, a third of the people who would remain uninsured under the Reid plan are illegal immigrants. You may recall that many Republicans criticized Democrats for not taking enough precautions to ensure that illegal immigrants are barred from a public option and also argued that illegal immigrants ought to be prohibited from buying insurance in any government-sponsored health insurance exchange. And the biggest factor accounting for fewer uninsured in the Reid plan, as opposed to the House plan, is that the Senate plan has less severe penalties for those who do not buy insurance. But many conservatives have criticized Democrats for the mandate, arguing that the government ought not get involved in requiring health insurance. Still, the bottom line is that Enzi said the Reid plan would leave 24 million people uninsured, and the CBO confirms that figure. We rate his statement True. | null | Mike Enzi | null | null | null | 2009-11-20T16:43:33 | 2009-11-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-00381 | When Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, do you know he was ridiculed? He was ridiculed. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/sep/07/donald-trump/was-lincolns-gettysburg-address-initially-ridicule/ | Few people would have had "Gettysburg Address" on their bingo card for President Donald Trump’s Sept. 6 rally in Billings, Mont. But Trump did riff on the famous mid-Civil War speech by President Abraham Lincoln. The 273-word address, memorized by countless schoolchildren, was delivered for the dedication of the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, at the site of a bloody but pivotal battle in the Civil War. Here’s what Trump said at the rally: "You know, when Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, do you know he was ridiculed? He was ridiculed. "He took the horse and carriage up from the White House, he wrote it partially in that carriage and partially at a desk in the Lincoln Bedroom, which is incredible, by the way, in the White House. And he went up to Gettysburg, and he delivered that speech, the Gettysburg Address. And he was excoriated by the fake news. They had fake news then. He was excoriated. "They said it was a terrible, terrible speech. They said it was far too short. It's not long. Many of us know it by memory. It was far too short, and it was far too flowery. It was too flowery, four score and seven years ago, right? Too flowery. And he died. "Fifty years after his death, they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America." Some portions of Trump’s description are inaccurate (the president rode the train to Gettysburg rather than taking a horse and carriage) while others are fairly accurate (he is generally believed to have written a large portion of the speech at the White House before completing it and making revisions after his arrival in Gettysburg). The part that raised our eyebrows is the notion that Lincoln, despite being lionized for his words in subsequent generations, was "ridiculed" for the address at the time. Trump has a point, but the speech’s reception is more complicated than he lets on. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union example Trump may have been thinking of the example of the Harrisburg Patriot & Union, which attracted national attention in in 2013, as the 150th anniversary of the address approached. The paper, located less than an hour away from the battlefield, wrote a scathing account of the speech. About Lincoln’s portion, the newspaper opined, "We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of." A century and a half later, the newspaper's take officially changed. The Harrisburg Patriot-News and pennlive.com, under the leadership of editorial page editors John L. Micek and Matthew Zencey, ‘fessed up to the paper’s past editorial misstep in a 2013 fashion modeled on Lincoln’s original address: "Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives. … No mere utterance, then or now, could do justice to the soaring heights of language Mr. Lincoln reached that day. By today's words alone, we cannot exalt, we cannot hallow, we cannot venerate this sacred text, for a grateful nation long ago came to view those words with reverence, without guidance from this chagrined member of the mainstream media. ... The Patriot-News regrets the error." The newspaper’s self-deprecating retraction went viral, even inspiring a recurring character on Saturday Night Live’s "Weekend Update" -- Jebidiah Atkinson, the unrepentant, arrogant "speech critic" for the 1860s Harrisburg Patriot & Union, played by cast member Taran Killam. (Watch his inaugural SNL appearance, in which Atkinson haughtily disses famous speeches by everyone from Patrick Henry to Jesus.) See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com So one particularly high-profile case backs up evidence for Trump’s remarks in Montana. Was this a common occurrence? The Harrisburg Patriot-News’ negative reaction was not isolated, but it was not unanimous. The poet and historian Carl Sandburg wrote in 1954 that "the American correspondent of the London Times wrote that 'the ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln. ... Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce.'" And the Chicago Times wrote, "The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances." But others offered high praise indeed. The Chicago Tribune wrote, "The dedicatory remarks by President Lincoln will live among the annals of man." Sandburg reported that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin wrote that "not many" who read Lincoln’s speech "will do it without a moistening of the eye and a swelling of the heart." And the Providence Journal added, "We know not where to look for a more admirable speech than the brief one which the president made." The key determinant of a newspaper’s positive or a negative review? Politics, historians say. Lincoln was a Republican. "The Patriot was a Democratic organ dedicated to the defeat of Republicans," said William Blair, a Penn State University historian and author of With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era. "The Democrats were being increasingly dominated by a peace faction that was calling for an armistice of an indistinct nature but with the possibility of bargaining with the South for reunification while preserving slavery. The Democrats increasingly criticized Republicans for a seeming willingness -- in their eyes -- to waste more and more white lives for the ending of slavery while refusing to consider negotiating to end the war." In other words, Blair said, what seems to modern ears like an apolitical speech appealing to universal values was actually seen at the time as a statement of policy -- in favor of continuing the war, and seeking emancipation. "It was a brilliant speech that pressed forward two important policy measures without seeming to do so," Blair said. "The Patriot’s response was to an extent predictable. Republican newspapers were very supportive" of Lincoln’s speech in the immediate aftermath. Trump does have a point about the address' changing assessment over time, said Eric Foner, a Columbia University historian who specializes in slavery and the Civil War. "The speech definitely was seen as iconic 50 years later but not at the time," Foner said. "A few (newspapers) recognized that this one was really special. But generally, in 1863 Lincoln was much more revered for the Emancipation Proclamation than the Gettysburg Address." Our ruling Trump said, "When Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, do you know he was ridiculed? He was ridiculed." Lincoln was definitely ridiculed by some newspapers, primarily on the basis of politics. Those sympathetic to Democrats and the South blasted it for seeming to support a continuation of the war and the goal of emancipation. It's worth noting that other newspapers -- those whose sentiments aligned with the Union -- lavished the address with praise. The statement is accurate but requires additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-09-07T15:06:46 | 2018-09-06 | ['Abraham_Lincoln', 'Gettysburg_Address'] |
goop-01144 | Jennifer Aniston “Dumped” By Brad Pitt For “Angelina Jolie Lookalike”? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-brad-pitt-dumped-angelina-jolie-lookalike-neri-oxman/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Aniston “Dumped” By Brad Pitt For “Angelina Jolie Lookalike”? | 2:59 am, April 20, 2018 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston', 'Brad_Pitt'] |
pomt-11056 | Burka clad woman runs over baby, gets away with crime for one stunning reason ... | false | /ohio/statements/2018/jun/26/blog-posting/blog-site-wrongly-claims-muslim-woman-escaped-puni/ | A conservative blog falsely claimed that a Muslim woman recently escaped punishment after striking and killing a 7-month-old baby with her car. The problem with that headline? The crash actually occurred June 2, 2016, and the driver received three years in prison and a lifetime suspension on her license, according to local reports. "Burka clad woman runs over baby, gets away with crime for 1 stunning reason," said a June 12, 2018, headline from Daily Headlines, a website offering "unapologetic news (and) commentary from a conservative perspective," according to the about section of its Facebook page. On its website, Daily Headlines said it is neither satire nor "fake news." Facebook flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Citing a Nov. 22, 2017, article from America Now, a blog site, the story said a Somali native drove her car off the road and into a house, injuring a man and killing his child in what was her second car accident in four days. The man was walking his son in a stroller. "After 2 car accidents in 4 days, one of which injured a father and took the life of his 7-month old baby before the car drove into a house, a Somali native has been arrested, charged, and convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide and was then let free to roam around until her sentencing hearing," the story said, adding that the woman, Muhuba Mohamed of Columbus, Ohio, was driving on a temporary permit at the time of the accident. But according to local reports from the Columbus Dispatch and others, Mohamed was not set free following the crash. After a judge found her guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide on Oct. 5, 2017, Mohamed surrendered her passport and remained free on bond while she awaited sentencing, which occurred Nov. 29, 2017. Mohamed’s bond was set at $10,000, according to court records. Judges often set criminal defendants free on bond as a means of securing their agreement to return to court for their remaining criminal proceedings. In this case, Mohamed returned to court for sentencing, where she received three years in prison and a lifetime license suspension. So yes, Mohamed was able to "roam around until her sentencing hearing," so to speak. But she surrendered her passport and was bound to return to court by a high bond. She also did not get away with her crime, as the Daily Headlines headline falsely stated. (Daily Headlines did not respond to a request for comment submitted via the contact page on their website.) We rate this statement False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-06-26T10:00:00 | 2018-06-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-02455 | We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/feb/25/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-medicaid-expansion-has-brought-h/ | After the troubled launch of President Barack Obama’s health care law last fall, the numbers of health insurance sign-ups has increased -- and so has the spin. Speaking at a dinner with the Democratic Governors Association on Feb. 20, 2014, Obama said the law had brought health care to millions of people. He provided a breakdown: "Right now, we’ve already got close to 4 million Americans who have signed up for exchanges. We’ve got 3 million Americans who were able to stay on their parents’ plan because of the law. We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion. So we’ve already got well over 10 million Americans just in the first few months, despite problems with healthcare.gov in the first month and a half, who suddenly have the financial security that in some cases they’ve never known before." One of these numbers has attracted particular scrutiny -- the "7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion." This refers to an expansion under the law of the federal-state Medicaid program. Obama’s law lifted the income limits on who is eligible for Medicaid coverage, newly opening the program to those who had incomes that were very low but still too high to qualify. The federal government would initially pay 100 percent of the cost, with the federal share eventually dropping to 90 percent. In its landmark decision affirming most of the law, the Supreme Court made an exception for the Medicaid provision, saying that states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion. So far, 25 states plus the District of Columbia have decided to expand their Medicaid program, and four more are still considering it. The remaining 21 -- mainly states with Republican political leadership -- have opted out. Our friends at the Washington Post Fact Checker gave Obama’s claim the worst rating on their scale -- Four Pinocchios. We thought we’d take a look, too. We asked the White House if it would like to explain Obama’s claim, but the press office did not offer any additional information. (The White House didn’t talk to the Post’s Fact Checker, either.) But we think we have a pretty good idea where the president got his number from -- a report released Jan. 22 by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, titled, "Medicaid & CHIP: December Monthly Applications and Eligibility Determinations Report." According to that report, the cumulative number of individuals determined eligible for Medicaid (or a related but separate State Children’s Health Insurance Program) by state agencies during October, November and December 2013 was a little more than 6.3 million. That’s not 7 million, but it’s approaching that number. However, the report notes some caveats about the 6.3 million figure. The number, according to the report, "includes those newly eligible under the Affordable Care Act and those eligible under prior law and, for some states, renewals." In other words, the number includes people who were already eligible under the old, pre-Obamacare Medicaid rules and "came out of the woodwork," so to speak, during the last three months of 2013. This means they did not suddenly gain "access to health care for the first time" due to Obamacare, which was the standard Obama used in his speech to the governors’ group. The number also includes some people who simply renewed lapsed Medicaid coverage -- people who also wouldn’t be getting "access to health care for the first time." So how many people actually got health coverage due to the Medicaid expansion? That’s a tougher nut to crack, because the data is scattered among different states and different categories. Two private-sector efforts to estimate the number produced divergent figures. Charles Gaba, a website developer and blogger in Michigan, has been tracking enrollment figures at his ACASignups.net site. His most recent estimate from late February shows 2.6 million Medicaid sign-ups once you subtract those falling into three categories -- those who signed up in states that didn’t expand Medicaid, those who were previously eligible and who "came out of the woodwork" to sign up, and an estimate of the typical "churn" for Medicaid sign-ups in those states. Meanwhile, Avalere, a health-care consulting firm, concluded that over the three-month period, between 1.1 million and 1.8 million people newly enrolled for Medicaid due to Obamacare. Avalere developed its estimates in part by comparing the CMS data on new enrollments to enrollment rates from the summer of 2013. The idea is to see how much of a "bump" in enrollments materialized due to the Medicaid expansion. There’s a significant difference between 1.1 million and 2.6 million, but the important factor for our fact-check is that both numbers are well short of Obama’s 7 million figure (and CMS’ 6.3 million figure). Our ruling Obama said, "We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion." Obama’s 7 million figure was a stretch even compared to his own administration’s 6.3 million figure. But more problematic is a disconnect between what he said and what the administration data is showing. The administration’s 6.3 million figure includes a lot of the "churn" in Medicaid that has nothing to do with the new law’s Medicaid expansion, as well as new sign-ups of people who were previously eligible for Medicaid -- and thus were not granted "access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion," in Obama’s words. The actual number is estimated to be between one-seventh and two-fifths of what Obama said it was. We rate the claim False. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2014-02-25T18:26:20 | 2014-02-20 | ['None'] |
tron-00904 | Forward a friendship email to friends and see a video on your screen | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/friends-forever/ | null | computers | null | null | null | Forward a friendship email to friends and see a video on your screen | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02659 | Noah Cyrus, Austin Mahone Dating, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/austin-mahone-noah-cyrus-dating/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Noah Cyrus, Austin Mahone NOT Dating, Despite Report | 3:39 pm, July 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03561 | Says Sam Houston opposed slavery and as governor said Texas should not leave the union over slavery. | half-true | /texas/statements/2013/may/22/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-sam-houston-opposed-slavery-and-sa/ | As the Texas-headquartered Boy Scouts of America moved closer to a vote on allowing openly gay members, Texas Gov. Rick Perry revisited his opposition to such a change, while calling for leadership that hews to principles even when they are unpopular. Speaking May 6, 2013, via video as part of the national, conservative Family Research Council’s "Stand With Scouts Sunday" webcast, Perry cited the example of Sam Houston, Texas’ first president and seventh governor, whose portrait hung behind Perry on a wall in the Governor’s Mansion. "From this library that I speak, he made a powerful decision that cost him his governorship," Perry said. "He was against slavery, and he stood up and very passionately said, you know, ‘Texas does not need to leave the Union over this issue of slavery. We need to stay. We’ve only been’ -- he thought, a terrible decision. He was right. But it cost him his governorship." That’s "the kind of principled leadership" we need today, said Perry, a former Eagle Scout who wrote a 2008 book defending the organization’s "American values" and saying it was the object of an anti-religious "cultural war" being waged to force the inclusion of gays, agnostics and atheists. His comments touched off an Internet flurry of debate over whether opposing slavery could or should be equated with opposing gay admission, but we wondered about the underlying facts. Did Sam Houston, the leader of Texas’ military insurrection against Mexico, oppose slavery and say Texas shouldn’t split from the United States over it? Houston did lose his job as governor over secession, ending a career of representing Texans in elected office almost continuously from the Texas Revolution to the start of the Civil War. The military hero of San Jacinto became the first president of the Republic of Texas in 1836; then a representative in the Republic’s legislature; president a second time; U.S. senator when Texas became a state in 1845; and, finally, governor starting in 1859. But Texas’ secession convention removed Houston as governor March 18, 1861, after he refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Confederate States of America. Historians have written that Houston’s views on secession had earlier cost him his seat in the U.S. Senate. As a senator, according to the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas, Houston angered pro-slavery factions by voting in 1848 to prohibit slavery in Oregon; supporting the delicately balanced slavery/anti-slavery decisions in the Compromise of 1850; and opposing, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act that let territories decide their own slavery status, repealing previous law that banned slavery north of latitude 36°30'. What guided Houston’s thinking in these disputes was his belief in the "glorious Union" he had worked hard to get Texas into. The Handbook says, "As senator, Houston emerged as an ardent Unionist ... a stand that made him an increasingly controversial figure. He stridently opposed the rising sectionalism of the antebellum period and delivered eloquent speeches on the issue." Perry spokesman Josh Havens referred us to the 2004 biography "Sam Houston," in which author James Haley described Houston the politician as treading a fine line on slavery for decades: "He disliked it," Haley wrote, but "recognized it as a fact of life to be dealt with." Via email, Haley told us, "Gov. Perry is right that Houston was against slavery, but as a Southern senator he was chained to it and could not openly oppose it." Haley pointed us to a key speech by Houston on slavery, delivered Feb. 22, 1855, in Boston, in which the senator said the Union should not be sundered for "political opinions," that slavery was natural to the Southern economy and that the North would still have slaves if it were profitable there. Emancipation, Houston said, would cast the freed man into jobless destitution: "You might call him free, but he would be an object of want and wretchedness." Haley wrote, "To Sam Houston, what was paramount at that time, and in that place, and during that crisis was keeping the Union together." Houston’s personal views on slavery are unclear. He was a slaveowner; according to his biography online at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, an inventory of his property upon his death in 1863 listed "12 slaves valued at $10,530.20." Yet "almost all acts other than his ownership of slaves support the idea that he disagreed with slavery as an institution," the university biography said. Among examples given: "While in office as president of the Republic of Texas and later as governor, he refused to permit payments to bounty hunters of escaped slaves. He also prohibited slave ships from trafficking in Texas." One of Houston’s slaves recalled hearing him speak against the institution on the day Abraham Lincoln was elected president. In the 1940 memoir "My Master," Jeff Hamilton said, "I heard the General say that slavery was a damnable thing at best, and that he didn’t believe in human slavery nor in secession or disunion either. He said he hoped God might in some way perform a miracle as of old and save the country from destruction." After Houston had helped shepherd Texas into the United States, he spoke publicly and often against ripping the Union apart over slavery. His pro-Union views and Senate votes made him anathema in Southern politics. His Senate career, the Handbook of Texas says, "was effectively ended when, in 1855, the Texas Legislature officially condemned his position on the Kansas-Nebraska Act," which Houston opposed "because it allowed the status of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, a concept he saw as potentially destabilizing to the nation." Somewhat of a lame-duck senator, Houston returned to Texas and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1857. Opponent Hardin Runnels advocated reopening the slave trade with Africa, which Houston had called an "unholy and cruel traffic" as Texas’ president. Houston was portrayed as a traitor to the South; the press accused him of "voting against all bills in the interest of slavery," according to a July 1914 analysis in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly that summed up his defeat: "The people had not yet forgiven Houston for his support of the Kansas-Nebraska bill." Before leaving Washington for good, Houston defended his Kansas-Nebraska vote in March 19, 1858, remarks to the Senate: "I was not the enemy of slavery, nor was I its propagandist, nor will I ever be." Houston ran for governor again as a pro-slavery candidate, according to T.R. Fehrenbach’s 2000 "Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans": In 1859, Houston, now past his sixty-fifth year, determined to appeal to the people once again. His platform was clear: he supported slavery, he supported the Constitution, but he pledged allegiance to the Union, come what may. It was not a popular platform, but Houston could not believe that the Texans were prepared to forsake the greater nation he had done so much to build. From the gubernatorial pulpit, Houston kept arguing against secession on practical grounds. In a Sept. 22, 1860, speech in Austin, Houston said slavery was not threatened if Southern states stayed in the Union: "We still have the institution of slavery. All the legislation on the subject for the past twenty years has been to secure it to us, so long as we may want it." Civil war would destroy the Southern states, he said, and there was no need for secession: "Are our rights invaded and no government ready to protect them? No! Are our institutions wrested from us and others foreign to our taste forced upon us? No! … if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union." The institution of slavery "is our own," Houston said, "and the North has nothing to do with it. The North does not want it, and we have nothing to do with that. … We have the right to abolish slavery -- they have the right to establish it. It is in our interest to have it. Climate, soil, association -- all make the institution peculiarly suited to us. If it were to their interest, the people of the North would have it." In a Nov. 14, 1860, open letter to residents of Huntsville who wrote to seek his advice on secession, Houston said a revolution should not be launched without "some more weighty reason for overthrowing the Government, than rash enthusiasts have yet given." As Texas moved toward secession, Houston told the Legislature in a Jan. 21, 1861, message that the slave states should be able to keep their rights, but "hasty" action could be disastrous for cash-strapped Texas. "The millions now spent by the United States, the support of our postal service, the defense of our commerce, must all come from the pockets of our people." Houston’s appeals failed, but Lincoln was impressed by his courage and according to the Texas State Library’s web site "made secret contact with him through intermediaries, offering the old general command of 50,000 troops and the rank of major general if he would lead a force to restore federal control of Texas." Houston turned down the offer in a March 29, 1861, letter; some accounts say he sat up late into the night discussing the question with friends in the mansion’s library and then dropped Lincoln’s offer into the fire. We asked Havens for reaction to our findings, and asked whether the Lincoln offer or another event was the "powerful decision" Perry had referred to. Haley’s book mentions a "family tradition" that says Houston paced the mansion’s floors all night before refusing to sign the Confederate oath. Havens said, "Gov. Perry was referencing Gov. Houston’s strength of character, standing up for what he believed was right in the face of public opposition. There were a collection of events that occurred over that period of time, including burning Lincoln’s letter in the mansion library, when Houston was pondering an issue that would not only shape the fate of our state, but also his personal future." Houston did not live to see the war’s end; he left Austin to return to Huntsville, where he died of pneumonia on July 26, 1863, at age 70. Our ruling Perry said his long-ago predecessor "was against slavery, and he stood up and very passionately said, you know, ‘Texas does not need to leave the Union over this issue of slavery.’ " Houston’s personal views are unclear; politically, he took actions that were viewed as anti-slavery as well as actions that were pro-slavery. But he did exhort Southerners and his fellow Texans not to secede over slavery -- an unpopular stance he stuck to in hopes of preserving the Union he revered. We rate Perry’s statement as Half True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2013-05-22T10:24:27 | 2013-05-06 | ['Texas', 'Sam_Houston'] |
goop-02407 | Christian Bale Weight Gain Making Him “Miserable”? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/christian-bale-weight-gain-miserable/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Christian Bale Weight Gain Making Him “Miserable”? | 5:54 pm, September 28, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12504 | Says Texas House rules authorized by the Texas Constitution supersede the state law permitting anyone to record a public government meeting. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2017/apr/27/charlie-geren/mostly-true-texas-house-can-supersede-state-law-pe/ | State troopers arrested a Texas woman after she persisted in shooting video of a legislative hearing in keeping with a decades-old state law. That law says: "A person in attendance may record all or any part of an open meeting of a governmental body," including legislative panels. Amy Hedtke, a 2017 Waxahachie school board candidate and self-described anarchist, streamed on Facebook Live a portion of the March 22, 2017, hearing of the House State Affairs Committee in a building on the Capitol grounds. Hedtke transmitted the live video, we confirmed, despite the panel’s chairman, Rep. Byron Cook, announcing at the hearing’s outset that anyone making a recording who lacked media credentials would be asked to leave. According to a March 22, 2017, Texas Department of Public Safety statement provided by the agency at our inquiry, Hedtke, 42, was removed "after she ignored repeated requests by the House Sergeant-at-Arms to stop recording/live video streaming during the meeting. Signs posted in the meeting room prohibit such action without proper media credentials." Anthony Holm of Austin, who brought Hedtke's removal to our attention, noted an April 2017 news report about Hedtke by WFAA-TV, Channel 8 in Dallas. Hedtke’s removal was reported earlier by the Waxahachie Daily Light. Holm asked that we look into whether officials had the authority to act against someone simply taping a hearing as the open-meetings law permits. Our initial inquiries led us to the House's legal explanation in a letter from a House leader, Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, to the TV station that essentially said House rules in keeping with a state constitutional provision let members rule their proceedings regardless of conflicting laws. And is that accurate? A House chairman's explanation Hedtke’s video plus video shot by another person show her refusing requests that she stop taping and being carried by troopers to a DPS sedan. By phone, Hedtke later told us that she was then taken to the Travis County Jail where she was charged with criminal trespass for failing to depart when asked; a court hearing, she said, is scheduled for May 2017. Hedtke’s video from the hearing shows Hedtke telling an unidentified House aide: "State law says that open meetings, you cannot prohibit attendees from recording." The aide replies: "The rules of the House have precedence over that — the Constitution, as well." Geren, chairman of the powerful House Administration Committee, said the same in his April 11, 2017, letter to the TV station, which we fielded by email after asking Jason Embry, a spokesman for House Speaker Joe Straus, why Hedtke was stopped from recording and carried out. Geren's letter says the station’s news account mistakenly indicated the law allowing individuals to record government meetings prevails over House rules giving members control of its proceedings. Constitutional provision and House rules Article III, section 11 of the Texas Constitution, Geren wrote, "authorizes each house of the legislature to determine the rules of its own proceedings." In its entirety, the section says: "Each House may determine the rules of its own proceedings, punish members for disorderly conduct, and, with the consent of two-thirds, expel a member, but not a second time for the same offense." Geren, chairman of the House Administration Committee, further wrote that the House’s 2017 rules deem those rules to be "the only requirements binding" on the 150-member body. Correct: House rules adopted by members at the start of the 2017 legislative session open: "Pursuant to and under the authority of Section 11, Article III, Texas Constitution, and notwithstanding any provision of statute, the House of Representatives adopts the following rules to govern its operations and procedures. The provisions of these rules shall be deemed the only requirements binding on the House of Representatives under Section 11, Article III, Texas Constitution, notwithstanding any other requirements expressed in statute." We asked Geren if he wished to elaborate on his letter, which WFAA-TV subsequently excerpted in a note preceding a web version of its story; he did not. In the latest House rules themselves, meantime, we didn’t spot any provision that a House member can obviate the open-meetings law including its provision that people can record meetings. Otherwise, the rules require the House to post video of public meetings and specify that permission to make live or recorded television, radio, or Internet broadcasts in or from the House chamber when the House is in session may be granted only by the administration committee. Murky? Section 551.023 of Texas’s government code, part of the open-meetings law that came to be in 1973, says: "A person in attendance may record all or any part of an open meeting of a governmental body by means of a recorder, video camera or other means of aural or visual reproduction." But, the law says, a governmental body "may adopt reasonable rules to maintain order at a meeting, including" rules relating to the location of recording equipment and how the recording is made. The law also says those rules "may not prevent or unreasonably impair a person from" recording during a meeting. So, what gives? Angling to sort this out, and with help from Kelley Shannon of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, we queried Austin attorneys steeped in Texas open government laws. Each one agreed that no court has ruled on the ability of the House or Senate to invoke the constitutional provision about the bodies setting internal rules to bypass the permission spelled out in the Texas Open Meetings Act for people to record meetings. Likewise, we found no sign of any such court interpretation when we reviewed materials available at the Texas State Law Library. The lawyers diverged, though, on whether Geren’s explanation holds up. "It gets murky," said David Donaldson of Austin, a retired lawyer whose past clients include the Austin American-Statesman, one of the newspapers that sponsors PolitiFact Texas. By phone, Donaldson added: "The answer may be that we don’t know the answer yet." Over the course of a couple days, Donaldson told us, he was swayed by conflicting arguments both for and against a person being able to record a legislative meeting. Bob Heath, who has advised lawmakers in the past, and Buck Wood, who helped write the open-meetings law, each said the constitution’s language supports what Geren told the station. To his chagrin, Wood said by phone, House members reinforced such a stance by adopting the provision leading its rules stating the body’s rules shall be deemed the "only" requirements binding on the House, regardless of state laws. In contrast, attorneys Bill Aleshire and Jennifer Riggs each suggested a portion of the open-meetings law signals an overarching legislative commitment to complying with the open-meetings law. Section 551.003 of the state’s Government Code states: "In this chapter, the legislature is exercising its powers to adopt rules to prohibit secret meetings of the legislature, committees of the legislature, and other bodies associated with the legislature, except as specifically permitted in the constitution." By email, Aleshire maintained that the section protects the open-meetings law from being preempted by lawmakers any which way. He noted also that the Constitution doesn’t say the Legislature has the power to outlaw recordings. Another hearing, another approach While checking this claim, we noticed that days after troopers carried Hedtke out, a different House chairman, Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, let people at a hearing, including Hedtke, take pictures and shoot video. According to House-posted video, just after the start of the March 28, 2017, meeting of the Homeland Security & Public Safety panel, King said: "We want to talk a little bit about cameras and things like that. I’m going to be a little flexible there." King directed anyone taking photos to do so from the back of the Capitol hearing room. "The rule of the day," he said, "is don’t disturb other people when you do it." Hedtke told us, and King confirmed, that she later got King’s permission to move her camera closer to the front of the room; intermittent noise from the hallway was marring her recording from the back. King, asked why he laid out guidelines for people to record the meeting, told us he recognized before the hearing that people following issues before the panel wanted to record or livestream. By phone, King said he’s aware of the law that says anyone can record a government meeting. Yet, he said, his decision to let people take photos or video was based on his discretion under House rules to run the hearing as the committee’s chairman. King said it’s the duty of any chair "to make sure the meeting is smooth, efficient and not disrupted." How did the permission to record affect the hearing? "It was fine," King told us. "Everybody behaved themselves." Our ruling Geren wrote that House rules authorized by the Texas Constitution supersede the state law permitting anyone to record an open government meeting. We find that a constitutional provision plus sweeping House-adopted language that arguably lets the body operate without regard to any law support the chairman's statement. But it's also worth clarifying that the rub with the 1973 law allowing anyone to record a government meeting has yet to be dissected by a court. We rate the claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. UPDATE, 12:20 p.m. May 25, 2017: On May 25, 2017, a Travis County state district judge sided with Hedtke, issuing a temporary order requiring Cook to let Hedtke take photographs and video-record hearings that Cook chairs. See the Austin American-Statesman's news story on the ruling here. This action wouldn't bear on our past rating of Geren's statement in that the judge acted after Geren made his claim. | null | Charlie Geren | null | null | null | 2017-04-27T11:32:25 | 2017-04-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-05746 | We supported the first new nuclear power plant in three decades. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2012/mar/02/barack-obama/obama-says-he-supported-first-nuclear-power-plant-/ | Countering Republican attacks on gas prices, President Barack Obama gave a hard-hitting speech on energy policy in Miami on Feb. 23, 2012. In his speech, Obama laid out a defense of his oil-related policies and reiterated his commitment to diverse energy sources. One of his speech’s shortest lines caught our attention: "We supported the first new nuclear power plant in three decades." Thirty years -- really? And why has it been so long? To satisfy our curiosity, we decided to check it out. (We fact-checked Obama’s claims about drilling in a separate report.) If you haven’t been keeping tabs on the nuclear energy industry, it has indeed been awhile since a new reactor was built. But Obama’s 30-year claim hinges on licensing. On Feb. 9, 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. The electricity giant Southern Co. intends to build them at its Vogtle site south of Augusta. (The White House pointed us to news coverage of the approval when we asked for evidence of Obama’s statement.) Prior to this year, the last time the commission granted a license to build a new reactor was in 1978, which was 34 years ago, according to a commission spokesperson. The permit was for the Shearon Harris plant operated by Carolina Power & Light near Raleigh, N.C. But it takes a long time to build nuclear reactors, so the plant didn’t get operational approval until 1986. And the North Carolina plant isn’t the most recent to go operational. That distinction goes to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar site in Tennessee. It received a construction license in 1973 and an operating license in 1996, or 16 years ago. Still, as we ran this claim by people who watch the nuclear industry closely -- both those opposed to nuclear energy and those in favor of it -- they agreed Obama’s claim to have "supported the first new nuclear power plant in three decades" was largely accurate. A technical note: The Georgia project adds two reactors to an existing electricity generation site with two existing reactors. We wondered if that diminished the accuracy of Obama’s statement, but the experts said it’s fair to call each reactor its own "power plant." Nuclear’s long wait So why has it been so long since a license was granted? Interestingly, the experts we spoke with said it’s not because of bureaucratic hassles or super-stringent rules. Rather, it’s because building new plants is expensive, and the dynamics of the energy market haven’t made new reactors a good deal for energy producers. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service opposes nuclear energy as "dangerous, dirty and expensive," said executive director Michael Mariotte. It’s the expensive part that’s made for the long wait, he said. Energy companies have struggled to build plants in a cost-efficient manner, and the Georgia plants are a long way from being finished, he said. The Southern Co. is trying to construct two reactors at once, which makes for more operational complexity. "If history repeats itself, then they won’t get built. We’ll have to see how much the industry has learned in the past three decades in terms of managing construction costs," he said. His group is part of a lawsuit to stop the construction, on the grounds that the reactor designs need to be updated with lessons learned from the recent nuclear disaster near Fukushima, Japan. (The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the license on a 4-1 vote; the dissenting vote was cast for that reason.) A sunnier take on the three-decade wait is that the nuclear industry has been really good at innovating and getting more electricity out of its existing plants. That’s what Steve Kerekes of the pro-nuclear Nuclear Energy Institute told us. "From essentially a static number of facilities -- a little over 100 --we’ve increased our electricity output roughly 40 percent. That’s the equivalent of nearly 30 new reactors since 1990, and we’ve done that from existing facilities," he said. Nuclear executives say they would build more plants if the current energy markets were different. The Georgia plant is going forward in a state where regulations allow utilities to bill customers for construction costs before the plant is finished. By way of contrast, the Illinois-based nuclear energy company Exelon operates in many states where that’s not the case. Exelon executives have said plainly it makes little economic sense for them to build new plants, citing two more factors. First, natural gas prices are very low. Second, Congress has abandoned plans to address global warming through a cap-and-trade system or other attempts to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. Both those things work against the business case for building new reactors. (Exelon executives, by the way, donated to Obama’s 2008 campaign, as we noted in this fact-check.) The administration’s support Obama said in his speech that his administration "supported" the new nuclear plants. Again, experts agreed this was so, particularly since the administration is in final negotiations to support the Southern Co.’s construction with $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees. Back in February 2010, when the project received conditional approval, Obama himself praised the deal, connecting it to the need for climate change legislation. "To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we need to increase our supply of nuclear power, and today’s announcement helps to move us down that path," he said. Our ruling Obama said, "We supported the first new nuclear power plant in three decades." He is right that it’s been that long since a new nuclear reactor has been licensed. However, because it takes so long to construct nuclear power plants, the most recent plant actually opened in 1996. The experts we spoke with, both those who support nuclear power and those who oppose it, said that Obama’s statement was largely accurate, given that the last time a nuclear reactor received federal approval was 1978. And, his administration has so far supported the recent approval of new reactors in Georgia with $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees. We rate Obama’s statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-03-02T10:25:16 | 2012-02-23 | ['None'] |
vogo-00382 | Fact Check TV: More Graduates and Less Trash | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/fact-check-tv-more-graduates-and-less-trash/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Check TV: More Graduates and Less Trash | May 31, 2011 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00260 | Lamborghini Giveaway | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/lamborghini-facebook-like-farming-scam.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Lamborghini Giveaway Facebook Like-Farming Scam | April 1, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00788 | Online Quiz to Help Bihar Flood Victims | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/flood-victims-quiz.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Online Quiz to Help Bihar Flood Victims | September 2008 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08140 | In Florida, illegal immigration costs taxpayers nearly $4 billion (a year). This amounts to $700 for every household in Florida. | false | /florida/statements/2010/dec/06/vern-buchanan/vern-buchanan-says-illegal-immigration-costs-flori/ | Sarasota-area congressman Vern Buchanan, a Republican who many think could run for the Senate in 2012, released a video Dec. 2, 2010, arguing against the DREAM Act -- a controversial piece of immigration legislation that would create a path to citizenship for youths brought to the United States illegally. The minute-long video included some sobering figures on the cost of illegal immigration to Florida taxpayers. "In Florida, illegal immigration costs taxpayers nearly $4 billion. This amounts to $700 for every household in Florida," Buchanan said. "Incredibly, some in Congress are still trying to pass a law to grant amnesty. The so-called DREAM Act would grant amnesty to as many as 2 million illegal immigrants. Amnesty rewards people who break our laws and encourages more illegal immigration." PolitiFact just recently ruled False the claim that the DREAM Act would grant amnesty to as many as 2 million illegal immigrants, noting that the 2 million figure is the number of people who would be potentially eligible for citizenship. It's also a matter of debate whether the path to citizenship can be called amnesty. You can read that analysis here. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act would allow children brought to the United States by illegal immigrants to obtain permanent legal status if they complete two years of college or enlist in the military. There are currently several versions of the DREAM Act kicking around in Congress, but under the version introduced in March 2009, people under 35 who arrived in the United States before the age of 16 and have lived here at least the last five years would be able to apply for legal permanent resident status on a conditional basis if they have obtained a U.S. high school diploma or GED. That conditional status would be upgraded to permanent after six years if they successfully complete at least two years of college or military service and if they maintain "good moral character." In this item, we wanted to check Buchanan's figures on the cost to taxpayers. Buchanan's press secretary, Sally Tibbetts, said the number comes from a 2009 study by the group the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). It is a group that opposes the DREAM Act and advocates against congressional action that includes amnesty for illegal immigrants, or a path to citizenship. The group also wants to reduce legal immigration to the United States. The FAIR study examined projected government spending on education, health and incarceration for illegal immigrants and found that illegal immigrants cost Florida taxpayers $3.8 billion. To determine the "cost" of illegal immigration to Florida, FAIR identified the average cost of government services according to, in many instances, other private studies, and then multiplied those figures by the number of illegal immigrants in the population. One of the problems with that kind of analysis, however, is that there's no official number of illegal immigrants living in Florida (illegal immigrants being a group that aren't exactly eager to raise their hands and be counted, after all). For example, FAIR ranked Florida's illegal immigration population fourth in the nation, with an estimated 950,000 immigrants in 2008. In contrast, the Department of Homeland Security ranks Florida third in the nation, with 720,000 illegal immigrants in 2009. But that's not the only problem. The FAIR report tries to identify spending on illegal immigrants in three different areas -- education, health care and incarceration. Of the $3.8 billion estimate, the lion's share -- $3.4 billion -- is spent on education. FAIR uses estimate after estimate to create a "fact." The group used its estimate of the illegal immigrant population in Florida to craft an estimate of illegal immigrant school-aged children -- a number they peg at about 146,000. Then, they use another estimate, a per-pupil figure from the National Center for Education Statistics of $8,234, to say that K-12 illegal immigrant children cost Florida taxpayers "at least $1.2 billion per year." Then, they create another estimate for the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants who were born in the United States -- and thus are American citizens. That number, they say, is 204,000. Add the cost for them in (an estimate) and you get an additional $1.7 billion in cost per year, or $2.9 billion combined. We admit, we can't offer you better estimates for the number of illegal immigrant schoolchildren or the number of legal sons and daughters of illegal immigrants -- because those numbers don't exist. But we can tell you, for instance, that the Florida Department of Education says its per pupil spending is $6,871, not $8,234. And if you use the state number, and not the one from the National Center for Education Statistics, the total cost is $2.4 billion not $2.9 billion. That's $500 million saved by using a different, and at least as reputable figure -- without even dealing with the other estimates, mind you. The remaining education funding, about $566 million FAIR figures, comes from teaching English language instruction for non-native English speakers. FAIR estimates that 80 percent of all children in English language training, a number they estimate to be around 250,000, are the children of illegal immigrants. They multiply that number by another estimate -- they say the amount of additional cost for these students is $2,264 -- to reach a taxpayer cost of $566 million. More estimates on top of estimates. FAIR bases its health care costs on a 2002 Florida Hospital Association survey that found unreimbursed emergency medical care for illegal immigrants topped $40 million. But the survey includes responses from private hospitals that are not funded by the state. So the cost to taxpayers is overestimated. And FAIR produces the state's incarceration costs for illegal immigrants based on the state Department of Corrections' "illegal alien" count of inmates. However, no such count exists. Instead, the state keeps tabs on all inmates who are not U.S. citizens, whether they're in the country legally or illegally. While many of those inmates are eventually released to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for further immigration processing, including possible deportation, the state does not track whether its inmates are legal U.S. residents. (We covered some of this ground already in a fact check from June about this same FAIR study). "I would take FAIR's numbers with a big shaker of salt," said Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington, D.C., policy group. "The organization exists to portray immigrants in a bad light." One of the easiest ways to see just how malleable the numbers are is to look at FAIR's 2010 state-by-state report. In 2010, FAIR said illegal immigrants cost Florida taxpayers almost $5.5 billion -- that's about a $1.7 billion or 44 percent increase in a year. Nothing that we've discussed, for the record, accounts for the money illegal immigrants pay in state sales taxes and federal income taxes. All people are required to pay state sales taxes. And while some illegal immigrants are paid cash under the table, many are paid by payroll check just like everyone else. Recent estimates suggest illegal workers are now paying $9 billion to $12 billion a year into Social Security through payroll taxes, for instance, with no legal way to get that money back in retirement benefits. (Illegal immigrants provide faked documentation and fake Social Security numbers). So while there is a cost, there also is a revenue side to the equation. In 2009, FAIR said illegal immigrants contributed $1.6 billion in taxes in Florida. In 2010, the number dropped more than $1.3 billion, to $261 million. Eric Ruark, FAIR's director of research, said the group greatly overestimated the amount of disposable income of illegal immigrants that would be subject to sales tax. In defending the study, Ruark notes that FAIR does not estimate the increased tax payments that Florida would gain from having legal workers replace illegal ones, or the cost to the state in payments to Floridians who are unemployed because of the presence of illegal workers in the labor force. The point is, the actual cost could be higher. The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan number-crunching arm of Congress, tried back in December 2007 to quantify the fiscal impact of illegal immigrants on state and local governments. It couldn't, and found problems with studies that did. The CBO noted that illegal immigrants who just arrive in the United States might use more government resources than those well or better integrated into American society, that it is difficult to capture all revenues and costs, and that there is little information on how much illegal immigrants contribute to American life through taxes, or how much they utilize government services. Instead, the CBO made a series of more general findings. Among them: * State and local governments incur costs for providing services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited options for avoiding or minimizing those costs. * The amount that state and local governments spend on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a small percentage of the total amount spent by those governments to provide such services to residents in their jurisdictions. * The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants. To us, that's a more appropriate and tempered analysis. A quick side note: In his comments, Buchanan said the per-household cost of for illegal immigrants is $700 a year. To get there, Buchanan again uses FAIR, which divided their cost figure for taxpayers ($3.8 billion) by the number of households headed by native-born residents (5.65 million). FAIR excludes households headed by non-native-born residents regardless of whether those heads of household are citizens or living in the United States legally. If they included all households (7 million), the cost per household would be about $550. We're unclear why FAIR, for instance, excluded citizens not born in the United States as well as legally documented residents -- who are all paying taxes -- from their calculations. Let's review. Buchanan said: "In Florida, illegal immigration costs taxpayers nearly $4 billion (a year). This amounts to $700 for every household in Florida." He is mostly quoting accurately from a study performed by the group Federation for American Immigration Reform, though he doesn't cite FAIR in his comments. The FAIR study is highly suspect. It relies on estimate after estimate, and was conducted by a group that is hardly objective when it comes to analyzing the effects of illegal immigration. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned specifically against trying to put dollar figures on the costs associated with illegal immigrants because of the large number of unknown variables. We'd consider offering more leeway if Buchanan sourced his statement back to FAIR, so at least people could know the source and question it independently. But Buchanan makes his pronouncement sound like it's fact, when it's far from it. We rate this claim False. | null | Vern Buchanan | null | null | null | 2010-12-06T18:42:32 | 2010-12-02 | ['Florida'] |
snes-04892 | Multiple news outlets reported that primary voters in New York claimed their votes were switched from Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/votes-switched-sanders-clinton/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | The Fix Is In: Sanders Supporters in New York See Votes Switched to Hillary | 19 April 2016 | null | ['Bernie_Sanders', 'New_York_City', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
snes-05628 | In accordance with a requirement of their original Royal Charter, the Hudson's Bay Company of Canada makes annual payments of elk and beaver pelts to the Queen of England. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fur-the-queen/ | null | Business | null | David Mikkelson | null | Canada Company Makes Annual Fur Payments to the Queen | 15 June 2001 | null | ['England', 'Canada'] |
tron-01356 | Jesus Has Been Removed from Starbucks Christmas Cups, Sparking a War on Christmas | mostly fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/jesus-removed-from-starbucks-christmas-cups-sparking-a-war-on-christmas/ | null | food | null | null | null | Jesus Has Been Removed from Starbucks Christmas Cups, Sparking a War on Christmas | Nov 9, 2015 | 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.