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snes-05696 | Photograph shows a fisherman in Wisconsin holding a furry trout he'd caught. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/furry-trout/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Man Catches Furry Trout in Wisconsin? | 18 May 2015 | null | ['Wisconsin'] |
tron-02833 | President Obama Cancelled 21st Annual National Day Of Prayer | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/nationaldayofprayer-obama/ | null | obama | null | null | null | President Obama Cancelled 21st Annual National Day Of Prayer | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00038 | They didn't know she was a representative of the Russian government | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/21/rudy-giulianis-pinocchio-laden-interview-nbcs-meet-press/" | null | null | Rudolph W. Giuliani | Glenn Kessler | null | Rudy Giuliani's Pinocchio-laden interview on NBC's \xe2\x80\x98Meet the Press' | August 21 | null | ['Russia'] |
snes-01154 | The Pentagon has disavowed knowledge of a stranded Air Force pilot after he successfully intercepted a missile near North Korea. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/u-s-pilot-shot-down-after-destroying-korean-missile/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Was a U.S. Pilot Shot Down After Destroying a North Korean Missile? | 22 January 2018 | null | ['United_States_Air_Force', 'The_Pentagon', 'North_Korea'] |
hoer-01275 | Woman Gives Birth to a Baby Elephant | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-news-woman-gives-birth-baby-elephant/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fake-News: Woman Gives Birth to a Baby Elephant | January 25, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01890 | President Obama has left the U.S. with the lowest number of active-duty troops since before World War II, putting the nation at risk. | half-true | /georgia/statements/2014/jul/07/jack-kingston/kingstons-attack-obamas-miltary-plans-misfires/ | As Georgia’s U.S. Senate race heats up, Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah has not been shy about his disdain for the policies touted by the current presidential administration. He has railed against Pres. Barack Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, saying it needs to be repealed and replaced. In television and radio ads he has played the part of playful provocateur, hiring a voice actor to play a pleading facsimile of the president. If you’ve hopped in your car for even a quick lunch break the last few days, you’ve probably heard this ad. However, it’s another Kingston ad that has us at PolitiFact wondering. In a spot titled, "Backward Priorities," Kingston takes aim at federal cuts to the defense budget. "Pres. Obama has it all wrong. He’s growing government with wasteful spending while drastically cutting our military, leaving us with the lowest number of active-duty troops since before World War II," Kingston says in the ad posted on his campaign’s YouTube channel on May 12. "Obama’s backwards priorities puts us all at risk." Kingston goes on to tout his own track record on military bases in Georgia, but this statement made us press the pause button. Is it true that troops are at their lowest since WWII? And if so, are we really at risk? We asked Chris Crawford, Kingston’s campaign spokesman, for the source behind the ad. Crawford forwarded us to a February press release from the Department of Defense, which detailed Pres. Obama’s proposed Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2015. Amidst the cuts were a series of reductions which included "shrinking the Army to its smallest size since before World War II." The proposal would shave off 15 percent of active-duty personnel over five years, from 520,000 to between 440,000 and 450,000. It acknowledged the fiscal reasoning behind the decision, noting cuts made through the Budget Control Act of 2011 ($487 billion over 10 years) and sequestration ($50 billion annually). Right off the bat, Kingston’s ad faces a problem. The 2015 fiscal year budget has a proposed five-year plan for military cuts – it hasn’t actually occurred yet, and will have to be approved by Congress. So Obama has not yet left the country with the lowest number of troops since WWII, even if he has proposed such cuts, though they are likely to go through given the fiscal constraints on the Pentagon. Crawford said this about the budget: "The President’s budget is a formal vision for the country and something behind which he uses the force of the entire federal government. It is a policy statement of the Administration under the President’s leadership. Keep in mind this comes from an administration that doesn’t let that repeatedly oversteps its bounds of executing the law rather than legislating it." But how do the numbers compare with past deployments? The folks at PolitiFact Wisconsin compiled a list of Army figures going back to 1775 while conducting a fact check of similar comments made by Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner. Kingston said active-duty troops will decrease to pre-WWII levels. On first blush, that seems true. That list, citing the Secretary of War Annual Report and Strength of the Army Reports, shows that in 1940, there were 264,118 active-duty troops. In 1941, after the United States joined the war following Pearl Harbor, that number shot up to 1.5 million troops. Kingston’s phrasing could use some fine-tuning. He seems to imply that the number of troops will be around 1940 levels through his comparison. But they are actually much closer to the numbers seen in the late 1990s and even early 2000s. There were only 479,026 active troops in 2000, and from 1998 to 2001, the number stayed close to 480,000. The current numbers are low, but historically speaking, they aren’t that low – especially when considering the nation’s unstable finances .Now for the second question: what risk does a smaller military pose for U.S. citizens? That’s a bit less cut and dry. Center for a New American Security fellow Travis Sharp addressed the issue in a policy brief, noting that the comparison to 1940 was "interesting," but "not particularly useful." "Since the 2014 Army is not going to fight in the 1940 strategic environment," Sharp wrote, "comparing them does not help us decide what to do today." He writes later that size does matter in many combat operations, but that decreasing ground forces in peacetime is "both precedented and logical," given budgetary concerns. For its part, the Defense Department report states that active duty strength will diminish, but will be replaced with continued investments in cyber capabilities, missile defense and nuclear deterrence. We called Ricky Smith, a senior army official and director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, a military think tank, to get his take about the connection between today’s troops and their 1940 counterparts. "It really is an apples to oranges comparison. The quality of today’s individual soldier is so much higher than it was," Smith said. "What they’re able to do the squad level, versus World War II, is amazing." Smith said the Army should still be able to handle single operations, but might struggle from its diminished force when attempting to fight in multiple arenas, like when U.S. troops fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Technology does decrease the need for on-the-ground troops, but those units are also still necessary for the vast majority of tasks. The military’s status as a global force may be lessened by cuts. "You ultimately have to have some kind of human contact," Smith said. "There’s something to be said about putting boots on the ground and having tanks." But that desire is balanced with fiscal realities. "By reducing our capacity, you are in some ways accepting risk," Smith said. "The question is, what is prudent risk?" In short, Kingston accused the Obama administration of reducing active troops to pre-WWII levels and putting "us all" at risk. While it is true that the numbers are at their lowest since 1940, they are substantively similar to the active enrollment numbers seen in the 1990s and early 2000s. Changing technologies and strategies for deployment make the comparison to the pre-Pearl Harbor days a bit of a stretch. The reduction of active troops has a clear effect on the scope of missions the United States can take on globally. But whether citizens at home are seeing a greater risk is less clear. Though Kingston’s ad contains some truth there is a lot of context missing. We rate Kingston’s claim Half True. | null | Jack Kingston | null | null | null | 2014-07-07T11:51:23 | 2014-05-12 | ['United_States', 'Barack_Obama', 'World_War_II'] |
pomt-06908 | The Atlanta streetcar is expected to create 930 jobs during construction, totaling more than 5,600 jobs over the next 20 years. | pants on fire! | /georgia/statements/2011/jul/25/federal-transit-administration/fta-says-atlanta-streetcar-create-thousands-jobs/ | The familiar clang of the Atlanta Streetcar Project sprang the Truth-O-Meter to action. Leaders fought hard for funds to build the line, which is slated to open in 2013. It will ferry passengers from Centennial Olympic Park to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, bringing new jobs and businesses to struggling downtown neighborhoods, they said. The $72 million project scored a crucial $47.6 million federal grant in October, but Republicans in Congress threatened to take the money back. Now, streetcar fans can breathe a sigh of relief. A Federal Transit Administration press release announced July 13 that the money’s finally ready, and construction can begin. The press release trumpeted reasons why the streetcar is good for Atlanta, including this one: "[T]he project is expected to create an estimated 930 jobs during construction and more than 5,600 jobs over the next 20 years." Wait a second. Didn’t the Truth-O-Meter debunk a similar streetcar job creation claim in March? Indeed, Democrat U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who represents the district where the streetcar will be built, said in a newsletter to constituents that building and running the streetcar is projected to create 1,399 jobs -- 460 to run it, and 939 to build it. The newsletter cited figures in the grant proposal that won the streetcar more than $47 million in federal money. Experts and civil servants came up with the numbers and vetted them, so Lewis’ staff thought they were safe to use. They weren’t. We ruled Lewis’ claim False. Those jobs weren’t actual positions. They were "job years." "Job years" means one job lasting for one year. So if a single position lasts five years, it counts as five "job years." But Lewis’ newsletter described the "job years" as "jobs," which would mislead typical readers. People think of "jobs" as actual positions, so constituents would think the streetcar would create more jobs than experts actually estimated. Since the FTA’s recent press release uses the same numbers, its statement has similar problems. The FTA said its 5,600 jobs figure includes the 930 construction jobs, plus those needed to run the streetcar and positions created when new residences and businesses pop up along the route. The agency, like Lewis, got its numbers from Atlanta’s grant application. (The FTA’s 930 construction jobs count is very close to the 939 the grant application used, so we won’t count this difference against the FTA.) The FTA’s press release portrays the construction jobs estimate accurately. It will take about one year to build the streetcar, so for this phase of the project, one job year does equal one actual job. But that doesn’t mean 930 people are projected to build the streetcar line, and the jobs aren’t all for locals. This is the construction phase’s "total employment" figure, which means the number of people who would be employed for construction, plus two other types of jobs created by the project: those to make materials such as steel to construct the line, and those created when workers spend their earnings on a new stereo or a package of cheese puffs. Planners expect to employ 467 workers for streetcar construction. The rest would be making steel, cheese puffs and the like -- often outside the Atlanta area. Now let’s deal with the rest of the jobs cited in the FTA release. These are the posts planners think the project will create over the next 20 years: 460 needed to operate the streetcar, plus about 4,200 created when the line spurs economic growth. When PolitiFact Georgia researched Lewis’ statement, we were unable to come up with enough evidence to evaluate job estimates for when the streetcar brings new business to the neighborhood. But we could evaluate the claim that 460 jobs are needed to operate the streetcar. This number also represents "job years," not actual positions. It will actually take an estimated 23 positions to run the streetcar, lasting over 20 years. In other words, this jobs figure is 20 times too high. How do we rule on the FTA? As we wrote earlier, a typical person thinks of "jobs" as actual positions, not "job years." And while experts may understand that the FTA’s jobs figures do not represent actual jobs, your average citizen would not. In fact, it will take an estimated 467 jobs to construct the line, plus 23 jobs that last 20 years or longer to run the streetcar. Experts think the remaining 4,600 jobs will be for those who produce materials needed to build the line or products workers purchase with their earnings, as well as employees of new businesses the streetcar brings to surrounding neighborhoods. This means that when the Federal Transit Administration announced the streetcar project would "create an estimated 930 jobs during construction," totaling more than 5,600 over the next 20 years, it gave a misleadingly high impression of the actual positions needed to construct and run it. If public officials keep exaggerating the number of jobs created by this project, PoiltiFact Georgia will keep turning up the heat. Pants on Fire. | null | Federal Transit Administration | null | null | null | 2011-07-25T06:00:00 | 2011-07-13 | ['None'] |
snes-01294 | Wikileaks released a trove of "deep state files" in late December 2017. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wikileaks-releases-deep-state-files-deepstatefiles/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did WikiLeaks Release a Trove of ‘Deep State Files’? | 27 December 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06256 | Says Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on his support for President Reagan’s policies. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/29/democratic-national-committee/dnc-calls-out-romneys-evolving-affection-reagan/ | The Democratic National Committee is beating the flip-flop drum to attack Mitt Romney. A four-minute DNC video ad accuses the Republican presidential candidate of switching positions on a host of issues including President Barack Obama’s job stimulus package, abortion, global warming and health care reform. Another topic on which the DNC says Romney pulled a switcharoo: his support for former President Ronald Reagan. The ad, released Nov. 28, 2011, juxtaposes two clips of Romney talking. In the first, he says, "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush." Next, he’s standing at a podium saying, "The principles that Ronald Reagan espoused are as true today as they were when he spoke them." It’s wrapped up with a clip of Reagan himself chuckling and saying, "There you go again." We’re looking separately at several claims in the ad. Here we ask, is Romney really a flipper when it comes to the Gipper? The video evidence The DNC provided us with a fact sheet laying out the source of each claim in the ad. The first clip of Romney, in which he seemed to be distancing himself from Reagan, comes from a 1994 debate when Romney was challenging the late Edward Kennedy in a race for U.S. Senate. The two were having a mostly philosophical discussion about poverty and families with Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, claiming that child poverty rates rose when Republicans occupied the White House. "Under the Reagan/Bush economic programs, under the economic programs you want to return to, the total number of children that are living in poverty, the total number of children out of wedlock -- this has happened, you know we’ve had Republican presidents during this period of time and the cutting back of support systems for children and most of all for families to get jobs," Kennedy said. "If you’re not going to provide a climate and an atmosphere for men and women to be able to work and provide for their children, you’re going to see the breakdown of the family as well." Kennedy said discussions about supporting families shouldn’t be used to score "political hits," prompting Romney to fire back that he wasn’t politicizing the issue -- Kennedy was. "I mentioned nothing about politics or your position at all. I talked about what I’d do to help strengthen families, and you talked about Reagan-Bush. Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush," Romney said, distancing himself from the popular former president. In the second clip, Romney was speaking at the annual Reagan lecture at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., in May 2010. He was talking about America’s position in the world. "I have to tell you that I’m optimistic. I’m optimistic about the future because I recognize that there is a growing awakening among the American people that this administration has put us on the wrong track and that the principles that Ronald Reagan espoused are as true today as they were when he spoke them." Romney was interrupted by applause, and then continued by elaborating on policies emphasizing low taxes, balanced budgets and strong families. So the two clips are as the DNC presented them in the ad. They are not covertly edited or cut to leave a false impression about what Romney said. But is it a flip flop? The DNC ad is titled "Mitt v. Mitt, The story of two men trapped in one body." It opens with ominous-sounding music and white letters on a black background saying, "He wants to be president" followed by "but what does he really believe?" Then a voice in the background asks, "Who is this guy? Can you trust him?" and the Romney images unfold. The ad’s overt message is that Romney has changed his position on numerous issues, and that makes him an untrustworthy candidate. But the Reagan matter is not so simple as a candidate voting in favor of a concrete issue, then voting against it. We looked and couldn’t find any other references to Romney distancing himself from Reagan, beyond the 1994 debate comment. Prior to 1994, Romney was a businessman, not a politician. It’s true that Romney was not registered with any party for several years in Massachusetts, and in 1992, he voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas, a liberal Democrat, in the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary, according to a McClatchy newspapers story. (Romney’s spokesman responded then "that the vote for Tsongas was a vote against Bill Clinton and that not enrolling in either major party was common in Massachusetts.") Later, during his first presidential campaign in 2007, Romney blasted primary rival John McCain for voting against President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. "That's failing Reagan 101," Romney said, holding up Reagan as the standard to which Republicans should aspire. In a debate that year, he was asked whether the primary candidates would support the Republican nominee if it was someone else. Yes, Romney said, then added, "I want that nominee, however, to come out of the same mold as Ronald Reagan." In the 2010 Reagan library address, Romney had more flattering words for the former president. While speaking about the need to keep America strong for the sake of world peace, he paraphrased "that wonderful line" of Reagan’s: "(Reagan) said, ‘of the four wars that were begun during my lifetime, not one of them was begun because America was too strong.’ And he’s absolutely right," Romney said. And again in that speech, Romney approvingly quoted Reagan taking a jab at the left, recalling Reagan’s words, "it isn’t that liberals are ignorant, it’s just that what they know is wrong." Our ruling The DNC ad casts Romney as a flip-flopper on his support for the policies of former President Reagan. In the first clip, Romney in 1994, as a candidate running against a liberal icon in a liberal state, says he’s "not trying to return to Reagan-Bush." Then, 13 years later, he’s speaking approvingly of the former president saying that Reagan’s principles "are as true today as they were when he spoke them." Romney’s affection for Reagan’s presidency has grown warmer over the years and as he appealed to a different electorate. In 1994, Romney needed to win votes from the middle while gunning for the Massachusetts Senate seat. Running for the Republican nomination for president, it’s politically wise for him (and any Republican presidential candidate) to speak glowingly of Reagan. We rate the claim Mostly True. | null | Democratic National Committee | null | null | null | 2011-11-29T16:04:14 | 2011-11-28 | ['None'] |
goop-01642 | Denzel Washington Said Donald Trump Saved America? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/denzel-washington-donald-trump-fake-news/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Denzel Washington Said Donald Trump Saved America? | 4:38 pm, February 5, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00513 | Ashton Kutcher Angry About Mila Kunis Getting “Cozy” With Justin Theroux? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-justin-theroux/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Ashton Kutcher Angry About Mila Kunis Getting “Cozy” With Justin Theroux? | 2:23 pm, August 6, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01969 | People in Brooklyn are refusing to vaccinate their pets based on fears created by the anti-vaccine movement. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brooklyn-refusing-vaccinate-pets/ | null | Medical | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Are People in Brooklyn Refusing to Vaccinate Their Pets Over Autism Fears? | 2 August 2017 | null | ['Brooklyn'] |
pomt-12658 | In year No. 1, 14 million Americans lose coverage, according to the CBO. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/mar/22/chris-murphy/house-gop-health-care-bill-would-cause-14-million-/ | Democrats continue to hammer Republicans over a health care overhaul that’s projected to set in motion steep drops in insurance enrollment nationwide. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in a press conference said the "biggest headline" from an analysis of the House bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was that 24 million fewer Americans would be insured by 2026 under the plan, with a big drop off starting next year. "In 2018, right off the bat, right in year No. 1, 14 million Americans lose coverage," Murphy said in a March 16 press conference. "This is because of the cuts to Medicaid, which will result in states dramatically curtailing Medicaid eligibility, but also because lots of Americans who today have private health care through these exchanges won't be able to afford that coverage, as well as people who will come off employer-sponsored care." We decided to fact-check Murphy's claim about the bill, formally called the American Health Care Act, that 14 million Americans would lose coverage. Murphy accurately identified several of the drivers behind the projected rise in the uninsured rate. But he left out that some of the reduced enrollment would result from the repeal of a deeply unpopular provision in the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate that requires most Americans to get coverage or pay a penalty. 14 million fewer Americans insured next year The CBO report places the anticipated 14 million newly uninsured people into several categories. It projects 5 million fewer people will be covered under Medicaid; 2 million fewer people will be covered through their employer, and 6 million fewer will obtain coverage on the individual market, either through private insurers or exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Murphy accurately characterizes the CBO’s findings on reduced enrollment due to Medicaid. In addition to the 5 million fewer people expected to be covered under Medicaid next year, the CBO projects 14 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid by 2026 as states that would likely expand Medicaid under Obamacare chose not to do so under the Republican proposal. The senator also fairly states the CBO’s conclusion on employer-based insurance. Beyond the roughly 2 million fewer people to get coverage through their employer in 2018, the Republican proposal is estimated to lead to roughly 7 million fewer people enrolled in employer-based insurance by 2026. But Murphy didn’t mention that some of these people would voluntarily drop their insurance. The House Republican health care overhaul would repeal the individual mandate penalty, and according to the CBO, this would be the single biggest driver of raising the uninsured rate by 14 million next year. "Most of that increase would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate," the CBO report reads. "Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums" (emphasis ours). The CBO could not provide specific figures on how many people would opt out of coverage based solely on the removal of penalties, so it’s difficult to quantify. But there’s reason to think the figure would be significant. A RAND study from 2014 found that repealing the individual mandate would cause a sharp reduction in enrollment—with roughly one in five people in the individual market dropping coverage—while adding only relatively small increases to insurance premiums. Some conditions have changed since the study was published, but these findings seem to suggest millions of people would opt out of coverage if the penalties associated with the individual mandate were eliminated. Suffice it to say that while those people would no longer have coverage, they didn't technically lose it, as Murphy said, so much as voluntarily forgo coverage. And omitting this group as a driver of the projected rise in next year’s projected uninsured rate does not tell the whole story behind the 14 million figure. Keep in mind, the people required to buy insurance helped keep rates reasonable for people who are sick or had pre-existing conditions. Insurance markets set up under Obamacare have depended on a group of younger, healthier people blending into a diverse pool with older, sicker people. This arrangement led to a system where "young and healthy enrollees without large subsidies effectively cross-subsidize older, less healthy enrollees when they are required to purchase insurance or pay a penalty," according to a December CBO report. Our ruling Based on the CBO's analysis of the House Republican health care bill, Murphy said, "In year No. 1, 14 million Americans lose coverage." It is the CBO's estimate that 14 million more Americans would be off the health insurance rolls in the year following the bill’s passage. But Murphy overlooked that some of next year's newly uninsured population never wanted insurance to begin with and only got coverage under Obamacare to avoid tax penalties. This is particularly true of the people who "lose" coverage during the first year -- many of them are people dropping coverage because there is no longer a penalty. We rate Murphy’s statement Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Chris Murphy | null | null | null | 2017-03-22T16:24:02 | 2017-03-16 | ['United_States', 'Congressional_Budget_Office'] |
pose-00069 | Prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs from consumers. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/72/prevent-drug-companies-from-blocking-generic-drugs/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs | 2010-01-07T13:26:47 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15123 | I cut state spending more than anybody (in the 2016 GOP field). | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/09/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-cut-spending/ | Jeb Bush, otherwise known as "Veto Corleone" in Florida, says he has the fiscal conservative track record to back up his nickname. "I cut state spending more than anybody. I’ll do it in DC too," Bush tweeted on Aug. 31, with an accompanying chart. I cut state spending more than anybody. I’ll do it in DC too. pic.twitter.com/8rXnJwBomb — Jeb Bush (@JebBush) August 31, 2015 Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who’s No. 2 in spending cuts according to the chart but No. 14 in the polls, begged to differ and tweeted at Bush with a different chart that shows the former Florida governor was actually the top spender in the field. (Jindal has used this chart to tout his own conservative bonafides before.) .@JebBush may claim to have cut government spending, but FL’s budget grew 52% under his watch https://t.co/BFGM4URs0a pic.twitter.com/VG5NUc6e7t — Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) September 1, 2015 We were curious about Bush’s claim that he’s the top spending cutter. We found that neither Bush’s chart nor Jindal’s chart is a perfect way to compare state budgets — but Jindal’s chart is less perfect. Bush’s chart The Bush campaign told us his source was a Fox News fact-check that compared the track records of the GOP governors in the race. It looked at changes in state spending, expressed as a percentage change in each state’s budget. Here’s the original chart from Fox: "The chart above shows that Bush cut spending the most. Though he's criticized by conservatives as ‘too moderate,’ the former Florida governor cut spending by an average of 1.39 percent each year he was in office. Most cuts came from ‘public assistance,’ higher education, and state discretionary spending," the fact-check reads. Fox’s data comes from a National Association of State Budget Officers report, which breaks up state spending into four spending pools: general fund (the main fund and typically most flexible), federal funds, other state funds (which includes targeted revenue, such as gasoline taxes for transportation spending), and bonds. According to Brian Sigritz, the association’s director of state fiscal studies, Fox tallied up two of the pools — general fund and other state funds — and adjusted the numbers for inflation and population. We ran Fox’s analysis by a few experts who told us that while it’s a fair analysis, it’s not flawless. (We’ll get to its imperfections later.) On the positive side, taking the different population sizes of different states into consideration is a good start, according to Alan Auerbach, a professor of public finance at the University of California at Berkeley. It’s also fair to leave out federal funds and bonds. David Crane, who researches state fiscal policy at Stanford University, told us he also excludes those categories when crunching the numbers in California’s state budget. "If the goal is to learn if a governor cut spending, why would you include funds provided by a third party?" he said. "(Bonds) are generally issued for infrastructure, not operating costs." Overall, the analysis created a way to measure spending that is mainly under the control of state officials. "It is pretty close to a concept of ‘tax supported spending,’ but still imperfect," said Don Boyd, who analyzes state and local fiscal issues at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. "Overall, based on what Fox said they did, I think they did a pretty good job." Jindal’s chart What about Jindal’s retort? According to his chart, Bush was the top spender out of the eight governors in the 2016 race, and his budget increased by an average of 6.08 percent every year. We noted in a recent fact-check that it’s a more simplistic, and thus more imperfect, way to look at the state budget picture. For one, the analysis does not adjust for inflation. That’s not an issue if you’re comparing the same years for everybody, but the numbers may be distorted when comparing different time periods. (Bush was governor from 1999 to 2007, while Jindal took office in 2008.) "If you're looking at different time periods, inflation surely would have been different and it can't possibly be an accurate reflection of the consequences of policy choices," Boyd said. For another, Jindal’s numbers only consider the general fund. Given that some governors may spend more out of other state funds, just looking at one pool of money makes it more difficult to compare across states, according to Boyd. Limitations all around Experts, however, emphasized that there’s no one way or perfect way to compare budgets across states. "There is not one single measure of state fiscal conditions that we recommend using," said Sigritz of the state budget officers’ association. "There are pluses and minuses with using each indicator." Then there are limitations with the data itself. The association’s numbers are self-reported by the budget offices of each state, which Boyd said may affect the quality of the data. Moreover, the numbers also reflect spending that’s not supported by taxes, such as higher education spending supported by tuition. And because the governors all served at different times, it’s unfair to compare them because they were working with different economic conditions. Bush, for example, governed during an economic boom, and Jindal held office during a recession. "The Bush claim has some merit, but there are additional things one would want to control for — like economic conditions in Florida relative to other states — to get a better picture," said Auerbach. "And, of course, what any governor does depends on the state legislature to a reasonable extent." He and Sigritz both noted that economic downturns have significant impacts on state budgets, and spending usually decreases during recessions. To its credit, Fox tried to address the disparity by comparing each candidate to his contemporaries (i.e. Bush to other governors of the 2000s and Jindal to sitting governors). By that measure, Bush was still the top cutter. Beyond the question of who cut the most spending, experts said we shouldn’t ignore how they did it. "If, for example, a governor cut spending by underpaying pension contributions, or by deferring maintenance on roads and bridges, then look out below," said Boyd. As Fox notes, Bush’s cuts came from public assistance, higher education and state discretionary spending. Much of the reduction under Jindal, reported the Times-Picayune in 2011, is "explained by waning hurricane recovery appropriations and the end of federal stimulus aid." Our ruling Bush tweeted, "I cut state spending more than anybody." He cited a chart by Fox News that experts told us was a valid way of looking at budget reductions. It’s not perfect nor is it the only way to measure spending cuts. Bush’s claim is partially true but leaves out context. We rate it Half True. | null | Jeb Bush | null | null | null | 2015-09-09T09:45:02 | 2015-08-31 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-11209 | Two-thirds of the people who use Medicaid are poor children, but two-thirds of the money is for long-term care for seniors, whether in a facility or at home. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/may/11/nancy-pelosi/nancy-pelosi-wrong-medicaids-role-children-elderly/ | During an appearance at a fiscal policy summit in Washington, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delved into who – and what — the Medicaid program pays for. Medicaid, the federal-state program that serves many poor Americans, is one of several mandatory spending programs putting pressure on the federal budget. At roughly 6:48 in this video, Pelosi said, "Two-thirds of the people who use Medicaid are poor children, but two-thirds of the money is for long-term care for seniors, whether in a facility or at home." Is this accurate? No — as Pelosi’s office quickly clarified after PolitiFact inquired. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Pelosi "misspoke," said Henry Connelly, Pelosi’s deputy communications director. Connelly clarified that she should have said that "children are close to half of Medicaid enrollees" and said she "inverted" the statistic about long-term care spending. "It’s not that two-thirds of Medicaid goes to long-term care, it’s that two-thirds of long-term care is paid for by Medicaid," citing data posted by the Alliance for Retired Americans. (To be precise, according to the group, the share of long-term care costs paid by Medicaid was 62 percent in 2015.) Let’s take a closer look at the actual data for age and long-term care spending. Children accounted for 48 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries in 2013, not the two-thirds Pelosi initially said. The percentage may have changed somewhat following the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, but experts said they did not expect there to have been a dramatic shift. Here’s the full breakdown: See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com As for long-term care costs as a share of Medicaid spending, it’s quite a bit less than the two-thirds Pelosi cited. In 2016, various types of long-term care accounted for 21.4 percent of all Medicaid spending. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Our ruling Pelosi said, "Two-thirds of the people who use Medicaid are poor children, but two-thirds of the money is for long-term care for seniors, whether in a facility or at home." Her office acknowledged that she misspoke. She overstated both the percentage of Medicaid beneficiaries who are children, and the percentage of Medicaid spending devoted to long-term care. We rate the statement False. See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2018-05-11T14:09:45 | 2018-05-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-00896 | The governor must inform the Senate president about his or her absence from the state. | mostly false | /new-hampshire/statements/2015/mar/05/jennifer-horn/nh-republican-party-says-governor-required-notify-/ | Gov. Maggie Hassan traveled to private meetings in New York and Washington D.C. Monday, fanning speculation that she may consider a run for U.S. Senate in 2016 to challenge first-term Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. In recent weeks, the New Hampshire Republican Party has taken aim at Hassan’s out-of-state travel schedule, claiming the New Hampshire Democrat is using the governor’s post as a "political stepping stone" to elevate her political career. Republican party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn filed several right-to-know requests seeking Hassan’s travel itinerary, and suggested that Hassan did not follow "proper protocol" by notifying the Senate President when she left the state. In a letter sent to Hassan’s office, Horn writes that "the governor must inform the Senate president about his or her absence from the state." In response to Horn’s letter, Hassan responded that -- at the time -- she had only traveled outside the state once in 2015, to the border with Maine to attend the groundbreaking for a bridge reconstruction project. She has since traveled out of the state twice more. We wondered, is the governor required to tell the Senate president every time she leaves the state, whether on official business, for vacation or simply to go out for dinner in Boston? State Republican Party spokesman Ryan William pointed to the New Hampshire Constitution, part 2 article 49, which outlines who acts as governor when the office is vacant, and what qualifies as a vacancy. That section states: "In the event of the death, resignation, removal from office, failure to qualify, physical or mental incapacity, absence from the state, or other incapacity of the governor, the president of the senate, for the time being, shall act as governor until the vacancy is filled or the incapacity is removed." The section furthers outlines when the powers of the governor are transferred as a result of an absence from the state in its concluding sentence: "While the governor or an acting governor is absent from the state on official business, he shall have the power and authority to transact such business." In other words, under Article 49, the only time gubernatorial authority would fall to the Senate President due to the governor’s absence would be when the governor is away on unofficial business, such as a private vacation, said Martin Gross, senior counsel at the law firm Sulloway & Hollis and an expert in New Hampshire constitutional matters. So, if Hassan leaves, is she required to notify Senate President Morse? The Constitution doesn’t directly spell it out. Williams says it’s good practice, for the safety of the state. "It’s important for Gov. Hassan to inform Senate President Morse when she is out of state. If she doesn't, he has no way to know he is acting governor (and) that would put the state at risk," Williams said. Still, good practice is not the same thing as a requirement. This is not a new issue; it has come up in state politics from time to time. The state attorney general’s office has rendered opinions on whether the governor is required to notify the senate president of an absence. "While there are instances when notice has been formerly given in the past, it is not mandated by the Constitution, which is wholly silent on the issue," wrote Attorney General Stephen Merrill in 1987. However, Merrill noted, the intention of the Constitution was to have an automatic transfer of powers. "Since the executive power must be kept functioning at all times, there can be no possibility of the gap which would occur while the Senate President awaits a notice from the governor," Merrill wrote. And Merrill added, "There appears to have been a custom in New Hampshire for a Governor to provide notice if he is to be absent or disabled for some significant period of time." Over the years, governors and senate presidents have worked out their own notification processes, and they vary widely. When Sen. Sylvia Larsen, a Concord Democrat, was Senate President between 2006 to 2010 then-Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, didn’t tell her when he was leaving, she said. "In my four years (as Senate President) I don’t ever recall ever being notified," said Larsen, who did not seek reelection last year. "If I learned about it, it was just because we were friends." That wasn’t the case with Larsen’s successor, Peter Bragdon, a Milford Republican who was Senate President between 2010 and 2013, overlapping with both Lynch and Hassan’s terms. Lynch and Bragdon worked out an informal system, Bragdon said. Lynch’s chief of staff would notify Bragdon’s office when the governor would be out of state. It was the same when Hassan took over, he said. "It was pretty much a courtesy," said Bragdon, who is now executive director of Health Trust Inc., which was formerly part of the Local Government Center. Hassan’s office recently released documents showing that her chief of staff, Pam Walsh, emailed Morse’s chief of staff, Kristy Merill, on the morning of Thursday, Feb 19, 2015, to tell her Hassan would be out of state that evening through Monday. That was when Hassan went to Washington D.C. to attend the National Governors Association winter meeting. "She will be reachable by cell and email during the trip," Walsh wrote. Walsh again emailed on Feb. 27, to say Hassan would be out of the state until the morning of March 3 as she traveled to New York and Washington D.C. We’ll note that none of the governor’s powers were transferred to Morse during any of Hassan’s absences, according to the governor’s office. Our ruling New Hampshire Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn said Gov. Maggie Hassan "must inform the Senate president about his or her absence from the state." While according to the state Constitution the governor’s powers are passed onto the Senate president during certain gubernatorial absences, the Constitution does not specifically require notification. It has been a frequent practice for governors to notify the Senate president of their absence from the state (as Hassan has been doing by email) but this policy hasn’t been followed in every case. We rate her statement Mostly False. | null | Jennifer Horn | null | null | null | 2015-03-05T15:08:21 | 2015-02-04 | ['None'] |
pomt-09693 | I signed the largest single tax cut in the history of Florida, a $25 billion tax cut over five years, directed at property tax cuts. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/10/charlie-crist/charlie-crist-is-taking-credit-for-floridas-larges/ | It's become part of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's firewall when confronted with criticism that he isn't conservative enough. "I signed the largest single tax cut in the history of Florida, a $25 billion tax cut over five years, directed at property tax cuts," Crist said while speaking to a group of Michigan Republicans in September. "My state goes back to 1845; the largest tax cut since 1845 in the Sunshine State." Crist touts his tax-cutting record over and over, in news releases, political speeches and in the first radio ad for his U.S. Senate campaign. The line is good politics. But is it true? The property tax changes proposed by Crist and the Legislature in early 2007 were sold as the antidote to citizens' complaints that local government spending had spiraled out of control. Crist famously predicted taxes would "drop like a rock." On June 21, 2007, the governor signed House bills 1B and 5B — the two-pronged tax package. House Bill 1B required local governments to reduce their property tax rates to 2006 levels and mandated deeper cuts based on how much a local government collected in property tax dollars. The reported savings to taxpayers: $15.6 billion over five years. House Bill 5B, meanwhile, let voters consider further property tax changes. Also known as Amendment 1, the changes — which included an additional homestead benefit, limited property value increases for non-homesteaded property and created portability for Save Our Homes — were approved by voters in January 2008. The savings: $9.3 billion over five years. Combined, that's the $25 billion Crist is talking about. We have to address two questions to see if Crist's claim is right: Are the estimates correct? And do they constitute the largest state tax cut ever? Caution: The following information is considered highly wonky. Crist's tax math To estimate the financial impact of the 2007 and 2008 property tax changes, analysts at the governor's office first forecast a future as if the changes had not occurred. The process was relatively simple. Analysts estimated five years of statewide property tax collection information by multiplying a tax rate, which they did not change, by taxable property values, which they grew at 3 to 5 percent a year. The calculation, analysts said, attempted to replicate the billions of dollars in property taxes Floridians would pay each year if nothing else happened. With that baseline, analysts next built a world post-tax changes, multiplying an estimated new tax rate by the same property values. The difference between Year 1 of the first calculation and Year 1 of the second constitutes the governor's estimate of the savings to Florida taxpayers. They did the same math for years 2 through 5, and voila — $25 billion in savings. Simple? No, says David Gamage, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in taxation. The governor's estimates would be accurate only if property tax values increased as analysts predicted and local governments failed to reduce their tax rates, Gamage says. We will never know what governments would have done to their tax rates, but we do know about property tax values: They've gone down. Taxable property values dropped 15 percent in 2008, according to figures from county property appraisers. Property values are expected to drop again in 2009. "Even if this policy hadn't been enacted, the future would look different than today," Gamage said. It's the same reason that a recent Florida Association of Counties report concluded that of the $1.5 billion trimmed from property tax collections at the county level in the past three years, almost half is a result of falling property values, not the Crist-led changes. When questioned by PolitiFact, the governor's office admitted that its original savings estimates are now likely high and it has not rerun the analysis. What we do know is this: the Department of Revenue said that as a result of the legislative-mandated tax rate rollbacks, the state's property tax collections fell about $300 million ( page 9 ) from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2008. And property tax collections in total fell an estimated $745 million ( page 163 ) from fiscal year 2008 to 2009, the first year the Amendment 1 changes took effect. That's a $1.05 billion reduction in property taxes. The governor's estimate predicted $6.1 billion in savings during that same period. If property values fail to increase, the gap will only widen since the changes are estimated to have a bigger impact in later years. Part of the difference in the numbers is that the governor's office counted future, theoretical increases in tax collections as part of its estimated "tax cut." And part of the difference is that falling property values wrecked the governor's projections. Is it the biggest? Despite inaccurate projections, the governor's office says the 2007 and 2008 tax cuts are still the state's largest. But what else competes? The governor's analysts point to the repeal of the intangibles tax. The intangibles tax — created during the Depression — was paid on investments, and at its peak, sat at 2 mills ($2 for every $1,000). The tax was cut under Gov. Lawton Chiles and repealed entirely in 2006 by Gov. Jeb Bush. At its height in 1999, it provided the state about $1.2 billion in revenue, according to the Department of Revenue. Adjusted for inflation, that translates to about $1.5 billion in 2007. That's a bigger tax break than what the Crist-led changes delivered in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, but not more than Crist's rosy projection. We wondered if anyone previously has claimed to be Florida's tax cut king. Bush did. In 1999, Bush and the Legislature passed what they called "the largest tax cut in state history." The $1.01 billion plan included further cuts to the intangibles tax, as well as the repeal of a per-drink tax on alcohol, a rollback in the school property tax rate and a reduction in unemployment taxes businesses pay, among other things. Kurt Wenner, director of Tax Research at Florida TaxWatch, suggested a third tax change that could be considered the state's largest: Save Our Homes. The amendment to the state Constitution proposed and approved by citizens in 1992 limited increases to the property value of homesteaded property in Florida. While there is debate about whether those savings were offset by people without homestead exemptions, the savings to homesteaded property owners is quantifiable. From 1996 to 2008, almost $1.9 trillion in property value went untaxed because of Save Our Homes. Using a conservative tax rate of 17 mills, that equates to $32 billion less in property taxes paid — or about $2.66 billion per year without adjusting for inflation. In 2007, the savings was about $7.27 billion and from 2004 to 2008 the estimated savings was more than $26 billion. Those numbers certainly are bigger than the Crist cuts so far, in reality and in projection. The governor's office said it did not consider Save Our Homes when it made the claim that the Crist tax changes constitute the state's largest. Officials then provided data that showed the saving in the first years of Save Our Homes was modest. But that's because the large savings came in later years as Save Our Homes protected against increases to properties' taxable value. Failing to consider Save Our Homes didn't sit well with Ken Wilkinson, the Lee County property appraiser who led the push for Save Our Homes — and supported the Crist-led changes. "I would say Save Our Homes is the largest tax cut in the history of Florida," Wilkinson said. "There is a savings, you can look it up, and it's real." Wilkinson and Wenner said you can't ignore Save Our Homes just because it was a citizen initiative. Moreover, the Crist-led changes built off Save Our Homes in two major ways — by making Save Our Homes portable and by creating a Save Our Homes style benefit for commercial and rental properties. If one's a tax cut, so is the other. Our ruling The Crist-led changes to Florida's property tax structure certainly required the lowering of tax rates and assessment values throughout Florida. But there are all kinds of holes in projecting the size and scope of the legislation's impact. The basis for the governor's estimate assumed a future that did not come to pass. Specifically, the governor's estimates relied on future property values continuing to increase and local governments failing to lower their property tax rate. We now know property values are decreasing. The governor's office admits its projections are now inaccurate because of declines in property values statewide. A state analysis concluded that the tax measures have failed to produce the savings estimated by the governor. Portability, for instance, was predicted to cut taxable property values by $11.5 billion in 2008. But it cut property values only $3.4 billion, the analysis showed. Here's the bottom line: While the tax structure changes passed by the Legislature, signed by Crist and approved by voters undoubtedly will result in less property taxes being paid by Florida residents, the specific financial impact of the initiatives remains quite unclear. Experts say projections can be misleading. But given the decline in home values, we know Crist will have difficulty reaching his claim of $25 billion over five years. In the absence of additional data, and with the knowledge that Save Our Homes has cut property tax bills for Florida residents $32 billion or more, we can't agree with Crist that the 2007 and 2008 changes constitute the largest tax cut in state history. We rule Crist's statement False. | null | Charlie Crist | null | null | null | 2009-11-10T18:02:40 | 2009-09-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-00812 | Georgia has one of the nation’s highest jet fuel taxes. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2015/mar/31/trebor-banstetter/delta-spokesman-mostly-correct-about-jet-fuel-taxe/ | Time is running out for the 2015 General Assembly and for state lawmakers who had a lofty goal this session of raising at least $1 billion for transportation improvements. One of the backstories to the transportation bill (House Bill 170) has been: Will a fraction of the money -- about $23 million -- come from eliminating a controversial state jet fuel tax exemption? That tax break has benefitted hometown Delta Air lines for nearly a decade and was made permanent by that lawmakers and the governor in 2012. To some, eliminating the exemption seems reasonable. "The loophole is unnecessary since Delta is highly profitable and no longer at risk of bankruptcy, as they were a few years ago (when the exemption was first granted)," said Wesley Tharpe, analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute. "Ending their special privileges at a time when we’re asking Georgians for more revenues makes sense." Delta executives don’t feel the same. They’ve called efforts to remove the exemption "one of the most business-unfriendly moves" by the General Assembly in recent years. Among Delta’s arguments is that the existing jet fuel taxes are already high enough and that a further increase could jeopardize Atlanta airport’s competitive status. "If approved, this measure would put Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at an economic disadvantage by making aviation fuel taxes in Georgia some of the highest in the industry," Trebor Banstetter Delta spokesman told The Associated Press, referencing House Bill 175, a measure that initially would have eliminated the sales tax exemption just for Delta. Banstetter and other Delta officials have cited information from Airlines for America, the airline trade association, that they say backs ups their claim that Georgia already has one of the nation’s highest jet fuel tax rates. PolitiFact Georgia wondered: Could that be right? Buckle up, and let’s see where the facts take us. The right-leaning Tax Foundation ranked states for jet fuel taxes in June 2014 based on data from Airlines for America. The foundation found Georgia was 11th nationally at 15 cents, based on its combined effective jet fuel tax rate and fees per gallon. Illinois had the highest jet fuel taxes at 32.8 cents -- more than twice Georgia’s -- followed by California with 27 cents and Connecticut with 26.4 cents. Three states -- Texas, Ohio and Delaware -- had no jet fuel taxes. Of the 47 states that have some type of jet fuel tax or fee, Georgia is considered an outlier, said Victoria Day, spokeswoman for Airlines for America. "Most states do not apply a retail sales tax to jet fuel, which makes sense because taxing business inputs creates tax pyramiding," Day said. Georgia’s jet fuel sales tax would go from three percent to four percent, if the exemption is eliminated. To show how complicated the jet fuel tax computations are: 19 states don’t include any jet fuel in their sales tax base; 16 states tax private jet fuel purchases but exempt commercial airlines; and 15 states apply the sales tax to commercial jet fuel, although sometimes at a reduced rate. Finally, three states (New Jersey, New York, and Washington) only tax fuel estimated to be burned within their state borders, significantly reducing the burden of fuel taxes, the foundation’s report said. We found another report on jet fuel costs at 12 billion.org, a site run by Unite Here International Union, a group critical of tax exemptions benefitting the airlines. The report looked at costs at the major airports. It’s data was slightly older than the association’s. It showed fuel costs at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as sixth highest at 15 cents a gallon and Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport as the highest at 32.75 cents per gallon, numbers identical to those reported by the airline trade association for 2014 for Georgia and Illinois, respectively. Commercial aviation supports more than 350,000 jobs and drives 45 billion in economic activity in Georgia, according to Airlines for America. How the tax break came to be Lawmakers first approved the jet fuel tax break for Delta in 2005, when the airline was headed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. They repeatedly extended the tax exemption even as the carrier’s finances improved and its stock soared, making it permanent for Delta and any airlines in 2012. State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs introduced House Bill 175 in January, saying it was time Delta "get off the taxpayer dime." He said the bill was retaliation against Delta officials for speaking out against a potential second airport in Paulding County or suggesting that lawmakers should not be "chicken" about raising taxes for transportation. Delta officials said Ehrhart’s bill, as originally drafted, was illegal because federal law requires jet fuel tax revenues be spent on airports or airport improvements, not go to the general fund, a statement PolitiFact Georgia ruled as True. Ehrhart vehemently denied the bill, which stalled in the House, was illegal, saying a three-year grace period from the feds would give the state a chance to reinstate the tax and spent the money as it wants, at least temporarily. Delta’s Banstetter said last week: "At this point, all we can say is that if the bill is passed it will be up to the FAA to decide whether the state is in compliance." In at least two other states -- North Carolina and Illinois -- legislators are considering proposals to remove tax breaks or close tax loopholes for airlines. Our conclusion: Delta officials are arguing against reinstating a 1-percent tax on jet fuel, which would generate about $23 million a year, mostly from Delta fuel purchases. Delta executives say that Georgia already has one of the nation’s highest jet fuel taxes and would have an even higher rate, if the exemption were eliminated. Georgia’s jet fuel tax is ranked 11th and is less than half of the tax in No. 1 rated Illinois. That bit of missing context takes this one down a notch on the Truth-O-Meter. We rate Banstetter’s statement Mostly True. | null | Trebor Banstetter | null | null | null | 2015-03-31T00:00:00 | 2015-03-01 | ['None'] |
snes-03146 | Shot Through the Heart | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/palestinian-boy-shot-photo/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does a Photograph Show a Palestinian Boy Getting Shot by Israeli Soldiers? | 13 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00107 | Claim: The Budget gives four times more to sheep welfare than to home childcare | mostly true | http://www.thejournal.ie/sheep-welfare-home-carers-budget-2017-3039714-Oct2016/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: Does the Budget give four times more to "sheep welfare" than home childcare? | Oct 23rd 2016, 8:30 AM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00462 | Says Bill Nelson "doesn’t pay payroll taxes for his employees. He doesn’t even provide them with health benefits. It’s stealing money from Medicare and Social Security." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2018/aug/16/rick-scott/nelson-wasnt-paying-payroll-taxes-because-he-didnt/ | A new attack ad portrays U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson as scamming his employees and the federal government by avoiding payroll taxes. The ad, released by Republican challenger Gov. Rick Scott, claims, "(Bill) Nelson doesn’t pay payroll taxes for his employees. He doesn’t even provide them with health benefits. It’s stealing money from Medicare and Social Security." Several PolitiFact readers emailed us (truthometer@politifact.com) to ask if the ad was accurate, so we decided to fact-check it. Back to the source The ad includes a headline that says, "Bill Nelson’s campaign avoiding taxes, health care costs on campaign staff." So we ruled out that Nelson’s official Senate staff were the employees the ad was talking about. The headline is from the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news organization, which published an article July 13 stating that Nelson had not hired any full-time employees on his Senate campaign. Federal campaigns are required to disclose their spending information to the Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaign finances. When the story was published, the Nelson campaign had not disclosed any "disbursements" labeled as payroll. Likewise, there were no insurance payments for workers listed in FEC filings between January 2017 and June 2018. When we dug in deeper, we found that the Nelson campaign didn’t have any full-time staff to pay taxes on. In the first half of the year, the Nelson campaign was using paid consultants. "This isn’t unusual, as most political campaigns rely heavily on consultants, especially early on in the cycle," said Nelson spokeswoman Carlie Waibel. Employers do not need to pay the payroll tax on consultants. They also do not need to provide health benefits. Paul Herrnson, professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, said hiring consultants is relatively common, especially for incumbent politicians. Incumbents may work with consultants — often people and firms they’ve worked with on previous campaigns or during their time in office — to help raise money, conduct polls, and organize early campaign efforts. Staff for a campaign are hired to manage day-to-day activities and voter mobilization closer to the election. We checked the FEC filings to see if other campaigns relied heavily on consultants. We focused on nearly a dozen similar races— battleground states with an incumbent running for re-election. Based on the FEC filings for these campaigns, all 11 incumbents had hired staff (and paid payroll taxes) by June, when the last filing was due. Nelson’s tactics, while legal, do seem to be uncommon. (Some Democrats have criticized Nelson’s campaign as understaffed and overmatched.) The Nelson campaign hired some full-time employees in early July, according to Waibel, but these changes have not been reported to the FEC yet. The next filing is due on Aug. 16, and Nelson will have to begin paying payroll taxes on these new employees. As for health insurance, Waibel said, "Nelson for Senate staff are compensated to ensure they have access to health care. Health care costs are considered when establishing staffer's salaries." The ad is somewhat outdated, but it does align with the most recent data available online. "Stealing money from Medicare and Social Security" The ad also claims that Nelson is "stealing money from Medicare and Social Security" by not paying payroll taxes. The payroll tax is one of the major financiers for Medicare and Social Security. But a company that pays consultants is not "stealing" from Medicare or Social Security. Here’s how it works: When a company pays a full-time employee, they set aside 7.65 percent of the employee’s check to go toward Medicare and Social Security. The employer will match that, so effectively 15.3 percent of the employee’s salary is paid to Social Security and Medicare. For consultants, things get a little more complicated. Consultants, like other contract workers, generally have to pay the full 15.3 percent themselves to Medicare and Social Security. If the consultant employed his or her own full-time employees, the employees would pay half and their employer (the consultant) would pay half. The same amount of money will go to Medicare and Social Security, regardless of whether the Nelson campaign pays it or the consultants do. This may be a cost-cutting measure for the campaign, but it certainly isn’t "stealing," as the ad claims. Our ruling Scott released an ad which claimed, "Nelson doesn’t pay payroll taxes for his employees. He doesn’t even provide them with health benefits. It’s stealing money from Medicare and Social Security." Nelson relied on consultants for the early parts of his campaign. Because he did not have employees, he did not have to pay payroll taxes or provide health insurance. In July, Nelson hired employees, though they will not report that change to the FEC until mid-August. The campaign still does not provide healthcare to their employees but says that salaries are adjusted so staff will have access to care. Nelson does not have to pay payroll taxes on consultants. Instead, the consultants pay the payroll taxes. This is a common set-up for contract work. No money is being lost or stolen from the national funds. We rate this statement Mostly False. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2018-08-16T09:00:00 | 2018-07-30 | ['Medicare_(United_States)', 'Social_Security_(United_States)'] |
pose-00277 | Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/293/call-for-repeal-of-dont-ask-dont-tell-policy/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy | 2010-01-07T13:26:54 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01200 | Two New Jersey Coptic Christians Beheaded | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/new-jersey-double-murder/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Two New Jersey Coptic Christians Beheaded | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03043 | DNC Hired Actors to Fill Seats at Convention | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/dnc-hired-actors-fill-seats-convention/ | null | politics | null | null | null | DNC Hired Actors to Fill Seats at Convention | Jul 28, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13266 | We don't have any chess grandmasters in the United States. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/14/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-maligns-us-chess-prowess/ | One of Donald Trump’s signature lines at rallies has been that the United States doesn’t win any more. "Folks, we don't win anymore, right?" he said in June in an event in the Woodlands, Texas. "We don't win anymore. We don't win! We don't win on anything." More recently, during an Oct. 10 rally in Ambridge, Pa., Trump offered a variation on that theme -- and the U.S. chess community wasn’t happy about his remarks. Trump was in the midst of criticizing international trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He said he supports the idea of bilateral agreements, saying that such deals would make it possible for the United States to threaten to withdraw, then renegotiate on more favorable terms before the agreement expired. Trump went on to say that with multilateral pacts like the TPP, "you can't terminate -- there's too many people, you go crazy. It's like you have to be a grand chess master. And we don't have any of them." (You can see it here, around the 19:45 mark.) Trump’s statement sounded wrong to us. The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry, but as it turns out, it is wrong. In fact, the comment provoked anger and ridicule within the chess community, which knows that the United States is currently on a roll in international competition. Chess grandmasters It’s literally wrong that "we don’t have any" chess grandmasters. That’s the correct term, by the way, not "grand chess masters." Currently, the United States has 90 grandmasters, counting both men and women, which is enough to rank third-highest in the world. The title is awarded by FIDE, the international governing body of chess; it’s the highest rank conferred by the group, and it is given for life. Russia, a longtime chess powerhouse, ranks first with 234 grandmasters, while Germany ranks second with 91, just one more than the United States. Here’s a list of the top 30 nations in the FIDE rankings. Recent U.S. victories In the meantime, Trump chose a particularly inopportune moment for his comment. Most notable is the victory less than a month earlier by the U.S. men’s team at the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan -- which is considered the first time in nearly 80 years that the United States won the gold. To win in September, the United States bested such powerhouses as Russia, Ukraine, India and China. Chess may not be the most popular sport in the United States, but observers called the Olympic victory a watershed moment for U.S. chess. "The 2016 win in the Chess Olympiad is huge," said Olimpiu G. Urcan, a Singapore-based chess writer and historian. "The previous Olympiad was won by China, and Russia and Ukraine are extremely competitive. Having the United States finish first was a huge boost for chess in America and a moment of genuine pride. Many in the U.S. right now believe that the successes of 2016 could produce a rejuvenation of chess" similar to what happened with the international stardom of Bobby Fischer in the 1970s. Macauley Peterson, a Hamburg, Germany-based American who serves as content director for chess24, calls it "frankly discouraging" that the United States team "received so little media attention. The number of U.S. grandmasters is higher than ever, and winning the Olympiad was a historic achievement." Urcan was among the first to notice Trump’s quote and tweeted about it. That led to none other than Garry Kasparov -- probably the most famous living chess grandmaster -- to tweet his disbelief. Kasparov is Russian but is living in exile in New York City; he has been an outspoken critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Hikaru Nakamura, a U.S. Olympic team member and currently the world’s No. 7 ranked player, joined in: See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com In the meantime, the United States is home to 15-year-old grandmaster Jeffrey Xiong, who in August won the World Junior Chess Championship -- the first U.S. victory in the tournament in nearly two decades. And the United States is currently the only country to have three players in the world’s top 10 list -- Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So. A final note: There is a long history of foreign players flocking to affiliate with the U.S. team. The victorious Olympic team includes Fabiano Caruana, a dual American and Italian citizen who had previously played for Italy, and Wesley So, who was born in the Philippines. Our ruling Trump said, "We don't have any" chess grandmasters in the United States. Actually, the United States has 90 grandmasters, the third most of any country, and the U.S. team recently won chess’ biggest international tournament for the first time in eight decades. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/26f8a1ec-4030-4753-90d5-20a8f2b68838 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-14T13:12:23 | 2016-10-10 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-11016 | Marijuana and THC "have caused emergency room visits to skyrocket." | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2018/jul/06/patrick-kennedy/has-marijuana-caused-emergency-room-visits-skyrock/ | Advocates against marijuana legalization frequently cite increased marijuana-related hospitalizations as proof the drug should not be sold commercially. But how much of a threat does cannabis actually present? Since retiring from Congress in 2010, Patrick J. Kennedy has been speaking out about his struggles with drug addiction and mental health. Kennedy is the co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a non-profit dedicated to combating cannabis legalization. The group refers to marijuana as "the next ‘Big Tobacco’" and advocates for increased research into cannabis as a potential medicinal source, rather than a recreational drug. In Kennedy’s home state of Rhode Island, the push for recreational legalization continues. In February 2018, the Rhode Island General Assembly resolved to create a working committee to study the effects of legalization. In May, Sen. Joshua Miller introduced a bill to the House to legalize for all people 21 and over. The day after the bill was introduced, the Providence Journal published an editorial by Kennedy. In it, Kennedy draws connections between addiction and mental illness, and encourages readers to take control of their mental health through "healthy coping mechanisms and problem solving skills." Especially for children, he writes, turning to drugs as a way of handling stress is a dangerous road to follow. Good as that all sounds, one line in particular stood out to us: "These drugs (marijuana/THC), which masquerade as food, have caused emergency room visits to skyrocket," Kennedy wrote. Researchers are still working to determine the long-term health consequences of marijuana. Although each person reacts to THC differently, no deaths caused by marijuana alone have ever been recorded, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration fact sheet. Regardless of immediate health risks, though, marijuana can impair judgement, leading to more accidents, or cause anxiety and paranoia in some users, leading to panic attacks that may prompt hospital visits. We decided to look at the numbers and determine if marijuana really has caused emergency room visits to increase. Colorado case study When we contacted Kennedy about this claim, Kennedy’s spokeswoman directed us to two studies about marijuana usage in Colorado: one conducted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and another compiled by Smart Against Marijuana. Colorado was one of the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Retail marijuana stores opened in early 2014, and medical marijuana had been legal since 2000. Colorado has also collected the most data on the consequences of marijuana legalization, serving as the template for other states considering the move. Hospitalization and emergency department visit rates related to marijuana are studied based on patient records. When a patient arrives at the emergency department, they are assigned "billing codes," which list their conditions. According to the American Health Information Management Association, the primary diagnoses should be listed first. The 2015 report from the Colorado Department of Public Health shows that hospitalizations with marijuana-related billing codes have climbed steadily over the years. In 2011, 1,313 per 100,000 hospitalizations had marijuana-related billing codes, a figure which had risen to 3,025 by 2015. However, hospitalizations and emergency department visits—the statistic that Kennedy claims to be citing—are slightly different. Emergency department visits refer to patients who come to the hospital and are treated without being admitted. According to Dr. Daniel Vigil, program manager of the Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research Program at the Colorado Department of Public Health, hospitalizations are more likely to include marijuana-related billing codes. "The limitation that a marijuana code might be present even when it isn't a causal factor in the visit may be more pronounced with hospitalizations, because there's more opportunity for gathering and documenting substance use information," Dr. Vigil told us in an email. "For this reason, I'm more likely to discuss the (emergency department) visit rates when asked about health impacts." So, although hospitalization rates are increasing in Colorado, emergency department rates are not. The emergency rate had increased from 2011 to 2014, peaking at 1,034 per 100,000 emergency visits, but then fell significantly in 2015 to only 754 per 100,000. In both this dataset and the data for hospitalizations, researchers counted any patient with a marijuana-related billing code, even if that code was unrelated to the injury being treated. So, if a patient were to come in with a cut on their hand, but also had smoked a few hours prior, they would receive a billing code and count as a "marijuana-related hospitalization." What’s it all mean? In Colorado, there has been a significant increase in patients being hospitalized with marijuana in their system. In the last decade, the hospitalization rate has more than doubled. However, it’s important to recognize that these numbers, while increasing, still make up a very small percentage of the total hospital visits. Three percent of hospitalizations in Colorado had a marijuana-related code in 2015, which could mean anything from "patient is currently high" to "patient smokes weed habitually." Only 0.6% of Colorado hospitalizations list marijuana in the top 3 billing codes. And again, none of that means that people are in the hospital because of marijuana. What About the Other States? There are currently few studies which examine marijuana-related hospitalizations within individual states, even in areas where recreational cannabis has been legalized. One nationwide study by Dr. He Zhu of Duke University Medical Center showed that across the United States, between 2004 and 2011, emergency department visits that involved the use of cannabis had increased from 51 to 73 per 100,000 patients between 2004 and 2011. Those that involved cannabis combined with other drugs had also increased from 63 to 100 per 100,000. So again, definitely a trend upwards, but marijuana-related cases still encompassed less than 0.01% of total hospitalizations. Similarly to the Colorado studies, the researchers relied on hospital records that could not identify cannabis as the cause of the visit, but rather just a contributing factor. Additionally, because the study only used data up until 2011, it could not accurately reflect the trends related to recreational sales. Is it causal? We cannot conclusively say that marijuana has caused an increase in visits to the emergency room. Rather, the data show that more people are arriving at the hospital having recently or habitually used cannabis, even if that is not their primary condition (or related at all to their primary condition). Through it seems plausible that impaired judgment or slowed reflexes may be a culprit, it is impossible to say how often that is true. Dr. Jerome Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told us for a 2016 fact-check, "The main risk from marijuana is from the risky or stupid things people do after using it, such as driving, rather than from any toxic effects of the substance itself, which is remarkably safe." Our ruling Kennedy wrote that marijuana and THC, "have caused emergency room visits to skyrocket." It is true that hospitalizations have increased over the last decade by people using marijuana, both in states like Colorado that have legalized recreational cannabis and nationwide. However, due to the way hospitals keep patient records, it is impossible to say that marijuana is the cause of these visits. Rather, it is possible that the higher numbers of high patients are due simply to the fact that more people are using marijuana overall. To say that marijuana is causing emergency room visits to skyrocket is unfounded based on the limited data that has been collected. We rate this claim Half True. Correction: This article has been revised to better reflect uncertainty about the long-term medical effects of marijuana. It does not change the rating of the fact-check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Patrick Kennedy | null | null | null | 2018-07-06T11:00:00 | 2018-04-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-06494 | When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, "the percentage uninsured went down." Under his successor, Rick Perry, "it's gone up." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/13/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-uninsured-increased-under-rick-pe/ | During the Oct. 11, 2011, Republican presidential debate in Hanover, N.H., former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sought to contrast health care in his state with that in rival Gov. Rick Perry's home state, Texas. "We (Massachusetts) have less than 1 percent of our kids that are uninsured," Romney told Perry. "You have a million kids uninsured in Texas. A million kids." Under the administration of George W. Bush, he continued, "the percentage uninsured went down. Under your leadership, it's gone up." We weren’t sure whether Romney meant the uninsurance rate for Texans of all ages, or specifically for children. Romney didn’t explicitly cite children in his comment, and when we contacted the campaign, they confirmed that he had meant uninsured Texans overall. However, the comment followed on the heels of discussion of uninsured children, so we think viewers would have reason to think Romney was talking about the uninsurance rate for kids only. As it turns out, which meaning is ascribed to Romney’s words pretty much determines whether Romney is right or wrong. To explain, we’ll turn to historical data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. First, let’s look at the uninsurance rate for the population as a whole. Under Bush, the percentage of Texans without health insurance declined from 24.5 percent in 1995 to 23.5 percent in 2001. Under Perry, the percentage without health insurance rose from 23.2 percent in 2001 to 26.1 percent in 2009, the most recent year available. (Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the rate for 2001 was slightly different for the two governors. This is because the Census Bureau changed its methodology in the interim.) So, based on the uninsurance rates for Texas’ population at large, Romney’s claim is justified. How about the rates for children? That’s a different story. Under Bush, the uninsurance rate for children fell from 22.4 percent in 1995 to 21.3 percent in 2001. Under Perry, the uninsurance rate for children didn’t rise -- it continued to fall, from 21.1 percent in 2001 to 16.5 percent in 2009. So looking at the children’s uninsurance rate, Romney’s comment is wrong. "The continued decline in the number of uninsured Texas children … is the silver lining to a very cloudy uninsured rate for Texas adults," said a report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank in Austin. The results for children’s uninsurance surprised us. Even as uninsurance rates for the Texas population as a whole were rising, the rates for children were falling -- and falling faster than the overall rates rose. In addition, the rate of children without insurance in Texas fell faster than the national rate, which declined from 11.3 percent in 2001 to 10 percent in 2009. And this all came as Texas’ population was increasing by about 20 percent, meaning that huge numbers of kids had to be added to the insurance rolls just to keep pace with population growth. One explanation we looked at is the margin of error for the Census Bureau studies. Using the sampling error values included in the tables, we found that the declines for both all Texans and children during the Bush years was within the margin of error. That means that the decreases we saw might actually have been an increase -- the measurements weren’t precise enough to know for sure. However, the changes under Perry were all outside the margin of error. So sampling error didn’t cause an anomaly with Perry’s statistics. As it turns out, the biggest increase in childrens’ coverage under Perry came from government programs, mostly Medicaid, which is a joint federal-state program. In 2001, 22.5 percent of children received their health care from Medicaid; by 2009, that rose to 37.4 percent. During that same period, the percentage covered by private health insurance fell from 59 percent to 48.5 percent. Both Bush and Perry acted to increase coverage of Texas children by Medicaid and other government programs, though both of them also took actions that worked against or delayed increasing coverage. In 1997, when Bush was governor, the Texas Legislature established the Texas Healthy Kids Corp., a public-private partnership that subsidized coverage for children in families with incomes up to 185 percent of the federal poverty line. That same year, Congress passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which gives federal matching funds for states to help low-income children get health coverage. By 1999, after initially being criticized for slow adoption of SCHIP, Bush and the Legislature sped up Texas’ utilization of the program. "Texas was slow in enacting and implementing SCHIP expansions, in part because the Legislature meets only every other year, and the federal authorizing statute was enacted after adjournment in 1997," wrote Joshua M. Wiener and Niall Brennan in a 2002 paper for the Urban Institute, an independent Washington think tank. "After implementation, however, enrollment in the Texas SCHIP program increased quickly. In June 2000, enrollment was only 39,859 beneficiaries, but by September 2001, it had reached 439,222 children." Bush also signed Medicaid eligibility simplification provisions for children, which helped increase coverage rates. Perry, for his part, first tried to privatize many of the administrative functions of his health and human services department, a decision that led to backlogs and hampered signups for Medicaid, said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Later, Perry pulled back and instead appointed Tom Suehs to head the department. Under Suehs, Dunkelberg said, the department has "really turned things around," possibly explaining the past few years of insurance coverage gains among children, she said. So both governors did some things that boosted coverage (and some things that didn’t) but their powers were hardly dictatorial. To the extent that Texas has seen gains in coverage among children, significant credit goes to the federally supported programs of Medicaid and SCHIP. And numerous other factors, including the general state of the economy, have an impact on insurance coverage rates. Our ruling Romney’s camp said he meant to refer to the uninsured population as a whole, and using those statistics, he’s right that uninsurance rates declined under Bush (though within the statistics’ margin of error) and rose under Perry. But we think many viewers, seeing the comment in context, might have assumed that Romney was referring to uninsurance among children. And for children, uninsurance has actually declined steeply under Perry. Meanwhile, the policies pursued by both Bush and Perry had an influence on their respective trendlines, but their records in this regard were somewhat mixed and other factors also contributed. On balance, we rate the statement Half True. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2011-10-13T18:55:37 | 2011-10-11 | ['Rick_Perry', 'Texas', 'George_W._Bush'] |
goop-00612 | Jennifer Aniston Dating Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-dating-google-founder-sergey-brin/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Aniston NOT Dating Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin, Despite Report | 1:57 pm, July 19, 2018 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston'] |
pomt-00924 | Says he "often" appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and "often was praised" by Bill O'Reilly. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2015/feb/26/david-corn/mother-jones-reporter-oreilly-often-praised-wor/ | Mother Jones writer David Corn finds himself in the crosshairs of Bill O’Reilly after Corn and Daniel Schulman wrote that O’Reilly embellished his personal experiences covering the Falklands War in Argentina. Corn's initial story said O'Reilly claimed he reported in a "war zone" when he was not. O'Reilly disputed the story and called Corn "an irresponsible guttersnipe." We’ll leave it to you to decide who to believe in that he-said, he-said. But we were struck by something Corn said during an appearance on the Feb. 25, 2015, Rachel Maddow Show. Apparently, Corn once worked for Fox News, and he and O’Reilly were something of pals. Here’s how Corn put it: "I’ve watched Bill O’Reilly over the years. In fact I used to work there from 2001 to 2008, and was often on Bill’s show and often was praised by Bill, not as a liar but as a good reporter. But that was then. This is now." Corn said. That’s an interesting little nugget in this media story that we thought was worth verifying. As it turns out, when Corn was the Washington editor of The Nation, a long standing left-of-center publication, he had a contract with Fox News and played the role of arch liberal against the network’s roster of conservative voices. We went to the Nexis transcript database to see how many times Corn appeared and what O’Reilly said about him. Corn appeared on Fox News at least 60 times. Six of those appearances came on O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor (May 3, 2002; Nov. 18, 2002; Jan. 15, 2003; March 4, 2003; April 7, 2003; and April 20, 2007). Six appearances over five years is hardly often, but what did O’Reilly have to say about Corn? We found one occasion when O’Reilly explicitly praised Corn’s reporting. In November 2002, a few months before the Iraq War, Corn wrote that a small socialist group called the Worker’s World Party had played a key role in organizing a large anti-war demonstration. O’Reilly clearly valued journalism that revealed a tie between the protest march and a group that O’Reilly called "hardcore commies." "All right, Mr. Corn, good reporting," O’Reilly said. "Nobody else reported that. And we appreciate it." That was as effusive as O’Reilly ever got with Corn. The two men always sparred aggressively, transcripts show. A couple of weeks before the start of the Iraq War, Corn argued that the evidence was thin that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that the United States was ill prepared for the aftermath of an invasion. O’Reilly said an invasion was worth the risk, but at the end, appreciated Corn for his feistiness. "Mr. Corn, we appreciate your point of view. Thanks for coming in, and standing up," he said. After the war began, Corn appeared again to challenge O’Reilly’s belief that papers like the New York Times slanted their headlines to make the fight look tougher for American forces than it actually was. As the segment clock ran down, O’Reilly threw it back to Corn. "David, because we like you as a guest, give you the last word. You've got 15 seconds. Go," O’Reilly said. On one occasion O’Reilly called Corn "a left-wing, liberal, pinko communist," a remark that Corn took in good humor. Once, O’Reilly accused Corn of intellectual dishonesty. O’Reilly also described Corn and journalist Robert Scheer in 2006 as "bomb throwers" and "very far-left individuals." We spoke to the Mother Jones public affairs director, shared the results of our Nexis search and asked if there were any other details we should know. We did not hear back and will post an update if we do. Our ruling Corn said that before this current brouhaha with O’Reilly, he appeared often on O’Reilly’s show and was often praised by the Fox News host. Corn’s use of the word "often" wouldn’t pass the eye test of most fact-checkers. While Corn was a guest on Fox News programs many times, he had just six appearances with O’Reilly between 2001 and 2008, transcripts show. And as for praise, O’Reilly explicitly did so once. A few other times O’Reilly expressed his satisfaction with Corn as a spokesman for a liberal perspective. But he also described him as bomb thrower and very far-left individual. Corn’s statement is partially accurate but takes things out of context. We rate the claim Half True. | null | David Corn | null | null | null | 2015-02-26T17:45:25 | 2015-02-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-06594 | Says Rick Perry wrote a letter "supporting Hillarycare." | mostly false | /texas/statements/2011/sep/24/ron-paul/ron-paul-says-rick-perry-wrote-letter-supporting-h/ | Standing next to the other Texan seeking the Republican presidential nomination, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson suggested during a Sept. 7, 2011, debate that Gov. Rick Perry had flip-flopped on health care. "You know, the governor of Texas criticized the governor of Massachusetts for Romneycare, but he wrote a really fancy letter supporting Hillarycare," Paul said, referring to two well-known health care overhaul plans that were debated about a dozen years apart. "Romneycare" is a term that critics use to refer to a 2006 Massachusetts health care law signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney, who is also currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Many Republicans have criticized the law as a government intrusion into the health care system, including through its mandate that residents obtain health coverage. As PolitiFact has noted in previous fact-checks, the Massachusetts law is similar to the act that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010. For this article, we’re reviewing only whether Perry wrote in support of what critics call "Hillarycare." We’re not judging that label. Days after entering office in January 1993, President Bill Clinton created a task force to write health care overhaul legislation to bring costs under control and extend coverage to the nation’s uninsured. He selected his wife, Hillary, to lead it. In September 1993, President Clinton outlined his plan in a speech to Congress, and two months later, legislation was formally introduced by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine. According to a 1994 analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Clinton’s proposal for universal coverage built on an employer-based health insurance system, requiring individuals to have coverage and employers to provide coverage for their workers and contribute to their premiums. The plan also would have created "health-purchasing alliances" in which private insurers and providers would compete for business from people and businesses. A September 1993 New York Times news article reported that Americans "would be guaranteed a generous basic package of coverage, negotiated separately in each state by alliances of consumers with insurance companies and medical groups." During the Sept. 7 debate, Perry did not dispute that he had written a letter to the first lady in 1993 when he was the Texas agriculture commissioner. "We were hoping that she would be able to come up with something that would not leave (out) the agriculture men and women — because I was the agriculture commissioner at that particular point in time," Perry said. "We had no idea it was going to be the monstrosity that's known as Hillarycare." Perry’s letter — dated April 6, 1993, and posted online Aug. 30, 2011, by the conservative website Daily Caller — was sent on Texas Department of Agriculture stationery. It opens with Perry saying that he thinks Clinton's "efforts in trying to reform the nation's health care system are most commendable." He continues: "I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration to the needs of the nation's farmers, ranchers, agriculture workers, and other members of rural communities. Rural populations have a high proportion of uninsured people, rising health care costs, and often experience lack of services." Perry then details some of the health care delivery problems in rural areas of Texas, including hospital closures and shortages of providers "within a safe driving distance." The letter continues: "I have made economic development for rural Texans a high priority in my Administration. Leadership, education, infrastructure systems, and health care facilities can do much towards aiding a rural community to prosper." In closing, the letter revisits its opening, stating that Perry thinks Clinton's efforts are "worthy" and asking that she "remember this constituency as the task force progresses." The letter was last brandished against Perry in 2005 when U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was considering challenging him in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary. In a March 2005 news article, though, the Houston Chronicle described Perry’s letter as falling "far short of actually being an endorsement" of the Clinton health care plan. However, the story said, the letter was penned at a time when some commentators were already describing Clinton's idea for a "government-sponsored HMOs and health care cooperatives as 'socialism.' " The Chronicle article quotes Perry's 2006 campaign manager, Luis Saenz, as saying that when the letter was written, "I don't know that anybody knew what the final efforts were going to be." In an Aug. 30, 2011, radio interview with Sean Hannity, who also has a Fox News Channel program, Perry said he wrote the letter because he didn't want the Clinton administration "to overlook a very important constituency." Perry said he had no idea that the "end product" would be "this monstrosity of a bill." Fair enough? Not so fast, said Gary Howard, a spokesman for the Paul campaign, who told us in an email that key aspects of the Clinton health care plan were already known before Perry signed the letter to the first lady. He pointed to a news article published in the Los Angeles Times the day before the date of Perry's letter. The April 5, 1993, article says that although many key details of the reform plan remained unsettled, "the broad outlines" were emerging. The story included specifics, including that the plan would likely create new "government-certified regional health insurance purchasing cooperatives" and impose a requirement that employers provide insurance to their workers. We checked to see what Austin American-Statesman readers were learning about the work of the health care task force around the same time. In the second half of March and first week of April 1993, the newspaper published at least 10 news and opinion articles related to the task force or its work, including reports on possible reform ideas and reactions to them. On April 3, 1993, the Statesman published a Los Angeles Times story on its front page noting that the Clinton plan was expected to lead to universal health coverage and a guaranteed set of health benefits for all Americans. The article quoted Ira Magaziner, a leader of the Clinton task force, as saying that care would be delivered under a "managed competition system," with residents of a geographic area choosing among several health plans that meet government standards. The story also says the Clinton proposal would require businesses to provide health coverage for their employees. Workers could either choose their company's plan or select one offered by "local buying organizations," which the employer would pay for, according to the article. The next day, the Statesman published another Times article; it details three mechanisms that the task force was reportedly considering to impose price controls on health care services. Our ruling It's correct that Perry sent a letter to Hillary Clinton commending her efforts as the head of the president’s health care task force at a time when the president’s general goals and some possible specifics of the plan had been reported. Yet Perry's letter, dispatched more than five months before the plan was finalized, is clearly a request that the task force consider the interests of rural Americans. We rate the statement as Mostly False. | null | Ron Paul | null | null | null | 2011-09-24T14:05:48 | 2011-09-07 | ['Rick_Perry'] |
pomt-03817 | Under Gov. Kasich, Ohio wages have increased by $10.3 billion. | true | /ohio/statements/2013/mar/21/john-kasich/gov-john-kasich-says-ohio-wages-are-more-10-billio/ | With budget battles looming for Gov. John Kasich's plans on taxing and spending, Ohio's improving economy remains a bright spot for him. Kasich promised during the 2010 gubernatorial race that his pro-business agenda would bring jobs to Ohio, and he has touted his record on job creation since his first year in office. On March 15, he tweeted about it with another angle: "The most recent data shows OH wages have jumped by $10.3 billion. Ohioans are creating jobs and driving our comeback." It linked to a picture with the overlay "Under Gov. Kasich, Ohio wages have increased by $10.3 billion." PolitiFact Ohio wanted more detail and wondered about the source of the wage figure. Kasich's office pointed to data assembled by the Bureau of Labor Market Information of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Specifically citing the figures for total wages of workers employed in Ohio, they compared the combined wages for the third and fourth quarters of 2010 and the first and second quarters of 2011 against the period starting six months after Kasich took office -- the third and fourth quarters of 2011 and the first and second quarters of 2012. The first four quarters total $204.2 billion (averaging $51 billion per quarter). The second four quarters total $214.5 billion (averaging $53.6 billion). The difference: $10.3 billion. We looked further, hoping to make the numbers more meaningful to individuals, and found that per capita income in Ohio increased 4.5 percent in 2011, the most recent figures available, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. PolitiFact has always stipulated that the ability of an individual governor -- or president or any other elected official -- to influence the economy is limited. Determining how credit or blame should be apportioned is seldom clear. Kasich took office at a time when Ohio's employment picture already had begun to improve. The wage growth for the time period under the Republican governor could as easily be classified as having happened under President Barack Obama, a Democrat (as Mitt Romney found last fall). In his tweet, Kasich did not try to apportion responsibility or take personal credit for wage growth in Ohio. In fact, he credited Ohioans with "creating jobs and driving our comeback." The link to the photo with the words "Under Gov. Kasich. . .," however, seemed clearly designed to attribute the wage growth to Kasich. Still, we have previously found that Kasich can certainly lay claim to having kept some jobs here and attracted new ones. The numbers back up his statement. We rate it as True. | null | John Kasich | null | null | null | 2013-03-21T17:04:17 | 2013-03-15 | ['Ohio', 'John_Kasich'] |
pomt-10743 | Our tax code is so complicated it extracts $140 billion in extra tax preparation costs every year - one thousand dollars for every American family. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/nov/05/john-mccain/the-high-cost-of-paying-taxes/ | Sen. John McCain wants to overhaul our complex tax code and turn it into something simpler. In making the case against current tax laws, he pulled together an array of statistics. In a speech in September 2007, McCain got specific: "Our tax code is so complicated it extracts $140 billion in extra tax preparation costs every year - one thousand dollars for every American family. It's offensive that six out of every ten taxpayers have to pay someone else just to figure out how to pay the government." According to McCain's campaign, the senator got his stats from a 2005 report from the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. Some of the numbers are right. It's true that six out of 10 individual tax filers pay someone to prepare their returns, according to the IRS. But when McCain says the total cost of tax preparation is $140 billion, he's got nothing to back him up. The Advisory Panel on Tax Reform that he cites has no background citations and the only place we can find that $140 billion figure is a Tax Foundation study from 2001 that referred the cost of tax preparation for individuals and businesses. A 2005 study by the Tax Foundation puts the value at closer to $111-billion. That would put the per-family cost at about $822. But this is worth noting: The dollar figure for spending on tax preparation is a calculation of the value of the time people spend working on their taxes, which the Tax Foundation put at about $39 an hour, not how much they pay to tax pros. That's not clear in McCain's statement. McCain has suggested fixing the tax code by getting a task force headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to come up with a plan for simplifying the code and putting it to Congress for an up or down vote. McCain's point is on target; tax preparation is costly because the tax code is so complicated. But McCain is off by a good bit on the figure he uses and he's not being clear that the cost he's talking about isn't an expense of dollars but of time. That leads us to a Half True. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2007-11-05T00:00:00 | 2007-09-28 | ['United_States'] |
snes-04167 | Kinking an electrical wire stops electricity flow like kinking a garden hose stops water. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kinking-a-live-electrical-wire/ | null | Science | null | Bethania Palma | null | Kinking a Live Electrical Wire Stops Electricity and Makes it Safe | 26 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05201 | Says Jeff Wentworth, bending the rules, "has used $211,743.96 in campaign contributions to lease luxury cars." | mostly false | /texas/statements/2012/jun/11/connservative-republicans-texas-pac/political-group-says-jeff-wentworth-bending-rules-/ | San Antonio state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, headed to a July 2012 runoff with Republican challenger Donna Campbell, drew fire from a political group before leading the May primary, including a claim about the cars he drives. On its anti-Wentworth website, www.wentworthrecord.com, the Conservative Republicans of Texas PAC says: "Wentworth has used $211,743.96 in campaign contributions to lease luxury cars including the Lexus he currently drives." The claim appears under the heading "Bending the Rules." Curiosity steered us to take a closer look. A word: It’s legal for state legislators to lease vehicles with campaign funds so long as the vehicles are not for personal benefit. Put another way, Texas law permits campaign contributions to be used to pay expenses incurred while holding an elected office as well as those incurred while campaigning. Conversely, state law bars candidates or officeholders from converting campaign funds to "personal use," which the law defines as a "use that primarily furthers individual or family purposes not connected with the performance of duties or activities as a candidate." Austin lawyer Fred Lewis, who wrote a 2004 report detailing expenditures by Texas lawmakers on vehicles and other expenses, told us by phone that the leasing of cars is a "very common practice. There is nothing unusual about it in the least." And the fact that Wentworth leases cars qualifies as old news. According to a July 30, 2007, Houston Chronicle news article, Wentworth spent $20,308 from January through June 2007 to lease a Lexus. The newspaper quoted Wentworth as saying the campaign Lexus is in keeping with the kind of cars he drives in his personal life. He said it is necessary for driving the dangerous stretch of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin. "It's a matter of safety," Wentworth told the newspaper. Three years earlier, Chronicle columnist Rick Casey noted that Houston Democratic Sen. Rodney Ellis was paying $630 a month to lease a campaign vehicle and Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, had plunked down $29,211 in campaign contributions for a "campaign vehicle." Casey said Wentworth and then-Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, had leased top-of-the-line Infiniti sedans. We asked the PAC for the basis of its claim, especially the part about bending the rules. Spokesman Allen Blakemore emailed us a spreadsheet listing car lease expenditures from 2000 to 2012 that he told us by phone were drawn from Wentworth’s campaign finance reports. We compared the research to Wentworth’s campaign finance filings, finding minor discrepancies with the research while otherwise confirming the PAC’s proclaimed cost of the leases, $212,446.20, over the dozen years. We asked to interview Wentworth and heard from his campaign consultant, Bryan Eppstein, who declined to address the specific claim. Broadly, Eppstein said, Wentworth’s auto expenses are not unusual for a legislator whose district runs from part of Bexar County through four counties into a chunk of Travis County. Wentworth "travels across his district every day," and during this campaign he’s driven to 40 debates in six counties, Eppstein said. In a follow-up interview, Blakemore asserted that Wentworth drives no other vehicles, so he must have used leased cars for personal purposes. Also, Blakemore said, Wentworth’s reported campaign contributions and expenditures fail to show the senator regularly reimbursing his campaign for times he used the leased vehicles for personal purposes. Eppstein later said that Wentworth has three personal cars, also saying by phone that Wentworth has driven leased vehicles only for campaign or officeholder purposes. Earlier, Eppstein provided a confidential June 9, 2009, order from the Texas Ethics Commission dismissing a complaint referring in part to Wentworth spending $54,740 in campaign funds on auto leases. The order quotes Wentworth swearing that he used those vehicles for office-related purposes. "I have other vehicles for personal use, and personally pay the cost of operating the leased vehicles when they are used for personal purposes." Eppstein told us Wentworth’s statement that he paid for personal uses of leased vehicles was hypothetical. The commission’s order notes that Wentworth swore that he used the leased vehicles only for official duties and used personal vehicles for personal purposes. "There is no evidence to contradict" those sworn statements, the order says, thus insufficient evidence that Wentworth violated the law. Our ruling Wentworth spent some $212,000 in campaign funds leasing vehicles, as the PAC says. Then again, such leases are allowed if the vehicles are used for officeholder or campaign purposes, which is how Wentworth's camp says he uses the leased vehicles. All told, this claim portrays spending on a permitted activity as "bending the rules" without evidence of wrongdoing. We rate the statement as Mostly False. | null | Conservative Republicans of Texas PAC | null | null | null | 2012-06-11T12:00:00 | 2012-05-24 | ['None'] |
snes-01150 | Did Sylvester Stallone Say Obama Is a ‘Closet Homosexual Living a Lie’? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stallone-obama-living-lie/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Sylvester Stallone Say Obama Is a ‘Closet Homosexual Living a Lie’? | 23 January 2018 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00083 | 1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night. | unsupported | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/pelosi-misrepresents-childhood-hunger-data/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Eugene Kiely | ['childhood poverty'] | Pelosi Misrepresents Childhood ‘Hunger’ Data | May 1, 2018 | 2018-05-01 21:52:13 UTC | ['United_States'] |
bove-00122 | Did Anna Hazare Draw Huge Crowds In Karnataka?: A FactCheck | none | https://www.boomlive.in/did-anna-hazare-draw-huge-crowds-in-karnataka-a-factcheck/ | null | null | null | null | null | Did Anna Hazare Draw Huge Crowds In Karnataka?: A FactCheck | Jan 05 2018 2:35 pm, Last Updated: Jan 05 2018 3:15 pm | null | ['None'] |
afck-00173 | “White households earn at least 5 times more than black households, according to Statistics South Africa.” | mostly-correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/facts-alternative-facts-zumas-10th-state-nation-address-checked/ | null | null | null | null | null | Facts or alternative facts? Zuma’s 10th State of the Nation Address checked | 2017-02-10 07:12 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02448 | Fatherhood “Killing” George Clooney, | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/george-clooney-fatherhood-killing-health/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Fatherhood NOT “Killing” George Clooney, Despite Report | 11:38 am, September 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00066 | Hillary Clinton Supplied Chemical Weapons to Syria | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/hillary-clinton-supplied-chemical-weapons-syria/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | ['barack obama', 'donald trump', 'hillary clinton', 'international', 'syria'] | Hillary Clinton Supplied Chemical Weapons to Syria | Apr 10, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05016 | If you make more than $250,000 a year … you only really take home about $125,000. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/16/steve-doocy/steve-doocy-says-someone-earning-250000-pays-half-/ | Steve Doocy, one of the co-hosts of Fox & Friends, last week took aim at President Barack Obama’s longstanding proposal to let the George W. Bush-era tax cuts expire for taxpayers making $250,000 and up. "If you make more than $250,000 a year, (President Obama wants to) jack up your taxes about 5 percent," Doocy said on the July 11 edition of the show. "But when you think about it, at $250,000 you only really take home about $125,000, which in some parts of the country, if you've got a couple of kids in college, is not much money." A reader asked us to check whether Doocy was right that a typical taxpayer earning $250,000 a year would be left with only $125,000 in take-home pay. (Fox’s media office did not return an inquiry for this story.) The main taxes we’ll consider here are federal income taxes, federal payroll taxes and state income taxes. • Federal income taxes: A table produced by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center offers data on the "effective tax rate" -- that is, how much a filer paid in income tax divided by their income -- for various income ranges. More than a third of those earning $200,000 and up had an effective tax rate between 15 percent and 20 percent. Just under one-third had an effective rate between 20 and 25 percent. So, if you’re earning $250,000, this means you’re pretty typical if you’re paying between $37,500 and $62,500 in federal income taxes. • Federal payroll taxes: An employee will pay Social Security taxes (6.2 percent on the first $110,100 of salary) and Medicare taxes (1.45 percent of all of their salary). Someone who’s self employed will pay twice that, to cover the employer’s share. So the payroll tax can add an additional $8,000 to $17,000 to the tax bill. • State income taxes: State income taxes vary widely; in fact, some states have no income tax at all. A 5 percent state income tax, which is somewhere in the middle of the pack, could add an additional $10,000 to $12,500, or perhaps less, depending on how many deductions are being taken. Adding these three tax categories together and subtracting them from $250,000 gives us a range of take-home pay from $158,000 to $194,500. Either figure is well above the $125,000 in take-home pay that Doocy claims. Is it possible to get the taxes so high they can cut take home pay for $250,000 to just half? Let’s construct an extreme example to see if it gets us there. Using the IRS’ tax calculator, we plugged in information for an individual who earned a $250,000 salary, without any other non-salary income such as capital gains. Although this would shock our hypothetical taxpayer’s hypothetical CPA, we assumed the taxpayer refused to use even the most basic deductions beyond the standard deduction. No home-mortgage deduction, charitable donations, child credit or IRAs. And no offshore tax shelters. According to the IRS calculator, this unlucky taxpayer would owe the IRS $63,811 in federal income taxes. Add in payroll taxes ($8,817 to $17,634) and income taxes for the state with the highest rate, Hawaii (roughly $25,000) and it brings you to, at worst, take-home pay of $143,555. So, even in this extreme and highly improbable example, the taxpayer takes home more money than the $125,000 Doocy claimed. We checked our math with Steve Street, an accountant with the firm Ross & Moncure in Alexandria, Va. He ran a hypothetical tax return for a single New Yorker earning $250,000, first as an employee and then as a self-employed businessperson, with no deductions beyond the standard deduction. The employee takes home $153,629, while the self-employed businessperson takes home $148,408. One might be tempted to throw other taxes into the equation. However, tax experts do not typically include property taxes or sales taxes in such comparisons because they are so variable and require too many assumptions about behavior, said William McBride of the Tax Foundation. Assuming that someone has a house or property with a large tax bill is "not a normal assumption to make," McBride said. "You could also get there with sales taxes, but again you’d have to make some very particular assumptions about consumption which are not very representative." Even if you take this inadvisable course of adding in property taxes, it’s highly unlikely that they could provide the additional $20,000 in taxation needed to hit Doocy’s benchmark even in this extreme case. For instance, to return to our Hawaii example, the state’s highest median property tax payment for any county is $1,463, in Honolulu County. So to make it to Doocy’s $125,000 level you’d need to be stuck with a property tax bill almost 14 times the county’s median. Bottom line? "Doocy is stretching it," McBride said. Our ruling Doocy said someone who earns $250,000 a year ends up with take-home pay of just $125,000. But typical taxpayers end up with comfortably more than that. We found someone with that salary would take home $158,000 to $194,500 -- and even more if they lived in a state without income tax. Even our most extreme example produced quite a bit more take-home pay than he suggested. We rate Doocy’s statement False. | null | Steve Doocy | null | null | null | 2012-07-16T14:41:10 | 2012-07-11 | ['None'] |
tron-02816 | Photo of Kenyan Birth Certificate Alleged to Belong to Barack Obama | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-kenya-fake-birth-certificate/ | null | obama | null | null | null | Photo of Kenyan Birth Certificate Alleged to Belong to Barack Obama | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01243 | Million Pounds of Rat Meat As Chicken Wings | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/million-pounds-of-rat-meat-as-chicken-wings-fake-news-report/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Million Pounds of Rat Meat As Chicken Wings Fake-News Report | August 16, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06693 | Say Ohio Reps. Marcia Fudge, Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich are "socialists who are openly serving in the U.S. Congress." | pants on fire! | /ohio/statements/2011/sep/06/blog-posting/bloggers-claim-reps-marcia-fudge-marcy-kaptur-and-/ | Politicians need thick skin. Name calling has a long, if not honorable, history in public life, and opinions are protected speech under the Constitution. But all names are not equal -- nor are they even matters of opinion. A number of websites and blogs recently have been busy claiming there are 70 card-carrying Socialists in the U.S. House of Representatives, including three Democrats from Ohio: Reps. Marcia Fudge, Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich. (The number actually varies. Some posts say 70, others insist it’s either 73 or 76 and some go as high as 83. One post used both 76 and 75 in the same entry.) While most of the names politicians are called are opinions, calling a congressman a Socialist sounds both emphatic and exact, which always gets our attention at PolitiFact Ohio. Another thing that gets our attention is when a claim gets spread far and wide. This one meets that test, too. Our colleagues at PolitiFact Oregon scrutinized the claim because it also named two members of that state's congressional delegation. We're following their work here. An Aug. 12 post on the website for a group called Sovereign Citizens United mentions Fudge, Kaptur and Kucinich by name. It also says this: "I’m sure if you asked random people on the street if we had open socialists in the U.S. Congress, they would say – well only Bernie Sanders (Senate). But the right answer is much, much worse." "This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one," says an Aug. 16 post on ConservativeByte.com. "The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the Democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth." In case you miss the point, the post comes equipped with a large and very bright hammer and sickle emblem. Here’s a blog post on Aug. 17 by Texas radio host Dan Cofall, whose show airs out of Fort Worth: "The magic number ‘70’ is the number of members of the 111th Congress who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. These are not just politicians who vote left of center; these are card-carrying members of ‘the Democratic Socialists of America’." Cofall did not respond to an email asking for comment. And PolitiFact couldn’t reach anyone from ConservativeByte. Before our ruling, let’s begin with some basics. Congress resets itself every two years, which means the current edition is the 112th Congress, not the 111th. Why does that matter? Because the new Congress that begins in January every two years always follows an election and some of the people on the list are no longer in office. Cofall acknowledges this but then continues to list names from the 111th Congress anyway. Those listed as "card carrying" socialists who are no longer serving include Robert Wexler (Florida), Phil Hare (Illinois), John Hall (New York), Alan Grayson (Florida), and Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii). Then there’s this: Real card-carrying Socialists say those members are not Socialists. The list that Cofall and dozens more rely upon "is completely fraudulent," said Frank Llewellyn, who served as national director of the Democratic Socialists of America for 10 years until stepping down July 5. There is not one member of Congress who is a formal member of the DSA, Llewellyn said. In order to join, a person must fill out a form and pay dues. Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is not a formal member of the DSA, Llewellyn said. The last member of Congress who was an actual card-carrying member, he said, was California Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums, who served 28 years in the House until leaving in 1998. Llewellyn and DSA’s new national director, Maria Svart are chagrined for two reasons. First, they have to spend time knocking down reports that never seem to go away. Second, Llewellyn said, "if we had formal political relationships with 70-odd members, we would be making a lot more money’’ from dues. For the record, Fudge, Kaptur and Kucinich say they’ve never been associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Fudge's spokeswoman, Belinda Prinz, said the same claim came up last year, when the congresswoman's office contacted one website and asked that her name be removed from its list. "We're sorry to see this erroneous information get repeated," Prinz said. "She has never been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and never endorsed their activities or policies." Kaptur denied the accusation and said, "As a Polish-American, I know very well the difference between totalitarian communism and fascism on the one hand and social-democratic governments in Europe that include our NATO allies." Her spokesman, Steve Fought, said the claim "is part of this unfortunate trend in our country where if you don't agree with someone politically, you vilify and villainize them. "A lot of people who throw the word socialism around don't even know what it is and couldn't distinguish the different varieties," he said. "It's a facile way for people who don't understand shades of gray to talk about political movements." Kucinich said: "I'm a Democrat." Bad information gets spread all the time. But where did the number, or numbers, come from? The list purported to have originated with the DSA says this on page two: Q: How many members of the U.S. Congress are also members of the DSA? A: Seventy It then lists them by name. What it does not say is that the names are simply lifted en masse from the membership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a collection of liberal-leaning lawmakers that includes not a single socialist. According to its website, the Progressive Caucus is one of the largest in Congress and works for such causes as economic justice, civil rights and civil liberties as well as global peace and security. Llewellyn said that DSA supports some of the policy positions of the caucus. Voicing support for positions embraced by a group of lawmakers is a routine part of business on Capitol Hill and is employed by organizations as disparate as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association and NORML, a group devoted to legalizing the use of marijuana. But agreeing with some positions doesn’t make a member of Congress a card-carrying Socialist. Llewellyn says similar accusations of Socialism (with a capital S) have surfaced every election year since 1991 when the Progressive Caucus was created. "There’s nothing we can do to stop it, Llewellyn said. "I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve tried to stop it." Misinformation and smear campaigns also are part of political life. But these persistent claims about socialists are riddled with errors and outright lies. Any one of the problems would be sufficient to discredit the report, but taken together, the effort is flagrantly false. For that reason, we rate this claim: Pants on Fire. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2011-09-06T06:00:00 | 2011-08-12 | ['United_States', 'Marcy_Kaptur', 'Ohio', 'Dennis_Kucinich', 'United_States_Congress'] |
pomt-06949 | Says a new report proves the stimulus supported by N.J. Democrats cost $278,000 per job. | false | /new-jersey/statements/2011/jul/19/national-republican-congressional-committee/NRCC-stimulus-278k-per-job/ | Republicans in Congress were not functioning independently of one another on their first workday after the Independence Day holiday. Shortly after noon on July 5, House Speaker John Boehner "tweeted" a July 3 blog posting from the conservative Weekly Standard’s website, labeling it "POTUS’ economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per job." Around 4 p.m., the National Republican Congressional Committee followed suit with multiple press releases that used the same Weekly Standard blog item to target dozens of Democrats in Congress, including New Jersey’s Rush Holt and Frank Pallone. Its headline: "New Report Shows Dems’ Failed Stimulus Cost $278,000 Per Job As Economy Got Worse." It went on to claim that Holt’s and Pallone's "government spending spree" "delivered little except skyrocketing debt owed to foreign countries like China." By 4:55 p.m., the National Republican Senatorial Committee had recycled the Weekly Standard blog posting to attack Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. This time the claim was: "President Obama’s own top economists estimate that the Obama-Brown stimulus debacle cost taxpayers an average $278,000 per job." Our sister website, PolitiFact Ohio, thought the concerted GOP effort made it worthy of a look. Since Boehner kicked it off on Twitter, they used his tweet. The Weekly Standard blog item that spawned the statistic cites a July 1 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which states the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "saved or created between 2.4 and 3.6 million jobs as of the first quarter of 2011." It also tallies the sum of the stimulus bill’s outlays and tax cuts at $666 billion. The $278,000 per job figure doesn’t appear anywhere in the White House report. To come up with that number, the publication divided the $666 billion stimulus total by the low-end 2.4 million job estimate to come up with a dollars per job statistic that it rounded off to $278,000. The blog item contends this statistic "provides further evidence that President Obama’s ‘stimulus’ did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy and a whole lot to stimulate the debt," and insists "the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the ‘stimulus’ and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead." After Republicans began to circulate the blog item, White House spokeswoman Jay Carney said its conclusions were "based on partial information and simply false analysis." White House spokeswoman Liz Oxhorn issued a statement that noted the Recovery Act bolstered infrastructure, education, and industries "that are critical to America’s long-term success and an investment in the economic future of America’s working families." The White House points out that Recovery Act dollars didn’t just fund salaries - as the blog item implies - it also funded numerous capital improvements and infrastructure projects. Lumping all costs together and classifying it as salaries produces an inflated figure. Furthermore, the publication created its statistic with the report’s low end jobs estimate. Had it instead gone with the 3.6 million job figure at the top end of the range, it would have come up with a smaller $185,000 per job figure. Republicans made a similar assertion in November 2009, using similar calculations to contend that the stimulus cost taxpayers more than $246,000 per job. Back then, they divided $160 billion in stimulus spending by 650,000 jobs that the White House estimated the measure had created or preserved. A "fact check" conducted at the time by the Associated Press called that math "satisfyingly simple but highly misleading." "Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for the material, supplies and that workers’ output - a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid," the 2009 Associated Press item noted. The Weekly Standard claimed that the stimulus actually "has been working in reverse the last six months, causing the economy to shed jobs." It derives this conclusion from the fact that as of two quarters ago, the stimulus had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs - or 288,000 more than it has now. Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi says the Weekly Standard misinterpreted that data. "It’s not that ARRA [the stimulus] is now costing the economy jobs, it is that the economy is now creating jobs without ARRA’s help," Zandi told TPMDC. "This is exactly the objective of fiscal stimulus, namely to end recession and jump-start economic recovery." The day after the White House responded to the GOP’s dissemination of the Weekly Standard blog item, its author penned a defense that reiterates his claims. He says he never said that $278,000 per job went to salaries, but "rather that each job has cost taxpayers $278,000." Yet, his original item did say taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead if the government had simply "cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the ‘stimulus?’" So where does that leave Boehner’s tweet -- and the identical claim from the NRCC -- that a report said the stimulus had cost $278,000 per job? The figure attributed to the president’s economists does not appear anywhere in the White House report. Rather, the Weekly Standard attributed the number to economists at the White House after it made its own calculations and conclusions. The methodology used to get that number was previously termed suspect because it lumps all costs associated with stimulus projects together as if they are wages, suggesting it would have been cheaper to just "cut a $100,000 check" to each person who found work as a result of the stimulus. On the Truth-O-Meter, we rate the tweet (and the subsequent variations of the claim) as False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. Editor's note: This item was originally published on the Boehner statement. We have specifically republished it on the National Republican Congressional Committee statement. | null | National Republican Congressional Committee | null | null | null | 2011-07-19T05:15:00 | 2011-07-05 | ['None'] |
tron-03096 | Bernie Sanders a Vietnam War Draft Dodger | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/bernie-sanders-a-vietnam-war-draft-dodger/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Bernie Sanders a Vietnam War Draft Dodger | Feb 16, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10170 | Henry Kissinger "said that we should meet with Iran — guess what — without precondition." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/27/barack-obama/kissinger-and-obama-arent-really-on-the-same-page/ | From the start of his campaign, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has said that as president he would personally negotiate with the leaders of rogue states who have long been denied face-to-face meetings with U.S. presidents, such as Iran. Sen. John McCain raised the issue during the first presidential debate, arguing that Obama's willingness to meet with dictators — without conditions — would provide enemies of the United States, like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with a platform to spread propaganda. Ahmadinejad, McCain pointed out, has called for the destruction of Israel and denied that the Holocaust ever happened. McCain's point, notably, is one on which he agrees with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who differed with Obama on the same issue during the Democratic primaries. To parry McCain's criticism at the debate, Obama said that McCain's own foreign policy adviser, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served under President Richard Nixon, has called for high-level negotiations with Iran, without condition. And Obama's statement suggests that Kissinger was supporting presidential-level negotiations. Here's what Obama said: "So let's talk about this. First of all, Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful person in Iran. So he may not be the right person to talk to. But I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe. "And I'm glad that Senator McCain brought up the history, the bipartisan history of us engaging in direct diplomacy. "Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who's one of his advisers, who, along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet with Iran — guess what — without precondition. This is one of your own advisers." McCain opposes direct, president-to-president meetings with Ahmadinejad; Obama favors them. Kissinger may differ with McCain on when negotiations should begin – the Sept. 20, 2008, remarks Kissinger made on CNN, which Obama was referencing, aren't entirely clear – but he did not endorse a meeting between the presidents of Iran and the United States. Here's what Kissinger said during the CNN forum with other secretaries of state at George Washington University: "Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we — we know we're dealing with authentic," Kissinger said. "At a very high level right out of the box?" asked moderator Frank Sesno. "Initially, yes," Kissinger said. "And I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are — what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve so that they have something that they can react to. Now, the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Japan and Germany, have all said nuclear weapons in Iran are unacceptable. They've never explained what they mean by this. So if we go into a negotiation, we ought to have a clear understanding of what is it we're trying to prevent. What is it going to do if we can't achieve what we're talking about?" Kissinger then added, "But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government." That would seem to differ from McCain's position. McCain has made clear he would hold "no unconditional summits." After the debate, the McCain campaign was quick to say that Obama had incorrectly described Kissinger's remarks, issuing a statement from Kissinger that said, "I would not recommend the next president of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the presidential level.” Obama is right that Kissinger supports meetings without preconditions, but he neglects to mention that Kissinger specified they would be "at the secretary of state level." And Obama's comments imply that he was referring to meetings at the presidential level. So we find Obama's statement to be Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-09-27T00:00:00 | 2008-09-26 | ['Iran', 'Henry_Kissinger'] |
pomt-05083 | The Medicaid expansion is "going to cost Florida $1.9 billion a year." | false | /florida/statements/2012/jul/02/rick-scott/rick-scott-says-medicaid-expansion-will-cost-state/ | Gov. Rick Scott announced June 29, 2012, that Florida will not expand its Medicaid program, saying that provision of the federal health care law would cost the state an additional $1.9 billion a year. "It’s going to cost Florida $1.9 billion a year," Scott said July 2, 2012, while co-hosting CNBC’s Squawk Box. Scott repeated the $1.9 billion claim on Fox News June 29 and July 2, on CNN July 1 and in a July 1 official statement. Don’t believe it. Scott’s Medicaid figure is an oversimplified estimate that relies on several assumptions and ignores how the Medicaid expansion would actually be implemented. Even if you believe the assumptions and ignore how the law would be implemented, Scott is still quoting the wrong number, according to an estimate created by his own Agency for Health Care Administration. By now, you’ve probably read about the proposed Medicaid expansion, which was part of the 2010 federal health care law. But you’ve also likely missed some critical details in the few paragraphs of background you’ve seen. Medicaid is a joint state-federal, government-run health care program for the very poor. (Its cousin, Medicare, is for senior citizens of any income level.) Medicaid is an entirely voluntary program for the states -- but every state participates -- in part because of the good financial terms. The federal government covers about 55 percent of all Medicaid costs in Florida and covered about 68 percent in recent years with additional stimulus funding. The health care law required states to expand eligibility to Medicaid by raising income eligibility limits to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. States currently have widely varying thresholds depending on a person’s age and situation, and Florida has some of the strictest thresholds in the country. For instance, childless adults cannot receive Medicaid in Florida, and parents who have children must make less than 22 percent of the federal poverty level to receive Medicaid. (That means a single parent of one would have to make less than about $3,500 a year to qualify for Medicaid in Florida.) The federal government agreed to fund 100 percent of the cost for states to expand Medicaid for three budget years. The federal government would cover 95 percent of the costs in 2017, 94 percent of the costs in 2018, 93 percent of the costs in 2019 and 90 percent of the costs in 2020 and beyond. The expansion, too, was technically voluntary, but the federal government said it would penalize any state (by withholding Medicaid funds) that failed to comply. That penalty was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. The court’s ruling allows states like Florida to decline expansion without losing any current funding. That brings us back to Scott. His own Agency for Health Care Administration attempted to quantify the financial impact to the state because of the changes to Medicaid (which is quite different than the expansion of Medicaid Scott is talking about). We received a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of the agency’s findings, dated Jan. 4, 2012. The state first assumed that there are people who currently qualify for Medicaid, pre-expansion, but have not enrolled for one reason or another. They would come forward, however, in the new system. The cost to Florida: $516 million a year. The state also figured that there are people currently privately purchasing insurance who would abandon their private plans because they would be eligible for Medicaid as part of the expansion. That would cost Florida another $90 million a year. And of course the state estimated the number of people who would be eligible for the Medicaid expansion and would apply. The cost: $500 million. Most of these costs, mind you, would not kick in until 2020 -- a fact Scott ignores. That said, the state estimates the Medicaid expansion -- which the state says would provide health insurance for an additional 2 million Floridians -- would cost about $1 billion a year starting in 2020. More than half of that cost, however, would come from people who today are eligible for Medicaid but have not yet enrolled. That cost could come whether or not Florida agrees to participate in the Medicaid expansion. The state health care agency lumps in another $400 million in costs each year for increased rates for Medicaid primary care physicians in its report. But we’re not sure why. The rate increase was part of the federal health care law -- not the Medicaid expansion -- as a way to make reimbursement rates the same for Medicare and Medicaid patients. But the rate increase was only temporary for 2013 and 2014, and was fully funded by the federal government. Florida could decide to continue paying higher reimbursement rates, but it is not required to. So the state’s most generous estimate is that the Medicaid changes as part of the federal health care law will cost the state about $1.47 billion a year starting in 2020. But really, the expansion to Medicaid -- the part Scott is fighting -- would cost the state about a little more than $500 million once it’s fully implemented in 2020, according to the state. (We should note that a Tallahassee group called the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy has criticized the state estimates, saying its figures are "hyper-inflated." We're not taking a side on the estimates as a whole as it pertains to this fact-check.) The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation put the additional cost to the state between $1.2 billion and $2.5 billion between 2014 and 2019, which is roughly between $200 million and $400 million a year. That would help insure between 950,000 and 1.3 million Floridians. (Kaiser did not calculate a cost to the state in 2020, when Florida would pay for 10 percent of the expansion.) Our ruling In triumphantly declaring that Florida will reject a provision of the federal health care law that expands Medicaid coverage, Gov. Rick Scott told national television audiences that the expansion would cost Florida $1.9 billion a year. The most recent estimate from the state health care agency says a series of changes to Medicaid could wind up costing about $1.4 billion a year, but that number includes things beyond the expansion to Medicaid that Scott was talking about. For instance, about $400 million is tied to increased reimbursement payments to Medicaid providers. But the state isn't required to pay that out. And another estimated $516 million will pay for people who are eligible for Medicaid under its current provisions but have not enrolled. They would remain eligible whether or not the program is expanded in Florida. That leaves about $500 million in estimated new costs for Medicaid patients under the federal government expansion. And that cost would not fully kick in until 2020. So yes, the Medicaid expansion will cost the state. But Scott’s $1.9 billion claim appears to be wildly high. We rate this claim False. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2012-07-02T19:54:29 | 2012-07-02 | ['None'] |
snes-05124 | Cameron Diaz was cast to portray Maya Angelou in a new biographical film. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cameron-diaz-maya-angelou/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | No, Cameron Diaz Wasn’t Cast to Play Maya Angelou in a Biopic | 3 March 2016 | null | ['Maya_Angelou', 'Cameron_Diaz'] |
pomt-10561 | 8 years of the Clintons, major losses for Democrats across the nation. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/feb/11/barack-obama/cumulatively-major-losses/ | Raising the prospect that a Hillary Clinton presidency will weaken the Democratic party nationally, a mailer sent on behalf of Barack Obama in the days before Super Tuesday spells out how many governorships and congressional seats the party lost during the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency. "8 years of the Clintons, major losses for Democrats across the nation," the mailer read, comparing the number of Democratic governors, U.S. senators and representatives after the 1992 and 2000 elections. It shows Democrats lost 12 governorships, seven Senate and 46 House seats over that span. Factually, the mailer's claims are borne out in breakdowns by the Senate, Clerk of the House and Congressional Quarterly, using 1993 and 2001 as the reference years. Many of the Democratic losses came in the 1994 election cycle, when voters dealt a stunning rebuke to Clinton's first-term policies and put Republicans in control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But the GOP began to lose congressional seats in the 1996 and 1998 elections, while Clinton still was in office. And just months after he departed, the Senate shifted back to Democratic control after Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords switched his affiliation from Republican to Independent. While it's true that Democrats suffered major losses in 1994, they recouped some of those seats before Clinton left office. We find the claim to be Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-02-11T00:00:00 | 2008-02-01 | ['Bill_Clinton', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-02101 | Giant Hawaiian Cane Spider | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-giant-hawaiian-cane-spider/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Giant Hawaiian Cane Spider | 8 February 2013 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07092 | Seventy of Ohio's 88 counties now have more than 25 percent of their residents eligible for emergency food. | true | /ohio/statements/2011/jun/24/dennis-kucinich/rep-dennis-kucinich-says-one-quarter-residents-qua/ | A report by the Government Accountability Office on potential duplication of federal programs led the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to call a hearing on welfare spending. Two Ohio congressmen took lead roles that showed contrasting approaches to the subject. Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican whose 4th District includes a broad swath of conservative countryside in the central and western Ohio, accurately characterized the GAO report when he said it "concluded that not enough is known about the effectiveness of many of these programs." Jordan has introduced H.R. 1167, the Welfare Reform Act of 2011, which would change eligibility requirements and reduce funding. The committee's ranking member, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose heavily Democratic 10th District includes part of Cleveland and several urban suburbs, said the GAO report "did not find waste, fraud and abuse in the administration and delivery of these programs. It does not recommend delivering fewer benefits to those in need." Jordan asked if Kucinich agreed the government should be able to determine if programs are effective and make sure they do not "encourage the wrong kind of behavior." Kucinich replied that the issues can be examined "while we keep feeding people" during a time of continuing need. And he offered statistics to illustrate that need. "Seventy of Ohio's 88 counties now have more than 25 percent of their residents eligible for emergency food," he said. PolitiFact Ohio decided to take check that claim out. Kucinich's office referred us to recent reports from the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies and the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, using data from the Ohio Department of Development. The starting point for the figure is poverty, defined in the OACAA report as a state of deprivation in which a person or family lacks sufficient resources for a minimally adequate standard of living. The 2009 federal poverty threshold for a family of four with two children was a household income of $21,756. Higher up the scale of economic well-being is the self-sufficiency level, or the income that a household needs to meet its basic needs without public or private assistance. That is generally considered to be about 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and is a ceiling for eligibility for food assistance programs. The Ohio Department of Development data shows that in 70 of the state's 88 counties, at least 25 percent of their citizens live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level -- and are therefore eligible for emergency food. The level drops below 20 percent in only three counties -- Medina, Delaware and Warren -- but tops 45 percent in five: Adams, Meigs, Morgan, Pike and Vinton. In rural Morgan County, 51 percent of residents live below the self-sufficiency level. The data shows that Kucinich’s statement is both accurate and not lacking significant details. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates as True. | null | Dennis Kucinich | null | null | null | 2011-06-24T06:00:00 | 2011-06-01 | ['Ohio'] |
snes-04081 | A viral video shows a newborn baby delivered inside an intact amniotic sac. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/baby-delivered-inside-amniotic-sac/ | null | Medical | null | David Emery | null | Video Shows Baby Delivered Inside Intact Amniotic Sac | 7 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00424 | Antifreeze in Swiffer Wetjet Kills Pets, Children | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/swiffer-wetjet-kills-pets/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Antifreeze in Swiffer Wet Jet Kills Pets, Children-Fiction! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03490 | Members of the alt-right group the National Policy Institute can be seen on video doing a Nazi-like salute as speaker Richard Spencer calls out "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alt-right-hail-trump-salute/ | null | Conspiracy Theories | null | David Emery | null | Video Shows Alt-Right Group Engaging in ‘Hail Trump’ Salute | 23 November 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01435 | Did Muslims March in Favor of Sharia Law in England? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/video-muslims-sharia-ashoura/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Muslims March in Favor of Sharia Law in England? | 15 November 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00135 | Justin Theroux, Laura Harrier Apartment Hunting In Paris? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-theroux-laura-harrier-dating-paris-apartment/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Justin Theroux, Laura Harrier Apartment Hunting In Paris? | 10:33 am, October 15, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01269 | Kourtney Kardashian Did Tell Sofia Richie To “Back Off” Kids, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kourtney-kardashian-sofia-richie-back-off-kids-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kourtney Kardashian Did NOT Tell Sofia Richie To “Back Off” Kids, Despite Reports | 3:26 pm, April 1, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11656 | Says a "recent analysis" showed that 91 percent of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are employed, in school or serving in the military. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2018/jan/10/julian-castro/julian-castro-daca-recipients-employed-school-mili/ | Calling out Republicans, Julián Castro of Texas said research shows that nearly every young immigrant at risk of losing federal protection from deportation is employed, in school or serving in the military. According to an October 2017 web post, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary was generally urging the Republican-led Congress to change federal law by offering a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children or those who overstayed their visas. The post on the conservative blog PJ Media says that in a conference call organized by an advocacy group, Castro specified that a "recent analysis" showed that 91 percent of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, sometimes called "Dreamers," are employed, in school or serving in the military. Critics, conversely, sometimes characterize the program as an illegal amnesty that harms the working class. Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential prospect, directed his call for DACA action at U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio, as well as John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate majority whip, who, Castro said, "should make sure Congress passes a DREAM Act soon." Castro, who joined the faculty of the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in 2017, was otherwise quoted in the post criticizing President Donald Trump for declaring the month before that his administration would discontinue DACA, which President Barack Obama launched through a 2012 memo, unless Congress authorized a program by changing federal laws. In a September 2017 tweet, Trump said both that Congress should "legalize DACA" and that in the event of inaction, he’d "revisit this issue." Castro cites online survey results So, was Castro right about DACA recipients nearly all being in school, employed or in the military? Castro, asked the basis of his claim, told Josh Baugh of the San Antonio Express-News by text that he drew his data points from an August 2017 web post by the left-leaning Center for American Progress about a national DACA survey. That survey, we found, asked if DACA recipients had jobs or were in school. It didn’t ask if respondents were in the military. The center’s post summarizing the results said Tom Wong, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, led the August 2017 survey of 3,063 DACA recipients. All told, the post says, the survey reached DACA recipients in 46 states including Texas, where 17 percent of respondents said they were living, according to the center’s separate post of the survey’s 22 questions and tallied results. Let’s check on whether the results back up Castro’s claim before turning to the survey methodology and other efforts to gauge how DACA recipients spend their lives. Survey results Asked if they were "currently employed," 91.4 percent answered affirmatively, according to the results, with 55.9 percent of those respondents saying they hadn’t been employed "before DACA." Another question asked if the respondent was currently in school; 44.9 percent responded affirmatively with 55 percent saying not, according to the results. Wong told us by email that an additional sort of the "in school" and "currently employed" responses showed 97 percent of all respondents reporting being employed or enrolled in school — with 71.5 percent of those saying that they were in school reportedly pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higher. Methodology The center said in its post that the results drew on the largest sampling of DACA recipients to date. Some perspective: the 3,000-plus respondents would have amounted to about 4/10ths of 1 percent of some 690,000 active DACA recipients reported at about that time by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Wong conducted the survey in collaboration with the center and advocacy groups United We Dream and the National Immigration Law Center. At the survey’s release, that teaming drew criticism on the right-leaning Breitbart blog, where writer Neil Munro underscored an acknowledgment in the survey’s methodology section that "it is not possible to construct a valid margin of error" for the results because "there is no phone book of undocumented immigrants." Munro counted this as an admission that the data was unreliable. In the same vein, we wondered how Wong’s team confirmed that respondents were signed up for DACA; best we could tell, beneficiaries are not revealed by the government. By phone, Wong reaffirmed the methodology described in the center’s post about the survey including that the partnering entities recruited the recipients surveyed online. Specifically, Wong said, the partners sent a web link to the survey to individuals on their respective email lists, also employing Facebook ads to ensure that self-identified DACA recipients from all over the country could participate. Recognizing that non-DACA recipients could potentially click through the survey, the researchers reported taking steps to eliminate bias and other factors that might skew the results. In the write-up posted by the center, Wong and his co-authors said that to prevent people from submitting multiple responses, they used a survey platform that prevented an IP address from submitting multiple responses. Wong said he used another tactic to stop people from gaming the study: Near the beginning of the survey, each respondent was asked to say at which age she or he came to the U.S. Close to the end, the survey requested the year the respondent came to the U.S. If the age provided toward the survey’s start matched the year offered later, the results stayed in. If off by more than a year, Wong said, he threw out the response. In the end, he said, the responses of 3,063 people were tallied--with approximately 6,000 respondents’ surveys getting set aside for one reason or another. We asked Wong to provide more detail perhaps enabling us to confirm the percentages in the results. Wong told us by email that he hadn’t talked to the study’s outreach partners "about what data can and can’t be released." Wong also said he plans to write a book analyzing the first four years of his survey results, at which point the data he analyzes for the book will be made publicly available. "I know talk isn’t worth much, but I analyzed all of the data myself and stand by the results," Wong wrote. Solid research, expert says We separately asked Ernesto Castañeda, an American University expert on migration research, if he considers the Wong-led results to be valid. Castañeda’s answer: Yes. Wong and his colleagues "carried out a valid study on a hard-to-reach population," Castañeda said by email. "With more than three thousand respondents, this is an exceptionally large sample size." Castañeda further said that researchers cannot always calculate margins of error for "unknown populations" like homeless and undocumented people, adding that the authors "took a number of steps to avoid duplicates or dubious data." Castañeda told us too that the study’s results appeared to be consistent with ethnographic research on DACA recipients and survey and interview research through 2016 by Roberto Gonzales, a Harvard University expert on immigration and social inequality, suggesting that DACA recipients made gains after getting that designation. Wong and Gonzales each found DACA beneficiaries finding educational and career opportunities that had been closed to them before they entered the program. According to Gonzales’ study, posted by the center in June 2017, "DACA beneficiaries told the authors that they were able to match their education and training with work that was meaningful to them—‘an occupation that they could be proud of and that did not carry the stigma of ‘immigrant work.’ " Wong told us a result from his 2017 study stood out to him: 54.2 percent of respondents reported getting a job "that better fits my education and training." In the Breitbart post critical of Wong’s work, Munro wrote that the study was "based on a skewed sample of relatively successful DACA illegals who were identified by advocacy groups." To Munro’s point, 35.5 percent of respondents 25 and older reported having bachelor’s degrees or higher. Seemingly in contrast, Munro noted, an August 2017 Migration Policy Institute study found only 5 percent of the "immediately eligible DACA population" holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. The institute, a think tank that says it believes in the benefits of well-managed immigration, reached its "5 percent" figure by drawing on responses to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey. Wong, asked about the possibly too-high education levels suggested by his results, pointed out that the 35.5 percent of survey-indicated DACA recipients with bachelor’s degrees came out only slightly greater than what’s lately shown for naturalized American citizens. According to bureau data from 2016, 35.2 percent of naturalized citizens — those who obtained citizenship after being born as non-citizens — reported having a bachelor’s, graduate or professional degree. DACA recipients’ high education levels make sense, Wong said, because the program requires applicants to be currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a General Education Development (GED) certificate, or be an honorably discharged Coast Guard or military veteran. "We’re actually requiring them to be more educated than the general population," Wong said, adding: "Now that the DACA population is getting older, we’re talking about a pretty sizable number of college-educated individuals who are just beginning to hit their strides in their careers." Castañeda suggested by email that Wong’s survey provided more meaningful results than the MPI study, which was concerned with many more residents including individuals unlikely to seek DACA status. Castañeda wrote: "DACA recipients are by definition positively self-selected since they have to apply to the program, deal with the complex application process and requirements, and pay application fees." Another view We also asked Jessica Vaughan of the conservative-leaning Center for Immigration Studies to evaluate the survey cited by Castro. By phone, Vaughan told us that she would not be surprised that DACA recipients participate in the labor force at high rates because for many, employment was likely "a motivating factor to apply for DACA." Vaughan speculated, though, that the survey overstated the employment and education rates of DACA recipients simply by being administered online and, she suggested, drawing from people with regular online access as well as individuals with the "time and inclination to fill out such a survey." It’s reasonable, she said, to suppose that the same people would be more likely employed and well-educated. Our ruling Castro said a "recent analysis" showed that 91 percent of DACA recipients are employed, in school or serving in the military. Some 97 percent of respondents to an August 2017 online survey reported being employed or in school. However, the researchers asked no questions about military service. We rate this claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Julián Castro | null | null | null | 2018-01-10T14:01:18 | 2017-10-29 | ['None'] |
pose-00697 | Reform pension plans: Reamortize pension; create hybrid 401(k), audit existing plan, develop long-term plan to coordinate retirement age with Social Security age. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/promises/linc-o-meter/promise/727/reform-state-employee-pension-plan/ | null | linc-o-meter | Lincoln Chafee | null | null | Reform state employee pension plan | 2012-04-25T20:24:58 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10817 | Bill Richardson is the only major Democratic candidate with a plan to withdraw all American troops from Iraq. All of the other major Democratic candidates support leaving American troops in Iraq indefinitely. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/sep/23/bill-richardson/richardson-wants-all-troops-out/ | Bill Richardson claims for himself a place among the top tier candidates (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards) as he seeks to distinguish himself from the field on Iraq, saying he is alone among this group to want to withdraw all the troops. The distinction is real. The others candidate want to leave residual forces in Iraq to be on hand for peacekeeping purposes or in case terrorists mount an offensive. Richardson says a small force will be ineffective, and all troops should come home. But we feel compelled to point out that Richardson's poll numbers have never put him in league with Clinton, Obama or Edwards. A Sept. 16 Gallup Poll showed him with 5 percent support, a good six points shy of Edwards' 11 percent, and well behind Clinton and Obama. That leaves Richardson in the single digits, along with Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Of those two rivals, Richardson's position is not significantly different from Kucinich on questions of withdrawal and timetables. Kucinich advocates a prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops to be replaced with international peace keepers. Biden, on the other hand, has proposed an elaborate plan for partitioning Iraq into self-governing regions with U.S. troops helping maintain order. We won't take any points off for Richardson's claim to be among the "major" candidates here, but we will lower his Truth-O-Meter rating because the other candidates have not said they want troops in Iraq indefinitely, as Richardson suggests. Instead, they have said they need the information a commander-in-chief gets to make a final decision on force levels in Iraq. It may be a fine distinction, but it's not the same thing as supporting an indefinite deployment. | null | Bill Richardson | null | null | null | 2007-09-23T00:00:00 | 2007-09-25 | ['United_States', 'Iraq', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Bill_Richardson'] |
pomt-11801 | Says the Austin school district "enjoys the highest per-student funding of all large Texas districts" even after forwarding tax revenue to the state. | false | /texas/statements/2017/nov/17/roger-falk/taxpayer-incorrectly-says-austin-school-district-t/ | An activist made his case against voters approving a record $1 billion Austin school bond proposition in part by saying the school district tops other big Texas districts in per-student funding. We wondered about that. "Austin ISD has the highest taxable property value per student of all school districts in Texas," Roger Falk of the Travis County Taxpayers Union wrote in a November 2017 commentary published a few days before the bond won voter approval. "It also has the lowest tax rate of all districts in our area." Falk then rebutted the school district’s complaints that it suffers under the state’s school-finance system of recapture, which essentially shifts money from districts with strong property tax bases (like Austin) to property-poor districts. "A major part of its sales pitch is that recapture is killing the district and driving this bond," Falk wrote. "Recapture, as an argument from the district, actually shows its incompetence, as Austin ISD enjoys the highest per-student funding of all large Texas districts after recapture." We’re not fact-checking all that Falk said there. But by email, Falk told us he reached his conclusion about the Austin district having the highest per-student funding among large districts by checking on 2016-17 per-student budgeted spending in a dozen high-enrollment districts starting from a Texas Education Agency website. We confirmed from TEA figures posted for the Austin district that the district budgeted $10,949 per student--an amount reached by dividing $906,180,314 shown in AISD state, local and federal receipts by its 82,766 students. That disregards $406 million in local taxes recaptured by the state. Falk said that from TEA-posted figures, he identified only one high-enrollment district with a greater per-student figure; the 157,787-student Dallas district, per the site, drew $11,377 in receipts per student. Falk told us he found from posted figures that 10 other districts--including Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso and Corpus Christi--drew less in receipts per student. "First or second, my central point remains true: AISD uses recapture to give the impression they have unfair and inadequate funding," Falk said. "Based on their peers, many of whom don't pay recapture, they have superior funding along with a low tax rate." We confirmed that most of the districts Falk reviewed are classified by the state as "major urban" districts, although that classification doesn’t apply to all the districts in his comparison. The exceptions are the Katy, Cypress-Fairbanks, Aldine and Corpus Christi districts. We also learned more precision was possible. Taking into account all funds Next, we asked the state education agency and a couple of school funding experts who advocate for districts at the Capitol to assess Falk’s statement and methodology. By email, TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson said Falk’s per-student figures, based on 2016-17 budgeted data submitted to the state, were accurate to a degree. Culbertson said, for instance, the posted data didn’t reflect final totals of federal funds fielded by each district. She subsequently emailed us a spreadsheet showing that districts ultimately got far more, or less, federal aid than indicated in the reports Falk drew upon. In response to our inquiry, agency experts reviewed audited actual spending data, including federal aid, for the latest available year, 2015-16. By this sort, Culbertson said, Austin fell to eighth among the dozen districts singled out by Falk with $10,805 in per-student spending. Culbertson provided a chart indicating the San Antonio district topped the sampled districts with per-student spending of $12,430. At the low end, the Fort Worth ($10,507); Cypress-Fairbanks ($10,395); Corpus Christi ($10,216) and Arlington ($10,171) districts spent less per student than the Austin district. Also to our inquiry, lobbyist Joe Wisnoski, a former education agency official expert in school finance, similarly said the TEA data cited by Falk was incomplete, leaving unconsidered "a lot of federal funds" spent by districts. Like the education agency, Wisnoski turned to audited district revenues for 2015-16 showing Austin eighth in per-student revenue of all kinds among the districts analyzed by Falk, though his review indicated Austin was sixth if federal aid wasn’t considered. Wisnoski also advised: "Spending can vary from revenues in a given year and result in a different ranking." Wisnoski said too that the revenue amounts "would include money for both operations and debt service," a reference to what districts put into paying off bond debt rather than paying for day-to-day operations. Also, Wisnoski wrote, the "amounts per student are without regard to any variance in the educational needs of, or program participation of, the students in the listed districts." By email, Tom Canby of the Texas Association of School Business Officials concurred with Wisnoski’s analysis. Focusing on state’s highest-enrollment districts For our part, we noticed that Falk’s sampling left out a few of the state’s 12 highest-enrollment districts: in 2016-17, the latest year of state-posted counts, these were the Northside and North East districts in Bexar County, the Conroe district in Montgomery County and the Fort Bend district in Fort Bend County. Folding in actual per-student financial data for Falk’s listed districts and for these other districts led us to compose a chart showing the Austin district in 2015-16 trailed eight of the state’s highest-enrollment districts in such spending. Within the sample, the San Antonio district had the greatest per-student figure, at $12,430, followed by the Dallas, Katy, Houston, Ysleta, North East, El Paso and Aldine districts--before the Austin district. Focusing on the 10 largest districts by enrollment puts Austin sixth in per-student revenue, with the Dallas district leading at $12,069 per student. TEN HIGHEST-ENROLLMENT TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS DISTRICT 2015-16 All Funds Total Revenue/Student DALLAS $12,069 KATY $11,568 HOUSTON $11,450 NORTH EAST $10,921 ALDINE $10,905 AUSTIN $10,805 NORTHSIDE $10,722 FORT WORTH $10,507 FORT BEND $10,419 CYPRESS-FAIRBANKS $10,395 SOURCES: Email, DeEtta Culbertson, information specialist, Texas Education Agency, Nov. 13, 2017 and PolitiFact Texas research starting from a TEA website, "PEIMS District Financial Actual Reports, 2015-16," accessed Nov. 15, 2017 We shared the information provided by the agency and Wisnoski with Falk. He replied by email: "In my goal to provide accurate, thoughtful counterpoint, I defer to those I use for reference, like TEA," which collects and analyzes data. "If they differ with the assessment, I accept their numbers and gladly stand corrected." Falk followed up: "My point could have been made by simply saying ‘similar funding to other large districts’ or something to that effect." Our ruling Falk said the Austin district "enjoys the highest per-student funding of all large Texas districts" even after forwarding revenue to the state. Considering all audited actual revenues for 2015-16, it looks to us like the Austin district trailed other high-enrollment districts in spending--ranking sixth or ninth among such districts depending on which ones you include. We rate this claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Roger Falk | null | null | null | 2017-11-17T15:41:49 | 2017-11-03 | ['Texas', 'Austin,_Texas'] |
abbc-00279 | In terms of how I have described my attitude towards negative gearing, I have always understood that for the vast majority of Australians who use negative gearing they are modest income earning Australians, nurses, teachers, police, Treasurer Scott Morrison told the National Press Club in February. | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-03/fact-check-negative-gearing-scott-morrison/7180812 | Mr Morrison's claim is selective. Australian Tax Office data shows that one in 10 Australians who files a tax return is negatively geared in terms of rental property. Data provided by Mr Morrison's office, based on Treasury calculations, showed 67 per cent of the people who use negative gearing have taxable incomes of $80,000 or less. This was backed up by Fact Check's analysis of ATO statistics. However, as 82 per cent of all taxpayers have taxable incomes below $80,000, it is not surprising that most of the negative gearers fall into this category. As this category represents only 67 per cent of negative gearers, it is clear that these taxpayers use negative gearing proportionately less than taxpayers with higher income. Put another way, only 8 per cent of people with taxable incomes less than $80,000 use negative gearing, compared with more than double that proportion among people with taxable incomes above $80,000. Similarly, people with taxable incomes over $80,000 receive 42 per cent of the negative gearing benefit, but they only represent 33 per cent of all negative gearers. Finally, those with a total income (including negative gearing benefit) of $52,000 a year or less — an income more in line with the definition of modest as a "moderate" or median income — represent 59 per cent of all taxpayers, but only 40 per cent of negatively geared taxpayers. Only 4 per cent of these people use negative gearing. When the negative gearing benefit is removed by taking out their rental losses, they represent 33 per cent of people who use negative gearing. | ['tax', 'housing', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'liberals', 'australia'] | null | null | ['tax', 'housing', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'liberals', 'australia'] | Fact check: Do most negative gearers earn a modest income? | Mon 7 Mar 2016, 5:21am | null | ['Australia'] |
snes-04697 | Hillary Clinton is disqualified from holding the office of President under the provisions of U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-disqualified/ | null | Politicians | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Hillary Clinton Disqualified by U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071 | 27 May 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04134 | Pokémon Go developer Niantic is working on a Harry Potter version of the hugely popular augmented-reality game. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pokemon-go-developer-niantic-to-develop-harry-potter-go/ | null | Technology | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Pokémon Go Developer Niantic to Develop ‘Harry Potter Go’? | 31 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01053 | Apple iPhone 7 Giveaway | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/apple-iphone-7-giveaway-facebook-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Apple iPhone 7 Giveaway Facebook Scam | January 9, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01612 | 17 Fake Cell Phone Towers Detected | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/fake-cell-towers/ | null | government | null | null | null | 17 Fake Cell Phone Towers Detected | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00178 | “There has also been a 19% decline in households involved in agriculture from 2.9 million in 2011 to 2.3 million households in 2016.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/facts-alternative-facts-zumas-10th-state-nation-address-checked/ | null | null | null | null | null | Facts or alternative facts? Zuma’s 10th State of the Nation Address checked | 2017-02-10 07:12 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14886 | Obamacare insurance cooperative failures "should be expected" because they're like any business, and "when you start businesses in America, at the fifth year, half of the businesses have closed." | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2015/nov/10/ezekiel-emanuel/did-obamacare-insurance-co-ops-fail-faster-average/ | It’s sign-up time for Obamacare and while the website is clicking along and the program has succeeded in reducing the ranks of the uninsured, there is one notable sore spot: A $2.4 billion effort to provide low-cost insurance through consumer owned insurance cooperatives is in deep trouble. Out of the 23 co-ops largely funded through Obamacare by federal loans, 12 will no longer offer policies after this year. Republican critics of the president’s signature health care law have focused on these failures. But a staunch defender of the Affordable Care Act, Zeke Emanuel, brother of President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, downplayed the bad news on MSNBC. "When you start businesses in America, at the fifth year, half of the businesses have closed," Emanuel said on Nov. 3, 2015. "The idea that some of these co-ops are going to work and some aren’t should be expected. That's what business is about. The idea that 100 percent will succeed is a false metric we don't hold the private sector to." We decided to dig into Emanuel’s notion that a 50-percent failure rate after five years for businesses applies to these insurance co-ops. Where the co-ops came from When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, it included $6 billion in loans to launch Consumer Owned and Oriented Plans. The vision was to create nonprofit health insurance companies that would provide low-cost, high quality policies to individuals and small businesses. Without the need to produce a return on investment, these enterprises would, in theory, be able to compete against the major generally for-profit players in the market. In fact, in places where competition was scant, these co-ops would help the market deliver better value for all consumers. Throughout 2012 and 2013, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department approved loans to get the co-ops up and running. After a series of budget cuts, program funding was capped at $2.4 billion. In 2013, the co-ops began selling policies to provide coverage in 2014. The dates are important because it’s doubtful any of these co-ops were five years old as of 2015. If they weren’t five years old, then Emanuel’s benchmark might not be as suitable as he suggested. Emanuel told us that the co-ops launched before 2012. "Many of these co-ops were started in 2011 and were doing a lot of work to get ready," Emanuel told PunditFact. "To apply for a loan, you had to do some serious analysis about the market and costs. You needed to have a business plan." On the other hand, Emanuel said there isn’t any perfect comparison data to work with. His real point he said was "to give some context for the closures," and "to focus on when they began is to miss the forest for the trees." "Their age? They were somewhere north of three years old," he told us. Scott Harrington is a business professor who focuses on health care finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. "Some of the co-ops didn’t even last two years," Harrington said. We looked at the data to help resolve this. Failures accumulate For several decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has tracked the births and deaths of firms in the Business Dynamics Statistics database. We crunched the numbers in two ways -- for all firms and for firms in the finance, insurance and real estate business. That industry group -- known by the acronym FIRE -- is broader than you would want but it’s the closest match to see how the insurance co-ops stack up against approximately similar kinds of firms. The bottom line is that after five years, about 44 percent of all businesses have disappeared. So Emanuel was pretty close when he said about half have closed. But as you might expect, the younger the companies, the lower the failure rate. Here are the average rates from 2000 to 2007, based on Census business data. (We didn’t include 2008 or 2009 because closings spiked during the Great Recession.) Average firm failure rate 2000-2007 After 1 year After 2 years After 3 years After 4 years After 5 years All firms 17% 27% 34% 40% 44% FIRE industry 16% 26% 34% 40% 45% So Emanuel’s comparison ultimately boils down to how old the co-ops were. There is no perfect answer. Emanuel said they existed when they began doing the research to apply for a federal loan. You could say they were born on the day Washington approved their loans. We used the Census Bureau definition. The Census Bureau said it treats the first year a company shows employment in its payroll tax records as the year it was born. We looked at CoOportunity Health in Iowa. It was in the first wave of loan recipients on Feb. 17, 2012. The company’s former Chief Financial Officer Stephen Ringless told us the loan award took the co-op to the next step of securing a state insurance license. When that came through, it hired a few consultants. "When the company was able to develop a payroll system in early June 2012, those consultants became full-time employees," Ringless said. Almost exactly two-and-half years later, on Jan. 29, 2015, the Iowa insurance commissioner moved to liquidate CoOportunity Health. The firm was about $50 million in the red. While some employees were retained as the firm was wound down, as a going concern, its days ended in early 2015. We did not dig into the details of all of the failed co-ops but the CoOportunity timeline seems more or less to apply to many of them. A June 2013 Inspector General’s Office report looked at the 18 co-ops funded in the first half of 2012. The federal auditors said that by the end of 2012, all of the firms were still "hiring staff, obtaining licensure, and building necessary infrastructure." By the third quarter of 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported that 12 co-ops would no longer be in business as of 2016. Given all this, it would be reasonable to say the co-ops were three years old when they failed. That would run from mid-way through 2012 -- approximately the time of funding -- until mid-way through 2015 -- approximately the time the closure process was underway. The failure rate was over 50 percent. The corresponding failure rate at the three-year mark for all American businesses and for the broader finance, insurance and real estate sector is 34 percent. The co-ops fared significantly worse than the U.S. average, failing at a rate that is about 40 percent faster than is typical. Harrington at the University of Pennsylvania noted one other significant difference between the co-ops and the typical American start-up. "How many firms launch with heavy subsidies from the government?" he asked. Our ruling Emanuel said the Obamacare insurance co-ops failed at a rate that’s typical for American businesses over a five-year period. The underlying comparison is flawed. While the age of each co-op is subject to debate, we used the Census Bureau’s definition to determine when they were born. Interviews with experts, government audits, and regulators’ actions point to three years as the typical lifespan of a failed co-op. About 50 percent of the co-ops shut down. Compared to the three-year failure rate in America, the co-ops have done much worse -- cratering at a rate that is about 40 percent faster than average. But Emanuel could turn out to be right. We won’t know the five-year rate for the entire group until late in 2016 or early 2017. If the remaining co-ops are still running, then the group’s failure rate will be close to the national average. Emanuel’s statement is accurate regarding the five-year-average but leaves out important details. We rate this claim Half True. | null | Ezekiel Emanuel | null | null | null | 2015-11-10T17:54:45 | 2015-11-03 | ['United_States'] |
pose-00162 | Obama will personally lead diplomacy efforts beginning with a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration. He will make clear that we are not at war with Islam, that we will stand with those who are willing to stand up for their future, and that we need their effort to defeat the prophets of hate and violence. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/174/give-a-speech-at-a-major-islamic-forum-in-the-firs/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration | 2010-01-07T13:26:50 | null | ['Islam', 'Barack_Obama'] |
snes-06283 | An Arizona sheriff dismissed prisoners' bellyaching about the heat by pointing out that soldiers serving in Iraq cope with similar conditions. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pinking-sheers/ | null | Crime | null | Snopes Staff | null | Sheriff Joe Arpaio | 14 August 2003 | null | ['Iraq', 'Arizona'] |
pomt-04400 | Says his administration has created "5 million jobs … over the last 30 months in the private sector alone." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/17/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-his-administration-has-created-5/ | Early in the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, President Barack Obama answered a question from a young voter seeking reassurance that he will be able to find a job after he graduates. Obama responded in part, "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone." Job-creation statistics have been bitterly contested terrain between the campaigns this election cycle, with each trying to frame the question in a way that paints their side most favorably. For example, Mitt Romney’s campaign ran an ad recently that said, "Since President Obama took office, there are over 450,000 more unemployed women." We rated that statement Half True, because the number was correct by one method, but way off by others. Obama’s claim from the debate suffers from the same problem. If you start at the low point in the private-sector job market -- February 2010, which is 31 months ago -- then Obama has presided over the net creation of 4.7 million jobs. But that means starting the count more than a year after Obama took office, which -- a little too conveniently for the president -- removes all of the job losses from his first year off his ledger. Another way of doing it would be to start with January 2009, when Obama was sworn in. By this count, the nation has gained a net 514,000 private-sector jobs -- an amount only one-tenth the size of what Obama claimed. However, this method has its drawbacks, because no president can have much impact in the first few months on the job. A middle-ground position is to start the count at the official beginning of the recovery, which came in June 2009. From June 2009 until today, the nation has gained roughly 3.6 million private-sector jobs. That’s less than Obama claims, but more than the inauguration-day calculation the Romney camp often prefers. It's also worth noting that economists say that presidents have a relatively modest impact on the ups and downs of jobs, so it can be a stretch to give Obama either credit for good job numbers or blame for weak job numbers. A final note: Private-sector job numbers are a credible yardstick, but they do paint a more favorable picture for the president than total job numbers do, since government jobs have been shrinking in recent years. Since June 2009, the nation has gained a little under 3 million total jobs, compared to 3.6 million using private-sector jobs alone. Our ruling Obama said that his administration has created "5 million jobs … over the last 30 months in the private sector alone." That’s true only using the most cherry-picked time frame. A more reasonable method -- starting the count at the beginning of the recovery -- shows a gain of 3.6 million jobs. That’s still a substantial number, but well short of the 5 million Obama claimed. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-10-17T15:04:50 | 2012-10-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-00328 | Says Michigan congressional candidate Elissa Slotkin "just parachuted into the district to run for Congress" and "admitted that she doesn’t know our area." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/sep/19/mike-bishop/campaign-ad-accuses-elissa-slotkin-carpetbagging/ | It has been 18 years since a Democrat held the U.S. House seat in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. Even so, the race between political newcomer Elissa Slotkin and incumbent Mike Bishop is viewed as a bellwether in the fight for control of the U.S. House in November. Slotkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, is looking to unseat the two-term Republican congressman, who received 56 percent of the vote in his 2016 re-election bid. The district, which stretches from north of Detroit to the state capital Lansing, voted for President Trump with 51 percent of the vote. Slotkin is seen as a "different kind" of Democrat who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, supports existing gun rights and criticizes single-payer health care. One argument routinely made against Slotkin — and emphasized in a recent radio ad by Bishop — is her weaker ties to the district. "What do we know about D.C. insider Elissa Slotkin? Not much, since Elissa Slotkin just parachuted into the district to run for Congress. We know that Elissa Slotkin was recruited by Nancy Pelosi and sent here from Washington. Slotkin doesn’t own a home in Michigan, and her only voting record … for herself, just a few days ago in the Michigan primary. Elissa Slotkin even admitted that she doesn’t know our area." (Audio of Slotkin's voice) "I did not know the outline of the district…" "Doesn’t know the district? Then how can Elissa Slotkin know us?" Here, we are focusing on her Michigan ties and the claim that she "doesn’t know" the district’s boundaries. She's not as much of an outsider as the ad says. Slotkin and Michigan Slotkin’s campaign calls her a third-generation Michigan native. Slotkin was born in New York, but her family returned to Michigan when she was 4 years old, the campaign said. Slotkin grew up on her family’s farm in Holly, which is located in the 8th district in Oakland County. Her great-grandfather established her family’s meat business called Hygrade Foods, which opened its Detroit headquarters in 1949. The business created a number of foods, but most famously the Ballpark Frank, first sold at Tiger Stadium. Slotkin studied at Cornell University in New York and then went to graduate school at Columbia University. She served three tours in Iraq as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst before taking on various roles in Washington in the intelligence and defense departments during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Slotkin moved back to her family’s farm from D.C. in the spring of 2017 after her national security post ended with the Obama administration. She runs a small consulting business there called Pinpoint Consulting, according to the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. Does Elissa Slotkin own a home in Michigan? The ad claims that Slotkin doesn’t own a home in Michigan. That is accurate, but leaves out some important context. Slotkin does not own her family’s farm herself — the deed is in the name of her father, Curtis Slotkin, Oakland County property records show. Slotkin's father and stepmother live about 30 minutes from the farm, in the Detroit suburbs of Oakland County. The farm was purchased by Slotkin’s grandfather and passed down to her father when her grandfather passed away, said Slotkin campaign spokeswoman Laura Epstein. "When Elissa’s parents pass," Epstein says, "the property will then be in her name — in line with family tradition." What about her voting record? Bishop’s ad asserts that Slotkin has only voted in Michigan once, and that was in her own primary. That statement, according to state records, is correct. Michigan Secretary of State Elections Bureau records show that Slotkin has only voted once in the state, and that was in the August primary. Does she really not know the district’s boundaries? The audio clip of Slotkin talking about the district’s outlines is from a town hall event sponsored by the NAACP Lansing chapter, according to Bishop campaign consultant Stu Sandler. It is clear the audio is clipped. Slotkin said she "did not know the outline of the district," even though the ad's retort of "doesn't" makes the listener think she still doesn't know. We were unable to obtain a full recording from that event. However, at a campaign volunteer event on July 7, Slotkin can be heard saying something similar, that she "didn’t know, probably a year and a half ago, the exact boundaries of the district." She then goes on to review the district’s outlines. Epstein told PolitiFact that Slotkin frequently introduces herself by giving a lay of the land at the beginning of an event and sometimes starts by talking about the district lines. Our ruling Bishop’s ad portrays Slotkin as a "Washington insider" who parachuted into the district to run for the U.S. House. It also utilized an audio clip to allege she doesn’t know the outlines of the district. On some of the technical claims, the ad is accurate. Slotkin has only voted once in the state (in her own primary race), and she is not a Michigan homeowner. However, the ad leaves out important details about her childhood background in the district, and takes her words at a campaign event out of context. The home where she lives is owned by her parents on her family farm, and is slated to be passed down to her. The ad's soundbite is clipped to make it sound like Slotkin admitted to not knowing the outlines of her own district. A similar Slotkin statement shows she may not have known the boundaries before moving back to the state, but she does now. We rate the claim Half True. Update, Sept. 24, 2018: This report was updated to include Slotkin's birth in New York. The rating remains the same. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Mike Bishop | null | null | null | 2018-09-19T16:01:38 | 2018-09-19 | ['United_States_Congress', 'Michigan'] |
farg-00347 | “Texas church shooter was antifa member who vowed to start civil war.” | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/11/texas-shooting-unrelated-antifa/ | null | askfactcheck | FactCheck.org | Saranac Hale Spencer | ['Antifa'] | Texas Shooting Unrelated to Antifa | November 8, 2017 | 2017-11-08 16:33:49 UTC | ['Texas'] |
goop-01361 | Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost Engaged? | 3 | https://www.gossipcop.com/scarlett-johansson-colin-jost-engaged-ring/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost Engaged? | 1:14 pm, March 19, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00058 | “Last year, we increased the number of tourists by 12.8%” | mostly-correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/verifying-key-claims-in-the-2018-state-of-the-nation-debate/ | null | null | null | null | null | Verifying key claims in SA’s 2018 State of the Nation address debate | 2018-02-19 02:56 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06623 | Says that even if you have no children, "under Obamacare, you would still have to carry insurance that covers pediatric, maternity and newborn care even though you do not need it." | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2011/sep/19/mary-taylor/lt-gov-mary-taylor-says-obamacare-would-require-pu/ | Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor also heads the state Department of Insurance. She makes no secret of her dislike for what she derisively calls "Obamacare," the law formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In June, Taylor wrote a guest column for newspapers in which she said, "I will do everything I can to protect Ohio’s citizens and job creators from this catastrophic law." She followed it by giving a speech with a similar theme. In another guest column for newspapers that was posted Sept. 8 to the Department of Insurance website, Taylor says the health care law will limit choice and increase cost for consumers. "The law’s heavy-handed mandates force insurance companies to include coverage for many benefits and services you may not want," she wrote. "Say for example, you do not have any children. Under Obamacare, you would still have to carry insurance that covers pediatric, maternity and newborn care even though you do not need it. "Such mandates remove consumerism from the process and replace it with a one-size-fits-all approach. By requiring consumers to buy services they do not want or need, costs will rise significantly." That got PolitiFact Ohio’s attention. Would consumers really be forced to buy unnecessary coverage, like pediatric, maternity and newborn care for people with no children? We asked Taylor's office for support. We were referred to Section 1302 of the Affordable Care Act as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. "It addresses the essential health benefits," a spokesman for Taylor said. We read Section 1302, and it seemed to bear out Taylor's assertion. But we were frankly confused by the wording, and we turned for guidance to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a trusted independent source on health care issues. "It is true that this (pediatric, maternity and newborn care) is covered as part of the essential benefits package," a spokesman told us. "The law does mandate that insurance." But the spokesman added more: Current employer-provided insurance plans "may include coverage you will never use or need, such as maternity care for a man or prostate cancer coverage for women." Wanting further explanation, we talked with Neera Tanden, who worked on the health care legislation as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. She is currently CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "Ninety percent of all plans cover everything described in the bill as 'essential health benefits package," she said. "People are paying for all those benefits today. We all pay for things we never use. It is the nature of insurance." Individual policies are usually more expensive, offer fewer benefits and are less regulated than group plans, she said, noting that Section 1302 of the health care act says that the scope of the package should equal the scope of benefits "under a typical employer plan." The act also bans exclusions for "preexisting conditions" that exclusively or primarily affect women and ends the practice of charging women higher premiums than men, she said. "The thrust of (Taylor's) case is there should be no requirements on what insurance companies offer," Tanden said. Wanting the perspective of an authority without a dog in the political fight, we turned to J.B. Silvers at Case Western Reserve University. He is professor of health care finance and professor of banking and finance at the Weatherhead School of Management, faculty director of the Health Systems Management Center and holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine. He also is former CEO of a health plan and insurance company. Silvers said the health care plan "makes the playing field level" by setting a standard for benefit packages. "It is true you could buy some sort of stripped-down policy," he said, but such plans are "almost universally a bad deal" with higher costs. Normally, he said, a company negotiates coverage for employees, and "wouldn't offer one plan for single males and another for people with families." What does that say about the accuracy of Taylor's statement? "It's irrelevant," Silvers said. "It's a silly argument, frankly. Insurance by definition includes things you don't think you need." What it means to us is that Taylor, the top official at the state department that oversees insurance, was accurate in describing provisions of what she calls Obamacare. But it is misleading to imply that health insurance policies are purchased a la carte, that such purchasing would reduce costs to consumers, and that the "essential benefits package" represents a departure from current group plans. And when a statement has an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, it rates Mostly False on the Truth-O-Meter. | null | Mary Taylor | null | null | null | 2011-09-19T12:30:03 | 2011-09-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-07116 | Muslims tried to use Sharia law to influence court decisions in New Jersey and Oklahoma | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2011/jun/20/herman-cain/cain-claims-muslims-tried-influence-sharia-law-nj-/ | Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain can’t get away from the subject of Islamic law. Reporters have been dogging him on the issue since March, when a liberal blogger asked Cain whether he’d feel comfortable appointing a Muslim to his Cabinet if he became president. Cain said he would not appoint one because Islam demands they follow Sharia law, above all others -- including the U.S. Constitution. Sharia law is a wide-ranging set of rules that govern aspects of Islamic life including religious practice, daily living, crime and financial dealings. Muslims differ on its interpretation. Later, Cain denied saying he would not appoint Muslims -- a statement PolitiFact Georgia ruled Pants on Fire. CNN anchor and moderator John King asked Cain about the subject again during the June 13 Republican primary debate in Manchester, N.H. "Are American-Muslims as a group less committed to the Constitution than, say, Christians or Jews?" King asked. "There have been instances in New Jersey -- there was an instance in Oklahoma where Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia law. I was simply saying very emphatically, ‘American laws in American courts,’ " Cain replied. Have there been instances in New Jersey and Oklahoma where Muslims tried to "influence court decisions with Sharia law"? We turned to news accounts and court documents to address the issue. First, we’ll consider Oklahoma, where voters approved the "Save Our State Amendment" Nov. 2. It forbids courts from using Sharia law as well as international law when they make decisions. A judge granted a request later that month for a preliminary injunction that bars the amendment from going into effect. It is being challenged in federal appellate court. During a Nov. 22 hearing in Oklahoma federal court, state Assistant Attorney General Scott Boughton defended the amendment on behalf of the state. He conceded under questioning by a federal judge that he did not know of any instances where Sharia law was used in state courts, according to The Oklahoman newspaper. An Oct. 28 Los Angeles Times article on the proposed amendment found three cases that backers said demonstrate Sharia law is being used in U.S. courts. None of them took place in Oklahoma. A brief filed in federal court in support of the Oklahoma amendment did not assert that Sharia law had been used in Oklahoma courts. Instead, it listed one example from New Jersey. This brings us to Cain’s mention of New Jersey during the June 13 debate. In 2009, state Superior Court Judge Joseph Charles denied a woman a restraining order after she reported her husband repeatedly beat and sexually assaulted her. She and her husband are Muslim. Charles asked their imam during the injunction hearing how Islamic law applies to sexual behavior. The imam testified that a wife must comply with her husband’s sexual demands, but a husband was forbidden to approach his wife "like any animal." Charles said he denied the restraining order in part because the husband’s "desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited," according to the decision. The New Jersey appeals court ruled July 23, 2010, that Charles was wrong. His decision contradicted U.S. and state Supreme Court precedent on conflicts between criminal law and religion, the ruling said. Let’s sum up. Cain was wrong on Oklahoma. Voters did pass an amendment to the state constitution that would prevent the use of Sharia law in state courts, but supporters found no instance where "Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia law," as Cain said. There was a New Jersey case in which a judge considered Islamic law when he denied a request for a restraining order. However, since the issue of Islamic law arose only when the New Jersey judge questioned the couple’s imam, it is unfair to accuse Muslims of trying to "influence court decisions with Sharia law." The judge raised the subject. We rule Cain’s statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Herman Cain | null | null | null | 2011-06-20T06:00:00 | 2011-06-13 | ['New_Jersey'] |
snes-01277 | The United States government has secretly negotiated a deal to return the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico to Spain. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-returning-puerto-rico-to-spain/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Is the United States Returning Puerto Rico to Spain? | 2 January 2018 | null | ['United_States', 'Spain', 'Puerto_Rico'] |
goop-01600 | Jennifer Lopez Caught Alex Rodriguez Texting Former Fling? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-lopez-alex-rodriguez-texting-lauren-hunter-false/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Lopez Caught Alex Rodriguez Texting Former Fling? | 4:49 pm, February 20, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00212 | Of course you've got a low unemployment rate when people've got to work two and three jobs just to make ends meet. | pants on fire! | /florida/statements/2018/oct/15/andrew-gillum/andrew-gillum-unemployment-claim/ | Gov. Rick Scott has touted a strong Florida economy built up over his two terms in office. But Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate seeking to replace him, says the economy is "propped up" by low wages and people working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. In an interview on CBS Miami’s "Facing South Florida," host Jim DeFede asked the Tallahassee mayor if he gave Scott any credit for the economy. "I give him credit for an economy that is largely propped up on low-wage work," Gillum said. "Of course you've got a low unemployment rate when people have got to work two and three jobs just to make ends meet." In a companion fact-check, we looked Gillum’s claim about low-wage work propping up Florida’s economy (Half True). Here, we will examine Gillum’s latter point about the low unemployment rate is propped up by people with multiple jobs. After the interview, the campaign of Gillum’s Republican rival, Ron DeSantis, cried "Pants on Fire!" to Gillum’s multiple jobs claim. The campaign was referencing our fact-check of a similar statement by Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the national unemployment rate. Is Gillum’s claim any better? No. It is similarly wrong. Multiple jobs Florida does have nearly full employment, with an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent as of August 2018. Gillum doesn’t see that as positively as Scott. But his point that low unemployment indicates that people are working multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet doesn’t hold up. Official unemployment rates are not affected by the number of jobs people hold. Nationally, only a small percentage of American workers are employed at more than one job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number has hovered in the 4.7 to 5.2 percent range during the past 10 years. Florida’s percentage of residents with more than one job does not deviate from national trends. The number of jobs in Florida has risen 2.8 percentage points faster than the number of workers in Florida over the past eight years, based on data from the federal Household and Payroll surveys. Moody's Analytics senior economist Kwame Donaldson said that’s evidence some workers have more than one job. However, he said, Florida is ranked 26th in the United States in this measure. Nationally, the number of jobs rose 2.9 percentage points faster than the number of workers in that time period. Data about multiple job holders isn’t specific enough to draw conclusions about the quality of the jobs, according to Sean Snaith, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. "You can have multiple jobs even if your primary job is high-paying," Snaith said. Over the past year, the number of American workers who’ve held multiple jobs has ranged between 6 million and 7 million, compared to more than 148 million who are employed in a single job. The number of jobs people hold does not affect the BLS unemployment rate. People are counted as employed as long as they hold one job. They do not get counted again if they hold more than one. "The claim about multiple jobs and unemployment is simply not true," Snaith said. Our ruling Gillum said that unemployment was low because people were working multiple jobs. Unemployment rates are not influenced by how many jobs someone holds, and not many people hold more than one job. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Andrew Gillum | null | null | null | 2018-10-15T08:00:00 | 2018-09-30 | ['None'] |
pomt-08346 | Of the more than 1.3 million temporary mortgage modifications, over half have defaulted. | half-true | /florida/statements/2010/oct/27/marco-rubio/rubio-claims-among-more-13-million-temporary-mortg/ | Foreclosures are a rampant problem in Florida, and the next U.S. senator will be expected to help tackle the national crisis. In the final debate Oct. 26, 2010, between Florida's U.S. Senate candidates on NBC, moderator David Gregory asked Republican Marco Rubio "what would you do to solve the foreclosure problem?" During his answer, Rubio bashed the efforts of the current administration. "Over 1.3 million temporary work-outs, over half have now defaulted,'' he said. Gregory clarified what Rubio meant by "work-outs:" "Those are called mortgage modifications?" Rubio: "The temporary modifications. There have been 500,000 permanent (modifications). We just found out yesterday of the 500,000 permanent (modifications), 11 percent already defaulted." For this Truth-O-Meter we wanted to explore, did Rubio get his numbers right on the larger figure -- have there been more than 1.3 million temporary mortgage modifications of which more than half have defaulted? An Oct. 25 Associated Press article provides some answers. The article focused on comments by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion Wall Street bailout in 2008 that includes a mortgage modification program launched in 2009. According to the AP, Barofsky concluded that the administration's "foreclosure-prevention effort has been ineffective in tackling the foreclosure crisis." Barofsky issued a 338-page quarterly report about TARP to Congress on Oct. 26, the day of the debate. The report states on Page 6: "Finally, the most specific of TARP's Main Street goals, 'preserving homeownership,' has so far fallen woefully short with TARP's portion of the Administration's mortgage modification program yielding only approximately 207,000 ... ongoing permanent modifications since TARP's inception, a number that stands in stark contrast to the 5.5 million homes receiving foreclosure filings and more than 1.7 million homes that have been lost to foreclosure since January 2009." Funded through TARP, the Home Affordable Mortgage Modification Program is intended to help prevent foreclosure by modifying mortgages. By the end of September 2010, HAMP spent about $483 million in TARP money. The report shows a chart on page 74 that 1,369,414 mortgage modification trials had started by the end of September 2010. The chart states that 699,924 trials had been cancelled -- so note that is slightly more than half. The chart doesn't use the word "temporary" for any of the trials -- but it is clear that the 699,924 figure refers to temporary because another line on the chart shows that nearly 500,000 trials were converted to "permanent." Of those permanent modifications, the majority survived while almost 29,000 were cancelled. Rubio stated that the more than 1.3 million mortgage modifications were temporary. While all of the more than 1.3 million started out as temporary, about 500,000 became permanent. Rubio also said that more than half of those 1.3 million had "defaulted." But the chart doesn't state that they defaulted -- it says cancelled. We sent Rubio's claim to Matthew Anderson, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Treasury that oversees the mortgage modification program. "It is not accurate, however, to say that all canceled trials are the result of 'default,'" Anderson wrote in an e-mail. "Trial plans may be canceled for a number of reasons, only one of which is failure to make payments." Anderson pointed us to the September 2010 HAMP report that contains data from the largest service providers, which indicates the top three reasons, in order, for cancellation. Anderson listed them for us: "Borrowers not providing sufficient documentation to servicers, trial plan payment default, or a homeowner who is ineligible because their housing expense is already below the program's 31% threshold." We called and e-mailed Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos on Oct. 27. He sent us back a link to an Oct. 18, 2010, Government Sponsored Enterprises report, a publication done by the Washington, D.C., consulting firm Canfield and Associates. The GSE report stated: "As of August, only 449,000 borrowers have received permanent modifications through HAMP—34% of the 1.3 million borrowers who have enrolled in the program, while 680,000 borrowers have fallen out of the program (51%)." That report also stated that through July, incomplete requests (28 percent) and trial plan default (21 percent) were the top two reasons that trial modifications failed to convert to permanent. Rubio is familiar with the housing crisis personally. An Oct. 22 St. Petersburg Times article about his personal finances stated that Rubio's "Tallahassee home, which he bought with fellow legislator David Rivera, nearly went into foreclosure before Rivera came up with $9,525 for missed payments and fees. Rubio said the delay was over a dispute with the mortgage company." In the final full week of the U.S. Senate race, how did Rubio fare on his numbers about the mortgage modification program? Rubio said "over 1.3 million temporary work-outs, over half have now defaulted,'' referring to a temporary mortgage modification program. His claim requires some clarification -- of the more than 1.3 million mortgage modifications that started out as temporary, nearly 700,000 in the trial phase were cancelled -- or 51 percent. So Rubio is correct on "over half" but wrong to conclude that all of those had "defaulted." Defaulting was the second most common reason for cancellation, therefore we rate this claim Half True. | null | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2010-10-27T19:12:12 | 2010-10-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-06586 | We have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day. | true | /ohio/statements/2011/sep/26/john-boehner/house-speaker-john-boehner-says-10000-baby-boomers/ | Since President Obama launched his offensive to tout initiatives he believes will create jobs and revive the economy, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has provided a steady Republican counterpoint. Boehner appeared Sept. 19, 2011, on Fox Business Network, where he described Obama’s call for higher taxes on millionaires as "class warfare," and advised the president to "tackle the spending problem." "What we’re seeing out of the president’s so-called deficit reduction package is more of the same," Boehner told interviewer Gerri Willis. "It’s class warfare, not serious about dealing with the real drivers of our debt. And that’s major entitlement programs. "We have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day. It’s time for us to get serious about ensuring that these programs are going to be there for them." That’s a lot of retirees. PolitiFact Ohio was intrigued and took a look at the speaker’s claim. The claim is similar to one made by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that our counterparts at PolitiFact Virginia examined. We’ll incorporate some of their findings here, too. Baby boomers comprise a large demographic group of Americans who were born between Jan. 1, 1946 and Dec. 31, 1964. Their pending departure from the workforce is expected to significantly stress the retirement system. According to the Social Security System’s Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2012: "Nearly 80 million baby boomers will file for retirement benefits over the next 20 years – an average of 10,000 per day." That bears out the statistic cited by Boehner. A 2010 Pew Research Center study says baby boomers comprise 26 percent of the total U.S. population. After 2030 - when that generation reaches retirement age - Pew projects that 18 percent of the nation’s population will be over age 65, compared with 13 percent today. Census data collected by Pew indicates the estimated number of retires could be even greater than 10,000 per day. According to Pew’s data, 76 million people were born in the United States between 1946 and 1964. After subtracting those who died and adding immigrants born during those years, America has 79.6 million people of that generation. If you divide 79.6 million by 19 years (the number remaining until 2030), then divide that by 365 days, you get a daily average of 11,476 people turning 65. Although not everyone in that age group will live to reach age 65, the amount who will end up retiring each day could significantly exceed Boehner’s 10,000 per day figure. Boehner’s statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. We rule his claim True. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2011-09-26T06:00:00 | 2011-09-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-04945 | Says PolitiFact "validated and independently documented" its "criminal history" claims about Adan Ballesteros. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2012/jul/27/texans-accountable-government/texas-group-says-politifact-validated-criminal-his/ | In a July 26, 2012, email blast, a political group backing Michael Cargill for a Travis County constable post asserts that Cargill’s opponent in the July 31 Democratic primary runoff, incumbent Adan Ballesteros, has been stealing anti-Ballesteros signs. We’re not wading into signs being hoisted. But we fired up the Truth-O-Meter for the email’s citation of PolitiFact. The email from Texans for Accountable Government, which says it’s focused on reining in the reach of government, says that its anti-Ballesteros website, CocaineConstable.com, brings to light Ballesteros’ "criminal history -- including being fired from (the Texas Department of Public Safety) for allowing the trafficking of drugs and taking money from informants, the Texas Public Safety Commission sustaining the firing, and his lawsuit against them being thrown out of court for being 'baseless and retaliatory.'" The email continues: "TAG's claims were validated and independently documented recently by PolitiFact.com," the email says. Do what? We figured that this part was referring to our June 25, 2012, article on another group’s claim that Ballesteros, the county’s Precinct 2 constable, had "accepted more than $15,000 in cocaine blood money." Unlike most of our fact-checks, we ended up being unable to rate that claim. Our 2,200-word story says that the DPS dismissed Ballesteros as an employee in 1998 after seeing merit in a complaint that, years earlier, he had accepted thousands of dollars in illicit funds from a drug smuggler/informant -- a firing upheld by the Texas Public Safety Commission. However, a Texas Workforce Commission tribunal later said a grand jury found no probable cause to indict Ballesteros and also said "there is not a preponderance of evidence before this appeal tribunal to find the claimant guilty of criminal acts." The July 26 email blast makes no mention of the tribunal’s statement or of the fact that Ballesteros was not charged in criminal court. Ballesteros, who has consistently said he did not accept such funds, told us in an interview that he was investigated and fired because he refused to fire a secretary who had made sexual harassment allegations against a DPS employee. He said that he was ordered to fire the woman shortly after moving to Austin to lead DPS’s narcotics training unit in 1993 — two years before the investigation into his activities as a narcotics investigator in South Texas began. Ballesteros made the same claim in a lawsuit he filed against the DPS. U.S. District Judge James Nowlin dismissed the suit on Sept. 20, 2000, saying in his order that Ballesteros failed to offer relevant evidence. On April 2, 2001, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order, writing that Ballesteros had failed to offer evidence that the DPS investigation was "baseless and motivated by retaliatory intent," as mentioned in the email blast. By telephone, we asked the group’s executive director, Heather Fazio, to elaborate on PolitiFact validating its claims, as the email says. Fazio said the reference was solely to our reporting on Ballesteros getting fired by the DPS for allegedly letting drugs into the country and taking illicit money; his firing being upheld; and his post-firing lawsuit being judged baseless. Fazio said the validation reference was not intended to say PolitiFact had confirmed the entire CocaineConstable site. Asked about the email’s reference to Ballesteros’ "criminal history" despite the fact he was not indicted, Fazio replied: "If you were fired for something that is a criminal act, just because you were not indicted doesn’t mean you were not involved in criminal activity." Beyond that, she said, the "criminal history" term reflected the group’s opinion and was not intended to signal that PolitiFact validated as much. If recipients reach such a conclusion, she said, "I guess I have to apologize for that part." Our ruling As the group’s email suggests, our story that was the basis of the email’s PolitiFact reference sketches out the complaint and investigation that preceded Ballesteros’ firing and the fact that the firing was upheld and his lawsuit found baseless. However, we did not validate Ballesteros’ "criminal history," as the group’s email can be read, and the group’s statement fails to point out he was not indicted or that the workforce commission tribunal saw no preponderance of evidence of criminal acts. Broadly, the group indicates we reached a conclusion about Ballesteros being a criminal that we did not reach. The claim rates Mostly False. | null | Texans for Accountable Government | null | null | null | 2012-07-27T09:40:40 | 2012-07-26 | ['None'] |
snes-03396 | Ben Carson said abortions led to baby ghosts haunting hospitals, stealing medical supplies, and increasing healthcare costs. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ben-carson-abortions-create-baby-ghosts-haunt-hospitals/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Ben Carson: ‘Abortions Create Baby Ghosts that Haunt Hospitals’ | 7 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
faly-00029 | Claim: Access audit of 1662 important buildings in 50 cities has been completed till date. | true | https://factly.in/fact-check-has-accessibility-for-pwds-improved-in-the-last-four-years/ | Fact: Access audits of 1662 buildings in 50 cities completed by auditors. Hence, the claim is TRUE. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Has Accessibility for PwDs improved in the last four years? | null | null | ['None'] |
goop-00617 | Gwen Stefani Unable To Sell Tickets For Las Vegas Residency? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-sell-tickets-las-vegas-residency/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Gwen Stefani Unable To Sell Tickets For Las Vegas Residency? | 3:00 am, July 19, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09660 | The Congressional Budget Office -- supposedly non-partisan -- estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four (from cap and trade) will be $6,800 per year. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/27/chain-email/6800-cap-and-trade-not-cbo-estimate/ | Critics of the Democratic cap-and-trade proposal have many complaints about the plan, but their biggest is cost. They say it will cost so much that it will be a significant burden on a typical American family. The latest variation of this comes in a chain e-mail that contends the cap-and-trade plan will require more energy-efficient homes (a claim we rated Pants on Fire ). The e-mail says, "The Congressional Budget Office -- supposedly non-partisan -- estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded." We've spent a lot of time looking into claims about how much the cap-and-trade plan could cost families, and one thing's for certain: There's no consensus. The Environmental Protection Agency says it could cost as little as $80 per year while the conservative Heritage Foundation says it could cost as much as $1,241 annually in higher energy bills. We've explained the pros and cons of the various estimates in those previous items, so here we're going to look into the chain e-mail's claim that the CBO estimates cap-and-trade will cost a family of four $6,800 a year. The bill in question is called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. It is sponsored by Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, and aims to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Companies, particularly utilities, would have to either buy pollution credits or adopt cleaner technology. Critics say that either way, the cost of energy will go up, and that cost will be passed on to the consumer. The CBO is a key player because it is a widely respected nonpartisan branch of Congress that calculates cost estimates. In June 2009, the CBO released an analysis of the House bill, saying that the economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion -- or about $175 per household. The individual cost would vary depending on your wealth. Low-income consumers could expect to save $40 a year because of credits from utilities, while high-income consumers would see a net cost for energy of $235 to $340 annually. It's also important to note that the costs are expected to vary year to year because of the way the law would be phased in. The CBO chose 2020 as a milestone for its analysis because it's a point at which the program would have been in effect for eight years, giving the economy and polluters time to adjust. But had the CBO chosen a later date, the cost per family may have been higher because the government would gradually be charging polluters more. We traced the $6,800 estimate back to a report from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has been very critical of the cap-and-trade plan. In the report, the group criticizes the CBO for failing to consider the harm that the cap-and-trade plan could do to the economy. The conservative group says the law could cause companies to produce less, which would reduce the GDP in 2020 by $161 billion in 2009 dollars. By 2035, it would be $650 billion lower, which works out to about $6,800 per family of four per year. So the chain e-mail has taken the estimate from a conservative think tank and falsely attributed it to the CBO, a nonpartisan branch of Congress. There are many legitimate questions that can be raised about the cost of cap-and-trade, but it's simply incorrect to say the CBO came up with the $6,800 figure. We find this claim False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2009-11-27T17:55:35 | 2009-11-24 | ['None'] |
thet-00019 | ...the problem with the supply of affordable housing in England is much, much, much larger than Scotland. I find it fascinating that there is no private-sector rental used at all to place people up here – it’s all local authority and housing association, because you have supply.” | false | https://theferret.scot/scotland-homeless-housing-private-sector/ | null | Fact check Housing and homelessness | Heather Wheeler MP | null | null | Claim that Scotland does not use private accommodation for homeless people is False | March 23, 2018 | null | ['Scotland', 'England'] |
pomt-05997 | Many types of fish and shellfish from waters across the state are labeled unsafe to eat. | mostly true | /new-jersey/statements/2012/jan/20/james-florio/jim-florio-says-fish-new-jersey-waters-labeled-uns/ | There’s plenty of fish in the waters of New Jersey, along with lots of other things: mercury, polychlorobiphenyls and dioxin, among them. And according to a former governor, there could be some danger in eating fish from Garden State waters. "Many types of fish and shellfish from waters across the state are labeled unsafe to eat," Jim Florio wrote in a Dec. 14 guest column in The Star-Ledger about how new reductions in mercury pollution will protect New Jerseyans from contaminated seafood. It turns out Florio wasn’t exactly telling a fish tale, PolitiFact New Jersey found. "I think that’s a fair and accurate statement actually," said Kerry Pflugh, manager of Constituent Services for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. "But that doesn’t mean that everything we catch is unsafe to eat. … Advisories are not based on water quality, it’s based on what’s in the fish itself. Fish advisories are set by tissue analysis, not water quality." Jonathan Scott, communications director for Clean Water Action in Washington, DC said, "We would agree with his assessment." Florio could not be reached for comment. How are fish consumption advisories formulated? Fish collected from New Jersey waterways are sent to The Academy of Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia. Tissue samples are taken to test for contaminants – mostly mercury, PCBs, DDT and other pesticides, said Richard Horwitz, senior biologist at the academy. A committee decides an acceptable risk for eating a particular fish based on potential health issues for people considered "high risk": children, pregnant women and women of child-bearing age, Horwitz said. They are advised to eat smaller portions of fish and less often. The 2010 Fish Consumption Advisories for all New Jersey waterways is available at the DEP’s Office Of Science website. The 30-page document explains what parts of fish are safe to eat; proper preparation; consumption frequency; and more. "Fish is a very healthy source of protein, vitamins and minerals," said Dr. Gary Buchanan, manager for the DEP’s Office of Science. "Just be careful about the fish you eat when catching them in local waters." The state also considers federal recommendations made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "The EPA provides guidance to assist states, Indian tribes and local governments in developing methods of monitoring, gathering and assessing information about their fish populations," EPA press officer John Martin said in an email. "Since this information is only guidance, use by states is not mandatory. The States have primary responsibility for monitoring, assessing and making advisory decisions. Thus the basis for each State fish advisory varies." While a variety of contaminants are found in fish, mercury is the most prevalent, experts told us. The mercury found in New Jersey waters comes from air pollution emitted from power plants, coal plants and incinerators from Pennsylvania and the Midwest, according to Buchanan, Horwitz and Scott. "If those sources from out of state are reduced, that will help speed up the reduction of mercury in our waters and our fish and help allow additional fish consumption," Buchanan said. "It is a nationwide problem. It’s not just a New Jersey problem. Every state in the country has a fish advisory for some parameter and some species." Even with the chemicals found in fish, New Jerseyans shouldn’t fear eating fish caught from the state’s waters, said Tom Fote, legislative chairman for the Jersey Coast Anglers Association in Toms River, as long as fish consumption guidelines are followed. "Seafood coming out of New Jersey waters is no different than the seafood coming from out of any other state," Fote said. Our ruling Florio said in a recent opinion column in The Star-Ledger that most fish from New Jersey waterways "is labeled unsafe to eat." Experts told PolitiFact New Jersey that they agree with the former governor’s assessment but also note that fish from New Jersey waters can be eaten safely by following consumption advisories. Also, fish bought in supermarkets or other stores in New Jersey are labeled, but recreationally caught fish are not. We rate Florio’s statement Mostly True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com. | null | James Florio | null | null | null | 2012-01-20T07:30:00 | 2011-12-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-04733 | Says the national health care law puts federal "bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor." | false | /new-jersey/statements/2012/aug/30/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-national-health-care-law-puts-/ | The truth can be difficult. So difficult that even as Gov. Chris Christie said Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would "tell us the hard truths," Christie himself slid into misleading territory. "Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world’s greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor," Christie said during his keynote address Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. In his capacity as a top Romney surrogate, Christie has previously criticized the health care reform passed by President Barack Obama, repeating the thoroughly debunked Republican talking point that the law is "a government takeover of health care." Here, we decided to check Christie’s statement that the law, formally called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- or as some call it, Obamacare -- puts federal "bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor." (In a separate fact-check, we evaluated Christie’s claim that the United States has "the world’s greatest health care system.") PolitiFact National recently fact-checked a nearly identical statement from Romney and rated it False. Romney said that "Obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor." PolitiFact found Romney’s claim overstated the level of government control under the new law, which keeps intact the private-sector delivery of health care. The law requires insurance plans to carry a minimum benefits package and sets up virtual exchanges where individuals can purchase insurance. The law also creates incentives and penalties to promote better care. But none of that prevents doctors and patients from making healthcare decisions together, as they do now. And while some doctors are critical of the law, the leading physician advocacy group, the American Medical Association, supports the reform. The group’s president, Jeremy Lazarus, said in a June 28 news release after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act that the law "simplifies administrative burdens, including streamlining insurance claims, so physicians and their staff can spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork." Other physician advocacy groups have also expressed support for the law. But, as PolitiFact noted, there are concerns among specialists about the legislation’s impact, specifically in relation to the Medicare program. Many opponents of the law have said the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB -- which will recommend ways to prevent Medicare’s spending growth from exceeding certain targets -- will lead to health care rationing. But the board is specifically forbidden from submitting "any recommendation to ration health care." Though it can decrease government payments to health care providers for services and recommend ways to cut wasteful spending. In a March fact-check, U.S. Senate hopeful Joe Kyrillos, whom Christie has endorsed, pointed, in part, to IPAB to support his claim that under the health care law "the patient-doctor relationship will be eliminated." That statement rated a Pants on Fire on the Truth-O-Meter. Our ruling Christie said Romney will be able to tell the hard truths necessary to end the debacle of putting federal "bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor." We found no solid evidence to support Christie’s sweeping claim, which overreaches on the role of the federal government under the new law. With the reform, the private health care delivery system remains in place. While there are significant changes to the health insurance market and incentives and penalties to promote better care, that doesn’t mean the government is inserting itself in between doctors and patients. We rate this statement False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/53b2a47e-a962-45e1-adcf-140275b44bec | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2012-08-30T07:30:00 | 2012-08-28 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-04073 | Says Rick Scott’s proposal for election reform "only mandates 48 hours of early voting." | mostly true | /florida/statements/2013/jan/22/pink-slip-rick/pink-slip-rick-rick-scotts-proposal-only-mandates-/ | Activists behind Pink Slip Rick are not impressed with Gov. Rick Scott’s attempts to distance himself from the voting reforms he signed into law in 2011. Scott called on the Florida Legislature to consider three reforms to avoid hours-long waits that dogged early voting in some counties in 2012: add more sites for early voting aside from election offices, libraries and city halls; shorten the language of proposed constitutional amendments; and increase the maximum number of early voting days from eight to 14. Scott touted his proposal as giving Floridians "the greatest access to early voting ever in Florida history – at up to 168 hours." But @PinkSlipRick tweeted a strikingly different take on the announcement. "#PinkSlipRick’s proposal is so vague that it only mandates 48 hours of early voting," the tweet said. We wondered how Pink Slip Rick, which is organized by liberal group Florida Watch Action, could have a tally so much lower from the governor’s statement. Here’s the answer: Both sides are right. The 2011 elections law reduced the number of days for early voting from 14 to eight, with supervisors required to offer between six and 12 hours of early voting each day instead of simply eight hours. (Here’s a related check on that.) That meant local elections supervisors had the choice to offer between 48 hours and 96 hours of early voting over eight days. Still, most supervisors offered the maximum of 96 hours, according to an analysis by University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. At 54 hours, Hernando County was among counties offering the smallest amount of time to vote early. Scott is recommending a law that allows supervisors to offer between eight and 14 days of early voting and maintaining the six-to-12 hour window. So under Scott’s proposal, supervisors would be able to provide a maximum of 168 hours of early voting (14 days multiplied by 12 hours a day). The fewest number of hours they would be required to offer for is 48 (eight days multiplied by six hours). Scott’s proposal largely mirrors recommendations from the state supervisors of elections association. "Our ultimate goal must be to restore Floridians' confidence in our election system," Scott said in a statement. "We need more early voting days, which should include an option of the Sunday before Election Day." So both sides make an accurate remark about Scott’s plan, but they cherry-pick the extreme scenario to fit their interest. Florida Watch Action executive director Amy Ritter said Scott should have restored early voting the way it was before the 2011 election law, with a minimum of 96 hours. "Anything less than that is not a promise to restore or expand early voting," Ritter said. We surveyed several local supervisors for how they might implement Scott’s option. In Miami-Dade County, a spokeswoman said the county would likely resume the pre-2011 law system of offering 14 days with 8 hours each day and eight total hours on the weekend, with more room to offer more hours closer to a presidential election. In Hillsborough County, supervisor Craig Latimer said the county has always offered the maximum amount of hours for early voting, and he could see offering the hypothetical max of 168 hours in a presidential election. "There’s got to be relief for large counties," he said. In tiny Franklin County, home to just over 7,000 Panhandle voters, elections supervisor Ida C. Elliott said implementing the full monty of 168 hours would not be feasible, citing overtime costs for workers and a simple lack of need. But even she wouldn’t go to the minimum of 48 hours. "48? That’s a little too...not enough," she said. "That’s crazy. You’d have to do at least your whole working day, for sure." Our ruling Pink Slip Rick’s remark is accurate but leaves out part of the story. Scott’s proposal would mandate a minimum of 48 hours, but it would also let supervisors offer a maximum of 168 hours. Local supervisors would make the call, and the ones we spoke with said they would offer more than the bare minimum. Still, the group is right that 48 hours would be the mandated minimum. The statement is accurate but needs clarification. We rate it Mostly True. | null | Pink Slip Rick | null | null | null | 2013-01-22T17:56:05 | 2013-01-17 | ['None'] |
hoer-00564 | Woman Found Guilty of Raping Eight Men | statirical reports | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/woman-raping-eight-men-satire.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Circulating Story Claims Woman Found Guilty of Raping Eight Men | November 27, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00252 | Prominent barrister Geoffrey Watson SC has criticised Australia's failure to establish a federal anti-corruption watchdog, telling ABC's RN Breakfast that it puts us "out of step with our international obligations". | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-28/fact-check-is-australia-in-breach-of-anti-corruption-obligations/8974742 | Mr Watson's claim that Australia is in breach of its treaty obligations is debatable. But the convention allows nations to use whatever system best suits their particular circumstances, and their approaches can be wide and varied. In Australia's case, our "multi-agency" integrity system relies on a variety of state and Commonwealth bodies to investigate corruption in the public sector. Included among these agencies is the national watchdog for investigating Commonwealth public sector corruption — the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. Experts and advocates are divided on whether this system is sufficient for Australia to comply with its treaty obligations, the result of their different interpretations of the convention's requirements. Some argue that we will not be meeting our obligations until our system is made to be effective by being comprehensive. For the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity to meet this expectation, its funding would need to be increased and its jurisdiction expanded. Others say that simply by having federal law enforcement officials who are not subject to political interference could get Australia across the line. And while they argue that a single, national watchdog might be desirable, it may not be necessary for meeting our obligations. Most countries considered "cleaner" than Australia in terms of corruption do not have such a body. | ['corruption', 'international-law', 'australia'] | null | null | ['corruption', 'international-law', 'australia'] | Fact check: Is Australia in breach of its UN anti-corruption obligations? | Fri 10 Nov 2017, 12:18am | null | ['Australia'] |
goop-01133 | Gwen Stefani Inspired By Janet Jackson To Have Another Baby? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-janet-jackson-inspired-baby-blake-shelton-untrue/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Gwen Stefani Inspired By Janet Jackson To Have Another Baby? | 12:37 pm, April 23, 2018 | null | ['Gwen_Stefani', 'Janet_Jackson'] |
goop-00061 | Channing Tatum, Jessie J Living Together? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/channing-tatum-jessie-j-living-together-dating/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Channing Tatum, Jessie J Living Together? | 5:47 pm, October 30, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
bove-00150 | The Real Story Behind The Huge Crowds Gathered At IPhone Launches | none | https://www.boomlive.in/the-real-story-behind-the-huge-crowds-gathered-at-iphone-launches/ | null | null | null | null | null | The Real Story Behind The Huge Crowds Gathered At IPhone Launches | Nov 06 2017 3:14 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13423 | Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death. | mostly false | /california/statements/2016/sep/21/tom-steyer/did-california-spend-5-billion-execute-13-people/ | California billionaire and potential gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer joined the debate over ending the state’s death penalty last week by repeating a questionable claim. "Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death," Steyer said in a press release announcing his support for Proposition 62. The measure would abolish capital punishment in the state. Proposition 66, a competing measure on November’s ballot, would keep the death penalty but proposes speeding up its appeals process. There’s no doubt California’s death penalty system is slow and expensive: But $5 billion to execute 13 people? We decided to fact-check that suspect claim. Our research There are more than 700 people on California’s death row, which the Yes on 62 campaign has correctly claimed is the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere. The state has paid incarceration and court costs for all of those inmates, not just the few that have been executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Steyer based his ‘$5 billion to execute 13 people’ claim on information from the Yes on 62 campaign, according to his spokesman. The campaign has made the death penalty’s high cost a central part of its argument for abolishing executions. The Yes campaign made the same claim as Steyer in a September 12 Facebook post. The Yes on 62 campaign posted this image on its Facebook page on Sept. 12, 2016. The Yes on 62 campaign made the same claim on Twitter on Sept. 16, 2016. It published a more accurate and nuanced statement on its website: "Since 1978, California taxpayers have paid $5 billion to maintain the death penalty and death row, and executed 13 people." The Yes on 62 campaign says it extrapolated the $5 billion estimate from a report by California’s Loyola Law School in 2011 that placed the cost of the state’s entire death penalty system at $4 billion. One of the report’s authors, Paula Mitchell, told PolitiFact California that the $5 billion figure is her updated estimate for how much state and federal taxpayers have spent on California’s entire death penalty system since 1978, not just on cases for the 13 people who have been executed. Mitchell said Steyer and the Yes on 62 campaign left out this key context in their claims. "I think the way to fairly characterize the expense is to say we’ve spent $5 billion on a system that has produced only 13 executions since 1978," said Mitchell, who heads Loyola’s Project for the Innocent and is an adjunct professor. Representatives for the No on 62 campaign rejected the claim by Steyer, noting costs are spread across "a much larger number of cases." They also called the $5 billion estimate in Mitchell’s report "a wildly inflated number." A guard stands watch over the east block of death row at San Quentin State Prison Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016, in San Quentin, Calif. A pair of November ballot measures will decide the future of the death penalty in California. As of Aug. 1, 2016, there were 700 condemned inmates at the prison. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) Wildly inflated? We dug a bit deeper to examine whether Steyer not only wrongly attributed the entire cost of the death penalty system to 13 cases, but also used a "wildly inflated" cost estimate. Mitchell, who is an advocate for abolishing capital punishment, said she’s worked with the Yes on 62 campaign to discuss death penalty cost estimates. She said her estimates are derived from the cost of pre-trial investigations, trials, appeals and incarceration. Her report cites figures from the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, among other sources. Frank Zimring, a law professor and death penalty expert at UC Berkeley, said he’s relied on the report in the past and finds the cost estimate credible, "give or take a hundred million or so." Cost comparison Mitchell’s said her current $5 billion cost estimate represents the amount taxpayers spent "above what it would have cost us" without the death penalty. Her report could not reach a conclusion, she said, on how much a life in prison system would have cost taxpayers over the same period. On average, it cost $47,000 per year to incarcerate a prison inmate in California during the 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The cost to house a death row inmate, however, is $90,000 more per year than for an inmate in the general prison population, said Mitchell. She attributed the higher cost to lengthy and complex death row court cases. Death penalty court cases cost more than others, in part, because more attorneys are legally required to participate and more investigation is required. Costs also mount because death penalty appeals must be heard by the California Supreme Court, which has only seven justices. That creates a bottleneck, Mitchell said, where each case can stretch a decade or more. Without the death penalty, Zimring said the cost of trials and appeals would be "vastly less." Our ruling Tom Steyer said recently: "Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death." But that cost has been spread over hundreds of cases since 1978, not just the 13 that led to executions. California currently has more than 700 inmates on death row. Prosecuting and housing each costs the state significantly year after year. Steyer’s claim might have been correct if he had said taxpayers have spent $5 billion on a system that’s resulted in 13 executions. Instead, his words leave the impression California paid the entire $5 billion for a fraction of its hundreds of cases. We rate Steyer's claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/bc51bc76-832d-4387-956d-fa0a87051f25 | null | Tom Steyer | null | null | null | 2016-09-21T06:00:00 | 2016-09-14 | ['California'] |
pomt-11708 | Alabama state police arrest 3 poll workers in Birmingham. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/dec/19/american-revolution/no-alabama-poll-workers-were-not-arrested-us-senat/ | Poll workers in Birmingham, Ala., allowed 3,000 invalid votes to benefit Democrat Doug Jones in his Senate race against Republican Roy Moore, according to a fake news article on Facebook. "Alabama State Police arrest 3 poll workers in Birmingham" stated a headline on the American Revolution website. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. There is no truth to this article. We saw no disclaimer on the American Revolution website, but the same story was posted on reaganwasright, a website that identifies itself as satire and is a frequent purveyor of fake news. Jones beat Moore in the Alabama U.S. Senate special election Dec. 12. The Washington Post reported in November that Moore, while in his 30s, initiated sexual encounters with several teenagers, according to the women interviewed by the newspaper. There have been multiple fake news reports related to the election. This article on the American Revolution website contained no details explaining the supposedly fraudulent votes and contains some fictional details such as stating that Birmingham is in Applevale County -- it is located in Jefferson County. It stated that the three poll workers -- Wanda Werkmeister, Olivia Pertuiary and Maureen Brown -- will all face felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $1 million in fines. The article includes a quote by Fox News host Sean Hannity, but we found no evidence he said this: "Without that inner-city ghetto vote, Doug Jones doesn’t have a chance. It doesn’t make much sense why someone from the city’s vote is so much more important to Democrats, who swear they aren’t at all racist." The article stated that Hannity made those comments on Dana Loesch’s show Guns God and Grits. A Fox News spokeswoman told PolitiFact that Hannity did not make the statement and Loesch, who hosts a conservative radio show, told PolitiFact that she hadn’t had Hannity on her show in a few years and doesn’t have a show with that name. The American Revolution website linked to the Facebook page for Special News USA. We sent a message to Special News USA via Facebook and a person replied stating, "I do not know whether or not the news is correct or not, but I distributed it to get the feedback of other people." We found no news reports that poll workers were arrested in Birmingham. Robyn Bradley Bryan, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency spokeswoman, told PolitiFact that the agency did not arrest any poll workers. A spokesman for the Alabama Secretary of State, John Bennett, told PolitiFact that there were no poll workers with the names in the article. A headline stated "Alabama state police arrest 3 poll workers in Birmingham." There is no evidence that such a crime occurred. We rate this headline Pants on Fire. ' See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | American Revolution | null | null | null | 2017-12-19T11:29:25 | 2017-12-15 | ['Alabama', 'Birmingham'] |
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.