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vogo-00548 | Statement: “Pacific Beach has typically around 600 DUI’s a year,” Scott Chipman, a member of the Pacific Beach Planning Group, said on the KPBS program These Days on July 1. | determination: true | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-where-do-people-get-arrested-for-dui/ | Analysis: Appearing on KPBS, Chipman advocated for greater regulation of alcohol licensing in Pacific Beach. He blamed the neighborhood’s high bar density for continuing a rowdy reputation and large presence of certain crimes like DUI. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Where Do People Get Arrested for DUI? | July 21, 2010 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00970 | On counting state budget shortfalls | full flop | /wisconsin/statements/2015/feb/13/scott-walker/did-scott-walker-flip-flip-budget-shortfall/ | It’s a favorite talking point of Gov. Scott Walker, one he’s taking national as he charges up a potential presidential campaign: He inherited a $3.6 billion budget shortfall from Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, but dug out of it by cutting costs and limiting union bargaining power with state and local government. Walker even dropped the figure into his well-received January 2015 speech at an Iowa cattle call for 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls. So our eyebrows went up Feb. 6, 2015 when Walker was questioned about his stewardship of the state budget by Fox News anchor Bret Baier in a profile on the rising presidential hopes of the Wisconsin governor. During the interview, Baier said: "You talk about $2 billion in (tax) savings for individuals and businesses, but you also have a $2.2 billion budget shortfall in the coming two years." Walker immediately questioned the credibility of the $2.2 billion number and portrayed it as a media creation. "I would contend that’s based on numbers from some of the Wisconsin media outlets as if everybody who asked for anything got it," Walker said. "Even in your own household budget that never happens." Has Walker changed his view on the validity of these shortfall estimates now that he’s in the governor’s chair? This is another one for the Flip-O-Meter. Our standard disclaimer applies: The Flip-O-Meter is not designed to say whether any change in position is good policy or good politics. Rather, it strictly looks at whether a public official has been consistent in his or her stated views on a topic. Let’s go back to November 2010, shortly after his election to replace Doyle. Walker pounced on the numbers from a statutorily required report by the state Department of Administration that showed -- in combination with other debts -- Walker would inherit a $3.6 billion shortfall six months after taking office in January 2011. Time and again …. and again … Walker used that number to portray the state as broke, and to explain the cuts he proposed -- and which were ultimately made -- in public education funding and other programs. We, and other media outlets, examined the figure then and declared it credible, as far as it goes. As we’ve explained, it’s not a "deficit" number as Walker and others in Madison often call it. It’s a pre-budget estimate designed to illustrate the size of the shortfall or challenge the governor faces when putting together a budget. The shortfall figure includes all the requests from state departments, and also predictions of how much tax revenue the state will collect. Fast forward to the Fox interview. Walker said the report of a $2.2 billion shortfall heading into his budget was a media creation. But the fact is, it came from a report from his own budget shop in his Department of Administration. What’s more, tax cuts pushed by Walker and Republicans in the Legislature play into some of the challenge that faced budget-makers, as projected revenues have fallen short. But by far the biggest chunk of the $2.2 billion projection is -- as Walker alluded to on Fox -- the spending increases sought by state agencies. But that’s always been the case. That’s the purpose of the report -- to see how tax revenue projections are looking compared to what state agencies say they want and need. Nothing’s changed about the methodology behind the shortfall projections. The only thing that’s changed is Walker’s tune. He still talks up the 2010 figures as if describing a budget-balancing miracle, but now dismisses their 2014 version as a big nothing. This merits a Full Flop. ------ More on Scott Walker For profiles and stories on Scott Walker and 2016 presidential politics, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Scott Walker page. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2015-02-13T18:00:00 | 2015-02-06 | ['None'] |
tron-02109 | The story behind the military song “taps” | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/taps/ | null | inspirational | null | null | null | The story behind the military song “taps” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02914 | Only 14 percent of Americans were able to keep these individual market plans for two years before Obamacare became law. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2013/nov/03/van-jones/amid-swarm-canceled-policies-van-jones-says-indivi/ | Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care law are quick to evoke the plight of potentially millions of Americans getting hit by cancellation notices from their health insurance companies due to new coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act. All of a sudden, Republican critics sound like members of the consumer-first "party of Ralph Nader," quipped Van Jones, the Democratic co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, during a panel discussion on ABC’s This Week. "They're the biggest consumer protection operation in the world now, but six months ago we had people who were getting these same cancellation notices and the Republican Party was silent," he said. "There's a problem when you're indifferent to the losers the last time. I want to make one thing perfectly clear. You look at the numbers here. Fourteen percent, only 14 percent of Americans were able to keep these individual market plans for two years before." Is his figure about the volatile individual market accurate? First, understand that consumers who seek health insurance coverage on their own are not the norm in this country. Most people are covered by their employer or Medicaid or Medicare. Another 16 percent are uninsured. About 6 percent, or 15 million Americans, are in the individual marketplace, which will be the most affected by the new law. That was intentional. After the show, Jones told PunditFact that the individual marketplace is a "wild, wild west" where people were denied coverage for pre-existing conditions and policyholders were continually dropped by insurers offering thin, sketchy coverage. The people in this unstable market are a transient bunch, signing 12-month contracts with insurers as they move between jobs or lose coverage they once had. When their contract is up, the insurer can discontinue a policy or change it. If they end it, federal law says they have to give policyholders 90 days notice and the choice to sign up for different coverage. "Current policyholders are not having their current policy canceled – rather, the insurance company is exercising its option to discontinue the policy at the end of the contract year," according to Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. And now, if healthcare.gov straightens out, they can purchase new coverage there. The health care law’s authors wanted to make sure people in the individual marketplace had access to the same standardized coverage as everyone else. As a result, new policies created after the health care law passed in March 2010 must cover "10 essential health benefits," such as preventive care, ambulatory service, and maternity and newborn care. Because many of these individual plans don’t offer that, and they weren’t eligible to be "grandfathered" under the new law, the insurers are shedding some of them. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s all part of the complicated before-and-after picture that Jones was trying to paint for viewers about the benefits of the much-maligned health care law. As for his stat that "only 14 percent of Americans were able to keep these individual market plans for two years" before the health care law, Jones told us he was a little off. He meant to say 17 percent, a reference to a finding in a 2004 study published in the journal Health Affairs that was recently highlighted in a Washington Post explainer about the policy cancellations. The study examined coverage patterns in the individual insurance marketplace from 1996-2000 -- quite some time ago. The key finding for our purposes is this: "Roughly one-sixth (17 percent) of those with individual insurance coverage retained it for more than two years." The reason? Not because of insurers canceling plans like Jones suggested. Though insurers do cancel coverage, the study determined that most of the volatility with enrollment and dropped policies had to do with policyholders moving between employer coverage, with a median enrollment length of eight months. The people who kept their insurance the longest were small business employees or self-employed, the study found. So Jones is close on the number. But Timothy Jost, a Washington and Lee law professor, says the number does not exactly mean what Jones said it does. Jones is saying it’s the fault of insurance companies that most people could not hold onto their coverage, but the reality is less known. It’s probably not accurate to pin it all on insurers canceling the plans, Jost said, though no one knows for sure how much of the churning has to do with insurers and people canceling their plan or choosing a new one. "He does have a point, but I wouldn’t have said it that way," Jost said. "It’s a market that has just not functioned very well. ... It’s long been the case that people just come and go from the market all the time." Other health policy experts found Jones’ remarks confusing. Yes, the market tends to be volatile due to high administrative costs and the inability to pool risk among healthy and sick patients like large employer plans, said Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush. "Does he think Republicans should have complained about the volatility in the individual market before this? That only makes sense if they have a solution to the problem," she said. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius referenced another 2004 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation in an online column meant to offer some calm around the cancellation notices for individual plans. The study said about 45 percent of policies remained after two years, a much higher estimate though its sample did not include short-term health insurance policies that are often bought to cover gaps of three to six months. Our ruling Jones said, "Only 14 percent of Americans were able to keep these individual market plans for two years" before Obamacare became law. He was trying to make the point that canceled policies have been the norm in the individual insurance market long before the Affordable Care Act. His figure is 3 percentage points off of a 2004 study that found only 17 percent of individual policyholders kept their plans for more than two years. More importantly, though, a health policy expert said Jones probably went too far in indicating that insurance companies were to blame for the high turnover. Many people enter that market for the purpose of buying short-term protection. That means people in the individual market might be dropping the health insurance plan they have as much as insurance companies might be canceling the plan altogether. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Van Jones | null | null | null | 2013-11-03T17:58:28 | 2013-11-03 | ['United_States'] |
farg-00108 | It’s time that a president stepped up to address gun violence. "And I’m talking Democrat and Republican presidents. They have not stepped up." | spins the facts | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/trumps-misleading-gun-rhetoric/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Eugene Kiely | ['gun control'] | Trump’s Misleading Gun Rhetoric | March 1, 2018 | 2018-03-02 00:03:30 UTC | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-00430 | NASA says an asteroid bigger than a football pitch is heading towards Earth. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2018/aug/24/blog-posting/not-so-close-asteroid-headed-towards-earth-wont-hi/ | Articles trending on social media are hinting at an out-of-this-world claim: that Earth is about to be decimated by an incoming asteroid. "NASA says an asteroid bigger than a football pitch is heading towards Earth," the Wakefield Express reported. The meaning of that sentence — aside from the term "football pitch," which is simply Britspeak for "soccer field" — seemed alarming to us. "Dubbed ‘2016 NF23’, the gargantuan lump of space rock has been labelled ‘potentially hazardous’ by (NASA)," the article continued. Uh-oh. We began to wonder if Earth was on a collision course with a giant asteroid. Turns out, the answer is no. This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Close, but not that close The Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory keeps a database that details all instances where objects in space have had a "close approach" to the Earth. The asteroid in question, 2016 NF23, is on that list. According to that database, the asteroid is predicted to be closest to the Earth on Aug. 29, 2018. It will be travelling at 20,000 miles per hour, or about 5 and a half miles per second. The database also says the asteroid is estimated to be 70 meters to 160 meters in diameter, or about 75 to 175 yards. That’s roughly the size of a soccer field. But there’s actually no reason to worry about 2016 NF23. That’s because even at its point of closest approach to the Earth, the asteroid will be more than 3 million miles away (or, a lot of soccer fields). That’s more than 13 times the distance between the Earth and its moon. "From an astronomical perspective, that may be close, but from a human perspective, it’s obviously not very close at all; the asteroid is certainly not ‘skimming’ past the Earth, as the story claims," said Paul Chados, the manager of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, in an interview. He added, "In no way is our prediction a ‘warning,' as the story intimates." The Wakefield Express is also incorrect in saying that 2016 NF3 "has been labelled 'potentially hazardous'" by NASA. Alan Chamberlin, a senior engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told PolitiFact, "The object is not classified as a PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) as defined in our CNEOS website." That’s because the asteroid has too high of an absolute magnitude (a measurement for determining how bright asteroids appear) and is too small of an object to be considered a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. Both Chados and Chamberlin suggested that the article was misleading and recommended that readers who are concerned about asteroids and other objects possibly striking the Earth look at NASA’s Sentry page. Unlike the close approach database, the Sentry page only lists asteroids "that have even the slightest chance of colliding with our planet over the next century or two," as Chados put it. The Wakefield Express did not respond to a request for comment sent to the editorial email listed on its Contact Us page. Our ruling A headline on the website Wakefield Express claimed that "NASA says an asteroid bigger than a football pitch is heading towards Earth." NASA has indeed confirmed a large asteroid is heading in the direction of Earth. But the asteroid will not actually do any damage to us. It will stay far, far, far away. In addition, the article says that NASA has labeled the asteroid ‘potentially hazardous.’ NASA has made no such designation. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-08-24T16:18:51 | 2018-08-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-14186 | As a former federal prosecutor, I prosecuted over 4,000 cases. | true | /missouri/statements/2016/apr/25/catherine-hanaway/federal-prosecutor-catherine-hanaway-and-her-offic/ | At the March 17 Republican gubernatorial debate in Columbia, candidate Catherine Hanaway told an audience that she prosecuted more than 4,000 cases during her tenure as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Hanaway served as a federal prosecutor from July 20, 2005, through April 17, 2009, which means that she would have had to prosecute at least three cases a day on average to make that 4,000-case benchmark. That seemed like a lot of cases, so we looked at the record. Hanaway’s history in public life While many Missourians may know Hanaway as the first female speaker of the House in Missouri, she is also a decorated prosecutor who’s worked in both the private and public sectors. In 2005, Hanaway left her position as speaker after being appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri by former President George W. Bush. In 2009, Hanaway resigned and joined the Ashcroft Law Firm, founded by former Missouri governor, senator and U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft. As a side note, in 2013, Missouri Lawyer’s Media listed Hanaway as the most expensive lawyer to hire in Missouri at a rate of upward to $793 an hour. Hanaway said at the time that most of the firm’s clients were large national and international companies, and "our rates are reflective of that." Hanaway joined Husch Blackwell’s St. Louis office in 2013. Her federal prosecution history Will Scharf, Hanaway’s policy director, said as a U.S. attorney, Hanaway was "directly responsible for federal prosecutions across half the state, signing every federal indictment initiating formal proceedings against criminals within the district, and supervising prosecutions as they progressed." It’s unclear how many of these cases she prosecuted personally. She oversaw a staff of more than 100 people, as Hanaway makes clear on her campaign website. According to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri’s online Case Management/Electronic Case Files system, which tracks criminal case filings for the court, Hanaway’s office filed at least 5,430 cases during her stint as a federal prosecutor. That doesn’t include cases inherited by Hanaway from her predecessors. So it could be argued that Hanaway actually dealt with even more than 5,430 cases. Scharf also noted in an email interview that Hanaway never claimed to be "lead counsel" or that she "tried 4,000 cases," and that the notion that she could physically be there to prosecute 4,000 cases "would be absurd, since 95 percent of criminal cases end in a guilty plea without a trial." That percentage of plea bargains is in line with a 2011 Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate. Our ruling Hanaway told an audience that she prosecuted over 4,000 cases during her time as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Based on federal data, Hanaway’s office dealt with well over 4,000 cases and each case required her personal signature. Her words might suggest that she handled each case herself, but most listeners would understand that she ran a large office. We rate this statement True. | null | Catherine Hanaway | null | null | null | 2016-04-25T09:57:55 | 2016-03-17 | ['None'] |
snes-06161 | A photograph captures a rare seven-headed snake found in the Honduras. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/7-headed-snake/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does This Photograph Show a 7-Headed Snake? | 26 November 2013 | null | ['Honduras'] |
snes-03141 | Michelle Obama's Secret Service detail abruptly quit during her Hawaii vacation and left her on the street. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/michelle-obama-ditched-by-secret-service/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Michelle Obama Get Ditched by Secret Service? | 14 January 2017 | null | ['Hawaii', 'Michelle_Obama', 'United_States_Secret_Service'] |
chct-00282 | FACT CHECK: Has The House Held Zero Hearings On The Russia Investigation? | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/11/01/fact-check-has-the-house-held-zero-hearings-on-the-russia-investigation/ | null | null | null | David Sivak | Fact Check Editor | null | null | 2:57 PM 11/01/2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00508 | Under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/25/chain-email/chain-email-says-medicare-wont-pay-observational-s/ | A reader recently sent us a chain email we hadn’t seen before. The lengthy missive, purportedly written by a "senior gentleman in Mesa, Arizona," details a visit to a hospital made contentious by Medicare payment rules. The anonymous author claims to have experienced "a medical situation that made it very clear that the ‘Affordable Care Act’ is neither affordable, nor do they care." The full email, which is lengthy, is accessible in its entirety here. But briefly, the author relates what happened after he sought treatment for a suspected urinary-tract infection. After collapsing in a local urgent-care clinic, he was taken to a hospital. There, the medical staff feared he could be experiencing sepsis, a potentially serious inflammation caused by an infection, so they ordered a battery of tests, including one that could take a day or two to complete. As a result, they told him that he would need to stay in the hospital "for observation" rather than going home. Here’s what happened next: "I said, ‘Doctor, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you admit me for observation, my Medicare will not pay anything. This is due to the Affordable Care Act.’ He said, ‘That's right, it won't.’ I then grabbed for my bag of clothing and said, ‘Then I'm going home.’ He said you're really too sick to be going home, but I understand your position. This health program is going to hit seniors especially hard." Then another doctor came into the room. "I said, ‘Doc, you and I both know that under the Affordable Care Act anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent.’ At which point he nodded in affirmation. I said, ‘You will either admit me for a specific treatment or you won't admit me.’ Realizing he wasn't going to win this one, he said he would prepare my release papers." We zeroed in on the core claim of this story, that "under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent." When we looked into it, we found that Medicare does indeed have different reimbursement policies for patients who had been admitted to hospitals for observation as opposed to being admitted to treat a specific diagnosis. However, the email’s author (and, if his recounting is accurate, each of the medical professionals he spoke to) were sorely misinformed about how Medicare rules operate. The different reimbursement rates have to do with follow-up in-home care, not the original hospital stay. And crucially, the controversy over reimbursement for patients under "observation care" has nothing whatsoever to do with President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. What is ‘observation care’? According to Kaiser Health News, "hospitals provide observation care for patients who are not well enough to go home but not sick enough to be admitted. This care requires a doctor’s order and is considered an outpatient service, even though patients may stay as long as several days. The hospitalization can include short-term treatment and tests to help doctors decide whether the patient should be admitted." Because observation care is considered outpatient treatment, Medicare generally covers such visits, minus things like copayments and the cost of routine drugs. Where Medicare reimbursement significantly falls short is once an observation patient leaves the hospital. "Observation patients cannot receive Medicare coverage for follow-up care in a nursing home, even though their doctors recommend it," according to Kaiser. "To be eligible for nursing home coverage, seniors must have first spent at least three consecutive days (or through three midnights) as an admitted patient, not counting the day of discharge." In other words, assuming the email author’s story actually happened, he shouldn’t have had to worry about Medicare paying for his time in the hospital while under observation. Medicare would have paid, minus copayments and the like; there was no need for him to go home while in a fragile state just to avoid being responsible for the full cost of his care. Is this related to the Affordable Care Act? Tying this policy to Obama’s law is flat-out wrong. "The Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with observation status," said Mary T. (Terry) Berthelot, a senior attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy. Several other health-policy experts confirmed that. The policy was established by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. While we’re at it, we’ll take a moment to debunk an additional Affordable Care Act-related claim included in the email. The author writes that during a visit to his family practitioner, "I told him that I had heard that the Affordable Care Act would no longer pay for cancer treatment for those 76 and older, is that true? His understanding is that it is true." In reality, there are no such age limits. In October 2014, we rated Pants on Fire a chain email that claimed that under the Affordable Care Act, "at age 76 when you most need it most, you are not eligible for cancer treatment. … Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age." Our ruling The chain email said that "under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent." That’s wrong. Medicare will cover the hospital stay, minus standard copayments and the like. Patients kept in the hospital under observation will not be able to receive Medicare reimbursements for follow-up care such as nursing-home stays, however. Even more inaccurate is the charge that this policy stemmed from the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this stems from a separate policy decision and had nothing to do with Obama’s law. The claim is not only ridiculous but also dangerous, by urging ailing patients to leave the hospital for no good reason. This claim rates Pants on Fire. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2015-06-25T11:08:43 | 2015-06-24 | ['Medicare_(United_States)'] |
goop-01384 | Jennifer Lawrence Can’t Find A Boyfriend? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-lawrence-dating-disaster-not-true/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Lawrence Can’t Find A Boyfriend? | 12:54 pm, March 15, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03740 | An Oregon ballot lists Democratic presidential candidates twice but no Republican candidates. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oregon-ballot-omits-donald-trump/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Snopes Staff | null | Oregon Ballot Omits Donald Trump | 21 October 2016 | null | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Oregon'] |
pomt-01547 | Says "Nick Rahall voted with Obama 94 percent of the time." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/sep/15/national-republican-congressional-committee/nrcc-says-nick-rahall-voted-barack-obama-94-time/ | One of the biggest obstacles to a strong Democratic showing in the 2014 midterm elections is that approval ratings for President Barack Obama are mired in the 40 percent range -- and even lower in many red states. Because of this, it’s no surprise that the National Republican Congressional Committee -- the House Republicans’ campaign arm -- is creating ads that emphasize the degree to which vulnerable Democratic incumbents have voted with Obama. We recently found two NRCC ads using virtually identical language on this point. Here, we’ll fact-check an ad that targets Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia. In a separate item, we’ll fact-check an ad attacking Democratic Rep. John Barrow of Georgia. Rahall, first elected in 1976, represents a district that gave Republican Mitt Romney a whopping 32-point margin of victory over Obama in the 2012 presidential election. It ranks as the second-most Republican district currently represented by a Democrat in the House, making it a prime takeover opportunity for the GOP. (The most Republican district held by a Democrat is the Utah seat occupied by retiring Rep. Jim Matheson.) Rahall faces state Sen. Evan Jenkins in November, in a race analysts say is one of the most vulnerable seats held by the Democrats. The ad against Rahall features a constituent, Carrie Overby of Huntington, W.Va. She says, "On the issues that have mattered, Nick Rahall has voted with Barack Obama, whether it's spending, cap-and-trade, EPA regulations, Obamacare." When she says that, text on the screen says, "Nick Rahall voted with Obama 94 percent of the time." In much smaller type, the ad footnotes this claim to "Congressional Quarterly 2009 vote analysis." Since data from 2009 would now be five years old, we had a hunch that the NRCC might have ignored a couple of years with lower percentages. It turns out we were right. Data from the same CQ study shows that Rahall voted with Obama 88 percent of the time in 2010, 65 percent in 2011, 64 percent in 2012 and 58 percent in 2013. (Data for 2014 has not yet been posted.) That’s not as low as Barrow, who was targeted in the companion ad; Barrow’s score dropped as low as 28 percent in 2012. Still, it shows a degree of voting independence by Rahall that’s not reflected in the NRCC ad. Clearly, the 94 percent figure for voting with Obama was a more attractive one for the NRCC to highlight, but it amounts to cherry-picking. Asked to justify using the five-year-old data and ignoring later figures, NRCC spokesman Ian Prior said, "It is important for West Virginia voters to know that in 2009, when the Democrats controlled all the levers of government and could push legislation through both chambers of Congress, Nick Rahall voted with Barack Obama 94 percent of the time, including on Obama’s budget, which included a cap-and-trade plan and a $3 billion, 37 percent EPA funding increase to advance his climate agenda." Our ruling The NRCC ad said, "Nick Rahall voted with Obama 94 percent of the time." Rahall did indeed vote with Obama 94 percent of the time -- but that was in 2009, a fact that is footnoted in the ad, albeit in small type. Between 2010 and 2013, Rahall’s voting record was less closely aligned with Obama, bottoming out at 58 percent in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context, so we rate it Half True. | null | National Republican Congressional Committee | null | null | null | 2014-09-15T09:28:55 | 2014-09-08 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02391 | Country star Willie Nelson has died. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/willie-nelson-death-hoax/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Willie Nelson Death Hoax | 23 February 2015 | null | ['Willie_Nelson'] |
pomt-02378 | Says President Barack Obama’s approval rating "gained 3 points in the last couple months." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/mar/16/dan-pfeiffer/dan-pfeiffer-says-obamas-approval-rating-recent-mo/ | Here’s a smattering of headlines from the last week on President Barack Obama’s polling numbers: Time: "Poll: Obama’s Approval Rating Sinks To New Low." Politico: "Poll: Obama approval at record low." Wall Street Journal: "WSJ/NBC News Poll: Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low." Des Moines Register: "Obama job approval hits record low." So you can imagine our surprise when White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer claimed Obama’s numbers are actually up during an interview with Meet the Press host David Gregory. Here’s the exchange. Gregory: "We had a big poll out, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, this week. Here’s what it found. Overall job approval for the president: 41 percent. Handling the economy: 41 percent. Same number when it came to foreign policy. And here’s what’s striking: Approval is 74 percent among Democrats. Sounds high, but it’s the lowest that the president’s had. ... The president has really slipped." Pfeiffer: "Public polls are a little bit all over the map. On the same day your poll came out, another poll came out that showed the president gaining 6 points in the last couple months. I’ve looked at a lot of data and let me tell you what we see. There’s no question that everyone in Washington, the president included, took a big hit from the double whammy of a shutdown and the problems of healthcare.gov. We have stabilized and we’re working our way back. If you look at the aggregate of public polling, we’ve gained 3 points in the last couple months." We checked in with the White House to see where Pfeiffer got his numbers. A spokesman pointed us to Real Clear Politics, a political website that aggregates polling data and calculates an average. Obama’s job approval has been underwater for some time. Since May of last year, more Americans polled expressed disapproval in Obama’s job performance than approval. The gap has widened considerably since then. While the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released this week has Obama hitting a new low with an approval rating of 41 percent, the White House noted the Real Clear Politics average had Obama bottom out in December with an approval rating of 39.8 percent. That came on Dec. 3 after several weeks of bad headlines about healthcare.gov’s botched rollout. On March 17, Obama’s aggregate poll numbers put his approval rating at 42.9 percent. That accounts for the 3-point jump that Pfeiffer claimed. The recent "surge" in the average seems to be skewed largely by two outlier polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports and Bloomberg. In a survey from March 13-15, Rasmussen Reports said 49 percent of Americans approve of Obama, while 50 percent disapprove, a statistical dead heat. Bloomberg between March 7-10 found an even split among those surveyed -- 48 percent both approved and disapproved of Obama. That’s a six-point improvement from December, when Bloomberg put his approval rating at 42 percent. The remainder of the polls included in the Real Clear Politics average showed Obama’s net approval rating ranging from -8 (Public Policy Polling) to -16 (Fox News) percentage points. John McIntyre with Real Clear Politics said the average from Dec. 3 likely included six or more polls taken between mid to late November as well as daily tracking polls, but it's possible they weren't from the same pollsters as the current average (at press time McIntyre was looking into which polls were used and we'll update the post when he gets back to us). He added that a quick look at the numbers showed, based on Real Clear Politics' average, Pfeiffer was right, though he noted that the December average captured a weird time period as some polls shut down around the Thanksgiving holiday. Other poll aggregation methods, meanwhile, show much more modest gains by the president. Huffington Post, for example, tracks 88 polls and takes a snapshot of the daily tracking polls from Gallup and Rasmussen every three days. According to their model, Obama’s aggregate approval rating was 42.5 percent on Dec. 2 (his low point) and has jumped just a bit to 43.3 percent. That’s less than 1 percentage point, a considerably smaller improvement than Real Clear Politics’ average. Charles Franklin, co-founder of pollster.com (which the Huffington Post now owns) and director of the Marquette Law School Poll in Milwaukee, walked us through his own aggregation of Obama’s poll numbers. According to Franklin, Obama’s low point came Dec. 2 when he registered an approval rating of 41.98 percent. He currently estimates the number at 44.38, a gain of about 2.4 percentage points. So all three poll averages show Obama’s low point actually came in early December, but his bounceback varies depending on the methodology. "There are various ways of ‘averaging’ or aggregating polls to estimate trends," Franklin said. "My bottom line: There has been some gain though it appears to be not as large as 3 points when using all available polls and a standard trend estimate. There may be a specific pollster you could find that has shown a 3 point gain, but that is cherry picking the one with a larger gain, rather than using all the polls as I and HuffPost do." Our ruling When asked about Obama’s approval rating, Pfeiffer said, "We’ve gained 3 points in the last couple months." He’s right that the aggregate of polling data suggests that Obama’s low point was December, not early March, as the new WSJ/NBC poll said. But there’s some variation in how big of a rebound Obama’s approval rating has seen. While Real Clear Politics says its 3 percent (buoyed by two outliers), Huffington Post put it at less than a percentage point. Franklin said it was somewhere in between those two. Pfeiffer’s correct that the president’s poll numbers are up slightly over the past few months. But they remain low (and underwater), and the gains depend on how you run the numbers. We rate Pfeiffer’s claim Mostly True. Correction: Charles Franklin said President Barack Obama's aggregate approval rating bottomed out at 41.98 percent in December 2013. An earlier version of this fact-check included a different figure. | null | Dan Pfeiffer | null | null | null | 2014-03-16T17:39:52 | 2014-03-16 | ['None'] |
snes-03697 | Video depicts Democrats committing fraud during the 2016 primary. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/voter-fraud-in-2016-primary/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Video Shows Democrats Committing Voter Fraud in 2016 Primary | 26 October 2016 | null | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-03711 | Gov. Scott Walker (is) more than halfway to (his) 250,000 jobs goal. | pants on fire! | /wisconsin/statements/2013/apr/17/maciver-institute/maciver-institute-says-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-/ | Gov. Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his four-year term. With less than two years remaining, the governor’s opponents -- and supporters -- are paying increased attention to the count. That’s why an item posted April 9, 2013 by the MacIver Institute caught our attention. The Madison-based group, which publishes items supportive of conservative causes -- items that are often then cited by other conservatives -- included this headline: "Gov. Scott Walker more than halfway to 250,000 jobs goal." That’s a much larger number of jobs created under Walker than we’ve ever heard -- even from the governor himself. In December 2012, Walker said the state had created "just under 100,000 jobs" since he took office. We rated that statement Pants on Fire. Why? Walker had combined full and partial year data sets from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. His staff explained that he was using a "raw number." But state experts and the governor’s own staff have long said that while the quarterly census is more accurate than monthly measures, the census data should only be viewed in one-year blocks. That is, January to January, or July to July. In other words, you can’t combine partial years of census data with full years to create a running total, due to major seasonal fluctuations in the workforce. Here is what Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie told us when we asked about job numbers in the summer of 2012: "Please don’t, as John Koskinen, an economist at DOR would say, compare February temperatures to July." When we asked MacIver to show us their math, spokesman Nick Novak responded: "We used Bureau of Labor Statistics QCEW figures for each month from January 2011 to September 2012 (the most recent month available). To get to the number of 137,372, we simply subtracted the January 2011 jobs number from the September 2012 jobs number." Novak provided a link to a BLS report that showed the two numbers. But, this isn’t just a simple math problem. MacIver made two critical errors in their calculations. Starting point Walker took office at the beginning of January 2011. MacIver used the number for the end of January 2011. To properly measure the governor’s promise, you need to start with the number of jobs that existed at the start of his term. That is a difference of 65,401 jobs. Here’s how it plays out the way the MacIver Institute calculated the numbers. January 2011 census number: 2,205,584 September 2012 census number: 2,342,956 Increase: 137,372. Here’s how it plays out with the December 2010 number. December 2010 census number: 2,270,985 September 2012 census number: 2,342,956 Increase: 71,971 In summary: MacIver’s math nearly doubles Walker job count because it started counting one month later. In effect, they used a lower starting point, which makes the growth seem larger -- by 65,401 -- than it really is. And even that is a bad number. Apples to oranges There’s a second, more important -- and more familiar -- problem. Like Walker in December, MacIver failed to line up a year-to-year comparison. It measured February temperatures against July. What’s more, the item itself notes that Koskinen, the state economist, told them they should not combine the data sets in this manner: While Koskinen called the numbers "literally true" the article goes on to note: "Koskinen said economists typically use the same month from different years to avoid seasonal variations in employment." Asked about this, Novak said: "In the article we account for the fact that this is not seasonally adjusted and that the chief economist from the Department of Revenue is wary of using data from different months when comparing data year over year." But they didn’t apply any such disclaimer to their headline, or a very large graphic. The claim was retweeted by Madison-based conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna to her 7,114 followers and Milwaukee talker Charlie Sykes posted it on his Right Wisconsin subscription-based website. PolitiFact Wisconsin follows Walker’s jobs promise using the Walk-O-Meter, using a method created with guidance from both state and academic economists, including Koskinen. We combine full year census reports with less accurate monthly employment survey results, and show the results in a monthly graphic. Once full-year information becomes available, it is added in to get an ever-stronger number. As of February 2013, our latest estimate of the number of jobs created since Walker took office is 63,700. Our rating The MacIver Institute posted an item that says Wisconsin has 137,372 more private sector jobs than when Gov. Scott Walker first took office, meaning that Walker is more than halfway to his goal of 250,000 jobs. The jobs promise will be the No. 1 yardstick used to measure Walker’s performance as governor. But the conservative group’s number is wrong, two times over. MacIver started with the wrong month of data. That alone nearly doubled the number of jobs they claim were created under Walker. They compounded their error by combining full and partial years of data -- even though they (like the governor himself) were told not to do so. Pants on Fire. | null | MacIver Institute | null | null | null | 2013-04-17T09:00:00 | 2013-04-09 | ['None'] |
pomt-02346 | Our state economic development agency under Walker, WEDC, actually isn’t even using the funds that are appropriated to it. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2014/mar/23/mary-burke/mark-burke-says-wisconsins-job-agency-has-unspent-/ | In 2011, Gov. Scott Walker led the transformation of the state Commerce Department into the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. The creation of a quasi-private agency was meant to spearhead job creation. After a rocky start, including staffing turmoil and a scathing audit in 2013 , WEDC executives say the agency is finally on solid ground. Walker’s Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, thinks otherwise. "Our state economic development agency under Walker, WEDC, actually isn’t even using the funds that are appropriated to it," she said in a Jan. 21, 2014 video interview with the Appleton Post Crescent. The claim caught our attention because Walker is less than half way to meeting his promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs by the end of his four-year term. Is Burke right that the agency has not even spent the money it has been given to boost job creation? When we asked Burke for backup to the claim, campaign spokesman Joe Zepecki cited news stories and a Jan. 8, 2014 report from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau about the state of WEDC finances. That report was prepared as WEDC asked the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to release the second year of the agency’s two year budget. WEDC leaders were ordered to appear before the committee so lawmakers could hear a progress report and get a detailed look at agency finances. The report said WEDC had a "surplus" of about about $18 million. That’s for an agency that has 90 employees with a budget of about $95 million. The agency also is allowed to issue employers some $300 million in economic incentives in the form of tax cuts. Not surprisingly, leaders of the agency viewed their performance differently. They say a good part of the the surplus stems from the switchover from the old Commerce Department. They also say the agency is track to spend all of it’s budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2015. Burke’s claim is a "bumper sticker about a pretty complicated topic," said WEDC deputy secretary Ryan Murray. The surplus WEDC ended its last fiscal year, which closed in June 2013, with a surplus of $34 million. About $14 million of that was money that "carried over" from the old Commerce Department. The largest chunk -- $30 million -- was due to low demand for loans from the agency. In short, WEDC had expected to lend out $30 million more than was sought by businesses planning to relocate or expand in Wisconsin. The lower demand for loans came from the weak economic recovery, and also the rocky transition to the new agency, Murray said. The agency’s board took two actions to deal with this surplus. First, it created a new policy -- one overlooked when the agency was created in 2011 -- that creates a reserve fund of between 15 to 25 percent of the agency’s budget. The fund gives the agency greater flexibility to handle unexpected events, such as loans offered during propane shortages this winter. The reserve fund was set at $16 million for the current fiscal year. Secondly, WEDC sought for and received funding for the current fiscal year that was $18 million less than the agency’s original request. That action happened in January 2014, after WEDC executives were ordered to appear before the committee. In the end, the panel voted to provide $44.7 million in new taxpayer money for WEDC through June 2015. Spending pace Murray and WEDC spokesman Mark Maley also noted that the agency is on pace to spend its entire appropriation for the current fiscal year. The organization’s total appropriation for the fiscal year ending in June -- including programs, loans and operating expenditures -- is $95.2 million. Through the first six months of the fiscal year, WEDC has spent, made commitments or signed contracts totaling $53.4 million -- 56 percent of the total appropriation, Maley said in an email. That’s a good point. But, of course, it’s not what Burke was talking about. She was criticizing the $18 million surplus -- the amount that was left even after the creation of the reserve fund -- even though she spoke in the present tense. Our rating Burke says that Walker’s jobs agency "isn’t using the funds appropriated to it." She referred to WEDC’s well-documented surplus. No one disagrees about the amount, how it came about or what was done in response to it. Officials note the current budget is on track to be spent in its entirety. We rate Burke’s claim Mostly True. | null | Mary Burke | null | null | null | 2014-03-23T05:00:00 | 2014-01-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-12142 | There are"thousands of Georgia workers that are misclassified as independent contractors," who lose benefits, including health care. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2017/aug/10/stacey-evans/are-georgia-firms-cheating-1000s-workers-out-healt/ | With health care policy in limbo in Washington, the politicians who would like to be Georgia’s next governor are staking out their own policy outlines. Democratic State Rep. Stacey Evans favors expanding Medicaid, but said the state could take other action as well. "There are thousands of Georgia workers that are misclassified as independent contractors, so that their employers can wrongfully deny them the benefits that they deserve, including health care," Evans said Aug. 5. "By expanding Medicaid and classifying workers appropriately, insurance will be available to hundreds of thousands more Georgians." We decided to check Evans’ number of misclassified workers, and found she’s on safe ground. Defining misclassification Some businesses avoid treating workers as employees by calling them an independent contractor. The person might work only for that one business, use equipment the business provides and do exactly what the business tells him or her to do, and yet be labeled as if the person was in business for themselves. The advantage for companies is they avoid paying a number of employment taxes, including Medicare, Social Security and unemployment insurance. If they offer health insurance, they would sidestep that too. As Georgia’s Department of Labor put it, "independent contractors are not independent just because that is what their employer calls them, because that is what they call themselves, or because they sign an ‘independent contractor agreement.’ Independent contractor status depends on the underlying nature of the work relationship." In a recent case, a state administrative judge ruled that a man who drove for a Georgia limousine service was actually an employee and not an independent contractor, as the company (and the state Department of Labor) claimed. The company had required the man to set up his own limited liability corporation, but the ruling said that made no difference. The driver used a company car, and he was "given direction as to where to drive, when to drive, how to drive, how often to drive, and the rates to charge customers." The judge called this an "extreme" case of misclassification. The number in Georgia Evans’ campaign spokesman Seth Clark said she relied on a 2015 Georgia Senate study. That report said an accurate estimate was difficult to make because the state had never done a complete study, as other states have done. However, the state Department of Labor reported that its inspectors had found "over 4,000 misclassified employees," across about 1,700 businesses in 2014. When we asked, the state Department of Labor sent us more recent data. In 2015, it found about 1,500 misclassified workers at 1,800 firms, and in 2016, the number was about 3,000 out of 2,400 firms audited. Complaints by workers and random selection by inspectors trigger audits. The data show that most audits lead to the discovery of a misclassified worker. The department told us that currently, it lists nearly 235,000 employers. The review of about 2,400 represents a small fraction, about 1 percent. The Senate report said the department lacked the resources and manpower to "effectively audit and investigate potential violators." The Senate report listed other state studies. By and large, the more effort a state put into an investigation, the more it found. Minnesota estimated that about 14 percent of employers misclassified workers. Michigan found about 8 percent. A Maryland audit uncovered an average of 20 percent of employers misclassifying employees. In contrast, Nevada relied on records accumulated in the ordinary course of business and reported that while about 12 percent of complaints involved a claim of misclassification, the fraction of audits that found this problem was 2.7 percent. At the national level, the most recent numbers come from the Government Accountability Office. Its review of IRS data from 2008-10 found that worker classification problems represented 20 percent, or over 3 million cases, of noncompliance issues. It’s important to note that simply being classified as an employee is no guarantee of health coverage. Companies with fewer than 51 employees face no penalty if they fail to offer insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Our ruling Evans said that thousands of Georgia workers are misclassified as independent contractors and as a result, lose out on benefits, including health insurance. A state Senate study said there is no solid estimate of the number of misclassified workers, but state investigators had found between 1,500 and 4,000 instances in each of the past three years, or an average of 2,800 per year. That is based on a review of about 1 percent of businesses and most reviews reveal a misclassified worker. States that have conducted more systematic studies found misclassification rates in the range of 10 to 20 percent. The 2,800 average likely misses many instances and it’s a relatively small number, but it’s enough to support Evans’ statement. The connection to health care is less clear, because many small employers don’t offer health insurance, nor are they required to. But Evans was careful to include health care as one of several benefits, and her claim doesn’t hinge on that element. With that caveat, we rate this claim Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Stacey Evans | null | null | null | 2017-08-10T14:51:06 | 2017-08-05 | ['None'] |
goop-01552 | Melissa McCarthy Cheap, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/melissa-mccarthy-cheap-coupons/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Melissa McCarthy NOT Cheap, Despite Report | 12:16 pm, February 18, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01052 | A series of images show a Tesla vehicle in space. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tesla-car-really-space/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This Car Really in Space? | 7 February 2018 | null | ['None'] |
mpws-00035 | Gov. Mark Dayton gave a late-season State of the State address this week. In it, he highlighted some of the bright spots in Minnesota’s economic, education and health outlook as evidence that changes made during his tenure are making the state better. PoliGraph looked at three of those statements this week. “There are more than 2.8 million jobs in Minnesota today. More jobs than ever before in our state’s history. 150,000 more jobs than when I became governor.” Using seasonally adjusted Department of Employment and Economic Development data going back to 1990, Dayton’s claim checks out: There are roughly 2.81 jobs in Minnesota today, and that’s more than the state has seen in recent history. It’s also true that there are about 151,000 more jobs today than when Dayton took office in January 2011. Of course, it’s important to put these numbers in context. The nation as a whole has been recovering from the recession for several years now. According to DEED, Minnesota went into the recession earlier than the nation and came out of it a bit earlier, too. Since then, the state’s growth has essentially tracked the nation’s growth. “Our graduation rate, nearly 80 percent, is the highest in a decade.” According to data from the Department of Education, 79.5 percent of seniors graduated in 2013 up from about 77 percent the year before “This increase is twice the yearly increase seen over the past three years, showing acceleration in progress for Minnesota seniors,” the education department said when it released the numbers. Minnesota’s graduation rate is among the highest in the nation. In fact, graduation rates everywhere are on the rise, particularly among Hispanic and African American kids. However, when it comes to graduating lower income kids, Minnesota’s rate is on the low side compared to other states – about 58 percent, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Education. “We have the fifth lowest percentage of citizens without health insurance coverage.” | accurate | https://blogs.mprnews.org/capitol-view/2014/05/poligraph-dayton-claims-about-economy-education-accurate/ | null | null | null | Catharine Richert | null | PoliGraph: Dayton claims about economy, education accurate | May 2, 2014, 2:20 PM | null | ['Minnesota', 'Massachusetts', 'Washington,_D.C.', 'Connecticut', 'Mark_Dayton', 'African_American', 'Vermont'] |
pomt-04731 | Says Connie Mack IV co-sponsored a bill to "take a third of the Social Security Trust Fund ... give it in individual accounts to the senior citizens, who then were to invest it in the stock market." | false | /florida/statements/2012/aug/30/bill-nelson/bill-nelson-said-connie-macks-wants-take-social-se/ | We’ve heard plenty about U.S. House budget chairman and vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s plans for Medicare lately, but what about his efforts to reform Social Security? U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson would sure like to discuss it -- and tie his opponent, Rep. Connie Mack IV to Ryan’s largely unpopular past plans for the program. "My opponent co-sponsored a bill with none other than congressman Paul Ryan, a bill to privatize Social Security," Nelson said. "Specifically what they did was they were going take a third of the Social Security Trust Fund, they were going to give it in individual accounts to the senior citizens who then were to invest it in the stock market." Never mind for a moment the claim that the GOP wants to privatize Social Security -- we’ve found that particular Democratic condemnation of personal savings accounts to be Mostly False, since they would be voluntary. Let’s delve into the specifics Nelson is citing, and find out how clear he is on the whole Republican plan. A taxing analysis Although Mack wasn’t mentioned by name, Nelson’s office told us the senator was referring to Ryan’s Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act of 2005, which was co-sponsored by Mack and 12 others. The proposal, which never became law, aimed to reform Social Security by allowing workers to divert some of their contributions away from the traditional Social Security program and into personal savings accounts. (Ryan has proposed several versions of this plan over the years.) That’s enough for Nelson to try to fire up his liberal base, but the specifics of his claim are off base. Nelson said this would rob the trust fund, which is funded through payroll taxes. But that fund was never going to have money taken directly from it, nor was the fund going to be abolished. The Ryan plans called for the fund to be compensated with general tax revenue in order to maintain benefit levels for people who stayed in the traditional system. We should note that the plan Mack co-sponsored would have allowed people to divert half their payroll taxes, not a third as Nelson said. An age-old debate More critically, Nelson said the Ryan-Mack plan would have senior citizens invest payroll taxes in the stock market. This gives the wrong idea about who would be affected. Every plan advanced by Ryan has stated the changes in the system would only affect workers younger than 55, with no changes in Social Security for workers and retirees older than that. No one older than 55 would even be eligible for the personal savings accounts, let alone be given an account to invest on their own. Among younger workers who chose to invest in the accounts, government oversight of the accounts would not allow them to invest on their own. The Social Security Administration would have ensured future retirees with those accounts would receive at least the equivalent in payouts as the traditional system, if not more so, if the investments had a higher rate of return. If the accounts fell short due to losses from the stock market, general revenue tax money was slated to cover the difference, which was a source of criticism after the Great Recession savaged investments in 2008. The accounts are no longer part of Ryan’s budget resolutions, the most recent of which passed the Republican-led House but not the Democratic Senate. The ruling Nelson said that Mack "co-sponsored a bill with none other than congressman Paul Ryan, a bill to privatize Social Security. Specifically what they did was they were going to take a third of the Social Security Trust Fund, they were going to give it in individual accounts to the senior citizens who then were to invest it in the stock market." There are few things wrong with this. The 2005 proposal Mack co-sponsored allowed one-half of payroll taxes to be used, not a third. Payroll taxes do replenish the Social Security Trust Fund, but the money to fund personal savings accounts would have been replaced with general revenue taxes to pay out traditional benefits.The trust fund would have remained balanced, with fewer people entering the system by using personal accounts instead. Redirecting one third of payroll taxes from the trust fund does not constitute removing one third of the total trust fund, in any case. Those accounts also wouldn’t have gone to senior citizens, as Nelson alleges, because no one over the age of 55 would have been eligible for the accounts in the first place. Every version of Ryan’s plan maintains this age limit. Nelson had a point that Mack has supported Ryan’s plans for private or personal accounts in the Social Security program. But his comments gave the wrong impression to a roomful of seniors that it would have affected them. A constant in Ryan’s budget proposals is the exclusion of senior citizens to any changes in the current system. We rate this statement False. | null | Bill Nelson | null | null | null | 2012-08-30T14:34:29 | 2012-08-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-03000 | Chris Christie "cut equal pay for women, calling it 'senseless bureaucracy.' " | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/17/debbie-wasserman-schultz/dnc-says-chris-christie-cut-equal-pay-wome/ | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie seems poised for easy re-election this November, one step on a path toward a possible 2016 presidential campaign. As Christie becomes a more prominent figure in the Republican Party, he’s subject to more criticism on the national level. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who oversees the Democratic National Committee, wrote a statement attacking Christie after a gubernatorial debate that gave us a taste of what we might hear more of over the next two years. For this fact-check, PolitiFact decided to hone in on her critique of the governor’s wage policy. "He cut equal pay for women, calling it ‘senseless bureaucracy,' " Wasserman said. ‘Senseless bureaucracy’ The New Jersey state legislature passed a package of four bills in September 2012 designed to narrow the pay gap. Christie signed one, gave conditional vetoes to two and an absolute veto to the other. Here’s a breakdown of each bill in the package and Christie’s actions: A-2647: Christie signed a statewide requirement for employers to notify employees of the right to be free from benefits and pay discrimination. A-2648: This bill was designed to extend protections for employees who reveal discriminatory actions in their workplaces. Christie vetoed this bill conditionally, because he wanted it to fall under a different existing law than what was proposed by legislators. The bill became law in August, after Christie’s changes were made. A-2649: Christie gave this bill an absolute veto. It called for government contractors to report employee gender and compensation information to the NJ Department of Labor. A-2650: This bill would grant back pay to victims of pay gap discrimination. Christie gave this a conditional veto because it didn’t specify a limitation for how far back pay could go. It hasn’t been passed. Assembly Bill A-2649, the bill requiring government contractors to report compensation by gender and the only absolute veto of the bunch, is the one Wasserman Schultz referred to in her critique of Christie’s attitude toward discrimination by gender. That’s the bill Christie described as "senseless bureaucracy." In his veto message, he wrote that the bill "will burden countless employers with onerous reporting requirements, thereby driving up the cost of public contracts, which are ultimately shouldered by the taxpayer ... the reporting requirements fail to advocate sound policy over senseless bureaucracy." The bill’s focus is on transparency surrounding pay, but it would not have directly required changes in salary by gender. Yasemin Besen-Cassino, a Montclair State University sociology professor, conducted research on New Jersey’s gender gap with the American Association of University Women. She said the bill Christie vetoed would’ve helped narrow the wage divide. "A lot of women claim they just don’t know how much men make," Besen-Cassino said. "One of the things that we found in our research was that making it public and at least available to a third party would push corporations toward equal pay." There’s a correlation between a greater level of pay equity in the federal government and also a greater level of transparency, an AAUW report said. New Mexico passed legislation a couple of years ago requiring contractors to report pay equity information. Fatima Goss Graves, National Women’s Law Center vice president for education and employment, said the law has proven to be uncontroversial there. Vermont also has a similar law. We should note that although Christie vetoed that bill and issued conditional vetoes for others, he has not abolished any existing equal pay legislation, as a reader might assume from the wording of Wasserman Schultz’s comment. "The governor has never ‘cut’ equal pay and he has a well-documented public position of supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (a national law) and equal pay for equal work," said Kevin Roberts, a campaign spokesman for Christie. Christie touted the importance of A-2647 and asserted his support for equal pay. "Too often, women's value and contributions in the workplace have been undermined and shortchanged merely because of their gender," he said after signing the bill. Equal pay in New Jersey We wanted to take a look at the issue of equal pay in New Jersey on a broader scale and the implication that equal pay rights have not moved forward under Christie’s leadership. The median pay gap suggests that a woman in the Garden State make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. However, it’s important to remember that this number doesn’t control for factors like number of hours worked, occupation and race. The AAUW reports that one-third of the pay gap remains after these factors are controlled for. The national wage gap has not closed in the past decade, said Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center. New Jersey’s divide falls in the middle of the pack in terms of biggest wage differences, she added. "I think that for Jersey, like the rest of the country, this problem has been pernicious and persistent and it’s clear that we can’t just wish it away," said Lisa Maatz, American Association of University Women vice president of government relations. "We need some kind of legislative response." Our ruling Wasserman Schultz said Christie "cut equal pay for women, calling it a ‘senseless bureaucracy.’ " Christie didn't cut anyone's pay, though. Instead, he said it was "senseless bureaucracy" to require government contractors to report more employee information, including information about gender and compensation, and he vetoed a measure that would have mandated such reporting. Experts said the measure would have improved equal pay for women. But Christie also signed two other bills that may help narrow the wage gap in New Jersey. So we rate Wasserman Schultz’s statement Mostly False. | null | Debbie Wasserman Schultz | null | null | null | 2013-10-17T12:07:51 | 2013-10-08 | ['None'] |
goop-00772 | Brad Pitt Does Think Angelina Jolie Iraq Trip Was “Publicity Stunt,” | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-angelina-jolie-iraq-trip-publicity-stunt-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Brad Pitt Does NOT Think Angelina Jolie Iraq Trip Was “Publicity Stunt,” Despite Report | 9:04 pm, June 21, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11120 | Says Wisconsin ‘could compel’ Foxconn to install solar panels that would power 33,000 homes. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2018/jun/06/tony-evers/can-state-force-foxconn-install-solar-panels-publi/ | Saying Wisconsin made a "bad deal" to bring Foxconn to the state, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers argues Wisconsin should force the company to be the best corporate citizens in the state. He suggested the state put Foxconn’s "feet to the fire" to make the company provide high wages and benefits, as well as transportation for workers who do not live close to the Racine County plant. Then Evers took it one step further. "We could compel Foxconn to put solar panels on the roof, and there'd be enough electricity generated to serve 33,000 homes in southeast Wisconsin," Evers said in an April 22, 2018, interview on UpFront with Mike Gousha on WISN-TV (Channel 12). Evers said he thinks Foxconn — which has begun work on a $10 billion facility that is to employ up to 13,000 in Racine County — is "all in," so renegotiating shouldn’t jeopardize the deal. Can the state force such an action at this point? And, if it forced the solar panels, could the panels really power more than 30,000 homes? Let’s take a look. System would be unprecedented in scope Asked to back up the claim, Evers spokeswoman Maggie Gau said he was drawing from a Wisconsin State Journal column from August 2017. In the piece, John Imes, executive director for the Madison-based Wisconsin Environmental Initiative, presented the idea as a hypothetical. "Imagine if … all of the roofs on those facilities were covered with the latest solar panel technology?" Imes wrote. "The buildings would generate over 200 (megawatt-hours) of electricity each year, enough to power almost 33,000 homes." But experts say a solar system with the kind of capacity Evers describes would have to be several hundred megawatts -- unprecedented for a rooftop solar array. A handful of U.S. solar farms — in places like Arizona and California — have this capacity, but those are dedicated, ground-based units. PV Magazine, a solar industry publication, says the largest rooftop system now is less than 20 megawatts, though Tesla has begun work on one around 70 megawatts. Such a system at Foxconn could cost $250 million to $500 million, said David Feldman, an economic and financial analysis researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Checking the math Experts disagree on whether a system that size would be enough to power 33,000 homes. The planned Foxconn campus will cover about 22 million square feet, though a company spokesman declined to specify how much roof square footage will be involved (multi-story buildings would obviously reduce the available roof space). Two of the three solar experts we talked with said a roof around that size could feasibly provide enough power. Cara Marcy, renewable electricity analyst with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said a roof at 22 million square feet -- based on the typical sunshine in Mount Pleasant -- could generate about 430,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually. That’s above the roughly 300,000 megawatt-hours that 33,000 homes would need, based on the typical energy usage in Wisconsin. Ben Zientara, lead researcher and policy analyst for Solar Power Rocks, said a solar array could be enough to power 33,000 homes at 13 million square feet, well below the size of Foxconn. However, that would require flat-mounted arrays, which would be more susceptible to snow buildup. But calculations by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which regulates public utilities in the state, showed solar panels on 22 million square feet of roof would only generate enough electricity for about 24,000 homes, said spokesman Matthew Spencer. All calculations required some assumptions or approximations based on the type of solar panels — fixed or movable on one or two axes to tilt with the sun — and the space between panels. Experts also noted not all of the roof space would be usable for solar panels. Physical limitations The size of such a project means it is much more than a math problem, however. Marcy said it’s not realistic to describe generators in terms of homes powered because solar power is so inconsistent. It is obviously not available at night, or for long stretches of winter. "The solar facilities are not necessarily generating electricity at the same time electricity is needed by the system consumer, so from that perspective I think it’s inaccurate to say it's meeting the electricity of these homes," she said. A typical solar array has a maximum capacity around 20%, meaning there is enough sunshine to generate electricity about one-fifth of the time, experts say. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s solar resource calculator assumes 16%, but Wisconsin would face a challenge typical high-use solar states would not — snow removal. Spencer, whose agency is run by three commissioners appointed by Gov. Scott Walker, said companies that install solar arrays typically use the electricity for themselves first, then sell any unused power back to the grid. Spencer said it is likely not legal for Foxconn to provide electricity directly to the public — as the claim suggests — without going through the agency to become certified as a public utility. Can state compel solar installation? This brings us to where Evers’ claim started – whether Wisconsin "could compel" Foxconn to build such a thing. Requirements like installing solar panels could be fair game as part of negotiating an incentive package for a company like Foxconn. But for Foxconn, those negotiations are already over. "Any discussions about what could have been included in that contract are hypothetical and moot at this point since the state already has an executed contract in place," said Mark Maley, spokesman for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. The agency is run by a 12-member board of Republican appointees, though it includes two Democratic party representatives. Maley said contracts do change in some cases, such as if the agreed-upon number of new jobs changes. That would open up a new negotiating window where changes to the agreement itself could theoretically happen. Jack Huddleston, emeritus professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said trying to re-open negotiations now would be "pretty risky" for the state. "The Development Agreement (DA) that was agreed to by all involved parties was a result of trade-offs made by each party," he said in an email. "If Foxconn, for example, agrees to renegotiate, it may demand new requirements to compensate for the loss of previously agreed to components." Gau, the Evers spokeswoman, noted Foxconn has made investments in renewable power in other countries. "If they are doing this there, why not here?" she said in an email. "Companies can be compelled to follow certain hiring practices like wages and employing workers from certain geographic areas, why not renewable energy for on-site sustainability or surrounding homes?" Our rating Evers says the state "could compel" Foxconn to install solar panels, and those would have enough capacity to power 33,000 homes. Experts say the quoted capacity is theoretically possible, though it would be extremely expensive and vastly larger than anything put on a roof in the world to date. And the logistical issues are many. Meanwhile, Foxconn construction is underway and incentive agreements have been signed, so the state doesn’t appear to have a route to force such action unless outside factors lead to reopened negotiations. We rate Evers’ claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tony Evers | null | null | null | 2018-06-06T06:00:00 | 2018-04-22 | ['None'] |
pomt-11350 | Republicans in Congress are plotting to take away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/apr/05/ron-wyden/do-republicans-congress-want-take-away-social-secu/ | It’s been a time-tested Democratic attack line: Republicans are going to take away your Medicare, or maybe your Social Security. We gave a variant of the line our 2011 Lie of the Year. Now the talking point has re-emerged, in a March 29 tweet, from Oregon’s Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee: "#TrumpTax was only the beginning. After giving massive tax giveaways to wealthy & powerful shareholders, Republicans in Congress are plotting to take away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com In reality, the notion that congressional Republicans are scheming to "take away" Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security is inaccurate. The Democratic news release The first piece of evidence undercutting the tweet’s message is actually linked in the tweet itself. An accompanying Senate Democratic press release, dated March 27, starts by saying, "It’s only been a few months since Republicans jammed through their massive giveaway to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders. Now they’re planning on paying for it with huge cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, despite President Trump’s promises that he wouldn’t do so." "Huge cuts," the phrase used in the press release, sounds scary. But it’s not the same as saying the Republicans will "take away" the programs. The release goes on to cite specific comments by Republican leaders. These comments focus on changes to "entitlements," the wonky term for federal programs that automatically allocate benefits to qualified recipients, rather than being dependent on Congress appropriating enough money every year. Entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for the largest share of the federal budget. The Senate Democratic release includes two separate comments from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in December 2017 talking about returning to entitlement reform in 2018. The release quotes Ryan at a subsequent press conference on March 20, 2018, saying, "The House passed the biggest entitlement reform bill Congress has ever considered last year, and regrettably the Senate did not follow suit. So we’re just going to have to keep at it on entitlements." These quotes suggest the Republican in charge of the House continues to seek overhauls of the entitlement system. Cutbacks aren’t the same as elimination However, none of the proposals being weighed by Republican lawmakers would eliminate the programs. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., does not share Ryan's zeal for taking up entitlement changes. For Medicaid, Republican-proposed cuts could lead to specific individuals losing their coverage. That was the case with GOP proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Under these prior proposals, other beneficiaries might have experienced cutbacks in their Medicaid coverage. But the program itself wouldn’t have been taken away. The argument that Medicare or Social Security could be eliminated is even weaker. Even if cuts to these programs are proposed — usually through limiting inflation-adjustment formulas, raising taxes on benefits, or raising the retirement age — we’ve seen no plan that scraps the programs. Wyden’s staff tacitly confirmed that cuts are the GOP’s goal. They pointed us to President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, which calls for $15.3 billion in Medicare cuts and $6.5 billion in Medicaid cuts in just the first year. Wyden’s office added that Republicans have made no secret about their desire to "voucherize" Medicare (by giving beneficiaries a limited amount to purchase private insurance) and to raise the eligibility age for Social Security. Still, such ideas fall well short of what the tweet said. "Obviously the devil is in the details but reform does not equal ‘take away,’" said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "And clearly there needs to be some changes to get these programs on fiscally sound footing." AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, told PolitiFact that "no one has ever proposed taking away these programs. This kind of hyperbole is what keeps our important entitlement programs on an unsustainable trajectory." The House already passed a bill that would have curbed Medicaid, but it died in the Senate. And the Senate -- where Republicans have just a 51-49 edge in a chamber that requires 60 votes for most legislative business -- is expected to be a graveyard for legislation to rein in Medicare and Social Security. Indeed, McConnell, R-Ky., said during his year-end press conference on Dec. 22, 2017, that he does not plan to bring up entitlement reforms in the current environment due to a lack of bipartisan agreement on the sensitive issue. "We had a missed opportunity during the Obama years, when you had divided government, like you did with Reagan and Tip O'Neill, to address the long-term unsustainability of some of our most popular programs, who currently don't meet the demographics of the country in the future," he said. Our ruling Wyden said, "Republicans in Congress are plotting to take away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security." Some key Republicans, including Ryan, have long argued in favor of overhauling entitlement programs such as these by reducing the amount of money spent on them. However, no Republican proposal has been made to "take away" any of the three programs cited in the tweet. In addition, Wyden glosses over just how far away from passage even a more modest overhaul would be. We rate it False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Ron Wyden | null | null | null | 2018-04-05T16:24:59 | 2018-03-29 | ['United_States_Congress', 'Medicare_(United_States)', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Social_Security_(United_States)'] |
vees-00488 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: PH-US: Break up or cool off? | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-ph-us-break-or-cool | null | null | null | null | Duterte China visit,PH-US relations | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: PH-US: Break up or cool off? | October 21, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00499 | Since Scott Walker has been our governor, we’ve gone from 50 percent state funding for the University of Wisconsin System "to 15 percent." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2018/aug/06/tony-evers/tony-evers-figures-are-wrong-attack-scott-walker-o/ | NextGen America is a political group run by California billionaire Tom Steyer, who plans to spend $30 million on the 2018 elections trying to give Democrats control of Congress. On July 22, 2018, the group took a narrower focus, hosting a forum that was attended by four of the eight Democrats running for governor of Wisconsin. NextGen America’s target is younger voters. And at times, its event at the former Pabst brewery site in Milwaukee, brought out the whimsical side of the candidates. Mahlon Mitchell, a firefighter and firefighters union president, used his time for a closing argument to put on firefighter gear in under 60 seconds. And Tony Evers recited the Gettysburg Address and took a selfie with the crowd. But the forum was serious, too, including when the host asked: "What would you do to make college more affordable?" Evers answered first. He noted that as part of his role as the state supreintendent of schools, he serves on the state Board of Regents, which governs the University of Wisconsin System. Then he attacked Republican Gov. Scott Walker, saying: "Since Scott Walker has been our governor, we’ve gone from 50 percent state funding for the (UW) system to 15 percent." That would be a precipitous drop of 35 percentage points. All our fact checks in the governor’s race. Walker and the GOP-run Legislature did cut $250 million from the UW System in the 2015-’17 state budget. And Democrats have attacked Walker on education funding ahead of the Aug. 14, 2018 primary, as they compete to be the nominee running against the two-term incumbent in the Nov. 6, 2018 general election. But in this case, the attack misses. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter: @PolitiFactWisc. "Tony misspoke," his campaign spokeswoman Maggie Gau told us. "We acknowledge it's not correct. As much as we try to prevent them, no one is perfect and mistakes happen on the trail." UW System’s funding streams The UW System is composed of 13 campuses, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that offer four-year and advanced degrees, and 13 campuses that offer two-year degrees. Currently, its operating budget is about $6 billion per year, with about $1 billion — 17 percent — coming from state funding. To see whether that percentage has changed during Walker’s tenure as governor, we turned to a state agency, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. (Federal funding and tuition are the two other largest sources of funding, and there are others, as well.) Here is how much of the UW System operating budgets has come from state funding since the year before Walker took office as governor: Fiscal year Percentage of UW System operating budget from state funding 2010-’11 21.1 percent 2011-’12 (Walker’s first year) 17.9 percent 2012-13 19.2 percent 2013-’14 19.2 percent 2014-’15 19.3 percent 2015-’16 16.6 percent 2016-’17 16.8 percent 2017-’18 17.1 percent So, state funding of the UW System was nowhere near the 50 percent Evers claimed when Walker took office. Rather, it was 21 percent. Since Walker became governor, state funding has been below the 21 percent. Now it’s at about 17 percent, a drop of about 4 percentage points since Walker took office — though above the 15 percent Evers claimed. Our rating Evers said: "Since Scott Walker has been our governor, we’ve gone from 50 percent state funding for the" University of Wisconsin System "to 15 percent." The gap is much narrower. State funding made up about 21 percent, not 50 percent, of the UW Systems’s operating budget when Walker took office. It’s now at 17 percent, not 15 percent. We rate Evers’ statement False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tony Evers | null | null | null | 2018-08-06T16:13:13 | 2018-07-22 | ['University_of_Wisconsin_System', 'Scott_Walker_(politician)'] |
wast-00045 | Let me re\xc2\xadmind you that when the Re\xc2\xadpub\xc2\xadlic\xc2\xadans took pow\xc2\xader when President Obama was president of the United States, what Mitch McConnell said is, \xe2\x80\x98The most im\xc2\xadport\xc2\xadant thing we can do is to make sure he does not suc\xc2\xadceed.' If that wasn't a rac\xc2\xadist state\xc2\xadment. That is un\xc2\xadthink\xc2\xada\xc2\xadble. | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/14/nancy-pelosi-twists-an-old-mcconnell-quote-into-racist-statement/" | null | null | Nancy Pelosi | Glenn Kessler | null | Nancy Pelosi twists an old McConnell quote into a \xe2\x80\x98racist statement' | August 14 | null | ['United_States', 'Mitch_McConnell', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-11692 | After enactment of the Republican tax bill, "school teachers can no longer deduct the cost of their classroom supplies on their taxes." | false | /punditfact/statements/2017/dec/27/jenna-fischer/jenna-fischer-office-tweets-outdated-info-teacher-/ | Jenna Fischer, the actress best known as Pam on NBC’s The Office, prompted a bit of a Twitter tussle before Christmas. "I can't stop thinking about how school teachers can no longer deduct the cost of their classroom supplies on their taxes...something they shouldn't have to pay for with their own money in the first place. I mean, imagine if nurses had to go buy their own syringes. #ugh," Fischer tweeted on Dec. 23. The tweet attracted 66,000 retweets and 223,000 likes. (Fischer has about 750,000 followers.) But the tweet was wrong, relying on an outdated proposal. (After this fact-check was posted, Fischer deleted the tweet; see "After the Fact" below.) An existing provision in the tax code has allowed teachers to deduct eligible, unreimbursed classroom spending up to $250. The provision was expanded and made permanent in December 2015. The tax bill unveiled by House Republicans in November would have scrapped the deduction. But amid an outcry from teachers and their allies -- we wrote about opposition from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., here -- it was stripped before the House and Senate passed identical versions of the bill and President Trump signed it on Dec. 22. (The Senate bill actually would have doubled the deduction, but that idea was rejected too.) A number of Twitter users pointed this out, including one identified as Matt Rossetto, who snarked later that day that Fischer’s tweet "is 100% wrong, because the final bill KEPT this deduction, but 14,000 RT’s later..." Fischer noticed Rossetto’s tweet and fired back, "It was capped at $250 which is woefully insufficient especially considering they shouldn't have to go out of pocket at all. #iloveteachers." See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Some Twitter users, however, still found fault with Fischer, since $250 was always the limit for that particular deduction -- it was not lowered due to the new law. Rossetto, for instance, tweeted back, "It WAS $250 before the bill and hasn’t changed. If you’re going to grandstand, get it right." Finally, on Christmas Day, Fischer returned to Twitter to acknowledge her critics. She tweeted, "Thanks for your tweets! I had some facts wrong. Teachers surveyed by Scholastic in 2016 personally spent an average of $530 on school supplies for students. Teachers who worked at high-poverty schools spent an average of $672. The tax deduction was capped at $250." See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Fischer didn’t explicitly acknowledge that the $250 limit existed before the Republican-backed bill, but she was right on the other statistics. They refer to a national survey of 4,721 public school educators for Scholastic by the firm YouGov in July and August 2016. As of the time this article was published, however, Fischer’s initial correction tweet had garnered far less interest than her original one -- 830 retweets and about 6,600 likes. Our ruling Fischer tweeted that after enactment of the Republican tax bill, "school teachers can no longer deduct the cost of their classroom supplies on their taxes." As numerous Twitter users pointed out, that is incorrect -- the newly signed tax bill does not affect the existing deduction for teacher expenses. Fischer later acknowledged that "I had some facts wrong" and deleted the tweet. We rate her initial tweet False. See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com | null | Jenna Fischer | null | null | null | 2017-12-27T14:54:41 | 2017-12-23 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-00482 | A photograph of children in orange jumpsuits depicts detained immigrant children. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/are-children-orange-jumpsuits/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Are These Immigrant Children in Orange Jumpsuits? | 11 June 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09682 | The Stupak Amendment doesn't just say you can't use your federal insurance subsidy to pay for an abortion, it says, if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/16/rachel-maddow/maddow-says-stupak-amendment-bars-those-subsidies-/ | An amendment to the House health care bill about abortion coverage continues to inspire political passions, driving a wedge between abortion-rights supporters who are outraged at what they consider a major loss for women's rights, and Democratic lawmakers who dread seeing their long-awaited reform effort potentially stalled due to the highly controversial debate. We've examined the role of abortion coverage in the health care debate numerous times, specifically as it relates to this amendment, including a recent claim by Rep. Nita Lowey . But on Nov. 12, 2009, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow addressed the issue again, and we thought we'd take another crack at it. "Congressman Stupak and his supporters say that this Stupak Amendment would simply maintain the status quo," Maddow said on her show. "It should be noted that that's baloney. The Stupak Amendment doesn't just say you can't use your federal insurance subsidy to pay for an abortion, it says, if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money. That's the first bit of dishonesty going on here." The amendment, sponsored by Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Joe Pitts, R-Pa., was a last-minute addition to the House legislation and passed due to support from Republicans and antiabortion Democrats. It establishes restrictions on how abortion can be covered under the bill's virtual health insurance "exchanges." These exchanges are designed to help people buy coverage if they are not currently insured, or if they work for businesses that are too small to offer health coverage to employees. Essentially, the Stupak-Pitts amendment bars abortion coverage for those who choose the "public option," which is the House bill's federally administered, but privately funded, insurance plan. (Cases of rape, incest or a danger to the life of the mother are exempted.) The amendment also prevents anyone who accepts federal subsidies for health coverage from purchasing a plan with abortion coverage on the exchange. However, the amendment does allow people purchasing insurance on the exchange to choose a plan with abortion coverage if they pay for it without federal subsidies. Those who do accept subsidies can purchase an abortion "rider" -- that is, a separate policy covering abortion -- as long as they pay for it entirely with their own money. Many supporters of abortion rights argue that the amendment represents a severe infringement on a procedure that has been upheld by the Supreme Court. They say that relatively few women will be able to buy insurance on the exchanges without subsidies, making the exception for unsubsidized purchases close to meaningless. And they say that the idea of a "rider" isn't all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, abortion-rights supporters argue, women won't be likely to purchase separate coverage for a procedure they never expect to need. In addition, they say, insurance companies will be unlikely to offer abortion coverage because of the bill's logistical hurdles. For instance, the bill requires that insurers offering plans on the exchange that cover abortion also have to offer an identical plan that does not cover abortion. All of these factors, abortion-rights supporters say, indicate that insurers will simply take the path of least resistance and decline to offer abortion coverage. If this happens, the law could end up diminishing the abortion coverage options for people on the exchange. In our previous ruling, we drew a distinction between what the law does and what might possibly happen in the law's wake. The law spells out quite clearly that abortion coverage can be obtained on the exchange, even by those who are subsidized. By contrast, the notion that low demand for, and low supply of, abortion coverage could hamper women's access to abortion struck us as a different matter. We concluded that it's too speculative to say that this scenario will definitely come to pass. As we look at Maddow's statement, we'll start by giving her credit for using more careful wording than have many of her fellow abortion-rights supporters, including the subject of our prior fact-check, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. Whether by design or not, Maddow hewed quite closely to the actual language of the amendment when she said that "if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money." In fact, the amendment text does, on eight separate occasions, make a distinction between a "plan" and "supplemental coverage." Specifically, the amendment says that people who buy subsidized insurance on the exchange cannot buy an insurance "plan" that includes abortion coverage. But the amendment does allow subsidized people to purchase "supplemental coverage" that covers abortion, as long as they do it with their own money. We believe that Maddow's failure to mention the option of buying "supplemental coverage" -- a rider -- undercuts her broader argument that "if you're getting a federal subsidy of any kind, you're not allowed to buy an insurance plan that covers abortion even with your own money." We'll concede that the amendment's language does draw a distinction between buying a "plan" and buying "supplemental coverage," but the difference is likely to be lost on viewers without expertise either in the insurance business or in legislative drafting. We ran our argument by Maddow. She gamely disagreed. "I absolutely stand by my comment," she wrote in an e-mail. "Get real, you guys. It's crazy to argue that the real impact of the Stupak Amendment will be that women receiving federal subsidies (probably the vast majority of women in the exchange) will just buy 'abortion insurance,' since abortion wouldn't be covered as health care under their health insurance anymore. Women are really going to get a specific insurance rider that they'd pay for every month, for a procedure no one ever plans on having or thinks they'll ever have to have? Really? Come on." But we think her response only strengthens the argument that the law isn't, itself, barring abortion coverage. Saying, as she does, that the burden of purchasing or not purchasing "abortion insurance" would fall to women tacitly confirms that the law does indeed allow subsidized women on the exchange to buy abortion coverage. Meanwhile, contrary to suggestions that insurers won't offer abortion riders, our research shows that they do exist in at least three of the five states that already have rules similar to the Stupak amendment on the books. In Oklahoma and Kentucky -- both of which which bar insurers from offering elective abortion coverage as part of a comprehensive plan -- regulatory officials told PolitiFact that such riders do exist, because insurance companies must file paperwork with the state before they sell such policies. In addition, Paula Gianino, president and chief executive for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region, told the St. Louis Beacon that she estimates 7 percent to 10 percent of the roughly 6,000 abortions provided annually at its St. Louis facility are covered by private insurance. Since companies in Missouri are banned from purchasing plans with abortion coverage except by rider, these examples show that some abortion riders are being purchased in that state. However, none of these states keeps track of how many companies offer the riders, or how many people have purchased them. Ultimately, we'll give Maddow credit for linguistic care, but we continue to hold that the Stupak Amendment does not, as she suggests, prevent subsidized women on the exchange from buying abortion coverage. They can buy a rider that adds that coverage. We rate Maddow'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 | Rachel Maddow | null | null | null | 2009-11-16T18:26:49 | 2009-11-12 | ['Stupak–Pitts_Amendment'] |
pomt-03920 | Of six Rhode Island tax-credit programs worth about $35 million, "three companies got 90 percent of that -- CVS and two companies not even located in the state of Rhode Island." | true | /rhode-island/statements/2013/feb/24/gary-sasse/gary-sasse-says-90-percent-35-million-tax-credits-/ | In the debate over taxes -- which ones to cut and which ones to raise -- any proposed change would result in winners and losers. During a discussion of taxes on the Feb. 10 edition of WJAR-TV's "10 News Conference," host Jim Taricani asked how taxes could be cut while still financing the services that governments need to perform. Gary Sasse, director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University, said people need to be talking "about tax reform, not just tax cutting, the same debate that's going on nationally." "You asked why it's so expensive to live here. Well, we don't invest in things that will grow the economy [like] higher education," he said. "We have such an inbred system of crony capitalism that we have tax loopholes that make no sense. Good sound tax policy is lowering rates and not having government pick winners and losers by favoritism." Taricani asked Sasse if he was referring to "tax breaks for CVS and other types of things?" "Absolutely," said Sasse. "There was a study put out by the Division of Taxation. They only looked at six of our tax credits that totaled about $35 million, $36 million. Three companies got 90 percent of that -- CVS and two companies not even located in the state of Rhode Island. They were in California." Ninety percent of the tax credits were going to CVS and two California companies? We went to the Division of Taxation website and found the report Sasse was talking about. The division is required by law to report on six incentive programs, even though one was repealed in 2009 and the other is phasing out. The remaining four distributed $34.4 million in tax credits (not quite $35 million but close enough) to 39 entities. But one Woonsocket company, the pharmacy giant CVS Caremark, with a net after-tax income of $3.9 billion in 2012, got 59 percent of it. CVS got $4.9 million from the state through the Economic Development Corporation Project Status program, in which the EDC waives the sales tax for construction projects. (Only projects approved before July 1, 2011, could qualify.) CVS got another $15.4 million under the Jobs Development Act, which allows for a reduction in a company's corporate income tax rate if it creates and maintains a certain number of jobs. Total: just over $20 million. But wait, as the TV commercials say, there's more. Any entity that receives one of the six credits is required to disclose any other credits it gets from the state. During that fiscal year, CVS received an additional $4.4 million from four tax credits; nearly all of it from a $4.3-million state investment tax credit, which is designed to encourage investment in buildings and equipment. And what about the two out-of-state companies that Sasse was talking about? Both benefited from the controversial motion picture production tax-credit program, which was designed to encourage TV, motion picture and video production in Rhode Island. The credit can help production companies reduce their Rhode Island taxes. More often, those companies can raise money by selling unused tax credits -- typically through brokers -- to companies or individuals that owe Rhode Island taxes but have nothing to do with the entertainment business. The biggest tax credit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, was an $8.1-million break to Paige Productions Inc. of Burbank, Calif., which was producing the ABC medical drama "Body of Proof" and filmed its initial episodes in Rhode Island. Another $2.9 million went to Moonrise LLC of Santa Monica, Calif., the production company that filmed "Moonrise Kingdom," a movie that has been nominated for an Academy Award in the best original screenplay category and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category of best motion picture musical or comedy. Add them all together and you have three companies garnering $31.3 million of the $34.5 million in tax credits -- or 90.1 percent. "Keep in mind: that report is only dealing with six tax credits. There are others," Sasse said. "We ought to expand that report to look at more tax credits." Are these tax breaks worth the lost revenue? That’s a matter of opinion that we wouldn’t rule on. But we will remind readers that a PolitiFact Rhode Island article from Dec. 19, 2010, noted that there is a lot of debate over the real value of the motion picture production tax credit. The Rhode Island Department of Revenue was supposed to issue an evaluation of the incentives in January of 2012 but that report is still being prepared. We asked the Chafee administration for an explanation for the delay but didn't get a response. Our ruling Gary Sasse said that among six Rhode Island tax-credit programs worth about $35 million, "three companies got 90 percent of that -- CVS and two companies not even located in the state of Rhode Island." Sasse is rounding off some large numbers but he was, in essence, correctly quoting the state report he was citing. We rate the claim True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Gary Sasse | null | null | null | 2013-02-24T00:01:00 | 2013-02-10 | ['Rhode_Island'] |
snes-04793 | Facebook routinely suppresses conservative news in favor of liberal content. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-facebook-censoring-conservative-news/ | null | Media Matters | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Is Facebook Censoring Conservative News? | 9 May 2016 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00018 | Many Australians try to reduce their personal carbon footprint, but do we have the same options as people in other countries? | in-the-red | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/fact-check-corolla-emissions-comparison-uk-australia/8805598 | Mr Butler's claim is ill-informed. Although Australia has placed limits on emissions of "noxious air pollutants" since the 1970s, Mr Butler accurately points out that there are no mandatory standards for carbon dioxide emissions from cars. However, the evidence does not back up the idea that the Corolla vehicle that "you'll buy" in Australia emits double the carbon dioxide as the same type of car in the UK. The comparison Mr Butler refers to was one made between two very different cars in the Corolla range — an Australian petrol model and a UK petrol-electric hybrid. A closer comparison would have been between the UK and Australian petrol models, or the UK hybrid and Australian Prius which shared the same engine. Importantly, Mr Butler's comparison is also based on outdated information. The Corolla is no longer sold in the UK, having been replaced by the Toyota Auris. And a lower-emitting petrol-electric hybrid Corolla was introduced to Australia in 2016, which compares more favourably with a similarly specified hybrid Auris. So, while Mr Butler has fairly accurately described a comparison that was set out in a 2014 Climate Change Authority report, the comparison was flawed at the time and changes in model line-ups mean the figures are not valid for 2017. | ['climate-change', 'air-pollution', 'alp', 'australia', 'united-kingdom'] | null | null | ['climate-change', 'air-pollution', 'alp', 'australia', 'united-kingdom'] | Fact check: Does a Corolla bought in the UK emit half the carbon dioxide of one bought in Australia? | Tue 29 Aug 2017, 8:48am | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14608 | Says Ohio Gov. John Kasich had "the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/02/right-rise/does-john-kasich-have-worst-rating-spending-any-go/ | The super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is trying to counter a perceived challenge for moderate New Hampshire voters from Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The PAC, Right to Rise, is airing an ad in New Hampshire that declares Kasich "wrong on New Hampshire issues." It’s run at least 284 times on Boston television since Jan. 21, according to the Internet Archive’s Political Ad Tracker. The 30-second ad makes a number of claims, but we decided to focus on one surrounding spending. The ad claims Kasich had "the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat." That’s a potentially devastating claim, especially since Kasich is selling the economic turnaround in Ohio as part of his presidential resume. It in large part hinges on Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid in the state as part of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Where the claim comes from Right to Rise isn’t pulling its claim out of the air. The super PAC is accurately citing a report by the libertarian Cato Institute. Cato’s report, entitled Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors 2014, attempts to compare 48 of the nation’s governors on a number of fiscal measures. (Virginia and Alaska were excluded.) Overall, Kasich earned a score of 44, which Cato translated to a D. Only 12 Democrats, and no Republicans, scored lower. But Right to Rise is focusing on one subcategory of the overall scorecard, which measures spending changes. On that score, Kasich indeed finished dead last -- with a total of six. Cato found that Ohio proposed 5.7 percent growth in per capita spending and ended up with 8 percent growth in actual per capita spending. In its report, Cato makes clear that the spending measures we just cited -- proposed per capita spending and actual per capita spending -- are only for general fund budgets, which Cato describes as "the budgets that governors have the most control over." Proposed per capita spending is measured through fiscal year 2015, and actual per capita spending is measured through fiscal 2014. As wonky as that previous paragraph sounds, that makes all the difference in assessing the validity of Cato’s report, Kasich’s rebuttal, and ultimately Right to Rise’s claim. A quick primer on state budgets If you’ve followed any state budgeting process, you’ll quickly realize that there are different ways to describe what you call "the budget." Cato is honing in on the general fund budget, which is usually the part of the budget that lawmakers and governors have the most power to influence. Generally speaking, this is the money that lawmakers might fight over when it comes to spending on pet projects, or subsidies for sports stadiums, or economic development incentives. Again, generally speaking, general fund spending is the most unencumbered. But there are lots of other pots of money that ultimately make up a state budget. Road tolls might go into a trust fund where they must be re-invested in road-building projects. A state lottery system might guarantee all its proceeds to education funding. Fees for developers might be dedicated to infrastructure improvements. The federal government might pass millions of dollars to a state for a specific project or need (roads, health care, school lunches). That’s all money that the state spends, but lawmakers have fewer levers to pull to try and manage it. Kasich’s rebuttal Kasich’s campaign offers two rebuttals to the Right to Rise/Cato charge. The first deals with how you define the budget. If you expand the budget to include all funds, the spending increases Cato references at 5.7 percent and 8 percent shrink to about 2 percent. The second rebuttal involves an accounting change that the Kasich campaign says inflates Cato’s numbers in the first place. Kasich officials say Ohio transitioned about $2 billion in spending into the general fund from the overall "all funds" budget. Analyzing only the general fund budget "makes this accounting correction erroneously appear to be an increase, when an analysis of all state spending would reveal that total spending didn’t go up as a result of this, and that this move was merely a movement of funds between internal accounting lines," the Kasich campaign told PolitiFact. State officials told the Columbus Dispatch that the accounting shift came when the state moved a large chunk of Medicaid spending from the all-funds budget to the general revenue fund. The money, tied to Medicaid expansion as part of President Barack Obama’s health care law, originally was placed in the "all-funds" budget but was moved to the general revenue budget. "That substantially explains … why the (general revenue fund) grew," Timothy S. Keen, Ohio’s director of the state office of budget and management, told the Dispatch. "It’s not new spending. It’s an accounting change." Cato’s rebuttal to Kasich’s rebuttal This issue, now appearing in the campaign ad, boiled over in August when Kasich was asked about it on Fox News Sunday. CHRIS WALLACE: "Unemployment down from 9.1 percent to 5.2 percent. And the top income tax rate has been lowered from 6.2 percent to 4.9 percent. "But the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, gave you a ‘D’ on its government’s (sic) report card just last year, noting the budget grew 13.6 percent in 2014 and that over your time as governor, government jobs have increased 3 percent. A ‘D,’ sir?" KASICH: "Well, I don’t know who these folks are, Chris, another Washington group. But, look, we have the lowest number of state employees in 30 years and in addition to that, our budget overall is growing by about 2 percent or 3 percent, and our Medicaid growth has gone from 9 percent when I came in to less than 4 percent and no one has been left behind. We haven’t had to cut benefits or throw anybody off the rolls. So, we pay attention to the mentally ill and the drug addicted and the working poor." Kasich’s criticism prompted a response from Cato. Cato looked at the budget in a few new and different ways, including by removing any federal Medicaid contribution from the general revenue budget. That calculation found that Ohio general fund spending increased 3 percent to 5 percent annually from 2013-16. "By using the all-funds number, Kasich is trying to use federal spending to mask the quick increase in general fund spending," wrote Cato economist Nicole Kaeding. (Kaeding has since moved on to the pro-business Tax Foundation.) "Federal spending — besides Medicaid — is not increasing in Ohio that quickly. Kasich has little control over federal spending, but he is using it to hide how much Ohio’s state spending has grown during his tenure." We asked Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at Cato, what he makes of the Right to Rise attack and Kasich’s rebuttals. Edwards agrees that a large part of the spending increase is tied to Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid. "I understand Kasich says we unfairly used that in our study," Edwards said. "But it’s spending, and he did it." Our ruling In an ad targeted at New Hampshire voters, a super PAC supporting Bush said Kasich had "the worst rating on spending of any governor in the country, Republican or Democrat." Right to Rise is accurately citing a portion of a study by the Cato Institute that looked at one measure of spending for 48 of America’s governors in 2014. But Kasich disputes the study itself, and correctly notes that there are other ways to measure state spending, and that a shifting of dollars from one part of the budget to another affected the results. What to make of it all? This reminds us of some previous attempts to look at the spending records of governors running for president. And like in those cases, the result here might be a tad unsatisfying for people seeking clarity. Cato, in our judgment, did nothing to unfairly target Kasich. Yet, there is more to Ohio’s particular budget story that may leave viewers with a different impression. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Right to Rise | null | null | null | 2016-02-02T16:46:27 | 2016-02-02 | ['John_Kasich', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Ohio'] |
goop-02111 | Taylor Swift Determined To Sell More Albums Than Adele? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-swift-adele-album-sales/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Taylor Swift Determined To Sell More Albums Than Adele? | 4:05 pm, November 30, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02689 | In my home state, nearly one in five Floridians live in poverty. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2014/jan/06/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-nearly-one-five-floridians-live-p/ | Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. Since then, says Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., taxpayers have spent $20 trillion on welfare and other government programs intended to lift them out of poverty -- yet tens of millions of Americans are still impoverished. "In my home state, nearly one in five Floridians live in poverty," Rubio said in a Jan. 5 video message. "After 50 years, isn’t it time to declare big government’s war on poverty a failure?" Rubio called for a new agenda to help people lift themselves out of poverty and create a new "opportunity society" to enable people to live the American dream. Rubio is expected to release additional details Wednesday during a speech at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Rubio released his video as the Senate returns to take up the issue of renewing emergency unemployment benefits that lapsed in December. Also, Democrats have announced that they will target income equality as a top issue this election year, including a push to raise the federal minimum wage. Here we will fact-check Rubio’s claim that nearly one in five Floridians live in poverty. Census data on poverty and Florida First, some background. The Census Bureau, the official federal record-keeper for poverty rates, determines poverty status by comparing annual income to a set of dollar values called poverty thresholds that vary by family size, the number of related children and the age of the householder. For example in 2012, that would mean a single person earning $11,720 or a family of four earning $23,492 would be considered poor. A Rubio spokesman told PolitiFact Florida that he arrived at his figure of nearly one in five Floridians based on a story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that said Florida’s poverty rate was 17.1 percent in 2012, according to the census. In 2012, Florida had a higher percentage living in poverty than the national average of 15.9 percent. Using the 2012 figure of 17.1 percent would place the number of Floridians in poverty closer to one in six than one in five. "You’re correct that 17.1 is between one-in-six and one-in-five," Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told PolitiFact in an email. "He said 'nearly' 1 in 5, but he could have said "more than" 1 in 6. Either way, I think we can all agree that 17.1 percent is too high a number." (The numbers are even worse if we zero in on Rubio’s home county of Miami-Dade where about one in four residents lived in poverty in 2012.) Another way to look at the percentage of Floridians in poverty is by using the census’ three year average between 2010-12. That average showed that 15.4 percent of Floridians lived in poverty -- or about one in six Floridians. One footnote: While we’re not rating Rubio’s claim that the war on poverty is a failure, we will note that in 1964 the official poverty rate was even higher nationally than it is now -- 19 percent. Our ruling Rubio said that "nearly one in five Floridians live in poverty." He points to 2012 census data which showed that 17.1 percent of Floridians lived in poverty, which would mean about one in six Floridians live in poverty. The percentage is slightly lower if we look at the three year average which showed 15.4 percent living in poverty -- still about one in six. Rubio’s numbers are close. We rate his claim Mostly True. | null | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2014-01-06T13:07:15 | 2014-01-06 | ['None'] |
pose-01207 | I believe we should expand communications support for as many Asian languages as possible, particularly languages widely used in Austin such as Mandarin, Korean, Hindi, Vietnamese and Bangla. | stalled | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/adler-o-meter/promise/1298/include-asian-languages-city-communications/ | null | adler-o-meter | Steve Adler | null | null | Include Asian languages in city communications | 2016-03-21T17:46:35 | null | ['Bengali_language', 'Austin,_Texas', 'Vietnam', 'Mandarin_Chinese', 'Hindi', 'Asia', 'Korean_language'] |
pomt-12009 | Since we took office, we have been outpacing the nation in job growth. | half-true | /missouri/statements/2017/sep/21/eric-greitens/missouri-really-outpacing-nation-jobs-greitens-too/ | Republican Gov. Eric Greitens has been pushing job growth since his 2016 campaign. In a Facebook live video on Aug. 23, Greitens said there has already been substantial improvement since he took office in January. "Since we took office, we have been outpacing the nation in job growth," he said. Is Missouri really "outpacing the nation" in jobs? We wanted to find out. By the numbers The number of jobs added from January through July 2017 increased by 0.9 percent over the same period in 2016. Greitens compared Missouri to the national average job growth over the same time, which was 0.8 percent. Between January and February of 2017, Missouri job growth increased by 0.0012 percent whereas national job growth increased by 0.0016 percent. However, Missouri experienced a 0.005 drop in jobs between February and March. Greiten’s Press Secretary Parker Briden claims that the governor has created more than 35,000 jobs since then. "Since March, we have created 37,200 jobs, while the United States as a whole has created 792,000," Briden said. "Thus, in that time we account for approximately 4.7 percent of total job creation in the country, performing far better than the national average." The standard metric for tracking job growth at the national and state level is the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics survey. As far as numbers go, Greitens has a point. But can he take credit for the job spike? In 2016, Missouri experienced a 0.2 percent hike in job growth. The same upward trend goes for 2014 and 2015, where jobs grew by 0.5 percent in the first seven months of each year. So, jobs had been added at a decent clip before Greitens took office, though not as much as this year. BLS' data shows the state of Missouri at a steady increase in job growth over the past five years. "Most economists would say that it’s highly unlikely anything he did in the first eight months of office is the reason for this job growth," said Peter Mueser, an economics professor at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Public Affairs. Mueser even went on to say that most of the time, governors don't have enough control to cause employment growth or decline. "Lots of things contribute to the economic growth that the governor doesn't have control of," he said. "Over time, population increases and every so often it's easier to claim that employment grows because of the population growth." Bills for businesses Greitens’ major initiatives on the economy or workforce have either not yet taken effect or only recently became law. In January, Greitens signed SB 19, a "right-to-work" bill that allows workers to opt out of joining a union. Greitens pledged to pass this bill while on the campaign trail and signed the bill in an abandoned warehouse in Springfield. The bill was supposed to take effect on Aug. 28. However, after more than 300,000 petitions (more than triple what is required to put a bill on the ballot) were submitted, "right to work" will instead be moved to the Nov. 28 ballot for the public to decide. Another bill the governor has signed but only recently went into effect is HB 130, which requires transportation network companies, such as Uber and Lyft to pay a one-time $5,000 licensing fee and conduct driver background checks and vehicle inspections. Pacific Republican Kirk Mathews sponsored the bill and says regulations will keep transportation network company drivers in Missouri. The bill is expected to created up to 10,000 new driver jobs in the state but was five days away from becoming law when Greitens made his statement. Greitens also signed SB 43, which will make it tougher for fired workers to prove employment discrimination. The governor, who signed the bill in June, said the new law will "prevent trial lawyers from killing good jobs." Our ruling Greitens said, "Since we took office, we have been outpacing the nation in job growth." Missouri did outpace the national average in job growth from January to June in 2017. However, Missouri’s jobs have been on a steady uphill climb since 2014, long before Greitens took office. And although Greitens has passed multiple laws affecting employment and businesses, these bills did not go into effect until Aug. 28. So there is no evidence that the continued job growth in Missouri is because of his management. Even Greitens’ press secretary didn’t provide information on how exactly Greitens has increased job growth except employment numbers. When asked for further examples on how the governor has created 37,200 jobs, Briden did not return request for comment. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Eric Greitens | null | null | null | 2017-09-21T09:52:46 | 2017-08-23 | ['None'] |
snes-06048 | Photograph shows boxes of Tyson "[inverted] boneless pork rectums." | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pig-in-a-poke/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Inverted Boneless Pork Rectums | 1 July 2014 | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00352 | Fact Check TV: Recycled Sewage and Hotel Taxes | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-tv-recycled-sewage-and-hotel-taxes/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Check TV: Recycled Sewage and Hotel Taxes | August 8, 2011 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00212 | Kim Kardashian Divorcing Kanye West For Moving To Chicago, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-divorce-chicago-moving/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kim Kardashian NOT Divorcing Kanye West For Moving To Chicago, Despite Report | 5:09 pm, September 26, 2018 | null | ['Chicago', 'Kim_Kardashian'] |
pomt-00022 | Says photo of man shows "diseases coming across the border." | false | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/nov/06/blog-posting/dated-photo-used-make-false-claim-about-migrants-d/ | A 2014 photo of a man with a rash has been dredged up and re-posted on Facebook by a group that claims numerous diseases are coming across the border into the United States. But the accompanying photo is four years old. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar shared the original photo with the Houston Chronicle in 2014, along with a series of other images that showed cramped and unsanitary conditions in a Customs and Border Protection facility in South Texas. The claim that immigrants bring infectious diseases isn’t new. We’ve fact-checked a couple iterations of the claim over the years. In 2014, a congressman said migrants may be bringing the Ebola virus across the U.S.-Mexico border. We rated that Pants on Fire. In 2015, Donald Trump said, "Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border." At the time, the health experts we spoke with agreed that there was no evidence of massive influx of infections across the border. Most recently, other posts have gone viral about the migrants in the caravan heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border supposedly bringing diseases. There are no known reports of this being the case, according to The New York Times. The photo in the Facebook post is from a particular outbreak of scabies in 2014. Scabies is a treatable skin condition, but it can spread rapidly under crowded conditions. That outbreak was largely contained to migrants living in close quarters in detention centers. Only a small handful of border patrol agents appear to have contracted it. There is some evidence that diseases cross between the U.S.-Mexico border, but the Center for Disease Control attributes spread of disease in that region not to illegal immigration but to legal back-and-forth between the United States and Mexico. Our ruling There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants to the U.S. are carrying deadly diseases. Spread of disease is more likely from the much larger numbers of legal crossing across the border and the number of international travelers visiting other countries and then returning to the United States. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-11-06T18:29:22 | 2018-11-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-00577 | 500 percent more traffic here? | mostly true | /texas/statements/2015/jun/09/anonymous-activist/austin-yard-signs-suggest-office-tower-project-cou/ | A chunk of residential Northwest Austin has bridled at the prospect of a low-rise office park becoming much more. Our attention was drawn to yard signs suggesting the towering redevelopment at the southwest corner of Spicewood Springs Road and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) would quintuple area traffic. Dallas-based Spire Realty Group LP seeks a zoning change to build up Austin Oaks, an office complex with 12 buildings of two to three stories each. In a version of its proposal made public in 2014, Spire said that on the parts of the site closer to MoPac, it wanted to build two office buildings of 17 stories each, though those plans have since been trimmed to 10-story buildings or so, according to Steve Drenner, an Austin lawyer representing Spire in its zoning case. Initial plans, also since modified per Drenner, called for up to 610 apartments and townhomes in the three- to five-story buildings, plus retail and restaurant space. The soonest construction was planned to start was around 2020, after existing office leases expire. The "500%" signs don’t reveal any group or person as the originator or sponsor. By phone, Ann Denkler, a volunteer with a coalition opposing the redevelopment, told us the group did not create them. City 'unable to verify' traffic impact We reached out to city officials at first, wondering what data were available. By email, spokeswoman Sylvia Arzola told us: "The project and the traffic impact analysis are currently under review. At this time we are unable to verify the traffic impact until a full evaluation of the project and accompanying mitigation is provided by the developer." Meanwhile, we found something close to the 500 percent claim in a September 2014 presentation by Jim Duncan of Austin, a city planner by profession. Duncan said he developed the presentation at the urging of a neighborhood friend and based his traffic projection on an engineering report written by another firm at the developer’s request. That report, Duncan said, indicated daily car trips near the proposed Austin Oaks Planned Use Development would increase from 4,118 to 23,804 once the expansion was finished--a 478 percent uptick. We turned back to Arzola, who agreed by email it looks like the traffic figures indeed came from "the developer’s consultant’s study." However, she noted, a fresh traffic analysis was released in May 2015 based on the developer changing what it seeks to build. Duncan said he’d heard the revision talk and for that reason, he said, his calculation of the potential 478 percent increase in daily car trips near the project would likely be outflanked. "I’m sure the number is lower" now, Duncan said. Traffic impact studies Arzola emailed us two traffic studies for the project, dated a year apart, and another city official, Bryan Golden, emailed us excerpts from a study completed in August 2014 (which looked to us like the one Duncan relied on). Each study presents predicted "unadjusted daily trips" in the area should the project be built out with predicted increases ranging from more than 300 percent to more than 480 percent. Generally, "unadjusted daily trips" means daily car trips in an area, a city official told us, without reductions accounting for trips internal to a development, say, or trips there on city buses. An unadjusted count rolls in trips expected due to existing developments plus the additional trips expected once the project is finished, Bryan Golden told us by email. The projections are generated by an engineering industry "calculator," Golden said. The initial June 26, 2014, traffic impact analysis was completed by a professional engineer, Bobak J. Tehrany, for Bury-AUS, Inc. That analysis, of 14 nearby intersections and 11 proposed driveways, said the redevelopment on completion in 2031 would generate an additional 20,736 unadjusted daily trips by car compared to some 4,248 daily trips attributed to the existing office complex — which breaks out to an eventual 488 percent increase. With the redevelopment, Tehrany wrote, all but two of the nearby intersections would need improvements. That is, he said, "the maximum desirable volumes are currently being exceeded along the roadway segments which were evaluated," though he also said that doesn’t mean the roadways had exceeded their respective capacities. The Aug. 19, 2014, traffic impact analysis--taking into account a nearby intersection the city wanted to add to the analysis, Amanda Swor of Drenner’s firm told us by email--suggested the project would result in nearly 19,700 additional unadjusted daily car trips, up 478 percent from 4,118 of late. We didn’t get a fix on why the count of current-day traffic went down. Most recently, the May 22, 2015, traffic impact analysis filed on behalf of the developers states: "Based on the proposed land use intensities, it is anticipated that the development will generate a total of 19,819 unadjusted daily trips; however, due to the existing office land uses, the proposed redevelopment is anticipated to generate a net increase of 15,701 unadjusted daily trips. This is taking into consideration the trips which already exist on the roadway network due to the existing development." That is, once the development is done, nearby traffic would be up 381 percent from the 4,118 daily car trips of late. Developer's advocate says traffic likely to increase less By phone, Drenner pointed out the May 2015 analysis includes a chart suggesting that once adjustments are made to account for car trips internal to the development, there would actually be a 332 percent increase in traffic. He said this latest analysis was based on Spire’s modified development plan—halving the number of residential units and reducing retail uses — filed with the city April 30, 2015. Drenner said, too, the developers are suggesting $1.5 million in spending to improve nearby streets and creation of a fund that would accumulate money for area road improvements. Next, we wondered how much traffic near the site would increase if the developers added nothing. Denkler and Golden counseled that analysts assume a 2 percent annual increase in car trips. At our request, Golden calculated the 4,118 current unadjusted daily car trips would escalate 37 percent to 5,653 in 2031--again, provided there’s no expansion on the site. Our ruling Yard signs posted in opposition to a proposed Northwest Austin redevelopment say: "500 percent more traffic?" Traffic studies filed in 2014 based on the developer’s original proposal support the 500-percent figure, yet the developer later submitted a revised plan and its May 2015 traffic analysis suggests at most a 381 percent increase in daily car trips, still a substantial spike. Perhaps the project and predicted traffic effects will continue to change. For now, taking into account the information available when the signs were made, we rate the claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Anonymous Activist | null | null | null | 2015-06-09T10:00:00 | 2015-05-19 | ['None'] |
chct-00278 | FACT CHECK: Are 7 In 10 Americans Pro-Choice? | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/11/04/fact-check-are-7-in-10-americans-pro-choice/ | null | null | null | David Sivak | Fact Check Editor | null | null | 5:12 PM 11/04/2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03889 | Says his proposed education spending "is the highest state funding level in Florida history." | half-true | /florida/statements/2013/mar/05/rick-scott/rick-scott-touts-his-education-plan-third-state-st/ | Gov. Rick "Let’s get to work!" Scott may be trying out a new slogan for his re-election campaign. More and more, his priorities are screaming "Let’s get to class!" Scott devoted much of his third State of the State address on Tuesday to education, singling out educators as special guests and asking lawmakers to stand in honor of their favorite teacher. Then he turned to another telltale sign of showing love: showing them money! To polite applause, Scott reiterated his desire for the Legislature to give teachers a $2,500 across-the-board raise. He asked lawmakers to use his proposed education spending, which calls for an increase of $1.2 billion from last year, as their guide as they craft the state’s 2013-14 budget. "Our total education investment of $10.7 billion in state funding for K-12 schools this year is the highest state funding level in Florida history," he said. "This represents an increase of more than $400 in per student funding over the current fiscal year." Is he right? We’ll explain. Scott’s statement is carefully crafted to specify that his budget proposal would provide the highest state funding level ever. Scott’s proposal would be the highest ever in terms of the state government’s actual dollar investment. In second place would be the 2007-08 budget signed by Gov. Charlie Crist, when the state allocated $9.71 billion. But this doesn’t tell the entire story. Schools have a complex funding formula that involves a mix of local taxes, state dollars and, in recent years, federal stimulus money. If Scott had his way, Florida’s total K-12 education budget would be $18.47 billion (the Legislature decides how to spend the state’s dough). If Scott gets the budget he wants, it would not be the highest spending on education ever. It would trail the 2007-08 budget signed by Gov. Charlie Crist by $280 million. Education spending per student tells the same story. Yes, at $3,941, the state’s share of per-pupil spending in Scott’s budget would be the highest dollar investment. But this view again neglects the complete picture of education spending. Total per-pupil funding proposed in Scott’s budget would be $6,700. This would be a $412 increase from the current year, but it lags behind per-pupil spending of $7,126 in the 2007-08 budget signed by Crist. This is an important point: Six years ago, the state had fewer students but spent more money on each. Now we have 85,000 more students but spend less money on each one, according to Department of Education data. We wondered if Scott’s proposal would hold up as the state’s biggest education investment when adjusted for inflation. Using a Consumer Price Index calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we compared Scott’s proposal with state spending on education for the past 10 years. We found state spending on education, when adjusted for inflation, would not be significantly different than it was from 2004 to 2007. Our ruling Scott talked up the state’s share of education spending in his budget proposal as an historic investment, and it is in terms of actual dollars. But his overall recommendation for education spending remains short of what Florida students received before the economic crash, and about the same as it was from 2004 to 2007 when considering inflation. Scott’s claim is partially accurate but missing important details. We rate it Half True. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2013-03-05T15:38:19 | 2013-03-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-02126 | Wendy Davis "was just doing a fund-raiser in Chicago with the international socialists organization." | pants on fire! | /texas/statements/2014/may/09/david-dewhurst/dewhurst-claim-wendy-davis-raised-money-socialists/ | Wendy Davis became debate fodder late in a roundtable showdown between Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Sen. Dan Patrick, who will meet in a May 27, 2014, runoff for the Republican Party’s lieutenant governor nomination. Toward the end of their quarrelsome give-and-take joust, hosted May 7, 2014, by WFAA-TV in Dallas, Patrick blamed Dewhurst for igniting Davis’ gubernatorial bid with his oversight of the Texas Senate in the summer 2013 special legislative session in which Davis, a Democratic senator from Fort Worth, filibustered GOP-sought abortion restrictions. Dewhurst scoffed, saying that Republican Greg Abbott, the state attorney general, is winning the governor’s fray. "And Wendy Davis’s star is falling, not rising," Dewhurst said. "She was just doing a fund-raiser in Chicago with the international socialists organization." She was? We put that claim to the Texas Truth-O-Meter. We asked Dewhurst’s campaign spokeswoman, Eliza Vielma, for the basis of Dewhurst’s claim, and, by email, she pointed to May 6, 2014, Abbott campaign press release. The Abbott release quoted a Chicago Sun-Times news blog post previewing Davis as a featured guest at a May 5, 2014, Chicago fund-raiser for U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. Abbott’s release also cited an Oct. 16, 2010, post on "The Corner," a National Review Online blog that describes itself as a "web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion." The 2010 post, by Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics & Public Policy Center, said that while researching his book, "Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism," he came across "documentary evidence" that Schakowsky was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America at the start of her political career. Kurtz closed his post by saying the "idea of socialist politicians working openly or quietly within the Democratic Party is not a wild impossibility but a real phenomenon." No documents were included in the post to back up Kurtz’s claim that Schakowsky was a member of the socialist group. So we followed up with him. By email, Kurtz said Schakowsky was an "active member" of Chicago’s DSA chapter in the 1980s, a conclusion he said he based on chapter newsletters from 1983 and 1986 that he said he viewed in archives at New York University. "I do not know how long" Schakowsky "remained a member of the DSA," Kurtz wrote. After we published this fact check, Kurtz told us by email, he sent Breitbart Texas copies of the relevant newsletter pages. Schakowsky is credited as the author of an article in the February/March 1983 issue of the Chicago Socialist, published by the Chicago chapter. Her article recapped a Joliet meeting of the Illinois Public Action Council, a mix of progressive groups. A June 1986 newsletter item, headlined "DSAers on the move," included a sentence stating that on the local political scene, a DSAer had been hired by the chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party while Schakowsky’s bid "for Cook County Board got a boost when she drew 2nd ballot position among 14 candidates." The Cook County Board of Commissioners is the county’s legislative body. Also by email, Bob Roman, secretary of the Chicago DSA chapter, told us the posted excerpts were authentic. Schakowsky’s House spokesman, Lee Whack, referred us to her campaign political director, Alex Armour, who didn’t engage. By telephone, Maria Svart, the national director of the DSA, noted the group is an activist and educational group and not a political party. She also reaffirmed what a predecessor in that role, Frank Llewellyn, told PolitiFact in 2011. To join the group, a person must fill out a form and pay dues, Llewellyn said, adding that the last member of Congress who was a card-carrying member was California Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums, who served 28 years in the House until leaving in 1998. Svart also said that while the group doesn’t announce its members, as far as she knows, Schakowsky isn’t a member and never was. Separately, we spotted a web post by the Chicago chapter of the DSA showing Schakowsky spoke at the group’s May 13, 2011, Eugene V. Debs-Norman Thomas-Michael Harrington dinner celebrating union organizers and other activists on the left. A May-June 2011 DSA recap said Schakowsky told guests that despite Democrats being the House minority, she was optimistic in that conservatives in Congress had over-reached. A DSA web page on the history of the annual dinner lists Schakowsky as the 2000 dinner’s honoree. That listing led to another web post detailing why Schakowsky was honored, touching on her actions as a consumer advocate and state and federal legislator. It didn’t speak to her membership (or not) in the DSA. By phone, Roman said Schakowsky is "not somebody that we claim as a member." He also said he generally doesn’t comment on whether anyone is current or former member. "Once you say ‘so and so’ is a member, was a member or was never a member, then you open yourself to queries about any single person who has ever been a member," Roman said. To our inquiry, Davis campaign spokesman Zac Petkanas (fairly new to Texas) said of Dewhurst’s statement: "That’s potentially the most absurd claim I’ve ever heard." Petkanas emailed us a copy of the invitation to the Schakowsky event attended by Davis. The invitation lacks mention of Davis--and lists Winstead as the star attraction. Petkanas also provided what he described as the prepared text of Davis’ remarks at the event, which do not include an appeal for donations to Schakowsky’s political kitty. "Davis stopped by the event to talk about Texas and give an update on her campaign," Petkanas said. Our ruling Dewhurst said Davis raised money in Chicago for a socialist organization. Davis appeared at a fund-raiser for a Democratic U.S. House member who may have participated in DSA chapter meetings in the 1980s. There’s no sign Schakowsky is a current DSA member, nor is there evidence Davis raised money for a socialist group. This claim shakes out as incorrect and ridiculous. Pants on Fire! PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. UPDATE, 6:18 p.m., May 12, 2014: This article was updated to include detail about the newsletter excerpts relied upon by Kurtz, the conservative author. These additions did not change our rating of Dewhurst’s statement. | null | David Dewhurst | null | null | null | 2014-05-09T13:14:31 | 2014-05-07 | ['Chicago'] |
pomt-13447 | Over the last 40 years, this country’s prison population has grown by 500 percent. | mostly true | /california/statements/2016/sep/16/kamala-harris/mostly-true-americas-prison-population-has-skyrock/ | During her run for U.S. Senate, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has touted a "smart on crime" approach that focuses on the most violent offenders and reducing recidivism. Harris believes this strategy is key to slowing what she claims is a dramatic rise in the nation’s prison population. "Over the last 40 years, this country’s prison population has grown by 500 percent," Harris said on her campaign website, and in a recent tweet that included a stark black and white picture of prison bars. "We have a responsibility to ensure agencies focus on preventing crime -- not just fighting crime after the fact," Harris added in the tweet. Harris is competing with U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer in November’s election. All three are Democrats. We decided to check whether Harris stretched the truth in her claim about the rapid rise in America’s prison population. Our research We relied on data from the Sentencing Project. The criminal justice advocacy group is considered a credible source for incarceration figures. Its data was cited by the national PolitiFact team in a recent fact check on a similar claim. The Sentencing Project’s data show there are 2.2 million people in the nation’s federal and state prisons and local jails -- a 500 percent increase over the past 40 years. For comparison, the overall United States population has increased just 51 percent during that period. Available numbers from the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics agree with those from the Sentencing Project. Harris’ claim is slightly different in that it cites the nation’s spike in "prison population" rather than a combined increase in prisons and jail figures. Some might read her statement as including both prison and jail inmates, but there’s a significant difference between the two. To assess Harris’ more limited claim, we examined the rise of the prison population alone. The Sentencing Project’s data show the nation’s prison population grew from 218,466 in 1974 to 1,508,636 in 2014, which is a nearly 600 percent increase. Unlike most politicians, it appears Harris understated her legitimate point. More background Harris’ claim and stance on prison reform is significant given California’s overcrowded prisons. At nearly 600,000 people, California has the second largest correctional population among states, behind only Texas’ nearly 700,000, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Those figures include prison and jail inmates and people on probation and parole. Source: U.S. Justice Department Harris’ claim centers on the rise of prison inmates over the past four decades. Over the past few years, however, America has seen a decline in prisoners. The nationwide total dropped about 100,000 from 2009 to 2014, according to the Sentencing Project. Reforms in California account for much of that drop, as the state has reduced its prison population by about 50,000 following a 2009 federal court order to do so, according to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California. In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 57, a measure proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown designed to ease the state’s prison overcrowding. It would allow some offenders to be considered for parole earlier than now possible. A campaign spokesman said Harris has declined to take a position on Prop 57, or any ballot measure, because as attorney general she is charged with writing an independent summary and title for each measure. The spokesman pointed to data from the Sentencing Project and other academic reports to back up Harris’ claim about the prison population. Our ruling U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris recently said "Over the last 40 years, this country’s prison population has grown 500 percent." Data show the nation’s combined prison and jail population has grown 500 percent over this period. But when isolating just the prison population, the data shows that group has soared by nearly 600 percent. No matter how you crunch the numbers, they show a dramatic rise in incarceration -- one that actually exceeds what Harris stated. Her statement is on the right track, but needs this clarification. We rate it Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/da79554e-4177-4b1f-a88b-0a25ee20818e | null | Kamala Harris | null | null | null | 2016-09-16T06:00:00 | 2016-08-22 | ['None'] |
pomt-06001 | Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/19/newt-gingrich/gingrich-ad-says-mitt-romney-enacted-taxpayer-fund/ | Did Mitt Romney make taxpayer-funded abortion the law of the land in Massachusetts? That’s one claim in an attack ad put out by Newt Gingrich’s campaign, which says Romney called himself "pro-life" but "governed pro-abortion." "Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer funded abortions," the ad says, as a downcast Romney appears onscreen, along with his signature. This is a claim that’s sure to be repeated, so we decided to look into it. What’s in the law? First, what’s not in the law: the word "abortion." The sweeping health care legislation Romney signed on April 12, 2006, aimed to extend health insurance coverage to nearly every Massachusetts resident. It included an individual mandate, requiring almost all Massachusetts residents to get insurance, leading to an insured rate of nearly 98 percent in the state. It required people who don't have health insurance to buy it or lose their individual state tax exemptions. To cover low-income people, private insurance companies developed low-cost plans that residents could buy through a new state-run insurance exchange called the Health Connector. But the law doesn’t address what is covered and what isn’t. Search the text of it, and "abortion" is nowhere to be found. "It doesn’t say in the law what is covered or not. It talks about health care and funding health care," said Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which opposes abortion. Yes, abortion is covered A 1981 Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Massachusetts said that the cost of abortions had to be included in publicly subsidized plans. Most private insurance plans in the U.S. include abortion coverage, and the state-subsidized plans in Massachusetts do, too. So when the Health Connector began, abortion coverage was automatically included. In some of the low-cost plans, abortions are covered with a $50 co-pay. So Gingrich’s ad is right that some abortions in Massachusetts are "taxpayer-funded." But that requirement long predated the law Romney signed. "That was already a given," Fox said. "Anything that’s paid for with tax money, like Medicaid, covered abortions." Her group was part of an effort to overturn that requirement with a constitutional amendment, but it failed. "The combination of the court order and state-controlled health care means Romney really wasn’t involved in funding these abortions. It was automatic, and there would be no way to stop it," Fox said. "We tried. It would have to be a constitutional amendment. It would not be something somebody could just veto." Fox’s assessment lines up with that of an abortion-rights group we contacted: "NARAL Pro-Choice America’s position is that the Massachusetts health care plan enacted during former Gov. Romney’s tenure expanded on a system that already covered abortion. Thus, Romney should not get credit for improving women's access to abortion in Massachusetts," spokesman Ted Miller said in an email. Our ruling Gingrich’s ad says "Romney signed government-mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions." What’s right about that? Romney did sign government-mandated health care, and Massachusetts does provide taxpayer-funded abortions. But the ad inaccurately links the two together. The law Romney signed did not mention abortion coverage. It was included by the state exchange, which created plans that mirror private insurance nationwide. And a court decision two decades earlier mandated that the cost of the abortions be included. You’d never know any of that based on the misleading wording in the ad. We rate it Mostly False. | null | Newt Gingrich | null | null | null | 2012-01-19T19:05:17 | 2012-01-10 | ['None'] |
goop-00607 | Kaley Cuoco’s Shoulder Surgery Hurting Her Marriage? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kaley-cuoco-shoulder-surgery-marriage-karl-cook/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kaley Cuoco’s Shoulder Surgery Hurting Her Marriage? | 2:46 pm, July 20, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00106 | Thanks to the president's leadership, we're already providing nearly $2 billion more in help to local governments to ensure security at our schools and the safety of our students. It represents the single largest investment in school safety in American history. | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/23/the-trump-administrations-bogus-spin-that-it-obtained-2-billion-for-school-safety/" | null | null | Mike Pence | Glenn Kessler | null | The Trump administration's bogus spin that it obtained $2 billion for \xe2\x80\x98school safety' | May 23 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-04012 | Comedian Jeff Foxworthy slammed Hillary Clinton and was attacked by liberals. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jeff-foxworthy-slams-hillary-clinton/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Snopes Staff | null | Jeff Foxworthy Gets Attacked by Liberals After Publicly SLAMMING Hillary Clinton | 17 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06533 | Gains in Atlanta Public Schools scores on a national standardized test lend credence to "dramatic" score increases on state tests. | false | /georgia/statements/2011/oct/07/beverly-hall/former-aps-head-beverly-hall-says-national-test-pr/ | Ever since Atlanta Public Schools’ cheating scandal began, then-Superintendent Beverly Hall has repeatedly pointed to a national test as proof that the changes she made produced real results: the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP is a top measure of student achievement, and APS’ NAEP scores improved under Hall’s term, Hall has said. One of her backers mentioned these scores in a New York Times article last month. Hall, herself, raised them Aug. 10 in a commentary published by the national trade publication Education Week. "The results of the standardized tests administered in 2010 and 2011 under this enhanced security have not been questioned -- and most important of all the dramatic improvement in test scores has remained. That improvement has also been confirmed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is independently administered," Hall wrote. "Dramatic" improvement in scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests has been "confirmed" by the NAEP? We decided to take a look. First, a brief aside. We checked Hall’s claim that CRCT tests scores for 2010 and 2011 "have not been questioned" and gave her a Pants on Fire. State investigators, the Governor’s Office for Student Achievement and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution questioned the validity of both years’ results. We asked Hall’s attorney for evidence backing her claim about the national test but received no response. After our inquiry, Council of Great City Schools Executive Director Michael Casserly repeated a similar claim Sept. 7 in The New York Times, but the story included no supporting evidence. Hall previously served on the board of Casserly’s organization. Now, the NAEP is different from your typical standardized test. Like the CRCT, it tests core subjects such as reading and mathematics, but many students don’t take it. Those who do don’t take all of it. They don’t even get their results. Instead, the NAEP randomly selects a representative sample of students to take the test. They take slices of the exam over a single day. Historically, the NAEP has been used to track student achievement at the state and national level. During the past decade, however, about a dozen large urban districts were recruited for a special trial to see how well the test evaluates district performance. APS joined the trial in 2002. The test was not the focus of the state’s CRCT investigation, and a federal review found no evidence of NAEP cheating, said Arnold Goldstein, who is program director for the assessment division of the National Center for Education Statistics, the division of the U.S. Department of Education that oversees the NAEP. The federal review’s findings were not published in a report, so PolitiFact Georgia could not examine its work. Experts agree that it’s much more difficult to cheat on the NAEP than the CRCTs, and they give the following reasons: -- NAEP test administrators are federal contract workers, not APS employees, so they have little incentive to cheat. Some are retired APS teachers, but a federal testing official told PolitiFact that they all worked as part of three-member teams with colleagues who had no ties to APS. -- NAEP test materials are not kept in schools overnight or during the weekend. That’s when much of the CRCT cheating took place, according to the state investigation. -- Students are tested on multiple subjects during the same NAEP test session. While one is working on a reading exam, another might be doing mathematics, so they can’t copy each others’ answers. But cheating is not out of the question. Sonny Perdue, who as governor launched the state investigation into the CRCT scores, is a member of the board that oversees the NAEP. He suggested at an August board meeting that there may be weaknesses in the system but did not give details. He declined through a spokesman to comment for this story. APS critics say the district might have tipped scores in its favor by withholding names of low-performing students from the roster the NAEP uses to select its test-takers. The NAEP doesn’t check student rosters by name. The procedure is to see whether the list it receives from a school matches up with the school’s overall characteristics, Goldstein said. The NAEP review found no problems, Goldstein said. But the federal review focused on whether APS followed standard procedures -- not whether the rosters were accurate. To comply with privacy policies, NAEP administrators routinely destroy the rosters schools send them, Goldstein said. Therefore, we think it may be impossible to check whether APS sent accurate lists. Now, let’s take a closer look at the NAEP results starting in 2002, which is when APS began participating in the urban district program. We found that even if you ignore the possibility of cheating, it’s not clear the gains are dramatic. APS previously trumpeted that since 2002, its students demonstrated the largest gains of other large urban school districts on the NAEP reading tests. This is correct, but since that time, APS’ demographics have shifted toward whites and Hispanics -- groups that generally score higher on the NAEP, experts noted. For instance, in 2002, 6 percent of APS fourth-graders were white and 3 percent were Hispanic. By 2009, the percentage of white students more than doubled to 13 percent. Hispanics increased to 5 percent. "I think that demographic changes in the fourth grade account for 40 percent or so of the progress, but that’s not something anybody wanted to talk about or even to point out," said Mark Musick, an East Tennessee State University professor who once was chairman of the board that directs the NAEP. Also, APS’ NAEP marks aren’t all improvements. The score gap between whites and blacks remains the second-largest in the nation among large districts. In addition, children in poverty now lag even further behind their peers in reading. Furthermore, Atlanta still trails well behind other large urban districts in crucial areas. For instance, Atlanta’s eighth grade 2009 mathematics scores were lower than all others but Cleveland, the District of Columbia and Los Angeles. And at current rates, it will take Atlanta 50 to 110 years for all its students to become proficient, said Binghamton University education professor Lawrence Stedman, who thinks that the cheating scandal is proof that the U.S. needs to scrap its approach to high-stakes testing. What gains APS made slowed in recent years, he said in a recent analysis of the district’s NAEP scores. Even if we take the NAEP gains at face value, it’s not accurate to say they support CRCT gains. Though student achievement rose according to both measures, NAEP gains don’t quite match up to CRCT increases, and demographic shifts might account for a portion of the increase. That said, it’s not clear we can take the NAEP scores at face value. While a federal review of APS procedures found no red flags, the bulk of the district’s cheating on the state CRCT exam only became public knowledge after a rigorous investigation that looked beyond procedures. Such an inquiry has not taken place on the NAEP. And even if it did, it may not ever be possible to ensure that APS sent accurate rosters to NAEP administrators. The NAEP destroyed its copies. Both the CRCT and NAEP registered some gains, but the causes are unclear, the results are mixed and the district’s integrity remains in question. So many questions remain unanswered that it makes little sense to conclude that NAEP scores confirm "dramatic" gains on the CRCT. Hall therefore earns a False. | null | Beverly Hall | null | null | null | 2011-10-07T06:00:00 | 2011-08-10 | ['None'] |
goop-01776 | Teresa Giudice Did “Lawyer Up” To Divorce Joe Giudice, | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/teresa-giudice-lawyer-divorce-joe/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Teresa Giudice Did NOT “Lawyer Up” To Divorce Joe Giudice, Despite Claim | 1:29 pm, January 20, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01021 | When you look at the earned income tax credit, it has about a 25 percent fraud rate. We're looking at $20 billion to $30 billion. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/30/rand-paul/rand-paul-says-earned-income-tax-credit-has-25-per/ | In what could be a prelude to the Republican presidential debate season, a handful of potential GOP contenders shared a stage at a recent conservative confab hosted by the deep-pocketed Koch brothers. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas cordially sparred on a host of issues at the Freedom Partners retreat on Jan. 25. One area of division was about whether to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. The program is designed to incentivize low-income individuals to work by giving them a tax refund (technically a refundable tax credit) on money that is earned. For the very poor, the refund increases the more money they make, which encourages more work. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit is one area where there’s some agreement between President Barack Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the GOP’s go-to member for fiscal issues. But Rand Paul said Washington needed to pump the brakes on those proposals. "When you look at the earned income tax credit, it has about a 25 percent fraud rate," Paul said. "We're looking at $20 billion to $30 billion. And this is from estimates from the (Government Accountability Office), from the government themselves." We decided to check to see if Paul’s numbers add up. There are definitely problems with the Internal Revenue Service’s administration of the Earned Income Tax Credit, but they’re not all issues of fraud, as Paul claimed. In multiple reports, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has dinged the IRS for failing to take steps to prevent improper payments. Since 2002, the IRS has been required to report estimates of improper payments to Congress. In that time, "the IRS has made little improvement in reducing improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments," the inspector general wrote in 2013. The Earned Income Tax Credit is the only IRS program that is considered a high-risk for improper payments, the inspector general said in 2014. At the root of the problem is the complex nature of the tax credit: It is available to only low-income individuals, and it fluctuates based on earnings, number of children and other factors. The churn into and out of the program is high — about one-third of all recipients are first-timers, or their eligibility changes year-to-year due to swings in their income. This creates confusion among both recipients and administrators. The IRS said it is difficult to balance reducing improper benefits with encouraging people who qualify to use the credit. How prevalent are these improper payments? According to the inspector general, 22 to 26 percent of all payments are improper. And how much does that cost taxpayers? The entire program totaled $63 billion in 2013, meaning improper payments ranged from $13.3 billion to $15.6 billion. So Paul’s percentage was right, but he overstated the actual annual cost. Paul’s statement, his spokesman Brian Darling said, also included another tax credit highlighted by the auditor’s 2014 report, the Additional Income Tax Credit, which similarly provides refunds for some working families with children. The inspector general found improper payments between $5.9 billion and $7 billion in 2013. Combined, improper payments from the two programs would likely top $20 billion. Not all improper payments, however, are "fraud," as Paul put it. There are six issues that have led to improper payments, one of which is fraud. But none of them "can be considered the primary driver of the (Earned Income Tax Credit) improper payments," the report said. Improper payments had two root causes: authentication and verification. For example, an authentication problem would be if a parent claims a child that doesn’t live with the parent most of the time. A verification problem would be if a person claims to have a lower income than they have. About 70 percent of improper payments are due to authentication problems. "The biggest source of error has to do with family status," said Eric Toder, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and former director of research at the IRS. "The size of the EITC has to do with how many kids you have, and the definition of ‘child’ means they’re living with you half the time. And in many low-income homes, kids go back and forth between one parent or another, and it’s not obvious who should be claiming the child, or they’re claiming the child they shouldn’t be." Of course, there are also ways to make mistakes filing income taxes under both scenarios. The IRS doesn’t keep track of how many improper payments are due to fraud and how many are due to human error. Paul’s spokesman said the distinction is negligible. "At a minimum it is a fraud on the taxpayer, because they are the source for improper payments," Darling said. Why have there habitually been issues stopping these improper payments? Unlike other federal assistance like food stamps, which require an in-person application process to weed out potential fraud, the tax credit is handled entirely by the tax system. Another issue is the typical benefit per family is small. The average payout is about $3,000. The IRS might prioritize more costly fraud instead of targeting small-time scofflaws, Toder said. Attempts have been made in the past to increase the number of auditors to target fraud among these populations, Toder added. Other policy changes have attempted to fix the error rate, to little success. Our ruling Paul said the earned income tax credit has a 25 percent "fraud rate" at a cost to taxpayers of $20 billion to $30 billion. There is a history of improper payments with the Earned Income Tax Credit that has not been resolved, for various reasons, since the IRS began reporting it in 2002. It’s listed as the only IRS program deemed to have a high risk of improper payments. But Paul’s characterization of the problem as "fraud" is way too specific. Not every improper payment constitutes fraud, and the exact percentage of fraud is not known. Also, the amount of improper payments is less than Paul said -- between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate the claim Half True. | null | Rand Paul | null | null | null | 2015-01-30T13:27:58 | 2015-01-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-00336 | Says there is a report "that showed that, should we move to cover more people to a Medicare for All system, we could actually save the system trillions over an extended period of time." | half-true | /florida/statements/2018/sep/18/andrew-gillum/fact-checking-andrew-gillum-cost-medicare-all/ | Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, has attracted national attention for his support for "Medicare for All," an idea to expand the government-run Medicare health insurance program to cover everyone, rather than just Americans 65 and over. Under the plan Gillum supports, individuals (and their employers) would no longer need to shoulder co-pays for medical care or premiums for private insurance coverage. Instead, the government would pay everyone’s medical bills. It's based on a bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. On CNN’s State of the Union, host Dana Bash asked Gillum about a George Mason University study that found Medicare for All could cost the government $33 trillion over 10 years. Bash asked whether Gillum be willing to tell Floridians they need to pay more in taxes to offset the costs. "Well, let me first say there was also a report, Dana, that showed that, should we move to cover more people to a Medicare for All system, we could actually save the system trillions over an extended period of time," Gillum said during the Sept. 2, 2018 interview. We confirmed with Gillum’s campaign that he and Bash were actually referring to the same report — one published by the free-market-oriented Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Both sides in the Medicare for All debate have seized upon aspects of the report to bolster their arguments. Critics, including the author of the report, emphasized that the policy would bring a substantial fiscal burden. But supporters found fiscal hope. When Sanders previously said that the study indicated that enacting Medicare for All "would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period," we rated that claim Half True. We thought that the issue was worth a fresh look with Gillum's defense, especially given some slight differences in his phrasing. The Mercatus study Medicare for All supporters say the proposal would not only increase health-insurance coverage to 100 percent but that the government could actually save money. The savings, they say, would come from eliminating the profits currently generated by health insurers, from taking advantage of economies of scale, and from being able to leverage lower prices on everything from prescription drugs to physician reimbursement fees. Critics are skeptical that such savings would materialize, leaving taxpayers on the hook if they don't. They also worry about other negative consequences, such as mass retirements of doctors unwilling to accept lower fees. To settle this debate, Medicare for All supporters flip to the page in the Mercatus report summarizing the financial effects of Sanders’ bill. The researchers looked at two main scenarios after implementation of the proposal. One compared Mercatus’ projection for the Sanders Medicare for All bill with what would be expected under a continuation of the current system (according to a Department of Health and Human Services’ projection). With Medicare for All, the total amount of health care expenditures nationally would fall by $2.054 trillion over 10 years compared to the current system. So Gillum can point to some evidence in the study that predicts savings. However, the Mercatus report’s author, Charles Blahous, criticized that takeaway. In an August interview with PolitiFact, Blahous said that estimate is based on a relatively generous assumption about how well Sanders’ plan will end up controlling health care costs. It assumes that provider payments will be reduced to Medicare levels, that negotiation with prescription drugmakers will generate significant savings, and that administrative costs will be cut from 13 to 6 percent. Blahous was more confident about an alternative scenario published in the report, in which cost-control works less effectively. Mercatus found that over the same 10-year period, national health expenditures would actually increase by $3.252 trillion compared to current law. In addition, even if the switch to Medicare for All does end up cutting the total amount of money spent on health care in the United States, the legislation places more of those costs on the federal budget. In an era of rising debt and an aging Baby Boom generation, that could be a problem. The role of uncertainty In other words, there are a range of possible outcomes if Medicare for All is enacted, some supportive of Gillum’s perspective and some not. Independent health policy experts express caution before assuming large savings. Sustained cuts as deep as those projected in the Mercatus model that Gillum likes are "not likely feasible," John Holahan, a fellow in the health policy center at the Urban Institute, told us in August. His Urban Institute colleague, Linda Blumberg, agreed, saying it’s a "pretty heroic assumption to say that you can dial payment rates down to those levels system-wide politically." Christine Eibner, a health policy analyst with the RAND Corp., said that uncertainty makes it hard to predict the cost impact of Medicare for All, including whether administrative costs and reimbursements would decline or whether demand for health care services could be kept in check. In a recent report co-authored by Eibner that considered the impact of a single-payer model for New York state, RAND found that "the estimated effects are highly dependent on the assumptions about provider payment rates, administrative costs, and drug prices." Our ruling Gillum said there is a report "that showed that, should we move to cover more people to a Medicare for All system, we could actually save the system trillions over an extended period of time." Trillions in savings would be one of a range of possibilities for how Medicare for All enactment could play out. But it’s not the only one, and independent analysts say it’s far from a sure thing that Medicare for All would save as much money as Gillum hopes it will. The statement is partially accurate. We rate it Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Andrew Gillum | null | null | null | 2018-09-18T11:43:40 | 2018-09-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-02043 | Says Gov. Scott Walker "has made Wisconsin 2nd in the nation in losing jobs." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2014/jun/02/brett-hulsey/brett-hulsey-says-scott-walker-has-made-wisconsin-/ | It’s well known that Gov. Scott Walker has faltered on his top 2010 campaign promise of creating 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term. With his re-election looming in November 2014, he’s less than halfway there. So when state Rep. Brett Hulsey announced he was running in the Democratic primary to challenge Walker, it would seem he had an easy issue to raise. But even when running a shoestring campaign, those shoestrings can trip you up. In an April 30, 2014 news release -- issued at a time when the state GOP was poised to vote on a resolution proclaiming the right to secede from the United States -- Hulsey declared: "Governor Walker’s Reign of Error has made Wisconsin 2nd in the nation in losing jobs. To create a better future for our children, we should strive to be the best in the United States, not leave it." As evidence of his jobs claim, Hulsey cited a March 30, 2014 article from The Capital Times that discussed the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report for February of 2014. That report said Wisconsin lost an estimated 9,500 jobs in February. Only North Carolina at 11,300 was worst; Alaska at 2,300 placed third. (These figures include both private-sector and government jobs. Walker’s campaign promise focused only on private sector jobs.) So, at least in terms of the February report, Hulsey’s claim was on point. But the jobs count cited in the article was based on monthly numbers, which are derived from a small sample of employers and often subject to dramatic changes. And Hulsey did not specify a month in his claim. Rather, he expressed it as a current condition. Indeed, by the time Hulsey made his statement the estimates for March were already out, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics had also revised the February figures. Two things in those numbers stand out: -- Wisconsin’s jobs number for February actually worsened with the revision, and the state fell behind North Carolina to the top, er, bottom spot. -- But the March figures said the state added 6,900 jobs in March. As for the No. 2 loser title, that month it belonged to Virginia (-5,000) which followed Pennsylvania (-8,400) By either measure, Hulsey was wrong -- in one case slightly so, in the other wildly so. Our rating Hulsey said Walker "has made Wisconsin 2nd in the nation in losing jobs." He cherry-picked a report for a single month but spoke of it as a longer-term trend. What’s more, the data was already outdated at the time, so he was wrong when he said it. We rate his statement False. | null | Brett Hulsey | null | null | null | 2014-06-02T05:00:00 | 2014-04-30 | ['Wisconsin', 'Scott_Walker_(politician)'] |
goop-01357 | Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton “Secretly Married,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-blake-shelton-secretly-married-wrong-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton NOT “Secretly Married,” Despite Late And Wrong Reports | 8:20 pm, March 19, 2018 | null | ['Gwen_Stefani', 'Blake_Shelton'] |
pomt-00403 | Says "Sasha Obama’s racist anti-white rant just got her expelled." | pants on fire! | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/sep/04/blog-posting/no-sasha-obama-wasnt-expelled-racism/ | President Barack Obama’s younger daughter Sasha Obama didn’t go off on her biology teacher in a "racist anti-white rant." She hasn’t been expelled, either. The website ConservativeColumns.com made these claims, citing the nonexistent DC Gazette-Intelligencer. A link supposedly to the original report redirects to an article from The Aquila Report titled "Mother, adult son fight for right to incestuous relationship." This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The Obama sisters are frequent targets of malicious websites. We debunked a similar expulsion story about Malia Obama in April. The headline: "Malia Obama suspended after racist anti-white attack goes viral." Neither of these stories are true. Malia is currently attending Harvard University, and Sasha is a senior at Sidwell Friends School in Washington. The story was copied from the website America’s Last Line of Defense, which self-identifies as a satire site. Conservative Columns does not include a disclaimer on its home page or on the story. In addition to the identical content, the America’s Last Line of Defense article appears under the same headline as conservativecolumns.com, and it’s filed in the site’s category of "You'll have to wait for the Snopes debunk to tell If it's ‘satire’ or not." This story was copied from a conservative satire site and then touted as fact. It’s not. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-09-04T14:14:43 | 2018-09-03 | ['None'] |
pomt-11977 | California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom was "for (high-speed rail), before he’s against it, and then he’s for it again." | mostly true | /california/statements/2017/sep/29/antonio-villaraigosa/has-gavin-newsom-flip-flopped-californias-high-spe/ | High-speed rail has wedged itself into the 2018 campaign for California governor, splitting the current top two Democrats in the race. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently claimed Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — the frontrunner in the race — has essentially flip-flopped in his support for the state’s controversial and costly rail project. Here’s what Villaraigosa told the Sacramento Bee on Sept. 20, 2017: Newsom was "for it, before he’s against it, and then he’s for it again." He added that Newsom was revising his positions "when the winds blow in his direction." Given the key decisions California’s next governor will need to make on high-speed rail, we wanted to know whether Newsom has really shifted this much in his support for the massive project. We hopped aboard for a fact-check. Background on the bullet train In 2008, California voters approved a nearly $10 billion bond to jump-start the development of a high-speed rail network. Plans called for trains to zip across the state at 200 miles per hour, initially connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles and eventually extending the system to Sacramento and San Diego. Cost estimates for the project, however, have see-sawed from an initial $33 billion to $98 billion to $64 billion. The project has also fallen far behind schedule with construction limited to a small segment in the Central Valley. We asked Villaraigosa’s campaign for evidence of Newsom’s shifting positions. As examples of his initial support, it pointed to news articles showing Newsom backing the 2008 bond measure. The campaign then cited a 2014 radio interview that it says proves Newsom opposed the project. Finally, it cited articles from October 2016 in which the lieutenant governor again pledged his support. "We absolutely need this," Newsom said of high-speed rail in a 2007 Mercury-News article. In February 2014, however, Newsom was asked by conservative radio host Ben Shapiro: "Are you pro or against the train, especially now that the California public, which approved the train in the first place, has reneged and no longer likes the train?" Newsom responded: "I think I’m where the public was and is." A poll in September 2013 found 52 percent of Californians wanted the rail project stopped and 51 percent felt it was a waste of money. Newsom went on to tell Shapiro:"We don’t have the federal dollars we were hoping for ... the private sector hasn’t stepped up." Shapiro then asked: "If you had your druthers, Gavin, would you kill the thing?" Newsom responded: "I would take the dollars and redirect it to other, more pressing infrastructure needs. … I am not the only Democrat that feels this way. I gotta tell you, I am one of the few that just said it publicly. Most are now saying it privately." This exchange gave many the impression Newsom had backed away from the project. Newsom did not clarify in the interview what kind of funds should be redirected. In October 2016, Newsom told the Sacramento Press Club that he would "100 percent" seek a solid funding source for the train project if he's elected governor in 2018. The Associated Press took that to mean he again supported the project. A March 2017 poll found Californians remain divided over high-speed rail, with 48 percent favoring the project and 46 percent opposed. The survey added that 66 percent say they would favor high-speed rail if it cost less than the current estimate of $64 billion over the next 20 years. In this Feb. 26, 2016, file photo, the supports for a 1,600-foot-viaduct to carry high-speed rail trains across the Fresno River are seen under construction near Madera, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) Newsom’s response Dan Newman, Newsom’s campaign spokesman, described Villaraigosa’s claim about shifting positions this way: "The statement is extremely misleading at best," he said in an email. "Villaraigosa is simply trying to score political points with a disingenuous cheap shot, by blithely ignoring the fact that the project being discussed today is significantly different than what voters supported in 2008." The spokesman said Newsom has "never opposed" high-speed rail. Instead, Newsom publicly scrutinized the project’s business plan when cost estimates ballooned to nearly $100 billion and questioned Gov. Jerry Brown’s plans to use cap and trade funds for it, the spokesman said. "Scrutinizing the business plan is very different from opposing (high-speed rail)," Newman added. He said Newsom’s comment in the 2014 radio interview about redirecting money away from the project was referring to redirecting cap and trade money away from it, not the state bond money passed by voters. He said a statement from Newsom’s office in March 2014 clarifies Newsom’s consistent support even as he questioned the project’s finances: "The lieutenant governor has long supported high speed rail and still does, but this project in its current form gives him pause," Newsom’s spokeswoman Andrea Koskey, told Buzzfeed News for an article on March 27, 2014. He added that Newsom’s statements of support in more recent years are also consistent with previous comments. Experts we spoke with were split on the claim. Sacramento State Political Science Professor Wesley Hussey said Villaraigosa’s claim about Newsom vacillating on the project isn’t right. "I don't think it's a fair assessment," the professor said in an email."Newsom came out several years ago with serious doubts about the high speed rail, but I don't think he's ever said definitely he would stop the program if he became governor. Maybe he fluctuates from lukewarm to a soft no, but that's not the same as consistently changing his opinion." Key to our assessment, however, was the 2014 radio interview and Newsom’s own admission that he agreed with the growing public sentiment that opposed the train at that time. We spoke with one more expert. Lou Thompson is chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, an independent oversight group that issues reports to the Legislature on the project. He declined to comment about whether he believed Newsom had definitely switched his stance on high speed rail. Thompson said, however, that redirecting cap and trade money away from the project in 2014, as Newsom suggested doing, would have made the project’s future "a lot more difficult." Asked whether such a move would have effectively killed the project, Thompson said: "I don’t know what other source of money they would have found." He described cap and trade money as the key revenue source for the project both then and now, given the restrictions on other sources, including the bond funds. Our rating Villaraigosa claimed Newsom has essentially flip-flopped in his support for California’s high-speed rail, saying he was "for it, before he’s against it, and then he’s for it again." Villaraigosa’s campaign cited articles showing Newsom strongly backed the project a decade ago. It also pointed to a radio interview in 2014 in which Newsom admitted that he shared the public’s growing opposition to high-speed rail. He also suggested redirecting funds away from the project, a move that the head of the project’s oversight panel said would have made building high-speed rail "a lot more difficult." A spokesman for Newsom’s campaign defended the candidate’s stance, saying Newsom has scrutinized project costs as they have soared beyond initial estimates. He said, however, that Newsom has never turned his back on high-speed rail. We found Villaraigosa pointed to key evidence, particularly the 2014 radio interview, that shows Newsom’s stance had shifted, at least for that moment in time. In fairness to Newsom, he’s consistently expressed concern that the project no longer represents what voters supported in 2008 and that his main worry was its cost. Villaraigosa’s statement could have used this additional information. We rate his 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 | Antonio Villaraigosa | null | null | null | 2017-09-29T15:18:09 | 2017-09-20 | ['California', 'Gavin_Newsom'] |
chct-00181 | FACT CHECK: Does China Produce As Much Steel In A Month As The US Does In A Year? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/03/10/fact-check-china-produces-as-much-steel-in-month-as-us-in-year/ | null | null | null | Kush Desai | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 7:26 PM 03/10/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12165 | Hillary Clinton has third heart attack — docs says she ‘won’t survive’. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/aug/03/blog-posting/hillary-clinton-not-dead-heart-attack-fake-news-si/ | An online story about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffering not just one heart attack, but three, is a fake news story concocted by a parody site run by a liberal troll. "Breaking: Hillary Clinton has third heart attack — docs says she ‘won’t survive’," read the headline on a July 28, 2017, post on PoliticsPaper.com. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social media site’s efforts to combat fake news. The article called Clinton the "Butcher of Benghazi" and quoted Dr. Eugene Icsa of Westchester Memorial Hospital in upstate New York as saying, "We predict she’ll be at rest within hours." The story further said daughter Chelsea was visiting, but husband and former President Bill Clinton was "sitting on the front porch of the Chappaqua mansion drinking what looks like either tomato juice or a Bloody Mary." There have been no other reports of Hillary Clinton suffering a massive coronary episode; it’s because she hasn’t. The story is fake. The photo ostensibly of a doctor feverishly working to save Clinton’s life is actually a stock photo we most recently found on a Seattle Times story about the challenges facing trauma nurses. There’s not even a Westchester Memorial Hospital in upstate New York, as far as we can tell. There is a Westchester Medical Center in Westchester, N.Y., but that’s it. This item was originally posted on July 22 on TheLastLineOfDefense.org, a website run by a man named Christopher Blair, who creates absurd news stories in an attempt to fool conservative readers. A footnote on the bottom of the website said that "everything on this site is a satirical work of fiction." The warning is repeated in the About Us section, where a disclaimer reads, "We present fiction as fact and our sources don’t actually exist." This site and its troll-run brethren like to write about Clinton’s death quite a bit. OurLandOfTheFree.com, a related website, wrote on July 13 that Clinton died of an overdose of Dilaudid, which is a brand-name of the opioid painkiller hydromorphone. TheLastLineOfDefense.org also ran a series of stories in which Hillary and Chelsea Clinton died in a boating accident that was the result of sabotage. Clinton is still very much in the news, since Republican members of Congress continue to push for investigations into her own campaign activities. But she’s still alive. We rate this claim Pants On Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-08-03T15:30:45 | 2017-07-28 | ['None'] |
snes-00067 | A videos shows the step-by-step process of making a lemon-pomegranate hybrid fruit. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lemon-pomegranate-hybrid/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does This Video Show a Lemon-Pomegranate Hybrid Plant? | 18 September 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02662 | Taylor Swift Carried In Suitcase Out Of Apartment, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-swift-suitcase-carried-apartment-luggage-car-trunk/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Taylor Swift NOT Carried In Suitcase Out Of Apartment, Despite Reports | 6:04 pm, July 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00210 | Shia LaBeouf Dating FKA Twigs To ‘Get Back’ At Robert Pattinson, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/shia-labeouf-dating-fka-twigs-get-back-robert-pattinson-mia-goth/ | null | null | null | Gossip Cop Staff | null | Shia LaBeouf NOT Dating FKA Twigs To ‘Get Back’ At Robert Pattinson, Despite Report | 10:48 pm, September 26, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13674 | Trade deals threaten "India’s role as the pharmacy of the developing world" for new HIV medicines. | mostly true | /global-news/statements/2016/aug/03/doctors-without-borders/do-trade-deals-threaten-india-low-cost-hiv-drug-ma/ | If there was one success story to emerge from the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, it was that more people are getting treated for HIV/AIDS than ever before -- about 17 million by the latest United Nations estimate. Falling drug prices played a key role in helping providers reach this point. But the international health group Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) warned at a press conference that trade negotiations around the world put future gains at risk. The group said its latest report "examines multiple global threats to access to affordable treatment, including trade deals which threaten India’s role as the ‘pharmacy of the developing world.’" Trade is at the center of the U.S. presidential election for its effect on the American work force. But is there more at play? We wondered if it’s true that the next round of agreements, both those that involve the United States and those that don’t, would undermine some large drug makers in India. Why India India matters because thanks to the country’s patent laws, India and generics go together like toast and jam. The rules there make it easier than other places for companies to churn out generic drugs once the patent on the original version runs out. Generics are cheaper than their brand name cousins and if you want to stretch a dollar, you take the generic option. Doctors Without Borders said 97 percent of the drugs it uses to treat people with HIV are generics made in India. That includes medicines for HIV itself, as well as for diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis that hit people with suppressed immune systems. Doctors Without Borders is worried less about the drugs it uses today and more about the ones it’s counting on in the future. As the number of people coming in for treatment rises, doctors are finding more who don’t respond to the most common, or first-line, medications. Doctors Without Borders is focused on making second-and-third-line drugs more affordable to keep pace with a growing need, and they see India as the place to make that happen. Impact of trade deals Although the Trans-Pacific Partnership gets a lot of attention in the United States, India is not part of it. But it is part of discussions involving the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a mega-regional pact that aims to tie together 16 countries including China, India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and many other Asian nations. The European Union is also seeking a regional trade agreement with India and other Asian countries. Both of those trade negotiations have sought to get India to tighten its patent laws. The United States has too, through a one-on-one process overseen by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The issues that office has raised mirror ones in the big trade deals. The USTR’s latest report criticizes India’s patent laws, saying "the pharmaceutical industry in particular faces a host of challenges related to intellectual property rights." What do U.S. trade negotiators not like in particular? For one, India is reluctant to grant new patents for a drug or blend of drugs built around medications that already enjoy patent protection. These so-called secondary patents extend the time for the drug maker to enjoy exclusive production rights. That translates into a chance to charge higher prices. American officials also don’t care for India’s rules on clinical trial information. When someone invents a drug, they have to prove it’s safe and effective. That proof is in the trial reports. India lets generic drug makers rely on the original clinical trials. One way to extend the exclusive right to make a drug is to bar generic drug makers from using that data for a number of years. Would these sorts of changes make life easier for the makers of new drugs and harder for the generic manufacturers? We found no dispute that they would. We talked with independent experts who think India should stand its ground and those who thought it ought to bend, but either way, they agreed on who wins and who loses. There are good arguments on both sides for protecting the profits of companies that invent new drugs, versus making drugs more affordable. We take no position on the larger question of where the right balance point falls. We're focused only on the claim that large trading partners want to move Indian law in favor of the inventors of new drugs. Lee Branstetter is a professor and trade specialist at Carnegie Mellon University. He thinks Indian law ought to change at the expense of the generic companies. "In the short run, this will constrain the profit opportunities for the generic producers," he told us. Srividhya Ragavan, a professor of law at Texas A&M, thinks India’s laws strike the right balance as they are. She told us she sees the U.S. position as "an effort to weaken India’s generic drug industry." We found any number of articles that reached the same conclusion. But just because Branstetter and Ragavan see eye to eye on how these policy shifts would undermine generic drug makers, that doesn't mean they agree on what this means for the availability of low-cost drugs. Ragavan told us "the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and EU’s trade negotiations, are all targeting India’s generic drug industry much to the detriment of access to medication to the poor people." Branstetter said that’s unlikely and highlights an important feature in the overarching trade rules of the World Trade Organization. The escape hatch Branstetter said based on what he’s seen in other countries (he cited Peru as an example) he doubts that would happen. But even if it did, he said, a part of the WTO code -- the Doha Declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement -- gives countries the chance to override a patent that limits a drug’s availability. Branstetter calls it an escape hatch. "Any member state could declare we have a public health emergency," Branstetter said. "Then, they can force the company that holds the patent to licence the manufacture of that drug to a domestic or foreign drug producer, who would provide it at an agreed price." Branstetter notes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership specifically requires any country that signs it to accept that Doha declaration. Countries have taken this step before. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the mid 2000s, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana, Mozambique and many others issued what are called compulsory licenses to get affordable HIV/AIDS drugs to their citizens. Still, Rohit Malpani, director of policy of the Doctors Without Borders- Access Campaign, told us that in recent years, the number of compulsory licenses has fallen off. "Even if countries have the right to use the safeguard and can use them they do not," Malpani said. He suggested several reasons, including a lack of political will and pressure from the United States, the EU and the drug companies. Our ruling Doctors Without Borders said that trade deals threaten the capacity of Indian generic drug makers to produce the next round of HIV drugs. We found that trade negotiations, whether part of large regional trade agreements or unilateral discussions between the United States and India, have language that work against India generic drug makers. They push India to be more ready to grant patents for drugs that are extensions of drugs that already enjoy patent protection. And they want India to bar generic drug makers from relying on the clinical trial data produced by the inventor of the drug. Both measures would make patents last longer and give the drug companies more time to charge higher prices. None of the articles we read or experts we reached doubted this result or that this would undermine the generic drug makers. Our experts disagreed on whether this would reduce access to critical drugs. The trade deals do no favors for India’s generic drug makers. With a caveat about future access to drugs, we rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Doctors Without Borders | null | null | null | 2016-08-03T11:24:05 | 2016-07-21 | ['India'] |
pose-01245 | As Governor, I will fight to ... pass laws that encourage voting. | stalled | https://www.politifact.com/north-carolina/promises/coop-o-meter/promise/1336/new-laws-encourage-voting/ | null | coop-o-meter | Roy Cooper | null | null | New laws to encourage voting | 2017-01-05T19:39:55 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03325 | Most of the U.S. Senate is comprised of multimillionaires. | mostly true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/jul/25/sheila-oliver/sheila-oliver-says-us-senate-mostly-made-multi-mil/ | Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver says the U.S. Senate doesn’t look enough like the rest of America. It’s mostly just a bunch of multimillionaires, the Essex County Democrat claims. As one of four candidates in the Aug. 13 Democratic primary to fill the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Frank Lautenberg, Oliver has presented herself to voters as a hard-working individual from humble beginnings. Oliver is competing against Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Congressmen Rush Holt and Frank Pallone. "Many of our senators have not lived the life of an average working-class person," Oliver said in a July 11 interview on NJToday. "Most of the U.S. Senate is comprised of multimillionaires." For the most part, Oliver’s claim is on the money. Most current senators had an average net worth in 2011 of more than $1 million, but less than a majority were "multimillionaires" with several million dollars, according to an analysis of financial disclosure forms by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Washington, D.C.-based center’s analysis is based on financial disclosure forms filed by members of Congress when they were already in office or running as candidates last year. After subtracting the liabilities from the assets, the center estimates a range of net worth. The most recent data available on the center’s website covers 2011 and includes 98 of the 100 current senators. Only Sen. Jeff Chiesa of New Jersey -- who was appointed as an interim replacement for Lautenberg -- and Brian Schatz of Hawaii are not included in the database of personal finances for 2011. Of those 98 current senators, 62 had an average net worth of more than $1 million, according to the center. Among those 62 senators, 13 had between $1 million and $2 million; 6 had between $2 million and $3 million; and 43 senators had more than $3 million, the center states. Based on those 2011 figures, the wealthiest senator was Mark Warner of Virginia, who had an average net worth of slightly more than $228 million, according to the center. The poorest senator was Florida’s Marco Rubio with negative $45,494 in average net worth, the center states. The annual salary for most senators is $174,000. Senate leaders earn $193,400 per year. Since less than a majority of senators had an average net worth of several million dollars in 2011, Oliver’s claim about "multimillionaires" is slightly off. Still, most senators at least had more than $1 million. In response to our findings, Oliver spokesman Michael Makarski made the following statement: "Speaker Oliver was making the point that average working and middle class people are underrepresented, and that Congress and Washington in general are out of touch with mainstream Americans." Some political science experts said the number of millionaires in the Senate is related to the expense of running a Senate campaign and the prestige of being a senator. "The Senate is the big boy's and big girl's...sandbox," Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said in an e-mail. "You get all your calls returned." Richard Arenberg of Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, who worked on Capitol Hill for about 34 years, also noted how wealthier individuals are more likely able to meet the demands of running for Senate and maintaining the office. "My theory would be that it is a challenge to live the lifestyle expected of a senator, including maintaining homes in Washington and their home states, if the senator is living solely on a senator's salary," Arenberg said in an e-mail. "The campaign demands also play a role in the sense that a campaign for the Senate these days takes a fulltime commitment for up to two years," Arenberg added. "Many people cannot break from their careers and make the financial sacrifice to do that." Our ruling In an NJToday interview, Oliver claimed: "Most of the U.S. Senate is comprised of multimillionaires." Based on financial data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics, 62 current senators had an average net worth in 2011 of more than $1 million. Of those senators, 13 had between $1 million and $2 million; 6 had between $2 million and $3 million; and 43 senators had more than $3 million. We rate the statement Mostly True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. Editor's Note: After this story was published, we learned that Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey is included in the database of personal finances for 2011 as a congressman. We have revised the story to show that 62 senators had an average net worth in 2011 of more than $1 million. | null | Sheila Oliver | null | null | null | 2013-07-25T07:30:00 | 2013-07-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-11034 | Our courts find that 80 percent of those who do file for asylum aren’t qualified for it, do not merit that relief. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/02/jeff-sessions/jeff-sesssions-false-claim-80-percent-asylum-appli/ | Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s "zero-tolerance" policy to prosecute all immigrants who enter the United States illegally, saying not prosecuting them would be a "disservice" to the country and an "insult" to those who come to the United States legally. Sessions said "adults are only being arrested" because they didn’t come to the United States through a port of entry "where they could have applied for asylum lawfully." (That’s not accurate. Immigrants can apply for asylum even if apprehended at the border, regardless of immigration status.) "But many do not apply for asylum, of course" Sessions said June 25 before the National Association of School Resource Officers. "And our courts find that 80 percent of those who do file for asylum aren’t qualified for it, do not merit that relief." Is Sessions accurate that 80 percent of immigrants who apply for asylum "do not merit the relief"? We asked the Justice Department about Sessions’ claim, pointing to Sessions’ prepared remarks posted on the department’s website saying: "courts find that 80 percent of asylum claims are without merit." In fiscal year 2017 there was a 20 percent grant rate for asylum applications, "which suggests that most are not meritorious," Justice Department spokesman Devin M. O’Malley told PolitiFact. But experts told us it’s not that clear cut that the remaining 80 percent of asylum applications are not merited. There are several other reasons why an asylum claim is not granted, experts told us. Here’s a closer look at the issue. Asylum data The Justice Department pointed to immigration court statistics, particularly a table on asylum rates for the latest full fiscal year, 2017. A footnote for that table said the data is for asylum decisions on affirmative and defensive applications issued in completed removal, deportation, exclusion, and asylum-only proceedings. ("Affirmative asylum" is filed voluntarily with Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; if USCIS is unable to approve a case, the agency may refer it to immigration court within the Justice Department. "Defensive asylum" applications go before an immigration judge and are filed by individuals who are in removal proceedings.) Here’s what the 2017 asylum rates said: • Grant rate: 20.22 percent • Denial rate: 33.51 percent • Other closure rate: 27.66 percent • Administrative closure rate: 18.61 percent The "other" rate is for cases that have a decision of abandonment, not adjudicated, other, or withdrawn. The administrative closure rate covers "decisions that have not been placed back on the docket following a granted motion to recalendar," the footnote for the table said. Just because the grant rate is about 20 percent, it does not mean that an 80 percent aren’t qualified, or don’t merit relief, as Sessions claimed. As the Justice Department table showed, there are several other factors at play. It’s also worth noting that the data the Justice Department highlighted includes "affirmative asylum" cases, which initiate with USCIS and are referred to immigration court. Affirmative asylum applicants are not in removal proceedings, as would be people apprehended at the border due to the "zero-tolerance" policy. Denise Gilman, a clinical professor and director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, pointed to other data released in the Justice Department’s fiscal year 2016 statistics yearbook. It showed a 31 percent grant rate in 2016 for defensive asylum claims. Border claims would fall into that pile (along with some others), Gilman said. Experts weigh in Immigration law experts told us that some asylum cases can also be denied while still having viable claims. It is not accurate to infer that because only 20 percent of claims were granted that the rest were not meritorious, said Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham Law School. "Many cases are denied for procedural reasons not related to the merit of the claim, or because the applicants are unrepresented or poorly represented and therefore don't have the chance to make their case in an effective way," Gordon said. She also said that cases decided by asylum officers are not counted in the immigration court statistics. Access to counsel significantly impacts the outcome of a case, said Lori A. Nessel, a law professor and director of Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Social Justice. "When asylum-seekers are detained, they are much less likely to have lawyers and without lawyers, they are less likely to even seek asylum or other relief, much less be granted," Nessel said. Immigrants, including asylum applicants, also do fare better in some courts than in others, said Stephen Meili, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School. An October 2017 story published on NJ.com noted disparities in outcome of cases, with immigrants faring better in courts in Newark, N.J. than in Atlanta. Greater access to lawyers in the Newark and New York area could determine success in courts, the story said. In discussing merit, it's also important to count the number of cases that are reversed by the board of immigration appeals or by one of the circuit courts of appeals, said James Hathaway, a law professor and director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Our ruling Sessions said, "Our courts find that 80 percent of those who do file for asylum aren’t qualified for it, do not merit that relief." Sessions’ claim is based on Justice Department data showing a 20 percent asylum grant rate in 2017. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the remaining 80 percent were without merit. The data the Justice Department used to support Sessions’ remark actually undercut his point. Some cases had not been adjudicated or placed in the court docket. Immigration law experts also said that even if a case is denied, it could still be meritorious, but unsuccessful in court because an applicant did not have a lawyer. Sessions’ claim is not accurate. We rate it False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Jeff Sessions | null | null | null | 2018-07-02T08:00:00 | 2018-06-25 | ['None'] |
vees-00257 | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program in PH explained | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-sheet-facebooks-third-party-fact-checking-pr | null | null | null | null | factcheckph,facebook,third-party fact-checking program | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program in PH explained | April 18, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13879 | As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/01/donald-trump/did-hillary-clinton-launder-millions-dollars-while/ | Donald Trump assailed Hillary Clinton’s credibility in a rapid response email following her speech on economics on June 21. Trump claimed that Clinton used her role as secretary of state as a vehicle to funnel government money to her husband. "As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group," the email said. "Clinton's State Department provided $55.2 million in grants to Laureate Education from 2010-2012. Laureate thanked Bill for providing unbelievable access to the secretary of state by paying him off $16.5 million. This is yet another example of how Clinton treated the State Department as her own personal hedge fund, and sold out the American public to fund her lavish lifestyle." Laureate Education is a network of more than 80 for-profit educational institutions that operate in 30 countries. Bill Clinton was named Laureate’s honorary chancellor in 2010 and maintained this position until 2015. His role chiefly consisted of advising the company on educational matters and traveling to campuses across the world to speak to young people. The Trump campaign did not respond to our requests for clarification, but his argument seems to be based off of claims made in Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash. In the book, Schweizer describes what he calls the "Clinton blur" between the activities of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the State Department and associated nonprofits and corporations. We decided to investigate Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton, who was secretary from 2009 through early 2013, "laundered" money to Laureate to pay off her husband’s salary. We ultimately found that there is zero evidence that Laureate received any money from the federal government while Clinton was at the State Department. Bill Clinton and Laureate Education Neither Bill Clinton nor Laureate Education disclosed his compensation as honorary chancellor. However, his tax returns show that Laureate paid him approximately $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014. We looked to usaspending.gov to find out if Laureate received any funding from the State Department. The site tracks the amount of money given to various organizations through government grants and contracts. According to this database, Laureate did not receive any money from any federal agency while Bill Clinton was in his role, nor while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. State Department Spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement, "The State Department is not aware of any grants provided directly to Laureate Education since 2009, though we are aware of some grants to educational institutions within or affiliated with the Laureate Education network." The International Youth Foundation Clinton Cash draws a connection between Laureate Education and the International Youth Foundation, a nonprofit that supports youth employment, entrepreneurship and social innovation across the world. The book notes that Laureate Chairman Douglas Becker is also chairman of the foundation’s board of directors. The foundation’s profile on usaspending.gov shows that it received approximately $72.6 million in grants between fiscal years 2009 and 2013. Trump gets to his $55.2 million figure by summing the grant money received between 2010 and 2012. We looked at the grant money given to the International Youth Foundation by the government between 2009 and 2013. FY 2009: $9M from USAID FY 2010: $17M from USAID FY 2011: $14.6M from USAID FY 2012: $23.6M from USAID. $1.9 million from State Department. FY 2013: $10.4M from USAID The grant money shown on usaspending.gov appears to have sharply increased while Hillary Clinton was at the State Department, which is the gist of the claim that Trump’s source makes. However, he fails to mention several key facts that undermine the logic of his claim. First, the International Youth Foundation had been receiving similar amounts of grant money before Hillary Clinton joined the State Department. An open letter by CEO William Reese claims that they negotiated a grant in 2008 under President George W. Bush for $30.2 million for a USAID mission in Jordan. He says that the money from this grant was handed out over several years, overlapping with new grants from President Barack Obama, giving the false impression that funding had sharply increased after Clinton became secretary of state. We looked at financial records provided by the foundation and confirmed the existence and size of the grants. The records show that approximately $24 million from the grant was dispensed between 2010 and 2012. Second, almost all of the grants came from USAID, which is a separate agency than the State Department. Is it possible that Hillary Clinton had influence over the USAID grant process while she was secretary of state? A State Department spokesperson told us the two agencies have separate grant and contract offices, separate procurement offices and their own rules with regards to the grant process. "State would not have oversight of or be involved in the USAID grant process — grants are let through a competitive process that the agency itself undertakes," said Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of Global Health & HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, who is familiar with the agencies’ grant processes. Finally, there is no evidence to indicate that the International Youth Foundation is a sister organization of Laureate that could be used to transfer money to the company. Schweizer points to Douglas Becker to imply that the organizations are linked. However, Becker isn’t paid for his position at the foundation and has no official executive role. In an interview with PolitiFact, Reese of the International Youth Foundation expanded on their relationship with Laureate. "If we were a subordinate organization we would have to state that in our 990. If we were to transfer money over to Laureate we would have to put that," Reese said. "We’ve received money from Laureate but never given money to them." Reese stated that the two organizations have worked together on a variety of projects related to global development in the past, such as a relief project for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The foundation’s records show that it’s been receiving between $100,000 and $1.4 million per year from Laureate since 2003, seven years before Bill Clinton joined Laureate. When we asked about any relationship Bill Clinton had with the International Youth Foundation, Reese said, "No contractual or employment or consulting agreements have been made with President Clinton." The foundation’s profile on Charitynavigator.org, a site that ranks nonprofits according to transparency and accountability, shows that it’s a respected charity with a score of 94.26 out of 100 possible points. The foundation has worked with various other high-profile partners such as Nokia and Barclays since 1990. Our ruling Trump said Hillary Clinton "laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group." That's a serious of charge of illegal activity. Actually, the State Department under Clinton never made any direct transfers to Laureate Education. Trump’s source conflates Laureate with a separate charitable organization that received funds from a separate government agency. The International Youth Foundation is a respected nonprofit that has received money from the government since the Bush years, before Clinton joined the State Department. We rate this claim False. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-07-01T12:30:00 | 2016-06-21 | ['Bill_Clinton', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
pose-01149 | To be perfectly clear right now and forever: absolutely no tax increases whatsoever for any of my programs. The Abbott administration will not have any tax increases.” in the works https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1239/approve-no-tax-increases/ None abbott-o-meter Greg Abbott None None Approve no tax increases 2015-01-20T14:00:00 None ['None']
pomt-15182 The rate in which people are working (in Wisconsin) is almost five points higher than it is nationally." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2015/aug/21/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-wisconsin-percentage-people-work/ | Gov. Scott Walker took a new approach when asked about his jobs record during the first GOP presidential debate on Aug. 6, 2015. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace reminded viewers that Walker promised in 2010 that state employers would create 250,000 jobs in his first four-year term. "In fact, Wisconsin added barely half that and ranked 35th in the country in job growth," Wallace said, addressing Walker. "Now you're running for president, and you're promising an economic plan in which everyone will earn a piece of the American dream," he said. "Given your record in Wisconsin, why should voters believe you?" Walker responded that the state’s unemployment rate has declined from more than 8 percent in the depths of the Great Recession to 4.6 percent, and that the state had "more than made up for the jobs that were lost during the recession." Then he turned to the claim we want to check: "And the rate in which people are working is almost five points higher than it is nationally." Is he right? And is that something new under Walker? About the statistic Walker’s campaign said he was referring to the Labor Force Participation Rate, a measuring stick created by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate includes "the number of people who are either employed or are actively looking for work," according to Investopedia.com. It does not include those who are no longer actively searching for work. It’s a different vantage point than the more typically used unemployment rate. As of June 2015, the state’s rate was 67.9 percent. That compares with the national rate of 62.6 percent. Thus, Wisconsin’s rate is about 5.3 percentage points higher than the national one. So, Walker is correct on the number. (A note: the national figures come from a different set of data, the Current Population Survey, while the state figures are from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics.) The history behind the numbers But, a deeper look shows that the state’s performance predates his time in office. That is, Wisconsin’s labor force participation has exceeded the nation’s for years. For instance, in 2010 -- the year before Walker took office -- the state’s participation rate was 63.4 percent, compared with 58.5 percent nationally. That was a difference of 4.9 points, at a time when the economy was just beginning to emerge from the recession. Wisconsin’s high water mark was 71.8 percent in 1997, compared with 63.8 percent nationally, a difference of 8 points. Nationally, the number reached a high in 2000, at 64.4 percent. Wisconsin has topped that figure in 24 of the past 38 years. Our rating In the debate, Walker said "the rate in which people are working (in Wisconsin) is almost five points higher than it is nationally." He’s right on the numbers, but the same statement could have been true had it been made by any of his seven immediate predecessors, Republican and Democrat. That important bit of context was missing from his claim. We rate it Mostly True. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2015-08-21T10:00:00 | 2015-08-06 | ['Wisconsin'] |
tron-02718 | Cop Who Arrested Malia Obama Found Dead | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/cop-arrested-malia-obama-found-dead-fiction/ | null | obama | null | null | ['barack obama', 'malia obama', 'police', 'the obamas'] | Cop Who Arrested Malia Obama Found Dead | Aug 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01875 | Nordstrom is offering Eyes Lips Face makeup product for as low as $1 each | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/nordstrom-makeup-elf-scam/ | null | household | null | null | null | Nordstrom is offering Eyes Lips Face makeup product for as low as $1 each | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02157 | A sign posted in the London Underground informed passengers that they all smelled and should wear deodorant. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/london-underground-sign/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This a Real London Underground Sign? | 22 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04764 | Mitt Romney "gave away his father's inheritance." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/27/reince-priebus/republican-national-committee-chair-reince-priebus/ | Mitt Romney, the self-made man. That’s part of the "Mitt Romney story" that Republicans plan to tell at their convention in Tampa this week. His father may have been well-to-do, but Republicans have been emphasizing for weeks that Romney made his millions on his own. Romney’s father, George, was chief executive of Detroit automaker American Motors Corp. and a three-time governor of Michigan who ran for president in the 1960s. Mitt grew up in a wealthy Michigan suburb, attending prep school and ultimately Harvard. He's been the target of silver-spoon attacks because he’s worth more than $100 million. (Perhaps far more.) But Republicans argue he wasn’t handed his wealth — he earned it. He even "gave away his father’s inheritance," national committee chair Reince Priebus repeatedly told TV interviewers on Aug. 26, 2012, as the party prepared to open its convention. We’ve rated a related claim from Romney himself that he "didn’t inherit money" from his parents. That earned a Half True, because he previously told interviewers he did get an inheritance, but donated it to Brigham Young University. This time we’re checking whether he "gave away his father’s inheritance." We’re short on primary evidence for the claim — we haven’t seen his father’s will, nor a receipt from Brigham Young. But there’s a strong circumstantial case that Priebus is correct. Rich get richer George Romney died in 1995 at age 88. By that time, his son had led Bain Capital, the private equity firm he launched in 1984, for more than a decade. As Romney told a C-SPAN interviewer in 2006: "I did get a check from my dad when he passed away. I shouldn’t say a check, but I did inherit some funds from my dad. But I turned and gave that away to charity. In this case I gave it to a school which Brigham Young University established in his honor. ... And that’s where his inheritance ended up." Why did he give the money away? "I figured we had enough of our own," he said. According to a short history of the George W. Romney Institute of Public Management at BYU, the family provided an endowment in 1998, within a few years of George Romney's death. Our ruling Reince Priebus says that Romney "gave away his father's inheritance." Romney has repeatedly said so himself and that's backed up by the simple fact that Brigham Young University has an institute named for his father launched just a few years after his death. And there’s no reason to think Romney would have needed the money a decade after his lucrative move to Bain Capital. We find the evidence supports the claim and we see nothing to contradict it. If any evidence emerges, we'll review it. But in the meantime, we rate Priebus’ claim True. | null | Reince Priebus | null | null | null | 2012-08-27T18:02:59 | 2012-08-26 | ['None'] |
snes-01688 | A video shows a group of unidentified flying objects over Oklahoma City. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ufos-spotted-oklahoma-city/ | null | Viral Phenomena | null | Dan Evon | null | Were UFOs Spotted Over Oklahoma City? | 22 September 2017 | null | ['Oklahoma_City'] |
pomt-01550 | The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on. | true | /punditfact/statements/2014/sep/14/michael-hayden/former-cia-director-obama-said-syrian-opposition-w/ | President Barack Obama drew harsh criticism for comparing the terrorist group Islamic State to a "JV team" — and then again for claiming that’s not what he said (PolitiFact rated that statement False). On Sunday, another one of his characterizations of the situation in the Middle East came under fire as the political talk shows debated his plan for dealing with instability there. Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden was asked about Obama’s decision to arm local rebel groups in Syria to help fight the Islamic State there. He wondered why Obama was suddenly interested in arming opposition forces there. "The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on," Hayden said. "We've turned on the dime in terms of our expectation for them, so if we're going to get them to this force that he said it was fantasy to rely on to the force that's going to be, as (White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough) said, the anvil in a combined arms operation, they're going to need an awful lot of help." In this case, we're checking whether Obama described the Syrian rebels as "pharmacists and doctors." We're not checking whether the rebels actually are pharmacists or doctors, as we'll explain in a bit. We tried to reach Hayden but were unsuccessful. McDonough, though, was asked about Obama’s comment during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. "I think that the question that the president was responding to at the time was looking back a couple of years," McDonough said. "We have had a relationship with these fighters now for a couple of years. They're getting better and more capable." If that’s the case, then maybe Hayden was embellishing Obama’s comments. Keep in mind, the debate over arming the Syrian opposition forces in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al Assad has been ongoing for years. PolitiFact noted in a fact-check last week that several key members of Obama’s national security team favored the move in August 2012. Let’s take a look at exactly what Obama said. We found four instances of Obama describing the Syrian opposition forces in recent months. May 29 Obama discussed his foreign policy during an interview with NPR. He was asked if conditions were more "robust" for aiding the rebels than in the past. "I wouldn't say the conditions are better," Obama said. "In many ways, the conditions are worse. "When you talk about the moderate opposition, many of these people were farmers or dentists or maybe some radio reporters who didn't have a lot of experience fighting," he added. "But creating a capacity for them to hold ground, to be able to rebuff vicious attacks, for them to be able to also organize themselves in ways that are cohesive — all that takes, unfortunately, more time than I think many people would like." For what it’s worth, the Washington Post fact-checked Obama’s claim about the makeup of Syrian rebels as farmer, dentists and radio reporters and found it to be dubious. June 19 In mid June, a few days before Obama asked Congress for $500 million to train and equip some of the Syrian opposition, he discussed the makeup of those forces on a couple occasions. In a June 19 press conference, a reporter asked Obama if "the expansion of the Syria war into Iraq changed your mind about the type of weapons and training we’re now willing to give the opposition there?" Obama responded: "The question has always been, is there the capacity of moderate opposition on the ground to absorb and counteract extremists that might have been pouring in, as well as an Assad regime supported by Iran and Russia that outmanned them and was ruthless. "And so we have consistently provided that opposition with support," Obama said. "Oftentimes, the challenge is if you have former farmers or teachers or pharmacists who now are taking up opposition against a battle-hardened regime, with support from external actors that have a lot at stake, how quickly can you get them trained; how effective are you able to mobilize them. And that continues to be a challenge." The next morning, he made a similar comment to CBS' This Morning. "When you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position suddenly to overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy." Aug. 8 In a sitdown with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Obama again was asked about why he chose not to arm the Syrian rebels. "This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards," Obama said. Counter to what McDonough said Sept. 14, Obama very much seems to be talking about the Syrian opposition in the present and the challenges in providing them with assistance and arms. This continued up until August. The one caveat that Hayden does not mention is the conversation was largely in the context of the opposition’s capacity to go up against Assad and the Syrian regime, not their ability to fight a rogue terrorist organization like the Islamic State. Still, it is a noticeable about-face that as recently as August, Obama told Friedman he believed "there’s not as much capacity as you would hope" for providing these individuals training. Our ruling In discussing Obama’s decision to arm opposition forces in Syria, Hayden said, "The president referred to the Syrian opposition just a few months ago as pharmacists and doctors, and so on." We found several examples of Obama, as recently as June and August, characterizing the Syrian rebels as pharmacists and doctors, as well as dentists, radio reporters and teachers. Usually he was describing their capacity to fight Assad, but that doesn’t make Hayden’s point any less accurate. We rate Hayden’s statement True. | null | Michael Hayden | null | null | null | 2014-09-14T18:03:08 | 2014-09-14 | ['Syria'] |
pomt-00697 | We spend more money on antacids than we do on politics. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/may/03/john-boehner/john-boehner-we-spend-more-money-antacids-we-do-po/ | Bellyaching about the state of American politics doesn’t seem to get very far with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. In a freewheeling interview with NBC News, Boehner dismissed the idea that special interests or gerrymandered congressional districts undercut what Washington does for the average citizen. And ditto for the billions of dollars that fuel the American political system. "We spend more money on antacids than we do on politics," Boehner told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on May 3, 2015. "We live in an imperfect democracy. But as bad as it is, let me tell you this. It’s better than any other place in the world." That struck us as a novel comparison. Do Tums and Rolaids lay a bigger claim to Americans’ paychecks than electioneering? We dug into the numbers, and while we are confident that Boehner could tell us how he spells relief when it comes to taxes, his math leaves something to be desired. Boehner’s spokesman Kevin Smith pointed us to two articles. One from the trade publication Drug Topics spoke of a $10 billion yearly market for antacids. The other from the nonprofit organization that tracks political money, the Center for Responsive Politics, said total spending on federal campaigns in 2014 was $3.7 billion. The problem is, that antacid number was for sales worldwide. In America, the total is about $2 billion. We found that estimate from a couple of sources. The business website Statista.com reported $1.96 billion in sales of antacid tablets in 2013. That excludes liquid antacids. We found 2011 figures for both tablets and liquid antacids. Liquid antacid sales add about 5 percent more to the total -- $1.6 billion in tablets compared to about $83 million for liquids. Assuming the same trend held in 2013, we’re looking at a total sales figure around $2 billion. That’s a lot of indigestion, but it’s less than the amount spent on the 2014 federal elections. The most recent data from the Center for Responsive Politics actually puts the total closer to $3.8 billion. That includes spending by the candidates’ campaigns, the party committees, Super PACs and outside groups. Even if we limit the tally just to candidates and the parties, there was still more than $2.7 billion spent. Boehner’s comparison gets into deeper trouble when state-level races are factored in. The National Institute on Money in State Politics reports almost $3 billion in spending in 2014 to elect governors and members of state legislatures. With or without factoring in state money, Boehner’s comparison doesn’t come close. Our ruling Boehner said Americans spend more on antacids than they do on politics. But the evidence Boehner’s office cited was based on worldwide antacid sales. Americans themselves spent more than $2 billion on antacids each year, reports show. Federal campaign spending tops that no matter how you cut it. Using the source provided by Boehner’s office, the total in 2014 was about $3.8 billion. Factoring in state elections makes the disparity even greater. We couldn’t swallow this claim. We rate it False. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2015-05-03T16:11:36 | 2015-05-03 | ['None'] |
goop-01989 | Ellen DeGeneres, Portia De Rossi Marriage At “Breaking Point”? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/ellen-degeneres-marriage-portia-de-rossi-breaking-point/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Ellen DeGeneres, Portia De Rossi Marriage At “Breaking Point”? | 8:57 am, December 21, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00599 | Justin Bieber: Pedophiles Control the Evil Music Industry | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/justin-bieber-pedophiles-music-industry/ | null | celebrities | null | null | ['celebrities', 'fake news', 'religion'] | Justin Bieber: Pedophiles Control the Evil Music Industry | Aug 8, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01332 | Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1424/cut-taxes-everyone/ | null | trumpometer | Donald Trump | null | null | Cut taxes for everyone | 2017-01-17T09:02:10 | null | ['None'] |
faan-00094 | “Under our Conservative government, Canada is going to have virtually unfettered access for our world-class products, workers and investors in 43 countries across the world … compared to just five when we took office.” | factscan score: true | http://factscan.ca/stephen-harper-under-our-conservative-government-canada-is-going-to-have-virtually-unfettered-access-for-our-world-class-products-workers-and-investors-in-43-countries-across-the-world/ | The Prime Minister said that with his government, Canada will have free trade with 43 countries. If a concluded agreement with the EU is ratified soon, adding 28 countries to Canada’s current 15 trading partners, this is true. | null | Stephen Harper | null | null | null | 2015-04-17 | arch 18, 2015 | ['Canada'] |
afck-00011 | “Today the Kenya Revenue Authority is collecting over KSh1.3 trillion.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/tax-revenue-and-development-spend-does-kenyas-majority-leader-get-his-numbers-right/ | null | null | null | null | null | Tax revenue & development spend: does Kenya’s majority leader get his numbers right? | 2018-09-14 08:30 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07588 | Oregon concealed gun applications include "home phone numbers, home address, Social Security numbers, what kinds of guns you have in the house … whether you were dishonorably discharged from the military, what controlled substances you are taking and were you ever accused of -- accused, mind you -- of stalking." | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2011/mar/26/kim-thatcher/kim-thatcher-says-concealed-handgun-applications-r/ | The Oregon House recently passed a bill that would remove concealed handgun applications from the public record. Proponents of the bill say that there’s too much personal information on individual citizens tied up in the documents. Public records should focus on the government, not private citizens, they say. Here’s Rep. Kim Thatcher’s full-throated defense of the move from the House debate on the day they passed the bill: "As the law stands now, the information in these applications includes things like, home phone numbers, home address, Social Security numbers, what kinds of guns you have in the house -- that's what's on the application -- whether you were dishonorably discharged from the military, what controlled substances you are taking and were you ever accused of -- accused, mind you -- of stalking," Thatcher, R-Keizer, said. "And right now all of that would be subject to public records disclosure." That’s an awful lot of information, indeed. But being our usual suspicious selves, we wondered whether all of that was truly included in the application. So, we did a quick check -- well, we thought it would be a quick check. We’d just pull down the Multnomah County Sheriff’s online license application and take a look, right? Well, it turns out that each of Oregon’s 36 counties has a slightly different application -- some considerably more stringent, some considerably less. After a few days of web searching and phone calling, we got our hands on 34 of the applications. Here’s what we found: -"Home phone numbers": Yes. This is one of the first things every application we reviewed asks for. -"Home address": Yes, again. You also have to include a mailing address if that’s different. -"Social Security numbers": Sort of. Every application we reviewed asks for a Social Security number, but all, save two, expressly note that "disclosure of your Social Security account number is voluntary." -"What kinds of guns you have in the house": Not usually. On 24 of the applications we looked through, there was no question asking applicants about current ownership. Of the remaining eight, six asked whether you "currently own or possess a firearm," but only if you have ever been dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, renounced your U.S. citizenship, been ordered to register as a sex offender in any state or use controlled substances. Everybody else can skip the question. The remaining four from Baker, Grant, Gilliam and Klamath counties ask all applicants for this information. -"Whether you were dishonorably discharged from the military": Yes, this is on most applications. If you have been, you also have to say when it happened. -"What controlled substances you are taking": Yep, this is there. Such controlled substances, for those who are curious, include but are not "limited to, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, methadone, LSD, or ecstasy." (That quote is from the Multnomah County application.) -"Were you ever accused of ... stalking": Nope. Eleven applications don’t touch on this subject at all. The other 23 ask only if the applicant is "currently subject to any type of restraining or stalking order by the court." They also have to include some specifics about that situation if that question applies to them. That said, if the order has been lifted, the question doesn’t apply -- note the word "currently." For what it’s worth, those last two questions (the one on controlled substances and the one about stalking) are pretty important given that federal law, according to the application, prohibits folks who say yes to those questions from possessing firearms at all, much less handguns of the concealed variety. Thatcher is spot on when it comes to four of her assertions (the phone numbers, home addresses, military discharge and controlled substances), but she’s less accurate on the other three (social security, current gun ownership and stalking). When we called her office, Rep. Thatcher -- and later her spokeswoman Dawn Phillips -- told us she wasn’t making sweeping proclamations about all of the applications. What matters, they said, is that her comments apply to some of the state’s 36 applications. On that point, she’s pretty close to right. That is, except for the stalking claim. Thatcher makes it sound as though anybody accused of stalking at any point in their lives would have to say so on the application. But that’s just no true. On certain applications, you have to noted whether you are currently under a court order. That’s considerably different, in our view. Still, we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that some of the necessary nuance was left out because her comments were spoken -- not written -- and rate this claim Mostly True. Comment on this item. | null | Kim Thatcher | null | null | null | 2011-03-26T06:00:00 | 2011-03-17 | ['None'] |
snes-00551 | Was a Muslim Educator Named Superintendent of Atlanta’s Schools? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/muslim-educator-named-superintendent-atlantas-schools/ | null | Junk News | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Was a Muslim Educator Named Superintendent of Atlanta’s Schools? | 24 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01482 | Was Tiger Woods Ordered to Take 137 Paternity Tests? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tiger-woods-paternity/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Was Tiger Woods Ordered to Take 137 Paternity Tests? | 3 November 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04042 | Charmin had introduced a Pumpkin Spice variety of toilet paper. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pumpkin-spice-charmin/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does Charmin make Pumpkin Spice Bathroom Tissue? | 13 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04499 | Says U.S. Senate opponent Tammy Baldwin supported a federal budget "that spent trillions -- not billions, trillions -- more money than the Obama budget." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/oct/05/tommy-thompson/budget-backed-democrat-tammy-baldwin-spent-trillio/ | In their race for a U.S. Senate seat, Democrat Tammy Baldwin and Republican Tommy Thompson depict each other as out of touch with the typical Wisconsin voter. The Madison congresswoman brands Thompson as a wealthy insider who is "not for you anymore." And the former governor labels Baldwin an extreme liberal. Thompson continued his line of attack on WISN-AM in Milwaukee on Sept. 27, 2012, hours before his first debate with Baldwin. He told conservative talk show host Jay Weber that Baldwin’s "philosophy is to spend as much money as possible and forget about the consequences of the next generation, the consequences of the declining dollar, the consequences of our debt load." "In fact she is so liberal -- I don’t know if people out there really know this -- she joined the Progressive Caucus, which introduced a budget that spent trillions -- not billions, trillions -- more money than the Obama budget." In the same vein, Thompson during the debate called Baldwin the House’s "number one spender" and alluded to her support of "increased spending" with the Progressive Caucus budget. Let’s see if Thompson’s right about the trillions. The caucus The Congressional Progressive Caucus, according to its website, consists of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent, and 75 Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Baldwin is a vice-chair of the group. The caucus gained attention when U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., claimed in April 2012 that its members were members of the Communist Party. That rated a Pants on Fire from PolitiFact Florida, which confirmed through the Communist Party USA that no members of Congress are members of its party. The fiscal 2012 budget proposed by the Progressive Caucus was what Thompson was referring to when he made his trillions more comment about Baldwin, Thompson campaign spokeswoman Lisa Boothe told us. That plan, unveiled in April 2011, was offered as an alternative to budgets proposed by President Barack Obama and by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Baldwin did vote for the caucus budget, which was introduced as an amendment to Ryan’s budget. The amendment failed in the House, 347-77. Budget comparisons The Progressive Caucus budget would have spent $44.5 trillion from 2012 to 2021, according to an analysis done for the caucus by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. To see how that compared with Obama’s plan over 10 years, we contacted experts from two nonpartisan think tanks: Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government spending watchdog; and the Concord Coalition, which seeks balanced federal budgets. They agreed that Obama’s fiscal 2012 spending plan called for $46 trillion in spending. That’s $1.5 trillion more than the Progressive Caucus Budget. So, Thompson was wrong when he said the Baldwin-backed caucus would spend "trillions more" than Obama’s budget. Thompson has said, in prepared statements before and after his radio interview, that the Progressive Caucus budget would have raised trillions more in taxes than Obama’s budget. And our experts agreed the caucus budget would have collected $42 trillion in taxes over 10 years, some $5 trillion more than Obama’s. But that wasn’t Thompson’s claim on the radio. What’s more, raising taxes doesn’t automatically mean a corresponding increase in spending. Indeed, The Economist magazine, among others, pointed out the Progressive Caucus budget would have reduced federal deficits more than both the Obama and Ryan budgets -- primarily because of its higher taxes and cuts in defense spending. Our rating Thompson claimed Baldwin supported the Progressive Caucus budget, which he said spent "trillions more" than a budget from Obama. Baldwin did back the proposal, which would have raised taxes by trillions more than the president. But the caucus plan would have actually spent less money than the Obama plan. We rate Thompson’s statement False. | null | Tommy Thompson | null | null | null | 2012-10-05T09:00:00 | 2012-10-27 | ['Tammy_Baldwin', 'Barack_Obama', 'United_States'] |
snes-03308 | Viral Venom | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bee-venom-kills-hiv/ | null | Medical | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Bee Venom Kills HIV | 19 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03213 | Wisconsin’s criminal threshold for drunken-driving is "way out of line" with "states surrounding us," which "have the second offense as a felony." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/25/alberta-darling/alberta-darling-says-wisconsins-neighbors-make-fel/ | Whenever state officials debate tougher penalties for drunken driving, critics raise concerns about the high cost of additional jail time for offenders. State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, the co-leader of the latest get-tough push, recently confronted that critique head-on while arguing to make third-offense drunken-driving a felony in Wisconsin. "We can’t just say, ‘It costs too much,’" Darling said in testimony before an Assembly committee Aug. 15, 2013. "What does that say to the victims and the victims’ families, that it costs too much to make a third do-over a felony? Why does it have to be a fourth offense as a felony?" Then she made a geographical appeal, twice saying during the hearing that Wisconsin is "way out of line" with some Midwestern neighbors. "The states surrounding us, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, have the second offense as a felony," Darling said. "That tells me that that is a reasonable public policy, that other states that are like-minded, that are Midwesterners with similar values, feel that’s what is appropriate. To me that counts. We are way out of line, that you get three do-overs." It’s well known that Wisconsin is the only state in which first-offense drunken driving is not charged as a crime; it’s treated as a civil matter featuring stiff money forfeitures. In fact, the second is still a civil forfeiture if the new offense is more than 10 years after the first, though it’s a criminal misdemeanor if it’s within the decade. But we wondered if the gap between the Badger State and our close neighbors on felony OWI is as stark as Darling described. So we compared Wisconsin’s law to that in the three states Darling mentioned, plus border states Minnesota and Michigan. Darling did not explicitly mention them, but they meet her definition of "surrounding us" (especially compared to Indiana, which doesn’t touch Wisconsin). We’ll confine our review to incidents that involve no aggravating factors such as causing injury or having children in the car. Here’s what we found: Wisconsin: The fourth offense here is a felony that carries a prison term of six months to six years -- but only if a previous offense was within the last five years. Otherwise, that fourth offense is a criminal misdemeanor with a 60 day to 1 year term, state penalty information shows. The third offense is now a criminal misdemeanor. The bill that Darling and Rep. Jim Ott, R-Mequon, have introduced with 13 co-sponsors would change that third offense to a Class H felony with a minimum of 45 days of imprisonment. And the bill would make fourth offense OWI a felony regardless of the timing of prior convictions. Much stiffer sentences would apply if the fourth is within five years of a prior incident. Iowa: Drunken driving becomes a felony quicker than under current Wisconsin law, but upon the third offense, not the second as Darling said. The first and second offenses are both criminal misdemeanors -- an aggravated one in the case of second. Illinois: As in Iowa, it’s the third offense that is a felony. The first two offenses are criminal misdemeanors. Michigan: The same as Iowa and Illinois -- third offense is a felony in Michigan. Indiana: The second offense is a felony if it’s within 5 years of the prior conviction. If the time gap is wider, it gets charged as a misdemeanor -- and that holds true even if it’s a third or fourth offense or more. Minnesota: As in Wisconsin, drunken driving without any aggravating factors is not charged as a crime until the fourth offense. Minnesota sweeps in offenses from the prior 10 years, though, compared with Wisconsin’s five. In sum, four out of our five closest neighbors clearly make drunken driving a felony faster than does Wisconsin. Minnesota, by contrast, is much like Wisconsin on this score. So "out of line" clearly would apply. But "way" out of line? It’s a bit of a subjective phrase, but Darling defined it in a specific way -- that the others make drunken driving a felony on second offense. By that measure, Darling was wrong -- with one exception. Among the surrounding states, only in Indiana is OWI a felony at second offense, and only if the offense is within five years of the first episode. Bob Delaporte, a Darling aide, told us Darling misspoke in saying some of Wisconsin’s neighboring states make it a felony at second offense. Before we close, a disclaimer. This analysis was confined to a simple look at when a felony classification kicks in. We did not try to sort out here the many complexities involved in determining whether one state’s law is truly "tougher" or "weaker" when factors such as plea bargaining and sentencing variations are considered. Still, a felony conviction undeniably packs a special punch, in terms of the loss of rights and stigma. "A felony is such a career killer," said Donald Ramsell, an Illinois attorney and national expert on drunken driving penalties. Nationally, about half the states mirror Wisconsin’s current approach or are more lenient in terms of when -- or if -- a felony charge enters the picture, various state surveys show. Our rating Darling said Wisconsin’s drunken-driving penalties are "way out of line" with "states surrounding us," which "have the second offense as a felony." In contrast to Wisconsin, where fourth offense can be a felony, four out of five of the state’s closest neighbors make it a felony faster than Wisconsin. But only one does so at the second offense as Darling said. Three put the threshold at third offense, and another puts it at fourth, as in Wisconsin. There is a gap between Wisconsin and neighboring states, so there’s an element of truth here, but for the most part that gap is not as wide as Darling said. We rate her claim Mostly False. | null | Alberta Darling | null | null | null | 2013-08-25T05:00:00 | 2013-08-15 | ['None'] |
pomt-14659 | Says the Democratic Party created a debate schedule "to maximize the opportunity for voters to see our candidates." | false | /florida/statements/2016/jan/20/debbie-wasserman-schultz/democratic-debates-maximize-exposure-debbie-wasser/ | Responding to rampant criticism about the Democratic Party’s presidential debate schedule, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has boasted about viewership numbers. The critics include party leaders as well as Hillary Clinton’s primary rivals, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Some Democrats say that the schedule of six debates including some on weekends limits voters’ exposure, giving Clinton an edge. But Wasserman Schultz says ratings show that voters have had plenty of TV face time with the Democratic candidates. "In fact, our first debate beat at least two of the Republican debates. And our last debate, compared to the Republican last debate, was just a little bit less than theirs," the Democratic National Committee chair told CNN’s Brian Stelter Jan. 17, hours before the debate over the Martin Luther King weekend in Charleston. After Stelter pressed her, Wasserman Schultz, a Broward County congresswoman, replied: "Brian, there's no number of debates that will satisfy everyone. So, I did my best to make sure, along with my staff and along with our debate partners, to come up with a schedule that we felt was going to maximize the opportunity for voters to see our candidates." Clearly, we can't rate what people within the Democratic party intended. Our fact-check looks at what the outcome was. Did the Democrats "maximize the opportunity" for voters to see their candidates? We found there’s no fair reading of the Democratic debate schedule that supports this. Democratic and Republican debate schedules in 2016 The Democrats scheduled six primary debates; the Republicans scheduled 11 primary debates (plus one more in March that is unscheduled). So far, Democrats have held four debates with a cumulative viewership of about 42.5 million while Republicans have held six debates with a cumulative viewership of about 103.7 million, according to Nielsen ratings of same-day viewership. Democratic debates: Date Day of week Network Viewership Oct. 13, 2015 Tuesday CNN 15.8 million Nov. 14, 2015 Saturday CBS 8.5 million Dec. 19, 2015 Saturday ABC News 8 million Jan. 17, 2016 Sunday NBC News 10.2 million Feb. 11, 2016 Thursday PBS TBD March 9, 2016 Wednesday Univision TBD Republican debates: Date Day of week Network Viewership Aug. 6, 2015 Thursday Fox News 24 million Sept. 16, 2015 Wednesday CNN 23 million Oct. 28, 2015 Wednesday CNBC 14 million Nov. 10, 2015 Tuesday Fox Business Network 13.5 million Dec. 15, 2015 Tuesday CNN 18.2 million Jan. 14, 2016 Thursday Fox Business Network 11.1 million Jan. 28, 2016 Thursday Fox News TBD Feb. 6, 2016 Saturday ABC TBD Feb. 13, 2016 Saturday CBS TBD Feb. 25, 2016 Thursday CNN TBD March 10, 2016 Thursday CNN TBD Back in 2008, when Barack Obama won the nomination, the Democrats held about 25 primary debates while the Republicans held 21. Overall, it looks like the GOP is doing a significantly better job of reaching viewers. Wasserman Schultz response In defense of Wasserman Schultz’s statement, DNC spokesman Sean Bartlett raised several points: • There are more GOP candidates than Democratic candidates. At the outset of the 2016 race, there were 17 Republican candidates but only five Democratic candidates. • Only three Democratic debates in 2008 topped the Democrats’ lowest rated debate this cycle. • The first Democratic debate drew 15.8 million viewers, surpassing the viewership of three of the Republican debates this cycle. • All but one of the Democratic debates are on broadcast network TV, which makes it more likely for people without cable to tune into the debates. • The schedule of one debate a month for six months doesn’t pull the candidates away from town halls and other events with voters. Still, Wasserman Schultz has faced constant questions about the debate schedule, specifically whether it was intended to help Clinton or minimize viewership. "That’s ridiculous," she said on Jan. 11 in Broward County. "I don’t know how many times I have to say it." She said that the Sunday debate in Charleston -- the city where nine African-Americans were killed at a church in 2015 -- was a recommendation by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute and NBC to coincide with Martin Luther King weekend. Experts dispute Wasserman Schultz’s characterization We contacted five professors of political science and communications. None of them bought Wasserman Schultz’s statement. "By the time voting starts in Iowa, potential voters will have seen about 40 percent less of Democratic candidates on the debate stage than their Republican counterparts," University of Michigan’s Director of Debate Aaron Kall told PolitiFact. Kall cited several factors contributing to the larger Republican viewership: • The first Republican debate occurred in early August, before the start of the NFL and NCAA college football seasons. Viewer anticipation is usually highest for the first debate. The Democrats didn't host their first debate until over two months later. • Of the four Democratic debates so far, three were on weekends, including the Dec. 19 debate a week before Christmas and the same night as the New York Jets vs. Dallas Cowboys NFL game. The Jan. 17 debate was the day before the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday. Kall cited two major factors beyond the Democrats’ control that have aided superior Republican ratings: a much larger GOP field and the phenomenon of Donald Trump, an entertainment star in his own right from his time on The Apprentice. John Schroeder at Northeastern University noted that the two highest Republican debates each drew between 23 million and 24 million, much higher than the Democratic debates. While a lot of the disparity is due to Trump, another factor is that all the Republican debates so far have been held on weekdays. "I think we can safely say that weekend time slots are not the key to maximizing the viewing audience," Schroeder said. Our ruling Wasserman Schultz says the party came up with a debate schedule "to maximize the opportunity for voters to see our candidates." Wasserman Schultz’s best point is that the Democrats largely scheduled their debates with TV networks, which means viewers without cable can see them. But other than that, her statement is very disingenuous. There are six Democratic party debates compared with 11 scheduled for the Republicans, and half of the Democratic debates are on weekends -- including one the weekend before Christmas and another on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. If the Democrats had wanted to "maximize" opportunities for viewers, the party could have added more debates, scheduled them on weekdays and avoided holidays. We rate this claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/4332516c-4413-4f88-bea0-e863cbe4f587 | null | Debbie Wasserman Schultz | null | null | null | 2016-01-20T15:10:22 | 2016-01-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-11517 | In Parkland, Fla. "the mass murderer was immersed in Islamic and leftwing hate." | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/feb/19/pamela-geller/no-proof-nikolas-cruz-was-motivated-islamic-or-lef/ | A conservative website portrayed Nikolas Cruz, who admitted to fatally gunning down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as sharing views of certain Muslims and leftists. "The mass murderer was immersed in Islamic and leftwing hate," stated a story on the Geller Report website on Feb. 14, the day of the shooting at the Parkland, Fla., school. The author of the website, Pamela Geller, is an activist who co-founded Stop Islamization of America, also known as the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a far-right group. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. We found no evidence that Cruz was immersed in Islamic or left-wing hate. Most of Geller’s story has nothing to do with political views held by Cruz. It largely repeats an initial story by Fox News the day of the shooting and showed some of Cruz’s alleged Instagram posts, identified by other teenagers as his, which included images of guns and knives as well as an image of a bullseye target with bullet holes that included the phrase "Group Therapy." Geller included an image from what was believed to be Cruz’s Instagram account showing a Google search for the Arabic phrase "Allahu Akbar." The phrase, which means "God is greater," is used by Muslims on many occasions and in prayers but has also at times been uttered by people commiting attacks. Cruz’s Instagram account has since been shut down; however, multiple media reports stated that Cruz appeared to make fun of Islam when he wrote that "at least we now know what it means when a sand durka says ‘allahu Akbar.'" We sent Geller a summary of our findings and asked if she had evidence to support her claim. "He mocked the phrase, but then he turned to violence himself. This indicates that underneath his mockery, he had an affinity with those who scream this phrase while murdering people," she told PunditFact in an email. Geller said that Cruz’s interest in the phrase "Allahu Akbar" "doesn't mean he was an Islamic jihadi, but his mockery of it may have been an attempt to deflect attention from his aspirations, or maybe even to try to convince himself not to take the path he ultimately chose. Ultimately, we cannot know for sure what was in his mind, or what was left of it." Law enforcement are investigating motives and his social media posts. The portrait that has emerged of Cruz so far is not of a person motivated by political views, but one of a young man who was drawn to firearms and had a troubled past. Cruz had regularly gotten in trouble at school at least since middle school and had transferred out of Stoneman Douglas in 2017 and had since attended alternative schools. He had a history of mental illness, and police had been called to his home. Cruz’s mother died in November; his father died when he was a young child. Ocean Parodie, 17, told The Daily Beast that Cruz wore patriotic shirts that "seemed really extreme, like hating on" Islam and would also deride Muslims as "terrorists and bombers." In general teenagers who knew Cruz used words such as "off," "weird" and "crazy" to describe him to journalists. Some initial news reports stated that Cruz was affiliated with a white nationalist group in Florida, but law enforcement said they didn’t have information to support that connection. A white nationalist appeared to have spread misinformation to media outlets. We emailed spokespersons for Instagram, the FBI and the Broward Sheriff’s Office to ask some questions about Cruz’s Instagram account but not did get a reply. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel did not offer any involvement in Islamic or hate groups to explain why Cruz walked into the school with an assault weapon in a Feb. 18 interview with Local 10 ABC’s Michael Putney. When asked why Cruz shot up the school Israel said: "Because he is an evil killer." The Geller Report described Cruz as being "immersed in Islamic and leftwing hate." Law enforcement are investigating motives, but so far Cruz appeared to be a person who had mental illness and a fascination with guns. A mocking Instagram post attributed to him showed he Googled the phrase "Allahu Akbar" but that doesn’t prove that he was immersed in Islamic and left-wing hate. We found no evidence to support Geller’s claim. We rate this statement Pants on Fire. ' See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Pamela Geller | null | null | null | 2018-02-19T14:42:57 | 2018-02-14 | ['Islam'] |
tron-01164 | Arizona Protest Sign Threatens Violence to Peace Officers | disputed! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/arizona-protest-sign-warning/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Arizona Protest Sign Threatens Violence to Peace Officers | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14805 | Says Russ Feingold "wanted to get money out of politics. Now he's profiting from that same dark money." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2015/nov/27/national-republican-senatorial-committee/campaign-finance-reformer-russ-feingold-profiting-/ | A television ad attacking Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who is aiming to reclaim the U.S. Senate seat he held for 18 years, opens with images of rapidly rotting fruit. The National Republican Senatorial Committee spot aired in Milwaukee and Green Bay during the GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee on Nov. 10, 2015. It contends that Feingold’s time in Washington changed him for the worse. "His values decayed, his principles eroded and he lost touch with Wisconsin," the narrator says midway into the ad. "He wanted to get money out of politics. Now he’s profiting from that same dark money." Feingold has long championed campaign finance reforms, though he earned a Full Flop on our Flip-O-Meter for reversing his position on raising most of his campaign funds from Wisconsin residents. But is Feingold "profiting" from "dark money"? That is, money spent in election campaigns by groups that don’t have to disclose their donors? More darkness Dark money spending is rising, we found earlier this month in rating as True a claim by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. So far in the 2015-2016 election, $4.88 million in dark money expenditures, mostly by conservative groups, have been made. That’s more than 10 times what was spent at this point during the 2011-2012 cycle -- when a total of $308 million in dark money was spent. It remains to be seen how much dark money might be spent on either side as Feingold challenges Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2016, in a rematch of their 2010 contest. The ad In the TV ad, when the claim about Feingold and dark money is made, footnotes alluding to two news articles appear on the screen. The major one was a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story in June 2015 on spending by two groups Feingold formed in February 2011: Progressives United PAC, a liberal political action committee, and Progressives United Inc., a so-called 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. The Journal Sentinel article reported that data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics showed the PAC had given a mere 5 percent of its income to federal candidates and political parties. Instead, nearly half of the $7.1 million that had been spent went to raising more money for itself. The article also said Feingold and nine of his former campaign and U.S. Senate staffers drew salaries or consulting fees from the PAC, and five of them also spent time on the payroll of Progressives United Inc., the nonprofit. PACs, however, are required to disclose their donors. So, our focus here is on the Progressives United Inc. nonprofit. It is a dark money group in that 501(c)(4) groups (a reference to the Internal Revenue Service code) are not required to disclose their donors. At the same time, nothing prevents nonprofits such as Progressives United Inc. from disclosing donors on their own. The money Federal tax filings show Progressives United Inc. paid Feingold as president of the group $10,000 in 2011, $30,000 in 2012 and $19,500 in 2013 -- a total of $59,500. But he is no longer "profiting" from the nonprofit in that he took a leave from Progressives United after being selected a special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa in June 2013. He hasn’t received any payments since 2013. But Progressives United Inc. didn’t actually operate as a conventional dark-money group does -- at least while it was active. A Feingold campaign spokesman sent us links (using the "Way Back Machine" -- archive.org) so that we could access pages from the Progressive United Inc. website that have since been taken down. The donors were listed for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. But Progressives United Inc. stopped operating at the end of 2014 and its website is dormant. That means the donor lists are no longer readily available -- at a time, with Feingold running for the Senate, when public interest in the lists might be high. A Feingold campaign spokesman told us the website is no longer active because Progressives United Inc. no longer is taking in income to pay for expenses such as web hosting. Our rating The National Republican Senatorial Committee said Feingold "wanted to get money out of politics. Now he's profiting from that same dark money." Feingold received $59,500 in salary from Progressives United Inc., a non-profit founded by Feingold that is not required to disclose its donors, but stopped receiving payments in 2013. While it was active, the group voluntarily listed its donors on its website. But those lists are no longer readily accessible, since the group’s website is no longer active. For a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details, our rating is Half True. More on Russ Feingold NRSC says Feingold cast the "deciding vote" for the "largest tax increase" in history. Mostly False Feingold says Ron Johnson "opposes entirely a federal minimum wage," except perhaps for "guest workers." True Feingold says Ron Johnson "is opposed to all government-assisted student loans." Mostly True | null | National Republican Senatorial Committee | null | null | null | 2015-11-27T10:00:00 | 2015-11-10 | ['Russ_Feingold'] |
pomt-11468 | The 2018 Academy Awards show was the "lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/06/donald-trump/donald-trump-correct-about-record-low-ratings-2018/ | President Donald Trump -- who has often invoked television ratings either as a sign of his own strength or of his rivals’ weakness -- appeared to take pleasure in the disappointing performance of the 2018 Oscars, which aired on ABC on March 4. Two days after the show aired, Trump tweeted, "Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore - except your President (just kidding, of course)!" See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Was Trump right that 2018 marked a low point for the Oscars? Since the beginning of Nielsen TV audience ratings in 1974, yes. The 2018 show attracted 26.5 million viewers, down almost 20 percent from the 2017 show. (Both were hosted by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.) Adweek noted that the 2018 Oscars "won’t end up as the year’s highest-rated entertainment telecast," since it has already been beaten out by the post-Super Bowl episode of the prime-time drama This Is Us. This is not a one-year downward blip, either. Oscars viewership in 2018 fell by 39 percent from its level just four years earlier, in 2014, when Ellen DeGeneres hosted for ABC. The previous low of 31.8 million viewers came in 2008, when Jon Stewart hosted not long after a lengthy writers' strike ended. Here’s a summary of viewership totals since 2008: See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com The all-time high for viewership came in 1998, when Billy Crystal hosted the ceremony and 55 million viewers watched. In 1998, the blockbuster Titanic won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture. Experts say the connection between high box office grosses and high viewership is more than coincidence. This year’s nominated films earned far less than Titanic, which had grossed north of $300 million by the time of the 1998 awards ceremony. The top earner among 2018’s best picture nominees was Dunkirk with $188 million, and only two other nominees this year made in excess of $60 million domestically. (All made additional money overseas.) Movie Domestic gross Dunkirk $188 million Get Out $176 million The Post $80 million The Shape of Water $57 million Darkest Hour $56 million Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri $52 million Lady Bird $48 million Phantom Thread $20 million Call Me by Your Name $17 million "Most of the movies up for Oscars in multiple categories are films that average moviegoers have not seen," said Eric Deggans, NPR’s television critic. "That's a function of our fragmented media landscape." Among the widely seen films that were shut out of high-profile Oscars nominations were Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Beauty and the Beast and The Fate of the Furious. Still, Deggans added that movie grosses aren’t the only factor to blame for low viewership. In fact, The Shape of Water -- this year’s Best Picture winner -- was the highest grossing film to win Best Picture since 2013, when Argo won. Rather, the longer-term -- and more intractable -- problem for the Oscars is the fragmentation of the television audience. And this goes beyond the impact of digital streaming, which isn’t tabulated in the Nielsen ratings. "Every awards show on television has seen erosion, and many are notching record lows in viewership," Deggans said. "There are more things than ever competing for an audience's attention, and more alternatives for people who might not want to sit through something as conventional as an awards ceremony." Ratings for the most recent Grammys fell by almost one-quarter in just one year, while the Screen Actors Guild Awards fell by 30 percent and the Golden Globes fell by 5 percent. This year’s Super Bowl had the lowest audience since 2009. Our ruling Trump said the 2018 Academy Awards show was the "lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY." He’s right, at least going back to 1974, when Nielsen started reporting ratings. We rate Trump’s statement True. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-03-06T16:21:35 | 2018-03-06 | ['Academy_Awards'] |
pomt-03533 | Two weeks after signing a taxpayer protection pledge, (Charlie Crist) breaks it. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2013/may/30/republican-party-florida/state-republicans-say-it-took-charlie-crist-only-t/ | The Republican Party of Florida is launching a pre-emptive strike against former golden boy Charlie Crist, who very well could run for governor in 2014 as a Democrat. In a new Web ad, the state GOP spoofs the History Channel with a segment called "This Day in CRIST-ory." The date: May 28, 2009. (The date should be May 27, but the state GOP flubbed that.) The setting: Tallahassee. The story: Then-Republican Gov. Crist is signing a $66.5 billion budget that includes a $1-a-pack cigarette tax and higher fees on drivers licenses and motor vehicle tags. The new taxes and fees, which are estimated to generate $2.2 billion, are needed to pass a balanced state budget -- and were supported by Republicans in the Legislature -- but also break Crist’s pledge not to raise taxes. "Two weeks after signing a taxpayer protection pledge, he (Crist) breaks it!" the Republican Party’s ad exclaims. Here at PolitiFact Florida, we didn’t need a history lesson to remember the basics of the 2009 budget. But we did wonder about the state GOP’s assertion that Crist had the gall to break a pledge just two weeks after he signed it. Crist, it turns out, did sign a taxpayer protection pledge two weeks before signing the budget into law. We found that through a press release from … the Republican Party of Florida. At the time, Crist had recently announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, and Republicans far and wide were rallying around his candidacy. (Well, except former House Speaker Marco Rubio. That’s for another day in CRIST-ory.) But the pledge Crist signed on May 14, 2009, was for federal candidates, not state ones. And it was specific to income taxes. Not taxes in general. Crist signed a pledge from the Americans for Tax Reform, a well-known anti-tax group led by Grover Norquist. In it, Crist promised to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and ... oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates." A tax pledge yes, but one that wouldn’t be broken with a tax on cigarettes or motor vehicle fees. That doesn’t get Crist out of hot water, however. Crist signed another taxpayer pledge from Americans for Tax Reform in June 2005. In that pledge, Crist promised to "oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes." "Pledges are important, but actions speak louder," Crist said in an email to supporters in December 2005. "Throughout my years of public service I have stood squarely against tax increases, and will continue to do so as governor." Crist’s 2009 budget signature does appear to violate his older pledge -- particularly in allowing the $1-a-pack cigarette tax to become law. "The cigarette tax is appropriate, and I really view it more as a health issue than I do as a tax issue," Crist said May 19, 2009. "(Ronald) Reagan said when you want to kill something you ought to tax it. Well, it wouldn't be bad if you killed smoking. There are about 2 million Floridians, maybe a few less, who smoke. And it's not good for you." (We looked for that Reagan quote, the closest we could find was," Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.") Republican Party of Florida spokesman Matt Moon admitted the mistake in the ad's phrasing. "While it's true we should have been more precise and not used the words 'two weeks,' ... he did sign a taxpayer protection pledge that he did break," Moon said. "And we're still going to call him out on it." Our ruling In a new Web ad, the state GOP portrayed Crist as a man who didn’t keep his word when it comes to raising taxes. The record there is pretty clear. Crist signed a pledge saying he would oppose efforts to increase taxes, yet signed a budget that included a $1-a-pack cigarette tax. However, the state Republican Party went unnecessarily far when it tried to say that it took Crist just two weeks to break that promise. The pledge he signed two weeks before approving the cigarette tax did not apply. We rate the Republicans’ claim Mostly False. | null | Republican Party of Florida | null | null | null | 2013-05-30T15:46:21 | 2013-05-28 | ['Charlie_Crist'] |
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.