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pomt-01296 | The "stand your ground" law caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. | false | /florida/statements/2014/oct/30/senate-majority-pac/radio-ad-dem-pac-blames-trayvon-martin-death-flori/ | The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, which sparked a national discussion about "stand your ground" laws, has become ammunition in the North Carolina U.S. Senate race. The Senate Majority PAC, which aims to elect Democrats, ran a radio ad urging higher turnout among black voters. The ad attacks Thom Tillis, the Republican speaker of the North Carolina House, challenging Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. The ad makes a series of claims about Tillis including this one: "Tillis even led the effort to pass the type of ‘stand your ground’ laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin." PolitiFact has fact-checked numerous claims related to the Trayvon Martin case. Did Florida’s "stand your ground" law cause his death? The radio ad was captured by the conservative blogger SisterToldjah and sparked considerable media attention. It prompted a conservative group to counterattack with a radio ad accusing the Democrats of "race baiting." While we are focused on the claim about whether Florida’s "stand your ground" law killed Trayvon, other media reports dissected Tillis’ role in the North Carolina law, which Tillis voted in favor of. Trayvon Martin and "stand your ground" law The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin of Miami Gardens on Feb. 26, 2012, and the acquittal of George Zimmerman the following year ignited political debate over race, gun rights and Florida’s "stand your ground" law. The law, which was approved overwhelmingly by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2005, allows people to use deadly force when they believe their life is at risk. The law, promoted by the National Rifle Association, now exists in about two dozen states. Trayvon, a black 17-year-old, was returning from a convenience store and walking through a gated neighborhood where he was staying with his father. Zimmerman, a white-Hispanic neighborhood watchman, called a non-emergency police number to report Trayvon as "suspicious." A violent struggle followed and Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon. Zimmerman waived his right to a "stand your ground" hearing before trial, and did not cite it in his defense during the trial. But the law was cited in jury instructions: "If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." In July 2013, the jury found Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder. After the verdict, Dan Gelber, a former federal prosecutor and state legislator from Miami Beach who was a critic of the law in 2005, wrote on his blog that jurors would have received different instructions under the old law, which said: "The defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force The fact that the defendant was wrongfully attacked cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force." (Gelber is now an adviser to Charlie Crist’s Democratic campaign for governor in Florida.) It’s difficult to quantify what extent "stand your ground" law played in the jury’s decision. One juror told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the jury discussed the "stand your ground" law. "It became very confusing. We had stuff thrown at us. We had the second-degree murder charge, the manslaughter charge, then we had self-defense, ‘stand your ground,’ and I think there was one other one." The juror, who was unnamed, said the murder or manslaughter charge did not apply "because of the heat of the moment and the ‘stand your ground.’ " But while the "stand your ground" law could have played a role for the jury, the law itself didn’t pull the trigger in the shooting. It’s impossible to fully evaluate Zimmerman’s thinking when he shot Trayvon, but one factor could have been that Zimmerman was a wannabe cop -- he had been rejected for a job with the Prince William County, Va., police department. Racial profiling could have played a role; Trayvon was a black male teenager wearing a hoodie. And then we will mention the obvious: Zimmerman had a gun. Zimmerman said in a TV interview in 2012 he had never heard of "stand your ground" until after the shooting, though during the trial the prosecution presented evidence that Zimmerman took a criminal-litigation course in which the instructor said he covered the "stand your ground" law. Zimmerman received an "A" in the course in 2010. The Senate Majority PAC’s back-up for the ad cites an article in Mother Jones shortly after the acquittal, which points to Zimmerman taking that course: "In reality, ‘stand your ground’ played a major role, from Martin's death to Zimmerman's acquittal. ... An armed Zimmerman knew about ‘stand your ground’ years ago." A spokesman for the PAC, Ty Matsdorf, didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s questions other than sending us the ad backup. He gave a statement to the New York Times defending the ad in general terms. But two defense attorneys we interviewed argued that the "stand your ground" law itself didn’t play a provable role. "I don’t recall any evidence that he made a conscious decision to rely on the law before acting," said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. Attorney in Miami now in private practice. " ‘Stand your ground’ may have led to the acquittal of George Zimmerman; that’s a more accurate statement. It’s led to other acquittals, too." "The law didn’t cause his death," said David Weinstein, a former state and federal prosecutor and now a Miami defense attorney. "The bullet that got fired by George Zimmerman’s gun is what caused Trayvon Martin’s death." After the Trayvon case, efforts to get rid of Florida’s "stand your ground" law went nowhere in the Republican-led Legislature. In fact, in 2014 the Legislature added that it applies to warning shots. The law has remained a hot topic nationwide, including in Florida’s race between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Crist. During the Oct. 15 debate at Broward College, Scott said he would not change the law, while Crist said it is "fundamentally flawed" and needs to be fixed. Our ruling A Senate Majority PAC radio ad said, "Tillis even led the effort to pass the type of ‘stand your ground’ laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin." The part we focused on is whether Florida’s "stand your ground" law killed Trayvon. There are plenty of factors that could have contributed to George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon including racial profiling and his desire to be a law enforcement officer (not to mention the obvious: his access to a gun). And the "stand your ground" law could have influenced the jury’s decision to acquit Zimmerman of murder. However, it is an overstatement to suggest that the law is to blame for Trayvon’s death. We rate this claim False. | null | Senate Majority PAC | null | null | null | 2014-10-30T16:04:52 | 2014-10-28 | ['None'] |
pose-00386 | Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a focused team within the White House that will work with agency leaders and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve results and outcomes for federal government programs while eliminating waste and inefficiency. This unit, a SWAT team, will be composed of top-performing and highly-trained government professionals and be headed by a new Chief Performance Officer (CPO) who will report directly to the president. The CPO will work with federal agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress. The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/405/create-white-house-performance-team-and-chief-perf/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Create White House performance team and chief performance officer | 2010-01-07T13:26:57 | null | ['White_House', 'Joe_Biden', 'Barack_Obama', 'Office_of_Management_and_Budget'] |
snes-00842 | Did David Hogg Lie About Being on Campus During Mass Shooting? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/david-hogg-on-campus-rumor-hoax/ | null | Politics | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Did David Hogg Lie About Being on Campus During Mass Shooting? | 26 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11946 | There have been more than 270 mass shootings in the United States in the last year alone. That’s where four or more are killed. | false | /california/statements/2017/oct/10/hillary-clinton/hillary-clintons-false-claim-mass-shootings/ | Citing the Las Vegas shooting that killed 59 people and injured hundreds, Hillary Clinton urged the nation to do more to prevent gun violence during a speech at the University of California at Davis on Monday. The Democrat and former presidential candidate rejected the idea that a debate over gun safety should wait until well after a mass shooting takes place. "What better time than now?" Clinton said, speaking on her current book tour’s only scheduled stop in California. Clinton went on to make a claim about the number of mass shootings that have taken place this year — and misstated how they are defined. "There have been more than 270 mass shootings in the United States this year alone. That’s where four or more are killed. Two hundred and seventy. We cannot accept this as normal. We cannot become desensitized." Hillary Clinton made her claim about mass shootings during a speech Oct. 9, 2017 at UC Davis. PolitiFact California took a deep look at how mass shootings are defined here, and found there’s wide disagreement on the matter. Democrats and gun control advocates use the very broad criteria that a mass shooting includes four or more people killed — or injured — in one event. It was developed by the Gun Violence Archive, a group that logs shootings across the country by crowdsourcing media reports. Under its definition, which does not require that anyone is necessarily killed, there have been more than 270 mass shootings so far this year. But there have been far fewer of these crimes where, as Clinton termed it, "four or more people are killed." More restrictive criteria A database compiled by Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, shows there have been only three mass shootings so far this year that meet the four-or-more measurement expressed by Clinton at the speech. The magazine itself shows seven mass shootings so far this year because it uses three or more deaths as its criteria. It excludes more conventional crimes such as armed robberies and gang violence in its count, focusing instead on "the distinct phenomenon of mass shootings." The Gun Violence Archive, meanwhile, which includes gang shootings and home invasion robberies as mass shootings, had tallied 19 shootings in which four or more people were killed. In the past, the federal government has used the more restrictive criteria of four or more killed to define a mass shooting. We found there’s no widely accepted definition that doesn’t create its own share of questions. A spokesman for Clinton pointed to the Gun Violence Archive’s definition for mass shootings, but did not immediately provide an explanation for Clinton’s misstatement of that definition. Our ruling Hillary Clinton in her UC Davis speech said there have been more than 270 mass shootings in the United States so far this year. She defined the events as "where four or more are killed." Our research has shown that a broad definition of mass shootings requires four or more people to be killed or injured. There have been more than 270 of those horrific crimes so far this year. But Clinton left out the key words "or injured," dramatically changing the criteria for these shootings. There have been a much smaller number of mass shootings that meet this stricter criteria of "four or more people killed," nowhere near the 270 she claimed. We rate Clinton’s claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2017-10-10T15:51:26 | 2017-10-09 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-09092 | In fact, oil spills from tankers are far more common than the very rare leaks from rigs or pipelines. | half-true | /georgia/statements/2010/jun/24/eric-johnson/candidate-oil-spills-tankers-more-common-very-rare/ | As the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to threaten the coastline, Savannah's Eric Johnson, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, remains steadfast in his support for offshore drilling. He dedicated a blog post to his position on his campaign Web page. "Predictably, liberal activists call the Gulf disaster a warning of things to come if we expand drilling, but this incident is an unfortunate exception to the rule. The last major oil spill from a drilling accident in America happened over 40 years ago in 1969. In fact, oil spills from tankers are far more common than the very rare leaks from rigs or pipelines." An earlier PolitiFact item ruled that Johnson's claim that the last major oil spill from a drilling accident in America took place in 1969 was False. This one deals with whether oil spills from tankers are far more common than "very rare leaks" from rigs or pipelines. We looked at a 2009 report produced by the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, that catalogs oil spills. Indeed, the number of spills from tankers in U.S. waters is nearly two-and-a-half times higher than those of offshore oil pipelines and oil platforms combined. Tankers also dump more than three times more oil. Two scientists who study the ocean and environment also confirmed that tankers are responsible for more spills. Here's how the numbers from the American Petroleum Institute break down: U.S. offshore pipelines, 1969 to 2007: 506 spills, 182,355 barrels p24 U.S. platforms, 1969 to 2007: 1,035 spills, 277,033 barrels p24 Oil tankers in U.S. waters: 3,774 spills, 1962 through 2007; 1,596,638 barrels p31 U.S. Coast Guard figures on spills differ from API data but back up the overall point that tanker spills are far worse polluters than offshore oil pipelines or platforms. But are leaks from rigs or pipelines "very rare"? The petroleum industry's own figures indicate the U.S. has averaged more than 13 pipeline spills and 27 platform spills a year. They're certainly less common than tanker spills, as Johnson stated. But platform and pipeline spills still take place roughly 40 times annually. That's a little more than three times per month. That's not rare at all. That's chronic. We rule this claim Half True. | null | Eric Johnson | null | null | null | 2010-06-24T06:00:00 | 2010-06-07 | ['None'] |
pomt-14801 | While the smoking rate nationally has fallen, more than 18 percent of Georgians still light up. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2015/nov/30/atlanta-mayor-kasim-reeds-office/Statement-on-smoking-rates-needs-slightly-more-con/ | Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and more than two dozen health professionals launched a statewide campaign last week to help Georgia smokers kick the habit. The "Nobody Quits Like Georgia" campaign emphasized connecting smokers with the counseling and other support they need to quit successfully. "Atlanta and state-level health care leaders are taking action because while the national smoking rate has fallen, more than 18 percent of adults in Georgia are still smoking," Reed’s office said in a press release on Nov. 17. The health hazards of cigarette smoking have been publicly recognized at least since the mid1960s, so could almost one in five Georgia adults still be lighting up? PolitiFact decided to check. First, a little background. Health advocates have been pushing to reduce the national smoking rate among adults 18 and over to 12 percent by 2020. About 20.6 percent of American adults were smoking in 2009, but the percentage has dropped every year since. In 2013, 19 percent of adults, nationally, and 18.8 percent in Georgia, were smoking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The CDC says smoking leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body. More than 16 million Americans are estimated to be living with a smoking-related disease. These include cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to the CDC. The financial toll of smoking is tremendous -- more than $300 billion a year in the United States alone. This includes about $170 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion in lost productivity due to premature death and exposure to secondhand smoke, the federal agency estimates. So what about the city’s statement about the habit in Georgia? We started our fact-check by contacting Reed press secretary Jenna Garland. She told us the American Lung Association, lead sponsor of the campaign, provided the statistic that appeared in the press release. Searches of CDC statistics last week also verified that 18.8 percent of Georgia adults were identified as smokers in 2013, Garland said. "At the time of our press conference and release, this data was absolutely correct. And it is still the primary data presented by the CDC," she said. Garland is right -- for 2013. The picture is peachier for Georgia, however, based on newer data for 2014. That was available in a press release put out by the Georgia Department of Public Health on the same day that Reed’s office issued its statement. In 2014, Georgia’s adult smoking rate had fallen to 17.4 percent, down 1.4 percentage points from 2013 as measured on the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System.(BRFSS). Particularly significant, the rate of smoking fell to 16.4 percent in young adults, ages 18 to 24, state officials said. National data from BRFSS for 2014 has not made public. We examined data gathered in the last 10 years on smoking rates in Georgia and the nation. You’ll see that smoking rates have been heading downward both in the state and nation throughout most, but not all of the decade. This is based on data collected by states through the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and submitted by the CDC. Percentage of Adults 18 and over who smoke Year Georgia U.S. 2005 22.1 20.8 2006 19.9 20.5 2007 19.4 20 2008 19.5 19.7 2009 17.7 18.3 2010 17.6 17.9 2011 21.2 21.2 2012 20.4 19.6 2013 18.8 19 2014 17.4 Not available Source: Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) reports and Georgia Department of Public Health. --------------------- CDC spokeswoman Brittany Behm said that although the prevalence of smoking in Georgia has steadily declined in the past several years, the progress has not been as robust as it could have been. She said that’s largely because "interventions we know work have not been fully implemented." She said these include higher tobacco product prices, comprehensive smoke-free laws, hard-hitting mass media campaigns, and full and sustained funding for comprehensive tobacco control programs. "Statistically, Georgia ranks 24th among the states and DC—almost exactly at the median," Behm said. Jean O’Connor, director of chronic disease prevention for the Georgia Department of Public Health, said state officials believe they’ve made serious headway, particularly with the tobacco-free schools program that’s now in 105 of the state’s 181 school districts. Enabling 1.3 million students to spend their school day free from exposure to tobacco appears to be showing up in the numbers, O’Connor said. With the smoking rate falling to 16.4 percent in the 18-24 age group, "that tells us kids are aging up and not using tobacco products," she said. "If you can get to 25 without using, odds of being addicted are very very low." That’s reinforced in Georgia’s University System, one of the first in the nation to be smoke-free at its college and universities, O’Connor said. Our ruling A press release from Mayor Kasim Reed’s Office said: "Atlanta and state-level health care leaders are taking action because while the national smoking rate has fallen, more than 18 percent of adults in Georgia are still smoking." The first part of the statement is misleading. Smoking rates have generally been falling nationally and in Georgia. The state’s rate was lower than the national rate in 2013. Reed’s office is correct that, in 2013, 18.8 percent of Georgia adults over 18 were smoking. But newer figures paint a peachier picture for the state. It doesn’t change the mayor’s overarching point that the state still has a way to go. We rate Reed’s statement Mostly True. | null | Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's Office | null | null | null | 2015-11-30T00:00:00 | 2015-11-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-03837 | In the period from 2007 to 2011, the Office of Health Insurance Commissioner reported an 18 percent decline in the state’s total medical spending. | half-true | /rhode-island/statements/2013/mar/16/joshua-miller/rhode-island-sen-joshua-miller-says-states-total-m/ | In a March 1 news release, Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston, announced a "landmark bill" representing the "next phase of health-care reform legislation in Rhode Island." Miller, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, said his bill builds on previous legislative work, including the creation of the Office of Health Insurance Commissioner in 2004, electronic records and payment reforms. "These efforts have begun to show significant progress in cost containment," Miller said in a news release. "In the period from 2007 to 2011, the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner reported an 18 percent decline in the state’s total medical spending and an increase by insurers of 8 percent in medical claims dollars spent on primary care, up from 5.4 percent in 2007." Given all you hear about the rising cost of health care, PolitiFact Rhode Island was curious about the claim that Rhode Island’s total medical spending fell by 18 percent in that time frame. When we asked Miller to back up his claim, he cited a September 2012 report from the state health insurance commissioner’s office regarding attempts to bolster spending on primary care in Rhode Island. "Between 2007 and 2011, total primary care spending grew by 23 percent (for an annual growth rate of 5.3 percent), while overall medical spending fell by 17.6 percent (-4.7 percent annually)," the report said. The report noted that the figures reflected the money spent by insurers, not by patients. And it attributed the overall decline in medical spending to three factors: "The dampening effect of the recession and slow economic recovery on spending." "The popularity among employers and members of leaner, cheaper benefit packages that shift more costs to the member." "The shift to self-insurance." In an interview, Health Commissioner Christopher F. Koller said, "Senator Miller is factually accurate in that the numbers are from the report, and the total medical spending reported by insurers during that period is true." But then Koller mentioned two key facts: total medical spending is down in large part because it reflects health insurer spending for fewer people. The most recent figures show per-person costs are actually rising. "It’s during a period of economic decline, so more people are uninsured," Koller said. "Also, during that time, we saw an increase in the number of companies that self-insure." And the figures don’t reflect those covered by employers who self-insure, such as Brown University, he said. Between 2007 and 2011, commercial health-insurance enrollment in Rhode Island plunged by 53,509 people or by 8.7 percent -- going from 613,124 to 559,615, according to Koller’s office. And when measured per-member per-month, medical spending rose by 6.8 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to another report by his office. Koller said that 6.8 increase is "relatively low" when compared with the increases seen in other states in that time frame. So, he said, that bolsters Miller’s larger point that Rhode Island is doing a good job of controlling health-care cost increases. Our ruling Sen. Joshua Miller said, "In the period from 2007 to 2011, the Office of Health Insurance Commissioner reported an 18 percent decline in the state’s total medical spending." In touting Rhode Island’s progress in "cost containment," Miller’s accurate but limited citation of a report gives the impression that overall medical costs are falling in Rhode Island. But his news release left out some important context: that spending by insurers has fallen mainly because it reflected spending on fewer people. In fact, in recent years, per-person costs have increased. That full context is required to provide a true picture of how Rhode Island is doing in controlling health-care costs. So we rule Miller’s claim Half 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 | Joshua Miller | null | null | null | 2013-03-16T00:01:00 | 2013-03-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-04425 | The tax burden on Virginia families was lower under Tim Kaine than under George Allen. | mostly false | /virginia/statements/2012/oct/15/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-says-says-tax-burden-families-was-lower-/ | The debate never strays too far from taxes in this fall’s U.S. Senate race between Republican George Allen and Democrat Tim Kaine. Allen recently aired a TV commercial accusing Kaine of being a big taxer. The ad highlighted Kaine’s unsuccessful proposals for $4 billion in tax increases when he was governor from 2006 to 2010 and his comment in a Sept. 20 debate that he would be "open" to imposing a minimum federal income tax on all Americans. Kaine responded to the ad. "The facts are that the tax burden on Virginia families was lower under Tim Kaine than under George Allen," his campaign said in a Sept. 25 news release. We wondered if the tax burden on families really was lower under Kaine than under Allen, who was governor from 1994 to 1998. Kaine’s campaign told us they got the numbers from the pro-business Tax Foundation. The organization estimates what residents of each state pay in taxes -- not to just their own state and local governments, but also to others, through hotel, gas and other levies. Take, for example, Northern Virginia residents who work in the Washington. The computations would include state and local taxes the commuters are paying Virginia as well as estimates of sales, restaurant and other levies they pay in Washington. According to the Tax Foundation, Virginians paid state and local taxes averaging 6.9 percent of their income during Allen’s governorship as compared to 6.7 percent during Kaine’s administration. We were uncertain what to make of these numbers because neither Kaine nor Allen could control tax rates outside of Virginia when they were governors. So we turned to data that is confined to computing the state levies Virginians pay, as a proportion of their income, to Virginia. We found two sources: Congressional Quarterly’s annual State Fact Finder; which makes the calculation based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis; and the Tax Policy Center, whose website allows visitors to build their own tables based on data from the Census Bureau. The annual data from both groups computes total state tax revenues as a percentage of the total income of Virginians. Congressional Quarterly’s figures show that during Allen’s governorship, yearly state tax revenues averaged 5.6 percent of all the income earned by Virginians; over Kaine’s term, the average was 5.3 percent. The Tax Policy Center’s figures show that the average was an identical 5.3 percent during Allen and Kaine’s terms. It should be noted that the center did not have data for the final budget year of Kaine’s term, which began July 1, 2009. We found an interesting trend in the data from both organizations. The tax burden was stable during the years Allen was in office; ranging from 5.5 percent to 5.6 percent according to the Congressional Quarterly, and 5.2 percent to 5.4 percent according to the Tax Policy Center. In contrast, the burden was volatile under Kaine, falling from 5.9 percent during his first year in office to 4.6 percent his final year, according to Congressional Quarterly. According to the Tax Policy Center, the burden dropped from 5.6 percent Kaine’s first year to 4.8 percent his third year -- the latest data available. Economists said the decline, experienced by many states, was caused by the national recession that set in half way through Kaine’s term. "Tax collections shrink faster than income," explained said Scott Drenkard, an economist with the Tax Foundation. Norton Francis, senior research associate with the Tax Policy Center, said Virginia’s tax revenues declined by 10 percent, as corporate income dropped, real estate sales sagged and consumers reined in spending. Virginia did not enact major tax cuts during the final years of Kaine’s term. That leaves the recession as best explanation why the tax burden fell, according to Drenkard. John Knapp, a senior economist and professor emeritus at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, said the per capita tax burden is a poor way to measure a governor’s performance. "Many of the events during a term that affect the denominator (income) are beyond the control of a governor," he said. "This also applies to the numerator (taxes) since a lot of factors affect tax collections in addition to explicit changes in tax rates and tax bases. For example, if the economy deteriorates in response to national and international events, income and sales tax collections will reflect the soft economy." The figures don’t reflect another important consideration: Allen unsuccessfully sought to cut taxes by $2.1 billion when he was governor, while Kaine unsuccessfully proposed $4 billion in tax increases. Finally, we should note that under Allen and Kaine, Virginia was among the 10 states with the lowest tax per capita tax burdens. Our ruling Kaine’s campaign said the "tax burden on Virginia families was lower under Tim Kaine than under George Allen." Raw numbers generally back Kaine, but paint a superficial picture. Kaine did not offer large-scale tax cuts during his term; to the contrary, he unsuccessfully proposed increasing taxes by $4 billion. The smaller burden was caused by shrinking tax revenues coming into the state because of the recession. Kaine’s statement tries to turn the state’s lost revenue -- caused by no effort of his own -- into an accomplishment. The claim is based on kernels of data that, when put into context, give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. | null | Tim Kaine | null | null | null | 2012-10-15T06:00:00 | 2012-09-24 | ['Virginia', 'George_Allen_(U.S._politician)'] |
vogo-00413 | More Medi-Pot Collectives Than Pharmacies? Starbucks? | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/more-medi-pot-collectives-than-pharmacies-starbucks/ | null | null | null | null | null | More Medi-Pot Collectives Than Pharmacies? Starbucks? | March 29, 2011 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02198 | The President wants the U.S. to sign on to the U.N.’s International Criminal Court. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/apr/24/chain-email/chain-email-says-barack-obama-wants-us-joint-inter/ | A reader recently sent us an email that had a meandering -- but strongly critical -- message of opposition to President Barack Obama. The email, which can be read in its entirety here, urges veterans and their families to vote in the 2014 midterm elections in order to send Obama a message. Here are excerpts: "The President, the Commander in Chief, has made the Rules of Engagement (ROE) so difficult, that our troops are often killed before they can even get permission to fight. Nothing has been done to stop our troops from being murdered by the Afghanis they are training, either. "Now, the President wants the US to sign on to the UNs International Criminal Court (ICC), which would allow the UN's ICC to arrest and try US troops for War Crimes, without the legal protections guaranteed under US Law, and from which there is no appeal. The President, with his Democratic control of the Senate, has nearly all the power. If the Non-Establishment Republicans, and Conservatives, can take back the Senate in 2014, our troops can once again be protected from unnecessary danger. Please consider this, and send it on to your mailing lists." We will be checking a few claims from this email, but in this report, we’ll look at the claim that "the President wants the U.S. to sign on to the U.N.’s International Criminal Court." First, some background on the International Criminal Court and its relationship to the United States. The ICC is a permanent, independent court headquartered in the Hague that investigates and brings to justice individuals who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, according to the Congressional Research Service. Cases may be referred to the ICC either by a member state, the court’s own prosecutor, or the U.N. Security Council. The court only investigates or prosecutes serious crimes by individuals (not organizations or governments), and then, only when national judicial systems are unwilling or unable to handle them. The court’s founding document, known as the Rome Statute, entered into force on July 1, 2002. So far, 122 nations have become members of the court. But while the United States signed the Rome Statute under President Bill Clinton in 2000, it has not moved on to ratification -- the step that would make membership official. This position is intentional. Under President George W. Bush, the United States actually went so far as to "un-sign" the Rome Statute. The reasons included concerns that the court could exercise jurisdiction over U.S. citizens or military officials, as well as a perceived lack of checks and balances on court pursuits. More recently, United States opposition has softened -- within limits. In 2008, the United States decided not to veto a Security Council resolution to refer a case from the Darfur region of Sudan. Then, when Obama took office, it began attending sessions as an "observer" nation in 2009. In January 2010, a Justice Department review found that "informational" support for "particular investigations or prosecutions" would be legal under laws passed under Bush. In theory, the Obama administration could choose to seek Senate ratification. But even if it did, experts say, the administration’s ability to win the 67 votes in the Senate is almost nonexistent, given the extent of lingering concern about U.S. membership in the court. "President Obama has made no indication that he ‘wants the U.S. to sign on to the U.N.’s International Criminal Court,’" said Steven Groves, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Since everyone knows such a transmittal would be dead on arrival, the likelihood that the president would do so before the end of his term is negligible, if not zero." Steven R. Ratner, a University of Michigan law professor who specializes in international law, agrees, calling the email’s claim "completely wrong." "Although the U.S. is no longer actively opposed to the court's existence and operation, as was the Bush administration, the Obama administration has no intention of submitting the ICC statute to the Senate," Ratner said. In other words, the email is wrong to claim that Obama, "with his Democratic control of the Senate, has nearly all the power." All Obama could theoretically do is ask for Senate support. Even if the Democrats had 67 votes -- which they don’t -- ratification for this particular agreement would be an uphill battle. We should add that the email has some other misleading elements about the court, such as when it says the court can "arrest and try U.S. troops for War Crimes, without the legal protections guaranteed under U.S. Law, and from which there is no appeal." While the ICC can issue "arrest warrants," it cannot enforce them. The ICC "cannot ‘arrest’ anyone -- it has no police power whatsoever," said Georgetown University professor of government and foreign service Anthony Clark Arend. Instead, it has to rely on its member states to do so, and "a state would not want to cooperate with the ICC if it sought arrest based on trumped-up charges," Ratner said. Ratner added that, contrary to the email’s claim about weak legal protections, the ICC procedures are "generally on par with U.S. law, with small exceptions such as trial by judges rather than a jury, and looser rules for admission of evidence." Our ruling The chain email says Obama "wants the U.S. to sign on to the U.N.’s International Criminal Court." While the Obama administration has been more willing to engage with the court than the Bush administration, which was strongly opposed to cooperating, Obama has made no sign that he wants to become a full-blown member of the court. Even if he did, doing so would require 67 votes in the Senate, making it essentially a nonstarter. We rate the claim False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2014-04-24T17:45:57 | 2014-04-24 | ['United_States', 'United_Nations', 'International_Criminal_Court'] |
pomt-01540 | Children who witness domestic violence are "twice as likely to commit it themselves." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/sep/16/amy-klobuchar/klobuchar-children-who-witness-domestic-violence-a/ | The release of a video showing NFL running back Ray Rice striking his now-wife in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino elevator revived conversations about domestic violence on the Sunday shows. On the Sept. 14, 2014, edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., shared an anecdote from her time as a prosecutor to illustrate the ills of domestic violence. "We had a poster outside the door so everyone would see it when they came in. It was a picture of a woman beaten up with a Band-Aid over her nose, holding a little baby boy," Klobuchar said. "And the words read, ‘Beat your wife, and it’s your son that goes to jail.’ " "Kids … that have seen it happen," Klobuchar said, are "twice as likely to commit it themselves." Klobuchar concluded that because the NFL puts "out their players as role models," they have "to set a different culture." We were interested in checking Klobuchar’s claim that kids who witness domestic violence are "twice as likely to commit it themselves." 90's kids We want to be clear upfront that witnessing domestic violence means witnessing it in a child’s household -- not watching the TMZ.com Rice video. That said, the "twice as likely" talking point is fairly popular among advocates against domestic abuse, and suffice to say has been around for a while. The domestic violence literature we’ve seen often cited that claim with a 1990 book called "Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families." This book compiled the results of the landmark National Family Violence Surveys of 1975 and 1985, which constituted 60-minute face-to-face interviews and 30-minute phone interviews, respectively, with thousands of American families. Based on those interviews, the book’s authors illustrated how a variety of factors influenced the incidence of domestic violence. Most of the book is about gender differences and roles in domestic violence, but the section on the effects on children crunches the surveys’ numbers on whether abusers said they witnessed abuse as children. That produced the "twice as likely" estimate. The experts we talked to told us there hasn’t been any study as definitive or comprehensive since, although other studies have taken stabs at the issue of intergenerational transmission of domestic violence. "We’ve known for such a long time that the biggest risk factor for being abusive against wives and children is witnessing domestic violence at home or being abused," said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing who studies domestic violence. So "people haven’t repeated the research for a while," Campbell said, and "a lot of stuff is old and mostly cross-sectional." What the existing literature says Campbell pointed us to a 2010 study about intimate partner violence -- a subset of domestic violence -- which found that children who witnessed any intimate partner violence were 2.6 times as likely to perpetrate it themselves. Children who witnessed any violence were 1.6 times as likely, according to the study, to become abusers as adults. Klobuchar’s claim, then, has grounds in literature both old and new. There are literally dozens of studies on this issue, though, and different studies tell different stories. A 2000 meta-analysis of 39 different studies on this issue found a "small-to-medium" correlation between witnessing and perpetrating. The studies in that survey, while a couple decades old, ranged from showing a causal relationship between witnessing and perpetrating to showing no relationship at all. That corroborates Klobuchar’s larger point that parents’ domestic violence has negative outcomes for their children, but that’s not the same as these kids being "twice as likely to commit it themselves." Difficulties with measurements Putting numbers on domestic violence is particularly hard, and perhaps even inappropriate, said Ruth Glenn, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. "I wouldn’t say twice as likely," said Glenn. "So I would say that it is an additional risk factor. I get nervous when we start to assign data, because there’s not enough data to support it. Domestic violence happens in families, and each of those families are individual units." In other words, there’s enough out there to suggest that children who witness domestic violence are more likely to perpetrate it, but saying something as precise as "twice as likely" is difficult. Domestic violence is "hard to measure for various and sundry reasons," said Glenn, from the lack of "good data" on who’s charged and convicted of domestic violence to confidentiality issues with its victims. And even when researchers can get affirmative data, there are methodological concerns. The studies about children who witness domestic violence often surveyed clinical populations -- meaning those with family issues, so a non-representative sample -- and ask respondents to self-report and to retroactively report. Extricating domestic violence from other family issues -- like mental health and substance abuse -- is also difficult, according to the studies Campbell referred us to. Our ruling Klobuchar, arguing that the NFL has a responsibility to hold its "role models" accountable to a "different culture," said that kids who witness domestic violence in their households are "twice as likely to commit it themselves." There are legitimate, peer-reviewed studies that bear Klobuchar’s claim out. But overall, even though there’s a consensus that witnessing domestic violence puts kids at a greater risk for perpetrating it themselves, the precise figures differ. Measuring domestic violence is very difficult for a variety of reasons, and there hasn’t been a recent, comprehensive study. So saying these kids are "twice as likely to commit" domestic violence is a little too precise. We rate Klobuchar’s claim Mostly True. | null | Amy Klobuchar | null | null | null | 2014-09-16T11:44:47 | 2014-09-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-01437 | On support for the auto bailouts. | full flop | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/oct/06/terri-lynn-land/michigan-republican-senate-candidate-now-says-she-/ | The federal government bailout of the auto industry was a contentious and frequent debate topic in the 2012 presidential election. But in the 2014 midterms, the issue has largely gone away — except in Michigan, the heart of the American automobile industry, where there’s a heated race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Rep. Gary Peters, D-Mich., has repeatedly trumpeted to voters his support of the 2009 bailout plan for General Motors and Chrysler. Late last month, the Peters campaign claimed to catch their opponent, former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, flip-flopping on her bailout position. "Yesterday, Land tried to rewrite history and claim she supports the auto rescue, but that’s a tough feat when news reports have chronicled her opposition," Peters spokeswoman Haley Morris said in a press release. The flip in question? On Sept. 25, responding to Peters’ comment on the campaign trail that Land opposed the bailout, Land spokeswoman Heather Swift said, "Once again Gary Peters has it wrong: Terri would have supported the auto rescue." Who is right? We decided to review the evidence. First, a quick refresher on the auto bailout: In 2008 during the economic crisis, President George W. Bush announced plans to bail out the auto industry. General Motors and Chrysler Group received $13.4 million in short-term relief in the final days of the Bush administration to keep them afloat until President Barack Obama’s new team could develop a long-term plan. The Ford Motor Company declined government assistance. In 2009, Obama said if Chrysler and GM wanted more federal money, they had to go through bankruptcy. They quickly agreed. GM received $30 million to restructure the company while Chrysler was sold to Italy’s Fiat. In all, the two companies received about $80 billion in loans, according to a 2010 Treasury report. Today, both companies are relatively healthy and touted as success stories, especially compared to where they were in 2008. We didn’t find many comments from Land about the bailout in 2009. The only statement we came across was from February 2009, when Land, then secretary of state, was exploring a gubernatorial bid. "We will have to work with (GM and Chrysler) and see how we can get them back to sustainability," Land said, according to the Grand Rapid Press. She didn’t say how nor whether she supported government financing to do so. Her campaign did not provide any other comments she made at the time. At the Republican National Convention in 2012, Land spoke with the Washington Times, a conservative news outlet, and was asked whether Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney could compete in Michigan despite the fact he "came out hard against the GM bailout" or whether that statement turned out to be a positive for him in Motor City. A video of the conversation was provided to PolitiFact by the Peters campaign. Here’s how Land responded: I’m with (Romney) on that. Because, actually Bill Ford — we live with the autos. Michigan is a very unique state. No state has one industry that’s so prominent and that’s global. It’s not a Michigan industry, it’s global. And what basically happened is Bill Ford went and got a loan. I mean, he did it that way. And so people know that that could have been done. GM has become, they call it General Government basically, it’s become this huge operation with really nobody that has the commitment like Bill Ford has with his family and his legacy of making sure that company is successful. And that’s what it’s kind of become. They call it Government Motors. That’s what they call it. That’s the reality of it. I think that was the position to have and, you know, Ford is doing great. Fast forward to this year: After a candidate forum in May, Land shirked multiple questions about whether she supported the bailout. A local Fox reporter, though, tracked her down and asked her how she would have voted if she was in Congress, and she said, "If I had been there as a U.S. senator, I would have worked to negotiate a deal that looked more like what Ford Company did." Land repeated that idea on a Detroit radio station the next day, saying, "I would have worked with the other senators to come up with a plan that would protect the taxpayers, make sure that jobs were kept here in Michigan, and did a plan more along the lines what Ford did." There’s several takeaways from this all that underscore a distinct change in position on Land's part. First, she says "I’m with (Romney) on that." "That," according to the question, is Romney’s position to come out "hard against the GM bailout." His actual position was a little more nuanced than that (though Land didn’t disagree with the questioner’s characterization). Romney in 2008 penned an op-ed for the New York Times about the state of the auto industry controversially titled (by the Times, not him) "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." He called for a managed bankruptcy of the auto companies and called for the federal government to "provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk," and he continued to argue those positions during the 2012 campaign. While GM and Chrysler did go through bankruptcies, they came out of it because of taxpayer financing. Romney’s plan would have required massive amounts of private capital that would have been tough to find during a financial crisis. Swift, the spokeswoman for Land’s campaign, said Land "did not call GM ‘Government Motors,’ she was describing the situation and telling the panel what she heard from others call it." The most literal of readings would find that accurate, but she didn’t dispute it and went on to describe the company negatively as "this huge operation with really nobody that has the commitment like Bill Ford has." This year, she said she would have supported a plan that would "protect the taxpayers" and "more along the lines what Ford did." Both the Romney plan and the Ford model are vastly different than what ultimately made its way through Congress. Ford's plan didn't even require government intervention. Swift also said the "comment (Land) made in 2012 was referring to the process" of deciding which course of action would be best, and was not opposing the bailout; rather, "she favored a different approach in the beginning." We asked for clarification by what Swift meant by "process" but didn’t hear back. It’s a confusing assertion to make since the remark came three years after the bailout took place. The process of deciding the plan of action was already complete, so we don’t understand why she would have been talking about the process. Our ruling Did Land change positions on a rescue package for the auto industry? If there’s any evidence Land supported the bailout until recently, we didn’t find it, and Land’s campaign didn’t provide it. On the campaign trail so far, she has mostly avoided a direct answer to the question. Her campaign recently said she supported it. In 2012, she said she supported Romney’s plan, which would have required private financing — not government money — to get the auto companies out of bankruptcy, and held up Ford, which rejected any government money, as a model. Her comments, read in full, are critical of how things played out. Earlier this year, she said she would have pushed for something "more along the lines what Ford did," which is even further from the auto bailout than what Romney supported. But on Sept. 25, her campaign said she "would have supported the auto rescue." That’s a distinct change of position, so we rate it Full Flop. | null | Terri Lynn Land | null | null | null | 2014-10-06T16:08:01 | 2014-10-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-06195 | In 1993, Newt Gingrich "first advocated for the individual mandate in health care. And as recently as May of this year, he was still advocating" for it. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/11/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-newt-gingrich-backed-individ/ | During a Republican presidential debate on Dec. 10, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., took aim at one of her rivals, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for his past support for an individual mandate for health insurance -- the government requirement for individuals to buy health insurance. It’s a central provision at issue in the legal challenges to President Barack Obama’s health care law. In 1993, Bachmann said, Gingrich "first advocated for the individual mandate in health care. And as recently as May of this year, he was still advocating for the individual mandate in health care." Readers asked us to check the claim, so we did. Gingrich appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Oct. 3, 1993, at a time when the Clinton administration was trying to pass a health-care overhaul. On the May 15, 2011, edition of Meet the Press, host David Gregory replayed a clip from Gingrich’s 1993 appearance that addressed the individual mandate. "I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance." That seems pretty clear, but we wanted to locate further context to make sure. We couldn’t locate the full transcript, but we did find a partial transcript excerpted in a Washington Times report: Q: Do you support compulsory national health care? A: Not at all. ... (The president's plan) is a monstrosity. I mean, after all the nice speeches, after all the nice testimony, the fact is, when you read the president's plan, it has got to be the most destructively big-government plan ever proposed. … That's how he gets the money -- by coercing change in order to pay for his plan. Without coercion, this plan collapses, and with coercion, it, frankly, is a remarkable bill to be offered to an American nation. Q: Are you for compulsory automobile insurance? A: I would like to see us go much closer to (Texas Republican Sen.) Phil Gramm's model. I would like to see every American have health insurance. I am willing to require that. I'd much rather do it through an individual voucher, much like an earned-income tax credit, rather than do it through an employer mandate that will kill jobs. But that's not the issue here. You can pass a requirement, and you can find a way to give what is actually less than 8 percent of the American people health insurance without having to go to the total overhaul of American health care, turning it all into a giant bureaucratic mess with a centralized board in Washington appointed by politicians. The full context makes Gingrich seem somewhat more flexible about the details, but ultimately he did say, "I would like to see every American have health insurance. I am willing to require that." What about the claim that Gingrich was advocating for the individual mandate as recently as May 2011 -- a point well after virtually all mainstream Republicans had come out against such a requirement? Here, too, the venue was Meet the Press, the May 15, 2011 edition. After Gregory played the 1993 clip, here’s the conversation: Gregory: "What you advocate there is precisely what President Obama did with his health care legislation, is it not?" Ginrgich: "No, it's not precisely what he did. In, in the first place, Obama basically is trying to replace the entire insurance system, creating state exchanges, building a Washington - based model, creating a federal system. I believe all of us -- and this is going to be a big debate -- I believe all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care . I think the idea that..." Gregory: "You agree with Mitt Romney on this point." Gingrich: "Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay -- help pay for health care . And, and I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond...." Gregory: "Mm-hmm." Gingrich: "...or in some way you indicate you’ll be held accountable." Gregory: "But that is the individual mandate, is it not?" Gingrich: "It's a variation on it." Gregory: "OK." Gingrich: "But it's a system …" Gregory: "And so you won't use that issue against Mitt Romney." Gingrich: "No. But it's a system which allows people to have a range of choices which are designed by the economy. But I think setting the precedent -- you know, there are an amazing number of people who think that they ought to be given health care. And, and so a large number of the uninsured earn $75,000 or more a year, don't buy any health insurance because they want to buy a second house or a better car or go on vacation. And then you and I and everybody else ends up picking up for them. I don't think having a free rider system in health is any more appropriate than having a free rider system in any other part of our society." This exchange became so controversial in Republican circles that Gingrich felt the need to personally walk back his comment the following day. "I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals," he said in a video. "I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional." We understand Gingrich’s desire to restate his opposition to the individual mandate, given how deeply opposed Republican voters are to the idea. But was what Gingrich said in the 2011 Meet the Press interview really "advocating for the individual mandate in health care," as Bachmann said in the Des Moines debate? Not quite. Gingrich calls it a "variation" on the individual mandate -- the idea that people take responsibility for their health care, either by purchasing health insurance or by posting a bond to pay for any health care they may eventually need. It’s not the first time Gingrich advocated a choice between a mandate and a bond. For instance, in a June 25, 2007, column titled, "Covering the uninsured -- do we want markets or mandates?" Gingrich wrote, "In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more, including passing legislation to … require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond." Working out the details of a bond system -- such as how much would need to be set aside and how -- poses challenges. But it’s conceivable that the legal challenges to Obama’s health care law, which are based on the notion that the government cannot compel Americans to buy a commercial product, might be less likely to succeed if the law had offered the bond option. "A bond alternative was part of the Heritage Foundation's plan and was actually originally in Romney's proposal in Massachusetts but was taken out by legislature late in game," said Michael Tanner, a health policy specialist with the libertarian Cato Institute. "It is a modest improvement over a straight mandate since it doesn't require you to buy a specific product, but libertarians like me still found it objectionable." Still, in our view, the fact that Gingrich supported the bond idea in the 2011 Meet the Press interview muddies the waters enough to weaken the argument Bachmann made -- that "as recently as May of this year, he was still advocating for the individual mandate in health care." Our ruling In the 1993 interview, Gingrich advocated for individuals "being required to have health insurance," though he expressed flexibility on the details. That makes the first half of Bachmann’s claim correct. In the 2011 interview, Gingrich said "we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond." It’s an exaggeration to say that this equates to advocating for an individual mandate, since he posed it as one of two acceptable options. On balance, we rate Bachmann’s statement Mostly True. | null | Michele Bachmann | null | null | null | 2011-12-11T12:14:58 | 2011-12-10 | ['Newt_Gingrich'] |
pomt-02248 | Obamacare is "costing 2 million jobs." | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2014/apr/13/laura-ingraham/ingraham-obamacare-costing-2-million-jobs/ | The Sunday morning TV pundits revived some passionate talking points about the health care law following this week’s resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Look to the partisan bickering between Democratic strategist James Carville and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on ABC’s This Week to see what we mean. Carville said Sebelius’ departure doesn’t change the fact that the law is working. "You know what? Y’all said it was gonna collapse. You said no one would sign up. You said it was going to cost part-time jobs -- " "It’s costing 2 million jobs," Ingraham jumped in, attributing the figure to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Carville kept talking: "You said the risk corridors were going to go broke. None of that has happened. Get over it. It’s working. It’s gonna work." PunditFact checks out Carville’s point on risk corridors here. In this fact-check, we focused on Ingraham’s point about a CBO report that analyzed the health care law’s long-term effect on employment. Fact-checkers have heard Obamacare critics misrepresent the report many, many times. When the CBO released this report in February, House Speaker John Boehner and Fox News host Gretchen Carlson jumped out in front with some poor interpretations of this paragraph from CBO: "The reduction in CBO's projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024," the nonpartisan research service wrote. At first blush, that may seem to match what Ingraham said about the law "costing 2 million jobs." But the losses CBO projected aren’t exactly full-time jobs, and they aren’t driven by employers laying off employees. Essentially, some workers are expected to voluntarily dial back their hours. Or as the CBO put it: "The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor." It’s an important distinction. CBO estimated that millions of Americans will probably decide they don’t need to work as much because the law makes health insurance more available by offering subsidies for some to obtain insurance and expanding Medicaid eligibility in some states. CBO found the tax penalties imposed on employers that do not provide insurance to their workers and new taxes on labor income would have a smaller effect on the labor market than the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies. Just as important, CBO’s 2 million "full-time-equivalent workers" figure is not a dressed-up word for 2 million full-time jobs. CBO did not break down how many full-time jobs would be reduced under the law versus employees simply working fewer hours, dropping a separate part-time job, or leaving the workforce. "Because some people will reduce the amount of hours they work rather than stopping work altogether, the number who will choose to leave employment because of the ACA in 2024 is likely to be substantially less than 2.5 million," the report states. "At the same time, more than 2.5 million people are likely to reduce the amount of labor they choose to supply to some degree because of the ACA, even though many of them will not leave the labor force entirely." None of this is to say the health care law is not affecting the job market. Analysts expect the country’s labor force participation rate to fall over the coming decade, and some people may not like the idea that people would work fewer hours because they can obtain government-subsidized insurance. "Bigger implicit and explicit tax distortions are reducing productive economic activity," Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, told us in February. Lastly, researchers said the law’s biggest effects on employment would happen after 2016, when more provisions have taken effect, so the estimate is not a present-day reflection as Ingraham makes it sound. CBO researchers also note total employment and compensation will increase over the next decade, but "that increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA." Our ruling We are fact-checkers, not fortune-tellers. We’ll steer clear of declaring the health care law a success or failure. For one, it’s simply too soon to tell. It is possible to say, however, whether pundits are accurately summarizing projections from nonpartisan government analysts about the law. And when Ingraham cited CBO for her claim that the law "is costing 2 million jobs," she glazed over a swath of important details. Ingraham’s claim contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. (Update April 15: Ingraham responded to our ruling on her April 14, radio show, saying: "The economy is affected when fewer people work. This is a real effect on the real American economy. So you can argue about how you interpret the number of jobs lost. You can say that's a good thing. ... Democrats love when people aren't working. ...That does not change the underlying fact that jobs will be lost because of Obamacare. PolitiFact and the Democrats think it's a good idea to add to those terrible (jobs) numbers with more people not working. And you're going to fact-check me? Fact-check this. Fact-check yourself. You are so untethered to reality and the real world for most people. Go finger paint in your free time.") | null | Laura Ingraham | null | null | null | 2014-04-13T14:38:10 | 2014-04-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-15264 | The law says ... when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says and then deal with it later. | false | /punditfact/statements/2015/jul/30/harry-houck/former-nypd-detective-sandra-blands-traffic-stop-l/ | Dashboard camera footage of the traffic stop of Sandra Bland spurred contentious, if not always accurate, cable news debate about a person’s rights when dealing with law enforcement. Bland, a 28-year-old woman from Chicago, was found dead in her jail cell three days after Texas state trooper Brian Encinia stopped her for failing to signal when changing lanes (she was ultimately charged with resisting arrest). Questions still surround her death, which officials called a suicide. But the video gives Americans a clearer look at the explosive start of the arrest that put her behind bars to begin with. The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety criticized Encinia’s actions, saying that the trooper violated arrest procedure. But some people are also questioning Bland’s behavior, including her refusal to put out her cigarette at Encinia’s request. Don Lemon led a CNN Tonight panel on July 21 about the ordeal with legal analyst Sunny Hostin, liberal pundit Marc Lamont Hill and retired New York Police Department detective Harry Houck. Most of the panel agreed with Hostin’s advice for dealing with law enforcement: Essentially, make the encounter as short as possible by obeying orders and dealing with legal issues or mistreatment later. Lemon then asked Houck to clarify the legal rights that people actually have during a police stop — and that’s where the discussion got murky. Lemon asked if all the attention on this encounter and others around the country "is giving people a false sense of rights that they have, that they really don’t have?" Yes, Houck responded. "People actually think, that I've talked to, saying that, no, if a police officer stopped me for something, I don't think he's stopping me for a right reason, but I don't have to cooperate with the officer. But that is wrong," he said. Houck continued: "The law says, just like you said, Don, that when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says and then deal with it later." Read literally, Houck’s statement seems to give law enforcement a lot of leeway during stops. Are civilians really required to obey their each and every order? The video Before we dive into the legal issues underlying Bland’s arrest, let’s review what the video shows. Encinia pulls Bland over for a failure to signal as she changed lanes. Encinia retrieves Bland’s driver’s license and insurance and heads back to his car. After four and a half minutes, Encinia returns to issue a ticket to Bland. At the window, he asks her if she’s okay. "I’m waiting on you, this is your job," she says. "You seem very irritated," he tells her. "I really am," Bland replies, explaining why she’s unhappy that she was pulled over. Encinia asks if she’s done speaking, then asks her to put out her cigarette. Bland refuses, saying that she’s free to smoke a cigarette in her own car. Encinia then directs her out of the car, calling it a "lawful order." When she doesn’t move, he opens the door and forcibly removes her, pointing a Taser in her direction and threatening to "light her up." After Bland exits the car, Encinia issues a number of orders, including for her to put her phone down, to "come over here," to "stand right here," and to "turn around." The confrontation becomes physical shortly afterwards, before Encinia puts Bland in the back of his squad car. The panelists were divided on the issue of whether Bland escalated the situation by claiming rights she did not have when she refused Encinia’s order to put out her cigarette. Experts we consulted said Bland had the right to act the way she did, but Encinia may have, too. Here’s why. Pleading the Fifth (and the Fourth) Does the law really say you have to do whatever a police officer says during a traffic stop? Literally, no. The Constitution affords a few fundamental rights to everyone stopped or arrested by law enforcement in the United States. The right to refuse a search of one’s person, car or home is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, and the right to remain silent is protected by the Fifth. No matter how much information Encinia wanted to get out of Bland, she was not legally obliged to provide it. "You definitely don’t have to answer questions," said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in criminal justice and procedure. So Houck’s statement doesn’t hold up under constitutional scrutiny. When reached for comment, Houck said his comments were being taken too literally, adding he only meant that civilians were obligated to comply with orders "within reason." "Anybody with common sense knows what I said," he said. Houck told PunditFact that he had been focusing primarily on the legality of Encinia’s order for Bland to exit her car, a point he brings up early on in the panel discussion but doesn’t stress throughout. In the interview, he brought up Pennsylvania vs. Mimms, a Supreme Court case from 1977 in which two implicated law enforcement officers were found not to have violated the Fourth Amendment when directing a man to exit his car upon stopping him for a traffic violation. He argued that the precedent established in Mimms applies to Bland’s arrest as well. Reasonable suspicion Houck does have a point that officers have a considerable amount of authority over a person during a traffic stop. In Mimms, after directing a man out of his car, officers noticed a bulge under the man’s jacket. The bulge turned out to be a loaded gun, and the man was then arrested. The court ruled that exiting one’s car for the duration of a stop did not violate a person's Fourth Amendment rights. So Encinia, using Mimms as jurisprudence, had the right to direct Bland out of her car, even if he had no reason to suspect that she was armed or dangerous. Some have argued, however, that because the "legal stop" was finished by the time Encinia directed Bland out the car, he did not have the right to continue the interaction. But the broader point that Houck misses in his explanation is that much of an officer’s authority to search or use force or a person is permissible only if they have reason to suspect that the person is armed or dangerous, or has committed a crime. What exactly constitutes "reasonable suspicion" is still up for for debate. Weisberg emphasized how gray this area of law still is. A non-answer, for example, can often be interpreted by law enforcement as "furtive behavior," thus authorizing many options an officer might not have otherwise had, including searching, moving, or using force on a subject, Weisberg said. Making these judgment calls is where officers have the most leeway, said Jason Williamson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who recently wrote a Bland-inspired article for Time entitled "What to Do if You Get Pulled Over by a Cop." "It’s certainly true that cops are given discretion and the benefit of the doubt," Williamson said. In order for Encinia to argue that he was suspicious of Bland, he would have to point to her refusal to put out her cigarette as an indication of violent intentions, said Jody David Armour, a University of Southern California law professor. "That is a judgment of intent," he said, "and a judgment of character." Our ruling Houck claimed that "the law says … that when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says" during a stop. Reasonable suspicion justifies an officer’s increased authority during a stop or an arrest, though the definition of "reasonable" is often unclear. Applied generally, however, the claim is incorrect. Even though it might be advisable to defer to law enforcement in many cases, the Constitution protects one’s right to remain silent and to not consent to a search. Without suspicion that the subject is armed or has committed a crime, an officer must respect these rights. That's what the law says. We rate Houck's claim False. Correction: This item was updated on July 31 to correct the sequence of events in describing Pennsylvania vs. Mimms. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the act of ordering a person out of a car for the duration of a stop, even in the absence of reasonable suspicion, is constitutional. | null | Harry Houck | null | null | null | 2015-07-30T14:44:05 | 2015-07-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-09433 | The Obama administration "spent more money on the Cash for Clunkers program than the space program." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2010/mar/12/marco-rubio/rubio-criticizes-space-budget/ | NASA's budget has been a hot topic among Florida politicians since the Obama administration's recent announcement that it plans to kill the NASA Constellation program, which sought to put astronauts back on the moon. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio jumped on the bandwagon and spoke against Obama's plan during a meeting of the Brevard County Republican Club in February, according to an article in Florida Today on Feb. 8, 2010: The article said that Rubio "criticized the Obama administration for discontinuing manned space flight in favor of more innovative technological advances, ignoring that Obama also proposed an increase in NASA's budget over the next several years." Rubio was quoted saying, "They spent more money on the Cash for Clunkers program than the space program." That article and another one in Politico that used the same quote, had some context before Rubio's quote about the proposed cuts in the Constellation program. The Florida Today article mentioned Obama's plan to discontinue manned space flight. Politico quoted Rubio's primary opponent, Gov. Charlie Crist, stating: "Unless we continue the Constellation Program that allows America to be a leader in space innovation and provides jobs for many Floridians on the Space Coast, this discussion will leave many of the same problems unresolved." Both articles also noted that overall, Obama proposed an increase in NASA funding. When we asked Rubio's campaign about the quote, spokesman Alberto Martinez told us that Rubio was referring to the Constellation program -- not NASA's overall budget. "Marco has used that line several times, and what he is specifically referring to is President Obama's decision to scrap the Constellation Program," Martinez wrote to us in an e-mail. Before we wade into the question of whether Rubio's context was clear, here's how the numbers compare: * Cash for Clunkers was a $3 billion program, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. * NASA's overall budget this year is $18.7 billion, proposed to rise to $19 billion next year. * NASA's Exploration program, which includes the Constellation initiative, was about $3.8 billion this year. The cost would be $2.5 billion to phase out the Constellation program over two years and then it would drop to zero. So Rubio would be right if the comparison is Constellation ($3 billion for Cash for Clunkers versus $2.5 billion to phase the Constellation effort), but he'd be wrong if it's the NASA space program overall (the $3 billion for Clunkers versus roughly $19 billion for NASA). Now, to the question of Rubio's context. Martinez told us he was referring specifically to Constellation. "The point Marco was making is that this president has shown he is willing to spend more money in programs like 'Cash for Clunkers' than he is willing to spend on pursuing the next phase of a planned manned-space flight program. Marco made his remarks before an audience on the Space Coast which is informed about this issue. They know the only manned space flight program was the Constellation Program." That made us wonder what the audience thought, so we called two Republicans who attended the meeting and asked them what they believed he was referring to. But neither specifically recalled the statement. So to recap: Rubio would be correct if indeed he was suggesting that the U.S. spent more on Cash for Clunkers -- $3 billion -- than the Obama administration would spend on Constellation. But by referring to it as the "space program," his comment was so vague that it sounds more like he's referring to the entire NASA budget. And the Florida Today article helps to back that up by noting that he ignored the fact that Obama was proposing an increase in NASA's overall spending. The Rubio campaign says his context was clear to the audience, but we think his wording most likely is interpreted to mean the entire NASA budget. So we find the claim 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 | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2010-03-12T17:06:54 | 2010-02-08 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-10254 | (McCain) says "we can't have ... timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/27/joe-biden/mccain-has-often-opposed-timelines-but-not-always/ | In his Aug. 27, 2008, speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Sen. Joe Biden characterized Sen. John McCain's position on timelines for withdrawal from Iraq as an unequivocal "no." Here's the full context of Biden's claim: "Should we trust John McCain's judgment when he says — when he says we can't have ... timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq, that we must stay indefinitely?" Biden said. "Or should we listen to Barack Obama, who says shift the responsibility to the Iraqis and set a time to bring our combat troops home? Now, after six long years, the administration and the Iraqi government are on the verge of setting a date to bring our troops home. John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right." But does McCain really say "there can be no timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq"? It is true that on many occasions McCain has vociferously opposed the idea of setting a timetable — or a timeline (we believe the words are interchangeable) — for withdrawal from Iraq. During the Republican primary contest, McCain harshly criticized Mitt Romney's use of the term "timetable," saying it was "the buzzword for withdrawal." For days he carried around a note card with Romney's words to remind primary voters of Romney's endorsement of a timetable. However, it is also true that more recently McCain has adjusted his rhetoric. In a July speech, McCain said: "I'm confident we will be able to reduce our forces in Iraq next year and our forces will be out of regular combat operations and dramatically reduced in number during the term of the next president of the United States." And on other more recent occasions, when criticizing timelines, he has been careful to characterize them first. Here's McCain on Aug. 18: "The hard-won gains of our troops hang in the balance. The lasting advantage of a peaceful and democratic ally in the heart of the Middle East could still be squandered by hasty withdrawal and arbitrary timelines." Note the insertion of the word "arbitrary." On other occasions McCain has criticized "artificial" timelines. But that does not mean he is opposed to any timelines at all. Rather, that language implies that if a timeline were not "arbitrary" or "artificial," McCain could support it. Indeed, here's McCain in a CNN interview on July 25, when asked about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's endorsement of a timetable: "He said it's a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground," McCain said. "I think it's a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal — but they have to be based on conditions on the ground." That wasn't the clearest statement in the world. So ABC's George Stephanopoulos pressed McCain on the issue on This Week two days later: STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama was in London this morning, and he was responding to your comments from yesterday when you said that 16 months might be a pretty good timetable in Iraq. He said, 'We're pleased to see that there's been some convergence around proposals we've been making for a year-and-a-half.' MCCAIN: That's really good. Look, it's not a timetable, as I said. I was asked, how does that sound? Anything sounds good to me, but… STEPHANOPOULOS: But you never used the word before. MCCAIN: … you know, the point is… STEPHANOPOULOS: You made a point of never using… MCCAIN: … I never… STEPHANOPOULOS: … the word before. MCCAIN: Look, I have always said, and I said then, it's the conditions on the ground. If Senator Obama had had his way, we'd have been out last March, and we'd been out in defeat and chaos, and probably had to come back again because of Iranian influence... STEPHANOPOULOS: But it does seem… MCCAIN: But it is a — it is not a date. I want to make it very clear to you, it is not a date. It's conditions on the ground. STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you shouldn't have used the word timetable. MCCAIN: Pardon me? STEPHANOPOULOS: You shouldn't have used the word timetable. MCCAIN: I didn't use the word timetable. That I did — if I did… STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, it's a pretty good timetable. MCCAIN: Oh, well, look. Anything is a good timetable that is dictated by conditions on the ground. Anything is good. But the timetable is dictated, not by an artificial date, but by the conditions on the ground, the conditions of security. McCain clearly was not comfortable embracing the idea of a timetable for withdrawal. But nor was he comfortable opposing it in all cases. His answers in both the CNN and ABC interviews suggest that he could be okay with a timetable if it were dependent on conditions on the ground. Biden did not acknowledge the gray area in McCain's approach to a timeline, instead implying that McCain was unequivocally opposed to any timeline at all. Since McCain has spoken out repeatedly against timelines — but indicated he was open to them on other occasions — we find Biden's claim to be Half True. | null | Joe Biden | null | null | null | 2008-08-27T00:00:00 | 2008-08-27 | ['Iraq', 'John_McCain'] |
pomt-09821 | Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/02/john-kerry/kerry-claims-arctic-will-be-ice-free-2013/ | Sen. John Kerry says climate change is happening faster than we think. In an Aug. 31, 2009, op-ed in the Huffington Post, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote that the threat of climate change "is not an abstract concern for the future." "It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now," he wrote. "Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now. Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and — yes — even to American national security." We don't debate that the effects of climate change are already being felt. However, Kerry's claim that the Arctic will be ice-free in as little as five years is ominous and worth putting to the Truth-O-Meter. Arctic ice has long been considered a canary in a coal mine for climate scientists; they watch it closely because significant melts indicate an acceleration of climate change effects. In fact, temperatures actually rise faster in icy regions because of something known as ice albedo feedback loop. Ice is more reflective than land or water. When ice melts, the reflectivity of the Earth's surface decreases as well, and more solar radiation is absorbed by the land and the oceans. So, as ice melts, more and more heat from the sun is absorbed, accelerating the warming process. Melting has recently become a more serious problem, and 2007 was a particularly bad year for the Arctic. Then, about 552 billion tons of ice melted from Greenland's ice sheet during the summer — about 15 percent more than the summer average. The summer of 2009 didn't look much better. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the average rate of melt in July of this year is nearly identical to that of July 2007, in part due to unusual weather patterns and an underlying trend toward higher temperatures. But does this mean ice will be completely gone in the next few years? We talked to Julienne Stroeve, a researcher for the NSIDC, for some perspective. Climate scientists "agree that we'll lose summer ice cover," she said. "As to the exact date, it varies between groups." The summer ice cover is what's left of the sea ice after the annual seasonal melting. It refreezes when temperatures drop. Indeed, predictions are all over the map. Kerry got his data from Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who as early as 2007 predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013. Similar projections have been trumpeted by a handful of other scientists, including Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec and NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally. (A Kerry spokeswoman directed us to this 2007 article about Maslowski's work.) Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group relying on the consensus of hundreds of climate scientists, estimated in 2007 that summer ice would largely be gone in the latter part of the 21st century; and Stroeve said NSIDC supports a prediction of 2030. NASA climate researcher Gavin Schmidt wrote in an e-mail to us that Maslowski's prediction isn't necessarily a communitywide opinion. "A fair statement would be that some scientists have predicted summer ice free Arctic Ocean as soon as 2013, but others expect it to happen a little slower — say 2040-2060," Schmidt wrote. Differences occur when research focuses on the area of the Arctic — based on aerial satellite photographs — or on thickness and volume of the ice as well as area, according to Maslowski. In both cases, scientists have seen melting, Maslowski said. However, when estimates are based on the latter method, as Maslowski and his team of researchers have done, melting seems to be happening much faster. "There is no crystal ball, there is no final prediction, just estimates," Maslowski said. "All we are trying to show is that we better start thinking [ice-free summers] could start earlier than 2100 or 2030. We should be prepared for the worst-case scenario." Kerry's claim also leaves out an important nuance; as Stroeve said, most climate scientists agree that summer ice is likely to disappear at some point, but that the oceans will still freeze in the winter for a very long time. However, Kerry's op-ed could make it sound as if the Arctic will devoid of ice all year long. As always with the climate change debate, we've found that there's a wide range of informed opinion on the issue of Arctic melting. In a general sense, Kerry is correct that Arctic ice is melting at a quickening rate. However, he has based his prediction on the earliest and most extreme estimate, when a much wider range of estimates are available and most project the turning point will occur decades from now. And he makes it seem as if the Arctic will be totally ice-free within a few short years when in fact that would only be true for the summer. As a result, we rate Kerry'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 | John Kerry | null | null | null | 2009-09-02T16:42:37 | 2009-08-31 | ['None'] |
pomt-13600 | Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2016/aug/16/vote-no-2/medical-marijuana-amendment-doesnt-restrict-dispen/ | Local governments will be powerless to prevent medical marijuana dispensaries from sprouting up anywhere and everywhere should Amendment 2 pass this fall, opponents of the measure say. A pamphlet from Vote No On 2 mailed to voters in July warns that the constitutional amendment prevents any kinds of restrictions on the locations of marijuana-related businesses. The amendment would allow doctors to recommend medical marijuana for certain health conditions and patients to pick up the drug from dispensaries that sell it. "Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school," the pamphlet cautions. Vote No On 2 is a campaign run by the Drug Free Florida Committee, an anti-drug group started in 2014 by longtime GOP fundraiser Mel Sembler and his wife, Betty, with financial backing from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. We wanted to know whether Amendment 2 prevented communities from their own bans on so-called "pot shops." The short answer is that the amendment does not have any provisions for local legislation — but that’s only because the state would eventually be deciding whether local jurisdictions could do that. Amendment 2 redux First, let’s recall that Amendment 2 hit the ballot first in 2014, but just missed the 60 percent of the vote needed to pass. The current version for the November 2016 ballot has the same name, but United for Care, the group behind the measure, has altered the language for November 2016 to clear up confusion about the prior proposal. The amendment now requires parental consent and doctor certification for minors and more clearly defines the medical conditions it covers: cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis "or other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated," with a doctor’s recommendation. That means that if a doctor recommends medical marijuana for a patient with one of these conditions, the patient (or a certified caregiver) will get a state-issued ID card. That card allows them to buy marijuana at a state-regulated dispensary. There are some things to keep in mind about the whole process. Doctors are only recommending cannabis, because it’s illegal under federal law to prescribe a Schedule I drug — meaning it’s considered highly addictive and has no known medical benefits. Doctors would risk losing their ability to practice medicine if they prescribe marijuana. Pharmacies also can’t legally distribute cannabis, making dispensaries necessary. Dispensary suspense The state has estimated there could be almost 2,000 medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida should Amendment 2 pass, though there may be far fewer than that in reality. The proposed amendment requires the Legislature and the health department to figure out all the details of implementing medical marijuana should the measure pass — including the number of dispensaries and where they’re allowed to be. Vote No on 2 spokeswoman Christina Johnson pointed out to us that Amendment 2 does not include any language about a local option, and therefore doesn’t guarantee the state will allow them. The group believes that if a community passes an ordinance, the issue will have to be settled in court due to the amendment’s wording, and a right to access will trump local law. But the amendment also doesn’t prevent the state from letting local jurisdictions create their own rules. While no one knows exactly what will happen, chances are good that there will be some leeway for local rules. Kate Bell, legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, said it wouldn’t be appropriate for an amendment to try to codify regulations into the state’s constitution. Instead, regulations would have to spell out specifics, such as setbacks from schools and how dispensaries must follow local zoning laws. If the state doesn’t make distinct rules about dispensaries, local zoning rules would likely apply. The examples from other laws vary, as all 25 medical marijuana states (plus the District of Columbia) differ in their regulations. In New York, a rule says dispensaries can’t be within 1,000 feet of a "school, church, synagogue or other place of worship." In Washington, D.C., a dense urban area, dispensaries and cultivation centers where marijuana is grown may be no closer than 300 feet of a "preschool, primary or secondary school, or recreation center." Ordinances could be shaped into de facto bans, but there is some precedent for local governments being prevented from prohibiting dispensaries entirely. Maryland regulations say a licensed dispensary "shall conform to all local zoning and planning requirements," but the state’s attorney general has said in an opinion that those rules can’t outright ban dispensaries. Arizona law says "cities, towns and counties may enact reasonable zoning regulations that limit the use of land for registered nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries to specified areas," but court rulings have said those laws can’t make opening a dispensary practically impossible. Pennsylvania’s law, passed earlier this year, prevented local ordinances from completely banning dispensaries. Andrew Livingston, a policy analyst for national law firm Vicente Sederberg, which represents marijuana businesses, said Florida is fairly unique in trying to pass a constitutional amendment with the expectation of marijuana storefronts. Nevada and Colorado passed constitutional amendments, and both allow local dispensary bans. He said almost all states that used voter-approved initiatives — like California, Oregon and Alaska — made the decision before the idea of dispensaries became popular. Those states focused on allowing patients or caregiver to grow their own plants, not buy them through state-approved dispensaries. "There were no reasons to ban marijuana businesses because marijuana businesses were never mentioned in these earliest laws," Livingston said. There is no provision in the Florida amendment for patients to grow their own plants. As for Florida, we don’t have to wait to see whether towns or counties will create their own laws shunning medical marijuana. It’s already happening, in part because of a 2014 law allowing low-THC cannabis products for patients with muscle spasms, cancer, epilepsy and terminal illnesses. More than two dozen cities have regulated or completely banned medical marijuana sales. Boca Raton, for example, has a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries, cultivation, processing or distribution until city zoning rules are ironed out. Pasco County has banned any type of marijuana business. And while cannabis is still illegal in Plant City, the city commission passed an ordinance on Aug. 8 in anticipation of Amendment 2 winning at the polls. If federal law one day changes, medical marijuana dispensaries would be allowed, but they still have to be at least 500 feet from schools, churches, daycares, drug treatment centers, public parks and residential areas. Any dispensaries also would be confined to an area smaller than four acres in the city, next to a hospital and a fried chicken restaurant. Our ruling Vote No On 2 said, "Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school." While the statement is technically accurate about the amendment’s wording, it’s highly doubtful there will be a dispensary on every corner. If it passes, the state will be in charge of writing regulations, including whether and how local jurisdictions will be able to create their own zoning laws or ordinances. It’s impossible to say with certainty what Florida’s regulations on dispensaries would look like should the amendment pass, as regulations in other medical marijuana states vary. But local bans or restrictive laws on dispensaries are common in medical marijuana states. Fears about the precise locations of pot shops and local control are premature. We rate the statement Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f4413312-de1e-4cdc-82c4-14c5503bfc39 | null | Vote No On 2 | null | null | null | 2016-08-16T16:38:20 | 2016-07-20 | ['None'] |
tron-00006 | 4Syrian Man With 4 Wives, 23 Kids Gets $360,000 Per Year in Welfare | truth! & unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/syrian-man-with-syrian-man-4-wives-22-kids-welfare/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | ['germany', 'immigration', 'refugees'] | Syrian Man With 4 Wives, 22 Kids Gets $360,000 Per Year in Welfare | May 15, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04484 | Says under U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s watch the nation’s unemployment rate and debt doubled and the federal budget deficit quadrupled. | half-true | /new-jersey/statements/2012/oct/07/joseph-kyrillos/joe-kyrillos-pins-blame-robert-menendez-rising-nat/ | Republican Senate hopeful Joe Kyrillos started his pitch for the votes of New Jersey residents in November by tying national economic woes to his Democratic rival. In his opening remarks in a debate with Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez that aired on NJTV Thursday night, Kyrillos said the "American dream is in peril" and "we need to make a change." "Now if you think things are just fine, that things are okay here in New Jersey and across the land, well then you’ll choose my opponent again. But if you think that unemployment doubling — doubling — under his watch, the deficits quadrupling, our national debt doubling is unacceptable, then you’re going to make a change and you’ll choose me," said Kyrillos, a state senator from Monmouth County. Kyrillos, for the most part, accurately reflected the economic trends since Menendez took office as a U.S. Senator in January 2006. But Kyrillos runs into trouble because as one expert said it’s "beyond ridiculous" to pin those increases on one senator. Here’s how the three numbers -- unemployment, debt and deficit -- break down. The unemployment rate stood at 4.7 percent in January 2006, according to federal labor data. It climbed to a peak of 10 percent in October of 2009, but when Kyrillos made his statement the latest numbers showed the jobless rate was 8.1 percent. That’s less than double the 2006 rate. The unemployment rate dropped in September to 7.8 percent, according to data released Friday morning. As for the growth in the national debt and deficit, since 2006 the former nearly doubled and the latter quadrupled. The gross national debt includes money the government borrowed from outside investors and foreign countries, as well as money loaned from one governmental pocket, like the Social Security Trust fund to another, like the general fund. The gross debt was about $16.16 trillion on Thursday, up from $8.17 trillion on Jan. 18, 2006, the day Menendez was sworn into the U.S. Senate. That’s according to data from the U.S. Treasury Department. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the budget for fiscal year 2006 had a nearly $250 billion deficit, which is the difference between incoming revenue and outgoing expenses in a year. In 2009, the deficit hit a peak of about $1.4 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects the fiscal year 2012 budget deficit to be about $1.1 trillion, more than quadruple the deficit in 2006. But how much, if at all, is Menendez responsible for those increases? "Placing responsibility for national economic developments on an individual Senator is beyond ridiculous," Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an e-mail. We have addressed similar issues in previous fact-checks, noting that governors, presidents and legislators aren’t the sole catalyst behind broad economic trends. In his campaign kickoff speech in February, Kyrillos blamed Menendez for increased deficits during his tenure in the Senate. We noted in that fact-check that Menendez voted for some measures -- like the stimulus program -- that fueled more spending in 2009. But federal budget experts cited the recession as a major factor behind increased deficits, so Kyrillos’ statement was rated Half True. The same problems apply to Kyrillos’ statement in the debate. The numbers are mostly on target, but the recession played a critical role in driving up government costs and driving down employment. Menendez's campaign manager Mike Soliman called Kyrillos' statement "hypocritical" because of his support for policies, like the tax cuts passed by President George W. Bush, that contributed to the debt. Kyrillos’ campaign manager, Chapin Fay, stuck with the same refrain, saying in a statement, "Fact is, we are worse off since Bob Menendez took office." Our ruling Kyrillos said that under Menendez’s watch the nation’s unemployment rate and debt doubled and the federal budget deficit quadrupled. While Kyrillos’s arithmetic is mostly accurate in the time since Menendez joined the Senate, it’s wrong to assign full responsibility for national economic trends on one legislator. For that reason, we rate this claim Half True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Joseph Kyrillos | null | null | null | 2012-10-07T07:30:00 | 2012-10-04 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-01031 | Documents released from the Soviet Union show "the Soviet Union started treating" President Ronald Reagan more seriously after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. | pants on fire! | /wisconsin/statements/2015/jan/28/scott-walker/scott-walker-records-show-soviets-treated-ronald-r/ | As momentum builds for a possible 2016 presidential run, Gov. Scott Walker has spent more time speaking on foreign policy. One of his talking points: Leadership trumps experience when it comes to managing affairs overseas. Look at Ronald Reagan. That was Walker’s response Jan. 21, 2015 when he was asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about the importance of foreign policy experience. First, the governor criticized the secretary of state record of Hillary Clinton, the leading potential Democratic candidate for 2016. Then he turned to Reagan, one of his political heroes, and one of the Republican president’s early acts in office -- the mass firing of most of the nation’s air traffic controllers. In August 1981, after contract talks between the federal government and the union for the controllers stalled, nearly 13,000 controllers walked off the job. Just seven months into his first term, Reagan called the strike illegal and demanded they return to work. When more than 11,000 didn't, Reagan fired them in what was an unprecedented action. In his MSNBC interview, Walker asserted that the move was one of the most important foreign policy decisions "made in our lifetime," showing allies and adversaries around the world "that we were serious." Then he added this: "Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case. The Soviet Union started treating (Reagan) more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think (President Barack Obama) has failed mainly because he's made threats and hasn't followed through on them." So, Walker goes beyond stating an opinion about the foreign policy implications of Reagan’s move. He states as fact that there are Soviet documents showing the Soviets treated the Reagan more seriously because he fired American air traffic controllers. That’s a bold claim. Walker's evidence When we asked for evidence to back the claim, both the governor's office and Walker's campaign cited statements from a variety of people. Each essentially said the firings showed Reagan meant what he said, and that he was to be taken seriously. Some examples: Reagan special assistant Peggy Noonan wrote in her White House memoir that George Shultz, who became Reagan's secretary state a year after the firings, had called the firings the most important foreign policy decision Reagan ever made. Joseph McCartin, the author of a book on the strike, wrote that when House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Democrat, visited Moscow not long after the strike, "he learned that the Soviet leaders had been deeply impressed by Reagan’s actions." And Reagan biographer Edmund Morris wrote: "Former Soviet apparatchiks will tell you that it was not his famous 'evil empire' speech in 1983 that convinced them he meant strategic business, so much as photographs of the leader of the air traffic controllers union being taken to jail in 1981." Those are perceptions of Americans, however. Walker's claim was the Soviets treated Reagan more seriously after he fired the controllers, and that Soviet documents prove it. But he did not provide us anything referencing Soviet documents. And apparently there are no such documents that have been made public. Experts Five experts told us they had never heard of such documents. Several were incredulous at the notion. McCartin, a Georgetown University labor history expert who wrote the book about the strike that Walker cited, said: "I am not aware of any such documents. If they did exist, I would love to see them." Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russia programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, told us she "had to listen to the Walker interview twice, so ridiculous is the statement about the air traffic controllers. There is absolutely no evidence of this. I would love to see the released Soviet documents on this subject that he has apparently seen." James Graham Wilson, a historian at the U.S. State Department, also told us he was not aware of any Soviet documents showing Moscow’s internal response to the controller firings. He speculated that there could be such records, given how some Soviet experts characterized the firings. Wilson and other authors have noted the perspective of Richard Pipes, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Harvard University. Pipes said the firings showed the Soviets that Reagan was "a man who, when aroused, will go to the limit to back up his principles." But even as the firings gained the attention of the Soviets, there were other U.S.-Soviet matters during 1981 that were also important. With his first budget, Reagan added $26 billion in defense spending, accelerating the placement of new tanks and warplanes, and he embarked on a modernization of the nation’s nuclear weapons. Reagan also wrote to Soviet leaders imploring them to alleviate Cold War tensions and negotiate arms reductions. In any case, the lack of Soviet records described by Walker is clear. Reagan's own ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, told us: "It's utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever." Matlock questioned whether Soviet leaders even paid much attention to the firings, saying: "At that point, their big question was whether (Reagan) was going to attack them." Our rating Touching on foreign policy issues, Walker said: "Documents released from the Soviet Union" show "the Soviet Union started treating" Ronald Reagan more seriously after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. There is a view, echoed by Walker, that the firings caught the Soviets’ attention. But Walker cited no Soviet documents showing that the firings made the Soviets treat Reagan more seriously. And experts, several of whom felt Walker’s claim is outrageous, told us they are not aware that any such documents exist. For a statement that is false and ridiculous, our rating is Pants on Fire. ------ 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. To comment on this item, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s web page. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2015-01-28T05:00:00 | 2015-01-21 | ['Soviet_Union', 'Ronald_Reagan'] |
pomt-00468 | Hospitals are closing in rural America because they don't have access to high-speed internet. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/aug/15/marsha-blackburn/blackburn-broadband-lack-closed-rural-hospitals-it/ | At a gathering of the Tennessee Farm Bureau in Franklin, Tenn., Republican Senate nominee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, talked about things she would aim to reduce, such as EPA regulations, and things she would aim to build up, such as broadband internet. Blackburn said fast internet was important for education, and health care. "Hospitals are closing in rural America because they don't have access to high-speed internet," she said Aug. 8. We decided to see if lack of broadband was as pivotal to rural hospitals as Blackburn said. Key takeaways Nationwide, 87 rural hospitals have closed or stopped providing in-patient care since 2010. The leading reasons these hospitals close include: 1. They serve older, poorer, and sicker communities where higher percentages of patients are covered through public insurance programs; 2. They have too few patients to support the size of the facility; 3. Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements often don’t cover their costs. Access to high-speed internet would help, but researchers were unable to identify a hospital that closed due to lack of access. Why hospitals close The Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tracks rural hospital closures. The center’s director and senior researcher told the Senate Finance Committee in May that the causes are complicated, but they did see some patterns. "Most closures and abandoned rural hospitals are in the South – 60 percent – where poverty rates are higher and people are generally less healthy and less likely to have health insurance, private or public," they said. They said in 2016, the average urban hospital had double the profit margin of the typical rural facility, about 5 percent compared to a bit over 2 percent. A profit margin that slender put hospitals at risk. Their testimony made no mention of high-speed internet. Shep Center research associate Kristie Thompson told us that "we have not identified broadband or any other single cause for the rural hospital closures." It’s not that broadband access wouldn’t help. It would. "Without it, a hospital can’t perform to its potential," said Maggie Elehwany, vice president for policy at the National Rural Health Association. "High-speed internet is definitely a factor in keeping a hospital in good condition. But you can’t say that the lack of it forced a hospital to close." The trade group NTCA-Rural Broadband Association estimated that telemedicine through better broadband could boost the bottom line of the average rural hospital in Tennessee by about $150,000 a year. That is a relatively modest amount. We looked at the eight rural hospitals that have closed in Tennessee since 2010. No press release or news article mentioned the lack of high-speed internet as a driving factor. More common was a declining demand or advances in treatment that left the centers unable to compete. And some reports mentioned federal Medicaid and Medicare payments. Elehwany told us a major issue is a slide in government reimbursements. She said after a wave of rural hospitals shut their doors in the 1980s and 1990s, Congress designated these facilities as critical access hospitals, or other types of rural facilities, and paid them more generously under Medicare. Some states used that designation to boost Medicaid payments as well. "Now, there’s been an erosion of payments to rural hospitals," Elehwany said. "Sequestration was particularly damaging." In an article in the Journal of Health Affairs, public health researchers at the University of Colorado reported that the Affordable Care Act appeared to play a role in rural hospital closure rates. States that expanded Medicaid saw the number of hospitals closing decrease drop steadily after 2014, while states that didn’t saw their closures first decline, and then rise. Overall, researchers said that Medicaid expansion was good for the hospitals’ bottom line. Tennessee did not expand Medicaid. Shep Center researchers said it is an open question whether Medicaid expansion alone lies behind these trends, but they noted that the disproportionate share of closures in the South overlaps with the states that were least likely to expand Medicaid. Abbi Sigler, spokeswoman for the Blackburn campaign told us that lack of access limits hospitals' ability to provide care. " If we don’t improve high speed internet access to rural hospital providers, they will continue to close at alarming rates," Sigler said. She gave no example of a hospital that closed because it didn't have high-speed internet. Our ruling Blackburn said that rural hospitals are closing because they don’t have access to high-speed internet. We could find no research to back that up. The country’s leading center for tracking rural hospital closures said it did not know of a case where lack of broadband caused a hospital to close. A broadband trade group estimated that better internet would help the typical rural hospital in Tennessee by about $150,000 a year. Researchers say that other factors play a much larger role, including a patient base that tends to need more care and has less ability to pay for it. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Marsha Blackburn | null | null | null | 2018-08-15T10:00:00 | 2018-08-08 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-08925 | Shirley Sherrod "was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/26/stephen-hayes/stephen-hayes-defends-fox-handling-sherrod-story/ | Washington and the nation were captivated a week ago by the controversy over Shirley Sherrod, a once-obscure U.S. Agriculture Department official who became a villain, and then a victim, over the course of 24 hours. Because the story began and ended so quickly, we were unable to fact-check it at the time, but here's a recap of what happened. Andrew Breitbart, a conservative provocateur, started things off July 19, 2010, when he posted a video on one of his websites, BigGovernment.com, that seemed to show Sherrod, who is black, telling an NAACP audience that she had discriminated against a white farmer. After conservative bloggers raised an outcry about Sherrod's apparent revelation, the NAACP moved to condemn Sherrod, and senior Agriculture Department officials quickly pressured Sherrod to resign. But within hours, it came out that the video had been selectively edited, and the uncut version made clear that Sherrod had actually been telling the story about the white farmer to explain how she had overcome her own prejudices. She ended up helping save the family's farm, and the farmer and his wife took to the airwaves to defend Sherrod. The Agriculture Department then reversed itself, with Secretary Tom Vilsack making a heartfelt apology and asking Sherrod to return to the department. Sherrod also received a personal call from President Barack Obama. This whirlwind of charges and counter-charges prompted a round of soul-searching by most of those involved in the episode, including those in government, advocacy groups, the blogosphere and the media. One question that quickly emerged was how culpable Fox News was. In the past, Fox news commentators have often beaten the drum on stories critical of Democrats, liberals and the Obama Administration, so to some who were sympathetic to Sherrod, Fox seemed like a plausible villain. They took as evidence a July 20, 2010, CNN interview with Sherrod, in which she explained how, while driving through Georgia, she was forced out by Cheryl Cook, the deputy undersecretary. When Cook called her cell phone, Sherrod recalled telling Cook, "'Cheryl, I've got a three-and-a-half-hour ride to get into Athens.' She called me a second time, (saying,) 'Where are you now?' I said, 'I'm just going through Atlanta.' She called me again and I said, 'I'm at least 45 minutes to an hour from Athens. She said, 'Well, Shirley, they want you to pull over to the side of the road and do it (formally resign), because you're going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.'" Beck, of course, is an outspoken conservative commentator with popular talk show on Fox. The question of Fox's role came up during the July 25, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week. Host Jake Tapper cited a commentary by Josh Marshall of the liberal website Talking Points Memo. "Breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published it with a central claim that he either made up or made no attempt to verify," Tapper quoted Marshall as writing. "To use terminology of infectious disease, Fox was the primary vector of this story. And to the best of my knowledge, there's been not only no disciplining of anyone in the newsroom, but as far as I can see, no retraction, apology, or even discussion of their primary role in an obvious smear. This is a journalistic felony, really, the worst kind of thing that journalists can ever do, a reality only compounded by the fact that they refuse to admit not only culpability but even that they did anything wrong." For a reaction, Tapper turned to Stephen Hayes, a senior writer with the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, who was a member of the show's roundtable that week. "Stephen, do you think that ... liberals are unfairly using this to try to discredit conservative journalists?" Hayes responded, "Yes, of course, they are. Look, the timeline doesn't work. I mean ... Howard Kurtz, at CNN and the Washington Post wrote that the timeline simply doesn't work. She actually resigned before or was forced to retire before anybody on Fox said a word about this." We thought it would be worthwhile to check the transcripts and see whether it's correct that Sherrod "actually resigned before or was forced to retire before anybody on Fox said a word about this." The earliest on-air comment we could find came the toward the end of the 8 p.m. hour, during an airing of The O'Reilly Factor, a talk show hosted by pugnaciously conservative host Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly told viewers that "speaking at an NAACP event in March, Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod was caught on tape saying something very disturbing. Seems a white farmer in Georgia had requested government assistance from Ms. Sherrod." He then showed a clip of Sherrod saying, "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland. And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do." When the clip ended, O'Reilly said, "Wow. Well, that is simply unacceptable. And Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately. The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance. We are requesting an explanation from the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, and will keep you posted. By the way, the full transcript of Ms. Sherrod's remarks is posted on BigGovernment.com." While it's safe to assume that O'Reilly was unaware of Sherrod's ouster at the time he aired those comments -- why would he call for her ouster if it had already happened? -- his producers apparently found out as the segment was underway, because as O'Reilly was speaking, Fox aired an on-screen notice that said, "Sec. Vilsack has accepted Sherrod's resignation." A few minutes later, during the 9 p.m. hour of Fox, O'Reilly's fellow conservative host, Sean Hannity, began his show with an alert that Sherrod had resigned. So, based on the Fox transcripts as well as Sherrod's own account in the CNN interview, Hayes appears to be correct that Sherrod "was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this." Indeed, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic, reported that "after a news meeting Monday afternoon (July 19), an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said, 'Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right.'" But we think it's worth mentioning two additional points. First, it's clear from O'Reilly's on-air comment that at least one Fox commentator was preparing to make hay over the Sherrod controversy before she resigned -- it's just that the Agriculture Department beat Fox to the punch by ousting her first. If officials above Sherrod had spent more time reviewing her case instead of forcing her to the side of the road, O'Reilly at least, and possibly other Fox hosts, were ready to take up the call for her to be ousted. Second, Fox's television network may not have discussed Sherrod before she was ousted, but there's evidence that two of its web affiliates did mention the story. Media Matters for America -- a liberal group that tracks alleged media bias and regularly spars with both Fox and Breitbart -- located a FoxNews.com story posted around noon on July 19 that began, "Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy." Media Matters wrote that FoxNews.com credited BigGovernment.com with posting the video, and added that "FoxNews.com is seeking a response from both the NAACP and the USDA." While Media Matters said that the article is no longer available on FoxNews.com, it provided a screenshot. Not long after that post went up at FoxNews.com, Media Matters said, Fox Nation -- an online community for news and commentary that's affiliated with Fox News -- posted the link to the Sherrod clip on BigGovernment.com under the headline, "Caught on Tape: Obama Official Discriminates Against White Farmer." All told, it seems clear to us that the USDA ousted Sherrod in order to forestall the possibility that commentators on Fox's cable channel would start calling for her resignation, not because Fox commentators had actually begun to do so. Still, two Fox web affiliates mentioned the controversy before Sherrod's ouster, and the fact that O'Reilly called for her resignation without knowing that she was already out of a job suggests that Fox was already beginning to pounce. On balance, these two caveats persuade us to drop Hayes' otherwise accurate statement that Shirley Sherrod "was forced to resign before anybody on Fox said a word about this" by a notch to Mostly True. | null | Stephen Hayes | null | null | null | 2010-07-26T18:15:42 | 2010-07-25 | ['Resignation_of_Shirley_Sherrod'] |
pomt-13550 | Says Ron Johnson "voted five times for tax breaks that help companies ship Wisconsin jobs overseas." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2016/aug/26/russ-feingold/feingold-johnson-voted-five-times-tax-breaks-help-/ | In the race for the U.S. Senate, a new TV ad from challenger Russ Feingold claims that U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, "voted five times for tax breaks that help companies ship Wisconsin jobs overseas." When it comes to attacks on Republican officeholders, this claim is not new. In 2014, PolitiFact National wrote: "Democrats and their advocates have washed, rinsed and are now repeating one of their favorite talking points from 2012: that ‘(Insert Republican Here) supports tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas.’ " The piece called the description "so simplistic as to be misleading," adding there is no specific tax break for sending jobs to other countries. OK, 2012 … 2014 … 2016 … we’re sensing a trend here. Let’s take a look at how Feingold’s claim fares on the Truth-O-Meter. Bring Jobs Home Act The Feingold campaign cited five votes by Johnson, two of which were on what was termed the Bring Jobs Home Act, which would have given companies credit for bringing jobs to the United States and denied existing deductions associated with moving a business outside the country. Those two votes were specifically addressed in a 2014 factcheck involving a claim against U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. The claim in the 2014 piece was that McConnell voted "three times for corporate tax breaks that send Kentucky jobs overseas." Feingold’s campaign emphasized that the claim in their ad was that Johnson voted five times for tax breaks that help companies ship jobs overseas, not that corporate tax breaks by themselves are responsible for sending jobs outside the U.S. "Like that PolitiFact notes, McConnell voted against denying deductions for costs associated with outsourcing," Feingold spokesman Michael Tyler said in an email to PolitiFact. "That helps a company attempting to ship its jobs elsewhere." But the earlier item noted: "The tax breaks that the law would have stopped are actually standard business expense deductions. Companies can write off many business-related expenses as tax-deductible -- including relocation. But this isn’t a special provision just for businesses that move outside of the United States. A business would get the same deductions for money spent moving from New York to California." Tax experts said there is very little money associated with these standard deductions and "getting rid of deductions for business expenses associated with outsourcing would not be nearly enough to affect a company’s decision to engage in foreign activity." The legislation was proposed in 2012 and 2014 and Johnson voted "no" on procedural measures in each case, functionally voting to block the legislation from moving forward. The measures failed on procedural votes. The legislation itself was "almost entirely symbolic," PolitiFact reported. Three votes on budget amendments Now let’s turn to the other three votes, taken in March 2015 and cited by the Feingold campaign, this time on amendments to Congress’ concurrent budget resolution for fiscal year 2016. Two were proposed by Democrats and a third was proposed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential race. The amendments were opposed by Republicans, with the two Independents voting with the Democrats. -- Amendment 817 statement of purpose: "To establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to provide tax benefits to patriot employers that invest in American jobs and provide fair pay and benefits to workers and to eliminate tax benefits for corporations that ship jobs overseas." -- Amendment 523 statement of purpose: "To prevent United States companies from getting tax benefits for moving jobs overseas, to end offshore tax loopholes including inversions, and to provide incentives for United States companies to relocate overseas jobs to the United States." -- Amendment 323 statement of purpose: "To create millions of middle class jobs by investing in our nation's infrastructure paid for by raising revenue through closing loopholes in the corporate and international tax system." USA TODAY reported that amendment 323 targets "tax loopholes" that "let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs and profits overseas." But experts we spoke with said these votes had no practical effect. Congress’ concurrent budget resolution does not have the force of law and it would not be the place to change the tax code, said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "To me those are just sort of messaging -- they were all very much of a partisan vote," Ellis said. He added: "You can argue, well, he voted against whatever the message that the member, the Senator, was trying to get across, but I wouldn't necessarily say that was voting for tax breaks that help companies ship Wisconsin jobs overseas because if he had voted for it, it wouldn’t have had any effect and voting against it didn’t have any effect." In addition, he said, tax reform would have to originate in the House, and it would be dealt with by the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means -- not on the floor of the Senate in a budget resolution. In an email, Johnson’s campaign said the senator’s position is that "we should scrap the tax code, rather than favor any single deduction." Our rating Feingold’s campaign ad said Johnson "voted five times for tax breaks that help companies ship Wisconsin jobs overseas." By voting against the Bring Jobs Home Act, Feingold is correct that Johnson voted against denying deductions associated with moving a business out of the country. But, as the 2014 PolitiFact notes, the law was mostly symbolic and these aren’t deductions specifically for moving jobs elsewhere, which is how the statement could easily be interpreted. The amendments to the budget resolution on which he voted had no practical effect, experts told us. We rate this claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/8071a5a8-716d-4d13-89f3-26a897cd494b | null | Russ Feingold | null | null | null | 2016-08-26T05:00:00 | 2016-06-14 | ['Wisconsin'] |
pomt-12169 | A witness will testify against Hillary Clinton. | false | /punditfact/statements/2017/aug/03/blog-posting/internet-post-misleads-saying-witness-will-testify/ | A story online that says a witness will speak out against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of a larger investigation into her actions is a muddled mix of real developments misleadingly retold. "Breaking: A witness will testify against Hillary Clinton," read the headline on a July 30, 2017, post on CoffeeBreakForYou.com. Facebook users flagged the story as being potentially fabricated as part of the social media site’s efforts to combat fake news. The post said that Clinton would be "held accountable for the many wrongdoings she has been charged with," although it never specifies what those charges may be. It said President Donald Trump had tasked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate Clinton’s ties to Russia. That’s where the "key witness" comes in. "Glenn Simpson has been friends with the Clinton family for many years," the post read. "Not coincidentally, he is also a co-founder of the firm Fusion GPS that disseminated the widely debunked fake news dossier containing over-the-top stories about Donald Trump going to Russian hotels." The CoffeeBreakForYou.com article said the Senate Judiciary Committee had subpoenaed Simpson. The post asked readers whether they thought Simpson "will share crucial information about how Hillary attempted to frame Donald Trump." The story appears to have originated as a July 30 post on Conservative101.com. The byline on the post was Christopher Reynolds. We attempted to reach Conservative101.com through the website’s contact form (the only method of contact available) but didn’t get a response. The story isn't fake in the sense that it makes up all its content, but it does spin things to the point of being misleading or incorrect. The most notable issues are whether Clinton is really being investigated, and for what reasons the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to talk to Simpson. Trump has publicly criticized Sessions for failing to investigate Clinton for deleting emails from her private server and for allegedly getting information from Ukraine during her presidential campaign. The Justice Department has not publicly acknowledged an investigation into Clinton, although the Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded the agency disclose if it’s investigating the Ukrainian allegations. The Justice Department has until Aug. 3 to respond. House Republicans have requested FBI documents into the campaign investigation and have asked for a special counsel for a Clinton probe. The Senate committee has been looking into the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 election. Simpson is a real person. He is a former journalist who is a founding partner of opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Simpson was initially being subpoenaed for a hearing, but not explicitly to expose Clinton. The committee wanted to compel him to discuss details of his company’s Trump dossier, which became public in January 2017. Simpson wanted to protect the Democratic-leaning client who hired Fusion GPS to create the Trump dossier, according to the Daily Beast. Simpson had originally intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, but struck a deal in which he would provide a transcribed interview. The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed and withdrew its subpoena. We couldn’t find any proof that Simpson was "friends with the Clinton family," although the New York Post reported that Fusion GPS was "actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump agenda." But trying to protect the identity of a Clinton ally who paid for opposition research against Trump is not the same as testifying against Clinton. In addition to the Trump opposition report, Fusion GPS also had reportedly worked to ease sanctions against Russia, through ties with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. She’s the same lawyer Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had met in a controversial and previously undisclosed 2016 meeting. Our ruling Bloggers said, "A witness will testify against Hillary Clinton." The post used details from several real news events in a way that would lead readers to draw some unproven conclusions. The article said that a founding partner in an opposition research firm was being called to testify against Clinton. Simpson was being asked to discuss details about a dossier filled with unsavory (and largely unsubstantiated) details about Trump as part of an investigation into Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election. We rate this statement False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-08-03T10:44:33 | 2017-07-30 | ['None'] |
goop-00583 | Tom Cruise’s Daughter Suri Begging Him To Visit Her? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/tom-cruise-suri-daughter-visit/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Tom Cruise’s Daughter Suri Begging Him To Visit Her? | 11:26 am, July 25, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02823 | Obama Volunteer Alerted Secret Service | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-volunteer-secret-service/ | null | obama | null | null | null | Obama Volunteer Alerted Secret Service | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09013 | The U.S. "only ranks 25th worldwide on defense spending as a percentage of GDP." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/09/sarah-palin/palin-says-us-ranks-25th-defense-spending-ranking/ | In a June 30, 2010, Facebook post, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted excerpts from a speech she gave in Norfolk, Va., primarily on national security. At one point, she said, "Did you know the U.S. actually only ranks 25th worldwide on defense spending as a percentage of GDP?" We didn't, so we decided to check up on her statistic. We quickly tracked down the chart from which we suspect she pulled her factoid. (Her staff didn't return our e-mail query.) It's a credible source -- the CIA World Factbook -- and, as Palin said, the U.S. does rank 25th in the world, spending an estimated 4.06 percent of GDP on defense in 2005. Case closed? Not really. The list includes all countries, regardless of size, so some tiny countries outrank the United States on the CIA list. There's Eritrea at number 9 (with an economy about 1/1000th of the size of the U.S. economy); Burundi at number 11 (with an economy that's even less than 1/1000th the size of the U.S. economy); and Maldives at 13th (with an economy roughly the same size as Burundi's). Given this competition, several other states on the CIA's list seem like veritable economic powerhouses, such as Mauritania at 14th, Swaziland at 19th and Brunei at 22nd. Many of the states on the CIA list are modest-sized but live in a high-tension neighborhood -- the Middle East. They include the top seven, which are, in descending order, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Yemen. A bit lower on the list are Syria, Kuwait, Turkey and Bahrain. All told, only four nations on the CIA list could be described as either industrialized democracies or major world players. They are Israel (6th), Turkey (16th), China (23rd) and Greece (24th). Is there a better yardstick? We think there is -- using rankings of members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD is a group of 31 nations that are generally large, industrialized democracies. This list makes the comparison closer to one of peers. To make this comparison, we looked at a comprehensive table of defense spending compared to GDP that was published by the World Bank. First, two caveats: The figures are more recent than the ones used to create the CIA list, so they don't compare exactly. And we should note that varying definitions and a tendency toward secrecy make international military comparisons tricky. That said, compared to its 30 fellow members of the OECD, the U.S. trailed only one other member nation, Israel (at 8 percent of GDP, compared to 4.3 percent for the U.S.). In fact, the U.S. rate is double the rate of many of its peers. We also looked at China and Russia -- two nuclear powers that do not belong to the OECD -- and both of them also trail the U.S. in this measurement. Todd Harrison, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said other factors set the U.S. apart. "In absolute dollars, we spend almost as much as all other countries combined," Harrison said. "So saying we are 25th is a bit misleading and a selective use of facts." We agree. Although she's technically correct, the numbers are wildly skewed by tiny, non-industrialized countries. We find her claim 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 | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2010-07-09T13:56:30 | 2010-06-30 | ['United_States'] |
goop-00337 | Meg Ryan Desperate To Join ‘Big Little Lies’? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/meg-ryan-big-little-lies/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Meg Ryan Desperate To Join ‘Big Little Lies’? | 11:10 am, September 3, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06121 | Bill Clinton was the "first pardoned federal felon ever to serve as President of the U.S." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-draft-pardon/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Mikkelson | null | Was Bill Clinton a ‘Felonious Draft Dodger’? | 6 January 2003 | null | ['Bill_Clinton', 'United_States'] |
pomt-01407 | In Massachusetts, Scott Brown pushed for a law to force women considering abortion -- force them -- to look at color photographs of developing fetuses. | mostly true | /new-hampshire/statements/2014/oct/10/jeanne-shaheen/jeanne-shaheen-says-scott-brown-wanted-women-look-/ | As the 2014 New Hampshire Senate race veers toward a conclusion, the state’s next senator needs the support of women voters. Incumbent Jeanne Shaheen underscored that point when she targeted Republican challenger Scott Brown’s record supporting women’s reproductive rights during his tenure as a state senator from Massachusetts. Her aim was to undercut Brown’s assertion that he is a pro-choice politician. An ad with a female narrator released on Oct. 7 said, "In Massachusetts, Scott Brown pushed for a law to force women considering abortion -- force them -- to look at color photographs of developing fetuses." The ad, titled "Force," drew a swift response from Brown. He held a press conference the same day the ad was released, calling it a lie and adding that it was "not only insensitive, it is also deeply offensive." "I have always been a pro-choice, independent Republican and have a strong record of supporting women’s health care," Brown said in Derry, N.H., with his wife Gail by his side. Brown demanded that Shaheen pull the ad, and the next day he launched his own ad calling Shaheen’s commercial a "smear campaign." More than ever in this hotly contested Senate race, this seemed like a job for PolitiFact. For support, the ad, and Shaheen’s campaign, pointed to Massachusetts Senate Bill 979, "An Act Relative to a Woman’s Right to Know," filed in 2005. While the bill co-sponsored by Brown and Republican Michael R. Knapik eventually failed, it would have given any woman seeking an abortion information and mandated 24 hours to consider the consequences of that decision. (Exceptions would only be given in the case of a medical emergency.) "The purpose of the Woman's Right to Know Act is to ensure that every woman considering an abortion receives complete information on the procedure, the risks, the status of her unborn child, and her alternatives, and sufficient reflection time, thereby reducing the possibility of serious, lasting, or life threatening consequences of a medical, emotional and psychological nature," the bill states. Similar laws have been proposed and enacted in other states following a 1992 Supreme Court decision allowing the state of Pennsylvania under its "Abortion Control Act" to require a woman seeking an abortion to give her informed consent prior to the procedure, receive a host of information about abortion and adoption, and wait 24 hours before having an abortion. The introduction to the Massachusetts bill cites that Supreme Court decision, saying the state "has an important interest in ensuring that women seeking abortions are provided a fully informed choice and a sufficient period of time to reflect on the information provided, ‘to reduce the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.’ Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 882 (1992)." So how about those photographs of fetuses that women would be "forced" to look at? Like similar laws proposed and passed elsewhere, the proposed Massachusetts law would have required doctors or their representatives to provide women with lots of information at least 24 hours before an abortion was scheduled, including the names of adoption agencies and contact information for public and private agencies that offer financial and medical support to women throughout a pregnancy and after childbirth. It also required women to receive descriptions of the "anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child at two week gestational increments from fertilization to full term, including color photographs." If photos were unavailable "realistic drawings" were considered acceptable. The bill made clear that photos of fetuses must be provided to women seeking abortions, but didn’t stop there. It also called for descriptions of the different methods of abortion and "the physical, psychological and emotional risks or medical complications commonly associated with each method; a description of the physical, psychological and emotional risks or medical complications of pregnancy and delivery; a description of the support obligations of the father of a child born alive." Before performing an abortion, the doctor or a representative would have to ask the woman if she had "seen" the information and "provide the woman with an opportunity to contact abortion alternative agencies at this time should she so desire." In addition, a woman’s signature was required before the abortion was performed to give her consent and "indicate that she has been offered the information described in this section." Brown says the bill was intended to give adoption a chance and "did not force women to do anything. I would never force women to do anything." He’s got a point. Nowhere in the bill is the word "force" used. Still, the language of the bill certainly ensures women would be given the information, asks them if they had "seen it," and provided at least 24 hours to review it before having an abortion. Our ruling Shaheen’s ad says that "in Massachusetts, Scott Brown pushed for a law to force women considering abortion -- force them -- to look at color photographs of developing fetuses." The measure backed by Brown nine years ago made sure that women were provided photos of developing fetuses, along with a lot more information. It certainly forced doctors and their representatives to provide this information to women seeking abortions -- except in cases of emergency -- and it ensured women received the information both through verbal questions and a signed consent form. Brown has a point that the bill wouldn't have "forced" them to look at color photographs -- but it did just about everything else it could possibly do up to that line. This statement is accurate but needs clarification, so we rate it Mostly True. | null | Jeanne Shaheen | null | null | null | 2014-10-10T14:11:14 | 2014-10-07 | ['Massachusetts'] |
snes-03731 | The 1987 film Back to the Future II correctly predicted that the Florida Marlins would win the 1997 World Series and that the Cubs would play Florida in the 2015 World Series. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/back-to-the-future-prediction/ | null | Entertainment | null | David Mikkelson | null | ‘Back to the Future II’ Correctly Predicted Cubs World Series Win in 2015? | 25 October 1997 | null | ['Miami_Marlins', 'Chicago_Cubs', 'World_Series'] |
pomt-06883 | Says Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling offered "unqualified support" for a plan to end Medicare | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/jul/29/we-are-wisconsin/we-are-wisconsin-says-state-senator-alberta-darlin/ | State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, handed her recall opponent a big opening when she was asked about U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s hotly debated Medicare plan and heaped praise on him. Or did she? At a June 10, 2011, fundraiser in Milwaukee, Darling told an audience during questions and answers that Ryan is "doing the exact right thing to try to reform" Medicare. Her comments are available to anyone, thanks to a new reality in partisan politics: Once-private talks are now routinely captured on video by bloggers, political parties or interested groups. In this case, one of the two videos of Darling’s remarks was done for We Are Wisconsin, the labor coalition backing Democrats in the Senate recalls. The Progressive WI channel on YouTube posted a long version on June 11, 2011, and We Are Wisconsin put up a shorter but better-quality video on June 13, 2011. The Journal Sentinel wrote about it on June 14, 2011, in an All Politics blog post headlined, "Darling backs Ryan’s Medicare plan." A few weeks passed, but then things really got interesting. The National Journal reported Darling told one of its reporters in June that she had taken no position on Ryan’s plan at the fundraiser. "I didn’t say I supported his Medicare effort," the publication quoted Darling as saying. Around the same time, state Rep. Sandy Pasch, D-Whitefish Bay, Darling’s opponent in the August recall election, put up a TV spot saying Darling "supports ending Medicare" -- a reference to the recorded comments. Then on July 14, 2011, after a protest at her office, Andrew Davis, Darling’s campaign manager, told Fox Point-Bayside Patch: "Senator Darling has no opinion on the matter." The reaction was swift. The next day We Are Wisconsin blasted Darling and Ryan in a July 15 news release, saying she was dishonestly denying her "unqualified," "unequivocal," "unwavering," "ironclad" support for a "radical plan that ends Medicare" or proposes "gutting" it or would "scrap" it. Strong words. Does the video tell the tale of "unqualified support"? We’ll look at a claim in two parts: (1) that Darling offered unqualified support for Ryan’s plan and (2) that Ryan’s plan would "end" Medicare. There is no dispute about the authenticity of the video. As these things go, the question-and-answer exchange is actually clear. Darling’s camp says her answer was unscripted, but she was fully aware the exchange was being recorded. Her remarks are not an aside; she eagerly took the microphone and spoke for more than a minute. The question from an unidentified male was direct: "What do you think of Representative Ryan’s Medicare changes?" Here’s the full exchange: "You know, I was asked at the beginning of the week what I think about Rep. Ryan’s Medicare reforms, and they were trying to tie me to Ryan and thought that would be a negative for me. "I said, ‘I’m standing with Ryan anytime, anywhere. He’s a leader.’ And I said ‘You guys are lying about what he’s doing with Medicare ... 55 and older Medicare stays; 55 and younger, there are new reforms so that health care actions can be available when people get to be seniors." She finished: "So, I think Paul Ryan is doing the exact right thing to try to reform Medicaid because Medicaid is going to go broke. But they’re lying. People 55 and older will keep Medicare. 55 and younger will have a reform of Medicare to have options so that health care can continue. "Totally, go Paul Ryan!" Darling said to applause. "They are trying to label that as a negative. I said, " ‘Are you kidding, he’s absolutely a hero.’ " We requested an interview with Darling; she declined. Davis provided written answers to our questions. In her response to us, Darling did not take a position on Ryan’s plan, instead reiterating she can’t vote on Medicare changes, and she admires Ryan’s leadership on the issue. "I did not and do not endorse Congressman Ryan’s plan," her response said. "I do not want to see Medicare end, I want to see it continue to provide for our seniors. But if we do not do anything about it, it’s not going to be there for future generations." The intent of her answer at the event, Darling’s statement said, was to "combat the lies" about Ryan’s plan. Davis said Darling’s "exact right thing" remark was only in reference to Ryan’s taking on the issue, not the specifics of his plan. Kelly Steele, spokesman for We Are Wisconsin, countered that Darling discusses details of the plan and shows her cards by saying Ryan’s attempt at Medicare reform is the "exact right thing." The group says Darling is now reacting to residents’ concerns about cuts to Medicare. "Her attempt to walk this back is laughable," Steele said. "I have not seen a more unequivocal embrace of Paul Ryan’s plan than that piece of video." Let’s go back to the tape -- and the We Are Wisconsin claim -- and examine the two pieces of this. For her part, Darling’s campaign contends she only embraced Ryan and Ryan’s drive to reform Medicare -- not the specifics. But she discusses and defends key aspects of it, and -- in response to a question about what she thought about the plan -- offers that he is doing the "exact right thing." If Darling wanted to express neutrality, she could have prefaced her comments or framed them as such. She could have embraced Ryan and still made clear she was taking no position on his plan. Instead she offers not even a hint of concern or caution about Ryan’s plan and invites the conclusion that she backs it wholeheartedly with comments such as "totally, go" and "standing with Ryan anytime, anywhere." Most importantly, the question wasn’t Ryan’s courage or his place in history -- it was what she thought of his plan. The question, perhaps designed for this purpose, was specific. We think many listeners would judge her remarks in that narrow context and take her enthusiastic back-slapping comments as at least a general endorsement of his plan. But Darling didn’t come right out and say she endorses his plan. And this was an apparently unscripted response at a GOP fundraiser where you might expect Darling to lead cheers for Ryan. We could find no other, more formal statements by Darling on the plan. Looking at the whole context, though, we think it’s generally true Darling offered unqualified support. Now the back end of the claim. The problem for We Are Wisconsin is that it says Ryan’s plan would "end" or "scrap" Medicare. The group qualifies the language at times, but the overwhelming impression left is that Ryan’s plan would mean the end of Medicare -- and that this is what Darling supported. PolitiFact has repeatedly ruled False the notion that Ryan’s plan would end the program. It would change dramatically, yes, but it would still exist. So where does that leave this two-part statement on the Truth-O-Meter? On balance, we rate the statement from the group Half True. | null | We Are Wisconsin | null | null | null | 2011-07-29T09:00:00 | 2011-07-15 | ['None'] |
snes-05708 | Senator Dianne Feinstein said "when the gunman realizes that nobody else is armed, he will lay down his weapons and turn himself in, that's human nature." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gunman-gambit/ | null | Media Matters | null | David Mikkelson | null | Dianne Feinstein ‘Gunman’ Quote | 8 January 2015 | null | ['Dianne_Feinstein'] |
snes-04706 | A little-known painting entitled "Cat Prevents House Fire" was created by Norman Rockwell. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/norman-rockwell-cat-prevents-fire/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Little-Known Norman Rockwell Painting: ‘Cat Prevents House Fire’ | 26 May 2016 | null | ['Norman_Rockwell'] |
snes-06261 | A fire in a three-apartment dwelling killed black and Mexican families living there but spared a white couple because they were the only ones at work when the blaze started. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fire-kill-black-mexican-families-spare-white-couple/ | null | Racial Rumors | null | Snopes Staff | null | Did a Fire Kill Black and Mexican Families But Spare a White Couple? | 25 September 2008 | null | ['Mexico'] |
pomt-10887 | Both China and Japan have surpassed us, with Japanese cars now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/jun/21/barack-obama/technically-correct-but-uses-unrealistic-numbers/ | In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on May 7, 2007, Obama said the U.S. needs to make more fuel-efficient cars. "While our fuel standards haven't moved from 27.5 miles per gallon in two decades, both China and Japan have surpassed us, with Japanese cars now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon." Obama's claim about Japanese cars getting more than 45 mpg involves the fuzzy science of measuring fuel economy, complicated by differing standards in each nation. Obama's campaign says his number comes from a 2004 study by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change that calculated Japanese cars would get 46 mpg if Japan followed the same test methods as the U.S. (Obama accurately says the U.S. mandate has been 27.5 for 20 years.) Obama's claim is technically correct. But the Pew numbers exaggerate the differences between the countries because those estimates do not reflect real-world conditions, according to Lee Schipper, director of research at the World Resources Institute's Center for Transport and Environment. He says the Japanese fleet actually averages about 23 mpg on the road today, but is improving. The U.S. number is only slightly lower, about 21, but has been stagnant. The real-world numbers are closer because, despite more fuel-efficient cars in Japan, heavy traffic congestion erases much of the efficiency. Schipper said Obama "is correct that Japan's fuel efficiency is higher and improving more rapidly, but his number is inaccurate. The number he used doesn't really represent a realistic on-road achievement." Yet Schipper said he doesn't fault Obama for the confusion. "Everybody makes this mistake. What matters is what cars really get on the road, how long it takes to change the entire fleet and how much people drive." (Japanese drivers drive about one-third as many miles per year as U.S. drivers.) | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2007-06-21T00:00:00 | 2007-05-07 | ['Japan', 'China'] |
pose-00453 | Will require at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels by 2030. … Will invest federal resources, including tax incentives and government contracts into developing the most promising technologies and building the infrastructure to support them. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/473/require-production-of-more-biofuels/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Require production of more biofuels | 2010-01-07T13:26:59 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10352 | The U.S. government spends less on energy innovation "than the pet food industry invests in its own products." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jul/11/barack-obama/this-dog-wont-hunt/ | Sen. Barack Obama says the United States has its priorities about energy research all wrong: Case in point, the government spends less on energy research than the pet food industry does on its own research and development. That's the claim Democratic nominee Obama makes in his "Plan to Make America a Global Energy Leader," to explain why he wants to increase the amount the government spends on energy innovation. "At present, the federal government spends over $3 billion per year on all energy innovation efforts," the Obama plan states. "While this may seem like a significant sum, it is much less than what we spent in the late 1970s when adjusted for inflation, and is less than the pet food industry invests in its own products." A June 2008 Harvard study confirms that the part about the 1970s is true. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the government was spending more than $6 billion a year on energy research and development in the late 1970s, which is more than double what it's spending this year. But that second claim? The pet food one? The Obama campaign declined to explain what the Illinois senator meant, exactly, by "invests in its own products." Instead, it referred Politifact to an August 2007 article by University of California (Berkeley) Professor Daniel M. Kammen, which makes precisely the same point Obama did: "The federal government spends less on energy research and development than the U.S. pet food industry spends on its products in the United States," Kammen wrote. The article, on global warming, contains no footnotes to support the pet food assertion, doesn't expand upon it beyond that one sentence, and Kammen did not respond to several requests for comment. That forces us to take the Obama statement as any voter would: at face value. In his article, Kammen refers to pet food industry spending, which it could be argued, refers to everything the industry spends on its products, from raw materials to packaging to advertising. But Obama uses the word "invests" – and given the parallel construction of his argument – it reads to us like a comparison between federal government energy research and pet food industry research, (i.e. the development of new products.) For its part, the Pet Food Institute, the trade association for the industry, says that it doesn't keep such figures, leaving us to wonder where Kammen got them. But a 2006 study by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which examined the 1,000 companies across all industries that spend the most on research and development, found that on average those companies spent 3.8 percent of their gross sales on R&D.; Given that the pet food industry as a whole grosses about $15 billion a year in sales, it's inconceivable that the industry spends more on new product research than the $3-billion the government spends on energy R&D.; That would be 20 percent of gross sales. As a result, we find Obama's claim to be False. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-07-11T00:00:00 | 2008-07-11 | ['United_States'] |
snes-03526 | A Mexican supermarket chain is adding "donations" for a U.S.-Mexico border wall to its charges. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mexican-supermarket-taking-donations-for-trump-border-wall/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Mexican Supermarket Taking ‘Donations’ for Trump Border Wall | 17 November 2016 | null | ['Mexico', 'Mexico–United_States_border'] |
snes-02354 | The remains of a woman who went missing in 1985 were found on the property of Bill and Hillary Clinton. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/miriam-loomis-found-dead-clinton-estate/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Woman Found on Clinton Estate Dead, Tortured, and Malnourished? | 24 May 2017 | null | ['Hillary_Rodham_Clinton', 'Bill_Clinton'] |
pomt-04104 | 200 consumer laws were destroyed in 2011 when Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 92. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2013/jan/14/vince-megna/vince-megna-says-gov-scott-walker-destroyed-200-co/ | Vince Megna, the Milwaukee attorney known as "King of the Lemon Laws," is mincing no words as he runs a partisan-style race attempting to unseat Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack. In a profanity-laced, theatrical series of YouTube videos and on his campaign website, the man who built a national reputation taking on auto companies and other big corporations goes after Gov. Scott Walker and other Republicans. Megna is running in the spring 2013 race as a liberal Democrat even though the contest is officially nonpartisan. He considers Roggensack a Republican, a claim we won’t deal with here. One of Megna’s big talking points is the measure by GOP lawmakers in 2011 -- in what became Act 92-- that limited attorney fees in the kind of cases that are Megna’s bread and butter. "Governor Scott Walker signed into law the most destructive anti-consumer protection bill in Wisconsin history," Megna’s website says. "With one swipe of the pen, 200 consumer laws were destroyed and more than 40 years of case law development was rendered moot." We’re not going to compare the measure with every consumer bill since statehood. But we will test whether "200 consumer laws were destroyed" by it. A bit of background first. Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who is now the Assembly speaker, shepherded through the 2011 bill after a car dealer in his district fought a lawsuit by a man who said the dealership did about $5,000 of unauthorized work on his new truck. Megna was an attorney for the truck owner. A Racine County judge ruled in the dealer’s favor. But the state Court of Appeals ruled the truck owner didn’t have to pay if he didn’t authorize the work.It sent the case back to the lower court. Three days before subsequent trial at the lower court, the two sides settled, with the dealer paying $12,500 for damages and interest, $151,250 in legal fees and $5,284 in costs. The Vos-backed bill said judges should presume that reasonable attorneys fees do not exceed three times the amount of compensatory damages. But judges can lift the cap under certain circumstances. Over the objections of Democrats and consumer advocates, the law took effect in December 2011, so it’s slightly more than a year old. When we asked Megna how the measure "destroyed 200 consumer laws," he backed off a bit, saying he did not mean it in a literal sense. Indeed, in 2011, he told reporters the effect would be to "virtually repeal" the statutes. He repeated that to PolitiFact Wisconsin, saying that Walker’s action amounts towiping out the statutes because lawyers will be wary of representing tenants, discrimination victims and buyers of defective cars given the possible fee limits. "Those are effectively wiped out because you can’t find attorneys who will represent you," he said. Let’s take a look under the hood. The law clearly can affect lawyer’s fees in many matters brought under so-called "fee-shifting" cases -- matters in which laws give consumers the right to recover attorney’s fees from the other side if they prevail. As many as 280 statutory and administrative causes of action could fall under the three-times-damages cap, according to an October 2012 analysis in the Wisconsin Lawyer, a publication of the State Bar of Wisconsin. The Bar opposed the legislation, saying it would also hurt businesses’ legal defense against frivolous claims brought by someone who has actually violated the law. Many of those 200-plus statutes are related to consumer protection; some are not. But did the legislation "destroy" them? We contacted consumer lawyers and those who defend businesses and found general agreement that the law will spawn changes, some potentially significant -- and in the eyes of lawyers for consumers, harmful to their cause because they believe getting a lawyer will be more difficult. But none went so far as to say consumer laws that allow legal action had been destroyed or eliminated. Attorney David Dudley represented many low-income clients from an office in Madison and relied exclusively on attorney-fee-shift provisions for its operation. He closed the office after the law took effect, blaming the legislation for the move. He now works for the federal government. DeVonna Joy, a southeast-Wisconsin consumer lawyer, told us she now turns down more potential clients. Proving even small claims cases can cost a lot, the cap is "absurdly low" in many cases, and defense lawyers are dragging out more cases to pressure plaintiffs to settle, she said. Joy acknowledged that other lawyers might be picking up some of the clients she’s rejected, but she said many already have been turned down multiple times when she hears from them. Brian Schuk, a Delavan attorney who represents tenants and sometimes landlords, says he now refuses many smaller cases even when there is an obvious violation of the law. So now, more of those people don’t end up suing, or try to take on landlords without representation, he said. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two professors active in public-interest law, Sarah Orr and Mitch, said it was too early to judge the ultimate impact, but both said fewer cases would be brought on behalf of consumers and tenants in matters such as fraud, debt collection and consumer-law violations. Note: Mitch officially has no last name. But not all lawyers are trimming their caseloads -- including Megna himself. Megna told us that his own practice is mainly intact because he handles some big-ticket cases that allow him to continue to handle smaller cases. We also spoke with lawyers who often find themselves defending clients against consumer claims. Tristan Pettit, a Milwaukee lawyer who frequently represents residential landlords and businesses, said he has not seen much effect one way or another. Lisa Lawless, another Milwaukee lawyer, said the law’s impact is still an open question, but predicted that lawyers representing consumers would be more "reasonable" about settling cases faster. She praised the law, and said the fee cap was fair, but added that it could be an issue for lawyers taking on small damage claims. Both say they have not noticed a drop-off in cases. Finally, it’s worth noting again that the new law presumes a cap at three times damages, but a judge can go higher. Megna acknowledged that it’s too early to say whether judges will allow fees above the suggested cap. Many cases in front of judges now were filed before the law went into effect and thus not covered by the limits. But many lawyers who handle cases affected by the law predict the cap will become the standard -- in part because busy judges can’t take the time to sort out what is reasonable on fees. Our rating Megna described the impact of Act 92 in stark and dramatic terms saying that "200 consumer laws were destroyed" when Walker signed it. It seems clear that the changes tilt the playing field against consumers in some significant ways, but the laws remain on the books and litigation will continue at some level -- perhaps reduced, but it’s premature to say. Megna’s claim misleadingly suggests Walker and Republican legislators wiped hundreds of statutes off the books. We rate his claim False. | null | Vince Megna | null | null | null | 2013-01-14T09:00:00 | 2013-01-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-10654 | Average families are spending roughly $2,000 more a year on energy costs. ... It's like a $2,000 energy tax in just the last seven years, more than three times what the typical American family received from the Bush tax cuts. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/02/hillary-clinton/her-comparison-is-too-selective/ | Even staunch Democrats probably recall the guilty pleasure of spending their extra cash from the Bush tax cuts. And just about every American has felt the pinch at the gas pump lately. So which had a bigger impact on your wallet? Are you flush from the Bush tax cuts, or did rising energy prices wipe out the fleeting boon? Sen. Hillary Clinton thinks rising energy prices wiped out your family's tax savings — three times over. Whether she's right or wrong depends on several factors. "It depends on how much you drive, and how much you earn," said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Institute. (He bikes to work.) Let's start with Clinton's energy number. PolitiFact doesn't know where she got it, since Clinton's camp did not respond to inquiries. But here's what we found. From 2001 to 2006, "average annual energy and gasoline costs have increased by over $2,300," according to "The Middle-Class Squeeze," a September 2006 congressional committee report prepared for Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman, both California Democrats. The report included the gasoline in your car, oil to heat your home, and fuel for electricity. It also included some tough-to-measure "pass-through" costs, such as higher retail prices because of higher shipping costs. Going by this report, Clinton's energy number seems reasonable. Now, for the tax cuts. In 2001, the White House said, "Under the President's tax relief plan, the typical American family of four will be able to keep at least $1,600 more of their own money." That's not how it necessarily worked out, said Burman. A median-income family held on to $744 in 2006 as a result of the tax cuts, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis. Well, it happens that $2,300 is three times more than $744. But PolitiFact finds Clinton's comparison too selective. It appears she's comparing a single year of tax savings (2006) to an escalation in energy prices that took several years. What happens if you add up each year's tax savings, and then add up each year's change in energy costs? After all, oil and gas prices actually dropped in late 2001 and into 2002. The answer is, we don't know. To do that kind of a calculation, over so many years, one would have to account for changing tax laws, inflation, income changes, energy use, driving patterns, what people bought, even the weather. In short, it's not a number that is tracked by the Energy Information Administration or the Tax Policy Center. Maybe the Clinton campaign did all of that, but if so they're not sharing it with us. We're left with somewhat accurate numbers from Clinton (judging by one report) that tell only part of the story of energy costs vs. tax savings. At our generous best, we can only give her a Half True. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2008-01-02T00:00:00 | 2007-11-19 | ['United_States', 'George_W._Bush'] |
snes-05282 | Donald Trump paid Sarah Palin $10 million for her endorsement. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-palin-endorsement/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Donald Trump Didn’t Pay Sarah Palin for Her Endorsement | 1 February 2016 | null | ['Sarah_Palin', 'Donald_Trump'] |
goop-01035 | Jessica Simpson Depressed Over Weight Gain, Career Slump? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jessica-simpson-depressed-weight-gain-career-slump/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jessica Simpson Depressed Over Weight Gain, Career Slump? | 11:05 am, May 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07151 | China owns about 29 percent of (the U.S.) debt.'' false /florida/statements/2011/jun/14/allen-west/rep-allen-west-says-china-holds-29-percent-us-debt/ China's economic muscle and the U.S. debt are common worries in Congress these days. Republican Congressman Allen West, who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, weighed in during an interview about China on Fox News June 2. Anchor Jenna Lee asked: How would you deal with China, especially with our economic ties right now? I mean, what's the way forward?" West replied: "Well, I think that that is one of the key things that we need to be talking about, when we look at the debt that we have and China owns about 29 percent of that debt." West linked to the interview on his website. Is West's figure right -- does China own about 29 percent of the U.S. debt? We asked spokeswoman Angela Sachitano for an explanation. She sent us back a link to a March 25, 2011, report from the Congressional Research Service titled "Foreign Holdings of Federal Debt." Note the word "foreign." Table 2 shows the top 10 "foreign holders" of federal debt, and Mainland China is at the top, with about $1.16 trillion or 26.1 percent (Japan is No. 2). This means China holds about 26 percent of "foreign investment in U.S. privately held federal debt," the report states. Our colleagues at PolitiFact Georgia weighed in on a similar claim by Herman Cain, a Republican presidential candidate, who spoke about China's share of the U.S. debt at a tea party event in Iowa on April 16. We rated Cain's claim False. "If we don't begin to grow with the potential that we have in this country, we will have another national security crisis, and that national security crisis is that China will be as big as we are," Cain said. "They'll start to develop a military as big and as good as ours, and they've got a billion more people and they're holding 26 percent of our debt. And you think we're going to be able to sing Kumbaya with them?" After examining a U.S. Treasury Department report of foreign holders of treasury securities as of March, PolitiFact concluded: "According to the report, as of February of this year, China held $1.15 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury securities. Together, all foreign holders came to $4.47 trillion. So China's share of that comes to about 26 percent. China, incidentally, tops the list of foreign holders of U.S. debt, followed by Japan and then, with a much smaller share, countries such as the United Kingdom and Brazil. "But that's just the foreign holders of Treasury securities. More than two-thirds of the debt is held by U.S. residents and institutions. When you look at everyone who holds U.S. Treasury securities, China's share drops to 8.1 percent ($1.15 trillion out of $14 trillion)." (For the West fact-check, we contacted the U.S. Treasury to ask whether that report had been updated since March and were told that it was the most recent data available.) PolitiFact National continued: "Of course, there are lots of ways to slice debt statistics. For example, instead of gross federal debt (the figure cited above), some people prefer to use a figure for 'debt held by the public.' That's the gross federal debt minus the share of the debt held by the U.S. government itself. That was $9.4 trillion at the end of 2010. Which would put the portion held by China at about 12.3 percent. There are also Chinese holdings of debt outside of Treasuries, said Derek Scissors of the conservative Heritage Foundation. But that doesn't get Cain anywhere near his 26 percent figure. "Even stretching, you can't get past 15.6 percent of our debt as held by China and I would not use that number," Scissors said. The number cited by Cain is "misleadingly large," Scissors said. "He's not talking about our debt, he's talking about the foreign share of our debt. If you are going to use that number, you really have to explain it." We told Sachitano that West's figure was close to China's share of the foreign-held U.S. debt. She replied by e-mail: "No misrepresentation." She also referred us to slides on West's website, which he uses at town-hall meetings. On his slide show, however, West's pie charts correctly show China's share of the U.S. debt held by foreigners, a distinction he didn't make on Fox News. The 29 percent figure that West mentioned on Fox is even higher than what Cain had cited, and we've already labeled that too high. The number West used is also wrong. Although on TV he left out only a couple words, those words matter because they make a big difference here. He could have explained that he was referring to foreign holders of U.S. debt -- but he didn't. So his statement makes it appear that China owns a much larger chunk of the federal debt than it does. We rate this claim False. | null | Allen West | null | null | null | 2011-06-14T12:11:22 | 2011-06-02 | ['United_States', 'China'] | null | null | null |
pomt-12887 | Say George Soros's money "went straight into the (Women’s March) protesters’ pockets." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/25/blog-posting/pants-fire-george-soros-money-womens-march-protest/ | According to several blog posts, the women’s marches around the country did not reflect grassroots concern over the policies of President Donald Trump. Rather, they were the work of the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The Constitution.com blog posted that "the liberal media and Democrat pundits are mischaracterizing the past weekend’s march as grassroots. Listening to them, people would believe that the participants were sincere, spontaneous and concerned citizens. While some were genuine, most were paid minions." The post went on to say, "George Soros funded over 50 organizations partnering and participating in the March for Women’s Rights. Part of that funding went straight into the protesters pockets. They weren’t there for rights. They were there for riches." In this fact-check, we focus on whether Soros money went into the pockets of protesters. There is no evidence that's true. We used the Constitution.com website’s contact form to ask where they got their information and did not hear back. However, the blog cited an opinion piece by Asra Nomani that appeared on the Women in the World section of the New York Times website. Nomani’s article voiced her displeasure with the anti-Trump focus of the march. As a self-identified liberal feminist and Trump supporter, she said she did not feel welcome. Nomani went through the list of 403 groups listed as partners of the march and found that "Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s ‘partners,’ including ‘key partners’ Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies." Nomani told us that she has now counted 65 organizations with some sort of tie, not necessarily financial, to Soros and his philanthropic organization, the Open Society Foundation. We looked at Nomani’s spreadsheet of march partners annotated with any ties to the Open Society Foundation. It is unclear exactly how many groups currently receive foundation support. Some got money for projects several years ago. For others, the connection is indirect, such as participating in programs that Soros’ Open Society Foundation also supports. No matter the number of organizations or the amount of money they may have received, Nomani never claimed that Soros’ Open Society was paying individual protestors. In an interview with PolitiFact, Nomani rejected the claims of other bloggers. "I definitely do not conclude that most of the people marching were paid to do so," Nomani said. "I believe that most of the people were motivated by sincere political and ideological beliefs. I do believe that most of the participants in the march had genuine concerns. It is not factual that they were paid to march." But what about the role Soros money paid in making the marches happen at all? Nomani said, "The march organizers have not yet revealed their funding sources, so it is unclear who directly funded the march." For its part, the Open Society Foundation sent us a statement saying there is "no truth" to reports that either Soros or the foundation funded the protests. "We have long supported a wide range of organizations, including those that support women and minorities who have historically been denied equal rights," the statement said. "Many of them are concerned about what policy changes may lie ahead. We are proud of their work. We of course support the right of all Americans to peaceably assemble and petition their government -- a vital, and constitutionally safeguarded, pillar of a functioning democracy." Our ruling Bloggers said many participants in the women’s marches were motivated by money from Soros and his Open Society Foundation. The person whose work lies behind that rejects that claim and said she believes "most of the people were motivated by sincere political and ideological beliefs." She never claimed protesters were paid to attend. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. Share the Facts Politifact 5 6 Politifact Rating: Say George Soros's money "went straight into the (Women’s March) protesters’ pockets." Bloggers In a blog post Tuesday, January 24, 2017 -01/-24/2017 Read More info | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-01-25T15:28:33 | 2017-01-24 | ['George_Soros'] |
pomt-15277 | With the exception of baby formula, the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date, and state laws vary widely. | true | /punditfact/statements/2015/jul/27/john-oliver/john-oliver-hits-regulatory-gap-food-last-week-ton/ | Ever wonder about the accuracy of your milk carton’s expiration date? Or exactly how late is too late to eat that apple? So did comedian John Oliver. He used the July 19 episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight to discuss the issue of food waste, zooming in on little-known regulatory gaps that he argued cause mass confusion over the meaning and purpose of date labels on food. "With the exception of baby formula," Oliver said, "the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date, and state laws vary widely." And of the 50 states, he went on, nine don’t require any labels at all. The confusing issue has been well documented over several decades, though we doubt it’s ever been the target of an 18-minute monologue in a late-night comedy show. We wanted to see if Oliver had it right. Chaotic laws, confusing labels Oliver was right in saying, with the exception of infant formula, the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date. Experts say it would be almost impossible to set up an effective umbrella regulation for labeling foods with expiration dates. The diversity of climates and crops in the United States means it’s hard to judge the pace at which different foods deteriorate in different places. A piece of fruit left out in the hot, humid fields of Georgia might spoil faster than the same piece of fruit left out in the cool, dry mountains of Colorado. In the absence of an overarching federal statute, a jumble of laws at the state level dictate which foods require date labels. The comedian’s research team got the bulk of its data from a 2013 report compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental think tank, and the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. The study found that most states have laws that require date labels on some foods. Oliver cites the report’s finding that nine states don’t require any date labels, including New York, Idaho and Alabama. Of those nine, seven states don’t have regulations that govern the labels that manufacturers voluntarily place on products. These inconsistencies can make it hard to do business across state lines, said Emily Broad Leib, the study’s lead author and director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. Laws in Montana and Pennsylvania require milk to be sold 12 and 17 days after pasteurization, respectively, but don’t allow the milk to be donated if it goes unsold in that time. "Without federal guidance," Leib said, "some state laws require that (unspoiled) food be thrown away." The Montana law prompted some out-of-state dairy farmers to argue that the law unfairly protects in-state producers. Label it what you want The regulatory gap also leads to confusion about what food labels actually mean. As a news clip in Oliver’s segment illustrates, one might see the same product labeled "sell by" or "use by," or it may have no label at all. Most retailers and manufacturers use a labeling system referred to as "open dating." Though it might sound like a relationship status, "open dating" simply means that a calendar date is displayed on a product instead of a code that only makes sense to the producer. Perhaps surprisingly, the dates on these labels aren’t regulated. This means it’s entirely up to the manufacturer to decide what date to print on the labels in all 50 states. (The strictest federal regulation of this kind applies to poultry, but it allows the use of a packing date instead of a sell-by date.) The purpose of manufacturers’ date labels isn’t to ensure safety, but quality, according to the USDA. Oliver suggests that because manufacturers are free to determine their own best-by dates, they may have a financial incentive to falsify them. But one expert said he wasn’t convinced manufacturers try to help out their bottom lines by making it seem like food perishes faster than reality. Quality standards almost always consider safety, said Keith Schneider, a food microbiologist at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Keeping a customer happy means also keeping them safe. "These dates are usually based on lab tests and historical precedents," he said. Most of all, he said, manufacturers want to build brand loyalty by consistently guaranteeing fresh, safe food, so they are often overly conservative with sell-by and use-by dates. Leib said it would be difficult to prove a producer manipulates its dates to boost profits, "but it would be perfectly easy to falsify that information." Still, manufacturers have an interest in ensuring quality, and many times smaller companies don’t have the money to test their products and apply accurate sell-by dates. "Sometimes," she said, "dates are just made up." Our rating Oliver said, "With the exception of baby formula, the federal government does not require any food to carry an expiration date, and state laws vary widely." While Oliver’s underlying argument for more regulation can be debated, he’s right to say that the federal government doesn’t require expiration dates on food, and state laws filling in that gap are inconsistent. We rate his statement True. A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Natural Resources Defense Council. | null | John Oliver | null | null | null | 2015-07-27T17:34:38 | 2015-07-19 | ['None'] |
tron-01525 | Michelle Obama: Slaves Built the White House | mostly truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/michelle-obama-slaves-built-white-house/ | null | government | null | null | null | Michelle Obama: Slaves Built the White House | Jul 27, 2016 | null | ['Michelle_Obama'] |
pomt-05407 | We didn’t go out asking people to join the "stand your ground" task force. | false | /florida/statements/2012/may/03/jennifer-carroll/jennifer-carroll-apply-stand-your-ground-task-forc/ | Lawmakers and lawyers clamored to join the task force set up by Gov. Rick Scott to examine Florida’s justifiable homicide laws after Trayvon Martin’s shooting death. The clamoring turned to confusion when Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, whom Scott designated co-chair, explained how the panel’s members were chosen. "What we did was go to the individuals that seek our approval to be on the task force. We didn’t go out asking people," she said at an April 19 news conference. "They came to us with an interest in this review, and those are the people of the pool that we went and looked at, who would be best to serve on this task force given the diversity of the state." Reporters asked Carroll about Sen. Chris Smith, a South Florida Democrat and prominent "stand your ground" critic who publicly asked to be on the panel. "He did not apply," Carroll said. "We went with the application, people that sent in information who were interested in serving on this task force." Carroll’s comments immediately surprised some lawmakers. As we heard doubts about an application process, we started digging up more information about how the committee came together. Was Carroll accurate that no one recruited people to the task force? In March, Scott said the task force would be led by Carroll and the Rev. R.B. Holmes of Tallahassee and comprised of appointees from Attorney General Pam Bondi, House Speaker Dean Cannon, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, Senate President-designate Don Gaetz and House Speaker-designate Will Weatherford. Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, who was chosen to sit on the 19-member task force, said he knew nothing about an application. He simply told Haridopolos he was interested. The same goes for Smith. (Read Smith’s letter to Haridopolos.) "When the governor announced his task force, he stated who he’d get recommendations from," said Smith, who started his own task force to look into the law. "I called those people and expressed my desire to serve. And I’ve expressed publicly in many news outlets my desire to serve. So I was surprised that there was an application process that I did not know about." Here’s what we know about the process. In short, some members were chosen because they asked to be, like Carroll said. But we found several cases where task force members said explicitly that they were recruited, some by Carroll’s own chief of staff. Haridopolos, the Senate president, recommended Scott choose one senator from a list of seven senators that included four Democrats -- Larcenia Bullard of Miami, Arthenia Joyner of Tampa, Siplin and Smith -- and three Republicans -- David Simmons of Altamonte Springs, Andy Gardiner of Orlando and Greg Evers of Crestview, according to a March 28 letter. Siplin and Simmons made the cut. Cannon also made a recommendation. Unlike Haridopolos, he went outside of his chamber. Public records show the House speaker recommended Orlando attorney Derek Bruce, who filled out a standard questionnaire for gubernatorial appointees. "The speaker reached out to Mr. Bruce and recommended him to the governor because he thought he would be a good fit for the task force," said House spokesman Ryan Duffy. There’s no evidence in House records that Bruce lobbied Cannon to be on the task force. Speaker-designate Weatherford also had some picks: Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, who sponsored the 2005 "stand your ground" law, and Rep. Jason Brodeur, a Republican from Sanford, where Martin was shot. When Baxley heard Scott’s instructions, he told us that he called Weatherford and asked him to submit his name for the task force. Brodeur didn’t ask to be on the task force. But he readily agreed to it when Weatherford called, he said. Bondi nominated two law enforcement leaders, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings and Florida State Police Chief David Perry, to the task force a week later. She approached them, spokeswoman Jennifer Meale said. No application. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told us she received an out-of-the-blue call about joining the committee from Carroll’s chief of staff, John Konkus. "He said that they would like me to be on it," she said. "I asked some questions about who else was on there, what was the time frame." She accepted his offer the next morning. "I consider it a real duty," she said. So does Gretchen Lorenzo, a crime prevention coordinator for the Fort Myers police department. She said Konkus called the department, requesting that she be placed on the task force. "I was appointed," she said. "It was a great opportunity for our city." Task force member Maria Newman, 64, who stopped volunteering with her neighborhood crime watch unit two years ago, tells a similar story. She said a friend on the Melbourne Police Department asked her if she wanted to be on the task force. "I look at it as I’m taking a journey," Newman said. "Hopefully my little voice will go a long ways." Miami community organizer Edna Canino deflected when asked about whether she was recruited onto the task force or volunteered herself, saying "I don’t think that’s important at this time." So we know several members of the task force were essentially recruited by Carroll, Cannon or Bondi. It puts a hole in Carroll’s claim that the selections were entirely based on people who "came to us with an interest in the review." We did find one person to support that claim: Tampa criminal defense attorney Joe Caimano, who emailed Cannon about serving. In an email, he wrote that his experience litigating "stand your ground" cases would be valuable. He ended up on the task force, though we’re not sure who made the decision since Cannon only recommended Derek Bruce. We made a public records request for all correspondence -- including any "applications" -- between those interested in the task force and the governor’s office on April 19, shortly after the news conference ended. It remained unfulfilled as of May 2, although the governor's office said it would get back to us shortly. A spokeswoman for Scott clarified Carroll’s comments on April 25, a week after the request, saying, "There was no formal application process." Spokeswoman Jackie Schutz added: "Sen. Smith never made his interest in serving on the task force known to our office." Konkus also called us on May 2 to explain there were no cold calls, but that some people had been recommended without their knowledge. "Several people had their names put forward from other voices across the state," he said. Our ruling Carroll said "we didn’t go out asking people" to join the task force charged with examining Florida’s "stand your ground" law. "They came to us," she said. This was accurate for several members, including Baxley, Siplin and Caimano (there could be more, but we can’t know that without Scott’s office fulfilling our records request). But we found several instances of the panel’s organizers inviting people to join, including a state attorney and crime prevention coordinator personally recruited by Carroll’s top aide. That's not how Carroll put it at the news conference, when she spoke of an application process. We rate Carroll’s claim False. | null | Jennifer Carroll | null | null | null | 2012-05-03T11:24:47 | 2012-04-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-06886 | Says Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel "supports allowing the United States to default on its obligations." | pants on fire! | /ohio/statements/2011/jul/28/ohio-democratic-party/ohio-democratic-party-accuses-josh-mandel-endorsin/ | Josh Mandel, who was elected Ohio treasurer last November, has not officially announced he is running for the U.S. Senate next year. But that has not kept the Republican from raising money like a candidate or from collecting endorsements such as that of the Senate Conservatives Fund. The fund is a political action committee headed by U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, founder of the Senate’s Tea Party Caucus. The group said it was "launching an all out SCF surge" to raise money for Mandel, who "strongly supports all of the SCF policy goals." That drew the attention of the Ohio Democratic Party, which looked at those goals and issued a statement saying that Mandel "supports allowing the United States to default on its obligations." The statement said the "extreme stand" puts him in disagreement with Ohio Republicans like Sen. Rob Portman and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner. PolitiFact Ohio asked for evidence. Democratic Party spokesman Justin Barasky directed us specifically to a video posted by Ohio Dems and to the endorsement statement of the Senate Conservatives Fund. Barasky said they show Mandel opposes raising the debt limit, "and by definition (in taking that position) you are endorsing default." The 1 minute 43 second video asserts in its first 20 seconds that Mandel supports allowing the U.S. to go into default, citing an email from the Senate Conservatives Fund as the source. The remainder quotes a variety of sources, including Portman and Boehner, on the dangers of default, and quotes President Ronald Reagan from 1985 on the need to raise the federal debt ceiling. We then looked at the SCF statement. In it, DeMint wrote: "Sherrod Brown supports raising the debt limit. Mandel opposes it." We next called Mandel's spokesman on political matters, Anthony Conchel, to ask about Mandel's position on default. "I'm not going to respond to that," he said, instead providing a quote from Mandel that he said "mirrors his public comments" on the matter: "I am a proud supporter of the 'Cut, Cap and Balance' plan that includes a balanced budget amendment and that passed the House with a bi-partisan vote. If families and small businesses have to tighten their belts and balance their budgets, then government should do the same." Finally, we looked at statements of DeMint, a pivotal figure in the discussion. Shortly before announcing the SCF endorsement of Mandel, DeMint joined nine other Republican senators pledging their opposition to increasing the national debt limit unless Congress cuts spending, enforces spending caps and passes a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. He said he would not support any candidate who would not sign such a pledge. Asked in interviews if that did not make default likely, DeMint said on ABC: "We'll never default. If it's the last penny we have, we'll pay our bills." On NBC, he said, "It certainly will be disruptive if we continue on the track we're going right now," but he dismissed talk of default as "panic" stirred to force a deal: "We are not going to default. We've got enough tax revenue to pay our bills." Where does that leave us? The Ohio Democrats argue that failing to raise the debt limit will inevitably lead to default. And they say the SCF’s opposition to raising the debt ceiling, opposition the SCF says Mandel shares, amounts to an endorsement of default. But there’s some problems with that line of thinking. Opposition to raising the federal debt ceiling is not the same as actively endorsing the idea of the United States defaulting on its obligations. Protest votes opposing previous debt ceiling increases were common from both parties. But that doesn’t mean they were advocating default. No where in a list of policy goals the SCF has posted on its website is there any mention of support for default. And DeMint argues it won’t happen, describing talk of default as "panic" stirred to force a debt ceiling deal. Again, correct or incorrect, DeMint is not advocating default. DeMint himself has said he would support legislation to increase the debt ceiling if it followed provisions in his Cut-Cap-Balance Pledge; substantially cut current spending, cap future spending and require the passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment before raising the debt limit. Mandel has endorsed that plan. However unlikely it is that those provisions would gain passage in Congress, it’s far from endorsing default. But perhaps most importly, while declaring Mandel endorses default, the Ohio Democrats don’t rely on Mandel’s words at all. Their cited source was information DeMint and the SCF stated about Mandel. We find the Ohio Democratic Party’s claim isn’t just inaccurate, it’s also ridiculous. On the Truth-O-Meter there’s just one ruling for that kind of statement: Pants on Fire. | null | Ohio Democratic Party | null | null | null | 2011-07-28T15:15:00 | 2011-07-25 | ['United_States', 'Ohio', 'Josh_Mandel'] |
pomt-15307 | Texas’ high school graduation rate went from 27th in the country in 2002, to second highest in the country in 2013. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2015/jul/20/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-texas-shot-no-2-no-27-high-school-/ | It hasn’t been long since we checked a Rick Perry claim about the schools in his home state. In June, we found Mostly True the former governor’s declaration that Texas has the second-highest high school graduation rate in the country and the highest graduation rate for African Americans and Hispanics. That was close to entirely right. Then after that, the second-time Republican presidential aspirant caught our interest when he said in a July 2, 2015, speech in Washington, D.C.: "Texas’ high school graduation rate went from 27th in the country in 2002, to second highest in the country in 2013." As we wrote before, Perry was off by a notch in that Texas in 2012-13 tied for third with Wisconsin for its 88 percent graduation rate, according to a February 2015 federal chart. And did Texas rocket past two dozen states from about a decade before? Hold that thought: To arrive at his claim, Perry did the statistical equivalent of mixing apples and artichokes. That is, the measurement he cited for the No. 27 ranking was not the same measurement used to arrive at Texas’ No. 3 ranking. The more recent ranking reflected each state’s four-year "adjusted cohort graduation rate," based on the "number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the graduating class," according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education. The center says the size of each potential graduating class was adjusted starting the first year of high school by adding students who subsequently transferred in and subtracting students who transferred out, moved to another country or who died as reported by each state. Put another way, if Perry had stuck with the indicator that landed Texas around 27th nationally in 2001-02, he would have ensured accuracy by saying Texas was tied with four states for 22nd in 2011-12, the latest year of available data. A factor in Perry doing otherwise, we speculate, is the metric landing Texas at No. 3 wasn’t universally applied until a few years ago. 2001-02 Our search for 2002 data started with an email to Perry campaign aides asking about the basis of his comparison; we fielded no reply. When we asked the Texas Education Agency about the state’s 2002 graduation rate, spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson advised by email that the agency did not circulate state-by-state rankings at that time because accurate comparisons were believed to be hard to nail. In 2003, though, the Texas Legislature directed the department to "compute dropout rates and graduation rates consistent with federal standards and definitions," Culbertson said. Nationally, she said, a mandated graduation rate standard was put in place in 2008 in accord with the No Child Left Behind Act (which was approved by Congress in 2001). "It took some time for many states to develop the data collection and processing systems to calculate a rate based on four years of individual student-level data," Culbertson wrote. So, Texas in 2012-13 ranked near the top nationally in its graduation rate by a measure that wasn’t in place in 2002. Responding to our request for data covering earlier years, Culbertson noted that in 2002-03, the year after the one singled out by Perry, Texas ranked 29th nationally, tied with Indiana, for its 75.5 percent "averaged freshman graduation rate." New Jersey led the nation with an 87 percent rate. Those rates were calculated, according to the NCES, by dividing the number of high school students who graduated with a regular high school diploma that year by the average of three enrollments: Grade 8 enrollment five years earlier, Grade 9 enrollment four years earlier and Grade 10 enrollment three years earlier Our search of the center’s website led us to an October 2005 report showing averaged freshman graduation rates in 2001-02, Perry’s cited year. Texas then landed 28th among the states, we found, with a 73.5 percent rate. New Jersey led nationally with an 85.8 percent rate. The report’s introduction touched on how this measurement differs from those that track each student individually, stating that while the averaged freshman graduation rate is not as accurate, it "can be computed with currently available data." 2011-12 In 2011-12, the latest year of available data, Texas ranked 22nd nationally in its averaged freshman graduation rate, according to a center chart. The 82 percent rate tied the rates for California, Colorado, Illinois and Kentucky. Vermont and Nebraska tied for first with 93 percent rates. So by this gauge, Texas went from 28th nationally in 2002 to tied for 22nd in 2012. Misleading? We wondered if it mattered that Perry echoed rankings rooted in different calculations. To our inquiries, experts told us his statement was misleading. Grover Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, emailed: "Perry should have used the same measure to compare graduation rates across the years in question rather than one measure for the beginning year and another measure for the ending year. His statement is misleading." Whitehurst agreed the yardstick placing Texas third in 2012-13 wasn’t available in 2002. "It is quite possible to switch measures when discussing different points on the trend line, as the governor did, because of confusion rather than intentional cherry picking of the numbers that make the progress in Texas look best," he wrote. The NCES, he said, publishes "dueling statistics on graduation and completion rates in such a way that a casual reader can easily make the mistake of comparing incommensurate measures." By phone, Walt Haney, a retired Boston College professor, called Perry’s dual-method comparison "potentially extremely misleading. It’s based on different metrics." Haney said it would have been more meaningful to air the state’s rank in 2002 and 2012 by the been-around-longer "averaged freshman graduation rate" indicator. Likewise, Rob Warren, a University of Minnesota sociologist, said Perry tapped incompatible metrics. "On the only metric for which you have measurements over time, there has been little change," Warren said by email. "I infer that not much has changed." Broadly, Warren said by phone, he also doubts the averaged freshman graduation rate indicator delivers accurate state-to-state comparisons. He said that’s because each state has leeway to define what goes into the rate calculations. Of note, he said, is whether a state as a whole holds back a lot of ninth-grade students. If so, the related graduation rate calculation will distort actual results--to the detriment of the state’s standing. Perry’s claim misleads, Warren said, because the 2013 and 2002 percentages don’t measure the same thing. "So you may be higher on one, lower on the other, that doesn’t tell you which one is right. They have similar names, purport to measure similar things, but they’re not the same thing," he said. Our ruling Perry said: "Texas’ high school graduation rate went from 27th in the country in 2002, to 2nd highest in the country in 2013." Texas graduation rates improved while Perry was governor. But this comparison evidently jammed together results reached by different calculations--a statistical no-no leaving the misimpression that Texas galloped past many states on Perry’s watch. It looks to us like Texas actually moved from about 27th nationally in 2002 to tied for 22nd in 2012, according to a measure that compares graduates each year to tallies of students earlier enrolled in lower grades. By a newer gauge tied to tracking individual students, Texas in 2013 tied for third (not No. 2). We rate this claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2015-07-20T10:00:00 | 2015-07-02 | ['Texas'] |
goop-02733 | Matt Lauer Worried Megyn Kelly Will Hurt ‘Today Show’ Ratings, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/megyn-kelly-ratings-matt-lauer-today-show-worried/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Matt Lauer NOT Worried Megyn Kelly Will Hurt ‘Today Show’ Ratings, Despite Report | 1:16 pm, June 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00500 | If you don't have insurance, or don't like your insurance, you'll be able to choose from the same type of quality private plans as every federal employee - from a postal worker here in Colorado to a congressman in Washington. All of these plans will cover essential medical services including prevention, maternity, disease management and mental health care. No one will be turned away because of a pre-existing condition or illness. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/520/if-you-dont-have-insurance-or-dont-insurance-you-h/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | If you don't have insurance, or don't like the insurance you have, you'll be able to choose a new plan on a health insurance exchange | 2010-01-07T13:26:49 | null | ['Colorado', 'Washington,_D.C.'] |
pomt-14689 | As governor of Florida, I used a combination of strategies to help reduce heroin use among youth in Florida by approximately 50 percent. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-says-governor-he-helped-reduce-youth-hero/ | Addiction is a deeply personal issue for Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, whose daughter Noelle suffered from addiction and a string of related criminal charges while he was serving as governor of Florida. In a Medium post on Jan. 5, 2016, Bush offered a glimpse into "the heartbreak of drug abuse" that his family had experienced, along with policy proposals to better address addiction. In the column, Bush discussed his record on drug policy during his gubernatorial tenure. "As governor of Florida, I used a combination of strategies to help reduce heroin use among youth in Florida by approximately 50 percent," Bush wrote. Bush took office in January 1999 and left in January 2007. We took a closer look into that statistic. (A few days later, Bush turned Noelle's story into a television ad.) The Bush campaign pointed us to the 2006 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey conducted by the Florida Department of Children and Families. (Although several surveys of drug use are released on an annual basis, experts told us that this is the only survey that would speak to the specific numerical claim Bush made.) For heroin use, the survey offers two measurements -- heroin use at any time of one’s life, and heroin use during the past 30 days. For the first category -- use of heroin in one’s lifetime -- 2.2 percent of respondents between the ages of 11 and 18 had used it in 2000, compared to 1.1 percent in 2006. That’s a 50 percent decrease. And for the second category -- heroin use in the past 30 days -- 0.8 percent reported using it in 2000, compared to 0.4 percent in 2006. That’s also down by 50 percent. So numerically, Bush has a point. Still, experts said it’s worth taking those numbers with a grain of salt. Testing the numbers One concern is that the percentage of youth using heroin is small, meaning the differences from year to year are small -- and this makes them potentially unreliable. Indeed, the report itself cautions, "Heroin use in a school population is extremely rare. Nationally, no lifetime prevalence rate for heroin has exceeded 2.4 percent in the 8th, 10th or 12th grades in the past decade. … Given the extremely low prevalence rates associated with heroin use by Florida students, analyses that attempt to precisely specify or quantify changes over time are subject to error." In addition, for both measurements, the biggest drop came between 2000 and 2001, with minimal changes between 2002 and 2006. That seemed curious to Lloyd Johnston, a senior research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future study, which tracks drug use in the United States. "While that is possible, I don't think it very plausible," Johnston said. "Rates almost always change more gradually." One possible explanation for that pattern, he said, is that the 2000 survey collected its data in December and January, whereas the 2001 to 2005 surveys conducted their data in April and May of those years. A further curiosity, Johnston said, is that one would not expect a one-year decline that steep for lifetime heroin use. From year to year, the pool of respondents is mostly the same. In the first year, the survey includes youth who are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 years of age. The following year, the 18-year-olds drop out and a new group of 11-year-olds joins, but all the other groups are included again. With such modest changes from year to year in the makeup of the age groups, one would not expect a large change in heroin use over a lifetime from one year to the next, Johnston said. "That makes the lifetime improvement in 2001 highly implausible," Johnston said, adding that a sizable change in the 30-day-rates would be more plausible. What was Bush’s role? There’s also a separate issue: Did Bush’s policies help engineer this decline? That’s hard to say, though drug-policy experts in Florida do praise Bush for his work on the issue. James Hall, a drug abuse epidemiologist at Nova Southeastern University, said that Bush gave the issue high priority, including the creation of a drug policy office out of his own office to coordinate law enforcement, treatment, education and prevention. The office -- which was later eliminated by Gov. Rick Scott -- made a "very significant contribution" to drug policy in the state, Hall said. In addition, Bush championed community-based anti-drug coalitions that helped consolidate prevention efforts, Hall said. And his wife Columba was also active in drug- and alcohol-abuse issues, he added. Still, such efforts likely had a "marginal influence" on heroin-use rates, Hall said. Often, broader issues such as demographic and social trends have a bigger impact. Indeed, it’s worth noting that heroin use among youth was declining nationally during roughly the same period. Johnston’s own study found that heroin use among youth was declining nationally between 1999 and 2007, the full extent of Bush's term in office. "For the three grades we study (eighth, 10th, and 12th), the combined prevalence of heroin use during the prior 12 months declined from 1.3 percent in 1999 to 0.8 percent in 2007," he said. That’s a drop of about 40 percent -- not far from what the Florida-only survey found. Our ruling Bush said that "as governor of Florida, I used a combination of strategies to help reduce heroin use among youth in Florida by approximately 50 percent." The only statistics that directly address his statement offer numeric support. However, the report in question cautions against drawing broad conclusions for such low-frequency events as youth heroin addiction, and experts thought it curious that the drop essentially happened in the first year, with little change after that. Experts praise Bush for his drug policies, but it’s important to note that broader demographic and social factors -- reflected in falling youth heroin use nationally during that period -- likely made a difference as well. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Jeb Bush | null | null | null | 2016-01-13T16:03:19 | 2016-01-04 | ['Florida'] |
goop-01312 | Justin Bieber “Trying To Entice” Baskin Champion With Unbuttoned Shirt, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-bieber-baskin-champion-shirt-chest-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Justin Bieber NOT “Trying To Entice” Baskin Champion With Unbuttoned Shirt, Despite Claim | 2:09 pm, March 26, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02396 | Prayer request for soldier Matt Maupin | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/maupin/ | null | military | null | null | null | Prayer request for soldier Matt Maupin | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00009 | On Oct. 18, a day after he was sworn in as the country’s top diplomat, Locsin posted on his Twitter account: | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-phs-new-top-diplomat-locsin-makes-wron | Locsin’s claim is wrong. | null | null | null | teddy,locsin,human rights council | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: PH’s top diplomat Locsin makes wrong claim about UN Human Rights Council | October 25, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02872 | Angelina Jolie “Getting Married Already” To “Wealthy Brit,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-getting-married-british-boyfriend-philanthropist-businessman/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Angelina Jolie NOT “Getting Married Already” To “Wealthy Brit,” Despite Report | 1:42 pm, April 12, 2017 | null | ['Angelina_Jolie'] |
wast-00069 | Regarding a question on opioids, Bredesen compared the issue to the methamphetamine crisis during his own time as governor. He said the meth problem was \xe2\x80\x98cut in half' when laws were enacted restricting people from buying certain drugs. | 3 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/18/phil-bredesens-claim-that-tennessees-meth-problem-was-cut-in-half/" | null | null | Phil Bredesen | Salvador Rizzo | null | Phil Bredesen's claim that Tennessee's meth problem was \xe2\x80\x98cut in half' | July 18 | null | ['Phil_Bredesen'] |
pomt-08523 | Says Roy Blunt "secretly inserts language to benefit tobacco giant Philip Morris" into a national security bill while "Blunt's girlfriend and son are lobbyists for the cigarette company, and just days earlier, 26 Philip Morris executives wrote checks to Blunt totaling $23,000." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/oct/05/commonsense-ten/commonsense-ten-ad-accuses-roy-blunt-secretly-inse/ | An independent group called Commonsense Ten has begun airing attack ads in several key Senate races including Missouri, where they have come after Rep. Roy Blunt with a potent cocktail, accusing Blunt of trying to push through pro-tobacco legislation while dating a Philip Morris lobbyist and cashing campaign checks from Philip Morris executives. Commonsense Ten, led by several Democratic strategists, sets the stage with a time/date stamp at the beginning of the ad: U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C., Nov. 13, 2002. And then the conspiratorial-sounding voice-over: "A critical national security bill is up for a vote. Just hours before, Roy Blunt secretly inserts language to benefit tobacco giant Philip Morris. Blunt's girlfriend and son are lobbyists for the cigarette company, and just days earlier, 26 Philip Morris executives wrote checks to Blunt totaling $23,000." Republican Blunt's Democratic opponent Robin Carnahan included a similar allegation in one of her ads, stating, "Congressman Roy Blunt. He got caught trying to insert a secret deal for tobacco giant Philip Morris into a bill just days after company executives gave him $30,000." The Commonsense Ten version scores an attack-ad trifecta. Big tobacco. Girlfriend and son lobbying for said big tobacco. And pay-to-play. But is it accurate? Let's start with the stuff in the ad that's not contested, or at least is well-documented. Back in November 2002, Blunt was dating Abigail Perlman, who was at that time a lobbyist for Philip Morris (and whom Blunt would later marry). Blunt's son, Andrew, was a lobbyist for Philip Morris in Missouri (not a federal lobbyist). And records show that Blunt got the donations cited in the ad from Philip Morris executives. Now, to the contested part, whether Blunt secretly inserted language in a national security bill to benefit tobacco giant Philip Morris. It's an allegation that originated with a June 11, 2003 story in the Washington Post. The Washington Post cited several unnamed sources who alleged Blunt -- just named the new majority whip -- "surprised his fellow top Republicans by trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security." The story went on, "Once alerted to the provision, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, quickly had it pulled out, said a senior GOP leader who requested anonymity. Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Tex., also opposed what Blunt (Mo.) was trying to do, the member said, and 'worked against it' when he learned of it." According to the Post, "the provision would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes, two practices that cut into Philip Morris's profits." Groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids opposed the Blunt provision at the time, arguing it had less to do with national security, which Blunt's office said was its intention, and more to do with protecting American cigarette companies. Among other things, they argued that while cracking down on cigarette smugglers, it also would have prevented U.S. tobacco companies from being sued by foreign governments which charged them with intentionally supporting international cigarette smuggling to avoid duties and taxes. The Post story quoted a "senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity" saying "some GOP members worried at the time that it would be 'embarrassing' to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public." According to the story, "Another Republican said Blunt's effort angered some leaders because there was 'so little support for' a pro-tobacco provision likely to generate controversy." Then, as now, Blunt defended the provision as good policy and a bona fide homeland security issue. Blunt spokesman Rich Chrismer told us in an e-mail, "The provision Roy Blunt and members of the House leadership supported would have cracked down on the illegal sale of contraband cigarettes to fund terrorist activities. Bipartisan legislation, originally sponsored by Democratic Senator Herb Kohl and Congressman Anthony Weiner, passed overwhelmingly in both bodies and is now the law of the land." Chrismer cited news accounts that documented the growing concern among federal law enforcement officials that smugglers were using millions of dollars acquired from illegal cigarette sales and funneling the cash to organizations such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Chrismer also forwarded a letter former Majority Leader Dick Armey wrote to Blunt on July 21, 2004: "I have been reading a lot about the anti-terrorism provision that you and others wanted to include in the homeland security bill in November 2002, and I wanted to correct the record on a few circumstances surrounding that effort." Armey wrote that he "not only agreed with the provision, but understood the Senate would be supportive." "I recall that the Speaker's office was concerned that the Judiciary Committee had not yet thoroughly reviewed the provision by means of committee hearings and markup," Armey wrote. "He did not want a jurisdictional fight on his hands, and it is his job to manage those issues. But, since then, the Judiciary Committee has held hearings and approved a freestanding bill to crack down on illegal sales of cigarettes and eliminate a source of funding for terrorist groups. "The effort you and I supported has great momentum now," Armey stated, "and I am tired of reading stories that only tell half the truth." But the provision proposed by Blunt was not identical to the later Kohl/Weiner bill referenced by Blunt spokesman Chrismer, which ultimately passed. The Kohl/Weiner legislation was similar, in that it sought to address Internet cigarette sales and other contraband trafficking of tobacco products. But there was nothing in that bill about blocking foreign governments from bringing lawsuits against U.S. tobacco companies in U.S. courts for their involvement in tobacco tax evasion or related contraband trafficking. That's the part of Blunt's provision that groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids opposed. In fact, the Campaign strongly supported the later, bipartisan legislation. According to a 2003 press release from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "The problem of contraband and Internet sales of tobacco products is a serious one that Congress should address. But the approach advocated by Philip Morris and Rep. Blunt is narrowly written to protect only Philip Morris’ commercial interests and not the broader public health or state government interests involved." Allegations of "secretly inserting" provisions into bills are often a matter of interpretation. In this case, hours before a final vote on the Homeland Security Bill, Blunt proposed a provision that had not been vetted in a committee meeting or in legislative markup sessions. It may have been added in a way that meant there was little notice and little discussion, but that doesn't necessarily add up to "secretly." Blunt may argue the provision was a legitimate homeland security concern and that a similar version later received bipartisan support. But the Blunt provision was opposed by some anti-tobacco groups, who viewed it as special interest legislation to benefit big tobacco. And we note that those groups did not oppose the later legislation. When you date (and later marry) a Philip Morris lobbyist, when you have a son who works as a tobacco lobbyist, when you accept hefty sums of campaign money from tobacco executives, and then you add an 11th hour provision that some view as pro-big tobacco, you leave yourself open to the kind of criticism raised in the ad. "Secretly" may be overstating how Blunt acted, but the ad's other points are backed up, so we rate it Mostly True. | null | Commonsense Ten | null | null | null | 2010-10-05T16:24:11 | 2010-09-15 | ['Roy_Blunt', 'Philip_Morris_International'] |
snes-00803 | Can Facebook Users Receive $17,500 Each Over a 'Data Breach'? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-data-breach-cash/ | null | Computers | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Can Facebook Users Receive $17,500 Each Over a ‘Data Breach’? | 6 April 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00439 | On conservative mega-donor Richard Uihlein. | full flop | /wisconsin/statements/2018/aug/23/leah-vukmir/flip-flop-leah-vukmir-accused-donor-trying-buy-us-/ | In the space of nine days, Leah Vukmir went from condemning Richard Uihlein’s campaign cash to essentially soliciting it. Seem like a flip-flop? Unwrap the Flip-O-Meter, which we use to rate a person’s consistency on an issue — in this case, Vukmir’s position toward Uihlein, the conservative mega-donor. Who is Uihlein? Uihlein, an Illinois resident, is a founder of Uline Corp., a shipping and packaging supply company based in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., near the Illinois border. If anyone could almost single-handedly make political newcomer Kevin Nicholson into a viable candidate for the U.S. Senate, it was Uihlein. All of our fact checks in the U.S. Senate race. Nicholson ultimately lost to Vukmir, a longtime state lawmaker, in the Aug. 14, 2018 Republican primary for the right to take on the incumbent, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin, in the fall. But he took the fight to Vukmir -- in no small part because of spending by Uihlein. Groups supported by Uihlein spent nearly $11 million in support of Nicholson and against his rival, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported several days before the primary. For example, the Uihlein-backed group Solutions for Wisconsin made a $911,000 television buy in the final days. What Vukmir said about him Now, to what Vukmir has said about Uihlein — the contrasting statements having been pointed out in an Associated Press news article. Aug. 6, 2018: "Try to buy" Eight days before the primary, Vukmir was salty toward Uihlein. "I think it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of a lot of people that a particular out-of-state donor is spending as much money as he is to, in essence, almost try to buy a Senate seat, and that’s not what Wisconsin politics is about," Vukmir told Green Bay conservative radio talk show John Muir, in a clear reference to Uihlein. That Vukmir remark echoed criticism from Democrats, who 10 months earlier were complaining that Uihlein was trying to buy the seat for Nicholson. Aug. 15, 2018: "Reaching out" The day after her primary win, however, Vukmir was conciliatory. "We are already reaching out to Dick Uihlein and I hope that he will want to continue with his commitment," Vukmir said to conservative Milwaukee radio talk show host Mark Belling. "Let’s face it, he wants to defeat Tammy Baldwin. And so I will look forward to having that conversation with him," Vukmir added, noting she would be attending a unity dinner two days later co-hosted by Uihlein. Our rating The Flip-O-Meter has three ratings: No Flip – No significant change in position. Half Flip – A partial change in position. Full Flop – A complete change in position. In this case, Vukmir went from condemning Uihlein’s campaign contributions to essentially soliciting them. It may be understandable, given Uihlein’s resources, that Vukmir would decide to seek his support. But it’s also a Full Flop. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Leah Vukmir | null | null | null | 2018-08-23T08:05:31 | 2018-08-15 | ['None'] |
snes-03599 | Scientists say that largest the supermoon since 1948, occurring on 14 November 2016, will trigger tidal waves and catastrophic earthquakes, wreaking havoc across the planet. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/supermoon-tidal-waves-earthquakes/ | null | Science | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Rare Supermoon Is Going to Unleash Tidal Waves and Massive Earthquakes | 8 November 2016 | null | ['None'] |
chct-00083 | FACT CHECK: Lou Barletta Said There Are More Job Openings Than Unemployed People | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/08/04/fact-check-barletta-job-openings-unemployed/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 5:18 PM 08/04/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01064 | If you ask how many times did Ronald Reagan attend a fundraiser when he ran for re-election in 1984, the answer is eight times. If you say how many times did Barack Obama attend a fundraiser in 2012, the answer is 228 times. | mostly true | /new-hampshire/statements/2015/jan/20/lawrence-lessig/lawrence-lessig-compares-number-fundraisers-betwee/ | Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig has recently been making a frigid, 150-mile walk through New Hampshire to promote campaign finance reform. Lessig, the founder of the crowdfunded Mayday PAC -- known as the super-PAC to end all super-PACs -- kicked off the 10-day march in the tiny Northern New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, known for its midnight ballot box voting during the "first in the nation" primary. His walk will take him and dozens others to the state capitol in Concord by Jan. 21. In a visit to the Concord Monitor before starting the walk, Lessig offered a striking comparison showing how the role of money in politics has changed over the years. To Lessig, fundraising has become a primary focus for today’s politicians, at the expense of governing. "If you ask how many times did Ronald Reagan attend a fundraiser when he ran for re-election in 1984, the answer is eight times. If you say how many times did Barack Obama attend a fundraiser in 2012, the answer is 228 times," Lessig told the Monitor. He continued, "And you think, how does a man, as a person, run the nation when he's attending 228 fundraisers? And the answer is not very well. It's pretty terrible for your ability to do your job. It's pretty terrible for your ability to be responsive to the American people, because -- let me tell you -- the American people are not attending 228 fundraisers. Those people are different." It’s no secret that truckloads of dollars are raised and spent in presidential elections, but PolitiFact New Hampshire wondered whether Lessig’s specific comparison between Reagan and Obama was accurate. Lessig isn’t the first to make the comparison between Reagan and Obama on fundraising; similar statistics have surfaced in various media reports. These comparisons track back to a distinction in campaign financing that we’ll recap here. The story begins in 1972, the year of President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. (Yes, the one that led to the Watergate scandal.) That year, the Nixon re-election campaign collected millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions. After Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed (and Nixon’s successor as president, Gerald Ford, signed into law) changes to the Federal Election Campaign Act. Once enacted, presidential candidates were able to receive a partial federal match for money they raised for the primary, up to $5 million. And for the general election, candidates could secure full federal funding -- up to $20 million -- as long as they raised no private money for the general election and stuck to expenditure limits. That system prevailed for the better part of three decades. However, in recent presidential campaign cycles, the system began to break down due to a combination of court decisions and changes in how presidential campaigns prefer to operate. An arms-race style competition between the parties has left any candidate who accepts the restrictions tied to federal funding at a severe disadvantage, since candidates can easily raise more private money than the federal allotment, without the strings attached. Obama is one of those politicians. He was the first president since Nixon to be elected with only private money. And to give some perspective on the amount of money we’re talking about, more than $2 billion was raised and spent in the last presidential election between Obama and Mitt Romney. When we contacted Lessig to see where he was getting his data comparing Obama to Reagan, he pointed to a presentation by Fred Wertheimer, a lawyer and founder of Democracy 21, a group that advocates curbing the influence of big money in American politics. In his presentation -- made at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in October, 2012 -- Wertheimer said the system for public financing of presidential elections, which emerged in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is broken. Reagan used the public financing system for his campaign in 1984 and did not have a primary opponent, eliminating his need to raise money during the primary and general election. Reagan "ran for re-election without holding a single campaign fundraiser," reported Washington Post national political editor Dan Eggen in a 2012 article, "Post-Watergate campaign finance limits undercut by changes." "If he attended fundraisers, they must have been for the party or for other GOP candidates," concurred Viveca Novak, the editorial and communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money raised by politicians running for federal offices. Lessig later pointed to an article in the Baltimore Sun by Brendan Doherty -- a political science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of the book, The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign. Doherty counted 220 fundraisers for the Obama Victory Fund, compared to just three fundraisers "headlined" by Ronald Reagan during his third and fourth years in office, leading up to his re-election. Doherty doesn’t break down the fundraisers year by year, and instead uses a campaign cycle, which usually spans two calendar years. His numbers match those cited by USA Today, which reported on Aug. 12, 2012, that Obama had attended his 200th fundraiser since filing for re-election in the spring of 2011. Obama attended five fundraisers in one day in Chicago, including one at which guests paid $40,000 per ticket, according to the newspaper. Doherty counted the fundraisers by using the public papers of the presidents of the United States, presidential libraries and Lexis-Nexis searches of Associated Press articles. "My numbers are a bit different from the trend you cite, but (the) shift from Reagan to Obama in terms of time spent fundraising has been dramatic," Doherty told the Monitor. All told, Reagan received about $40 million in public financing during his campaign -- while Obama raised more than $715 million in private funds. With the demise of the public financing system and looser rules on raising and spending money, said Novak of the Center for Responsive Politics, "fundraising is unfortunately a bigger part of the process than ever before," Novak said. Our ruling Lessig said Reagan attended eight fundraisers in 1984, while Obama attended 228 in the 2012 cycle. We couldn’t replicate his exact numbers, but they jibe with reports by experts and the logic of how the public- and private-financing systems work. There’s certainly little doubt about Lessig’s larger point -- that there’s been a sea change in spending on presidential elections during the past 30 years. On balance, we rate Lessig’s claim Mostly True. | null | Lawrence Lessig | null | null | null | 2015-01-20T17:30:09 | 2015-01-05 | ['Ronald_Reagan', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-06252 | At a minimum, 40 percent of those who view child pornography end up molesting children as a result. | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2011/nov/30/mike-dewine/mike-dewine-cites-link-between-viewing-child-porno/ | There is no category of crimes more revolting to most people than sexual crimes committed against children. In the wake of the Penn State scandal, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine rolled out a new "Crimes Against Children" initiative on Nov. 18 targeting Internet predators who trade child pornography or actually molest or attempt to molest children. Flanked by police chiefs and prosecutors, DeWine announced that he was dedicating a new 15-person unit to focus on stopping crimes against children. The unit would be part of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is run by his office. Attempting to demonstrate the prevalence of the crimes in today’s society, DeWine focused on the link between viewers of child pornography and the actual molestation of children. "At a minimum, 40 percent of those who view child pornography end up molesting children as a result," DeWine said. "At least 40 percent, some estimates as high as 80 percent." PolitiFact Ohio was struck by the relatively high percentage cited by DeWine and the cause and effect he said exists between viewing child porn and committing physical acts of sexual contact against children. Could four in 10 people who viewed child porn really be committing sexual acts against children? We turned first to DeWine’s office for some supporting evidence, who quickly e-mailed us a pair of studies said to back up his claim. The first study, entitled "A Profile of Pedophilia: Definition, Characteristics of Offenders, Recidivism, Treatment Outcomes, and Forensic Issues, is from doctors at the Mayo Clinic. It states that 30 to 80 percent of arrested individuals who viewed child pornography and 76 percent of individuals who were arrested for Internet child pornography had molested a child, according to studies and case reports. The study quotes from a November 2004 article from the American Prosecutors Research Institute called "From Fantasy to Reality: The Link Between Viewing Child Pornography and Molesting Children" written by Candice Kim. It also apparently references a 2000 study of sex offender inmates in a Federal Bureau of Prisons program. Kim’s report cites a U.S. Postal Inspection Service finding that 80 percent of purchasers of child pornography are active abusers and nearly 40 percent of the child pornographers investigated over several years have sexually molested children. A footnote indicates the statement is taken from the 2002 testimony Ernie Allen, director of The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, when he appeared before a congressional committee. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service made 1,807 child porn arrests from January 1997 to March 2004 which netted 620 "confirmed child molesters," the article states. That is a child molestor rate of 34.3 percent, according to the statistic provided by U.S. Postal Inspection Service Agent Ray Smith during a 2004 interview with Kim. Other statistics found in the report include a Pennsylvania-based law enforcement task force reporting that 51 percent of individuals arrested for pornography-related offense were also determined to be actively molesting children or to have molested in the past. In Dallas, a similar task force put that figure at 31 percent. The original source of those statements was again Allen’s 2002 congressional testimony. The other study cited by DeWine’s office is a 2005 study funded by a congressional grant to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. In that study of 1,713 people arrested nationwide for child pornography in a one-year period from July 2000 to July 2001, 40 percent were "dual offenders" who sexually victimized children and possessed child pornography with both crimes discovered in the same investigation. So what are all these studies saying? They are saying there is a link between those arrested by various state and federal law enforcement agencies for child porn possession and acts of molestation of children by this same group of people. What the do not say, though, is that the link exists for the entire group of people that views child porn and whether those people molest children. As the 2005 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children report puts it "we do not know if these child porn possessors were representative of all Internet-related child porn possessors." Furthermore, that report states that there is no known evidence supporting cause and effect -- that simply possessing child pornography encourages or causes child victimization. There has been no study of this issue. "Knowing a considerable number of dual offenders were discovered during investigations of Internet-related, child-sexual victimization and child porn possession cases does not explain how possessing child pornography is related to child victimization or whether it encourages or causes such victimization," states the report. "We do not have data to determine this." Later, the report states as to whether the child porn viewing is done before the molesting "we had no information about the sequencing of crimes committed by dual offenders." Meanwhile, a 2000 study done by psychologists working with prisoners in the Federal Bureau of Prisons sex offender treatment program found that 76 percent of inmates charged with child pornography crimes admitted to having committed contact sex crimes. That study was followed up in 2009 by a similar study which found that 85 percent of 155 convicted sex offenders had committed at least one "hands on sexual offense." However, a paper prepared by one of the primary authors of both studies, Andres Hernandez, stresses not to apply the statistics of those convicted of child porn possession to the larger "unknown" population of child porn users. "The number of individuals who are apprehended by law enforcement for committing child porn offenses represents a small proportion of the population of individuals collecting, trading and producing child pornography worldwide," Hernandez writes. "Some individuals have misused the results (of the two studies) to fuel the argument that the majority of child porn offenders are indeed contact sexual offenders and, therefore, dangerous predators. This is simply not supported by the scientific evidence." Said Hernandez’s paper: "Some individuals in law enforcement are tempted to rely on a biased interpretation of our study...to prove that the majority of child porn offenders are child molestors." Hernandez’s paper also notes something not reported in this 2009 study — that a 42-person sample of the prisoners were asked questions about when they began possessing child porn compared to when they began committing contact sexual crimes. "The vast majority of our subjects indicated they committed hands-on abuse prior to seeking child pornography via the Internet," he writes. "The results indicated that in 41 of 42 cases examined hands-on sexual crimes preceded child porn offenses." So where are we left as we bid this abhorrent subject goodbye? At a news conference promoting a crackdown on sexual crimes against children, DeWine made statements stating that "at a minimum 40 percent of those who view child pornography end up molesting children as a result." Molestation crimes are horrific. And while DeWine’s statement is overly broad, it does contain an element of truth: that people who commit acts of child molestation also often view child pornography. His statements are based on studies which are all of those arrested for child porn offenses and range from a 31 percent child molester rate up to 85 percent, depending on the study. However, several of the authors of those studies caution that the numbers should not be generalized to the bigger universe of all people who have viewed child porn -- those who have been arrested and those who have not. And that’s exactly what DeWine did. And researchers caution that there is no evidence that the molesting of children by those possessing child porn takes place as a result of viewing the child porn, a claim made by DeWine. Quite to the contrary, study of this cause-effect relationship we found suggests that nearly all offenders committed acts of molestation prior to looking at child porn. Those are critical facts that would give a different impression of DeWine’s claim. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates Mostly False. | null | Mike DeWine | null | null | null | 2011-11-30T10:00:00 | 2011-11-18 | ['None'] |
pose-00684 | I will upgrade RI.gov to ensure that citizens can take maximum advantage of the public services they pay tax dollars to fund. The upgrade will include putting online government services that currently require a trip to state offices, such as making DMV appointments and renewing drivers’ licenses. This initiative will make online services available for free. | in the works | https://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/promises/linc-o-meter/promise/714/upgrade-state-website-to-put-government-services-s/ | null | linc-o-meter | Lincoln Chafee | null | null | Upgrade state website to put government services such as obtaining drivers licenses online | 2010-12-22T12:23:53 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05828 | Says critics called the original GI Bill "welfare." | mostly false | /texas/statements/2012/feb/17/lawrence-odonnell/lawrence-odonnell-says-critics-called-original-gi-/ | In a promotional spot for his MSNBC program, Lawrence O’Donnell speaks proudly of his father attending college on the post-World War II benefits package that transformed the nation. O’Donnell further says of the original GI Bill: "It’s the most successful educational program that we’ve ever had in this country -- and the critics called it welfare." They did? Austin lawyer Terral Smith, a former Republican member of the Texas House, urged us to check this after seeing the ad in January. After asking MSNBC to elaborate, we looked for authoritative recaps of how the far-reaching law came to be. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, the "GI Bill of Rights," into law in June 1944, according to the Veterans Administration’s online history of the agency. Broadly, the history says, the act provided millions of veterans with up to four years of education or training, plus a monthly subsistence allowance; offered them federally guaranteed home, farm and business loans with no down payment; and provided for unemployment compensation of $20 weekly for up to 52 weeks for veterans who had served 90 days or more. The VA’s web post is silent on the act’s progress through Congress -- and any related criticism. Next, we turned to the American Legion’s online post of a 1949 article by a Washington reporter, David Camelon, recapping the law’s roots. This story says the American Legion drafted the proposal in 1943 and lobbied for it the first part of 1944 -- surprisingly drawing early opposition from other veterans groups, including the Disabled American Veterans. According to the article, that group’s representative, Millard Rice, sent a Feb. 22, 1944, letter to Walter George, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, objecting to the proposed unemployment benefits. Rice’s letter said, in part: "The lazy and 'chisely' types of veterans would get the most benefits, whereas the resourceful, industrious and conscientious veterans would get the least benefits, if any." The article says Rice and others assumed too many veterans would idle for the 52 weeks of unemployment payments. Despite such critiques, a revised version of the proposal shortly won unanimous Senate approval, according to the article. In the House, though, Rep. John Rankin, chairman of its committee for veterans affairs, had misgivings about the unemployment compensation element. In his 2009 book, "Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill," Stephen Ortiz, an assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, says Rankin "viewed the educational features (of the GI Bill) with skepticism, believing that only a small percentage of already privileged veterans would take advantage of them. Moreover, he treated the unemployment features with outright disdain. An ardent white supremacist, Rankin feared the unemployment provision’s impact on the work habits of the African Americans in his state and region. African Americans would not quickly rejoin the work force, he argued, if they were being paid generous unemployment benefits. Rankin complained further that it would ‘spoil’ them." In a telephone interview, Ortiz told us that no critics called the GI Bill "welfare," but some admirers later considered the law a welcome step toward the United States becoming more of a social-welfare state. Back to our timeline: House committee members sent their version of the legislation to the House, which gave unanimous approval in May 1944, the American Legion story says. A House-Senate conference committee convened to iron out differences between the bodies. By early June 1944, its members had resolved many provisions though, the article says, they broke down seemingly over which agency would oversee veteran job placements, a standoff that the article calls a camouflage for continued uncertainty over the measure’s 52-20 unemployment compensation feature. The impasse ultimately cleared after a Georgia member of the conference panel flew in overnight to vote for the compromise, the story says. By email, MSNBC spokeswoman Lauren Skowronski sent us two batches of excerpts, some attributed to members of Congress as quoted in the 1944 Congressional Record. Many of the excerpts covered objections noted in the American Legion magazine article. A memo from Melissa Ryerson, a producer of O’Donnell’s program, says some lawmakers and critics also fretted over the GI Bill’s "broad" education provisions. The memo also suggests that objections mentioning "relief" or "the dole" were equivalent to modern-day references to welfare. "If Mr. O’Donnell had used the word ‘relief’ instead of ‘welfare’" in the advertisement, the memo says, "no one would have understood what he meant." A sampling of MSNBC’s excerpts: -- Comments from Rep. Rankin about fearing a "tremendous inducement to certain elements to try to get employment compensation. It is going to be very easy… to induce these people to get on federal relief." Another Rankin comment, suggesting the proposal would reward those who delayed seeking work: "The bane of the British Empire has been the dole system." He also aired a racist comment, saying: "If every white serviceman in Mississippi… could read this so-called GI Bill, I don’t believe there would be one in 20 who would approve of it... We have 50,000 Negroes in the service from our state and in, in my opinion, if the bill should pass in its present form, a vast majority of them would remain unemployed for at least another year, and a great many white men would do the same." -- A 1950 Saturday Evening Post article stating: "The education and training section of the GI Bill became, in reality, a relief act or a bonus act… more than 15 million veterans [were still] entitled to an average of 40 months of schooling at government expense, including subsistence." --A comment attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951: "Colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles… [The GI Bill] is a threat to American education [and] education is not a device for coping with mass unemployment." We spotted the same comment in a November 2004 commentary on the GI Bill’s origin by writers Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen. Before quoting Hutchins’ "hobo jungle" warning, the commentary says: "Racist politicians opposed provisions of the bill that would ‘put money in the pockets of black vets’ and some elitist educators opposed higher education as a benefit." By 1956, the commentary says, the law had helped to produce 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists, and more than 1 million other college-trained men and women. Also, it says, 11 million of 13 million houses built in the 1950s were financed with GI Bill loans. Ortiz and Nancy Beck Young, a University of Houston historian who has studied the legislative history of the GI Bill, each told us it would be incorrect to say critics called the proposal welfare. Beck Young told us in a telephone interview that members of Congress were intent on ensuring returning troops did not face the fate of World War I veterans, some of whom marched on Washington only to be ignored and then mistreated. While there were concerns about the unemployment provisions and the measure's overall cost, she said, they "did not call it welfare. The (congressional) debates were about fine-tuning. Everybody realized something that had to be done; something generous." Beck Young cautioned against "cherry-picked research. It’s not right to say they called it welfare." Our ruling We found no evidence of critics referring to the GI Bill as welfare. Yet some fretted that the law’s unemployment compensation element would encourage laziness. We see a touch of truth to O’Donnell’s claim, which we rate Mostly False. | null | Lawrence O'Donnell | null | null | null | 2012-02-17T13:03:26 | 2012-01-31 | ['None'] |
snes-03955 | A video shows Black Lives Matter protesters in Charlotte attacking and beating a homeless vet. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-lives-matter-protesters-beat-homeless-vet/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Black Lives Matter Protesters Beat Homeless Veteran | 26 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02875 | Emails for a cancer victim named Rachel | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/rachel/ | null | pleas | null | null | null | Emails for a cancer victim named Rachel | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02511 | Oral sex reduces the risk of breast cancer | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/fellatio/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Oral sex reduces the risk of breast cancer | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01062 | Today, home sales are up nearly 50 percent from where they were in the worst of the crisis. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/20/barack-obama/home-sales-are-nearly-50-percent-worst-housing-cri/ | President Barack Obama is touting the apparent success of his policy decisions in speeches, telling a crowd in Phoenix that his actions have led to a rebound in the housing market. At a speech at Central High School on Jan. 8, 2015, Obama said programs to stop people from losing their homes and to help move homeless veterans off the streets has led to tangible economic benefits. "So as a result of all these efforts, today, home sales are up nearly 50 percent from where they were in the worst of the crisis." PolitiFact wondered if home sales had really jumped that much, or if Obama was just selling us a line. Tour of homes We contacted the White House, which said they used two sets of data to formulate this claim. One is new home sales, the measure of newly constructed houses as measured by the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The other is existing home sales, which is compiled by the National Association of Realtors. The two are tracked by separate entities because new home sales involve measuring other economic indicators, as well, like construction jobs and materials. The numbers the White House provided were measured like this: They took the average of the last six months of available data (ending November 2014, in this case) and compared it to the lowest point in sales for both kinds of sales. Those low points were in different months for each type of sale (February 2011 for new home sales and July 2010 for existing home sales). The census data an Obama spokesperson provided matched what we found independently, but existing home sales data are a little trickier. The National Association of Realtors splits that into two groups, single-family homes and condos or co-ops. The White House supplied single-family home numbers only, but NAR spokesperson Adam DeSanctis said the best measure is to combine both, because that gives a better overall picture, so we looked at it that way, too. Because we don’t want to make your head spin from all these digits, we’ll chart it out for you: Sale type June-November 2014 average Low point during recession Percent change New home sales 432,000 270,000 (February 2011) + 60 percent Existing home sales (single-family homes only) 4.49 million 3.06 million (July 2010) + 47 percent Existing home sales (single-family homes + condos and co-ops) 5.096 million 3.45 million (July 2010) + 48 percent For reference, this is approaching a return to more normal transaction numbers, because sales were grossly inflated during the housing bubble. Sales of new homes reached a peak of almost 1.4 million in July 2005, while existing home sales topped out at 7.26 million in September 2005, before the bubble finally burst around 2008. Obama said "nearly 50 percent," so he could be talking about simply existing home sales, but the White House supplied us with both. We can’t simply average out the two different percentages because they cover different time periods, but both have recovered considerably. Beyond an upswing in sales, reports from real estate data firms RealtyTrac and Core Logic show foreclosure filings (things like default notices, bank repossessions and scheduled auctions) in 2014 were down more than 60 percent from their 2010 high of 2.87 million, back to pre-recession levels. That’s not to say the housing market is necessarily robust, either. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said in its latest State of the Nation’s Housing report that new single-family housing starts are still depressed, and existing home inventories are constrained. Households that pay an excessive portion of their incomes to live in their property remain near historical highs, as well. In any case, the approximation of the rebound in the national market is accurate, although one expert told us it still doesn’t paint the clearest picture of the economic recovery. "While encouraging, national numbers mask the uneven nature of the housing recovery," said Geoff Smith, executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. "In many towns and neighborhoods the legacy of the crisis is strong, and these areas continue to struggle with weak demand, underwater homeowners and high levels of vacancy and abandonment." Debbie Goldstein, executive vice president at consumer protection group the Center for Responsible Lending, credits the Obama administration for pushing several policy positions that helped prospective homebuyers secure loans, and helped delinquent homeowners refinance. She said the Home Affordable Refinance Program that started in 2009 saved many homeowners from defaulting on their mortgages. She also said more recent underwriting rules will help lenders and buyers avoid some problems that led to the housing crisis. But she also said Washington could have done more, such as reducing principal for underwater homeowners, helping more first-time homebuyers get into the market and improve lending access to minorities. Plus, Congress could always roll back the underwriting rules and change everything. Our ruling Obama said, "Today, home sales are up nearly 50 percent from where they were in the worst of the crisis." That number matches census data for new home sales, although the White House said they also based the claim on existing home sales, which have increased by about 60 percent over the lowest point during the recession. The national numbers are largely accurate, although Obama’s statement doesn’t provide details about pockets of the market still experiencing trouble, nor does it address whether the recovery would have happened regardless of his policies -- although experts say those policies were a factor in the recovery. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2015-01-20T19:32:51 | 2015-01-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-02741 | About 40 percent of workers don’t ... have a single paid sick day. | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2013/dec/17/vicki-shabo/about-40-percent-workers-dont-even-have-single-pai/ | Panelists on MSNBC’s The Cycle chewed on the topic of mandatory paid leave -- and how it isn’t a thing for all American workers -- on the heels of new legislation from Democrats that would create a program to make it happen. The Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., would allow workers to take up to 12 weeks of paid family and sick leave through the creation of a trust fund, administered by the Social Security Administration, that would be funded by contributions from employers and employees of 0.2 percent of earnings (2 cents per $10). One big supporter is the National Partnership for Women and Families, which was very involved in the passage of the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act of 1993 that guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid leave for most workers. Now, the group is pushing for the law to go even further so that more workers can take off -- and be paid -- during emergencies. America is far behind the modern world in the area of paid leave, said Cycle guest Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, on Dec. 12, 2013. "About 40 percent of workers don’t even have a single paid sick day," Shabo said, "much less the long-term leave that the FAMILY Act would provide." We wondered if her statistic was accurate. Her source: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2013 National Compensation Survey. The data show 61 percent of all private-sector workers were offered paid sick leave, leaving about 40 percent without it. The BLS count for public and private workers, excluding those who are self-employed or work for the federal government, is a tad higher at 65 percent. State and local government workers have a much higher rate of getting paid sick leave compared to other sectors, at about 89 percent. Employees of smaller firms and the leisure and hospitality sector are the least likely to have paid medical leave, the survey shows. The rate of paid sick leave increases with pay level, with the rise of white-collar jobs being the main reason that more workers have access to paid sick leave than 20 years ago. Under current law, workers are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for reasons that include childbirth, caring for a spouse, child or parent with a serious health issue, dealing with a serious health problem of their own, among others. According to the Department of Labor, nearly 60 percent of workers are eligible for unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act of 1993, and 13 percent reported taking leave under FMLA in the past year. The Gillibrand-DeLauro proposal would provide leave to every worker, including those who work for smaller employers or are self-employed or unemployed, "as long as the person has sufficient earnings and work history," according to a DeLauro press release. The idea is modeled after programs in California and New Jersey. Payments to employees on leave would be equal up to 66 percent of monthly income, capped at a monthly amount. We checked in with the conservative Employment Policies Institute, which opposes pro-labor policies. Research director Michael Saltsman said Shabo's statistic, while accurately sourced, does not account for workers given a pool of hours to use for vacation, illness or personal reasons. Widening the scope shows 77 percent of private-sector workers receive paid vacation time, he said, referencing the BLS. "Of course, that makes the statistic appear far less 'shocking' than Shabo would like it to be," Saltsman said. Consolidated leave plans, which offer employees a block of leave time per year to use for various reasons, are becoming more popular for American workers, particularly those in the insurance and health care sectors, according to the BLS. The BLS found 26 percent of all workers were offered consolidated leave plans in 2012. Our ruling Shabo accurately referenced 2013 federal data when she said, "About 40 percent of workers don’t even have a single paid sick day." Saltsman did offer one caveat, however, noting that some workers have a pool of days that can be used for illness or vacation. That caveat is enough to rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Vicki Shabo | null | null | null | 2013-12-17T12:18:22 | 2013-12-12 | ['None'] |
goop-02718 | Caitlyn Jenner “Caught On Date With Ex-Girlfriend” Candis Cayne, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/caitlyn-jenner-not-caught-date-ex-girlfriend-candis-cayne/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Caitlyn Jenner NOT “Caught On Date With Ex-Girlfriend” Candis Cayne, Despite Claim | 12:03 pm, June 24, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05558 | The mass-murdering Michael Myers character in the Halloween series of films sports what was originally a Captain Kirk mask. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/william-shatner-halloween-mask/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Who Was Michael Myers? | 27 October 2015 | null | ['James_T._Kirk', 'Michael_Myers_(Halloween)'] |
pomt-01051 | Starting in December 2007, "1.4 million jobs were created in Texas. In that same period, the rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs." | mostly true | /texas/statements/2015/jan/22/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-texas-gained-million-jobs-while-re/ | Rick Perry reminded lawmakers in his last speech to them before ending more than a decade as governor that he’s proud of Texas job gains on his watch — and the rest of the country lost jobs in recent years, he said. "I have been guided by a simple philosophy: That job creation, not higher taxation, is the best form of revenue generation," Perry said in his Jan. 15, 2015, speech. "And we have created jobs. In the last year, we have created 441,000 jobs. Since I became governor, with your help, we have created almost one-third of all the nation’s new jobs." Those figures hold up if you get your wording straight. We found True Perry’s past claim to Texas’ accounting for one third of net new jobs in the country. As we checked this latest statement, analyst David Cooper of the liberal Economic Policy Institute crunched the latest federal figures and told us Texas jobs accounted for 27 percent of the net jobs gained in the 43 states that gained jobs since 2000. "Still pretty impressive," Cooper said by phone. In his speech, Perry added accurately: "The unemployment rate in Texas is significantly below the national average. And right here in Austin, Texas, it’s below 4 percentage points." Then Perry said: "In fact, if you look at the last seven years…starting in December of 2007, you will see that 1.4 million jobs were created in Texas. In that same period, the rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs." That much of a Texas/Not-Texas gulf? By email, Perry spokesman Felix Browne pointed out U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for Texas and other states and encouraged us to consult Mark J. Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan campus in Flint. Professor Perry wrote in a November 2014 online commentary that from December 2007, the start of the national recession, through October 2014, Texas saw civilian employment balloon by 1.36 million jobs. "In contrast," he wrote, "civilian employment in the other 49 states without Texas is still 0.26% and more than 350,000 jobs below the December 2007 level … — there were 134.9 million non-Texas jobs in October vs. 135.26 million in December 2007." To our query, the scholar emailed a chart showing that based on what the government calls "total employment," covering all jobs including self-employed posts, Texas had 1,410,400 more jobs in November 2014 than it had in December 2007 while the rest of the country had 352,440 fewer jobs. Total employment, he said, serves as a comprehensive indicator and is used to calculate unemployment rates. Mark Perry said the likely reason the latest figures weren’t perfectly echoed in the governor’s speech is the BLS recently revised upward U.S. jobs for November 2014, which had the effect of reducing the number of jobs lost outside of Texas in the cited period. A little more: The BLS says the definition of employment in the federal household survey, which the governor relied on for his comparison, "comprises wage and salary workers (including domestics and other private household workers), self-employed persons and unpaid workers who worked 15 hours or more during the reference week in family-operated enterprises. Employment in both agricultural and nonagricultural industries is included." In contrast, the government's oft-quoted payroll survey of employers "covers only wage and salary employees on the payrolls of nonfarm establishments." Cooper of EPI commented to us that the timeframe singled out by the governor may deliver a more glowing contrast for Texas than other periods. According to the government’s payroll surveys, he said, the country has added 9.1 million jobs since June 2009, the acknowledged end of the national recession, with Texas accounting for 1.5 million of the additions. Significantly, he said, the rest of the country as a whole lost jobs from June 2009 until February 2010. Since then, he said, the U.S. has added more than 10 million jobs with Texas (again) accounting for more than 1 million of them. Professor Perry said that in his view, the best comparison of Texas to the rest of the nation starts in December 2007. His point: "Texas never experienced significant job losses during the Great Recession, while the rest of the country did," he emailed. "Therefore, comparing job gains since June 2009 or Feb. 2010 really won’t make much sense. Of course the non-Texas US gained a lot of jobs since June 2009, and more than Texas, but that’s because Texas never lost any (very many) jobs in 2008 and 2009 like the rest of the country. Texas is a great economic success story, and an anomaly vs. the rest of the country regarding job losses/gains," he wrote. Separately, we asked a Dallas-based analyst about the governor’s claim. Cheryl Abbot of the BLS said by email the claim could have been precise by referring to "total civilian employment" rather than jobs. That said, as of November 2014, Abbot said, 24 other states had yet to reach pre-recession employment levels. "On a statewide basis, Texas by far leads all states, with total civilian employment growth of 1,410,440. California is a distant second with civilian (household) employment growth of 452,763," Abbot wrote. Our ruling Gov. Perry said that starting in December 2007, "1.4 million jobs were created in Texas. In that same period, the rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs." His figures mostly hold up according to household surveys by the federal government looking into civilian employment including self-employment, though positions not yet recovered outside Texas totaled closer to 350,000, according to the latest available data when Perry spoke. We rate this statement 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 | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2015-01-22T10:50:51 | 2015-01-15 | ['Texas'] |
pomt-07858 | When the Milwaukee County mental health facility is full, "cops sit out there in their squad cars with a mentally ill patient" and sometimes "spend an entire shift out there doing that." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/10/jim-sullivan/milwaukee-county-executive-candidate-jim-sullivan-/ | During a two-month period in 2004, more than 60 people with mental health emergencies waited for up to 60 hours to get treatment at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. Some had to be kept under police guard until they could receive care. In early 2008, police agencies continued to rack up thousands of dollars in overtime as officers waited in their squad cars or in hospital emergency rooms with patients who needed psychiatric crisis services. According to Jim Sullivan, one of the five candidates running in the Feb. 15, 2011, primary election for Milwaukee County executive, the problem persists. In a Jan. 31, 2011 meeting with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors and reporters, Sullivan responded to a question about the Mental Health Complex by saying: "When they’re full up over there, our local police officers -- if you’ve got somebody who needs to be over at mental health because they’re mentally ill, they may pose a danger to themselves, any of these different things -- if it’s full, cops sit out there in their squad cars with a mentally ill patient in the back and they have to wait to unload and people will, in some cases, spend an entire shift out there doing that." If Sullivan is right, police officers are regularly experiencing hours-long delays at the Mental Health Complex when transporting someone who needs crisis services. Is he right? We asked Sullivan, a former Democratic state senator from Wauwatosa, the basis for his statement. He did not have any direct evidence, but said he heard the Wauwatosa and West Allis police departments experienced such waits. Thousands of people each year receive crisis care at the complex, 9455 W. Watertown Plank Road. Some are admitted to the 96-bed facility but most are treated and released. As Sullivan indicated, crisis patients are brought to the facility, often by police, because they are deemed a danger to themselves or others. The Journal Sentinel’s Patients in Peril investigation has uncovered numerous problems at the complex, from bungled care of patients and staff members falsifying documents to skyrocketing overtime costs. But delays faced by police officers transporting crisis patients have not been in the news recently. What’s more, Sullivan’s claim about delays is contradicted by an October 2010 study by a national consulting firm, which found that changes made by the county "have been very effective in reducing backups." The finding was reiterated by the Milwaukee-based Public Policy Forum research organization in a January 2011 report, which summarized issues for candidates in the county executive race. That report relied, in part, on a November 2010 county memo that showed a dramatic reduction in police waits beginning in 2008. To further check Sullivan’s statement, we contacted the two police departments he cited as well as the Milwaukee Police Department and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. Here is what they told us: Wauwatosa police: Long delays ended five or more years ago and current wait times are usually less than 30 minutes, said Capt. Jeff Sutter. "It would be extremely unusual for us to have what I consider a long wait," he said. West Allis police: Long waits ended three years ago, according to Chief Mike Jungbluth, who said his officers transport patients to the Mental Health Complex "every day." Milwaukee police: "We aren’t experiencing the issue anymore," said spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz. Milwaukee County sheriff: Deputies usually wait about 20 minutes, said Capt. Darlene Jonas. If several officers are trying to get patients treated, the wait time could be one to two hours, she said. So what’s the bottom line? Sullivan said delays in admitting people to the Mental Health Complex for crisis care can be so long that police officers spend up to an entire shift with patients waiting for them to receive treatment. Hours-long delays were a problem some years ago. But the four largest police agencies in the county now say waits are short. Perhaps there are isolated cases today in which officers waits for hours, but at minimum Sullivan’s claim is clearly dated. We rate it False. | null | Jim Sullivan | null | null | null | 2011-02-10T09:00:00 | 2011-01-31 | ['Milwaukee_County,_Wisconsin'] |
snes-00720 | Did Jane Goodall Compare Donald Trump’s Actions to Primate Dominance Behavior? | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jane-goodall-trump-primate-behavior/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did Jane Goodall Compare Donald Trump’s Actions to Primate Dominance Behavior? | 25 April 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02140 | Costco Coupon Offers $41 Off Purchase of $50 or More | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/costco-coupon-41-off-50-purchase/ | null | internet | null | null | ['business', 'coupons', 'facebook', 'scams'] | Costco Coupon Offers $41 Off $50 Purchase to Celebrate Anniversary | Oct 19, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03490 | “The Eye of God” Picture From Space by the Hubble Telescope | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/eyeofgod/ | null | space-aviation | null | null | null | “The Eye of God” Picture From Space by the Hubble Telescope | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04773 | A Texas man found a dead rat in a partially consumed bottle of Dr Pepper. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rat-found-in-dr-pepper-bottle/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Rat Found in Dr Pepper Bottle | 11 May 2016 | null | ['Texas', 'Dr_Pepper'] |
pomt-06667 | The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is considering implementing mandatory physical fitness testing for security staff. | pants on fire! | /wisconsin/statements/2011/sep/10/chain-email/email-claims-physical-fitness-tests-will-be-requir/ | A fake story purporting to be from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website got thousands of workers at the state’s Department of Corrections buzzing. And then re-buzzing. Some 10,000 employees of the state agency that oversees prisons received an email on Sept. 6, 2011, that included a "story" with the byline of Jason Stein, a reporter in the newspaper’s Madison Bureau. It looked like a JSOnline story, down to the same font and similar layout. The headline: "Dept. of Corrections considering yearly physical fitness testing." The item went on to say the department was considering new testing for "security staff" beyond what’s administered when they are hired. It even included a fake quotes from the department’s actual spokeswoman, Linda Eggert. All of this would no doubt come as a surprise for state employees. Many are already anxious about their jobs in the wake of a new state law pushed by Gov. Scott Walker greatly limiting collective bargaining for most public workers. And there are fitness tests at the time someone is hired. An applicant must clear a number of hurdles -- including a fitness test that consists of push-ups, sit-ups and a run. The standards vary depending on the age and gender of the applicant. So, an authentic-looking story could well get them wondering: Are regular push-up tests coming for prison guards already on the job? There’s only one problem. The story wasn’t published by JSOnline.com and the Corrections Department says the claims in it aren’t true. It’s another email hoax. Because so many people receive chain emails, PolitiFact checks them out. PolitiFact’s national site has evaluated 100 chain emails. Of the claims, 28 were rated False and 51 were rated Pants on Fire. Some of them are items such as one claiming the federal government is going to make you get rid of your light bulbs next year (Pants on Fire). Or that members of Congress and their families are exempt from repaying student loans (likewise). At PolitiFact Wisconsin, we looked at a chain email that -- also using a fake JSOnline story -- said Walker had hired convicted Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen to oversee a raid on the state employee retirement system to help balance the state budget. That email wound up, briefly, on a teachers union website in Little Chute before the hoax was revealed. We rated it Pants on Fire. Anyone sensing a trend? As for the new email, the agency first heard about it the morning of Sept. 6, 2011, when an employee from the Prairie du Chien prison contacted administrators in Madison, said Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Le Monds. That afternoon, the agency sent an email to all employees trying to set the record straight. "Enclosed is a ‘report’ that some of you may have received or seen. I want you to know that this report is false and has no merit or truth to it whatsoever," wrote corrections secretary Gary Hamblin. "No one from the Secretary’s Office had a discussion about this topic with any reporter nor is the issue of physical fitness testing being considered." Hamblin tried to close the door on this issue. But the fake story was pasted into his email which suggested it had actually been published. On Sept. 7, 2011, the secretary’s office tried again. "To further clarify, neither the Journal Sentinel nor any of its reporter/s was involved in any way in the creation of the ‘report’ enclosed in the message," wrote Eggert. The department does not know where the fake email originated and there are no plans to track down the source of the email. "It’s a waste of time," Le Monds said. Our conclusion A fake JSOnline.com was emailed around the Department of Corrections saying that prison guards could face fitness testing. The story was never published. And the department says there are no plans for such tests. Pants on Fire. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2011-09-10T09:00:00 | 2011-09-06 | ['None'] |
tron-00825 | Merv Griffin’s tombstone | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/merv/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Merv Griffin’s tombstone | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05247 | A photograph shows a pilot taking a selfie over a football stadium. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jet-flyover-selfie/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Pilot Takes Selfie During Stadium Flyover? | 9 February 2016 | null | ['None'] |
chct-00327 | FACT CHECK: Is Trump Sending 'Mixed Messages' On Amnesty? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/09/14/fact-check-is-trump-sending-mixed-messages-on-amnesty/ | null | null | null | David Sivak | Fact Check Editor | null | null | 11:12 AM 09/14/2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00351 | Chris Pratt, Anna Faris Back Together, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/chris-pratt-anna-faris-not-back-together/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Chris Pratt, Anna Faris NOT Back Together, Despite Speculation | 5:06 pm, August 30, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03068 | Hillary Clinton Freed a Rapist, Laughed About It | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/hillary-clinton-freed-rapist-laughed/ | null | politics | null | null | ['criminal justice', 'hillary clinton', 'the clintons'] | Hillary Clinton Freed a Rapist, Laughed About It | May 2, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03814 | In 2008, "only 54 percent of Latinos in Texas were registered to vote and only 35 percent actually turned out." | mostly true | /texas/statements/2013/mar/22/battleground-texas/battleground-texas-says-54-percent-texas-latinos-r/ | A pro-Democratic group says demographic changes and stepped-up voter turnout in Texas will lead to Democrats winning statewide sooner than later. On Comedy Central’s Feb. 26, 2013, "Colbert Report," Jeremy Bird, senior adviser to the newly announced Battleground Texas group, was asked if his mention of demographics was a liberal euphemism for more Hispanic and black residents. Bird replied: "If you look at the state, it’s not just about the demographics, it’s about the turnout. So in 2008, for example, only 54 percent of Latinos in Texas were registered to vote and only 35 percent actually turned out. So what you’re getting is, when only about 50 percent of the population turns out to vote in a place like Texas, you’re getting a government in Texas that’s for half the people and by half the people." We’re not wading in on that logic, nor are we getting into potential strengths or weaknesses of stirring citizens to vote who have historically not voted. We wondered instead if 54 percent of Latino Texans registered to vote in 2008, as Bird said, and 35 percent turned out, especially considering that no one marks down their race or ethnicity when they register to vote. Depending on estimates Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Los Angeles-based William C. Velasquez Institute, which says it conducts research aimed at improving the level of political and economic participation in Latino and other underrepresented communities, told us by telephone that there is no perfect way to pinpoint the makeup of any electorate. But for decades in even-numbered years, he said, the U.S. Census Bureau has followed up general elections by surveying residents about voting habits. He said he respects the surveys’ results, though they include some inflated responses. "It’s the government asking if you’ve voted or registered to vote," Gonzalez said. "So there’s an (unquantified) exaggeration factor." Alternatively, Gonzalez said, campaigns target Latinos after identifying them by surnames on state voter rolls. There are quirks here too: Voters who go by non-Latino last names tend to be missed and others who marry into Latino families might be miscounted. Also, he said, firms taking this approach depend on surname dictionaries that vary in quality. All told, 60 percent of more than 13.5 million Texas voters turned out for the 2008 presidential election, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. Latinos made up 20 percent of the state’s November vote, according to voter exit polls, with 63 percent favoring Democrat Barack Obama for president and 35 percent backing Republican John McCain, who otherwise carried the state like every GOP presidential nominee since 1980. How Battleground Texas calculated When we asked Battleground Texas for backup on Bird’s figures, we heard from several individuals employed by or contracting with 270 to Win, a political consulting firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Lynda Tran, a partner at the firm, pointed out the Census Bureau survey taken after the 2008 general election. According to that survey, 54.3 percent of Latino Texas citizens 18 and older--an estimated 2.4 million of its estimated nearly 4.5 million Hispanic citizens in the state--said they registered to vote, with a margin of error of three percentage points. Nearly 1.7 million, or about 70 percent, of the Latino registered voters also said they voted, according to the survey, accounting for 37.8 percent of the state’s adult Hispanic citizens as estimated by the survey. This result had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, making Bird’s declared 35 percent in range. Andrew Claster, a number-cruncher for the cause, said later by email that Bird drew his reference to 54 percent of Latino citizens registering to vote from the bureau’s post-election survey estimates. But he said the conclusion that 35 percent of Latino citizens voted was developed by estimating the number of Latino voters, 1,340,097, a figure reached by applying a "commercial ethnicity model" to the state’s 2008 voter file to determine ethnicity based on name and census information. Claster said the voter estimate was then divided by a 2008 bureau estimate of the number of Latino Texas citizens, 3,812,343, which did not come from the post-election survey. That estimate of voting-age Latino citizens runs some 700,000 less than the estimate of nearly 4.5 million reached via the bureau’s post-election survey. We asked why the group used one census study for one statistic and relied on another for the second. Claster replied that whichever estimate one chooses for the number of adult Latino Texas citizens, it appears that some 30 percent to 38 percent of those citizens voted, either way reinforcing Bird’s point. Other looks at Latino registration, turnout Three other analyses, developed in Texas, enabled us to reach our own statistical speculations. Compared to the post-election census survey, the other estimates suggest more Latinos registered to vote, but fewer turned out in November. Each of the calculations was based on identifying Spanish-surnamed voters on the state's 2008 voter roll. Republican pollster Mike Baselice of Austin and the Texas Tribune, teaming with the El Paso Times, each estimated that there were some 2.9 million Spanish-surnamed Texas registered voters that year. Democratic pollster Jeff Smith of Austin told us by email that his audit of the voter roll, teasing out Latino voters based both on Spanish surnames and maiden names and also removing voters whose names were at least temporarily struck from the roll before the November election, indicates 2,713,681 Hispanic citizens registered to vote. Baselice and the Tribune/Times concluded that about 1.3 million Texas Latinos voted that year. That’s 400,000 fewer than indicated by the census survey. In contrast, Smith estimated that 1,382,360 Latinos voted. Summing up: The 2008 census survey suggests Texas had some 300,000 to 500,000 fewer Latinos registered to vote than the voter-roll analyses by the Texas outfits. The census survey indicates, too, that there were up to 400,000 more Latinos who voted than estimated by the other analyses. Baselice and Smith each said he did not try to gauge the number of Latino citizens who could have registered to vote nor did the Tribune air an estimate. Time for a little math of our own. We used the Texas analyses to stab at the share of voting-age Latino citizens who registered to vote. We did this by dividing each of the other estimates of Latinos who registered to vote by the census bureau’s survey estimate that there were 4,493,000 voting-age Latino citizens in 2008. By our calculations, 60 percent to 65 percent of voting-age Latinos registered that year, more than the 54 percent suggested by the census survey and echoed by Bird. Next, we divided the Texas-devised estimates of Latinos who voted by the census survey’s estimate of 4,493,000 voting-age Latino Texas citizens, a methodology that suggests 29 percent to 31 percent of voting-age Latlnos turned out in November--a bit under the 35 percent figure aired by Bird. Footnote: Census Bureau spokesman Robert Bernstein told us results from the bureau’s 2012 post-election voting surveys were not finalized. Our ruling The Battleground Texas advocate said that in 2008, "only 54 percent of Latinos in Texas were registered to vote and only 35 percent actually turned out." Research rooted in federal surveys and an analysis starting from the state's 2008 voting roll supports those figures, while our own estimates starting from Texas studies suggest a larger share of voting-age Latino citizens registered and a smaller share of them voted--which, if so, could still be fodder for pushes to improve participation. We rate this claim as Mostly True. | null | Battleground Texas | null | null | null | 2013-03-22T10:00:00 | 2013-02-26 | ['Texas'] |
pomt-05498 | Says opponent Ted Cruz has not led businesses. | true | /texas/statements/2012/apr/16/tom-leppert/tom-leppert-says-ted-cruz-has-not-led-businesses/ | Businessman and former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert says fellow candidate Ted Cruz, a Houston lawyer, has a meaningful gap in his background. During the April 13, 2012, Republican U.S. Senate debate at WFAA-TV in Dallas, Cruz asked Leppert to comment on another candidate’s position on wage taxes. Leppert didn’t go there, instead replying: "The reality of it is that you have been a terrific staffer in the attorney general’s office. But the reality of it is you haven’t led businesses. So when you start talking about these issues, on how they impact business, to you it’s really an academic exercise. To me, it’s a career." Has Cruz never led a business? In a telephone interview, Leppert spokesman Daniel Keylin told us that Leppert based his claim on Cruz’s biography as presented on Cruz’s campaign website. Cruz says in the site’s biographical section that he is now a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in Houston, where he "leads the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice." From 2003 to 2008, the section says, Cruz was the state’s solicitor general, leading state government’s legal appeals before state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. (Cruz was appointed to the post by Attorney General Greg Abbott, the state’s chief lawyer.) From 2004 to 2009, the entry says, Cruz also taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. And before that, the entry indicates, he held back-to-back federal posts and helped George W. Bush run for president. "Prior to serving as solicitor general, Ted served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission," Cruz’s entry says. He earlier was "an associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice," according to the entry, after serving as "domestic policy advisor on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. "In addition, Ted clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court," the entry says. We asked Cruz’s campaign if Leppert’s claim about his not leading any businesses holds up. Spokesman James Bernsen pointed to Cruz’s campaign biography. We rate Leppert’s claim as True. | null | Tom Leppert | null | null | null | 2012-04-16T14:09:19 | 2012-04-13 | ['Ted_Cruz'] |
snes-00079 | Photographs document CNN's Anderson Cooper faking the depths of Hurricane Florence floodwaters. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anderson-cooper-hurricane/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is This Anderson Cooper Standing in a Ditch While Reporting Hurricane Florence? | 16 September 2018 | null | ['Anderson_Cooper', 'CNN'] |
snes-04838 | Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a law banning boys from wearing "gay" colors. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gay-color-ban-indiana-fake/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Indiana Governor Bans Boys from Wearing Clothes with ‘Gay’ Colors | 29 April 2016 | null | ['Mike_Pence', 'Indiana'] |
pomt-03976 | On his definition of "takers" and "makers" | full flop | /wisconsin/statements/2013/feb/13/paul-ryan/has-ryan-remained-consistent-talking-about-what-h-/ | In the 2012 presidential campaign and for years before that, Paul Ryan warned that a culture of European-style dependency on government programs had created as many "takers" as "makers" in American society -- or even a majority of "takers." So when President Barack Obama in his second inaugural address proclaimed that Social Security and Medicare strengthen America rather than make it a "nation of takers," many saw it as a swipe at Ryan. Ryan blasted Obama’s words as misleading. Republicans, he said, had not meant to include elderly recipients of Social Security and Medicare as "takers." Those folks, Ryan said, helped earn their retirement benefits through payroll taxes deducted from their paychecks specifically for those programs. Ryan critics in the media labeled it a reversal and an attempt to soften the GOP rhetoric on fiscal issues. But Ryan insisted the position didn’t change, though Obama’s words created another impression. Has Ryan’s position remained the same? Or has the 2012 Republican vice-presidential candidate altered it as the GOP repositions itself following a painful defeat in the presidential race? With Ryan a possible presidential candidate in 2016, we thought we’d roll out the Flip-O-Meter. Our standard note: The Flip-O-Meter does not measure whether a change is good politics or good policy, only whether a politician has been consistent. So, what about those "takers" and "makers"? We’re not sure who introduced the terms into the political debate, but Ryan helped popularize them, notably after a 2009 report by the business-backed Tax Foundation on the redistribution of federal tax dollars and spending. That report categorized Americans by whether they had received more in federal benefits than they had paid in various federal taxes, though it used the gentler terminology of "givers" and "receivers." The study, cited frequently by Ryan, calculated that 60 percent of families were net receivers and projected the figure would rise to 70 percent under Obama’s policies. It is important to note that Medicare and Social Security benefits were included in the Tax Foundation calculation. The report, and subsequent ones that borrow from it, make clear that "all federal spending" is covered. The studies also make clear that taxes people pay toward those programs were included on the other side of the ledger. Enter Ryan, who picked up the 2009 report’s conclusion in support of his argument that America was at or near a "moral tipping point" and already at a fiscal crossroads. His warnings were sometimes dire, and based explicitly on the Tax Foundation report. In a 2010 interview on a cable show hosted by U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-North Carolina), Ryan promoted his debt-reduction plan, including gradually reducing Social Security benefits for younger Americans and replacing Medicare’s guaranteed health benefits with vouchers to help buy private coverage. Those big entitlement programs "are exploding our debt" in a way that threatens the U.S. economy, Ryan said. He told Jones: "Right now, about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes. So we’re going to a majority of takers vs. makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that." Ryan repeated the point with conservative political activist Star Parker in September 2011. "Right now according to the Tax Foundation, between 60 and 70 percent of Americans get more benefits from the federal government than they pay back in taxes," he said. "So we’re getting toward a society where we have a net majority of takers vs. makers, who, if that trend continues, then we’ll have a European situation on our hands. Campaigning in August 2012, just days before officially joining the presidential ticket with Mitt Romney, Ryan told a MacIver Institute interviewer: "We risk hitting a tipping point in our society where we have more takers than makers in society, where we will have turned our safety net into a hammock that lulls able bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency which drains them of their will and incentive to make the most of their lives." Obama, Ryan said, wrongly portrays Republicans as favoring a "dog eat dog" society. They actually want a safety net that provides "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome," he said. Ryan avoided the "takers" and "makers" line -- and references to the Tax Foundation study -- after his August 2012 selection as the veep nominee. It was a hot topic, though, after a video surfaced of Romney’s remarks that 47 percent of Americans are content to be dependent on government, and they support Obama. In a campaign interview with the Journal Sentinel, Ryan blamed Obama and the bad economy for increasing dependency, and said people were not dependent by choice. Also during the 2012 campaign, Ryan pulled back from his 2005 description of Social Security as a socialist-based "welfare transfer" and "collectivist system" that was too costly and should be converted to a system of individual accounts that workers could invest as they wished. Let’s look now at Ryan’s post-election comments. Two days after Obama’s inaugural jab at those who call Social Security and Medicare recipients "takers," Ryan told a conservative talk show host that Obama had used a "twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man in order to win an argument by default." "No one is suggesting what we call our earned entitlements -- entitlements you pay for, like payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security -- are putting you in a taker category," Ryan said on the Laura Ingraham radio show. "No one suggests that whatsoever." Ryan said his primary concern was welfare programs of the sort Washington reformed in the 1990s. That change was under President Bill Clinton, eliminating the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in favor assistance tied to work. Ryan’s comments on the show were the first instance we could find of him separating Medicare and Social Security from what he calls the "takers." We asked Ryan’s office if there any instances before the election in which he made the distinction between the retirement programs and "takers." The office did not provide any. Instead, they pointed us to comments he made after the inaugural to Journal Sentinel reporters and editors, in which Ryan noted that Social Security helped him go to college after his father died. Ryan also said he didn’t think of his mother, who is on Medicare, as a taker. In those interviews, Ryan argued that he had only used the Tax Foundation figure of 60 to 70 percent as a device to highlight his larger point that it’s not too late yet to reverse course because not all takers see themselves that way. That’s accurate to a point. In some instances he made the larger point by citing surveys showing only 30 percent of Americans favor a welfare state. But in several interviews his point was simply the need to cut the budget to prevent the 60 percent "takers" figure from growing. But here we’re looking at how Ryan defined "takers" before the election and whether it changed after the election. We found no record of Ryan prior to the election spelling out, program by program, which federal benefits would cause him to view a recipient as a "taker." Rather, he took an all-in approach. Ryan labeled all recipients of federal benefits that way, elevating numbers buried in a think-tank report to the statistical centerpiece of his budget-cutting message over a period of years. Indeed, his warnings about dependency were made all the more dramatic because the numbers he cited were so large -- in part because they included the entitlement programs. Had Ryan taken out the big entitlement programs the number would have been lower, said Gerald Prante, the former Tax Foundation economist who devised the methodology used in the paper. In our view, by distancing himself from his prior, broad denunciation of "takers" in connection with all federal benefits, Ryan’s post-election approach has changed dramatically. That’s true both on the key point of how retirement benefits should be viewed, and in the style of his presentation. A major reversal earns him a Full Flop. | null | Paul Ryan | null | null | null | 2013-02-13T09:00:00 | 2013-01-22 | ['None'] |
tron-01761 | Controversial survey of U.S. troops | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/militarysurvey/ | null | government | null | null | null | Controversial survey of U.S. troops | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
goop-00870 | Anna Wintour “Banned” Ariana Grande From Wearing Ponytail On Vogue Cover? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/anna-wintour-ariana-grande-banned-ponytail-vogue-cover-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Anna Wintour “Banned” Ariana Grande From Wearing Ponytail On Vogue Cover? | 2:17 pm, June 6, 2018 | null | ['Anna_Wintour'] |
snes-03918 | Former FBI director James Comey benefited financially from the Clinton Foundation and was therefore biased when he investigated Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/comey-clinton-foundation/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Did James Comey Take Millions from the Clinton Foundation? | 29 September 2016 | null | ['Clinton_Foundation', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton', 'Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation'] |
pomt-04942 | Says Donna Campbell is pushing a 35 percent sales tax extending to medicine, groceries and real estate. | pants on fire! | /texas/statements/2012/jul/27/jeff-wentworth/jeff-wentworth-says-donna-campbell-pushing-35-perc/ | State Sen. Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio says his opponent in a July 31, 2012, Republican primary runoff has a hankering to hike taxes. A Wentworth campaign mailer tells residents of the Austin-to-San Antonio Senate district: "Don’t be tricked: Donna Campbell," his New Braunfels runoff opponent, "is pushing a 35% national-state-local sales tax on medicine, healthcare, groceries, water and real estate!" Another Wentworth mailer presents her as saying: "Texas needs a 35% sales tax on groceries, medicine, healthcare, water and ALL purchases." And a July 18, 2012, news article in the San Marcos Daily Record quotes Wentworth as saying: "My opponent's call for a 35 percent sales tax in Texas on medicine, groceries, water, real estate and all purchases is absurd." A refresher: The existing state sales tax of 6.25 percent applies to retail sales, leases and rentals of most goods plus 17 categories of taxable services including Internet access and security services. Also, Texas cities, counties, transit authorities and special-purpose districts have the option of imposing an additional local sales tax for a combined total of state and local taxes of 8.25 percent. Many items -- including water, groceries and medicine -- are exempted from the sales tax. So, Wentworth is saying that Campbell both wants to more than quintuple the state sales tax rate and start applying the tax to some essential items. One hitch for us in starting this fact-check was the absence of any public sign that Campbell has been campaigning for a 35 percent state-federal-local sales tax. Any such proposal goes unmentioned on her campaign website, where she says she will work to decrease taxation. Asked how Wentworth unearthed his opponent’s double-digit tax-hike push, Wentworth’s consultant, Bryan Eppstein, pointed out that while Campbell was running for the U.S. House in 2010, Austin’s KVUE-TV quoted her as advocating the replacement of federal income taxes with a 23 percent federal sales tax on consumer goods and services, a position then pointed out by her Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett. An online version of the Oct. 29, 2010, KVUE news story quotes Campbell as saying: "Income tax, payroll tax, you wouldn’t pay any of that" under the approach. "If it’s a retail tax, and you buy something new you’d pay 23 percent," she said. Eppstein further pointed out that an official with the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, Talmadge Heflin, testified afresh in May 2012 in favor of the state wiping out property taxes and making up the lost revenue with changes in the sales tax. He said that based on Heflin’s testimony, Wentworth concluded that Campbell favors a state sales tax rate of 12 percent. Heflin, a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, hearkened in his testimony to an April 2009 foundation report stating that revenue generated by property taxes could be replaced by money raised from the sales tax by setting the rate at 12.5 percent if the existing tax is extended to property sales or, he said, 9 percent if the tax is extended to property sales as well as all services that are taxed in at least one other state. The report says that if the sales tax is not expanded to additional items or services, its rate would need to be around 14.5 percent to raise revenues lost by eliminating property taxes statewide. Eppstein also noted that Campbell has the endorsement of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, a group that asked candidates seeking its support to fill out its 2012 candidate questionnaire, including questions about phasing out property taxes in return for raising sales taxes. One question on the survey refers to "end-user consumption taxes," meaning sales taxes. The questions says: "Would you support moving Texas away from property taxes in favor of the existing sales and use tax?" Candidates are asked to support or oppose. The question is followed by this text: "Note: Tax swaps, phase-outs or trade-offs are not considered tax increases unless the total tax burden is increased." Next on the questionnaire: "Statement: Texas should phase out property taxes in favor of end-user consumption taxes." Candidates are asked to agree or disagree. By email, Campbell spokesman Jon Oliver said that Campbell replied on the questionnaire that she supports moving Texas away from property taxes to the existing sales tax and also agreed that Texas should phase out property taxes in favor of end-user consumption taxes. But, Oliver said, in order to have Campbell’s support, a proposal to replace property taxes with sales taxes would have to lower the overall tax burden for Texas families and businesses; be limited to taxing items currently covered by the sales tax; be phased in gradually; and win voter approval at the polls. Earlier, Oliver said by email: "She is intrigued by the overall idea of a consumption tax instead of a property tax if it would truly lower the tax burden, but it's not part of her platform and she certainly wouldn't support a state sales tax in the form Sen.Wentworth has claimed she would -- that is, taxing items that are currently exempt." Oliver noted, too, that Campbell has signed three pledges disavowing higher taxes: the Americans for Prosperity Taxpayer Pledge in favor of requiring voter or legislative supermajority approval for tax and spending increases; Gov. Rick Perry’s "budget compact" pledge to oppose any new taxes or tax increase; and one to taxpayers, advocated by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, stating she "will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes." We circled back to Eppstein, asking for evidence of Campbell talking up a 35-percent sales tax. By telephone, Eppstein said he has heard Campbell indicate as much, but did not record it. Our ruling Wentworth says Campbell is pushing a 35 percent sales tax extending to medicine, groceries and real estate. She’s not, though we can see the threads behind this misleading claim. While running for Congress in 2010, Campbell spoke out in favor of a possible 23 percent federal sales tax in return for wiping out federal income taxes. In the same spirit, she now supports replacing property tax revenue collected across Texas with income from the state sales tax. By itself, that move could drive the state sales tax rate to 14 percent or so. Then again, the conditions her campaign lays out could be taken as signals she’s not ready to embrace any sudden surge or broadening of the tax. Campbell’s two stances, taken years apart in campaigns for different offices, reflect on sales taxes at different levels of government.This claim distorts both positions by effectively combining the possible tax rates. All told, too, it’s ridiculous to assert that Campbell, who has signed no-new-tax pledges, is pushing or calling for an expanded sales tax set at 35 percent. Pants on Fire! | null | Jeff Wentworth | null | null | null | 2012-07-27T11:30:21 | 2012-07-19 | ['None'] |
vogo-00371 | Statement: “The stadium’s the oldest one in the country and it’s the second oldest while I was there,” former San Diego Mayor Susan Golding said about Qualcomm Stadium on NBC7 San Diego June 23. | determination: false | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-chargers-stadium-oldest-in-nfl/ | Analysis: As part of a series of interviews with government officials, NBC asked Golding to reflect on the lasting impacts of her administration, whose decisions in the 1990s contributed to the city’s current financial woes. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Chargers' Stadium Oldest in NFL? | June 29, 2011 | null | ['San_Diego'] |
pomt-14522 | Says Dontre Hamilton, who was killed during a confrontation with a Milwaukee police officer, was "unarmed." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/18/hillary-clinton/black-man-was-unarmed-when-shot-dead-white-milwauk/ | The disproportionate incarceration of black males was posed by a Facebook user during the Feb. 11, 2016 Democratic presidential debate, which was hosted by PBS in Milwaukee. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders responded to the question first. When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed, she made a claim about the 2014 death of a black man at the hands of a white Milwaukee police officer that we want to check. Clinton, after alluding to a statistic cited by the questioner, said: "And we know of the tragic, terrible event that led to the death of Dontre Hamilton right here in Milwaukee. A young man, unarmed, who should still be with us. His family certainly believes that. And so do I." The key word in Clinton’s claim, of course, is unarmed. We found this to be one of the more difficult claims we have rated. Moments before he was shot to death by the officer, Hamilton had taken the officer’s baton and struck the officer with it. But Hamilton, who was mentally ill, had no weapon when he was rousted by the officer shortly after two other officers had allowed Hamilton to continue sleeping in a park. In that sense, Hamilton was armed only after he had been struck. Sequence of events Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Hamilton, 31, was described as having long suffered from mental illness, including making a suicide attempt the year before his death. He had a history of encounters with Milwaukee police, but no convictions for any violent crimes. Hamilton was shot to death April 30, 2014 after police were called to Red Arrow Park in downtown Milwaukee. Here’s an overview of the incident, based on a report by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. Chisholm’s report was based on an investigation done by a division of the Madison-based Wisconsin Department of Justice and a review by Emanuel Kapelsohn of the Peregrine Corp. in Pennsylvania, whom Chisholm cited as a leading national expert in use-of-force reviews. First police contacts: Shortly before 2 p.m., an employee of the Starbucks located at Red Arrow Park called police about Hamilton, who was sleeping in the park. The call was classified as a "welfare check" -- in other words, to check if Hamilton was OK. A desk sergeant called downtown officer Christopher Manney’s cell phone and left a voicemail message, saying he wanted Manney to go to the park about "a homeless guy sleeping" there. Manney, a 38-year-old, 13-year veteran of the department, was working another call downtown. Because he didn’t immediately respond to the voicemail, the Starbucks call was referred to a dispatcher, who then dispatched two other officers to the park. They found Hamilton lying on his back with his eyes closed. They nudged Hamilton, he got up and provided identification; he said he was taking a nap and was all right. The officers left, since Hamilton was not disturbing anyone, according to the report. About 2:10 p.m., another call to police about Hamilton came from Starbucks. The two officers went to Starbucks and told the employees Hamilton was not doing anything wrong. The officers left shortly before 3 p.m. So, at this point, police had no concerns that Hamilton was armed or dangerous. Manney responds: Just before 3:30 p.m., Manney listened to the voicemail. He called dispatch and asked if there was an assignment for Red Arrow Park. Told there was not, Manney asked, according to the report, "that he be recorded as responding to a trouble with subject" call, and he went to the park. He apparently was not aware the other officers had preceded him. Manney approached Hamilton, who was lying down, helped him up and then began to pat him down. Hamilton resisted. Witnesses told police that Manney, who was yelling commands at Hamilton, struck Hamilton one or more times with his baton before Hamilton took the baton and struck Manney with it one or more times, according to the report. The witnesses said Hamilton was holding the baton -- one said menacingly -- when Manney fired his service weapon. It was determined that Manney fired the gun 14 times, resulting in 15 gunshot wounds to Hamilton. So, Hamilton had no weapon when Manney approached him. He was armed, with Manney’s baton, only after Manney struck him with the baton. It’s worth noting that Flynn said, when he later fired Manney, that "officer-created jeopardy is a term that has real meaning in the training circles of police departments around the country." He said officers, in their use-of-force training, "are taught not to create circumstances that place them at a situation where they have no choice." (Chisholm opted not to file criminal charges against Manney, saying Manney's use of force was justified self-defense.) Our rating Clinton said Hamilton, who was killed during a confrontation with Milwaukee police officer Christopher Manney, was "unarmed." Hamilton had no weapon when he was confronted by Manney. After Manney rousted Hamilton and began patting him down, a struggle ensued and Manney used his baton to strike Hamilton. Only then did Hamilton take the baton and strike Manney. That’s when Manney shot and killed Hamilton. Clinton’s statement is accurate, but needs clarification. That’s our definition of Mostly True. More on police use of force Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said that in 2012, there were nearly 12.2 million arrests and only 410 "uses of deadly force" by police in the United States. Our rating was Mostly True. Flynn correctly quoted FBI statistics on arrests and justifiable homicides by law enforcement officers, although the 410 appeared to be an undercount of the number of people killed. PolitiFact National rated Half True a claim by National Urban League president Marc Morial, who said: "The number of killings of citizens by police is at a two-decade high." The former New Orleans mayor also cited FBI figures. But only a fraction of law enforcement agencies provide such data to the FBI, and the agencies that file the reports change from year to year, complicating comparisons. Conservative Michael Medved, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, said: "More whites than blacks are victims of deadly police shootings." That earned a Half True from our partners at PunditFact. In absolute terms, the claim was accurate. But when comparing death rates, blacks are about three times more likely than whites to die in a confrontation with police. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2016-02-18T05:00:00 | 2016-02-11 | ['Milwaukee'] |
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.