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pomt-10462 | As a state senator, he (Obama) even refused to support a measure to stop sex businesses from opening near schools or places of worship! | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/23/focus-family-action/he-wanted-local-officials-to-decide/ | A letter from the conservative group Focus on the Family Action makes a multifaceted attack on Sen. Barack Obama in an attempt to portray him as someone who would be "the most left-wing president in our nation's history." The article, written for the organization's Web site and widely circulated via chain e-mail, tries to paint Obama as bad for families, accusing him of everything from trying to further "the homosexual agenda" to being soft on the war against terrorists. Focus on the Family Action is the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family, an organization founded by evangelical Christian Dr. James Dobson. One of the claims in the article, written by Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Focus on the Family Action, is that, "As a state senator, he (Obama) even refused to support a measure to stop sex businesses from opening near schools or places of worship!" It's true. But before you go fitting Obama with Hugh Hefner-esque silk pajamas, some explanation is in order. The bill that came before the Illinois state Senate on March 29, 2001, sought to prohibit adult businesses from being located within 1,000 feet of public or private elementary or secondary schools, public parks, places of worship, preschools, day care facilities, mobile home parks or any areas zoned residential. Obama argued that kind of regulation is better handled by local officials through zoning. He noted that the City of Chicago opposed the bill as a pre-emption of its home rule. Addressing the assembly, Obama stated: "This is one of those areas where nobody likes, necessarily, to have — well, I don't say nobody, but most of us would prefer not to have an adult bookstore or movie theater or something next to our residence. But that's exactly why we have local zoning ordinances. And that's why, presumably, we have council members or heads of townships or all the various branches of local government who are much closer to the ground than we are in making these determinations. And it seems to me that if there's ever been a function that has historically been relegated to local control and it is appropriately there, it's these kinds of zoning matters. I would urge a No vote." But Obama didn't actually vote "no." He and four others voted "present." In the Illinois state Senate, lawmakers sometimes vote "present" instead of "no" to block bills without officially opposing them. (Earlier in the campaign, Sen. Hillary Clinton questioned whether Obama used present votes 129 times over eight years as an Illinois state senator to duck tough votes. PolitiFact examined Obama's present votes here. ) The political considerations here are obvious. Had he voted no, the attack would now be that "Obama opposed..." instead of the weaker "Obama refused to support..." The small distinction didn't appear to have saved Obama much grief. The vote came down 33 in favor; 15 against, with 5 voting "present." Because the bill needed 36 votes in favor — a three-fifths majority — it narrowly failed. Any implication that Obama's vote means that he supports sex businesses opening near schools or places of worship would be false. But in Minnery's article, which has been widely circulated through chain e-mail, he states that Obama "refused to support" a bill that would have prohibited sex shops near schools and places of worship. That's True. | null | Focus on the Family Action | null | null | null | 2008-04-23T00:00:00 | 2008-03-26 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-11428 | Research shows that 1 percent of licensed dealers supply a whopping 57 percent of the guns that are recovered in crimes. | half-true | /florida/statements/2018/mar/16/cory-booker/are-1-percent-gun-retailers-responsible-more-half-/ | As tens of thousands of students across the country walked out of their schools to protest gun violence, members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee examined school safety procedures and gun policies ahead of the Parkland school shooting. During the hearing, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., repeated a talking point among people who support gun restrictions and expressed the need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. He said most guns used in crime come from only a handful of places. "We see guns pouring into our community, and we have found that a significant number of them are coming from a very small group of retailers that sell to criminals or straw purchasers," Booker said March 14, a month after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He turned to Thomas Brandon, acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: "You’re aware of that, correct?" Brandon said yes, but Booker took the claim a step further: "We know the research shows that 1 percent of licensed dealers supply a whopping 57 percent of the guns that are recovered in crimes." Brandon said Booker’s claim rested on outdated research. "Yes, senator. That’s a study that, I think, is over 20 years old," Brandon said. "I would not agree with that statistic today." Booker continued to press Brandon about the distribution between licensed gun dealers and guns recovered in crimes and then talked about the need for more research on gun violence. Still, the differing assertions made us wonder about Booker’s statistic. As we’ve found in the past, a federal report from 2000 backs this up. But there are several caveats worth pointing out. Booker’s claim stems from 20-year-old data Booker's point matches data from a 2000 report from the federal Bureau of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Department. The report found that 1.2 percent of licensed gun dealers accounted for more than 57 percent of the crime guns traced to current dealers in 1998. The study looked at the number of licensed retail dealers and pawnbrokers nationwide and aimed to track the movement of a firearm recovered by law enforcement officials from its first sale by the manufacturer. An ATF spokesman said the agency no longer uses that study to evaluate current crime trends. Frank Kelsey, chief of the public affairs division at ATF, said tracing a gun used in a crime back to a dealer does not necessarily indicate illegal activity by the dealer or its employees. And he noted that a gun might have changed hands any number of times — legally or illegally — before it was used in a crime. That said, there isn’t any more up-to-date information on the subject — and there’s a reason for that. In 2003, Congress and the George W. Bush administration, with the support of the National Rifle Association, passed the Tiahrt Amendment, which forbids ATF from sharing information about guns it has traced with the public except with state and local police agencies in the course of a criminal investigation. Two of the experts we reached out to (Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, and Jaclyn Schildkraut, assistant professor of Public Justice, State University of New York at Oswego) said that they wouldn’t completely dismiss the findings of the 2000 report, unless there was any evidence that showed otherwise. Still, more information is needed. Glenn L. Pierce, the director of the Institute of Security and Public Policy at Northeastern University, helped compile the ATF’s 2000 analysis. Pierce said the pattern found in 1998, when there were 105,563 federal firearms licensees, is very similar to the pattern identified in the 1995/1996 first report to ATF, at which time there were about 258,000 federal firearms licensees. "At least over those years, the pattern stayed very much the same even (as) the number of (federal firearms licensees) showed a steep decline due to legislation implemented in 1994 during the Clinton administration," he said. Still, he said, it would be necessary for ATF to conduct another study to determine the extent to which this is actually the case today. "The firearms trace patterns found in the 1995 and 2000 reports might well persist today, but it would be necessary for ATF to conduct such a trace data analysis to determine the extent to which this actually the case." Our ruling Booker said, "Research shows that 1 percent of license dealers supply a whopping 57 percent of the guns that are recovered in crimes. Booker made his claim in the present tense, but the data that backs his point is almost 20 years old. We do not have better data to represent the current picture. The 2000 report traced the purchases of guns used in crimes back to the original dealer. But it didn’t take into account whether the firearm changed hands, illegally or legally, before it was used in a crime. That said, Booker is relying on the latest, best data available. Booker’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important information about the study's age. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Correction, 3:45 p.m. March 16: A previous version of this article misstated the purpose of the Tiahrt Amendment. The article has been updated. | null | Cory Booker | null | null | null | 2018-03-16T09:32:05 | 2018-03-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-09112 | The addition of a 1 percent sales tax would cost a typical household in Hillsborough County approximately $12 a month. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2010/jun/18/hillsborough-area-rapid-transit-hart/brochure-estimates-financial-impact-hillsborough-t/ | After decades of fits and starts, Hillsborough County commissioners agreed to ask voters to consider a 1 percent sales tax increase for expanded bus service, light rail and road improvements. The issue will appear on the November ballot. One question many voters want answered: How much will the new tax cost me? In a brochure outlining how rapid transit can boost the economy and ease traffic congestion, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit says the tax will cost the average family $12 a month. That figure comes from the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s long-range transportation plan. It puts the cost of a 1 cent sales tax for the average family at $142 a year, and the average for a single person at $85 a year. The MPO came up with those numbers by plugging the county’s household incomes into the IRS sales tax deduction calculator, available on the agency’s Web site. The IRS developed the calculator because tax rules allow people to deduct either sales taxes paid annually or state income tax from their federal returns, and the calculator enables them to arrive at a reasonable estimate without having to save a basket of receipts. MPO planner Beth Alden said she used average household income rather than median income. “The number we’ve been using is the higher one, just to be more conservative,” she said. The county’s average family of three has a household income of $77,852, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A single household’s average income is $44,832. We plugged those figures into the IRS calculator and it showed the average family would pay $141.83 a year in local sales tax, which currently is 1 percent. A single person would pay $91.50. That’s virtually the same as the MPO estimates. The figure does not include sales taxes on major purchases, such as cars, mobile homes or construction materials for a house. Those are listed separately on tax returns. The county sales tax on items worth more than $5,000 is capped, meaning the maximum amount paid on any single item would be $50. But how accurate is the IRS calculator? Skeptical observers say it spits out a low figure. “It’s in the IRS’ interest to have that on the lower end, obviously, to decrease the deductions,” said Rusty Spoor, a tax accountant at Foley & Lardner. He guessed the calculator could be as much as 30 percent off. Like other tax experts, he noted it’s impossible to determine exactly how much people pay a year in sales taxes without saving receipts, so the IRS calculator is a useful tool. “That’s the best of the poorest options,” he said. “I don’t think that number’s great, but it’s the best starting point.” The calculator is based on spending patterns captured in the Consumer Expenditure Survey conducted annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, IRS spokesperson Florida Mike Dobzinski said. That’s the best method for calculating how much people pay in sales tax, according to Frank Williams, chief economist for the Florida Department of Revenue’s Office of Tax Research. “It should be fairly close,” he said. “It may understate it by 2 to 5 percent, but that’s just a gut feel.” Opponents of the sales tax say it will cost residents much more than the MPO estimates. Jim Hosler, a demographer running for Hillsborough County commissioner, initially figured it would cost households nearly $400 a year. He came up with that number by dividing the estimated revenue from the tax — about $174 million, according to the Florida Legislative Committee on Intergovernmental Relations — by 454,000, the approximate number of households in Hillsborough County. That comes about $383. Trouble is, residents aren’t the only ones who pay sales taxes. Tourists, commuters and businesses also pay them. Experts say there’s no way to know exactly who pays what, but most estimate that non-residents bear about 20 percent of the tax burden. Under that calculation, the cost is $307 per household. But that spreads out sales taxes equally among all households, regardless of income. And a household that earns $200,000 a year will pay much more in sales taxes than a $20,000 household, simply by virtue of having more disposable income. Hosler concedes his number may be high. “But their number is definitely a low number,” he said. “The real number is probably somewhere in between.” Clearly there are a number of ways to calculate the figure, and the result for all of them is a somewhat imprecise. Still, our research shows that the number in the brochure is very close to the one provided by the MPO, and HART used a recognized, legitimate source in coming up with the figure. The IRS calculation, while perhaps on the low side, is a recognized standard. So we rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Hillsborough Area Regional Transit | null | null | null | 2010-06-18T17:33:40 | 2010-06-18 | ['Hillsborough_County,_Florida'] |
pomt-02564 | Says Alex Sink "even supported a tax on homeowners insurance policies." | half-true | /florida/statements/2014/jan/31/national-republican-congressional-committee/alex-sink-supported-tax-homeowners-insurance-polic/ | In the special election for a U.S. House seat, Republicans are taking aim at Democratic nominee Alex Sink’s career in both the public and private sector. On a website called The Real Alex Sink Truth Team -- intentionally aping Sink’s own Truth Team page -- the National Republican Campaign Committee calls her out for allegedly supporting higher taxes while serving as Florida’s elected chief financial officer, or CFO. "Alex Sink has consistently supported higher taxes, including property taxes, sales taxes, and taxes on water, sewer and cable television," the site reads. "She even supported a tax on homeowners insurance policies." We’ve seen all these claims often repeated during the campaign (so far, we’ve rated the one on water and TV Mostly True). But the one about whether she supported a tax on homeowners insurance deserves some attention. Avoiding a catastrophe To back up this claim, the the NRCC pointed us to a story in the Palm Beach Post from June 2008, after Sink had become CFO. The article detailed a Cabinet meeting between then-Gov. Charlie Crist and Sink, both of whom voted to extend a 1 percent assessment on private home, car, boat and motorcycle policies to cover a $625 million shortfall in the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, often referred to as the CAT fund. The assessment was put in place in 2007 to cover outstanding claims from the very heavy 2005 hurricane season. The purpose of the fund -- established in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew destabilized the state’s insurance market -- is to pay policyholders when insurers are unable to cover all their obligations. Because of the vast number of claims following Hurricane Wilma, the fund was falling short, so an emergency assessment was enacted to cover the lack of funds. By law, the fund only has to pay out claims to the extent of its cash balance, and it issues bonds to cover the difference should claims exceed that balance. To cover the repayment of those bonds, an emergency assessment is made on all policyholders to share the burden. The 2007 assessment was set to expire in 2012, but Crist and Sink changed that so the assessment would last until Dec. 31, 2014. The NRCC pointed to a partial quote from Sink, who said extending the assessment was "really a tax on insurance policies." But nuances keep this from being slam-dunk support for the NRCC’s claim. First, in a literal sense, the emergency assessment is not a tax. The state statute for the CAT fund says so. In addition, there’s evidence that Sink was not a fan of the process at work here. The fund was facing scads of new claims after Wilma, and Sink had been supporting changes in state law to shore up its finances. But state legislators hadn’t taken action on her recommendations before the extension. She and Attorney General Bill McCollum continued to press the Legislature for changes to Citizens after the extension, as well. "It's certainly not a good time to be telling homeowners they've got a $600 million tax increase in addition to what they were already paying," Sink was quoted as saying about a month before the vote, referring to the onset of the Great Recession and again characterizing the assessment as a tax. She confirmed to us through her campaign that she "believed it was not a good time to keep the assessment and was not an enthusiastic supporter of it." Crist and Sink both voiced concerns that state policyholders were on the hook for potentially fraudulent claims, but agreed to extend the assessment because CAT fund director Jack Nicholson said there were only about 10 or 20 weeks worth of money still available for payouts. One alternative would have been to increase the emergency assessment, which happened when it was bumped up to 1.3 percent in January 2011, covering an additional $676 million in bond payments, and is slated to last until July 1, 2016. A big reason for the shortfall was the poor estimates from insurers about how much they would need to cover claims, a process that happened in 2006, before Crist and Sink took office. Nicholson told PolitiFact the fund now "is in the best situation that it has ever been in financially," and that it would take storm claims in excess of $25 billion to force the state to issue more bonds. Our ruling The NRCC said Alex Sink "supported a tax on homeowners insurance policies," and it used Sink’s own words as evidence. In casting her Cabinet vote to extend an emergency assessment on policyholders to pay for hurricane claims, she did use the term "tax." However, it wasn’t officially a tax. And Sink supported the policy grudgingly, saying it was unfair that consumers would have to continue paying for old storm damages. Sink had a history before and after the Cabinet vote of trying to scale down the state’s exposure to hurricane coverage and reinsurance to private companies The ad is wrong to call it a tax, but Sink’s vote -- grudging though it was -- did serve to maintain an increase in insured consumers’ out-of-pocket costs, which had the effect of seeming a lot like a tax to policyholders. The claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context, so we rate it Half True. | null | National Republican Congressional Committee | null | null | null | 2014-01-31T11:50:38 | 2014-01-10 | ['None'] |
thet-00070 | Under the SNP, teacher numbers have declined by 4,000. | true | https://theferret.scot/teacher-numbers-declined-snp/ | null | Education Fact check | Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale | null | null | Have teacher numbers declined under the SNP government? | June 2, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02210 | Elon Musk Dating Jessica Hart, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/elon-musk-jessica-hart-not-dating/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Elon Musk NOT Dating Jessica Hart, Despite Speculative Report | 12:02 pm, November 13, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00769 | Tristan Thompson Feels “Dumped” By Khloe Kardashian? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/tristan-thompson-khloe-kardashian-dumped-los-angeles-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Tristan Thompson Feels “Dumped” By Khloe Kardashian? | 3:46 pm, June 22, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02813 | Republican ideas on health care don’t give people "an option to even enroll in something that they can afford." | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2013/nov/26/donna-brazile/brazile-says-gop-lacks-plan-help-working-poor-get-/ | Republicans have been pointing out the failures of the Obamacare rollout, telling voters, "We told you so." But the health care law’s problems aren’t a complete boon for the GOP. More and more, they’re getting questions about what their big ideas for health care are. Democratic pundit and sometimes political adviser Donna Brazile made that point during an installment of CNN’s Situation Room. "They have a blank slate," Brazile said. "They're not offering an alternative. They're not giving people who are desperately seeking health care an option to even enroll in something that they can afford." We asked Brazile if she was referring to the approximately 47 million uninsured people in the country and she told us "Yes. I was referring to those who would qualify for Medicaid, etc." We wanted to know what the Republican ideas would do to make insurance affordable for people of modest means. So we looked at some of the bills they’ve introduced this session to fact-check Brazile’s statement. Ideas on the Republican menu Not all but most of the nine bills on our list use the tax code to put more money in citizens’ pockets on the condition that the money will be spent on health care. We found three basic approaches that potentially address insurance affordability. Overhauling health care tax deductions The most generous proposal comes from the conservative Republican Study Committee, which put forward a bill with 100 cosponsors. H.R. 3121 would give a $7,500 deduction to individuals and a $20,000 deduction to families. We saw two big catches here. You would need to have insurance in the first place. Plus, the bill would eliminate the biggest tax break households enjoy today, the portion of their premiums paid by their employer. Getting rid of that $170 billion tax benefit would be a tough sell and a dramatic change to employer-provided insurance. Refundable tax credits These are like tax deductions, with the big difference that you can claim the credit even if you don’t have taxable income. H.R. 2300 from Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., offers a maximum tax credit of $5,000 for families making up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $47,000 a year. The bill covers the cost of the tax credits with a blend of savings from medical malpractice reform, reducing waste, fraud and abuse, and cuts in discretionary spending. Health Savings Accounts These are accounts that enjoy a trifecta of tax breaks. Money goes in tax-free, the returns on investment accumulates tax-free and some withdrawals are tax-free. Several bills loosen the rules on health savings accounts to allow more people to put more money into them. Other ideas Additional GOP ideas include medical malpractice reform, allowing small business to form their own insurance buying pools, letting insurers sell policies across state lines and subsidizing state high-risk pools for people who can’t insurance anyplace else. These changes would be significant but would have only an indirect impact on families seeking affordable insurance. Assessing the Republican options None of the Republican proposals have undergone an intensive independent analysis of how they would help the needy. Based on interviews with experts and our research, the two possibilities that would most directly provide affordable insurance are tax deductions and refundable tax credits. A tax deduction that would offset payroll taxes could touch many families of limited means. About 50 million taxpayers making less than $40,000 a year pay such taxes. But there’s a chicken-and-egg issue here. Until you have insurance, you can’t get the tax break and the bill doesn’t provide a way to help workers get over that hurdle. Plus, the bill relies on the elimination of the tax break on employer-sponsored health insurance. This would represent a radical shift in federal tax policy. In terms of feasibility, the majority of analysts we talked to give the edge to the refundable tax credit approach. That does not mean there is a resounding consensus on how much it would achieve. The proposal from Price would make credits payable in advance. In other words, you could use the federal credit even if you didn’t have the money up front to pay for insurance. While the details are different, this resembles the program put forward by President George W. Bush. A 2005 study of the Bush plan by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, found that "lower-income individuals experience the largest declines in uninsurance rates" under the Bush proposal. However, of the 45 million people uninsured then, Bush’s $3,000 tax credit plan would have helped only about 2 million people who made less than 200 percent of federal poverty and just a bit over 3 million overall. Thomas Buchmueller, a health economist at the University of Michigan, said it is a major undertaking to provide insurance to those who lack the money to pay for it. "Tinkering with tax deductions and making health savings accounts more attractive is not going to change that basic fact," Buchmueller said. "Roughly half of the Affordable Care Act coverage gains come from expanding Medicaid. I don't see anything in these proposals that would do much for the people who will gain Medicaid under the ACA." Conservative analysts see more promise in the use of refundable tax credits. Nina Owcharenko with the Heritage Foundation, a group that has supported tax credits for many years, wrote in 2005 that this approach could go far to level the playing field, "especially lower-income individuals who do not fit into today's patchwork health care system." One of the widest gaps between Democrats and Republicans is the basic understanding of what it means to offer a plan to people of limited means. For Democrats, a plan is an identified insurance policy, whether public, as in expanded Medicaid, or private, as in buying subsidized private insurance through a web-based, highly regulated marketplace. For Republicans, a plan is anything that makes buying insurance more affordable, however the person finds the policy. Our ruling Brazile said Republicans offer no option for those who are desperate for coverage the chance to enroll in something they can afford. Within a more Democratic definition of a plan, that claim is accurate. However, using a broader definition, the Republican plan to use refundable tax credits would likely have some impact on Americans of very limited means. Opinions vary widely on how many Americans this would help, but a program of this sort would do something for a portion of the people Brazile had in mind. While the Republican option is full of uncertainty and results might be limited, they are more than nothing. Still, supporters of the GOP reforms were unable to point to independent studies to show how much their ideas for tax deductions and tax credits would accomplish, and previous independent analysis suggests they would have a modest impact on reducing uninsurance rates. We rate Brazile's claim Mostly True. | null | Donna Brazile | null | null | null | 2013-11-26T16:41:07 | 2013-11-19 | ['None'] |
tron-02049 | Woman who preached to Alaska Airlines passengers on doomed flight | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/alaskaflight261/ | null | inspirational | null | null | null | Woman who preached to Alaska Airlines passengers on doomed flight | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01327 | Rep. Carol Shea-Porter "votes with Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats 95 percent of the time," but Frank Guinta "will take on both parties" and has "independent New Hampshire values." | mostly false | /new-hampshire/statements/2014/oct/24/national-republican-congressional-committee/nrcc-ad-says-carol-shea-porter-partisan-democrat-f/ | In New Hampshire’s highly competitive 1st Congressional District race, a Republican group is using a new ad to draw a stark contrast between Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter and her GOP challenger, former Rep. Frank Guinta. Here’s the narration of the ad, which was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ election arm: "Carol Shea-Porter votes with Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats 95 percent of the time. More spending, higher taxes. We need a change. As mayor, Frank Guinta brought a tax cap to Manchester and balanced four straight budgets. Frank will take on both parties. Cut spending, fight for a balanced budget, and restore Medicare to protect our seniors. Independent New Hampshire values, that’s Frank Guinta." But is the comparison in partisan voting patterns really that stark? The answer is no. Their records are easy to compare, because Shea-Porter and Guinta have traded off ownership of the seat over the past several election cycles. Shea-Porter was elected to the House in 2006 and 2008, lost to Guinta in 2010, then beat him in a rematch in 2012. The ad footnotes Shea-Porter’s 95 percent partisan voting record to a Washington Post vote study. That shows that Shea-Porter did indeed vote with her party 95 percent of the time in the current Congress. A similar study by Congressional Quarterly shows Shea-Porter’s partisan unity score ranging between 95 percent and 98 percent each year during her congressional career. So the ad has a point that Shea-Porter has loyally voted the party line in the House. The problem with the ad is in suggesting that Guinta has done the opposite. He hasn’t. The same Post tally shows that in Guinta’s term in Congress -- covering 2011 and 2012 -- he voted with his party 96 percent of the time. That’s barely distinguishable from how Shea Porter voted with her party. The CQ tally shows much the same: Guinta had a 97 percent partisan unity score in 2011 and 95 percent in 2012. NRCC spokesman Ian Prior countered with two arguments. First, he said that if Guinta had served as Manchester mayor with a "my-party-is-100-percent-right attitude, he wouldn’t have been able to implement a tax cap (or) balance four straight city budgets." Second, he said that Shea-Porter’s votes that make up that 95 percent "are out of touch with her district and show that she puts her own liberal agenda ahead of her district." Both points have merit but are far from bulletproof. On Prior’s first point, city-level policymaking tends to be more technocratic and shaped less by the national political partisanship that drives Congress. In the exact comparison between the two candidates -- how they have voted in Congress -- they have both voted in virtual partisan lockstep. On his second point, that Shea-Porter’s votes are out of step with the district, we’ll just note that the district voted for Obama for president not once but twice. It’s possible that voters have grown disgusted with his agenda since his 2012 reelection. We’ll soon find out: That’s what elections are for. Our ruling The NRCC ad says that Shea-Porter "votes with Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats 95 percent of the time," but Guinta "will take on both parties" and has "independent New Hampshire values." That’s a pretty stark comparison -- yet by the most apples-to-apples measurement of how both candidates have voted in Congress, Guinta scored a 96 percent partisan unity with Republicans during his term in Congress, which is hardly evidence of a big contrast. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | National Republican Congressional Committee | null | null | null | 2014-10-24T14:25:33 | 2014-10-24 | ['Frank_Guinta', 'Nancy_Pelosi', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Carol_Shea-Porter'] |
tron-02923 | Rep. Maxine Waters Paid Her Daughter $750,000 to Send Campaign Mailers | truth! & outdated! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/rep-maxine-waters-paid-her-daughter-750000-to-send-campaign-mailers/ | null | politics | null | null | ['2016 election', 'congress'] | Rep. Maxine Waters Paid Her Daughter $750,000 to Send Campaign Mailers | Apr 27, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01569 | Confederate Soldiers Are Considered U.S. Veterans Under Federal Law | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/confederate-soldiers-are-considered-u-s-veterans-under-federal-law/ | null | government | null | null | null | Confederate Soldiers Are Considered U.S. Veterans Under Federal Law | Jul 23, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02111 | Says he’s "the only licensed firearms dealer in America running for Congress." | half-true | /georgia/statements/2014/may/14/john-stone/stone-claims-unique-position-gun-dealer/ | It’s an attention-grabbing campaign ad. John Stone fires a cannon that he says resembles the one his forefathers used in the Revolutionary War. "As the only licensed firearms dealer in America running for Congress, I’m willing to do the same if we have to," Stone declares on the video. "But it's a whole lot easier just to vote in new House Republican leaders who will stand up to Obama and defend our Constitution." Stone, a Republican and former congressional aide, is making his second bid to unseat five-term 12th District U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Democrat from Augusta. He last tried in 2008. The Second Amendment is a galvanizing issue, and politicians know it. Barrow pulled out his father’s gun, his grandfather’s gun and his National Rifle Association endorsement for an ad when he was fending off other challengers two years ago. And it’s unlikely that many would say it was coincidence that this year, with the entire General Assembly up for re-election, state lawmakers passed a gun bill that the NRA called the "most comprehensive" in recent Georgia history and that critics decried as one of the nation’s most extreme. But can Stone really say he’s the only licensed firearms dealer in America running for Congress? We decided a fact check was in order. We saw the potential to check Stone’s claim. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives keeps a database of all federal firearms licenses, so a check of those names against the names of all U.S. House and Senate candidates could do the trick. The only problem: There are about 140,000 current federal firearms licenses, and many are issued in the names of businesses and corporations, not individuals. Stone was forthcoming with us about his license (he even emailed us a copy) and about how he came to make his only-one-in-the-country claim. Friends in the firearms industry pointed out to him in 2012 that he might be the only U.S. House candidate with an ATF license, Stone said. He said he went to multiple sources for verification, including the NRA, Gun Owners of America, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the ATF. "To everyone’s knowledge, I am the only one," Stone said. "I have Google and Bing searched this extensively, and to the best of my knowledge and ability to check, I am the only one." He volunteered that he would change his ad if another candidate were found to be able to make the same claim. But our research turned up another question: Can he really call himself a dealer? Stone has a federal firearms license. It is what’s known as a Curio and Relic license. He collects, restores and trades historic firearms, at least 50 years old, and as a hobby, not a business. When we asked the ATF to assist in our search for his license, we were told that, based on a code on the license, "he’s a collector, not a dealer," a distinction we wondered about since his ad says dealer. The ATF does issue what it labels as "dealer" licenses. They are largely reserved for gunsmiths, pawnbrokers and others who make a living buying and selling many types of guns. Jerry Henry, with the gun advocacy group GeorgiaCarry.org, said he thinks Stone’s YouTube claim is "misleading at best." "He’s a collector," Henry said. "That’s not what I consider a firearms dealer." Others we talked to agreed. Tim Coker with the National Firearms Dealer Network said gun enthusiasts hearing the claim would assume that Stone is a licensed dealer, selling modern firearms. NRA officials were not aware of Stone’s claim, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said. The group has been a Barrow supporter. "He (Barrow) has stood steadfast with gun owners, hunters and sportsmen thought his career," Arulanandam said. Stone remains insistent. He sent us two dictionary definitions of dealer. He also said he deals in black-powder firearms and pre-1899 firearms, which require no ATF license, restrictions or registration on buying and selling. "I am a firearms dealer. I buy and sell firearms," he said. "This fact is indisputable." When we first started the fact check, we asked Stone why he decided to tout the fact that he was a federal firearms dealer. He said the discussion of where a candidate stands on Second Amendment rights can be time-consuming. With the dealer moniker as his calling card, he said his position is immediately clear. In summary, Stone, a former congressional aide, has proclaimed himself the "only licensed firearms dealer in America running for Congress." He said he wasn’t able to document that statement, but after talking with people in the firearms community, he believes it’s true. We couldn’t find any sources to definitively prove or disprove Stone’s claim of exclusivity. He does have a federal firearms license for a very niche group of collectors. He contends this status allows him to make the claim that he is a gun dealer. Others suggest his statement is misleading. Overall, a viewer of Stone’s ad needs much more information to weigh the value of his claim -- an awful lot of context is missing even though there is some truth to part of his statement. We rate the statement Half True. | null | John Stone | null | null | null | 2014-05-14T00:00:00 | 2014-04-23 | ['United_States', 'United_States_Congress'] |
pomt-15081 | We had a three-hour debate, no discussion about the national debt, very little about the economy. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/20/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-cnn-debate-had-no-question-debt-a/ | The high polling numbers for the GOP presidential field’s "outsider" candidates are in part the result of the media refusing to discuss substantive issues, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Rubio said on the Sept. 20, 2015, episode of This Week that political newcomers like Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson were seeing success because people were tired of establishment candidates. But the CNN debate earlier in the week in Simi Valley, Calif., also showed that coverage isn’t focused on the country’s problems, he said. "I don’t think it’s limited to the politicians, it’s also the media," Rubio said. "We had a three-hour debate, no discussion about the national debt, very little about the economy. It was a constant he-said-she-said, what do you say because so-and-so called you this name or that name." What did the candidates really discuss during the debate? We reviewed the transcript and wouldn’t say there was "no discussion" about the debt, but Rubio has a point there was little said about the economy. The economy We’ll actually start with how much the candidates said about the economy, because it came up first, much in the way Rubio described. (We reached out to his campaign for more on this but didn’t hear back.) After lengthy discussions about Trump’s worthiness as a candidate, Russia’s involvement in Syria, Congress attempting to defund Planned Parenthood, immigration and other issues, moderator Jake Tapper switched gears. "We've received a lot of questions on social media about the economy and about jobs," he acknowledged, but used the pivot to asked Fiorina to respond to Trump’s criticism of her record as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina then recounted her history with the company, before mentioning voter concerns over the nation’s $18 trillion debt as an attack on Trump. "There are a lot of us Americans who believe that we are going to have trouble someday paying back the interest on our debt because politicians have run up mountains of debt using other people's money," Fiorina said to Trump. "That is in fact precisely the way you ran your casinos. You ran up mountains of debt, as well as losses, using other people's money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice, four times, a record four times." Tapper later asked questions about the minimum wage and tax policy, which one could argue are related to the economy. But he asked no direct questions about job creation or debt. Still, candidates did mention the economy as they addressed other questions. Ohio Gov. John Kasich said that when he left Congress, "we had a $5 trillion surplus, and the economy was booming." He implied his time as a congressman from 1982 to 2001 will help him find consensus as president to "create a stronger economy for everybody." Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pointed out Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton’s call for a higher minimum wage is "her answer to grow the economy." Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee mentioned that finding cures to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s will save the country trillions, and would "change the economy and the country." Rubio, meanwhile, discussed the economy when answering a question about climate change. He said disregarding alarms raised by "the left-wing government" was necessary because "every proposal they put forward are going to be proposals that will make it harder to do business in America, that will make it harder to create jobs in America." "We are not going to destroy our economy," he said. "We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather, because America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely." New Jersey Gov. Christie also made mention of agreeing with Rubio that "we shouldn't be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild left-wing idea that somehow us by ourselves is going to fix the climate." Back in April, PolitiFact checked a statement by Rubio that "with certainty (cap and trade) would have a devastating impact on our economy." We rated it False. The national debt So candidates did discuss the economy, though with little in the way of concrete plans. There also were a few mentions of the national debt, in addition to Fiorina’s attack on Trump. Christie cited debt service as a major portion of what the federal budget is stuck dealing with. "Seventy one percent of all federal spending is on entitlements and debt service," he said. Bush said his 4 percent economic growth plan will "deal with the structural fiscal problems that exist because of our entitlement problems that will overwhelm and create way too much debt," but didn’t discuss specifics about controlling projected costs. Rubio brought up the national debt while trading barbs with Trump; Rubio mentioned the debt as a symptom of Washington dysfunction. "You have millions of people in this country living paycheck to paycheck, and nothing is being done about it," Rubio said. "We are about to leave our children with $18 trillion in debt, and they're about to raise the debt limit again." Our ruling Rubio said, "We had a three-hour debate, no discussion about the national debt, very little about the economy." He’s right there was very little mention of the economy, but the national debt was brought up by some of the 11 candidates, usually while addressing an opponent. We should note that even then, no one gave any specifics about what to do beyond some broad talking points. We rate Rubio’s statement Mostly True. | null | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2015-09-20T16:05:27 | 2015-09-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-00291 | Says Sen. Bill Nelson is a socialist. | pants on fire! | /florida/statements/2018/sep/27/rick-scott/gov-rick-scotts-ridiculous-statement-sen-bill-nels/ | As dead fish washed up on some Florida shores, politicians dished blame about red tide. Now they are debating another type of red scare: socialism. "Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum — they're socialists," Gov. Rick Scott said at a Titusville event for his U.S. Senate campaign. Scott explained his comments further in an interview with Florida Today. "They want big government and socialism," Scott said. "They're both into higher taxes. Gillum said he's going to raise corporate taxes 40 percent. Nelson said that, if the Democrats get control, he's going to go back and raise the taxes. They don't believe that the tax cuts that we did this year are good for our state. If you look at their programs, they just want government to run everything." Scott linked the duo as offering a "very liberal, very radical and very risky direction for our state and country." We’ve previously rated a claim from Gillum’s opponent Ron DeSantis that Gillum has a "far left socialist platform" akin to Venezuela as False. Scott’s labeling of Nelson as a socialist is a misleading red-scare tactic — one from the Republican playbook this cycle after the surprise Democratic primary win of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist, in New York. Calling a politician in Florida a socialist packs particular punch because some Hispanic voters, a battleground demographic, have fled socialist regimes. What is socialist about Nelson’s record? Nelson has praised Gillum and may get a boost from the voter excitement he is generating. But he does not share Gillum’s more liberal positions. Scott’s campaign said in a press release that Nelson called Gillum's support for higher taxes, government-run health care and abolishing ICE "mainstream." The campaign linked to a Miami Herald article that didn’t make those points. The article said that Nelson and Gillum "represent two diverging camps of the Florida Democratic Party." Nelson said that Gillum’s policies weren’t too progressive for Florida, but he made no specific reference to raising taxes, government-run health care or abolishing ICE. Here is what Nelson actually said about Gillum’s platform: "You characterize it as being to the left," Nelson said to reporters. "You look at his positions, they’re mainstream: strengthening education, pay teachers, clean up the environment. Go through all the issues and I think that’s where the people of Florida are." In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times editorial board, Nelson showed that he doesn’t share all of Gillum’s views. Nelson said he doesn’t want to abolish ICE. When asked about Medicare for All, Nelson didn’t show interest. "I've got enough trouble just trying to save Obamacare," Nelson said. "I'm into results." Even though it doesn’t factually check out, the Scott campaign also said that Nelson "voted more than 300 times to raise taxes" — which we have rated False. Scott inflates the number by including nonbinding budget resolutions and multiple votes on the same piece of legislation. The list neglects that Nelson has, on occasion, voted for lower taxes. Nelson has been a critic of the 2017 tax bill, but that doesn’t mean he wants to raise taxes across the board. He said the bill didn’t do enough to help the middle class and shown support for reversing some cuts that benefit the rich. The Scott campaign also said that Nelson "embraced Obama’s plan to appease Cuban dictators and palled around with Assad and Hugo Chavez." But Nelson repeatedly criticized Chavez in 2004 and 2005, calling him a "serious threat." While While Nelson agreed with Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014, Nelson has criticized Castro. (We fact-checked a similar attack by a GOP group about Nelson’s statements about Chavez and the Castro brothers and rated it Pants on Fire.) Experts said the socialist label doesn’t apply to Nelson Socialism is when the government owns (or at least controls) the means of production. Nelson hasn’t called for a government takeover of businesses. "Claiming that Nelson is a socialist is ludicrous," said Philip J. Williams, professor at the Center for Latin American studies at the University of Florida. "His stance in opposition to the tax cut bill and in support of Medicaid expansion are mainstream Democratic positions. (Even some Republican governors have supported Medicaid expansion, including John Kasich.)" While some might describe Medicare or Medicaid as socialism, because the government is providing health insurance to citizens, the health industry remains in private hands, said Sean D. Ehrlich, a Florida State University political science professor. "The government doesn’t control the production of health care," Ehrlich said, "they merely regulate some elements and reimburse providers and consumers for their health care costs." University of Miami professor Merike Blofield, an expert in Latin American and comparative politics, said that by the standards of other wealthy liberal democracies with public, universal health care, Nelson’s policy proposals are conservative. Our ruling Scott’s description of Nelson as a "socialist" is an inaccurate red scare tactic. The definition of socialism is a government takeover of production, and Nelson hasn’t called for that. Scott’s campaign pointed to Nelson’s support for Gillum, the Democrat running to the left of Nelson in the governor’s race. While Nelson has shown enthusiasm for Gillum, they are not lockstep on all issues. Gillum has called for abolishing ICE and Medicare for All, and Nelson has said he does not agree. Nelson’s criticism of the Republican tax bill isn’t the same as calling for higher taxes in general. And supporting an expansion of Medicaid is not the same as calling for government-run health care. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2018-09-27T06:00:00 | 2018-09-19 | ['Bill_Nelson'] |
pose-00699 | We're going to do everything we can to drive down the budget deficit. We're going to balance the budget and one of the ways we can do it is selling the state plane. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/729/sell-the-state-plane/ | null | scott-o-meter | Rick Scott | null | null | Sell the state plane | 2010-12-23T17:45:11 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03688 | No poll done this year ... shows less than a majority to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/22/dianne-feinstein/sen-dianne-feinstein-says-every-national-poll-year/ | Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told fellow senators before they voted down her renewed ban on assault weapons that the American people sided with her. What’s more, she told them: Every poll said so. "In poll after poll, that support is there," she remarked from the Senate floor on April 17, 2013, the same day broader gun control legislation failed. "In no poll — even with all the discussion, even with the mobilization of gun owners and the NRA, a majority in every single national poll done shows that the majority want controls over assault weapons. I know of no poll done this year that shows less than a majority to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons." A 1994 assault weapons ban, written by Feinstein, lapsed in 2004. After a gunman killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, she proposed the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 — a renewal and expansion of the original ban. Senators, who considered it as an amendment to a broader bill, voted 40 to 60 against it. Did they vote against a majority of Americans? "No poll done this year ... shows less than a majority to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons," Feinstein said. We went in search of polls. ‘Assault weapons’ We combed through 18 polls with questions about assault weapons conducted between Jan. 9 and April 7. Nearly half of them occurred in January, both before and after President Barack Obama released his plan to reduce gun violence. He called for "banning military-style assault weapons." Feinstein’s bill, introduced a week after the president’s plan, proposed blocking the future manufacture, possession, sale and importation of 157 specific "semiautomatic assault weapons," such as AK-47s and UZIs, along with any other weapon with a detachable magazine and at least one "military characteristic," such as a pistol grip or barrel shroud. Pollsters used a range of phrases to describe firearms as they asked Americans about their support or opposition to a ban, from "assault rifles and semiautomatic weapons" to "military-style assault weapons." Here's a quick look at the results: Poll Date Question Support for ban Reason-Rupe Jan. 17-21, 2013 "Do you think people should be prohibited from owning assault weapons, or should people be allowed to own them?" 44% CNN/ORC International April 5-7, 2013 "Please tell me whether you would generally favor or oppose each of the following proposals which some people have made to reduce the amount of gun violence. ... A ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of so-called assault rifles, capable of semi-automatic fire, such as the AR-15." 51% * Fox News/Anderson Robbins Research/Shaw & Company Research March 17-19, 2013 "Do you favor or oppose each of the following proposals to reduce gun violence? ... Banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons." 51% * Quinnipiac University Feb. 27 - March 4, 2013 "Do you support or oppose ... a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 54% Fox News/Anderson Robbins Research/Shaw & Company Research Jan. 15-17, 2013 "Do you favor or oppose each of the following proposals to reduce gun violence? ... Banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons." 54% McClatchy/Marist March 4-7, 2013 "Do you favor or oppose a ban on assault weapons?" 55% Pew Research Center Jan. 9-13, 2013 "Please tell me if you favor or oppose the following proposals about gun policy ... a ban on assault style weapons." 55% Pew Research Center Feb. 13-18, 2013 "Please tell me if you favor or oppose the following proposals about gun policy ... a ban on assault style weapons." 56% CNN/Time/ORC International Jan. 14-15, 2013 "Please tell me whether you would generally favor or oppose each of the following proposals which some people have made to reduce the amount of gun violence. . . . A ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of semi-automatic assault guns, such as the AK-47." 56% Quinnipiac University Jan. 30-Feb. 4, 2013 "Do you support or oppose ... a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 56% ABC News/Washington Post April 11-14, 2013 "Would you support or oppose a law requiring a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 56% ABC News/Washington Post March 7-10, 2013 "Would you support or oppose a law requiring a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 57% University of Connecticut/Hartford Courant Jan. 22-28, 2013 "Please tell me if you would favor or oppose the following proposals made as ways to control gun violence. . . . Banning military style assault weapons" 57%- strongly favor (48) or somewhat favor (9) ABC News/Washington Post Jan. 10-13, 2013 "Would you support or oppose a law requiring a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 58% Morning Joe/Marist March 25-27, 2013 "Do you support or oppose legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons?" 59% Quinnipiac University March 26 - April 1, 2013 "Do you support or oppose ... a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?" 59% Gallup Jan. 19-20, 2013 "Suppose that on Election Day you could vote on key issues as well as candidates. Would you vote for or against a law that would … reinstate and strengthen the ban on assault weapons that was in place from 1994 to 2003?" 60% Johns Hopkins/GfK Jan. 2-14, 2013 "Banning the sale of military-style, semiautomatic assault weapons that are capable of shooting more than 10 rounds of ammunition without reloading." 69% * Majority not large enough to be statistically significant. In 15 polls, conducted by organizations from ABC News/Washington Post to Quinnipiac University, the idea of a ban on such weapons got support from 54 percent to 69 percent of respondents, depending on the timing and phrasing of the question. In two, from CNN/ORC International and Fox News in April and March, support was 51 percent — with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. That means the polls reflected support between 48 percent and 54 percent, perhaps a majority and perhaps not. In other words, the "majority" wasn’t statistically significant. And one poll, from the libertarian Reason Foundation, asked the question in a distinctly different way, and got a different result. Most pollsters asked whether people supported or opposed a ban on assault weapons. Reason asked: "Do you think people should be prohibited from owning assault weapons, or should people be allowed to own them?" They found that just 44 percent of respondents thought people should be prohibited from owning assault weapons. We’ll note that the question goes beyond Feinstein’s legislation. Nothing in the bill would have prohibited people who already owned such weapons from keeping them. Still, argued Emily Ekins of Reason, "response variability across polls demonstrates support for an assault weapons ban is not as clear cut as some may have previously thought." Indeed, a USA Today/Gallup poll from December, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, also showed only 44 percent support for a law similar to Feinstein’s. Meanwhile, polls showed a partisan divide. In a January poll from Pew Research Center, for example, 55 percent of respondents favored an assault weapons ban. But just 44 percent of Republicans did. And a separate poll from Quinnipiac University in February showed that nearly half of Republicans might be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who voted for a ban on the sale of assault weapons — in addition to a third of independents and 11 percent of Democrats. That lack of support was most pronounced in the West. So, while national support was generally strong, as Feinstein said, individual lawmakers faced a different reality. Our ruling Feinstein claimed that a majority of the American people supported her bill, saying "no poll done this year ... shows less than a majority to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons." She's largely accurate, though the "majority" in two national polls wasn’t statistically significant, and a poll by a libertarian foundation showed less than majority support for prohibiting assault weapon ownership. Meanwhile, limiting her statement to "this year" excluded a USA Today/Gallup poll from December that undermined her point. Still, the libertarian poll went beyond Feinstein’s proposal, which didn’t prohibit ownership of assault weapons by those who already own them. Otherwise, two polls teetered on the edge of majority support, while 15 others unequivocally supported her claim. We rate her statement Mostly True. | null | Dianne Feinstein | null | null | null | 2013-04-22T14:24:05 | 2013-04-17 | ['None'] |
snes-00321 | The Cancer Act of 1939 makes it illegal to cure cancer. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cancer-act-1939/ | null | Medical | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Does the Cancer Act of 1939 Make It Illegal to Cure Cancer? | 18 July 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15331 | We don’t have a (military) reserve force if something happens. | false | /punditfact/statements/2015/jul/14/joe-theismann/former-nfl-qb-joe-theismann-we-dont-have-reserve/ | Former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann recently joined the all-female cast of Fox News’ Outnumbered to offer his perspective on recent news, from a federal judge ordering the logo of his former team to be canceled to the slaying of a San Francisco woman that sparked fresh debate about this country’s immigration policy. Theismann called the murder of Kathryn Steinle, 32, a tragedy and bemoaned the porous borders that allow undocumented immigrants to access the country, including the alleged killer, a Mexican felon who had been deported five times named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. After criticizing Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the border as an unrealistic fix, Theismann warned that budget cuts to the military are making the already chaotic environment worse. "Our border patrol is spread out so thin that people just walk through, they don’t even know they’re there," Theismann said during the July 9 episode. "We’re faced with a situation now where you talk about National Guardsmen going down there. We’re about to cut the military by 40,000 people, which is another subject. We went from 500,000 down to 400,000. "We don’t have a reserve force if something happens." The retired quarterback who later had a long career as a sports broadcaster threw out a slew of facts, but the last one sounded the most alarming. Are U.S. leaders really sacrificing the military reserve as they whip the country into top fiscal shape? No — a fact Theismann acknowledged during a phone call with PunditFact. Theismann said he was trying to highlight cuts to the military that are, in fact, happening due to automatic federal spending cuts known as sequestration. But he took it too far. "With all the things that are happening in the world, especially in the Middle East right now, if we ever felt like we needed to get our ground forces involved, what position would we be in to deal with any difficult situation that could come up anywhere in the world?" Theismann told us. "Because I still believe that we should be the world power and by continuing to cut the military, I think we diminish the ability to be the biggest stick in the valley." "That was what I was trying to say in a short period," Theismann said. America’s reserve military forces include both the reserves and the National Guard. People may use the terms interchangeably, but they are different. National Guard units are jointly controlled by both state governors and the president and often respond to state-level emergencies, including riots, hurricanes and other disasters. Full reserves fall under the control of the president and the branch of the military in which they serve. Theismann clarified that he was talking about the Army Reserve, not the Army National Guard or other components of the National Guard. While it’s important to have your vocabulary correct, it doesn’t really affect the accuracy of Theismann’s claim either way. Both the National Guard and reserves expect cuts. But both will most definitely continue. The Army National Guard is scheduled to shed 15,000 soldiers by Sept. 30, 2017, as part of sequestration. This will bring the Army National Guard to 335,000 soldiers — down from its current size of 350,000. The Air National Guard will not lose positions due to sequestration, said National Guard spokesman Kurt M. Rauschenberg. The Army Reserve also expects to lose positions. On July 9, coincidentally the same day as this episode of Outnumbered, the U.S. Army announced how it would go about budget cuts that would affect active and reserve military. The Army Reserve said its force would drop to 185,000 if sequestration continues through the 2017 fiscal year, part of an overall cut of 60,000 soldiers. The active military could fall to 450,000 soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2018, down from 570,000 in 2012 after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under the current plan for cuts, the overall Army would drop from 1,042,200 soldiers to 980,000, a total that includes active-duty Army (full-time), Army National Guard (part-time, can be activated to respond to state emergencies) and Army Reserve (part-time branch of the Army). Army Reserve employees would fall from 202,000 soldiers to 195,000 by the end of the 2017 fiscal year. "I believe that where we are now is about as low as we can go," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters in a May conference call, according to Army Times. "If we continue to go lower, we're going to have to say we cannot do all the things we're doing today." Our ruling Warning of a shorthanded military amid a border crisis, Theismann said, "We don’t have a reserve force if something happens." Theismann later admitted he didn’t choose his words very carefully. Automatic federal cuts as part of sequestration are shrinking the military. Leaders have warned that cuts could reduce the Army’s ability to respond to crises. But the Army Reserve, which Theismann says he was talking about, very much remains in existence. The Reserve would be available, along with the National Guard, to assist the border patrol or active military in emergencies. We rate his claim False. | null | Joe Theismann | null | null | null | 2015-07-14T13:42:20 | 2015-07-09 | ['None'] |
wast-00141 | Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. 4 pinnochios https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/02/20/bernie-sanders-resurrects-a-zombie-claim-on-gun-sales-without-background-checks/ None None Bernie Sanders Glenn Kessler None Bernie Sanders resurrects a \xe2\x80\x98zombie' claim on gun sales without background checks February 20 None ['None']
hoer-00108 UPS Uniforms bogus warning https://www.hoax-slayer.com/ups-uniforms-hoax.html None None None Brett M. Christensen None UPS Uniforms Hoax 11th May 2011 None ['None']
goop-01358 Selena Gomez Partying With “Mystery Man,” 0 https://www.gossipcop.com/selena-gomez-mystery-man-partying-yacht-false/ None None None Shari Weiss None Selena Gomez NOT Partying With “Mystery Man,” Despite Claim 4:15 pm, March 19, 2018 None ['None']
pose-01328 I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” | stalled | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1420/not-take-vacations/ | null | trumpometer | Donald Trump | null | null | Not take vacations | 2017-01-17T09:06:37 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02273 | Says he was the only statewide elected official to speak in favor of a federal guest worker plan at the 2012 Republican Party of Texas convention. | true | /texas/statements/2014/apr/08/jerry-patterson/jerry-patterson-flew-solo-among-statewide-elected-/ | Jerry Patterson, an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor this year, subsequently said that he somewhat uniquely spoke out for a federal guest-worker program a few years ago. According to a March 30, 2014, news story in the San Antonio Express-News, Republicans including state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, who's in a May 27, 2014, runoff for the party's lieutenant governor nomination with incumbent David Dewhurst, have talked about not putting language supportive of a guest-worker program in this year’s party platform, which is to be finalized by delegates to the next state convention in June 2014. Patrick has stumped on securing the Texas-Mexico border, also objecting in a Jan. 25, 2014, Twitter post to the "illegal invasion." The Express-News story described Patterson, the state land commissioner since 2003, as saying he was the only statewide elected official to speak in favor of the guest-worker plank at the June 2012 state convention where it was initially adopted. Patterson separately said on his 2014 campaign website: "Many of my elected colleagues privately expressed support, but told me that they just couldn’t take the risk." Did Patterson, who often flies his own plane between cities, venture solo in this way? Immigration in 2012 platform The immigration plank, on page 21 of the platform, states that mass deportation of all the undocumented individuals in the United States "would neither be equitable nor practical," while "blanket amnesty" would only encourage more illegal entries. The plank also calls for securing the border, modernizing Social Security cards and limiting birthright citizenship to babies born to a U.S. citizen. Finally, the plank calls for a temporary worker program "to bring skilled and unskilled workers into the United States for temporary periods of time when no U.S. workers are currently available," to be self-funded through participation fees and fines, the plank says. The guest-worker plank was characterized by proponents at the time as a meaningful breakthrough for the state party. A June 9, 2012, Texas Tribune news story quoted TexasGOPvote.com's Bob Price, a convention delegate, as saying adoption of the guest-worker provisions "takes away a tool that Democrats have used for years to drive a wedge between conservative Hispanics and Republicans." William Kelberlan, a delegate from Williamson County, told the Tribune: "It was a tough pill to swallow; it didn't go down easily." Kelberlan said he recognized the need for immigration reform but thought more time was needed to hammer out the details of what form it should take. Patterson spoke in favor of the guest-worker plank, according to the story, but it was silent on whether he was the sole statewide elected official to do so. Patterson invokes 'cojones' To our inquiry, Patterson indicated he remembers his solo status well. "Ain’t much to elaborate," he said by email. Asked if he’d heard the speeches given by other statewide elected officials and why he knows he was alone in this regard, Patterson replied: "I know all the statewides. I know what they do and say. I know who has cojones" (um, courage) "and who doesn't. I was the only one." By email, Steve Munisteri, the party chairman, confirmed Patterson was the only statewide elected official to speak during floor debate of the guest-worker plank and then only after delegates agreed to let him do so, Munisteri said. Separately, Brad Bailey told us he helped draft the relevant language as a delegate from Senate District 11 in Houston. By phone, Bailey said Patterson was alone among statewide elected officials in speaking about the guest-worker section. Main speeches lacked mention of guest-worker idea We didn't have to take anyone's word for this. Munisteri reminded us the party placed video recordings of the convention online. So we watched the speeches given by several statewide elected officials: U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn; Gov. Rick Perry; Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst; Attorney General Greg Abbott; Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and State Comptroller Susan Combs. None — plus Patterson, in his main speech to the convention — aired support for a guest-worker law. In fact, only Staples mentioned conditions near the Texas-Mexico border. Patterson spoke from floor during platform debate But as delegates discussed the party platform, Patterson stepped to a microphone on the convention floor after Munisteri adjudged that two-thirds of the delegates, by a show of hands, had agreed to suspend the rules to let him join the conversation even though he wasn’t a delegate. (Hear Patterson’s remarks starting about the 11:15 mark of the video here.) Patterson opened by describing himself as a conservative who believes the platform’s immigration plank and border security "go hand in hand." He then said he supported the then-pending state law requiring most voters to present photo identification at the polls as well as initiatives stressing English as the state’s primary language. Patterson said he also supported a physical barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border, including a fence in some cases. He added that he opposed "unconditional birthright citizenship," bilingual "balance" and restrictions on police officers asking someone’s immigration status during an apprehension or investigation of a crime. Further, he said, he was opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants. But, Patterson said, "I will tell you… that I very loudly, firmly and with great fervor support… a guest-worker program as part of our border security." "We have folks in this country who are here to do us harm," Patterson said. "They are criminal, they are coyotes, they run things back and across the border whether they are illegals, whether they are drugs or contraband. "And we also have folks in this country," Patterson continued, "who want to work hard, pay their taxes, obey our laws. And there is no way for those to come here and do that lawfully because our immigration system is broken. We need a guest-worker, temporary guest-worker program that is in the immigration plank in our platform," he said. Our ruling Patterson said he was unique among statewide elected officials in speaking for the guest-worker section that became part of the Republican Party of Texas platform in 2012. True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Jerry Patterson | null | null | null | 2014-04-08T10:00:00 | 2014-03-30 | ['Republican_Party_of_Texas'] |
vogo-00057 | The Challenge of Our New Fact Check Ruling | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/the-challenge-of-our-new-fact-check-ruling/ | null | null | null | null | null | The Challenge of Our New Fact Check Ruling | February 21, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00272 | CNN PH anchor Pinky Webb taking notice Trillanes is crazy | fake | http://verafiles.org/articles/week-fake-news-cnn-ph-anchor-pinky-webb-taking-notice-trilla | null | null | null | null | fake news | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: CNN PH anchor Pinky Webb taking notice Trillanes is crazy UNTRUE | March 30, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10178 | I introduced a bill that would’ve helped stop the multimillion-dollar bonus packages that CEOs grab on their way out.. (McCain) opposed that idea. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/25/barack-obama/mccain-never-talked-about-the-bill/ | As Congress worked through the details of a $700-billion bailout of the financial system, the presidential candidates zeroed in on the issue of executive pay and skirmished over who could rightly take credit for sounding an alarm about highly compensated CEOs at troubled financial firms. Appearing in Dunedin, Fla., on Sept. 24, Barack Obama depicted John McCain as a recent convert on the issue of corporate accountability, and took credit for introducing legislation last year that would have imposed some formal restraint on big bonuses and severance payments that corporations routinely award top executives. "In the last few days, my opponent has decided to start talking tough about CEO pay. He’s suddenly a hard-charging populist. And that’s all well and good," Obama said. "But I sure wish he was talking the same way over a year ago, when I introduced a bill that would’ve helped stop the multimillion-dollar bonus packages that CEOs grab on their way out the door. Because he opposed that idea." Obama also lamented that McCain didn't join him in demanding accountability from troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose former chief executives received pay and bonus packages worth a combined $24-million. Obama was trying to tap into mounting public frustration over the prospect of CEOs exiting their posts with lavish pay and benefit packages while taxpayers cover the cost of saving their former firms. The Bush administration yielded this week to demands from congressional critics in both parties that the proposed bailout package include a provision to limit the pay packages of those executives whose companies would benefit from the bailout. But is Obama’s populist attack grounded in facts? We’ve already dealt with McCain’s response to the problems at Fannie and Freddie here (he called for a vigorous response to a 2006 report detailing shady accounting at Fannie) and his position on the bailout of the giant insurer American International Group in this item (he said management and speculators who created the mess shouldn’t be bailed out). It’s true that Obama wrote a bill that would have changed federal securities law to require shareholders of publicly traded companies to hold nonbinding votes on executive compensation packages. The measure, introduced on April 20, 2007, was one of a number of proposals circulating in Congress at the time that attempted to apply limits to executive compensation. But Obama's proposal has never come up for a hearing or a vote in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. As for Obama’s contention that McCain opposed the measure, we reviewed McCain’s public statements and found nothing in his press releases or in the Congressional Record expressing opposition or support for Obama’s bill. We asked Obama’s campaign for evidence that McCain was against the proposal. They provided a copy of remarks McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin made to the Wall Street Journal in April 2008 that the Arizona senator opposes legislative or regulatory fixes for executive pay problems, preferring private-sector intervention. But as early as 2002 McCain criticized excessive executive pay packages in the wake of the accounting scandal at energy giant Enron Corp. In a July 11, 2002, appearance at the National Press Club, McCain outlined a series of steps to "restore public confidence in corporate America" that included forcing executives to return any compensation directly received from their proven misconduct and preventing them from selling holdings of company stock while serving in that company. So Obama can legitimately take credit for introducing legislation that took aim at executive pay practices that have aroused tremendous public ire in the wake of the proposed financial bailout. But there's simply no evidence to support Obama's contention that McCain "opposed that idea." We can find no record that McCain ever uttered an opinion on Obama's proposal, and in fact it's clear that McCain has criticized excessive executive payouts in the past. The only thing the Obama campaign has to support its contention that McCain opposed Obama's executive pay bill is a remark in a news story from one of his to advisers about McCain's general preference for private-sector remedies — a remark made a full year after the Obama bill was introduced. It's not unreasonable to think McCain might have preferred a different approach to what Obama proposed, but that's just not enough to support what Obama is saying. We rate this attack 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 | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-09-25T00:00:00 | 2008-09-24 | ['Chief_executive_officer', 'John_McCain'] |
pomt-04121 | Every day, 34 Americans are murdered with guns. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2013/jan/09/pardeep-kaleka/son-sikh-temple-mass-shooting-victim-34-gun-murder/ | After his father and five other worshippers were killed Aug. 5, 2012, in a mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, Pardeep Kaleka joined a national campaign to address gun violence. Kaleka’s father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, died trying to stop gunman Wade Michael Page, who also wounded four other people, including a police officer, before killing himself. Pardeep Kaleka took part in promoting Demand a Plan, an effort to press President Barack Obama and Congress to develop a plan to counter gun violence. Kaleka spoke in a one-minute video posted on Demand a Plan’s website on Dec. 17, 2012 -- two months after three people were shot to death at a suburban Milwaukee salon and three days after 26 people were gunned down at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. He ended his plea by saying: "Every day, 34 Americans are murdered with guns. That’s 48,000 Americans murdered with guns during President Obama’s next term. I need to know what our leaders are going to do to stop the gun violence. I demand a plan." Let’s check the 34 Americans murdered figure, a statistic repeated by Kaleka’s brother, Amardeep Kaleka, in his own video on the website. Shootings spurred campaign The shooting at the Sikh temple, located in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, is one of at least 62 mass shootings in the U.S. in the past 30 years, according to a December 2012 article in Mother Jones. Most of the killers were mentally ill and obtained their guns legally, the liberal magazine reported. Demand a Plan was launched in July 2012 after 12 people were shot dead earlier that month at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. The sponsor of the campaign is Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a national group that includes Oak Creek Mayor Steve Scaffidi and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. The mayors group, headed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, backs legislation that would, among other things, require every gun buyer to pass a criminal background check; and ban military-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Similar claim checked The claim Kaleka makes in his video was also made in December 2012 by Democrat Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanapoulos." PolitiFact New Jersey rated it Mostly True. Our colleagues found that, between 2005 and 2009, an average of 34 Americans were killed by guns each day. The figure, which doesn't include suicides or accidents, is from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But more recent figures from the CDC, which tracks the causes of deaths for U.S. residents, had been released in September 2012. The newer figures show that, for 2006 through 2010, the five-year rolling average for gun homicides dropped to 33. In 2010 alone, there were 31,672 gun-related deaths, including 19,392 suicides and 11,078 homicides. The remaining deaths were classified as unintentional (606), undetermined (252), or legal intervention/war (344). PolitiFact New Jersey also pointed out that, on an annual basis, the gun homicide figure is dropping. An average of 30 people were killed in 2010 and the preliminary figure for 2011 is also 30. That's down from the average of 35 in 2006, the highest year of the decade. Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman for Demand a Plan, told us the number of gun homicides might be declining because of improvements in medical care have resulted in more lives being saved. She cited a December 2012 news article in The Wall Street Journal. The article said that the number of people shot in the U.S. is increasing, but the percentage who die is decreasing. The article quoted experts as saying improvement in medical care is a major factor in the decline in gun homicides. Our rating As part of a national campaign to address gun violence, Pardeep Kaleka, the son of a Wisconsin gun homicide victim, said: "Every day, 34 Americans are murdered with guns." The average for 2010, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, was 30. But the latest rolling five-year average, the type of measure Kaleka used, was 33, slightly less than what Kaleka claimed. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Pardeep Kaleka | null | null | null | 2013-01-09T09:00:00 | 2012-12-17 | ['United_States'] |
bove-00189 | No, This Is Not An Army Officer’s Son; This Is Pakistan’s Ghulam-e-Murtaza | none | https://www.boomlive.in/no-this-is-not-an-army-officers-son-this-is-pakistans-ghulam-e-murtaza/ | null | null | null | null | null | No, This Is Not An Army Officer’s Son; This Is Pakistan’s Ghulam-e-Murtaza | Sep 13 2017 2:17 pm, Last Updated: Sep 23 2017 3:00 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11558 | First NFL team declares bankruptcy over kneeling thugs. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/feb/07/blog-posting/no-jaguars-nfl-team-didnt-declare-bankruptcy-after/ | Taking a knee in protest during the national anthem has led the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team to bankruptcy, a fake viral post on Facebook said. "First NFL team declares bankruptcy over kneeling thugs," said a Feb. 2 headline on TopBuzz, an open platform where anyone can post articles and videos. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. We found that there is no evidence that the Jaguars plan to file for bankruptcy as a result of players taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality or injustice against African-Americans. The fact-checking website Snopes found that the same story was posted by Patriot Post, a satirical website, on Dec. 3. The article has since been posted by many other websites including Defense USA, Santa Christmas and Policetask. The Feb. 2 story said that "last week" 31 of 42 men on the Jaguars took a knee during the national anthem. (The Jaguars’ schedule shows their last game was Jan. 21, so technically they didn’t play the week before Feb. 2.) The players angered "every God-fearing, country-loving American who has either had the honor to serve or know someone who did. They might as well have wiped their proverbial asses with the American flag," the story said. The story said that the Jaguars were "quietly maneuvering behind the scenes to file a Chapter 11 reorganization of debt bankruptcy in the 3rd District Court of Atlanta next week." We found no such court in Atlanta, and we found there is a bankruptcy court much closer to home: the Florida Middle Bankruptcy Court in Jacksonville. We searched news reports and found nothing about the Jaguars moving toward bankruptcy. Forbes valued the Jaguars at about $2 billion, in 25th place, in it’s 2017 ranking of the value of NFL teams. The controversy about football players’ silent protests began in 2016, when then-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick initially sat, and later switched to taking a knee, during the pre-game anthem to protest racial discrimination, especially at the hands of police. Those protests became even more politicized after President Donald Trump tweeted Sept. 23, 2017 that any such players who don’t stand during the national anthem should be fired. The next day, dozens of NFL players nationwide took a knee in protest, including some Jaguars players during their game in London. The Jaguars drew particular attention because their owner, Shahid Khan, a Pakistan-born Muslim and only nonwhite NFL owner, publicly showed his support for the protests. Khan joined his team on the field and locked arms to show solidarity during the game. "We have a lot of work to do and we can do it, but the comments made by the president make it harder," Khan said in a statement. "That's why it was important for us, and personally for me, to show the world that even if we may differ at times, we can and should be united in the effort to become better as people and a nation." Khan had donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration but has also criticized Trump’s attempt to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. We emailed the Jaguars’ public relations office and did not get a reply. The protests by NFL players have fueled multiple fake news stories including that a flight crew took a knee and stranded the New Orleans Saints on an airport runway, and that the NFL fined Pittsburgh Steelers $1 million each for skipping national anthem and that Fox Sports cancelled NFL broadcasts. All of those stories rated Pants on Fire, and in this case the claim that the Jaguars declared bankruptcy over "kneeling thugs" is also made up. We rate this story posted by various bloggers Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-02-07T08:04:16 | 2018-02-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-03664 | A recent study of a proposed cap-and-trade policy’s effect on Wisconsin consumers showed it could "raise gasoline prices by 141 percent and electricity rates by 171 percent" by 2030. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2013/apr/28/ron-johnson/ron-johnson-says-recent-study-showed-wisconsin-gas/ | Ron Johnson described believers in man-made causes of climate change as "crazy" when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2010, saying that sunspot activity or "just something in the geologic eons of time" were more likely explanations for extreme weather. Now in his third year in the Senate, Johnson is markedly more diplomatic when responding to constituents who want him to support limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding cap-and-trade policies and climate change," he wrote to Greg Everett, a retired musician from Conover on March 26, 2013. "I share your desire to protect our natural environment." Still, Johnson sought to make clear to Everett -- who had signed a petition asking Johnson to support cap and trade -- his continued opposition to government intervention in this realm. "But I am equally concerned that misguided efforts to improve the environment can destroy much-needed jobs and new job creation," Johnson said in a response that Everett posted on his blog. "Too often, these policies become so prohibitively expensive that they undermine economic growth and the average American's ability to support himself or herself." Johnson then referred to "a recent study of a proposed cap-and-trade policy." The study, he wrote, "showed it would cost Wisconsin nearly 75,000 jobs by 2030 and result in a loss of disposable income of up to $6,900 per household. It could also raise gasoline prices by 141 percent and electricity rates by 171 percent." We’re aware there’s general agreement that cap-and-trade legislation carries a cost for most -- if not all -- consumers. But the numbers Johnson cites on gas and electric costs are eye-popping. Let’s take a look. How cap and trade works Generally speaking, cap and trade works like this: To slow climate change, the government would set a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, companies such as electric utilities must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits — also known as allowances — to continue polluting. Companies that find ways to reduce pollution easily and cheaply can end up with extra credits, and sell them to other companies that have trouble reducing their emissions or want to make longer-term investments in conservation, according to a summary by the Environmental Defense Fund. While companies may exchange allowances, the overall limit on pollution remains in place. The cap would then be reduced over time to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions. A lower cap aims to make it more costly for utilities and industries to continue burning fossil fuels. When we asked Johnson for backup, a spokesman in his office said the constituent response refers to a 2008 study commissioned by groups concerned about a cap-and-trade bill introduced in the Senate. The study does have numbers very close to what Johnson cited -- 141 and 177 percent increases, for gas and oil, solely because of the bill. The study broke out price effects for each state, as well as a national figure. But several things jumped out at us about the study. In predicting price effects over nearly 25 years, the study presents a range of low and high price-hike estimates, not single figures. The low-cost estimate for gasoline is 72 percent, half of the worst-case estimate. For electricity, the low end increase was 126 percent. Johnson mentions only the worst-case scenario, though he did frame it as prices "could" jump by the higher figures. The study was commissioned by two groups that have opposed legislative efforts on climate change on the same economic grounds that Johnson cites. They are the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). It is relatively recent, 2008, but it focused on a bill -- the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) -- first introduced in 2007. It was replaced by a companion bill in 2008, which died in the Senate. Neither got as much traction as a 2009 bill that passed the House. When we broadened our search, we found numerous impact studies by public and private entities on cap-and-trade legislation, and specifically on Lieberman-Warner. According to experts, all such efforts at forecasting energy price increases are iffy due to the complexity level. The cost projections on Lieberman-Warner are "at best speculative" and should be viewed skeptically, warned an exhaustive Congressional Research Service review of six studies. "It is difficult to project costs up to the year 2030, much less beyond. The already tenuous assumption that regulatory standards will remain constant becomes more unrealistic, and other unforeseen events loom as critical issues which cannot be modeled." Fuel price estimates, in particular, vary widely depending on various assumptions made by researchers, the review said. And the study for the manufacturing group -- cited by Johnson -- showed dramatically higher increases in gasoline prices than predicted in studies by two government agencies and a non-profit that supports cap and trade, the research service found. Gasoline: The Johnson-cited study projected hikes of $1.70 to $3.25 per gallon by 2030, while the federal government’s official source of energy statistics, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), predicted increases of 40 cents per gallon. The non-profit Clean Air Task Force put the hike at 25 cents. The figures compared are national, not specific to Wisconsin. Electricity: The Johnson-cited study predicted increases at least twice as high as studies by EIA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Task Force, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Mining Association. Again, the figures are national. The CRS specifically warned about breaking down cost impacts state by state -- as the manufacturers study did -- saying: "Simple attempts by some presentations to break down the cost by industrial sector or by state should be viewed with attentive skepticism." Overall, the service found, "the more comprehensive analyses are the work by EPA, EIA, and MIT." Another bill, another study The two groups behind the study Johnson relied on also did a separate projection of the Wisconsin energy cost impact of a more recent bill -- the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 sponsored by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. The Waxman-Markey bill, unlike Lieberman-Warner, passed the House 219-212 on June 26, 2009. It did not get a Senate vote. Its impact was studied in 2009. In that study, the two groups projected much smaller price increases from Waxman-Markey (19.9 percent to 26.1 percent for gas, and 37.5 percent to 59.7 percent for electric)than from the bill Johnson chose to highlight (increases well over 100 percent). That’s likely because Waxman-Markey rolled some of the revenue from pollution permits back to consumers in the form of rebates or expanded efficiency programs. Johnson spokesman Brian Faughnan told us Johnson’s climate change letter was simply an attempt to show the reasonable possible impact of major legislation that started in the Senate, the chamber where he serves. "Senator Johnson’s letter does not claim to give a full range of the estimates of the impact of cap and trade," Faughnan wrote in an email to us. And in any event, the two studies by the manufacturers show major increases in gas prices, and significantly greater electricity costs, Faughnan wrote. Our rating Experts agree that cap and trade likely means higher energy costs for consumers. Johnson goes further, saying it would be "prohibitively expensive." He tells constituents he opposes it in part because a "recent study" showed it could "raise gasoline prices by 141 percent and electricity rates by 171 percent." There is a study that includes those estimates for Wisconsin. But Johnson ignores critical facts. The same study cites much smaller increases under a second scenario. And its conclusions, published by opponents of the bill, are an outlier among several other studies that independent congressional researchers say were more thorough -- and show much smaller increases. He also ignores studies that said a more recent bill dramatically held down the size of cost increases to consumers. In an area in which precise conclusions are difficult, Johnson cherry-picks one study of a dead bill and presents its worst-case scenario as hard evidence of "prohibitively expensive" effects of a cap and trade approach. We rate his statement Mostly False. | null | Ron Johnson | null | null | null | 2013-04-28T09:00:00 | 2013-03-26 | ['Wisconsin'] |
tron-01044 | Officer Jay Stalien Facebook Post on Black Lives Matter | authorship confirmed! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/officer-jay-stalien-facebook-post-black-lives-matter/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Officer Jay Stalien Facebook Post on Black Lives Matter | Jul 14, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11456 | The Koch brothers have given Paul Ryan "$500,000 in campaign contributions." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2018/mar/09/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-stumping-paul-ryan-opponent-randy-b/ | At or near the top of liberals’ love-to-hate list are "the Koch brothers" -- billionaire industrialists and funders of conservative causes, Charles and David Koch. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders took a swipe at them with an eye-popping statement about campaign cash during his most recent visit to Wisconsin. The Vermont independent, who won the Badger State during his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination for president, was keynoting a Feb. 24, 2018 rally in Racine for Randy Bryce. Bryce is one of two Democrats running for the southern Wisconsin congressional seat held by Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan, who was first elected to the seat in 1998, has repeatedly said he won’t decide until spring whether he’ll run for re-election in November 2018. Sanders said: And this particular election could not be clearer in terms of the competing visions for America. It is not an accident that Paul Ryan now has, I think, $10 million in his campaign war chest. It is not an accident that the Koch brothers have given him $500,000 in campaign contributions. It had been reported a month before Sanders’ visit that Ryan had $10 million in cash on hand in his campaign account as of the end of 2017. But did $500,000 of it come from the Koch brothers? It may not seem like it sometimes, but there are still limits on how much individuals can give to candidates. We found Sanders’ claim is partially accurate, but takes things out of context. The money To back Sanders’ claim, his campaign directed us to page 364 of a January 2018 Federal Election Commission report filed by something called Team Ryan. The report shows that in November 2017, Team Ryan received $247,700 each from Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth Koch, of Wichita, Kan. That’s a total of almost $500,000 ($495,400). But were those campaign contributions given to Ryan? Not exactly. To ‘Ryan’ Team Ryan is a joint fundraising committee that raises and transfers money to three groups: 1. Ryan for Congress -- that is, Ryan’s own campaign fund. 2. Prosperity Action, a leadership political action committee run by Ryan that gives money to other politicians. 3. National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans. In disputing Sanders’ claim, Ryan’s campaign said the vast majority of the Koch money goes to the National Republican Congressional Committee, given that there are federal limits on what an individual can give to Ryan’s campaign ($5,400 per election cycle) and to Ryan’s leadership PAC ($5,000 per calendar year). Campaign finance experts from three nonprofits, the Center for Responsive Politics, the Campaign Finance Institute and Common Cause, confirmed to us that those limits apply to the Koch donations. That means the $495,400 in Koch money to Team Ryan would break down this way: Ryan’s campaign $10,800 Ryan’s leadership PAC $10,000 National Republican Congressional Committee $474,600 Two points worth noting as we close: 1. Team Ryan raised $44 million in 2017, a record for a House speaker in a non-election year. In announcing the $44 million in January 2018, Team Ryan said it would be transferring $32 million to the NRCC. 2. The contributions by Charles and Elizabeth Koch were made 13 days after the House passed the Ryan-backed GOP tax reform that was signed into law by President Donald Trump. Both Charles and David Koch were major advocates for the tax plan, which cuts the corporate tax rate and estate taxes. Our rating At a campaign rally for one of the candidates running for Ryan’s U.S. House seat, Sanders said "the Koch brothers have given" Ryan "$500,000 in campaign contributions." It wasn’t the two Koch brothers but rather one of the brothers, and his wife, who contributed $495,400. The money was given to a joint fundraising committee controlled by Ryan. But it primarily funds campaigns of other Republicans because, by law, only $10,800 could go to Ryan’s own campaign fund. We rate Sanders’ statement Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bernie Sanders | null | null | null | 2018-03-09T06:00:00 | 2018-02-24 | ['None'] |
pose-01280 | “As soon as I take office I will ask Congress to fully eliminate the defense sequester and will submit a new budget to rebuild our military. It is so depleted. We will rebuild our military.” | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1371/end-defense-sequester/ | null | trumpometer | Donald Trump | null | null | End the defense sequester | 2017-01-17T08:38:36 | null | ['United_States_Congress'] |
goop-02346 | Kate Middleton “Frustrated” By Meghan Markle Stealing Spotlight? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kate-middleton-spotlight-meghan-markle-feud/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kate Middleton “Frustrated” By Meghan Markle Stealing Spotlight? | 2:54 pm, October 14, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04797 | Sarah Palin wants to ban "Arabic numerals" from American schools. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sarah-palin-arabic-numerals/ | null | Junk News | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Sarah Palin Wants ‘Arabic Numerals’ Banned From America’s Schools | 6 May 2016 | null | ['United_States', 'Sarah_Palin'] |
pomt-02487 | When union membership goes down, so do (middle class) wages. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2014/feb/18/ed-schultz/schultz-go-unions-so-go-wages/ | In the days before workers rejected an attempt to unionize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., MSNBC host and union supporter Ed Schultz attempted to underscore what he thought was at stake. "If it fails, it could be a major setback for workers all across this country," Schultz told viewers. Schultz then pointed to a chart showing two lines that headed down over time. One was the percentage of union workers and the other was, in his words, "middle class income." "Quite the parallel there, isn’t there?" Schultz said. "When union membership goes down, so do wages. This vote is a pivotal moment for union workers in this country." Schultz, who did not respond to our requests for comment, is right to point out that union membership affects wages. But his wording takes things a little too far. We’ll explain why in this fact-check. How unions affect wages We found the chart that Schultz had on his show. It comes from the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, and shows the percentage of union workers falling from about 28 percent in 1967 to about 11 percent today. In the same period, the share of the nation’s income going to the middle 60 percent of households declined from 52.3 percent to 45.7 percent. That seems to support Schultz’s claim, but actually it doesn’t prove his point. First, he talked about wages and the chart talks about the share of the national income, which is different. One is money in your pocket and the other is money in your pocket compared to the money in rich peoples’ pockets. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, a reliable source of neutral number crunching, household median income rose between 1967 and 2012 by about $7,000 after accounting for inflation. If you want to find the strongest evidence for Schultz’s statement, you have to look at the wages for men. Work by economists Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney finds median wages for men slipped slightly starting in 1970 and have remained stagnant ever since. But while wages and union membership might have fallen (or flatlined) at the same time, it doesn’t mean one caused the other. That’s where independent research picks up. Most analysts have looked at Schultz’s claim from another angle, by seeing if unions raise wages. The research shows generally, yes. We found near consensus that unions tend to deliver higher pay for their members. "Unions raise wages for people in the middle of the skills distribution about 10 to 15 percent," said David Card, one of the leading economists in this field at the University of California-Berkeley. Card’s work is full of daunting equations and statistical techniques, but within those, he teases out the role a person’s skill level plays. Card has found that people with higher skills are less inclined to join unions and that union employers tend to avoid lower-skilled workers. That means the biggest impacts of unions are felt among people in the middle. Another leading researcher, David Macpherson at Trinity University, uses data from the federal government’s Current Population Survey to produce a database called Unionstats.com. In the latest numbers for 2013, Macpherson finds unions play a larger role in shaping wages in the private sector than in the government sector. "The union premium is about 20 percent in the private sector," Macpherson said. "While in the public sector, it’s about 9 percent." Any number, however, has caveats and is imprecise, economists told us. They point to holes in the data and the challenge of separating the impact of unions compared to other macroeconomic forces, such as global competition. There’s also evidence the union effect has dropped over time. Still, according to the experts we reached, unions are good for their members. For the record, economist John DiNardo at the University of Michigan studied companies where unionization votes -- both for and against -- were very close. DiNardo found that it didn’t really matter whether workers approved or rejected unions. Wages in both kinds of companies followed the same path. Where Schultz goes too far So there is broad consensus that unions are typically good for people who join them in that it results in increased wages. But Schultz’s claim was broader than that. He said that when union membership goes down, people not only lose the potential to earn more -- their wages drop. And that happens regardless of whether you had the chance to join a union or not. That’s a trickier claim to substantiate, but there are some theories on how that could happen. Labor economist Richard Freeman at Harvard University speaks of the "threat effect", that is, when non-union employers raise wages to avoid a successful union vote by their workers. Freeman found evidence of companies raising wages to undermine union growth in the 1950s and 1960s when unions were strong. But today is a different story, he said. "To go from those situations and show they affect the whole economy is a stretch," Freeman said. "Schultz's claim is plausible, and it may be right, but we don't really know the magnitude of the spillover." Other powerful forces are also at play, Freeman said. Global competition and much greater use of technology hurt some workers and helped others. There is no consensus on the role unions by themselves played over the decades. On one end, there is the work of Macpherson and his colleagues. Macpherson looked at how much of the nation’s total income went to workers since the mid 1960s. It has gone up a bit and down a bit, but generally it held steady even as the percentage of union workers fell. "I don’t see any evidence that wages across the board went down as union membership declined," Macpherson said. But Macpherson’s data didn’t look at the distribution of those wages. A CEO’s pay was mixed in with that of a store clerk. Other researchers have focused on how pay is spread around. Sociologists Jake Rosenfeld at the University of Washington and Bruce Western at Harvard concluded that men who work full-time would be doing appreciably better if union membership hadn’t fallen since the 1970s. How much better? Rosenfeld said if more men -- again, it’s the male workers -- had belonged to unions, their yearly wages would have increased about $2,600. Card at the University of California had similar results. "The decline in unionization has reduced wages for people in the middle relative to those in the top," Card said. Setting aside the matter of unions and income inequality, here is one point on which Rosenfeld, Macpherson and Freeman generally agree. The impact of unions depends heavily on the nature of the work and where it takes place. When unions are strong in a particular industry and a particular region, Rosenfeld said it raises the bar and non-union managers tend to mimic their neighbors. "If that (other) firm happens to be union, then you're paying union-level wages regardless of whether your company is organized," Rosenfeld said. "Was Ed Schultz right to say that 'when union membership goes down, so do wages?' " Rosenfeld said. "Sure -- for union members and for those non-members who worked in areas and occupations where labor was strong. For everyone across the whole economy? Probably not." Our ruling Schultz said when union membership goes down, so do wages. Schultz emphasized that "all workers" have a stake in this and his chart tied union membership to the income of everyone in the middle class. Schultz would have done better to have talked about the distribution of income rather than wages. His claim is most likely to be true for male union workers and only partly true for non-union workers. Even for union workers, other factors such as globalization and technology have diminished the union effect. The ability of unions to push up wages for workers outside the union is limited to certain industries that operate in the same region. Schultz’s statement has a measure of truth but in today’s economy, the data don’t support the strong tie he suggests between unions and wages overall. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Ed Schultz | null | null | null | 2014-02-18T15:39:53 | 2014-02-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-02729 | Florida has experienced positive job growth for 39 consecutive months. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2013/dec/19/republican-party-florida/nod-rick-scott-republican-party-says-florida-had-3/ | After a recent Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times investigation revealed that state incentives have so far only led to a tiny sliver of promised jobs, Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican Party of Florida decided to fight back with their own job statistics. "Florida has experienced positive job growth for 39 consecutive months," the Republican Party of Florida posted on Facebook this month. The claim seemed odd to us, since 39 months would include part of former Gov. Charlie Crist’s term. We wanted to dig further. Florida job statistics currently are available through October 2013, meaning Scott has been in office for 34 months where figures are available. In that time, Florida has gained jobs in 29 months and lost jobs in five months -- including as recently as May. That means Florida has added jobs for five consecutive months, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, not 39. Case closed? Not entirely. The state Republican Party told us it didn’t mean "consecutive" as in month after month. Instead, Republicans said they were comparing each month to the same month the previous year -- so October 2012 vs. October 2013, etc. By that measure, Florida has had 39 months of positive job growth. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, the last month that saw a decline in the total number of people employed compared to the same month the previous year was July 2010. We turned to economists to see what they thought of the GOP’s wording and approach. They said the GOP was misleading in its wording but that one measure of job growth isn’t necessarily better than the other. Chris Lafakis, a senior economist at Moody’s and Bill Seyfried, an economist at Rollins College in Florida, told us it can be more useful to look at trends over a few months in a row. "For example, In March and April of 2013, the Florida economy added about 25,000 and 19,000 jobs, respectively," Seyfried said. "There were about 5,000 fewer jobs in May but then about 36,000 jobs added over the next two months. As an economist, I view May as the outlier given solid employment gains in the two months before and two months afterwards. I wouldn’t extend that to 12 months, but normally would focus on the three-month average (as opposed to just one month at a time)." Gary Burtless, an economist at Brookings, said that most readers would have misinterpreted the Republican Party’s statement to refer to one month followed by the next month. "Employment has generally increased over the past 39 months," he said. But "it simply hasn't increased for 39 consecutive months." Retired University of Florida economics professor David Denslow agreed. The GOP "should have said, Florida has experienced positive year-over-year job growth for 39 consecutive months,’ " Denslow said. Our ruling The Republican Party of Florida said "Florida has experienced positive job growth for 39 consecutive months." Economists say the state GOP is guilty of sloppy wording here. Florida has not experienced 39 consecutive months of job growth. The correct figure is five. But there is a sliver of truth if you look at the claim through the GOP’s eyes. Florida has seen year-over-year job growth for 39 consecutive months, which while not what Republicans said, is an equally notable metric. Words matter. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Republican Party of Florida | null | null | null | 2013-12-19T13:36:19 | 2013-12-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-03340 | The city of Brookhaven’s ordinance could cause the Pink Pony to close, thereby "putting 300 Pink Pony employees out of work in this economy." | half-true | /georgia/statements/2013/jul/22/pink-pony/pink-pony-ad-warns-fight-could-cost-jobs/ | We couldn’t resist. The folks who run the Pink Pony Gentlemen’s Club recently paid for an ad in a community newspaper claiming several hundred people would be unemployed if a city of Brookhaven ordinance forced the strip club to shut its doors. Dancers. Bartenders. Even "house moms." We’ll get to the house moms in a minute. "FACT," the ad says in red letters. The ad said the city’s ordinance would put "300 Pink Pony employees out of work in this economy." A colleague saw the ad in a DeKalb County newspaper and forwarded it to us. The ad included a prior fact check we wrote looking into the Pink Pony’s claim that management has never been cited for a violation of a state law or ordinance. That one was rated True. We at PolitiFact Georgia are typically digging into technical topics and slogging through long reports; so we virtually danced (with our clothes on) at another opportunity to fact-check a claim by the club. Does the Pink Pony really employ 300 people? "Three hundred might be a conservative number," said Aubrey Villines, an attorney who specializes in First Amendment issues who represents the club. In May, the Pink Pony filed a lawsuit against the DeKalb County municipality claiming Brookhaven’s ordinance to regulate sexually oriented businesses would put the club out of business. Specifically, the ordinance would prohibit nude dancing, with or without serving alcohol. The city has said it will not enforce the ordinance until a DeKalb County Superior Court judge rules on its legality. The lawsuit is serious business, Villines says. The Pink Pony claims Brookhaven would lose $450,000 a year in property and sales taxes, along with license and permit fees. It’s also a big deal for Brookhaven taxpayers, who are paying legal fees associated with the lawsuit. There’s been plenty of news coverage over the years about how the strip club business has made it rain with greenbacks in Atlanta. (See: The Gold Club, Adam "Pacman" Jones.) Cab drivers, food delivery workers, they all make money off the Pink Pony, Villines said. "If we leave that area (of Brookhaven), it will cave under," Villines said, stressing that was the main point of the ad. Villines estimated the Pink Pony employs about 200 dancers. Some work there a couple of days a week, he said. Others, he said, work as many as five days a week. There’s the bartending staff, servers, the kitchen crew, security, disc jockeys, the janitorial staff. And, yes, house moms. House moms, Villines explained, are women who help dancers if they encounter work-related trouble, such as a flat tire en route to the Pony. Their duties include making sure the dancers don’t drive home under the influence. "They’re the first line of defense," Villines said of house moms. The Pink Pony, though, wouldn’t show us any proof that they have 300 people on the payroll. They couldn’t reveal that sort of information, Villines said. DeKalb County, though, requires strip club dancers, waitresses, bartenders and bouncers to get an annual license to work at adult entertainment establishments. The dancers pay $300 a year; the other occupations pay $200 a year. As of July 18, there were 352 men and women licensed to work at the Pink Pony, county records show. The records do not show each employee is currently working there. So, there are more than 300 people currently licensed to work at the club, which is more than what the Pink Pony claimed in its ad. Still, we don’t know if all of them are regularly working there. Do the majority of the 200 or so dancers work two days a week? Once every two months? The Pink Pony claim is partially accurate, but it ignores a lot of context that would give a reader a different impression. We rate this claim Half True. | null | Pink Pony | null | null | null | 2013-07-22T00:00:00 | 2013-07-11 | ['None'] |
snes-06262 | Patients should request the use of thyroid guards during x-ray procedures.to head off thyroid cancer. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thyroid-guards/ | null | Medical | null | David Mikkelson | null | Should Patients Request Thyroid Guards During X-Rays to Prevent Thyroid Cancer? | 20 March 2011 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00764 | Taylor Swift, Joe Alywn Getting Married In August? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-swift-joe-alwyn-married-august-summer-wedding/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Taylor Swift, Joe Alywn Getting Married In August? | 3:24 pm, June 23, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08903 | I don't think the argument can be credibly made that the United States of America is undertaxed compared to our competitors. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/29/tim-pawlenty/tim-pawlenty-says-us-not-undertaxed-compared-its-c/ | Tim Pawlenty -- Minnesota's outgoing Republican governor and a likely candidate for president in 2012 -- met with Washington reporters on July 26, 2010, for a wide-ranging discussion of politics and policy. One of the things he said made it into the reports of at least two journalists in attendance, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post and John Dickerson of Slate.. Asked what his reaction would be if a presidential commission on the national debt were to recommend a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, Pawlenty said, "Not good. I don't think the argument can be credibly made that the United States of America is undertaxed compared to our competitors." In an opinion column published the following day, Marcus took aim at Pawlenty's remark. "Actually," Marcus wrote, "the United States is on the low end in terms of the overall tax burden -- 28 percent of gross domestic product in 2007, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, compared with an average of 36 percent in the 30 OECD countries. Only South Korea, Mexico and Turkey were lower." By locating the OECD chart -- which is exactly what we would have done -- Marcus ably did much of our work for us. But we still wanted to check with a few tax experts to make sure that she didn't miss anything in her analysis. Three experts we queried -- Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, William Ahern, the director of policy and communications at the Tax Foundation, a tax research group, and Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research -- all agreed with Marcus's conclusion, though Ahern and Mitchell took the opportunity to add some additional context. Ahern said that tax-burden-to-GDP ratios -- the data that underlies the OECD chart -- should be used carefully because they can obscure deficits. A country with a low tax-to-GDP ratio may have a substantial deficit, and in time, that deficit will put upward pressure on taxes. So nations with low tax-to-GDP ratios may not find those ratios sustainable over the long term. Mitchell, for his part, agreed with Marcus' point about the overall tax burden, but he noted that in the U.S., the burden from different types of taxes varies. Some types of taxes, such as corporate taxes, are among the highest of the OECD nations. Others are closer to average, such as the top income tax rate and the capital gains tax rate. "The big reason the U.S. has a lower aggregate tax burden when measured as a share of GDP is that we don't -- yet -- have a value-added tax," Mitchell said. "Our payroll taxes also tend to be lower than average." Indeed, when we contacted Pawlenty's camp, a spokesman cited the high rates of corporate taxes in the U.S. "This unacceptably high corporate tax rate makes the U.S. less competitive by encouraging companies to shift investment to nations with lower corporate tax rates," said spokesman Alex Conant. Despite the caveats from our experts, we see no reason to undercut Marcus' finding that the U.S. ranks low among other developed countries in total tax burden. Corporate taxes are comparatively high in the U.S., and that's a worry for businesses and, indirectly, for their employees and customers. But corporate taxes only accounted for 12 percent of federal tax revenues in 2008, so we don't think it's valid to focus on that factor to the exclusion of the broader tax burden. While we won't take a position on the the question of overtaxation, we think that, contrary to what Pawlenty said, there is a credible argument to be made that the U.S. is undertaxed compared to its competitors. So we rate his statement False. | null | Tim Pawlenty | null | null | null | 2010-07-29T15:24:22 | 2010-07-26 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-13570 | 22 veterans take their own lives each day. | mostly true | /california/statements/2016/aug/23/kamala-harris/kamala-harris-slightly-claim-about-veterans-suicid/ | In her campaign for U.S. Senate, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has pledged to "clean up" the scandals and reduce wait times at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The issue, Harris has said, is a matter of life and death. "It is unconscionable that 22 veterans take their own lives each day. We must ensure that they have support to adjust to civilian life," Harris, a Democrat, said on Twitter on August 18, 2016. Harris made the same claim about veterans suicides on her website here, where she adds that she’ll work "to ensure that every Veteran knows what benefits they earned and how to access those benefits." We wondered whether the suicide statistic Harris used is correct. Checking a somber number Her campaign spokesman said Harris used a widely-cited figure of 22 suicides per day from the VA’s 2012 Suicide Data Report, which examined veterans deaths in 21 states, from 1999 to 2011. That study’s researchers, as noted by the Washington Post Fact Checker, cautioned against the use of the 22-deaths figure more than once in the study: "It is recommended that the estimated number of veterans be interpreted with caution due to the use of data from a sample of states." Researchers gave a range of 18 to 22 veteran suicides a day. Harris chose the high-end of this range. Importantly, Harris’ figure of 22 suicides per day fails to account for research the VA released in July for its most comprehensive report yet on veteran suicides. The VA examined about 55 million veterans records from 1979 through 2014. It found that in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, 7,403 veterans took their own lives, or an average of about 20 a day. That’s close to the 22 suicides per day cited by Harris, a figure that continues to be used by many others despite the new, more extensive research. It does not take away from the point Harris is trying to make: That the rate of veterans suicide is far too high. VA figures show that in 2014 veterans accounted for 18 percent of all deaths from suicides among adults in the United States while they made up only 8.5 percent of the population. Capital Public Radio / File photo One prominent voice in American politics has cited the new number. PolitiFact Virginia rated a claim by Donald Trump in July that "a shocking 20 veterans are committing suicide each and every day, especially our older veterans," as True, based on this new report. PolitiFact Virginia added that the VA always acknowledged that this old study (from 2012) was limited. Notably absent were records for California and Texas — two states with very high veteran populations. The new figure of 20 veteran suicides a day is based on records from every state. When asked, Harris’ campaign spokesman acknowledged there has been new research. "Kamala believes strongly we must work hard to get that number to zero," the spokesman added. Old study widely cited Harris is not the only person to cite the 22 suicides per day statistic from the old study. Her opponent and fellow Democrat in the race for U.S. Senate — U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez — has repeated it, including in this video posted in November 2015. Our ruling Kamala Harris recently said "22 veterans take their own lives each day." The number she cites relies on data from a 2012 VA study by the VA, which was limited and included caveats. That old report has been widely cited by Republicans and Democrats, including Harris’ opponent in her run for U.S. Senate. But Harris’ claim ignores research the VA released in July for its most comprehensive report yet on veteran suicides, with records from all states. The new study found an average of about 20 veterans a day, two fewer than what Harris claimed. Harris’ statement is close, but needs clarification or additional information. We rate her claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Kamala Harris | null | null | null | 2016-08-23T06:00:00 | 2016-08-18 | ['None'] |
goop-00820 | Reese Witherspoon Wants Daughter Ava To Star In “Legally Blonde 3”? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/reese-witherspoon-daughter-ava-legally-blonde-acting/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Reese Witherspoon Wants Daughter Ava To Star In “Legally Blonde 3”? | 2:26 pm, June 14, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11817 | Since 2015, Scott Walker has not done a public event where you don't have to pay admission or be on an approved list. | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2017/nov/15/scot-ross/how-often-does-gov-scott-walker-seeking-re-electio/ | Gov. Scott Walker has repeatedly been criticized for not being accessible to the general public. In 2013, state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, went extreme, saying Walker "hasn't done a public event this entire year." That rated Pants on Fire. We noted a number of events, such as a Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony in the Capitol rotunda attended by hundreds of people (including a few who booed during Walker’s remarks). In 2016, we rated as True a much narrower statement from state Rep. Dana Wachs, D-Eau Claire, that Walker's "listening sessions" were "invite-only and excluding the press." As he traveled Wisconsin to meet with residents, Walker asked various people, including Democratic lawmakers, for suggestions on who to invite to his listening sessions. But these events -- held by Walker, rather than him attending events staged by others -- were not open to the public or to the press, only to people who were invited. Now the 2018 campaign for governor is in full swing, with Wachs among seven Democrats hoping to challenge Walker. And the attacks on Walker’s accessibility are returning. On Nov. 3, 2017, Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, was interviewed on "The Devil’s Advocates," a liberal radio talk show based in Milwaukee. During a discussion about Walker, host Mike Crute said the governor doesn’t often meet with the general public, "not unless they’re invited, not unless they own a corporation. What about the town hall meetings or lack thereof, Scot?" Ross replied: No, I mean, since 2015, Scott Walker has not done a public event where you don't have to pay admission or be on an approved list. I mean, it is disgraceful, this guy -- I mean since 2015, we’re talking two years you have not been able to go to a Scott Walker event unless you open your checkbook or your organization is a lobbying firm and they open their checkbook. As we’ll see, Walker does attend events held by others that are open to the public, but at events he stages, access is more limited. Ross’ evidence When we asked Ross to back his statement, he reiterated that he was referring to events Walker hosts, not events held by others that Walker attends. He made these points: "The closest you can find to Walker attending events that the public can attend without paying or being on a list were the holiday tree lighting ceremony … and his attendance at the last two Martin Luther King Day Jr. celebrations as a guest of the organizers." "Walker doesn't release his schedule publicly." "Even Walker's re-election events have all been held at private businesses that do not allow the public to attend." In July 2016, One Wisconsin Now said it had analyzed campaign contributions of people attending Walker listening sessions during the first three months of the year, and they had made nearly 4,000 contributions totaling over $1 million, overwhelmingly to Republicans and conservatives. Walker’s response In response, Walker’s campaign cited these events attended by Walker: Holiday events: Attending the 2017 Memorial Day ceremony at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee and participating in Fourth of July parades, such as the ones in Wauwatosa and in Menomonee Falls in 2017. Other events not organized by Walker: Participating in events such as the first lady’s walk, Special Olympics torch run, ceremonies honoring law enforcement officers, groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings. Re-election tour: At 14 campaign announcement events around the state in 2017, people were asked to register ahead of time, but were not turned away if they hadn’t, according to the campaign. Walker’s campaign also cited a 9/11 event cosponsored by the governor's office and a September 2016 news event in Madison, noting Ross attended, in which Walker made an announcement about refinancing student debt. Ross said he heard secondhand about the event, at a UW Credit Union, and that it was not generally known or accessible to the public. Our rating Ross said: "Since 2015, Scott Walker has not done a public event where you don't have to pay an admission or be on an approved list." It’s pretty clear that access to Walker is limited. His schedule is generally not made public ahead of time, making it difficult for people to go to events he attends. There are events that are open to the public, such as holiday ceremonies, that Walker attends. But in terms of events Walker himself holds, his campaign team cited campaign events at which registration is requested but not required, a 9/11 ceremony that the governor's office co-sponsored and a news event that had not been announced to the general public. For a statement that is partially accurate, our rating is Half True. Editor's note: This article was edited on Nov. 17, 2017 to indicate that a 9/11 ceremony was co-sponsored by the governor's office and to make clear that registration was requested but not required at Walker campaign announcement events. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Scot Ross | null | null | null | 2017-11-15T10:00:38 | 2017-11-03 | ['None'] |
snes-05400 | According to a body language expert, a photograph of President Obama crying reveals he is a psychopath. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-crying-like-a-psychopath-meme/ | null | Politicians | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Obama Crying Like a Psychopath Meme | 7 January 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-13303 | Says he has "a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/09/donald-trump/donald-trump-has-no-fiduciary-responsibility-his-p/ | In response to a New York Times article dissecting leaked pages from his tax returns, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign released a statement that sought to justify Trump’s efforts to keep his personal income taxes low. The Times article followed months of refusal by Trump to release his tax returns, something that all presidential candidates since 1980 have done. The paper reported that a $916 million loss could have enabled Trump to cancel out earned income in other years, enough to legally pay no personal federal income tax for up to 18 years. The Trump campaign’s unsigned statement argued in part that Trump had an obligation to pay the lowest amount of taxes possible. "Mr. Trump is a highly skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,’ the statement said in part. But does Trump have a "fiduciary responsibility" to pay as little as possible in personal income taxes? Most experts agreed that no such responsibility exists. (Trump’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article.) Let’s start with defining what "fiduciary responsibility" means. The most basic definition of fiduciary responsibility is a legal obligation of one party to act in the best interests of another. (There are other types of fiduciary relationships than economic ones -- such as attorneys to their clients, priests to their parishioners and doctors to their patients -- but we’ll set those aside here.) In a business setting, fiduciary obligation most often refers to the principle that a company’s management has a responsibility to act in the best interests of those who own the company -- its stockholders. There’s some disagreement about how this principle should be put into practice -- for instance, should a company maximize its short-term income regardless of the risks that doing so could carry for the long-term success of the company? In general, though, the overarching principle is considered fairly straightforward: A company’s manager is under an obligation to put shareholders’ interests ahead of his or her own personal financial interests. This principle is commonly followed in the business world. But most experts we contacted said that while the fiduciary principle would govern how a company pays its taxes, it would not apply to Trump’s personal tax return. "The general view is that corporate law imposes a fiduciary responsibility on company managers to maximize company profits on behalf of the company’s owners," said Dennis Caplan, associate professor of accounting at the University at Albany. That means that if Trump managed a company owned by others, he’d have an obligation to minimize corporate taxes in order to maximize profits, he said. But that’s not the case for personal income tax returns -- and it is those returns that were leaked to the New York Times and that were the subject of the speculation about 18 tax-free years. "I do not see how the taxes on his personal tax return would be relevant with respect to this particular fiduciary responsibility," Caplan said. Other experts agreed. Richard W. Painter, a University of Minnesota corporate law professor who was previously chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told PolitiFact that "one does not have fiduciary duty to other people, except perhaps a joint-filing spouse, when filing personal tax returns." Painter added that there is also "no such thing" as a fiduciary duty to oneself. "That’s called greed," he put it in an interview with the New York Times. "And greed is not a component of the law of fiduciary duty anywhere." The fiduciary responsibility argument is something that Trump is "making up," said Daniel Shaviro, a professor of taxation at New York University Law School. "No such responsibility would extend to his personal taxes, even if he were the CEO of a publicly traded company," he said. There’s a difference between tax evasion, which is illegal, and tax avoidance, which is legal, said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. He suspects that Trump was trying to echo this old piece of wisdom, but not successfully. The statement was not done in the "most artfully crafted" way, Elson said. At most, Trump might be able to argue that he has some fiduciary obligations to his employees, suggested Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. That would be arguable "to the extent that any bankruptcy -- which might have arisen if he had not availed himself of these loss carry-forward/carry-back opportunities -- would have converted them into unsecured claimants for any delayed wages or other benefits," White said. However, that’s a "novel" argument untested in the courts, said University of Chicago Law School professor Daniel Hemel, writing in a Medium post. "Employers generally have no fiduciary duties to their employees," Hemel wrote. Our ruling The statement from Trump’s campaign said he has "a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required." That might have been a credible argument if he were referring to his companies’ tax returns. But the statement was in response to controversy surrounding Trump’s personal tax returns. Experts we contacted said there is no generally accepted fiduciary obligation keep one’s own taxes low. The statement is not accurate. We rate it False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/3108538b-63c9-4643-a6b3-4833eaa0441c | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-09T20:00:00 | 2016-10-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-11848 | Says "FBI and Texas State Police are both confirming that Raymond Peter Littleberry, the man accused of shooting up a Texas church, was an avid atheist on the payroll of the Democrat National Committee." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/06/freedomjunkshuncom/no-texas-church-shooter-was-not-dnc-payroll-s-fake/ | Fake news bloggers have seized on the mass shooting at a Texas church, which killed 26 and injured 20 others, to spread disinformation about the shooter’s identity and motive. Freedumjunkshun.com, a self-avowed fake news website, portrayed the perpetrator as a desperate Democratic activist whose killing spree at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was motivated by atheism. "FBI and Texas State Police are both confirming that Raymond Peter Littleberry, the man accused of shooting up a Texas church, was an avid atheist on the payroll of the Democrat National Committee," the article claimed. The fake news article missed basic facts and fabricated others. It wrongly identified the alleged shooter as Raymond Peter Littleberry. Law enforcement officials identified the gunman as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley. Some media reports quoted acquaintances of Kelley describing the man as an avowed atheist. But the fake news article’s claim that atheism motivated the attack was undercut by law enforcement officials who said religion was not a factor, and that the shooting appeared to stem from a "domestic situation." "There was a domestic situation going on with this family. The suspect's mother-in-law attended this church. We know that she had received threatening texts from him," Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters in a Nov. 6 press conference. Martin added the shooting "wasn't over religious beliefs." The fake news article portrayed the perpetrator as "a liberal island in the middle of a conservative sea" who organized Black Lives Matter protests and gay pride parades. It noted that the shooter "was on the DNC payroll," in reference to the Democratic National Committee. "That’s completely false," DNC spokesman Michael Tyler told PolitiFact of the alleged connection. Freedumjunkshun aims to dupe conservative readers into mistaking its satire for truth. "Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate," its disclaimer reads. "Reality is often in the eye of the beholder. You won’t find any of it here." The fake story was wrong to say that Kelley was on the DNC payroll, and authorities said his religious beliefs do not appear to have been a factor in the shooting. We rate this Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | FreedomJunkshun.com | null | null | null | 2017-11-06T12:43:51 | 2017-11-06 | ['Texas', 'Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation', 'Texas_State_University'] |
snes-02372 | Does Cooking with Aluminum Foil Put You at Risk for Alzheimer’s? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cooking-with-aluminum-foil-puts-you-at-risk-for-alzheimers/ | null | Science | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Does Cooking with Aluminum Foil Put You at Risk for Alzheimer’s? | 17 November 2016 | null | ['None'] |
wast-00133 | Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. | 3 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/04/04/president-trumps-claim-that-democrats-created-catch-and-release-policies/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Salvador Rizzo | null | President Trump's claim that Democrats created \xe2\x80\x98catch and release' policies | April 4 | null | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
goop-01817 | Meghan Markle Struggling With “Royal Strain,” | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/meghan-markle-royal-strain-not-true/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Meghan Markle NOT Struggling With “Royal Strain,” Despite Report | 3:10 pm, January 16, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00696 | Crocodile In Sugar Mill Sump | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/croc-sugar-mill.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Crocodile In Sugar Mill Sump | 14th March 2011 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06023 | In 1958, there were 16 states in this country that prohibited -- prohibited -- an African-American and a Caucasian from being married. | mostly true | /new-jersey/statements/2012/jan/15/sheila-oliver/sheila-oliver-says-16-states-prohibited-interracia/ | Gay rights advocates are casting the fight for same-sex marriage as a struggle mirrored in the nation’s past. "This is a civil rights issue," Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said during a news conference announcing Democratic plans to legalize same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Oliver recounted the story of an interracial couple forced to leave Virginia in the 1950s or face jail time for being married. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard Richard and Mildred Loving’s case and ruled state statutes banning interracial marriage unconstitutional. But, "in 1958, there were 16 states in this country that prohibited -- prohibited -- an African-American and a Caucasian from being married," Oliver (D-Essex) said on Jan. 9. "Without question, Senator (Stephen) Sweeney said it best: this is a civil rights issue. It is a snapshot in time in the history of our country issue. And I think for those of us that believe in equality, equality, equality, marriage equality represents the third leg on the stool of civil rights and equality in this country." A spokesman said Oliver based her statistic on a New York Times article published earlier this month. It put the number of states where interracial marriage was illegal in 1958 at 16. It’s actually more than that, PolitiFact New Jersey found. Oregon repealed its law in 1951, becoming the first state to do so since Ohio in 1887. Colorado, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota followed suit. By 1958, two dozen states still prohibited interracial marriage: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Although California still technically had a miscegenation law on its books in 1958, "once the state Supreme Court declared the law invalid in the 1948 Perez V. Sharp case, it was no longer legally enforceable. So from 1948 on, California is put into the ‘legal column,’" Renee Romano, the author of "Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America" and an associate professor of history at Oberlin College in Ohio, said in an email. "The Speaker was responsibly relying upon the data graphic included in that New York Times [article]," Tom Hester Jr., a spokesman for the Assembly Democrats, wrote in an email. "The Speaker’s overall point was to note that same-sex couples continue to suffer from the same wrongful discrimination that interracial couples such as the Lovings and many, many others endured until the Supreme Court rightly put a stop to it." By the time the Supreme Court unanimously ruled miscegenation laws unconstitutional in 1967, 16 states still had such statutes. "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State," then-Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion for the court for the Loving v. Virginia case. Romano said the analogy between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage isn’t exactly parallel, but it’s powerful. If you can make the case that 50 years ago people supported bans on interracial marriage, but "now, we know that it goes on and it’s no big deal, you can sort of use that," she said, to say in another 50 years, people may ask "what the hullabaloo is about. It’s a really powerful analogy. There’s a lot of richness there politically." Our ruling Oliver claimed that 16 states prohibited interracial marriage in 1958. There were actually 24 states with legally enforceable statutes banning the marriage of blacks and whites then. Oliver’s number is off, but the precise figure only further supports her point about discrimination against interracial couples in the 1950s. We rate this statement Mostly True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com. | null | Sheila Oliver | null | null | null | 2012-01-15T07:30:00 | 2012-01-09 | ['None'] |
snes-04641 | An image serves as photographic proof that Hillary Clinton is incontinent. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photograph-incontinent-hillary-clinton/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Photograph of ‘Incontinent’ Hillary Clinton | 7 June 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02057 | A line from George Orwell's novel 1984 predicts the power of smartphones. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/orwell-1984-smartphone-screens/ | null | Questionable Quotes | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Predict the Power of Smartphones? | 17 July 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11118 | Says "Rosie O’Donnell apparently committed the same offense five times, five times, when she broke the identical law that Dinesh (D'Souza) was prosecuted for." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jun/06/ted-cruz/dinesh-dsouza-and-rosie-odonnell-fec-violations-di/ | Backlash to President Donald Trump’s pardon of Dinesh D’Souza caused complaints of a double standard among conservatives. In an interview with the Austin American-Statesman, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told the reporter that D’Souza faced political persecution for a crime liberal comedian Rosie O’Donnell had committed five-fold. (Cruz also claimed credit for the pardon and called D’Souza his friend.) "What’s interesting is, just a few weeks ago we saw revelations that Rosie O’Donnell apparently committed the same offense five times, five times, when she broke the identical law that Dinesh was prosecuted for," Cruz said. "I don’t recall any of those liberal activists on Twitter calling for Rose O’Donnell to be prosecuted." Did O’Donnell commit the same offense as D’Souza? The two cases are very different. The Federal Election Commission caps donations to individual candidates at $2,700 per election. Primaries, runoffs and general elections are counted separately. On May 20, 2014, D’Souza was convicted of a felony for making illegal contributions to Wendy Long’s unsuccessful challenge of Kirsten Gillibrand to represent New York in the U.S. Senate. Long was a friend from D’Souza’s time at Dartmouth College. D’Souza was allowed to contribute a maximum of $5,000 to a single candidate. (The limit on each election was $2,500 in 2012 due to inflation, and this covered the primary and general election.) In March 2012, D’Souza gave $10,000 on behalf of himself and his wife. He then directed his assistant and a lover to also contribute $5,000 each on behalf of themselves and their spouses for a total of $20,000. D’Souza reimbursed them. D’Souza pleaded guilty "to violating the federal campaign election law by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said in a statement. He "admitted that he knew that what he was doing was wrong and something the law forbids." D’Souza faced eight months in a supervised community confinement center, five years of probation, and a $30,000 fine. Trump pardoned D’Souza on May 31. The New York Post reported that O’Donnell made the following contributions, exceeding the individual limit of $2,700 by a total of $5,400. $4,700 to Alabama Sen. Doug Jones in the special general election against Roy Moore. $3,600 to Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb for the special election he won in March. $2,950 to California Rep. Adam Schiff for his primary congressional race. $4,200 to Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congressional candidate, for her primary. (Note: when we searched the FEC individual contributor database, we found $2,700 are marked as going towards the primary campaign and $1,500 towards the general.) $3,450 to Omar Vaid, a congressional candidate in Staten Island and Brooklyn, for his primary. O’Donnell told the New York Post she did not deliberately exceed the limit. "If $2,700 is the cut off — (candidates) should refund the money," she said. "I don’t look to see who I can donate most to … I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit." O’Donnell indeed broke FEC rules, but campaign finance experts told us this type of violation goes unpunished as long as there is no intent to deceive. The money can be refunded or redirected to the candidate’s next race. "The rather small amounts in excess of the limits, as well as the fact that O’Donnell made no effort to conceal the contributions, indicates this is just a sloppy mistake," said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the left-leaning watchdog group Public Citizen. "Rosie O'Donnell contributed her own money in her own name to the candidates in question," said Michael Malbin, executive director at the Campaign Finance Institute. "The candidates are in fact responsible for keeping records and returning the extra, although she should also know what she is doing, as most donors do. Her contributions were fully disclosed." In an op-ed calling out a double standard, D’Souza said he did not buy O’Donnell’s defense. "I find this defense implausible because O’Donnell used four different – though similar –variations of her name and five different addresses," D’Souza wrote. The variations in her name were as follows: Rose Odonnell, Rose O’Donnell, Rosie O’Donnell, and Rosie Odonnell. She listed two different zip codes (which correspond with homes she owns) in two of the donations that exceeded the limit. Experts said D’Souza’s case was distinct by legal standards. D’Souza violated statutes 52 U.S.C. 30116 for exceeding contribution limits, 52 U.S.C. 30122 for making contributions in the name of another, and 18 U.S.C. 1001 for lying to law enforcement. The last (and most serious) charge was eventually dropped in the plea bargain. O’Donnell violated only the first statute. But criminal enforcement is only deemed appropriate if the violation is knowing and willful. Violators are usually subject to a civil penalty instead. The FEC has not announced an investigation of O’Donnell, although Holman said they "likely deemed that violation as unintentional and just not worth their time." Our ruling Cruz said, "Rosie O’Donnell apparently committed the same offense five times, five times, when she broke the identical law that Dinesh was prosecuted for." Both D’Souza and O’Donnell violated campaign contribution limits, which is a criminal offense. Those cases are subject to prosecution if determined to be willful. D’Souza’s violation was considered willful. He violated another law by using straw donors to donate $20,000 over the legal limit to one Senate candidate. O’Donnell surpassed the limit by a quarter of that money in donating to five different campaigns under her own name. We rate this statement False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Ted Cruz | null | null | null | 2018-06-06T15:54:58 | 2018-06-04 | ['None'] |
snes-05368 | A Florida man was emasculated during an attempt to engage in sexual relations with a pit bull. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-man-pit-bull/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Was a Florida Man Emasculated During a Pit Bull Sex Assault? | 13 January 2016 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01540 | Kim Kardashian Telling People Kylie Jenner Got Liposuction After Giving Birth? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kim-kardashian-kylie-jenner-liposuction-birth-baby/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kim Kardashian Telling People Kylie Jenner Got Liposuction After Giving Birth? | 10:07 am, February 20, 2018 | null | ['Kim_Kardashian'] |
snes-04244 | Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was arrested for shoplifting and continued to collect unemployment benefits while working. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/katrina-pierson-shoplifting-unemployment/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Katrina Pierson Arrested for Shoplifting, Illegally Collected Unemployment? | 15 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00019 | Don't Flash Headlights Gang Initiation | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/flash-lights-hoax.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Bogus Warning - Don't Flash Headlights Gang Initiation | July 18, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00016 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report saying Leni Robredo 'ready to step down from office out of shame' | fake | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-report-saying-leni-robredo-ready-step | null | null | null | null | false news | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report saying Leni Robredo 'ready to step down from office out of shame' UNTRUE | October 23, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10141 | 1.3-million people in America make their living off eBay. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/07/john-mccain/ebays-big-but-not-that-big/ | Asked during the second presidential debate whom he would consider for treasury secretary, Sen. John McCain floated the name of former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, then talked her up with an astounding statistic. "I like Meg Whitman," McCain said during the Oct. 7, 2008, debate. "She knows what it's like to be out there in the marketplace. She knows how to create jobs. Meg Whitman was the CEO of a company that started with 12 people and is now — 1.3-million people in America make their living off eBay." That's way off. We hate to nitpick apparent misstatements, but this one's a doozy — 1.3-million is the number of people worldwide who make some money off eBay, according to a 2006 A.C. Nielsen study. As of 2003, some 20,000 Americans made their living off eBay, company executive Jim Griffith told a Colorado newspaper at the time. These days, the company only keeps track of eBay entrepreneurs worldwide, and doesn't distinguish between full time and part time online auctioneers, a representative told us. But it's not conceivable that the number of Americans making a living off eBay has climbed to 1.3-million. In 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available, just 724,000 Americans made money selling on eBay, according to a Nielsen study. But that includes many who made just a few bucks – not a living. We examined this issue before , when McCain said 50,000 Americans made their living off eBay. The company told us it didn't know where he got that number, but we gave him a Half True because we couldn't be certain he was wrong. This time, his number is more than a million higher, and not even conceivably true. McCain bought himself a False. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-10-07T00:00:00 | 2008-10-07 | ['United_States', 'EBay'] |
tron-02099 | Irena Sendler, a woman who saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish Children during WW II | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/irena-sendler/ | null | inspirational | null | null | null | Irena Sendler, a woman who saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish Children during WW II | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Irena_Sendler'] |
pomt-13036 | CNN accidentally aired 30 minutes of pornography in Boston on Thanksgiving night. | false | /punditfact/statements/2016/nov/29/blog-posting/reports-cnn-showed-pornography-instead-anthony-bou/ | Following this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, a lone Twitter profile alleged that CNN was serving up something difficult to stomach — a half-hour of hardcore pornography. Apparently starved for content, the media ate it up. Around 10:30 p.m. ET on Nov. 24, 2016, Twitter user @solikearose tweeted from Boston that the scheduled episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown was not appearing on CNN. She said there was an explicit sex scene showing on the network, instead. The user shared several images with TiVo digital programming information included, tagging from Boston-area cable provider RCN. (Image via Mediaite) Twitter being Twitter, rumors of explicit sex on a cable news channel spread quickly. Other users included the hashtag "#BourdainPorn" while sharing the images and discussing the alleged incident. By 9:54 a.m. ET the next day, cable provider RCN responded to the tweets. They said there had been no similar reports of pornography shown on CNN. At some point, major media outlets picked up on the subject and started posting stories based on @solikearose’s tweets. It’s not exactly clear what media outlet first wrote up a story, because so many have since edited their postings. (The Verge contends it was the U.K.’s Independent, which was then sent out by The Drudge Report with a tweet that read, "CNN accidentally airs 30 minutes of trans porn…") See Figure 5 on PolitiFact.com Other outlets that wrote posts about the supposed network nookie included the Daily Mail, Fox News, The Wrap, Esquire, Maxim, the New York Post, the New York Daily News and more, on down to smaller sites like Sputnik News and RT.com. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com The porn star in the photos, whom Twitter users identified as Riley Quinn, acknowledged the alleged exposure on Twitter. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Variety even quoted a CNN representative as saying the event indeed happened. "The RCN cable operator in Boston aired inappropriate content for 30 minutes on CNN last night. CNN has asked for an explanation." But while the story was shared far and wide in less than a day, it appeared by Friday evening that no one else had witnessed the same thing @solikearose had. On Friday evening, BuzzFeed News posted an interview with the purported original Twitter user, whom they only identified as a Boston woman named Rose. "I initially posted because I wanted to see if anyone else in Boston had been affected," she said. "I think it was a broadcasting error that affected only my house." The person BuzzFeed News interviewed assured the site that the incident was real, and that she had conversed with a customer service representative who advised her to restart her digital cable converter. The pornography then stopped, she said. She said had made her Twitter account private because she had been harassed online. BuzzFeed News quoted RCN Boston general manager Jeff Carlson as saying there had been no other complaints about the event. The account @solikearose has since been deleted, and most of the posts on the incident have since been updated, many of them calling the incident a "hoax." When we contacted CNN, the network gave us the same response it gave other outlets on Nov. 25: "Despite media reports to the contrary, RCN assures us that there was no interruption of CNN’s programming in the Boston area last night." CNN also noted to us that while many media outlets referred to the network airing the footage, the CNN feed is the same nationwide. That means every market gets the same programming, and any difference would be through the local cable provider. Shortly after the BuzzFeed News interview was posted, RCN wrote on their Facebook page about the flap. When we contacted RCN, they referred us to the same statement, attributing it to Carlson. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Our ruling Bloggers said CNN accidentally aired 30 minutes of pornography in Boston on Thanksgiving night. Every account of this incident, which undoubtedly would have given thousands of viewers indigestion, relies on tweets from a single Twitter user. Media accounts appear to have spread based on the same information, despite no other reported complaints to the cable provider. The single customer’s cable equipment may have malfunctioned somehow, the provider said, but the person’s account is working properly. Media outlets that repeated the story have since backtracked on their single-source posts. For lack of evidence, we rate this distasteful claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/7aa26997-acf3-4b7e-bc66-36778b96cc8b | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2016-11-29T17:10:36 | 2016-11-24 | ['Boston', 'CNN'] |
hoer-00906 | Are Phone Cameras being used to Steal Credit Card Information? | unsubstantiated messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/phone-camera-scam.html | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Are Phone Cameras being used to Steal Credit Card Information? | 2004 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11057 | NASA announced that it communicated with four races of aliens. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/jun/25/blog-posting/no-nasa-has-not-communicated-aliens/ | Social media users were puzzled when an online blog resurfaced a years-old claim saying NASA has communicated with four separate alien races. This ridiculous claim can be traced back to satire from 2016. "NASA announced that it communicated with four races of aliens," said a June 23, 2018, headline from The Life Buzz, an online blog. Facebook flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) According to the false report, a NASA spokeswoman named Trish Chamberson said during a press conference that the space agency had known about alien life for years. "During the two hour briefing, NASA scientists confirmed previously speculated information about UFOs and Alien technology, confirming that four separate races of aliens are in regular contact with NASA, and have actually asked the agency to say hello to everyone on the planet for them," the false report said. This bogus story actually originated as satire on Waterford Whispers News, an Irish site that identifies as "a satirical newspaper and website" and "uses invented names in all its stories," according to its disclaimer page. The original article was published Aug. 26, 2016, and is clearly made-up. NASA does not list anyone named Trish Chamberson on its website. In fact, Snopes issued a fact-check in 2016 of websites attempting to republish the Waterford Whispers News article as a real news story. Several similar stories appeared without a disclaimer on blog sites and social media postings during 2016 and 2017. The Life Buzz post included no warning to readers that the story originally was published as satire. We rate this statement Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-06-25T17:37:26 | 2018-06-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-15251 | 97 percent of the work that Planned Parenthood does is about mammograms and preventative health. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/03/martin-omalley/97-planned-parenthoods-work-mammograms-preventive-/ | The vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s work goes toward mammograms and preventive care, said former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Since an anti-abortion group released videos Planned Parenthood officials talking about aborted fetal parts, Republicans have pushed to take away federal funding from the women’s health organization. Democratic presidential candidates, on the other hand, are showing their support, if subdued. O’Malley said he hadn’t seen the videos, speaking to reporters in New Hampshire July 26. "And I don't generally make a habit of responding to right-wing videos," O'Malley said, according to Washington Post’s Dave Weigel. "I do know that 97 percent of the work that Planned Parenthood does is about mammograms and preventative health. So that's what I know, but I'll defer to others for commenting on that video and whatever videos they're pumping out there." Is 97 percent of what Planned Parenthood does mammograms and other preventive care, as opposed to abortions? O’Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris pointed us to a Planned Parenthood press release that had a similar, but not identical, statistic. "More than 97 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are primary and preventive health care, including lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, testing and treatment of STDs, annual exams and health counseling," the 2011 release said. As we’ve found in previous fact-checks, Planned Parenthood comes to this number by adding up the number of individual services provided each year. In total, they provided nearly 11 million services in 2013, according to their most recent annual report. (Planned Parenthood clinics saw 2.7 million individual patients in 2013, so many received multiple services.) Here’s the breakdown from the annual report: Abortions: 327,653 Sexually transmitted infection/disease testing and treatment: 4,470,597 Contraception: 3,577,348 Cancer screening and prevention: 935,573 Pregnancy tests: 1,128,783 Prenatal services: 18,684 Family practice services: 65,464 Adoption referrals: 1,880 Urinary tract infection treatments: 47,264 Other: 17,187 Based on this list, it’s accurate that abortion procedures only count for 3 percent of all services provided, meaning 97 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides are other forms of reproductive and primary care. By far, contraception and STI/STD testing and treatment are the most frequented services. Of their services, Planned Parenthood considers many to be preventive care in that they manage health and prevent disease or worse problems down the line. This includes STI/STD testing and treatment, contraception and cancer screening and prevention -- 8,983,518 services provided in 2013. Not included in this list are abortions, pregnancy tests, prenatal services, adoption referrals, UTI treatments, family practice services (a vague category that could include certain preventive care), and other services -- 1,606,915 services in 2013. Based on this breakdown, about 85 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work is preventive. Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Elizabeth Clark put the figure at 90 percent. But both are a bit lower than what O’Malley said: that 97 percent is preventive care and mammograms. Oh yeah, what about mammograms? Within the category of "cancer screening and prevention services," Planned Parenthood said it offered 487,029 breast exams or breast care services in 2013. However, as we’ve noted before, Planned Parenthood clinics do not provide mammograms themselves. Rather, Planned Parenthood physicians perform other types of breast exams and refer patients to outside clinics where they can get a mammogram. An October 2012 statement posted on Planned Parenthood’s website explained the group’s approach, which they said is helping women access mammograms via referral even though the clinics do not perform them in-house. So O’Malley’s 97 percent figure has some basis -- that’s the percentage of Planned Parenthood’s services that aren’t abortion. But that’s a broader category than "mammograms and preventative health," which O’Malley said. Our ruling O’Malley said, "97 percent of the work that Planned Parenthood does is about mammograms and preventative health." According to Planned Parenthood, about 97 percent of the services the group provides in a given year are services other than abortion. That includes preventive and primary care. Preventive care accounts for about 85 to 90 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides. While mammograms are considered a form of preventive care, Planned Parenthood doesn’t do their own mammograms. Clinics perform breast exams and refer patients to outside clinics for an actual mammogram. The claim wasn’t pulled out of thin air, but it’s missing some important information, so we rate O’Malley’s claim Half True. | null | Martin O'Malley | null | null | null | 2015-08-03T09:46:54 | 2015-07-26 | ['None'] |
farg-00445 | Facebook Will Give Koch Brothers ‘Unprecedented Access’ to Our Personal Information | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/04/facebook-not-giving-kochs-user-data/ | null | fake-news | FactCheck.org | Angelo Fichera | ['facebook'] | Facebook Not Giving Kochs User Data | April 12, 2018 | 2018-04-12 19:17:54 UTC | ['None'] |
pomt-01162 | Terrorist detainees "were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment." | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2014/dec/14/dick-cheney/wake-senate-report-dick-cheney-says-terrorists-not/ | Former Vice President Dick Cheney has had a relatively quiet couple of years since leaving the White House. But with the recent release of a Senate report on alleged torture by the CIA, it was inevitable that Cheney -- who is closely associated with the post-9/11 policy of "enhanced interrogations" for captured terrorists -- would return to television screens. On Dec. 9, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report about the CIA’s interrogation techniques in the wake of 9/11. About 500 pages of the 6,700-page report were made public. The report concluded that the techniques were not an effective way to gain intelligence from detainees, and that the CIA misled Congress and the White House. The report detailed such techniques as "rectal rehydration" and the use of coffin-size confinement boxes. A few days before a scheduled appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Cheney sat for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Here’s a portion of their exchange on Dec. 10, focusing on the fate of the detainees discussed in the Senate report. Baier: "Is there anything to the Geneva Convention, to the world rule of law on this?" Cheney: "Sure there is. But remember, the terrorists were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment you would accord to those." There’s significant disagreement between Cheney and his critics on the issue of torture or "enhanced interrogation techniques." Still, experts told us that the question of what protections, if any, the detainees qualified for under the Geneva Convention -- is somewhat more clear-cut than other aspects of this policy debate. So we’ll take a closer look at Cheney’s claim that terrorist detainees "were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment." The Geneva Conventions First, some background on the Geneva Conventions. They are a group of four international treaties covering different aspects of how civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers are to be treated once they are rendered incapable of fighting. (Read more about them here.) The most recent version of the treaties in force date from 1949; the United States has ratified all four though it has not ratified some of the protocols added later. The conventions guarantee a certain level of protection for former combatants, including prisoners of war and civilians. They set out in detail the requirements for food, clothing, shelter, safety from combat, access to medical care, and other matters. However, whether fighters could qualify for these protections depended on whether they adhered to some basic rules of law such as wearing uniforms, carrying arms openly, answering to a chain of command, and not committing war crimes. Many of those who would one day end up in Guantanamo Bay and other sites were from non-state terrorist groups and did not adhere to these rules. So these fighters were not guaranteed the same protections afforded POWs. Cheney’s strongest point in his interview with Baier was to draw this distinction between prisoners of war, who receive these extensive protections, and "unlawful combatants," who do not. There is, in fact, a distinction in the level of protection. What undercuts the accuracy of Cheney’s claim, however, is a different part of what he said. It’s misleading for him to say that such combatants are "not covered by the Geneva Convention." While detainees who do not have POW status don’t get the top level of protection, they do get more basic protections from the Geneva Conventions. And glossing over those less-stringent protections hides an important point: Even the lower level of protection would have shielded detainees, at least on paper, against some of the harsh treatments now alleged in the Senate report. Experts pointed us to identical passages in each of the four conventions, known as "Common Article 3." Among other things"prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever" by Common Article 3 are "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" as well as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." In other words, despite the implications from what Cheney said, even unlawful combatants "have minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions," Richard D. Rosen, director of the Center for Military Law & Policy at Texas Tech University Law School. The Hamdan decision In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was considerable debate inside and outside the Bush administration about how captured members of al-Qaida and the Taliban should be treated. The Bush administration contended that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to terrorism suspects held abroad, siding with White House and Pentagon lawyers over objections from the State Department. Administration lawyers also approved the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and said they were legally permissible. The debate about the Geneva Convention piece of the equation ended in June 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, a watershed case on detainee rights. The 5-3 majority wrote that Common Article 3 "affords some minimal protection, falling short of full protection under the Conventions, to individuals associated with neither a signatory nor even a nonsignatory who are involved in a conflict 'in the territory of' a signatory." In other words, by this decision, "our own Supreme Court has made it completely clear that, whatever their status, (detainees) are entitled to some minimal protections under the Geneva Convention," said Steven R. Ratner, a University of Michigan law professor. "That ruling is binding law in the United States, no matter what the former vice president says." University of Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, a specialist on international law, agreed. "The Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan conflicts directly with the vice president’s assertion," she said. We will also note that while Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is one source of basic protection for detainees, their rights to these protections may be bolstered by other international agreements as well. One is Article 75 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, which includes minimal protections for all people, whatever their status, who are caught in a conflict. While the U.S. has not ratified this protocol, the U.S. government has said that, "out of a sense of legal obligation" it will adhere to Article 75 for "any individual it detains in an international armed conflict, and expects all other nations to adhere to these principles as well." And despite resistance during the Bush administration, two other international agreements to which the United States is a party -- the 1984 Torture Convention and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -- would also prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, experts said. Our ruling Cheney said that terrorist detainees "were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment." Cheney has a point that unlawful combatants are not afforded as high a level of protection as prisoners of war or civilians. However, his comment glosses over the fact that unlawful combatants are still accorded a minimum degree of protection, including a ban on "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," both of which have been validated by the Supreme Court. This is an important omission, since some of these very actions have been alleged in the Senate report. Because the statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False. | null | Dick Cheney | null | null | null | 2014-12-14T13:00:40 | 2014-12-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-00581 | If you care about the environment, we've got record funding. | pants on fire! | /florida/statements/2015/jun/08/rick-scott/rick-scott-says-we-have-record-funding-environment/ | Gov. Rick Scott says that Florida has invested big bucks in the environment. As he boasted about the state’s record during his economic summit for GOP presidential contenders in Orlando June 2, Scott reeled off a bunch of statistics about Florida’s budget and economy including this one: "If you care about the environment, we've got record funding." Scott’s record on the environment has been scrutinized since he first ran for office in 2010. Since that time, news reports detailed how state officials under his watch have been banned from using terms such as "climate change," environmental fines have nosedived, and Scott has boasted about reducing the number of days to get an environmental permit. But despite that record, does Florida now have "record funding" for the environment? No, it doesn’t. Everglades and springs funding Scott’s spokesman pointed us to his proposals to increase funding for springs restoration and for preserving the Everglades. During his re-election campaign in 2014, Scott promised to propose a $500 million plan over 10 years to restore springs. The 2013 budget included $10 million for springs, and the 2014 the budget included $30 million. In his budget proposal for 2015-16, Scott recommended $50 million. As for the Everglades, the state reached an agreement in 2012 with the federal government to end a dispute that predates Scott. Over 13 years, the state will spend $880 million on Everglades cleanup, or about $32 million a year. In 2014 the Legislature increased Everglades restoration funding to $169 million, more than double the previous year’s total. The Legislature also earmarked $90 million for raising 2.6 miles of the Tamiami Trail to let the Everglades flow more freely beneath it. That brought the total amount during that session to $259 million. "The one place where he did step up was on the Everglades," said Frank Jackalone, Sierra Club’s Senior Organizing Manager in Florida. "It was the environmental highlight of his term as governor." But where Scott has fallen short on the Everglades is acquiring U.S. Sugar land south of Lake Okeechobee, Jackalone said. A deal in the works for the state to buy about 46,000 acres fell apart earlier this year. Department of Environmental Protection While Everglades and springs restoration are important parts of environmental funding, they don’t provide a complete picture. If we look back a decade at funding for the Department of Environmental Protection, the high point was $2.9 billion in 2006-07 under then Gov. Jeb Bush. DEP is tasked with protecting air, water and land. Under Scott, DEP’s budget peaked at $1.8 billion in 2011-12. In 2006-07, the state used an extra $310 million (on top of Florida Forever’s usual $300 million land-buying program) to purchase Babcock Ranch, 73,000 acres of cypress domes and pine forests in Charlotte and Lee counties. DEP’s budget was also in the $2 billion range part of the time under the next governor, Charlie Crist. But once the recession kicked in, DEP’s budget decreased. This year, the total budget is $1.56 billion, and for next year Scott proposed a budget of about $1.53 billion -- $29 million less than the current year. (You can see the year-by-year DEP funding and caveats including that it combines state and federal dollars.) What Scott omits There have been several other cuts related to the environment under Scott: In 2011, Scott and the Legislature abolished the Department of Community Affairs, which for decades reviewed development plans in cities and counties; The same year, Scott and lawmakers forced state water management districts to slash property tax collections. Water management districts handle planning for water resources and wetlands protection, among other environmental issues; Revenue collected from environmental penalties plummeted from $9.3 million in Scott’s first year to $1.4 million in 2013; Funding for Florida Forever, the state’s land acquisition program, was about $100 million when he took office. It has stayed below $28 million since. That led to environmentalists advocating for Amendment 1, which was approved by 75 percent of voters in November. Scott took no position on the amendment before it passed, and his spokeswoman did not mention it as part of his evidence for this fact-check. Amendment sponsors had hoped that the land buying program would get $300 million to return it to pre-recession levels, but Scott’s budget proposal this year included $100 million for Florida Forever, while legislators proposed less. "Record funding" for the environment has become a talking point for Scott. But after we rated a similar claim False in 2014, he tweaked his message to talk specifically about "record funding" for springs. On the national stage surrounded by presidential contenders in May, he went back to talking about record funding generically for the environment. But environmentalists say he doesn’t hold a record for overall environmental funding. "He cut back services to DEP, he cut back funding to various water management districts in state, he hasn’t done what needs to be done to acquire sugar land south of Okeechobee to finish Everglades restoration," Jackalone said. Also, "he cut back on environmental enforcement." Our ruling Scott said, "If you care about the environment, we've got record funding." Scott's team points to investments the state has made to restore the Everglades and springs during Scott’s tenure -- and he has championed both. While those are high-profile projects, he claimed that Florida has "record funding" for the environment overall, and that’s not the case. The budget for the state Department of Environmental Protection and for Florida Forever were not a record under Scott -- two major pots of money that relate to the environment. Scott repeated a previously debunked claim in a national forum; his statement has long been proved incorrect. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/965e8d47-5dc2-49eb-95da-eaeb9f48caee | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2015-06-08T11:01:11 | 2015-06-02 | ['None'] |
goop-01995 | Ben Affleck Has Dumped Lindsay Shookus To Win Back Jennifer Garner, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/ben-affleck-dumped-lindsay-shookus-jennifer-garner-rehab/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Ben Affleck Has NOT Dumped Lindsay Shookus To Win Back Jennifer Garner, Despite Report | 2:08 pm, December 20, 2017 | null | ['Ben_Affleck', 'Jennifer_Garner'] |
tron-02859 | Forward an email to provide medical care for Natalie | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/natalie/ | null | pleas | null | null | null | Forward an email to provide medical care for Natalie | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08269 | Animal abuse is often an indicative trait of future acts of violence against humans. | true | /georgia/statements/2010/nov/10/robert-brown/state-senator-says-animal-cruelty-lead-violent-adu/ | State Sen. Robert Brown wants to strengthen Georgia's animal cruelty laws and made his case at a recent hearing. "Animal abuse is often an indicative trait of future acts of violence against humans," said Brown, a Democrat from Macon, "and prosecuting such behavior is our first line of defense against potentially dangerous criminals." Is it true? Are people who abuse animals more likely to hurt people? "He's right," said Mary Lou Randour, professional outreach director for animal cruelty for the Humane Society of the United States. "It's just another example of the type of people who are anti-social and aggressive." Animal cruelty became a hot topic in these parts in 2007 when one of the state's biggest athletic stars, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, was accused of participating in a dogfighting ring with some of his longtime friends. Vick pleaded guilty, served time in prison and is now the starting QB for the Philadelphia Eagles. Randour sent us links to several academic studies that link animal abuse to violence against people. We looked at those. And we looked at a variety of other information relating to the subject. Researchers have been conducting more detailed studies on the subject for several decades. The findings are similar: - The Chicago Police Department looked at 332 animal cruelty and related cases from July 2001 to July 2004. Police found 70 percent of suspects had prior arrests for other felonies. Eighty-six percent of them had two or more prior arrests. - A 2007 study of some women in domestic violence shelters found their abusers were 11 times more likely to have harmed or killed a pet. - A 1983 study of alleged child abuse found evidence in 60 percent of the cases of possible earlier animal abuse. - Of 117 men serving time in South African prisons for crimes "of aggression," nearly two-thirds of them admitted to cruelty to animals, according to a 1999 study. Brown authored legislation in 2000 that allows animal abuse to be charged as a felony. The senator said he pushed for the changes, in part, from anecdotal stories of people who abused animals when they were young and committed felonies against people as adults. Brown also was swayed by FBI agents who made the connection between animal abuse and violence against people. Brown said he's considering legislation that would create tougher penalties on people who abuse animals in the presence of children. Brown said he's not sure whether it will pass when the Legislature convenes in January because he understands lawmakers will be focused on the state's budget challenges and there will be a large freshman class at the Gold Dome next year. "We want to look at a remedy [to the existing law] that will have some broad impact," he said. Brown appears to have done his homework on his claim about the connection between animal abuse and violence against humans. There is overwhelming research that Brown is right. This one is a slam-dunk. We rate his claim as True. | null | Robert Brown | null | null | null | 2010-11-10T06:00:00 | 2010-10-29 | ['None'] |
pomt-03125 | Warren Buffett recently said "Scrap Obamacare and Start All Over." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/sep/17/blog-posting/bloggers-say-warren-buffett-recently-turned-agains/ | Conservative Internet bloggers are turning up three-year-old quotes from Warren Buffett and casting them as fresh evidence that American support is dwindling for President Barack Obama's health care law. But the quotes are not properly identified as three years old and do not reflect Buffett's full thinking on the health care law. It's unclear why or how the old quotes resurfaced. But we started seeing the Buffett quotes in Facebook feeds on the morning of Sept. 17, 2013, after the Weekly Standard linked to it, starting its blog post, "You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that 'we need something else.' " The link went to a website called Money Morning, which posted an entry on Sept. 13 titled, "Buffett: Scrap Obamacare and Start All Over." The post on the website includes quotes from Buffett, including: • "Health care costs in the United States are like a tapeworm eating at our economic body." • "We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control. And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else." • "Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage. I would much rather see another plan that really attacks costs. And I think that's what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill." The post goes on to paraphrase Buffett as saying he would scrap Obamacare and start over. A variety of other conservative media outlets spotlighted the post in the past week as a development in the ongoing battle over the health care law, such as Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto and Newsbusters. But the comments come from an interview that Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., gave to CNBC on March 1, 2010 -- three and a half years ago, before the bill was signed. Buffett's office told PolitiFact that the blog reports do not reflect his views. Buffett "has never said or thought that Obamacare should be scrapped," said Debbie Bosanek, Buffett's assistant. She said she showed him our research and that he said our analysis "covered it very well." So what did Buffett say in 2010? They can be found in a Politico article published at the time that summarized the interview. That article also includes other tidbits excluded from the more recent blog posts that paint a more nuanced picture of his views. • Buffett was referring to a bill that was still pending in Congress. At the time of his comments, a bill had passed the Senate, but lawmakers were still deciding how to get it through the House, so he’d have reason to think his comments might carry some weight in bargaining over details. He was not referring to the law after it was on the books, and he did not make his comments with three and a half years of hindsight from looking at its implementation. • Buffett said the bill he was criticizing was still worth passing despite its imperfections. According to Politico, Buffett was asked on CNBC whether he would be in favor of scrapping the Senate’s version of the health care bill; he responded: "I would be." However, Politico also noted "that while he does not like the Senate bill, he’d vote for it in preference to doing nothing." Buffett said in the interview, "If it was a choice today between plan A, which is what we've got, or plan B, … the Senate bill, I would vote for the Senate bill. But I would much rather see a plan C that really attacks costs." It’s worth noting that in July 2012, just after the Supreme Court upheld the health care law, Buffett told Bloomberg TV that the court made the right decision. Invoking the same metaphor, Buffett said health care is "the tapeworm, essentially, of the American economy, and we have not dealt with that yet." But he added, "Obamacare is a step in the right direction in many ways." Shortly after we started looking into the blog posts, the Weekly Standard added an "update" to its post. It said, "It appears that Buffett made his anti-Obamacare comments in 2010, thereby showing that he, like most of the American people, has opposed Obamacare since even before it was passed — a point that Mark Hemingway addressed yesterday in response to USA Today’s implication that Americans’ widespread dislike of Obamacare is mostly attributable to Republicans’ efforts to fight it." We sent inquiries to the Weekly Standard and Money Morning but did not hear back. We also sent an inquiry to Buffett and will publish a comment if he offers one. Our ruling A variety of blogs reprinted an item indicating that Warren Buffett recently said "Scrap Obamacare and Start All Over." However, the comments came from an interview in 2010, when the health care bill was still being debated, and are not based on the subsequent three and a half years of seeing the law implemented. If anything, comments by Buffett in 2012 suggest that he’s pleased to see the law being put into effect, despite the shortcomings he sees. The notion that Buffett had recently turned on a president he supported by souring on his signature health care law could have been easily debunked using Google searches. We rate the claim Pants on Fire. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2013-09-17T14:49:03 | 2013-09-13 | ['Warren_Buffett'] |
pomt-08636 | Harry Reid has voted "to give illegals Social Security benefits even for the time they were here illegally." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/17/sharron-angle/sharron-angle-says-harry-reid-wants-give-illegals-/ | We’ve rated one claim in an ad by Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle as False. That was a claim that Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid voted "go give special tax breaks to illegal aliens." The second charge in the ad is that Reid voted "to give illegals Social Security benefits even for the time they were here illegally." Until a change in the law in 2007, illegal immigrants had a right to receive credit in their benefits calculation for Social Security payments they had made while working illegally, typically while using an unauthorized Social Security number. They received such credit only after they had received legal working papers and a genuine Social Security number. As much as several billion dollars a year are typically collected from illegal immigrants by the Social Security system. Reid voted twice to uphold this system. During a Senate debate over immigration reform in 2006, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., offered an amendment to prevent anyone from earning credit for Social Security payments made using an unauthorized Social Security number -- a provision that would mostly if not entirely affect illegal aliens. On May 18, 2006, the Senate voted on a motion to table -- that is, to stop consideration of -- the Ensign amendment. By a bare one-vote majority, the chamber voted to table the amendment. Reid's was one of the 50 votes in favor of tabling. Then, on July 19, 2007, Ensign tried again, proposing a similar amendment to the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007. Under the rules in effect, the amendment needed 60 votes to pass but only got 57, so it failed. Reid was one of the senators who voted against the amendment. So the fact that Reid voted "no" twice provides support for Angle's claim. But it isn't foolproof. First, Reid also cast another vote on this issue that Angle's camp doesn't mention. On Oct. 23, 2007, during another immigration bill debate, Ensign offered a similar amendment. This time, the Senate passed it by an overwhelming 92-2 vote. Reid was one of 92 senators to support the amendment. But that's not all. We also see problems with the ad's explanation of what was being voted on. For one thing, the vote wouldn't have given current illegals Social Security benefits, as the ad implies. Instead, Reid's votes affected the policy for former illegal aliens who were later made legal. For another, the vote was not about giving benefits but rather on whether to change the calculation process so that former illegals could get credit for money they had paid into the system years before, when they were illegal. We consider these descriptions misleading, and in combination with the ad's decision to ignore Reid's contrary vote, we feel the this part of the statement deserves a rating of 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 | Sharron Angle | null | null | null | 2010-09-17T13:53:37 | 2010-09-14 | ['Harry_Reid'] |
pose-00031 | Obama believes that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/34/enforce-pay-as-you-go-paygo-budget-rules/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Enforce pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules | 2010-01-07T13:26:46 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'PAYGO'] |
snes-01530 | Did John McCain Cause a Fire Aboard the USS Forrestal that Killed 134 People? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/john-mccain-fire-uss-forrestal/ | null | Military | null | David Emery | null | Did John McCain Cause a Fire Aboard the USS Forrestal that Killed 134 People? | 24 October 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03613 | South Carolina exit polls asked voters whether black people had become "too demanding" on the subject of civil rights. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/civil-blights-movement/ | null | Ballot Box | null | David Mikkelson | null | Offensive South Carolina Exit Poll | 6 November 2014 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05994 | President Obama has "said he is going to cut veterans' benefits." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/20/rick-santorum/rick-santorum-says-obama-wants-cut-veterans-benefi/ | Rick Santorum says the president wants to solve the budget deficit by picking the pockets of America’s military veterans. In a debate on Jan. 19, 2012, in Charleston, S.C., Santorum said he grew up in VA housing and saw Vietnam vets who were badly in need of medical and psychological care. He said service members returning from war now should have better support. "We need to be much, much more aggressive. We have the president of the United States who said he is going to cut veterans' benefits, cut our military, at a time when these folks are four, five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs, sacrificing everything for this country," Santorum said. We decided to check: Does President Barack Obama intend to cut benefits for veterans? Expansions to benefits Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 increases the overall Veterans Affairs budget by more than 10 percent. The numbers are big: from $53 billion in FY 2010 to almost $59 billion in FY 2012. It provides new benefits for veterans’ caregivers, including health care and mental health services, and invests nearly $1 billion in VA services for homeless veterans and those at risk of becoming homeless. The White House pointed us to several examples of how VA services have been beefed up, summed up in a comment Obama made in 2009: "We dramatically increased funding for veterans' health care: more care for women's veterans, for our wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries," Obama said at a 2009 signing of a bill that funds veterans’ medical care a year in advance. Separately, PolitiFact has given Obama seven Promise Kept ratings on pledges he made to improve services to veterans, compared with zero Promise Brokens. Proposed cuts Santorum’s campaign did not respond to our email about his statement, but he may have been referring to Obama's deficit reduction plan, which increases fees for some programs. In September 2011, Obama submitted his outline for how to pay for his American Jobs Act. It was intended to serve as a guide to the joint committee tasked with finding savings in the federal budget. In that plan, Obama proposed three possible "reforms" or increases in fees in military programs: * A new $200 annual fee for TRICARE for Life recipients. Open to veterans 65 and older, TRICARE for Life pays out-of-pocket expenses not covered by Medicare. This proposed fee is estimated to save approximately $6.7 billion over 10 years, according to the plan. * Increases in pharmacy co-pays. The plan says "co-payments for military members have lagged behind other federal and private plans. For example, the average co-payment for a costly brand-name drug purchased at a drug store by a federal retiree in the most popular medical plan option is estimated to be $45, compared to $9 for a military retiree." * Review and reform military retirement benefits. The current system, the plan states, "provides generous benefits to the relatively few members who stay for at least 20 years and no benefits for the roughly 80 percent of service members who stay less than 20 years. To consider reforms the Administration plans to set up a commission to develop recommendations for reforming the current military retirement system." We should add that the president suggests grandfathering in those now serving so that major reforms don’t affect them. What others say We contacted a few veterans groups to get their take on how the president has served veterans. Joe Davis, director of public affairs for Veterans of Foreign Wars, said Obama "has been consistent in statement and action on protecting the Department of Veterans Affairs budget." But the changes Obama has floated are a concern. "We are, however, concerned that budget cuts currently under consideration by the Department of Defense could undermine the viability of the all-volunteer force by changing the current military retirement system and by diverting more health care costs—higher enrollment fees and prescription co-payments—onto the backs of military retirees who were first required to donate 20 or more years of their youth to their nation. This is in addition to previously announced plans to shrink the size of the active-duty force," Davis said in an email. Joe Violante, national legislative director for Disabled American Veterans, echoed that sentiment. "The president has increased vet funding over the years and has expanded many programs, women vets, caregivers and PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury), to name a few. He is also responsible for supporting advance appropriations for VA health care funding. While you are correct in saying there are proposals to TRICARE fees, these are not usually considered vet programs and come under DOD. Thus far, vet programs have done well under this administration," Violante said in an email. Our ruling Santorum said that Obama has pledged to cut veterans’ benefits. That is not the case with the VA budget, which Obama wants to increase. But there are some proposals for programs in the Defense Department budget that might shift more expenses to veterans. On balance, we rate Santorum's claim Half True. | null | Rick Santorum | null | null | null | 2012-01-20T18:21:40 | 2012-01-19 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02933 | Does a Video Show Muslim Refugees Rioting in France? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/muslim-refugee-france-video/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does a Video Show Muslim Refugees Rioting in France? | 15 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11771 | If you don't pay income taxes ... you'll have more money under the Republican tax plan. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/29/tim-scott/if-you-pay-no-taxes-will-you-end-more-money-under-/ | Will the Republican tax proposals be a boon for Americans who currently don’t earn enough to pay taxes? Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., says yes. Days before the Senate was slated to take up the tax bill, Scott was interviewed by Martha Raddatz on ABC’s This Week. Here’s a portion of their exchange about the Senate legislation: Raddatz: "About 45 percent of Americans don't pay income tax, and many of those are the working poor. So, how does it help them?" Scott: "Well, if you don't pay income taxes and we increase your refund by 40 percent, that is a direct dollar impact. In other words, you'll have more money to use to keep those ends together, those single mothers like mine, who are working paycheck to paycheck, they will now not get a $9,300 deduction." To streamline the wording, we decided to fact-check his overall point that a typical family not currently paying income taxes would receive more money under the overhaul. (His office did not object to that paraphrase.) These people would not be getting an increased "refund of 40 percent," or a "$9,300 deduction," even though Scott said that. Those changes would not improve the position of people who already do not pay income taxes. (Scott’s office said those points referred to an earlier discussion in the interview.) The 40 percent figure refers to early estimates by the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee about how Americans with specific income and family structures would gain from passage of the bill. (More recent projections are here.) As for the $9,300 deduction, that’s roughly the amount the Senate bill would increase the current standard deduction for single heads of households. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., interviewed on ABC's "This Week" Again, those don't apply here, even though they were in Scott's claim. So we wondered how it would be possible for Americans who already don't pay income taxes to see money from the proposed tax overhaul. The individual mandate If a household already was paying no taxes, having more money in their pocket would require either getting more money back from the government through the tax process, or arguing that the economic growth spurred by the tax bill would inevitably generate raises for the workers in that household. However, the GOP tax bills do not expand the earned income tax credit, which is a refundable credit designed to put more money in the pockets of the working poor. If anything, the bills' use of a slower-growing inflation measure called chained CPI would make EITC refunds less valuable over time. And another refundable tax credit, the child tax credit, would see tighter eligibility rules for the refundable portion, which could result in some households losing that portion of the credit. Meanwhile, even those who argue that the bill’s corporate and income tax cuts will spur economic growth can’t guarantee that any particular American will receive a raise. As it turns out, Scott’s office offered a different justification -- one involving the proposal in the Senate bill to rescind the individual mandate for purchasing health insurance. That provision of the Affordable Care Act requires that Americans who don’t have health insurance to pay a tax penalty. "By repealing the individual mandate, a tax paid overwhelmingly by the middle and working classes, the Senate bill removes a burden placed on low-income families," said Michele Exner, a spokeswoman for Scott. The individual mandate penalty does fall disproportionately on lower- and moderate-income households. And lower- and moderate-income households are also likeliest to owe no federal income taxes. Here’s how Scott’s example of a family saving money from the tax bill would work. Say you’re a family that did not earn enough to face a tax burden. Currently, you’d have a choice regarding health coverage -- either pay for insurance, at roughly $2,500 a year after subsidies for a typical Affordable Care Act plan, or forgo insurance and pay the penalty. This year, the penalty is either 2.5 percent of income, or $695 per adult and $347.50 per child, up to a family maximum of $2,085 —whichever is higher. If the individual mandate is rescinded, this family would have a different choice: Either keep paying for insurance, or drop their insurance and save whatever their individual-mandate penalty would have been. Here’s what could happen Does Scott’s justification hold water? This scenario could leave certain low-income households with more money in their pocket -- but there's no guarantee. One possibility is that a family would keep their insurance despite the removal of the individual mandate; in that case, they wouldn’t be assured of saving any money. Health care experts say that if too many young and healthy Americans go without insurance, the premiums for everyone else will go up. If that scenario plays out, this group might end up with less money in their pocket, contrary to Scott’s assertion. The alternative would be for this family to drop their insurance. This could lead to a gain in pocket money, depending on how much they spend on health care. That's because the family would now be on the hook for all of their medical expenses. If they were blessed with luck and stayed healthy, they would come out ahead compared to the status quo. But if they fell seriously ill, the costs could be ruinous. "Whether I will have more or less money in my pocket at the end of the year depends on whether or not I incur sufficiently higher medical expenses to wipe out the savings," said Daniel Shaviro, a New York University law professor who specializes in tax law. "Even insofar as the statement is literally true in some cases, it’s fundamentally dishonest and misleading." What an independent analysis shows So how would lower- to middle-income families fare overall under the Senate bill that includes the elimination of the individual mandate? The Joint Committee on Taxation -- Congress’ nonpartisan office for analyzing tax proposals -- has found that the provisions in the Senate bill, taken collectively, would increase tax collection from the lowest income ranges. In 2019, each of the three income ranges below $30,000 would see increases in tax revenue. (This refers to cumulative totals for all households within that income range; individual households may see their taxes go up or down, depending on their specific situation.) And by 2027, every income range below $75,000 would see a collective tax increase. Here’s the summary table. (This assumes no further action from Congress during that time.) See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Lower-income Americans could get another hit from the Republican tax proposal if budget cuts are needed to offset the loss of federal tax revenue for programs that help the poor, said Gary McGill, director of the Fisher School of Accounting at the University of Florida. All in all, McGill said he finds Scott's argument to be an odd one. "If I quit paying rent, I’ll have more money in my pocket, but I’ll be homeless," he said. "Or if I quit buying food, I’ll have more money -- until I’m dead." Our ruling Scott said, "If you don't pay income taxes ... you'll have more money" under the Republican tax plan. Scott’s logic rests on Americans who do not pay income taxes no longer having to pay the penalty for not carrying health insurance. However, people who decided to keep buying health insurance despite the lifting of the individual mandate penalty wouldn’t benefit under Scott’s scenario. And if they decided to forgo health insurance and pocket the amount of the individual mandate penalty instead, they would only end up ahead if they remained healthy enough to keep their medical costs low. That’s more of a gamble than anything close to a certainty. We rate this statement False. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tim Scott | null | null | null | 2017-11-29T12:10:42 | 2017-11-26 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-01161 | Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros bribed three Democratic senators to vote for a shutdown of the U.S. federal government. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/soros-shutdown-bribe/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did George Soros Pay Three Democrats Millions to Vote for Government Shutdown? | 22 January 2018 | null | ['United_States', 'George_Soros', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-05248 | The state of Michigan has passed a law banning oral and anal sex. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/michigan-senate-crime-against-nature/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Michigan Senate Passes Law Banning Sodomy? | 9 February 2016 | null | ['Michigan'] |
pomt-07699 | Says city of Portland has a one-time $22 million surplus | half-true | /oregon/statements/2011/mar/07/sam-adams/sam-adams-says-portlands-finances-show-one-time-22/ | Despite these hard economic times, the city of Portland is doing just fine. It’s doing so well, in fact, that it’s running a budget surplus. At least, that’s what Mayor Sam Adams has been telling residents. The news seems to have first cropped up in Adams’ own blog on Dec. 8, 2010: "In last two years, because of our more conservative revenue forecasting, a federal accounting rule change & tamped-down spending (ex: no CPI raises for city staff) results in $21 million one-time surplus." In recent weeks, Adams has been using the line with some frequency. In a question-and-answer with Willamette Week published Feb. 16, 2011 he said, "You asked me what I was proud of. And we have a budget surplus. A one-time budget surplus. We’re in a very different position than most major cities in the United States and most of the governments around us." He repeated the claim in more detail during his State of the City address on Feb. 18, 2011. In fact, he repeated it twice: "Let me repeat. Next year we begin with a $22 million, one-time, general fund surplus." If that’s true, it’s a pretty good reason to be self-congratulatory. After all, like Adams said, most other budgets aren’t looking so good these days. Take, for example, the multibillion-dollar shortfall the state is facing going into the next two-year budget cycle. But, we wondered, is it true? Could Portland really be running a surplus when all we hear about are deficits? So, we decided to check out the mayor’s State of the City claim that Portland is starting next year with a $22 million one-time surplus. In order to see what the city’s finances look like, we turned to a 5-year budget forecast that was released in December. The document, on first glance, seemed to back Adams up. Resources for the upcoming budget should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $398 million while required expenditures are estimated at $376 million. Take the latter from the former and you get a budget surplus of $21.7 million. If you keep reading, though, the numbers get murky. For instance, Table 1 mentions an additional $10.5 million in "continued unfunded ongoing" expenditures. Basically, that category is made up of things that traditionally get funded but aren’t "required." You throw that into the equation and suddenly the city’s surplus is halved ($11.2 million to be precise). The confusion doesn’t end there. Continue on to Table 2, and the report offers a separate scenario. Again, we start with a $21.7 million surplus, but then, it says, there are two new categories to consider: "new one-time" expenses and "additional on-going spending." Those two bits add up to $15 million. Take that from the $21.7 million surplus and the city is left with $6.7 million. What’s more, the forecast goes on to say that the city really shouldn’t spend that $6.7 million. See, the city budgets with five-year forecasts. The idea is that the budget being crafted this year will pave the way for a zero-balance budget five years down the road. In order to get to that zero balance, the city needs to hold onto that $6.7 million, according to the report. So, the forecast concludes, the city’s surplus might not even exist. City of Portland economist Josh Harwood puts it this way: "We're not in crisis mode. We're not short-selling the house, but we're not buying a new car either." Until the details of the budget are hammered out, it’s difficult to tell what surplus -- if any -- will remain. According to the December analysis, that remaining balance could be as high as $21.7 million or as low as, well, nothing. We gave the mayor’s office a call to see if we’d missed something. "The number is accurate," Roy Kaufmann, the mayor’s spokesman said, referring to the $21.7 million figure. But "it does not take into account the one-time spending." "We're too early in the budget process to know ... how that all is going to shake out," Kaufmann added. "I think that the point that the mayor was making was demonstrating to city residents how Portland was being fiscally responsible and fairly fiscally conservative since he was elected, even before he was sworn in." That may be true, but if it’s too early in the budget process to know how the one-time funding is going to shake out, it seems to us that it’s also too early to be trumpeting a surplus at all -- let alone a pretty optimistic one of $22 million. We rate Adams’ claim that Portland has a one-time surplus of $22 million as Half True -- the statement is partially true, but it leaves out some pretty important details. Comment on this item. | null | Sam Adams | null | null | null | 2011-03-07T06:00:00 | 2011-02-08 | ['None'] |
goop-02016 | Taylor Swift Pregnant, | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-swift-not-pregnant-sweatshirts/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Taylor Swift NOT Pregnant, Despite Speculative Report | 11:16 am, December 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04694 | Republicans would give seniors a (Medicare) voucher that limits what's covered, costing seniors as much as $6,400 more a year. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/05/kathleen-sebelius/kathleen-sebelius-repeats-problematic-claim-romney/ | Democrats pushed to reclaim "Obamacare" at their national convention in Charlotte, N.C., deploying the secretary of Health and Human Services to celebrate it as a "badge of honor." But Kathleen Sebelius trotted out some problematic talking points in her Sept. 4, 2012, defense of the president’s health care law, saying, for example, that "Republicans would give seniors a voucher that limits what's covered, costing seniors as much as $6,400 more a year." We’ve rated similar claims from Democrats about that extra cost, rating them Half Trueand Mostly Falsebecause they rely on an analysis of an outdated Republican plan. We’ve also rated whether Republicans "want to turn Medicare into a voucher system," finding it Mostly True— their plan is somewhere between "premium support" and "vouchers." Sebelius combined the two claims for a less-than-true statement. Let us explain. The Romney-Ryan Medicare plan Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan released his initial Medicare plan in early 2011. Under this plan, Medicare would have changed from a program that pays doctors and hospitals fees for particular services to one in which beneficiaries would be paid an amount by the government that they could use toward private insurance premiums. This would have affected people who today are under 55 only, but critics said those who fell under the new rules would face an increasingly large gap between what the government paid for their benefits and what their health care services cost. It would limit "what’s covered," as Sebelius put it, in that seniors would get a defined contribution to buy coverage rather than the defined benefits of traditional Medicare. The plan was approved by the GOP-controlled House before dying in the Senate, where Democrats called it radical and harmful to beneficiaries. Subsequently, Ryan offered updated versions of the plan, the first in conjunction with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and then as part of his fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. It still offers seniors a defined amount toward private insurance rather than paying providers directly. That’s why we’ve said it’s Mostly Trueto call it a voucher system. But the new plan has two key differences from Ryan’s previous proposal. The newer version allows beneficiaries under 55 a choice — they can use their payment to buy private insurance or a plan that acts like traditional Medicare. Meanwhile, the size of the payment would be set by the market — the price of the second-cheapest plan. The most recent Ryan plan appears to be the closest to the Romney-Ryan campaign’s position. In an interviewwith a Green Bay, Wis., television station on Aug. 15, Romney said, "Paul Ryan and my plan for Medicare, I think, is the same, if not identical — it's probably close to identical." That makes Sebelius’ claim about cost an outdated one. Here’s how. The $6,400 question Previous claims by Democrats of a $6,400 increase in out-of-pocket costs cite a reportby the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. Here’s what the group said: "In 2022, the first year the voucher would apply, (the Congressional Budget Office) estimates that total health care expenditures for a typical 65-year-old would be almost 40 percent higher with private coverage under the Ryan plan than they would be with a continuation of traditional Medicare," center president Bob Greenstein wrote. "CBO also finds that this beneficiary's annual out-of-pocket costs would more than double — from $6,150 to $12,500. In later years, as the value of the voucher eroded, the increase in out-of-pocket costs would be even greater. The difference between $12,500 (the out-of-pocket costs under the Ryan plan in 2022) and $6,150 (the out-of-pocket costs that year under traditional Medicare) is $6,350, which is very close to $6,400. But here’s the problem: The CBO analysis, and other groups’ analyses built on those CBO numbers, refer to the original Ryan plan, not to the current one. The current plan, while it caps overall growth in Medicare spending, is slightly more generous in how fast it allows subsidies to grow as health care costs increase. Ryan also made a number of other technical changes to address concerns that the credits wouldn’t keep up if medical costs kept going up and up. As we mentioned before, the amount a beneficiary receives, for example, would be based on the second least-expensive plan available on a Medicare exchange. The earlier out-of-pocket estimate was based on the idea that seniors’ initial payments would be tied to how much the government had previously paid for their Medicare coverage, forcing seniors to pony up the difference for more expensive private plans. Traditional Medicare would not have been among their options. In the new proposal, Medicare is one of the options, and the payment’s size is based on the price of one of the available plans. So if Medicare were a cheaper option, seniors could use their premium support payment toward purchasing it and save money. If traditional Medicare were more expensive than the second-least expensive plan, it could cost seniors more out-of-pocket to keep it. An estimate of that expense, though, would differ from analysis for Ryan’s earlier plan. But Ryan hasn’t yet asked for a rigorous analysis of his new proposal. "CBO has not analyzed the policies that might be implemented to produce such a path for Medicare spending, including a premium-support approach to Medicare of the sort that Chairman Ryan and other Members of Congress have recently discussed," CBO wrote earlier this year. There is one clue that under the proposal, extra costs for seniors who wanted to keep traditional Medicare wouldn’t come close to $6,400. A study published Aug. 1, 2012, in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that if Ryan’s plan had been in place in 2009, the cost of the second-cheapest Medicare Advantage plan (and thus the size of the premium support payment) would have been 9 percent less than traditional Medicare. That would have required an out-of-pocket payment for seniors who wanted to use traditional Medicare of $64 a month — which adds up to less than $800 a year. Meanwhile, under the Ryan plan, seniors could also choose to buy the plan covered entirely by the premium support payment — for no extra out-of-pocket cost. And all plans offered under the proposal would have to provide at least the actuarial equivalent of traditional Medicare. Of course, absent details from the Ryan camp and an updated CBO analysis, it’s still not clear what would happen over time if the new, market-based payments grew faster than the Ryan plan’s cap on Medicare spending. Would savings still come from beneficiaries? Or providers? Or somewhere else? The absence of details and rigorous analysis of the new plan means that claims about its financial impact on seniors are speculative. It’s irresponsible of Sebelius to repeat a number about an old Republican plan just because she doesn’t have an updated analysis of the new — and different — plan. Meanwhile, to say the new plan provides a voucher "that limits what's covered," as Sebelius said, oversimplifies how it might work. Traditional Medicare limits coverage to specific areas such as doctor and hospital visits, which is why some seniors buy private "gap" insurance to add benefits such as vision, hearing and dental. Under the new Ryan plan, the voucher amount to buy a private policy or traditional Medicare would be limited to the cost of the second-least-expensive policy that provided at least the actuarial equivalent — or same value — of benefits under traditional Medicare. But what got covered might vary from policy to policy. Our ruling Sebelius recycled an old number about an outdated Republican plan when she said, "Republicans would give seniors a voucher that limits what's covered, costing seniors as much as $6,400 more a year." She’s right that a shift to paying a defined amount for seniors to buy their own insurance essentially offers them a voucher. But the Republicans’ Medicare exchange with market-based premium support payments would offer more protection than a pure voucher. And we simply don’t have enough details about that new plan to know how much extra money seniors might have to pay for traditional Medicare. We rate her full statement Half True. | null | Kathleen Sebelius | null | null | null | 2012-09-05T19:51:33 | 2012-09-04 | ['Medicare_(United_States)', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-02878 | Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was confronted by a shareholder over the company’s support for same-sex marriage. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/starbucks-same-sex-marriage/ | null | Politics | null | David Mikkelson | null | Starbucks and Same-Sex Marriage | 26 March 2015 | null | ['Howard_Schultz'] |
pomt-12347 | Rare is the president "who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jun/13/donald-trump/donald-trumps-boasts-about-accomplishments-office-/ | Some commentators called it "the weirdest Cabinet meeting ever": President Donald Trump’s leadership team gathered to deliver a litany of praise for the president. Trump saved some of the boasting for himself, making claims that his administration has been one of historic accomplishments. "I will say that never has there been a president -- with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle -- who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated," Trump said, later adding, "We've achieved tremendous success." We’ve previously checked Trump’s claim in April that "no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days" and found that assertion to be False. But given the high-profile setting of Trump’s comment -- his first formal Cabinet meeting -- we decided to take a look at his new statement. Presidential and congressional scholars aren’t any more convinced than they were in April. "Trump’s boasts are empty," said Max J. Skidmore, a University of Missouri-Kansas City political scientist who has written several books on the presidency. Legislation signed by Trump When we checked with the White House, they noted that in this remark Trump acknowledged exceptions such as Roosevelt. They also pointed to the statistics for the number of laws and executive orders signed by a president in 100 days -- a metric that Trump fares well on. Around the 100-day point of Trump’s presidency, we found that White House press secretary Sean Spicer was accurate on the numbers when he said that the current president has "worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since (Harry) Truman." We noted that in the first 100 days of his first full term, Truman signed 55 bills; the president with the highest count since then is Trump with 28. However, none of the bills Trump had signed at that point qualified as major pieces of legislation. None of the ones since are, either. They include, among others, two federal spending bills of the sort required periodically of every president and Congress to keep the government running; a bill overhauling government-employee travel policy; a bill about the United States competing for an international expo; a measure addressing Department of Homeland Security vehicle fleets; and the official naming of a federal courthouse in Tennessee. While the White House is pursuing several major issues in Congress -- notably the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act and efforts to cut taxes and promote infrastructure -- it would be premature for Trump to take credit for these. The health care bill has passed the House but not yet passed the Senate, while the tax and infrastructure measures haven’t even gotten that far. Trump is "correct that he has signed a rather large, although not unprecedented, number of bills," Skidmore said. However, "most of the bills he has signed are routine and unimportant." Sarah Binder, a George Washington University political scientist who specializes in Congress, agreed that "the absence of significant legislative movement is glaring. Contrary to Trump's statement, this is a Republican government struggling to legislate, despite control of both chambers and the White House." By contrast, even if you set aside Franklin D. Roosevelt -- as Trump did -- other presidents signed more far-reaching legislation during their first 100 days. Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, while Barack Obama signed not only a nearly $800 billion stimulus package to combat a spiraling recession but also the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and a law expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Obama also implemented two urgent economic programs formally passed in the final weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the auto industry bailout. Meanwhile, John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps (later ratified by Congress), while Truman’s first 100 days were a whirlwind of foreign-policy actions -- the end of World War II in Europe, the writing of the United Nations charter, the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, and Japan’s unconditional surrender. Trump’s most significant legislative achievements may be his use of the Congressional Review Act -- a previously little-used power that makes it easier for Congress and the president to overturn federal regulations. "Some of these regulations are substantively and politically important," such as the overturning of the Stream Protection Act, an environmental regulation that Trump and others said harmed coal mining, said Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political scientist. Still, Koger added, "these definitely do not rise to the level of ‘landmark’ legislation, or even ‘major’ legislation." And John Frendreis, a political scientist at Loyola University in Chicago, added that such powers were not available to most postwar presidents, since the Congressional Review Act was only passed in the 1990s. This makes comparisons with past presidents difficult, he said. Trump’s executive orders As president, Trump has signed some three dozen executive orders, which also places him numerically above the presidents since Franklin Roosevelt. A number of these orders have addressed high-profile issues, and some could potentially have significant impacts. One -- a visa ban for individuals from certain Muslim-majority nations -- remains tied up in lawsuits and is headed to the Supreme Court. Another notable order directs the Treasury Department to stop collecting penalties related to not having health insurance. If this policy is followed and isn’t blocked by the courts, "it could cripple this aspect of the Affordable Care Act without altering the law," Frendreis said. Trump also used executive orders to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and to green-light key pipelines that had been held up by the Obama administration. And Trump also announced that the United States would be pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, though he didn’t use an executive order in that case. These are significant policy changes -- but it’s important to note some caveats about Trump’s use of executive orders. First, many of these orders started the ball rolling to overturn federal regulations, rather than overturning them in one fell swoop. Often, Congress needs to weigh in to change a law, or Cabinet departments must undertake a lengthy administrative process before policies officially change. And second, new presidents routinely issue orders during their first 100 days that overturn actions of their predecessors of the opposite party. Just two days after taking office, President Bill Clinton signed orders overturning restrictions on abortion imposed during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and with equal speed, President George W. Bush overturned Clinton’s opposition to a ban on aid to international groups that participate in abortions. "Every president uses executive orders, especially when they cannot pass legislation because of a hostile Congress," Frendreis said. "So his actions here are typical, and not unusually impressive. In fact, his need to act administratively instead of legislatively implies legislative weakness, not strength, because he should be able to make policy through the legislative process since he has unified partisan control." All told, he said, "the early Trump presidency stands out in terms of the number of symbolic actions he has taken to ‘fulfill’ campaign promises, but his record of changing policy is not off to a fast start. Like all presidents, he has taken some impactful actions, but he does not stand out in this regard." Our ruling In his Cabinet meeting, Trump said that rare is the president "who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated." Scholars of the presidency and Congress are unconvinced that Trump’s legislative and administrative output is exceptional by historical standards. Trump has signed a relatively large number of bills so far, but comparatively few with significant impact. And while some of his executive orders have made an immediate impact, most have merely expressed his policy preferences or set in motion a process that may, or may not, change policies down the road. We rate the statement Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-06-13T14:35:58 | 2017-06-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-05283 | Since Scott Walker took office as governor in January 2011, there has been an increase of 33,200 jobs in Wisconsin. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/may/24/scott-walker/gov-walker-says-wisconsin-has-added-33200-jobs-he-/ | With less than two weeks to go until the June 5, 2012, recall election pitting Gov. Scott Walker against Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, the top issues can be summed up this way: Jobs, jobs, jobs. And: jobs. Nowhere is this more clear than in a television ad from Walker that is built on new jobs numbers for 2011 that show a brighter picture than previous numbers -- including much-cited monthly tallies by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation’s official scorekeeper on jobs. In the ad, which began running May 16, 2012, Walker leans into the camera and tells viewers what they have heard about jobs going down is wrong. "The government just released the final job numbers," he says, "and as it turns out Wisconsin actually gained -- that’s right, gained -- more than 20,000 new jobs during my first year in office." He goes on: "Add the jobs created this year, and the total grows to over 30,000." There has been a blitz of job-related claims and counter-claims. We have already done items on several to help sort out the various aspects of what is being said. In this item, we are focusing on the claim Walker has made about how many jobs have been created. Is he right? One of our principles is that we rate statements based on the information available when they are made. For instance, when Barrett blamed Walker for worst-in-the-nation job losses from March 2011 to March 2012, we noted he was correct based on the official numbers at the time, but wrong to pin the blame solely on Walker and his policies. We rated the claim Half True. In the new Walker ad, two sets of words appear on the screen as the governor speaks. One quotes from a Journal Sentinel article and reads: "... a gain of 23,321 jobs between Dec. 2010 and Dec. 2011 ..." A second slide says "33,200 total new jobs." This is the figure Walker settles on and what we’re examining. How did Walker arrive at the numbers? Walker begins with the new numbers his administration submitted to the federal government May 16, 2012, the day the ad began. They are based on a required quarterly census of state employers. Walker compares the December 2011 numbers to the December 2010 numbers, to get 23,321. This is the same number included in the Journal Sentinel article the TV ad cites, which is understandable: The administration provided them to a reporter May 15, 2012, the day before it announced the census numbers that had been sent to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Walker then takes monthly numbers from the start of 2012, about 10,000, adds them to the numbers from 2011 and arrives at the 33,200 figure. Simple, right? Not really. The 2011 numbers are based on the jobs census, which covers about 95 percent of employers. They are deemed more accurate than the monthly numbers, which are based on a survey of sample of about 3.5% of employers, then extrapolated to get a state number. At various times Walker has touted and criticized these monthly numbers, depending on whether they have shown an increase or a decrease. And these are the numbers Barrett and Democrats have cited to argue the state is losing jobs under Walker. The BLS itself recognizes the census method as more accurate. Indeed, it uses those numbers to update the monthly numbers. Think of it as a picture that over time comes into sharper focus. The problems: -- The 2011 numbers are not final. They will be reviewed by the BLS and can change, though typically they do not change by a large amount. The normal procedure is the state gathers the employment data from more than 90 percent of state businesses -- some 160,000 -- and then submits it to the feds for review, said Abdur Chowdhury, chairman of the Marquette University economics department. "They vet the data and correct any mistakes in calculations," he said of the feds. "Sometimes the mistakes are very small, sometimes they are very large." -- The two sets of numbers are collected differently. If not an apples and oranges comparison, Walker is certainly mixing two different varieties of apples. They eventually will be combined by federal officials -- the census numbers will be the new basis for the monthly numbers as the ever-changing picture is updated. But this won’t happen for some time. Of course, that’s not satisfying for Walker who wants to highlight the numbers -- or for voters who must factor in progress on jobs (Walker’s top 2010 campaign promise was to create 250,000 new private-sector jobs over four years) before the recall vote. How do we evaluate them? First, the numbers provide the best current estimate for 2011 and the most recent 2012 count, so they offer a sense of where things stand. While the 2011 numbers are not yet "official," they are real numbers submitted by the state to the BLS. (We separately rated a claim by Barrett that the numbers were "just dreamed up" as False.) Chowdhury said the numbers released by Walker should be considered "raw data" because they have not been reviewed by the BLS. They are not, he said, the "final" numbers for 2011 employment. (We separately rated the claim in the ad by Walker that these were the "final numbers" as False.) When we asked Walker’s campaign about the numbers, spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said, "That’s the best data available to us." Barrett spokesman Phil Walzak noted the new 2011 numbers "raised some serious questions" because "they can't be verified and they won't be verified until after the election." He also noted that the Journal Sentinel story about them said never has there been such a large swing -- 57,000 -- between earlier numbers showing job losses and Walker's new numbers showing job gains. Are the April numbers included? The Walker campaign did not respond to efforts to clarify which set of numbers for 2012 were used. That is, was it the numbers for the first three months -- January, February, March? These were the latest released at the time the ad debuted, on May 16, 2012. Or the first four months, including April? Those monthly numbers were announced by the BLS the next day. When Matthews stopped responding to our questions on this point, we tried numerous ways to get the 2011 and 2012 numbers to add up as they do in the ad. The approach that came closest to the number used in the ad was using the January to April monthly numbers for public- and private-sector jobs. When added to the 2011 number, which also was for all jobs, it would mean an increase since he took office of 33,421. That compares with the 33,200 used. The April numbers actually showed a drop from March. Had the March numbers been used, the total cited in the ad could have been higher, about 39,600. Finally, there is the question of how much Walker is crediting his own policies as leading to the new numbers. A governor -- like a mayor -- has little control over national economic trends such as a severe recession. And any policy changes implemented in response take time to be felt. Thus, when we have evaluated similar claims in the past, the Truth-O-Meter winds up somewhere in the middle, often as Half True. In the ad, Walker presents the numbers as just the guv sharing good news. It’s not a full-throated credit-me approach. But in highlighting his own success and urging viewers to continue his policies, implicit in the claim is a statement taking credit for the improving numbers. What’s more, Walker has acknowledged the numbers were released in an unusual manner. Without the early release, they would not be out until well after the election. So, it is to his political benefit to release -- and tout -- them now. Thus, that deserves a big asterisk any time the numbers are cited. Indeed, the article the ad cites as support for the 2011 numbers includes all of these cautionary notes -- but in isolating a few words from the article the ad snips them out for more advantage. Our rating Walker’s ad says there are 33,200 more jobs in Wisconsin since he took office. To reach the number, he combined two data sets -- one that involves unofficial (but generally more accurate) numbers that could change in the weeks after the election; the other is volatile, but still official monthly numbers. From an accounting standpoint this would be flagged as a mistake. From a political standpoint, he is mixing and matching to present the best possible view. Walker presents it all as final and official, offering no cautionary notes or caveats -- even though there are many. And Walker credits his policies for the improvement, which overstates the impact a governor can make on broad economic trends in a short period of time. There is clearly some truth to the numbers. But in mixing everything together and not making it clear these numbers are preliminary, Walker ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. That is our definition for Mostly False. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2012-05-24T18:58:00 | 2012-05-16 | ['Wisconsin', 'Scott_Walker_(politician)'] |
tron-02127 | The Little boy who was helped by “Birdies” while trapped beneath a garage door | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/birdies/ | null | inspirational | null | null | null | The Little boy who was helped by “Birdies” while trapped beneath a garage door | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01935 | Fishing with Hand Grenades Goes Wrong | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/russian-hand-grenade-fishing/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | Fishing with Hand Grenades Goes Wrong | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01272 | Pregnant Woman Claims She was Raped By Pig | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/hoax-pregnant-woman-claims-she-was-raped-by-pig/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Hoax Pregnant Woman Claims She was Raped By Pig | June 29, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00626 | Will reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by "ending their government takeover, shrinking their portfolios, and establishing minimum capital standards," saving taxpayers as much as $30 billion. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/gop-pledge-o-meter/promise/652/end-government-control-of-fannie-mae-and-freddie-m/ | null | gop-pledge-o-meter | John Boehner | null | null | End government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac | 2010-12-22T09:57:30 | null | ['Freddie_Mac', 'Fannie_Mae'] |
pomt-06498 | Says he never called teachers "thugs" and has said nothing but "great things" about them during the fight over his curbs on unions | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/oct/13/scott-walker/walkers-praise-teachers-not-all-encompassing/ | At the NBC News "Education Nation" summit in New York City on Sept. 26, 2011, anchor Brian Williams put Republican Gov. Scott Walker on the hot seat over his cuts to school funding in the 2011-’13 budget. Williams opened by saying that among the 10 governors on the panel, only Walker was the subject of a social-media campaign questioning NBC’s decision to include him -- with one Twitter post Williams read comparing it with "having an arsonist talk about fire safety." Then he read from a letter sent to NBC by Wisconsin educator Heather DuBois Bourenane. The letter expressed shock that they were "featuring Scott ‘Teachers are Thugs’ Walker at the summit." Twice in the minutes that followed, Williams pushed Walker hard on the origin of "teachers are thugs" reference. Had Walker said it in the heat of the protests over his successful push to sharply curtail collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees? Walker first said it "came from the Internet and everything else" and later flatly denied saying it. He then went further, as he described his encounters with teachers around the state. "I’d have an open forum for an hour with teachers at our schools and they’d say, ‘Why are you pickin’ on teachers?’ And I’d say, ‘Go back to NBC, go back to YouTube, go back to all the statements I’ve made earlier this year and you’ll never find one time when I’ve said anything but great things about our teachers.’" He continued: "The teachers who teach not only my kids but all the other children across the state of Wisconsin, are great public servants. What I’m doing is long term, it’s making a structural change so that more of them can stay in our classrooms." Let’s see … high-profile statement, check. Strong comments, check. Important topic, check. A dispute over what was said, check. Yes, this is one for PolitiFact. So, is Walker right on the "thugs" comment and that he only had positive things to say about teachers? First, "teachers are thugs." It’s worth noting that prominent public officials -- as well as many political commentators -- have freely applied the term "thug" to aspects of the 2011 collective bargaining battle. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, said death threats were "thuggery," while former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wausau, said Walker’s move against unions itself was "political thuggery." Bloggers saw "thuggery" everywhere. In the damage done to the Capitol grounds. In the prank phone call made to Walker. In Walker telling that caller he considered planting troublemakers among protesters. They also saw itin a union-supported boycott of pro-Walker businesses. In protesters’ angry confrontation with Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman. And in a GOP open records request for emails sent by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who compared Walker’s "style" to Joe McCarthy’s. But did Scott Walker say "teachers are thugs"? Certainly not in the sharp way that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did in an April 2011 interview with ABC News about teachers there. "I believe the teachers in New Jersey in the main are wonderful public servants that care deeply," Christie said. "But their union, their union are a group of political thugs." We could find no instance of Walker directly addressing teachers -- or their union -- in that fashion. We did, though, find one instance in which Walker used a form of "thug" in discussing the reaction to his limits on unions. It came in a March 10 appearance on conservative talk host Sean Hannity’s TV show immediately after Republican lawmakers approved Walker’s legislation, ending a stalemate with Senate Democrats who fled to Illinois and blocked a vote for more than three weeks. Hannity asked Walker about "mayhem" at the Capitol, which was occupied for weeks by protesters. Hannity specifically mentioned Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald calling the Capitol "unsafe" for lawmakers trying to get to work, as well as reports of death threats against senators and protests outside Walker’s Wauwatosa house. Walker answered: "People should not be coming into the state trying to intimidate lawmakers, offer up threats or anything else. That’s just not the way it’s done, at least not in the Midwest. And thankfully, again, our lawmakers stood up to those sorts of thuggery attacks, and we’re not going to allow that here in the state of Wisconsin. We can have good civil debate." He added: "The people who work for state and local government have been decent, and I respect them throughout this process. But the people coming in from other states, that bring these sorts of tactics, just don’t belong here." In the view of the state’s largest teachers union, the "thuggery" remark was aimed in part at teachers. "Wisconsin teachers were a big part of the collective actions at the start of the movement he’s referring to -- and his take that there was ‘thuggery’ involved, and that it was out-of-state protesters driving these actions, was way off the mark," said Christina Brey, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Education Association Council. But Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the governor was not talking about teachers when he denounced "thuggery attacks." He said Walker was referring to death threats from out-of-state people. A multitude of threats of various kinds were cataloged by conservative observers and the mainstream media during the protests. In our view, it’s clear Walker directed the comment at what he characterized as out-of-state protesters, without specifically mentioning teachers or the teachers union. He didn’t exclude teachers, though. We asked DuBois Bourenane, the letter writer to NBC, about the "teachers as thugs" moniker she gave Walker. She is a post-secondary instructor whose Monologues of Dissent blog frequently blasts Walker as an enemy of public education. She joined in many of the protests at the Capitol, appeared on MSNBC’s "The Ed Show," and has blanketed Walker’s office with dozens of long, critical emails. She told us it was not meant to suggest that Walker ever said those exact words, but merely a device to highlight her view that Walker disrespects teachers. "I never said he said that and I’d be surprised if he did," she told us. "But I do think he actively promotes a rhetorical discourse that promotes the impression that teachers who disagree with his policies are bad for schools and dangerous and subversive." This gets us to part two of this fact check. To gauge Walker’s rhetoric regarding teachers, we examined dozens of Walker statements on education, on unions and on the Capitol protests that teachers figured so prominently in. During the 2010 campaign, Walker made clear he felt public schools -- and specifically underperforming teachers -- were failing Wisconsin’s students. On his campaign website, he called for teacher evaluations, merit pay and other measures, without mentioning his plan to severely limit collective bargaining. He touted an expansion of voucher and charter schools. But he also made clear the "vast majority" of teachers are succeeding, when he released his education plan during the 2010 campaign. After his election, Walker pressed the case against union rules. In a Wall Street Journal opinion column, Walker wrote that the teachers union "hid behind" a labor contract when an award-winning first-year teacher was laid off because of seniority rules under collective bargaining. In February 2011, after Walker unveiled his union limits and benefits cuts, major school districts across the state shut down when teachers flocked to protests in Madison. Walker praised the "good professionals "who went to work and said those who skipped out had every right to be heard, "but I said I’m not going to allow for one minute the voices of the tens of thousands here to somehow overpower the millions of hardworking taxpayers of my state who know what were asking for is modest." He was less diplomatic when referring to the teachers union. He told conservative talk show host Mark Levin on Feb. 21, 2011, that the union’s motivation was only to get its hands on teachers’ dues payments. By announcing it would give in to Walker’s benefits cuts if he would drop the limits on collective bargaining, "they threw their members under the bus," he said. The same day, Walker told Hannity that Republicans were "not going to be intimidated" by tens of thousands of protesters from Chicago, Nevada and New Jersey. (PolitiFact Wisconsin rated False Walker’s Feb. 22 claim that "almost all" the protesters were from outside Wisconsin at that point, while noting that Illinois teachers unions had sent buses of protesters to Madison.) In late February and early March, as the standoff with Democrats dragged on, Walker used a series of news releases to highlight deals that teachers had negotiated through their union -- or won in arbitration -- on pay, retirement benefits, overtime and working conditions. Some of the releases singled out small but attention-grabbing items in particular districts. One was, "Almost $10,000 Per Year for Doing Nothing," a reference to a teacher emeritus program. Another was "Arbitrator Reinstates Porn-Watching Teacher." Another: "$6,000 Extra for Carrying a Pager." Walker has taken steps to assert that he and his budget were pro-teacher. He frequently praises the public school teachers his two sons have encountered in Wauwatosa, and other outstanding teachers elsewhere. At the NBC summit, Walker repeated his respect for teachers. "I understand there’s sometimes a difference of opinion, but in the end, we believe the right thing to do is put the power in the hands of the teachers," he said. Brey, the statewide teachers union spokeswoman, says WEAC’s main beef with Walker is his actions, not his words. But she said Walker uses his words to depict unions as greedy (seeking an "expensive entitlement"); controlled by intimidating out-of-state "bosses"; and incompetent (with union hiring restrictions gone, Walker says, now we can keep the best teachers). Criticism of the union, Brey contends, amounts to criticism of teachers, who elect their union representatives. In our view, both sides have a gripe. Teachers who belong to the union feel aggrieved by Walker’s comments about their union. But being critical of a group is not the same as being critical of individuals, and it’s a stretch to call Walker’s calls for educational reform and school choice an attack on teachers, per se. On the other hand, it’s disingenuous for the governor to suggest that his praise of teachers is all-encompassing, but that when he’s talking about the protesters -- even mischaracterizing them as dominated by out-of-state interests -- and teachers organizations, it is limited. Our conclusion At the NBC Education Summit, Walker denied saying "teachers are thugs" and said he’s only said "great thing" about teachers. Though we looked at two pieces of the statement, it essentially amounts to single claim -- that he’s only praised teachers. There’s no evidence at all that he used the thug line -- and even the educator whose letter prompted the questioning doesn’t believe he said it. He did use the term "thuggery attacks" in response to a question about the protesters’ occupation of the Capitol, death threats against elected officials and protests outside his home. Many Wisconsin educators joined in that occupation, but Walker says he was referring only to death threats by out-of-state people. On the larger point of his rhetoric about teachers, we found Walker was careful about expressing his respect for teachers and other protesters, while offering criticism of the union that represents them. So, Walker can accurately claim he has avoided direct rhetorical attacks on teachers as a profession. But we found Walker said less than "great things" about the union that represents teachers, and in his "thuggery" comment Walker left room for teachers to assume he was passing judgment on their protests at the Capitol. Walker’s statement may be narrowly accurate, but it slips down the Truth-O-Meter when you examine the full context of his comments about the teachers union, teacher benefits and the protests. Taken as a whole, his comments fall short of the high bar he set about saying only "great things." We rate his statement Half True. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2011-10-13T09:10:53 | 2011-09-26 | ['None'] |
snes-01854 | In August 2017, Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis told supporters of President Donald Trump not to shop at his stores. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/camping-world-ceo-trump/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did the CEO of Camping World Tell Trump Supporters Not to Shop at His Stores? | 23 August 2017 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Camping_World'] |
tron-00564 | Delta Airlines Giving Away Free Tickets | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/delta-airlines-giving-away-free-tickets/ | null | business | null | null | null | Delta Airlines Giving Away Free Tickets | Feb 2, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05980 | Rob Cornilles has been endorsed by 20 local mayors, including Independent, Democratic and Republican. | false | /oregon/statements/2012/jan/23/oregon-republican-party/ruling-change-has-rob-cornilles-locked-endorsement/ | PolitiFact Oregon has the great dishonor of reversing a ruling today. We freely admit we have egg on our face. If we were a cat, our ears would be lowered and our head down. If we were a dog, we’d be looking up at you with sad dog eyes. You get the picture. Last week we ruled True a statement by the Oregon Republican Party that Republican Rob Cornilles had the endorsements of a variety of local mayors, including Democrat, Republican and Independent. The upper case "I" means he had the backing of a registered member of the Independent Party of Oregon, which is a third party group. Well, we were wrong. We checked Cornilles’ list of mayors online, and confirmed their party registration. As we suspected, most are Republican. But we found six non-Republicans, including three registered Democrats. We originally emailed Amity Mayor Michael Cape and asked him if he was registered with the Independent Party, as opposed to being a non-affiliated voter. He said yes. But it turns out that he’s actually a non-affiliated voter. The Independent Party of Oregon was officially recognized by the Secretary of State in January 2007. Previously, people registered with no party could call themselves independent voters. Now they best stick to calling themselves non-affiliated voters. Cape said in a later interview that he considered himself independent, as in neither Republican nor Democratic. This is a confusing issue. When we first contacted the Yamhill clerk’s office, a person there said Cape was registered as Other-Independent. Which is not the same as registering with the Independent Party. Had the Oregon Republican Party used a lower case "i" they would have been accurate. They say that’s what they intended all along. But capitalization makes a difference. We’re very sorry for the confusion but facts are facts. We change our previous ruling from a True to a False. Go back to OregonLive to comment. | null | Oregon Republican Party | null | null | null | 2012-01-23T17:16:33 | 2012-01-13 | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)', '[0', '13', '"Oregon\\\'s_1st_congressional_district"'] |
goop-02888 | Barbra Streisand Mentoring Justin Bieber, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/barbra-streisand-mentoring-justin-bieber-mentor-advice/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Barbra Streisand NOT Mentoring Justin Bieber, Despite Report | 3:18 pm, April 3, 2017 | null | ['Barbra_Streisand'] |
pomt-11336 | Actress Emma Stone: ‘For the first time in history we have a president that… | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/apr/09/politics-elite-trump/fake-news-claims-emma-stone-converted-trump-suppor/ | According to an Internet rumor, actress Emma Stone is President Donald Trump’s newest supporter. "Actress Emma Stone: ‘For the first time in history we have a president that…" read the headline on April 1 on Politics Elite Trump, a blog site that publishes stories about Hollywood and politics. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat misinformation. The story quotes Stone as saying that even though she originally wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election, she has come to realize that America made a great choice electing Trump. That didn’t happen. In reality, Stone called the results of the 2016 election "incredibly painful." Clinton and Stone have also been photographed together backstage at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The story includes a doctored image of Stone wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat. It was photoshopped from a real photo taken of her at Disneyland in 2015. Stone was wearing a navy blue hat with a Mickey Mouse logo, but the article removed the logo replacing it with Trump’s campaign slogan. The article also claims that Stone stated that she is not usually involved in politics. Though Stone has said that she has stayed quiet in publicly expressing her opinions, she has recently said that she is speaking out more often. Stone has supported equal pay for men and women and Planned Parenthood. When searching for the quotes attributed to Stone in the article, we found no results. A fake news blog said that actress Emma Stone has converted to a Trump supporter. We rate this Pants on Fire. | null | Politics Elite Trump | null | null | null | 2018-04-09T17:40:14 | 2018-04-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-13957 | The Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/15/donald-trump/donald-trump-suggests-barack-obama-supported-isis-/ | In a series of comments designed to cast doubt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has charged that the Obama administration has actively supported the Islamic extremist group that became ISIS. In this fact-check, we’ll begin by recapping what Trump said. Then we’ll look at whether he has any evidence to support the allegation. (The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry.) What Trump said It all began with a June 13 interview with Fox & Friends, when Trump said, "Look, we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind. And the something else in mind — you know, people can't believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable." Trump, as we have previously detailed, declined to clarify what he meant in a subsequent interview on NBC’s Today show. He said, "Well, there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn't want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn't want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn't know what he's doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn't want to get it. He doesn't want to see what's really happening. And that could be." Then, on June 14, Trump told the Associated Press that Obama "claims to know our enemy, and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies, and for that matter, the American people." A day later, Trump tweeted, "An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right." The tweet then linked to a Breitbart story that began, "Hillary Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State." Finally, later that day, Trump posted on Facebook, "Hillary Clinton --- is CROOKED! Hillary Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State." This post also linked to the Breitbart article. The 2012 intelligence memo The story on the conservative website Breitbart was based on a classified and partially redacted U.S. intelligence document written in August 2012 and released last year as a result of a lawsuit by the group Judicial Watch. The document outlines what is known about "the general situation" on the ground in Syria and Iraq after the rebellion against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. In that context, the document refers, among other groups, to al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI, which eventually morphed into ISIS, sometimes called the Islamic State or ISIL. The document calls AQI one of a few "major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." Specifically, it said, "AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition (to) Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis." (As background, AQI and ISIS are part of the Sunni branch of Islam, which is often in conflict with the Shia branch.) Meanwhile, the document said that "the West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the opposition, while Russia, China and Iran support the regime." The significance of the memo Trump sees the memo as the smoking gun that demonstrates U.S. support for ISIS or its predecessor group. But that’s not the case. Rather, experts say it means that the United States shared an overarching goal with the opposition -- namely, countering Assad -- without actively supporting all elements of that opposition. In the byzantine world of the Syrian opposition, the United States sought to support moderate elements while opposing extremists such as AQI and, later, ISIS. The White House firmly rejected the notion that the United States actively supported either AQI or ISIS, noting the number of terrorists the administration has killed, including major leadership figures. "We, in conjunction with our Iraqi partners, relentlessly pursued and ultimately degraded AQI with every tool in our arsenal -- including military force," said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council. "And, of course, the fact that we eliminated AQI's leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid leaves no doubt about our determination to rid Iraq of this group." Independent experts agreed with the White House. "The United States has never backed AQI and has never backed ISIS," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "It was never part of the opposition that the United States supported, full stop." Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, agreed. "It has never been the policy or stated goal of the Obama administration to arm or assist al-Qaida," he said. "I would say it's another unsupportable conspiracy theory," said John Limbert, an international affairs professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who previously served as a foreign service officer in post-war Iraq and as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department. John Pike, the director of globalsecurity.org, said it would be putting it "mildly" to call it a conspiracy theory. And Gartenstein-Ross also used that term, tweeting that Trump’s effort to make this argument was a "transparently fallacious conspiracy theory." A point Trump could have made, but didn’t Ironically, experts say, Trump could have made a different point against the Obama administration's Syria policy. Gartenstein-Ross has written about the perils of the administration’s attempts to identify and support potential allies from the motley ranks of the opposition. The effort, he wrote, ended up "benefiting the very jihadist groups the U.S. has been fighting for the past 15 years." Specifically, the policy of arming and promoting Sunni rebel groups fighting the Assad regime ended up indirectly helping the al Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, Landis said. Al Nusra was "allied with many of the leaders that the U.S. did arm or assist," Landis said. And other rebel groups were overrun by al Nusra, he added, even having to surrender their U.S.-provided arms to the al-Qaida affiliate on occasion. The difference with what Trump said is that these developments were unintended -- and unwanted -- side effects of the United States’ policy, not a goal of it. "I think our policy has been both foolish and tragic, but it doesn’t make the argument from Breitbart true," Gartenstein-Ross said. Our ruling Trump said "the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State." U.S. efforts to court "moderate" opponents of Assad may have benefited other Islamic extremist groups such as al Nusra, but any such benefits were an unintended consequence of U.S. policy, not a goal of that policy itself. That’s different from the argument made by Trump -- that the U.S. was actively supporting ISIS or its predecessors. In fact, experts say that assertion is flat wrong. The implication that the Obama administration was actively helping the United States' enemies is ridiculous. It has always been U.S. policy to oppose AQI and ISIS, and the United States has aggressively fought the group for years. We rate Trump’s assertion Pants on Fire. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a39424ee-8ef7-492b-876a-f6e2322a78e9 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-06-15T17:48:18 | 2016-06-15 | ['Iraq', 'Al-Qaeda', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-03522 | Wisconsin has "one of the most progressive tax codes in the country." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2013/jun/02/dale-kooyenga/kooyenga-says-wisconsins-income-taxes-stand-out-na/ | The author of a Wisconsin income tax overhaul sees the flat tax in the Flatland to the south as a beacon for Republicans trying to ease the Badger State’s heavy tax burden on the middle class. "We have a long ways to go in Wisconsin," state Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, told reporters. "Everyone in Illinois pays 5 percent. Illinois millionaires … pay less of a rate in taxes than Wisconsin’s lower income, middle-class families." Researchers deem Illinois’ personal income tax structure "regressive" because a uniform tax rate ultimately takes a bigger bite from lower incomes than higher ones. Wisconsin pioneered the opposite approach, a "progressive" system in which tax rates rise with earnings. Kooyenga argues change is long overdue. "Wisconsin was the first state to enact an income tax in 1911," he wrote in a May 27, 2013 posting on the conservative Right Wisconsin website. "The complexity of the Wisconsin tax code has exponentially grown as Madison politicians believed the tax code was their magic wand which could be used to accomplish political and social objectives." His conclusion: "As a direct result, our tax code picks winners and losers and is one of the most progressive tax codes in the country." Kooyenga’s plan reduces rates and collapses several tax brackets. It comes on top of Gov. Scott Walker’s tax-cut proposal. Combined they reduce taxes by nearly $790 million over two years. Top earners would likely receive the majority of the $444 million in tax savings under Kooyenga’s plan, and those with modest incomes would land in the same tax bracket as very high earners, the Journal Sentinel reported. Kooyenga acknowledges that, but says everyone deserves tax relief and that the top 10 percent right now pay over 50 percent of the tax revenue in Wisconsin. But Kooyenga’s claim wasn’t about the impact of his plan. Rather it was about the tax system as it stands today. Does Wisconsin have "one of the most progressive tax codes in the country"? The rankings Kooyenga’s plan focuses on the personal income tax, so we’ll confine our analysis to that rather than all taxes in the code. We found two 50-state studies comparing income tax burdens by income level, and Kooyenga cited the same research when we asked him for backup. A March 2013 study of 2010 tax data by the non-partisan Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, a research organization, concluded that: -- Among 42 states with an income tax (and the District of Columbia), Wisconsin is the 9th most-progressive when comparing married couples with $10,000 of gross income to those with incomes of $150,000, $250,000, $500,000 and $1 million. -- Wisconsin’s ranking drops lower, in a range from 11th to 15th "most progressive," when comparing a couple earning $35,000 to each of those four higher levels. The ranks were 11, 12, 15 and 15. Minnesota came in number 2. The second study cited by Kooyenga is a January 2013 examination by the nonpartisan, liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) in Washington, D.C. (The group is a partner organization to Citizens for Tax Justice, which has criticized the Walker and Kooyenga tax cuts as costly and regressive. Also, on May 30, 2013, ITEP released a review of Kooyenga’s plan, concluding that the top 20 percent of earners, a group with an average income of $183,000, would receive more than two-thirds of the benefit.) In any event, the group’s earlier 50-state study -- the one cited by Kooyenga to back up his claim -- found that Wisconsin’s income tax was the 12th most progressive in the nation. That ranking is not revealed in the report, which deals with a broader variety of state and local taxes, but the group made it available to us from its unpublished database. So, the two studies rank the income tax here in a range from 9th to 15th most progressive. That puts Wisconsin among the top 21 to 36 percent of "most progressive" income tax states, depending on the comparison point and the study. Of course, that’s just among the state’s that levy a personal income tax -- the tax that is the main way to add a progressive element to a tax system. Four states that don’t levy a personal income tax are on the ITEP’s top-10 "most regressive" list for their overall tax systems, so it’s safe to say Wisconsin’s income tax approach is more progressive than in those additional states that don’t even use this progressive tool. Of the two studies, the ITEP research is more up to date, but is limited to non-elderly taxpayers. It, unlike the Minnesota study, accounted for the effect of reductions that Walker initiated in 2011 in the earned income tax credit for low-income workers, a cut of 19 percent, or $56 million over two years. That change made the income tax less progressive, but we don’t know how it affected Wisconsin’s ranking vs. other states, some of whom made similar changes. Digging deeper From the ITEP study, Kooyenga highlighted tables showing that Wisconsin’s top 20 percent of earners pay an effective income tax rate considerably higher than the national average. Similarly, for the lowest 20 percent, Wisconsin’s burden is lower than the 50-state average. That’s true, and it demonstrates the progressive nature of the Wisconsin system. The progressive income tax offsets the regressive effect, for example, of the sales tax. Aside from the graduated rate structure that rises with income, the state’s sliding standard deduction is "powerfully progressive," as is the itemized deduction credit, notes Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance president Todd Berry. But the ITEP study also shows that by the time earnings reach an average of $28,000, Wisconsin’s personal income tax bite is already over the national average for the second 20 percent. PolitiFact Wisconsin in November 2012 reviewed a claim by state Rep. Robin Vos that on income taxes, "Wisconsin is one of the best places in the country to be poor but "top 4 or 5 worst" for middle-income earners. We rated it Mostly True. Wisconsin, in the 2013 ITEP study, is not singled out as at the very highest end as either progressive or regressive. "Unlike most states, Wisconsin allows a large capital gains tax break," ITEP executive director Matthew Gardner wrote in an email. "Since the benefits of this tax break go primarily to the best-off taxpayers, the capital gains tax break makes Wisconsin’s income tax much less progressive than you would think from just looking at the tax rates." Gardner said it would be reasonable to say that Wisconsin is in the upper tier of "least regressive" states based on its #12 ranking. But, in his view, "it’s hard to describe the Wisconsin income tax -- or the tax system as a whole -- as among the ‘most progressive’ in the US." In the Minnesota study, the rankings drop quite a bit when the comparison income is set at $35,000 instead of $10,000. The reason for that is related to the tax credits for very low earners that we mentioned earlier. Wisconsin has a prominent credit, helping to account for its progressive ranking. Such credits phase out as income rises, however, so those people would have a tax liability, unlike lower earners whose bill is wiped out by the credit, said Aaron Twait, research director at the Minnesota center. A few other states keep the credits in place at higher incomes, bumping up their "progressive" rating. Kooyenga could have balanced off some of the regressive effect of his plan by increasing tax credits for very low-income earners. But he notes that many workers in that category receive the credit even though they did not earn enough wages to have Wisconsin taxes withheld. It’s a wage supplement in the form of a refund. That, in Kooyenga’s view, is one of the inappropriate "social objectives" in the tax code, his office told us. Our rating PItching his plan to begin flattening the Wisconsin state income tax code, Kooyenga said Wisconsin has "one of the most progressive tax codes in the country." Kooyenga was talking about income taxes, and it’s clear from two national studies that Wisconsin’s tax is more progressive than two-thirds to four-fifths of the states that levy such a tax, depending on the study. So Wisconsin is clearly in the upper tier, but not in elite of the elite. We rate the claim Mostly True. | null | Dale Kooyenga | null | null | null | 2013-06-02T09:00:00 | 2013-05-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-04427 | Signs letter saying Consumer Product Safety Commission is acting "without consultation or input from the company" to stop the sale of Buckyballs. | false | /tennessee/statements/2012/oct/15/phil-roe/roe-letter-claims-consumer-commission-stopping-buc/ | Buckyballs and Buckycubes, tiny rare earth magnets manufactured in China and sold by the Maxfield & Oberton Co. of New York, are intended to be adult desk toys. They’re marketed as "the amazing magnetic desk toys you can’t put down," and have received rave reviews in magazines like Maxim, Wired, Esquire and People. They’ve also been swallowed by children and have been the cause of emergency surgeries. In July, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in filing only its second administrative complaint in 11 years, charged that their design poses a "substantial risk of injury to the public." U.S. Reps. Marsha Blackburn and Phil Roe, both R-Tenn., and five other members of Congress, wrote to President Obama on Oct. 1, saying the CPSC "is penalizing our nation’s brightest innovators and job creators through excessive and selective enforcement." The congressmen go on to say that they learned of the Buckyballs case during a recent hearing. They say CPSC "overreach and lack of flexibility has virtually eliminated these products and the jobs associated with their sales and distribution." They ask the president to review the case and for the CPSC to continue to work cooperatively with the company. They point out that 2.5 million of the small magnetic cube and ball toys have been sold in the past three years. Then they say that the "CPSC is working, without consultation or input from the company, to eliminate this product by stopping the sale of their products by directly approaching its retail partners and requesting a recall." We asked Blackburn’s communications director, Mike Reynard, for supporting evidence that the agency was acting without consultation or input from the company. After conferring with staffers, Reynard sent a USA Today story indicating the CPSC has been intervening with retailers to end sales of the magnets as it pursues its lawsuit. He said the lawsuit itself showed the agency is "done working with the company." In a followup email message, Reynard wrote: "You can't say you're working with someone when you are actively suing them to kill their product. That might be the administration's idea of a cooperative working relationship but it isn't for most Americans and business owners. CPSC should be working with Buckyballs to resolve any concerns around these limited cases when compared to the 2.5 million units sold. Clearly they have pushed to get this product off shelves as the USA Today story confirms specific vendors who have pulled the product." Roe spokeswoman Tiffany McGuffee said Roe takes the same position. Then we looked at the lengthy letter from Maxfield & Oberton CEO Craig Zucker laying out its case against the CPSC’s actions. It notes the "extraordinary lengths" the company has taken to prevent misuse of its products, including "warnings, education, labeling, retailer sales restrictions and continuous cooperation with the CPSC – right up until literally the moment they turned on us." Zucker’s letter explains the toys went on sale in March 2009 and were originally labeled for use by those 13 and older. When the federal rules for children’s games changed to include those 14 and older, the company entered into a May 2010 voluntary recall of all the toys with the original labeling. It went on to create a "comprehensive safety program" and began labeling the toys with a warning: "Keep Away From All Children." The company also required retailers to agree to rules for placement of its products in their stores, with new signs. It designed a Magnet Safety website in March of this year and met with three CPSC commissioners and staff in April to discuss the expanded safety program. The company also created a medical advisory group and, along with its competitors, created the Coalition for Magnet Safety. But on July 10, the commission voted 3-1 to file the administrative complaint after, it said, "discussions with the company and its representatives failed to result in a voluntary recall plan that CPSC considered to be adequate." The CPSC said that, despite the warnings and labeling, people were still ingesting the magnets, sometimes after placing them on tongues or on cheeks to resemble piercings. The CPSC warned that when two magnets are swallowed, they can be attracted to each other through stomach or intestinal walls, resulting in serious injury requiring surgery. CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said in an interview that gastroenterologists have said the injuries often resemble "a gunshot to the gut" but without entrance or exit wounds. Wolfson noted that both Maxfield & Oberton and a Denver-based company, Zen Magnets, were sued after they failed to provide adequate suggestions for making their products safer. They were the first such complaints since the Arkansas-based Daisy BB gun company was sued in 2001. "Due to the number of ingestion incidents received by CPSC staff since the 2010 recall announcement and 2011 safety alert, CPSC staff seeks the remedies outlined in the complaint to stop further incidents and injuries to children," the agency said in a statement. Those remedies include stopping the sale of the toys and providing consumers with refunds. Our ruling Blackburn, Roe and their fellow letter writers are concerned that the "nation’s brightest innovators and job creators" are being penalized by an overzealous consumer protection agency. We’ll leave it to others to determine whether the sellers of Chinese magnetic balls qualify as the nation’s "brightest innovators," and also decline to determine the truth of the letter writers’ assertion that the agency’s first administrative complaints in 11 years suggest "excessive and selective enforcement." Those are opinions, but it is possible to see whether the CPSC failed to consult or seek input from the company. The lengthy record laid out by the company’s CEO establishes there was, in fact, much consultation leading up the agency’s conclusion that the toys are inherently unsafe. We rule the Congress members’ statement False. | null | Phil Roe | null | null | null | 2012-10-15T03:00:00 | 2012-10-01 | ['None'] |
tron-03593 | Thieves Cloning Auto Door Lock Codes, Breaking Into Cars | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/thieves-cloning-auto-door-lock-codes-breaking-cars-truth/ | null | warnings | null | null | ['crime', 'police', 'warnings'] | Thieves Cloning Auto Door Lock Codes, Breaking Into Cars | Jan 18, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.