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pomt-07988 | Under current U.S. immigration policy, "literally one person with a green card" can, in the extreme, bring in more than 270 of his relatives. | false | /georgia/statements/2011/jan/18/phil-gingrey/marietta-republican-says-single-immigrant-can-lead/ | U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey wants Georgians to know that even a trickle of immigration can lead to a deluge. The Marietta Republican explained just how bad he thinks it can get during a state legislative committee meeting on immigration. Speaking via a video conference transmission from Washington on Dec. 16, he put blame on the shoulders of national immigration policy. "And so now, under the policy, our immigration policy, literally one person with a green card can bring in, in the extreme ... 279 people." That sounds like a lot. Is this true? Immigration became a central issue during the election season when now-Gov. Nathan Deal and his Democratic foe, former Gov. Roy Barnes, both called for an Arizona-style immigration law. That state's decision to take a more active role enforcing federal laws prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to file suit against it. We called Gingrey's office for evidence. A staffer referred us to NumbersUSA, a nonprofit group that advocates for lower immigration levels. Roy Beck, the group's executive director, said he did not know of any cases where this happened, but he stressed it's possible through "chain migration." That's when immigrants take advantage of U.S. rules that allow them to bring their relatives here. Foreigners who obtain green cards can apply to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring their spouses and unmarried children. If they become citizens and are over age 21, they can also apply to bring in their married children, parents and siblings. We checked NumbersUSA's math. The group used immigration rules and fertility rates for less-developed countries to determine that 273 relatives of a legal immigrant can follow him during the next 15 years. (Gingrey said 279, but we won't count this slight difference against him.) Since Gingrey said such immigration was possible "in the extreme," we accepted the group's assumptions such as that in recent years, families in the less-developed world have, on average, three children, and that all of an immigrant's eligible family members would leave for the U.S. and become citizens as soon as they could legally do so. We also assumed there were absolutely no visa processing waits and that immigration backlogs do not exist. We found NumbersUSA's estimate was not based on "literally one person with a green card" entering the country, as Gingrey said. Their estimate assumes that the first immigrant comes here as a worker with his spouse and three children. This roughly doubles its estimate. We also found that immigration researchers generally agree that in the real world, such large-scale immigration is at least extremely unlikely if not impossible. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration levels, is critical of chain migration, but she noted that administrative wait times and quotas can make such large-scale migration difficult. She had not heard of a case where this has happened. Karen Woodrow-Lafield, who studies immigration as a professor at the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland, noted those same problems. She said such numbers are "not possible under the current immigration system" because of visa application backlogs. Atlanta's USCIS field office now takes four or five months to process immigration documents. In California, the processing time for U.S. citizens to bring in siblings is more than four years. Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a national association of attorneys and law professors who practice and teach immigration law, said her group also determined that NumbersUSA's figures are not possible. Her group supports the U.S. Justice Department's suit against Arizona. "If people could bring in those numbers, they would have," Williams said. "But they didn't." U.S. law sets yearly quotas on legal permanent residents and caps the percentage of potential immigrants from a particular country to 7 percent. This means waits that can last for decades. For instance, Filipino siblings of U.S. residents who applied for visas before Jan. 1, 1988, are only just beginning to be interviewed for entry, according to the U.S. State Department. For countries without backlogs, the date is Jan. 1, 2002. In reality, chain-migration numbers are much lower, experts who study the subject told us. Over a span of 20 years, immigrants who came in on employment visas in 1971 brought in an average of one resident. More recently, one researcher found that on average, one foreign citizen brings in 2.1 others under family reunification rules. And another study shows only some 10 percent of immigrants who got their green cards in 2003 petitioned to bring a relative to the U.S. So what does this mean? Gingrey said that "literally one person with a green card" could bring in more than 270 others "in the extreme." But we found his figure was not based on one person. It's based on a family of five. We found this scenario is likely impossible under quotas established under current immigration policy. Quotas mean it can take years -- even decades. Merely processing immigration documents can take months, if not years. Given that recent data show that the average immigrant brings in 2.1 others in his lifetime, Gingrey could easily have remained within the bounds of accuracy by describing an "extreme" scenario as one where two or three dozen others followed the first immigrant within 15 years. Instead, he said "279" -- hundreds more than "extreme." We therefore rule Gingrey's statement False. | null | Phil Gingrey | null | null | null | 2011-01-18T06:00:00 | 2010-12-16 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-05883 | Says President Barack Obama "has an Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/07/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-says-epa-plans-boost-gas-prices-25-c/ | What better way to scare American voters than tell them the government wants them to pay 25 cents a gallon more for gas? In an appearance on Meet the Press on Feb. 5, 2012, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued that President Obama’s policies have "weakened the country." Prime example: "He has an Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon. There are very few Americans who want to see the price of gasoline raised by government ... 25 cents a gallon." We think Gingrich is probably right about that second part. We decided to look further into the first. EPA and reducing tailpipe emissions Gingrich’s campaign spokesman, R.C. Hammond, directed us to recent news coverage of the EPA’s proposed "Tier 3" regulations on fuel emissions. The regulations are part of Obama’s multi-year plan to reduce tailpipe pollution. Initially, his administration created the first-ever fuel economy and greenhouse gas requirements for trucks. Next the administration set such standards for cars, light trucks, and sport-utility vehicles, called "light-duty vehicles," for model years 2017- 2025, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Now, the EPA is working to create a new set of emissions standards to reduce pollution from these light-duty vehicles. These would update standards that EPA set in 1999. But the potential costs of the new regulations have some politicians up in arms. Hammond pointed us to a letter signed by six U.S. senators to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson raising concerns about the proposed action. "With gasoline prices already high, and with so many Americans already struggling to make ends meet, we urge you to recognize that now is not the time for new regulations that will raise the price of fuel even further," the letter stated. It went on to cite a study by the consulting firm Baker & O’Brien, which estimated capital and annual costs of complying with the new regulations of $17 billion and $13 billion respectively and predicted oil refinery closures and an increase in gasoline prices of 12 to 25 cents per gallon. That’s where Gingrich’s 25-cent statement came from. But there are some important things to know about this study. First, it was conducted for the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry trade group. "At the very least, industry-sponsored studies (and interest-group sponsored studies, for that matter) should always be taken with a grain of salt," said David Jenkins, vice president for government and political affairs for Republicans for Environmental Protection. "Candidates should not be reciting such studies as gospel, since they know, or should know, that a study can be engineered to produce whatever results the sponsor would like by tweaking the choice of assumptions." Second, the Baker & O’Brien study assumes two major changes in the standards: lowering the sulfur content in gasoline and adjusting something called Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP), a measure of fuel volatility. But the study was initiated before the EPA made its intentions known, according to Michelle Robinson with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Now, the EPA has said it is only exploring changes in sulfur levels. Baker & O’Brien’s conclusions were based on four scenarios, all of which assumed lower RVP requirements. Robinson wrote in an email that "while the API study did not distinguish the costs of reducing the RVP from the costs of lowering sulfur content, a review of the report indicates that most of the costs are due to the RVP reduction." That means that the biggest chunk of the costs are expected from a change that EPA has said it isn’t seeking. Said Robinson: "The oil industry study is dramatically overstating the cleanup costs because it is based on a false premise." Other evidence We found another study examining the impacts of Tier 3, commissioned by the International Council for Clean Transportation, a nonprofit foundation that seeks to improve transportation efficiency in order to reduce climate change. This study specifically included a scenario which allowed the gasoline sulfur improvement to be isolated from the RVP improvement, Robinson told us. Conducted by the refinery consulting firm MathPro, this study concluded that the price of reducing the average gasoline sulfur content would be less than one cent per gallon. EPA did not respond to our inquiry, but in several published reports we found references to remarks by Margo Oge of EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality. She said Jan. 26, 2012, at the Washington Auto Show that the oil industry’s cost projections were based costs of a program that "EPA is not planning to propose." Our ruling Gingrich warned that under Obama, the EPA plans to raise gasoline prices by 25 cents a gallon. He drew that information from an industry-funded study considering the cost impacts of the EPA’s proposed Tier 3 fuel standards and went right for the high end of the estimate. "Surely he knows that API has a vested interest in presenting a high projection," said Jenkins, of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Even more importantly, the study concluded its cost estimates based on fuel-standard changes that EPA is not considering. When looking only at lowering the sulfur content of gasoline, the cost would be far lower -- even less than a penny per gallon, according to a study commissioned by an environmental group. Gingrich’s statement exaggerates and misleads, and we rate it False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/bc4d6c67-20d8-4f5c-b267-c8c971698e88 | null | Newt Gingrich | null | null | null | 2012-02-07T18:09:05 | 2012-02-05 | ['None'] |
tron-00387 | Great White Shark Caught in Great Lakes | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/great-white-shark-captured-great-lakes/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Great White Shark Caught in Great Lakes | Jun 22, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
bove-00041 | Times Of India Uses Fake Image To Alert Readers About Viral Kiki Challenge | none | https://www.boomlive.in/times-of-india-uses-fake-image-to-alert-readers-about-viral-kiki-challenge/ | null | null | null | null | null | Times Of India Uses Fake Image To Alert Readers About Viral Kiki Challenge | Jul 30 2018 6:40 pm | null | ['None'] |
tron-01774 | Congressional Testimony of Darrell Scott, father of one of the Columbine Shooting Victims | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/darrellscott/ | null | government | null | null | null | Congressional Testimony of Darrell Scott, father of one of the Columbine Shooting Victims | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04207 | Author J.K. Rowling was the first person to fall off of the Forbes billionaires list due to donating so much money to charity. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/j-k-rowling-drops-off-forbes-billionaires-list/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Emery | null | J.K. Rowling Drops Off Forbes Billionaires List Due to Charitable Donations | 20 August 2016 | null | ['Forbes'] |
abbc-00395 | The claim: Bill Shorten says a thousand manufacturing jobs have been lost every month the Abbott Government's been in power. | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-19/bill-shorten-cherrypicking-manufacturing-job-loss-figures/5260996 | The claim: Bill Shorten says a thousand manufacturing jobs have been lost every month the Abbott Government's been in power. | ['work', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'bill-shorten', 'alp', 'manufacturing', 'industry', 'australia'] | null | null | ['work', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'bill-shorten', 'alp', 'manufacturing', 'industry', 'australia'] | Bill Shorten cherrypicking manufacturing job loss figures | Mon 3 Mar 2014, 12:38am | null | ['None'] |
tron-02649 | “Why Believe in a god?” Campaign | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/american-humanist-ads/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | “Why Believe in a god?” Campaign | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00033 | “Over the last 6 years, the forest cover has increased from 6.99% to 7.3%.” | unproven | https://africacheck.org/reports/hit-or-miss-5-claims-by-kenyan-governors-fact-checked/ | null | null | null | null | null | Hit or miss? 5 claims by Kenyan governors fact-checked | 2018-07-04 01:06 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01264 | A photo retweeted by President Donald Trump shows the widow of a veteran killed in the line of duty. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/picture-soldier-family-killed/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Is This Family Grieving a Soldier Killed in Action? | 5 January 2018 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00001 | Sen. Blumenthal “went around telling war stories” about Vietnam, talked of “people dying left and right, but my platoon marched forward.” | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/10/trumps-escalating-exaggerations-on-blumenthal/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Robert Farley | ['military record'] | Trump’s Escalating Exaggerations on Blumenthal | October 8, 2018 | 2018-10-08 21:15:20 UTC | ['Vietnam'] |
snes-02562 | Massapequa, New York pizza restaurant Villaggio's refused to serve a soldier named John Welch because he visited with a service dog. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/restaurant-refuse-soldier-massapequa/ | null | Military | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did a New York Restaurant Refuse to Serve a United States Soldier? | 21 April 2017 | null | ['Massapequa,_New_York', 'New_York_City'] |
pomt-00509 | Says Barack Obama told the U.S. Coast Guard Academy "that the number one threat to the military and the world today is global warming." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2015/jun/25/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-barack-obama-told-coast-guard-gl/ | As he pursues a bid for the White House in 2016, Gov. Scott Walker has made it a point to call for more action against "radical Islamic terrorism." He did so again while speaking June 20, 2015, in Washington, D.C., at a conference of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a group led by conservative political strategist Ralph Reed. Toward the end of his remarks, Walker turned to national security -- or what he prefers to call "safety." He criticized President Barack Obama and Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president. And then he made a claim about Obama, national security and global warming. "You know, I think about how mixed up this Obama-Clinton doctrine is when it comes to foreign policy," Walker said. "We've got a president who, earlier this year -- at the graduation ceremony for the Coast Guard Academy -- stood up and actually told the graduates that the number one threat to the military and the world today is global warming. "Well, I've got a message for you, Mr. President: The number one threat to the military, the number one threat to America, the number one threat to the world, is radical Islamic terrorism and it's about time we do something about it." Extended applause followed. But Walker made a far-reaching claim. Did Obama tell graduates from a branch of the military that global warming is the number one threat to the military and the world? What was said Walker’s claim pertains to the commencement speech the president gave May 20, 2015, at the academy, which is located in New London, Conn. The official text shows Obama devoted the bulk of his speech to climate change (he used that term, not global warming), describing it as a serious threat to America’s national security and to global security. He did not go so far as to call it the top threat to the military or the world. Here’s a key portion of what Obama said: And this brings me to the challenge I want to focus on today -- one where our Coast Guardsmen are already on the front lines, and that, perhaps more than any other, will shape your entire careers -- and that’s the urgent need to combat and adapt to climate change. As a nation, we face many challenges, including the grave threat of terrorism. And as Americans, we will always do everything in our power to protect our country. Yet even as we meet threats like terrorism, we cannot, and we must not, ignore a peril that can affect generations …. Here at the Academy, climate change -- understanding the science and the consequences -- is part of the curriculum, and rightly so, because it will affect everything that you do in your careers ….As America’s Maritime Guardian, you’ve pledged to remain always ready -- Semper Paratus -- ready for all threats. And climate change is one of those most severe threats. And this is not just a problem for countries on the coasts, or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act -- and we need to act now. So, Walker suggests Obama puts climate change ahead of terrorism as a threat, but in his speech, the president notes that the U.S. needs to confront both. We also checked five news accounts of the speech -- from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, TIME and Fox News. They all emphasized that Obama described climate change as a threat or serious threat to national security. Other speeches Prior to the Coast Guard speech, Obama -- in a general context -- suggested climate change is the world’s number one threat. For instance, in his State of the Union speech in January 2015, Obama said: "No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." And in April 2015, a few days before Earth Day, he said: "Today, there's no greater threat to our planet than climate change." So, after having identified climate change as perhaps the world’s greatest threat overall, Obama did devote a speech, given to members of the military, to the threat climate change poses to national and global security. But he didn’t go as far as Walker claims. Our rating Walker said Obama told the Coast Guard Academy "that the number one threat to the military and the world today is global warming." Obama on various occasions, and in a general context, has said there is no greater threat to the world than climate change. But in the speech Walker cited, the president told Coast Guard graduates that climate change was a serious threat, not the number one threat to the military or the world. For a statement that contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we give Walker a Mostly False. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2015-06-25T10:25:00 | 2015-06-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-09457 | On reconciliation | full flop | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/05/barack-obama/obama-hypocrite-reconciliation/ | With President Barack Obama calling for Congress to move toward a reconciliation bill on health care (which would require only a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate rather than the customary supermajority of 60), many conservative opponents have posted pre-presidential Obama quotes that they say expose his hypocrisy on the issue. We'll examine the context of some of the more popular quotes being cited, and then weigh in with our 2 cents on whether Obama has flipped on reconciliation. The quote that seems to be making the widest rounds is one Obama made during the presidential campaign in an interview with the Concord Monitor on Oct. 9, 2007. It has been featured in segments by pundits Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Here's how Beck presented it on his show March 3, 2010: Beck: "In fact, you know, one of the big people that was really outspoken on reconciliation, said it was a really big mistake, especially using it for health care, you can't use the 50-plus-one option and still govern. That person was Barack Obama." Beck then played a clip in which Obama said the following: "You've got to break out of what I call the sort of fifty-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of fifty plus one. Then you can't govern. You know, you get Air Force One, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can't deliver on health care. We are not going to pass universal health care with a fifty-plus-one strategy." This turns out to be a splice of Obama's comments. Obama actually said a good bit between the first sentence and the rest of the quote. That added context doesn't make this one as cut-and-dried as it may appear. Obama was talking about the differences between himself and his then-opponent in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton. "I think it is legitimate at this point for me to explain very clearly to the American people why I think I will be a better president than Hillary Clinton, and to draw contrasts," Obama said. "But that's very different from this sort of slash-and-burn politics that I think we've become accustomed to. Look, part of the reason I'm running is not just to be president, it's to get things done. And what I believe that means is we've got to break out of what I call, sort of, the 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Which is, you have nasty primaries where everybody's disheartened. Then you divide the country 45 percent on one side, 45 percent on the other, 10 percent in the middle -- all of them apparently live in Florida and Ohio -- and battle it out. And maybe you eke out a victory of 50-plus-one, but you can't govern. I mean, you get Air Force One, there are a lot of nice perks to being president, but you can't deliver on health care. We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy. We're not going to have a serious bold energy policy of the sort I proposed yesterday unless you build a working majority. And part of the task of building that working majority is to get people to believe in our government, that it can work, that it's based on common sense, that it's not just sort of scoring political points. The interviewer then asked, "So is your answer to 'Why I will be a better president than Hillary Clinton,' is your answer that she'll be a 50-plus-one president and you won't?" "Yes," Obama said. A bit of historical context is in order. During the campaign, one of the knocks on Hillary Clinton -- even among Democrats -- was that she was a politically polarizing figure, and that would make it hard for her to get things done. It was an image the Obama campaign played up, presenting Obama as someone better able to forge consensus on difficult issues. Asked about the quote in a press briefing on March 4, 2010, press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama was talking about "electoral strategy, not vote counting in the House and the Senate." The same scenario unfolds with a quote Obama made when he was speaking a couple of weeks earlier at the Change to Win Convention on Sept. 25, 2007. Again, Obama was contrasting himself with Democratic primary opponents, this time both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and Obama suggested that he was better able to "excite and inspire the American people" and build a larger consensus (even with Republicans) on issues like health care, immigration and energy. "The bottom line is that our health care plans are similar," Obama said. "The question once again is, who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we're going to have to have a 60 percent majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're gonna have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk. That is not just a fifty plus one majority." Obama was right: short of a reconciliation bill (which wasn't even being discussed at the time), health care legislation would require a 60 percent majority to pass the Senate. Again, Obama was touting his ability to build consensus and was not saying specifically whether he was for or against reconciliation. There's one more quote we'd like to address. This one was made in a press conference at the National Press Club on April 26, 2005. At the time, Democrats and Republicans were jousting over controversial judicial nominations made by President George W. Bush. Republicans were threatening a so-called "nuclear option" in which they could use a simple majority to get the judges affirmed. Obama was asked to weigh in on the issue. "What I worry about would be that you essentially have still two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian absolute power on either side," Obama said. "And that's just not what the Founders intended. You know, the Founders designed this system, as frustrating it is, to make sure that there's a broad consensus before the country moves forward. "You know, and if we want to start getting into the frustrations of minority rights, you know, we could talk about the fact that (South Dakota Sen.) John Thune, with a population of 600,000, has the same vote as I do, with a population of 11 million. I mean, there are all sorts of counter-majoritarian impulses in our system of government, and that's why this government has worked so well. And I think that's why we should try to back off the brink on this one." We should note that while the issues are similar, this was a debate over judicial nominations, not a reconciliation bill. We think it's important to note that none of the quotes from Obama directly addresses reconciliation. So that makes his position less definitive. But he makes it clear that he doesn't believe a slim majority is enough for a major piece of legislation. Specifically, he talked about health care not being a 50-plus-one issue. And the fact is, he's now advocating a 50-plus-one strategy on health care. Obama may argue that he has tried to include Republicans, but that they have simply been unwilling to play ball. He also has noted that the first iteration of the health care bill passed the Senate with a supermajority. But the fact is, the health care bill is not getting any Republican support, and Obama is pressing forward with a plan to push through a health care plan without them, and without a 60-vote majority. And we think the last quote, from 2005, is even more on point. Yes, Obama was speaking about the "nuclear option" as it related to judicial nominees, and not a reconciliation bill. But the principles are largely the same, especially as Obama noted that having simple "majoritarian" power in the Senate is "just not what the Founders intended." And we think that's enough to warrant a Full Flop. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2010-03-05T11:23:50 | 2010-03-04 | ['None'] |
bove-00024 | Crying Schoolgirl & Grandmother: Twists & Turns Behind This Viral Image | none | https://www.boomlive.in/crying-schoolgirl-grandmother-twists-turns-behind-this-viral-image/ | null | null | null | null | null | Crying Schoolgirl & Grandmother: Twists & Turns Behind This Viral Image | Aug 23 2018 7:58 pm, Last Updated: Aug 24 2018 11:50 am | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09644 | President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions, but China and India will still be allowed to increase their emissions. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/11/sarah-palin/copenhagen-treaty-allows-emerging-economies-more-c/ | On Day 2 of the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin decided to weigh in. Her op-ed, published in the Dec. 9, 2009, edition of the Washington Post , enumerated her concerns about a series of e-mails that skeptics say show disagreement over the seriousness of climate change and President Barack Obama's plan to pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels. We wrote a separate story on the e-mails . Here, we'll look at the emissions questions. Palin argues that developing countries, like India and China, should at least be equal partners in the effort to slow global warming; it's unfair for the United States to shoulder the burden. "Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions," she wrote. Is that really what is happening? On Nov. 27, 2009, China announced it will lower emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That may sound like a lot, but it's important to read the fine print here. China is talking about lowering carbon intensity. It's a measurement of how much energy it takes to produce a given amount of economic output. Climate experts say this means emissions from China will likely continue to grow along with its economy, but not as quickly as they would have otherwise. "Let's say you commit to an intensity target of -6% per year in carbon/GDP," wrote climate scientist Jonathan Koomey, professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "If your GDP grows at 10% per year, that means your carbon emissions will still grow 4% per year. So you're improving your carbon efficiency but absolute emissions are still increasing." Indeed, China's GDP is growing rapidly. In the third quarter of this year, it grew 8.9 percent, likely bringing the total annual growth to 8 percent. On Dec. 4, India offered a similar proposal. Officials there say the country is prepared to cut carbon intensity from 20 to 25 percent by 2020. It's a landmark announcement for India; traditionally, the country has argued that it cannot afford to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But like China, India's economy is growing rapidly, and with it its carbon emissions. Obama, on the other hand, is arguing for a cut large enough that the United States would see an absolute reduction in emissions, explained Koomey. (Obama's plan to trim emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is part of a cap-and-trade change bill pending in the House of Representatives. A Senate bill would require a 20 percent cut.) Koomey, like many climate scientists, say overall cuts -- even from developing countries -- are necessary to really slow down climate change. While the United States' proposed cuts are more stringent than those proposed by China or India, they're less aggressive than the 25 to 50 percent emissions reduction scientists say countries must adopt to hold global average temperature increases to about 2 degrees Celsius. So, where does that leave Palin's claim? She's correct that China and India's plans will allow them to increase emissions, while the United States would have to cut back. For this claim, Palin gets a True. | null | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2009-12-11T18:51:03 | 2009-12-09 | ['China', 'India', 'Barack_Obama'] |
snes-03497 | High school students in Texas were reprimanded for a skit depicting the assassination of President-elect Trump. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/texas-high-school-students-fake-trump-assassination/ | null | Politicians | null | Bethania Palma | null | Texas High School Students Fake Trump Assassination | 21 November 2016 | null | ['Texas'] |
goop-02757 | Taylor Schilling “Blackballed” From Press Appearances? | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/taylor-schilling-blackballed-press-appearances-ellen-degeneres-show/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Taylor Schilling “Blackballed” From Press Appearances? | 3:23 pm, June 3, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11715 | UPDATE: ‘Thousands’ voted for Doug Jones in Alabama town with population of 2,256 | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/dec/15/blog-posting/fake-news-spreads-about-doug-jones-and-votes-ficti/ | It’s not true that Democrat Doug Jones got more than 5,000 votes in a town of less than 3,000 people in the Alabama Senate race. Unofficial results from the Dec. 12 special election show that overall, Jones beat his Republican contender Roy Moore by 1.5 percentage points, or about 20,000 more votes. Moore’s election loss in deep-red Alabama prompted false stories of voter fraud, including a post from a website called Ladies of Liberty, headlined "UPDATE: ‘Thousands’ voted for Doug Jones in Alabama town with population of 2,256." Ladies of Liberty describes itself as "a whimsical playland of conservative satire." It’s About page says that everything on the website is fiction. "It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined," said the website’s About page. Yet, we’ve seen website’s claim, though not always attributed to Ladies of Liberty, spread around on Facebook, with some users thinking it’s true. Here’s what the post claims: "The State Election Board of Voting Integrity said early on that ‘more than a third’ of Jones’ votes up to 11 a.m. looked suspicious — and with good reason. Many of them came from the small town of Bordalama, a rural community about 20 miles outside Birmingham. According to official tallies, Roy Moore received 953 votes in the small town. Doug Jones received 5,327. If the disparity in numbers isn’t enough to give you reason to smell something fishy, the population of the town should. There are 2,256 residents there and only 1,867 registered voters. In other words, more people voted for Doug Jones than even live in Bordalama." The quick facts: The name of the purported board is a variation of the "State Election Integrity Board" named in other fake news items, which a spokesman for the Alabama Secretary of State previously told PolitiFact does no exist. Bordalama? Doesn’t exist either. No mention of it in the U.S. Census’ list of places in Alabama. As of 2 p.m. Dec. 15, Moore had not conceded the race, arguing that military and provisional ballots had not been counted yet and that the Alabama secretary of state still hadn’t certified the race. (In a CNN interview, the Alabama secretary of state expressed skepticism that election outcome would be different.) Ladies of Liberty says its posts are not fake news because they are "not real." We say Ladies of Liberty’s post is Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-12-15T15:06:19 | 2017-12-13 | ['Alabama'] |
tron-02009 | Fence Along Mexico-Guatemala Border | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/fence-along-mexico-guatemala-border/ | null | immigration | null | null | ['donald trump', 'mexico', 'national security'] | Fence Along Mexico-Guatemala Border | Jan 30, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12008 | Says "Carnival Cruise Lines will now offer free cruises" to hurricane victims. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/sep/21/breakingnews247net/carnival-isnt-giving-hurricane-victims-free-cruise/ | A bogus online post that said Miami-based Carnival Cruise Line was providing cruises and cash to people affected by an unnamed hurricane was from a website that generates fake news articles. "Carnival Cruise Lines will now offer FREE Cruises," read the headline on a Sept. 20, 2017, post on BreakingNews247.net. The post featured an image of the vessel the Carnival Sunshine. "Carnival is now offering Free Cruises to those effected (sic) by the Hurricane," the post read. "Just call Carnival or Message John Heald and say you want a stress free cruise with ( hash tag) Carnivalfamily and they will have you set up on a 4-7 night cruise of your choice. Just pay taxes and port fees. You also will receive $100 per cabin OBC." There’s no mention of which 2017 hurricane sparked the offer, whether it be Harvey, which drenched Texas, or Irma, which blew through Florida (the "OBC" stands for on-board credit). But Carnival isn’t offering such a deal, because the story is fake. It’s not readily apparent, but BreakingNews247.net is one of a gaggle of websites that allow users to create their own stories, labeling them as "prank" articles. Below the text and some advertisements is a button that reads "Create a Prank." Clicking on it allows a user to build their own fake story. PolitiFact has written about similar sites before. A range of websites allowing people to generate these kinds of stories have been reported by Facebook users for all manner of faux stories, as part of the social network’s efforts to curb fake news. While some people may look at the sites as a way to create jokes, they open up the potential for a scam known as "like farming." That’s when users create posts to gain as many likes as possible. The scammers then use highly ranked links to spread malware, gain readers’ personal information or otherwise make money. This particular post first appeared sometime before Sept. 15, according to the Miami Herald. It drew Carnival’s attention after being posted on Facebook. The post suggested readers contact Heald, who is a real British Carnival cruise director. Heald addressed the hoax on his own Facebook profile, in which he engages Carnival customers. "It is a fake page and we have reported the author accordingly," Heald wrote in a Sept. 15 Facebook post. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Heald said on the post that he was aware which Facebook group was spreading the fake story but didn’t elaborate. He also called the original poster a "soulless, heartless wanker" and further talked about the issue in a video posted to his profile later that day. A Carnival spokeswoman confirmed that the story was false, although the company is making monetary donations and helping ferry supplies to storm-affected areas. Carnival reported the original Facebook post, which appeared to have been removed. But the fake story was still available at BreakingNews247.net. As of this writing, a counter on the article said it had been shared more than 83,000 times. Don’t pack your bags just yet, because there’s no free pleasure cruise for hurricane victims. We rate this claim Pants On Fire! See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | BreakingNews247.net | null | null | null | 2017-09-21T14:01:23 | 2017-09-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-04146 | Individuals with mental illnesses die an average of 25 years earlier than those without a mental illness. | true | /ohio/statements/2013/jan/02/terry-russell/nami-ohio-leader-terry-russell-says-people-mental-/ | One of the questions about the state budget proposal that Gov. John Kasich is expected to announce in February is whether the state will follow through with the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid coverage. The federal health care law would expand coverage to people with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level -- a provision which was made optional under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that otherwise upheld the law. A bipartisan group of 85 health coverage organizations has written to the governor saying anything less than the full 138 percent would cause people to drop or skip coverage, endangering their health. Terry Russell, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio, told Gongwer News Service that mentally ill Ohioans struggle to stay employed, and that local mental health agencies have marginal resources to help. "The sad statistic that haunts us every day is that individuals with mental illnesses die an average of 25 years earlier than those without a mental illness," he said. "Sixty percent of these premature deaths are the result of preventable and treatable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and infections." PolitiFact Ohio checked into his claim about 25 years, and quickly found his statement was right on the money. A study published in 2006 by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors that was the focus of wide attention and concern in the mental health community looked at data from 16 states, including Ohio. It found that, on average, people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population. The figure for Ohio was actually worse. People with severe mental illness die 32 years earlier. Calling it "a serious public health problem for the people served by our state mental health systems," the study said about 60 percent of premature deaths are due to conditions such as cardiovascular, pulmonary and infectious diseases. A number of factors contribute to risk, the study said, including modifiable factors like obesity, poor nutrition and alcohol and tobacco use. People with severe mental illness have poorer access to appropriate health care, and may be additionally vulnerable because of higher rates of homelessness, victimization, unemployment and poverty. Among its recommendations, the report called for better access to physical health care for people with serious mental illnesses to fight what it called an "epidemic of premature death and its contributing causes." Russell said that people with mental illnesses, on average, die 25 years earlier than those without a mental illness. He accurately cited findings of a major study on the issue. And in Ohio, the average is actually greater than 25 years. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates True. | null | Terry Russell | null | null | null | 2013-01-02T06:00:00 | 2012-12-06 | ['None'] |
pose-00065 | Strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/68/strengthen-antitrust-laws-to-prevent-overcharging-/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Strengthen antitrust laws to prevent overcharging for malpractice insurance | 2010-01-07T13:26:47 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02771 | Mike Pence once said that smoking doesn't kill people. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-smoking/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Mike Pence Said Smoking Doesn’t Kill? | 11 November 2016 | null | ['Mike_Pence'] |
pomt-08281 | The budget submitted by Obama will add more to the debt than the outstanding debt of the previous 43 presidents combined. | true | /virginia/statements/2010/nov/07/eric-cantor/cantor-says-obama-budget-adds-more-debt-totaled-43/ | Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th, recently had his pants set afire by PolitiFact Virginia for the following statement on Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart: "What you've seen (in Washington)," he said, "is a crowd that has taken advantage of a crisis back in late '08, early '09 and spent more money than this country has spent in the last 200 years combined, in the two years since." In a Richmond Times-Dispatch letter to the editor days after the PolitiFact rating, Cantor owned up to misspeaking and clarified his remarks. "What I meant to say was that the budget submitted by Obama will add more to the debt than the outstanding debt of the previous 43 presidents combined," he wrote. Well, is that true? We decided to take a look. First, it bears mentioning that Cantor’s revised statement does two things: it changes the focus from spending to accumulated public debt and does away with the two-year timeline. That changes things considerably. Asked for a source for the adjusted claim, a spokeswoman for Cantor pointed to statistics on publicly held debt from the Office of Management and Budget. According to those figures, the debt from the nation's birth through the end of 2008 -- George Washington through George W. Bush -- was $5.8 trillion. Now, had Cantor stuck with the original timeline of two years, we would need to limit our look at the increase in public federal debt between the end of 2008 and the end of 2010, which has been almost $3.5 trillion. That would make the claim false by a long shot. But by leaving the date open ended, we are left to determine for ourselves when and if the Obama administration’s budget would double the $5.8 trillion in debt accumulated through the end of fiscal 2008. Well, according to the OMB’s fiscal year 2011 budget projections, that would occur at the end of fiscal 2012, when the debt is expected to reach $11.6 trillion. In fiscal 2013, the last budget assembled during President Barack Obama's first term, debt is expected to reach $12.5 trillion. So, let’s take a look back. Cantor’s clarifications altered the original claim in two ways: focusing on publicly held debt instead of spending and not limiting the timeline to two years from Obama taking office. As a result, the claim adds up since the $5.8 trillion of debt accumulated in the U.S. to date is projected to double by 2012, or three years after Obama took office. Of course, whether this will happen is another matter entirely, as new budgets with new projections are adopted each year. Nonetheless, Cantor’s claim works based on the most recent numbers available and we therefore find it to be True. | null | Eric Cantor | null | null | null | 2010-11-07T10:00:00 | 2010-10-30 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02107 | Recent seismic activity in Yellowstone Park portends a coming cataclysmic volcanic eruption. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unmellow-yellow/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Do Yellowstone Earthquakes Foretell a Coming Cataclysm? | 6 July 2017 | null | ['Yellowstone_National_Park'] |
chct-00289 | FACT CHECK: Is Climate Change A 'Bigger Fiscal Issue' Than Entitlements? | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/10/25/fact-check-is-climate-change-a-bigger-fiscal-issue-than-entitlements/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 11:24 PM 10/25/2017 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00169 | The right of habeas corpus allows prisoners to ask a court to determine whether they are being lawfully imprisoned. Recently, this right has been denied to those deemed enemy combatants. Barack Obama strongly supports bipartisan efforts to restore habeas rights. He firmly believes that those who pose a danger to this country should be swiftly tried and brought to justice, but those who do not should have sufficient due process to ensure that we are not wrongfully denying them their liberty. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/181/restore-habeas-corpus-rights-for-enemy-combatants/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Restore habeas corpus rights for "enemy combatants" | 2010-01-07T13:26:50 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02878 | Says the Obama administration is handing out a pamphlet titled, "What To Do When The Veteran In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting" | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/nov/12/mr-conservative/obama-admin-pamphlet-veteran-mass-shooting/ | On Nov. 12, 2013, a blog called Mr. Conservative posted an alarming headline -- especially so given that it was just one day after the Veterans’ Day holiday. The story, which was forwarded to us by a reader, was headlined: "Obama Admin. Hands Out Pamphlet: 'What To Do When The Veteran In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting.'" The story went on to say that "veterans all across the country are upset" with the Education Department-issued pamphlet. Veterans, the site said, "are taking the stance that this makes it look like ‘all veterans are PTSD-crazed cauldrons of rage.’ " The Education Department’s defense, according to the post, was that there were already other pamphlets "like ‘What To Do When The Hispanic In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting,’ ‘What To Do When The Gay Student In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting,’ and ‘What To Do When The Special-Needs Child In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting.’" The article quoted an unnamed representative of the Veterans of Foreign Wars calling the pamphlets "incredibly frustrating" and saying they offered "several asinine recommendations." Was the story true? A lot of people seemed to think so. A number of blogs and other social media sites referenced or reposted it, and commenters on Mr. Conservative appeared to take it seriously. "I am ashamed that we are demeaning my fellow veterans in this manner. It seems to be part of Obama's grand scheme to diminish the military," said one. Said another, "What is it going to take to get this guy impeached??? If he doesn't get impeached, nobody will." Other commenters called Obama a "disgusting pig" or worse. But a few Mr. Conservative commenters wondered whether it was a spoof, and it turns out that they were on to something. It was actually a piece of satire -- one that Mr. Conservative posted without labeling it as such. Though Mr. Conservative didn’t cite the original source or link to it, some quick Googling enabled us to find the source easily -- a website called the Duffel Blog, which is a satire site aimed at members of the military. Here’s the disclaimer posted on the Duffel Blog’s "About" page: "We are in no way, shape, or form, a real news outlet. Everything on this website is satirical and the content of this site is a parody of a news organization. No composition should be regarded as truthful, and no reference of an individual, company, or military unit seeks to inflict malice or emotional harm. All characters, groups, and military units appearing in these works are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual military units and companies is purely coincidental." Indeed, a cursory glance at the Duffel Blog front page on Nov. 12 suggests that a visitor probably would have been able to figure that out on their own. The headlines included, "Pentagon Proposes New Antarctica Command," "Applebee’s Declares Bankruptcy After Offering Free Alcohol For Veterans Day," and "Paperwork Error Sends Marines To Guard Streets Of Hell" (the last one was datelined, "The Pearly Gates of Heaven"). Just to be sure, we also asked the Education Department, and a spokesman said the pamphlet "is obviously not ours." An inquiry sent through Mr. Conservative’s website was not answered, and as of publication time, the site had neither taken down the story nor labeled it as satire. The Duffel Blog’s founder, former Marine Sgt. Paul Szoldra, did not respond to a request, but in 2012, he told Columbia Journalism Review, "I think you have to have a dark sense of humor just to survive. "It’s a way of coping with things beyond your control. Telling jokes or laughing about things you wouldn’t normally laugh at, especially in a combat situation, helps you cope with that kind of stress." Our ruling The website Mr. Conservative posted an article that claimed the Obama administration was handing out a pamphlet titled, "What To Do When The Veteran In Your Classroom Attempts A Mass Shooting." The story originated on a satire site and was in no way real -- a truth that could have been easily discovered through a few clicks on the Internet. We rate the claim Pants on Fire. Editor's note: A few hours after our initial publication, Mr. Conservative appended an update to its post: "Since the original posting of this article, we learned that the original news source that posted this story was not an actual news site but a satirical site. However, the fact that this story is believable, on its face, says something about our government and the society in which we now live." | null | Mr. Conservative | null | null | null | 2013-11-12T16:35:39 | 2013-11-12 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
vogo-00589 | Statement: San Diego County has more than 70,000 outstanding warrants, Jim Duffy, one of two candidates vying to replace Bill Gore as sheriff, told KPBS for a story April 21. | determination: true | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/fact-check-the-countys-outstanding-warrants-backlog/ | Analysis: As of April 2, the county had 74,949 outstanding warrants. About 17,600 of those warrants were for felonies and about 21,700 for misdemeanors. The rest were for court orders, juveniles or other warrants. | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: The County's Outstanding Warrants Backlog | May 5, 2010 | null | ['Jim_Duffy_(footballer)', 'San_Diego_County,_California'] |
goop-02153 | Prince William “Insensitive” To Pregnant Kate Middleton’s Needs, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/prince-william-insensitive-kate-middleton-pregnancy-needs/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Prince William NOT “Insensitive” To Pregnant Kate Middleton’s Needs, Despite Claim | 4:22 pm, November 23, 2017 | null | ['Prince_William,_Duke_of_Cambridge'] |
hoer-00971 | Free 40 Tesco Voucher Giveaway | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/free-40-tesco-voucher-facebook-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Free 40 Tesco Voucher Giveaway Facebook Scam | March 28, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10564 | Hillary Clinton "starts off with 47 percent of the country against her." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/feb/11/barack-obama/clintons-negatives-are-higher-than-obamas-/ | Sen. Barack Obama often speaks about how he believes he will be a stronger general election candidate than his primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton. At a campaign stop in Alexandria, Va., on Feb. 10, 2008, he brought up the negative opinions some people have of Clinton, who is well known to most voters from her time as first lady. "I think Sen. Clinton starts off with 47 percent of the country against her. That's a hard place to start if you want to win the election," he said. Pollsters regularly ask voters whether they rate candidates positively or negatively. Indeed, Clinton's negatives are consistently higher than Obama's, but different polls show her at different levels. We looked at the times the USA Today /Gallup Poll asked voters whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, going back to January 2007. Her negative percentage fluctuated between 40 and 52, but the average of 21 polls came out to 47. ABC News and the Washington Post have asked the question at least four times since January 2007. Her unfavorable ratings on that poll came in between 48 and 40, with an average of 44.5. CNN polled four times and found unfavorables between 39 and 44, with an average of 41.5. Obama's unfavorable ratings tend to be well under 40 percent. In several polls, his unfavorable ratings are in the 20s. Not every poll rates her unfavorables consistently as high as 47 percent, and poll numbers are always a little bit squishy. But, the USA Today /Gallup Poll has polled often on Clinton's unfavorables, and the average of 21 polls puts her negatives at 47 percent. We find that to be about as solid a poll figure as you can have, so we find Obama's statement True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-02-11T00:00:00 | 2008-02-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-08322 | Decorated Marine, two-tour Iraq war vet. | true | /ohio/statements/2010/oct/29/josh-mandel/ohio-treasurer-candidate-josh-mandel-decorated-mar/ | Any voter who has seen TV commercials for Republican Ohio treasurer candidate Josh Mandel know he has a military background. Part of Mandel’s campaign strategy is to weave his military service into his candidacy, and the military images prevalent in the commercials work toward that goal. In the commercials, Mandel is described as a "Decorated Marine." "Decorated Marine, two-tour Iraq war vet – Josh Mandel’s led a life of integrity and results," says the narrator for the commercial titled, "Tested and Trusted." Since Mandel has attached his candidacy to his military service, we decided to check what it means to be a decorated Marine, and if Mandel fits the bill. Mandel, a state representative from Lyndhurst, provided a list of nine medals earned during his service, including two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals he earned for his tours of Iraq. "When you earn decorations, you’re a decorated Marine," he said. "It’s pretty cut and dried." The U.S. Marines Corps agreed. Major Shawn Haney, a public affairs officer for the Marine Corps’ manpower and reserve affairs department, which maintains personnel files, confirmed Mandel had received medals that qualified him as a decorated Marine. "He has awards that he would wear," Haney said. "If he calls himself a decorated Marine, he’s not incorrect." A decorated Marine is "a Marine who receives an award during his or her service," Lt. Gregory Wolf, another media officer for the Marine Corps, told PolitiFact in an e-mail. Wolf said Mandel’s medals put him in that category. Mandel, 33, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 2000, shortly before he graduated from Ohio State University. He served two tours in Iraq – one in 2004, the other in 2007-08 – for a combined 15 months. Mandel served as an intelligence specialist both times, working with other Marines to build relations with local Iraqis and figure out who among the civilians could pose a threat to troops trying to maintain peace. Mandel’s Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals are known as personal medals, meaning they were awarded for individual acts Mandel performed. The criteria for earning the achievement medal, according the Marine Corps, is for "meritorious service or achievement in a combat or noncombat situation based on sustained performance or specific achievement of a superlative nature, and shall be of such merit as to warrant more tangible recognition than is possible by a fitness report or evaluation sheet, but which does not warrant a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal or higher." Haney, of the manpower and reserve affairs department, pointed out that Mandel’s achievement medals, while earned in Iraq, do not include the valor device, which denotes performance in combat. Other medals he earned, such as the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, are known as unit medals, given to soldiers who participated in specific operations defined by the military. Given the list of medals Mandel has earned and the Marine Corps’ inclusive definition of the term "decorated Marine," Mandel certainly qualifies. We find the statement True. | null | Josh Mandel | null | null | null | 2010-10-29T12:01:00 | 2010-09-22 | ['Iraq'] |
pomt-07907 | Says his state budget will "provide an increase in state funding for the 2011-12 school year." | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2011/feb/02/john-kitzhaber/john-kitzhaber-says-proposed-budget-represents-inc/ | Before Gov. John Kitzhaber released his budget proposal for the next two-year cycle, he gave a few hints at how he’d budget some of the biggest pieces of state government. In an e-mail sent out before the Feb. 1, 2011, budget announcement, he says he’ll allocate some $5.56 billion for the state’s K-12 public school system. But that’s not all. He gets even more specific. Kitzhaber plans to make 52 percent of the total (about $2.89 billion) available in the first year of the cycle. This, he says, is the "equivalent to a $5.78 billion budget for school funding. The effect is to provide an increase in state funding for the 2011-12 school year." That, naturally, piqued our curiosity given that most of what you hear down in Salem is worrying comments about how education will have to take a cut going forward. And yet, here’s Kitzhaber talking about increased spending. Could he really be offering the schools more money next year? We decided to find out. To start off, it’s helpful to have a clear understanding of where funding is currently. The thing is, the budget for public education has fluctuated several times over the past couple of years. The state revenue forecast is consistently down, which has led to reductions in the budget. Meanwhile, there’s been movement on the federal level to kick funds to states, which have helped balance, in part, some of those earlier cuts. But not all of them. To get the most recent number, we called Oregon's Legislative Fiscal Office. According to the office’s most recent calculations, K-12 education is operating on a budget of $5.756 billion. Thatincludes the promise of $35.5 million from a state education stability fund, which may or may not come through. But, for the purpose of this article, we’ll keep it in the total. Of that $5.75 billion, $342 million has come from the federal government in various forms and $5.41 billion has come from the state. To parse it even more (who doesn’t love lots of numbers?), $2.94 billion went to schools during the 2009-10 school year, while the remaining $2.82 billion went to schools for the current year. So, let’s compare these numbers to what Kitzhaber is proposing. According to the e-mail statement, Kitzhaber is suggesting a K-12 budget of $5.56 billion for the next two-year period. But for next year in particular, he is suggesting $2.89 billion go to schools. That’s a clear increase in funding (not just state funding, but overall funding) this year over next, by about $70 million. Still, it’s important to note here, that funding, overall, will take a hit. Sure, the state is throwing in more cash for the upcoming biennium than it did the current -- about an extra $150 million. And yes, the school system will have more cash to work with next year than it did this year. But overall the biennium’s budget is down, $5.756 billion to $5.56 billion. That’s because the state’s increase in funding still doesn't offset lost federal dollars. What’s more, under Kitzhaber’s proposal, that reduction will be felt strongest come the 2012-13 school year. Whereas there will be a $70 million more to work with next year, as compared to the current school year, there will be a $150 million decrease the following year, if you use the current year as the baseline. By front-loading 2012, you necessarily leave 2013 with a smaller slice of the funds. Kitzhaber explains his logic in the e-mail: "Front-loading the funding also provides a year to find cost savings through consolidation and other efficiencies to maintain this level of classroom support during the 2012-13 school year." Whether those cost savings will be realized, nobody can say, so we’ll stick the initial statement, which is that this proposed budget represents an increase in state funding for the upcoming 2011-12 school year. Kitzhaber is right, it does. That said, it’s important to recognize that even with the increase in state funds, the school system will have to make do with less sooner or later. Kitzhaber seems to have chosen later. Since we think that bit of context is important, we rate this claim Mostly True. Comment on this item. | null | John Kitzhaber | null | null | null | 2011-02-02T06:00:00 | 2011-01-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-03009 | The White House had a live video feed of the Benghazi attacks as they occurred. | pants on fire! | /texas/statements/2013/oct/15/david-dewhurst/dewhurst-suggesting-obamas-impeachment-airs-ridicu/ | David Dewhurst told a group that President Barack Obama ought to be impeached, saying later that his reasons include Obama standing by while the White House fielded live video of the fatal Benghazi attacks, the Texas Observer reported. Dewhurst, the third-term lieutenant governor faced with three challengers for the 2014 Republican nomination, suggested Obama’s impeachment while speaking Oct. 14, 2013, to the Northeast Tarrant County Tea Party, which also heard from the other GOP candidates. "This election is about protecting you and your freedoms, which are given to you by God, but which are being trampled on by Barack Obama right now. I don’t know about you, but Barack Obama ought to be impeached," Dewhurst said, according to the Observer. "Not only for trampling on our liberties, but what he did in Benghazi is just a crime." Afterward, Dewhurst elaborated on his criticism of the administration’s handling of the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, which killed Americans including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stephens. "I’m very concerned about Benghazi, in which all of the national news reporting indicated that live video was streaming into the White House," Dewhurst told Observer reporter Christopher Hooks. "That means that there was an overhead platform, probably a drone in the area. At least that’s what it tells me," he said. "And for not mobilizing some response to protect the ambassador and those three Americans is just outrageous to me. Just outrageous." We asked Dewhurst for the basis of his reference to a live video feed of the attacks reaching the White House and didn’t hear back. It didn’t take us long to find that the "Benghazi live stream" claim has already been debunked by the Snopes.com "urban legends" website. That Snopes post, last updated Nov. 1, 2012, traces the claim to an Oct. 24, 2012, Forbes magazine op-ed article, which opened: "Just one hour after the seven-hour-long terrorist attacks upon the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began, our commander-in-chief, vice president, secretary of defense and their national security team gathered together in the Oval Office listening to phone calls from American defenders desperately under siege and watching real-time video of developments from a drone circling over the site. Yet they sent no military aid that might have intervened in time to save lives." The Forbes article did not provide a source for writer Larry Bell’s reference to real-time video. In its article, Snopes noted that a CBS News story also posted Oct. 24, 2012, stated that the FBI and State Department had reviewed video from security cameras that captured the attack on the consulate. The CBS News report continued: "The audio feed of the attack was being monitored in real time in Washington by diplomatic security official Charlene Lamb. CBS News has learned that video of the assault was recovered 20 days later from the more than 10 security cameras at the compound. The government security camera footage of the attack was in the possession of local Libyans until the week of Oct. 1," CBS News said. Earlier, on Oct. 12, 2012, the Daily Beast quoted two unidentified U.S. intelligence officials as saying that video taken the night of the attacks, showing a military-style assault took place, had been recovered the week before from the site of the attacks. "The Obama administration has been studying the videos, taken from closed-circuit cameras throughout the Benghazi consulate’s four-building compound, for clues about who was responsible for the attack and how it played out," the story said. The story did not mention any live stream into the White House, though it said that in "addition to the footage from the consulate cameras, the U.S. government is also poring over video taken from an overhead U.S. surveillance drone that arrived for the final hour of the night battle at the consulate compound and nearby annex." Our search for news stories on such a live stream, using the Nexis database, led us to an Oct. 29, 2012, Slate news story noting a claim by Charles Woods, whose son, Tyrone, died in the attacks, that the White House watched the attacks on a live stream over seven hours. The story also notes the CBS News report of a drone flying over the fatal scene hours after the attacks began. Slate quoted a White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, as saying: "No one watched video of the attack at the White House as it happened." Separately, as documented by Erik Wemple, who writes a "reported opinion blog" on the news media for The Washington Post, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity repeatedly incorrectly stated that the State Department watched live video as the attacks occurred. In a Jan. 23, 2013, news story, Wemple said that earlier that day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked before a House committee about live video feeds to the agency and replied: "There was no monitor, there was no real time." Earlier, on Oct. 26, 2012, Fox News said it had learned that "there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real-time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers." The story did not say any video was watched inside the agencies. Our ruling Dewhurst said live video of the Benghazi attacks reached the White House as the attacks occurred. That’s not confirmed by news reports we found, while the White House said in October 2012 that no one there watched a live video feed. Given that this claim has been debunked for about a year, we see it as incorrect and ridiculous. Pants on Fire! PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | David Dewhurst | null | null | null | 2013-10-15T17:01:04 | 2013-10-14 | ['White_House', 'Benghazi'] |
tron-01920 | The origin of the word “shit” | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/shit/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | The origin of the word “shit” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02535 | Says Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is responsible for the roughly $7,800 "I pay in property taxes per year." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2014/feb/07/david-clarke-jr/sheriff-david-clarke-blames-milwaukee-mayor-tom-ba/ | When some politicians speak, it’s like a whisper in the wind. For Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., it’s often more like heavy-metal thunder. In a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel news article Jan. 31, 2014, Clarke revealed plans to explore a possible run for mayor of Milwaukee in 2016. The sheriff called three-term Mayor Tom Barrett politically vulnerable and lacking vision. Then he lowered the boom. "I have 7,800 reasons to be critical of Mayor Barrett," Clarke contended. "That's about what I pay in property taxes per year." As every Wisconsin property taxpayer knows, when property tax bills show up each December, they show dollar-signs from a handful of governmental bodies. So, how is it that Barrett is responsible for the entire amount of Clarke’s property tax bill? That would be some heavy-metal power. Property tax breakdown We plugged Clarke’s home address, on Milwaukee’s far northwest side, into the city property tax database to see his latest property tax bill, for 2013. (Clarke’s spokeswoman confirmed the sheriff was referring to the total amount of his bill. She said he didn't have any other evidence for us to consider.) The record shows Clarke paid $7,728 in property taxes, a bit less than the $7,800 he said in the interview. Before about $200 in credits, Clarke's bill broke down this way: Governmental body Amount of property tax levied City of Milwaukee $2,745 Milwaukee Public Schools $2,728 Milwaukee County $1,387 Milwaukee Area Technical College $575 Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District $460 State of Wisconsin $46 Bottom line: The city’s levy accounts for only about one-third of Clarke’s property tax bill. Even at that, responsibility for the city’s portion can’t be put entirely on Barrett. In Wisconsin, the governing body of each town, village, city, county and school district, as well as the state, levies the total amount of property tax to be raised. The amount is based on the size of each entity’s budget and how much in property taxes, in addition to other revenue, will be needed to fund the budget. (The total levy for Milwaukee County, by the way, is $279.3 million. Nearly one-fourth, $66.7 million, is for the Sheriff’s Office.) As mayor, Barrett plays a pivotal role in how much Milwaukee collects in property taxes. He proposes the city budget and can veto changes made by the Common Council, although ultimately aldermen could override his vetoes. The Milwaukee mayor also appoints seven of the 11 commissioners for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. But MMSD sets its own property tax levy. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Area Technical College District board members, who are appointed by county officials, set MATC’s levy. And levies for Milwaukee County, Milwaukee Public Schools and the state are set by elected representatives of those bodies. Which is to say, Barrett has little or nothing to do with the lion’s share of Clarke’s property tax bill. Our rating Clarke said Barrett is responsible for the roughly $7,800 "I pay in property taxes per year." Barrett has significant influence over how much Clarke pays in property taxes to the city, but that amounts to only about one-third of Clarke’s tax bill. We rate Clarke’s claim False. You can comment on this item on the Journal Sentinel's web site. | null | David A. Clarke Jr. | null | null | null | 2014-02-07T05:00:00 | 2014-01-31 | ['Tom_Barrett_(politician)'] |
tron-00323 | The survivor of the World Trade Center collapse who rode the debris down | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/surfer/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | The survivor of the World Trade Center collapse who rode the debris down | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00271 | Ghost Ship Full of Ebola Rats Headed Toward U.S. | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/ghost-ship-full-of-ebola-rats-headed-toward-us/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Ghost Ship Full of Ebola Rats Headed Toward U.S. – Fiction! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
para-00174 | Says Julia Gillard broke her promise that there would be "no carbon tax under the government I lead". | mostly true | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/19/tony-abbott/did-gillard-break-her-no-carbon-tax-promise/index.html | null | ['Carbon Tax'] | Tony Abbott | Ellie Harvey, Peter Fray | null | Did Gillard really break her 'no carbon tax' promise? | Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 6:52 p.m. | null | ['Julia_Gillard'] |
goop-02697 | Kourtney Kardashian, Younes Bendjima Did Split, | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kourtney-kardashian-not-split-younes-bendjima-still-together/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kourtney Kardashian, Younes Bendjima Did NOT Split, Despite Report | 10:32 am, July 3, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07906 | Says that over the last decade, the state's population grew three times faster than the Texas state tax system. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2011/feb/02/mike-villarreal/mike-villarreal-says-texas-population-grew-three-t/ | State Rep. Mike Villarreal maintains the state tax system, untended by ruling Republicans, needs a full review. In a Jan. 7 op-ed column in the San Antonio Express-News, the San Antonio Democrat wrote that "Republicans have ignored the fact that over the last decade our population has been growing three times faster than our state tax system." We’re not gauging what Republicans notice, but wondered if Villarreal correctly compared population growth and state taxes. In an interview, Villarreal told us he drew his population counts from the state demographer, Lloyd Potter, and fiscal information from annual cash reports by the state comptroller’s office, adjusting figures for inflation to reflect 2009 dollars. Villarreal said he considered all state taxes including sales and franchise taxes and taxes on motor fuels, vehicle sales, tobacco and alcohol products, insurance and oil and natural gas production. He said he prepared a spreadsheet in consultation with experts including Dale Craymer, president of the business-oriented Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, and Eva De Luna Castro, senior budget analyst for the liberal Center for Public Policy Priorities, which has made a case for Texas to create a state personal income tax. According to Villarreal, the state’s population increased 19 percent from 1999 to 2009, from 20.9 million to 24.8 million. In 2000, according to Villarreal, inflation-adjusted state taxes generated $35.8 billion. In 2009, the comparable total was $37.8 billion, up 6 percent. So, Villarreal said, population increased three times faster than annual state tax revenue. What we noticed: Villarreal’s spreadsheet also showed that money from non-tax revenue such as state fees went up 13 percent, trailing population growth, while federal aid surged 47 percent, more than double the rate of population growth. State income from all sources, including federal aid, increased 26 percent. Next, Villarreal shared a revised spreadsheet indicating that revenue from all sources increased 19 percent--not 26 percent. In an e-mail, Villarreal said he fixed an error "that had me over-counting non-tax revenue and as a result over-counting" total revenue from all sources. He said he’d inadvertently double-counted the federal aid, but stressed the error did not bear on his comparison of state taxes to population growth. Even in the revised version, we noted, all revenue to state government increased at about the same pace as population growth. Villarreal agreed, but said that the bulk of money from all sources--which broke down in 2009 to 45 percent from state taxes, 18.5 percent from state non-tax revenue and 37 percent from federal funds--consists of dollars dedicated to specific purposes. His point: Lawmakers can’t easily tap such sources, which include public college tuition, to support general needs such as public education and health care. We sought outside perspective. Craymer of TTARA, which represents businesses and trade associations, said Villarreal’s work leads to a flawed conclusion--that the state’s main revenue source, the sales tax, is undependable. "If there is a systemic problem with the tax system," Craymer said, "it’s probably that it reflects the economy," which was rocked by two recessions in the decade. "So it’s not surprising to me that sales taxes would not have kept pace with population." Craymer said too that any analysis varies due to the time period it covers. For instance, he said, sales tax revenues steadily rose from 2005 through 2007. Lobbyist James LeBas, formerly the state’s chief revenue estimator, offered a per-person breakdown of Texas taxes over the decade, adjusted for inflation, which also took into account property taxes levied by local governmental units. LeBas, who said his figures came from the comptroller’s office, said in an e-mail that from 2000 to 2010, taxes per person grew slightly faster than inflation--by 37 percent compared to the 27 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index. In 2000, he said, Texas taxes per person, adjusted for inflation, amounted to $2,180; the 2010 figure was $2,195. LeBas, summing up, said the tax system "has produced a stable, if unremarkable, amount of revenue per capita, even adjusted for inflation." We asked De Luna of the CPPP for her perspective on per-capita state plus local taxes. She suggested that combining state taxes and locally levied property taxes obscures the fact state taxes have dropped. Drawing on figures published by the comptroller in January 2011, she said 3.6 percent of personal income in Texas went to state taxes in 2010--down from the 4.4-percent level of 2001. Next, we asked LeBas to focus on state taxes alone. He reported that inflation-adjusted per-capita state taxes were $1,210 in 2000 but $1,145 in 2009. The 5-percent decrease reflected slower growth in state taxes than population. DeLuna floated another way to pit changes in taxes and population. She said average annual rates of change can be more meaningful than comparing a recent year to an earlier year. The year-by-year average "helps put numbers in a better context for the average person," she said. From 1999 to 2009, she said, the state’s average annual population growth, 2 percent, compared to inflation-adjusted growth in state revenue of .8 percent and inflation-adjusted growth in all funds of 1.7 percent. Finally, we asked DeLuna the question we’d asked Villarreal: If revenue to the state from all sources pretty much kept pace with population growth, should there be a beef? DeLuna replied that revenue from all sources soared mainly because of federal aid, which the comptroller expects to drop in 2012-13. Also, she said, lawmakers perpetually added to the state’s funding burdens in 2006 by cutting local school property tax rates and committing the state to cover the difference going forward. Phew. What a seminar. Our take: Villarreal’s analysis disregards that state revenue from all sources, in part due to increased federal aid, about matched population growth from 2000 through 2009. He also disregards property taxes, which are affected by legislative decisions. That said, his statement accurately compares population to state taxes, which are, as he said, the taxes lawmakers directly set. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Mike Villarreal | null | null | null | 2011-02-02T06:00:00 | 2011-01-07 | ['Texas'] |
snes-00300 | Whoopi Goldberg called Judge Jeanine Pirro a "sand n***er" after the latter's appearance on 'The View.' | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/goldberg-pirro-view-spat/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Whoopi Goldberg Call Judge Jeanine Pirro a ‘Sand N***er?’ | 24 July 2018 | null | ['Whoopi_Goldberg', 'Jeanine_Pirro'] |
tron-01006 | Drivers Can Be Ticketed $250 Under Florida Cell Phone Law | mostly fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/florida-cell-phone-law-distracted-driving/ | null | crime-police | null | null | ['cell phones', 'facebook', 'florida', 'law and order', 'police', 'public safety'] | Drivers Can Be Ticketed $250 Under Florida Cell Phone Law | Jul 10, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02223 | The Trump administration sent a letter to recipients of the President's Education Award, misspelling the word "success." | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-letters-succuess/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did President Trump Send Letters Lauding Middle Schoolers on Their ‘Succuess’? | 12 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09914 | The Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 "would guarantee Barack Obama will never be held accountable for producing forged birth documents." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/01/chain-email/e-mail-claims-free-flow-information-act-would-prot/ | Who knows where some political ideas originate. Any anonymous person can post a statement on the Internet. It can be passed around, repeated, added to and commented on in blog after blog. It can be circulated in chain e-mails. And pretty soon it gathers such steam, its very reach seems to add credibility. Here, we deal with just such an idea. It's the claim that the Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 passed by the House in March is actually a "stealth" law aimed at protecting President Barack Obama from having to produce his "actual" birth certificate. That's why some conservative bloggers derisively call it the "Obama Birth Certificate Protection Act." Readers sent us an e-mail that claimed the bill "would guarantee Barack Obama will never be held accountable for producing forged birth documents." Most versions call for readers to contact their local legislator to oppose the bill, which has been introduced in the Senate. As for the claim that Obama produced "forged" birth documents, that's a matter we have been following for quite some time, and we direct your attention here . In this item, we wanted to set the record straight about the Free Flow of Information Act. Passed by the House in March, the bill is designed to protect journalists from having to reveal confidential sources in federal court. Here's what the bill says: "A federal entity may not compel a covered person to provide testimony or produce any document related to information obtained or created by such covered person as part of engaging in journalism, unless a court determines by a preponderance of the evidence." You can read the bill in its entirety here . Many bloggers insist it would also protect federal employees of the executive branch from being compelled to release documents. But the key words are "covered person." And this is how it's defined later in the bill: "The term 'covered person' means a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person." In other words, "a covered person is simply a journalist," said Sophia Cope, legislative counsel for the Newspaper Association of America, which has lobbied hard for the bill. "The White House would not fall under that." This bill has been kicking around Congress for four years, long before Obama announced his candidacy for president. The idea that it is a covert attempt to block Obama from producing his birth certificate is absurd. We also note that the bill has enjoyed widespread bipartisan support. It was so noncontroversial it passed the House on March 31 with a voice vote rather than a roll call. Last Congress, it passed by a vote of 398-21. A Senate version of the bill is under consideration. Cope isn't quite sure how the intent of the law has been so grossly distorted. "The bill's intent is to protect reporters and their confidential sources from being subpoenaed to testify, or from having to disclose the identity of those sources," Cope said. "I don't see how it would relate to Obama's birth certificate." One could argue that this law has simply been misread by some well-intentioned government watchdogs. But this is just the latest conspiracy theory from the fringe of a conservative group convinced that Obama hasn't provided sufficient documentation to prove he was born in the United States, and therefore cannot serve as president. Even among these folks, the claim about the Free Flow of Information Act is more than a stretch. We give it a Pants on Fire. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2009-07-01T19:41:18 | 2009-05-24 | ['None'] |
pomt-00129 | The migration of Hondurans toward the United States "was funded by Democrat activists." | pants on fire! | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/oct/26/blog-posting/bloggers-trump-gaetz-offer-no-evidence-caravan-was/ | The 7,000 people trying to make their way to the United States-Mexican border, a trek that originated with a smaller group from Honduras, continues to be the source of misinformation. A key theme being promoted by conservative pundits and websites is that is is being financed by the Democratic Party as an attempt to influence the November elections and undermine President Donald Trump. That concept is summed up by an Oct. 21, 2018 post on the Facebook site Conservative World Daily that has received more than 34,000 shares. It reads, "Over 7000 Hondurans are now headed to our border, with camera crews and support vehicles, two weeks before the midterm elections. If you don't know that this was funded by Democrat activists, then you're not paying attention." Here at PolitiFact, we do pay attention. So far, we haven't seen any hard facts to back up the assertion that the migration "was funded by Democrat activists." We're not alone.This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Some of the argument in favor of the migrant march being funded by Democrats seems to be completely made up, while some is based on video footage that falls short of qualifying as evidence. The video was posted in a tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Oct. 17. 2018. It shows a man handing out individual slips of currency-sized paper to women and girls. Gaetz characterized it as "Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & srom the US border @ election time. Soros? US-back NGOs? Time to investigate the source!" Trump later retweeted the video with the message, "Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?" The footage is from Chiquimula, Guatemala, not Honduras, and shot outside a store that sells auto parts. On his Twitter feed, Guatemalan journalist Luis Assardo reported, "I managed to talk to locals and they told me that among merchants in the sector they collected money and gave it to people from #CaravanaDeMigrantes." "Some have asked me about the money and it is important to say that we do not know its denomination," Assardo said. "But in Guatemala the tickets with the highest denomination are Q200 ($ 25 approx) and Q100 ($ 12.5). That is, the most they could have received (if that were the case) are between $ 12 and $ 25." Gaetz later acknowledged on his Twitter feed that he got the location wrong. He has offered no evidence that the handout was being coordinated by a non-government organization (NGO) or Soros, a reference to George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist widely reviled in conservative circles for supporting Democrats and promoting progressive causes. (For example, during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, Trump accused Soros, without evidence, of paying protesters to oppose the nomination.) No NGO -- Democratic or not -- has acknowledged financing creation of the caravan, and bloggers have not specifically named any group. Soros' philanthropic Open Society Foundations released a statement Oct. 18 saying, "Neither Mr. Soros nor Open Society are funding this effort." And bloggers have offered no evidence to the contrary. Thus, the claim that the Honduran exodus "was funded by Democrat activists" is all talk and no walk. We rate it False. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-10-26T11:13:26 | 2018-10-21 | ['United_States', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Honduras'] |
pose-00419 | Will "create 5 million 'green' jobs; will invest $150 billion over ten years to deploy clean technologies, protect our existing manufacturing base and create millions of new jobs." | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/439/create-5-million-green-jobs/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Create 5 million "green" jobs | 2010-01-07T13:26:58 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11711 | Says Marco Rubio tweeted a verse from the New Testament to shame "his own constituents for flocking to Trump rally." | false | /punditfact/statements/2017/dec/18/verified-politics/no-proof-rubios-religious-tweet-was-related-trump-/ | U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s tweet about a New Testament verse was an attack on Floridians who support President Donald Trump, according to an article on Facebook that lacked evidence. "Marco Rubio just publicly shamed his own constituents for flocking to Trump rally," stated a Dec. 9 headline on verifiedpolitics.com. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. We found that this article jumped to a conclusion about what prompted Rubio’s tweet. Trump held a rally in Pensacola the night of Dec. 8, when he called on Alabama residents to vote for Republican Roy Moore. A few days later, Moore lost the U.S. Senate election to Democrat Doug Jones. The Washington Post reported in November that Moore, while in his 30s, initiated sexual encounters with several teenagers, according to the women interviewed by the newspaper. Verifiedpolitics.com wrote that the crowd in Pensacola, composed largely of Floridians, cheered for Trump. "It was this display that moved the normally mild mannered Senator from Miami to lash out on Twitter and throw Republicans from his own state under the bus," the website stated. The article then cited Rubio’s tweet on the morning of Dec. 9: "At the sight of the crowds his heart was moved with pity 4 them b/c they were troubled & abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.Matthew 9:36." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com The tweet drew hundreds of replies. While some on Twitter replied with a photo of Trump’s Pensacola rally, a correspondent for the Eternal World Television Network replied that the verse was part of the Roman Catholic daily Mass. "Once again, @marcorubio quotes the daily Gospel for Mass, and Twitter can’t handle it," Jason Calvi tweeted. In his autobiography An American Son, Rubio wrote that he attends services at Christ Fellowship, his wife’s evangelical church, on most Saturday nights and then mass at St. Louis Catholic Church on Sundays. We sent emails to Rubio’s spokeswoman to ask if his tweet related to Trump’s speech or Moore and did not get a reply. Rubio had no tweets Dec. 8 or 9 that mentioned Trump or Moore. He tweeted about tax reform, Army vs. Navy football and Venezuela. But Rubio had made previous statements critical of Moore. In November, Rubio said on Fox & Friends that Moore’s accusers are "very credible" and that the charges are "very serious" and could be problematic for Moore if elected. However, the implication of the verifiedpolitics.com article is that Rubio used his tweet to shame his own Florida constituents for attending the Trump rally. Rubio’s criticism of Moore had been directed at Moore himself -- not Floridians who support Trump. And while Rubio at times has appeared critical of Trump or his administration, on other issues, such as Cuba policy, the two politicians have partnered together. Rubio regularly tweets verses For several months, Rubio has regularly tweeted lines from the Bible, drawing attention from the media, religious experts and others In an October interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Rubio defended his practice of tweeting out verses most mornings. "I'll continue to do it," he told the network. "If they don't like it, they don't have to follow me." We interviewed two experts about the religious meaning of the verse that Rubio quoted: Candida Moss, a theology professor at the University of Birmingham, and Christopher R. Matthews, Research Professor of New Testament at Boston College. "The surface meaning of the verse is rather clear: sheep do not organize themselves (they're not the brightest), so in the absence of a shepherd/leader there is the potential for confusion and chaos," Matthews said. The verse comes within the context of several stories about Jesus healing the sick, teaching people in the synagogues and proclaiming the good news, Moss said. "In its immediate context this verse is quite clearly about the people needing spiritual leadership and practical assistance (in the form of what we would call health care)," she said. "Taken out of context, however, that meaning is expanded so that it becomes a broader statement about people lacking moral and spiritual guidance, and how this state of affairs is distressing to God. Founded in 2017, Verified Politics describes itself as a political news website that it is for readers who are tired of fake news. We emailed the website and asked if they had any evidence that Rubio tweeted a New Testament verse to shame his own constituents for flocking to a Trump rally, and we did not get a response. Rubio, a regular at Sunday mass, provided no explanation for his tweet so it’s merely speculation to conclude that his point was commentary on Trump’s Pensacola rally the previous night. The verse from Matthew that Rubio tweeted was part of the daily Mass for that Sunday. We rate this claim False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Verified Politics | null | null | null | 2017-12-18T14:30:00 | 2017-12-09 | ['Marco_Rubio'] |
pomt-11340 | This year’s state budget "continues to direct millions in taxpayer dollars in advertising to the failing Start-Up NY program" | false | /new-york/statements/2018/apr/09/brian-kolb/did-year-state-budget-start-up-ny/ | Republican Assembly Leader Brian Kolb says the newly passed New York state budget earmarks millions of dollars for an economic development program that he says is not creating jobs. Start-Up NY will continue to receive money for advertising, Kolb said. "The 2018-2019 state budget ... continues to direct millions in taxpayer dollars in advertising to the failing Start-Up NY program," Kolb said in a statement. Many Republicans in the New York State Legislature oppose the program, which carved out tax-free zones around public college or university campuses for new businesses. Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Republican, said earlier this year that his conference wants to "get rid of" the program. Lawmakers were especially critical of Start-Up NY after the state spent $53 million in advertising to promote it between 2013 and 2015. The program created 408 net new jobs by the end of 2015 after launching in January 2014. Is Kolb right that this year’s budget also includes money to advertise Start-Up NY? Budget language The part of the budget Kolb referred to funds more than advertising for Start-Up NY. The bill sets aside $44.5 million to support the state’s economic development initiatives, including Start-Up NY, primarily through marketing and promotion. It also pays for the state's effort to promote New York state as a tourism destination and is also available to bolster some of the state’s other economic development programs. The Global NY program, for example, connects businesses in New York state to international companies. Empire State Development, the state’s economic development agency, has not spent money to advertise Start-Up NY for three years and has no plans to do so, said Jason Conwall, an agency spokesman. The funding line is a holdover from the 2014 budget, the first to earmark advertising money for the program. The same line has been included, almost verbatim, in each budget since. That’s not uncommon in the state budget. The document spans thousands of pages and includes 10 bills that allocate more than $160 billion. It’s routine for staff who write the bills to copy and paste language from the year before. Kolb’s view During budget votes, bills are delivered in the middle of the night with emergency "messages of necessity" from the governor. Members of the Assembly and Senate have to vote on the bills that are in front of them, said Michael Fraser, who’s Kolb’s director of communications. Kolb’s claim about Start-Up NY came immediately after the final budget passed, near 4 a.m., Fraser said. "We don’t have the luxury of getting promises from agencies about what they may or may not do," Fraser said. "Frankly, what’s actually in the law far outweighs what’s said after the fact. "What we do know is that the bill clearly mentions Start-Up NY by name," he said. "It presents a very specific percentage of funds that would be used outside New York." That is specifically written into the bill, Fraser said. He made a comparison to school district funding. Most district are not listed by name. "School aid is presented as a lump-sum of money that we know will flow to every school district in the state, but that’s not explicitly spelled out," he said. Our ruling Kolb said the state budget directs millions of dollars to advertise the Start-Up NY program. It’s true that a line in the budget allows the state to use money to advertise Start-Up NY. But state officials use the same pot of money to promote tourism and other programs in the state. While the bill may include language about where advertising money can be spent, if the agency chooses to advertise the program, nothing in the budget bill requires the Cuomo administration to spend money on Start-Up NY advertising. The agency that would create and run ads for Start-Up NY says it has no plans to use the money for that purpose. Kolb’s statement that the budget directs millions of dollars to be spent advertising the program is not accurate. We rate it False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Brian Kolb | null | null | null | 2018-04-09T16:00:00 | 2018-03-31 | ['None'] |
pose-01058 | We must expedite the demolition of condemned homes in order to reduce blight and make our neighborhoods safer. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/krise-o-meter/promise/1140/expedite-demolition-condemned-homes/ | null | krise-o-meter | Rick Kriseman | null | null | Expedite demolition of condemned homes | 2013-12-31T12:18:16 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02170 | Jon Ossoff is running to represent Georgia's sixth congressional district while living outside its boundaries. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ossoff-sixth-congressional-district/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Does Jon Ossoff Live Outside Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District? | 20 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00463 | In a press briefing held on Thursday in Malacañang, Calida gave the Malacañang Press Corps some “highlights of what we accomplished at the Office of the Solicitor General.” | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-should-credit-go-calida-winning-west-p | The term “under my watch” or “on one’s watch” connotes that something happened while someone is in charge. (Source: www.dictionary.com) | null | null | null | South China Sea,west philippine sea,calida,solicitor general | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Should credit go to Calida for winning the West Philippine Sea case? | January 21, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00897 | Fake Eggs from China | unsubstantiated messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/fake-eggs-china.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fake Eggs from China | 8th August 2007 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04274 | Iran's Tasnim News Agency blurred a woman volleyball player out of a photograph because she was in a bikini. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/iran-blurs-photograph-showing-olympics-volleyball-player/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Iran Blurs Photograph Showing Olympics Volleyball Player | 10 August 2016 | null | ['Iran'] |
goop-02874 | Mariah Carey, Bryan Tanaka Did Have “Final Blowout Fight” Over Birthday Gif | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/mariah-carey-fight-bryan-tanaka-birthday-gift-split/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Mariah Carey, Bryan Tanaka Did NOT Have “Final Blowout Fight” Over Birthday Gift | 8:50 pm, April 11, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02972 | Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered that all classroom globes be flattened. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/betsy-devos-demand-classroom-globes-flattened/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did Betsy DeVos Demand That Classroom Globes Be Flattened? | 9 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02145 | Delta Airlines Giving Away Free Tickets on Facebook | scam! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/delta-airlines-free-tickets/ | null | internet | null | null | ['facebook', 'scams'] | Delta Airlines Giving Away Free Tickets on Facebook | Jul 10, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02893 | President Donald Trump signed an executive order that bars undocumented people from receiving welfare. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-undocumented-immigrants-welfare/ | null | Junk News | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did President Trump Sign an Order Barring Undocumented Immigrants from Receiving Welfare? | 22 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10603 | Barack Obama's church gave a lifetime achievement award to Louis Farrakhan. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/23/chain-email/related-magazine-not-church-gave-award/ | An attack e-mail says the church Barack Obama attends, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave a lifetime award to Louis Farrakhan. Did it? It may be a small distinction, but the award Farrakhan received came from a magazine connected to the church, not the church itself. Trumpet Newsmagazine was founded by the church's senior pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a church newsletter. Now it's a nationally distributed lifestyle magazine aimed at socially conscious African-Americans. The magazine gave Farrakhan its Lifetime Achievement "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter" Award for those who work to "save the lives of Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora." The magazine interviewed Farrakhan and quoted Wright in the introduction. Here is the entirety of Wright's remarks on Farrakhan: "When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens," Wright said. "Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen…His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest. "Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African- American religious experience," Wright said. "His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African-American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose." It's worth noting that Wright appears to be applauding Farrakhan for his message of black empowerment, a philosophy Wright espouses as well. But the two men have different religions: Farrakhan is a Muslim and Wright is a Christian. Obama said he did not agree with the award; for more on that, see a related statement here . The magazine award became a campaign issue when Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote about the award. To most Americans, Cohen wrote, Farrakhan is racist with a history of making anti-Semitic remarks. Though the church didn't give the award, the magazine was founded by the church's senior pastor and is closely related. For that reason, we find the statement Mostly True. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2008-01-23T00:00:00 | 2008-01-18 | ['Louis_Farrakhan', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-10703 | I saved the taxpayers $2-billion on a bogus Air Force Boeing tanker deal where people went to jail. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/nov/29/john-mccain/he-uncovered-a-wasteful-mess/ | At the CNN/YouTube debate on Nov. 28, 2007, the Republican candidates were asked how they would tackle the national debt and control spending. CNN's Anderson Cooper called on Sen. John McCain, who said: "I have the record of fighting against wasteful spending. I have a clear record of winning. I saved the taxpayers $2-billion on a bogus Air Force Boeing tanker deal where people went to jail." Indeed, McCain was front and center in a well-publicized effort that killed an Air Force plan to lease 100 Boeing 767s and use them for refueling tankers. The plan eventually led to one of the more notable Washington scandals in years, resulting in prison terms for Mike Sears, a top Boeing official, and Darleen Druyun, the Air Force's No. 2 weapons buyer. Druyun admitted to giving Boeing preferential treatment and negotiating a $250,000-a-year job with the company while overseeing the deal. It is well-documented in media and government reports that McCain was quick to identify the $23.5-billion deal as a bad one for taxpayers. He found it in December 2001, tucked into a little-noticed amendment to the 2002 defense budget. Earlier that year, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Boeing had convinced the Air Force that it could start replacing its aging fleet of refueling tankers more quickly by leasing the aircraft rather than purchasing them. Air Force officials acknowledged that leasing would be more expensive, but they said the estimated extra cost — $150-million — was worth it. There were two problems. One, the Air Force previously expressed no great urgency to replace its tanker fleet. Two, government investigations prompted by McCain's public outrage found that the Air Force vastly underestimated the extra cost of leasing. In 2003, the Congressional Budget Office put the extra cost at $1.3-billion to $2-billion, which is where McCain gets his number. Other senators and watchdog groups took up the fight against the deal, but only after McCain and his staff revealed the makings of a scandal. A 2005 report by the Defense Department's Inspector General found that the Air Force circumvented normal procedures, conducted no analysis of the alternatives to leasing and collected no pricing data to justify the deal. "If it wasn't for Sen. McCain, the scrutiny that occurred about this deal would never have happened," said Keith Ashdown of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It was probably the best example of oversight in the 108th Congress." Boeing paid a record $615-million to settle the civil and criminal allegations that arose in the scandal. Since the tanker deal never went through, it's hard to say McCain saved taxpayers $2-billion. It might be more accurate to say he kept the government from entering into a deal that would have caused it to overspend by as much as $2-billion. Despite that quibble, we find his statement True. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2007-11-29T00:00:00 | 2007-11-28 | ['None'] |
snes-03099 | Canadian officials planted a "privacy hedge" along that country's border with the U.S. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/canada-border-privacy-hedge/ | null | Junk News | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Canada Plant a ‘Privacy Hedge’ Along the U.S. Border? | 20 January 2017 | null | ['United_States', 'Canada'] |
tron-01659 | Thirty Three U.S. Senators Voted Against Making English the Official Language of the United States | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/english-official/ | null | government | null | null | null | Thirty Three U.S. Senators Voted Against Making English the Official Language of the United States | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States', 'England'] |
snes-00745 | Samuel Beckett used to drive a teenaged André the Giant to school when they lived in a small French village. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/andre-the-giant-samuel-beckett/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Samuel Beckett Drive a Young André the Giant to School? | 18 April 2018 | null | ['France', 'Samuel_Beckett'] |
goop-02309 | Scott Disick Wants To “Be A Dad Again,” Have Baby With Sofia Richie? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/scott-disick-dad-again-baby-sofia-richie/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Scott Disick Wants To “Be A Dad Again,” Have Baby With Sofia Richie? | 12:49 pm, October 24, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04500 | U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hide a close familial connection to an Iranian official with whom he negotiated a nuclear deal. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/persian-shrug/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did John Kerry Hide His Connection to an Iranian Official with Whom He Negotiated a Nuclear Deal? | 31 July 2015 | null | ['United_States', 'Iran', 'John_Kerry'] |
pomt-15352 | Jasper County in Texas raised property taxes by 7 percent in order to pay for one death penalty case. | true | /texas/statements/2015/jul/09/ron-paul/ron-paul-says-death-penalty-trial-fueled-texas-tax/ | More than a decade ago, three men were prosecuted by an East Texas county for the racist 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr. One drew a life sentence, two were sentenced to death. Now comes Ron Paul of Texas, the former Republican U.S. House member and presidential candidate, hammering the fiscal impact of that case. Paul, whose senator-son, Rand, seeks the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, wrote in a June 2015 opinion column: "It is hard to find a more wasteful and inefficient government program than the death penalty." By way of example, he offered: "Jasper County in Texas raised property taxes by 7 percent in order to pay for one death penalty case!" A reader asked us to check on whether such a case had that tax impact. News stories mention tax hikes We didn’t hear back from Paul about how he reached his conclusion. But searches starting from the Nexis news database led us to a couple news stories suggesting the county bore the costs of three Byrd-related prosecutions and legal appeals by raising its property tax rate. In March 1999, correspondent John Burnett of National Public Radio reported the county, which had then finished one Byrd-related trial, "has had to raise property taxes 8 percent to pay for the three prosecutions, which are expected to surpass half a million dollars" in costs, Burnett said. His report included comments from Johnetta Nash, then the Jasper County auditor, saying the county had put off priorities including computer upgrades and a jail addition. A 2002 Wall Street Journal news story presented a percentage tax increase like the one Paul declared. The story said the county’s costs of prosecuting Byrd’s murder had exceeded $1 million with more expenses expected, straining its $10 million annual budget and "forcing a 6.7% increase in property taxes over two years to pay for the trial." Generally, the Journal story said, death penalty cases are expensive because sentencing someone to death requires two proceedings; the first determines the accused person’s guilt, the second whether the convicted individual deserves the death penalty. "A death sentence," the story said, "is typically followed by years of appeals, and sometimes the entire case is retried." Jasper County official provides costs document Next, we queried officials in Jasper County, including Renee Weaver, the current county auditor, who emailed us an undated document she said she found in her files. The one-page document, titled "Capital Murder Costs - Jasper County," noted the county had six capital murder trials from 1998 to 2000 without more specifics. So we couldn’t tell exactly which trials were covered by the figures. From 1998 through 2000, according to the document, the county spent $873,669 on capital murder costs across 20 itemized categories including salaries, court-appointed attorneys, investigation expenses, courtroom security and telephone charges. The document shows $118,863 in additional costs in 2000 and nearly $124,300 in costs accrued from 2001 through May 2003. Subtracting $298,916 in grants provided by outside agencies to help cover costs leaves the declared unreimbursed county spending over five years at more than $817,000. Uncertain impact on tax rate? Unfortunately for our purposes, the document presented no information on whether changes in the county’s tax rate were influenced by the Byrd-related trial costs. Hoping for illumination on that front, we reached out to current and former county officials. Joe Folk, who was the county’s top elected official as Jasper County judge from 1995 through 2006, said he didn’t recall any tax hike driven by the county’s prosecutorial and appellate costs, though it’s possible. "It cost us a pretty good sum," Folk said. "We probably had to raise the rates some. But it wasn’t a great amount." Folk guided us to Nash, the former official who spoke to NPR. She told us she wasn’t sure about any specific hike due to the trials and urged us to consult David Luther, who has long been the chief appraiser of the Jasper County Appraisal District. To our inquiry, Luther provided a chart showing the county’s tax rate changes in those years and, separately, the degree to which each adopted rate exceeded the rate needed to bring in the revenue the county raised from taxes the year before. Taxes did go up. A few months after Byrd’s death, according to the chart, the county increased its general tax rate nearly 12 percent from the year before--from 31.72 cents per $100 valuation to 35.405 cents per $100 valuation. Significantly, Luther elaborated, that rate was about 7.25 percent higher than the rate of 33.012 cents per $100 valuation that would have generated the revenue the county gathered the year before--with the county’s budgeted costs for the Byrd matter, he said, accounting for more than 80 percent of this difference. Luther said he knows how one of the Byrd cases played into the tax rate that first year thanks to his January 1999 letter to a Jasper County prosecutor about how much the judge overseeing that Byrd-related trial was going to have to pay in additional county property taxes on his home due to the county’s trial expenses. At issue, he recalled, was a motion to have the judge recused from the case because of potential bias caused by the tax increase on his homestead. Luther’s letter said the county budgeted about $292,000 for the costs of the trial during 1999 which, he wrote, translates to about two cents per $100 valuation of the tax rate. For an average local homeowner, county property taxes for the year attributable to those budgeted costs, Luther wrote, broke out to $5.10. "So," Luther told us by email, "you could say that taxes were increased due to the trial costs by 6.05%." He acknowledged by phone that this calculation reflected just the first part of the county’s spending on prosecutions and appeals, which extended over several years. Our ruling Paul said Jasper County "raised property taxes by 7 percent in order to pay for one death penalty case." The chief appraiser’s research and letter demonstrates there was nearly a 7 percent first-year increase in taxes attributed to the costs of a death penalty trial. We rate Paul’s claim 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 | Ron Paul | null | null | null | 2015-07-09T10:00:00 | 2015-06-14 | ['Texas'] |
pomt-07253 | Under Gov. Bob McDonnell, more jobs have been lost than created in Southside and Southwest Virginia. | false | /virginia/statements/2011/may/28/ward-armstrong/armstrong-says-jobs-are-down-southside-and-southwe/ | News that StarTek is closing its Henry County call center has reignited the debate over Gov. Bob McDonnell’s economic record. Shortly after the county’s biggest private employer announced it will shutter the facility with 631 jobs, House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, criticized the Republican governor’s efforts to boost employment in depressed rural regions. "The McDonnell-Bolling administration has been touting the creation of jobs throughout Southside and Southwest Virginia," Armstrong said in a May 23 news release. "But the administration has not been able to create more jobs than have been lost. Unless that trend is changed we will continue to go backwards." No doubt, the economic picture in some parts of the state has been bleak, particularly in the Martinsville-Henry County area that Armstrong represents. In Martinsville alone, the March unemployment rate was a 17.8 percent. That was than more double the national unemployment rate of 8.8 percent that month. Virginia’s unemployment rate, meanwhile, was 6.2 percent in March. Still we wondered if the situation has worsened under McDonnell’s watch. We asked Claire Wilker, Armstrong’s chief of staff, where he got the information for his statement. She cited a number of eliminations announced by a number of companies over the last year. "But the reality is all you need to do is spend some time down in Henry County or anywhere in Southside to realize that more people are being laid off than there are jobs being created to be filled," Wilker said in an e-mail. Outside StarTek, the biggest cut was Stanley Furniture’s announcement in May 2010 that it was cutting 530 jobs at its Henry County factory. She included announcements dating back to April 2009, but we only counted the ones that occurred after McDonnell was sworn in on Jan. 16, 2010. We came up with announcements of 1,386 jobs cut and 1,159 positions created. But data from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a public-private organization that recruits businesses for Virginia, paints a rosier picture of Southside and Southwest. It lists new and expanding business deals that promised 3,117 new jobs in the two regions since February 2010, McDonnell’s first full month in office. That’s almost three times the number Armstrong’s aide offered. We could not find a similar data base listing businesses closings or layoffs. Not every job loss or job gain makes it into a headline or a news release. So we started digging for data that would better establish the employment trend in Southside and Southwestern Virginia during the McDonnell administration. We turned to the state government’s Virginia Performs website to get a list of localities in each region. Southside Virginia includes the cities of Danville, Martinsville and Emporia as well as a dozen counties in the south-central part of the state. The Southwest region includes the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton as well as 14 counties down by the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina. We looked to the Virginia Employment Commission’s website for figures showing the number of jobs in each county and city in those two regions. Economists typically measure that by counting the number of jobs reported in a survey of businesses in an area. The problem is that at the county level, those jobs numbers are only available through September 2010. That takes us only about halfway into the McDonnell administration. So we can’t find a net number on how many jobs were gained or lost since the governor took office. But we can look at the results of another survey that reports how many people in each city or county in those two regions report having a job. The VEC website has compiled data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the total number of people employed in each county and city in Southside and Southwestern Virginia. Those raw numbers are not adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, such as spikes in summer hiring. To make up for that, we looked at the how the number of employed people in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the first quarter of 2011 in each region. We compared the first three months of each year because those months most closely align with the start of McDonnell’s term and with the latest figures that are available. In Southwestern Virginia, an average of 180,306 people were employed each month from January through March of 2011. That was 3,673 people more than the average number of workers employed during the first quarter of 2010. We found a similar situation in Southside, where a monthly average of 157,018 people had jobs in the first quarter of 2011, compared with 153,813 employed residents in the first quarter of 2010. So the number of people working in each region went up between the first quarter of each year. Unemployment rates went down in 30 of the 32 localities in Southside and Southwest Virginia, according to figures from the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. Bucking the trend were Southampton County and Galax. Let’s look at the employment picture the way a job seeker would -- by the number of positions open. In the Southside, the average monthly number of job postings was 9,132 in the first quarter of 2011, according to VEC statistics. In the first quarter of 2010, it was 5,904. In Southwest, job listings also markedly rose. The average number of postings each month in the first quarter of 2010 was 3,997. In the first quarter of 2011, there was an average 7,489 each month. A final note: We don’t suggest McDonnell deserves credit or blame for employment trends in Southside, Southwest or anywhere else in Virginia. As we have noted many times, economists have repeatedly told us governors have a limited impact on their state economies and get too much credit when things go well and too much grief when they don’t. To sum up: Armstrong said that there has been a net loss in jobs in the Southwestern and Southside parts of Virginia. There is no comprehensive data on which to base such a sweeping claim about the regions’ job losses under McDonnell. The only data available at the county level covers nine months of McDonnell’s 16-month term. But there are other statistics showing that under McDonnell, more people in those regions are employed and the number of job postings have increased. We rate his Armstrong’s claim False. Correction: An earlier version of this story said McDonnell was sworn in as governor in January 2011. He actually took office in January 2010. | null | Ward Armstrong | null | null | null | 2011-05-28T15:40:18 | 2011-05-23 | ['Bob_McDonnell', 'Southwest_Virginia'] |
goop-01209 | Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt’s Kids Taking Trip To Chateau Miraval? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-brad-pitt-kids-trip-chateau-miraval-france/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt’s Kids Taking Trip To Chateau Miraval? | 5:46 am, April 11, 2018 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston', 'Brad_Pitt'] |
goop-01851 | Blake Shelton Retiring To Become A Dad, | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/blake-shelton-retiring-dad/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Blake Shelton NOT Retiring To Become A Dad, Despite Claim | 3:12 am, January 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08049 | Says Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams has attended more than 150 tea party gatherings. | false | /texas/statements/2011/jan/03/dean-wright/austin-activist-says-michael-williams-has-attended/ | In a Nov. 30 article about the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Texas, a Capitol Hill newspaper quotes a conservative activist rating Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams an early favorite of the tea party movement for the GOP nomination. The Hill story further quotes Dean Wright of Austin saying that Williams has appeared at more than 150 tea party gatherings across Texas. That's a whole lot of tea-sipping -- and a worthy claim to stir the Truth-O-Meter pot. Right fast, we found ample evidence Williams has embraced the tea party movement. In December 2009, The Weekly Standard noted that Williams had recently come to Washington to accept the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund. The magazine quoted DeMint telling reporters: "Millions of people who've spoken out at town halls and tea parties . . . are looking for common sense mainstream leaders who believe in the principles of our Constitution. He's one of the most inspiring people I've heard talk about those principles in a long time." And in an April 2010 interview with Neil Cavuto of the Fox News Channel, Williams said he'd spoken at about a dozen tea party events, attended by as few as 100 and as many as 5,000 people. According to a transcript, Williams said, "That energy, that fervor you see at the tea party movement, that fight for -- for constitutional limits on the national... government, all of that, I agree with. And, so, I would like to think that I was a tea party candidate." Williams added that he doesn't think most tea partiers are looking to create a third political party. "But I think what they`re looking to is to inform the two dominant parties and to have us about be respectful of the notions of limited government, small government, controlling spending," Williams told Cavuto. "And they want us to return to a constitutional form of government. They don`t want the national government reaching into what should be the responsibility of the states and local governments, and even the private and civic communities." A dozen events is a small fraction of 150, though. We contacted Wright, founder and president of New Revolution Now, which describes itself as a party-agnostic organization created to harness the "core conservative values of mainstream Americans to elect the state and U.S. congressional representatives who will return the country to its founding values of limited government, low taxation, states rights and constitutional constructionism." Wright told us that he'd told The Hill that Williams had "probably" attended 150 tea party events, but he conceded that the real number was less than that. "I'm just trying to get the point out that he's really engaging with the tea parties," Wright said. "Just in the Central Texas region, I've been to five or six events where (Williams) has spoken at a tea party function." He suggested we check with Williams. Done: Williams' campaign consultant, Corbin Casteel, told us that Williams' past stump schedules are incomplete due to a computer glitch, but those that remain indicate that Williams spoke at eight tea party events from April 2009 through June 2010. Casteel said Williams estimates he's attended eight to 10 more. The events reflected in Williams' records were in Travis County (April 15, 2009); Weatherford (July 4, 2009); Granbury (Aug. 29, 2009); Waco (Sept. 3, 2009); Collin County (Sept. 7); Rowlett (Sept. 12, 2009); Wichita Falls (April 15); and Bastrop County (June 26, 2010). Finally, Williams told us in an interview he's been to 12 to 15 tea party events in Texas, and he expects more rallies to occur. "I'll have to see if I still get invitations; it's their party," Williams said. He said he was pleased by Wright's count. "He thinks I'm spreading more than I am," Williams said. The commissioner's got that right. We rate Wright's statement False. | null | Dean Wright | null | null | null | 2011-01-03T06:00:00 | 2010-11-30 | ['None'] |
pomt-01779 | (Mary) Burke’s company, Trek Bicycles, "makes 99% of their bikes overseas." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2014/jul/28/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-trek-makes-99-its-bicycles-overs/ | With his popularity among conservatives still high, and a poll showing his support dropping among independents, Gov. Scott Walker is working to dampen liberals’ enthusiasm for his main Democratic rival in the November 2014 election. Here’s part of his second campaign TV ad hitting Mary Burke’s former employer, Wisconsin’s Trek Bicycles, for building products overseas: "Mary Burke is trying to sell us on her experience at her family business, but she forgot to mention they make 99% of their bikes overseas, in places like China, where her company has outsourced jobs for years," a narrator says. The spot adds that "Burke’s company makes almost all their bikes overseas." In her campaign, Burke has highlighted her former role as a manager at Trek, the company founded in 1976 by her father, Richard, in Waterloo. She has said that Trek, as a company trying to compete globally, does what it can to manufacture bikes in the United States and makes more bikes in America than any other manufacturer. The latest Walker ad cites an OnMilwaukee.com piece from Jan. 9, 2011, flashing what looks like a headline that reads: "Over 99.5% Of The Bicycles That Burke’s Company Produces, Are Made Overseas." So that’s where we’ll start. The piece, a question-and-answer feature with a Trek spokesman, does not mention either Mary Burke or a figure of more than 99.5%. It ran under the headline "Trek Corporation Committed To Wisconsin" and highlighted Trek’s employment of nearly 1,000 people in the state at three facilities and another 800 around the world at the time. The story does not call Trek Mary Burke’s company, as Walker’s ad characterizes it. In one of her own campaign videos, Burke calls Trek "my family’s business" and one she says she helped grow into a worldwide force. But Burke left Trek’s employment in 2004, and its board in 2005, though she still owns stock in the private company. So the Walker ad seemingly is off to a rough start. But that OnMilwaukee piece did contain two numbers that allow a reader get a feeling for the balance of overseas versus domestic production at Trek, at least as of 2011. In the piece, Trek official Eric Bjorling is quoted as saying that Trek makes roughly 10,000 bikes a year in Wisconsin. Later in the story, in response to a separate question, he said that Trek sells about 1.5 million bikes a year around the world. We should note that Bjorling characterized the 10,000 figure as a rough estimate, saying it’s "almost impossible to give a number" because production is seasonal and demand-based. Nevertheless, doing the math yields an answer of 99.33 percent built overseas. So that works in Walker’s favor. We asked Trek company spokeswoman Marina Marich to comment on the ad and the number it presents, and she responded in part, "As a privately held company, Trek doesn’t disclose specific production data." A Burke campaign spokesman simply referred us to Trek. Industry observers say that broadly speaking, the 99 percent figure makes sense. "The bottom line is there is no major bicycle production in the U.S.," said Marc Sani, writer and former publisher of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. "It left when Schwinn went to China in the 1980s. That was the beginning of the end." Trek and other U.S.-based bicycle companies have little or no choice but to build product in cheaper venues overseas in order to compete globally, Sani said. Trek has two manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin -- one in Waterloo and one in Whitewater. Overseas, it builds in Germany, Holland and China. In 2011, CEO John Burke said Trek’s sales were more than $800 million. Trek contends, without providing numbers to back it up, that it manufactures more bikes the United States than any other bicycle company and is the only "major" bicycle company that stills manufactures product in the United States. As PolitiFact Wisconsin reported in January, Burke and Trek also have declined to document her claim that while at Trek the European division she oversaw went from $3 million to over $50 million in sales." Jay Townley, a bicycle industry consultant based in Wisconsin, noted that because U.S. production is so low, the numbers are volatile. But even if it was 30,000 instead of 10,000, the overseas production share would be 98 percent, which still sounds a lot like the Walker ad’s phrasing that "almost all" of Trek’s bikes are made outside the United States. Our rating Walkers’ ad says that Trek Bicycle "makes 99% of their bikes overseas," and it puts Mary Burke at the center of responsibility by saying Trek is "Burke’s company." The best available numbers, from Trek’s own mouth, lend credence to the 99 percent claim, as do the best educated guesses by industry analysts. So the ad’s main thrust is correct. Calling Trek "Burke’s company" is somewhat problematic, though. She held a management position there and still owns stock, but she left a decade ago and seven years before the 2011 story that yielded the 99 percent figure. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly True. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2014-07-28T05:00:00 | 2014-07-22 | ['None'] |
tron-00647 | Cam Newton Gets Fined for Giving Children Footballs | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/cam-newton-gets-fined-for-giving-children-footballs/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Cam Newton Gets Fined for Giving Children Footballs | Dec 15, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03018 | On responding to chemical weapon use in Syria | half flip | /wisconsin/statements/2013/oct/13/paul-ryan/did-paul-ryan-change-his-position-red-line-and-che/ | In the 2012 campaign, Paul Ryan repeatedly criticized President Barack Obama’s foreign policy but agreed with Obama that use of chemical weapons by the regime in Syria was a "red line" that would prompt U.S. action. A year later, after Obama asserted the line had been crossed, it was Ryan who came in for criticism when he opposed the president’s call for a military strike aimed at weakening Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. Did Ryan reverse his position on the "red line," as some commentators and news reports said? Let’s test this on the Flip-O-Meter. First, our standard disclaimer: The Flip-O-Meter does not measure whether any change in position is good politics or good policy, but simply whether a political figure has changed his or her position. Our research starts with 2011 comments by Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee who is widely considered a potential 2016 presidential candidate. In a 2011 speech at the Hamilton Society, Ryan endorsed a larger military and a more activist role in the world for the United States. He decried "brutal crackdowns" by various regimes, saying, "We have a responsibility to speak boldly for those whose voices are denied by the jackbooted thugs of the tired tyrants of Syria and Iran." So in 2011 Ryan used tough language, but was vague what actions were appropriate and when they should be taken. Comments in 2012 We found little else from Ryan regarding Syria until the fall 2012 campaign, when Ryan had been added to the GOP ticket by presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As could be expected, Ryan echoed his running mate’s criticisms of Obama’s approach in Syria. Amid reports that Assad might be preparing to use chemical weapons, Obama was asked at an Aug. 19, 2012 news conference "whether you envision using U.S. military, if simply for nothing else, the safekeeping of the chemical weapons." Obama responded: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus." He added: "We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people." Major media outlets generally agreed that Obama was, directly or indirectly, warning Syria it could face American military intervention. In the October 2012 vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden, Ryan bought into Obama’s "red line" rhetoric. But first, he complained fiercely that Obama had dallied while Assad slaughtered tens of thousands of Syrians and al-Qaida had entered the fight. Ryan said Obama had failed to aid moderate dissident elements in the country, wrongly gave Russian leader Vladimir Putin veto power over U.S. efforts to deal with Syria, and neglected relationships with allies in the region. Pressed on what Romney-Ryan would do if elected, Ryan said they agreed with Obama’s "red line" on chemical weapons. And Ryan, echoing Romney’s call for a tougher line, put some meat on the bone, endorsing American ground troops in Syria for the limited purpose of securing chemical weapons in the context of a "red line." Ryan emphasized that was the only scenario for U.S. boots on the ground. Ryan’s comments didn’t tell us much about the nature of any military action in case of a red line violation. But he made clear he was willing to use U.S. troops in Syria to secure chemical weapons. Comments in 2013 Fast forward to Aug. 21, 2013, almost exactly one year after Obama’s "red line" remark. On that day, international chemical weapons inspectors now say, a deadly attack on opposition-held suburbs of Damascus included the use of the nerve agent sarin. The Associated Press reported that the United States and its allies alleged the Syrian government was responsible. After the attack, Obama threatened missile strikes against Assad, then unexpectedly sought congressional approval for them, and then stepped back when Russian-led diplomatic efforts led to an ongoing United Nations-backed mission to scrap Syria’s capacity to make chemical weapons and destroy its stockpile. Critics said Obama’s twists and turns on a military strike undermined the notion of a tough response, and in Syria the delays angered residents and disappointed opposition leaders. Notably, Obama did not propose American troops on the ground. Next came Obama’s announcement on Aug. 31, 2012 that he would seek congressional approval for a military strike. Ryan briefly commented, saying, "The President has some work to do to recover from his grave missteps in Syria. He needs to clearly demonstrate that the use of military force would strengthen America's security. I want to hear his case to Congress and to the American people." Then, on Sept. 11, 2013, a day after Obama addressed the nation and with Obama still seeking congressional approval for a strike, Ryan announced his opposition, while the House’s two top GOP leaders backed a strike. Ryan’s lengthy statement said a lot about why Obama was off track but left us wondering about Ryan’s own views on military intervention. At various points he seemed clearly to suggest Obama’s proposed military strike was too small, calling it a "feeble" deterrent and too "limited" to degrade chemical-weapons capabilities when a "firm response" was needed. Ryan also repeated his 2012 criticisms that Obama had failed to aid rebels and had deferred to Russia. But at points he appeared to question the wisdom of any strike, saying, "A military strike could kill innocent civilians and earn the ire of everyone involved" and "drop America's standing in the Middle East even further." Ryan didn’t rule anything out, saying America must "carefully weigh all options." His statement ended with a proposal for action that did not mention military intervention: "Instead of the proposals put forth by the President, we should tighten sanctions on Assad's regime and give aid to the moderate elements of the opposition. " Asked to clarify Ryan’s position on military intervention, aide Kevin Seifert told us: "Paul Ryan’s concerns aren’t limited to ‘size,’ they are about the strategy." He continued: "It’s the mismatch between the president’s stated objective and the proposed strategy to achieve it." Seifert would not say how Ryan would view another proposal for military intervention came before Congress. More comments Four days after Ryan put out his September 2013 statement, the "UpFront with Mike Gousha" show aired an interview with Ryan in which he expressed deep pessimism about using inspections to get the chemical weapons out. Gousha cited Ryan’s debate position that agreed with Obama on a "red line" and asked him why he had now changed his position. Ryan said he had not changed his position; he just found Obama’s specific proposal to be incoherent. Gousha followed up: "Bottom line, do you think we should take military action because Syria used chemical weapons on its people?" Ryan, shaking his head from side to side, responded strictly in the context of Obama’s plan: "No. No, I do not believe he should do this because I don’t think this administration has any game plan for any of the contingencies surrounding it." For additional perspective on Ryan, we spoke to Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, and UCLA history professor and Middle East scholar James Gelvin. They offered differing interpretations of Ryan’s comments, but neither saw a full reversal by the congressman. O’Hanlon saw an inconsistency in Ryan rejecting Obama’s plan as too meek while Ryan himself earlier had specifically endorsed nothing more muscular for taking on Assad. Gelvin sees Ryan’s position as opportunistic politically but fairly consistent from a policy standpoint. He believes Ryan is in the foreign-policy camp that says, if we’re going to use force, do it big. Our rating Ryan has said all along he wanted more aggressive help for moderate groups fighting Assad. But here we’re testing whether his position has changed regarding a U.S. military response to Syrian use of chemical weapons. We know that after Obama drew the red line suggesting some sort of military intervention, Ryan endorsed that general idea, then 11 months later rejected Obama’s plan for it. But we don’t see a major reversal of position here -- in part because Ryan’s views on what to do about chemical weapons were ill-defined in 2012 and remain so now. It’s true Ryan rejected Obama’s proposed limited strike once chemical weapon use became reality, but he says he did so because of objections to Obama’s timing, strategy and execution. We found no evidence Ryan had previously backed -- or rejected -- this kind of limited strike. And he still says military intervention remains an option. His statements contain some inconsistencies, however. In 2012, Ryan said American ground troops would be an appropriate response if a red line was crossed, but his position on that is now unclear because he won’t answer questions about it. And the September 2013 statement he issued is a model of confusion as opposed to his feisty debate comments. In it, he strongly implied Obama’s strike was too small and not forceful enough, but then threw water on a limited strike because it could kill civilians. For those inconsistencies, we rate this a Half Flip. | null | Paul Ryan | null | null | null | 2013-10-13T05:00:00 | 2013-09-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-05279 | Says Democratic legislators this year "don't want to cut your taxes under any circumstances." | pants on fire! | /new-jersey/statements/2012/may/25/chris-christie/chris-christie-claims-democrats-dont-want-cut-your/ | Sometimes Gov. Chris Christie’s comments simply don’t jibe with reality. Take, for instance, his claim at a transportation conference Wednesday that Democrats are opposed to any tax cuts this year. As Christie continues pushing for an income tax cut, the Republican governor and Democratic legislators have been battling this week over differing state revenue projections. The Christie administration is estimating a shortfall of $676 million through the end of the next fiscal year, while David Rosen, the budget and finance officer for the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, has estimated a shortfall of $1.3 billion. After blasting Rosen as the "Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers," Christie in a speech Wednesday claimed that Democratic legislators "don't want to cut your taxes under any circumstances." "This year, when they don’t want to cut your taxes under any circumstances, they have their handmaiden walk over across the street in front of the Assembly Budget Committee today and say...’I was wrong. I was $1.6 billion wrong for this year, but trust me for next year. You’re another $660 billion short for next year.’ Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe this guy?" Well, PolitiFact New Jersey has a question of its own: Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe Democrats don’t want tax cuts when they released their own tax cut proposals a few months ago? The debate over their proposals and the governor's has gripped Trenton since Christie’s State of the State address in January, when the governor unveiled his plan for an across-the-board 10 percent cut in the state income tax. Democrats immediately pounced on the proposal for disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest residents. But in early March, Democrats in the State Senate and the State Assembly each laid out their own tax cut proposals. After pointing out the Senate Democrats’ plan during a town hall meeting in March, Christie offered this promise: "Looks like we got some place to work here. Here’s the one thing I know for sure: You’re gonna get tax relief in 2012, because we’re now agreeing on cutting taxes in Trenton." Both Democratic proposals only would benefit households earning up to $250,000 by providing a tax credit based on their property taxes. The tax credits would be applied against their income taxes. Senate Democrats have proposed a 10 percent tax credit, while Assembly Democrats are pushing what they refer to as a 20 percent credit. According to Assembly Democrats, seniors and the disabled would receive a 25 percent credit. Unlike the Senate plan, the Assembly proposal includes increasing taxes on income exceeding $1 million. Despite the poor revenue projections, Senate President Stephen Sweeney has stood by the need to provide property tax relief, according to published reports. Citing recent revenue projections, Assembly Democrats have criticized Christie's tax cut proposal, claiming their plan is the better solution. According to the Associated Press, one Assembly Democratic leader has left open the possibility that there may be no tax cut at all in the upcoming state budget. In response to our findings, Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts provided this statement: "Assembly Democrats specifically put forward a tax plan that raises taxes on some people. Theirs can be defined as much as a ‘tax cut’ as by a ‘tax increase.’ You guys are extraordinarily rigid on the use of language so I hope you make that note. Secondly, the Assembly plan is dead on arrival. It has zero chance of becoming law, which they know. Now, since the April revenue figures came out, Democrats have used those figures as an excuse to abandon a tax cut. Their statements indicate as much and we put out a release earlier today highlighting this fact." Our ruling In a speech Wednesday, Christie claimed that Democratic legislators this year "don't want to cut your taxes under any circumstances." That claim is pure nonsense. The main topic in Trenton has been competing tax cut proposals made by Christie and the Democrats. Christie may disagree with them on how to cut taxes, but there’s no doubt that many Democrats are willing to do just that. For Christie to suggest otherwise is just ridiculous. Pants on Fire! To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2012-05-25T07:30:00 | 2012-05-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-03866 | A proposed ban on hollow-point bullets and bullets that expand upon impact "essentially bans deer hunting." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2013/mar/10/vicki-mckenna/talk-show-host-vicki-mckenna-proposed-rules-bullet/ | In the months following the Sandy Hook school massacre, Wisconsin Democrats moved to restrict access to firearms and ammunition. Those efforts included the drafting of a bill in the state Assembly by Reps. Frederick Kessler, Evan Goyke and Mandela Barnes, all Milwaukee Democrats. Among other things, the bill would restrict sales and possession of hollow-point bullets, a type of ammunition that expands on impact and creates even larger wounds. Authorities said Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, used bullets designed to inflict maximum damage by breaking up in a victim’s body. Kessler argued banning such bullets would give the victims of a mass shooting at least a chance of survival. But that bill would have a far greater impact, said conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna on Feb. 18, 2013. It would end deer hunting, a key part of the state’s culture, said McKenna, whose show is aired in Milwaukee, Madison and LaCrosse. "Democrats in Wisconsin want to fight crime by banning deer hunting," McKenna said. She explained that the bill "proposed taking hollow-pointed ammunition off the shelves. Which essentially bans deer hunting because you can only use an expanding bullet to deer hunt." That caught our attention. After all, the state sold more than 614,000 licenses as of the start of the gun deer season in November 2012. That’s equivalent to a little more than 10 percent of the state’s population. So is McKenna right? Would Kessler’s bill blow away the gun deer hunt? (We’ll avoid picking nits and assume the bow hunting season would remain.) We turned to the experts to learn more about bullets and Bambi. The proposed legislation According to the Legislative Reference Bureau: "This bill prohibits a person, with certain exceptions such as for law enforcement, from selling, transporting, manufacturing, or possessing any hollowpoint bullet, any bullet that expands or flattens easily in the human body, or any bullet with a hard envelope that does not entirely cover the core of the bullet." That bans a lot of bullets. But what does this have to do with deer hunting? We asked Tim Lawhern, the state Department of Natural Resource’s top official on such matters. For years, state law required hunters of deer and others species to use hollow-point bullets, said Lawhern, administrator of the DNR’s enforcement and science division. The law was modified a couple years ago because more and more hunters were hunting with a different sort of ammunition -- often made of solid copper -- that also changed shape on impact, but was not a hollow point. State law now says it’s illegal to hunt deer with "non-expanding bullets." Said Lawhern: "It must be the expanding type of ammunition." The idea is that bullets that expand on impact do more damage, cause greater hemorrhaging, and the animal dies in a swifter, more humane manner, Lawhern explained. So Kessler and company want to ban the very kind of bullets that hunters are required to use. What ammo would that leave hunters with? "Nothing," said Lawhern. "Archery. You could use archery equipment." Banning hollow-point bullets "would have a negative impact on deer hunting," said George Meyer, former DNR secretary and executive director of Wisconsin Wildlife Federation. "If they don’t have any ammunition they could use, it certainly doesn’t sound good if you’re a hunter," Lawhern said. Legions of hunters would have the same reaction about an expanding-bullet ban, he added. "You’ll have the largest army in the world saying, ‘What, are you nuts?’" A change in plans Apparently they won’t have to worry. Shortly after word got out -- including on McKenna’s show -- Kessler admitted he and the other lawmakers had shot themselves in the foot. They’re rewriting the bill to "remove any conflicts of law and provide exemptions that honor our state’s great sporting heritage," Kessler said in a Feb. 19, 2013, statement, a day after McKenna’s show on the subject. The bill "was never intended to conflict with current laws or codes related to Wisconsin’s rich hunting tradition and those who annually participate in it," Kessler said, adding that the draft bills "contained unintended oversights." He added: "We will be working with the Legislative Reference Bureau, Legislative Council and the Department of Natural Resources to ensure that any future bill drafts are consistent with current sporting and hunting regulations." Kessler said in an interview that he still wants to limit sales of hollow-point bullets, but with an exemption for hunters. Such ammunition would be available "only to people who have licenses to hunt, who are on their way to hunt and it’s hunting season, " Kessler said. So let’s bag this one. McKenna said a proposal to restrict sale and possession of hollow-point and flattening or expanding bullets "essentially bans deer hunting." McKenna’s right on an important front. Deer hunters are required to use bullets that expand on impact -- including hollow points. And Kessler wanted to ban those very bullets. So it would leave gun hunters without bullets. But she’s wrong by suggesting that the Democrats were seeking to ban hunting. Kessler admitted hunting never crossed his mind when the bill was drafted in an effort to protect mass shooting victims. The city slickers came up with a bill with a problem that stood out like a white tail between the cross hairs. As it stood, the law would have banned the bullets. But it didn’t ban hunting. We rate McKenna’s statement Mostly True. | null | Vicki McKenna | null | null | null | 2013-03-10T09:00:00 | 2013-02-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-13203 | Ford is moving all of their small-car production to Mexico. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/23/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-ford-moving-all-small-car-produc/ | One of Donald Trump’s signature issues in his 2016 presidential bid has been stopping the outflow of American jobs to other countries. During a visit to Delaware, Ohio, he cited a recent example of a major American company moving some of its work out of the United States. "Companies like Carrier are firing their workers and moving to Mexico," Trump said. "Ford is moving all of their small-car production to Mexico. When I'm president, if a company wants to fire their workers and leave for Mexico or other countries, then we will charge them a 35 percent tax when they want to ship their products back into the United States." Is it really true that "Ford is moving all of their small car production to Mexico"? We’ll take a closer look. On Sept. 14, 2016, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced at an event with Wall Street analysts that "we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States" over the next two to three years, according to Reuters. Ford had already announced that it would be investing $1.6 billion in Mexico for small-car production starting in 2018. "During contract talks in 2015, Ford confirmed that it would move Focus and C-Max production out of its Wayne, Mich., plant in 2018. The United Auto Workers Union said at the time that Ford planned to build the next Focus in Mexico," Reuters reported. The Focus and the C-Max are considered small cars. The company cited declining interest among U.S. consumers for smaller cars and growing sales for bigger vehicles in an era of low gasoline prices. It also cited Mexican labor costs that are about 40 percent lower than than in the United States. "That's what it takes to compete in that (small car) segment," Fields told CNN. So Trump is right that the company is moving all small-car production in North America to Mexico. However, he overlooked a salient point -- that both the company and the United Auto Workers do not expect any jobs to be lost at the Wayne plant. Instead of building small cars, the Wayne facility will transition into producing SUVs and pickup trucks that are more popular in the United States. "Our U.S. workforce at that plant will be making those new vehicles," said Ford spokeswoman Christin Tinsworth Baker. In the past five years, Ford has invested $12 billion in U.S. plants and created nearly 28,000 U.S. jobs, Baker said. In all, the company has 85,000 U.S. employees. In a September interview with Fox News, Trump mischaracterized the changes at Ford, saying the company planned to "fire all their employees in the United States and … move to Mexico." The company aggressively countered that allegation. In an interview with CNN, Fields was asked whether the company would cut any U.S. jobs as part of the relocation of work to Mexico. He said, "Absolutely not. Zero. Not one job will be lost. Most of our investment is here in the U.S. And that's the way it will continue to be." In his speech in Ohio, however, Trump stuck closer to the facts. Our ruling Trump said that "Ford is moving all of their small-car production to Mexico." That’s correct as far as it goes, but framing it that way ignores an important qualifier -- that no U.S. jobs will be lost in the transition. The company says that workers at the Ford plant in question will instead make SUVs and pickups. We rate the statement Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/0f5ed3db-289b-4d1c-a1d6-4c03ac61e82e | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-10-23T16:18:38 | 2016-10-20 | ['Mexico', 'Ford_Motor_Company'] |
peck-00050 | Is Tanzania’s Unmet Need For Contraceptives At Crisis Levels? | true | https://pesacheck.org/is-tanzanias-unmet-need-for-contraceptives-at-crisis-levels-50375a467707 | null | null | null | Belinda Japhet | null | Is Tanzania’s Unmet Need For Contraceptives At Crisis Levels? | Mar 1 | null | ['Tanzania'] |
tron-03201 | Great-Great Uncle Remus Reid | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/remus-reid/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Great-Great Uncle Remus Reid | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02896 | Charlie Crist stopped "layoffs of some 20,000 school teachers during the global economic meltdown." | half-true | /florida/statements/2013/nov/07/charlie-crist/charlie-crist-says-he-stopped-layoffs-20000-teache/ | Former Gov. Charlie Crist wants voters to see a stark contrast between himself and Republican Gov. Rick Scott on public education. In his announcement speech in St. Petersburg on Nov. 4, 2013, Crist took credit for protecting teachers’ jobs when he was the Republican-elected governor from 2007 to 2010. (He switched to independent while running for U.S. Senate in 2010 and now he is running as a Democrat.) "I am proud of my record as the governor investing in public education, and stopping the layoffs of some 20,000 school teachers during the global economic meltdown." We will tackle this fact-check in two parts: Were 20,000 layoffs of Florida school teachers prevented during the recession, and does Crist get credit for that? Stimulus act The Crist campaign told us the basis of his claim was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the $787 billion federal stimulus bill pushed by President Barack Obama and passed by Congress in 2009. The Florida Department of Education published information in 2010 about how many "instructional personnel" the Recovery Act affected. The department identified 19,166 full-time equivalent jobs affecting a total 31,003 employees for the quarter ending June 30, 2010. Instructional personnel included elementary and secondary classroom teachers as well as guidance counselors, librarians and audio-visual workers, to name just a few. Many news reports stated that without the stimulus funds, the state would have had to make massive cuts including to education. Crist’s campaign cited a 2009 Miami Herald article which paraphrased the state’s education commissioner at the time, Eric Smith, saying that the stimulus dollars saved 26,000 teacher jobs. (Smith was appointed by Crist.) The stimulus money was paid out over two years: In 2009-10, nearly $908 million went to K-12 education, and another $873 million the year after, said Ruth Melton, director of government relations for the Florida School Boards Association. "The infusion of this federal cash was tremendously important in keeping school districts solvent during the recession," Melton said. We can’t say with certainty that without the stimulus dollars, 20,000 teachers would have been laid off, because each district could have made different decisions about how to make their budgets work. "It could have meant actually more teachers than reported," Melton said. At the other extreme, some districts could have laid off more expensive teachers who were close to retirement -- so that could have lowered the number. "A lot depended on the financial condition of the district before the recession hit – some districts had healthier reserve balances than others," Melton said. Crist’s role in the stimulus act Crist didn’t get to vote on passing the stimulus bill -- that was up to Congress. But Crist skipped a Florida Cabinet meeting to campaign with Obama for the stimulus in Fort Myers, and he went on national talk shows and across the state selling the plan. He lobbied members of Florida’s congressional delegation from both parties to pass the stimulus. "We know that it's important that we pass a stimulus package," Crist said on Feb. 10, 2009, amid "Yes, we can!" cheers as he introduced the Democratic president in Fort Myers, the Tampa Bay Times reported. "This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America and reigniting our economy." Crist and Obama exchanged a friendly hug, an image that came back to haunt Crist when he ran for Senate in 2010. While many governors accepted the stimulus money, Crist was one of the few prominent Republicans to actively and publicly support the stimulus, a choice that won him accolades from Obama. Crist defended his choice to accept stimulus dollars when he faced heat from his own Republican Party. Still, in accepting the money, Crist did the same thing as many governors across the country, including those who weren't cheerleading the stimulus. Nationwide, the stimulus doled out more than $93 billion in education funds, including $50.9 in money for elementary and secondary schools to close gaps in state funding. A map on recovery.gov shows all the states taking these dollars. Overall, the stimulus funded about 368,000 school employees’ jobs nationwide during the 2009-10 school year, according to a February 2011 article the Hechinger Report, a respected publication about education. States didn’t go on a hiring spree, but used the money to prevent mass layoffs and backfill other funding losses. It wasn’t a cure-all, though: Some teachers were still laid off, depending on the individual school district. Our ruling Charlie Crist said that he stopped "layoffs of some 20,000 school teachers during the global economic meltdown." Crist was referring to the 2009 federal stimulus, which included education money to keep teachers and other education workers on the job. Without stimulus dollars, there could have been massive layoffs, though it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise number of teachers. Crist was a big-time cheerleader for the stimulus, urging members of Florida’s congressional delegation to support it. There was also that manhug with Obama that was used against him in his race for Senate. But Crist didn't have much of a role in getting the actual stimulus passed; that credit goes to Congress and Obama. And, many governors took the stimulus money to save teaching jobs. In all likelihood, Florida would have gotten the money without Crist's high-profile support. We rate this claim Half True. | null | Charlie Crist | null | null | null | 2013-11-07T13:18:40 | 2013-11-04 | ['Charlie_Crist'] |
pomt-08004 | The White House "branded" the memorial service for the Tucson shootings with a "Together We Thrive" logo and slogan. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/13/michelle-malkin/did-white-house-brand-arizona-memorial-service-log/ | The University of Arizona memorial service for the victims of the Tucson, Ariz. shootings was called "Together We Thrive." But Michelle Malkin claimed the slogan was cooked up by the White House In an opinion piece about the Jan. 12, 2011, memorial event, Malkin, a conservative pundit, accused the White House of "branding" the memorial service with the slogan, complete with its own logo. Malkin noted that all 13,000 people who attended the "Together We Thrive" event were given blue and white T-shirts with the logo. "Can't the Democrat political stage managers give it a break just once?" Malkin wrote in her column. The Drudge Report subsequently ran a headline atop its web page, "Political Theme, T-Shirts at Memorial?" It linked to an AP photo of "Together We Thrive" T-shirts draped over the back of chairs before the memorial service at McKale Memorial Center on the University of Arizona campus. But officials at the University of Arizona said the White House had nothing to do with the name or the logo. "The name of the event and the logo for the event were done entirely by the university," said Johnny Cruz, a spokesman for the University of Arizona. "Branding of the event was not done in consultation with the White House, or any elected officials or political organization." The T-shirts were also the university's doing, Cruz said. "That was the university's idea," he said. "We wanted to give people something to remember, to symbolize the community spirit." The university bought the shirts without the use of taxpayer dollars, although he wasn't sure if the cost was borne by donations. "Almost everything was done by the university," Cruz said, including selection of the location for the event and planning the agenda. Once the president accepted an invitation, he said, the White House helped coordinate some logistics, such as security, but that was the extent of the White House involvement. And "Together We Thrive" was conceived by a University of Arizona student, he said. White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said during his briefing that the university was responsible for logistics. "I think it’s important to understand we were invited to and accepted quite happily the invitation of the university," he said. We should note that Malkin later added an update to her blog posting that stated, "As noted above, the University of Arizona announced the Together We Thrive event — and a few readers wrote in to say that the campus initiated the logo/campaign. Given U of A president Robert Shelton's embarrassing, thinly-veiled partisan cheerleading for Obama tonight, it may indeed be a 100 percent-campus-initiated campaign. Given the Obama White House's meticulous attention to stage prop details, however, I would say the odds of involvement by Axelrod/Plouffe & Co. are high." But university spokesman Cruz said all of the "stage prop details," as Malkin called them, were entirely conceived by and arranged by the college. The burden of proof is on Malkin and she has failed to prove any White House involvement. She may believe she sees the handiwork of the White House at play, but there's no evidence to back that up. Certainly not enough to justify her claim the White House used the shooting tragedy as an opportunity to orchestrate a "branded" political event. We rate Malkin's claim False. | null | Michelle Malkin | null | null | null | 2011-01-13T17:53:46 | 2011-01-12 | ['Tucson,_Arizona', 'White_House'] |
pomt-11012 | 83% of Trump tax breaks go to the wealthiest 1%. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/10/tax-march/nevada-tv-ad-cherry-picks-tax-cut-benefits-top-1/ | A new ad on the air in Nevada against the Republican tax law features a cheerful grandmother doling out brightly wrapped candy to her grandchildren. To the girl, she gives heaping handfuls. To the boy, a few pieces. When he complains how that’s unfair, the grandmother explains, "Some people start off with more than others, and so, we’re going to be giving them even more." On the screen appear the words "83 percent of Trump tax breaks go to the wealthiest 1 percent," with a reference to a Dec. 18, 2017, article on Vox. The ad from the group Tax March rehashes a Democratic talking point that we’ve addressed before. The number is roughly correct, but it leaves out a lot of important information. The tax cuts are a dividing line in the Nevada Senate race between the Republican incumbent Dean Heller, who voted for the law, and his Democratic challenger Rep. Jacky Rosen, who has said she would change it. A December 2017 analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, is the underlying source for the 83 percent. The center modeled the impact of the tax law and looked at how different income groups fared in three years: 2018, 2025 and 2027. Only in one year, 2027, did 82.8 percent of the tax cuts go to the top 1 percent of tax filers. In 2018, the number was 20.5 percent, and in 2025, it was 25.3 percent. Both are a far cry from the big number in the ad. Why the large shift? In order to stay within the Senate rules that shaped the bill, most of the individual tax cuts end after 2025. That leaves the corporate tax cuts, which do more to help upper income earners. Also, the law changed the calculation for factoring in inflation and those adjustments become less favorable to taxpayers over time. As this chart shows, the lopsided benefits come in the final year. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com "How much of the benefit of the tax bill goes to the top 1 percent income group greatly depends on what year you are looking at," Joseph Rosenberg, a senior research associate at the Tax Policy Center, told us in January. We asked Rosenberg if the center’s work allows any way to figure out the cumulative gains and losses over the 10 years of the tax law. He said there was not. "We only published single year results, and only for three years," Rosenberg said. It is worth noting that not everyone inside each income group does equally well. For example, among the top 1 percent in the final year, about a quarter of the group sees a small tax increase of $1,250 on average. Finally, the statement talks about the "wealthiest" 1 percent. The study looked at annual income, which is how much money a person takes in. Wealth is the assets someone has accumulated over time. Our ruling The Tax March ad says 83 percent of the Trump tax breaks go to the wealthiest 1 percent. The number is about right, but only for the last year of the tax law. In the two earlier years estimated by the Tax Policy Center, the share going to the highest income group was between 20 and 25 percent. The law does favor the well-to-do, but not by nearly as much as the ad says. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tax March | null | null | null | 2018-07-10T09:00:00 | 2018-06-21 | ['None'] |
tron-00167 | Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, views on September 11 | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/falwell-robertson-wtc/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, views on September 11 | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Jerry_Falwell', 'Pat_Robertson'] |
pomt-11548 | Heitkamp has voted against Trump 68 percent of time. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/feb/09/national-republican-senatorial-committee/misleading-nrsc-ad-heitkamp-trump-contrarian/ | A North Dakota National Republican Senate Committee ad portrays Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., as a contrarian to President Donald Trump. "North Dakota voted for President Trump," the voiceover says. "But Sen. Heidi Heitkamp doesn’t care. She’s joined Washington liberals in their partisan obstruction and is taking orders from party boss Chuck Schumer, the architect of the Schumer Shutdown." "Heitkamp has voted against Trump 68 percent of time," the graphic reads. The statistic was shared during State of the Union and Super Bowl digital ad campaigns. Given North Dakota's Republican leanings, Heitkamp is a top GOP target. However, the party's top potential recruit, U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, chose not to run, leaving state Sen. Tom Campbell the leading Republican challenger so far. We wondered whether Heitkamp had indeed opposed Trump’s agenda almost seven times out of 10. That depends on how you define opposition. The NRSC cited a FiveThirtyEight "legislative voting analysis" of Heitkamp’s votes. They pointed us to Heitkamp’s Trump Score on the news site, which tracks how many times each member of Congress votes with or against the president. FiveThirtyEight found that Heitkamp had voted with Trump 53.2 percent of the time and 46.8 percent of the time against him. The tally at the time the NRSC accessed the database (Jan. 26, 2018), was 53.33 percent with Trump, 46.7 percent against. That’s a much more moderate record than the ad suggests. When we asked how they arrived at a different number using the same source, the NRSC explained they had only looked at policy votes, excluding nomination votes. Heitkamp voted with Trump on 11 of 34 policy votes, and against Trump on 23 policy votes. That checks out, using the same simple arithmetic FiveThirtyEight used: 67.6, or 68, percent. But that leaves out 26 Cabinet and Supreme Court nomination-related votes. There were 21 votes with Trump, five against; That represents 80 percent agreement with Trump. Is it fair to include only policy votes? FiveThirtyEight didn’t think so. "Our goal is to track how often members vote in support of the president’s agenda, and we believe that including Cabinet-level and Supreme Court nominations is an important aspect of that," said Aaron Bycoffe, the article’s author. "Excluding votes on presidential nominations must be explained and it is not," said Steven Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. "That is misleading, particularly when the source does not separate nominations from legislation and report separate scores. Most standard ‘presidential support’ analyses, including Congressional Quarterly’s studies, which date back to the 1960s, include significant nominations, like Supreme Court nominations and controversial Cabinet nominations." Smith said that Heitkamp had supported the president’s position more than all but one other Democrat who has been in office throughout the term. Jeffrey Bumgarner, Criminal Justice and Political Science department head at the University of North Dakota, said that while the number sums up her legislative disagreement with Trump, favorable nomination votes should count as support for the president's agenda. That’s because "the president has included his judicial and executive branch appointments among his accomplishments (so he sees these votes as important) and, in this hyper-partisan environment, votes for the opposing party's nominees are not a given; hence, it is particularly remarkable when a senator crosses party lines on a vote--even for nominees," Bumgarner said. Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political scientist who specializes in legislative politics, said some voting studies ignore consensus votes, where 98 to 100 senators vote the same way, which may inflate presidential support scores. But that’s not the case here. Matthew Hitt, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University, said it’s standard for advocacy groups to use a selected subset of key votes, but has a misleading effect here. "Sen. Heitkamp voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch, a signature achievement of President Trump’s first year," Hitt said. "So, excluding that vote from the scoring, as one example, does paint an incomplete and slightly unfairly negative view of her overall support for the key objectives of the Trump administration." Heitkamp was one of three Democrats who voted to confirm Gorsuch. Our ruling A North Dakota NRSC ad said, "Heitkamp has voted against Trump 68 percent of the time." That’s if you’re only looking at policy votes. When Cabinet and Supreme Court nominations are added to the mix, which is how both the source of the NRSC’s claim and traditional legislative trackers score presidential support, Hetikamp supports Trump about half the time. Experts described excluding nominations, like Neil Gorsuch’s, as misleading, as they play a key role in furthering Trump’s legislative agenda. We rate this statement Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | National Republican Senatorial Committee | null | null | null | 2018-02-09T11:16:53 | 2018-01-31 | ['None'] |
snes-01376 | Horrifying photographs posted on social media by a Nigerian politician depict slaves sold in Libya. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tortured-nigerian-slaves-in-libya/ | null | Viral Phenomena | null | Bethania Palma | null | Are These Images of Tortured Nigerian Slaves in Libya? | 4 December 2017 | null | ['Nigeria', 'Libya'] |
tron-00637 | Metallica’s James Hetfield Going Country | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/metallicas-james-hetfield-going-country/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Metallica’s James Hetfield Going Country | Mar 11, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00189 | Legislation to end visas for all Iranian students | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/iranianstudents/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Legislation to end visas for all Iranian students | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Iran'] |
pomt-09078 | My opponent here has accepted money from Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae (and) hosted subprime mortgage seminars. | half-true | /florida/statements/2010/jun/25/jeff-greene/greene-attacks-meek-role-subprime-market-mess/ | When the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate debated June 22, 2010, in West Palm Beach, Jeff Greene didn’t go more than 60 seconds into his opening statement before launching his first attack on Rep. Kendrick Meek. "My opponent here has accepted money from Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, hosted subprime mortgage seminars and failed to regulate the banks, causing the worst housing crisis in our nation’s history and causing Florida to be at the forefront of these foreclosures." Is Greene right about Meek getting money from these two government lenders and putting on seminars on how to get a subprime mortgage? Well, yes and no. Public records show Meek accepted campaign contributions in 2006 and 2008 from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation Political Action Committee, aka Freddie Mac PAC, and Federal National Mortgage Association Political Action Committee, aka Fannie Mae PAC (see here www.opensecrets.org). The Fannie Mae PAC, for example, contributed $2,000 to Meek’s campaign in 2006. The Freddie Mac PAC donated $1,000 in 2006 and 2008. In fact, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac PACs donated to many other candidates in those election years -- Republican and Democrat alike. Altogether, the Fannie Mae PAC shelled out more than $1.45 million in those two election cycles, and Freddie Mac handed out $542,000 more, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website affiliated with Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in U.S. politics and elections. So what about the seminars? As the U.S. housing market peaked in mid-2006 and later collapsed -- the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts registered 64,001 foreclosure filings in 2009, compared to 9,814 in 2006 -- Meek organized a handful of public forums that aimed to secure houses for first-time homeowners (see foreclosure statistics here www.miami-dadeclerk.com/property_mortgage_foreclosures.asp). According to a flier for one March 2007 conference, the event focused on how to steer aspiring buyers to homeownership. Other topics looked at how to repair credit, identify the right mortgage, and budget expenses. Eager to learn more about homeownership opportunities from representatives with different banks and mortgage companies, "hundreds" poured into Florida Memorial University’s Athletic Center in Miami Gardens on March 17, 2007, according to the Miami Times, a family-owned weekly newspaper that serves Miami-Dade’s African-American community. Dubbed the "Ten Weeks to Homeownership Conference," the Meek event brought not only the Miami congressman but other elected officials, including Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan and then-Miami Gardens Vice Mayor Oscar Braynon II, a onetime Meek intern. Also lending their names to the event were the Rotary Club of Opa-locka and the Dade County Alumnae Chapter, Delta Sigma Sorority. The March 2007 event, typical of similar homeowner forums Meek has organized, was held in conjunction with W.O.W. (With Ownership Wealth), a group the Congressional Black Caucus formed in 2001 with the aim of increasing homeownership rates among minorities. On a website for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are listed among the group’s "national sponsors." Calling the sessions "subprime mortgage seminars" is a stretch, we think. The subprime market targeted prospective home owners who had poor credit ratings or limited credit histories. But the forums also covered the areas of credit counseling and financial literacy. Furthermore, these forums are a mainstay in Meek’s district, which is northern Miami-Dade and southern Broward. Well before the subprime market existed, Meek held fairs on homeownership and credit repair. So did his mother, Carrie Meek, during the decade she served in Congress. "All the information you need to buy a home will be available to you at the fair, such as how to get the best financing, how to find a good house to buy, or if you just don't understand the home-buying process and don't want to get ripped off," Meek was quoted as saying in Miami Times. So while it’s true that Meek accepted money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it’s not fair to call the forums "subprime mortgage seminars." The agenda wasn’t just homeownership. Moreover, these forums have long been the norm in Meek’s district -- regardless of what was happening in the housing market. So we rate Greene’s statement Half True. | null | Jeff Greene | null | null | null | 2010-06-25T18:16:11 | 2010-06-22 | ['Freddie_Mac', 'Fannie_Mae'] |
snes-05486 | A photograph shows a chemtrail switch on a plane. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chemtrails-switch-photo/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Chemtrails Switch Photo | 15 December 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03145 | Hillary Clinton refused to see Gold Star Mothers | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/goldstarmothers/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Hillary Clinton refused to see Gold Star Mothers | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00485 | “Morgan Freeman: ‘Jailing Hillary’ Best Way To ‘Restore Public Faith In Govt’” | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/01/freeman-didnt-say-lock/ | null | fake-news | FactCheck.org | Saranac Hale Spencer | ['2016 elections'] | Freeman Didn’t Say ‘Lock Her Up’ | January 11, 2018 | 2018-01-11 19:13:55 UTC | ['Morgan_Freeman'] |
huca-00010 | "We expect the CPPIB, like other Crown corporations, to live up to the highest standards of ethics and behaviour and that is, in fact, exactly what it is doing." | some baloney | https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/10/18/baloney-meter-morneau-cppib_a_23565098/?utm_hp_ref=ca-baloney-meter | null | null | Finance Minister Bill Morneau during question period Monday in the House of Commons. | Andy Blatchford | null | 'Some Baloney' In Bill Morneau Saying Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Has Highest Ethical Standards | 10/18/2018 11:49 EDT | null | ['None'] |
snes-03727 | Trump hotels are being renamed to eliminate use of the name 'Trump.' | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-removes-name-from-hotels/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Trump Just Removed His Name from His Hotels Due to Plummeting Business? | 23 October 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01715 | Disney is giving away free theme park tickets to Facebook users. | scam | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/free-disney-theme-park-tickets-scam/ | null | Inboxer Rebellion | null | David Mikkelson | null | ‘Free Disney Theme Park Tickets’ Scam | 1 May 2012 | null | ['Facebook', 'The_Walt_Disney_Company'] |
abbc-00307 | The claim: Prime Minister Tony Abbott says growth in spending is lower under the Coalition than it was under Labor. | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-29/tony-abbott-labor-spent-like-drunken-sailors-spin/6495670 | The claim: Prime Minister Tony Abbott says growth in spending is lower under the Coalition than it was under Labor. | ['economic-trends', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'liberals', 'abbott-tony', 'budget', 'australia'] | null | null | ['economic-trends', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'liberals', 'abbott-tony', 'budget', 'australia'] | Fact check: Tony Abbott's claim Labor spent like 'drunken sailors' in office is spin | Thu 28 May 2015, 11:09pm | null | ['Tony_Abbott', 'Coalition_(Australia)', 'Australian_Labor_Party'] |
snes-05303 | A New York artist named Lana Newstrom creates and sells "invisible art." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/invisible-art/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | FALSE: New York Artist Creates ‘Art’ That Is Invisible | 29 September 2014 | null | ['New_York_City'] |
pomt-11638 | A case before Washington’s Supreme Court seeks to effectively end public labor unions. | false | /new-york/statements/2018/jan/17/andrew-cuomo/unions-would-suffer-not-end-because-supreme-court-/ | Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in his State of the State address that a Supreme Court decision could end public labor unions. Cuomo said the case would be a blow to workers in New York state, which is home to the highest percentage of union workers in the country. "A case before Washington’s Supreme Court seeks to effectively end public labor unions," Cuomo said. "We will await the decision in the Janus case, but we must do all in our power to protect collective bargaining, the right to organize, and preserve workers’ rights." Cuomo did not say what actions the state would take to protect unions if the Supreme Court rules against them. The case he referred to will be heard by the court next month and decided later this year. It involves a state employee in Illinois and the union that represents him. Is Cuomo right that the court’s decision on the case would end public labor unions? Details on the case The case involves Mark Janus, an Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services employee, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. AFSCME represents workers at the agency where Janus works. He is not a member of the union, but money is still taken out of his paycheck to support it. He believes forcing non-members like him to pay union fees violates their constitutional right to free speech. "I’m forced to pay money to a union that then supports political causes I don’t agree with," Janus said in an interview with Illinois Policy, a conservative think tank. If the court sides with Janus, non-members would no longer have to pay those fees. The decision would only apply to public sector unions. Unions are allowed to charge non-members a fee less than the amount of full dues because of a different Supreme Court decision in 1977. The court ruled in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that non-members can still be required to make some payments to unions because the union negotiates for all workers, not just those who pay dues. Money from non-members may not be used for any of the union’s political campaigns. AFSCME spends millions of dollars each election cycle supporting Democrats, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The union also lobbies lawmakers on issues it believes important to workers, like paid family leave. Analysis by experts Unions would suffer financially from the decision, but not end altogether, experts said. "No, it doesn't mean the end of unions, and I certainly disagree with the governor about it," said Lee Adler, a senior extension associate at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "It’s a very serious challenge to unions, there’s no question about it." Public unions would have to do the same amount of work with fewer resources. Non-members would no longer have to pay fees, but unions would still have to represent them in contract negotiations and grievances. "Unions are no different than any other organization," said Celine McNicholas, labor counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, an economic research organization. "It’s very difficult for an organization to be required to provide services to people who do not provide payment for those services." That may limit the power of what unions can accomplish, but the decision would not end collective bargaining or worker representation. It would just make those services harder to provide. "There is that core of truth to what Cuomo is saying," said Vin Bonventre, professor of law at Albany Law School. "Claiming that it is going to destroy unions is far too broad a statement." Some states have already passed laws to prevent unions from collecting payments from non-members. Public employees still organize in those states. Florida, for example, has had such a law for more than 70 years, but AFSCME still has more than 60 locals in the state. Our ruling Cuomo said "a case before Washington’s Supreme Court seeks to effectively end public labor unions." The case presents a challenge for public labor unions that have been able to collect revenue from non-members. If the court sides with Janus, non-members of public unions would not have to pay union fees. But his claim that it would end those unions is an exaggeration, experts said. Cuomo's office did not respond to our inquiry about his claim. The statement is not accurate. We rate it False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Andrew Cuomo | null | null | null | 2018-01-17T15:33:51 | 2018-01-03 | ['None'] |
pomt-01245 | Austin mayoral candidate "Steve Adler admitted his law firm worked with Koch Industries for nearly a decade." | mostly true | /texas/statements/2014/nov/14/mike-martinez/mike-martinez-says-steve-adler-admitted-his-law-fi/ | Austin mayoral hopeful Mike Martinez says his opponent in a December 2014 runoff conceded his law firm helped out Koch Industries, the Kansas-based conglomerate owned by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch whose backing of conservative causes probably doesn’t play well among the city’s preponderance of Democratic voters. Martinez told reporters Nov. 12, 2014: "Last night, Steve Adler admitted his law firm worked with Koch Industries for nearly a decade. But Steve Adler still hasn’t come clean about what work his law firm did for the Koch Brothers, and how much money they made from it." By email, Martinez campaign spokesman Nick Hudson said Martinez was referring to Adler telling KVUE-TV, Channel 24 in Austin, for a news story aired Nov. 11, 2014: "My understanding from talking to my law partner is that back in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s, he did some work advising Koch on some cases; I was not involved in any of those." Martinez told KVUE: "If his law firm benefited from working with the Koch brothers, then he benefited from working with the Koch brothers." Web pages There’s no Koch mention on the website for Barron & Adler LLP, where Adler is described as a co-founding partner. The firm, which focuses on eminent domain and condemnation issues, came to be in 1983, which would have been the year after Adler graduated from law school. Martinez pointed out a description of Adler’s firm that listed Koch Industries among the firm’s "representative clients" until it was amended shortly before the Nov. 4, 2014, election that launched Adler and Martinez toward their runoff. Martinez said his campaign’s copy of the FindLaw.com entry listing Koch Industries was downloaded in October 2014. We spotted a similar Koch notation in a FindLaw.com web page for Adler’s firm downloaded by the online Wayback Machine in December 2003. Aside from Koch Industries, proclaimed clients at the time included: May Department Stores, Inc.; McDonald's Corp.; Nations Bank; Sears, Roebuck & Co.; Southland Corp.; Trammell Crow, and Weingarten Realty Investors. And separately at our request, researchers at the Texas State Law Library checked legal directories from the 1980s and emailed us a 1989 Martindale-Hubble Law Directory entry listing Koch Industries among a dozen representative clients of the Austin law firm Barron, Graham & Adler. So, Adler’s firm previously wanted it known it did work for Koch Industries. Attorney interviews Seeking detail about the firm’s Koch work, we spoke by phone with Adler; attorney Mike Barron, described like Adler as a founding partner of the firm; and lawyer/mediator Sam Graham, formerly with the firm. Adler reaffirmed he personally never worked with a Koch company, though he said he believes Barron and possibly another lawyer helped a Koch entity in the 1970s and, he thinks, early-to-mid 1980s. Adler said that after he graduated from law school, he worked for another firm for a year and then did work for the firm which he joined in 1984 or 1985. Generally, Adler told us, his understanding is Koch was asking for the firm’s advice on acquiring pipeline easements in Texas off and on over about a decade. Barron and Graham said in separate interviews Koch enlisted the firm for a spell in the mid-1980s because it wanted to build a private pipeline to carry jet fuel from the Gulf coast near Corpus Christi to San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Dallas/Fort Worth. Koch, Barron said, "hired us to shepherd them through" buying rights-of-way from landowners along the desired route. Graham said the firm also was committed to filing eminent-domain lawsuits for Koch if needed to access the desired land. But, Graham said, Koch succeeded in negotiating the rights-of-way without having to go to court. Barron said Koch paid the firm a retainer of about $2,500 or $5,000 and the firm billed monthly against the retainer for its services. He said its advisory work started in 1984 and ended in 1985 or started in 1985 and ended in 1986. Graham said the firm probably made less than $10,000 from the work, which he said took place in 1985 or 1987. Adler might not have been employed by the firm when the Koch work started, Barron and Graham each said, and he was not involved in the Koch work. "Steve never touched the file," which no longer exists, Barron said. "I did it all." Koch spokesman singles out Barron To our queries, a Washington, D.C.-based Koch spokesman, Rob Tappan, said by email Barron was the only person at the firm that Koch worked with as it acquired the rights-of-way. Tappan said the pipeline, built in the late 1980s, carries gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from Corpus Christi to the Dallas/Fort Worth area with terminals in San Antonio, Austin and Waco. Our ruling Martinez said Adler admitted his law firm worked with Koch Industries for nearly a decade. We’re not judging here whether the firm’s work means anything about Adler vis a vis the Koch brothers and their views. But Adler did say his firm did work for Koch for a number of years, though other lawyers and Koch say the advisory work occurred over a few years. Also, like Adler, they say Adler had no role. We rate Martinez's claim -- which relies on Adler perhaps overstating the Koch activities -- 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 | Mike Martinez | null | null | null | 2014-11-14T15:43:27 | 2014-11-12 | ['Koch_Industries', 'Steven_Adler', 'Austin,_Texas'] |
snes-01265 | In a 2 January 2018 Twitter thread, Chelsea Clinton wished the Church of Satan a Happy New Year. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chelsea-clinton-church-satan/ | null | Religion | null | David Emery | null | Did Chelsea Clinton Tweet ‘Happy New Year’ to the Church of Satan? | 5 January 2018 | null | ['Chelsea_Clinton'] |
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.