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hoer-01193 | My Home is Burning Facebook Phishing and Malware | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/my-home-is-burning-facebook-phishing-and-malware-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | My Home is Burning Facebook Phishing and Malware Scam | December 29, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00192 | Muslim Stamp by U.S. Postal Service Commemorates Muslim Holidays | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/eid/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Muslim Stamp by U.S. Postal Service Commemorates Muslim Holidays | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-01045 | Did Keanu Reeves Give an Envelope of Cash to Pay for a Stranger's Kidney Transplant? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-keanu-reeves-help-pay-for-a-strangers-kidney-transplant-with-an-envelope-of-cash/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Keanu Reeves Help Pay for a Stranger’s Kidney Transplant With an Envelope of Cash? | 9 February 2018 | null | ['Keanu_Reeves'] |
pomt-06525 | We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. It’s 35 percent. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/oct/09/jim-sensenbrenner/gop-rep-jim-sensenbrenner-says-us-has-highest-corp/ | With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., was asked what the federal government could do to create jobs. The suburban Milwaukee congressman, who was first elected to the House in 1979, didn’t hesitate in replying. "We’ve got to address the fact that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world," Sensenbrenner told the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sept. 29, 2011. "It’s 35 percent." Sensenbrenner argued that if corporate taxes in the U.S. were lower than they are in other parts of the world, more U.S.-based multinational companies would "repatriate" their profits back to America, creating more jobs here. It’s Sensenbrenner’s opinion that lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate would create jobs. We can’t check an opinion. But we can check whether the rate is 35 percent and if it is the highest in the world. Sensenbrenner’s district director, Loni Hagerup, pointed to a 2011 report from the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development, a Paris-based group of 34 large, industrialized democracies. The widely quoted report says the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent, tops among the member countries. Next in line were France and Belgium (both 34 percent), and then Australia, Japan, Spain and Mexico (each 30 percent). Seems pretty straightforward. Sensenbrenner is right, right? Let’s first look at two points: 1. "Combined" corporate tax rate Some analysts, when comparing countries, use the Paris group’s report but cite a different figure -- the combined corporate tax rate, rather than merely the corporate tax rate. The combined rate includes not only federal but also state tax rates for corporations. The combined corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39.2 percent, which ranks second behind Japan’s 39.5 percent. But Sensenbrenner was asked what the federal government could do to create jobs, so the corporate tax rate -- not the combined rate -- is relevant here. 2. Limitations of the corporate rate We consulted experts at two Washington, D.C. research organizations -- Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge and Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Both said Sensenbrenner is correct in stating that the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent and that the rate is the highest in the world, but they added some context to the discussion. Williams said the corporate tax rate "is not a good measure of the taxes that corporations actually pay." While some corporations might pay the full 35 percent rate, many pay considerably less, depending on the types of investments they make, depreciation they take and other factors that reduce taxable income, he said. Hodge agreed. He added, however, that the "effective" federal tax rate (after deductions) that corporations pay is about 26 percent -- and that also is among the highest rates of all industrialized nations. Our conclusion Asked what the federal government could do to create jobs, Sensenbrenner said lower the "corporate tax rate," which he said was 35 percent and the highest in the world. A widely quoted annual report says the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent and is highest among 34 large, industrialized countries. Two experts agreed with the rate and the ranking. We rate Sensenbrenner’s claim True. | null | Jim Sensenbrenner | null | null | null | 2011-10-09T09:00:00 | 2011-09-29 | ['None'] |
snes-05348 | Donald Trump said that he will deport all Nigerians if he gets elected president. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-nigeria-quote/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | FALSE: Donald Trump Said He Would Deport All Nigerians | 18 January 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump'] |
tron-01218 | The Elderly Female Carjacker | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/elderly-carjacker/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | The Elderly Female Carjacker | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00285 | Claims Bernie Sanders “lied” in his convention speech in talking about Trump’s stance on the minimum wage. | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/trumps-press-conference/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Donald Trump | Lori Robertson | ['Presidential Election 2016', 'Clinton emails'] | Trump’s Press Conference | July 27, 2016 | [' Press conference – Wednesday, July 27, 2016 '] | ['None'] |
pomt-07532 | Three courts have found the new health care law constitutional and two have found it unconstitutional. | true | /rhode-island/statements/2011/apr/06/james-roosevelt/tufts-health-plan-ceo-says-judges-have-split-3-2-c/ | While Republicans have been trying to repeal last year's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Congress, critics have challenged the new health care law in court, mostly asserting that the provision that requires individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional. According to The Heritage Foundation, 27 states have sued or are planning to sue to block the law. On the WPRI interview program Newsmakers, aired April 3 and taped April 1, James Roosevelt Jr., chief executive officer of Tufts Health Plan, who is helping Rhode Island prepare for implementation of the law, was asked whether the effort should be delayed until the law's constitutionality has been resolved. "Two courts have found it's unconstitutional to have the individual mandate, the one that makes people take personal responsibility to have insurance. Three courts have found that it is constitutional," said Roosevelt. "It will also go through three different courts of appeal. So the Supreme Court will get it with different points of view. I think that preparing for the bill is really important." We were curious whether Roosevelt's scorecard was correct, especially in light of assertions of some critics that the law is unconstitutional based on a ruling in Florida. PolitiFact National last looked at the issue on Feb. 6 after President Obama, in an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, was asked about the Florida decision. Obama said 12 judges had rejected "the notion that the health care law was unconstitutional." PolitiFact ruled that Mr. Obama's statement was False. Although a dozen court cases had been dismissed for procedural reasons, two federal judges -- both appointed by Democrats -- had ruled that the individual mandate was legal and two others -- both appointed by Republicans -- had ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional. When a check of the White House's health care blog turned up no reference to a fifth case, Roosevelt's office called our attention to Margaret Peggy Lee Mead et al. versus Eric H. Holder Jr. et al, which was decided in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Feb. 22. The five plaintiffs argued that the requirement to buy insurance required them to purchase something they would never use. Three had also objected to the mandate on religious grounds, saying that God would provide for them. Two objected because the health plan would not cover their holistic treatments. Judge Gladys Kessler, a Clinton appointee, upheld the law after ruling that Congress has clear authority under the federal Commerce Clause to regulate insurance markets. In her ruling, she declared that most of the millions of Americans without health insurance "consume medical services they cannot pay for," and "those who choose not to purchase health insurance will ultimately get a 'free ride' on the backs of those Americans who have made responsible choices to provide for the illness we all must face at some point in our lives." The new law, she said, was a constitutionally acceptable way to stabilize the price of health insurance. Kessler, in granting the government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, rejected the religious arguments, saying the purchase requirement would be an insignificant affront to their religious beliefs. So the score is three rulings upholding the law, two finding it unconstitutional. For now. We rate Roosevelt's claim True. | null | James Roosevelt | null | null | null | 2011-04-06T00:01:00 | 2011-04-01 | ['None'] |
goop-01425 | Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Watson Got Flirty At Oscar Party? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/leonardo-dicaprio-emma-watson-flirting-oscar-party-romance/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Watson Got Flirty At Oscar Party? | 11:42 am, March 8, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00282 | Chipotle $100 Gift Card Giveaway | scam | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chipotle-gift-card-giveaway/ | null | Fraud & Scams | null | David Mikkelson | null | Chipotle $100 Gift Card Giveaway | 31 July 2018 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00075 | “Poverty levels rose in 2015″ | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/state-of-the-nation-address-1-president-cyril-ramaphosas-claims-weighed-up/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact-checked: Pres Cyril Ramaphosa’s first-ever State of the Nation Address | 2018-02-16 06:36 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04851 | North Carolina no longer considers the $20 bill to be legal tender. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-20-bills-fake/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | North Carolina No Longer Accepts $20 Bills | 27 April 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00618 | Allow small business owners to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/gop-pledge-o-meter/promise/644/give-small-businesses-a-tax-deduction/ | null | gop-pledge-o-meter | John Boehner | null | null | Give small businesses a tax deduction | 2010-12-22T09:57:30 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09549 | Uses headlines to portray Gov. Rick Perry as beholden to special interests. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2010/feb/04/kay-bailey-hutchison/kay-bailey-hutchison-ad-pours-out-headlnes-casting/ | U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, seeking the Republican nomination for governor, unleashed a TV commercial Feb. 4 casting Gov. Rick Perry as beholden to special interests and lobbyists, including two who served as his top gubernatorial assistants. The ad flashes what look like seven ominous newspaper headlines about Perry before a narrator says: "There are two ways to get things done in Austin. Hire a lobbyist and donate to this governor. Or elect a new one." We wondered if Hutchison’s "New One" ad accurately reflected original headlines and news stories. (For this Truth-O-Meter item, we are focusing on Hutchison's use of the headlines — a common campaign technique. We are not assessing the accuracy of those articles or her overall Perry critique.) Hutchison spokesman Joe Pounder initially said every headline in the ad matched original published headlines. He later said the ad presents "pull quotes," meaning excerpts from articles and not necessarily the original headlines. Using Nexis, an electronic news retrieval service, we found that four of the quotations presented in Hutchison’s ad were identical to published headlines on news stories. Hutchison’s campaign showed that a fifth also was correct. The correctly quoted headlines are: "Perry to Name Lobbyist As New Chief of Staff;" "Lobbyists Revolving In, Out of Perry Staff Positions;" "Perry Shakes Down Special Interests, Lobbyists;" "Companies That Gave to Perry Got Road Contract;" and "Perry’s Top Donors Get Business." We noticed, though, that the headline about Perry shaking down special interests topped an editorial—not a news story—published in The Houston Chronicle about Perry in July 2000. At the time, Perry was lieutenant governor. He succeeded George W. Bush as governor in late 2000. The Chronicle editorial questioned a Perry letter asking lobbyists to buy $1,000 tickets to an upcoming political fund-raiser. Perry, the newspaper opined, "has just made it abundantly clear that he knows no bounds when it comes to shaking down special interests with business before the Texas Legislature." According to the editorial, Perry's letter asked lobbyists to specify how much money each of their corporate and group clients would be sending the lieutenant governor's way—potentially fostering illegal corporate donations or encouraging lobbyists to see links between donations and state business, the newspaper said. "With his latest fund-raising letter holding legislative lobbyists responsible for money contributed by their clients, Perry explicitly links campaign money to business before the Legislature," the editorial states. Two of the headline-like quotations in Hutchison’s ad were not previously published headlines on news articles: "Perry’s Former Chief of Staff is A Lobbyist for Merck" and "A Shroud of Secrecy Has Descended on the Governor’s Office." (The published headlines for those articles: "Reluctant governor yields on HPV shots; Calling a veto useless, Perry chides legislators for reversing his vaccination order" and "Perry refusal to release memo nothing new, He cites attorney-client privilege, this time in the execution controversy.") We confirmed, though, that the two quotations presented to look like headlines accurately reflected portions of the related news articles. It’s not unusual for campaign ads to present excerpts from newspaper stories as a stream of headlines. It’s also not rare for a candidate to quote an editorial as news reportage, even though editorials are opinion pieces. Still, a voter could conclude that Hutchison’s ad consists entirely of genuine clear-cut news headlines. That’s not so. We give her use of the headlines a rating of Mostly True. | null | Kay Bailey Hutchison | null | null | null | 2010-02-04T16:54:08 | 2010-02-04 | ['Rick_Perry'] |
pomt-10073 | Bush's tax cuts for high earners "have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jan/16/nancy-pelosi/tax-cuts-rich-deficit/ | At a news conference on Jan. 8, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asked about the U.S. budget deficit. The reporter noted that the Congressional Budget Office projected a relatively small deficit in 2012 if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of 2010 and tax rates go back to what they were during the Clinton administration. "You face a major decision next year on tax rates, since the rates do expire at the end of 2010," the reporter said. "Isn't it inevitable that many taxpayers will face a significant tax increase in 2011?" "Let me just say that the tax cuts at the high end that you were referencing have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit," Pelosi said. "Don't take my word for it, that's the word of the Congressional Budget Office when the Republicans had control of the Congress." She continued, "Put me down as clearly as you possibly can as one who wants to have those tax cuts for the wealthiest in America repealed," adding that it should happen "as soon as possible." She cited the same cutoff point that Barack Obama used during the campaign: Taxes should go up for people making about $250,000 or more. Pelosi was clear about her position, but we wondered about her assertion that the Bush tax cuts "at the high end" were indeed "the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." When we started this item, we thought it would be relatively straightforward. How wrong we were. We should start off with the easy stuff: First, there is no CBO report that says tax cuts for the wealthiest are the biggest contributor to the deficit. We asked Speaker Pelosi's office about her statement, and they pointed us to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Congressional Budget Office data show that the tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to the re-emergence of substantial budget deficits in recent years," said the center's analysis. It also created a handy pie chart that shows tax cuts are responsible for 48 percent of the costs of new legislation between 2001 and 2007. This is second to military spending, the Iraq war and homeland security spending, which together contributed to 35 percent of legislative costs. But that didn't satisfy us, because that 48 percent number included all tax cuts, not just for the wealthy. It also shows only the costs of new legislation, not the overall deficit. So we went asking around: For what part of the deficit are tax cuts at the "high end" responsible? "The real problem is that the deficit is a composite of revenues and spending. You can't say where we would be if we hadn't had any part of that," said Bob Williams, the principal research associate of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. (He also worked for the Congressional Budget Office from 1984 to 2006.) Having said that, Williams said it's very unlikely that overall tax cuts for the wealthy outpaced the tax cuts for everybody else. So what is "the high end"? During the campaign, Barack Obama called for repealing the tax cuts on singles making $200,000 or more and couples making $250,000 or more. This is roughly the top 3 percent of taxpayers. The Tax Policy Center analyzed that plan and found that if Obama raised the rates on that group, it would generate roughly $350 billion over 10 years. Conversely, leaving in place the Bush tax cuts for everyone else would come to $850 billion over 10 years. Another way to look at it: The Tax Policy Center calculated what share of the federal tax changes each income bracket gained from the Bush tax cuts. The top 5 percent of earners (those making about $225,000 or more) received 30.5 percent of the tax benefits in 2008, according to their analysis. But conversely, the bottom 95 percent of tax payers got 70 percent. Zoom out from the top 5 percent to the top 20 percent, and their share is 47.8 percent. Critics of the Bush tax cuts can call that disproportionate, but it's still less than half and therefore not "the biggest." All of this indicates that Pelosi is mistaken. Although the wealthy did get big benefits from the Bush tax cuts, their benefits did not outweigh those of everyone else put together. Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan nonprofit group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said there are three major contributors to the worsening budget picture presented by the Congressional Budget Office: tax cuts, the Iraq war and the economic downturn. "Within the tax cuts, the largest numbers went to the middle class, and those are the tax cuts that are most likely to be extended," she said. "I don't see how you could read the numbers to say otherwise." Certainly tax cuts for high earners have increased the deficit. Pelosi might have made a more convincing case if she had said high earners received a disproportionate benefit from the Bush tax cuts. But Pelosi said tax cuts for "the high end" were the "biggest" contributor to the federal deficit. We looked at the numbers from a bunch of different angles and found no evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy are larger than those of everyone else combined. In fact, all the numbers we looked at showed that tax cuts for middle and lower incomes represent a bigger slice of the overall revenue pie. We think that evidence directly contradicts her, so we rate her statement False. | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2009-01-16T12:21:54 | 2009-01-08 | ['None'] |
abbc-00044 | The claim: Health Minister Sussan Ley says subsidising paracetamol that can be bought without a prescription at "the supermarket and corner stores for around $2" is costing the government $73 million a year. | in-the-red | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/panadol-on-the-pbs/6434462 | The claim: Health Minister Sussan Ley says subsidising paracetamol that can be bought without a prescription at "the supermarket and corner stores for around $2" is costing the government $73 million a year. | ['health-policy', 'pharmaceuticals', 'australia'] | null | null | ['health-policy', 'pharmaceuticals', 'australia'] | Fact check: How much is subsidising cheap paracetamol costing the government? | Wed 13 May 2015, 2:40am | null | ['None'] |
farg-00169 | The National Rifle Association “loses as many races as it wins.” | cherry picks | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/murphy-misses-nra-track-record/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Robert Farley | ['gun control'] | Murphy Misses on NRA Track Record | October 4, 2017 | 2017-10-04 22:53:21 UTC | ['None'] |
snes-06234 | A virus deadly to dogs has been spreading in the canine population of the U.S. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dog-flu/ | null | Medical | null | David Mikkelson | null | Dog Flu | 26 September 2005 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-00540 | Did Melania Trump Plagiarize a Memorial Day Tweet From Michelle Obama? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/melania-trump-plagiarize-memorial-day-tweet-michelle-obama/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did Melania Trump Plagiarize a Memorial Day Tweet From Michelle Obama? | 29 May 2018 | null | ['Michelle_Obama'] |
pomt-12992 | Social Security "was basically invented" at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; "that's where Franklin Roosevelt got the idea." | true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/dec/16/russ-feingold/was-social-security-basically-invented-university-/ | Social Security and Medicare reform could be front and center in 2017. Key funds for Social Security are likely to be depleted by 2034, according to a June 2016 report, and Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund may be insolvent by 2028. President-Elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would "save" Social Security, a program that will provide $900 billion in benefits to more than 60 million people in 2016 alone. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress — notably House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) — have their own plans, which could largely privatize Medicare. In light of those challenges and policy differences, we returned to a statement about Social Security that struck us during the 2016 election. It’s from Russ Feingold, who said in an October television interview during his U.S. Senate race that the idea for Social Security "was basically invented up on Bascom Hill, my alma mater here; that's where Franklin Roosevelt got the idea." Is Feingold correct? Social Security’s history When we asked Feingold spokesman Josh Orton for backup, he pointed to several Wisconsinites and people tied to the University of Wisconsin-Madison — where Feingold graduated in 1975 — who were influential in developing Social Security. Among them: Edwin Witte, a graduate of UW-Madison and economics professor there from 1933-1957. Roosevelt appointed Witte chairman of the Presidential Committee on Economic Security, which essentially crafted the plan for Social Security in 1935. Arthur Altmeyer, a UW-Madison graduate and professor who also sat on the committee. Altmeyer later served on the federal Social Security Board and was the first Social Security commissioner. Roosevelt called Altmeyer "Mr. Social Security," according to the Social Security Administration. UW-Madison professor John Commons, under whom Witte and Altmeyer studied. Commons was a labor economist at UW from 1904-1933 where he helped develop the state’s employee compensation program and civil service law. He was known as the "spiritual father of Social Security," according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Wilbur Cohen, who served as a research assistant to Witte after graduating from UW-Madison in 1934. Cohen sat on the Committee on Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council and also advised the Social Security Board. Current UW-Madison professor Pamela Herd agreed that Wisconsinites tied to the university were key figures in the development of Social Security. "There were a lot of people involved in the creation of this program, but some of the most important players were from Wisconsin," said Herd, an expert on Social Security. Our rating Feingold said that the idea for Social Security "was basically invented up on Bascom Hill, my alma mater here; that's where Franklin Roosevelt got the idea." Historical accounts show, and an expert agrees, that officials who helped propose and initially operate Social Security had deep ties to UW-Madison. We rate Feingold’s statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/45a8e175-79f3-480e-9cd6-be734714ce85 | null | Russ Feingold | null | null | null | 2016-12-16T06:00:00 | 2016-10-07 | ['Franklin_D._Roosevelt', 'University_of_Wisconsin–Madison'] |
pomt-08296 | Says that under Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers have had "standing orders" not to inquire into the immigration status of people unless they're under arrest. | half-true | /texas/statements/2010/nov/01/bill-white/bill-white-says-under-rick-perry-state-troopers-ha/ | Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill White recently tromped into touchy territory -- whether state law officers enforce federal immigration law. White, interviewed Oct. 15 by the Texas Tribune's Evan Smith, started down that road by saying Houston, where he was mayor, is not a "sanctuary city." The term "sanctuary city" is rooted in the 1980s when some American churches provided sanctuary to thousands of unauthorized Central American migrants fleeing civil war in their homelands. In a March article, we rated False a statement by the then-chairwoman of the Republican Party of Texas that as mayor, White "offered sanctuary to illegal immigrants." A congressional report once listed Houston among localities with sanctuary policies, but the only overt action on White's watch was the decision, at the end of his six years in office, to join the Secure Communities program -- a federal initiative intended to make it harder, not easier, for illegal immigrants to remain in this country. In the Tribune interview, White said: "You don't have sanctuary cities by and large in the state of Texas — that's a myth, a complete myth and fabrication. We arrest people every day. (The Houston Police Department) arrests people every week who are non-citizens who commit crimes. The (Texas) Department of Public Safety, under Rick Perry, for the last 9-and-a-half years, has had standing orders that it would not do routine civil immigration work — would not inquire about immigration status for people unless they arrested people for crimes." We wondered if White's right that state troopers have standing orders not to ask anyone's immigration status unless they're under arrest. We asked White's campaign for back-up. In an e-mail, spokeswoman Katy Bacon stressed a May 2010 Tribune article and what the publication described as a relevant state document, "Enforcement of Federal Immigration Statutes." That document opens with a 1978 policy statement by then-U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, suggesting that local police forces "do not stop and question, detain, arrest, or place 'an immigration hold' on any persons not suspected of crimes, solely on the grounds that they may be deportable aliens." The document says, in part: "As enforcement of U.S. immigration law is not the primary responsibility of the (DPS), the following policy is adopted to guide department members." It goes on: "Members of this department will not engage in the enforcement of federal Immigration statutes by conducting road checks or business and residence searches unless assisting appropriate federal officers who have properly requested such assistance." The next section states: "Members may arrest aliens under the following situations: 1. When serving a valid warrant after checking to see that the warrant is current. 2. For violation of state laws the same as any U. S. citizen." The next section states: "Members will not arrest without a warrant an alien solely on the suspicion that he has entered the country illegally." Next, we asked DPS to confirm the authenticity of the policy. In the meantime, we found similar text posted online by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission in 2008. On what looks like two web pages from the DPS's internal website, guidance identical to what the Tribune published is presented under: "General Manual, Chapter 5." In addition, we found a "statewide agreement" on the Sunset site prefaced by an April 1, 1990, interoffice memo from Joe E. Milner, then the agency's director, stating that a lawsuit against DPS regarding arrests of illegal aliens "has been settled. As part of that settlement, we are to provide all commissioned officers of the department with this attached statewide agreement, which enunciates our agreement and policy with regard to· the handling of illegal aliens." Dated February 1990, the 16-point agreement says DPS shall not enforce federal civil statutes and regulations regarding immigration or question any person, including those stopped on traffic or criminal charges, "about their right to be in or to remain in the United States" or "about their nationality, national origin or place of birth for the purpose of enforcing the civil immigration laws." Talk about clear-cut orders! We wanted DPS's perspective on the document, in part because it appears to be more than 20 years old. What did it settle? Does it still apply? DPS spokesman Tom Vinger declined to comment on this front. Earlier, he said the policy published by the Tribune is "outdated." His e-mail continues: "All of our law enforcement policies are undergoing legal and best practices review, and will be updated as needed." We didn't land any document from DPS spelling out its policy. Instead, Vinger quoted DPS Director Steve McCraw saying that under DPS's "operational policy," if an officer has "reasonable suspicion that a person is in violation of a federal immigration law the department will refer that person" to the U.S. Border Patrol or the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement "for immediate action." "Can DPS troopers ask someone if they are here illegally when they pull someone over?" McCraw said via Vinger. "A trooper does not ask someone whether they are here legally or illegally when they are stopped; however, once a trooper has a reasonable suspicion that a federal violation has occurred, including immigration, the appropriate federal agency is contacted immediately to take appropriate action." How long has this "operational" policy been in place? "Several years," said Vinger. "I don’t have a specific time frame." To recap, White didn't show us evidence of so-called standing orders forbidding officers to ask into anyone's immigration status unless they're under arrest. And DPS didn't cough up a document spelling out a different policy. However, the agency does say its officers do not ask into the legality of anyone's presence here. That seems to hint at standing orders. Without those orders in hand, though, we rate White's statement Half True. | null | Bill White | null | null | null | 2010-11-01T06:00:00 | 2010-10-15 | ['Texas_Department_of_Public_Safety', 'Rick_Perry'] |
pomt-11478 | Legendary actor Kirk Douglas dead, 4 days before his 101st birthday. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/mar/05/your-action-news-3/fake-news-circulates-death-hoax-about-kirk-douglas/ | A death hoax has been circulating for months that actor Kirk Douglas died. "Legendary actor Kirk Douglas dead, 4 days before his 101st birthday," stated a headline by Your Action News 3 which has circulated since December. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. We found no evidence that the famous movie star had died. The fake story said that Douglas died of natural causes and that his family released a statement saying he "went comfortably and was in no pain" and "lived a long and prosperous life that people only dream of." In 2014, People magazine accidentally published the actor’s obituary on its website. "DO NOT PUB Kirk Douglas Dies" the headline read. The magazine removed the obit from it's website after reports about the premature obit circulated on social media. Many news organizations pre-write obits of famous people. We searched for mainstream news reports about Douglas and found no reports that he had died. When Douglas turned 101 in December, the Daily Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y., where the actor’s sister lives quoted the actor’s niece Marilyn Gordon. "Uncle Kirk is doing great," Gordon said. "They're going to have a big party for him (Saturday)." Douglas survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and a stroke in 1996. "I never, ever thought I would live to be 100. That’s shocked me, really. And it’s sad, too," he said in a 2017 interview. We sent an email to Your Action News 3 and did not get a reply. Our fact-checking friends at Snopes have debunked other death hoaxes by the same website about Morgan Freeman, Bob Barker, and George Zimmerman. Douglas is still alive, despite a fake story that said he was dead. We rate this story Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Your Action News 3 | null | null | null | 2018-03-05T12:56:12 | 2017-12-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-10604 | Obama "remains silent" and "is never asked how he feels about his church honoring Farrakhan." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/23/chain-email/obama-decried-farrakhans-racism/ | An attack e-mail says the church Barack Obama attends, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave a lifetime award to Louis Farrakhan, and that Obama "remained silent" and wasn't even asked about. We checked out the award claim and found it to be Mostly True. A magazine closely related to the church gave Farrakhan an award for lifetime achievement. For more on this, see the statement here . But Barack Obama definitely did not remain silent about it. The award received widespread attention after Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote about it on Jan. 15, 2008. Later that day, the campaign released a statement in which Obama himself said: "I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree." Cohen said in his column that he had asked the campaign about the award and received a response from a spokesperson saying Obama did not agree with the award. The blog "Talking Points Memo" said it too asked Obama about Farrakhan and received the statement from Obama rejecting the award. After the statement was released, it was reported in other news outlets as well. For these reasons, we find the e-mail's claims about Obama's response to the award to be False. UPDATE: Barack Obama resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ on May 31, 2008, after church pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. made controversial remarks about U.S. foreign policy and other matters. Obama said he intends to join another church after the election. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2008-01-23T00:00:00 | 2008-01-18 | ['Barack_Obama', 'Louis_Farrakhan'] |
pomt-01941 | The United States is the only developed country in the world without paid maternity leave. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jun/24/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-us-differs-developed-world-paid-/ | President Barack Obama convened the first Working Families Summit in Washington this week to unite his administration, labor organizations and progressive groups around his domestic agenda. Ahead of the conference (and a visit to Chipotle), Obama published an op-ed in the Huffington Post on June 23, 2014, to make a push for what he called "family-friendly workplace policies." Among the issues he hopes to pursue is a paid maternity leave for mothers. In his piece, Obama claimed, "The United States is the only developed country in the world without paid maternity leave." That’s quite the statement. But is it true? The Family Medical Leave Act requires employers with 50 or more workers to allow parents 12 weeks of job-protected leave annually to care for a newborn. While this means those individuals can take the time off without fear of losing their job, in most cases the leave is unpaid. Three states — California, New Jersey and Rhode Island — offer paid family leave through employee-paid payroll taxes. And some employers offer the perk even though it’s not required. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12 percent of private industry workers had access to some kind of paid family leave. How does that compare to the rest of the world? We asked the White House for the source of Obama’s claim. They pointed us to a report by the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations. The report looked at 170 countries where maternity benefit information was available. It found that only two don’t provide some kind of cash benefit to women during maternity leave: Papua New Guinea and the United States. That seems pretty convincing in its own right, but as the report notes, not all benefits are equal. Some countries cap the payments at low levels or exclude large portions of the population from eligibility. Obama specified in his statement that he was comparing the United States to developed countries, so that’s what we’ll focus on. For its part, the report labeled 41 countries and territories "developed economies." It’s pretty clear that the United States provides the fewest benefits to the smallest percentage of its people. Of the developed countries, not only is it the only one that does not offer or require paid maternity leave, it is also mandates the shortest period of time off. The United Kingdom and Australia provide the most time off, with both countries allowing a full year of leave, though not all of it is paid. At 13 weeks of maternity leave (all paid), Iceland has the second shortest leave, behind the U.S. at 12 weeks. The International Labor Organization also categorizes each country by what percentage of the population actually receives cash benefits for maternity leave. Of the developed countries, the United States is in the bracket with the smallest percentages, with an estimated 10 to 32 percent of the population eligible for paid leave. No other developed country is below 33 percent. Of the 41 developed countries, 17 provide paid time off for between 90 and 100 percent of their populations, including many Western European countries like Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K., but also Estonia and Czech Republic. But some countries exclude certain portions of their populations from eligibility, making it far from a universal benefit. Temporary workers do not receive cash benefits in Canada, home workers don’t receive maternity leave in Norway and Switzerland, and some civil servants don’t get any in Japan. Canada also excludes migrant workers and individuals that own more than 40 percent of their business, and it requires women to have at least 600 hours of insurable employment to be eligible. The result is that in some countries, large portions of the population don’t end up actually being covered. In Spain and Japan, between 33 and 65 percent of workers are covered, the fewest other than the United States. The International Labor Organization also sets a standard for what countries should provide in a benefits package: 1) women should receive at least 14 weeks off; 2) they should be reimbursed at least two-thirds of their previous earnings and 3) the benefit should be paid almost entirely by the state through public funds or social security. The United States is the only developed country to meet none of the benchmarks (and one of just 14 studied worldwide). But six other countries fall short of at least one goal. Canada — Provides payments less than two-thirds of woman’s previous earnings (55 percent) Denmark — Doesn’t pay for benefit entirely through public funds (mix of public and employer contribution) Germany — Doesn’t pay for benefit entirely through public funds (mix of public and employer contribution) Iceland — Maternity leave is less than 14 weeks (13 weeks) Malta — Doesn’t pay for benefit entirely through public funds (mix of public and employer contribution) Slovakia — Provides payments less than two-thirds of woman’s previous earnings (65 percent i.e. very, very close) Our ruling Obama said, "The United States is the only developed country in the world without paid maternity leave." The United States does not mandate cash benefits for workers on maternity leave at the federal level, and just a small fraction of its citizens live in states that require it or work for companies that provide it. In that regard, the United States is very different than the rest of the developed world, where at least some paid benefits exist in every country. It's worth noting, however, that paid maternity leave is far from a universal benefit in many developed countries. In some, as many as one-third of workers aren't actually covered for cash benefits, and six countries don't meet all of the International Labor Organizations guidelines for providing benefits. We rate Obama’s statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2014-06-24T16:42:33 | 2014-06-23 | ['United_States'] |
goop-02946 | Kanye West Getting “Revenge” On Kylie Jenner With Makeup Line? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kanye-west-makeup-kylie-jenner-cosmetics-feud-revenge/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kanye West Getting “Revenge” On Kylie Jenner With Makeup Line? | 10:38 am, March 9, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03160 | John Glenn versus Howard Metzenbaum | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/glenn-metzenbaum/ | null | politics | null | null | null | John Glenn versus Howard Metzenbaum | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['John_Glenn'] |
pomt-09009 | The state Legislature attempted to "outlaw stem cell research, passes bills about microchips in the brain, and talks about seceding from the Union." | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2010/jul/11/roy-barnes/former-governor-roy-barnes-said-georgia-passed-lau/ | Georgians, the rest of the country is laughing at you, former Gov. Roy Barnes says. And that means corporations are reluctant to relocate here and give you jobs. It's because your state Legislature has done some wacky things, according to the Democrat's latest campaign commercial, "Travel for Jobs." In this bid to win his old job back, Barnes took us on a trip down memory lane to recall some of the Legislature's stranger moments. "[I]t's hard for industry to take us seriously when the Legislature attempts to outlaw stem cell research, passes bills about microchips in the brain and talks about seceding from the union," an announcer said in the ad. Wait. Microchips? In the brain? And secession? Recently? The Barnes campaign sent us information on all three legislative attempts. All passed the Senate, then withered in the House. On stem cell research: The campaign cited 2009's Senate Bill 169, the Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act, sponsored by state Sen. Ralph Hudgens of Hull. Typically, when people discuss the stem cell research controversy, they're talking about "embryonic" stem cell research, which can destroy the embryo. This poses ethical problems for people who regard a human embryo as a human life. The legislation stated that the creation of all embryos "shall be solely for the purposes of initiating a human pregnancy." This means it would have barred scientists from creating human embryos for research. The bill does not ban embryonic stem cell research involving already-existing stem cell lines or lines from out of state. This was by design, Hudgens told PolitiFact Georgia. It passed the state Senate March 12, 2009. So state legislators did try to "outlaw" an important element of embryonic stem cell research, but not all of it. On microchips in the brain: Barnes cited SB 235, the Microchip Consent Act of 2010, sponsored by state Sen. Chip Pearson, a Republican from Dawsonville. It would have made it a misdemeanor to require a person to be implanted with the device beneath or in the skin. This includes the brain. Proponents had no evidence of large-scale abuses of the technology. "This is proactive," state Rep. Ed Setzler, who pushed the bill in the House, said at the time. It passed the Senate on Feb. 4. Therefore, while the state Senate did not pass "bills" on "microchips in the brain," it did pass one of them. And that one only cleared one chamber of the Legislature. On seceding from the Union: The Barnes camp pointed PolitiFact Georgia to Senate Resolution 632, which was also sponsored by Pearson. He could not be reached to clarify the bill's intent, so we analyzed the language ourselves and read an op-ed he wrote that was published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The six-page resolution does not specifically mention "secession," but it does lay out how and when states would do it. If the federal government creates laws that states think overstep its constitutional authority, they can "nullify" those laws, or declare them void. Here's where the possibility of secession comes into play. The bill lists six types of laws that, if enacted, would prompt the dissolution of the United States. Some, such as the declaration of martial law, are remote possibilities. Others are not, such as laws that limit the right to bear arms, "including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition." If such laws are passed, the federal government's powers would revert to the states, according to the resolution. States that want to form a new United States can do so. The rest can go off on their own. The resolution passed the state Senate April 1, 2009. In Pearson's op-ed, he disagreed with critics who said that the bill "will likely lead Georgia to secede from and disband the United States." It is an "extreme view" and "loose interpretation of the measure's language." That may be true, but whether the bill makes secession "likely" is a separate issue. The bill opens the door to it. Or as Barnes' commercial said, it "talks about seceding from the Union." We find that Barnes' ad is not entirely correct but does say many accurate things. Georgia's state Senate did try to outlaw types of embryonic stem cell research, though not all of it, as the ad suggests. It passed a law -- not "laws" -- on "microchips in the brain." And while a bill didn't use the word "secession," it raised the possibility and outlined what would trigger it. Barnes earns a Mostly True. | null | Roy Barnes | null | null | null | 2010-07-11T06:00:00 | 2010-07-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-08348 | Many of the companies bankrolling the ad campaign against Amendment 4 are recipients of a congressional bailout, in the form of humongous tax refunds earlier this year. | half-true | /florida/statements/2010/oct/27/chain-email/chain-e-mail-attacks-vote-no-4-backers-bulked-bail/ | Fact-checking chain e-mails doesn’t often carry twists like a Carl Hiaasen novel. You could say PolitiFact Florida just got lucky. We recently got our hands on an anonymous chain letter that landed in the in-box of Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact and Washington bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times. It delved into the often dense worlds of campaign finance, congressional bailouts and tax policy — then beseeched voters to visit the campaign website of Florida Hometown Democracy. That’s one of two of main political action committees wielding millions of dollars in their battle over Amendment 4, a Florida constitutional proposal on the Nov. 2, 2010, ballot that would put certain land use decisions directly before voters. Most of those millions — $10.5 million, in fact — have been raised by the main "Vote No on 4" effort. This e-mail purported to lift the veil on just whose cash had been flowing to "Vote No on 4." The biggest donor, it said, was the Florida Association of Realtors, followed by big home builders. Then came this claim, in all its bolded and underlined glory: "Here’s the killer: Many of the companies bankrolling the ad campaign against Amendment 4 are recipients of a congressional bailout, in the form of humongous tax refunds earlier this year." It later added: "So, when you see all those dire-sounding, fright-filled TV commercials, remember whose paying for them. You are." E-mail forwards are a notoriously unreliable form of campaign rhetoric, so with a big choice looming Nov. 2, we decided to run the "humongous tax refunds" claim through the Truth-O-Meter. First we were curious about the source of the e-mail, since we want to give the person behind a claim the chance to support it. We asked Wayne Garcia, communications director for Florida Hometown Democracy, if it originated with the campaign. It wasn’t a campaign e-mail, he said — he’d never seen it before. However, the idea was nothing new, and he pointed us to some evidence. The Hometown Democracy campaign made similar claims in a news release on Aug. 12, 2010. It listed major "Vote No on 4" campaign contributors such as Pulte Homes, Lennar Homes and KB Home that it said benefited from "billions in federal bailout money." Garcia also pointed us to news articles by the New York Times, Reuters and Builder Magazine that explained the tax refunds. We got to work with a few key questions: Did companies actually get a "bailout" in the form of "humongous tax refunds"? And did evidence about a handful of home builders support the claim that "many of the companies" behind "Vote No on 4" got a bailout? A bailout by any other name First, the bailout question. Any "rescue from financial distress" qualifies as a bailout to us. And last year, the National Association of Home Builders did indeed lobby Congress for — and win — a change in tax law that it argued was a "critical stimulus measure for the U.S. economy" that would provide "an infusion of monetary resources for firms struggling to retain workers and undertake economic activity." Technically — skip forward a few sentences if this word makes your eyes glaze over — it supported an expansion of the net operating loss carryback period, allowing businesses with losses to carry back deductions for five years instead of just two. As a National Association of Home Builders report explained, "The carryback option allows businesses to offset prior taxes paid, thereby generating tax refunds to finance ongoing expenses." A two-year carryback was simply too short for builders, it argued, since many had suffered since late 2005. In a two-year period, it claimed, there wouldn’t necessarily be enough taxable income to offset builders’ financial trauma. Small businesses had scored this benefit in the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. But big companies wanted to get in the game. The home builders’ association projected the change was potentially worth billions. President Barack Obama handed it to them Nov. 6, 2009, when he signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act. A New York Times column proclaimed days later "Home Builders (You Heard That Right) Get a Gift." Builder Magazine added up the lucre in February 2010: Nearly $2 billion in total tax refunds for the last three months of 2009. Not content to rely on secondhand sources, we spot-checked records ourselves, finding references to the new tax benefits in public filings. The general story held up. PulteGroup did indeed report an $800 million boost in fourth quarter 2009. KB Home reported an income tax benefit of $191.7 million, as reported in the Builder Magazine and Hometown Democracy charts. Meanwhile, the fourth-quarter Lennar Corp. number wasn't as easy to come by. While the charts said $251.1 million, Builder Magazine editor John Caulfield told us Oct. 27 that he was looking at the wrong report as he prepared his story. Lennar did say it expected a tax refund for the year of $320 million, though didn't appear to break out a fourth-quarter tax benefit. We also confirmed "Vote No on 4" campaign contributions from builders named in the Florida Hometown Democracy news release. Many were heavy hitters: A query to a Florida Division of Elections database for contributors who’ve handed over more than $100,000 each to fight the direct democracy initiative shows Pulte Homes Corp., Lennar Family of Builders, KB Home and more. (PulteGroup, for the record, said its commitment to oppose Amendment 4 "was made in 2009 prior to the receipt of any tax refund.") Beyond the builders Florida Hometown Democracy’s August press release broke out just 12 builders as specific examples of companies that benefited from the tax change and contributed to "Vote No on 4." It pointed out that private companies wouldn’t have to reveal their tax records. So we wondered: Would the word "many" in the claim hold up under scrutiny? Well, here’s twist No. 1. It wasn’t just builders that benefited from the 2009 tax change. We called Steven Friedman, national director of home building services for Ernst & Young, who explained that the carryback provision applied to nearly everyone, companies and individuals alike. Other than industries with special rules such as finance or insurance — and companies that already benefited from TARP funds — anyone with the appropriate losses and prior taxable income could benefit, he said. "The point is, this was a very broad-based change in the law," he said. "This was not a rifle shot targeted to Wall Street, to home builders, take your pick." We had crunched the campaign contributor data, which showed more than 1,000 contributions to the main "Vote No on 4" political action committee, Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy. When we pulled out individuals and industry and lobbying groups, such as leading donor Florida Association of Realtors Advocacy Fund, about 430 contributions were left, primarily from companies. The most common self-identified occupations included construction, development and real estate. Did "many" of those companies benefit from the tax refund "bailout?" We would have to know whether they had suffered the appropriate losses in 2008 or 2009 and previously had taxable income to offset. We could make an educated guess that it was likely for builders, developers and real estate companies, given the recession, but without intensive research — and likely stonewalls in the case of private companies — we couldn’t know for sure. The final twist If we could only talk with the originator of the chain e-mail claim, perhaps we would discover a powerful act of database journalism that cross-linked every business that contributed to "Vote No on 4" with any refunds supercharged by the 2009 tax law change. As it was, we were making some leaps — names weren’t usually an identical match. PulteGroup, for example, recorded the $800 million tax benefit. Pulte Homes Group made the $567,000 political donation. Then we found the author. Well, sort of. An Internet search on "humongous tax refunds" turned up the source, all right: novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen. But he had nothing to do with the chain e-mail. Instead, someone had borrowed liberally from his Oct. 9, 2010, column, "Running scared over Amendment 4." Hiaasen, who takes shady Florida developers to task in his novels, used this column to shake a finger at special interests for their attacks on Amendment 4. He connected big-builder contributors to those tax refunds. He told his readers: "These guys are using your money to keep your voice, and your vote, out of the neighborhood planning process." PolitiFact Florida got Hiaasen on the phone. "The tax refunds these companies got were well documented," he said. True. But could he confirm that "many" companies that contributed got the bailouts? "It depends on your definition of many," he said. It would be great if someone would cross-check those contributors with data on tax refunds, he offered. He could do it, just not immediately. But he had been struck that builders, who contributed to the over-development that brought on the real estate collapse in the first place, had benefited from an act of Congress — and now opposed a measure that would give voters a say in their work. "When you start taking handouts from the government and then suddenly have enough money to get politically involved at this level, with this much cash going in, I think you need to be accountable, and I think the public needs to know where their bailout dollars are going," he said. But he didn’t have that dreamy database we’d been hoping for. So what does the Truth-O-Meter make of all this? First, what we can confirm: Some companies bankrolling the ad campaign against Amendment 4 are recipients of a congressional bailout in the form of tax refunds. What no one has yet proved, though it seems likely: "Many." What we won’t rule on: "Humongous." While hundreds of millions of dollars sounds large to us, that’s a value judgment best reserved for opinion columns and novels. The statement we’re ruling on relies on finding companies that both got and gave, not on establishing a link between the cash flows. We don’t define "many" but we confirmed at least "some" — just 12 builders represent nearly $2 million for "Vote No on 4," about 18 percent of the money raised. We find it valuable context that companies far beyond home builders, Realtors and developers also benefited from this tax change — even, say, newspaper companies. We rule this claim Half True. Though if Mr. Hiaasen comes up with that magical database, we’d be happy to reconsider. UPDATE: John Caulfield, who graciously acknowledged his mistake on a Lennar number, later showed us one of our own errors. Our original post of this item used a year-end tax figure, not a fourth-quarter one, for KB Home. That has now been corrected. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2010-10-27T16:09:37 | 2010-10-12 | ['None'] |
hoer-00838 | Email Request for Hospital Patient Identification Tags | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/hospital-patient-id-tags-request.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Email Request for Hospital Patient Identification Tags | September 2006 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04894 | Says that President Obama said that "Small Businesses Succeed Because of Government." | false | /tennessee/statements/2012/aug/06/chuck-fleischmann/gop-congressman-chuck-fleischmann-claims-obama-was/ | Republicans have been pounding President Barack Obama relentlessly ever since he made remarks about the intersection of business and government during a campaign appearance in Roanoke, Va., on July 13, 2012. Critics pointed to two lines in the speech to make the case that Obama holds a general disdain for people who create and build businesses. U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, who represents Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District, offered his own critique of the president’s remarks a few days after Obama set off the firestorm. "Obama: Small Businesses Succeed Because of Government," screamed the headline from a blog entry that Fleischmann posted on his campaign website on July 17, 2012. "Having no experience in running a business, President Obama just doesn’t get it," Fleischmann wrote. "In fact, he fights against it. Just recently, he said: ‘If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’ " "If you are like me," Fleischmann continued, "you were speechless at the President’s latest arrogant attack on the foundation of the American economy. The President insists on pushing his view of successful businesses in America – that we owe the government for our success." Asked to explain Fleischmann’s comments, his campaign spokesman, Jordan Powell, said the blog item was built around Obama’s remarks in Roanoke. "The president seems to think that the government is the engine of success, and Chuck thinks it’s not so – it’s the private sector and hard-working small business owners," Powell said. Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has made pretty much the same claim about the president at public events and in several ads. The Republican National Committee and the National Federation of Independent Businesses are among the groups that have released their own videos and statements claiming Obama is out of touch. The criticism has become so big a threat that Obama’s re-election campaign felt the need to address the issue in a web video titled "Tampered" that quoted media accounts saying the quote had been taken out of context. We won’t delve into the broader question of what President Obama thinks about businesses. Here, we will simply examine Fleischmann’s claim that, in his campaign speech, Obama was saying "small businesses succeed because of government." Our colleagues at PolitiFact national have examined similar claims made by Romney and others and given them False rulings. Many of their points are repeated here. Let’s begin by looking at the full context of Obama’s speech. Here’s what he said: "There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. "So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the G.I. Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together." When placed in context, it is obvious Obama was making the point that success comes from the combination of "individual initiative" and the fact that "we do things together." Fleischmann and others who have criticized Obama’s remarks omitted the lead-up to his statement -- that "if you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges." These words indicate Obama was referring to infrastructure and educational opportunities that were paid for by taxpayers through the government -- things that the President argues establishes a necessary foundation for making private businesses successful. We think his meaning is clear -- that both business people and government play a role in the American enterprise system, not purely one or the other. Our ruling Rep. Fleischmann cherry-picks a quote from President Obama’s remarks to make it appear Obama was being dismissive of businesses and was saying in essence that "small businesses succeed because of government." But the preceding sentences in Obama’s remarks make clear that he was talking about the importance of government-provided infrastructure and education to the success of private businesses. Fleischmann also ignores Obama's clear summary of his message, that "the point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." By leaving out the "individual initiative" reference, Fleischmann has given a false impression. We rate his statement False. | null | Chuck Fleischmann | null | null | null | 2012-08-06T10:27:26 | 2012-07-17 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
hoer-00313 | Disneyland SuMMer Vacation Free Tickets | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/disneyland-like-farming-scam.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Disneyland SuMMer Vacation Free Tickets Like-Farming Scam | July 22, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03072 | I would be the first Republican senator elected in New Jersey in 41 years. | true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/sep/29/steve-lonegan/steve-lonegan-claims-he-could-be-first-republican-/ | Steve Lonegan is well aware of the potential to make history in the Oct. 16 special election for a U.S. Senate seat. If elected, the Republican would be the first senator from his party to be elected to the upper house of Congress in at least two generations, Lonegan noted during a radio interview Monday on the John Gambling show, during which he discussed his campaign. "I would be the first Republican senator elected in New Jersey in 41 years," said Lonegan, who is vying with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, for the seat left vacant after Sen. Frank Lautenberg died in early June. Lonegan is correct. Other than an eight-month period in 1982 when a Republican was appointed to a Senate seat from New Jersey, and this summer's appointment of Republican Jeff Chiesa to temporarily fill Lautenberg's seat until the special election, Democrats have had a stronghold on the state’s two Senate seats for more than 30 years. This statistic is not a new claim. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, referenced it in May 2012 during a speech he gave at an event held by the libertarian Cato Institute. Let’s first review some history about New Jersey’s senators. Clifford P. Case was the last Republican that New Jerseyans elected to the Senate, in 1972. Case served four terms before losing a re-election bid in the 1978 Republican primary to Jeffrey Bell. The Democratic lock on New Jersey’s Senate seats began in 1978 with the election of Bill Bradley. Republicans from the Garden State had served in the Senate for the 40 years leading up to Bradley’s election, but Democrats have dominated every Senate race since Bradley’s election. That changed briefly in 1982, when Republican Nicholas Brady was appointed to fill in for Democrat Harrison Williams Jr., who left office after convictions on bribery and conspiracy charges as part of the federal ABSCAM probe. ABSCAM was an investigation by the FBI in which several public officials were offered money or other items in exchange for special favors. Brady left the Senate after Lautenberg won the 1982 general election, defeating Republican Millicent Fenwick. Kean appointed Lautenberg to complete the final days of the term. Lautenberg started his first full term in January 1983 and served three six-year terms before deciding not to seek re-election in 2001. His retirement was short-lived, however. Lautenberg returned to the Senate in 2003 to replace fellow Democrat Robert Torricelli on the ballot. Torricelli, who had served one term, quit his re-election bid in 2002 over an ethics probe. Democrat domination continued until Christie appointed Chiesa, the state's former attorney general, to Lautenberg's seat on June 6. Chiesa was sworn in four days later. Our ruling Lonegan said during a radio interview, "I would be the first Republican senator elected in New Jersey in 41 years." In 1972, New Jersey sent Republican Clifford Case to the U.S. Senate to serve a fourth term, but he lost a Republican primary re-election bid in 1978, to Jeffrey Bell. Since then, New Jersey voters have not elected another GOP candidate to the Senate. Republicans from New Jersey served in the Senate for eight months during 1982, and since mid-June, but both were appointed, not elected. We rate Lonegan's claim True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com. Editor's Note: The 'Our Ruling' section of this story has been corrected to reflect that Clifford Case lost the Republican primary in 1978 to Jeffrey Bell, not Bill Bradley. | null | Steve Lonegan | null | null | null | 2013-09-29T07:30:00 | 2013-09-23 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'New_Jersey'] |
pomt-13484 | Says Dick Cheney "supported gay marriage sooner" than Hillary Clinton. | true | /colorado/statements/2016/sep/08/alternativepac/pac-backing-gary-johnson-says-dick-cheney-supporte/ | A viral online ad by a group supporting Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson features Abe Lincoln urging Americans to dump Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and vote for Johnson. The funny, five-minute video by AlternativePAC begins with the Lincoln impersonator standing outside a log cabin. "Oh, hey America, it’s me, dead Abe Lincoln, and you just got screwed," he says, "because you have to choose between a corrupt president or a crazy president." "Here’s Hillary, who’s like a Monopoly player using her get out of jail free card, then a rig an election card, and make millions on political favors card," Abe says. "And Trump, who’s like if your racist uncle got drunk and ran for president, and then the nation got drunk and said, ‘That guy should have nuclear bombs.'" Abe's pitch: Consider Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor, as a sensible third-party option. Since AlternativePAC posted the ad Aug. 25 on its website BalancedRebellion.com it has been viewed 18.3 million times on the group’s Facebook page. Among fake Abe’s many zingers, this one caught our attention: "Hillary’s policies are the same as Dick Cheney’s, except Cheney supported gay marriage sooner!" We did not fact-check the line that Hillary’s policies are the same as Dick Cheney's" -- because their positions aren't identical, and it smacks of humorous hyperbole. Instead we focused on the claim that "Cheney supported gay marriage sooner" than Clinton. Same-sex marriage is a personal issue for Cheney, who served as vice president to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. His second-oldest daughter, Mary Cheney, is openly gay and she married her longtime partner, Heather Poe, in 2012. She also served as a senior campaign advisor to her father during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Cheney broke with conservative orthodoxy on same-sex marriage during his Oct. 5, 2000, vice presidential debate against Sen. Joe Lieberman. Debate moderator Bernie Bernard Shaw of CNN asked the candidates if gay couples should "have all the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen?" "The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody," Cheney replied. "We don't get to choose, and shouldn't be able to choose and say, 'You get to live free, but you don't.' I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into." (Watch the debate; Cheney discusses gay marriage at 1:17) Cheney said the question of whether there should be an "official sanction" of same-sex relationships should be left to states -- which have traditionally overseen marriage laws. "I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area," he added. Cheney’s stand drew criticism from conservatives and praise from gay groups, the New York Times reported. In his 2011 memoir, In My Time, Cheney wrote of his debate comments: "I had given the issue a lot of thought and answered it from the heart. ...Of course, I had my daughter Mary and her partner, Heather Poe, in my mind, but I was also thinking about what's right for all of us as Americans if we truly believe in freedom." During the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election race, the vice president spelled out his differences on gay marriage with President Bush, who had endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, the Washington Post reported. For the first time, Cheney discussed the sexual orientation of his daughter, Mary. Asked his position on the issue at an Iowa town hall meeting, Cheney said: "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with. ... With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free -- ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to." He again said that same-sex marriage should be left to the states to decide, while noting Bush’s endorsement of the amendment to prevent states from recognizing gay marriages. "At this point ... my own preference is as I've stated," Cheney said. "But the president makes basic policy for the administration. And he's made it. " At a June 2009 National Press Club event, a journalist asked Cheney, given the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling legalizing game marriage at the time, "is some form of legalized gay marriage inevitable in the United States?" The former vice president repeated his mantra on the issue, saying, "Freedom means freedom for everyone. And as many of you know, one of my daughters is gay, and something that we’ve lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish." He appeared to positively view the movement by some states to legalize gay marriage. "I think people ought to get a shot at that. And they do at present." (Watch a video of Cheney's remarks.) Clinton's flip-flop As for Hillary Clinton, PolitiFact has reported that the Democratic presidential nominee opposed gay marriage for more than a decade before she came out in support of it in 2013. We found that as public opinion shifted toward support for same-sex marriage, so did Clinton. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that defined federal marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It also denied same-sex couples access to federal benefits, including Social Security survivor benefits and health care benefits along with barring gay couples from filing joint federal tax returns and receiving income and estate tax benefits for spouses. Hillary Clinton began facing questions about same-sex marriage during her 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate. In December 1999, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said she supported the Defense of Marriage Act, but added that "same-sex unions should be recognized and that same-sex unions should be entitled to all the rights and privileges that every other American gets," the New York Times reported. In July 2004, Clinton spoke on the Senate floor saying she -- like Cheney -- opposed a proposed federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage. (The amendment ultimately failed.) Though she opposed it, she said that she believed that marriage was "a sacred bond between a man and a woman." But her opposition continued to soften as popular support for same-sex marriage increased. In October 2006, Clinton told a private gathering of gay elected officials that she would support same-sex marriage in New York if a future governor and Legislature chose to enact such a law. During her 2008 run for president, Clinton backed away from the Defense of Marriage Act in a May 2007 questionnaire for the Human Rights Campaign: "I support repealing the provision of DOMA that may prohibit the federal government from providing benefits to people in states that recognize same-sex marriage." However, the New York Times reported that presidential candidate Clinton in 2008 continued to explicitly opposed same-sex marriage, saying that she favored civil unions but that decisions about the legality of marriage should be left to the states. As Clinton prepared for her second presidential bid, she announced her support for same-sex marriage in a video with the Human Rights Campaign on March 18, 2013. "LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones. And they are full and equal citizens, and they deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That’s why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples," she said. "I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, embedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans." Our ruling AlternativePAC says "(Dick) Cheney supported gay marriage sooner" than Hillary Clinton. The historical record is clear. Cheney spoke out in favor of gay marriage during the 2000 vice presidential debate, saying, "freedom means freedom for everybody… I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into." He said any "official sanction" of same-sex relationships should be left to states -- not the federal government. In the 2004 presidential election, Cheney broke with Bush, who supported a congressional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Clinton opposed same-sex marriage as a candidate for the Senate, while in office as a senator, and while running for president in 2008. She expressed her support for civil unions starting in 2000, opposed the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004 and voiced support for the rights of states to set their own laws in favor of gay marriage in 2006. She came out in support of same-sex marriage in 2013. We rate the claim True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/dd99c801-0f93-49fa-93fb-848a3b099859 | null | AlternativePAC | null | null | null | 2016-09-08T16:34:39 | 2016-09-25 | ['Hillary_Rodham_Clinton', 'Dick_Cheney'] |
chct-00307 | FACT CHECK: Is The US 1 Of 7 Countries That Allow Elective Abortion Past 20 Weeks? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2017/10/03/fact-check-is-the-us-1-of-7-countries-that-allow-elective-abortion-past-20-weeks/ | null | null | null | Holmes Lybrand | Fact Check Editor at The Daily Caller News Foundation | null | null | 4:26 PM 10/03/2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00823 | The Swedish parliament rejected seven proposals in May 2017 establishing a mandatory vaccination program, enacting a ban on the practice. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sweden-ban-mandatory-vaccinations-children-2017/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Sweden Ban Mandatory Vaccinations for Children in 2017? | 13 March 2018 | null | ['Sweden'] |
pomt-00404 | Says "I have been through the gauntlet, when we had riots in that Capitol." | pants on fire! | /wisconsin/statements/2018/sep/04/leah-vukmir/gop-us-senate-candidate-vukmir-refreshes-claim-abo/ | In her battle against U.S. Sen Tammy Baldwin, Republican Leah Vukmir is presenting herself as a tried, true and tested conservative. That approach was evident in the primary battle, in which Vukmir, a state senator from Brookfield, defeated U.S. Marine veteran and businessman Kevin Nicholson. During a July 26, 2018 primary debate, Vukmir stressed that Wisconsin Republicans have "moved the conservative ball down the field. We are not establishment Republicans in Wisconsin; we are activist Republicans." Vukmir then pitched herself as "a strong leader with a track record who’s not going to buckle" and cited the 2011 battle over Act 10 declaring: "I have been through the gauntlet, when we had riots in that Capitol." Erm? What? The background The 2011 protests against what would become Act 10 turned into a round-the-clock occupation of the Capitol, with demonstrators camping out in the rotunda. It was the largest series of protests at the Capitol since the Vietnam War, with crowds reaching an estimated 100,000 in early March, after the bill had been signed by newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker. The protests were over a push by Walker and Republicans in the Legislature to dramatically curtail collective bargaining for most public employees. The move allowed the state and other units of government to require a higher share of pension and health care costs be paid by workers, which Walker and the GOP said was needed to close a state budget gap. The protests -- and the fact Senate Democrats fled to Illinois to delay a vote -- drew major news coverage for weeks. The tumult even attracted international attention, with Piotr Duda, president of the 700,000-member Polish trade union Solidarity, releasing a statement in support of the Wisconsin protesters. Meanwhile, Ian’s Pizza shops delivered hundreds of free pizzas to the Capitol, with the cost picked up by contributions from all 50 states — as well as Bosnia, China, Egypt, France and 20 other countries. But pizza deliveries in a riot zone? A similar claim Mattias Gugel, communications director for Vukmir’s Senate campaign, did not respond to our requests for back up for Vukmir’s claim. This is not the first time we heard, and evaluated, a "riot" claim. Appearing on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" program the morning of Feb. 17, 2011, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., defended Walker’s efforts. "It's not asking a lot, it's still about half of what private sector pensions do and health care packages do," Ryan said. "So (Walker’s) basically saying, I want you public workers to pay half of what our private sector counterparts (pay) and he's getting riots -- it's like Cairo has moved to Madison these days." At the time, protests had also swept through the Middle East. In Egypt, 18 days of protests led to the Feb. 11, 2011, resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Our rating of Ryan’s riot claim: Pants on Fire. Numerous law enforcement agencies handled the protests, including the Dane County Sheriff’s Department, Madison police, state Department of Natural Resources and Capitol police. But only a handful of arrests were reported. "For the most part, people have been very respectful and very orderly," a public information officer for the Dane County Sheriff’s Department told us at the time. "It certainly has been a very peaceful protest." To be sure, there were threats made against Walker and GOP lawmakers. In his book "Unintimidated," Walker wrote that he received letters targeting his family and faced death threats and frightening encounters with protesters. There were also reports of threats being made against several lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. But that’s different than riots. At the time, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said of Ryan’s "riot" statement: "It’s astounding that he would say that. It’s so spectacularly wrong." Ryan himself admitted: "It was an inaccurate comparison." Our rating During a campaign debate, Vukmir said: "I have been through the gauntlet, when we had riots in that Capitol." That vastly overstates what happened, in an effort to burnish her own stand-tough persona for voters. The claim of "riots" in the Capitol was debunked in 2011 and rarely, if ever, has come up since. That is, until Vukmir put herself on the hot seat by recycling the claim. We still rate it Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Leah Vukmir | null | null | null | 2018-09-04T06:00:00 | 2018-07-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-12151 | My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/aug/09/donald-trump/under-donald-trump-us-nuclear-arsenal-far-stronger/ | One day after threatening North Korea with "fire and fury like the world has never seen" if it menaces the United States, President Donald Trump tweeted about the strength of U.S. nuclear weapons and improvements made on his watch. Trump wrote at 4:56 a.m: "My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com This tweet is not accurate. A week after taking office, Trump issued a presidential memorandum on "rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces." One sentence in this memo directs the defense secretary to "initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies." The review effort kicked off in April 2017, according to news reports. However, this wasn’t Trump’s first order as president — more than a dozen earlier executive orders and memoranda are listed on the White House website. More importantly, asking for a Nuclear Posture Review is not unusual; it’s expected. The Defense Department’s web page for the Nuclear Posture Review describes it as "legislatively mandated." HELP KEEP POLITIFACT GOING! MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT FACT-CHECKING Indeed, it’s common for new presidents to put their stamp on the nation’s nuclear capabilities by issuing a new review within two years after entering office. Bill Clinton produced one in 1994. George W. Bush produced one in 2002. And Barack Obama produced one in 2010. (Apparently, the Trump administration hasn’t updated its Pentagon web page on the Nuclear Posture Review. When we accessed it on Aug. 9, it still had a photo and "notable quote" by Hillary Clinton on it.) A larger issue with Trump’s assurance: Experts unanimously said the U.S. nuclear arsenal could not have improved to the extent Trump described in just over 200 days. There have been incremental improvements, but they have been trickling out under a plan begun under Trump’s predecessor, Obama. The United States is engaged in a multiyear program to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, including the rebuilding of the Minuteman III system, which launches intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Trident II submarine-launched missile systems, as well as the refurbishment of nuclear warheads and construction of new and upgraded facilities, such as a uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (Here’s an updated rundown of the modernization plan published by the Arms Control Association.) The modernization effort was estimated to cost roughly $35 billion a year over a decade, or 5 percent to 6 percent of planned national defense spending, according to Congressional Budget Office reports released in December 2013 and January 2015. Its most recent estimate, released in February 2017, CBO said the modernization effort would cost $400 billion between 2017 and 2026, or $52 billion more than CBO’s 2015 estimate, "largely because modernization programs will be ramping up." Cumulatively, total costs could reach $1 trillion over the next 30 years. See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com Experts panned Trump's boast of rapid improvements. "It would be a pretty fantastic claim under even Cold War standards given the size and scope of the arsenal," said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and a former State Department official under Obama. But given the restrictions under the New START treaty that went into force in 2011, it would be "pretty difficult, if not impossible, to achieve except in a crash, well-publicized effort." Matthew Bunn, a nuclear-policy specialist who teaches at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, called Trump’s claim "simply false." "There is a total of nothing that has changed substantially about the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the few months that Trump has been in office," Bunn said. "We have the same missiles and bombers, with the same nuclear weapons, that we had before." Bottom line: In the scale of decades, six months is a blink of the eye, experts said. This is not the first time Trump has sought to paint a picture of weak stewardship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal under Obama. As early as June 2015, Trump said, "Even our nuclear arsenal doesn't work. It came out recently they have equipment that is 30 years old. They don't know if it worked." We rated that False. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Our ruling Trump said, "My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before." What Trump did shortly after taking office was neither his first order nor a unique action; every new president in recent years has requested a Nuclear Posture Review. In addition, the ongoing nuclear modernization plan -- which dates back to the Obama administration and will take decades to complete -- would not have notched achievements in six months sufficient to be characterized as "far stronger and more powerful than ever before." We rate the statement False. EDITOR'S NOTE, Aug. 9, 2017, 4:30 p.m.: This article has been updated to include CBO's 2017 cost estimate. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-08-09T16:02:43 | 2017-08-09 | ['None'] |
snes-05412 | A riot broke out after a woman accidentally defecated while administering "vodka butt shots" on New Year's Eve. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vodka-butt-shots-riot/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | New Year’s Eve Vodka Butt Shots Riot | 5 January 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01105 | The motorist who thought the Biblical rapture was taking place | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/mistakenrapture/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | The motorist who thought the Biblical rapture was taking place | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00215 | The claims: Kevin Rudd says 1 million jobs have been created over the past five and a half years. Tony Abbott says unemployment is marching towards 800,000. | in-the-green | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-14/kevin-rudd-tony-abbott-correct-on-jobs/4874588 | The claims: Kevin Rudd says 1 million jobs have been created over the past five and a half years. Tony Abbott says unemployment is marching towards 800,000. | ['federal-government', 'work', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'abbott-tony', 'rudd-kevin', 'liberals', 'alp', 'australia'] | null | null | ['federal-government', 'work', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'abbott-tony', 'rudd-kevin', 'liberals', 'alp', 'australia'] | Kevin Rudd can defend his jobs claim but Tony Abbott is more on the money | Wed 21 Aug 2013, 8:26am | null | ['Tony_Abbott', 'Kevin_Rudd'] |
tron-03292 | Prayer Request for an 8 Year Old Cancer Patient Named Sam Bish | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/sam-bish/ | null | prayers | null | null | null | Prayer Request for an 8 Year Old Cancer Patient Named Sam Bish | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05663 | Over 37 million bees were killed by a large GMO cornfield was planted in Ontario, Canada. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bees-gmo-cornfield/ | null | Food | null | David Mikkelson | null | Were 37 Million Bees Found Dead After the Planting of a Large GMO Corn Field? | 7 November 2014 | null | ['Canada', 'Ontario'] |
pose-00275 | Will "place the weight of (his) administration behind...a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity." | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/291/expand-the-employment-non-discrimination-act-to-in/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Expand the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity | 2010-01-07T13:26:54 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05786 | There are more atheists in the country right now than Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists combined and doubled. | false | /rhode-island/statements/2012/feb/26/david-silverman/american-atheists-president-david-silverman-says-t/ | David Silverman, president of American Atheists, was interviewed recently by a Washington, D.C., television station about plans for a March 24 Reason Rally on the Washington Mall. "There are more atheists in the country right now than Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists combined and doubled," said Silverman. "That's a lot of people." The statement piqued our interest in light of the rancorous debate over the prayer banner at Cranston High School West. In January, a federal judge ordered the school to remove the banner, which begins "our Heavenly Father," ruling that it violated Cranston West student Jessica Ahlquist’s constitutional rights and made her feel "excluded and ostracized" because she is an atheist. (Ahlquist is scheduled to speak at the Reason Rally.) At a time when atheists are often reviled -- as witnessed by the crowd reaction in Cranston when some testified on the prayer banner issue -- we wondered whether the percentage of atheists is really as high as Silverman said it is. To find out, we focused on two major national surveys. The first was conducted in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Among the 35,556 U.S. adults asked to identify their religious affiliation, 1.7 percent characterized themselves as Jews, 0.7 percent were Buddhist, 0.6 percent were Muslim and 0.4 percent were Hindu. That’s a total of 3.4 percent. If you double that sum, as Silverman proposed in his claim, that's 6.8 percent. And what percentage of the population identified itself as atheist? Just 1.6 percent. The second was the American Religious Identification Survey from 2008, conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The survey of 54,461 people asked participants to identify their "religious tradition." A total of 1.2 percent said Jewish, 0.6 percent said Muslim and 0.9 percent said Eastern Religions, which includes Hindus, Buddhists and others. Those percentages are rounded off. When you look at the actual numbers and do the math, you get an upper limit of 2.6 percent. Doubling that gives you 5.2 percent. What percent of respondents in that poll call themselves atheists? Just 0.7 percent. That's so far off, we're starting to smell a little hellfire and brimstone. So we called Silverman. He said he's counting as atheists all people who fall into the "None" or "Unaffiliated" category when asked to state their religious preference. His rationale: They don't believe in God. They just don't say they're atheists, either because they don't know the word or don't use it. By his definition, that would be an inclusive group. In the Pew survey, 16.1 percent are listed as unaffiliated. In the American Religious Survey, 15.0 percent are listed as having no religion. "And that doesn't includes the atheists who call themselves Jews, Christians and Muslims," he said. Silverman also wants to count agnostics as atheists. (Our American Heritage dictionary defines an agnostic as someone "who believes there can be no proof of the existence of God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.") "An agnostic is an atheist," Silverman insisted. "If you don't have a belief in God, you're an atheist. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. It doesn't matter whether they like it or not, they're atheists." Similarly, Silverman wants the atheist category to include people who are listed as "secular unaffiliated" in the Pew study. We disagree with Silverman’s reasoning. The agnostics we know call themselves that because they don't want to be lumped into one group or another when it goes to the question of the existence of God. And the Pew report defines the "secular unaffiliated" as people who say that religion is not important in their lives. That doesn't automatically mean they don't believe in a god, so we don’t think they should be lumped into the atheist category either. Other questions in the survey, however, complicate matters somewhat. When the American Religious survey asked people what they thought of the existence of God, 2.3 percent said "There is no such thing." If you agree to add in the 4.3 percent who say, "There is no way to know," the ratio rises to 6.6 percent. When Pew asked a broader question -- "Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?" -- 5 percent said "No." Barry Kosmin of Trinity College in Connecticut and coauthor of the ARIS said there's an interesting distinction between people who say they are atheists and those who really don't believe in God. "There's a difference between belonging and belief," he said. "A truck driver may say God doesn't exist, but he's unlikely to give you Greek names like agnostic or atheist. That's why you see different numbers." "You're dealing here with a Jell-o. You see everything from 1 percent to 10 percent because a lot of them fall into the 'None' category and terms like secular, atheist, non-religious, areligious are used interchangeably," said Kosmin. "In terms of atheists who have come out, [Silverman] is wrong. In terms of the number of people who have that belief, if you ask them, he's correct." Our ruling Atheist David Silverman claimed that "There are more atheists in the country right now than Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists combined and doubled." He wants to include not only people who define themselves as atheists, but others, such as agnostics, who have serious doubts about the existence of God. But just as atheists don't want someone else's religious beliefs and practices foisted upon them, we believe that those who doubt the existence of a supreme power shouldn’t be lumped into the "atheist" category. If Silverman had claimed that the number of Americans who don't believe in God is larger than the number of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the U.S., he’d be on more solid ground. But he didn’t. Instead, he said you could double the number of people in those religions and atheists would still outnumber them. The only way to achieve that number is to include people who may not desire -- or deserve -- to be in that category, so we rate his statement False. (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.) Update: The original version of this item omitted the first name of Jessica Ahlquist, who sued the Cranston, R.I. School Committee to remove a prayer banner from Cranston High School West. | null | David Silverman | null | null | null | 2012-02-26T00:01:00 | 2012-02-17 | ['Jews', 'Buddhism', 'Islam'] |
snes-02736 | Three Sheets to the Wind: The Rum-Soaked Voyage of the USS Constitution | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/uss-constitution/ | null | History | null | David Emery | null | Three Sheets to the Wind: The Rum-Soaked Voyage of the USS Constitution | 23 March 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00045 | Cesar Sayoc is a Democrat posing as a Republican. | false | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/nov/05/blog-posting/pipe-bomb-suspects-florida-voting-records-show-onl/ | False flag theories persist as the man suspected of sending explosives to critics of President Donald Trump faces federal charges. News reports have described the 56-year-old as a registered Republican. But bloggers peddling a narrative that suggests liberals are behind the pipe bomb plot argue that until recently, Sayoc belonged to the Democratic Party. "A lifelong Democrat recently registered as a Republican, covered his van with Trump stickers and began sending bombs that didn’t explode to Democrats," reads a post that appeared on Facebook on Oct. 26. "And you have to ask why Americans find that suspicious?" 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.) According to the Florida Department of State, Sayoc registered with the Republican Party of Florida on March 4, 2016, less than two weeks before Trump won the Florida Republican presidential primary. But records from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department show that on two occasions in October 2012 — Oct. 9 and Oct. 26 — Sayoc initiated, but didn’t complete, new voter registration applications. Both times, he checked the box next to "Republican Party" as his party affiliation. On Oct. 9, 2012, he checked the box that said his was a "new registration," but it appears he left blank the answer to a question about whether he’d ever been "adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting." On Oct. 26, 2012, he didn’t check any of the boxes indicating the reason behind his registration application (i.e. new registration, address change, name change, party change, etc.) Near the top of that form, someone scribbled, "INCOMP," indicating it was incomplete. As provided to PolitiFact in response to a public records request, copies of both Sayoc’s 2012 applications show blank space in the section that asks for a Florida driver’s license, identification number or the last four digits of the applicant’s Social Security number. Florida election code states that if any of these pieces of information are not included in a voter registration application, the registration is considered incomplete. Sayoc’s application to vote remained incomplete until March 4, 2016, according to the department, when he provided his information in full, updated his mailing address and once again reported that his party affiliation was Republican. Also on the 2016 form, the box next to "new registration" is checked as the reason behind the application. The box next to "party change" is blank. Though Sayoc successfully registered to vote before Trump won the March 15 Florida presidential primary, his application still apparently came too late to be eligible to vote in that election. In Florida, the deadline to register in order to participate in an upcoming election is 29 days before the election. But Sayoc’s voting record seems to indicate that, after that, he was motivated to get his vote out: He went on to cast a ballot early three times — in the 2016 August primary, the 2016 general election and the August 2018 primary. Friends and other people who know Sayoc have said that he never showed an interest in politics until Trump came on the political scene, The Washington Post reported on Oct. 27. He started sharing pictures of himself at campaign events on Facebook. Ronald Lowy, a lawyer who represented Sayoc in a fraud case, told the paper Sayoc had "no interest in politics… and along came the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who welcomed all extremists, all outsiders, all outliers, and he felt that somebody was finally talking to him." "He registered as a Republican to vote in Florida — Lowy said he believes it was for the first time in Sayoc’s life — in 2016," the story says. Our ruling An Oct 26 post on Facebook states that, "A lifelong Democrat recently registered as a Republican, covered his van with Trump stickers and began sending bombs that didn’t explode to Democrats. And you have to ask why Americans find that suspicious?" We found no evidence that Sayoc was a "lifelong Democrat." And while it’s true that state records show that Sayoc registered to vote relatively recently, in 2016, an application from 2012 shows that Sayoc then considered himself a member of the Republican Party. We rate this claim False. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-11-05T11:01:33 | 2018-10-26 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-07610 | Says the state’s budget shortfall is "not that much different" than it was in 2003. | false | /texas/statements/2011/mar/22/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-2011-budget-shortfall-isnt-much-di/ | After urging GOP Texas House members to cut the state budget before dipping into the state’s "rainy day" fund, Gov. Rick Perry told reporters outside the closed-door meeting that he’d compared the situation to what lawmakers faced in the 2003 session. "So we talked about the difference between 2003 and 2011," Perry said. "And the percentage of the budget shortfall versus the budget is really not that much different than it was in 2003." We asked Perry’s office to elaborate, then hunted comparisons of the state’s current fiscal situation to 2003 when lawmakers resolved a $9.9 billion projected revenue shortfall with funding cuts, fee increases, federal aid and other strategies. Missing from that mix: state tax increases. In a Feb. 20 political commentary, reporter Peggy Fikac of Hearst Newspapers quoted an expert saying today’s budget crunch is most comparable to 1987 when lawmakers and GOP Gov. Bill Clements agreed to a record tax increase. Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, told Fikac the operating state deficit then was just under $1 billion, or 4.1 percent of discretionary state revenue -- that is, income that’s not constitutionally dedicated to specific purposes. In 2003, Craymer advised, lawmakers faced an operating deficit of $1.8 billion, 2.9 percent of discretionary state general revenue. The column quotes Craymer saying the current budget year’s $4.3 billion operating deficit -- 4.6 percent of discretionary revenue --"beats both of those . . . It’s a tougher challenge than either 2003 or 1987." Recently, two former Democratic elected officials pressed a similar point. A Feb. 1 letter to business leaders from former Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and Scott McCown, a former state district judge who directs the Center for Public Policy Priorities, states: "Texas faces its largest revenue shortfall in decades... a far larger shortfall than we faced in 2003 and even larger than we faced in 1987, until now the biggest shortfall in recent times." Budgetary refresher: A deficit means that the state is running short of money to cover current spending. Shortfall usually refers to a projected gap between expected revenue and future spending needs. Fikac’s column touched on the projected $10 billion revenue shortfall faced by lawmakers in 2003, but did not compare it to the $15 billion to $27 billion shortfall that’s currently projected if the state either maintains current spending or the current level of government services through 2012-13. However, the taxpayers association did. In a January presentation at the Capitol, the group said that in 2003, the money that had been needed to maintain current spending was equal to 12.4 percent of expected discretionary general revenue, and the money needed to maintain current government services amounted to 15.6 percent of expected revenue. According to the presentation, comparable percentages now are 17.2 percent and 26.2 percent, respectively. Upshot: The current-spending shortfall is 40 percent larger than in 2003 while the shortfall to maintain current services is nearly 63 percent larger. The presentation also says that in 2003, lawmakers budgeted $1.3 billion in federal fiscal relief funds while the 2011 Legislature has no expectations of similar aid. Also, the 2003 Legislature reduced eligibility for some health and human services programs while federal law now may prohibit cuts to services and eligibility, absent federal approval of waiver requests. Finally, Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told us Perry’s position is that "the situation we face today is very similar to the situation we faced in 2003." As then, lawmakers "don’t have as much money as we did last budget cycle. But we are going to work with what we have" without raising taxes, Frazier said. Our read: If it’s reasonable to make the comparisons we’ve laid out--and we think it is--then Texas faces a significantly greater shortfall now than in 2003. And that’s without taking into account the unlikelihood of a federal aid rescue and potentially greater difficulties reducing health and human services. Whether the budget can be written without new taxes, as Perry advocates, is not the issue. His statement is False. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2011-03-22T09:46:42 | 2011-03-07 | ['None'] |
goop-01838 | Khloe Kardashian Canceling Promo Appearances Because Of Pregnancy? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/khloe-kardashian-promo-appearances-pregnancy/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Khloe Kardashian Canceling Promo Appearances Because Of Pregnancy? | 5:12 pm, January 13, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07601 | Says Allen West helped thwart a terrorist plot by shooting a gun in the direction of an Iraqi detainee, then reported the incident to his superior and said it was wrong. | half-true | /florida/statements/2011/mar/23/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-says-allen-west-modern-day-ronin/ | During a recent discussion about the ongoing tragedy in Japan, radio host and Fox News personality Glenn Beck somehow worked in a comparison to former Army lieutenant colonel and now Florida U.S. Rep. Allen West. The discussion, on Beck's March 18, 2011, Fox News show, started with how U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin had said people in America should buy iodine tablets (not exactly what she said), then morphed into why there is no looting in Japan and onto a parable about Japanese honor. Norio Nishi, whom Beck described as a Japanese national living in America, explained a concept of the samurai lifestyle to Beck known as Nin Tai. "Nin Tai means endurance, perseverance, steadfastness," Nishi said. "You do not -- when you confront with danger, when you confront with the calamity, you don't shout, yell and move your head. You just take the pain. You just go forward and that is the kind of attitude or lifestyle that Samurai people built. That (feeling) permeates every single aspect of the Japanese society." Michael Auslin, the director of Japanese studies at the American Enterprise Institute, then explained to Beck a second part of the Japanese culture, a tension between duty and obligation. "There's another side of it, too, that I think is equally important that developed," Auslin said. "The Samurai ruled Japan for about 700 years and this other side is this tension between what they call duty and obligation. Duty is what you had to do legally. It's -- you know, if you were Samurai, you had certain things you had to do and the law bound you. Obligations were your relations with your fellow man, and they were often in tension. "And the most famous story in Japan is something probably everyone here has heard of. 'The 47 Ronin, The 47th Samurai,' where they wanted to avenge what they thought was the unlawful death of their lord. But they weren't allowed to do it, according to duty. It was illegal. So they had to choose what to do. They chose obligation. But they didn't run away from the duty, meaning they chose it, knowing that if they were successful in repaying the honor of their lord, upholding his honor, they would go to their deaths by the legal system. And they chose to do that. They had to somehow bring the two together. But what they didn't do was attempt, for example, to say, well, it wasn't -- we weren't doing that, it wasn't our fault. And this -- this idea of duty and obligation, I think, has helped." Beck said the story of "The 47 Ronin" -- which is being made into a movie starring Keanu Reaves -- reminded him of West, a former Army officer who was elected to Congress in 2010. "It is kind of like Allen West when he went (to Iraq) -- Congressman Allen West -- he was questioning a terrorist, knew that this terrorist had information that was going to get all of his troops killed," Beck said. "So he went in and he threatened the guy and he (the terrorist) said, 'I know you, you Americans, you'll never do it.' He fired a shot right by the guy's head, scared him to death, knew that it was wrong and got the information. "Then went right directly to his commanding officer, put his gun down, and said, what I did was wrong, I did it and I'd do it again, but I want you to know. That's the duty and the honor," he said. Did Beck get West's back-story right? The facts behind West's Iraq interrogation Beck's claim is from 2003, when West was serving in Iraq as a lieutenant colonel overseeing an artillery battalion of about 650 soldiers and officers. In early August, soldiers received a tip that West and one of his subordinate battery commanders were to be the subject of an assassination attempt. The same informant returned with the names of three people involved in the planning of the assassination, including an Iraqi policeman, Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi. Hamoodi was apprehended and brought in for questioning. What happened next comes from accounts provided by West and the other soldiers involved in the interrogation through sworn statements they gave during a subsequent military investigation. West joined the interrogation in progress after soldiers were unable to get useful information from Hamoodi. West said soldiers told him Hamoodi was being evasive and belligerent. That's when the interrogation got more physical. Soldiers punched and shoved Hamoodi when he wouldn't answer interrogators' questions. At some point, West sat down across from Hamoodi, took out his 9mm pistol and placed it on his thigh pointing in Hamoodi's direction. "I'm here for a reason," West said, according to a solider. "You are going to tell me who wants to kill me, or I am going to kill you." Then they took Hamoodi outside and placed his head over a clearing barrel -- a barrel filled with sand where people can unload firearms safely. West showed Hamoodi the gun and told him he had five seconds to talk. "I brought his head down toward the barrel using my left hand to shield him away from any sand or blast," West told investigators. Then West fired into the sand, at least once, maybe three times, inches from Hamoodi's head. Then West fired into the sky. Some soldiers thought West had shot Hamoodi. But Hamoodi was alive, and though stiff from shock, was ready to talk. West headed back to the operations center, and let the interrogation conclude. The fallout from the incident During a subsequent military hearing, Hamoodi said he was not sure what he told the interrogators, but that the information was meaningless and induced by fear and pain, the New York Times reported. The Times reported that at least one man named was taken into custody and his home was searched. No plans for attacks on Americans or weapons were found. West testified at his hearing that he did not know whether ''any corroboration'' of a plot was ever found. ''At the time, I had to base my decision on the intelligence I received," West said. "It's possible that I was wrong about Mr. Hamoodi.'' Yet he also notes that no attacks occurred after the interrogation. Hamoodi was detained another 45 days after the incident, then released without being charged. The military did not pursue a court martial against West, who was fined $5,000. News accounts say West decided to resign and retire during the investigation. "I know the method I used was not right, but I wanted to take care of my soldiers," West said at his hearing. "If it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can." Breaking down Beck's story That's pretty much the story. Our job here is to see how Beck's version stands up. In general, it's close. But on the specifics, Beck is writing his own history, or at least a subjective version of it. Let's break it down. "It is kind of like Allen West when he went (to Iraq) -- Congressman Allen West -- he was questioning a terrorist, knew that this terrorist had information that was going to get all of his troops killed." Beck says Hamoodi was a terrorist, which was never really proven. His name was offered up by an informant as someone who knew something about a plot to assassinate West. Hamoodi was never charged. Secondly, the alleged plot was to kill West and one of his subordinates. West said he was trying to protect troops who might have been jeopardized as a result of the insurgents' plot. "So he went in and he threatened the guy and he (Hamoodi) said, 'I know you, you Americans, you'll never do it.' He fired a shot right by the guy's head, scared him to death, knew that it was wrong and got the information." There's no record that we could find of Hamoodi essentially taunting West. Not in the media accounts of West's military hearing, not in the records of the investigation and interviews of the soldiers involved. Not in West's public comments on the matter. The rest of this portion of the statement is largely accurate, though it's unclear if the information was at all useful. "Then went right directly to his commanding officer, put his gun down, and said, what I did was wrong, I did it and I'd do it again but I want you to know that's the duty and the honor," he said. This line is in many ways the crux of Beck's comparison to the Ronin legend, the point of which was to say West knew he was acting improperly, chose to do so, then turned himself in to face the consequences. It's not clear, however, that is what happened. West did wake up his superior officer after the interrogation to recount what had occurred. But the superior officer testified that he did not remember West offering specifics, beyond saying that he had discharged his weapon during an interrogation and that no one was hurt, the Times reported. In fact, the Times said that the investigation into West's actions began only after a sergeant in another battalion wrote a letter of complaint about the ''command climate'' under West's superior officer. In that letter, the sergeant mentioned almost as an aside, according to West's lawyer, that West had interrogated a detainee using a pistol. A soldier also told investigators that West originally told him and others to keep the details of the interrogation silent. "This night stays within 2-20 and 2-20 only (the number of field artillery battalion)," the soldier, whose name was not released, told investigators. "We all gave a hooah and continued to walk to our rooms as (West) returned to the operations center." West never addressed that allegation in the records we could find. "In my anger, I do not know if I fired two shots into the barrel and one into the air and another into the barrel," he told investigators at one point. "The night of this action I informed COL (name withheld) what I had personally done firing my weapon. "The following day at my battalion update brief, I informed by (sic) battery commanders. This was not to boast but rather personally accepting responsibility and to not attempt to conceal my actions. I did embellish some points for emphasis." Our ruling During a recent discussion of the crisis in Japan, Beck used a parable about the Japanese people as a way to bring up the story of West's time as a military officer in Iraq. To be clear, we're not judging whether West should have done what he did, or whether it was honorable. We're simply seeing if Beck got the story right. In particular, we're focusing on Beck's assertion that West helped thwart a terrorist plot by shooting a gun in the direction of an Iraqi detainee, then reported the incident to his superior and said it was wrong. Beck embellishes on some of the points of the record. West did report the incident to his superior, though it's unclear how much he said. And the investigation into the shooting occurred after another solider complained. The "terrorist," Hamoodi, was a person offered up by an informant who was never charged with wrongdoing and ultimately released. And even West admits that Hamoodi may have had nothing to do with an assassination plot. No plot was ever uncovered. It's an interesting story about West, so we think it's important to keep it as close to the facts as possible. So we rate Beck's claim Half True. | null | Glenn Beck | null | null | null | 2011-03-23T14:16:00 | 2011-03-18 | ['Iraq'] |
goop-01810 | Caitlyn Jenner “Facing Knee Surgery” After “Refusing To Ditch Stilettos | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/caitlyn-jenner-knee-surgery-stilettos-high-heels-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Caitlyn Jenner NOT “Facing Knee Surgery” After “Refusing To Ditch Stilettos” | 12:31 pm, January 17, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
obry-00052 | Julie Lassa, the Democratic incumbent running for District 24 State Assembly of Wisconsin, published an op-ed in the Wisconsin Rapids City Times on Sept. 9. She discussed student loan debt and a bill called Higher Ed Lower Debt. According to Lassa, the bill would create a Wisconsin Student Loan Refinancing Authority, which would allow individuals to refinance their loans through the state. According to Lassa, “The typical Wisconsin student who graduates with a bachelor’s degree will make student loan payments of about $388 per month for almost 19 years.” According to the Institute for College Access and Success, an independent nonprofit organization focused on college affordability, the average student debt for a Wisconsin student is $28,810, which Lassa also stated in her article. | unobservable | https://observatory.journalism.wisc.edu/2016/11/07/the-debt-trail-for-wisconsin-college-graduates/ | null | null | null | Kerry Huth | null | The debt trail for Wisconsin college graduates | December 16, 2016 | null | ['Wisconsin', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-01912 | Racist Protesters Protected by Black Policeman? | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/racist-protesters-protected-black-policeman/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Racist Protesters Protected by Black Policeman? | 13 August 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02769 | Questions about President Obama Long Form Birth Certificate | none | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-birth-certificate/ | null | obama | null | null | null | Questions about President Obama Long Form Birth Certificate | Mar 18, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00168 | Airline pilot who asked his passengers to take action if hijacked | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/airposse/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Airline pilot who asked his passengers to take action if hijacked | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02979 | Rigged Election Results Released Early, Clinton Wins | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/rigged-election-results-released-early-clinton-wins/ | null | politics | null | null | ['2016 election', 'conspiracy', 'donald trump', 'hillary clinton', 'media'] | Rigged Election Results Released Early, Clinton Wins | Nov 3, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02038 | It Is Raining Spiders in Brazil | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/brazilian-sky-spiders/ | null | insects | null | null | null | It Is Raining Spiders in Brazil | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00152 | Says that U.S. Rep. Andy Barr was "even dismissing the importance of military service" by saying, "We both served our country. I’ve served in a position where ideas matter." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/oct/24/democratic-congressional-campaign-committee/did-andy-barr-dismiss-military-service-and-while-b/ | There are few things worse than belittling military service, and an ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accuses U.S. Rep. Andy Barr of doing just that. The Republican is running for re-election in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District against Marine veteran Amy McGrath. The DCCC launched the ad "Doing Right" on Oct. 8, and it accuses Barr of brushing off the significance of military service. The ad ran from Oct. 9 to Oct. 15. After criticizing Barr for allegedly giving tax breaks to corporations, the ad says Barr was "even dismissing the importance of military service" while onscreen text displays a quote from him that reads: "We both served our country. I’ve served in a position where ideas matter." So did Barr actually dismiss military service when compared with serving in political office? Not exactly. What Barr said in context The DCCC’s ad cites an article from the Louisville Courier Journal, which references an interview Barr gave to the New York Times. At one point, Barr seems to compare his political experience in government with McGrath’s military service. The DCCC ad ends his quote with Barr saying that he’s "served in a position where ideas matter." But, it isn’t the complete quote: "We both served our country. I’ve served in a position where ideas matter. My opponent has served her country in the military, where execution matters." The ad stops short of finishing Barr’s quote and makes it look like he said something more damning – that political office experience is more important than serving in the military. Barr didn’t say that, but he did compare the two. The Barr campaign says that the charge is a lie and pointed to his work on behalf of veterans. "A member of Congress serves his / her constituents," spokeswoman Jodi Whitaker said. "They get people their Social Security checks, Medicare payments, veteran benefits." Our ruling A DCCC ad says Barr is belittling military service while emphasizing the role of holding political office. Barr did compare military service with being a politician. But the ad doesn’t present the full quote, making what Barr said appear to be much worse than it was. We rate it Mostly False. Share the Facts 2018-10-24 21:04:20 UTC PolitiFact 3 1 7 PolitiFact Rating: Mostly False Says that U.S. Rep. Andy Barr was "even dismissing the importance of military service" by saying, "We both served our country. I’ve served in a position where ideas matter." Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Party Committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAU38PRe5I4&feature=youtu.be Monday, October 8, 2018 2018-10-08 Read More info | null | Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee | null | null | null | 2018-10-24T15:22:18 | 2018-10-08 | ['United_States'] |
tron-02622 | Potholes used to slow down speeders in Canada | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/canadian-potholes/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Potholes used to slow down speeders in Canada | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
thet-00021 | FFS Explains: The gender pay gap in Scotland | none | https://theferret.scot/ffs-explains-gender-pay-gap-scotland/ | null | Employment Fact check Finance | null | null | null | FFS Explains: The gender pay gap in Scotland | March 14, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03670 | The World Health Organization has listed being single as a disability under their definition of infertility. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/being-single-is-a-disability/ | null | Medical | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Is Being Single a Disability? | 29 October 2016 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01831 | Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth Secretly Married During New Year’s Trip To Australia, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/miley-cyrus-liam-hemsworth-married-new-years-australia-wedding/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Miley Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth NOT Secretly Married During New Year’s Trip To Australia, Despite Report | 10:05 am, January 15, 2018 | null | ['Australia', 'Miley_Cyrus'] |
hoer-01186 | Fake 50 Cent Cash Giveaway Facebook Page | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-50-cent-cash-giveaway-facebook-page-is-a-like-farming-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fake 50 Cent Cash Giveaway Facebook Page is a Like-Farming Scam | January 5, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01073 | “As governor, I'm going to get right down and start to work to make sure I stop it, so no more of these women's health centers shut down in Virginia. You have my word on that. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/virginia/promises/macker-meter/promise/1156/halt-closings-womens-health-care-centers/ | null | macker-meter | Terry McAuliffe | null | null | Halt closings of women's health care centers | 2014-01-17T12:40:32 | null | ['Virginia'] |
snes-05609 | A video shows a man suffering the deleterious effects of drinking 24 cans of Red Bull. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/24-cans-of-red-bull/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does a Video Show the Effects of Drinking 24 Cans of Red Bull? | 22 July 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09110 | U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett is “the most liberal man in the United States Congress.” | false | /texas/statements/2010/jun/20/donna-campbell/gop-nominee-says-lloyd-doggett-austin-no-1-liberal/ | Rousing delegates to the Republican Party of Texas’s state convention, physician Donna Campbell of Columbus lit into her November foe, calling U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, “the most liberal man in the United States Congress.” Campbell’s characterization June 12 touched off a supportive outburst from the partisans gathered in Dallas. No doubt, Doggett, elected to the House in 1994 after stints as a state senator and Texas Supreme Court justice, has long been a liberal—proudly so. We wondered, though, if he’s among the nation’s most liberal members compared, say, to solons from other left-leaning districts. When we reached Campbell to seek the basis for her statement, she couldn’t immediately visit; she was on duty in a hospital. Next, we endeavored to gauge Doggett's liberal lean following a methodology forged by PolitiFact in Washington when it explored a similar charge. In June 2008, the expected GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, said then-Sen. Barack Obama had accumulated the Senate’s most liberal voting record. PolitiFact found that Barely True. Also, we presumed that despite her wording, Campbell was comparing Doggett to all his colleagues, male and female, in the House and Senate. But for our analysis, we limited ourselves to the 435-member House; that seemed both reasonable and more doable than trying to compare Doggett's record to every other member of the House and Senate. We started our check by clicking to online ratings compiled by the National Journal, a nonpartisan political magazine. According to the Journal, Doggett’s 2009 voting record made him the House’s 163rd most liberal member, more so on social issues than economic or foreign policy, according to its tabulation of 92 House votes. From Texas alone, seven other Democrats had more liberal records, the Journal said. We also looked at the two preceding years. According to the Journal, Doggett’s votes in 2007 and 2008 made him the House’s 119th most liberal member and 97th most liberal member, respectively, in those years—not No. 1. Congressional Quarterly doesn’t rate members on a conservative-liberal teeter-totter. Instead it gauges whether members vote in step with the president or their party. In 2009, CQ says, Doggett voted with President Obama 89 percent of the time and with his party 95 percent of the time. According to an online chart, Doggett’s votes land landed him among members most likely to support their party and president, which does not put him in centrist company. Still, about 200 members, all Democrats, voted more often than Doggett in accord with Obama and about 175 members were more likely to vote the Democratic Party’s way, CQ charts suggest. For another comparison, we turned to voteview.com, a site overseen by Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of Georgia. According to voteview’s latest review of the House, Doggett is about the 117th most liberal member. Poole told us in an e-mail there is “no denying that Doggett is a conventional liberal but he is not an ‘extreme’ liberal.” After we alerted Campbell to how Doggett was rated by the outside measures, she replied in an e-mail: “It absolutely would have been more accurate (for me) to include the phrase ‘one of the most’” instead of saying Doggett was the most liberal man in Congress. “I’m not a practiced or polished politician and public speaking, like for many of us, is a skill I’m still honing,” Campbell said. “Before hundreds, or thousands of eyes, I sometimes speed too quickly through what I’d like to say. The point I was making is that Mr. Doggett’s ideology is considerably more liberal than mine, and considerably more liberal than what many, many Central Texans are telling me they want to see in their U.S. representative.” So, how does the doctor’s convention charge stick? Like melting butter. Doggett is liberal, but he’s by no measure the most liberal member of Congress, voting analyses show. Campbell owned up after we followed up. Her statement is False. | null | Donna Campbell | null | null | null | 2010-06-20T06:00:00 | 2010-06-12 | ['United_States', 'United_States_Congress'] |
pose-00338 | Will also direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/355/direct-revenues-from-offshore-oil-and-gas-drilling/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection | 2010-01-07T13:26:56 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03668 | A New Coin Called the “Amero” Is Being Minted As The Future Currency Of The U.S.A. | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/amero/ | null | warnings | null | null | null | A New Coin Called the “Amero” Is Being Minted As The Future Currency Of The U.S.A. | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12661 | Under "Trumpcare," the Republican replacement for Obamacare, "$600 billion worth of tax breaks will go to the wealthiest in this country." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2017/mar/21/mark-pocan/americas-wealthiest-get-600-billion-tax-breaks-rep/ | U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who helped put himself through college by working as a magician, has continued his performing since joining Congress. In the March 20, 2017 episode of "Magic Mondays," his regular video feature, the Wisconsin Democrat appeared to make part of a playing card move from his closed hand into an assistant’s hand. The purpose of the trick was to attack the Republican replacement for Obamacare, which is championed by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, supported by President Donald Trump and up for a House vote on March 23, 2017. Under "Trumpcare," as Pocan calls the proposal, "$600 billion worth of tax breaks will go to the wealthiest in this country." That figure has made headlines. But Pocan’s claim, while partially on target, suffers from saying that all the money would go to "the wealthiest." Previous claims Recent claims about what is formally known as the American Health Care Act -- including two portraying it as a sop to the rich -- have gotten mixed reviews on the Truth-O-Meter. Mostly False: A claim from U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who previously held Pocan’s seat, that "TrumpCare" would let insurance executives "personally make millions off your health care." One provision pegged at $400 million over 10 years is a tax break for corporations, not executives, and there’s no way to know how much of it would be turned into compensation for executives. Mostly True: A claim by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that the GOP legislation gives "$275 billion in tax breaks for the top 2 percent, people earning $250,000 a year or more." The savings over 10 years is projected to benefit the top 4.4 percent. Half True: Ryan’s claim that the legislation "will lower premiums." For people who buy health insurance on their own, premiums are expected to be higher than Obamacare in 2018 and 2019, but lower than Obamacare after that. The $600 billion It’s important to remember that the claims in those fact checks, along with the one by Pocan, were made about the original GOP replacement proposal -- prior to tweaks made in the days leading up to the expected House vote. The widely reported $600 billion in tax breaks comes from a solid source: estimates made by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, which is staffed by independent professionals. That’s the value over 10 years (2017 through 2026) of repealing nearly all the taxes contained in Obamacare and making other tax changes. To evaluate Pocan’s characterization of the $600 billion, we relied on analyses done by two expert nonprofit organizations -- the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Tax Policy Center. Here’s our breakdown: $275 billion to high-income earners by repealing two taxes: $158 billion: A 3.8 percent tax applied to capital gains, dividend and interest income for families with $250,000 or more in income ($200,000 for singles). $117 billion: Medicare surtax -- a 0.9 percent tax hike on wage income in excess of $250,000 a year for couples ($200,000 for singles). It’s arguable whether households earning $250,000 per year are "the wealthiest," but they are clearly on the high end of the income scale. According to the Tax Policy Center: About 90 percent of the benefit from repealing the investment tax would go to the top 1 percent of earners, who make $700,000 or more. And more than 99 percent of people would get no benefit from repeal of the Medicare surtax, while those in the top 1 percent would get three-quarters of the benefit—an average tax cut of $7,300. The rest of the $600 billion can be broken into two categories. $190 billion to businesses by repealing three taxes: $145 billion: A tax on health insurance companies based on their market share. $25 billion: Annual fee paid by prescription drugmakers and importers. $20 billion: A 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device makers and importers. Both Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center and Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told us these are a mixed bag. Repealing the taxes helps shareholders of those corporations, who tend to be wealthier; but they would also help a broad swath of people through lower prices. $122 billion to a variety of individuals through tax changes: $49 billion: Postponing the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health plans actually helps middle-income taxpayers, the Tax Policy Center says. $35 billion: Allowing more tax deductions for medical expenses -- starting at 7.5 percent of income, rather than 10 percent. This tends to help middle- and upper-income people, given that the rich are well insured and the poor don’t pay income taxes. $19 billion: Repealing a cap of $2,500 on the pre-tax dollars workers could put into flexible spending accounts annually. Poorer people can’t afford to put more than $2,500 aside for medical expenses, but this change benefits middle-income folks as well as the wealthiest. $19 billion: Increasing, to $6,550 for an individual and $13,100 for couples, the amount that could be put annually into a Health Savings Account. Similar impact as the pre-tax change. Our rating Pocan says that under "Trumpcare," the Republican replacement for Obamacare, "$600 billion worth of tax breaks will go to the wealthiest in this country." Not all of the $600 billion in tax breaks (over 10 years) would go to the wealthiest Americans. But nearly half -- $275 billion -- would almost exclusively benefit only people on the highest end of the income scale. And the wealthiest, along with middle- and lower-income Americans, would benefit from the remainder of the tax breaks. For a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details, our rating is Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Mark Pocan | null | null | null | 2017-03-21T15:39:10 | 2017-03-20 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act'] |
snes-00172 | Verizon Wireless limited the Santa Clara County Fire Department's data access by "throttling" their service in the midst of a wildfire. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/verizon-firefighter-data-service/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Verizon Wireless Throttle a Fire Department’s Data Service During a Wildfire? | 24 August 2018 | null | ['None'] |
para-00205 | on his economic philosophy. | half flip | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/30/kevin-rudd/rudd-economic-conservative-or-nationalist/index.html | null | ['Agriculture', 'Economy'] | Kevin Rudd | Ellie Harvey, Peter Fray | null | Rudd: an economic conservative or nationalist? | Friday, August 30, 2013 at 5:29 p.m. | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00694 | Little Rupert The One Pound Deer | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/rupert-one-pound-deer.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Little Rupert The One Pound Deer | 24th March 2011 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04083 | In total, we have added nearly 75,000 private sector jobs in New Jersey since we took office in January 2010. | true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/jan/20/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-states-gained-75000-private-se/ | New Jersey’s unemployment rate continues to hover above the rest of the nation but jobs are growing in the Garden State, according to Gov. Chris Christie. The growth is so good that Christie highlighted job gains during his State of the State address on Jan. 8. "In total, we have added nearly 75,000 private sector jobs in New Jersey since we took office in January 2010," he told lawmakers in Trenton. Christie has had a mixed bag of results from the Truth-O-Meter when it comes to claims about jobs. This time, however, he’s on target. Let’s review the facts. Christie became governor on Jan. 19, 2010, so we’ll measure private-sector job growth from that month, as well as February 2010 – his first full month in office. Also, since Christie gave his State of the State address on Jan. 8, we’re looking at job growth through November 2012. The December jobs numbers didn’t come out until Thursday, but we’ll note those figures later. New Jersey had 3,203,200 jobs in January 2010 and 3,269,900 jobs in November 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a net gain of 66,700 jobs. But Christie’s figure is on the mark if we start the jobs clock a month later. New Jersey had 3,197,600 private-sector jobs in February 2010 and 3,269,900 jobs in November 2012, according to BLS data. That net gain is 72,300 jobs. But 75,000 isn’t the highest private-sector jobs number that New Jersey has seen during Christie’s tenure. In a July 2, 2012 speech to the state Legislature, where he presented his case for a tax cut, Christie said the state had added "nearly 85,000 private-sector jobs" since Feburary 2010. Joseph J. Seneca, an economics professor with the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, said New Jersey’s jobs losses from June through October 2012 was at odds with national job growth. October’s Hurricane Sandy resulted in more significant job losses in November, but employment started to realign in December, he said. And seasonal hires were only part of the story for a major upswing in job growth announced Thursday: employers added 30,200 workers from across all major labor sectors to their payrolls. Factoring in those numbers, New Jersey’s private-sector job growth from February 2010 through December 2012 is 103,200, Seneca said. "Moving into 2013, New Jersey’s economy is poised to continue to grow," Seneca said. "There are still question marks out there with the federal fiscal debt and potential government shutdown and all the drama in Washington being played out again, but the December numbers are a big relief and catch up from what had been a pretty weak prior six months, but it’s much more consistent now with what’s been happening nationally." Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak and Kevin Roberts did not return a request for comment. Our ruling Christie said during his State of the State address, "In total, we have added nearly 75,000 private sector jobs in New Jersey since we took office in January 2010." If measured from January 2010, New Jersey’s job growth through November 2012 (December jobs figures didn’t come out until Thursday) was 66,700 jobs. Measured from February 2010 – Christie’s first full month in office – the net private-sector gains are 72,300 jobs. The numbers only get better. After the release of December’s job figures, New Jersey’s net private-sector job growth since January 2010 is 97,600 jobs. From February 2010, it’s 103,200 jobs. We rate the governor’s statement True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com. | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2013-01-20T07:30:00 | 2013-01-08 | ['New_Jersey'] |
pomt-05773 | A Dallas proof-of-insurance ordinance resulted in area tow lots mostly filling with the cars of illegal residents. | false | /texas/statements/2012/feb/28/chain-email/chain-email-says-dallas-ordinance-led-towing-many-/ | This just in from a chain email: An action by the Dallas City Council led to many local vehicles getting impounded, 80-plus percent of them belonging to illegal immigrants. Really? We scoped this out with Dallas authorities, who told us the claim, making the rounds for years on the Internet, reflects a council decision but is not accurate about related impoundments and couldn’t possibly be rooted in solid sources. More on cars piling up soon, but first, let’s air the email’s particulars, which were passed to us by a reader. "Has Dallas, Texas Got a Good Idea or What?" reads the email’s subject line, which concludes with an enthusiastic "GO Dallas!" The email itself says a Dallas ordinance passed in 2008 requires that drivers who are pulled over by law enforcement provide proof of insurance. If they can’t do that, the email says, their car is towed -- and proof of insurance is required to retrieve the car. And, the email continues: "Shortly after the "No Insurance" ordinance was passed, the Dallas impound lots began to fill up and (they) were full after only nine days. 80"-plus percent "of the impounded cars were driven by illegal’s," an indecorous (and ungrammatical) reference to undocumented residents. The chain email’s claims have been posted at least 50 times since Sept. 2010. We saw it on websites like Sodahead.com, Truthorfiction.com and in myriad online forums. None of the posts offered backup information. We checked, and found Dallas indeed has such an ordinance. According to an online city summary, the ordinance says that "drivers stopped for a traffic violation who cannot show proof of auto insurance meeting state requirements will be issued a citation and will have his or her vehicle towed at the owner’s expense." However, The Dallas Morning News reported in a Dec. 30, 2008 news article that police officers may use discretion in deciding whether the car will be impounded. In a telephone interview, Mitchell Rasansky, a former Dallas City Council member and a champion of the 2008 ordinance, said that he offered the change because "the people who are really being hurt by (uninsured motorists) are the middle- and lower-income people who get hit, and somebody who hit them doesn’t have insurance." Rasanky said he was unaware of how many cars have since been impounded or if affected drivers included many illegal immigrants. Scott Walton, spokesman for the Dallas Police Department, separately told us: "If you’ve ever been in an accident and found that the other person is not insured, it really does put a financial burden on you.The city really wants to make sure that anyone traveling through Dallas meets state requirements and don’t get put in that situation." Since 1982, it’s been against Texas law to drive without being able to pay for accidents one causes, a requirement most residents meet by having auto insurance, according to John Greeley, a public information officer at the Texas Department of Insurance. Austin police issue tickets to such drivers, according to Austin Police Department spokeswoman Veneza Aguinaga, but vehicles aren’t impounded. Cars that are towed by law enforcement are taken to the Dallas Police Department’s auto pound. Walton took issue with the email’s claim that those impound lots were full after nine days. "It never reached even close to capacity after this was implemented," he said. And has the Dallas ordinance disproportionately affected residents who are in the country illegally? Walton told us there’s no way to prove the figure the email offers because police officers don’t usually ask whether individuals are citizens in these situations. "We (also) do not check citizenship or the status of immigration when people come to claim their car," he said. "I don’t know where that (percentage) came from." Next, we explored another angle that might help independently evaluate the email: If illegal immigrants cannot obtain auto insurance, then perhaps they couldn’t be recovering their cars. Greeley of the TDI advised, though, that Texas residents do not have to show they are legally in the country before purchasing vehicle insurance. Finally, we ran the chain email by Steve Blow, a news columnist for the Dallas Morning News who has written about the city’s impoundment of vehicles. In his opinion, Blow said, the email has a grain of truth and a lot of fiction. "I know the line about the impound lot filling up is wrong," Blow said in an email. "That was one of the predictions that never happened. I have no idea where the 80 percent illegals figure comes from. Cops don’t inquire about citizenship. And I have heard nothing about accident rates plunging 47 percent. If that were true, I think police officials would have been eager to make that known." Our ruling Dallas has an ordinance that has led to cars getting impounded. Yet we found no evidence supporting the email’s linchpin claim that about 80 percent of the cars initially impounded belonged to illegal residents. There’s not even a factual way to reach that figure; Dallas authorities don’t usually check the legal residency status of motorists. We rate this chain email False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2012-02-28T06:00:00 | 2012-01-31 | ['Dallas'] |
hoer-00536 | 'Saved by the Bell' Star Dennis Haskins Is Dead | statirical reports | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/dennis-haskins-death-hoax.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | 'Saved by the Bell' Star Dennis Haskins Is NOT Dead | September 3, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00043 | Nigerian-eligible Southampton teenager among four new call-ups in Ireland squad | none | http://www.the42.ie/ireland-squad-denmark-northern-ireland-4324713-Nov2018/ | null | null | null | null | null | Nigerian-eligible Southampton teenager among four new call-ups in Ireland squad | null | null | ['Republic_of_Ireland'] |
tron-00191 | Gum arabic and Osama bin Ladin | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/gumarabic/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Gum arabic and Osama bin Ladin – Unproven! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14154 | Bernie Sanders voted with Republicans to protect the Minutemen, a hate group that used military tactics against our community. | half-true | /texas/statements/2016/apr/30/julian-castro/julian-castro-claims-bernie-sanders-voted-republic/ | Housing Secretary Julián Castro, a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, took aim at Bernie Sanders’ record on immigration during the senator’s former elected capacity as an Independent member of the U.S. House from 1991 to 2007. Sanders "voted with Republicans to protect the Minutemen, a hate group that used military tactics against our community," Castro, a former San Antonio mayor, said in a statement rolled out by the Clinton camp March 8, 2016, the day that Sen. Sanders of Vermont won an upset victory in the party’s Michigan presidential primary. Clinton leveled a similar claim about Sanders and the Minutemen at a Democratic debate in Miami the next day; PolitiFact found her statement Mostly True. Unlike Castro, she did not call the Minuteman Project a hate group. Democrats tend to support comprehensive immigration reform including possible citizenship for residents living in the country without legal permission. Sanders, an Independent, caucused with Democrats in the House and later in the Senate. So it’s arguably not helpful at the polls for him to be seen as supporting the Minuteman Project, which came into the spotlight in 2005 when its founders organized a volunteer stakeout of parts of the Arizona-Mexico border for the month of April. One of the co-founders of the Minuteman Project, Chris Simcox, parted ways with the project and established the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in 2005. The remaining founder, Jim Gilchrist, was fired from the Minuteman Project in 2007, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The groups spawned a network of chapters over the years, driven by a combination of growth and internal conflict over finances and other issues. Some chapters were not close to the border and focused on anti-immigration advocacy, while others voluntarily patrolled the U.S.-side of the border with Mexico. Those patrols and confrontation with undocumented immigrants prompted then-President George W. Bush to disparage them as "vigilantes" and a former Mexican president to call them "immigrant hunters," the Washington Post reported in 2005. But the Minuteman Project and Minuteman Civil Defense Corps websites in 2005 and 2006 explicitly described their cause as "peaceful" and urged members to follow the letter of the law while patrolling the border, or risk discrediting their cause. In the claim, Castro, like Clinton, was referencing a vote on an amendment to a 2006 appropriations bill. The amendment was proposed by Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia in response to rumors that the U.S. Border Patrol had been telling the Mexican government where vigilante civilian border groups were stationed. The 2006 CQ Almanac described it as follows: "Kingston, R-Ga., amendment that would bar the use of funds in the bill to provide a foreign government with information that relates to the operations or location of the Minutemen or other private volunteer border patrol groups along the U.S.-Mexican border, unless the information sharing is required by an international treaty." On the House floor, Kingston explained, "What this amendment does is it clarifies Congress' position on a Border Patrol practice or a practice of the U.S. Government that tips off illegal immigrants as to where citizen patrols may be located. ... What my amendment does is simply says that the U.S. Government cannot tip off the Mexican officials as to where these folks are located." At the time, Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., said he didn’t oppose it because it essentially restated existing Customs and Border Patrol policy. PolitiFact found that Clinton got Sanders’ vote right — he did vote with the GOP for the amendment, House records show — but downplayed what had been a bipartisan vote where 76 Democrats joined 216 Republicans in support. But unlike Clinton, Castro described the Minuteman Project as "a hate group." So, is the Minuteman Project a hate group — and did Sanders’ vote really protect them? Requests for clarification from Castro led to Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, reaching out via email and directing us to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of nativist extremist groups. The SPLC was established in 1971 and is listed as an outreach partner by the FBI, according to the agency’s website. The SPLC list doesn’t designate the Minuteman Project a hate group, unlike some other groups on their list of nativist extremists, which are marked with an asterisk to denote that they are both nativist extremist and hate groups. We wondered what moves a group into hate-group territory. By phone, Mark Potok, a center expert, told us "the nativist extremist groups are a step towards the center." "Basically, those are the groups which go beyond merely disagreeing with immigration policy and confront, personally, suspected illegal immigrants, or people who would help or hire them," he said, adding: "We don't list a group just for saying they think immigration levels ought to be lower." Potok continued, "the thing to understand about our hate group listing is it's not based on criminality or violence. It’s based on the ideology expressed by the group, on its website or by its leaders. We ask, does it demonize an entire group? Those are the hardest line groups we cover." The SPLC’s website defines hate groups as those that "have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics." Potok said that in 2006, the year the vote Castro referenced took place, nativist extremist groups were on the rise after beginning to emerge around 2005. Activity peaked in 2010, he said, when the center tallied 319 groups. In 2015, the SPLC counted only 17 such groups. "A lot of these [extremist nativist groups] were spinoffs of the Minutemen groups," Potok said, "but not all." Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, said in a phone interview that Jim Gilchrist, one of the co-founders of the Minuteman Project, was receptive when Levin approached him to deal with neo-Nazi elements in the organization, and that differences of opinion on how to handle that issue contributed to the fissure creating the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "Certainly there were entities in the border movement that were clearly racist hate groups, and certainly there were people who were in the Minuteman Project at the time who were, but I can tell you that [Jim] Gilchrist wanted those people excluded, and after I informed him, he took measures to do," he said. In our research, we found that coverage of the project’s offshoots has been dominated by several high-profile criminal cases that happened in the years between 2006 and today. In 2009, a former member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps murdered a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter after breaking into their home, CNN reported. In 2013, Minuteman Project and Minuteman Civil Defense Corps co-founder Chris Simcox was arrested for child sexual molestation, according to Univision. These incidents have taken a toll on the reputation of the groups (for instance, in 2010, the NAACP referred to the Minuteman Project as "a nativist organization that has in the past been associated with the murder of migrant Mexican workers as part of its vigilante "border operations"). But it doesn't make sense to judge Sanders’ House vote on incidents that came after it occurred. So what information on the project was available at the time of the vote? A report from the Congressional Research Service, dated April 7, 2006, cited many potential problems that could arise with civilian border patrols, but also said that "apart from the widely reported incident involving Ranch Rescue [an extremist anti-immigration group that dressed in military gear and went looking for armed drug smugglers in 2002], there have been no credible reports of civilian border patrol organizations engaging in violence against migrants." Some scholars of the Minuteman Project, like Leo Chavez, an anthropologist at UC Irvine who has written about the group, have suggested that press coverage and creating a spectacle were central to the group’s purpose ("Although monitoring the U.S.- Mexico border was Gilchrist’s immediate objective, the larger goal was to use the "citizen patrols" on the border to draw attention to Gilchrist’s larger aim of influencing public opinion and federal immigration policy," he wrote). Christopher J. Walker, an associate professor of law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, echoed this view in an article in the Harvard Latino Law Review, writing, "More than anything else, the Minutemen seek media attention." Todd Gutnick, communications director for the Anti-Defamation League, told us by email, "We have always referred to the Minutemen Project (of that period) as anti-immigrant extremists, who had racists/haters in their rank and file, but not specifically a hate group," when asked about the ADL’s view of the Project circa 2006. Sanders campaign policy director Warren Gunnels told us by email that Sanders "did not vote to protect the minuteman. This amendment simply stated what was already law at that time. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has never shared information with the Mexican government except when required by treaty." Although Sabo said it didn’t reflect a change in existing law, 106 out of 201 Democrats at the time still voted against it; 19 did not vote. We reached out to Kingston for his perspective on the amendment. "It wasn’t an extremist group, they weren’t violent, they weren’t making threats, it wasn’t anything like that at all," he said by phone. "It passed overwhelmingly. I may have spoken to Bernie about it at the time, I don’t remember, but it wasn’t an extremist position. To me, it was common sense." "It was a minor vote. I’ve gotten calls from a few other reporters that started a few months ago. I didn’t even remember the thing itself until they started asking me about it," he said. Our attempts to reach the Minuteman Project by phone and via its website proved unsuccessful. Our ruling Castro, a surrogate for the Clinton campaign, said: "Bernie Sanders voted with Republicans to protect the Minutemen, a hate group that used military tactics against our community." Sanders, then an Independent in the House, voted with 75 Democrats to restrict the U.S. from alerting Mexico to Minutemen operations on the border. However, we didn’t see any evidence that this since-weakened extremist group was designated a "hate group." On balance, we rate this claim as Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Julián Castro | null | null | null | 2016-04-30T18:00:00 | 2016-03-08 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Bernie_Sanders'] |
tron-03544 | Obama Flashes Shahada Muslim Gang Sign | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-flashes-shahada-muslim-gang-sign/ | null | terrorism | null | null | null | Obama Flashes Shahada Muslim Gang Sign | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03008 | Neil Gorsuch called for the "advancement of the white race" and segregation in a 2012 statement. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/neil-gorsuch-separation-of-white-and-black/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Neil Gorsuch Push for the ‘Separation of the White and Black Races’? | 2 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02556 | Three power outages that coincided in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York were caused by Russian hacking. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/power-outages-la-sf-nyc/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Bethania Palma | null | Were Power Outages in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York Caused by Cyberattacks? | 22 April 2017 | null | ['San_Francisco', 'Los_Angeles', 'Russia', 'New_York_City'] |
snes-02672 | A dragon skeleton was discovered in northern Iceland. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dragon-skeleton-discovered-iceland/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Dragon Skeleton Discovered in Iceland? | 6 April 2017 | null | ['Iceland'] |
thal-00003 | FactCheck: Is Varadkar right to say immigrants are more likely to be working than Irish people? | none | http://www.thejournal.ie/factcheck-varadkar-immigrants-4273981-Oct2018/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: Is Varadkar right to say immigrants are more likely to be working than Irish people? | Oct 14th 2018, 8:00 PM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09857 | If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/11/barack-obama/barack-obama-promises-you-can-keep-your-health-ins/ | At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Aug. 11, 2009, President Barack Obama repeated a line he's used many times in describing his health care proposal: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." On one level, Obama is correct. His plan seeks to build on the system we have now, where most people get health insurance through their employers. The plan also aims to cover the uninsured and reduce costs for everyone. Back during the campaign, we rated a similar statement True , based on the fact that his plan does seek to build on the existing system, where about 60 percent of Americans get health insurance through work. Now, close to a year later, we finally have detailed bills to examine. They closely mirror what Obama promised during the campaign. But the plans also introduce new ways of regulating health insurance companies that will surely change the current health care system. That could prompt employers to change their health plans, and we find Obama's statement less clear-cut now than it once seemed. At a news conference on June 23, 2009, Jake Tapper of ABC News asked Obama about the possibility of changes in coverage. Tapper's question centered on the public option on the health care exchange. Before we go any further, we want to explain in the plainest terms possible what the exchange is and what the public option is. The health insurance exchange is a virtual marketplace where individuals and small businesses can go to buy health insurance. Employer-provided insurance offered by large companies, on the other hand, will continue as is, though Democrats have ideas on lowering costs that they hope will end up benefiting these plans, too. (In the interests of brevity, we're not going to go into all the cost-saving aspects here.) The government would regulate the exchange so that insurance companies can't discriminate against people who have pre-existing conditions, or charge wildly different amounts for similar coverage. One of the options on the exchange will be a public option that offers basic coverage. Obama has said the public option will keep private insurers honest by competing with them and not allowing them to charge unfair rates for the basics. Many experts believe that the public option will be the least expensive option on the exchange. Jake Tapper's hypothetical Back to Tapper's question: If the public option is cheapest, Tapper said, "then lots of employers will want to have their employees covered by that cheaper plan, which will not have to be for-profit, unlike private plans, and may, possibly, benefit from some government subsidies, who knows. And then their employees would be signed up for this public plan, which would violate what you're promising the American people, that they will not have to change health care plans if they like the plan they have." So Tapper is suggesting that many employers will be allowed onto the exchange and will pick the public option, which would clearly change some people's health plans. Here is the core of Obama's somewhat lengthy answer: "When I say if you have your plan and you like it, or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform. ... Let's say that we take the advice of some folks who are out there and say, 'Oh, this is not the time to do health care. We can't afford it. It's too complicated. Let's take our time,' et cetera. So let's assume that nothing happened. I can guarantee you that there's the possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they're not going to end up having the same health care they have. Because what's going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions: 'We've got to raise premiums on our employees. In some cases, we can't provide health insurance at all.' And so there are going to be a whole set of changes out there. That's exactly why health reform is so important." So Obama's saying that the government will not force employers to change their health plans. Fair enough. But Tapper's hypothetical isn't wrong either, and we want to explain it in more detail. As we've already noted, the health insurance exchange is where individuals and small businesses go to shop for health insurance. The government intends to regulate it, and the exchange will have a public option that includes basic coverage. But there are many things about the exchange and the public option that have yet to be finalized in Congress. For starters, it's not clear whether the public option will be subsidized by the government or if it will have to finance itself with only patient premiums. (Note that Tapper said it would "possibly benefit from some government subsidies, who knows.") Obama has said that the public option should be self-sustaining, but this is not settled. In the House, fiscally conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs won a concession from other Democrats that the public option will have to negotiate payments to doctors. This would tend to put the public option on more equal footing with private health insurance companies. Another implication of Tapper's question is that "lots" of employers would be able to have access to the exchange. But we don't know if this is so. Pending legislation in the House says that only individuals and small businesses of fewer than 10 employees would be able to use the exchange during the first year, and only individuals and small businesses with fewer than 20 employees in the second year. In the third year, businesses are allowed in "based on the number of full-time employees of an employer and such other considerations as the Commissioner deems appropriate." This sounds like employers will gradually be allowed into the exchange based on size, as well as "other considerations as the (health exchange) Commissioner deems appropriate." This obviously gives tremendous leeway to the commissioner, who is presidential appointee in charge of the health exchange. So year three becomes a question mark as to how many businesses will be allowed into the exchange. Questions about the public option Conservative critics of the Democratic plans believe these questions surrounding the public option and the exchange are critical to determining whether people will indeed keep their coverage. "The two most important factors are who is eligible for the public plan, and what are premiums in the public plan, compared with private insurers," said Greg D'Angelo, a policy analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation. The foundation believes that the reform package will encourage employers to change or drop their health insurance and send their employees into the exchange to buy their own insurance. "Any change in policy will change the incentives in the system, and you have to understand what is likely to happen," D'Angelo said. "Employers will change or drop coverage, and individuals will have little to no say in the matter." If you accept the premise that employers will opt for the least expensive plan available, then millions of people should expect that their employers will change plans under the reform bill, he said. The main response to this objection from supporters of reform is just what Obama said during the press conference: Employers can change health care plans right now, and they often do. Still, the legislative details that have emerged on health care reform indicate that if reform passes, we're headed for some significant changes in how health care operates. Obama certainly intends to leave the current system intact. But at this point, it seems too pat to say, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." It seems likely that at least some people will have employers who decide to change plans when different plans become available, most likely any small businesses that currently offer health insurance. They will be allowed into the exchange right away, and it seems likely some might find a better deal there and change plans. Until the legislation gets closer to a final stage, it's difficult to say how many employers will likely opt to change coverage. But clearly some change is coming. It's not realistic for Obama to make blanket statements that "you" will be able to "keep your health care plan." It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe people that health care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one of the points of reform is to change the way health care works right now. So we rate Obama's statement Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2009-08-11T18:05:34 | 2009-08-11 | ['None'] |
goop-02094 | The Weeknd “Long-Distance Relationship” Joke Was About Selena Gomez, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/the-weeknd-long-distance-relationship-selena-gomez/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | The Weeknd “Long-Distance Relationship” Joke Was NOT About Selena Gomez, Despite Claim | 12:55 pm, December 4, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00129 | SONA 2017 PROMISE TRACKER: Environment | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/environment | null | null | null | null | Duterte,SONA promise tracker,environment | SONA 2017 PROMISE TRACKER: Environment | July 19, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06466 | When we got the income tax in 1913, the top rate was 7 percent. By 1980, the top rate was 70 percent. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/18/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-top-income-tax-rate-rose-7-p/ | During the Oct. 18, 2011, Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said, "When we got the income tax in 1913, the top rate was 7 percent. By 1980, the top rate was 70 percent." Is she correct? We turned to the website of the Tax Foundation, which has a document that lists every tax bracket since the imposition of the federal income tax in 1913. It turns out Bachmann is right. In 1913, the federal tax code levied income taxes ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent, with the top rate of 7 percent levied on incomes of $500,000 and above (or the current equivalent of $11,332,304). At that time, there were no distinctions in filing status, such as individuals or married filing jointly. By 1980 -- just before Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency -- the top rate was 70 percent for all filing categories. The top rate kicked in at $108,300 for individuals and $215,400 for married couples filing jointly, or $294,907 and $586,546, respectively, in today’s money. For comparison’s sake, the top rate today for all categories is 35 percent. And the top rate was actually higher before the 1980 level of 70 percent that Bachmann cited. For every year between1944 to 1963, the top tax rate exceeded 90 percent. Our ruling Bachmann has accurately presented the historical tax rates for the two years she cited. We rate her statement True. | null | Michele Bachmann | null | null | null | 2011-10-18T23:31:30 | 2011-10-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-02846 | Says Thomas Jefferson said, "You might be able to fool the people for awhile, and they may go astray, but sooner or later the American people are going to wake up and they will correct the course." | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2013/nov/19/herman-cain/herman-cain-changes-jefferson-quotation/ | We’ve noticed that pundits like to quote the words of leaders from the past. The practice is so common, that PunditFact has decided, from time to time, to check for accuracy. There seems to be a cottage industry in misquoting Thomas Jefferson. He didn’t say, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Nor, "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government," nor any variations of those or dozens of other pithy phrases wrongly attributed to our illustrious third president. But one-time Republican presidential candidate and former pizza franchise executive Herman Cain was at least in the ballpark when he cited Jefferson recently. Cain was explaining the reasons Obamacare was failing on a recent Web video broadcast. "As Thomas Jefferson said, 'You might be able to fool the people for a while, and they may go astray, but sooner or later the American people are going to wake up and they will correct the course’," Cain said. Peter Onuf, historian at the University of Virginia and author of Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood, recognizes Jefferson's spirit in Cain’s rendition. But not Jefferson's words. "It's a Jeffersonian sentiment, but I can pretty confidently say those are not his words," Onuf said. Other Jefferson historians, Jan Ellen Lewis at Rutgers and Annette Gordon-Reed at Harvard, also drew a blank on Cain’s’ paraphrasing. Jefferson is misquoted so often, the Jefferson Foundation at Monticello has assembled a page called Spurious Quotations. We emailed Cain TV and they told us that the original line from Jefferson was, "The good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves." We will sort out in a moment the differences between what Jefferson said and what Cain said that he said, but first we should confirm the accuracy of the original text Cain provided us. At Princeton University, the Papers of Thomas Jefferson has been compiling and cataloguing Jefferson’s words for 70 years. Editorial assistant Linda Monaco searched the digital files of the project’s "Main Series," "Retirement Series," "the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia" and the unpublished documents of Jefferson’s presidential years. Result? The quote Cain provided us (not the one he said in his Web video) is indeed Jefferson. "This is a Thomas Jefferson quote," Monaco said. "It is from Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787." So the question is, if Cain did not quote Jefferson word for word, how close did he come? Well, he captured the key words 'the people,' 'astray' and 'correct.' He tacked on the part about fooling the people; that might have come from Lincoln’s line about fooling all of the people some of the time. He also added a phrase about waking up. In sum, he captured Jefferson’s meaning and some of the key words but embellished freely. It is telling that none of the experts recognized Cain’s version, nor could the researchers at the Letters of Thomas Jefferson find the source based on what he originally said. Our ruling Cain said that Thomas Jefferson said, "You might be able to fool the people for a while, and they may go astray, but sooner or later the American people are going to wake up and they will correct the course." Jefferson did write a line that resembles that in some important ways, but Cain put a fair number of words into Jefferson’s mouth. At PunditFact, we believe quotations should be relatively word-for-word accurate. If someone went to the trouble to leave their thoughts for posterity, the least we should do is honor what they actually said. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Herman Cain | null | null | null | 2013-11-19T11:36:53 | 2013-11-15 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-13227 | We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/19/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-blames-russia-putin-wikileaks-rele/ | Editor's note: We've attached an update to this fact-check below in response to reader queries after subsequent testimony by James Clapper. The original fact-check and rating remain unchanged. In one of the most heated moments of the final presidential debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over Russia’s interference in the current election. Speaking of the WikiLeaks’ release of tens of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign and, earlier, the Democratic National Committee, Trump said Clinton had no idea who hacked and released the emails — "Russia, China or anybody else." Clinton responded by asking Trump if he really doesn’t believe the 17 federal intelligence agencies that have said Russia is behind the cyberattack. "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election," Clinton said. "I find that deeply disturbing." Back in July, when WikiLeaks released the DNC emails, the government hadn’t yet named a culprit. On Oct. 7, however — the same day WikiLeaks released the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta — the Homeland Security Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement that said, "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations." The statement added that the recent hacks "are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process." The statement also said the intelligence community believes these attacks are directed from top levels of the Russian government, as Clinton said. "We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," the statement said. The U.S. Intelligence Community is made up of 17 agencies, forming the basis of Clinton’s claim. The 17 agencies are: Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Energy Department, Homeland Security Department, State Department, Treasury Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marine Corps Intelligence, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Navy Intelligence and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The 17 separate agencies did not independently declare Russia the perpetrator behind the hacks. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said that this cuts against Clinton’s point, saying, "It is unlikely that all 16 of the agencies had looked independently at the Russian connection, which is what Clinton seemed to indicate." (Cheung said 16 agencies because he omitted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from his count.) However, as the head of the 17-agency intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James Clapper, speaks on behalf of the group. Our ruling Clinton said, "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election." We don’t know how many separate investigations into the attacks they were. But the Director of National Intelligence, which speaks for the country’s 17 federal intelligence agencies, released a joint statement saying the intelligence community at large is confident that Russia is behind recent hacks into political organizations’ emails. The statement sourced the attacks to the highest levels of the Russian government and said they are designed to interfere with the current election. We rate Clinton’s statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/542ece9a-ae39-433c-8215-4a41906b75c9 Update, June 6, 2017: Clapper's May testimony was about a newer report, not October assessment The now former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made a comment when speaking before Congress May 8, 2017, that some readers interpreted as going against our findings in this article. Here’s why we disagree with that interpretation. We wrote this article Oct. 19, 2016, responding to an Oct. 7, 2016, joint statement from Clapper’s former office, which oversees the entire intelligence community, and Homeland Security. Clapper’s May 2017 congressional testimony, on the other hand, was about the much more comprehensive January 2017 report produced by the CIA, FBI and NSA. The process of putting that report together didn’t start until months after we published this article, in December 2016, at which point the intelligence community decided to restrict the investigation to those three agencies. Here’s what Clapper said, according to Congressional Quarterly. ("ICA" refers to the January 2017 "intelligence community assessment.") "Additionally, I'll briefly address four related topics that have emerged since the ICA was produced. Because of both classification and some executive privilege strictures requested by the White House, there are limits to what I can discuss. And of course my direct official knowledge of any of this stopped on 20 January when my term of office was happily over. "As you know, the (ICA) was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA, and the FBI not all 17 components of the intelligence community. Those three under the aegis of my former office. Following an extensive intelligence reporting about many Russian efforts to collect on and influence the outcome of the presidential election, President Obama asked us to do this in early December and have it completed before the end of his term." The January report presented its findings by saying "we assess," with "we" meaning "an assessment by all three agencies." The October statement, on the other hand, said "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident" in its assessment. As we noted in the article, the 17 separate agencies did not independently come to this conclusion, but as the head of the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on behalf of the group. We stand by our rating. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2016-10-19T23:15:20 | 2016-10-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-03434 | There are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the U.K., compared to "466 violent crimes per 100,000" in the United States. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/24/blog-posting/social-media-post-says-uk-has-far-higher-violent-c/ | The debate over gun policy has inspired a blizzard of messages on social media, from both supporters and opponents of gun control. We’ve checked some of these posts (often called "memes") in the past, but a reader recently sent us one we hadn’t seen, so we decided to take a look. The meme said: "There are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the U.K., making it the most violent place in Europe. Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland. By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000. … So hey, Europe, how ‘bout you shut the #%$@ up about gun control?" The meme includes a lot of figures, so we started out by looking at the United Kingdom and the United States. As we were conducting our research, we stumbled across a thoughtful critique of this claim on a blog called the Skeptical Libertarian that was written by Daniel Bier, a master’s degree candidate in economics at Rutgers University. (Bier fact-checked a claim that’s similar, though with slightly different wording than the meme we’re checking.) Bier’s primary concern about comparing crime rates in the United Kingdom and the United States is that the definitions of crimes in each country are significantly different. This was not reflected in news coverage in British newspapers that appear to have been the source of the meme. This oversight produced a misleading comparison. As Bier put it, "The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports defines a ‘violent crime’ as one of four specific offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault." By contrast, "the British definition includes all ‘crimes against the person,’ including simple assaults, all robberies, and all ‘sexual offenses,’ as opposed to the FBI, which only counts aggravated assaults and ‘forcible rapes.’ " Once you know this, Bier wrote, "it becomes clear how misleading it is to compare rates of violent crime in the U.S. and the U.K. You’re simply comparing two different sets of crimes." We thought Bier’s points were reasonable, so we tried to replicate his approach. We looked at the raw violent crime numbers for each country, using statistics for England and Wales for 2012 and for the United States for 2011, in a way that sought to compare apples to apples. (We should note that the United Kingdom includes Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the numbers in the meme appear to be based only on crime in England and Wales, which are calculated separately.) For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: "violence against the person, with injury," "most serious sexual crime," and "robbery." This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people. For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people. This calculation suggests that there is a higher rate of crime in England and Wales, but the discrepancy is not anywhere near as wide as the one cited in the meme. However, before we put too much credibility on these calculations, we should note that criminologists say there is actually no good way to compare violent crime rates in these two countries. Our rough effort to equalize the definitions improved the quality of the comparison, but what we did is not enough to fix the comparison entirely, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. "Once you get away from clearly defined terms like homicides, all kinds of problems come in," Fox said. "You have to take comparisons not just with a grain of salt but with the entire shaker." For instance, the vast majority of violent crimes are aggravated assaults, and this is a category that isn’t as well defined as homicides, rapes and robberies. Many aggravated assaults don’t result in an injury, Fox said, and even police in the same country don’t always use the same standard in counting this particular crime. Another problem is that aggravated assaults, rapes and robberies are victim-reported crimes, so whether the crime gets reported varies widely, depending on such factors as the victim’s trust in the police. This difference shows up in comparisons of FBI crime data, which consists of crimes reported to police, and the far higher rates of crime victimization found in a survey of Americans by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. The survey counts all crimes that respondents say they have experienced, not just those they reported to police. The International Crime Victims Survey, conducted by an arm of the United Nations most recently in 2005, shows the difference between reported crime and all crimes committed by conducting polls that ask people if they've been victims of specific crimes. Polling data showed that England and Wales had 2,600 cases of robbery per 100,000 population and 8,100 cases of "assaults and threats" per 100,000. While those figures are even higher than the meme suggested, the U.S levels are also much higher -- 1,100 cases of robbery and 8,300 cases of assaults and threats per 100,000. And the rate of sexual assault is actually about 50 percent higher in the United States than it is in England and Wales. So this data set doesn’t support the thrust of the meme, either. "Recorded crime data are problematic due to definitional issues, reporting rates and other concerns," said Shane D. Johnson, a professor in the University College of London Department of Security and Crime Science. "There may also be considerable variation across counties, or states." When we presented the Skeptical Libertarian blog post and our own research to the source of the meme -- Adam Kokesh, a libertarian activist -- an aide to Kokesh sent us the original link from the Daily Telegraph and said, "We appreciate the close eye on that post and all the research." Our ruling The meme said "there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the U.K.," compared to "466 violent crimes per 100,000" in the United States. Our preliminary attempt to make an apples-to-apples comparison shows a much smaller difference in violent crime rates between the two countries, but criminologists say differences in how the statistics are collected make it impossible to produce a truly valid comparison. We rate the claim False. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2013-06-24T13:58:39 | 2013-06-21 | ['United_States', 'United_Kingdom'] |
pomt-06663 | The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly approved "only one out of 376 amendments offered by Assembly Democrats" in 2011. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/sep/11/brett-hulsey/wisconsin-rep-brett-hulsey-says-only-one-376-bill-/ | In early August 2011, after surveys tagged him as possibly the nation’s most polarizing governor, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pledged a renewed focus on bi-partisanship and jobs. Later that month, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, echoed the call. He said some jobs-related bills proposed by Democrats were good and would take them up by the Assembly after it returns from its summer recess on Sept. 13, 2011. Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison, professed doubts about the sincerity of the GOP calls for bi-partisanship. On Aug. 27, 2011, the day Fitzgerald’s comments were posted online, Hulsey said in an opinion column in The Capital Times of Madison: "On the floor of the Legislature, Assembly Republicans have rubber-stamped Walker’s corporate agenda while rejecting hundreds of Democratic amendments, even though many were common-sense measures that emphasized accountability or saved money. So far, Republicans have accepted only one out of 376 amendments offered by Assembly Democrats." Bi-partisanship, of course, can be measured in many ways. But the one-out-of-376 statistic caught our attention, so we decided to check it out. We started by asking Hulsey to clarify his statement. Hulsey said that of all the bills adopted by the Assembly in 2011 before it adjourned for the summer, only one of 376 amendments proposed by a Democrat was adopted. Some amendments were proposed on the Assembly floor and others in Assembly committees, he said. The single Democrat-sponsored amendment that was approved, according to Hulsey, was to Assembly Bill 94. That bill made administrative changes to the Milwaukee school choice program, which uses taxpayer dollars to send children to private schools. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Jason Fields, D-Milwaukee, a school choice supporter. It specifies that a pupil currently participating in the choice program may continue to attend a private school if their family’s income increases above current income eligibility requirements and that the pupil’s siblings are not subject to current income eligibility requirements, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Council, which provides legal and other services to legislative committees. To check Hulsey’s numbers, we contacted the Assembly chief clerk’s office, which referred us to the Wisconsin Legislative Technology Services Bureau. Hulsey contacted the bureau, as well. The bureau determined there were even more Democratic amendments than Hulsey had claimed -- 399 -- and that only the Fields amendment was adopted. We asked Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie and Fitzgerald spokesman John Jagler about the numbers. Neither disputed them. Jagler said many of the Democratic amendments were voted down because they were politically motivated. He also said that for the 2009-2011 state budget -- adopted when Democrats controlled the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature -- Republicans offered more than 120 amendments and none were adopted. That suggests Hulsey’s statement is just a measure of the reality of what happens when one party has outright control in Madison. Is the number of opposition amendments adopted a good measure of bi-partisanship? We put that question to two former state lawmakers, one from each party, who served in both the Assembly and the Senate. Mordecai Lee, a Democrat who represented Milwaukee and now teaches governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said the sheer volume of Democratic amendments rejected by the Republican-controlled Assembly is evidence "that these people despise each other." Brian Rude, a lobbyist and a Republican who represented the La Crosse area, agreed that the number of rejected amendments indicates a split, but added: "Partisanship has always been part of the process. Parties get elected to stand for something." For his part, Werwie cited a spreadsheet produced by the governor’s office on the 44 bills Walker has signed into law. It shows there were a total of 331 yes votes by Assembly Democrats on the bills. That means, on average, 7.5 of the 38 Democrats voted yes on each of the 44 bills. Our conclusion Hulsey said the Republican-controlled state Assembly adopted only one of nearly 400 amendments offered by Democrats to bills that were adopted by the Assembly. Complete official data is not available, but GOP leaders don’t dispute that only one Democratic amendment was approved. We rate Hulsey’s statement True. | null | Brett Hulsey | null | null | null | 2011-09-11T09:00:00 | 2011-08-27 | ['None'] |
chct-00178 | FACT CHECK: Is The UN Passing More Resolutions On North Korea Than Ever Before? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/03/14/fact-check-un-pass-record-resolutions-north-korea/ | null | null | null | Kush Desai | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 5:39 PM 03/14/2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02791 | Katy Perry Hooking Up With Calvin Harris For Revenge On Taylor Swift? | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/katy-perry-hooking-up-calvin-harris-revenge-taylor-swift/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Katy Perry Hooking Up With Calvin Harris For Revenge On Taylor Swift? | 4:15 pm, May 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05072 | The Mack Penny Plan for the federal budget "would balance our budget by 2019" and "continues to gain support." | half-true | /florida/statements/2012/jul/05/connie-mack/connie-mack-says-cutting-one-penny-out-every-/ | U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV faced accusations of using public money for campaigning when he sent an office mailer about his "Penny Plan" beyond his southwest Florida congressional district in May. Mack, R-Fort Myers, is running statewide for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Mack blamed the widespread mailing on the vendor who had also done campaign work for Mack. The vendor then reimbursed the government. While who received the mailer drew much scrutiny, what the mailer actually said drew less attention. Mack’s mailer was about a plan he introduced in May 2011 to balance the budget that he says is so basic it comes down to -- you guessed it -- a penny. "The Mack Penny Plan is simple -- eliminate one penny out of every federal dollar spent," the mailer said. "Doing this would balance our budget by 2019 and restore economic freedom by reducing spending and bringing fiscal discipline to Washington. The Penny Plan continues to gain support and now has 70 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, as well as support from key senators like Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey and Rand Paul. If Florida families can cut one penny, or more, out of every dollar in their budgets, so can Washington." We had a few questions about Mack’s plan: • Does the math work -- would it balance the budget in eight years? • How would Mack get to that 1 percent cut each year -- would it be across the board in every area, including Social Security and Medicare? • Is it really gaining support? Or is it stalled? By the numbers Mack has a fact sheet that shows the numbers for H.R. 1848, the One Percent Spending Reduction Act. Mack got the idea from the One Cent Solution. The founder, Bruce Cook, is a businessman from Georgia and a graduate of Harvard Business School. The math works like this: For six years, the federal government would reduce spending by 1 percent each year. In the seventh year, funding would be capped at 18 percent of gross domestic product, which measures the size of the overall economy. By the eighth year, the plan would balance the budget and save $7.5 trillion over 10 years. If Congress and the president couldn’t reach an agreement about what to cut, the plan would trigger automatic across-the-board spending cuts. Mack’s website shows the 1 percent reduction each year: FY 2012 – $3.382 trillion*, less 1 percent => $3.348 trillion cap FY 2013 – $3.348 trillion, less 1 percentt = > $3.315 trillion cap FY 2014 – $3.315 trillion, less 1 percent => $3.282 trillion cap FY 2015 – $3.282 trillion, less 1 percent => $3.249 trillion cap FY 2016 – $3.249 trillion, less 1 percent => $3.216 trillion cap FY 2017 – $3.216 trillion, less 1 percent => $3.184 trillion cap At the beginning of fiscal year 2018, it sets an overall spending cap of 18 percent of gross domestic product. The mailer says the plan would balance the budget by 2019, while a Mack congressional staffer told us based on the latest figures it would do the trick by 2017. To give you an idea of how dramatic this is, Paul Ryan’s budget plan wouldn’t balance the budget for nearly three decades, until 2040. The math isn’t the hard part We sent Mack’s fact sheet to several federal budget experts and asked them if the math worked and their opinion of Mack’s plan. Our experts included JD Foster of the conservative Heritage Foundation; Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute; Josh Gordon of the centrist Concord Coalition; Jason Peuquet of the centrist Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; and Michael Linden, of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Our experts generally agreed that Mack’s math is correct and would balance the budget. But no one we interviewed thought Mack’s plan was a realistic way to balance the budget. "One can always make the math work, as presented in this fashion it's a fairly straightforward exercise," Foster said. The straight math isn’t the hard part. It’s whether to cut everything by 1 percent or to target programs selectively. "The numbers work, but they have to be made effective by policy changes," Foster said. "The easiest part legislatively is the targets, and you have to have those, but then you still need to finish the job." Republicans have programs they want to protect from cuts, just like the Democrats do, and the GOP can end up fighting amongst themselves about what to cut -- take for example the battle over whether to extend the Export-Import Bank. "There are a lot Republicans in the House and Senate who fashion themselves as being for small government and supporting these overall caps, but when the rubber hits the road and they actually have to vote on cutting particular programs, they chicken out," Edwards said. Most notably, the bill doesn’t explain how it would adjust Medicare and Social Security to make up for the expected growth as Baby Boomers retire. We asked Mack’s congressional office if Mack supports cutting peoples’ Social Security 1 percent a year for six years. Their statement: "The Penny Plan sets a framework for reducing spending. It will be up to Congress and the president to work together to determine how best to achieve those spending reductions." (The One Cent Solution states that some programs could be spared while others cut more than others, so theoretically that could mean Social Security wouldn’t be cut though that would mean larger cuts elsewhere.) Linden, who called Mack’s plan "ridiculous", noted that this plan could mean an even cut larger than 1 percent for each senior, since the number of seniors getting Social Security will increase. And if Social Security and Medicare were off the table, that would remove about 35 percent of non-interest spending from the chopping block, leaving bigger cuts elsewhere. Most proposals to control spending account for the fact that more people are going to be getting Social Security and Medicare benefits in the future, Peuquet said. That means making actual cuts to the programs is very difficult. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities hasn’t analyzed the Penny Plan but examined a 2011 plan by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., to limit total federal spending to no more than 20.6 percent of the gross domestic product -- slightly larger than Mack’s proposal of 18 percent. The Center wrote that the cuts to entitlements would be massive: "There is little possibility that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security all would be exempted from these cuts. To do that would require cutting everything else — including defense, veterans’ programs, education, scientific research, and the like — by unthinkable amounts. ...and the cuts would have to be even larger if the economy faltered." Social Security and Medicare aren’t the only programs that our experts raised concerns about. Linden raised questions about whether Mack would cut veterans’ benefits although their needs are growing. "You have to think not just compared to what we spend today, but what we have to spend based on underlying demographics," he said. Gaining support? Mack introduced his bill in the House on May 11, 2011. It was referred to committees and introduced in the Senate on June 30. Since then, it’s seen no official action, according to the Library of Congress website. All 70 cosponsors in the House signed on in 2011. In the Senate, there is one sponsor plus 13 cosponsors and about half of the cosponsors signed on in 2012. Mack’s office also points to this April 2012 article in the conservative Washington Times cowritten by a Treasury official who worked under President George W. Bush. Mack also spoke about his plan at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center in April 2012. We agree that the Penny Plan is still getting some attention, but even Mack’s own website largely links to endorsements and news coverage from 2011. Our ruling Mack’s plan calls for reducing federal spending 1 percent a year for six years and then capping spending at 18 percent of GDP. Our experts agreed that the math works to balance the budget. But Mack has not provided a detailed road map on how to achieve cuts -- he simply says if Congress and the president can’t work it out, there will be across-the-board cuts, with no explanation about what that means for programs serving an increased number of people. We’d like to hear him provide details about whether older Americans should expect lower Social Security checks and to pay more for Medicare, or if they’ll be spared and in turn other departments will face much larger cuts. And we don’t see evidence that the plan is gaining support. The lack of action in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is a sign that balancing the budget requires broader policy discussions and debates about spending priorities. We rate this claim Half True. | null | Connie Mack | null | null | null | 2012-07-05T09:00:00 | 2012-05-09 | ['None'] |
goop-01210 | Justin Theroux, Selena Gomez Sending Flirty Texts Following Jennifer Aniston Split, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-theroux-selena-gomez-jennifer-aniston-split-flirty-texts/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Justin Theroux, Selena Gomez NOT Sending Flirty Texts Following Jennifer Aniston Split, Despite Report | 6:16 pm, April 10, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02372 | Tom Cruise “Reckless” Because He Fears He’ll Die Of Cancer Like His Dad? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/tom-cruise-stunts-fear-die-cancer-dad/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Tom Cruise “Reckless” Because He Fears He’ll Die Of Cancer Like His Dad? | 11:08 am, October 8, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01920 | President Trump inherited a White House infested with cockroaches due to the careless behavior of his predecessor, Barack Obama. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-left-trump-a-white-house-full-of-roaches/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Obama Left Trump a White House Full of Roaches? | 11 August 2017 | null | ['White_House', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-00008 | Said that man wearing racist shirt was working at a polling station in Mississippi. | false | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/nov/12/blog-posting/racist-t-shirt-wearer-mississippi-polling-station-/ | A photo of a man voting in Mississippi while wearing a racist T-shirt went viral after a Twitter post claimed he worked at the polling station. He didn’t. The T-shirt contained the image of a noose in front of a Confederate flag, along with the words "Mississippi justice." The original tweet of the photo was captioned "Olive Branch, Mississippi. Nov 6th, 2018." It got about 5,500 likes. The second tweet quoted the first and added, "Wait I forgot to mention he was one of the poll workers...." That post got more than 143,600 likes and garnered more than 50,000 retweets. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The photo is a real photo of a voter in Mississippi, but he wasn’t working at the polling station, according to election commissioner Paul Beale. The incident did not take place in his district, but he confirmed the authenticity of the photo. "He was not a poll worker; he was just a voter," Beale said. Beale said that the only time he would ask someone to leave would be if they were wearing campaign buttons or material supporting a candidate. Otherwise, he said, it was out of his hands. "We cannot regulate that; we cannot regulate stupidity," Beale said. "That’s all I’ve got to say about that." The image originates from a since-deleted Facebook post. Social media users and BuzzFeed News identified the man as Clayton John Hickey, a registered nurse at Regional One Hospital in Memphis and a resident of Olive Branch. The day after the election, Regional One tweeted that it was "aware of a photograph in circulation" and that they "are investigating and will take appropriate action." Regional One did not respond to our inquiry. The viral photo of a man with a racist shirt at a polling station in Mississippi is not photoshopped. However, the man was not a poll worker. We rate this claim False. | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-11-12T14:56:40 | 2018-11-07 | ['Mississippi'] |
pomt-04851 | I didn’t try to push a bill to reduce lottery scholarship proceeds for students. | false | /tennessee/statements/2012/aug/12/dolores-gresham/education-chair-gresham-said-she-didnt-push-bill-s/ | The Tennessee Education Lottery Corp. released its fiscal year 2011-12 results on July 16, reporting record sales and record proceeds for education. The Commercial Appeal called state Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, for her reaction because she sponsored the bill this year to raise the eligibility standards for Tennessee’s lottery-funded Hope Scholarships. We weren’t surprised that Gresham, the chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, was pleased with the lottery’s financial news – a $30 million increase for education over the previous year, far more than needed to cover the projected deficits. "Their success means success for students who earn lottery scholarships," she said. But we were surprised when the senator told the newspaper that she hadn’t pushed the bill that would have made it tougher for high school students to win the full $4,000 per year basic Hope Scholarship. "I didn’t try to push anything," said Gresham, whose district is about 30 miles east of Memphis. "The bill died. That’s not even an issue." Gresham was sponsor of the bill in the Senate and argued for its approval in two separate Senate committees and on the Senate floor, where it was approved in a partisan vote April 16. The bill later failed to become law when the House sponsor withdrew it on April 30, citing record lottery revenues. In March, we examined Sen. Gresham’s statement that the lottery reserve fund could sustain possible lottery-scholarship program deficits for "only" a few more years more and ruled it False. The policy contained in the bill was recommended last December by the Senate Lottery Stabilization Task Force, which Gresham chaired. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission had estimated the change would eliminate projected deficits in the program by cutting in half the Hope Scholarships for 5,200 to 6,600 new students per year. The bill also would have increased by $10 million per year state funding for the Tennessee Student Assistance grants, a separate scholarship program whose aid is entirely need-based. That provision would have served about 5,700 more students, with annual grants averaging $1,800 each. Gresham had also sponsored a bill in 2011 that would have raised qualification standards for all Hope recipients, but it never reached the Senate floor. We wondered how a lawmaker could say she didn’t "push" a bill when she was its sponsor, argued on several occasions for its passage, resisted efforts to block its passage and led it to approval in the Senate, so we emailed Gresham to ask for clarification. Senate Republican Caucus press secretary Darlene Schlicher responded, after speaking with Gresham, with a statement: "This sounds like a quibble over semantics. Sen. Gresham sponsored and advocated for this piece of legislation in her role as Lottery Scholarship Stabilization Task Force Chairman. No one disputes this. What Chairman Gresham took issue with was the implication by the reporter that she had attempted to twist arms or exert undue influence on the bill. She did not. Chairman Gresham did her job as a Task Force chairman and sponsor. Period." Some background is in order. The task force’s reason for being really dates back to fiscal year 2009, when the Tennessee Lottery had its first and only year-to-year decline in proceeds since its 2004 launch. It was the first time the program ran a deficit, and to close the books that year, the scholarship program took about $9.3 million from its huge $400 million-plus reserve fund. Last summer, Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey appointed a task force of senators and higher education officials to examine the issue. It concluded that deficits of up to $17 million to $20 million a year would occur in the short term, before falling considerably by 2020 if no changes were made. The panel recommended tightening eligibility requirements so that students entering college in 2015 must have a high school grade-point average of at least 3.0 and at least a 21 on the ACT to qualify for the basic $4,000 per year Hope Scholarship. Since the program began, students qualified by achieving one of the two standards – either a 3.0 high school GPA or a minimum 21 ACT score. Under the task force plan, students who scored one of the two standards but not both would receive a $2,000 annual scholarship. But even as the task force was working last autumn, the lottery was racking up record sales monthly. In fact, the lottery has been on a roll since the 2009 decline, rebounding in 2010 to a record level outstripping 2008’s pre-recession earnings. It set another record in 2011 and again in fiscal year 2012, yielding $323 million for education – up from $292 million the previous year. Thus, the projected annual deficit did not occur, and the lottery reserve fund still has over $400 million in it. As chairman of the task force, Gresham sponsored the task force’s recommendations in the form of Senate Bill 2514. Some examples of her advocacy: --Gresham argued for passage in a 51-minute discussion in the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 15, over the objections of Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga. --On Feb. 29, the Education Committee heard an update on lottery revenues from lottery executives, who reported that proceeds for education in the first seven months of the fiscal year were already $10 million ahead of the previous year and said they believed they could sustain at least that level into the future. Gresham told reporters after the meeting that she "absolutely" planned to proceed with the bill. --On March 7, after 21 minutes of talk, the Education Committee approved an oral amendment by Gresham that said the new eligibility standards would not go into effect in 2015 as the bill required if the lottery’s education proceeds were up at least $10 million annually over the next three years. --On March 20, Gresham presented the bill in the Senate Finance Committee, which discussed it for 22 minutes and then deferred a vote to the following week. --On March 27, the Finance Committee discussed the bill for 38 minutes before sending it to the Senate floor.. Gresham discussed the amendment again and emphasized that it meant only that the lottery had to generate $10 million more this year than last year, $10 million plus $1 the following year and $10 million plus $2 the following year. --On April 16, the bill was debated for 46 minutes on the Senate floor before winning approval on a 20-10 vote, with all Republicans favoring it and all but four Democrats opposing it. Gresham made her most vocal arguments for the bill here, against specific arguments raised by Democratic Sens. Berke, Jim Kyle (Memphis) and Roy Herron (Dresden). Gresham moved an amendment on the bill and tabled another. Our ruling It may be a quibble over semantics, but we think when the record shows that a state Senate committee chairwoman sponsored a bill, argued for its passage through two separate committee, tabled amendments offered by opponents and led it to passage on the Senate floor, that qualifies as trying to push for a bill. On the Senate floor, only one other member even spoke in favor of the bill in the entire 45-minute floor debate. We rule this statement False. | null | Dolores Gresham | null | null | null | 2012-08-12T06:00:00 | 2012-07-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-02364 | Says President Barack Obama was responsible for "the assassination of at least four American citizens" in drone strikes. | half-true | /texas/statements/2014/mar/19/kesha-rogers/four-us-citizens-killed-obama-drone-strikes-3-were/ | As LaRouche Democrat and U.S. Senate candidate Kesha Rogers of Texas calls for the impeachment of Democratic President Barack Obama, she lists among her reasons the "assassination" of U.S. citizens. Rogers says on her campaign website that Obama violated the Fifth Amendment "with the avowed assassination of at least four American citizens, Anwar Al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son, Samir Khan, and Jude Mohammed, without benefit of due process of law. Indeed, the death warrants against these individuals were effectively signed in secret, in a committee which is overseen directly by the president." PolitiFact has dipped before into the debate around the Obama administration’s use of pilotless drones armed with missiles to target terrorism suspects, exploring whether the president can legally authorize the killing of a U.S. citizen fighting for a foreign terrorist group, whether the program could be used on U.S. soil, if it complies with international law and if Obama has kept Congress fully informed. Were the individuals named by Rogers all U.S. citizens "assassinated" at Obama’s direction? Rogers’ views and alignment with conspiracy theorist and former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche led the Texas Democratic Party to urge voters not to cast ballots for her in the March 4, 2014, primary. Rogers still won enough votes to trigger a May 27 runoff that will determine whether she or Dallas investor David Alameel, who led the field, will challenge the Republican nominee, second-term U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, in November. In support of Rogers’ assassination claim, her campaign manager, Ian Overton, emailed us news stories from The New York Times and the New Yorker magazine, and we found more news coverage using Google and the Nexis news database. The citizens On May 22, 2013, the Obama administration "formally acknowledged for the first time that it had killed four American citizens in drone strikes outside the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq" since 2009, The New York Times said in a news story posted online that day. The acknowledgement came in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent that day to the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman: Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qa’ida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi. The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period: Samir Khan, ‘Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaqi, and Jude Kenan Mohammed. These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States. Anwar al-Awlaki and Khan were killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011. A March 9, 2013, Times news story about the strike said al-Awlaki, a cleric born in New Mexico, incited and plotted terrorist incidents involving U.S. targets, including lending support via email to Nidal Hasan in 2009 before Hasan killed 13 and wounded more than 30 people at Fort Hood in Texas. Khan, who the story said came from North Carolina, edited the online al-Qaeda propaganda magazine Inspire. The Times wrote of al-Awlaki’s death, "For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial." Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, a U.S. citizen born in Denver, Colo., died Oct. 14, 2011, in Yemen when, the Times wrote, "a missile apparently intended for an Egyptian Qaeda operative, Ibrahim al-Banna, hit a modest outdoor eating place in Shabwa. … Banna was not there, and among about a dozen men killed was the young Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism." U.S. citizen Jude Kenan Mohammad was believed by his family to have been killed in a November 2011 strike in Pakistan, according to a May 24, 2013, Los Angeles Times news story that said, "Former U.S. officials said that even if Mohammad wasn't the target of the strike, he was of interest to American intelligence because he was believed to have communicated with Muslims in the United States and encouraged them to travel to Pakistan or carry out attacks at home." The New York Times said another U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, had been killed by a drone strike in Yemen on Nov. 3, 2002, when George W. Bush was president. Derwish was a recruiter who put together an al-Qaeda sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., according to an Oct. 12, 2003, New York Times news story. The U.S. said he was not the intended target and did not acknowledge killing him, but a Yemeni official identified him as one of six men who died in the attack, the story said. Another U.S. citizen could be facing death by drone, according to news reports. A Feb. 28, 2014, New York Times news story said Abdullah al-Shami, "a militant who American officials say is living in the barren mountains of northwestern Pakistan" and who was possibly born in Texas, "is at the center of a debate inside the government over whether President Obama should once again take the extraordinary step of authorizing the killing of an American citizen overseas." Obama’s role Of the 2011 deaths, Rogers spokesman Overton said, "The Obama White House claims that only Anwar al-Awlaki was specifically targeted. However, there is no way to verify that, since the deliberations are secret. Either they were targeted or they were collateral damage of a kill policy. In either case, the program is run by Obama, who personally makes the final decision to kill a target. If the three were not specifically targeted, their deaths remain the responsibility of Obama." We looked to Obama’s public comments as well as news reports, including those Overton sent, for details. In a May 23, 2013, speech at the National Defense University, Obama said he had authorized the attack on Anwar al-Awlaki: "I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn’t. And as president, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took him out." What about the strikes that Holder said killed U.S. citizens unintentionally? News accounts indicate Obama likely approved those attacks as well. The New York Times reported in a May 29, 2012, news story that cited current and former presidential advisers, "Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top-secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture." The story, which quoted sources including William M. Daley, chief of staff in 2011, and Thomas E. Donilon, White House national security adviser from late 2010 to mid-2013, said that "the nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence and guided by (then-White House counterterrorism adviser John) Brennan, Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan — about a third of the total." Brennan, who became director of the CIA in 2013, said in an April 30, 2012, speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that proposals for a lethal strike are "evaluated by the very most senior officials in our government for a decision." CNN’s Jessica Yellin asked Obama in a Sept. 5, 2012, interview if he decides who will be targeted in drone attacks. The president said, "As president, ultimately I’m responsible for decisions that are made by the administration," and said an "extensive process" is behind such decisions. He described criteria: the target must be "authorized by our laws"; there must be a serious, not speculative, threat; there must be no option to capture the targeted individual instead of using deadly force; and civilian casualties must be avoided. Yellin pressed: "Do you personally approve the targets?" Obama said, "I can’t get too deeply into how these things work," but again said, "Ultimately I’m responsible for the process that we set up." An Oct. 23, 2012, news story in the Washington Post said, "Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to fire are made by the director of the CIA." ‘Assassination’ Were the cited deaths assassinations? Dictionaries define assassination as killing a person, particularly a prominent political figure. Left open is the question of whether the person’s death was intentional or collateral. A 1976 presidential executive order banned government employees from involvement in political assassinations; the word "political" was dropped from later orders, "assassination" is not defined and the federal government has argued the restriction doesn’t apply to wartime or terrorists. A Nov. 4, 2002, CNN news story on the ban notes that in 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of the home of leader Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and in 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on suspected terrorist compounds in Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush signed an "intelligence finding" that enabled the CIA to pursue and kill terrorists around the world. Anthony Clark Arend, a Georgetown University expert on international law, told us by phone that the 1976 order was meant to prohibit attacks on political opponents such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, "where those individuals were not combatants in an armed conflict against the United States." Holder has said the drone strikes are not assassinations because they are not illegal. In a March 5, 2012 speech at the Northwestern University School of Law, Holder said, "Some have called such operations ‘assassinations.’ They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced. Assassinations are unlawful killings. … the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful — and therefore would not violate the executive order banning assassination or criminal statutes." Arend said that wasn’t how he’d state it, but agreed the deaths were not assassinations. That term, he said, applies to political opponents rather than foes at war with the U.S. In his view, Arend said, the use of military force authorized by the president "against a combatant in an ongoing armed conflict -- which I would argue and one could argue actions against terrorists are -- that wouldn’t constitute an assassination," whether the combatant was American or not. Our ruling Rogers said Obama was responsible for "the assassination of at least four American citizens" in drone strikes. U.S. drone strikes reportedly carried out on Obama’s authority killed the citizens listed by Rogers. But three deaths were evidently not intended, while it’s debated -- and unsettled at best -- whether the killing of al-Awlaki, targeted for his al-Qaeda role, was an assassination. We rate this claim, which presents these deaths out of context, as Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Kesha Rogers | null | null | null | 2014-03-19T10:00:00 | 2014-03-19 | ['United_States', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-08028 | The richest 1 percent of America will get a bigger tax cut through this bill than the family income of the average family here in Central Texas. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2011/jan/07/lloyd-doggett/lloyd-doggett-says-richest-americans-getting-bigge/ | Austin U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett vigorously opposed the deal reached between President Barack Obama and Republicans to extend tax cuts initially put in place by Congress when Republican George W. Bush was president. After Vice President Joe Biden urged House Democrats Dec. 9 to vote for the deal, Doggett told reporters: "If it's take it or leave it, we'll leave it," according to an online USA Today news post. Early Dec. 17, the House approved the extension. Doggett then said on CNN’s "American Morning:": "We all like less taxes. But this came at an immense cost. It's our money. It certainly is. But it's also our (future) debt." Doggett, a Democrat representing the state's 25th Congressional District, which takes in parts of Travis and Bastrop counties plus Hays and five counties south and east of Austin, had swung home before the vote. And on Dec. 12, he told Austin’s KVUE-TV, Channel 24: "The richest 1 percent of America will get a bigger tax cut through this bill than the family income of the average family here in Central Texas. That’s just not equitable." Solid comparison? To our inquiry, Doggett’s office passed along a report by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal group focused on federal, state and local tax policies and their impact. The Dec. 9 report states that under the extension, the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent would enjoy an average tax cut of almost $77,000 in 2011. The report says that in Texas, the wealthiest 1 percent would see an average cut of $79,563. Doggett spokesman Cameron Arterton said the U.S. Census Bureau says the median family income for Doggett’s Congressional District 25 based on a 2009 survey is estimated at $57,723. Arterton said for Travis County, the median family income is $67,030; for Hays County, $70,998; and for Bastrop County, $55,344. To refresh, the median is not the same as the average, which is based on adding up all the family incomes and dividing the total by the number of families. In this instance, half of the area’s families have a lower income than the median and half of the area’s families have a higher income than the median. At the Census Bureau, spokeswoman Jenna Arnold guided us to county-by-county survey research showing estimated median and mean (or average) family incomes for the counties singled out by Doggett’s office for 2005-09; they differ slightly from the one-year estimates cited by Doggett’s office. For 2005-09, the median family income in Travis County is estimated at $69,251, about $25,000 less than the county’s average estimated family income of $94,955. Bastrop County’s median family income, $59,582, was about $12,000 less than its estimated average, $71,656. Hays County’s median family income, $72,647, was about $14,000 less than its estimated average, $86,364. Median or mean, what’s the best way to judge income? Lloyd Potter, the state demographer, told us that generally, he prefers to use average (or mean) income in comparisons rather than median income. "There’s something intuitive about the concept of an average," he said. But averages, Potter said, are sometimes distorted by extreme values at the high or low ends. "So if you had someone (in your county) who was really wealthy, like a billionaire, or just a couple, that would pull the mean up fairly significantly. It’s perhaps misleading as far as how most people are living," Potter said. "You’ve got some very wealthy people in Travis County. Doesn’t Sandra Bullock live there?" We heard next from Doggett, who pointed out via e-mail that in his Dec. 16 House remarks opposing the extension, he correctly compared the tax cut for the wealthiest Americans to median--not average--family incomes in Central Texas. Doggett said that in the earlier KVUE interview, "I wasn’t trying to change the standard of measurement... I was conveying the same important point about this tax deal -- the inequality between the tax benefits for the wealthiest 1 percent in this deal and the typical family income in our area for an entire year." His e-mail continues: "Even if you strictly limit ‘average’ to mean ‘mean,’ not ‘median,’ my statement is still accurate for the congressional district I represent." His office pointed us to census research indicating that family incomes in the district averaged $75,455 for 2005-09 in 2009 inflation-adjusted dollars. Doggett added that "‘median’ is a type of ‘average’ too according to Merriam Webster’s online, which lists the first definition of ‘average’ as ‘a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values.’)" As he acknowledges, Doggett didn’t specify median or mean incomes to KVUE, enabling his statement to leave the misimpression that the 2011 tax cut for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent exceeds the average income of Central Texas families. Solely considering average family incomes, his claim doesn’t hold up for two of three counties singled out by his office. Taking median incomes into account, though, his statement is supported. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Lloyd Doggett | null | null | null | 2011-01-07T06:00:00 | 2010-12-12 | ['United_States'] |
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