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tron-02617 | People Getting Cash Back by Using Food Stamp/EBT Cards With Minimum Purchase at Gainesville Publix Store | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/ebt-2-penny-grapes/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | People Getting Cash Back by Using Food Stamp/EBT Cards With Minimum Purchase at Gainesville Publix Store | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03441 | Chariot wheels found at the bottom of the Red Sea? | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/chariot-wheels/ | null | religious | null | null | null | Chariot wheels found at the bottom of the Red Sea? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01552 | Says Glenn Grothman pushed through state tax credits that when phased in, "someone that owns a factory that produces millions in income" will pay "less tax than their nephew would if he worked full time at Taco Bell for minimum wage." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2014/sep/14/mark-harris/new-wisconsin-tax-breaks-will-let-factory-owners-p/ | To spark his underdog campaign for Congress, Democrat Mark Harris is steering attention to his GOP opponent, state Sen. Glenn Grothman. And doing so with an attack that compares how much factory owners and Taco Bell workers pay in state income taxes. The winner of the Nov. 4, 2014 election will succeed retiring Fond du Lac Republican Tom Petri, who was first elected to the east-central Wisconsin seat in 1979. In doing an interview with Harris on Sept. 2, 2014, John "Sly" Sylvester, a liberal radio talk show host in the Madison area, argued that Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has provided "corporate welfare" and that the Legislature "has been sort of a rubber stamp." Harris, who is the Winnebago County executive, referred to Walker’s 2011-’13 state budget in giving this response: "Well, even in the first Walker budget, Mr. Grothman pushed through tax credits for manufacturing and agriculture," Harris said. "And he did it in the last day of the Joint Finance Committee, when there really wasn't time for anyone to scrutinize what was happening. And they basically passed credits that all but eliminate income tax on manufacturers and on agricultural operations." He continued: "And, you know, it's not fair to have someone that owns a factory that produces millions in income pay less tax than their nephew would if he worked full time at Taco Bell for minimum wage. But that's exactly what Glenn Grothman passed, and it's phasing in gradually." That’s an eye-opener. Did Grothman push through credits that, over time, would enable a factory owner earning millions to pay less state income tax than a worker earning minimum wage? The credits In June 2011, Grothman helped lead an effort to add manufacturing and agriculture tax credits to Walker’s state budget. The credits apply to the production income of the businesses, not to income such as royalties and investments. The measure gave businesses that are assessed as manufacturing or agricultural for property tax purposes a dollar-for-dollar credit on income from manufacturing or agricultural production on their 2013 tax bill. The credit, which began in 2013, rises annually until reaching 7.5 percent in 2016. Businesses organized as, for example, limited liability companies -- where an owner pays the firm's tax as personal income tax -- can reduce their state income tax rate from as much as 7.75 percent to 0.25 percent or less. In other words, come 2016, the 7.5 percent credit could eliminate a large share of a factory owner’s tax liability. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates the credits will mean $359.7 million less in tax revenues for the state over its first five years, and $128.7 million a year once it is fully phased in starting in 2016. The value Harris, who formerly practiced as a certified public accountant and a lawyer, provided figures on the state’s income tax rates and on the 2016 tax credits. The figures support his claim in that the credits would wipe away all of a factory owner’s state income tax liability -- on factory production income only -- for the first $2.4 million in production income. We consulted two accounting professors: the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s William Raabe, whose specialties include state taxation; and Stacie LaPlante, chair in accounting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Business School. They agreed that a full-time minimum-wage worker ($7.25 per hour for 2,000 hours per year) claiming the standard deduction ($9,930) and exemption ($700) would owe about $170 in state income tax. They also agreed that the factory owner wouldn’t owe more than that on production income until after earning roughly $2.6 million in production income -- a figure even higher than the one Harris cited. But the professors added some caveats under which the owner could pay more state income tax than the Taco Bell worker. "Qualified production income" is a specific type of business income. Not all of the net income from a factory would necessarily qualify for the tax credits, which would mean the owner would be paying additional taxes. Once the factory owner's production income exceeds roughly $2.6 million, he would pay more income tax than the Taco Bell worker. But it's worth noting that the owner's rate on that level of income would be only 0.15 percent (7.65 percent rate minus 7.5 percent credit), well below the 4 percent rate paid by the Taco Bell worker. Our rating Harris said Grothman pushed through tax credits so that when they are phased in, "someone that owns a factory that produces millions in income" will pay "less tax than their nephew would if he worked full time at Taco Bell for minimum wage." Once the credits pushed by Grothman are fully phased in, in 2016, some factory owners who earn up to roughly $2.5 million from production income from the factory will owe less in state income tax on that production income than a full-time worker earning minimum wage. But factory owners earning above that amount from production income would pay more than the minimum-wage worker, and more on any other income that doesn’t come from production. The statement is accurate but needs clarification, our definition of Mostly True. To comment on this story, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel web page. This item was changed on Sept. 15, 2014 to clarify that the tax rate on production income above roughly $2.6 million is effectively 0.15 percent. | null | Mark Harris | null | null | null | 2014-09-14T05:00:00 | 2014-09-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-09388 | The health care reform bill "is the largest tax increase in U.S. history." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/25/joe-scarborough/bush-i-clinton-and-reagan-all-pushed-taxes-higher-/ | On his Morning Joe program on MSNBC on March 24, 2010, host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, sparred with Sen. Dick Durbin over the tax effects of the health care reform bill. In the course of less than a minute, the bill was alternately described as "the largest tax increase in U.S. history" (Scarborough) and "the biggest tax cut in history" (Durbin). This seemed like a good place to step in and referee. First, here's the full context of the exchange between Scarborough and Durbin. "If this fall's election is going to be a referendum on this health care bill," Scarborough said to Durbin. "What should Democrats do when their opponents say, correctly, this is the largest tax increase in U.S. history? And it was passed at a time when we've got 17 percent real unemployment. And also, it's a further expansion of the federal government at a time when that worries a lot of Americans." "Joe, I keep hearing you every morning talking about the biggest tax increase in history, but you don't mention it's also the biggest tax cut in history," Durbin responded. "We have almost $500 billion in tax cuts. And the tax cuts go to small businesses to help pay for health insurance premiums. They're going to go to individuals who can't afford their health insurance premiums. It's really going to make certain everybody has a chance for affordable health insurance." We'll deal specifically with Durbin's claim in a separate item. Here, we'll tackle Scarborough's claim the health bill is "the largest tax increase in U.S. history." On the tax increase side, here are the biggies, along with what the government's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates they will bring in over the next 10 years: • Starting in 2013, an increase in the Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 percent on incomes over $200,000 ($250,000 for couples filing jointly). Also, people at this income level would pay a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income. The 10-year cost: $210.2 billion. • Starting in 2018, a new 40 percent excise tax on high-cost health plans, so-called "Cadillac plans," over $10,200 for individuals, $27,500 for families. That's expected to bring the government a total of $32 billion in 2018 and 2019. • Starting in 2011, new annual fees on pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers. That's expected to raise $27 billion over 10 years. • Starting in 2014, a 2.3 percent excise tax on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices. The 10-year total: $20 billion. • Starting in 2014, a new annual fee on health insurance providers. Total estimated 10-year revenue: $60.1 billion. • Starting in 2013, the floor on medical expense deductions will be raised from 7.5 percent to 10 percent of income. That's expected to bring in $15.2 billion over the next 10 years. • Starting in 2011, a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. That's expected to bring in $2.7 billion over the next 10 years. In all, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates various revenue-generating provisions in the health bill will bring $437 billion over the next 10 years. When it comes to tax cuts in the health bill, that's a matter of some debate. The plan includes government money to subsidize the cost of health insurance for lower income people who don't get insurance through their employer. Those subsidies, which are estimated to amount to $464 billion over 10 years, are paid directly to the insurance companies. They come via tax credits, but many Republicans and tax experts argue those shouldn't count as tax cuts. We'll get into that in more detail in the fact-check on Durbin's claim. There's also a no-doubt-about-it tax cut for some very small businesses that kicks in immediately, and allows them to write off a portion of the cost of providing insurance to their employees. That's expected to cost the government $40 billion over 10 years. "There are big chunks of money coming in and big chunks of money going out," said Linda Blumberg, a health policy expert at the Urban Institute. So let's talk net. The government's nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the changes in direct spending and revenue effects of the health care reform bill (as well as the reconciliation bill, which has yet to pass) and concluded the total net effect is that the bill would bring in an additional $525 billion in total revenues over the next 10 years. Does that translate to the biggest tax increase ever? Let's first agree to some ground rules. For starters, it doesn't make sense to compare, say, 2019 dollars to 1985 dollars. You have to adjust for inflation, or express the amount as a total of Gross Domestic Product at the time. The Republican calculation also uses the 10-year total effect of the net revenue gain, while in decades past, the Joint Committee on Taxation used to analyze tax provisions only in a 5-year window. Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thinks it makes the most sense to look at the last year of the 10-year CBO projections for the health care reform bill. By then, the plan is fully phased in, including the full effect of all the tax cuts and tax hikes. In that year, the total revenue increase is estimated to be $104 billion. That comes to a little less than 1/2 percent of the projected GDP that year. Horney notes that that's slightly smaller than the tax effect in the fifth years of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (a tax increase signed by President George H.W. Bush) and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (a tax increase signed by President Bill Clinton), as a percentage of the GDP at the time. And it's less than half of the tax increase (again as a percentage of GDP) from the Tax Equity And Fiscal Responsibility Act signed by President Ronald Reagan. "CBO says the net effect on revenues is that it is an increase," Horney said. "It's not insignificant. But it is far from being the largest tax increase in recent history." William Ahern with the Tax Foundation, a business-backed tax policy group, said total new revenues of $525 billion over 10 years isn't close to the size of the Clinton tax hike in 1993 or the Reagan tax hike in 1982. However, he said, a rigorous comparison can't be made because in 1982 and 1993, the Joint Committee on Taxation only did five-year estimates. Blumberg, of the Urban Institute, said both Republicans and Democrats would be wise to get away from the "biggest" jargon. Again, here we're are looking at Scarborough's side of the hyperbole wars. There's ample evidence that the health care bills result in a net tax increase. But when Scarborough characterized it as "the largest tax increase in U.S. history," that doesn't hold up when you level the playing field and compare several tax increases in recent decades to the GDP at the time. And so we rate his claim False. | null | Joe Scarborough | null | null | null | 2010-03-25T19:08:35 | 2010-03-24 | ['United_States'] |
snes-03012 | Did Neil Gorsuch Found a High School 'Fascism Forever' Club? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/neil-gorsuchs-fascism-forever-club/ | null | Questionable Quotes | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did Neil Gorsuch Found a High School ‘Fascism Forever’ Club? | 2 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05953 | A machine-shop worker tore his scrotum in a piece of machinery and then stapled it back together. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/suture-self/ | null | Medical | null | David Mikkelson | null | Scrotum Self-Repair? | 17 March 1999 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01228 | Help Find Ashley Flores | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/ashleyflores/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Help Find Ashley Flores | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01222 | Russell Crowe Dating Australian Radio Host Fifi Box, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/russell-crowe-fifi-box-dating-not-true/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Russell Crowe NOT Dating Australian Radio Host Fifi Box, Despite Report | 10:26 am, April 9, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00123 | “Our average maize yield has stagnated at 8.5 bags per acre, against a potential of 30 bags per acre, this reflects the very low yields among smallholders who produce 80% of our maize.” | mostly-correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/checked-5-claims-kenya-nasa-opposition-manifesto/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact-checked: 5 claims in Kenya Nasa opposition manifesto | 2017-07-07 06:32 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00310 | Will "support increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the support of which enriches schools and neighborhoods all across the nation and helps to promote the economic development of countless communities." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/327/support-increased-funding-for-the-nea/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Support increased funding for the NEA | 2010-01-07T13:26:55 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00173 | Will redouble our efforts to develop technology that can detect radiation and determine the danger it poses, and he will work with the maritime transportation industry to integrate this technology into their operations so as to maximize security without causing economic disruption. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/186/improve-port-security-through-better-radiation-det/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Improve port security through better radiation detection | 2010-01-07T13:26:50 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02426 | A man was hospitalized after a fidget spinner became lodged in his anus. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fidget-spinner-fake-news/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Was a Man Hospitalized to Remove a Lodged Fidget Spinner? | 16 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09670 | The Senate health care bill is longer than Tolstoy's 'War and Peace.' | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/20/orrin-hatch/hatch-senate-health-care-bill-longer-war-peace/ | They are both epic works of literature. One begins like this: "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news." The other starts like this: "Part A of title XXVII of the Public Health Service 10 Act (42 U.S.C. 300gg et seq.) is amended (1) by striking the part heading and inserting the following: 13 ‘‘PART A—INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP MARKET REFORMS’’; (2) by redesignating sections 2704 through 2707 as sections 2725 through 2728, respectively (3) by redesignating sections 2711 through 2713 as sections 2731 through 2733, respectively . . . " The first passage comes from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace . The second comes from Harry Reid's health care bill. Republicans have been comparing them to make the point that the Democratic plan is big and will lead to a bloated bureaucracy. In a Nov. 19, 2009, news release, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that the 2,074-page bill was "longer than Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace ." We decided to see if he was right. The Oxford World's Classics paperback edition of War and Peace weighs in at 1,392 pages, according to Amazon.com. By that measure, the 2,074-page Senate bill would indeed be longer. But using pages as the benchmark is misleading. The page layout of a Senate bill is much different from a novel. The bill uses much larger type, on 8.5-by-11-inch paper. The margins are larger and there are wider spaces between the lines. On balance, then, fewer words fit on a page of the Senate bill than fit on the page of the paperback novel. So for an accurate comparison, you need to count words. That's not perfect either, since the Senate bill (like its House counterpart, which checked in at just under 2,000 pages) has lots of line-by-line numbering, section headers, and various forms of coding that complicate the process of word counting. But it's still the best method available. To count the words in War and Peace , we relied on a feature on Amazon.com called "Search Inside!" that quantifies the books it sells on various measurement scales. That function found that the Oxford paperback version of War and Peace , an English translation, has 561,893 words. (In an accompanying chart, Amazon notes that 0 percent of books it studied have more words than that, so Hatch has picked the the right epic novel for his comparison.) As for the bill, we cut and pasted it into a Microsoft Word document and found that the bill contained 384,067 words. Just to make sure that Word wasn't choking on such a large file, we did a sampling of word counts on individual pages, then multiplied the typical one-page count by the total number of pages in our Word document. The single pages we checked tended to have a bit fewer than 300 words per page in Word. So, with our document running to 1,372 pages -- shrinkage that illuminates how spread-out the text of the Senate bill is -- we came up with a ballpark estimate of 411,000 words. That last estimate is a bit higher than what the Microsoft's word count function found, but not by much. Either way, Reid's health care bill is actually shorter than War and Peace . So while Hatch is right if you simply count pages, when you use a more accurate comparison -- the number of words -- War and Peace is actually longer. In other words, he is right by one measurement, but not by the best measurement. So it turns out that Democrats aren't as wordy as a Russian novelist. Who knew? We find his claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Orrin Hatch | null | null | null | 2009-11-20T13:57:05 | 2009-11-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-06669 | Thomas Jefferson expressed "strong support" for a balanced budget amendment in 1798. | half-true | /virginia/statements/2011/sep/09/bob-goodlatte/goodlatte-says-thomas-jefferson-strongly-backed-ba/ | Almost two centuries after his death, Thomas Jefferson is often quoted by Virginia politicians espousing limited, frugal government. So it wasn’t surprising when U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th, invoked Jefferson’s name in urging Congress to approve a balanced budget amendment and send it to states for ratification. "This amendment isn’t my idea. It’s not even a new idea," Goodlatte said Sept. 3 in the Weekly Republican Address to the nation. "Thomas Jefferson expressed strong support for it in 1798." Goodlatte has authored two balanced budget amendments pending in the House. Both require that spending doesn’t outpace revenues in a given fiscal year unless three-fifths of Congress signs off on the deficit spending. We were well aware of Jefferson’s remarkable resume -- author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, governor, secretary of state, president and founder of the University of Virginia. But we had never heard that he was a father of the balanced budget amendment and wondered if that is true. A spokeswoman for Goodlatte told us the congressman’s assertion is based on a Nov. 26, 1798 letter Jefferson sent to his friend, John Taylor. "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution; I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution," Jefferson wrote. "I mean an additional article taking from the federal government the power of borrowing." Kathryn Rexrode, Goodlatte’s press secretary, said ending federal borrowing would result in a balanced budget. Several Jefferson scholars told us there’s no doubt the former president opposed racking up national debt. But they said Jefferson’s position on federal borrowing, like much of his long life, was complicated and rife with contradiction. Princeton University is transcribing Jefferson’s correspondence through 1809 -- shortly after Jefferson’s presidency ended -- and expects it will fill 60 volumes. At Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation, editors are compiling additional correspondence from the statesman’s political retirement to his death in 1826. "Jefferson is a human being and he says a lot of things in the course of his very long career," said J. Jefferson Looney, a historian at Monticello and editor of the "Papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series." Looney noted that during the War of 1812, Jefferson was open to the nation incurring debt. The evidence is a June 24, 1813 letter Jefferson wrote to U.S. Rep. John Wayles Eppes of Virginia, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee who was also the former president’s nephew and son-in-law. Jefferson wrote that debt was acceptable as long as as it was paid off in a generation, which he calculated to be 19 years. He also suggested imposing a tax to ensure the debt was paid off within that time frame. "I hope yourself and your committee will render the immortal service of introducing this practice not that it is expected that Congress should formally declare such a principle," Jefferson wrote. "They wisely enough avoid deciding on abstract questions but they may be induced to keep themselves within its limits." Is this a flip-flop? "You pick the year -- 1798, he’s for an amendment (banning federal borrowing)," Looney said. "In 1813 he’s saying it’s OK to borrow, but you have to borrow within certain restrictions, but don’t tie the hands of Congress by saying it’s a rule." Looney said Jefferson always fretted about public debt but appeared more concerned about it when his political adversaries, the Federalists, were in power. Historians also note that as president Jefferson relied on public debt to finance one of his most famous accomplishments - the $15 million Louisiana Purchase. The deal with France bought the U.S. more than 800,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River. "People often say he believed in getting rid of debt, then what happened when Louisiana came along? Of course he bought it," said Barbara Oberg, editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson published by Princeton University Press. "It would have been silly not to. He’s a wonderful, pragmatic statesman." A couple of historians told us Jefferson’s unease with public debt may have stemmed from his own financial difficulties. Monticello’s website notes that at the time of his death, Jefferson had debts totaling somewhere between $1 million and $2 million in modern dollars. The historians also cautioned against using 18th century references and applying it to today’s debate over a balanced budget. "I don’t think any politician, Jefferson or otherwise, at this point was presented with a balanced budget amendment as we understand that today," said J.C.A Stagg of the University of Virginia. Oberg said the 1798 letter cited by Goodlatte hardly qualifies as a public call to end government debt. After all, she said, Jefferson threw out the idea in a private letter. Our ruling: Goodlatte said that Thomas Jefferson "strongly supported" the idea of a balanced budget amendment in 1798. The congressman cites a 1798 letter Jefferson wrote to a friend saying he would like to see a constitutional amendment "taking from the federal government the power of borrowing." This lends some credence to Goodlatte’s claim, although it’s a stretch to conclude that the private letter proves Jefferson "strongly supported" a balanced budget mandate. Goodlatte omits that Jefferson’s thoughts on government debt evolved in later years. As president in 1803, he borrowed money to make the Louisiana Purchase. And in 1813, he wrote another private letter suggesting it is OK to run up debt so long as its paid off in a generation. So there’s some basis to Goodlatte’s characterization of Jefferson’s view in 1798, some exaggeration and some selective interpretation. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Bob Goodlatte | null | null | null | 2011-09-09T15:38:39 | 2011-09-03 | ['None'] |
snes-04897 | A boy is suing his parents for allowing him to be born with red hair. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-haired-teen-sues-his-parents/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Red-Haired Teen Sues His Parents for $2M for Being Born “Ginger” | 18 April 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07492 | A cap-and-trade bill would "destroy over 50,000 jobs in Virginia." | mostly false | /virginia/statements/2011/apr/12/robert-hurt/robert-hurt-says-cap-and-trade-would-cost-50000-vi/ | U.S. Rep. Robert Hurt, R-Va., took time out from the budget showdown March 25 to express his contempt for cap-and-trade legislation aimed at regulating and lowering greenhouse emissions. In a newsletter to his 5th District constituents, Hurt detailed his efforts to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget. The freshman congressman wrote he is "a co-sponsor of H.R. 153, which would prohibit any funds at the EPA from being used to implement a cap-and-trade system that would harm our agriculture and manufacturing sectors, destroy over 50,000 jobs in Virginia, and amount to a job-crushing national energy tax when we can least afford it." A cap-and-trade bill known as Waxman-Markey passed the House during the prior Congress, only to die in the Senate. With the GOP now holding a majority in the House, the bill is generally considered dead. But Hurt’s claim that the legislation would cause more than 50,000 people to lose their jobs caught our eye. First, a word on how cap-and-trade would work. Each company with major greenhouse gas emissions would be subject to a cap on its emissions. Companies producing fewer emissions than their limit could trade or sell their extra emissions credits to companies exceeding the cap. The trading system would create a market for greenhouse gas emissions and give companies incentives to lower their emissions levels, since a cut in emissions could be turned into profits from the sale of extra credits. Each credit would cover one metric ton of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas and carry a price between $48 and $61 around 2020. The Waxman-Markey bill would have gradually lowered emission limits for companies. By 2020, U.S. emissions would be capped 17 percent below 2005 levels. In 2030, the level would be 42 percent below 2005 levels and 83 percent lower by 2050. Hurt drew his job-loss estimate from the National Association of Manufacturers, a business group opposed to the bill. NAM estimated that by 2030 Virginia could lose between 41,400 and 56,400 jobs because of the legislation, including lost mining jobs and positions lost if higher electricity prices cut back on manufacturing output. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has also cited the report in making almost identical claims as Hurt. NAM’s analysis projects Virginia would see higher energy prices under the bill, since the state’s electric utilities rely heavily on coal-fired power plants. The plants produce high levels of greenhouse gasses and might need to be retooled or replaced with non-emitting power sources -- such as nuclear plants or wind turbines -- to help Dominion Virginia Power or other utilities comply with the proposed law. If the utility companies continued to use coal plants, they might need to purchase extra carbon permits, again leading to an additional cost that could raise prices. These higher electricity prices, in turn, could force job cuts in the coal mining and manufacturing sectors, the report says. But independent experts and the federal Energy Information Agency say it is extremely difficult to calculate the bill’s long-term impact on employment. An EIA report notes the difficulty of predicting the price and availability of renewable energy sources in 2030. If cheaper wind and solar power became available, higher electricity prices may not be a major issue under the bill. Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard University, said it is "not unreasonable to expect job losses in several sectors ... especially coal, unless we come up with some genuine clean coal technology." But Frankel said the NAM report cannot really make an accurate jobs forecast for 2030 when economists often struggle to make employment predictions more than 6 or 12 months in advance. The economist also said the NAM analysis ignores the jobs that would be created due to a growth in new, non-emission technologies. "My feeling, as I think most economists would agree, is that the jobs created would approximately equal the jobs lost," he said. Charles Kolstad, a professor of environmental economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, added that "long range forecasts of unemployment are highly suspect. Sectors change, people change jobs. Unemployment is by its nature transitory." The Congressional Budget Office, the independent research and analysis arm of Congress, notes in a report that cap-and-trade could shift demand away from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. The CBO said jobs in coal mining and at coal-fired power plants could decrease unless new technology is able to capture emissions. But the CBO also expects employment to increase in sectors that require fewer emissions, such as nuclear, solar and wind power. Its report says the Waxman-Markey system, where carbon caps tighten over several decades, "would probably have only a small effect on total employment." As the CBO and Kolstad noted, the U.S. economy is adept at retooling to meet new challenges. Manufacturing employment fell by about 3.5 million jobs from 2000 through 2007, but employment in other sectors increased by 8.2 million jobs in that period, continuing the 40-year shift in America’s economy from manufacturing jobs to service jobs. Though workers who lose coal mining or other fossil fuel-related jobs may need retraining before finding a new position, the CBO predicts that "most laid-off workers would find employment in other industries whose products are less emission-intensive." One potential problem, however, is the risk that job losses would be concentrated in small communities, such as those scattered across Virginia’s coal belt, where other job opportunities are limited. This could force workers to relocate to find new work. The National Mining Association reports Virginia had about 4,650 coal miners in 2009, compared with 21,665 in West Virginia and more than 18,000 in Kentucky. The Virginia Employment Commission reported the state had an average of 8,748 coal-mining and natural-gas jobs in the third quarter of 2010, the most recent period for which data are available. The VEC also says Virginia had about 230,700 manufacturing jobs as of February, and the NAM believes some of those could be threatened by higher energy prices. The mining jobs are concentrated in the Southwest Virginia district represented by Republican H. Morgan Griffith. Hurt’s district contains manufacturing jobs as well as three power plants, according to EIA records. Let’s review our findings. Hurt, citing solely from a short report by the National Association of Manufacturers, says a cap-and-trade bill would cost Virginia 50,000 jobs. The NAM is an opponent of the legislation. The non-partisan CBO acknowledges there would likely be job losses in certain mining and manufacturing sectors under a cap-and-trade bill. But unlike the NAM, the CBO accounts for jobs that would be gained in new sectors. Independent analysts also predict cap-and-trade would have a far smaller impact on Virginia employment than projected by NAM. They also note long-range employment projections can be dicey. A thorough economic analysis should consider both gains and losses from a policy. The NAM report fails to do that. Hurt’s statement, based on the study, omits critical facts. We rate it Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Robert Hurt | null | null | null | 2011-04-12T14:16:09 | 2011-03-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-12583 | Seven out of ten doctors are not taking any new Medicaid patients as lower reimbursement rates make it cost-prohibitive. | mostly false | /texas/statements/2017/apr/07/donna-campbell/donna-campbell-says-due-low-rates-70-percent-physi/ | In a March 2017 email blast, a Texas state senator who's a physician said that in a meeting with President Donald Trump, she’d promoted federal block grants as a way to give states more sway over the costs of Medicaid, the decades-old federal-state insurance program for the poor and disabled. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, then declared: "Seven out of ten doctors are not taking any new Medicaid patients as lower reimbursement rates make it cost-prohibitive." Really? Let’s gauge physician acceptance of Medicaid patients, then the program's payments. A Senate aide to Campbell, Curtis Buckley, said by email that Campbell based her 7-out-of-10 statistic on a 2012 Texas Medical Association survey indicating 44 percent of doctors were declining new Medicaid patients, 26 percent limited such patients and 31 percent accepted new Medicaid patients without restriction. Indeed, in 2013, we found Mostly True a claim tied to that survey that 31 percent of Texas physicians were accepting all new Medicaid patients. Those figures, we noted, were based on poll responses rather than hard numbers. There's fresher data. The group's 2016 survey, which we fielded from TMA spokesman Steve Levine, found 38 percent of physicans accepting no new Medicaid patients, 21 percent limiting such patients and 41 percent accepting new Medicaid patients without restriction. Both surveys, that is, indicated about four in 10 Texas practices not accepting new Medicaid patients. Levine, asked why the association surveys suggest some inching up in the share of Texas physicians accepting all Medicaid patients, said a factor was a provision in the 2010 Obamacare law that temporarily raised Medicaid rates paid for services by certain physicians. Buckley, Campbell’s aide, also pointed out a 2014 study by Merritt Hawkins, a Dallas-based health-focused consulting firm, testing Medicaid acceptance rates in Dallas and Houston. His nudge led us to find another Merritt Hawkins study, were released just before Campbell made her claim. It indicates that nationally as of early 2017, 53 percent of 1,414 contacted physician practices in major metro areas were accepting Medicaid insurance with 60 percent of 494 practices in mid-sized metro areas doing so. Acceptance rates were lower, though, in cities where different kinds of practices (cardiology, dermatology, obstetrics-gynecology, orthopedic surgery and family medicine) were queried by phone in January-February 2017. On average, 17 percent of Dallas practices, 26 percent of Odessa practices and 37 percent of Houston practices, respectively, reported accepting new Medicaid patients. The 2017 report said: "The rate at which physicians accept Medicaid can vary for a number of reasons. In some cases, reimbursement rates provided by Medicaid to particular specialists may be below their cost of providing services. If not actually below costs, Medicaid reimbursement often is relatively low compared to that offered by other payers, and busy physicians may have no economic incentive to see Medicaid patients. In other cases, the process of billing for and receiving Medicaid payment can be problematic and some physicians choose to avoid it." A Merritt Hawkins spokesman, Phil Miller, pointed us to yet another report, though its focus wasn't on acceptance of "new" Medicaid patients. The 2016 national survey of 17,200 physicians conducted by the company for the Physicians Foundation, which says it seeks to empower physicians to lead in the delivery of high-quality, cost-efficient healthcare, found 16 percent not seeing Medicaid patients, 20 percent limiting such patients and 64 percent accepting Medicaid patients. A chart based on the survey showed variations among states -- and that nearly 30 percent of Texas physicians did not accept Medicaid patients. State data Next, we asked the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for data on Texas physicians and Medicaid patients. By email, Christine Mann sent a spreadsheet indicating that in fiscal 2016, which ran through August 2016, 63,915 Texas physicians were enrolled in Medicaid, including 31,585 primary-care doctors. The sheet further says that as of September 2016, per the Texas Medical Board, 74,098 physicians were licensed to practice in Texas. So, about 85 percent of the state’s physicians had a connection to Medicaid, though Levine separately said that could overly represent doctors who only occasionally treat Medicaid patients in emergency rooms and in unusual circumstances. But the commission’s data showed that only 32,130 Texas physicians reported a paid Medicaid claim in fiscal 2016. Those doctors amounted to about 43 percent of physicians licensed to practice in the state. Yet there’s a twist to that too, Miller helped us recognize: Data tracked by the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that in 2016, the state had 50,948 "direct patient care physicians," meaning doctors who worked directly with patients as opposed to those who were researchers, administrators or teachers. If you assume direct-care doctors predominantly submitted the tallied paid claims, then you can hypothesize that 63 percent of active physicians had a paid Medicaid claim. Levine commented: "Still–having one Medicaid claim paid is not nearly the same as taking new (let alone all new) Medicaid patients." Other analyses For broader perspective, we turned to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which focuses on national health issues and said in a March 2017 web post that nationally, about 70 percent of office-based physicians accept new Medicaid patients. That figure is a little old; it traces to a 2015 study based on the 2013 National Electronic Health Records Survey, a nationally representative survey that collects information on physician and practice characteristics. According to the results, 68.9 percent of U.S. office-based physicians who accepted any new patients were accepting new Medicaid patients--with 57.6 percent of such Texas physicians doing so: We sought more recent data and Jeff Lancashire of the National Center for Health Statistics emailed us an excerpt from the 2015 NEHRS survey indicating 28.2 percent of primary-care physicians weren't accepting new Medicaid patients with 71.6 percent accepting such patients--with Texas-specific results yet to be posted, the center's Corey Slavitt told us. After Campbell made her statement, FactCheck.org, a fact-checking effort based at the University of Pennsylvania, posted a lengthy analysis of flaws in claims about low physician participation in Medicaid. "There are no continuous measures on Medicaid participation," that story says, "but federal statistics gathered over recent years show that the percentage of physicians accepting new Medicaid patients has remained around 70 percent," though the story says participation rates have been affected by differences in state-specific reimbursement rates. Medicaid fees Campbell’s aide, Buckley, said her reference to lower Medicaid fees tied to her professional background and her understanding that Medicaid fees have long been a factor in doctors not accepting or limiting new Medicaid patients. Buckley also pointed out a June 2016 analysis published by the TMA confirming that in Texas, "reimbursement amounts for the same procedures differ among payers, with public payers (Medicare and Medicaid) setting a much lower rate than" what private payers offer. Our hunt for expertise led us to Stephen Zuckerman, co-director of the Health Policy Center at the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute, which has surveyed state-set Medicaid fees since 1993. On March 5, 2017, the institute posted a report co-authored by Zuckerman indicating that in July 2016, Medicaid fees paid Texas physicians amounted, on average, to 65 percent of fees paid in the state by federally funded Medicare; nationally, Medicaid fees averaged 72 percent of Medicare fees. In Texas, the report says, Medicaid fees paid for primary care services in 2016 were 58 percent of Medicare fees; for obstetric services, 66 percent; and for other services, 85 percent. A chart in the report indicates 2016 Medicaid fees paid Texas physicians were up slightly, 0.2 percent, from 2014 and those fees amounted to 88 percent of average Medicaid fees paid nationally. By phone, Zuckerman said Medicaid’s relatively lower fees definitely influence some physician decisions to accept patients. Zuckerman said doctors also cite the hassles of signing up for Medicaid and submitting claims. Another expert, the Kaiser foundation’s Julia Paradise, said by phone that Medicaid fees and physician participation comprise part of the story. A broader issue, she said, is whether Medicaid beneficiaries have access to providers. In that vein, Zuckerman pointed out a University of Pennsylvania study published in March 2017 finding that in 2016, appointments could be scheduled by phone by Texas Medicaid patients with about 60 percent of primary-care physicians--an insignificant change from 2013, the researchers wrote. Texas private-pay patients were able to schedule appointments with more than 80 percent of primary-care physicians, the researchers found. Our ruling Campbell said: "Seven out of ten doctors are not taking any new Medicaid patients as lower reimbursement rates make it cost-prohibitive." Texas Medicaid payment rates indeed trail those for other kinds of insurance. But the crux of this statement, the 7-in-10 statistic, lacks factual footing partly because it combines different answers to an outdated Texas physician survey. In contrast, a 2016 national survey indicated about 2 in 10 U.S. physicians were not accepting Medicaid patients with about 6 in 10 accepting them. The same year, a survey found about four in 10 Texas doctors weren't accepting new Medicaid patients. It's worth noting, still, a 2017 study suggesting far more Texas specialists weren't accepting new Medicaid patients. We rate this claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donna Campbell | null | null | null | 2017-04-07T18:05:36 | 2017-03-22 | ['None'] |
goop-01993 | Meryl Streep “Under Investigation For Covering Up Harvey Weinstein’s Crimes,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/meryl-streep-harvey-weinstein-investigation-sexual-assault-lapd/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Meryl Streep NOT “Under Investigation For Covering Up Harvey Weinstein’s Crimes,” Despite Fake News | 5:13 pm, December 20, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03091 | Official Department of Interior Twitter accounts were temporarily deactivated after the National Park Service account was used to retweet negative information about the incoming Trump administration. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nps-twitter-account-shut-down/ | null | Politics | null | David Emery | null | National Park Service Twitter Account Shut Down After Anti-Trump Retweets | 21 January 2017 | null | ['National_Park_Service'] |
pomt-13759 | An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/22/donald-trump/donald-trump-correct-lyndon-johnson-passed-legisla/ | In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, presidential candidate Donald Trump singled out "the evangelical and religious community" for their assistance in getting him nominated. "They have much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits," he said. "An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. Their voice has been taken away," Trump said. "I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and to protect free speech for all Americans." We were curious about the issue and whether an amendment — constitutional or otherwise — prevents the practice for religious institutions. For this fact-check, we're relying largely scholarly articles in the Denver University Law Review, the Case Western Reserve Law Review, Boston College Law Review. The restriction is actually a law, not an amendment, and it isn't exclusive to religious institutions. Lyndon Johnson is best known as America's 36th president, the Texan who assumed the office when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Texas politics can be rough, and Johnson knew how to play that game. Therein lies the origin of the "Johnson amendment." The restriction was championed by LBJ in 1954 when Johnson was a U.S. senator running for re-election. A conservative nonprofit group that wanted to limit the treaty-making ability of the president produced material that called for electing his primary opponent, millionaire rancher-oilman Dudley Dougherty, and defeating Johnson. There was no church involved. Johnson, then Democratic minority leader, responded by introducing an amendment to Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code dealing with tax-exempt charitable organizations, including groups organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literacy and educational purposes, or to prevent cruelty to children or animals. It said, in effect, that if you want to be absolved from paying taxes, you couldn't be involved in partisan politics. There was no record of any debate around the amendment. "The logical argument favoring such an amendment is that those corporations qualifying for the section 501(c)(3) tax subsidy should not be permitted to directly or indirectly use that subsidy to support candidates for office," said Michael Hone in the Case Western article. However it was likely, he said, that "Johnson was motivated by a desire to exact revenge on the foundation he believed supported his opponent and to prevent it and other nonprofit corporations from acting similarly in the future." Nonetheless, "Subsequently it proved to have a profound effect on how thousands of tax-exempt organizations — including churches — dealt with issues relating to political campaigns," according to Patrick O'Daniel of the University of Texas School of Law in the Boston College article. The law says all such organizations "are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." That includes contributions to political campaigns and any form of public statement for or against a candidate or group of candidates. Violating the restriction could result in the revocation of the organization's tax exempt status and the imposition of taxes. Nonpartisan, unbiased voter education or similar activities such as church-organized voter registration drives are allowed. Historically, that hasn't stopped some religious organizations from issuing endorsements anyway. O'Daniel has a list of examples. To cite two from 2000: Rev. Jerry Falwell told worshippers at the Genoa Baptist Church in Ohio to "vote for the Bush of your choice" and "We simply have to beat (Al) Gore." That same year, a pastor at a Bronx church who supported Hillary Clinton's run for the U.S. Senate at the time, substituted her opponent's name for Satan during a hymn. "In the face of lackluster opposition by the Internal Revenue Service, the Democrats and Republicans . . . continue to use the literal bully pulpits of the churches to preach to the party faithful," O'Daniel wrote. Nonetheless, the threat of losing tax-exempt status persists as long as the law is in place, and politically-minded religious groups, particularly evangelicals, have regarded it as a suppression of free speech and an entanglement of the IRS in the operation of their religion. In 2008, for example, pastors in 20 states organized to give politically-oriented sermons to protest the law, according to the Pew Research Center. The GOP platform has picked up that cudgel, calling for the repeal of that portion of the tax law. The Johnson amendment survived court challenges in 1983, 1990 and 2000, according to Pew. Our ruling Trump said, "An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views." Trump is correct that the law was pushed by Johnson and that religious groups that advocate for candidates risk losing their tax exempt status. It's important to note that the prohibition is not just restricted to religious institutions. It's nonprofit charitable organizations in general. But overall, we rate the statement as True.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/519857c8-1caa-412b-9ad9-04aa24f141e6 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-07-22T01:02:06 | 2016-07-21 | ['None'] |
snes-01302 | Former NBA superstar won a hefty award in 2015 after filing suit against a grocery chain that used his name in an advertisement without his permission. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/michael-jordan-sue-grocery-store-10-million/ | null | Legal Affairs | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Michael Jordan Sue a Grocery Store for $10 Million? | 24 December 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02224 | Purdon, Texas, Quarantined After Ebola Outbreak | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/purdon-quarantine/ | null | medical | null | null | null | Purdon, Texas, Quarantined After Ebola Outbreak | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Texas'] |
pomt-05861 | Oregon House Republicans’ jobs plan could generate more than 50,000 jobs over five years. | mostly true | /oregon/statements/2012/feb/11/kevin-cameron/oregon-house-republicans-tout-five-year-plan-50000/ | Oregon House Republican leader Kevin Cameron came out swinging in January with a jobs plan that his caucus says could create 50,000 jobs over five years. The plan calls for a mix of tax cuts as well as job growth in forestry, farms and food processing. Cameron insists it’s not a partisan plan and has offered to work with House Democrats who share the chamber with Republicans 30-30. Democrats said no, thank you, so we’re pretty sure the package won’t go anywhere this month. But a reader asked -- and we agree -- that the numbers need vetting. What’s their documentation for the claim that "the plan could generate more than 50,000 jobs?" As our sister organization PolitiFact Florida wrote in July 2010, we can’t weigh in on what may or may not happen in the future. But like PolitiFact Florida, we can check whether the House plan, as put together, actually calls for 50,000 jobs over five years. In other words, has a valid third party come by these numbers in some way? Cameron is wise to use the word "could." And to put it into perspective, 50,000 jobs isn’t too big. Portland Mayor Sam Adams said way back when that he would bring 10,000 jobs over five years in the city. Also, Portland metro area employers added 14,200 jobs over the last year, according to December unemployment figures reported by The Oregonian’s Richard Read. Nick Smith of the House Republicans provided emails and spreadsheets generated by the building’s nonpartisan Legislative Revenue Office, backed up by reports and data from Business Oregon and the state agencies of Employment, Forestry and Agriculture. There are seven components to the plan: (1) Water: Use 450,000 acre feet of water from the Columbia River to boost jobs in farm and food processing. The Agriculture Department estimates 72 acre feet of water could equal one direct job. That would yield 6,250 jobs, plus an additional 4,000 indirect jobs based on a multiplier used by Oregon State University. (2) Forests: Increase the amount of new growth timber harvested, adding 175 million board feet of timber to the 275 million board feet harvested in 2010. Legislative Revenue Officer Paul Warner checked with Forestry and calculated 7. 3 direct jobs for each million and 4.7 indirect jobs for each million, totaling 1,278 direct jobs and 823 indirect jobs. (3) Enterprise: Create more enterprise and e-commerce zones, providing incentives to companies that promise to hire people. The Legislative Revenue Office estimates 4,900 direct jobs and 3,200 indirect jobs. (4) Construction: Create an income tax credit for capital improvements to private homes and businesses. Legislative Revenue estimates the creation of more than 4,000 direct jobs and 2,600 indirect jobs. (5) Unemployed: Give businesses a tax break to hire people. Legislative Revenue projects more than 600 direct jobs and 400 indirect jobs. So far, that adds up to a little more than 17,000 direct jobs and roughly 11,000 indirect jobs. (Indirect jobs refers to the assortment of jobs that could be propped up by the direct job, such as at companies that supply material or at bars that serve thirsty new workers.) The final two proposals rely on a "general equilibrium analysis," and not impact analysis, which is why there’s no breakout between direct and indirect jobs. (6) Taxes: Double the income in the two lowest tax brackets, and provide a $250 per child tax credit. Combined, this should save a family of four with an adjusted gross income of $35,000 a year, about $927 a year. Legislative Revenue Office estimates more than 18,500 jobs at the end of five years. (7) Capital gains: Reduce the tax rate to 2.5 percent for two years, and then increase to 5 percent. This is expected to translate into nearly 3,800 jobs in 2016. Again, PolitiFact Oregon is not in a position to second-guess economic modeling by Legislative Revenue. But we did ask Paul Warner, the top man there, and Chris Allanach to walk us through some of the analyses. At the end, we asked: Is it fair to say this plan could result in 50,000 jobs? "Overall, I think it’s objective and under certain conditions I think those are reasonable approximations," Warner said. But, he also added, who knows what sorts of global and national factors might have an impact on our jobs picture five years from now? We turned to House Democrats to get their take. Jared Mason-Gere directed us to Steve Robinson, a consultant and former state analyst. Robinson questions the numbers -- as well as the philosophies behind the tax cuts -- and reminds us of jobs lost by the reduction in money to the public sector, such as at the Department of Human Services. (He points us to a report by ECONorthwest that examines the impact of loss of funding on long-term care workers.) We totally get that economists could measure impact on jobs in different ways. But the only real question we had left for Warner was whether his analyses regarding taxes and capital gains projected net jobs, in other words, accounting for losses as well as gains. He said yes, after a five-year period. "So when you reach this new equilibrium state, your private sector is bigger and your public sector is smaller," Warner said. We have a ruling to make. We stated upfront that we don’t have the economic credentials to second-guess these numbers, but we’ve largely cleared them of political manipulation. There are caveats galore, but House Republicans have relied on neutral third-parties to come up with job impact analyses. The only quibble we have is that indirect jobs are not the same as direct jobs estimated, and the statement should have included the distinction. Still, we end up with nearly 40,000 direct jobs estimated. We rate the statement Mostly True. | null | Kevin Cameron | null | null | null | 2012-02-11T00:00:00 | 2012-01-21 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-04931 | New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a multi-state "travel ban" involving states with "lax gun laws." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-york-state-gun-travel-ban/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | New York State Gun Travel Ban | 12 April 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04782 | Anti-abortion groups are claiming every sperm cell is "a life." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/every-sperm-is-sacred/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Pro-Lifers Declare Every Sperm Is Sacred | 10 May 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06080 | Says area near proposed northern Wisconsin iron ore mine is "15 hours away" from where public hearing on mining was held. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/jan/08/kelda-helen-roys/public-hearing-wisconsin-mining-held-15-hours-away/ | Passions run high over whether Wisconsin should allow a four-mile, 1,000-foot-deep iron ore mine near Hurley, a burg perched on the state’s northern border that brags of "wilderness, waterfalls and wildlife." And passions can sometimes lead to exaggeration. In a news release issued Jan. 5, 2012, state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, complained that a hearing on speeding the approval process for new mines was held in southeastern Wisconsin -- "15 hours away" from the mine region. Whoa. Stop the car. We love to drive through Wisconsin, but it seems like after 15 hours in the car, we’d be able to get from one end of the state to the other. And back. With plenty of time for potty breaks. To be sure, the distance question isn’t the most important issue in the mining debate. But the statement underlines how high the emotions are on the issue. Instead of driving the distance ourselves, we asked Roy, an attorney for her evidence. In her original news release, Roys cheered the fact that a Republican-controlled committee of the state Assembly, which is considering legislation to change the mine approval process, had changed course and decided to hold a public hearing on the measure in Hurley. The panel had held a hearingon the bill Dec. 14, 2011 near Milwaukee, which is a major center for mining equipment manufacturing. But only after two angry Assembly Democrats scheduled their own hearing for Jan. 7, 2012 in Ashland, much closer to Hurley, did the committee set a hearing in Hurley for Jan. 11, 2012. That led the Democrats to cancel their hearing. "I am pleased that the Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economy and Small Business has reconsidered and will now hold a public hearing in Hurley on the bill to permit a giant strip mine in northern Wisconsin," Roys began her news release. "It remains unclear why the original plan was to have the only hearing in Milwaukee -- 15 hours away from those most directly affected." Hurley and Milwaukee -- actually, the first hearing was held at State Fair Park in suburban West Allis -- are on opposite ends of the state. But Mapquest tells us the drive from Hurley to West Allis is about 300 miles and 5-1/2 hours by one route, or about 320 miles and 6-1/2 hours by another. Roy’s response: We should not be measuring the distance from West Allis to Hurley, but rather to communities to the north and west of Hurley such as Ashland and Superior. They are home to "lakes, streams, wetlands and groundwater that would be impacted" by the mine, she said. And we shouldn’t just measure the distance there, she said. We should measure it there and back. In bad weather. For residents of those communities, Roys said, "it was indeed a 15-hour round-trip drive, through snow and inclement weather," to West Allis. But that’s setting the claim on a whole new road. Roys had complained that the West Allis hearing was held "15 hours away from those most directly affected" -- in other words, claiming it would take a person 15 hours to drive to the hearing from northwestern Wisconsin. Roys also said that according to Google maps, "it takes 14 hours and 1 minute to travel the 772 miles from Port Wing," which is between Ashland and Superior. But then she goes on to acknowledge that that distance and duration would be round-trip between Port Wing and West Allis, not one way. Indeed, Mapquest shows that the longer of two driving routes between West Allis and Port Wing is 385 miles and just over seven hours one way. Roys concluded her email by telling us not to "miss the bigger point here," saying it was "an extremely long and inconvenient drive" for northwest Wisconsin residents to attend the West Allis hearing. OK. It is, indeed, a lengthy drive from northwestern Wisconsin to West Allis. About seven hours long, or less. Not 15. We rate Roys’ statement False. | null | Kelda Helen Roys | null | null | null | 2012-01-08T09:00:00 | 2012-01-05 | ['Wisconsin'] |
snes-02465 | A Syrian refugee receives close to $400,000 in benefits a year from the German government in order to take care of his wives and children. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/muslim-migrant-benefits/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | Does a ‘Muslim Migrant’ from Syria with Four Wives, 23 Children Receive $390,000 a Year in Benefits? | 9 May 2017 | null | ['Germany', 'Syria'] |
pomt-00876 | Said former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration "was forced to resign two years ago because of his personal use of emails." | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2015/mar/11/david-shuster/no-email-use-didnt-sink-us-ambassador-kenya/ | Hillary Clinton’s press conference about her use of a private email account when she was secretary of state basically came down to two points. She wants people to trust that she turned over every email that she should have, and that she "fully complied with every rule." But before she even left the podium, Clinton got pushback on whether she truly did follow State Department rules. David Shuster, a New York reporter for Al Jazeera America, brought up the 2012 resignation of Scott Gration, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya. "What about Scott Gration, who was forced to resign two years ago because of his personal use of emails?" Shuster asked. "David, I think you should go online and read the entire IG (inspector general) report," Clinton replied. "That is not an accurate representation of what happened." The case of ambassador Gration has come up frequently in recent days. The man himself was a guest on CNN’s State of the Union where he said that on the email issue, he was the victim of a double-standard. We thought it would be worth getting to the bottom of the assertion that Gration was forced to resign because of his personal use of emails. One of Obama’s biggest fans President Barack Obama appointed Gration to head the American embassy in Kenya in 2011. Gration was a retired Air Force general who had spent years in East Africa as the child of missionaries. Gration toured Africa with Obama in 2006 and was completely won over by the man who would become president. He was an early and key foreign policy adviser to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and was tapped by the president to serve as Obama’s special envoy to Sudan. He moved from that post to lead the embassy in Nairobi. Less than a year and half later, Gration departed, saying in his resignation letter that "differences with Washington regarding my leadership style and certain priorities lead me to believe that it’s now time to leave." Gration stepped down about a month before the release of an internal management audit by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General. In keeping with standard process, Gration had seen that report and was given the chance to respond before it came out. A damaging assessment The first bullet point in the inspector general’s report is a global indictment of Gration’s capacity to serve as chief of mission. It reads: "The Ambassador has lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission. Of more than 80 chiefs of mission inspected in recent cycles, the Ambassador ranked last for interpersonal relations, next to last on both managerial skill and attention to morale, and third from last in his overall scores from surveys of mission members. The inspectors found no reason to question these assessments; the Ambassador’s leadership to date has been divisive and ineffective." The auditors noted that many of the 19 federal agencies operating out of the embassy had little or no access to Gration, who they said showed an "ongoing unwillingness" to meet with agency heads. The auditors reported confusion and disruption. "Unless corrected there is a risk that the country team will become dysfunctional," the auditors wrote. Other issues included that Gration did not read classified cables and that an initiative he launched redirecting nearly $550 million in U.S. health assistance proved "disruptive." Communications with Washington were a significant source of friction, and Gration’s use of a personal email account was just one example of a larger pattern. The inspector general’s report said Gration "does not read classified front channel messages and has not established a system to have his staff screen incoming cables relevant to Kenya and U.S. interests in the region." Relating to emails, the report said: "The Ambassador’s greatest weakness is his reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions. He made clear his disagreement with Washington policy decisions and directives concerning the safe-havening in Nairobi of families of Department employees who volunteered to serve in extreme hardship posts; the creation of a freestanding Somalia Unit; and the nonuse of commercial email for official government business, including Sensitive But Unclassified information. Notwithstanding his talk about the importance of mission staff doing the right thing, the Ambassador by deed or word has encouraged it to do the opposite." The report goes on to say that Gration "ordered a commercial Internet connection installed in his embassy office bathroom so he could work there on a laptop not connected to the Department email system," and that Gration "very infrequently logs onto his classified account, which would allow him to read cables and classified emails." To our reading, Gration’s email habits were one point in a series of issues. Ronald Neumann, who served as American ambassador three times, most recently in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, agreed. Neumann, who is now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, said he finds it hard to miss the main message of the inspector general’s report. The message, Neumann said, is, "The ambassador is completely incompetent and should be removed as quickly as possible before he does any more damage to American interests." Neumann said from his experience, the staff in the Inspector General’s Office are credible and objective. He had no direct experience with the embassy in Kenya, but his reading of the report suggested the email issue played a minor role. "It could be an important issue, but when you screw up as many things as this guy did, it’s hard to get through to that one," Neumann said. We reached out to Shuster via email and through Al Jazeera’s press office and did not hear back. In an email to several news organizations, Gration said he was "‘'fired’ for the use of Gmail in the U.S. Embassy, my insistence on improving our physical security posture, and other twisted and false allegations." Our ruling Shuster said Gration was forced to resign because of his use of personal email accounts. That was one issue State Department officials raised. But just one of many. The State Department Inspector General’s report paints a much more troubling picture of an embassy in disarray under Gration’s leadership. In the words of the auditors, Gration "has lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission." Gration ranked at or near the absolute bottom among other ambassadors assessed by the department. His use of email was an issue, but according to an ambassador with much experience, it was a relatively minor one. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | David Shuster | null | null | null | 2015-03-11T17:59:31 | 2015-03-10 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-14991 | Says as secretary of state she was reserving judgment about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and "hoped it would be the gold standard." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/13/hillary-clinton/what-hillary-clinton-really-said-about-tpp-and-gol/ | Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended her opposition of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the first Democratic debate of the 2016 race. Clinton announced last week that she no longer supports the international trade deal, despite supporting it while serving as secretary of state -- once calling it the "gold standard." CNN anchor and debate moderator Anderson Cooper picked up on those words and asked Clinton about her reversal at the Oct. 13 debate in Las Vegas. "I did say, when I was secretary of state, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard," Clinton said. "It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn't meet my standards. My standards for more new, good jobs for Americans, for raising wages for Americans. And I want to make sure that I can look into the eyes of any middle-class American and say, ‘this will help raise your wages.’ And I concluded I could not." Clinton’s phrasing -- that she said she "hoped it would be the gold standard" -- implies that she was undecided on the TPP. But that doesn’t exactly match up to her prior comments. We found that her previous remarks actually gave the impression that she had confidence in the deal as it stood. In Australia in 2012, Clinton delivered remarks on the general topic of the U.S.-Australia relationship. Here’s everything she said about the TPP in that address, with the "gold standard" comment in bold. "So it's fair to say that our economies are entwined, and we need to keep upping our game both bilaterally and with partners across the region through agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. Australia is a critical partner. This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment." So it seems Clinton is saying the TPP does, definitevely set the gold standard -- as opposed to Clinton hoping it will. In other addresses around the same time, she expressed similar assuredness that the TPP would meet a high standard. In November 2012 remarks in Singapore, she encouraged all nations "willing to meet 21st century standards as embodied in the TPP" to join the deal. "The so-called TPP will lower barriers, raise standards, and drive long-term growth across the region. It will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and establish strong protections for workers and the environment. Better jobs with higher wages and safer working conditions, including for women, migrant workers and others too often in the past excluded from the formal economy will help build Asia's middle class and rebalance the global economy. Canada and Mexico have already joined the original TPP partners. We continue to consult with Japan. And we are offering to assist with capacity building, so that every country in ASEAN can eventually join. We welcome the interest of any nation willing to meet 21st century standards as embodied in the TPP, including China." Here are some of the other words Clinton used to describe the TPP before she left the State Department in 2013: "exciting," "innovative," "ambitious," "groundbreaking," "cutting-edge," "high-quality" and "high-standard." (To read more of her comments in full, check out our previous article on this subject.) As a presidential candidate Clinton has used more hedging language, for example saying she has "some concerns," and now she has said she outright doesn’t support the deal as it stands. In her 2014 memoir Hard Choices, she wrote: "Because TPP negotiations are still ongoing, it makes sense to reserve judgment until we can evaluate the final proposed agreement. It’s safe to say the TPP won’t be perfect -- no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be -- but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers." In fairness to Clinton, the TPP was still under negotiation when Clinton made the "gold standard" comment. The partners only finalized the deal this year. It’s quite possible the deal looks dramatically different than it did at the early stages of negotiations, when Clinton was at the State Department -- something Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill pointed out to us for this fact-check. The negotiations have been conducted in secret, so it’s hard for us to assess that ourselves. Also, as secretary of state, she spoke as a representative of the Obama administration, which was and remains wholeheartedly in favor of the deal. Our ruling Clinton said when she was secretary of state, she was reserving judgment but "hoped (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) would be the gold standard." She’s twisting her 2012 remarks a bit. Clinton said, "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements," which is a more confident claim than if she had said she "hoped" it would meet that standard. This is in contrast to more recent comments where Clinton said she had concerns about the deal and that she ultimately opposes it. The statement is distorting her previous comments. We rate it Half True. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2015-10-13T22:41:19 | 2015-10-13 | ['None'] |
bove-00136 | From Indian Media To NYT: How The ‘Donkeys Jailed In UP’ Story Went Viral | none | https://www.boomlive.in/from-indian-media-to-nyt-how-the-donkeys-jailed-in-up-story-went-viral/ | null | null | null | null | null | From Indian Media To NYT: How The ‘Donkeys Jailed In UP’ Story Went Viral | Nov 29 2017 9:24 pm, Last Updated: Nov 29 2017 9:27 pm | null | ['None'] |
snes-01696 | Are Facebook Users Secretly Following You? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-paying-spies/ | null | Technology | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Are Facebook Users Secretly Following You? | 5 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01607 | The United States had "allies lined up" for air strikes in Syria and then Obama "pulled the rug out." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/31/peter-king/peter-king-us-had-allies-lined-air-strikes-syria-o/ | Sunday marked the one-year point from President Barack Obama’s Aug. 31, 2013, Rose Garden address seeking congressional approval to conduct air strikes in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Twelve months later, the situation in Syria remains a troubling international crisis, amplified by the growing presence of the terrorist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, throughout the region. Across all five major Sunday political shows, Republicans — and even some Democrats — criticized the administration’s response to the unrest, with many politicians and pundits leaching on to Obama’s remark Thursday that "we don’t have a strategy yet" for dealing with the Islamic State. Among the critics was Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who said on CBS’ Face the Nation, "I wish our president was showing the same leadership that (British Prime Minister) David Cameron showed. What is President Obama waiting for?" "It was a year ago this all started," King added. "I remember being in the White House with (White House Chief of Staff) Denis McDonough talking about the importance of air attacks in Syria, and we had allies lined up and then the president pulled the rug out. And those allies are going to be very hard now to get back into a coalition." We looked at a similar claim in March, when former Vice President Dick Cheney said, "a lot of the allies signed on (for airstrikes in Syria). At the last minute, Obama backed off." We rated that statement Mostly False. Given the recent developments, we thought King’s comments about what happened a year ago deserved a review. Unlike Cheney, King does not go so far as to claim "a lot of allies signed on" to air strikes. The push to intervene in Syria came to a head on Aug. 21, 2013, when the Assad regime attacked a rebel-held area on the outskirts of Damascus using chemical weapons. A year earlier, Obama had said "a red line for (military intervention) is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." Within a week of the attack, the administration was talking about launching air strikes at weapon depots and military command centers in Syria. To do so, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tried to garner support from the international community. Leaders in France and Britain immediately jumped on board the idea of limited air strikes. On Aug. 27, 2013, French President Francois Hollande said, "France is ready to punish those who took the heinous decision to gas innocents." A top British official was quoted as saying it was "reasonable to assume our armed forces are making contingency plans." But Prime Minister Cameron suffered an embarrassing rebuke Aug. 29, 2013, at the hands of Parliament — controlled by his own party — which narrowly voted to defeat a motion to support military intervention in Syria. According to the Telegraph, it was "the first time that a British Government has been blocked from executing a military deployment." Cameron later called off a military deployment. Support among the other European states was equally hard to find. Italy said it would only go along if the U.N. Security Council approved the use of force (which didn’t happen). Germany, seen as a pivotal player, was clearly against military action. Germany signed on to a G20 statement that called the use of poisonous gas a war crime and said the Syrian government was the likely culprit. But the statement added, "The EU underscores at the same time the need to move forward with addressing the Syrian crisis through the U.N. process." The strongest legal justification for an air strike would come through the U.N. Security Council. That was impossible to achieve since two permanent members, Russia and China, had made it clear they would veto any such resolution. Within NATO, Turkey was a major proponent of intervention. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia was the most eager to see an attack on Syria, a long-time political foe. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were also on board. However, the Arab League, which includes Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, never approved a military strike. In the end, the most significant show of unity with allies was a Sept. 6 joint statement between the United States and Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom calling for "a strong international response to this grave violation of the world’s rules and conscience that will send a clear message that this kind of atrocity can never be repeated. Those who perpetrated these crimes must be held accountable." However, a "strong international response" was never defined, and eventually even France said it wanted to wait for a final report from U.N. chemical weapons inspectors. King also claimed support among allies dissipated because Obama "pulled the rug out" from plans to launch air strikes. It’s unclear exactly what moment King is referencing (his staff did not respond to an email seeking further explanation). But widespread hesitance to intervene among the international community was palpable from the start. Even before Obama sought congressional support for targeted military strikes on Aug. 31, 2013, — as opposed to unilateral action — Britain had already voted against any military action. It’s true Obama had a hand in shelving military action when the United States and Russia struck a deal that sidelined the use of force in exchange for Syria giving up its chemical weapons (which has since been completed). At that point, an international movement for significant military intervention dissipated since the source of the angst — Assad’s use of chemical weapons — was eliminated. But support was already fading anyway. Our ruling King said, "we had allies lined up (to launch air strikes on Syria) then the president pulled the rug out." A handful of allies "lined up" for air strikes. We counted France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as countries that were supportive. Hardly an overwhelming show of hands, but King did not specify how many in his remarks. Among the "no" crowd were key allies like the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. The Arab League and the United Nations also balked. Any support faded after Russia helped broker a diplomatic solution in which Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True. | null | Peter King | null | null | null | 2014-08-31T15:58:30 | 2014-08-31 | ['United_States', 'Syria', 'Barack_Obama'] |
snes-01923 | In August 2017, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would force women to purchase "rape insurance." | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/texas-rape-insurance/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did the Texas House of Representatives Pass a Law Requiring Women to Buy ‘Rape Insurance’? | 11 August 2017 | null | ['Texas_House_of_Representatives'] |
pomt-05411 | Says "in our gun laws we’re allowing domestic abusers to sidestep this ban on getting a gun. The loophole allows a convicted abuser to walk into a gun show and walk out with a gun, no questions asked." | true | /new-jersey/statements/2012/may/03/frank-lautenberg/frank-lautenberg-claims-loophole-allows-individual/ | U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg pushed through a law 15 years ago that prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from acquiring a gun. But the Democrat said there’s still avenues for those individuals to arm themselves. Lautenberg spoke April 26 on the Senate floor in favor of reauthorizing legislation that supports efforts to help victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. During his speech, he said even more needs to be done in this area. "Let me be clear. It would be tragic to turn our backs on victims and the people who dedicate their lives to supporting them. While we can’t stop all malicious acts, we can do more to keep women and their families safe," Lautenberg said. "In 1996, I wrote the domestic violence gun ban, [which] forbids anyone convicted of domestic violence from getting a gun. Since the law's inception, we have kept guns from falling into violent hands on over 200,000 occasions. For instance, in our gun laws we’re allowing domestic abusers to sidestep this ban on getting a gun. The loophole allows a convicted abuser to walk into a gun show and walk out with a gun, no questions asked." PolitiFact New Jersey wondered if it’s that simple for someone who, under federal law isn’t allowed to have a gun, to buy one. "Yes," said James Jacobs, director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University School of Law, it’s "that simple." Lautenberg was describing what is commonly known as the "gun show loophole." The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or Brady Act, requires all federally licensed firearms dealers to run a background check on potential customers to ensure they are not prohibited from owning a gun. But private sellers without a federal license don’t have to meet the same requirement. Though this exception is known as the "gun show loophole," unlicensed individuals don’t have to perform background checks whether they are selling a gun at a gun show or somewhere else. "Of course, a prohibited possessor can also buy from a private party outside of a gun show with no paperwork or background check," said Gabriel Chin, professor of law at the University of California at Davis School of Law. "But the trick is that many of the private sellers at gun shows are really unlicensed full time dealers, so they may be selling scores or hundreds of guns a year with no paperwork. Because of the volume, they are much more reliable sources of firearms for prohibited possessors." As a result of the loophole, "it’s possible a convicted felon could go into a gun show and buy a firearm without ever being checked," said Chris Bombardiere, public information officer at the Newark Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That isn’t possible everywhere, however, since some states have passed more restrictive gun laws. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 17 states, including New Jersey, "have either closed the gun show loophole or have taken action to close the loophole." Our ruling Lautenberg said that "in our gun laws we’re allowing domestic abusers to sidestep this ban on getting a gun. The loophole allows a convicted abuser to walk into a gun show and walk out with a gun, no questions asked." That statement is true because federal law does not require individuals who are not federally licensed to perform background checks before a gun transaction, whether they are at a gun show or not. Though laws can vary state to state and some states have passed laws that have essentially closed that loophole, this does not diminish Lautenberg’s statement. He was speaking on the Senate floor about federal law. We rate the statement True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Frank Lautenberg | null | null | null | 2012-05-03T07:30:00 | 2012-04-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-07208 | We’re the seventh highest taxed state in America. And that’s not just state, it’s local as well. | false | /ohio/statements/2011/jun/06/john-kasich/gov-john-kasich-says-ohioans-carry-seventh-heavies/ | Out on the stump, Gov. John Kasich loves talking taxes—specifically about how he thinks people in Ohio pay too much in them. During his successful run for governor against Democrat Ted Strickland in 2010, Kasich claimed that Ohio was one of the most heavily taxed states in a television ad that got major airplay around Labor Day. And the Republican governor was talking again about tax burdens at a May 24 event in Dublin, a Columbus suburb, as part of a discussion about his state budget proposal and the need for Ohio to stay competitive with other states. The state, he said, has given local entities, like schools and libraries and governments, the tools to keep their costs down, and they shouldn’t be going to voters for tax increases to offset cuts from the state. "If we don’t lower our taxes, we’re not competitive," Kasich told a GOP-friendly crowd inside a local ice cream parlor. "We’re the seventh highest taxed state in America. And that’s not just state, it’s local as well." Politifact Ohio gave Kasich a Half True rating for when he called Ohio one of the most taxed states last fall. But the governor’s now getting more specific about how he defines "taxed" by placing it in the context of Ohio’s combined local and state tax burdens. And he’s got a ranking — seventh in the country. So we decided to give this issue another study. Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols pointed to a study from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, which crunched state and local tax data and found Ohio to be seventh-highest among the 50 states. This ranking was most recently referenced by the group in a release entitled Fiscal Fact #207, dated Jan. 7, 2010. But the numbers have been updated since Kasich made his claim last fall and that data is no longer the most current from the Tax Foundation. A more recent Feb. 23, 2011 report from the group, entitled Special Report #189, ranks Ohio 18th in tax burden among the 50 states and suggests Ohio hasn’t been as high as seventh in tax burden since 2005. So why did a Jan. 2010 report from the group say Ohio was currently seventh? Tax Foundation spokesman Richard Morrison said the methodology used by the group is "tweaked" from report to report slightly and that updated, more accurate information is applied to back years which changes the rankings for multiple years from one report to the next. Additionally, there is an ongoing debate in taxation circles over whether the methodology employed by the Tax Foundation to determine a state’s local and state tax burden is correct. That’s because the group adjusts raw census data in certain ways to include considering taxes Ohioans may pay in other states before diving a state’s total tax collections by total personal income. In contrast, the Federation of Tax Administrators, sticks with the raw census data without making any adjustments. Their numbers had Ohio 16th in percentage of personal income paid to tax collectors in 2008. They haven’t yet crunched any numbers for 2009. Ron Alt, research economist for the Federation of Tax Administrators, said he thinks Ohio is getting close to the middle of the pack when it comes to tax burden around the country. "My judgment is that it’s close to the median in ranking," he said. "I would say it’s a pretty typical tax burden." So where does that leave Kasich’s claim? Kasich said Ohio had the seventh highest state and local tax burden in the country, relying on a study of the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation study. However, that figure was for 2005 and the study has been updated with the most recent set of rankings showing the state to have the 18th highest state and local tax burden. Another tax ranking, compiled by the more neutral Federation of Tax Administrators, showed Ohio 16th in state and local tax burden in 2008. No matter which set of rankings you use, Ohio clearly no longer has the seventh-highest tax burden. Kasich needs to update his talking points, and start giving his fellow Republicans a little credit for the full impact of the income tax cuts they began delivering to Ohioans back in 2005. On the Truth-O-Meter, we rate Kasich’s claim as False. | null | John Kasich | null | null | null | 2011-06-06T06:00:00 | 2011-05-24 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-14134 | The overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising is not going to Hillary (Clinton) to run for president. ... It's going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2016/may/05/george-clooney/george-clooney-decries-big-money-politics-says-mos/ | Editor's note, May 4, 2016: We originally published this item on April 17 and rated it Mostly True. Since then, readers have contacted us to consider other evidence about the Democratic Party’s fundraising processes, especially state parties sending money back to the Democratic National Committee. We have updated and rerated this fact-check based on new information, changing the rating from Mostly True to Half True. You can read an archived version of the original report here. You had to pay — or collect — as much as $353,000 per couple to attend recent fundraisers for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, including one hosted at the home of actor George Clooney. After the affair drew protesters who support Bernie Sanders, Chuck Todd, host of NBC's Meet the Press, asked Clooney what happened when he encountered them. Clooney said he was accused of being a corporate shill, which is "one of the funnier things you could say about me." Then he told Todd, "The overwhelming amount of money that we're raising, and it is a lot, but the overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising is not going to Hillary to run for president, it's going to the down-ticket. "It's going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress. And the reason that's important (is) ... we need to take the Senate back because we need to confirm the Supreme Court justice, because that fifth vote on the Supreme Court can overturn Citizens United and get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again. And that's why I'm doing it." Here, we’re fact-checking Clooney’s claim, "The overwhelming amount of money that we're raising, and it is a lot, but the overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising is not going to Hillary to run for president … It's going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress." What we found is that Clooney is technically accurate about most of the money not going to Clinton’s campaign, but it’s not necessarily going to "congressmen and senators." Clooney is right about the direct support for Clinton’s presidential campaign. Federal law says individuals can't give more than $2,700 to a presidential candidate's primary campaign. Another $2,700 can be collected for the general election. It doesn't matter whether you give it directly or a friend collects it from you on the candidate's behalf, the limit is there. Where the rest of those big-dollar donations end up is a bit of a maze. We’ll try to walk you through it. In this case, the Clinton California fundraisers were held on behalf of the Hillary Victory Fund, which distributes the money to Clinton's campaign committee, Hillary for America. But it also distributes money to the Democratic National Committee and the state parties. A donor can also give up to $33,400 a year to the DNC and $10,000 a year to each of the state parties for use in getting its candidates elected to federal office. If you do the math, with 32 state parties included in the Victory Fund, that's $356,100. The state parties generally are tasked with helping elect Democrats at the state level, and the DNC does the same at the national level. The way the donations are divided is explained at the bottom of the Hillary Victory Fund page on the Clinton website. The first $2,700 goes to Clinton, the next $33,400 goes to the DNC and the rest goes to state parties. How does this translate into total donations for each group? If you look at the money going out, which is available through campaign finance reports, it looks like Clinton is getting most of the money. According to the Center for Responsive Politics by the end of 2015, the Hillary Victory Fund had given $4.4 million to Clinton, $2.3 million to the DNC, and $2.2 to state political parties. That makes Clinton's share through 2015 almost exactly 50 percent. In the first quarter of this year, Clinton's share was 63 percent of the money that was officially spent on campaigns. Politico reported that the fund also spent $6.7 million for "online ads that mostly looked like Clinton campaign ads, as well as $5.5 million on direct marketing." The Clinton campaign gets the lion's share of the money collected by the Victory Fund, said Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin, because most of the donors give much smaller amounts, and everything up to $2,700 per person is earmarked to go to Hillary for America first. It's when a donor exceeds that limit that the excess spills over to benefit the national and state Democratic committees. Or — in the case of the state parties — that's how it appears on paper. Federal Election Commission records show that in most cases, the money given to the state parties has been immediately redirected to the DNC. The money isn't staying with the states at all. On May 2, Politico published a story reporting that 88 percent of the state money was immediately passed along to the DNC. In some cases, the state parties didn't even know the money had gone in and out of their accounts until after the fact. The Hillary Victory Fund sent $214,100 to Minnesota, for example, and that state party didn't keep a dime. It was routed to the DNC, which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to accept the money "since it came from donors who had mostly had already maxed out to the national party committee," Politico reported. We contacted the DNC and the Clinton campaign to try to understand what was compelling the states to immediately send funds back to the DNC. We couldn’t get straight answers. The Clinton campaign provided a copy of the agreement with the state parties, but it contains no language requiring such a transfer. Although DNC spokesman Luis Miranda said that the terms of the agreement called for states to send the money to the DNC for election infrastructure, Clinton spokesman Schwerin was emphatic that the state committees were free to keep whatever money they wanted. However, a Feb. 20 Washington Post story on Clinton's fundraising efforts says the executive director of Utah's Democratic party said state party officials understood they were supposed to send back money to DNC headquarters. So if money is going back to the DNC, what’s it being spent on? The overarching response of both the Clinton campaign and the DNC was that the money being diverted to the DNC was, in fact, being used to help local Democrats get elected. Those candidates need voter information, research, media monitoring, organizing capacity and other infrastructure services provided by the DNC to run a successful campaign, and that's how the money was being used. However, such services also benefit the Clinton campaign. "The process Hillary Victory is using has been common practice for a number of years," said Bob Biersack, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics. "The states always agree because they have no choice. Transferring the money back to the national party is a condition of participating. They do it in hopes of getting some good will from the national party down the road." As for the degree to which the system really helps House and Senate candidates, Biersack said there isn't a precise answer. He noted that the party's congressional committees aren't party to the deal. "If the goal was to support those campaigns, surely the national organizations most responsible would be participants. Traditionally the DNC and RNC are taken over by their presidential nominees during the election year, and the first priority for every spending decision is how it relates to the presidential race," he said. "If that campaign were to become significantly less competitive, then the national party might well move to other races, but it would happen in that sequence and in those conditions." One final important note: Spokesmen for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC said many millions raised for the state parties have not been distributed yet, but will be soon. Our ruling Clooney said, "The overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising, is not going to Hillary to run for president. ... It's going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress." Clooney is correct that most of the big-dollar donations in question are not going to Clinton’s campaign for president. By law, they can’t. Whether the money is "going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress" is a much different story. Most of the money appears to be winding up at the DNC, not state parties, as individual donors may have expected. The national party says that money is being used on campaign infrastructure that will benefit House and Senate candidates. But it will benefit Clinton, too. Clooney’s claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/4b455cd6-50e1-47a5-9314-36a64b25cdc6 | null | George Clooney | null | null | null | 2016-05-05T12:27:45 | 2016-04-16 | ['Bill_Clinton', 'United_States_Congress', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
peck-00007 | Is Bomet County Withholding Funds for the Elderly? | false | https://pesacheck.org/is-bomet-county-withholding-funds-for-the-elderly-4d2a2b8afa0d | null | null | null | Leo Mutuku | null | Is Bomet County Withholding Funds for the Elderly? | Dec 22, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09140 | Bill McCollum has "recovered $200 million in Medicaid fraud." | true | /florida/statements/2010/jun/14/jeb-bush/bill-mccollum-claims-he-recovered-nearly-200-milli/ | Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running as a Republican gubernatorial candidate, recently launched his first statewide TV campaign ad with a helping hand from former Gov. Jeb Bush. During the 30-second commercial, Bush speaks about McCollum's accomplishments: "Tough times require proven leadership. "Bill McCollum is a principled conservative with a record of doing what is right for Florida. "Bill’s recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid fraud. "He’s leading the charge to stop President Obama’s health care takeover. "And, he has a plan to create 500,000 new jobs, reform government and cut wasteful spending. "Support my friend Bill McCollum, the kind of solid leader Florida needs." We decided to focus on this claim: "Bill's recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid fraud." Increasingly Medicaid accounts for a huge chunk of the state budget, with Florida spending roughly $19 billion for the program that serves 2.7 million people, or 14 percent of Florida's population. And fraud is a big problem. Annually, some $3.2 billion in Medicaid fraud is bilked from the state and federal governments. To check whether McCollum has made a dent in curbing that fraud, we asked McCollum campaign spokesman Kristy Campbell for documentation. She gave us a March 9 press release from the Attorney General's office. "I am proud of the record-breaking recoveries my Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has made over the last three years, including $198 million last year," McCollum says in the release. Next, the Attorney General's office provided us with a list of recoveries from the Medicaid Control Unit for 2009. The list of 153 cases includes settlements that reach into the millions, like $32 million to be paid by pharmeceutical giant Eli Lilly, and smaller sums like $50,000 to be paid by Hialeah physician Ausberto B. Hidalgo. Adding up the itemized list, the sum is actually $203 million. So Bush is almost on the money. We should note that the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has been around since way before McCollum became attorney general. The unit started under the auditor general's office, but in July 1994 it was moved under the Attorney General's Office as a way to police the state's burgeoning Medicaid program. And McCollum has come under attack from state officials in both the Republican and Democratic parties for not doing enough. As for Bush's claim that McCollum "recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid Fraud," we rate it True. | null | Jeb Bush | null | null | null | 2010-06-14T10:26:09 | 2010-05-20 | ['None'] |
snes-04324 | Actor Denzel Washington announced he is switching his support to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/denzel-washington-switches-trump/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Denzel Washington Switches to Trump | 3 August 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Denzel_Washington'] |
snes-01157 | Does a Video Show a Muslim Engaging in a 'Halal Slash'? | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/halal-slash-video/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does a Video Show a Muslim Engaging in a ‘Halal Slash’? | 22 January 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07334 | During his time as House speaker, "unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4 (percent)." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/11/newt-gingrich/gingrich-unemployment-rate-claim-target/ | Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich did the, well, expected Wednesday, May 11, 2011, and announced his candidacy for president. The former Georgia congressman made it official in a campaign video on his website, as he had signaled earlier in the week. Gingrich promoted his credentials by touting a list of accomplishments in his four years as House Speaker, which began in January 1995 and ended in January 1999. Those accomplishments included cutting unemployment, which was at 9 percent in April 2011 and one of the nation’s biggest problems. "Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4," Gingrich, a Republican who now lives in Virginia, said in the video. Considering that Republican candidates will likely attack President Barack Obama over the unemployment rate as the presidential race heats up, Gingrich’s claim may sound like he has the solution to the problem or at the very least be able to argue he can do better than the Democratic president has done. In that vein, we wanted to check Gingrich’s numbers. In January 1995, the month Gingrich took the gavel as speaker, the nation’s unemployment rate was indeed 5.6 percent. The unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent by December 1998, the month Gingrich announced he was going to resign as speaker. The rate dropped one-tenth of a percentage point by January 1999, when Gingrich resigned. Each tenth of percentage point at that time equaled about 50,000 unemployed Americans. The unemployment rate didn’t fall below 4 percent until September 2000, which was 21 months later. The lowest the unemployment rate fell during Gingrich’s time as speaker was in April 1998, when it was 4.3 percent. An e-mail to a Gingrich spokesman late Wednesday was not immediately returned. Gingrich was correct about the unemployment rate when he became House Speaker and correct that it did go down, but he was wrong in saying it went down to 4 percent during his term as speaker. The lowest rate it hit during his tenure as speaker was 4.3 percent. He could have easily looked it up and gotten it right. We rate his claim as False. | null | Newt Gingrich | null | null | null | 2011-05-11T20:17:06 | 2011-05-11 | ['None'] |
tron-00379 | Woman Trains Squirrels to Attack Ex-Boyfriend | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/woman-trains-squirrels-to-attack-ex-boyfriend/ | null | animals | null | null | ['animals', 'satire'] | Woman Trains Squirrels to Attack Ex-Boyfriend | Apr 5, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00837 | Jennifer Aniston Convincing “Friends” Cast To Do Reunion? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-friends-reunion-cast/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Aniston Convincing “Friends” Cast To Do Reunion? | 11:46 am, June 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07279 | Early voting remains at 96 hours. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2011/may/23/kurt-browning/flexibility-early-voting-means-possibly-less-hours/ | Florida Gov. Rick Scott's elections chief is defending changes to election law that shrink the number of days for early voting by arguing that polling places will be open the same number of hours they are now. Yes, fewer days, Secretary of State Kurt Browning wrote in a May 23, 2011, guest column in the St. Petersburg Times. But longer hours on those days. HB 1355, which Scott signed into law May 19, cuts the number of days of early voting from 14 to 8, makes it harder for third-party voter registration groups to register prospective voters and requires voters who change their address from one county to another on the day of an election to cast a provisional ballot, which would then be reviewed by the county canvassing board. Browning and Republicans who supported the law say the changes will better protect the state's voting system against fraud. Democrats say the changes are an attempt to suppress voter turnout. "To combat voter fraud, reduce the burden on poll workers and provide needed flexibility to local election supervisors, the number of days polls remain open has been reduced from 14 possible days to eight days, even as the total number of hours available for early voting will remain the same," Browning wrote in a column titled "Florida's early voting remains at 96 hours." "The result is that working voters will be able to vote before or after work, something they haven't been able to do in the past," he wrote. "That added flexibility will enable more people than ever to take advantage of early voting. And, if an election supervisor finds it's not absolutely necessary to keep all of his or her polling places open a full 12 hours a day, which isn't unusual for rural areas, he or she has the flexibility to save taxpayer money by not employing poll workers that aren't needed. "Critics of the new election law suggest there will be less time to vote. That is just not the case. Now, more than ever, voters have more options to choose from in order to take advantage of early voting." In closing Browning wrote: "Today, the following remains true: Early voting remains at 96 hours, with greater flexibility for counties ... " We wanted to see if Browning is right. Before HB 1355 became law, statutes required that early voting begin 15 days before and end two days prior to an election, or 14 days overall. Further, statutes required that supervisors provide eight hours of early voting during weekdays sometime between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and a total of eight hours during each of two weekends. Over the 14 days prior to a Tuesday election -- two weekends and 10 weekdays -- that means that supervisors had been required to conduct early voting for a minimum of 96 hours. The law that Scott signed changes several provisions of the early voting requirements. The new version requires that early voting begin 10 days before and end three days prior to an election, or 8 days overall. The new statute says early voting must be available for six hours each of the eight days, and no more than 12 hours per day at each polling site. We'll repeat that -- under the new law, early voting must be available six hours a day for eight days, or a total of 48 hours, and can be available for up to 12 hours a day for eight days, or 96 hours. In other words, local supervisors of elections will have the ability to cut the number of hours of early voting in half. They will, however, have to increase the number of hours of early voting on weekends from 16 to 18 hours. What will local supervisors choose to do? For many, it's too early to say. In Pinellas County, Republican Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark said the longer early voting days would be more convenient for people who want to vote before or after work. But Clark also has been critical of early voting, saying in 2008 that early voting "does not increase voter turnout," just "election costs." Clark spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock said the Pinellas supervisor is not against extending early voting hours as allowed by the new law, but has yet to adopt an early voting schedule for the 2012 elections. But in Jacksonville and Duval County in northeast Florida, Republican supervisor Jerry Holland told voters not to expect 12-hour-a-day early voting, according to the Florida Times-Union. "The 12 hours is just not practical for us," Holland said. Another point about Browning's column. He wrote that a result of the new law is "that working voters will be able to vote before or after work, something they haven't been able to do in the past." But that already was happening, at least in Miami-Dade County. There, during the 2008 election, the supervisor staggered the eight-hour window of early voting between the first and second weeks. In the first week, early voting sites opened at 7 a.m. (the earliest they could open allowed by law). In the second week, early voting sites opened later so they wouldn't close until 7 p.m. (the latest they could stay open). Gov. Charlie Crist ultimately issued an executive order in 2008 requiring that all early voting sites stay open for 12 hours on weekdays. Browning spokesman Chris Cate said Browning will work to ensure that nearly all medium and large counties in Florida use all 96 hours of early voting available to them. "Every county that anticipates a high voter turnout during early voting, which applies to nearly every medium-to-large county in the state, will use all 96 hours of early voting made available. Voters can be confident of this fact," Cate e-mailed PolitiFact Florida. "Secretary Browning can also confidently say this because he will work with the appropriate supervisors of elections to make sure of it. "The only locations where early voting sites could possibly be open for less than 12 hours a day would be in rural counties, where voters don’t need all 12 hours a day to vote," Cate continued. "It would be a waste of local taxpayer dollars to force supervisors of elections to keep early voting locations open where nobody is trying to vote." In a follow-up e-mail, Cate was more blunt, saying that he doubts "the writers of the new law considered that a supervisor of elections for a large county (like Duval) might have such a lack of foresight that they wouldn’t open their early voting sites for the full 12 hours." Cate noted that supervisors are required to inform Browning's office of their plans 30 days ahead of time, giving Browning an opportunity to convince them to alter their schedule if necessary. The new law also allows Browning to provide "written direction and opinions to the supervisors of elections on the performance of their official duties." That flexibility in the law may save some smaller jurisdictions taxpayer dollars, but it's also the root of the problem when considering Browning's claim. While he noted in a May 23 op-ed piece that rural counties may schedule less than the current 96 hours of voting, he failed to note that the same option is available to every county in Florida regardless of size. In fact, local supervisors could cut the total number of hours of early voting from 96 to 48 if they chose because it's what the new law allows. However, they have the ability to keep 96 hours of early voting by increasing voting to 12 hours a day. So a requirement of 96 hours of early voting has been replaced by an option of 96 hours. We rate this claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Kurt Browning | null | null | null | 2011-05-23T16:57:30 | 2011-05-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-11290 | Archbishop Desmond Tutu dies while holidaying in Texas | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/apr/23/blog-posting/website-falsely-claims-desmond-tutu-died-texas/ | False information is circulating on social media inaccurately claiming Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu died in Texas. "Anti-apartheid and human rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died in Texas at the age of 86," claimed an undated post on nytimes-news.com. Tutu’s office debunked the claims in an April 22 statement. "There is a false story doing the rounds today suggesting that Archbishop Emeritus Tutu has passed away in the United States," said a statement posted on the Facebook page for The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. "The Archbishop and Mrs. Leah Tutu are in fact in good health and spirits at home in the Western Cape," the statement said. The website nytimes-news.com (note: not the online home of The New York Times) claimed Tutu’s wife "told reporters that the couple were in Texas for holiday and had plans of greeting George H.W Bush who lost his wife few days ago." The undated false claim was flagged on Facebook as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. The post seemingly gained traction due to national and international media coverage of former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral on April 21. It’s not the first time fake news sites have claimed Tutu died. Another hoax about his death spread in September 2016 after a hospitalization. The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his opposition to apartheid policies. Nytimes-news.com does not feature any description of who runs the site. The website’s banner only says "New York," and its address is designed to give readers the wrong impression that it’s the actual New York Times. (The real Times can be found at www.nytimes.com.) Take this quiz to see if you know how to spot fake news sites. Nytimes-news.com’s post claiming Tutu died in Texas is made up. We rate it Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-04-23T12:24:34 | 2018-04-22 | ['Desmond_Tutu', 'Texas'] |
pomt-05405 | Says she is "saving ratepayers $6 million/year." | false | /oregon/statements/2012/may/04/amanda-fritz/amanda-fritz-saving-water-ratepayers-6-million-eve/ | Portland city Commissioner Amanda Fritz is running for re-election as a penny-pincher who has saved residents and ratepayers millions of dollars. Specifically, Fritz says in her first television commercial via a voice-over that "she saved ratepayers $6 million a year in reduced water rate tax hikes." That she is "saving ratepayers $6 million a year" is included in the Voters’ Pamphlet as well and on her campaign website, where she writes: "That vote decreased the rate increase in 2010 by over 6 percent, saving ratepayers $6 million in 2010-11 and each year thereafter." In The Oregonian’s Voter Guide, she writes she "saved ratepayers $6 million per year starting 2009." PolitiFact Oregon knows from a previous fact check that Fritz saved ratepayers $6 million in 2010-11. (It is inaccurate of Fritz to claim the savings started in 2009, but we’ll let that go. We have bigger fish to fry.) The question we have is whether it’s accurate to claim the savings into the future, which is what Fritz says. We’ll explain. Once upon a time, in the not so distant past, the black-hearted U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the fair City of Portland (and other municipalities) to protect drinking water from terrorists and cryptosporidium. Portland officials objected, claiming the city had the best drinking water in the world. But their pleas fell on indifferent ears in Washington, D.C., and City Hall decided in 2009 to build a treatment plant to guard against cryptosporidium, an evil parasite that can make people very sick. In all seriousness, with the feds breathing down their necks, Water Bureau officials recommended the council approve a $385 million direct filtration system. Commissioner Amanda Fritz, however, argued for a cheaper $100 million system that would zap cryptosporidium with ultraviolet rays. We ruled Mostly True her 2011 statement that she persuaded City Council to save water ratepayers $500 million, because she did change the minds of commissioners ready to approve the more expensive system. (We knocked the ruling down from True because of details on construction costs) That’s all fine and good. Except that in March of this year, the state, with authority from the feds, told the city it would not have to build a treatment system at all. Despite the fact that we no longer have to build a plant, Fritz argues she can claim a $6 million savings every year into the future because she was responsible for lowering the baseline to start. "The savings are carried over year after year," she wrote in an email, "because the six percent wasn't added to the rate." We turned to David Hasson, the water bureau’s finance director. He said at most, she could have claimed the savings for at least a generation, had we built the UV treatment system. "Of course it is all hypothetical, because we didn't build either one," he said. And that’s the point. We’re not building a system. And Fritz had nothing to do with that decision. We give her credit for steering us to a less expensive option in 2009 and saving us money from 2010 through June 2012. But it stops there. Fritz cannot continue to claim credit for saving ratepayers money on something that they’re not buying. The statement is inaccurate. We rate the claim False. | null | Amanda Fritz | null | null | null | 2012-05-04T00:00:00 | 2012-04-19 | ['None'] |
chct-00229 | FACT CHECK: Has Trump Been In Thousands Of Lawsuits? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/01/16/fact-check-has-trump-been-in-thousands-of-lawsuits/ | null | null | null | Kush Desai | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 5:22 PM 01/16/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14934 | Bernie Sanders’s plan is "to raise your taxes to 90 percent." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/28/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-bernie-sanderss-plan-raise-you/ | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie drew chuckles at the Republican presidential debate in Boulder, Colo., when he described the Democratic field as consisting of "a socialist, an isolationist and a pessimist -- and for the sake of me, I can’t figure out which one is which." He went on to single out Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of those three Democratic candidates and a self-described democratic socialist. "The socialist says they’re going to pay for everything and give you everything for free, except they don’t tell you they’re going to raise your taxes to 90 percent to do it," Christie said. That echoed a claim made by Donald Trump at a rally in Richmond, Va., on Oct. 14, 2015. At that rally, Trump called Sanders a "communist" and said that tax hikes would come for everyone, not just billionaires. "This maniac that was standing on (Hillary Clinton’s) right is giving everything away, so she’s following," Trump said at the Richmond rally, referring to the Democratic debate the previous night. "He’s gonna tax you people at 90 percent. He’s gonna take everything. And nobody's heard the term communist, but you know what? I’d call him a socialist/communist, okay? ‘Cause that's what he is." There’s no doubt that Sanders wants to raise taxes on the richest 1 percent: "Yes, we are going to ask Trump and his billionaire friends to pay more in taxes. ...We'll come up with that rate. But it will be a damned lot higher than it is right now," Sanders said in an Oct. 18 interview with ABC’s This Week. But does Sanders want to tax the average Americans at 90 percent as well? Here, we’ll recap the problems we found with Trump’s claim and address why Christie’s claim was equally problematic. What Sanders has said Sanders hasn’t released a tax plan yet -- the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has a summary of the candidates’ tax plans here -- and we searched Lexis Nexis and CQ and found that Sanders has never explicitly proposed a 90 percent tax rate for billionaires, let alone applying that rate across the board. The confusion may stem from comments Sanders made in May 2015 about the marginal tax rate for the very wealthy. In an interview with CNBC, Sanders he doesn’t think a top marginal tax rate of 90 percent is too high. Before we parse his comment, let’s review what the marginal tax rate means. It’s the tax rate that’s applied to the last dollar you earn. The U.S. tax system is based on tax brackets. Let’s say you were a single filer who earned $410,000 in adjusted gross income last year. The first $9,075 you earned was taxed at 10 percent, the amount from $9,076 to $36,900 was taxed at 15 percent, the amount from $36,901 to $89,350 was taxed at 25 percent, the amount from $89,351 to $186,350 was taxed at 28 percent, the amount from $186,351 to $405,100 was taxed at 33 percent, the amount from $405,101 to $406,750 was taxed at 35 percent, and the amount above $406,751 was taxed at 39.6 percent. (The dollar levels are different for other types of filers, such as couples filing jointly.) In other words, the current top marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent, affecting individuals who make more than $400,000 a year. That’s roughly the threshold to make it into the top 1 percent of incomes if you’re filing as an individual. And even for this sample filer making $410,000, that 39.6 percent tax rate hits only a relatively small amount of their income. The average American never sees marginal federal income tax rates that high. "If my memory is correct, when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent," Sanders said on May 26. (His memory is correct.) "That's not 90 percent of your income, you know? That's the marginal." Many on the right and left interpreted Sanders’ comments as advocating for increasing the top rate to 90 percent. The Sanders camp, however, told us the Vermont senator has made it very clear that that’s not what he was saying. And beyond what his camp told us, a review of his past comments — one from 2008, and four more from this year — Sanders doesn’t seem like he’s committed to any figure: • Nov. 5, 2008 on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto: Sanders said of the top tax rate, "No, of course, it is not going to be 90 percent." Pressed by Cavuto for a figure, Sanders said, "Neil, I’m not going to develop tax policy in a three-minute segment on your show." • June 2, 2015 on Yahoo! News: In response to host Katie Couric’s suggestion that he proposed taxing the wealthiest Americans at 90 percent, Sanders interjected, "No, I didn’t. It’s not true. That’s one of these things that seems to be circulating. We haven’t come up with a formal tax proposal. ...Will we raise the individual tax rate for the wealthy? Absolutely, but we haven’t come up with a number yet." • June 11, 2015 on Charlie Rose: "We are working right now on a comprehensive tax package which I suspect will for the top marginal rates go over 50 percent." • Sept. 18, 2015 on CBS This Morning: "No, I don’t think you have to go up to 90 percent. …I don’t know if you have to go there but we will come up with some very specific ideas." • Sept. 23, 2015 on CNN New Day: "If you are extremely wealthy, yes, you are going to pay more in taxes. If you are a large corporation today, by the way, that's stashing your money in the Cayman Islands and not paying a nickel in federal taxes, yes, you are going to be paying taxes." In short, the most specific figure we found from Sanders on the top marginal tax rate is not terribly specific — "over 50 percent" — and it would only affect a tiny fraction of Americans. Nothing is certain but taxing corporations And that’s the point that’s even more problematic with this claim -- who Sanders’ supposed 90 percent tax would affect. Both Trump and now Christie have indicated that essentially everyone will be hit by a 90 percent tax hike. With Trump, this rate would supposedly be levied on "you people" in the audience at his rally. Christie, for his part, said Sanders would "raise your taxes to 90 percent." But whatever big hike a President Sanders would seek to implement -- and based on his comments it would be something south of 90 percent -- would be targeted mostly at the wealthiest Americans, including hikes to the tax on the largest estates and on trading transactions and an elimination of tax deferrals for U.S. corporations located abroad. The one exception is his call for paid family and medical leave, based on legislation introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would require "just a small increase in the payroll tax" that would hit everyone, Sanders said on This Week. How small? Employers and employees would chip in an additional 0.2 percent each, bringing the federal payroll tax from 12.4 percent to 12.8 percent. According to a report by Gillibrand’s office, that’s the equivalent of $72.04 per year for the average worker, and $227.40 for the highest wage earners. Beyond this, there’s some doubt that Sanders could achieve his policy proposals without additional tax increases. Indeed, one tax expert cautioned against speculating because Sanders has been so vague about his proposals. "There is not enough substance to (Sanders’) proposals for anyone to have analyzed them," Roberton Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said when we checked Trump’s original claim. "Organizations typically wait until there is a fully formulated plan before they try to model them. Sanders is not anywhere near that point yet." Our ruling Christie said that Sanders’s plan is "to raise your taxes to 90 percent." Sanders hasn’t released an official tax plan, either for billionaires or for anyone else. But based on his previous comments and proposals, the tax policies Sanders is advocating are targeted at corporations and affluent Americans. Sanders has dismissed the notion that he wants to set marginal tax rates for billionaires at 90 percent. And on the whole, his tax proposals so far do not envision raising "your taxes" -- that is, those of ordinary Americans -- to anything approaching 90 percent. This is a grossly misleading characterization of the extent and scope of Sanders' plan, so we rate Christie’s claim Pants on Fire. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/94917f97-e53e-4d00-8f83-c9f2de668891 | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2015-10-28T21:28:36 | 2015-10-28 | ['None'] |
vees-00334 | Bill seeking to criminalize fake news ‘potentially unconstitutional’—advocates | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/bill-seeking-criminalize-fake-news-potentially-unconstitutio | null | null | null | null | Centerlaw,fake news,AFEC-SEA | Bill seeking to criminalize fake news ‘potentially unconstitutional’—advocates | November 22, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14688 | For the first time ever, we completely funded the critical needs waiting list so persons with unique abilities can get the help they need. | half-true | /florida/statements/2016/jan/13/rick-scott/rick-scott-florida-completely-funded-critical-need/ | Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican seeking $1 billion in tax cuts this year, portrayed state spending on services for disabled Floridians as solid during his 2016 State of the State address. "With your help, we have invested Florida taxpayer dollars to make a lasting difference in the lives of Florida families," he said during the Jan. 12 speech. "For the first time ever, we completely funded the critical needs waiting list for persons with unique abilities so they can get the help they need." Scott is technically right about a specific waiting list for people with disabilities, but he omits important context. Namely, the critical needs waiting list is one component within a bigger waiting list for services. Wait-list rundown People with disabilities can apply through the state to get financial assistance through a Home and Community-Based Services Medicaid waiver, a joint state-federal program. The program serves people with intellectual disabilities, autism, cerebral palsy or other disabilities. The goal is to provide them care in their homes or community instead of sending them to more costly institutions. About 32,000 Floridians have this waiver now, but about 20,000 remain on a waiting list, according to a spokeswoman for the Agency for Persons with Disabilities. The state hasn’t provided enough money to fully empty out the waiting list for home- and community-based care. Florida’s waiting list is the second-highest in the nation behind Texas as of 2014, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s not surprising considering Florida’s large population, but some states do a better job at clearing off the waiting list than others. It’s important to note that Florida’s "critical needs" waiting list is a classification devised during Scott’s administration. So when he says he completely funded this waiting list "for the first time ever," he is referring to something that has only existed for a few years. In 2013, the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities had a work group that met to discuss how to reduce the waiting list. "We decided to take those with the most critical needs first," said agency spokeswoman Melanie Etters. That’s when the agency came up with the idea for a specific "critical needs" waiting list. The state assesses those on the waiting list and places them into different categories based on criteria set out in state law in July 2010, a few months before Scott took office. People who end up on this critical needs list face difficult circumstances, such as being a child in the welfare system or a person at risk of losing a caregiver. The state received money to whittle the critical needs list starting in 2013 when it gave waivers to 1,600 Floridians. However, some still remained on the list that year. The next year, 2014, the state emptied out the list for the first time when it gave waivers to 1,200 people. Again in 2015, the agency received enough money to offer a waiver to everyone on the critical needs list, around 2,500 at that time. Although the state has brought the list down to zero twice, it then starts to regrow again pretty much instantly as new babies are born or people with disabilities move to the state, sign up for the first time or move into categories deemed critical. Scott’s budget request for the next year calls for enrolling more than 700 individuals from the critical needs list, which is projected to empty the list. We won’t know the outcome of his budget request until the Legislature concludes the session in March. Advocates for people with disabilities said Scott has a point about working to reduce this specific waiting list, but he left out part of the story by not acknowledging the larger, non-"critical needs" list for services. "The governor is correct that he has funded the critical needs waiting list, but that’s not to be confused with the overall waiting list," said Suzanne Sewell, president of the Florida Association of Rehabilitation Facilities. Other advocates we interviewed backed up her argument. The last time the waiting list was fully funded was when Jeb Bush was governor, and that was as a result of a lawsuit, said Clint Bower, president of MACTown, or the Miami Achievement Center for the Developmentally Disabled. The advocates noted that while some people on the waiting list are not receiving services, others are getting services through other programs, such as at school. And some sign up on the waiting list although they don’t need services now but anticipate they will in the future. They had little hope for the wait list being completely cleared. It would be difficult to do because every year new babies are born with developmental disabilities, and they end up on the waiting list. "There will always be more people coming on," Sewell said. Our ruling Scott said, "For the first time ever, we completely funded the critical needs waiting list" for people with disabilities. Advocates said Scott has a point about working to help around 5,000 disabled Floridians get off a narrow waiting list, but he left out two pieces of important context. First, the critical needs waiting list is a category that Scott’s administration came up with about three years ago, so it’s not as if he had any historical competition. The state offered services to everyone on the critical needs list in 2014 and 2015, and Scott wants to do it again this year. However, Scott omits that those on the critical needs list are a subset of the overall waiting list of about 20,000 people. We rate this statement Half True. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2016-01-13T17:48:13 | 2016-01-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-10501 | Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/01/barack-obama/yes-families-pay-more-for-iraq-war-than-cable/ | The cost of the Iraq war has often been expressed in billions or trillions, numbers so big and abstract they remind us of Carl Sagan's description of the universe ("billions and billions of stars…"). The candidates have cited alternative uses for the war money, saying it would have been better spent on health coverage for the uninsured (Sen. Hillary Clinton) or on more school teachers (Sen. Barack Obama). In a speech on March 20, 2008, Obama took a different approach and emphasized the personal cost of the war. "When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you're paying a price for this war," he said in the speech in Charleston, W.Va. At $100 per month, the war cost to each U.S. household would be more than cable TV (average bill: $58), but less than a car payment (average bill: $400-500). We asked the Obama campaign about the source of the $100 figure and were told it came from The Three Trillion Dollar War, a new book by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and Linda J. Bilmes, a former Commerce Department official from the Clinton administration who is now a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The book says the monthly operating cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $16-billion. "To think of it another way," the book says, "roughly every American household is spending $138 per month on the current operating costs of the wars, with a little more than $100 per month going to Iraq alone." (Of course, Obama's simplified analysis does not reflect the variations in income tax levels. And you don't have to write a check for the war each month. The war costs are included in government spending that is paid for by taxes.) There was no footnote for the $100 estimate, so we called Bilmes to ask how she had calculated it. She said they took the Bush administration's 2008 request for war funding – $196-billion – and divided it by 12 to get a monthly cost. That works out to $16-billlion for both wars and about $12-billion just for the Iraq portion. Then, she and Stiglitz divided those figures by the number of U.S. households and came up with $138 for both wars and slightly more than $100 for Iraq alone, she said. We double-checked the authors' sources and math, and found they were right. Indeed, the Bush administration request for 2008 was $196-billion for both wars, with $159-billion going to Iraq, according to a summary by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. A recent Census Bureau report said there were 116-million households. So that works out to about $140 per month for both wars and about $114 for Iraq alone. (Our numbers are slightly higher than Bilmes and Stiglitz because we used the latest estimates from CRS and a newer and slighter higher count for households.) To verify the Bilmes and Stiglitz calculation, we checked with Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on defense issues. He said their methodology was correct and that the number "sounds about right." Bilmes, a Democrat who is neutral in the presidental race, said Obama could have used an even higher figure if he had included other war costs that aren't in the Pentagon's $196-billion tab. These include disability payments, the cost of replacing war-fighting equipment and interest on the borrowed money. By using the figure he did, Obama "really was being conservative on this," Bilmes said. "He's not overstating it in any way." And so we find Obama is right about the war's monthly cost. We find his claim to be True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-04-01T00:00:00 | 2008-03-20 | ['Iraq'] |
tron-02654 | Petition for a girl who says her father was shot and killed because of racism | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/racism/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Petition for a girl who says her father was shot and killed because of racism | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00099 | The claim: Tony Abbott says marriage, or marriage-like relationships, have always been between a man and a woman | in-the-red | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-01/tony-abbott-incorrect-history-marriage/5053844 | The claim: Tony Abbott says marriage, or marriage-like relationships, have always been between a man and a woman | ['abbott-tony', 'liberals', 'gays-and-lesbians', 'government-and-politics', 'federal-government', 'australia'] | null | null | ['abbott-tony', 'liberals', 'gays-and-lesbians', 'government-and-politics', 'federal-government', 'australia'] | Tony Abbott incorrect on the history of marriage | Fri 8 Nov 2013, 4:25am | null | ['Tony_Abbott'] |
pomt-13250 | When asked about equal pay for women, (Rubio’s) quote was that it was a waste of time. | half-true | /florida/statements/2016/oct/18/patrick-murphy/rubio-called-equal-pay-women-waste-time-murphy-say/ | During their first debate, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy attacked incumbent U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s positions on women’s issues, saying Rubio didn’t think the battle for equal pay was worth fighting. "When asked about equal pay for women, your quote was that it was a waste of time," Murphy said Oct. 17 at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. We checked the record to see if Rubio called the issue a "waste of time." While he used the expression, it was because he opposed specific parts of equal pay legislation, not the overall concept. The Paycheck Fairness Act Murphy’s accusation centers on Rubio’s take on the 2014 version of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill filed in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. Democrats had touted the measure as a way to increase gender parity in compensation, but Republicans opposed tthe bill. Rubio was one of the Republicans who planned to vote against it. In April 2014, after the bill was introduced, Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he felt it was addressing equal pay in the wrong manner. Rubio said that he was against provisions to make it easier to sue for discrimination, and that it would be better to focus on training to help women gain job skills (emphasis ours): "The proposals before the Senate now are really geared toward making it easier to sue an employer," Rubio told Tapper on April 8, 2014. "I understand the political benefit of highlighting that and why they're (Democrats) doing it, but it isn't going to solve the core of the problem. And I just think we're wasting time. Meanwhile, an entire generation of young women is caught in low-paying jobs with no way to emerge from that into a better-paying job." Tapper pointed out that female staffers in Rubio’s office made less than the men. Rubio admitted there was "a disproportionate number of women in our office who are working at the legislative assistant level," which accounted for the gap. "In terms of apples to apples, where you have two people working the same job, we pay people based on their skill and their ability and not their race, their gender, or anything of that matter," Rubio said. The next day, the Paycheck Fairness Act lost a cloture vote, when Rubio and other Republicans voted against it, and the bill failed to advance. He voted against the measure two more times that year before it was reintroduced in the following Congress. Rubio had made similar comments in 2012 about an earlier version of the bill, which he had voted against. "Once again, Senate Democrats have wasted the American people’s time by holding yet another show vote that proves any sense of urgency they have is about scoring political points instead of solving the problems that threaten America’s future," he said in a statement. He also attacked the 2012 version for including measures that he said would lead to lawsuits. He said the bill read to him like "a welfare plan for trial lawyers." Rubio touted another bill called the RAISE Act, but that bill focused on merit-based pay raises in union shops, not specifically gender equity. The context here is important, because it’s not that Rubio said he thought the concept of addressing the pay gap was a waste of time. He said he disagreed with Democrats trying to advance what he considered ineffective legislation. During the debate, Rubio said he supported equal pay for women, especially because he has two young daughters who will be entering the workforce. But he chastised Murphy’s talking point, alleging that under the Paycheck Fairness Act, a business trying to keep a woman from being lured away by another company wouldn’t be able to give her a raise to keep her without also giving her male counterpart a raise. "It has unintended consequences that would not have achieved parity in pay, but would have had these consequences making it very difficult for businesses to actually give raises to men and to women," Rubio said. It’s not our job to debate the merits of one policy approach over another. It’s clear Murphy wants to make it appear as if Rubio said the very issue is a waste of time, when Rubio actually was deriding a specific Democratic approach. Our ruling Murphy said, "When asked about equal pay for women, (Rubio’s) quote was that it was a waste of time." Rubio did use the expression to describe Democratic efforts to advance the Paycheck Fairness Act. Rubio thought the bill focused too much on allowing workers to sue employers for discrimination, and not enough time focusing on job training and other solutions. That’s not the same as dismissing efforts to close the gender pay gap out of hand. Murphy misrepresented the context of Rubio’s response. We rate Murphy’s statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/94b2ce38-f51a-4520-850d-1879affad57d | null | Patrick Murphy | null | null | null | 2016-10-18T15:41:13 | 2016-10-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-01920 | Republican candidate for governor Ken Block was "fined and had to admit that (he) funneled money illegally to the Moderate Party." | true | /rhode-island/statements/2014/jun/29/allan-fung/allan-fung-gop-challenger-ken-block-was-fined-ille/ | During the June 17 Providence Journal - WPRI-TV debate between the Republican candidates for governor, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung said his GOP rival, businessman Ken Block, was caught illegally funneling money to the Moderate Party that Block founded. That was before Block changed his affiliation to become a Republican. The comment came after Block criticized Fung for accepting campaign money from the city's police union. (The department was ultimately caught up in a parking ticket scandal, a controversy Fung has been accused of mismanaging.) Fung, in response, said he was not going to be lectured on ethics by someone who "has been fined by the state Board of Elections for funneling money into his Moderate Party." Fung repeated the allegation two minutes later, telling Block, "The fact that you were fined and had to admit that you funneled money illegally to the Moderate Party speaks for itself." To evaluate Fung’s claim, we first turned to The Journal’s December 2009 story. We also examined emails and the original consent decree signed by Block. Block founded the Moderate Party in 2007 and was its chairman in 2009. He successfully sued the Board of Elections in federal court over its rules that hampered establishment of new political parties. He would subsequently be the Moderate Party's candidate for governor in the 2010 election. On Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, he made a $10,000 party-building donation to the state Moderate Party. Most political donations are capped at $1,000 each year per person but that cap increases to $10,000 if the money is designed for "party building" to cover expenses related to staffing, rent and utilities, but not to winning a specific election. That same day, Block sent an email to Richard E. Thornton, director of campaign finance at the Rhode Island Board of Elections, asking if, "Using the most extreme example, an individual donor can make a $10,000 'party building' donation to every State Committee and every Town Committee of every political party in the State every year." The goal was to establish Moderate Party town committees in all 39 cities and towns. Thornton initially wrote back to say that would be allowed. But 74 minutes later, Thornton sent a followup message saying, "I need to do some additional research . . . before I can confirm that your assessment is accurate." "OK, Rick. Please let me know when you have more clarification on this issue," Block responded. Thornton then said the board would need to issue a full advisory opinion on the matter. Block, already at odds with the board over the federal lawsuit, didn't want to wait. He subsequently informed Thornton that he had made a second $10,000 donation, this time to the Barrington Moderate Party Town Committee. But two days later, the Barrington group transferred the money to the state Moderate Party. Ultimately, the board concluded that Block had violated campaign finance law in two ways: first, by making the second donation and second, because the Barrington committee had shuttled the money to the state committee. The two sides eventually settled for a $2,000 fine, to be paid personally by Block, who also signed an admission of wrongdoing. "I do believe that given the time and energy, we could have proven that we were right. But the election would have come and gone by then," Block said at the time. "It just made much more sense to put it behind us." Today, Block argues that when he sought advice, "They never actually said, 'No. Don't do this. You can't do it.'" "We were completely in the open about doing this," Block said. "Their overreaction to what we had done is a classic Rhode Island political payback story." Fung, during the debate, didn't go into details. He simply said that Block was "fined and had to admit that [he] funneled money illegally to the Moderate Party." We rate the claim as True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | Allan Fung | null | null | null | 2014-06-29T00:02:00 | 2014-06-17 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Moderate_Party'] |
pomt-01410 | Says Scott Brown co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for mammograms. | mostly false | /new-hampshire/statements/2014/oct/10/jeanne-shaheen/jeanne-shaheen-says-scott-brown-backed-bill-let-em/ | The U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire has been awash in claims about abortion and women’s health issues in recent days. One claim by incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen caught our eye. Shaheen is facing a challenge from former Republican Sen. Scott Brown. In a news release from her campaign, Shaheen said: "I have always supported a woman’s right to choose because I know women should be making health care decisions in consultation with their doctors and their families, not their employer. Scott Brown’s record is clear: When it counts, he doesn’t stand up for women’s reproductive rights and economic security. He co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for birth control or even mammograms. New Hampshire women can’t trust Scott Brown, and his record is move evidence that he is wrong for New Hampshire." We noticed two claims that are related, but distinct enough to analyze separately. First, would the legislation in question have allowed employers deny women coverage for birth control? And would it have allowed employers to deny coverage for mammograms? We’ve heard of controversies over birth control, but not mammograms. So we decided to check it out. (We’ve addressed birth control in a separate fact-check.) Mammograms are used to screen for breast cancer, either preventively in women who have no signs of the disease, or as a diagnostic aid after a lump or other symptom is reported, according to the National Cancer Institute. In a different Shaheen campaign news release, the campaign explained its sourcing by writing, "FACT: Scott Brown both co-sponsored and voted for the Blunt Amendment that would let employers deny women access to a range of healthcare services, including contraception and coverage for mammograms." The amendment in question was proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. It was tabled -- that is, dispensed with -- by a 51-48 vote in which a simple majority was required. Among those who voted "nay" -- that is, those who wanted to keep it under consideration -- was Brown, then representing Massachusetts in the Senate. He also co-sponsored a predecessor measure, S.1467, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011. So Shaheen’s camp is correct that Brown acted in support of this measure. But what did the amendment say? It acted to widen the scope of acceptable actions for opting out of provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on religious or moral grounds. It focuses on mandates within the law for preventive services, called the "essential health benefits package." The Shaheen campaign pointed us to a Feb. 29, 2014, news release opposing the Blunt Amendment by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. The release said, "the expansive nature of the proposed Blunt amendment ... could result in coverage denials of life-saving preventive services such as mammograms or tobacco cessation based on employer discretion." But we aren’t accepting the claim of an advocacy group without digging further. So we read the relevant portions of the law ourselves. We agree that the provision is drawn broadly. It’s not targeted at abortion or birth control -- it simply says that employers cannot be required to cover "specific items or services" that are "contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan." So, presumably, any aspect of preventive care could qualify for a religious-conscience opt-out -- including mammograms. Or, for that matter, stethoscopes or tongue depressors. We can’t imagine any religious objections to the use of tongue depressors. But what about mammograms? We asked a number of experts in medicine and bioethics whether they had ever heard religious objections raised regarding mammograms. None said they had. "I have not heard this claim in the specific context you describe," said Paul A. Lombardo, a specialist in medical law and ethics at Georgia State University. Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, noted that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent in Hobby Lobby noted past religious objections to blood transfusions (by Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (by Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (by certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (by Christian Scientists). However, Sonfield couldn’t recall hearing objections to mammograms. Opposition to mammograms would also be news to a leading anti-abortion group, the National Right to Life Committee. "I've never heard of any argument being made against mammograms based on a conscience objection," said Susan T. Muskett, the group’s senior legislative counsel. Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, said the closest he can get "to making any sense of" the claim involves what in the game of pool would be known as a multiple bank shot. Here goes: Planned Parenthood has become a target of anti-abortion activists because it performs abortions, but the group’s clinics also provide other forms of health care to women. These include breast examinations, but not mammograms per se. If the clinic determines that a patient needs a mammogram, they will be referred to a health care provider that offers one. Some abortion opponents might "see this as a ruse," Caplan said. "So there might be a doctor or a nurse who would refuse a mammogram referral from Planned Parenthood on the grounds that that they are just funding abortions." But this is all speculative, Caplan added. "No doc I know of has any issue with mammograms," he said. Holly Fernandez Lynch, a Harvard bioethicist and author of Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise, called the claim "technically true" but "a bit of a strawman." Could it have been used to deny access to mammograms? "Yes," she said. "Would it have been? Almost certainly not. I have never heard of a religious or moral objection to mammograms. The better examples would have been contraceptives, abortion, vaccines (especially HPV), psychiatric care, or palliative care/hospices." Our ruling Shaheen said Brown co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for mammograms. The amendment, which Brown supported, was written loosely enough to allow a religious-conscience opt-out for almost any conceivable form of preventive care. But it didn't target mammograms, as Shaheen implied. And while the amendment would have protected religious-conscience objections, we failed to uncover any evidence that mammograms have inspired religious opposition, either now or in the past. The claim contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | Jeanne Shaheen | null | null | null | 2014-10-10T11:25:07 | 2014-09-29 | ['None'] |
snes-00714 | A "new" study has demonstrated that marijuana leads to a "complete remission" of Crohn's disease. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-study-marijuana-crohns/ | null | Medical | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Did a New Study Show That Marijuana Leads to a Complete Remission of Crohn’s Disease? | 25 April 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00590 | Since 2010, eight children in Georgia have died due to vehicular heatstroke. | true | /georgia/statements/2015/jun/05/nathan-deal/deal-knows-his-numbers-child-deaths/ | Editor's note: This fact-check was updated after it first published to included corrected information from the state on one child death. A year ago this month, hearts across Atlanta collectively sank. Dominating the news last June 18 were reports that a 22-month-old Cobb County boy had been left in the back seat of his family’s locked SUV and had been found unresponsive nearly eight hours later. His dad, Justin Ross Harris, would tell family he thought he had dropped off young Ross at daycare before parking the SUV and going into work for the day. Police would later say the dad’s account didn’t add up. Harris, who has denied any wrongdoing, is awaiting trial on several charges, including malice murder. His boy is now part of the statistics that state officials used Wednesday in their ongoing campaign to raise public awareness of the potential dangers of leaving a child alone in a car, especially in the hot Georgia summer. "Since 2010, eight children in Georgia have died due to vehicular heatstroke," Gov. Nathan Deal said at a press conference outside the state Capitol. The governor, first lady Sandra Deal and a contingent of state leaders gathered to promote a new public service video that encourages parents and caregivers to "look again" before they leave their vehicle to make sure they are not leaving a child behind. PolitiFact Georgia decided to look deeper into the stats Deal cited on child deaths caused by heatstroke. But first a little background. Annually, since the death of 2-year-old Jasmine Green in 2011, state officials have used the kickoff of summer to launch a public campaign to remind the public of the dangers of leaving a child in a hot, closed vehicle. Jasmine was found dead in a day care center van that had returned from a field trip to a Chuck E. Cheese in Jonesboro. Authorities said she had apparently fallen asleep between the seats of the van, and staff didn’t notice she was missing from the center for more than two hours. The state agency that oversees child care centers received 17 reports in fiscal 2013, 18 reports in fiscal 2014 and four reports in fiscal 2015 of children being left in vehicles by child care providers. "We receive calls about incidents where children are left in vehicles from a few minutes to several hours, and we investigate each incident," Amy M. Jacobs, the commissioner of Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), said Wednesday. "While, thankfully, we have not seen any heatstroke-related deaths in child care centers since 2011, these dangerous close calls are completely unacceptable," she said. So what about those stats? We contacted DECAL, which provided us information on the eight Georgia deaths. In addition to the deaths of Ross and Jasmine, they include: *a 2-year-old Clarkston girl who was apparently trapped inside her mother’s car for more than an hour in 2014; * a 5-month-old girl was left in the family car outside a Kennesaw day school for five hours in 2011; * a 3-year-old Warner Robins boy left in a car outside a family day care for an hour in 2011; * a 3-year-old Canton girl left outside a church in 2010 for an unknown amount of time in the family minivan; *a 6-year-old girl from Evans who gained access to the family car in her garage for an undetermined amount of time in 2010. *an 18-month-old Monroe County boy was left in 2010 in the family van at an elementary school for seven or eight hours. Nationally, 639 children -- or an average of 37 per year -- died from heatstroke after being left in a vehicle between 1998 and 2014, according to data compiled by Jan Null with the Department of Meteorology & Climate Science at San Jose University. In that same time period, Georgia had 22 deaths, Florida 68, Alabama 14 and South Carolina 9. Our ruling Gov. Nathan Deal held a press conference Wednesday to raise public awareness of the potential dangers of leaving a child alone in a car. He and other state officials have been doing similar events since 2012, following the tragic death of a 2-year-old girl. The governor cited statistics showing that since 2010, eight children in Georgia have died due to vehicular heatstroke. The death count is accurate and makes the case that without vigilance on the part of parents and caregivers, there’s the potential for tragedy. We rate the governor’s statement True. | null | Nathan Deal | null | null | null | 2015-06-05T09:21:41 | 2015-06-03 | ['None'] |
pomt-02427 | For every week that (state lawmakers are) able to cut off our timeline, it saves (Georgia taxpayers) approximately $100,000. | true | /georgia/statements/2014/mar/04/casey-cagle/cagle-state-saves-money-shorter-session/ | Georgia lawmakers have been racing through the 2014 legislative session faster than NASCAR drivers, and for many observers frightened by the prospect of 236 politicians together for a lengthy period of time, that’s a good thing. Lawmakers want to return to their districts earlier this year. Why? The political party primaries are being held on May 20, two months earlier than normal, and elected officials want more time to campaign. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle talked about the financial benefits of a short legislative session. "For every week that we’re able to cut off our timeline, it saves us approximately $100,000," the Republican said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. PolitiFact Georgia decided to whip out its calculator to see whether Cagle’s math was correct. The Georgia House of Representatives and Senate typically begin their 40-day legislative session in early January and typically finish around the end of March or early April. The end of the session, or "sine die" as lawmakers call it, is scheduled for March 20 this year. The state Capitol can seem as frenetic as a NASCAR driver’s pit crew during the legislative session. Lawmakers, lobbyists, reporters and visitors roam the halls for various meetings during those 40 days as the Legislature passes legislation that has an impact on all 10 million Georgians. The Legislature hires additional people to help during the session, but it comes at a cost. Slightly more than 200 aides and interns are temporarily working this session, Cagle’s staff said. Those additional workers are paid about $93,000 a week, Cagle’s office said. We asked Cagle’s office for information to back up the numbers. It took some time, but they eventually came our way. Cagle’s office sent us two sets of weekly payroll data for the temporary session staff. The first was for the week ending Jan. 19. The total was $96,666.94. The other was for the week ending Feb. 9. The total was $96,673.79. The longer the Legislature is in session, the more it costs to pay those additional workers. A 40-day session stretched over 90 days would be more expensive than a 40-day session stretched over 60 days. Cagle’s spokesman, Ben Fry, said the temporary session staff is one of three factors that the lieutenant governor had in mind when he made his statement. The second is the cost to the state for lawmakers to drive to and from the state Capitol each week. Legislators receive round-trip mileage reimbursement once a week for travel to and from Atlanta. All 236 lawmakers are eligible to get about 56 cents -- the federal standard -- for each mile they drive. The weekly total? It’s at least $20,000, Cagle said. Each lawmaker would drive an average of about 150 miles round-trip to get to that $20,000 estimate. Other Georgia lawmakers have written about the taxpayer savings of a more condensed legislative session, citing similar numbers for the cost of temporary staff. "For every week the General Assembly is in session, temporary staff in both chambers cost the state approximately $93,000 per week in payroll – and that’s not even including the savings from legislator per diem," Sen. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, wrote in an item on GaPundit.com. Ah, what about the per diem? Shouldn’t that be included in the cost? That brings us to the third factor Cagle had in mind. Georgia lawmakers currently get a daily per diem of $173 for travel and other expenses. That adds up to about $200,000 a week. Adding the per diem to the cost of temporary session staff increases the weekly cost to about $300,000. Wouldn’t that mean Cagle underestimated the weekly total cost? "That cost (of giving lawmakers a per diem for 40 days) is the same regardless of how the session goes," said Fry, Cagle’s spokesman. Fry said the savings would come from what he described as "sandwich days." These are weekdays when the Legislature is not in session. Lawmakers can still request the $173 per diem. Fry said it’s difficult to come up with an estimate of how much those days cost taxpayers, but he said it can add up. To sum up, Cagle said the state could save $100,000 for each week the Legislature can reduce their session schedule. Cagle’s argument is the longer the Legislature is in session, the more it costs Georgia taxpayers. The lieutenant governor’s statement is correct that it costs a good bit of money to operate when the Legislature is in session, if you consider the cost of temporary staff alone. If you consider the regular per diem costs, Cagle’s weekly estimate of $100,000 seems too conservative. We rate his statement True. | null | Casey Cagle | null | null | null | 2014-03-04T06:00:00 | 2014-01-22 | ['None'] |
pomt-09992 | You can't read a speech by George Washington . . . without hearing him reference God, the Almighty. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/apr/10/rush-limbaugh/Rush-limbaugh-washington-religion/ | Radio host Rush Limbaugh, railing against a Newsweek cover that proclaimed "The Decline and Fall of Christian America," called on no less than the Father of Our Country for backup. Limbaugh was talking to a high school teacher from Rochester, N.Y., on his show April 8, 2009, when he invoked the first president to support the argument that the United States is a Christian nation. "Now, you've got people who want to conform and not cause any ripples, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, we're not a Christian nation, Judeo-Christian ethic, we are a lot of different religions here,' " Limbaugh said. "You can't read a speech by George Washington, you can't read his inaugural address, you cannot read them without hearing him reference God, the Almighty, and how this nation owes its existence to God and our thanks to God for the vision in founding this nation with people treated as he made them, the yearning spirit to be free and so forth." To see whether you indeed "can't read a speech by George Washington" without seeing a reference to God, we checked Washington's most noteworthy speeches, starting with his two inaugural addresses, since Limbaugh mentioned those specifically. The first inaugural address , though lacking the word "God," did contain plenty of references to a deity, such as one to "that Almighty Being who rules over the universe," and a line about how "no people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States." But Washington's second inaugural address , the shortest on record, had no references to God, direct or indirect. Nor did Washington's Second Annual Message to Congress, the sort of speech that would come to be known as the State of the Union. Washington's famous speech at Newburgh to officers of the Continental Army, who were threatening to desert for lack of pay, also contained no references to God other than as an exclamation. "My God!" Washington said in a speech that came six years before he became president. "What can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures?" (That, and one other reference to the "God of Armies," were the only two times in the 13 speeches we read that Washington used the word "God.") So clearly Limbaugh was wrong that you can't read a Washington speech without seeing a reference to God. It's also worth noting, given Limbaugh's larger point that Washington's religious views support the idea that the United States is a Christian nation, that Washington was hardly a devout Christian. Peter Henriques, retired professor of history at George Mason University and author of the 2006 book Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington , said Washington's voluminous writings contain exactly one explicit reference to Jesus — when he told the natives of the Delaware Nation a decade before he became president: "You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are." And in Washington's private writings, there's not one specific reference to Jesus, said Henriques, whose book includes a chapter devoted to Washington's religious views. Washington was fond of religion in general, saying in his farewell address to the nation in 1796 that of all the habits that lead to political prosperity, "Religion and Morality are indispensable supports." But he was also wary of religious sectarianism. He wrote of how religious disputes are "the most inveterate and distressing," how he feared they would "endanger the peace of society," and how he believed the Constitution established "effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny." Henriques said Washington was reluctant to spell out his own religious views, partly because he was "trying to be a unifying symbol for everyone." He believes Washington was best described as a "rational theist," meaning he believed in God and elements of Christianity, "but with a very strong dose of rationalism and reason." Other scholars label Washington and most of the other founding fathers "deists," meaning adherents of the 18th century movement that believed in God but emphasized morality. "They were sort of products of the 18th century Enlightenment," said John Ferling, a retired professor at the University of West Georgia whose book, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon , is due to be published in May. "They thought in terms of there being a Supreme Creator who created life and the universe but then didn't intrude in things from that point on." So Washington wasn't nearly the devout Christian that Limbaugh suggested he was and he did not refer to God in all his speeches as the talk show host claimed. We find Limbaugh's claim is False. | null | Rush Limbaugh | null | null | null | 2009-04-10T18:05:12 | 2009-04-08 | ['God'] |
snes-00335 | The Trump administration made immigrants pay $800 for DNA tests in order to get back children taken under its "zero tolerance" policy. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-dna-tests-pay/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Is the Trump Administration Making Immigrants Pay $800 for DNA Tests to Get Their Children Back? | 17 July 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02290 | Women in the U.S. get 23 percent less pay than men for the same exact work. | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2014/apr/04/jimmy-carter/carter-exaggerates-gender-pay-gap/ | The scribes at PolitiFact Georgia thought they heard some familiar numbers when former President Jimmy Carter recently told a national television audience that women in the U.S. make much less than men for the very same work. Carter was promoting his new book, "A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power." A former Georgia governor, Nobel Peace Prize winner and perhaps the nation’s best-known Sunday school teacher, Carter is also a prolific author. "In the United States for the same exact work for a full-time employee, women get 23 percent less pay than men," Carter told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in an interview that aired March 24. The so-called "gender wage gap" gets a lot of ink. PolitiFact has fact-checked various incarnations of the statistic Carter uses as the basis of his claim. Speakers have ended up all over the Truth-O-Meter depending on how accurately they framed the results of the study upon which the numbers are based. President Barack Obama ended up on the Truth-O-Meter for his take on the numbers during his 2012 campaign. He got a Mostly False ruling. Carter made a similar claim last year at a women’s conference in Atlanta. He told the conference that women in the United States are paid about 70 percent of what men earn for the same work. PolitiFact Georgia rated that statement Mostly False. Carter’s claim here is a bit different and more specific than the claim we checked last year. And this time, he was using the numbers to tout his book. PolitiFact Georgia decided to take another look. We reached out to Carter, and his assistant, Steven Hochman, emailed this about Carter’s television interview: "In a conversation or an interview, sometimes we don’t say all we want to say. In the United States for the same exact work, most women earn less than men. For full-time employees, the median annual earnings are about 23 percent less for women than for men." Let’s start with a basic primer on wages and gender. Experts agree there is a gender-based wage gap. But it is not as simple as it seems. Differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — and other factors make it difficult to make simple comparisons. The number Carter used in his TV interview comes from a U.S. Census Bureau study that looked at the total wages earned by male and female workers. The study found men’s total wages were about 23 percent higher than the total amount of women's wages. But that large discrepancy was due in part to the fact that men generally work more hours. The study did not attempt to look at equal pay for the same work or the same number of hours worked. Other data -- including hourly wages tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as data comparing the same jobs -- yield smaller wage gaps. Experts say the figure, which is often used to bolster arguments for gender-based wage bias, is misleading. Advocates often use the Census Bureau report because it shows the largest wage gap. The number does not take into account critical factors that could influence the figure, including specific occupation, time on the job and education level. And the gap drops dramatically if you compare men and women of similar education levels, job titles, time on the job and other relevant factors. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis cited one survey, prepared for the Labor Department. It found that when such differences are accounted for, much of the hourly wage gap vanished. It shrinks to the low single digits. Carter’s public statements about the gender wage gap are also at odds with his book. On Page 168, Carter states that "full-time female workers still earn about 23 percent less than men." There is no mention here of less pay for the "same exact work." During his MSNBC interview, Carter took a legitimate statistic and described it in a way that makes it sound much more dramatic than it is. The 23 percent figure is real. But it does not factor in occupations held, hours worked or length of tenure. That statistic does not refer to the pay of women doing "the same exact work" as men. There is a gender pay gap. But Carter vastly overstated it during his television interview. We rate Carter’s statement Mostly False. | null | Jimmy Carter | null | null | null | 2014-04-04T00:00:00 | 2014-03-24 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-04994 | Over the last six months, President Barack Obama has golfed 10 times and held 106 fundraisers, but his jobs council has never met. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/19/republican-national-committee-republican/did-barack-obama-hold-100-plus-fundraisers-while-h/ | In a video and an infographic, the Republican National Committee amplified a charge first raised by Mitt Romney on the stump the day before -- that President Barack Obama has held more than 100 fundraisers in the past six months, yet his jobs council didn’t meet once. "In the last six months, he has held 100 fundraisers, and guess how many meetings he has had with his jobs council?" Romney said in a July 18, 2012, campaign event in Bowling Green, Ohio. "None. Zero. Zero in the last six months. So it makes it very clear where his priorities are." The following day, the RNC released a graphic that provided some additional specifics. Over the last six months, the graphic said, Obama has golfed 10 times and held 106 fundraisers, but his jobs council has never met. The RNC supplemented this with a video that added a goofy soundtrack as well as audio and video of an exchange on this topic between reporters and White House press secretary Jay Carney. Several readers asked us to check this statistic. We won’t pass judgment on how Obama should spend his time, but we will check the accuracy of the numbers. The jobs council Let’s start by explaining what the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness actually is. Its website explains that the panel was established "to provide nonpartisan advice to the President" on strengthening the economy and creating jobs. The council is chaired by the chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, and is populated by a variety of other business figures, such as former AOL chairman Steve Case, venture capitalist John Doerr, former Citigroup and Time Warner chairman Richard D. Parsons, as well as economist Laura D’Andrea Tyson and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Checking the lack of recent meetings was straightforward. The council’s own web page cites four meetings of the council so far -- Feb. 24, 2011, at the White House, June 13, 2011, in Durham, N.C., October 11, 2011, in Pittsburgh, and Jan. 17, 2012, at the White House. The Web page does add that the council has also conducted "18 listening and action sessions in communities around the country with businesses and local leaders" and that it plans to hold more in the coming months. However, the Web page doesn’t appear to consider these to be "meetings," and since the most recent was just slightly over six months ago, the RNC’s claim is correct. Asked about the lack of meetings in a July 18, 2012, press briefing, Carney said "the president solicits and receives input and advice from members of his jobs council and others about economic initiatives all the time. … There’s no specific reason (why they haven’t met) except the president has obviously got a lot on his plate." Golf and fundraising For statistics on Obama’s golf and fundraising activities, we turned to the RNC, which provided us with an Excel spreadsheet they had compiled internally. We then double-checked the RNC’s work. There is no official tally of the president’s daily activities. There is one tally that’s unofficial but widely respected -- one compiled by longtime CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller. Knoller tweeted on June 12, 2012, that "today's six events will bring to 160 the number of fundraisers Pres Obama has done since filing for re-election with the FEC last year." He also wrote in a story on June 17, 2012, that Obama had just played his 100th round of golf since taking office. However, because Knoller did not return an inquiry for this story, we could not match these numbers to the RNC’s claim. The RNC offered links to news accounts to back up Obama’s 10 golf outings in the past six months, and they confirmed golf outings on the dates cited by the RNC count. As for fundraising events, the RNC only provided dates and locations. However, we were able to check this list using two sources. The White House’s archive of presidential speeches and remarks offers chronological links to transcripts of the president’s comments at every public appearance he makes. Many, though not all, fundraising events are included in this archive. Meanwhile, to track events that were closed to the press -- and thus wouldn’t be included in the archive of speeches and remarks -- we relied on our personal archive of White House pool reports, which are the dispatches written by journalists covering the White House several times a day and distributed to all members of the White House press corps. These pool reports will typically mention that the president is attending a fundraiser even if the event is closed to the press. Using these two sources, we were able to confirm virtually all of the fundraisers cited by the RNC. In only three cases were we unable to verify fundraisers cited by the RNC using these sources. This doesn’t mean that these three events didn’t happen; we just couldn’t find pool reports that specifically backed them up. However, even if the actual number of fundraisers in the last six months turned out to be 103 rather than 106, we won’t quibble -- the number would be close enough for us to consider it accurate. Our ruling The RNC said that over the last six months, Obama has golfed 10 times and held 106 fundraisers even as his jobs council didn’t meet once. The RNC’s tally is on target. We rate the statement True. | null | Republican National Committee | null | null | null | 2012-07-19T17:40:46 | 2012-07-19 | ['None'] |
bove-00167 | Fact Vs Fiction: Fake News After Las Vegas Mass Shooting | none | https://www.boomlive.in/fact-vs-fiction-fake-news-after-las-vegas-mass-shooting/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Vs Fiction: Fake News After Las Vegas Mass Shooting | Oct 06 2017 4:51 pm, Last Updated: Dec 15 2017 2:12 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08584 | Kilmartin has helped pass laws to "create a witness protection program." | mostly true | /rhode-island/statements/2010/sep/26/peter-kilmartin/kilmartin-says-he-helped-create-rhode-islands-witn/ | You might think a state like Rhode Island, with its legacy of organized crime and corruption, would have had a witness protection program for decades. So we were surprised when Peter Kilmartin, a Democrat running for attorney general, said he helped create it just nine years ago. On his website, Kilmartin boasts about a host of professional accomplishments during his 20 years as a state representative. Among them, he says, he helped "create a witness protection program." Was there really no witness protection program before Kilmartin? First, a history lesson. The federal Witness Security Program, the one that gives witnesses new identities and new lives, was created as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and amended by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. It is run by the U.S. Marshals Service. But that program primarily covers federal cases. Witnesses in state-level cases have occasionally been placed in the program, but only in the most dangerous of circumstances. Several decades ago, states began to realize there was a need for less drastic, localized protection when witnesses needed temporary security before and after testifying, not a whole new identity. So they began creating their own programs. Here in Rhode Island, the push for a state policy began in the wake of a scandal involving mob informant Peter Gilbert, who used drugs, carried weapons, collected welfare and went skydiving while under the protection of the Providence police. His case led then-Attorney General James O'Neil and the legislature to create new guidelines to control the costs of monitoring witnesses and establish a board to oversee who was eligible for protection. But there were gaps in the new policy. Local police departments continued to run their own protection programs with little coordination. Witnesses were typically afforded temporary protection only if they said they felt threatened. That meant it was mostly limited to criminal witnesses who agreed to testify in exchange for leniency. Innocent witnesses rarely participated, according to Michael J. Healey, spokesman for the attorney general's office. "It was a witness protection program in name only because it wasn't what you think of when you think of protecting someone who witnessed a crime," he said. The flaws in the system were exposed a decade later. In the spring of 2000, 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, a key witness in a Providence murder case, was fatally shot the day before she was to testify. Then-Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, now a U.S. senator, came under fire for not protecting the teenager. He subsequently created a group to study how to remake the law to better identify and protect vulnerable witnesses. Among its recommendations: centralize the program within the attorney general's office and devote a full-time staff person to oversee it; require prosecutors and police to conduct independent assessments of the witness's need for safety, instead of waiting for the witness to express concern; and seal the program's records to protect participants. This is when Kilmartin, a state representative from Pawtucket, entered the picture. With the outline of the bill in hand, Whitehouse asked Kilmartin to sponsor the legislation, according to both the attorney general's office and Kilmartin. Kilmartin was a city police officer at the time and had sponsored several law-enforcement related bills. "I think the Rivera situation clearly showed that the statute we had was antiquated and wasn't comprehensive enough. It didn't provide the evaluation necessary to protect people," Kilmartin recalled. "So we passed the bill and updated the law in response to that situation." The legislation was introduced in the spring of 2001 and became law that summer. Did Kilmartin technically help create the Rhode Island's witness protection program? No. He wasn't even in office yet when the first version become law. But as the attorney general's spokesman points out, that was a protection program in name only, since it provided little protection for innocent witnesses. What Kilmartin did through his sponsorship of the 2001 bill was to help update and strengthen an existing witness protection program to centralize it and create necessary controls. He can't take all the credit, but we'll give him his fair share and call it Mostly True. | null | Peter Kilmartin | null | null | null | 2010-09-26T00:01:00 | 2010-09-20 | ['None'] |
tron-00502 | Modern day Jonah swallowed by a whale | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/newjonah/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Modern day Jonah swallowed by a whale | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04422 | Donald Trump and his children face charges of evading $250 million in taxes. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-and-children-face-250-million-tax-evasion-charges/ | null | Politics | null | David Mikkelson | null | Trump and Children Face $250 Million Tax Evasion Charges | 19 July 2016 | null | ['None'] |
para-00165 | Labor has delivered the biggest increase to the pension in more than a century. | true | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/29/jenny-macklin/biggest-age-pension-rise-more-century/index.html | null | ['Pension'] | Jenny Macklin | Chris Pash, Su-Lin Tan, Peter Fray | null | The biggest age pension rise in more than a century | Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 3:01 p.m. | null | ['None'] |
tron-03456 | The Buddhist Monk who claims to have come back from the dead | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/monk/ | null | religious | null | null | null | The Buddhist Monk who claims to have come back from the dead | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00002 | No, Consuming Pepsi and Mentos Does NOT Lead to Instant Death From Cyanide Poisoning | bogus warning | http://www.hoax-slayer.net/no-consuming-pepsi-and-polo-mentos-does-not-lead-to-instant-death-from-cyanide-poisoning/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | No, Consuming Pepsi and Mentos Does NOT Lead to Instant Death From Cyanide Poisoning | May 24, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04232 | A photograph shows Hillary Clinton wearing a defibrillator under her clothes at a campaign event. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-defibrillator/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Hillary Clinton Wears a Defibrillator? | 16 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01033 | Did a Texas Teacher Named Heather Holland Die Because She Couldn't Afford Flu Medicine? | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/heather-holland-died-flu-medicine/ | null | Medical | null | David Emery | null | Did a Texas Teacher Named Heather Holland Die Because She Couldn’t Afford Flu Medicine? | 12 February 2018 | null | ['Texas'] |
pomt-14176 | Says he "was the only Republican" to vote against creating a House panel to investigate Planned Parenthood. | true | /florida/statements/2016/apr/26/david-jolly/us-rep-david-jolly-says-he-voted-against-house-pla/ | Seeking Marco Rubio’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat, U.S. Rep. David Jolly said during a debate in Orlando that he’s committed to sticking to conservative principles, even if it means voting against his own party. Jolly met with U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, at an Open Debate Coalition event on April 25, 2016, to discuss the Senate candidates’ platforms. After a question about whether he would support defending or defunding Planned Parenthood, Jolly said he opposed abortion and could not support the group, which has been under fire after being accused of selling fetal tissue. But he acknowledged other women’s health services deserved funding and decried government wasting too much time and money on attacking Planned Parenthood. "When my side of the aisle asked for an investigation of Planned Parenthood, I actually voted no. I was the only Republican to vote no," he said. "Should the issue be looked at? Yes. But there were already three committees looking at the issue. We didn’t need a fourth. We’re either going to be the party of less government or not." Technically, the investigation Jolly is talking about doesn’t mention Planned Parenthood by name, but the Indian Shores Republican was the lone member of his party to oppose it. Copious committees The Republican-controlled House responded swiftly after the Center for Medical Progress released their heavily edited videos in July 2015 alleging Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue after abortions. The Energy and Commerce Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee all announced investigations into the videos on July 15. (The Senate also prodded the Health and Human Services Department to open an investigation, as well.) Despite several hearings, including testimony from Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards, there was no proof the group broke the law, which allows for tissue donations for an unspecified procurement fee but not taxpayer funds for abortions. On Oct. 7, 2015, the House voted on HR 451, which created a select investigative panel "for the purpose of investigating abortion practices and the handling of and policies regarding fetal tissue, its cost, and how it is obtained." Planned Parenthood was not named in the resolution, but was clearly the target of the investigation. Jolly was the only Republican to go against his party in a 242-184 vote, with two Democrats voting for it. Jolly noted in a Facebook post after the vote that he did not believe the panel was necessary. "We should always look to streamline government, not expand it. And the bottom line is today's decision unfortunately fails that most basic conservative principle," he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. "Simply put, because three panels currently have jurisdiction to investigate, we do not need to create a fourth." We couldn’t find the post when we looked at Jolly’s Facebook timeline. His campaign directed us to a similarly worded Newsmax article Jolly wrote on Oct. 14, 2015. The article highlighted legislation Jolly introduced "to fully defund taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood until a thorough investigation is completed, and instead transfer that funding to other providers of critical non-abortion women's healthcare in underserved communities." Investigations by 12 state governments did not find any evidence of fetal tissue sales, although a grand jury in Texas in February 2016 did indict David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who made the videos. They both face charges of tampering with a government record, while Center for Medical Progress founder Daleiden was charged with prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs. The panel the House created in October, the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, has held hearings but has not yet asked Daleiden to testify. Our ruling Jolly said he "was the only Republican" to vote against creating a House panel to investigate Planned Parenthood. The reason he voted no, he said, is because the House already had three investigations into Planned Parenthood’s alleged sale of fetal tissue. Jolly made it clear at the time he was not in favor of spending more taxpayer dollars to investigate something already under the microscope. We rate his statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/b79daf49-671a-429c-b79c-f93a4464d6c7 | null | David Jolly | null | null | null | 2016-04-26T17:48:21 | 2016-04-25 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Planned_Parenthood'] |
afck-00047 | “When I assumed office as President, we promised to tarmac 10,000 kms roads across the country; we are on target having completed 3,000 kms to-date and with a further 5,000 kms under construction.” | unproven | https://africacheck.org/reports/uhuru-kenyattas-2018-state-of-the-nation-address-fact-checked/ | null | null | null | null | null | Uhuru Kenyatta’s 2018 State of The Nation Address fact-checked | 2018-05-02 06:20 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13770 | The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/21/donald-trump/trump-says-number-illegal-immigrant-families-cross/ | In his speech accepting the Republican Party nomination for president, Donald Trump laid out his assessment of the nation and said it was time to go back to safety, prosperity and peace. "We will be a country of generosity and warmth," Trump said. "But we will also be a country of law and order." That includes getting tough on immigration policy. "The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015," Trump said. We were curious to know if so far this year, the number of immigrant families who have crossed the border has surpassed all of 2015. Definition of family Immigration experts pointed us to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics on monthly and fiscal-year apprehensions of families along the Southwest border. CBP uses apprehensions as an indicator of total attempts to cross the border illegally. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center, says the definition of a family unit is quite loose, but basically involves at least one child who is accompanied by at least one adult who is their parent or legal guardian. Turning to the data There are two ways to interpret the data — by calendar year (January 1 to December 31) and by fiscal year (October 1 to September 30). And that makes all the difference. By calendar year -- the way most people would interpret Trump’s comment -- he’s wrong. But by fiscal year, he’s right. CBP’s has apprehended 29,682 family members from January to June 2016, records show. In all of 2015, CBP apprehended more family members, 53,840. If he’s reading by fiscal year, as CBP reports it, then the numbers support his statement. In fiscal year 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014-Sept. 30, 2015), there were 39,838 apprehensions. So far from Oct. 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016, there have been a total of 51,152 apprehensions. Fiscal year 2016 includes three months -- October to December 2015 -- when there was a notable spike in apprehensions. From October to December 2015, there were 21,470 apprehensions — 2.8 times higher than the same period in 2014 and 4.1 times higher than combined average for same months over the last four years (2012–15). What caused the numbers to spike? Experts aren’t sure. Federal officials generally have discussed challenges created by Central American families trying to enter the United States. "We are cognizant that conditions in Central America push many to flee the region in search of a better life in the United States, and recognize the need to provide a safe alternative path to our country, and that many from the region should be regarded as refugees," Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Jeh C. Johnson said in a statement accompanying the latest data. Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has been researching immigrant communities for decades, said these numbers mainly represent young mothers with small children from Central America "fleeing poverty and lethal danger from gangs in their countries," many who turn themselves into Border Patrol to seek asylum. Our ruling Trump said, "The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015." Many would understand it as calendar year and by this metric, Trump is wrong. However, Customs and Border Protection reports apprehension data by fiscal year. And by that measure, he has a point. On balance, we rate this claim Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/9186c898-10a9-4cc6-8a23-56096417e9d7 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-07-21T22:36:09 | 2016-07-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-11255 | Flint still doesn’t have clean water. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2018/may/01/michelle-wolf/michelle-wolf-right-flint-still-doesnt-have-clean-/ | The remarks by comedian Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents' Dinner were intensely scrutinized by journalists, commentators and users of social media. We don’t fact-check jokes, but we did want to look at one line by Wolf that seemed to be dead serious. At the end of her monologue, Wolf said, "Flint still doesn’t have clean water." She’s referring to the woes of Flint, Mich., where a switch in water sources was improperly handled, leading to unsafe levels of lead in the city’s water system. We’ve periodically checked in to see how Flint’s water problems are progressing, but the last time we looked was in late 2016. So, now that Wolf has used Flint’s situation as an exclamation point for her high-profile remarks, we decided to gauge whether she’s right that "Flint still doesn’t have clean water." Ultimately, we concluded that the reality is more nuanced than Wolf portrayed it. (We reached out to Wolf’s representatives but did not hear back.) Origins of the problem Flint is a low-income and majority African-American city beset by a decline in its manufacturing industry. The city’s lead poisoning was precipitated by Gov. Rick Snyder. Snyder, a Republican, had campaigned on his managerial experience and promised to bring outside experts to transform financially languishing municipalities. Under an emergency manager appointed by the state, the city ended its agreement to obtain water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and instead joined a new pipeline project, the Karegnondi Water Authority, that would draw water from Lake Huron. The move, made officially in April 2013, was done in large part to save the city millions of dollars. The day after the switch was announced, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department said it would cut off service in April 2014. Since the pipeline wouldn’t be ready by then, the city prepared to switch its water supply to the Flint River. However, the river water contained salts that would corrode pipes, and the right mix of corrosion inhibitors was never used. Not only did residents complain that their new water was foul, but it eventually became clear that lead was leaching into the water supply from the city’s old pipes. Lead is a highly toxic metal, especially for children whose bodies are still developing. After a litany of missed opportunities, the situation became a focus of the national media in the second half of 2015, prompting both emergency water distribution and a search for a longer-term solution. Water quality Flint faces two issues around its water supply: the quality of the water itself, and the effort to remove pipes that contain lead. First, let’s take a look at water quality. By July 2016, the federal Environmental Protection Agency had found significant reductions in lead levels, as long as residents used filters that were provided free of charge. Since then, there have been further improvements. A regulation known as the Federal Lead and Copper Rule set the safe limit for lead in water at 15 parts per billion in 90 percent of samples, using specific testing procedures. Most tests with these procedures in Flint have found that "lead levels have fallen to legally safe levels," said Peggy Kahn, a University of Michigan-Flint political scientist who has closely tracked the issue. Tests conducted in 2017 over a seven-month period by Susan J. Mastern of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State found lead levels that met the federal standard. Marc Edwards is a Virginia Tech environmental and water resources engineer who leads the Flint Water Study team, which helped identify the problem in the first place. His team also conducted tests in late 2017 and found lead levels below the legal threshold. So there’s solid evidence that Flint’s water is in compliance with federal regulations. That said, no level of lead is truly safe. Even the legal lead level for water does not fully protect children’s health, Kahn said, especially when there are other environmental sources of lead. "There is no such thing as perfectly safe water anywhere in the U.S.," Edwards said. "Even bottled water sometimes has health risks." Water delivery infrastructure Progress on replacing old, unsafe pipes has been slower. In March 2016, Flint began to rip out and replace some of the hazardous pipes under a "FAST Start program." That program continues. Kristin Moore, a Flint city government spokeswoman, said that 6,264 pipes have been replaced as of April 18, 2018. However, an estimated 12,000 Flint residences still have lead and galvanized service lines that need to be replaced, she said. "The pipe replacement work is expected to be completed by 2020," Moore said. "However, the mayor is hopeful that the project can be completed even sooner." One factor slowing the work is that "individual home tests may vary even within the same neighborhood," due to differences in how the original pipes were laid, said Kimberly Saks McManaway, director of the master’s of public administration program at the University of Michigan-Flint. So, how safe is the water? The consensus we found is that the water quality in Flint is greatly improved, but the city is not out of the woods yet. "While progress indeed continues to be made in Flint, Mayor Karen Weaver has said that there are still issues that must be addressed," said Moore, the city spokeswoman. She said residents are urged to drink water that is filtered and to keep their filters properly maintained, adding "some with health issues or compromised immune systems may be advised by medical professionals to drink bottled water." That said, Flint’s water quality now exceeds that of other cities with old water pipes, Edwards said. Kahn agreed that there has been "great improvement" compared to the worst of the crisis. However, she added that "there are still significant safety concerns, and there is a deep level of mistrust in view of some of the recent testing results and warnings, terrible past damage, unresponsiveness, and cover-ups." Our ruling Wolf said, "Flint still doesn’t have clean water." In reality, testing in recent months has repeatedly shown that Flint’s water meets federal standards. At the same time, the city won’t be fully safe until its old pipes are all replaced, which is currently estimated to happen in 2020. Considerable hurdles remain for Flint, but Wolf’s statement glossed over the significant progress made in water quality since the worst of the crisis. We rate her statement Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Michelle Wolf | null | null | null | 2018-05-01T14:12:41 | 2018-04-29 | ['None'] |
pomt-07061 | We do not want to raise anybody's tax rates. That's never been on the table. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/28/james-clyburn/james-clyburn-says-democrats-do-not-want-raise-any/ | On the June 26, 2011, edition of ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. -- the third-ranking House Democrat -- discussed tax policy. Amanpour noted that key Republicans participating in negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden over the rapidly approaching debt ceiling had recently walked away, saying their party couldn’t stomach any deal that involves tax hikes. Amanpour asked Clyburn, "What do you think is going to be the result of the meetings between President Obama and the leadership when they start tomorrow?" Clyburn responded, "Well, I don't know what they're going to do in those meetings, but I think that we had some very effective meetings. We had 10 meetings, and of course when the Republicans walked away from the table, it was on the day that we were to have our either last or next to the last meeting. I thought we were doing very, very good. "Now, the question is, how do you define a tax increase? And I don't know of anybody who will define a tax increase as closing the loophole. If you tell me that my tax rate is going to be 30 or 35 percent and I come up with all kind of gimmicks with pretty smart lawyers and only pay 9 percent, there's something wrong with the loopholes in the law. We want to close those loopholes up. We do not want to raise anybody's tax rates. That's never been on the table. And I wish they would get beyond their talking points and really get honest with the American people as to what these discussions are about. "We ought not have these oil subsidies. We ought not have all these ethanol subsidies. We ought not have all these new breaks for millionaires and billionaires. We ought to be honest with the American people and have an effective tax rate that will be fair to everybody." We wondered whether Clyburn was accurate when he said, "We do not want to raise anybody's tax rates. That's never been on the table." To understand Clyburn’s comment, we need to go back a bit. During 2001 and 2003, the Republican-controlled Congress and President George W. Bush enacted a series of tax cuts. Unless they were affirmatively extended before expiration at the end of 2010, the rates were set to return to their level prior to their initial passage -- specifically, to rates that prevailed under President Bill Clinton. During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama promised to extend the cuts for individuals with incomes below $200,000 and couples with incomes below $250,000 while ending the lower tax rates for Americans above those thresholds. In December 2010, Obama -- under pressure from Republicans who had just prevailed in the midterm elections -- agreed to keep the tax cuts not just for Americans below those thresholds, but also for upper-income Americans. The two sides agreed to extend the cuts for everyone for another two years, through the end of 2012. However, Obama did not go as far as many Republicans would have liked. They would have preferred to extend the Bush tax cuts indefinitely, or at least for a longer period, for all taxpayers regardless of income. After announcing the two-year extension, Obama reaffirmed his opposition to them over the longer term. "In the long run, we simply can't afford them," Obama said. "And when they expire in two years, I will fight to end them." That brings us to 2011. In analyzing Clyburn’s statement, we think it’s fair to look at the tax record of House Democrats, since Clyburn is a House Democratic leader. It turns out that House Democrats took their cue from Obama when assembling their 2012 budget proposal, which was released by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee on April 13, 2011. Here’s the relevant part of the proposal: "The Democratic budget makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for working Americans (individuals with income below $200,000 and couples below $250,000), but does not extend the tax cuts for those with higher incomes. … It expressly rejects the approach in the Republican resolution that provides millionaires with even larger tax cuts at the expense of middle-income taxpayers." Being in the minority in the House, the Democrats were unable to pass their proposal. But the chamber did take a floor vote on it. On April 15, 2011, the House voted down the proposal, 166-259. But despite unanimous Republican opposition, the proposal won the backing of the overwhelming majority of Democratic lawmakers, with 166 voting in favor of it and only 23 voting against. Among those who voted for it was Clyburn himself. When we contacted Clyburn’s staff, a spokeswoman said that the congressman, in his CNN comment, "was addressing what was specifically discussed in the Biden deficit reduction meetings. Ending the Bush tax cuts was not discussed in those meetings, but closing loopholes for big oil, corporations and the wealthy were raised as potential sources of revenue." We can see his point -- it's true that Amanpour’s question was directed at the talks led by Biden, and in his answer, Clyburn did mention the wisdom of closing various "loopholes." Still, we think a reasonable person would interpret Clyburn’s comment as having broader implications. Clyburn said that Democrats don’t want to raise "anybody’s" tax rate, and that tax hikes have "never been on the table." But the reality is that Clyburn and his own caucus proposed tax hikes for wealthier Americans and then voted for them on the House floor. While Clyburn’s explanation does make some sense, we think it’s the only interpretation that would make his claim accurate. A broader interpretation -- and one we think would be more obvious to viewers -- would suggest that his statement is incorrect. So we rate his statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | James Clyburn | null | null | null | 2011-06-28T18:41:26 | 2011-06-26 | ['None'] |
pomt-09688 | The health care bills will be "mandated spending. You can't cut it, regardless of the budget circumstances." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/12/rush-limbaugh/limbaugh-says-health-care-bills-spending-cant-be-c/ | On his Nov. 10, 2009, show, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh decried President Barack Obama's spending priorities, saying the president is "worried about 50 measly billion dollars to win a war" in Afghanistan when he's already spent, or wants to spend, trillions of dollars on other items, such as the economic stimulus package and health care reform. One of Limbaugh's claims caught our eye. He said that the health care legislation "is going to be mandated spending. You can't cut it, regardless of the budget circumstances." Limbaugh was trying to make the point that spending demanded in the health care bill would expand without ordinary budgetary limits, and that the health bill's spending would ultimately crowd out other government necessities such as funding the military. To determine whether Limbaugh is right, we'll start by defining "mandated spending." Federal budget experts actually use a slightly different term -- "mandatory spending" -- but the meaning is the same. It refers to spending that isn't controlled by the usual congressional appropriations process. The spending goes up or down -- usually just up! -- based on the number of people who qualify. Examples include Medicare, Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. Their cost keeps going up as long as the number of people who qualify keeps going up. The health care bill that passed the House and the slightly different one that passed the Senate Finance Committee offer two significant new streams of mandatory spending -- the "affordability credits" that subsidize health plans that people buy on the newly created health insurance "exchanges," and an expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. Both of these efforts, which are broadly intended to help cover previously uninsured Americans, are indeed mandatory spending, health experts said. Under the House bill, people qualify for the credits if they have incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level and are not eligible for Medicaid or Medicare. Beginning in year two, credits would be opened up to people whose employer?provided plan would cost more than 12 percent of their income. The Senate Finance bill would provide a credit to individuals with income up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. With either bill as currently written, that would fit the definition of mandatory spending. The second stream of mandatory spending -- an expansion of Medicaid -- also fits the definition of mandatory spending. Currently, Americans can qualify for Medicaid only if their income is low enough and if they are a child, pregnant, elderly, blind, or disabled. Both bills would expand eligibility for the program significantly. So Limbaugh is correct in that the most important new types of spending in the health care bills are mandatory. However, the second half of his statement -- that "you can't cut it, regardless of the budget" -- is off the mark. Just because mandatory spending is "mandatory" doesn't mean that it's permanent. Congress and the president can act to reduce mandatory spending, or even repeal entire programs, whenever they want. It's true that doing that is politically difficult. Once people get used to guaranteed benefits (such as Medicare), they usually fight hard to keep them. Politicians, fearing the wrath of highly motivated voters who stand to lose something they value, often back off from challenging mandatory programs. But occasionally, Congress finds the will to cut a mandatory program. In 1983, Congress agreed to some Social Security cuts that were recommended by a blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan. The cuts withheld cost-of-living adjustments for one quarter and cut benefits over the longer term. And under a major welfare overhaul enacted under President Bill Clinton, benefits were cut for some of those who had previously been entitled to welfare payments, including legal aliens (a bar that was subsequently repealed) and illegal aliens (one that remains in force). Along those lines, the Senate Finance health care bill includes a "fail-safe" provision that is supposed to ensure the mandatory spending won't bust the budget. Starting in 2012, the director of the Office of Management and Budget must certify every year that the provisions in the bill will not increase the budget deficit during the coming year. If the OMB director finds that the bill will increase the deficit, the subsidies in the health care exchange would automatically be cut. And that is . . . mandatory. So while it would be hard to take away mandatory health insurance assistance to lower-income Americans, it's not true to say, as Limbaugh did, that "you can't cut it, regardless of the budget circumstances." If Congress and the president have the will, there will be a way. So Limbaugh is right that the most important spending streams in the House and Senate bills are mandatory. But he's not correct that Congress is powerless to do anything about them. We rate his statement Half True. | null | Rush Limbaugh | null | null | null | 2009-11-12T14:52:12 | 2009-11-10 | ['None'] |
snes-00263 | In 2005, Senator Barack Obama expressed his opposition to "undetected, undocumented, unchecked" immigration. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barack-obama-2005-immigration-quote/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Barack Obama Express Opposition to ‘Undetected, Undocumented, Unchecked’ Immigration? | 2 August 2018 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
tron-01597 | WWII Memorial revises history in Roosevelt quotation | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/wwiimemorial/ | null | government | null | null | null | WWII Memorial revises history in Roosevelt quotation | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02374 | Cindy Crawford And Family Doing E! Reality Show? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/cindy-crawford-family-reality-show/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Cindy Crawford And Family Doing E! Reality Show? | 3:56 pm, October 7, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03455 | KT McFarland, Trump's pick for his national security team, outed her gay brother as he was dying from AIDS. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trumps-latest-staff-pick-outed-dying-gay-brother/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Trump’s Latest Staff Pick Outed Dying Gay Brother? | 29 November 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12682 | What has happened since 2005? We’ve seen violent crime continuously go down due to Florida's "stand your ground" law. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2017/mar/16/dennis-baxley/did-floridas-stand-your-ground-law-reduce-violent-/ | As one of the original authors of Florida’s 2005 "stand your ground" law, Sen. Dennis Baxley, has a long history of touting its success. Since the 2012 shooting death of Miami Gardens teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, opponents have pointed to an increase in justifiable homicides to argue against the law, which protects individuals who use deadly force in self-defense instead of retreating. Baxley, a Republican from Ocala, has repeatedly countered that argument and others by connecting the law’s passage 12 years ago with decreasing crime rates. He did it again in a March 15 debate on legislation that would shift the burden of proof from the defendant to the prosecutor in "stand your ground" cases. (The Senate approved SB 128 by a 23-15 vote; the House version has received the backing of one committee so far.) "So what has happened since 2005?" Baxley asked. "We’ve seen violent crime continuously go down. Is that not the public policy result that we would want?" When we examined a similar statement in 2012, we found that there had been a drop, but rates were declining before the law went into effect in 2005, calling into question what impact the law really had. Now it’s time to put this claim to the test once again, using updated data and research. Overall violent crime rate in Florida has dropped, but not every year Data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics shows that from 2005 to 2015, the violent crime rate in Florida decreased by a cumulative 34.9 percent overall. However, if you look at the changes from year to year, the violent crime rate did go up three times — in 2006, 2007 and 2014. (And remember, the rate had been dropping for several years anyway.) See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Given that there is a certain amount of "noise" in yearly crime statistics, those spikes don’t really undercut the argument that violent crime has been dropping overall in Florida. However, the word "continuously" is too strong to describe the trend line. "I do not think that is quite the correct word to use," said Bill Bales, a professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. However, Baxley's argument is not far off as long as "the declines experienced were very minimal." Other experts have offered a similar assessment in previous fact-checks of crime data. Alan Lizotte, a University at Albany criminologist, told PolitiFact last year that "a small increase between two time points is not an increase when the 20-year trend is downward. If it went on for several years, it might indicate an increase." Impact of ‘stand your ground’ not proven The bigger problem is Baxley’s assertion that the "stand your ground" law led to a demonstrable reduction on violent crime. (He confirmed through an aide that that was his point.) In reality, violent crime in the United States has decreased since the 1990s, except for an uptick in the past two years that has come nowhere near erasing the previous quarter century of declines. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com Given that, it’s hard to separate the downward trend in violent crime in Florida from the decline on the national level, which was also mirrored in many individual states. "I would posit that it has had little or no effect on any decrease," added Charles Rose, a Stetson University law professor. Baxley did not offer any evidence that showed "stand your-ground" had a demonstrable impact on crime. In fact, there’s actually contrary evidence. The journal JAMA Internal Medicine published a study in November 2016 that found that firearm homicides increased after the 2005 passage of the law in Florida. That’s a narrower measurement than violent crimes overall, but the findings shed some light on the issue. The study was done by David Humphreys of the University of Oxford, Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Douglas Wiebe of the University of Pennsylvania. They looked at trends for firearm homicides in Florida between 1999 and 2014. It found that after the "stand your ground" law took effect in October 2005, rates of homicide by firearm in the state significantly increased. "These increases appear to have occurred despite a general decline in homicide in the United States since the early 1990s," the authors wrote. And states without a "stand your ground" law that were studied — New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia — saw no such uptick. "Our findings support the hypothesis that increases in the homicide and homicide by firearm rates in Florida are related to the ‘stand your ground’ law," the authors wrote. Our ruling Referring to the year that the "stand your ground" law passed, Baxley said, "What has happened since 2005? We’ve seen violent crime continuously go down." Crime has gone down significantly since 2005, though "continuously" is overstated. Moreover, it is hard to pin the cause of the decline on the passage of the "stand your ground" law, since the decline in Florida has been mirrored on the national level. If anything, firearm-related homicides may have increased after the law’s passage, according to one peer-reviewed study. We rate the statement Mostly False. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Dennis Baxley | null | null | null | 2017-03-16T10:54:38 | 2017-03-15 | ['None'] |
snes-01710 | A circulating list of nine historical "facts" about slavery accurately details the participation of non-whites in slave ownership and trade in America. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facts-about-slavery/ | null | History | null | David Emery | null | 9 Facts About Slavery They Don’t Want You to Know | 17 August 2016 | null | ['United_States'] |
hoer-01280 | Ruins of Ancient City Discovered in Australian Desert | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-news-ruins-of-ancient-city-discovered-in-australian-desert/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fake News Ruins of Ancient City Discovered in Australian Desert | September 8, 2014 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01814 | Literally, by the time a child is 18 years of age, they've killed over 100,000 people in video games and other online things. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2014/jul/21/mark-omara/cnn-legal-analyst-18-kids-have-killed-over-100000-/ | The death of a Google executive at the hands of an escort he met online have pundits wondering: Is the digital age one of sex, lies and dark fantasies? To see the moral rupture created by technology, look no further than the reckless slaughtering on video games, said CNN legal analyst Mark O’Mara. O'Mara represented George Zimmerman, the Orlando-area man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. "The perceived anonymity of digital existence makes it much easier to sort of distance yourself for your own morality," said O’Mara on July 16, 2014 on CNN Tonight. "It’s just what happens because it’s so much easier to be somebody you want to be but know you shouldn't be when you’re online. Literally, by the time a child is 18 years of age, they‘ve killed over 100,000 people in video games and other online things." Whether video games lead to real-life violence has been a debate for decades. As for the virtual violence, we were struck by O’Mara’s claim that an 18-year-old has killed over 100,000 people in video games. We wanted to check it out. Shots in the dark While O’Mara’s delivery suggests we’d find our answer in some sort of academic journal, his spokesman told us the statistic was "napkin calculation." More realistically, it sounds like a guess. "(He) may have underestimated that significantly, it could be less than 5 percent of what the real number may be," O’Mara spokesman Shawn Vincent said. "The point is that young people are simulating murders, and witnessing thousands of them on TV." We were unable to find any study or research that approximates the number of video kills of an 18-year-old, and experts in the field said no such research exists. The problems include the types of games children play, how often they play them, how they play them. Plus, while the vast majority of children play video games, not all do. "There's absolutely no way to determine this -- it's too vague," said Entertainment Software Association spokesperson Dan Hewitt. "It's all how a game is played. For example. Grand Theft Auto can be played from beginning to end without harming or ‘killing’ anyone. Same is true with many games. It's all in how an individual plays it and there's no way to even make an estimate." From the gamer’s perspective So while it’s dangerous to make a broad generalization the way O’Mara did, we can get a sense of what’s happening among gamers who play shooting-style games. The take-away: Their virtual personas do a lot of killing. One of the best-selling gaming franchises, Halo, estimates that the first three games amassed 136 billion player-versus-player kills. We reached out to several players either through Facebook groups or through colleagues to hear about their personal stories. Pete Cruz, 22, has a total kill count of player-versus-player 52,459 on one Halo 3 game. He estimates that this is a pretty average or slightly above average count. Cruz has been playing the Halo games since 2004 and says his total kill count was "easily 100,000" when he was 18. "More like 150,000 if not more," he said. "That number can easily be reached during your teenage years or from 10 to 19 (years old)." Jay Manning, 21, estimated he probably reached 100,000 kills in his first six months of playing. Reaching that count by the you’re 18, he agreed, is "easy." Govinda Sessa, 18, has a total kill count of 73,316 over 30 game days in Halo 4. Ben Stuart, 23, put these numbers in context: He averages about 10 to 15 kills per game and has played about 5 or 6 games daily since he was 10 years old. That adds up. Call of Duty, another popular shooting franchise, hasn’t released recent data since its newest game debuted, said spokesperson Kyle Walker. But from the start of the franchise in 2003 to its second newest game, players have "respawned" (come back to life after a player-inflicted death) 1.9 quadrillion times. That’s 15 zeroes. Marty Maldonado, 21, began playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 when he was 16. He estimates spending two or three hours daily on the game in high school, and says he probably reached 100,000 kills by the time he was 18. But Maldonado is wary of saying these kills were of people. "You don't really see them as people, mainly because you're playing a game and you think of the avatar as an extension of the other person's ability," he said. "The only time I would say I felt like I killed someone were emotional games that had good character development like the BioShock series or (the) nuke scene in Call of Duty 4." Different keystrokes Halo and Call of Duty are both first-person shooting games, a category of video games that make up about a fifth of the market, according to a Entertainment Software Association report. All the gamers and experts we talked to point out that it’s hard to compare total kills. "What’d you even consider a kill? Mario stomping? Call of Duty shooting?" said PC Magazine writer David Murphy. In some categories -- action and sports game, for example, which take up about 22 percent and 15 percent of the market respectively -- killing is not even the point. The No. 2 best selling video game of 2012 was Madden NFL 13, a football game in which players aim for touchdowns not deaths. In Assassin’s Creed, a popular action-adventure franchise, the main gameplay involves storylines and missions. Though you do kill in the game, you don't really count the number in an open world game, said player Rahul Prakash. Even in shooting games, total kill counts don’t account for the many variables in video games and differences in players. Time spent on games, time frame per game, game goals, player age, player level, online or offline, single player versus multiplayer -- these factors all matter and are rarely accounted for, said Cruz. "Depending on how that number is constructed, it can definitely lead to misinformation and misconstrue facts about video games," he said. The ruling O’Mara said, "Literally, by the time a child is 18 years of age, they‘ve killed over 100,000 people in video games and other online things." Literally, the stat is a "napkin calculation." Research doesn’t exist on the point and there are too many variables to affect how many people someone might have killed in video game. That said, a range of gamers told us that if you play shooting-style games in your teen years, you’re quite likely to kill 100,000 people or more. While that gives O’Mara’s statement some truth, the lack of definitive information makes this claim somewhat dodgy. We rate it Half True. | null | Mark O'Mara | null | null | null | 2014-07-21T17:09:35 | 2014-07-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-03925 | Says if Congress doesn’t avoid the sequester, "tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/feb/22/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-sequester-would-leave-tens-thous/ | Will the sequester yank away parents’ child care? On March 1, mandatory federal budget cuts take effect that were supposed to be so painful that Congress would take action to avoid them. President Barack Obama has urged lawmakers to avoid the cuts, known as the sequester, and has been citing dire predictions about who might be hurt by the across-the-board reductions in a broad range of federal programs. On Feb. 19, 2013, he warned that if Congress didn’t take action, "tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids." The New York Times reported the next day that "day care centers are almost certainly not going to be padlocked on March 1." But what will happen? And will it send parents scrambling? Child care subsidies and Head Start At least two federal programs that affect parents’ child care options face cuts under the sequester. First, let’s recap how the sequester works. Unless a deal is struck, most types of federal spending must be cut by a uniform amount — tentatively 7.9 percent for most types of defense discretionary funding and 5.3 percent for nondefense discretionary funding. (Certain programs are shielded from sequestration cuts entirely, including Social Security, federal retirement payments, veterans compensation, Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and veteran's health programs. Medicare would be cut by 2 percent.) The uniform cuts must be applied to any "program, project or activity" that isn’t otherwise exempted. However, within a given program, officials don’t have to cut every line item equally. They have discretion to move money around within a program. The two big federal programs affecting child care are the Child Care Development Block Fund, which helps states provide child care subsidies for low-income working parents that affect more than 1.6 million kids. The second is early education program Head Start, which awards grants to public and private agencies to increase kids’ "school readiness," such as with whole or half-day programs in schools and centers. (It also includes programs that wouldn’t offset parents’ child care needs.) Head Start says it serves more than a million kids a year. All of Head Start’s funding is open to sequester, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. About half of the Child Care Development Block Fund’s program’s federal funding is mandatory — and therefore exempt from the sequester — but the other half faces cuts. Both programs are organized under the Health and Human Services Department, which estimates that "up to 70,000 children" would lose access to Head Start and Early Head Start programs, with some centers closing their programs early this year or delaying their start in the fall. Meanwhile, budget cuts would leave "up to 30,000 children" without child care services, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote. House Democrats and the White House also rely on the HHS estimates. But the precise impact and timing of the cuts is difficult to quantify. Why? Because the programs are designed to give considerable control over spending to states and other public and private agencies. Head Start’s rolling grant process means cuts will need to be made over the next seven months, the remainder of the current fiscal year, said Ted Froats, a spokesman for HHS’ Administration for Children and Families. But with the child care grant program, while cuts also take place over seven months, it’s harder to say when the impact may be felt. The department reached its 30,000 estimate by reducing the amount of funding available for the year according to the rules of the sequester and comparing that with the average cost per child served, Froats said. But states have "broad flexibility" in administering the program, which is also partly funded by the states themselves and by moving money from other federal pots, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Parents qualify for subsidies on a sliding scale, with some paying co-pays — and rules vary state by state. States might respond to federal cuts in a variety of ways, such as: • Imposing stricter eligibility criteria. • Freezing new enrollments. • Reducing subsidy amounts. • Increasing parental co-payment amounts. So it’s possible currently enrolled parents may keep their care, but with a lower subsidy or a higher co-pay. Still, it’s important to note that states are already stretched. Nearly half had waiting lists or stopped taking new families in 2012, according to a report by the Women's National Law Center, which advocates for affordable child care. Meanwhile, reimbursement amounts have lagged. Parents may not be able to keep up with yet another cut. And the idea that states might be able to move money around and still support the same number of kids doesn’t hold up, said Karen Schulman, a senior policy analyst who co-authored the report. "They wouldn't have waiting lists if they had other ways around," she said. "... To me, that suggests they've already looked at the 'fat.'" (The libertarian Cato Institute in 2010 noted a 2004 report from Congress’ Government Accountability Office found HHS didn't do a sufficient job overseeing state management of the program, leading to waste and abuse. But GAO’s recommendations have since been implemented.) Our ruling The president warned that if Congress didn’t take action, "tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids." The sequester does hit two big programs that affect parents’ child care or their need for it — a subsidy program and the early childhood education program Head Start. The government estimates up to 100,000 kids would be affected. But neither the White House nor HHS has provided sufficient evidence to establish the number of kids whose parents would need to find other child care. Parents might be able to keep their subsidized child care with lower subsidies or higher co-pays. In the case of Head Start, it’s not clear how many of the affected kids would lose spots in the types of programs that might leave their parents in a child-care lurch. Between the two, "tens of thousands" is plausible, but unproven. We rate the claim Half True. EDITOR'S NOTE: We updated this item Feb. 22, 2013, to clarify that federal cuts to the child care grant program would take place over seven months. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2013-02-22T10:38:41 | 2013-02-19 | ['None'] |
abbc-00096 | The claim: Adam Bandt says a recruitment freeze at the CSIRO is part of the Abbott Government's anti-science bias and that a quarter of jobs could be lost within a year. | in-the-red | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-18/greens-mp-adam-bandt-csiro-job-cuts/5086844 | The claim: Adam Bandt says a recruitment freeze at the CSIRO is part of the Abbott Government's anti-science bias and that a quarter of jobs could be lost within a year. | ['greens', 'work', 'science-and-technology', 'public-sector', 'federal-government', 'australia'] | null | null | ['greens', 'work', 'science-and-technology', 'public-sector', 'federal-government', 'australia'] | CSIRO job cuts: Greens MP Adam Bandt turns to spin | Thu 21 Nov 2013, 6:03am | null | ['None'] |
goop-00188 | Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr. Friendship Making Brad Falchuk Jealous? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwyneth-paltrow-robert-downey-jr-brad-falchuk-friends-jealous/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr. Friendship Making Brad Falchuk Jealous? | 12:38 pm, October 3, 2018 | null | ['Gwyneth_Paltrow', 'Robert_Downey,_Jr.'] |
pomt-10053 | There are no earmarks in the stimulus bill. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/feb/04/robert-gibbs/stimulus-bill-includes-projects-some-consider-earm/ | For weeks, President Obama and his aides have said it is critical that the economic stimulus package not contain any "earmarks," projects that are often viewed as wasteful or frivolous. This week, Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs declared they had succeeded. At his daily briefing on Feb. 2, 2009, Gibbs said the bill contains "unprecedented accountability and transparency. There are no earmarks in this bill. The information on the projects that will be funded in this legislation will be available online, as you know, at www.recovery.gov . There will be an oversight board that will monitor the progress of each project and address any problems that are involved early and aggressively." Obama made a similar claim in an interview with ABC on Feb. 3, saying, "If you take a look at the bill, the fact is, there are no earmarks in this bill, which, by the way, some of the critics can't claim for legislation they've voted for over the last eight years." Given all the complaints Republicans have made about the bill, we wondered if Gibbs and Obama were right. What's an earmark? We need to start by explaining the different ways earmarks are defined. The term comes from the practice of marking the ears of livestock for identification. It has been used in American politics since the 1930s and has come to mean money that is "set aside . . . for a special project or purpose," according to Safire's Political Dictionary, a well-regarded reference book on political terms. But Safire 's notes that in Congress, the term often has a narrower meaning: "funds that individual senators or representatives specify be directed to projects and activities that will benefit particular people, institutions or locations in their home constituencies." The Office of Management and Budget, an agency that is essentially an extension of the White House, offers a definition with a little executive branch attitude: "Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds." If you sense a little snarkiness in the OMB definition, it's because the executive branch doesn't fancy the legislative branch telling it what to do. But members of Congress, particularly those on the Appropriations Committee, say an earmark is simply how the legislative branch fulfills its duty under the Constitution to tell the executive branch what to do. (Article 1, Section 9: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.") Because of the fuss over the "Bridge to Nowhere" and other controversial projects, the House and Senate now have rules requiring members to disclose their requests for earmarks. The Senate avoids the fuzzy term "earmark," preferring the more lawyerly "Congressionally directed spending items," which it defines as "a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Senator providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula driven or competitive award process." The Senate definition also covers tax benefits for "a particular beneficiary or limited group of beneficiaries." The House rule defines earmark as "a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula driven or competitive award process." More earmarking in Senate The stimulus bills are huge. The Senate version has more than 700 pages that on average cost more than $1 billion per page. In general, the approach behind the bills is to leave the specific spending decisions to federal agencies and states and municipalities. For example, the bill's don't specify particular highways for federal money. The states can decide. Still, there are plenty of specifics in the House and Senate versions that indicate members of Congress are earmarking, at least in the broad sense of the word. PolitiFact has spent the past couple of weeks fact-checking many claims about what's in the bills. Although we found Eric Cantor was Pants on Fire wrong when he said the House bill included $300,000 for a Miami sculpture garden, the Republicans were right the House bill had $335 million for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases , and that the Senate version authorizes $198 million for Filipino veterans. (We should note that the Senate bill is a work in progress and that the contents may change; our rulings are accurate for the time when the statement was made.) When the House bill was being considered, it had controversial elements such as money for improvements to the National Mall, which some people consider an earmark. But that was stripped out before final passage. Matthew Specht, a spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who is considered the biggest critic of earmarks in the House, told us, "Yeah, we agree that the House version can probably be considered earmark-free." There seems to be more earmarking in the Senate version, however. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has highlighted many provisions he considers to be earmarks, including a $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers. It would allow large Hollywood studios the opportunity to choose between an existing tax break or write off 50 percent of the entire production cost for movies and TV shows made in 2009. It was in the bill when Gibbs made his statement but was removed Feb. 3 when Coburn passed an amendment 52-45 to remove it. To answer whether that project and others could be considered earmarks, we turned to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington advocacy group that tracks government spending and highlights waste. Steve Ellis, the group's vice president, said congressional leaders had generally resisted the urge to fill the bill with earmarks, according to the strict definitions of the word. But he said there still were some projects in the bills that he and other people would consider earmarks. "There’s at least a few and I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up finding more," he said, citing the provision for Filipino veterans as an example. Coburn spokesman John Hart and Taxpayers for Common Sense also cited another project as an earmark: a provision in the bill calling for $2 billion for a "near zero emissions powerplant." They say the money is intended to restart FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that is supported by Sen. Dick Durbin. Senators are also employing a wink-wink approach that uses vague-sounding language in a committee report to quietly direct money to pet projects. Although the language does not sound specific, groups that track earmarks say it's clear where senators want the money to go. For example, a report on the bill from the Senate Appropriations Committee specifies $70 million for "supercomputer activities, especially as they relate to climate research." The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, says that is probably targeted for the National Center for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md. The group also cites $250 million that is designated "to repair NASA facilities damaged by Hurricane Ike and to reduce the significant backlog of maintenance and repair projects at NASA facilities nationwide." That appears to be for the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Those projects don't have senators' names attributed to them, but the Senate Conservatives Fund points out that senators on the Appropriations Committee include Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. It's worth noting that Obama's observation about the overall nature of the bill is mostly correct. The House and Senate stimulus bills have not been stuffed with hundreds of pet projects the way that highway, energy and water bills often are. And that's especially true for the House bill. But the Senate version includes at least several projects that we consider to be earmarks. The Filipino project might not fit the narrow definition of earmarks that Congress or OMB uses, but we think reasonable people would consider it to be an earmark. And the movie industry tax break, which was in the bill when Gibbs made his statement, and the Texas and Maryland projects sure look like earmarks by any definition. Gibbs didn't leave himself any wiggle room. He said "no earmarks." But we see at least a few, so we find his statement to be False. | null | Robert Gibbs | null | null | null | 2009-02-04T15:47:43 | 2009-02-02 | ['None'] |
snes-02257 | Facebook revised its position on to female toplessness or nipple exposure in imagery as of May 2017. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-lifts-nipple-ban/ | null | Technology | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Has Facebook Reversed Their ‘Nipple Ban’? | 6 June 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05428 | Chipotle's 2015 outbreaks of foodborne illness were the work of pro-GMO bioterrorists. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chipotle-gmo-bioterror/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Chipotle Sabotaged by GMO Activists? | 30 December 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02734 | Mariah Carey Did Pay Bryan Tanaka To Get Back Together, | 3 | https://www.gossipcop.com/mariah-carey-not-pay-bryan-tanaka-back-together-stipend-salary/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Mariah Carey Did NOT Pay Bryan Tanaka To Get Back Together, Despite Claim | 4:54 pm, June 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06204 | The lyrics of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" chronicle his reaction to the death of his girlfriend in a plane crash. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fire-and-rain/ | null | Entertainment | null | David Mikkelson | null | The Meaning of James Taylor’s Fire and Rain | 14 December 2007 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00024 | Judge Brett Kavanaugh "argued that presidents should be above the law and granted a free pass from criminal investigation while in office." | none | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/kavanaugh-file-executive-privilege/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Dick Durbin | Robert Farley | ['executive privilege'] | Kavanaugh File: Executive Privilege | September 6, 2018 | [' Senate confirmation hearing – Tuesday, September 4, 2018 '] | ['None'] |
farg-00032 | Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/08/cohen-plea-deal-exposes-repeated-false-claims/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | FactCheck.org | Eugene Kiely | ['campaign finance laws'] | Cohen Plea Deal Exposes Repeated False Claims | August 22, 2018 | 2018-08-22 21:24:03 UTC | ['None'] |
pomt-09089 | In the last 6 years, there have been 420 elections for State Senator and State Representative. Only three incumbents have been defeated! | true | /florida/statements/2010/jun/24/fair-districts-florida/incumbents-hard-beat/ | Underneath the loud tussling over who Florida's next governor and U.S. Senator will be runs a quiet political battle that could have far more lasting ramifications. Two warring efforts to reshape how Florida's voter districts are drawn are gearing up across the state. On one side stands Fair Districts Florida, a citizens group that claims political leaders manipulate the redistricting process to benefit incumbents. They put two constitutional changes, Amendments 5 and 6, on the November ballot. The measures would require lawmakers to adhere to redistricting standards that don't favor incumbents when they redraw legislative and congressional lines starting next year. On the other side are Republican lawmakers and a handful of minority leaders who argue the requirements set out in the amendments are both vague and impossible. They placed their own constitutional amendment on the ballot, Amendment 7, that would allow legislators to craft districts using "communities of interest," such as race or coastal communities. "We asked them a very simple question, 'How does your plan to draw the districts work?' And they said, 'I don't know,'" said incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, a critic of the Fair Districts campaign who pushed Amendment 7 through the 2010 legislative session. "I am not going to play politics with something as important as someone's voting rights." But critics of the legislative amendment paint it as a ploy to confuse voters and gut the Fair Districts amendments. Ellen Freidin, campaign chair of Fair Districts Florida, said Florida's redistricting process deters new candidates. "They actually designed their districts specifically for themselves," she said. "They know how many registered voters in the district are Republican or Democratic so someone from the other side can't win because they stack it that way." The Fair Districts Florida website explains the stakes this way: "In the last 6 years, there have been 420 elections for State Senator and State Representative. Only three incumbents have been defeated! After all, their districts are specially designed for them! With virtually certain seats, legislators have no incentive to be responsive to their constituents and they see no reason to compromise for the public good." We aren't going to address the finger-wagging over which side is in the wrong. But Fair Districts' election statistics are ripe for a Truth-O-Meter item. We wondered, are Florida elections really that predictable? The short answer is yes. We checked the state Division of Elections site, which lists every state Senate and House candidate since 1996. It also lists the outcomes of each race, including primaries, special elections, runoffs and general elections. In the past six years, Florida has held three regularly scheduled general elections and 17 special elections for Senate and House seats. By definition, special elections don't feature incumbents, so those campaigns are not relevant to our count. In 2008, there were 141 seats up for grabs. In 2006, there were 140, and 2004 saw 142 seats enter into play. That amounts to 423 potential general elections in six years. There are many more elections if you count individual primaries, runoffs and general elections. Freidin said her "420" figure was based on the number of Senate and House seats that might have been up for election during those three cycles. From 2004 through 2010, many Florida incumbents won re-election when candidate qualifying closed because they drew no opponents. In 2004, every incumbent won re-election. Of the incumbents who drew rivals, exactly three were defeated during that six-year span: Republican Rep. Sheri McInvale of Orlando lost her 2006 general election to Rep. Scott Randolph, a Democrat from Orlando. Two Republicans, an independent and a write-in candidate qualified in June 2010 to run against Randolph. Republican Rep. Susan Goldstein of Weston was trumped in the 2006 general campaign by Rep. Marty Kiar, a Democrat from Davie, who was re-elected in June 2010 when no other candidate qualified to run. Democratic Rep. Tony Sasso of Cocoa Beach failed to keep his seat during the 2008 general election. The winner was Rep. Steve Crisafulli, a Republican from Merritt Island who was re-elected in June 2010 without opposition. Fair Districts Florida's larger point that Florida races tend to be easy on incumbents still rang true after further scrutiny. A review of the past six election cycles shows challengers had a slightly better chance of winning just before and right after the state's districts were redrawn in early 2002, but not by much. In that election year, four incumbents lost their seats in a race where 160 seats were initially up for grabs. In 2000, with 141 open seats, four other incumbents were defeated. In 1998, with 141 seats in play, four incumbents didn't win back their seats. We'll do the math for you: just 15 state senators and representatives didn't win re-election bids over the span of six election cycles. Haridopolos said incumbent victories aren't necessarily tied to redistricting. The winners could simply have run better campaigns or enjoyed higher name recognition, he said. But our concern is the statement in question, which has to do with statistics, not cause and effect. Fair Districts Florida got it right. We rate this claim True. | null | Fair Districts Florida | null | null | null | 2010-06-24T14:27:06 | 2010-06-23 | ['None'] |
snes-01847 | Ronald Reagan: 'If Fascism Ever Comes to America, It Will Come in the Name of Liberalism' | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ronald-reagan-fascism-liberalism/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Ronald Reagan: ‘If Fascism Ever Comes to America, It Will Come in the Name of Liberalism’ | 24 August 2017 | null | ['United_States', 'Ronald_Reagan'] |
pomt-12389 | In Wisconsin’s school voucher program, "two-thirds of the money" in the "tax vouchers" went to people "making more than $100,000." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2017/may/31/mark-pocan/mark-pocans-errant-claim-about-tax-breaks-wisconsi/ | U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan tried to grill U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about a program he opposes: vouchers that use taxpayer dollars to send low-income children to private schools. But while posing questions to DeVos at a House subcommittee hearing on May 24, 2017, the Madison-area Democrat made a claim that mixed up the long-standing voucher program in Wisconsin with a relatively new private school tax break that’s offered to people of all income levels. "The last expansion in Wisconsin of this program -- 75 percent of the parents who got this money, their kids already attended the schools," Pocan said, after criticizing the voucher program at length. "And two-thirds of the money that went in the tax vouchers to the folks who receive this were making more than $100,000. So, largely, this is tax policy, this isn't education policy." The $100,000 claim is in reference to a tax break for people who themselves pay to send their children to private schools, not the voucher program. The voucher program The 2013-’15 state budget made more Wisconsin children eligible for the voucher program, which dates back to 1989, when Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and a Democratic-majority Legislature created the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation's first urban school voucher program of its kind in the country. Its aim was to improve results for poor city children in public schools by allowing them to attend private or religious schools with publicly funded vouchers. To be eligible for the vouchers -- tax dollars paid to the private schools for tuition -- families must meet income limits. For the 2017-’18 school year, the limit for a family of four is $72,900 for students in Milwaukee and Racine and $44,955 for other parts of the state. The tax credit Unlike the voucher program, there are no income limits to qualify for the tax break, which reduces the taxable income for families who send their kids to private schools. The break also was created as part of the 2013-’15 state budget. Taxpayers can subtract from their income amounts paid to private schools for tuition and mandatory student fees. For each student in kindergarten through eighth grade, the maximum deduction is $4,000; for each student in high school, the maximum is $10,000. Pocan’s office told us the congressman made his claim based on a January 2017 news article in the Wisconsin State Journal. It says that in 2015, almost $8 million of the $12 million tax cut, or two-thirds, went to tax filers making more than $100,000. That amounted to about $388 per filer. But the tax break has nothing to do with the voucher program. Our rating While criticizing Wisconsin’s school voucher program, Pocan said "two-thirds of the money" in Wisconsin’s school "tax vouchers" went to people "making more than $100,000." But a tax break Pocan alludes to -- for people who themselves pay to send their kids to private schools -- has nothing to do with Wisconsin’s voucher program, which uses tax dollars to pay for low-income children to attend private schools. We rate the statement False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Mark Pocan | null | null | null | 2017-05-31T05:00:00 | 2017-05-24 | ['Wisconsin'] |
snes-05313 | Residents of Flint, Michigan have been threatened by CPS with removal of their children if they refuse to pay for contaminated water. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flint-water-crisis-cps/ | null | Legal | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Flint Residents Told That Their Children Could Be Taken Away If They Don’t Pay for City’s Poison Water? | 26 January 2016 | null | ['Michigan', 'Flint,_Michigan'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.