claimID stringlengths 10 10 | claim stringlengths 4 8.61k ⌀ | label stringclasses 116 values | claimURL stringlengths 10 303 | reason stringlengths 3 31.1k ⌀ | categories stringclasses 611 values | speaker stringlengths 3 168 ⌀ | checker stringclasses 167 values | tags stringlengths 3 315 ⌀ | article title stringlengths 2 226 ⌀ | publish date stringlengths 1 64 ⌀ | climate stringlengths 5 154 ⌀ | entities stringlengths 6 332 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
wast-00068 | Another day, another lie. The reality is that 7 in 10 Americans support #RoevWade and the right to legal abortion. bit.ly/2KZtoXy #7in10forRoe | not the whole story | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/19/whos-in-favor-of-abortion/" | null | null | NARAL Pro-Choice America | Meg Kelly | null | How many Americans back abortion rights? | July 19 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-03087 | United We Can't Stand | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-pulling-out-of-un/ | null | Politics | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is the U.S. Pulling Out of the United Nations? | 22 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00422 | Deadly Snow Snakes in Ohio and Pennsylvania | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/deadly-snow-snake/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Deadly Snow Snakes in Ohio and Pennsylvania | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Ohio', 'Pennsylvania'] |
pose-00176 | Barack Obama supports efforts to provide greater technical assistance to local and state first responders and dramatically increase funding for reliable, interoperable communications systems. He also supports a more rapid turnover of broadcast spectrum to first responders. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/189/improve-communications-systems-for-first-responder/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Improve communications systems for first responders | 2010-01-07T13:26:51 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06389 | Photographs show a suicide bomber killed in Iraq's Green Zone | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/inside-the-green-zone/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Inside the Green Zone | 18 January 2005 | null | ['Iraq'] |
goop-02699 | Kristen Stewart Seeing Alicia Cargile Behind Stella Maxwell’s Back, | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kristen-stewart-seeing-alicia-cargile-behind-stella-maxwell-back/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Kristen Stewart NOT Seeing Alicia Cargile Behind Stella Maxwell’s Back, Despite Report | 4:32 pm, July 2, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05447 | The Democrat-controlled Senate, it hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,000 days. | true | /ohio/statements/2012/apr/26/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-senate-dems-havent-passed-budget/ | As the House prepared to begin floor consideration of several contending budget resolutions for fiscal 2013, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner released a video trumpeting the Republican position. "Ours is the only responsible budget in town," Boehner said about the GOP spending plan proposed by Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee’s Republican chairman. Other budget proposals included those from the House Democratic leadership, the conservative Republican Study Committee, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, plus a bipartisan budget inspired by the Simpson-Bowles Fiscal Commission and co-authored by Reps. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, and Steve LaTourette, the Ohio Republican. "Unfortunately, we're again waiting for leadership from the Democrats who run Washington," Boehner added, and then refreshed a favorite GOP talking point: "The Democrat-controlled Senate, it hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,000 days." Ultimately the House approved the Ryan budget by a near party-line 228-191 vote, but it isn’t expected to go anywhere in the Senate. PolitiFact Ohio, though, thought it’d check out the speaker’s claim about Senate budgets. It is similar to other statements that have been rated by PolitiFact national, PolitiFact Ohio, PolitiFact Wisconsin, PolitiFact Florida and PolitiFact New Hampshire. Among them: "The Democrat-led Senate has failed to pass a budget for 750 days ... Senate Democrats have neglected one of their most basic responsibilities." (Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio) "Congress has worked for two years without passing a budget." (former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer) The U.S. Senate Democrats "have gone without any budget at all" for almost three years. (Ryan) Each of those statements cites the same starting point as Boehner’s claim of 1,000 days -- April 29, 2009. That was, according to the Congressional Research Service and news sources, when the Senate passed a budget resolution for fiscal 2010. No budget resolution has passed since then, so Boehner's time tally -- like those of the previously checked statements -- is accurate. The day his video statement was posted, March 28, 2012, was 1,064 days from that date. The PolitiFact rulings on these and other similar statements depended on their phrasing, but none was rated entirely True. Knowing how Congress comes up with its federal budget helps to explain why. Since the passage of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate and the House are supposed to pass budget resolutions in the spring. These budget resolutions set a framework for spending, taxation and other fiscal items in the coming fiscal year. They also lay out general plans for the next four years. If these budget resolutions differ, the chambers are supposed to hammer out a compromise. Budget resolutions are policy plans. They are not appropriations bills, or spending bills, which actually allocate money for specific purposes. If a budget resolution doesn’t pass, the federal government won’t go dark. In the absence of a budget resolution, appropriations bills have continued to allocate money. But, as a previous PolitiFact story said, "the inability to pass the budget framework can reflect poorly on the majority's organizational skills and/or the degree of partisan discord in Congress. It also increases the likelihood of a logjam of appropriations bills in the fall and winter, and decreases the chance that controversial tax bills will pass the Senate." We wondered if the Senate, under Democratic control, had neglected its basic responsibility. Our PolitiFact colleagues in Wisconsin, Florida and at PolitiFact national had the same question, and concluded that neither party can claim superiority on budget resolutions. In 2010, the then Democratic-controlled House and Senate did not adopt a budget resolution or adopt a single spending bill "because the Democrats were afraid of being labeled big spenders," said Steve Ellis, a budget expert with Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent group that analyzes federal spending. Senate Democrats didn’t pass a fiscal 2011 budget because "Republicans were threatening to hijack the budget process and waste the American people’s time with pointless political votes," a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told PolitiFact Florida. "Faced with this obstruction, we decided it would be a more productive use of the American people’s time to move on and address other issues critical to middle-class families." Our Florida colleagues also found that the House and Senate have failed to pass a joint budget bill on four earlier occasions since 1983. For fiscal year 2003, the Senate, under Democratic control in 2002, failed to pass a budget resolution of any kind. For fiscal 1999, 2005 and 2007, the House and Senate failed to reconcile their different bills and pass a compromise measure. In these latter three cases, the Republicans were in the majority in both chambers of Congress. Those facts lend perspective to Boehner’s statement. But on its face, Boehner’s statement is accurate. And it is more precisely worded than those that we’ve previously checked. On the Truth-O-Meter, it rates True. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2012-04-26T06:00:00 | 2012-03-28 | ['None'] |
goop-02490 | Pippa Middleton Asked Kate Middleton For Advice On How To Get Pregnant? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/pippa-middleton-asked-kate-advice-pregnant/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Pippa Middleton Asked Kate Middleton For Advice On How To Get Pregnant? | 5:58 am, September 7, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06444 | Says "these ‘Jersey Shore’ folks, they’re from New York." | half-true | /new-jersey/statements/2011/oct/21/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-jersey-shore-cast-members-are-/ | The cast members of the "Jersey Shore" may live by three words -- gym, tan, laundry -- but Chris Christie has just one to describe their show: bad. The New Jersey governor in a recent radio interview slammed the MTV show, repeating one of his favorite criticisms of its cast. The roommates in the Seaside Heights beach house aren’t from New Jersey. "Here's the deal, let's remember something for the people who are listening in your audience, these 'Jersey Shore' folks, they're from New York," Christie said Wednesday on 77 WABC’s ‘The Joe Crummey Show’. "They parachute these New Yorkers into Seaside Heights, New Jersey, and they try to make the whole country think this is New Jersey. It's not. It's bad for New Jersey. It's bad ... because it's a mischaracterization of who the people are here in New Jersey and so I've said all along that I think ‘Jersey Shore’ is bad." Christie last month vetoed a $420,000 tax credit -- dubbed the "Snooki subsidy" -- for the MTV show, saying the program "does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the State and its citizens." There are eight fist-pumping housemates who are the target of Christie’s scorn. Of them, two are New Jersey natives, PolitiFact New Jersey found. Samantha Giancola, or Sammi, and Deena Nicole Cortese were born and raised in New Jersey. Giancola hails from Hazlet and attended William Paterson University, where she was a midfielder on the women’s soccer team. Cortese is from New Egypt and attended Brookdale Community College in Lincroft. She joined the cast in season three, replacing Staten Island, N.Y.-native Angelina Pivarnick. Five of the six other cast members are New York natives. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino was born in Staten Island but grew up in Manalapan. His publicist said Sorrentino still lives in New Jersey, but he also conducts business in Miami. Jenni "JWoww" Farley also grew up in New York, but now lives within Jersey’s borders, according to an MTV spokesperson. Vinny Guadagnino, Ronnie Magro and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi are from New York. Rhode Island-native Paul DelVecchio is the only cast member from outside the tri-state area. An MTV spokesperson declined to comment on Christie’s remarks. But Polizzi spoke with The Star-Ledger in August. "It’s the 'Jersey Shore.' We’re not trying to represent Jersey," she said then. "Even if you’re from Africa, you’re gonna come here." Our ruling The governor said the cast members of the "Jersey Shore" are from New York and misrepresent "who the people are here in New Jersey." Sammi and Deena are true Jersey girls -- born and raised. "The Situation" was born in New York, but grew up and still lives in New Jersey. We think he deserves some Jersey cred. Four New Yorkers -- one of whom, "JWoww," has since moved to New Jersey -- and a Rhode Island-native round out the rest of the crew. We rate Christie’s statement Half True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Chris Christie | null | null | null | 2011-10-21T07:30:00 | 2011-10-19 | ['New_York_City', 'Jersey_Shore'] |
pomt-10151 | Barack Obama's health care plan is "to mandate health care coverage and have a universal government-run program." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/02/sarah-palin/obamas-plan-does-not-call-for-government-run-healt/ | At the vice presidential debate in St. Louis, Sarah Palin defended John McCain's health care plan and criticized Barack Obama's. Obama has a plan "to mandate health care coverage and have a universal government-run program," Palin said. "And unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds." Problem is, Obama's plan keeps the free-market health care system intact, particularly employer-based insurance. It is not a goverment-run program and is very different from the health care systems run by the government in some European countries. Obama's plan essentially takes the health care system as it is today and seeks to expand it to the uninsured. The plan increases eligibility for the poor and children to enroll in initiatives like Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It also creates pools for individuals to buy their own cheaper insurance. And it outlines several strategies aimed at reining in costs for everyone, such as streamlining medical record-keeping and emphasizing preventive care. Obama's plan does not mandate coverage, except for children. Obama said often during the Democratic primary campaign that he did not include a mandate for adults so as not to penalize people with modest incomes. His reasoning for not including a mandate for adults was this: If premiums don’t drop enough after his reforms are implemented, people will still be unable to afford insurance. If a law mandates they buy it anyway, they probably won’t. Obama’s argument is that if you then fine them, you’re essentially punishing the poor — and they will still be uninsured. Obama said he hopes his plan will lower costs enough that many of the estimated 47-million uninsured will sign up without a mandate, and a mandate will come later. Obama has said he would like it to be universal, in that everyone has health care coverage. So Palin is mostly wrong about Obama's plan having a mandate; it only has one for children. He would like it to be universal at some point. She also emphasized that Obama proposes government-run health care, a statement that is completely inaccurate. Taking all that together, we rate her 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 | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2008-10-02T00:00:00 | 2008-10-02 | ['None'] |
pomt-03029 | Violent crime is up since the last year of Sharpe James’ administration. This year it’s higher. … The unemployment rate is almost 15 percent. The high school dropout rate is over 50 percent. | half-true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/oct/10/steve-lonegan/steve-lonegan-claims-violent-crime-newark-also-cit/ | Violent crime higher now than eight years ago, unemployment well into the double digits, and more than half of Newark’s high schoolers forgoing their education. Are things that bleak in the Brick City? Republican Steve Lonegan, who is challenging Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, for a vacant U.S. Senate seat on Oct. 16, addressed those issues during a Sept. 23 interview with radio host John Gambling on WOR 710 AM. "Violent crime is up since the last year of Sharpe James’ administration," Lonegan told Gambling. "This year it’s higher. … The unemployment rate is almost 15 percent. The high school dropout rate is over 50 percent." Those statistics offer a troubling view of the city and while there’s some accuracy to the claims, they leave out critical details. Let’s first address violent crime, then go to unemployment and education. Lonegan campaign spokesman Will Gattenby said in an e-mail that the violent crime claim is based on numbers from the FBI’s annual detailed report on crime statistics known as the Uniform Crime Report. Lonegan’s camp compared UCR data from 2005 and 2012. The FBI’s UCR defines violent crime in four categories: murder and nonnegligent homicide; forcible rape; robbery; and aggravated assault. The number of violent crime offenses in Newark last year totaled 3,219. The 2005 total was 2,821. James Allen, Booker’s communications director, said it would be "a fair benchmark" to use 2006 to measure violent crime since James, also a Democrat, left office that year and Booker succeeded him on July 1, 2006. The results are the same, though. When compared with 2012 UCR data, overall violent crime is up, as Lonegan claims, but he fails to note that offenses in three categories have fallen: homicides and manslaughters, rapes, and aggravated assaults. Here's a look at Newark's violent crime statistics, according to the data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report: YEAR POPULATION VIOLENT CRIME TOTAL MURDER/NON-NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE FORCIBLE RAPE ROBBERY AGGRAVATED ASSAULT 2005 281,063 2,821 97 83 1,250 1,391 2006 280,877 2,839 105 87 1,288 1,359 2012 278,906 3,219 95 55 1,976 1,093 Sources: FBI website, Crime In The United States (Uniform Crime Report), 2005, 2006, 2012 Robberies are driving that category's increase, according to Allen, who said the stealing of iPhones and smartphones represents a significant number of those crimes. "While the rise of smartphones over the last five years has made them increasingly prevalent targets for robberies, the generic UCR classification of ‘violent crime’ gives equal weight to a smartphone robbery and a first-degree murder -- despite the vastly different nature and frequency of those crimes," Allen said in an e-mail. Next, unemployment. Newark’s unemployment rate has largely been stuck between 14 percent and 16 percent for much of Booker’s tenure as mayor, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s worth noting, however, that Booker’s tenure also bookends the recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. BLS data shows a sharp uptick in the city’s unemployment rate during the recession and after it ended. Comparatively, Newark’s unemployment measured as a percent change is lower than unemployment increases for the state and nation, according to BLS data. Finally, let’s look at Newark’s dropout rate, which Lonegan said exceeds 50 percent. "The number of students who start 9th grade and graduate within four years via HSPA is 32.2%," Gattenby told us. That methodology has been cited by Gov. Chris Christie, who has claimed multiple times that the graduation rate for an incoming Newark freshman who finishes high school in four years is 23 percent. The Truth-O-Meter handed Christie a Pants on Fire for repeating the claim. Like Christie, Lonegan looks only at one group of students -– those who graduate by passing the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), a state standardized test. But there are other routes to graduation, including the Alternative High School Assessment. Also, some students are exempt from testing. In total, 55 percent of students graduated from Newark’s high schools in four years, according to data from the 2009-2010 school year, PolitiFact New Jersey determined in January 2012. Jarrad Toussant, Booker’s senior education adviser, told us that the district’s graduation rate for June 2012 was 68 percent. The remaining 32 percent either graduated after more than four years or dropped out, he said. The Newark School District, which Toussant said tracks dropout data, did not respond to our request for comment. Our ruling Lonegan said, "Violent crime is up since the last year of Sharpe James’ administration. This year it’s higher. … The unemployment rate is almost 15 percent. The high school dropout rate is over 50 percent." Overall violent crime is up whether measured from 2005 or 2006 to 2012, but the increase is skewed by a sharp uptick in robberies, according to UCR statistics. Violent crime is down in other categories. Unemployment during Booker’s tenure has hovered between 14 percent and 16 percent, but the impact of the recession on those figures can’t be disregarded. Lonegan’s claim about Newark dropouts is based on students who graduate following a standardized testing route, but that doesn’t consider all of the district’s high schoolers. There are other routes to graduation. Each claim has a varying degree of accuracy to it, but each claim also leaves out important details and context. That’s why we rate the overall claim Half True. To comment on this article, go to NJ.com. | null | Steve Lonegan | null | null | null | 2013-10-10T07:30:00 | 2013-09-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-13375 | Says "no, you’re wrong," responding to the assertion that stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/28/donald-trump/debate-donald-trump-says-stop-and-frisk-constituti/ | Donald Trump has been pushing for cities to expand stop-and-frisk policies in order to combat crime, but some argue it’s a form of racial profiling. At the Sept. 26 presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt asked Trump what he would do to heal racial divides. Trump said the country needs to "bring back law and order" in inner cities and praised stop-and-frisk policies in Chicago and New York. Then Holt jumped in with what sounded like a fact-check. "Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men," Holt posed to Trump. "No, you're wrong," Trump responded. "It went before a judge, who was a very against-police judge. It was taken away from her. And our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. They would have won an appeal. If you look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it's allowed." Whenever there’s a disagreement over who has their facts right, we’re compelled to sort it out. So the question of whether stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York piqued our interest. As it turns out, Holt and Trump are both a little bit right and a little bit wrong. But Trump's more wrong than Holt. Stop-and-frisk is the practice of a police officer stopping and questioning a person (the stop), then patting the person down for weapons (the frisk). Stops and frisks are legal, in New York and everywhere else. In its decision in the 1968 case Terry vs. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that an officer can legally stop a person if the officer has reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. And if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that this person is armed, he or she can legally frisk the person for weapons. Because of that reasonable suspicion standard, the court said these stops would be consistent with the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. A 2013 case before the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Floyd vs. City of New York, raised the issue of the constitutionality of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policies between 2004 and 2012. Judge Shira Scheindlin found that New York City had been conducting unconstitutional stops and frisks on two grounds: Officers were stopping and frisking people without reasonable suspicion, in violation of Terry and the Fourth Amendment; and a disproportionate number of those stopped and frisked were minorities, in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. "Both statistical and anecdotal evidence showed that minorities are indeed treated differently than whites," Scheindlin wrote in her opinion. "For example, once a stop is made, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband." So Holt was right to note that a court found New York City had an unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy because police had been disproportionately targeting black and Hispanic people. But the Floyd case was specific to New York City’s particular way of conducting stops and frisks between 2004 and 2012. Scheindlin did not rule all stops and frisks unconstitutional, and her findings were consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in Terry. Scheindlin ruled that New York City could continue to conduct stops and frisks as long as they made some changes. "Stop-and-frisk was not outlawed," said Andrew Schaffer, former deputy commissioner for legal matters for the New York Police Department and an adjunct professor at New York University Law School. The ruling only sought to correct a supposed problem of officers making stops without a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and disproportionately stopping black and Hispanic people. Schaffer added, "The Floyd decision in New York did not and could not overrule Terry." "The judge made it very clear that she was not finding stop-and-frisk as a general practice unconstitutional," said David Rudovsky, a leading civil rights attorney and senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. So Holt’s claim — "stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York" — isn’t quite precise because it makes it seem as if the judge decided that all stops and frisks were unconstitutional in New York, when really her ruling said New York had to stop and frisk differently. New York cops still stop and frisk today. But it also isn’t quite correct for Trump to call Holt’s claim "wrong" because that implies there was no finding of unconstitutionality in New York’s practices or that Scheindlin’s ruling was tossed out, when really it still stands. There might be some confusion in the public conversation over stop-and-frisk because it seems the public has come to associate the phrase "stop-and-frisk" with unconstitutional practices, like officers stopping people for no reason, said Ian Weinstein, professor at the Fordham University School of Law in New York. "Constitutional stop-and-frisk is legal across America, and the unconstitutional version is illegal across America," Weinstein said. For some additional context, we wanted to know what Trump was talking about when he said the case "was taken away" from Scheindlin. After Scheindlin ruled against them, lawyers representing New York City went to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a rung above Scheindlin’s court. A panel of Second Circuit judges decided to remove Scheindlin from all future proceedings in the Floyd case because Scheindlin had spoken to the media while the case was pending and because the panel believed Floyd had been inappropriately assigned to her. The panel did not make this decision because Scheindlin was "anti-police," as Trump said in the debate. The panel also did not reverse or throw out Scheindlin’s ruling. A few months later, at the start of 2014, Bill de Blasio replaced Michael Bloomberg as the mayor of New York, and he decided to drop the appeal, accept Scheindlin’s ruling, and dramatically reduce the frequency of stops and frisks in New York City. Our ruling Responding to the assertion that stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, Trump said "no, you’re wrong." Trump has a point that a judge’s ruling in a 2013 case did not declare stop-and-frisk as a general practice unconstitutional in New York. Stop-and-frisk is still legal and still takes place in New York and across the country. But his claim ignores that a judge did decide that the manner in which New York previously conducted stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional and that her ruling still stands. Trump had argued that stop-and-frisk was working effectively in New York City to reduce crime during the time period covered by the lawsuit. Trump’s statement has an element of truth but leaves out critical context that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-09-28T16:20:42 | 2016-09-26 | ['New_York_City'] |
pomt-07128 | The president came in and campaigned against me 12 times. | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2011/jun/17/john-kasich/gov-john-kasich-still-claiming-obama-made-dozen-ca/ | In a June 13 interview on Fox News’ Hannity program, Gov. John Kasich retold an old tale — how he beat incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland despite the Democrat getting repeated help from President Barack Obama, who jetted to the Buckeye State on Air Force One to help his party mate. If this is starting to sound familiar, it should. "The president came in and campaigned against me 12 times," Kasich told Sean Hannity. "And, you know, I mean, it didn’t work." Kasich made the comment after Hannity asked the governor about his invitation to play golf with the president on June 18, and how comfortable he would be with Obama given their political differences. But did Obama really come to Ohio 12 times to campaign against Kasich? Kasich has made this claim several times since being elected and Politifact Ohio has checked it and rechecked it. And while it is true Obama came to Ohio in 2010 to help Strickland with his bid for re-election, Politifact Ohio has also noted that the governor is clearly overstating the scope of the president’s assistance. The facts bear repeating, so here it goes. Obama did indeed visit Ohio 12 times between taking office in January 2009 and the November 2010 election. But a review of Obama’s travel schedule and the speeches he made offers a different picture. One of Obama’s visits, for instance, occurred March 3, 2009, a full two months before Kasich even announced his candidacy. And of Obama’s 12 trips, nine were made under the guise of official White House business during which he pushed specific policies – mainly health care reform and the economic stimulus bill. Two trips in 2010, Oct. 17 and Oct. 31, were made specifically to campaign for Strickland and the Democratic ticket. And on a trip made Aug. 18, 2010, Obama hosted a fund-raiser for Strickland and in a separate event pushed his economic polices. Transcripts from Obama’s non-campaign visits show he referred to Republicans in Washington many times in arguing that his policies are better than GOP plans. But Obama never mentioned the governor’s race or Kasich. At a campaign rally Oct. 17 before 35,000 people in Columbus, Obama never mentioned Kasich. He did name Kasich twice when he spoke at an Oct. 31 rally in Cleveland. So, by that recounting, Obama actually visited Ohio just three times to directly campaign or raise money for Strickland and only once in those three trips did the president actually mention Kasich by name. Kasich’s campaign team argues that every time Obama trekked into Ohio during a campaign season, his visibility alone could be taken as a campaign stop for Strickland, who trailed in the gubernatorial race the entire way and ended up losing by two percentage points. "Whether it’s one visit or 12 visits, Ohio is a key state and clearly the President wanted to keep his party in control of it going into 2012," Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said Thursday. And on several of the "non-campaign" stops, Strickland was at the president's side, Nichols rightfully points out, which certainly gives the impression that Obama was visiting to stomp for Strickland. But conversely, Ohio is an important political state for anyone seeking to be elected or re-elected president and Obama, facing re-election next year, could just as well have been trying to maintain and strengthen his own political fortunes in this bellwether state. The governor does have reason to be proud of his election victory. Here’s a completely accurate statement the governor could use that is remarkable unto itself: Kasich was the first person to defeat an incumbent Ohio governor since 1974. That alone makes his victory historically significant. As we have said before, there is a small element of truth in Kasich’s claim. Obama did make 12 visits to Ohio prior to the November 2010 election. But he made just three trips directly on Strickland’s behalf and he mentioned Kasich by name in his remarks on just one. Those are critical facts that give a different impression. On the Truth-O-Meter, that means Kasich’s claim rates Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | John Kasich | null | null | null | 2011-06-17T06:00:00 | 2011-06-13 | ['None'] |
vees-00251 | Report claiming Robredo, De Lima’s lies shocked the UN | misleading | http://verafiles.org/articles/week-fake-news-report-claiming-robredo-de-limas-lies-shocked | null | null | null | null | fake news | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: Report claiming Robredo, De Lima’s lies shocked the UN MISLEADING | April 20, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01540 | A photograph shows Sarah Huckabee Sanders wearing KKK robes for Halloween in 1993. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sarah-huckabee-sanders-kkk-robe-halloween/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Sarah Huckabee Sanders Wear a KKK Halloween Costume in 1993? | 23 October 2017 | null | ['Ku_Klux_Klan'] |
snes-03962 | A photograph shows Donald Trump posing with his parents in Ku Klux Klan robes. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trumps-parents-kkk/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Donald Trump’s Parents Wore Ku Klux Klan Attire? | 24 September 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Ku_Klux_Klan'] |
pomt-06875 | The federal government is spending 25 percent of our entire economy versus 100 years ago we spent only 2 percent. | true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/jul/31/ron-johnson/us-senator-ron-johnson-says-federal-government-spe/ | As the debt-ceiling crisis deepened, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, lambasted Democrats for failing to put together a public plan to bring down federal spending. Johnson, in an appearance on CNBC’s "Squawk Box," argued constitutional limits on government spending were the only way to keep politicians’ hands off the pocketbooks of their constituents. To illustrate his point, the freshman Republican reached way back into the history books. "We’ll increase the debt ceiling, give the president what he wants, and all we’re saying is, ‘Let’s pass a constitutional limitation to the size of government,’ which by the way is the root cause of the problem," Johnson said. "The federal government is spending 25 percent of our entire economy versus 100 years ago, we spent only 2 percent. The problem is the size, the scope, all the regulations and the cost of government." PolitiFact National has tested the current end of this claim and found it True. But the back end is new territory. Has the federal government’s share of the nation’s economy really jumped twelvefold in a century? A frequently cited source on the history of federal spending is the White House Office of Management and Budget. Its website shows the federal share of "gross domestic product" -- the GDP, essentially our total economic output for a year -- was 25 percent in 2009, 23.8 percent in 2010 and is estimated at 25.3 percent for 2011. In 1930, by contrast, the federal government made up just 3.4 percent of the economy. There are many reasons for the change -- ones that go beyond year-to-year growth in spending for existing programs. Before the 1930s, the federal government was basically the post office, veterans benefits, a small defense department and national-debt payments, according to an official government summary and experts we consulted. Local government was dominant. World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam pushed up the federal role considerably, and when that spending waned, it was more than offset as the country aged into Social Security and the Great Society programs -- including Medicare and Medicaid -- took off. The federal share of the economy went up and down in the 1980s and 1990s, amid recessions, higher debt interest payments, higher health care spending and tax cuts. Homeland security and military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks pushed the number up, as did the recession that began in 2007. The largest part of the growth since the 1950s, the Office of Management and Budget reports, came from a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, deposit insurance, and means-tested entitlements such as Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, the refundable portions of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. "A big part of the difference is that as the U.S. got richer, a lot more services were demanded, and a whole layer of protections unknown in 1910 got assumed by the government," said Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist. As we noted, the current numbers cited by Johnson are accurate. But what about 100 years ago? The OMB calculations on the federal share of the economy go back only to 1930, because GDP was not calculated before then. But earlier spending numbers are readily available, and several researchers have produced calculations dating back to the early 1900s. They use U.S. Census Bureau data that measured the economy in a different way, but produce comparable numbers, according to the economists we consulted. Johnson’s staff pointed us to 1902. We also looked at other years in that first decade of the century, to see if they were consistent with the year in question. Economists Robert Gordon at Northwestern University and Randall Holcombe at Florida State University independently calculated a federal share right around 2 percent in that time period. Our calculations produced a similar result. So Johnson’s numerical claim is on target. At the advice of our experts, though, we took one more step: We looked at what the combined local-state-federal share was a century ago compared to today. If local government was predominant and the federal government minuscule in earlier times, is it possible that all government spending combined took up the same share of the economy as today? No, we found. Holcombe said the total government share has gone up markedly, though not on the order of the twelvefold increase in the federal-only share. Gordon confirms that. Let’s tally this up. Johnson turned the clock way back in criticizing the size of the federal government. He claimed it took up just 2 percent of the economy a century ago, but 25 percent today. Johnson’s reference hearkens back to an entirely different era in American governance -- and it’s not clear just how far back in time on a percentage basis Johnson thinks we should go. But based on widely available, and generally accepted, historical data, he accurately described the dramatic rise of Washington, D.C., in our economic lives over the last 100 years. We rate his statement True. | null | Ron Johnson | null | null | null | 2011-07-31T09:00:00 | 2011-07-25 | ['None'] |
snes-04209 | PIctures show that Dodge is offering an elephant skin interior with their new Challenger SRT Hellcat. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dodge-challenger-elephant-skin/ | null | Automobiles | null | Dan Evon | null | New Dodge Challenger Features Elephant Skin Interior | 20 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11271 | California State Assembly bill would ban the (sale of the) Bible! | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/apr/26/oath-keepers/no-california-bill-would-not-ban-bible-sales/ | Freedom of religion and speech are fundamental to American life, and some conservatives warn that a California bill threatens both. "California State Assembly bill would BAN the Bible!" said the April 19 headline on the Oath Keepers website. "Whatever happened to Free Speech and Religious Freedom? Of course, this is the People’s Republic of California, so such things are to be expected. They are so far down the totalitarian, Globalist path that they are oblivious to any sane, sensible ideas." The controversy is over California bill AB 2943, a measure that puts strict limits on programs that aim to change a person’s sexual orientation. The legislation, which passed out of the state assembly and over to the Senate, bans any "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual." The bill does this by amending the state’s consumer protection law, which covers such things as false advertising, selling defective goods and the like. So, the prohibition would only apply when money changed hands. Someone needs to be selling and someone needs to be buying a service called "sexual orientation change efforts" for this bill to apply. The Oath Keeper headline (since changed) spoke of a complete ban on the Bible with no mention of selling. But in the video interview that went along with the post, the Oath Keeper host asked, "Would this prohibit the sale of the Bible?" We’re checking whether the law would ban the sale of the holy book. While the odds are remote, some legal scholars said the law as written could lead to issues. A slender link to the Bible Even some opponents to AB 2943 argue that it likely wouldn’t ban the sale of Bibles across the board. "It is virtually impossible that California will immediately attempt to ban the sale of the Bible itself," wrote Robert Gagnon in the Federalist. "But citations of Bible verses in the context of declaring homosexual practice and transgenderism to be morally debased could indeed get one into serious trouble with the law if it comes in the context of selling or advertising a product or service." Concerned Women for California of America, a group that "promotes biblical values" through prayer and advocacy, told lawmakers that the bill "puts in question the sale of books, participation in events, and related activities." So from opponents, the impact on Bible sales is a question, not a certainty. Room for debate By one estimate, Americans buy about 25 million Bibles each year. Based on population, about 3 million would be sold in California. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh dismissed the idea that simply selling the Bible would be affected, because people buy Bibles for many reasons that lie outside the bill. "The ordinary sale would not be an effort to change sexual orientation," Volokh said. But on the other hand, Volokh can imagine circumstances when things would get muddy. "There needs to be a practice that seeks to change the person's behavior," Volokh said. "A Bible sold with an eye to that could be affected by this law." Paul Horwitz at the University of Alabama School of Law said there’s a serious question that the law "could include books arguing that one should refrain from homosexuality lest one be condemned or damned, and thus could include the Bible, at least as some read it." Apart from any impact on Bible sales, the core ban on any program sold to change someone’s sexual orientation might itself fail on constitutional grounds, according to Jefferson Powell at Duke Law School. The bill fails to define what it aims to block, he said. "The law can’t constitutionally apply to many forms of speech that have the purpose of persuading people not to act on, or enabling them not even to feel, same-sex attraction," Powell said. "But the bill’s language displays no concern to tailor its scope to avoid those situations." If the bill failed to pass constitutional muster, then the whole thing would be thrown out, along with any possible impact on the sale of Bibles. Ample ground for disagreement The legal dispute we found centered on whether the Bible itself argues for changing one’s sexual orientation and whether every paid effort to dissuade a person from homosexuality meets the legal definition of a sexual orientation change effort. Before all else, said University of Miami law professor Caroline Corbin, the Bible as a book lies outside the bill’s reach. "The bill prohibits the provision of certain services and advertisements of those services, and the Bible is neither of those things." But what if the Bible were part of some sort of sexual orientation conversion program? Douglas Laycock at the University of Virginia said "no judge is that stupid" to view the Bible so narrowly. "The Bible is a vast collection of books," Laycock said. "Only a few brief passages say anything about same-sex sexual conduct, and those don't say anything about sexual orientation, or about changing it." In short, the Bible by itself is not a how-to kit for sexual orientation conversion. George Washington law professor Catherine Ross echoed that point and emphasized that simply calling homosexuality a sin would not meet the definition of a "sexual orientation change effort." "A person selling or promoting the Bible could say that in this book you will discover what is good and bad and the book will tell you that to be LGBT is really bad," Ross said. "But even that doesn't take the next step, and say that when you are convinced by reading this, the next step is to get into a Sexual Orientation Change program. And the statute is only triggered when a person promotes or advertises the Sexual Orientation Change Effort solution." Ross also noted that the proposed law regulates commercial speech, which she said the Bible is not. "The brief passages in the Bible that concern homosexuality would keep the book as a whole well below the standard for triggering the statute," Ross said. "An offer to sell a Bible would not bring the content of the Bible itself into the definition of commercial speech." Our ruling The Oath Keepers group said that a California law would ban the sale of the Bible. We found that even some opponents of the bill don’t go that far. The general consensus is that the Bible covers a lot of ground and the proposed law would have no effect on the ordinary sale of Bibles. If the law had any impact at all, it would be on those occasions when a Bible is sold in conjunction with a program to change someone’s sexual orientation. This is a point where legal scholars differ. Some say the law could touch the sale of a Bible, while others believe the Bible lies outside the scope of the law. But even assuming the law might have an impact, with millions of Bibles sold in California, the weight of evidence suggests the bill might only touch a fraction of them. We rate this claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Oath Keepers | null | null | null | 2018-04-26T11:54:49 | 2018-04-19 | ['None'] |
goop-00814 | Tom Cruise Cured Val Kilmer’s Cancer With His Touch And Scientology Powers? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/tom-cruise-val-kilmer-cancer-cured-touch-scientology-powers-untrue/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Tom Cruise Cured Val Kilmer’s Cancer With His Touch And Scientology Powers? | 4:04 pm, June 15, 2018 | null | ['Val_Kilmer', 'Tom_Cruise'] |
pomt-08781 | The Republicans have 2 percent of the Muslim vote.'' mostly true /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/20/tamara-holder/crowd-gop-big-tent-doesnt-include-many-muslims/ Republicans already have minimal support among the Muslim community, so they better watch what they say about building a new Mosque near Ground Zero, said Tamara Holder, a liberal Fox News Contributor in an August 18, 2010, segment of Sean Hannity. I just like to make the point that we can argue all day whether this is a moral issue or religious issue or whatever. But the bigger issue here on this political show is that the Republicans have 2 percent of the Muslim vote, 2 percent. Most Muslims, like 77 percent, are Americanized. They've been here for 20 years. Not all Muslims are radical," Holder said. It's a little known secret that we're suckers for arguments involving statistics, so we decided to look into Holder's claim that Republicans have 2 percent of the Muslim vote. We began by reading American Muslim Voters and the 2008 Election, a report put out in January 2008 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a non-profit group that works to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America. The study results come from a random sample telephone survey of 1000 American Muslim registered voters. The group found that 49 percent of Muslim Americans consider themselves Democrats, 36 percent independent, and 8 percent Republicans. The survey, taken before the 2008 election, also asked participants about the presidential candidates. Nearly 45 percent said that they "don't know" or "haven't decided," but among those who declared a preference, Democrats took the lead. "Republican Ron Paul, who is regarded by many Muslims as fair-minded, was mentioned by 2 percent, more than any other Republican hopeful," the report stated. Those numbers are consistent with at least one post-election analysis. On November 7, 2008, the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, an umbrella group for various Muslim advocacy groups, released the results of phone interviews with 637 registered Muslim American voters. The organization found that among those who voted, 88.9 percent backed President Barack Obama; only 2.2 percent voted for Republican John McCain. Then there is the Muslim West Facts Project -- a partnership between Gallup and the Coexist Foundation -- which released Muslim Americans: A National Portrait in early 2009. According to the report, 49 percent of Muslims identified themselves as Democrat; 37 percent said that they were independent and 8 percent considered themselves Republican. Gallup researchers did not analyze what percent of Muslim Americans voted for President Obama, but they found that from January through the end of October 2008, eleven percent said that they would vote for McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin. Eric Nielsen, who heads Gallup media relations, told us during a phone interview that the 11 percent is a "rough proxy" of how many Muslim Americans actually voted for the Republican duo. Finally, the Pew Research Center published Muslim Americans in May 2007. The survey found that 11 percent of Muslim Americans identified as Republicans, 63 percent as Democrats, and 26 percent as either independent or having no leaning. During the 2004 presidential election, 14 percent voted for Bush and 71 percent voted for Kerry, according to the study. So, to recap, Holder claimed that Republicans only have 2 percent of the Muslim vote. We found that roughly 8 to 11 percent of Muslims consider themselves Republicans. Muslims voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry during the 2004 election, and at least one post-election analysis shows that McCain only received 2 percent of the vote in the 2008 election. Gallup does not have data on how many Muslims voted for McCain, but we're told that it may be roughly 11 percent, a bit higher than what Holder claimed. Still, that's quite low compared to the support that Democrats have, so Holder's underlying point that Republicans lack significant Muslim backing is valid. We rate this Mostly True. | null | Tamara Holder | null | null | null | 2010-08-20T17:49:43 | 2010-08-18 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] | null | null | null |
pomt-03503 | Nearly 6 out of 10 believe that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the U.S. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/06/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-says-six-10-americans-say-wealth-sh/ | In a recent tweet, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., reiterated one of his most frequent themes -- income inequality in the United States. "Nearly 6 out of 10 believe that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the U.S.," Sanders tweeted. We wondered: Is the percentage holding that view really that high? Actually, it is -- and it hasn’t changed much for almost three decades. The Gallup polling organization has been asking the following question periodically since 1985: "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?" The most recent data comes from a Gallup survey taken April 4-7, 2013. The result: 59 percent agreed that "the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people," while 33 percent said the distribution was fair. The poll had a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points. Gallup has asked the question 12 times since 1985, with the percentage saying that wealth should be more evenly distributed keeping within a fairly narrow band, ranging between 56 percent and 68 percent. Gallup also reported a partisan divide: More than eight in 10 Democrats said money and wealth need to be more evenly distributed, compared with 28 percent of Republicans. It’s worth noting that there is less agreement on how this situation should be remedied. Gallup has periodically paired the question above with one additional question: "Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?" During the 2012 presidential election, the candidates divided sharply on this question, with President Barack Obama favoring higher taxes on the rich and Republican Mitt Romney opposing any tax hikes. Support for higher taxes on the wealthy has zig-zagged between mild approval and mild disapproval since the 1980s, while backing for higher taxes on the rich has ranged from 45 percent to 52 percent. Most recently, in April 2013, Gallup found that 52 percent supported higher taxes on the wealthy while 45 percent opposed such a policy -- the second-largest gap in favor of higher taxes since the question was first asked. (In 2008, 51 percent supported higher taxes on the wealthy, while 43 percent were opposed.) Our ruling Sanders tweeted that "nearly 6 out of 10 believe that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the U.S." The senator has accurately reported the results of a longstanding Gallup question, so we rate his claim True. | null | Bernie Sanders | null | null | null | 2013-06-06T14:19:58 | 2013-06-04 | ['United_States'] |
abbc-00144 | The claim: Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty claims that the rate that Western Australia jails Indigenous children is higher than the rate black children in the US are incarcerated. | in-the-green | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-17/fact-check-indigenous-children-incarceration-rates/6511162 | The claim: Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty claims that the rate that Western Australia jails Indigenous children is higher than the rate black children in the US are incarcerated. | ['discrimination', 'children', 'indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander', 'indigenous-policy', 'law-crime-and-justice', 'police', 'prisons-and-punishment', 'australia', 'wa'] | null | null | ['discrimination', 'children', 'indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander', 'indigenous-policy', 'law-crime-and-justice', 'police', 'prisons-and-punishment', 'australia', 'wa'] | Fact Check: Amnesty International claim on 'shocking' Indigenous child incarceration rates checks out | Fri 19 Jun 2015, 5:05am | null | ['Western_Australia', 'Amnesty_International'] |
farg-00416 | Grandmother With AK-47 Saves Cops Being Attacked By Street Gang. | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/gun-toting-grandma-story-is-made-up/ | null | fake-news | FactCheck.org | Saranac Hale Spencer | ['false stories'] | Gun-toting Grandma Story Is Made Up | May 31, 2018 | 2018-05-31 21:38:34 UTC | ['None'] |
pomt-03969 | I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2013/feb/14/marco-rubio/look-marco-rubios-working-class-west-miami-home/ | Forget for a minute about the awkward grasp for a plastic bottle of Poland Spring before millions on live TV. There’s something else in Sen. Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union on Tuesday that is riling up the blogosphere. Where does Marco Rubio live? President Barack Obama loves to say people who don’t agree with him are rich, Rubio said on Feb. 12, 2013. Rubio went on to emphasize his own middle-class Republican cred. "Mr. President, I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy." Some bloggers jabbed Rubio for omitting details about his West Miami crib. The headline of a post from Miami gossip columnist Jose Lambiet: "Marco Rubio: I still live in da hood -- sorta!" Lambiet included a slew of photos of Rubio’s home on his blog, including his living room, kitchen, and backyard pool, trampoline, wooden fort and patio surrounded by a tall green hedge. Miami New Times dinged Rubio for his "humbleboast." What’s their beef? One, Rubio did not mention his home is for sale. Rubio wants to sell the four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom home and buy one in D.C. so he can see his kids more often, spokesman Alex Conant told The Daily Caller in January. Rubio rents a room in a Capitol Hill apartment, Conant said. "If he can sell his home in Miami, he would be able to afford to move his wife and kids to Washington during the school year and still own a home in Florida," Conant told us in an email. And two, at a listing price of $675,000, the two-story, 2,700-square-foot home on a cul de sac is not what some may consider "working class." From New Times: West Miami is, in fact, a fairly blue collar town, just west of tonier Coral Gables. But it's pretty brazen to put your residence there in a nationally televised speech when 1) you are actively trying to leave that working-class neighborhood and 2) you stand to make more than a half-million bucks by doing so. Rubio and wife Jeanette bought the home in 2005 for $550,000, the same year it was built. The sale garnered controversy for Rubio in 2008 when the Miami Herald reported Rubio failed to disclose a $135,000 equity line he obtained from a bank run by political supporters after taking out his mortgage. Rubio’s realtor and brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia of Centrust Realty, told us Rubio’s home is one of the nicer ones in his neighborhood. "It’s all a working-class neighborhood," he said. "You’ve got some executives, and you have a lot of regular people there." Cicilia said he found the home for Rubio at a construction price in 2005. Cicilia, married to Rubio’s older sister, lives in Rubio’s childhood home, about half a mile away. Cicilia did not want to elaborate on that. The neighborhood is in a central location close to pricier Coral Gables, the airport, shopping malls and other businesses. About 27,000 people live in Rubio's zip code (33144), according to the Census Bureau’s 2007-11 American Community Survey. Of those, 74 percent of the people are Cuban, and about 71 percent are foreign-born, according to Census data. The average years of education is 12, a high school diploma. The median household income is $37,556. Less than 1 percent of households there make more than $200,000 a year. And while Rubio’s home is going for $675,000, the median home value of an owner-occupied home is significantly lower at $311,475, according to 2010 Census data. Zillow.com put the median home list value in West Miami at $202,600. Rubio said he still lives in the "same working-class neighborhood" he grew up in. Yes, but he is looking to leave. We rate his claim Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/50017cc5-229e-4969-83e7-38042f90e044 | null | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2013-02-14T12:11:41 | 2013-02-12 | ['None'] |
tron-03237 | Analysis of Hillary Clinton by Dick Morris | confirmed authorship! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/dick-morris-hillary-clinton-101313/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Analysis of Hillary Clinton by Dick Morris | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
pomt-12229 | I've gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment … I signed an executive order so that now ... ministers and and preachers and rabbis and whoever it may be, they can speak. You know, you couldn’t speak politically before, now you can. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jul/18/donald-trump/trump-claims-he-got-rid-johnson-amendment-true/ | Responding to compliments about his election victory and support from evangelical voters, President Donald Trump told Christian Broadcasting Network’s founder Pat Robertson that he had signed an order to empower religious leaders to speak up politically. "We've really helped because I've gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment, now we are going to go try to get rid of it permanently in Congress, but I signed an executive order so that now people like you that I want to hear from, ministers and and preachers and rabbis and whoever it may be, they can speak," Trump said in a July 12 interview with Robertson. "You know, you couldn’t speak politically before; now you can. And I want to hear from you and others that we like." During the campaign Trump accurately said that an amendment pushed by Lyndon B. Johnson threatened religious institutions with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocated their political views. Trump then said he would repeal that language. So Trump’s comments to Robertson left us wondering if in fact Trump had "gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment" and if because of his executive order religious leaders were able to speak up politically. Politics and religion experts told us Trump’s remarks were misleading on several grounds: He does not have the constitutional authority to eliminate the law, and religious leaders have been speaking up politically even before Trump’s order, despite the legal restriction. Background on the ‘Johnson Amendment’ We noted in a previous fact check of Trump’s remarks about the "Johnson Amendment" that the restriction comes from the Internal Revenue Code, and that it applies to all 501(c)(3) organizations, known as charitable organizations. The term "Johnson Amendment" derives from America’s 36th president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Johnson championed the restriction in 1954 when he 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. In response, Johnson, then Senate Democratic minority leader, introduced 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. The objective was to restrict the involvement in partisan politics of organizations that wanted to be exempt from paying taxes. The law says: "Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) 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. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes." ‘Gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment’? Trump told Robertson that he had "gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment." But that’s misleading. Trump cannot get "rid of" a law because a president does not have that constitutional authority. Trump needs Congress to take action; he even referenced that process when he added to his statement, "now we are going to go try to get rid of it permanently in Congress." (A bill on this topic introduced by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., is in the Ways and Means Committee.) We asked the White House for more information on Trump’s comments but did not get a response. What Trump has done is sign an executive order that tells the Treasury Department to be lenient in its enforcement of current law against religious organizations. Specifically, the May 4 order said: "The Secretary of the Treasury shall ensure, to the extent permitted by law, that the Department of the Treasury does not take any adverse action against any individual, house of worship, or other religious organization on the basis that such individual or organization speaks or has spoken about moral or political issues from a religious perspective, where speech of similar character has, consistent with law, not ordinarily been treated as participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) a candidate for public office by the Department of the Treasury." The order defines adverse action as the imposition of any tax or tax penalty, delay or denial of tax-exempt status, disallowance of tax deductions for contributions made to the charitable organizations, "or any other action that makes unavailable or denies any tax deduction, exemption, credit, or benefit." An array of experts and groups said Trump's order doesn't achieve much. "As of right now, Trump's comments that he got rid of the Johnson amendment are inaccurate and an overstatement," said Jeanine Kraybill, who researches politics and religion and is an assistant professor of political science at California State University-Bakersfield. Trump did not get rid of the Johnson Amendment, "he just ordered that apparently it not be enforced," said Kenneth D. Wald, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Florida. The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concerns about Trump’s executive order based on a leaked draft, but later said it had "no discernible policy outcome." The conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom, which advocates on behalf of pastors and churches and against the Johnson Amendment, said Trump’s order came up short and described it as just "vague instructions" with wiggle room to be ignored. ‘You couldn’t speak politically before, now you can’ Experts also told us that it's inaccurate to suggest religious leaders could not speak politically. "The regulations have never been designed to prevent ministers or other church officials from speaking in church about social and political issues," said Wald, the University of Florida professor. What they are forbidden from doing is formally endorsing candidates, Wald said. Also, the Johnson Amendment has not been strongly enforced over the years, and preachers and pastors have openly challenged it, said Kraybill, the professor at California State University-Bakersfield. Kraybill said that since 2008 the "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" movement, which began with the Alliance Defending Freedom, has led pastors of primarily conservative churches to intentionally preach about candidates and encourage their congregations to vote a certain way. A pastor in San Diego told CNN last year that his church records sermons and sends them to the Internal Revenue Service "in the hopes of provoking a lawsuit," and that those efforts have been fruitless. "It has been quite rare as matter of practice for the IRS to enforce that rule," said Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College. Pew Research Center in August 2016 published survey results that said about two-thirds of Americans who had attended religious services had heard clergy at their church speak about social and political issues. Some churchgoers had even heard clergy speak in support or opposition of a specific presidential candidate, Pew found. With that context, Trump’s executive order in many ways attempts to codify the status quo. But it doesn’t eliminate the Johnson Amendment. Our ruling Trump said, "I've gotten rid of the Johnson Amendment … I signed an executive order so that now ... ministers and and preachers and rabbis and whoever it may be, they can speak. You know, you couldn’t speak politically before, now you can." Experts say Trump’s claim is an overstatement because his executive order merely directed the Treasury Department to be lenient in its enforcement of the law. The president does not have constitutional authority to eliminate laws. In practice, the law has rarely been enforced, experts said, and clergy members have spoken about social and political issues, or even spoken in favor or against candidates. Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-07-18T11:00:00 | 2017-07-12 | ['None'] |
goop-02169 | Jennifer Aniston “Leaving Hollywood” To Save Justin Theroux Marriage, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-not-leaving-hollywood-save-marriage-justin-theroux/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Aniston NOT “Leaving Hollywood” To Save Justin Theroux Marriage, Despite Report | 1:05 pm, November 21, 2017 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston', 'Cinema_of_the_United_Kingdom'] |
tron-03452 | The Twelve Days of Christmas is a catechism song | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/twelvedaysofchristmas/ | null | religious | null | null | null | The Twelve Days of Christmas is a catechism song | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00199 | Says a pro-choice activist in California 'proudly breaks world record by getting her 27th abortion' | pants on fire! | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/oct/17/worldnewsdailyreportcom/no-california-woman-didnt-break-world-record-getti/ | The words "murderer" and "killer" were among the insults and slurs readers hurled at a 34-year-old woman who allegedly made history when she had her 27th abortion. But the article reporting the record is—by the website’s own admission—fictional. "World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content," reads a disclaimer at the bottom of worldnewsdailyreport.com, where the story appeared. "All characters appearing in the articles in this website—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle." A message sent to World News Daily Report was not immediately answered. But on the website’s Frequently Asked Questions page, the website touts a "News Team" featuring members fluent in more than 12 languages. "We thus have access to thousands of newspapers around the world and choose information we feel is of interest to the Christian, Muslim and Jewish zionist community worldwide." Readers are also encouraged to help spread the outlet’s "wisdom to the miscreants of the world." This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Though the story doesn’t have a date showing when it was posted online, CrowdTangle data shows it has generated more than 566,000 social media interactions, including nearly 48,000 shares. Some commenters reacted without any hint that they knew it was fake. "She is INSANE," one reader commented. "Hope she fails her medical exams." The fictional woman at the center of this scandal is supposedly a medical school student and pro-choice activist who aspires to one day perform abortions. The photo that accompanies the story shows a smiling, caucasian woman in a hospital bed with an IV tube in her arm. The same image can be found by searching Getty Images’ stock image files. The article says that woman’s most recent procedure was performed at the Sacramento Street Health Center. No such clinic appears to exist. Finally, no one knows more about world records than Guinness World Records. Rachel Gluck, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records North America, said she searched the organization's database and found no evidence that such a title exists: "After researching within our database," Gluck wrote in an email, "I cannot confirm that this is a title Guinness World Records would monitor." We rate this headline Pants on Fire. Update: This report was updated after its initial publication to include a response from Guinness World Records. | null | worldnewsdailyreport.com | null | null | null | 2018-10-17T15:39:39 | 2018-10-15 | ['California'] |
snes-06067 | A teenaged Laura Bush caused the death of a classmate in an automobile accident. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/laura-bush-car-accident/ | null | Politicians | null | Snopes Staff | null | Laura Bush’s Fatal Accident | 15 September 2004 | null | ['Laura_Bush'] |
afck-00149 | “Today, more than 2,282 MW of power is available on the national grid compared to the 1,664 MW available 3 years ago.” | incorrect | https://africacheck.org/reports/kenyas-budget-speech-claims-power-investment-roads-add/ | null | null | null | null | null | Kenya’s budget speech: Do claims about power, investment & roads add up? | 2017-04-07 02:26 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09567 | Inequality in Texas is steadily getting worse, with very few rich people, a great many poor people, and fewer and fewer in the middle. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2010/jan/28/ronnie-earle/ronnie-earle-says-income-gap-steadily-widening-tex/ | Ronnie Earle, the former Travis County district attorney seeking the Democratic nod for lieutenant governor, says powerful interests hold more sway at the Capitol than regular folks. According to The Austin Chronicle, he went farther afield before the NXNW Austin Democrats Jan. 18, saying: “Inequality in Texas is steadily getting worse, with very few rich people, a great many poor people, and fewer and fewer in the middle.” We wondered if the former prosecutor had stated his case on inequality correctly. Earle shared with us outside research suggesting growing gaps in household income nationally as well as in Texas, beginning in the late 1990's. For instance, research by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute found that the incomes of the poorest fifth of Texas families and the middle fifth of families didn’t change significantly between the late ‘90s and about 2005. Meantime, the average income of the richest fifth of Texas families increased by $10,505, or 9 percent, to $126,658. What about more recently? Karl Eschbach, the Texas state demographer, shared estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau that showed the distribution of Texas families across the income scale barely changed from 2000 through 2008, though inequality increased slightly. As of 2008, the state’s wealthiest 20 percent of households accounted for nearly 51 percent of income. That is, about half the money taken home that year went to the richest Texans. The next-wealthiest 40 percent of households garnered 37 percent of income. The remaining 40 percent of households -- the bottom earners in Texas -- got less than 12 percent of total household income. We also reviewed an indicator that's a widely accepted measure of income inequality. Scientists use the GINI coefficient to gauge inequality in income across societies. A society that scores 0.0 on the scale has perfect equality, meaning everyone has the same income. The higher the number over zero, the more the inequality. A score of 1.0 indicates total inequality where one person or household corners all the income. According to Eschbach’s analysis, the GINI coefficient for Texas was .466 in 2008, up slightly from .46 in 2000. Separately, the Census Bureau estimated a Texas GINI index of .474 for 2008—placing Texas fifth in income inequality among the states, trailing only Louisiana, Mississippi, Connecticut and New York, which topped the dubious category with a GINI index of .503. James K. Galbraith, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, pointed us to research he’s overseen suggesting that income inequality in Texas widened over the past few decades. Texas had a GINI index of .37 in 1970. The index reached .39 in 1980, .42 in 1990 and .47 in 2000 before dropping to .46 in 2004. With help from a Census Bureau statistician, we tried to assess whether the state's middle class has shrunk. Kirby Posey, a bureau survey statistician, told us that if the middle class is shrinking in Texas, it's happening slowly. As of 1990, the middle class accounted for 47 percent of all the state's household income. The share of income attributed to the middle class was 46.6 percent in 2000 and 45.8 percent in 2008, according to the bureau. By and large, Earle correctly noted that Texas is home to lots of poor people and a clutch of the very wealthy. Earle passed along a September press release from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for programs serving low-income Texans, stating that the ranks of Texans living in poverty has likely swelled given the national recession. Even if so, that doesn't necessarily mean that fewer people are in the state's middle class. Eschbach, the state demographer, suggested that because there has been little change in income inequality across Texas over the past decade, more research would be needed before concluding the state's middle class has dwindled. Ultimately, neither Galbraith or Eschbach quibbled with the gist of Earle’s claim. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Ronnie Earle | null | null | null | 2010-01-28T17:22:27 | 2010-01-18 | ['Texas'] |
pomt-06829 | The deal to raise the federal debt limit created the "largest debt ceiling increase in America’s history." | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2011/aug/08/saxby-chambliss/chambliss-debt-ceiling-deal-creates-largest-increa/ | The compromise to raise the debt ceiling unleashed bipartisan laments from Capitol Hill lawmakers. One Democrat called it a "Satan sandwich." Another grumbled, "It's evil, or more evil." Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss expressed his disappointment with more sober rhetoric. He said he voted against Tuesday’s debt deal because it didn’t do enough to fix the problem. "I cannot vote for the largest debt-ceiling increase in America’s history without significant assurances that the bill’s proposed spending reductions will actually be realized, and without reforms to the way our government budgets its spending of taxpayer dollars," Chambliss said in a press release the day the Senate passed the deal and President Barack Obama signed it. Is this the "largest debt ceiling increase in America’s history"? Sounds like a job for the Truth-O-Meter. Chambliss is a member of the so-called "Gang of Six," which has fought for months for a bipartisan solution to cut the nation’s burgeoning federal debt. They floated a plan last month to end the stalemate on the debt ceiling, but it didn’t go far. The plan that did pass Tuesday calls for a debt limit increase of up to $2.4 trillion,accompanied by at least $2.1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. PolitiFact Georgia contacted Chambliss’ press office to get evidence backing his claim. A spokeswoman sent us a July 26, 2011, report from the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, and a list of debt ceiling increases from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Federal laws have limited specific types of debt since 1917, according to the Congressional Research Service. But they did not exist as they do now, as a single limit that covers nearly all debt held by the public, until 1939. The list of debt ceiling increases from the Office of Management and Budget covers 1940 to the present. If you compare debt ceiling increases by their dollar amount, Chambliss is right. The only increase that rival’s Tuesday’s debt deal is a $1.9 trillion hike in Feb. 2010. A 2003 increase at $984 billion takes third place. We decided to nose around a little more. From our past research, PolitiFact Georgia knows that when economists talk about the size of the national debt, they often express it as a percent of the nation’s economy, or gross domestic product. This comparison gives a clearer sense of the debt’s scale. Tuesday’s deal increases the debt limit by up to $2.4 trillion, which amounts to about 16 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. We found two other occasions where the increase was greater: World War II and the mid-to-late 1970s. During the 1940s, the cost of the massive war effort pushed debt limit increases to higher than 47 percent of GDP. The 1970s increases were blips. During these years, the debt limit spiked repeatedly, peaking at more than 17.9 percent of GDP. In these instances, debt limits expired and returned to prior, much lower amounts. After a few days, Congress restored them to levels only slightly higher than the expired limits. How do we rule? Chambliss is correct by one measure -- the dollar amount of debt limit increase. He wasn’t that far off by another -- debt limit increases by percentage of GDP. In the case of this second measure, the only times the debt limit rose by an amount that exceeded this year’s increase were the result of highly unusual situations: a world war and legislative blips. We won’t count the ‘70s data against Chambliss as they resulted in small overall increases. But since Chambliss missed out on World War II, we’ll give him a Mostly True. | null | Saxby Chambliss | null | null | null | 2011-08-08T06:00:00 | 2011-08-02 | ['United_States'] |
tron-00259 | Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Republican, Other Claims about Selma March | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/martin-luther-king-jr-was-a-republican-and-other-claims-about-selma-march/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Republican, Other Claims about Selma March | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-08070 | We have dozens of districts that go for 150 to 200 miles, splitting counties, splintering cities and connecting areas that have very little in common. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2010/dec/21/ellen-freidin/districts/ | Following a polarizing midterm election, and with intensifying partisan bickering over everything from taxes to health care, a group dubbing itself No Labels is hoping to start an earnest discussion about policy over politics. The group, comprised of Democrats, Republicans and independents, launched its website on Dec. 13, 2010, in the hopes of starting a movement that "encourages leaders to ‘put the labels aside’ in an effort to seek common sense solutions to our nation's problems." The launch brought out independents like outgoing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who both spoke at a kickoff event in New York City that was live-streamed on the No Labels website. Also speaking was Ellen Freidin, chairwoman of Fair Districts Florida, a group behind the passage of two constitutional amendments that set new guidelines for how legislative and congressional districts are drawn up. Freidin used the occasion to note: "We have dozens of districts that go for 150 to 200 miles, splitting counties, splintering cities and connecting areas that have very little in common." We decided to take a closer look at Freidin’s statement. The Fair Districts Florida website cites two examples of such districts, but we were curious to see if there were dozens of examples, as Freidin stated. About redistricting First, some background on how Florida’s districts are created. It’s an issue bound to be back in the limelight as state legislators restart the process of translating those numbers into political boundaries on a map. Every 10 years -- two years after U.S. Census figures are compiled -- state lawmakers redraw state and congressional legislative districts. The objective is to adjust district sizes to reflect changes in the population. Occasionally, new congressional districts are added when a state gains population. For example, Florida gained two House seats this time. The civics book reason for periodic redistricting is to protect the value of each voter’s ballot by preventing it from being diluted by a population surge -- the goal being for each person's vote to carry relatively equal weight in elections. But the process of redistricting is never without accusations of "gerrymandering" often brought up against the party in power. The term dates back to 1812 when Massachusetts Gov. Eldbridge Gerry signed a bill to redistrict Massachusetts. A newspaper noted that the contorted districts on the map resembled salamanders, and the term "gerrymander'' has since come to mean creating districts for political motive over geographical proximity. The Florida website for the redistricting that was carried out in 2002 gives a sense of the process and numbers involved. The Legislature divided the state’s population evenly into 120 state House districts, each containing a little over 130,000 people. Records show the number of registered voters per district ranged between 45,000 and 98,000. The same population is divided evenly into 40 state Senate districts. Each district's population hovered around 399,000, with the number of registered voters varying from about 134,000 to 280,000. Florida's Congressional districts contained a uniform population of 639,295, give or take a few people, and had voter registration ranging from about 232,600 to 418,700. During the November 2010 election, Florida voters approved two amendments to the state constitution that set specific guidelines in the creation of such districts. Amendment 5 was geared toward state districts and Amendment 6 was to be applied to congressional districts. Both amendments say districts should not be drawn to favor incumbents or a particular political party. Districts must be contiguous, compact and follow local and geographical boundaries. The districts shall also not be drawn to interfere with minority representation as provided for in the Voting Rights Act. The amendments were brought forth by Fair Districts Florida, a group that collected 1.7 million signatures to get the questions on the state ballot. A look at our districts So, do the districts created in 2002 "go on for 150 to 200 miles, splitting counties, splintering cities and connecting areas that have very little in common?'' Here, with the distances for the larger districts approximated by plugging cities into Mapquest, are some examples we found of both state and congressional districts that speak to the issue at hand: The 2nd Congressional District This Panhandle district represented by newly elected Republican Steve Southerland contains the largest number of counties in the state's delegation -- 16. It takes in some or all of Bay, Calhoun, Dixie, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Leon, Liberty, Okaloosa, Suwannee, Taylor, Wakulla and Walton counties. Approximate distance covered: 240 miles. The 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts The 3rd District, represented by Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown, contains portions of larger cities like Jacksonville and Orlando, while also taking in smaller communities like Gainesville and Apopka. The 2010 edition of the Almanac of American Politics notes that the district has three sets of borders. Designed in 1992 to be North Florida's black majority seat, from a partisan point of view it was also created "to shift as many Democrats as possible to the 3rd District to strengthen Republicans elsewhere,'' the Almanac says. It taps Democratic voters in the center of Jacksonville, then picks up voters in Orlando and Gainesville, with stops in Sanford and smaller communities. Approximate distance covered: 210 miles. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Ander Crenshaw's 4th District stretches across the northern border of the state from the Atlantic shore in Nassau County to Tallahassee in the center. It includes, as the Almanac notes, "much of Jacksonville, minus the African-American neighborhoods,'' and runs west through Baker, Union, Columbia, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson and Leon counties. Approximate distance covered: 165 miles. The 5th Congressional District Carved from west-Central Florida, this district represented in the upcoming Congress by Republican Rich Nugent stretches from the northern tip of Polk County to include nearly all of distant, rural Levy County, large portions of Lake, Marion and Pasco counties and all of Sumter, Citrus and Hernando counties. Approximate distance covered: 140 miles. The 6th Congressional District Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns' district is another that takes a bite out of the metropolitan Jacksonville area. From there it wobbles south through wooded north-central Florida, shaving off part of Gainesville and stopping in Lake County, a short drive from Orlando. In the process it takes in some or all of Duval, Clay, Bradford, Alachua, Gilchrist, Levy, Marion and Lake counties. Approximate distance covered: 146 miles. The 10th and 11th Congressional Districts Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor's 11th District used to be entirely in Tampa and Hillsborough County, but during the 2002 redistricting, a sizable pocket of Democratic voters in South St. Petersburg were frog-marched across Tampa Bay, electorally speaking, to be joined with Democratic kindred spirits. The district also picked up a piece of Manatee County. The effect boosted the GOP margins in Pinellas County, where Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young holds the 10th District, which voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 and Al Gore in 2000. Young's district is the only one in Florida contained wholly within a single county's borders. The 16th Congressional District Represented by Republican Tom Rooney, the district stretches from the Atlantic coast on the east almost to the Gulf of Mexico, and was described in the 2010 edition of the Almanac of American Politics as "one of the most oddly designed districts in the nation.’’ The district spans parts of Charlotte, Glades, Hendry, Highlands, Okeechobee, St. Lucie, Martin and Palm Beach counties. Approximate distance covered: 155 miles. The 22nd Congressional District While the district was once a Democratic stronghold, it recently traded hands into the Republican party when Allen West defeated Democrat Ron Klein. the narrow coastal district, which stretches from Palm Beach Gardens down to Cooper City Broward County, may be a straight shot down the coast, but the western portion of the district is a series of electoral cul-de-sacs. The 25th Congressional District The needs of voters in the largely Hispanic enclaves of West Miami-Dade County like Hialeah Gardens may have little in common with the needs of older rural voters in Collier County, but the two Republican-leaning areas are linked in the same congressional district. The 25th District was one of two new districts carved out by the Legislature in 2002. Mario-Diaz Balart, who was Florida House majority leader at the time, also chaired the redistricting committee that created the district. Diaz-Balart, a Republican, was subsequently elected the district’s first congressman in 2002. It is about to pass to newly elected U.S. Rep. David Rivera, also a Republican. State Senate District 1 Sen. Tony Hill's district cascades south through Duval County, spreading out in central St. Johns, and sending a spur line into Putnam County, and dips south to take in a large swath of Flagler County and a looping portion of Volusia County. Approximate distance covered: 108 miles. State Senate District 3 State Sen. Charlie Dean’s district covers Baker, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Suwannee and Taylor counties, in addition to parts of Citrus, Columbia, Jefferson, Leon, Levy, Madison and Marion counties. Approximate distance covered: 272 miles. State Senate District 7 Represented by Republican Sen. Evelyn J. Lynn, this district snakes from Clay County down to Putnam and Marion counties and covers most of Volusia County. Approximate distance covered: 165 miles. State Senate District 8 Republican Sen. John Thrasher’s district is spread along the Atlantic coast, running through Nassau, Duval, St. Johns, Flagler and Volusia counties. Approximate distance covered: 144 miles. State Senate District 14 Republican Sen. Steve Oelrich's district covers Alachua, Bradford, Gilchrist and Union counties with portions of Columbia, Levy, Marion, and Putnam counties in the fold. Approximate distance covered: 85 miles. State Senate District 15 Republican Sen. Paula Dockery's district is carved where four counties converge -- Hernando, Sumter, Lake and Polk, throwing in a piece of Osceola County to fill it out. Approximate distance covered: 159 miles. State Senate District 18 The district, represented by Democratic Sen. Arthenia Joyner, covers parts of East and South Tampa, South St. Petersburg in Pinellas County and a sliver of Manatee County. Approximate distance covered: 57 miles. State Senate District 21 Republican Sen. Mike Bennett's district covers nearly all of Manatee County, plus pieces of Sarasota, DeSoto, Charlotte and Lee counties (and the Senate misspells Charlotte on its website map). Approximate distance covered: 124 miles. State Senate District 26 The district represented by Republican Senate President Mike Haridopolos covers coastal areas of Brevard County, but also covers portions of Osceola and Indian River counties. Approximate distance covered: 164 miles. State Senate District 27 The district, currently represented by Palm Beach County Republican Lizbeth Benacquisto, spans five counties (Palm Beach, Glades, Hendry Charlotte and Lee) and travels nearly coast to coast from West Palm Beach in the east to Fort Myers in the west. Approximate distance covered: 140 miles. State Senate District 28 Republican Sen. Joe Negron's district hugs the highly developed southeastern coast, except when it veers deep into the state to pick up portions of Okeechobee, St. Lucie, Martin and Palm Beach counties. Approximate distance covered: 109 miles. State Senate District 39 Democratic Sen. Larcenia Bullard’s district covers a vast geographic terrain from Hendry County to rural Immokalee in Collier County, plus urban areas in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties and down to the Florida Keys in Monroe County. Approximate distance covered; 268 miles. State House districts are more compact because they take in a smaller population, but they do meander from time to time, with electoral ramifications for the counties and towns affected. Here are a few notable clusters: State House Districts 29, 30, 31, 32 This Atlantic coast region is solidly Republican, with Tom Goodson in district 29, Ritch Workman in district 30, John Tobia in district 31 and Steve Crisafulli in district 32. Despite the GOP nature of the territory, it is still carved into byzantine interlocking connections of neighborhoods and towns around Melbourne and the beach communities to the north and south. State House Districts 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49 These districts, taken together, are a case study of the political legerdemain when district lines are drawn. Districts 36, 39 and 49 rub shoulders in the urban Orlando area, and present three faces of the Democratic Party -- white liberal, African American and Hispanic. The state House district interactive map puts them in political perspective. District 36, represented by liberal Democrat Scott Randolph, is shaped vaguely like a lobster, with its claws in northern and eastern Orange County and its body in the center of Orlando. District 39, represented by African American Rep. Geraldine Thompson, is a more solid, cohesive block of voters. District 49, represented by Darren Soto, tracks the Hispanic population through west Orlando, down to Kissimmee and elsewhere, spreading across Orange and Osceola counties. All around them are Republican districts enjoying a carefully crafted symbiotic relationship. Between the lobster's claws rests the wealthy enclave of Winter Park, in district 35, home to Republican House Speaker Dean Cannon. Nearby is the southern edge of Apopka Republican Rep. Bryan Nelson's district 38, which picks up voters in the gaps between Democratic districts 36 and 39. District 40, represented by Republican Eric Eisnaugle, is another odd configuration, cobbling together disparate suburbs in lumps and bulges constituting southern GOP border of this political nexus. Neighboring district 41, represented by Republican Stephen Precourt, is where the tidy urban divisions really begin to break down. With districts 36 and 39 holding large groups of Democrats across the border, this Republican district sprawls west from Orange County into the old Florida region of south Lake County, and dips into Osceola County to the south. State House Districts 55, 67, 68 and 69 With its southern end sandwiched narrowly between three Republican districts, district 55, represented by Democrat Darryl Rouson, combines voters in Sarasota, Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Greg Steube's district 67 takes eastern chunks of Sarasota and Manatee counties along with an oddly shaped section of southern Hillsborough County. Republican Rep. Jim Boyd's district 68 covers the more affluent beach communities around Bradenton, and district 69, represented by Republican Jay Pilon, takes in south Manatee and Sarasota, enveloping the southern tip of Rouson's district. State House Districts 78, 79, 80, 84 District 78, represented by Democrat Stephen Perman, contains a large portion of western Palm Beach County, plus odd pieces of Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee counties, including what looks like a surgical sliver of metropolitan Fort Pierce. It also wraps around district 84, represented by Haitian-born Democrat Mack Bernard, whose district includes Belle Glade and the surrounding area, then tracks along a road east to pick up more voters in neighborhoods around West Palm Beach. North of this oddly shaped pair of Democratic districts it is solidly Republican. Mike Horner's district 79 runs north from Okeechobee County through Osceola County and picks up chunks of Orange and Polk counties. And Debbie Mayfield's district 80 tracks the jagged edge of Perman's district to the Atlantic Ocean. State House Districts 101 and 112 Naples Republican Matt Hudson's district is a political oddity with two nodes of urbanization separated by thousands of square miles of swamp, farms and open land. To the east it picks up a little of urban Broward County along the edge of Pembroke Pines, then it slides west through a long, narrow passage that includes the Everglades and Big Cypress swamp, emerging amidst a host of suburban neighborhoods around Naples, in Collier County. Approximate distance covered; 108 miles. The same strange geography and approximate distance applies with district 112, represented by Miami Republican Jeanette Nunez. Winnowing people by party alliance does raise a basic question about representative government -- Should a politician be given carte blanche to discard certain voters, or would the public good be better served if the offfice-holder were required to take divergent views into account? But that discussion is not why we're here. So, back to the question at hand. Was Freidin accurate in stating that Florida has "dozens of districts that go for 150 to 200 miles, splitting counties, splintering cities and connecting areas that have very little in common?" Florida has a total of 185 legislative and congressional districts -- 120 in the state House, 40 in the Senate and 25 in Congress. Of those, 67, or 36 percent, are contained within the borders of a single county. In less populated regions, a district must, of necessity, spread out to meet its population number. But, as the maps above show, that's not always the reason for the shifting lines. The state's major cities are carved into all manner of peculiar bits and pieces to assemble state House, Senate and even Congressional districts. Fort Lauderdale and Orlando are each divvied up into four congressional districts, often being grouped with smaller rural communities that share little common interest. It is also clear that the integrity of county lines is not a concern when district lines are drawn. As we mentioned before, only one of the state's 25 congressional districts is wholly contained in one county. Among the rest, one includes some or all of 16 counties, and the average number of counties per district is 4.8. Miami-Dade and Broward counties are in five congressional districts. Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval counties are in three. The state House and Senate are not much better. In the House, 59 -- slightly less than half -- of the districts fall within one county. One district takes in portions of 10 counties, and the average number of counties included wholly or partially in a state House seat is 1.96. Only seven of the 40 state Senate seats fall within one county, and on average, senate districts spread over three counties. What about the claim that districts "go for 150 to 200 miles?'' Many do, as our rough approximations illustrate. Strictly speaking, there are not "dozens'' that run over 150 miles, but there are at least nine on our list, and if you loosen the standard slightly to take in those over 140 miles, we found 13. One might argue that districts should be measured not just from end to end, but by the sprawling territory they take up, which would likely add to the list. Whether it would get it to "dozens'' is debatable. Inarguably, the districts meander and wind in jagged jigsaw patterns that crisscross cities and counties. We highlighted more than three-dozen examples. With a slight penalty for fuzzy math on the number of giant districts, we rate Freidin’s claim Mostly True. | null | Ellen Freidin | null | null | null | 2010-12-21T20:29:05 | 2010-12-13 | ['None'] |
pose-00654 | Work with every member of the Republican Conference to identify a spending cut that they can champion as part of the YouCut program. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/gop-pledge-o-meter/promise/684/have-every-member-of-the-house-republican-conferen/ | null | gop-pledge-o-meter | Eric Cantor | null | null | Have every member of the House Republican conference champion a YouCut program | 2010-12-22T09:57:30 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02114 | Musician Kid Rock died in July 2017. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kid-rock-death-hoax/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Kid Rock Death Hoax | 4 July 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09251 | If you will go look up the definition of 'act of God,' we've used it in legal terms for a long time in this state. | true | /texas/statements/2010/may/05/rick-perry/gov-rick-perry-says-oil-rig-explosion-could-have-b/ | Two Texas Republicans have invoked God's ways in dramatic fashion recently. State Rep. Leo Berman of Tyler called Democratic President Barack Obama "God's punishment on us" April 24. And this week, Gov. Rick Perry suggested the April 20 British Petroleum oil rig explosion on the Gulf Coast could have been an "act of God." Perry, speaking Monday at a governors conference about job creation sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, warned that banning offshore drilling could hurt the economy. "From time to time, there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented," he said. Critics howled that Perry was dismissing the situation's seriousness. A day later, Perry defended the comment. He told reporters: "Here's what I said, and I think it's an interpretation issue with one reporter, is what I think. If you will go look up the definition of 'act of God,' we've used it in legal terms for a long time in this state and the — nobody knows what happened, and I said that in my remarks, that there were, you know, a lot of speculation. It could have been an act of God, it could have been, you know, who knows?" Texas law works in mysterious ways? Barron's Law Dictionary defines "Act of God" as the "manifestation of the forces of nature which are unpredictable and difficult to anticipate; 'the result of the direct and immediate and exclusive forces of nature, uncontrolled or uninfluenced by the power of man and without human intervention, [which] is of such character that it could not have been prevented or avoided by foresight or prudence.' Examples are tempests, lightning, earthquakes and a sudden illness or death of a person." The legalese dates back to Roman law, and judges have since continued to rule that an act of God doesn't depend on divine influence. In 1609, a British court ruled that a fire caused by lightning was an act of God. In 1785, a court ruled a fire not caused by lightning wasn't, according to a 1996 article in the American Journal of Public Health. Steve Bickerstaff, an adjunct law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that when someone who has previously expressed a strong religious affiliation — like Perry — calls an oil rig explosion an act of God, it sounds like that person is suggesting the disaster is celestial retribution. Bickerstaff said: "My first reaction was, 'Oh, no — we're back to God taking revenge on us. But, actually, the term act of God has very prominent historical significance, very commonly used in contracts." Bickerstaff concurred that the term has had historic uses in Texas and the United States, and it's in most contracts, particularly between big businesses. Take a house knocked down by an earthquake. Did someone cause that? "Well, if they didn't build the house adequately according to code and requirements, then yes," Bickerstaff said. "But the earthquake itself is an act in which they have no control." And the oil rig explosion? No way to know yet, Bickerstaff said. "Was the company negligent? Was it BP, or the company operating the rig? I don't know. Was the system flawed in some way? We don't know." We're not endeavoring to judge, so to speak, whether the rig explosion was an "act of God." That said, we quickly found several state laws that use the phrase. It's illegal for a railway company to obstruct a street, railroad crossing or public highway for more than five minutes, but "it's a defense to the prosecution under this section that the train obstructs the street, railroad crossing or public highway because of an act of God or breakdown of the train," according to a transportation law that took effect in 1995. An insurance carrier isn't liable to pay for an employee's injury if, among other exceptions, the injury "arose out of an act of God, unless the employment exposes the employee to a greater risk of injury from an act of God than ordinarily applies to the general public," according to a 1993 law about workers' compensation. An agriculture-related law that took effect in 2003 protects people who violate rules about artificially controlling the weather if they can prove the violation "was caused solely by an act of God, war, strike, riot or other catastrophe." A law enacted in 1997 similarly protects people who violate certain state water laws. Summing up: We're not judging whether the BP explosion was an "act of God." That said, Perry's follow-up statement reflects the term's prevalence in law. We rate that statement as True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2010-05-05T22:51:20 | 2010-05-04 | ['God'] |
pomt-12072 | Hurricane Irma is "predicted to come through Mexico, hit us and everything in between up to Houston." | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2017/sep/01/blog-posting/map-showing-hurricane-irma-path-hit-houston-fake-n/ | A map showing that government officials predict Hurricane Irma is on a path to hit Houston is fake news. "Everyone needs to pay attention to Hurricane Irma," read a Facebook post on Aug. 31, 2017. (The post has since been deleted.) "She’s predicted to come through Mexico, hit us and everything in between up to Houston. She's already a Category 2 and hasn't even got into warm water yet." The post uses the official logo of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has a map showing a projected path of the storm. It had been shared more than 36,000 times on Sept. 1, 2017. Joe Maley, the author of the post, did not respond to our request for comment. The National Weather Service took the rare step of debunking the forecast on Twitter on Sept. 1, 2017, flagging the post as fake. "Keep your eyes out for fake forecasts. THIS is what an official NOAA advisory looks like. Note: forecast only goes out 5 days. #Irma," the National Weather Service tweeted. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com "National Weather Service issued a tweet in response to a Facebook post by someone who is not an employee of NOAA, NWS or the National Hurricane Center," National Weather Service spokeswoman Maureen O'Leary told us. "The post included logos and language that could be mistakenly taken as an official forecast." As of this writing, the National Weather Service projects Irma’s probable path as moving in the direction of the Caribbean, but it’s still too early to tell where the storm will make landfall and whether it will impact the United States. U.S. code subjects people who counterfeit weather forecasts or falsely represent government-issued forecasts to fines or imprisonment for under 90 days. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2017-09-01T15:41:14 | 2017-08-31 | ['Mexico', 'Houston'] |
snes-04770 | The Obama administration has proposed revising power guidelines that could affect eagles, but the President hasn't issued a "kill order" allowing the slaughter of thousands of bald eagles per year. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-gives-kill-order-for-bald-eagles/ | null | Politicians | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Obama Issues ‘Kill Order’ for Bald Eagles | 13 May 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02500 | In just over a year, more than sixty holistic health practitioners have died suspicious deaths, and the media refuses to acknowledge that these deaths might be linked. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/holistic-doctor-death-conspiracy/ | null | Medical | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Have Sixty Holistic Doctors Died Suspicious Deaths In the Past Year? | 3 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00407 | In a speech in Butuan City on June 17, Duterte promised the military top-tier defense equipment and quality health services, and said: | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-can-president-order-coa-bypass-govt-bi | The president got three things wrong. | null | null | null | Duterte,commission on audit | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Can the president order COA to bypass gov't bidding rules? | July 17, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01111 | Hotel key cards being used for identity theft? | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/keycards/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Hotel key cards being used for identity theft? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01965 | Queen Elizabeth Did “Ban” Obamas From Attending Royal Wedding, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/queen-elizabeth-not-ban-obamas-royal-wedding-prince-harry-meghan-markle/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Queen Elizabeth Did NOT “Ban” Obamas From Attending Royal Wedding, Despite Report | 2:59 pm, December 25, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08275 | On toll roads. | half flip | /wisconsin/statements/2010/nov/09/scott-walker/scott-walker-has-shifted-tone-highway-tolls/ | For as long as there have been roads in Wisconsin, the notion of rigging them with tolls has been only slightly less popular than, say, abolishing deer hunting. Badger State motorists turn red with ire every time they head down I-94 toward Chicago and have to scrounge for change. So, it was notable late in the 2010 campaign when Governor-elect Scott Walker expressed support for certain tolls. The Republican nominee assured voters he didn’t back full-fledged toll roads that require all motorists to pay. Rather, he was open to adding a faster-moving lane to freeways that drivers would pay a toll to use. That is, toll lanes. "I don't support tolls," Walker said in an Oct. 23, 2010, article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Tolls are where you have no options (on paying). I oppose tolls today just as much as I did in 2004." In 2004, Walker was running for re-election as Milwaukee County executive. He promised not only to block any toll ways but also any new fees. All of which means it’s time to break out the Flip-O-Meter, which we use to determine whether someone has flip-flopped on an issue. Walker’s support for toll lanes drew at least two accusations of flip-flopping in the days before the Nov. 2 election. One came from Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, who created a website called www.notolltax.com. Another came in a radio ad from the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund, an arm of the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee. So, let’s sort this out, using a timeline of Walker’s statements. 2004: During his re-election campaign for county executive, Walker distributed a flier promising voters he would do 10 things, one being:"Block any attempt to increase taxes or create new fees, including toll ways." So: Not only no toll roads, but no to any new fees. Feb. 19, 2009: Two months before announcing his campaign for governor, Walker reacted to news that Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle would be open to charging tolls on state highways, possibly for express lanes. Walker said he was generally opposed to tolls, but that the concept of a so-called HOT lane was worth discussing. High-occupancy toll lanes give motorists the option of paying a toll to use a less congested lane. In some places, drivers who have one or more passengers can use the HOT lanes without paying. So: Opposed to toll roads, but open to toll lanes, which would create a new fee for those who want to use them. Aug. 6, 2010: In a debate, Walker repeated his opposition to toll roads. But in an interview, he said he was open to allowing drivers to pay to use express lanes. Again, opposed to toll roads, but open to toll lanes and the fees that go with them. Oct. 19, 2010: Walker told the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin he supports putting tolls on new highway express lanes. That was the move that prompted news stories and the flip-flop cries from opponents. So, where has this historical drive taken us? Walker has consistently opposed traditional toll roads, but as toll lanes emerged as an option, he embraced them in concept and finally endorsed them. In arguing he has not flipped on the issue, Walker actually provides some additional evidence he has at least twisted a bit: His 2004 promises list included a pledge not to create any new fees, but his support for toll lanes amounts to a user fee to drivers who want to use the faster lane. In our estimation, with his position on tolls, Walker has done a Half-Flip. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2010-11-09T09:00:00 | 2010-10-19 | ['None'] |
huca-00027 | "I think small businesses should be paying less taxes, we just have to make sure that it's done right ... We have to know that a large percentage of small businesses are actually just ways for wealthier Canadians to save on their taxes and we want to reward the people who are actually creating jobs." Justin Trudeau, in an interview with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, broadcast on Sept. 8. | a little baloney | https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/10/baloney-meter-did-trudeau-unfairly-smear-small-business-owners-as-tax-dodgers_n_8115754.html?utm_hp_ref=ca-baloney-meter | null | null | then that five or 10 could be a large number. So it depends on your frame of reference." | Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press | null | Justin Trudeau's Tax Dodgers Claim About Small Business Contains 'A Little Baloney' | 09/10/2015 09:43 EDT | broadcast on Sept. 8. | ['Justin_Trudeau', 'Canada', 'Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporation'] |
snes-06312 | The staff of snopes.com were arrested after a law enforcement raid. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snopes-staff-members-arrested-law-enforcement-raid/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Mikkelson | null | Were Snopes Staff Members Arrested in a Law Enforcement Raid? | 13 September 2010 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12860 | The chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion. | mostly true | /california/statements/2017/feb/01/ted-lieu/odds-youll-be-killed-terror-attack-america-refugee/ | President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration halts the admission of all refugees into the United States for four months as the federal government develops stronger vetting systems. It places an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. Trump has cited national security concerns as the reason for his order, and during his campaign he called Syrian refugees "a great Trojan horse" that could lead to future terrorist attacks. In addition to the refugee halt, his order also suspends immigration for citizens of seven majority Muslim countries for 90 days. They are: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Critics of Trump’s action say the notion that refugees represent a terrorist threat is false. They say the chance of being killed in a terror attack by a refugee is beyond remote. "The chances of being struck by lightning TWICE is 1 in 9 million. The chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion," California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu said on Jan. 27, 2017 in a press release. "These facts lead me to conclude that Trump's action is not based on national security, it is based on bigotry. Lady Liberty is crying." We decided to fact-check Lieu’s claim that the "chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion." We interpreted his statement to apply to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Before we start, here’s some background on refugees: The U.S. Code defines a refugee as any person outside of the U.S. that is of special humanitarian concern to the U.S. and "has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion," according to the Pew Research Center. America accepted large waves of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, followed by high numbers from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. More recently, refugees from Somalia, Burma, Bhutan and Syria have been granted refugee status and resettled in the United States. Refugees are the most heavily vetted of any people who enter the United States, facing an 18- to 24-month processing period, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Our research A spokesman for Lieu cited a September 2016 study by the Cato Institute called Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis, as evidence for the claim. Cato is a Washington D.C.-based think tank that advocates for limited government, free markets and greater immigration admissions. Its study does, indeed, conclude that "the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year." Here’s what the study reported: "Of the 3,252,493 refugees admitted from 1975 to the end of 2015, 20 were terrorists, which amounted to 0.00062 percent of the total. In other words, one terrorist entered as a refugee for every 162,625 refugees who were not terrorists. Refugees were not very successful at killing Americans in terrorist attacks. Of the 20, only three were successful in their attacks, killing a total of three people." To arrive at the "1 in 3.64 billion per year" statistic, Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato study’s author, told us he added up the nation’s population for each year between 1975 and 2015, and then divided the total by the three deaths. Lieu omitted the "per year," portion in his claim, though we did not view this as an egregious oversight. In his study, Nowrasteh notes that a trio of Cuban refugees carried out the three fatal attacks in the 1970s. Not a single refugee, Syrian or otherwise, has been implicated in a terrorist attack since the Refugee Act of 1980 set up systematic procedures for accepting refugees into the United States, the report adds. The study draws on data from a Global Terrorism Database maintained at the University of Maryland, College Park. Origin of past terror attacks Trump’s executive action affects many categories of immigrants from students to employers to refugees. Refugees, however, have not been the primary perpetrators of any of the country’s major terror attacks that killed Americans in recent decades. A Somali refugee injured nine people in a knife and car attack in November 2016 on the Ohio State University campus before he was shot dead. None of the victims died. Many of the major terror attacks that have killed Americans were carried out by U.S.-born citizens or permanent legal residents from countries not included in the ban. Here’s a look at the origin of those responsible for major attacks in recent years: 9/11 terror attacks Of the 19 people who hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, all entered the United States legally on a temporary visa, most on tourist visas. They were not refugees and they were not from any of the seven countries in Trump’s executive order. San Bernardino attacks Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people and injured 22 others in December 2015 in San Bernardino. Farook was an American citizen born in Chicago. Malik was born and raised in Pakistan. She arrived in the United States on a fiancée visa and later became a permanent resident. Boston Marathon bombings Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, were born in Kyrgyzstan to parents from war-torn Chechnya. Three people were killed and at least 264 were injured in the attack. The Tsarnaev family arrived in the United States in 2002 and was granted political asylum. Asylum is typically granted to people already in the United States who have fled persecution in their home country. Refugees are generally people outside their home country, and have applied for resettlement. Orlando Omar Mateen, the Orlando nightclub shooter was a U.S. citizen and son of Afghan immigrants. He shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others inside a gay nightclub in June 2016. Experts weigh in We asked experts on refugees and terrorism to evaluate the Cato study, and the claim at the center of this fact check. "Having gone through the methodology they used, the figure of one in 3.6 billion is absolutely correct. It is a well-done analysis based on available data," said UC Irvine Professor Ruben Rumbaut, a leading expert on refugee resettlement in the United States. Joel Day, a visiting research scholar at the University of San Diego and expert on terrorism, said the Cato study draws from reliable sources, including the Global Terrorism Database, considered the best of its kind. Day said he agreed with the study’s methodology, adding "I think their data is absolutely right." Another expert, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stricter immigration policies, said the "one in 3.6 billion" statistic from the Cato study includes too many qualifiers. Notably, he said, it excludes terrorist attacks by refugees that did not kill anyone and those "we’ll never know about" foiled by law enforcement. "It’s not that it’s wrong," Krikorian said of the Cato study, but its author "is doing everything he can to shrink the problem." Kathleen Newland, a senior fellow and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute, said she believes the Cato study is credible. Her own work, she said, has shown there’s "vanishingly small probability," that an American would be murdered by a refugee in a terrorist attack. Newland said her only disagreement with the study is its designation of the three Cuban refugees as terrorists. In her evaluation, she said, the crimes they committed don’t strictly amount to terrorism. In opinion polls, Americans have expressed worry over accepting a large number of Syrian refugees. Newland said people tend to lump refugees in with all categories of immigrants, without considering the data showing how infrequently refugees are involved with terror attacks. "I think people just don’t make the distinction between categories of people," she said. Our ruling California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu recently said the "chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion." Lieu’s claim is backed by a September 2016 study by the Cato Institute. It’s important to clarify, however, that its study examined terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, something Lieu does not explicitly state. Also, the Cato study says the odds of an attack are one in 3.6 billion "per year." Without these words, Lieu’s claim could be viewed as slightly understating the odds, but we did not view his omission as egregious. Several experts on terrorism and refugees examined the Cato study and told us its methodology and conclusions were credible. One said the study had too many qualifiers, but did not dispute its data. A high-profile terror attack involving a Somali refugee took place in November 2016, after the period examined by the study. Nine people were injured in that attack, but there were no fatalities. This is a notable piece of information, but does not take away from the accuracy of the congressman’s claim regarding the "chances of being killed by a refugee" or the study he cited as its source. Lieu’s statement is accurate, though it needs a couple clarifications or additional information. We rate it Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/27a77628-e6d7-4170-98a6-a2078ecebdc5 | null | Ted Lieu | null | null | null | 2017-02-01T13:50:08 | 2017-01-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-07096 | Says Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Julio Robaina "has the highest salary among Florida mayors. More than $260,000." | half-true | /florida/statements/2011/jun/23/common-sense-now/gimenez-group-says-robaina-highest-paid-mayor-flor/ | In the June 28, 2011 Miami-Dade mayor's race, the opposing camps have tried to portray the other side as living high off the government hog. PolitiFact Florida has been watching the tit-for-tat, and trying to keep all of the tax dollars straight. Previously we explored a claim from supporters of former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, who said former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez "drove a fancy European car at taxpayer expense" like recalled Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Alvarez. We found the claim Half True, noting the deals for Gimenez and Alvarez were not identical, and that taxpayer-funded cars are a common perk for South Florida politicos. Now, we're checking a claim from the other side. A group called Common Sense Now is airing an ad criticizing Robaina, and specifically, his salary while Hialeah mayor. "Say no to Mayor Julio Robaina ... No to Mayor Robaina because he has the highest salary among Florida mayors. More than $260,000," the ad claims (as $50 bills float around the screen no less). "More than our governor and U.S. Senators." Is that true? Hialeah has what's considered a strong mayor, in that the mayor acts like a city manager and serves as the executive of government. The position comes with a full-time salary, two expense accounts and access to city vehicles. The current city budget includes a salary of $155,243, a $75,019 expense account and an additional $41,616 for travel/per diem, or $271,878. (The city did cut its health insurance cost to Robaina, because Robaina gave back 7 percent of his base salary as an extra insurance contribution. That brings his total compensation to around the $260,000 cited in the ad). The ad, as you can tell, is including the expense account and travel budget in calculating Robaina's salary. But that's not altogether inappropriate. Unlike most situations, Robaina got the full amount of the expense account and travel budget whether or not he spent that money on travel or city expenses. In other words, Robaina did not have to submit receipts to get reimbursed for expenses, travel or per diem. "Expenses" could go toward anything he needs for city business, and whatever he didn't spend he could keep. "He doesn't have to show us what he uses it for," said Hialeah finance director Vivian Parks. "The intention is the mayor has to do a lot of city business on his own time and he doesn't get reimbursed for any of that. This is to cover his travel, his meals and his expenses for all city-related business." Check registers from 2010 and 2011 confirm that payments for salary, expenses and travel all were directly deposited to Robaina. And all three sources of money would be considered income for tax purposes. What's difficult to figure out, of course, is how much of that money Robaina spent on city business (which he could deduct from his income for tax purposes), and how much he pocketed as what most people would classify as salary. We called Robaina, but did not hear back. No matter, the setup -- or at least the size of the expense accounts -- appears unique within Florida government. We contacted several other large cities and asked about annual salaries and expenses for mayors. We couldn't find any in excess of $260,000. In Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tampa and Jacksonsville -- all strong mayor positions -- mayors made anywhere from $150,000 to $175,000. But none had expense accounts like Robaina. The mayors in those cities are reimbursed for city expenses. As for Robaina earning more than Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Senators, it again comes down to the expenses. Senators earn $174,000 in salary and travel expenses come out of an office budget. Florida's governor is paid $130,273 (though Scott is declining a salary) though most of a governor's expenses, including housing, are paid for by the state. We also checked the position of Miami-Dade mayor, the job Robaina wants. County spokeswoman Vanessa Santana-Penate said the mayor's last annual salary was about $233,000 with around an additional $80,000 in benefits. But not all of those benefits are income, and not all of them come up front like they do in Hialeah. So it's clear on salary vs. salary, Alvarez made more. But when you factor in the expenses, it becomes more difficult to say. J.C. Planas, an attorney for the Gimenez campaign told us it's right to include Robaina's expense accounts as salary because he "does not submit invoices or receipts to get reimbursed, but simply collects the amount regardless of whether he spends it or not." But Planas' explanation ignores the fact that the some of that money was being used to conduct city business -- even though Robaina did not have to turn in receipts. To recap, the Common Sense Now add said Robaina "has the highest salary among Florida mayors. More than $260,000." Robaina had a salary of around $155,000 -- which is in line with many strong mayors in Florida, though less than Miami-Dade mayor. But Robaina received more than $105,000 for expenses, which he got whether or not he used the money on business. Other mayors in Florida are reimbursed for their expenses. We don't know how much of that money was used for legitimate expenses. So it's not fair to include all of that money as straight "salary." We rate this claim Half True. | null | Common Sense Now | null | null | null | 2011-06-23T10:23:44 | 2011-06-20 | ['None'] |
abbc-00247 | Among the more alarming claims about the troubled National Broadband Network is an assertion that Kenya now has faster internet than Australia. | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/fact-check-nbn-broadband-australia-vs-kenya/9083562 | Mr Turnbull's claim is not the full story. Data compiled by Kenya's Communications Authority shows more than one-third (34.2 per cent) of Kenyans have access to broadband, after factoring in 15.4 million mobile subscriptions. However, it is unlikely that the millions of Kenyans using mobile broadband services would get faster speeds than the majority of Australians. Australia also has slightly faster mobile broadband than Kenya. These factors put Australia ahead of Kenya, but Mr Turnbull is not entitled to suggest that the scale of Australia's advantage is in the order of 90:1.5. Nor can he say that all but a handful of wealthy people in Kenya have no access to first-world telecoms. | ['internet-technology', 'turnbull-malcolm', 'liberals', 'kenya'] | null | null | ['internet-technology', 'turnbull-malcolm', 'liberals', 'kenya'] | Fact check: Is Malcolm Turnbull's comparison of Kenyan and Australian broadband valid? | Thu 23 Nov 2017, 12:01am | null | ['Australia', 'Kenya'] |
pomt-13488 | As governor, Ted Strickland left only 89 cents in Ohio’s rainy day fund. | true | /ohio/statements/2016/sep/08/us-chamber-commerce/heard-one-about-ted-strickland-and-89-cents/ | Ads against Democratic Senate candidate Ted Strickland are torpedoing Ohio airwaves, even as reports say that supporters of incumbent Sen. Rob Portman are scaling back their spending. One claim that has been repeated across multiple ads is about a handful of change: 89 cents, to be exact. "Eighty-nine cents," reads the script from the ad, paid for by the US Chamber of Commerce’s political action arm. "You can find that in your couch. Or your jeans. Or even under your floor mats. But as governor, Ted Strickland left only 89 cents in Ohio’s rainy day fund." It seems unlikely that so specific a number would be used without factual underpinning. We wanted to be sure it checked out. It does. In official-speak, Ohio’s rainy day fund is known as the Budget Stabilization Fund. When Strickland left office in January 2011, the fund had bottomed out to $0.89. Here’s a chart using data from Ohio’s Office of Management and Budget. It shows the ebb and flow of Ohio’s reserves, including the low point in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Where’d the reserves go? Stickland used $1 billion from the fund to balance the state budget in 2009, a move he and his campaign have defended. "I would not have had a rainy-day fund if I had listened to many Republicans," Stickland said in 2009. "I'm glad I held on to it. There is justification for it now." Kim Rueben, a state and local finance expert at the Urban Institute, told Columbus Business First that, "I wouldn’t blame a governor for spending budget stability funds in a time when you need to stabilize your budget." Yet the tiny reserve became a bit of Ohio lore. Brian Perera, the Ohio Senate’s former deputy chief of staff for budget and finance, even cut a check for $0.89 so he can say he personally doubled the state’s reserves. The reserve has grown since Strickland left office. Current Gov. John Kasich started to replenish the rainy day fund with a injection of $246.9 million in July 2011. The money came at the tail end of Strickland's final two-year budget even though he had left office. Today, the rainy day fund sits at over $2 billion, according to the state. Our ruling Campaign ads criticized Strickland for leaving Ohio’s rainy day fund at $.89 when he left office as governor. Strickland’s defenders say the recession that hit the United States and Ohio required Strickland and state officials to drain the $1 billion fund. And they note the fund started to be replenished at the tail-end of his final budget, even though Strickland had left office. But we don't think that affects the accuracy of this claim. We rate it True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2ce48995-a59a-4079-94eb-6d03717ebdf6 | null | U.S. Chamber of Commerce | null | null | null | 2016-09-08T13:12:51 | 2016-08-12 | ['Ted_Strickland', 'Ohio'] |
abbc-00174 | The Minerals Resource Rent Tax came into effect in July 2012 to tax "super profits" made by coal and iron ore producers. | in-the-green | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-22/abolish-the-mining-tax-promise-check/5349376 | null | ['mining-industry', 'liberals', 'tax', 'mining-environmental-issues', 'abbott-tony', 'australia', 'wa'] | null | null | ['mining-industry', 'liberals', 'tax', 'mining-environmental-issues', 'abbott-tony', 'australia', 'wa'] | Promise check: Abolishing the mining tax | Sun 8 May 2016, 7:37am | null | ['None'] |
goop-01917 | Gwen Stefani Did “Call Off Wedding” To Blake Shelton, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-wedding-blake-shelton-marriage-off/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Gwen Stefani Did NOT “Call Off Wedding” To Blake Shelton, Despite Report | 11:35 am, January 3, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00192 | A.A. Milne created the animal characters in 'Winnie-the-Pooh' to represent various mental disorders. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/winnie-the-pooh-mental-disorders/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Were ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ Characters Created to Represent Different Mental Disorders? | 21 August 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01240 | Stop over-testing. Over-testing is overwhelming our students and teachers and jeopardizing the quality of education provided in our schools. ... As governor, I will promote a statewide education policy that encourages creativity in the classroom, with personalized education plans, flipped classrooms and student governance, among others. | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/north-carolina/promises/coop-o-meter/promise/1331/less-standardized-testing-and-more-freedom-teacher/ | null | coop-o-meter | Roy Cooper | null | null | Less standardized testing and more freedom for teachers to craft lesson plans | 2017-01-05T19:16:20 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02032 | Beware of New Poisonous Spiders In the United States | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/bushspiders/ | null | insects | null | null | null | Beware of New Poisonous Spiders In the United States | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00588 | The entirety of North America -- Canada, the United States and Mexico -- there's more known reserves in those three countries than in Russia and Saudi Arabia. | mostly false | /new-hampshire/statements/2015/jun/05/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-us-canada-and-mexico-have-more-ene/ | Former Texas governor Rick Perry was talking energy in Deerfield when he decided to put the country’s resources in perspective. "The entirety of North America -- Canada, the United States and Mexico -- there's more known reserves in those three countries than in Russia and Saudi Arabia," Perry said at the 9 Lions Tavern on May 7. While energy production in the United States has certainly boomed in recent years, Perry’s statement seemed surprisingly broad. Could three North American countries really outrank oil-rich Russia and Saudi Arabia? We decided to check it out. Thankfully, there’s a U.S. government agency that keeps track of just this kind of data. It’s the Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy that collects statistics and does analysis on all topics related to energy. Going through the site’s tables, though, would seem to suggest that Perry is off track. Using its 2014 data set for crude oil proved reserves, Canada, the United States and Mexico had a combined total of 219.8 billion barrels. A hefty amount, no question. But Russia and Saudi Arabia have a combined crude oil proved reserves of 348.4 billion barrels. The vast majority of that -- 268.4 billion barrels -- is held by the Saudis. (There are questions about the reliability of the Saudi-reported numbers, but let’s put those aside for now.) That certainly doesn’t seem to support Perry’s contention. So we checked with his staff. They also sent along data from the Energy Information Administration, but not just crude oil reserves. Their numbers included coal and natural gas totals. Those 2014 numbers show North America has proven reserves of 422.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Russia and Saudi Arabia have combined reserves of 1,986.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with 1,688 trillion of that coming from Russia. Once again, the energy giants to the east win out. As for coal, North America looks to be the clear leader. While only data from 2011 is available, Canada, the United States and Mexico have 267,411 million recoverable short tons of coal in reserve. Of that, 258,619 tons are in the United States. Russia and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, have 173,074 million short tons of coal, all located in Russia. While Perry’s staff added the numbers from the various energy sources together to emphasize the former governor’s point, that’s misleading. The problem, put simply, is that each source of energy has a different kind of measurement. Barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and short tons of coal are not directly equivalent. As the EIA explains, one short ton of coal (or 2,000 pounds) produces 19,210,000 British thermal units (a basic heat measurement). One thousand cubic feet of natural gas produce 1,025,000 Btu. And a single barrel of oil produces 5,892,000 Btu. There is a way to measure all of the resources together, though. It’s called BOE, or barrels of oil equivalent. The Congressional Research Service uses a simple multiplier to equate natural gas and coal to petroleum. Using these figures, including proven oil and natural gas reserves and recoverable coal reserves, North America has roughly 1,217 billion BOE. Russia and Saudi Arabia have about 1,296 billion BOE. But energy is a tricky subject. Proven reserves aren’t the same as estimated or potential reserves. Extraction methods can improve, adding resources thought off-limits to the overall supply. Energy efficiency measures and the types of coal or petroleum used can introduce even more variables. Much remains to be learned. As Ryan Carlyle, a subsea hydraulics engineer, wrote on Quora in 2013: "Corporate reserve estimates are too low by an unknown amount, and national reserve estimates are too high by an unknown amount. And no one knows how much oil is still undiscovered." While the United States has a lot of recoverable coal reserves, there are questions as to whether it will ever be mined. New environmental regulations, legal action and overall costs make it more challenging for energy companies to use the fuel. That being said, Perry has been outspoken in his criticism of President Obama’s energy policy, including coal regulations, so a Perry administration could see a change in course. Our ruling Perry said "The entirety of North America -- Canada, the United States and Mexico -- there's more known reserves in those three countries than in Russia and Saudi Arabia." There is some basic truth to Perry’s statement. North America does have a large supply of petroleum, natural gas and coal. But combining the three fuel sources together is like comparing fossil fuel-based apples and oranges. Just comparing straight numbers, Perry was right about coal, but wrong on natural gas and crude oil. We rate his statement Mostly False. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2015-06-05T13:45:08 | 2015-05-07 | ['United_States', 'Canada', 'Russia', 'Mexico', 'Saudi_Arabia', 'North_America'] |
tron-00949 | New Facebook Virus “spreading like wildfire” | virus! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/koob-face-virus-warning/ | null | computers | null | null | null | New Facebook Virus “spreading like wildfire” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01797 | Claims About Brain-Boosting Inteligen Pill Supplement | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/claims-brain-boosting-inteligen-pill-supplement/ | null | health-medical | null | null | ['facebook', 'scams'] | Claims About Brain-Boosting Inteligen Pill Supplement | Oct 11, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10484 | I'm the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/15/barack-obama/obamas-more-right-than-he-knows/ | Illinois Sen. Barack Obama recently confronted the issue of equal rights for gays and lesbians with some history about his life. "I'm the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born," he told TheAdvocate.com. Obama made the remark during a wide-ranging interview about issues affecting the gay, bisexual and transgender community with a Web site for gay and lesbian readers. Obama said his perspective about rights for same-sex couples is shaped by the broader political and historical context of his upbringing. Such laws were more widepsread than Obama realizes. At the time of his birth Aug. 4, 1961, 22 states banned interracial marriages, not 12. (For those counting: Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.) But it was never an issue for his white American mother and black Kenyan father, who lived in Hawaii. The island state is one of only nine that never declared these marriages illegal. At one time or another, laws against miscegenation were active in close to 40 states. In 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the bans unconstitutional in the landmark Loving vs. Virginia ruling, 16 states were still enforcing them, said Peter Wallenstein, a Virginia Tech history professor and pre-eminent scholar on the subject. Wallenstein said that although his number is off, Obama's point is still striking a chord with younger supporters who "can't imagine there was ever a time" when mixed marriages were illegal. We can't give Obama a straight-up true because his number is way off, but his larger point, that many states prohibited interracial marriage in the early 1960s, is correct. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-04-15T00:00:00 | 2008-04-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-09683 | Under the House health care bill, the government "will have to penalize citizens if we choose not to buy a plan that will cost a minimum of about $15,000 per family per year." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/13/sarah-palin/sarah-palin-says-health-care-reform-will-be-costly/ | Sarah Palin may be in the midst of launching her new book, Going Rogue , but she still found time to post a note on her Facebook page criticizing the Democratic plans for health care. Her note, titled "Pelosi 'Health Plan' Should Be DOA," argued that people shouldn't be compelled by the government to purchase health insurance. She also wrote that the House Democrats' measures for enforcing the new requirement, known as the individual mandate, are overly punitive. "If you don't buy what the government considers 'acceptable health care coverage,' you’re going to be hit with a tax of at least 2.5% of your income," Palin wrote. "And if you don’t pay that new tax, you could be fined as much as $250,000 and sentenced to up to five years in prison. "But here’s the thing: they have to make the penalty for opting out very harsh in order to force us to buy coverage. The only way to keep this government run health care plan afloat is for everyone to buy into it – especially young and healthy people. That means that they will have to penalize citizens if we choose not to buy a plan that will cost a minimum of about $15,000 per family per year." Palin is correct that the Democratic plan requires everyone to buy insurance or face a tax penalty. The fines and jail terms, though, are not part of the health care bill, but rather the tools the Internal Revenue Service uses against tax cheats. (We ruled on a similar statement about jail terms and fines for those who don't buy health insurance and rated it Barely True .) Here, we wanted to check out whether the plan requires people to buy plans that cost $15,000 per family per year. Here's how the overall plan for reform works: It largely leaves in place the current system for people who get insurance through work, people who have access to the Veterans Administration, and people on Medicare or Medicaid (government-run health insurance plans for the elderly and the poor, respectively). The people who will see the most immediate changes under the health bill are those who have to buy insurance on their own, and the uninsured. The House Democratic plan overhauls the rules for insurers who sell to individuals by creating a virtual marketplace called a health insurance exchange. On the exchange, individuals can compare plans and buy coverage. People of modest means will get a tax credit from the government to help them buy a plan. The poorest people will be enrolled in Medicaid. The $15,000 number that Palin cites comes from a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a respected, independent federal office that calculates costs associated with pending legislation. The CBO found that in 2016, when the reforms are fully implemented, the annual cost of a basic family policy on the health care exchange will be $15,000. So when Palin says people will have to buy policies that "will cost a minimum of about $15,000 per family per year," that applies only to people who buy insurance on their own. For comparison, the average family policy in 2009 for someone who gets insurance through work is $13,375, according to an analysis from the independent Kaiser Family Foundation. The employer typically pays $9,860 of the policy, while the worker pays the remaining $3,515. People on the exchange will have to pay for the policies on their own, unless they qualify for tax credits to help them buy coverage. The tax credits are on a sliding scale; the House bill says that people who make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level will qualify for credits. This year, 400 percent of the federal poverty level means $88,200 for a family of four and $43,320 for a single person. Palin said that under the House health care bill, the government "will have to penalize citizens if we choose not to buy a plan that will cost a minimum of about $15,000 per family per year." She's correct that they will be penalized if they don't have insurance. But her statement is misleading in two ways. For many who have health insurance through work, they won't have to pay $15,000 for the family plan because their employer will pay a lot of that. (The average employer would pay about three-fourths, if the current ratio continues.) For people of modest means, the government will give them a tax credit, so it won't cost them the full $15,000, either. The people who will have to pay the full amount will be people who have access to no other insurance and make more than 400 percent of the poverty level. Palin's statement implies that everyone will be forced to buy a family plan that costs them $15,000. In fact, only a small percentage of people would be forced to pay that full amount. So we rate her 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 | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2009-11-13T17:02:57 | 2009-11-12 | ['None'] |
snes-00537 | Starbucks is giving away free coffee for a year to anyone who can damage their new "shatter-proof" windows. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/starbucks-shatter-proof-windows/ | null | Junk News | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Is Starbucks Installing ‘Shatter-Proof Windows’? | 29 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00354 | Recent COA report on pork barrel scam involving Pangilinan | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/week-fake-news-there-no-recent-coa-report-pork-barrel-scam-i | null | null | null | null | fake news,sara duterte,kiko pangilinan,liberal party | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: There is NO recent COA report on pork barrel scam involving Pangilinan | October 13, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01721 | Hillary Clinton said women voted for Donald Trump because they "caved" to pressure from the men around them. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-women-caved-voting/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Hillary Clinton Says Women ‘Caved’ to Men in Voting Against Her? | 15 September 2017 | null | ['Donald_Trump'] |
pomt-00156 | Say Maine U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin "voted to gut your retirement benefits." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/oct/24/maine-democratic-party/maine-democratic-party-overstates-poliquins-plans/ | What’s the difference between a trim, a cut or a jagged, painful gutting? The Maine Democratic Party prompts such a question, thanks to a mailer it sent to homes in much of the state. It accuses Bruce Poliquin, the incumbent Republican in Maine’s expansive 2nd Congressional District, of "voting to gut your retirement benefits." The flyer then breaks this down, saying Poliquin has "turned his back on us by: "Voting to gut Social Security "Supporting a raises in the retirement age and capping cost of living increases for Social Security. "Voting to cut $500 billion from Medicare "Voting for a tax plan that rewards his donors but adds nearly $2 trillion to the debt, and will force cuts to Social Security and Medicare." That’s enough to make any retiree frugal, and by necessity, too. But it also appears to be overkill. Here’s why. Retirement "gutting" Some of the ad’s claims are based on a series of votes by Poliquin to approve tax cuts and a federal budget blueprint. Poliquin supported the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which reduced individual and corporate income tax rates. The Maine Democrats’ flyer provides footnotes to explain how this could affect Social Security and Medicare, and how the tax plan helped Poliquin’s donors. The $1.5 trillion tax package was promoted as a way to propel the economy, because companies would have more money to invest and hire, and families would have more disposable income. Poliquin’s donors presumably supported the cuts, but it is impossible to say whether his retiree-donors — who have given more than $368,468 for his re-election — like them more or less than people behind the business PACs that have given him $1.25 million, or any other donors who helped make up his $3.6 million campaign chest, as of Sept. 30. The only thing certain about that is, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, about 45 percent of the tax cut benefits go to the top 5 percent of earners in the first year, and by 2027, 83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent. The tax cuts were paid for through borrowing, and that borrowing will help push annual deficits to over $1 trillion by the year 2020, the Congressional Budget Office says. The CBO agrees that the tax cuts will "increase the supply of labor and capital in the economy, thereby raising potential output." But counting interest, the tax cuts will nevertheless add a cumulative $1.9 trillion to the federal debt over the course of 10 years, the CBO projects. Democrats said from the start that the loss of tax revenue was certain to bolster Republicans’ calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which the GOP says are otherwise unsustainable. Together, they account for about 40 percent of all federal spending. In fact, in early December, 10 days before the House vote on tax cuts, U.S. News reported that House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress would "have to get back next year at entitlement reform" in order to tackle the debt and the deficit. The Democrats’ worries over this were bolstered recently when on Oct. 16, less than two weeks after the Maine Democrats approved their mailer and prepared to send it to homes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said spending on the retirement programs would need to be contained. McConnell blamed federal spending, not the tax cuts, for the problem. So how severe could this containment be, and would it amount to a gutting? McConnell and other Republicans have discussed for several years the possibility of shrinking the growth of Social Security and Medicare, not gutting it. Based on public discussions, this would involve delaying or trimming benefits for future retirees, not current ones. Other retirement changes This leads to the second part of the Maine Democrats’ claim — that Poliquin "has turned his back on us" by "supporting a raise in the retirement age and capping cost of living increases for Social Security." The Democrats cited a YouTube video from a 2011 breakfast speech to the Portland, Maine, Community Chamber of Commerce in which Poliquin, then the state treasurer, discussed a $4.3 billion shortfall in the state’s pension fund for teachers and state workers. To deal with it, he supported a proposal to limit cost-of-living increases for current retirees, require higher payments into the fund by those still working, and delay retirement — until age 65 — by workers there less than five years. That was a state pension issue, not a Social Security one. In Maine, employees in the public pension system don’t pay into Social Security and generally don’t draw its benefits. But the next year, when Poliquin ran unsuccessfully in a primary for U.S. Senate, he was quoted in National Review as saying he had a plan for saving Social Security: "The way to do it is raise the retirement age for new entrants and also slow down the rate of growth of benefits." Medicare cuts The other part of the Democrats’ claim is that Poliquin voted "to cut $500 billion from Medicare." This is based on his vote in 2017 for a nonbinding House budget blueprint that laid out Republican priorities, including cutting $487 million from the growth rate of Medicare over a decade. To make this cut, the House would gradually raise Medicare’s eligibility age, which is now 65, or lower than Social Security’s age for full benefits (which is now 66 and moving slowly to age 67). The Republican plan called for a "premium support" program, which means seniors would get a voucher so they could pick among private insurance plans or stick with traditional Medicare. PolitiFact in 2017 looked at a similar proposal from Senate Republicans — who called for a Medicare cut of $473 billion — and determined it would provide the program with 5.5 percent less than if Medicare continued at its current projected spending rate. Our ruling The Maine Democratic Party said Poliquin "voted to gut your retirement benefits." Technically, Poliquin did not vote to do anything to Social Security, although a discussion about cuts is likely. As he said in 2012 of Social Security, "The way to do it is raise the retirement age for new entrants and also slow down the rate of growth of benefits." Similarly, he voted for a budget blueprint that, while not binding, called for getting more insurers involved in Medicare, offering a "premium support" for it and gradually raising the program’s eligibility age. PolitiFact is not pollyannaish. There easily could be slices and dices, which is partly why we have rated claims that referred to that possibility — claims based on the tax and budget bills — as Half True. But "gut" is a strong word and, based on what is known, goes too far. We rate claim Mostly False. ' See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Maine Democratic Party | null | null | null | 2018-10-24T10:43:49 | 2018-10-05 | ['United_States'] |
clck-00029 | The temperature is not rising nearly as fast as the alarmist computer models predicted. You know, it’s much, much less, factors of 2 or 3 less. | incorrect | https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/cnn-interview-william-happer-incorrectly-claims-temperatures-dont-match-climate-model-projections/ | null | null | null | null | null | In CNN interview, William Happer incorrectly claims temperatures don’t match climate model projections | [' CNN, 22 April 2017 \xa0 '] | null | ['None'] |
goop-01324 | Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Want To Adopt “Multiracial Children” Like Angelina Jolie? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/prince-harry-meghan-markle-adopt-angelina-jolie/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Want To Adopt “Multiracial Children” Like Angelina Jolie? | 3:00 am, March 24, 2018 | null | ['Prince_Harry'] |
pomt-15344 | Bernie Sanders voted against the Brady Bill -- background checks and waiting periods. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/10/generation-forward-pac/did-bernie-sanders-vote-against-background-checks-/ | As hype around Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders grows, political opponents and media reporters are once again suggesting the socialist Vermont senator is a gun nut. "One issue your Democratic rivals are starting to hit you with is the fact that you have, in the past, sided with the NRA on some gun issues," CNN’s Jake Tapper said in a July 5 interview with Sanders, alluding to an attack ad paid for by a pro-Martin O’Malley group. "Bernie Sanders voted against the Brady Bill -- background checks and waiting periods," said the attack, which first aired June 25. "Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns." Sanders’ record on guns has been the subject of liberal ire ("Bernie Sanders, gun nut") as well as conservative glee ("Sorry liberals, Bernie Sanders is a gun nut"). So we wanted to take a look at his vote on the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a landmark piece of gun control legislation. The Brady Act mandated that everyone who wanted to buy a handgun had to wait five days while local law enforcement ran criminal background checks. (After 1998, the firearm dealers became responsible for conducting the checks.) But before Brady became law, it underwent many transformations. Sanders, elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, voted on it numerous times, virtually almost always in opposition: • In May 1991, Sanders voted against a version that mandated a seven-day waiting period for background checks, but the bill passed in the House. • The Senate decreased the waiting period to five days and the bill returned to the House. In Nov. 1991, Sanders voted against that version. Though it passed in the House, the Senate didn’t muster enough votes. The Brady bill and its gun control stance remained in limbo during 1992. • After some back and forth, a version of the bill resurfaced that reinstated the five day waiting period. In November 1993, Sanders voted against that version but for an amendment imposing an instant background check instead (seen by some as pointless, as the technology for instant checks didn’t exist at the time). • He also voted against an amendment that would have ended state waiting periods, and for an amendment giving those denied a gun the right to know why. • The final compromise version of the Brady bill -- an interim five-day waiting period while installing an instant background check system -- was passed and signed into law on Nov. 30, 1993. Sanders voted against it. According to Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ reason for opposing the Brady bill was two-fold. First, he believed implementing a national waiting period was federal overreach. And second, he was doing his job. "He wasn't opposed to states having (waiting periods) if they wanted to. The Republicans wanted to repeal waiting periods in states that had them, and Bernie voted that down," Weaver said. "He said he would be against waiting periods, and he kept his word to the people of Vermont." In April 1991, Sanders’ then-chief of staff Anthony Pollina echoed the idea that Sanders was simply representing the will of his constituents. "Bernie’s response is that he doesn’t just represent liberals and progressives. He was sent to Washington to present all of Vermont," Pollina said. "It’s not inappropriate for a congressman to support a majority position, particularly on something Vermonters have been very clear about." The Green Mountain State, though left-leaning, has a high gun ownership rate and lax gun control laws (as well as a low homicide rate). That and Sanders’ own personal views are reflected in his overall voting record, experts told us. "As a rural state with a large number of hunters and other gun owners, Vermont has been less liberal on guns than on most other issues, historically," explained Bertram Johnson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. "He seems to support more regulation of guns than the U.S. presently has, but he recognizes his constituents’ preferences so does not make gun control a priority." "I think he has disappointed many progressives in Vermont with his gun positions, which sort of walk a middle line – and angering both sides through the years," said Chris Graff, the former Vermont Associated Press bureau chief. "Gun control is a tough issue in Vermont for all politicians." Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose 2004 presidential bid is often compared to Sanders’ 2016 run, received high marks from the National Rifle Association. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy also voted against the Brady bill. For his part, Sanders has voted to tighten gun control about half the time, and to protect Second Amendment rights the other half. Here are his votes on key gun bills in his 25 years in Congress (bold reflects a pro-gun control position): Year Legislation Sanders’ Vote Result 1993 Imposes a five-day waiting period and background checks on firearm purchases, part of the Brady Bill Nay Passed 1993 Imposes instant background checks instead for firearm purchases, part of an amendment to Brady Bill Yea Passed 1993 Imposes an interim five-day waiting period while while waiting to put a instant background check system in place, part of Brady Bill conference report Nay Passed 1994 Bans semi-automatic assault weapons Yea Passed 1996 Repeals the semi-automatic weapons ban Nay Passed 1998 Increases minimum sentencing for gun crimes Yea Passed 1999 Creates "instant check registrants" and narrowly defines "gun shows," part of the Mandatory Gun Show Background Check Act Nay Failed 1999 Imposes three day waiting period for guns purchased at gun shows, part of an amendment to the Gun Show Act Yea Failed 2002 Allows pilots and flight personnel to carry firearms in the cockpit Yea Passed 2003 Prohibits lawsuits against firearm makers for unlawful misuse of a firearm Yea Passed 2005 Prohibits lawsuits against firearm makers for unlawful misuse of a firearm Yea Passed 2006 Prohibits funds from being used to enforce trigger locks on guns Nay Passed 2006 Increases the burden of proof for the AFT to penalize law-breaking gun dealers, as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reform bill Yea Passed 2007 Prohibits foreign aid funding restrictions on U.S. gun ownership, as an amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008 Yea Passed 2008 Prevents the use of funds for anti-gun programs as an amendment to the Indian Health Care Improvement Act Yea Passed 2009 Gives the District of Columbia seats in the House of Representatives and repeals the district’s ban on semi-automatic weapons Yea Passed 2009 Allows the use of firearms in National Parks Yea Passed 2009 Allows concealed and carry across state lines Nay Failed 2009 Allows firearms in checked baggage on Amtrak trains, as an amendment to the congressional budget Yea Passed 2009 Prohibits higher insurance premiums for gun owners, as part of an amendment to the Affordable Care Act Yea Passed 2013 Prevents the U.S. from entering the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, as an amendment to the congressional budget Nay Passed 2013 Allows concealed and carry across state lines in states where the practice is not prohibited Nay Failed 2013 Lists all people prohibited buying a firearm in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Yea Failed 2013 Bans high-capacity ammunition magazines carrying more than 10 rounds Yea Failed 2013 Bans assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines Yea Failed Sanders’ moderate stance is noted by firearm enthusiasts and gun control advocates alike. Former NRA research coordinator Paul Blackman says the group doesn’t consider Sanders "an anti-gunner," and he’s received mixed marks from NRA ranging from a C- to F. Brady Campaign president Dan Gross says Sanders has shown suppleness and evolution since those first Brady votes and added he isn’t a "gun lobby lapdog." Experts agreed that on guns, Sanders’ views are to the right of his Democratic rivals. "When it comes to guns, he’s not Ted Cruz, but he believes federal policy should be less intrusive than Martin O’Malley or Hillary Clinton," said Eric Davis, who studies Vermont politics at Middlebury College. "Guns are not an important issue for him, because they don’t fit into the class-based framework that Bernie looks at politics through." Our ruling An attack ad said, "Bernie Sanders voted against the Brady Bill -- background checks and waiting periods." The Brady bill imposed a five-day waiting period for would-be purchasers of handguns. Between 1991 and 1993, Sanders voted against it five times. He did, however, vote for a version of the bill that imposed instant background checks, and against an amendment that repealed state background checks. Experts noted Sanders’ votes were representative of Vermont’s gun owners and gun laws. Since the 1990s, his record on gun control is mixed. We rate the ad’s claim Mostly True. | null | Generation Forward PAC | null | null | null | 2015-07-10T10:00:00 | 2015-06-25 | ['None'] |
snes-02906 | President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a letter to the Smothers Brothers for making Americans laugh by mocking him on their show. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-smothers-brothers/ | null | History | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did President Lyndon B. Johnson Applaud the Smothers Brothers for Mocking Him? | 19 February 2017 | null | ['United_States', 'Smothers_Brothers', 'Lyndon_B._Johnson'] |
pomt-10686 | An anonymous e-mail says that Hillary Clinton advocates communism. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/12/chain-email/hillarys-no-red-menace/ | An anonymous chain e-mail maligns Hillary Clinton in the form of a "gotcha"-style quiz. The quiz lists six quotations, then asks which famous communist said it. Choices include Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and other Nazis, fascists and dictators. (We'll leave aside as a minor quibble the fact that communism and Nazism are completely different political philosophies.) Every quotation includes a "none of the above option." At the end of quiz, the punch line is that all the answers are "none of the above" — Hillary Clinton said those things! Get it? The problem with the quiz is that every statement is either taken out of context or edited to look worse than it is. In none of the circumstances was Clinton advocating communist-style government for the United States or socialistic economic policies. In some instances she was criticizing out-of-control government spending or the excesses of Big Business; at other times she was saying that complicated issues will require political consensus. Let's look at the quiz items one by one. • From the chain e-mail: "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." This is from 2004 remarks that Clinton made to a roomful of Democratic donors, some of whom paid $10,000 to attend the function, according to the Associated Press. She was discussing the need to end the Bush tax cuts in order to balance the budget. Her full quote was, "We're not coming to you, many of whom are well enough off that actually the tax cuts may have helped you, and say 'We're going to give you more.' We're saying, 'You know what, for America to get back on track and be fiscally responsible, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. ' " • From the chain e-mail: "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few. ... And to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." In this one, Clinton was giving a speech in May 2007 attacking the economic policies of the Bush administration. She slammed subsidies for oil and gas companies, tax incentives for companies that move jobs overseas, and excessive CEO pay, according to a report in the Concord (N.H.) Monitor . Notice the italicized phrases that were left out of the chain e-mail quote: "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few. Time to reject the idea of an on-your-own society and replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a we're-all-in-it-together society. " • From the chain e-mail: "(We) ... can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." Clinton was speaking at a forum on religion and public life hosted by CNN in June 2007. This quote was in reply to a question from a Catholic priest, who asked, "In an age in which there is, oftentimes, narrow and excessive individualism, how will you speak to our country about the need for sacrifice, restraint, when it comes to the critical issues of taxes, gun control, health care, and energy consumption?" Here's Clinton's more complete response about energy: "You know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil and the need to deal with global warming and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people." • From the chain e-mail: "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground." This quote is from the same CNN forum and question mentioned above, but on the health care issue. Clinton's full quote is a little more verbose and concerns the uninsured: "I think we could reach that agreement, and then we would have to start doing the hard work of deciding what we were going to do to make sure that they were not uninsured, because an uninsured person who goes to the hospital is more likely to die than an insured person. I mean, that is a fact. So what do we do? We have to build a political consensus, and that requires people giving up a little bit of their own turf in order to create this common ground." • From the chain e-mail: "I certainly think the free market has failed." This might be the most egregious of the quiz quotes, because it's taken from a long list of institutions that Clinton says have failed to help kids make good decisions. Clinton was responding to a question, again at the CNN forum, about how antiabortion and proabortion forces can work together to reduce abortions. Clinton said it was important for everyone to help teens make better decisions: "We have so many young people who are tremendously influenced by the media culture and by the celebrity culture, and who have a very difficult time trying to sort out the right decisions to make. And I personally believe that the adult society has failed those people. I mean, I think that we have failed them in our churches, our schools, our government. And I certainly think the, you know, free market has failed. We have all failed." • From the chain e-mail: "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched." Clinton's target here was oil companies. She alleged that they were gouging consumers by raising prices after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, according to a 2005 Washington Post story. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in our entire economy that they're being watched," she said in explaining her call for an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission. "I think human nature left to itself is going to push the limit as far as possible, and that's what you need a government regulatory system for: to keep an eye on people to make the rules of the game fair, to make a level playing field and not give anybody some kind of undue advantage." So is Hillary Clinton advocating communism? Hardly. The masked e-mailer hopes you might think so after reading a political tyrants' Hall of Fame list alongside truncated quotes about taking things away and the collective good. We give the mock quiz a failing grade, with extra points deducted for unabashed fearmongering. Its argument that Clinton advocates Marxism is not just False, it's Pants-on-Fire wrong. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2007-12-12T00:00:00 | 2007-12-12 | ['None'] |
pomt-10005 | His proposed budget would "cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/25/barack-obama/obama-promises-cut-deficit-half-four-years/ | Defending his budget at a news conference on March 24, President Barack Obama repeated his claim that his plan would cut the deficit in half in five years. "Both under our estimates and under the CBO estimates, both the most conservative estimates out there, we drive down the deficit over the first five years of our budget," Obama said. "The deficit is cut in half. And folks aren't disputing that." Earlier in the news conference, Obama said he'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. So we'll look at the picture from four and five years out. According to projections in the Obama administration's proposed budget , released at the end of February, the yearly deficit would go from $1.75 trillion in 2009 to $533 billion in 2013 and $570 billion in 2014. So obviously, by the administration's estimation, the deficit would be cut well more than half whether you measure it until the end of Obama's first term (four years), or five years out. The Congressional Budget Office projections — released a month later — were not as optimistic. The CBO, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, projected the 2009 deficit at $1.8 trillion, and forecast it would taper down to $672 billion in 2013, then to $749 billion in 2014. Still, even those numbers support Obama's assertion that he'd halve the deficit. So technically, Obama is correct. But it's a bit misleading. When Obama says he will halve the deficit, he's comparing it to a 2009 deficit that is massive and far, far above the norm. It's a deficit fueled by a major recession (translation: lost tax revenue) and boosted by costly recession-fixers like the bailouts last fall and the economic stimulus package passed in February. For comparison purposes, we note that the deficit in 2008 was $459 billion (and less than half that the year before). So the deficit is expected to nearly quadruple in 2009. That's the number Obama promises to cut in half. "It’s true, but it's very misleading," said Brian Riedl, a research fellow in federal budget policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "It's true because they quadrupled the deficit this year and then they'll cut that in half." Riedl notes that Obama's projected deficits in four and five years will be "significantly higher" than deficits before the recession. "It's quite easy to cut that in half," echoed Jonathan DeWald, a spokesman for the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that specializes in analysis of budget deficits. Obama was quick to point out that he inherited much of this year's goliath deficit. And he's mostly right. The deficit began skyrocketing before Obama ever took office. In January, the CBO projected the 2009 deficit would balloon to $1.2 trillion. A worsening economy, the burden of the economic stimulus package, and projected spending in Obama's budget led the CBO in late March to revise its 2009 deficit projection to $1.8 trillion. So Obama can't claim that he inherited the entire deficit. But suffice to say the huge jump in the 2009 deficit is not a result of Obama's proposed budget. We note one other point. Although Obama's budget plan is expected to more than halve the 2009 projected deficit in four and five years out, after that, the CBO projects that deficits will begin to grow again, and significantly. The CBO's 10-year outlook predicts a deficit of $1.2 trillion in 2019. That's far more pessimistic than the Obama administration's projections, which Obama rightly attributed in the news conference to different assumptions about the future growth of the economy. "Now, none of us know exactly what's going to happen six or eight or 10 years from now," Obama said. "Here's what I do know: If we don't tackle energy, if we don't improve our education system, if we don't drive down the costs of health care, if we're not making serious investments in science and technology and our infrastructure, then we won't grow 2.6 percent, we won't grow 2.2 percent. We won't grow." And to be extra clear, deficits are one-year snapshots. They represent a revenue versus expenses picture for that year. In other words, Obama is not saying he will be cutting the national debt by half in four or five years. To the contrary, the CBO projects the running total of the country's national debt — which was around $7 trillion when Obama took office — will increase to nearly $12 trillion in four years. In summary, Obama is correct when he says the CBO predicts that under Obama's budget plan, the deficit would be cut in half in five year. But he's comparing it to a year we all hope is a major anomaly, which makes the dramatic-sounding achievement much easier. So we rule his statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2009-03-25T19:44:58 | 2009-03-24 | ['None'] |
pomt-11891 | People who die from a home invasion make up a sad but minuscule .04% of all gun murders in the U.S. And over a third of them are killed by their own gun that the criminal has either stolen or wrestled from them. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2017/oct/25/michael-moore/michael-moore-flubs-stats-people-killed-guns-durin/ | Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas was to propose rewriting the Second Amendment, providing a laundry list of statistics to support his arguments for increased gun control. Moore suggested his "proposed 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" in an Oct. 4, 2017, Facebook post, three days after a gunman killed 58 and wounded 489 in a massacre at a Las Vegas country music festival. His recommendations included limiting the number of bullets a firearm magazine may hold, banning all automatic and semi-automatic guns, and storing guns outside of the home. "People who die from a home invasion make up a sad but minuscule .04 percent of all gun murders in the US. And over a third of them are killed by their own gun that the criminal has either stolen or wrestled from them," Moore wrote. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Polling shows that self-defense is the top reason most gun owners purchase their weapons, but we wondered whether Moore’s numbers were right. Do homicides during home invasions comprise 0.04 percent of all gun deaths in the United States? And are a third of those people killed with their own weapon? We attempted to contact Moore to learn what sources he used, but didn’t hear back. The figures we found in both cases are difficult to confirm, even for the experts. Elusive statistics Problem No. 1: The term "home invasion" isn’t necessarily used in crime-tracking data. Broadly, the term usually describes a break-in at a residence while the people who live there are present, or more specifically, when someone breaks into a home to rob or hurt the residents. Some jurisdictions use it and some don’t, but there is no universal definition or dataset. What would be called a home invasion is often reclassified as the eventual crime committed by the suspect — a robbery, a physical attack or so forth. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System tracks the location, weapon and crime being committed at the time of a violent death. But there’s no distinction about whether it was during a home invasion, or with the victim’s own firearm. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report and its Supplementary Homicide Report, which compile data voluntarily provided by local law enforcement agencies, track the number of homicides and whether another crime was being committed. Home invasion is not a specific category, however. Several experts on firearm statistics told us they hadn’t seen a recent study on either home invasions ending in homicide or who owned the weapon used, but Moore’s first point sounded somewhat reasonable. "Every year, there are about 100 burglary homicides in the U.S. If half of these were gun homicides, he would be in the right ballpark," University of Chicago Crime Lab co-director Harold Pollack said. "So the statistic isn’t wildly off base, but I haven’t seen a rigorous analysis. There’s no question that lethal home invasions are terrifying but rare events." When we checked 2015 FBI figures, for example, there were 13,455 reported homicides, and 102 of those happened during burglaries. That’s 0.76 percent of all homicides — but there was no mention of the term home invasion, or the weapon used to commit the homicide. It turns out there is one study that did come close to defining things the way Moore did, but Moore overstated the reported figure. A 2010 report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics noted that "between 2003 and 2007, approximately 2.1 million household burglaries were reported to the FBI each year on average. Household burglaries ending in homicide made up 0.004% of all burglaries during that period." That’s about 86 people killed during a burglary annually, but the 0.004 percent is from all burglaries, not just ones classified as home invasions. Furthermore, the report’s 0.004 percent is 10 times less than the 0.04 percent figure Moore stated. The study also does not specify a gun was the murder weapon, but rather counts every homicide regardless of how it was committed. Shannan Catalano, a statistician at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the datapoint was actually only a side note in her larger report from 2010, but showed how few homicide-related burglaries there were overall. Moore appeared to take the figure from her study, she said, but for some reason got the percentage wrong. Catalano suggested it may have been a typographical error, but had no way of knowing Moore’s intent. Catalano’s broader study used data from her agency’s National Crime Victimization Survey, which uses statistical samples from a cross-section of addresses around the United States to estimate crimes. She said she will update the study in 2018, using the National Incident Based Reporting System. Like everyone else we contacted, Catalano also did not know of a statistic that supported Moore’s second assertion about a third of people being killed with their own gun during these attacks at home. Several studies show owning a firearm greatly increases the risk of unintentional gun-related deaths. Philip Cook, a public policy professor at Duke University, said if a statistic showing people killed by their own weapon in home burglaries exists, it’s not widely known. "I’m quite sure that it’s not part of any of the standard databases," Cook said. "So it must be a one-time study by someone, probably of limited scope." Our ruling Moore said, "People who die from a home invasion make up a sad but minuscule .04 percent of all gun murders in the U.S. And over a third of them are killed by their own gun that the criminal has either stolen or wrestled from them." While Moore has a point that guns are rarely used when someone breaks into a home, it is difficult to confirm. After interviewing several experts and agencies, we only found one study that came close to supporting Moore’s assertion about the number of home invasion deaths. Even then, the report’s author said Moore misstated the scope and specifics. Our sources conceded that the homicide rate during burglaries is a tiny fraction of overall gun deaths, committed during burglaries or otherwise. But none of them, including federal agencies that track crime, could independently verify Moore’s figures about the owner of the weapon used in those crimes the way he claimed. We rate this statement Mostly False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Michael Moore | null | null | null | 2017-10-25T17:24:36 | 2017-10-04 | ['United_States'] |
goop-00574 | Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie Did Force Husbands To Go On Good Charlotte Tour, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/cameron-diaz-nicole-husbands-good-charlotte-tour/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie Did NOT Force Husbands To Go On Good Charlotte Tour, Despite Report | 10:17 am, July 26, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00358 | “NASA Will Pay You $18,000 To Stay In Bed And Smoke Weed For 70 Straight Days.” | none | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/05/nasa-wont-pay-smoke-weed/ | null | askfactcheck | Various Websites | Eugene Kiely | ['fake news'] | NASA Won’t Pay You to Smoke Weed | May 26, 2017 | [' Facebook post – Monday, January 2, 2017 '] | ['None'] |
vees-00254 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report likening Noynoy Aquino to father in opposing Marcos projects | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-report-likening-noynoy-aquino-father-o | null | null | null | null | Ferdinand Marcos,Ninoy Aquino,Bongbong Marcos,Noynoy Aquino,Dengvaxia | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Report likening Noynoy Aquino to father in opposing Marcos projects misleading | April 19, 2018 | null | ['Benigno_Aquino_III', 'Ferdinand_Marcos'] |
pomt-01034 | Since Gov. Nathan Deal office in 2011, the state’s rainy day fund has grown by 643 percent. | true | /georgia/statements/2015/jan/27/nathan-deal/deal-accurate-rainy-day-fund-being-replenished/ | Rebuilding the state’s reserve or rainy day fund is something Gov. Nathan Deal likes to crow about. In his 2013 State of the State address, the governor bragged that the rainy day fund had grown 226 percent since he took office in 2011. His staffers were all a-twitter about it then on, um, social media. The news this year, Deal said in his annual speech, is even better. The rainy day fund has grown a whopping 643 percent. It’s hard for most of us to get our minds around those kind of percentages. We knew it was big when the Dow Jones closed up 7.52 percent for 2014. When we heard the governor say the rainy day fund has soared 643 percent, our heads and the unflappable AJC Truth-0-Meter started spinning. First, a little background. Georgia, like other states, has a "rainy day" fund to carry it through tough economic times. The fund had $1.5 billion, or enough money to operate the state for 30 days, on July 1, 2007. But when the Great Recession hit, hurting Georgia harder than many states, the rainy day fund was drawn down to balance the 2008, 2009 and 2010 state budgets. By the end of the 2009 fiscal year, the state’s reserves had dwindled to $104 million. Most states were in the same boat. State rainy day funds collectively fell from $25.9 billion in FY 2007 to $10.4 billion in FY 2010, although they had bounced back to about $21.6 billion by last fall, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Note Alaska and Texas aren’t counted in those tallies because their large reserves skew the state averages.) "Since the Great Recession, states have done a relatively good job of rebuilding their reserves,’ said Arturo Perez, a financial analyst with NCSL. By the end of the current fiscal year, most states will have fund balances averaging about 5.8 percent of their revenues, Alaska and Texas not included, Perez said. At the low point, the average had dropped to 1.8 percent, he said. Georgia’s was at 4.5 percent at the end of 2014, Perez said. Now to check Deal’s calculations against state records. Georgia’s rainy day fund had $116,021,961 before Deal took office in 2011 and reached $377,971,440 by June 30, 2012, earning the governor a True rating from PolitiFact for his statement in the State of the State in January 2013. By June 30, 2014, the end of the last fiscal year, the fund had $862,835,447. Deal told lawmakers in his State of the State this month that being conservative had paid off. He said the 2014 budget was based on a conservative estimate that state revenues would increase 3.4 percent. Revenues were actually up 4.8 percent, and the difference went to the rainy day fund, the governor said. "Every budget cycle since I have been governor, we have added to that fund so that it has increased by 643 percent since I took office," Deal said. His numbers add up. The rainy day fund has increased 643 percent since Fiscal Year 2010, the year before he took office. What’s the right amount for tough times? The question that likely worries every family has been debated by officials at all levels of government. Rating agencies recommended in the early 1980s that states set aside 3 percent to 5 percent of their revenues in reserves for economic tough times. The Government Finance Officers Association more recently has suggested that states have 10 percent to 15 percent or two months’ worth of operating money on hand. Alan Essig, executive director of the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, said state officials indicated they wanted 10 percent to 15 percent in reserves when the state raised the cap to 15 percent under former Gov. Sonny Perdue, he said. "If that’s the case, Georgia has some work to do before its reserves exceed 10 percent," Essig said. "Reserves equal to 10 to 15 percent would be somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion." The other way to measure reserves to project how many days they could be used for government operations, and the current money would cover about 16 days, he said. In summary, the state had $1.5 billion in its rainy day fund and relied on it to balance the state budget through the toughest years of the Great Recession. The fund is not where it once was nor is it where it needs to be so the state is ready for the next economic downturn. But it is exactly where Deal said it is -- up 643 percent since he took office. We rate Deal’s statement True. | null | Nathan Deal | null | null | null | 2015-01-27T00:00:00 | 2015-01-14 | ['Nathan_Deal'] |
pomt-02766 | Says Nelson Mandela "was a communist." | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2013/dec/11/bill-oreilly/bill-oreilly-says-nelson-mandela-was-communist/ | It’s been almost a quarter century since the Cold War ended. But the recent death of Nelson Mandela has stirred up quite a few old ideological ghosts. When high-profile Republicans including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz released statements of praise for Mandela after his death on Dec. 5, 2013, they were deluged with negative comments by Americans who felt Mandela was either a communist, a terrorist or both. On Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor just hours after Mandela died, host Bill O’Reilly discussed Mandela’s legacy with former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. The exchange got the most attention for Santorum’s comment equating Obamacare with apartheid -- namely, that "we have a great injustice going on right now in this country, with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives. And Obamacare is front and center in that." In this item, however, we’ll be fact-checking a different claim -- the one by O’Reilly that preceded that statement. Mandela, O’Reilly said, "was a communist." Before looking into the claim, we will note that O’Reilly’s point was more nuanced than this fragment in isolation. O’Reilly said, "Nelson Mandela -- I spent some time in South Africa. He was a communist, this man. He was a communist. All right? But he was a great man. What he did for his people was stunning -- the sacrifices that he made. He could have repudiated and got out of that prison. He wouldn't do it. He was a great man. But he was a communist." So was he? We checked with seven scholars of Mandela and 20th century South African history, and most agreed that Mandela was -- at least for a while -- a member of the Communist Party. However, they added that the label is far from the sum of a very complex political leader. There has never been much question that the South African Communist Party was an ally of Mandela’s African National Congress. "The Tri-Partite Alliance -- the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the labor federation COSATU -- cooperated closely in the fight against apartheid," said Douglas Foster, author of After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa. But the question of whether Mandela himself was actually a member of the Communist Party has always been murkier. Stephen Ellis, a British historian based in Amsterdam, made waves in 2011 when he published a paper that concluded that Mandela had been a member of the South African Communist Party. The paper was controversial, in no small part because Mandela had suggested throughout his life that he was not. For instance, during Mandela’s trial for treason, the South African government accused him of being a communist. He had his lawyer challenge the accusation, and it was withdrawn, said Danny Schechter, author of Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela. In a Dec. 7 column, Bill Keller of the New York Times quoted Mandela saying, "If by Communist you mean a member of the Communist Party and a person who believes in the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and who adheres strictly to the discipline of the party, I did not become a Communist." To Keller, this answer was "both evasive and perfectly accurate." By the time of Ellis’ paper, Mandela was too ill to be asked about it publicly. But among scholars at least, lingering doubts about Ellis’ finding were largely washed away the day Mandela died. Upon Mandela’s death, the South African Communist Party released a statement of mourning that revealed that, "at his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then-underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party's Central Committee." Tom Lodge, a professor at the University of Limerick and author of Mandela: A Critical Life said Mandela "joined the SACP probably in late 1960, early enough to be involved in its decision to adopt a strategy of ‘armed struggle.’ It seems that he had second thoughts about his membership while touring Africa in early 1962." It’s unclear whether Mandela ever formally resigned, Lodge said, but "certainly by the late 1960s, the Communist Party no longer regarded him as a member." In its statement, the South African Communist Party called him "a great and close friend of the communists till his last days," a phrasing that suggests that he wasn’t actually a party member any longer. There is no indication he was a party member at the time he was elected president after being released from prison. So the weight of the historical evidence is that O’Reilly was correct to say that Mandela "was a communist." But scholars told us it’s important to leaven this with a few bits of context. • Mandela was not a communist ideologue. "Mandela is the least ideologically rigid leader I have ever encountered," said John Carlin, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. "He was the very opposite of a fanatic. He showed immense respect for all political points of view and never to my knowledge believed he had the answers to the problems of human life, much less the key to heaven on earth, as his Communist brethren might have done." Indeed, Carlin said, during Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment at Robben Island, he "had long and heated debates with the one big South African Communist Party figure imprisoned there, Govan Mbeki." Foster said that even if Mandela was officially a Communist Party member for a time, he would not have defined himself that way. "Nobody who has even a passing familiarity with South African history, and Mandela's role, would describe him as someone with mixed loyalties," Foster said. "He was a disciplined, true-blue member of the ANC through his entire adulthood." • For decades, there were few allies Mandela could have sought out in the fight against apartheid. At the time Mandela would have been a South African Communist Party member, all liberation groups (including the Communist Party) were banned. And within this small group of opponents of apartheid, only the Communist Party was multiracial. "The Communist Party in South Africa was attractive to some because it was the only nonracial party at the time for activists who didn't want to be defined ethnically," Schechter said. "For many years, the ANC was only for Africans, the Indian Congress for Indians and the Congress of Democrats for Whites." Indeed, Keller writes that the legacy of nonracialism was one of the most valuable legacies of Mandela’s alignment with the Communist Party, since it made racial reconciliation possible after the toppling of apartheid. (Keller also lists other, less positive legacies, including "remnants of Communist protocol and jargon (that) live on in the platform and demeanor of South Africa’s ruling party.") • The Communist Party – due in part to its long fight against apartheid – does not have the same negative connotation in South Africa that it does in the United States. Former South African President F.W. DeKlerk -- who worked with Mandela to end apartheid -- told Schechter that Communist Party leader Joe Slovo "played a pragmatic and crucial role in engineering the compromises that led to a political settlement. … All this ‘commie’ talk obscures more than it reveals." In fact, "half the members of the present cabinet in South Africa are party members," Lodge added. "It really isn’t an issue." Our ruling O’Reilly said that Mandela "was a communist." The weight of the historical evidence shows that O’Reilly is correct. For a time, Mandela -- despite his denials -- appears to have been a member not only of the party but also of its central committee. However, it’s worth noting that Mandela’s affiliation with the party or its goals was never a dominant feature of his ideology or message. We rate O’Reilly’s claim Mostly True. | null | Bill O'Reilly | null | null | null | 2013-12-11T17:23:34 | 2013-12-05 | ['None'] |
para-00102 | We [stopped the boats] at a time where there were 20 per cent more people seeking asylum throughout the world than there are today. | mostly true | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/23/kelly-odwyer/more-or-fewer-asylum-seekers-10-years-years-ago/index.html | null | ['Asylum Seekers'] | Kelly O'Dwyer | Ellie Harvey, Peter Fray | null | Were there more or fewer asylum seekers 10 years ago? | Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 3:34 p.m. | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04337 | While she was mayor, Lois Frankel took a "police helicopter ride to go to a dinner party." | half-true | /florida/statements/2012/oct/25/adam-hasner/adam-hasner-says-lois-frankel-used-police-chopper-/ | Republican congressional candidate Adam Hasner has accused his Democratic opponent Lois Frankel of hitching a ride on a police chopper that rushed her to a party when she was mayor of West Palm Beach. The incensed female narrator in Republican Hasner’s ad "Gotta Go" says: "That Lois Frankel is something. She gave herself a 40 percent pay raise. Charged us for a police helicopter ride to go to a dinner party. But the worst part? Frankel spent over $13,000 in taxpayer money on a marble shower in a private bathroom with her own toilet. What a waste. "All that money right down the drain for her own personal use," says the narrator, who is revealed to be sitting on a toilet."When you gotta go, you gotta go but that’s just ridiculous." The claims in the ad are similar to an ad by the YG Action Fund, a conservative PAC which showed Frankel’s headshot inside a cartoon image of a helicopter flying near a mansion with balloons falling from the sky. We fact-checked a claim by the PAC that Frankel got a 40 percent pay raise while the city of West Palm Beach lost jobs. We rated that claim Half True because the pay raise was correct but the ad failed to accurately explain the jobs picture. We also looked at whether Frankel spent money on a marble shower. We rated that Half True as well. In this fact-check we will focus on Hasner’s claim that Frankel took a ride in the city’s helicopter to go to a dinner party. We aren’t weighing in on whether it was a good decision by Frankel to take that ride -- our role is to evaluate whether Hasner accurately portrayed it. Hasner and Frankel, both former state legislators who have each raised just shy of $3 million, are competing in the Broward/Palm Beach Congressional District 22. Frankel was mayor of West Palm Beach between 2003 and 2011. Helicopter ride featured in gossip column The ad cites an April 2005 Palm Beach Post article by gossip columnist Jose Lambiet. (He now writes a column for the Miami Herald, a PolitiFact Florida partner.) The article didn’t state the date of the helicopter ride but said "earlier this year" Frankel’s aide drove her during rush hour to a homeowner’s association meeting, where she said she was there "just to shake hands." About an hour later, a police chopper landed on the community’s golf course and Frankel was taken to a party downtown. The columnist described it as an affair thrown by "Clematis-area merchants ticked off about - you guessed it - roadwork." "What sounds like a party to you is work for me," Frankel said at the time. "I called in the helicopter with clear instructions that, if there was a public safety emergency, they wouldn't need to come. I don't make a habit of this." "I did see all the cars stuck down there. I was thinking: 'Maybe I should do this more often,' " she said. Lambiet wrote that Police Chief Delsa Bush didn't know about the mayor’s ride but said, "The mayor's the boss, and she's welcome to use the chopper. … The county commissioners have police escorts. Why can't the mayor?" Frankel interview with PolitiFact When we interviewed Frankel, she said that she never took a city helicopter to a personal party -- it was a work party. Frankel said around Christmas she went to a community party on one edge of the city but was also scheduled to host a party hosted by the city’s Downtown Development Authority the same night. "It was one of those things -- I was supposed to be at two places at one time," she said. We asked Frankel if she used the police helicopter to get to any other events. She said "Maybe one other time from a work event to another work event. I didn’t go up that often. I am pretty claustrophobic, hydrophobic." We noticed that Frankel said the helicopter ride occurred around Christmas time, but Lambiet’s column -- which simply said "earlier this year" -- was written April 3. Lambiet told us in an interview that he thought that the chopper ride was a few days before his column was published. The exact date of the ride wasn’t crucial to rule on Hasner’s claim but we thought it was important to try to pin down exactly which party Frankel had attended. Frankel’s campaign supplied us with two calendar entries for the mayor on Dec. 22, 2004. The first one states "5 p.m. Sharp! Ibis Tropical Cheers" and states that the event would end at six. The other calendar entry states that from 6 to 8 p.m., Frankel would host a holiday party at Wine Living and includes a contact phone number for the Downtown Development Authority. (Wine Living has since closed.) The calendar entries don’t specifically discuss the police helicopter. However, both calendar entries state "required to Arthur Apicella" in the police department. Frankel’s campaign says that Apicella was in charge of the helicopter at the time and has since retired. Our efforts to reach Apicella were unsuccessful. We interviewed Art Bullard, Frankel’s executive assistant at the time, who drove her to the event in Ibis. "That particular event, it was important enough that she made the decision to take the helicopter," Bullard said. "It wasn’t an everyday procedure. I think it happened maybe once or twice." Our ruling Hasner’s ad says that while she was mayor of West Palm Beach, Frankel took a "police helicopter ride to go to a dinner party." But Frankel says she never took the helicopter to get to a private party -- only in her duties as mayor. Public records we found appear to support that. The ad left open to interpretation whether that was a private party or a mayoral event. So for making that unclear we rate this ad Half True. | null | Adam Hasner | null | null | null | 2012-10-25T14:15:15 | 2012-10-18 | ['None'] |
snes-03003 | President Trump's White House dress code includes a requirement women wear dresses. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-house-dress-code/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does President Trump’s White House Dress Code Mandate Dresses for Female Staffers? | 3 February 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02578 | North Dakota Names Landfill After Obama | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/north-dakota-names-landfill-after-obama/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | North Dakota Names Landfill After Obama – Fiction! | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05333 | George Allen and his colleagues in the Senate "turned the biggest surplus in the history of the United States into the biggest deficit in the history of the United States." | half-true | /virginia/statements/2012/may/15/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-claims-deficit-george-allen-helped-turn-/ | Editors Note: On Dec. 26, 2011, PolitiFact Virginia rated as Mostly True a statement by Democrat Tim Kaine that Republican George Allen, during his term in the U.S. Senate from 2001-2007, helped turn the largest budget surplus in U.S. history into the largest deficit. Our ruling was largely based on raw federal budget numbers dating back to the 1930s. The Allen campaign recently told us that our rating did not give enough credence to what two economists said in the original story: The best way to compare deficits through history is to express them as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product at the time. We took a new look at the fact-check and concluded the Allen campaign is right. So we are changing our rating to Half True because there is still validity to Kaine’s claim, but his numbers need context. And we are providing a new analysis, which appears below: Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine says that Republican George Allen was a big spender during his term in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2007. "He (Allen) turned, and his colleagues in the majority in the Senate turned, the biggest surplus in the history of the United States into the biggest deficit in the history of the United States," Kaine said in a Dec. 7, 2011 debate between the two candidates. We should point out that when measured in raw dollar terms, deficits in the last couple years have easily been the largest shortfalls ever. This fiscal year alone it’s projected to be $1.33 trillion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. But Brandi Hoffine, a Kaine campaign spokeswoman, said Kaine was referring specifically to surpluses and deficits as they stood at the time of Allen’s term in the Senate. Allen supported each of about four dozen appropriations bills that came to the Senate floor during his tenure. Did a record U.S. surplus melt into an historic deficit during Allen’s time? We checked. Hoffine, in an email to us, correctly noted that Office of Management and Budget data shows the surplus hit $236 billion in fiscal 2000. The data also show the budget sank to a $412.7 billion deficit in fiscal 2004. One way is to look at the numbers, as Kaine did, are as measurements of surpluses and deficits in their current year dollars without adjustment for inflation. By that method, 2004 had the highest deficit on record up until that time. Fiscal year 2000, which ended a couple months before Allen arrived, had the highest surplus on record. In May 2001, the Congressional Budget Office had been projecting another banner surplus for fiscal year 2001 -- $275 billion. But in an updated August 2001 analysis, the CBO said the surplus that year was expected to be much lower -- $153 billion. The main reasons for the diminished outlook, the CBO said, were the sluggish economy (a recession hit in 2001), as well as the enactment of the Bush tax cuts in 2001, which Allen supported. The OMB also provides data measuring each year’s deficit or surplus in 2005 dollars that have been adjusted for inflation. When that’s done, the deficits during World War II were greater than the 2004 deficit peak during Allen’s tenure. For example, when measured in 2005 dollars, the deficit was $531.7 billion in 1943. In 2004, the height of the deficit during Allen’s term, the shortfall was $428 billion. So by that measurement, Kaine’s claim does not hold up. A third way to look at this -- favored by several analysts we spoke with -- measures surpluses and deficits as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product in a given year. The comparison to GDP -- the market value of all goods and services produced by a country -- provides a gauge of a nation’s ability to absorb its deficit. In 2004, the U.S deficit was 3.5 percent of GDP, the highest level during Allen’s term. Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted the deficit was a higher percentage of GDP at other times, including under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1986. The Reagan administration hit its high water mark in 1983 when the deficit was 6 percent of GDP. OMB tables show other periods -- including the early 1990s, World War II and the 1930s -- when the deficit as a share of GDP was greater than 2004. The 2000 surplus was 2.4 percent of GDP. We found one point, in 1948, when the surplus was bigger -- 4.6 percent of GDP, according to the OMB tables. Kogan said measuring the deficit by current year dollars, without taking into account for inflation and other factors, is "one way of looking at the story." "It’s not the best way. The best way of looking at the story is to measure deficits as a share of GDP," Kogan said. "The reason for that is numbers have vastly different meanings over decades." Kogan said most analysts compare deficits through history by measuring how they compare to a particular year’s GDP. But Kogan said that when measuring deficits in strict dollar terms and not adjusting for inflation, Kaine’s statement isn’t entirely off the mark. "As long as he (Kaine) meant through that date, through when Allen left the Senate, he’s literally correct," Kogan said. Michael Linden, director of tax and budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Kaine’s broad point that the surplus switched to deficits is correct. But Linden said he cringes when he hears historic comparisons using raw dollar figures. "Dollars are worth different things in different years," said Linden, who prefers measuring deficits as a share of GDP. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said it’s not wrong using raw dollar tallies when comparing deficits over time. Ornstein, however, said he thinks it would be better to use dollars that have been adjusted for inflation. Our ruling Kaine said Allen, during his term in the Senate, was part of a Republican majority that turned the largest surplus in U.S. history into the nation’s biggest deficit up until then. Kaine relied on raw numbers that do show the surplus peaked a few months before Allen took office and then dove into a record deficit during Allen’s term. But analysts said Kaine’s numbers -- which are unadjusted for inflation and do not take into account the size of the U.S. economy at the time -- are a weak basis for historical comparison. Several analysts told us the best historical measure comes from looking at annual surpluses and deficits as a percentage of the nation’s GDP for a given year. By that gauge, although the U.S. had high deficits during Allen’s term, they were not close to record-setting. So Kaine’s statement is accurate in terms of raw numbers, but it frays when historical context is added. We rate his claim Half True. | null | Tim Kaine | null | null | null | 2012-05-15T11:02:38 | 2011-12-07 | ['United_States', 'George_Allen_(U.S._politician)'] |
tron-01689 | Obama refused to answer a question about health plan options for his family | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-abc-question-health/ | null | government | null | null | null | Obama refused to answer a question about health plan options for his family | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04821 | President Obama freed USS Cole bomber Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri from Guantánamo Bay. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-freed-uss-cole-terrorist/ | null | Politicians | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Obama Freed USS Cole Terrorist? | 3 May 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'USS_Cole_bombing'] |
pomt-02710 | Kathleen Peters refuses to ‘take a stand’ to repeal Obamacare. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2013/dec/27/david-jolly/david-jolly-says-kathleen-peters-wont-take-stand-r/ | The 13th U.S. Congressional District race is heating up ahead of the Jan. 14 Republican primary, with front-running candidates David Jolly and state Rep. Kathleen Peters taking swipes at each other in mailings and TV commercials. In the first flier we saw attacking Peters, David Jolly’s campaign paints the state representative from South Pasadena as being compliant with the Affordable Care Act. It shows Peters and Democratic challenger Alex Sink in a photo collage with President Barack Obama, with the words, "It’s Pinellas County’s worst nightmare! … Keeping Obamacare!" The mailing quotes Peters saying, "I do not think we should take a stand and say absolutely repeal it." In a Republican primary, the attack that a politician is pro-Obamacare -- or even just Obamacare-tolerant -- can be potent. We wanted to know if the flier is accurate in saying that Peters "refuses to ‘take a stand’ to repeal Obamacare." The magic word Peters has been a state representative since 2012 for House District 69, which includes Treasure Island, South Pasadena and Gulfport. We couldn’t find any public comments from Peters on the Affordable Care Act before she decided to run for the late C.W. Bill Young’s open U.S. House seat. At a Suncoast Tiger Bay Club forum in St. Petersburg on Dec. 6, Peters fielded a question from an audience member who asked what her position to improve health care was. "What I can tell you is that I don’t like the plan that we currently have to take care of affordable health care. And I don’t even think they named it appropriately, and I think it’s one of those wolves in sheep’s clothing when they call it the Affordable Care Act, because it is not at all affordable," Peters answered. "I do not think that we should take a stand and say absolutely repeal it. Not unless we have a plan and a proposal to replace it." She added she didn’t think pre-existing conditions should be a factor in obtaining insurance, and gave an anecdote about how she had previously had difficulties with insurance companies after a surgery. "Is it a problem? Yes, we have to address it," she concluded. "But we can’t just repeal it, we have to have a comprehensive plan ... something that’s affordable, that isn’t mandating down and forces people to not have choices." Jolly, who has been very vocal in his opposition to the law, has said he is using the flier as "a contrast piece," to illustrate how he wants to repeal the law and Peters doesn’t. The quote he chose, however, doesn’t include much context or any indication of Peters’ other talking points about Obamacare. Peters previously told the Tampa Bay Times she didn’t believe "this affordable care act is truly affordable," but didn’t change her message that some portions of the law -- such as not denying coverage to patients -- were worth keeping. "I don't think we can just go back to the way it was," she said. This point of view seems to largely fall in line with many Americans. A Gallup poll released on Dec. 6 found that only 30 percent of respondents wanted it gone entirely. The rest wanted to law kept, scaled back or expanded. We should note, though, that when the results are broken down by party affiliation, 68 percent of Republicans favor repeal. Peters seemed to change the tack of her arguments immediately after the flier was mailed out, posting a message on Facebook dealing with Jolly’s implications. She began clearly stating she supported repeal of Obamacare. "David Jolly is shamelessly attempting to tie Alex Sink’s support of this law with my position," she wrote. "I want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but at the same time, we have to have a viable option to replace the law." She has since solidified her position, saying during a Dec. 19 press conference that she supports the repeal of Obamacare. "I want to be very clear, I support full repeal of Obamacare," she said. "Jolly has misrepresented me on this issue." She also told PolitiFact Florida via email she is seeking to replace the law "with free-market based solutions" and added "there are several Republican alternatives that I am currently reviewing to cosponsor in the future." Her view seems to square with national Republicans who have advocated a "repeal and replace" strategy since 2010. Our ruling Jolly wanted to portray Peters as soft on Obamacare, in an attempt to win over conservative voters. His use of Peters’ quote, "I do not think we should take a stand and say absolutely repeal it" without context is designed to appeal to voters who want the law taken off the books entirely. Peters has repeatedly said she doesn’t support the law, but doesn’t feel it would be good policy to simply strip the Affordable Care Act off the books without addressing some of the problems in the health care system. Her stance lacked specifics before the mailing came out, but it was always clear she wasn’t a staunch Obamacare advocate. She repeatedly said or implied the law should go, so long as some provisions could be retained, such as helping people with pre-existing conditions get insurance. The mailer attempts to make it appear as if she supports the law, which she didn’t do even before clarifying her message. We rate this statement Mostly False. | null | David Jolly | null | null | null | 2013-12-27T10:05:29 | 2013-12-13 | ['None'] |
goop-01553 | Caitlyn Jenner Did Take Over ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ One Year After False Repor | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/caitlyn-jenner-celebrity-apprentice-take-over-host-false/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Caitlyn Jenner Did NOT Take Over ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ One Year After False Report | 2:30 am, February 18, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01223 | In the 2014 elections, "the American people overwhelmingly said we don't want Obamacare … and we don't want amnesty." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/21/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-says-2014-elections-voters-made-clear-the/ | The night before President Barack Obama was scheduled to announce that he was removing the threat of deportation from up to 5 million undocumented immigrants, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, launched a preemptive strike during an appearance on Fox News. Cruz told Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that "it's incumbent on Republicans in Congress to use every single constitutional tool we have to defend the rule of law to rein in" Obama so that the president "does not become an unaccountable monarch imposing his own policies in defiance of the American people." Cruz went on to say that the election results demonstrated that on two issues -- health care and immigration -- the American public delivered a resounding blow in favor of the Republican position. He said: "You know, in elections that he liked, the president was fond of saying elections have consequences. Well, this last election there was no ambiguity. There were two issues that dominated this last election. Number one, Obamacare. And number two, amnesty. This was a referendum on amnesty. And the American people overwhelmingly said we don't want Obamacare. It's a disaster. It's hurting the American people. And we don't want amnesty. And I'm sorry to say the president is behaving in an unprecedented way. There is not in recent times any parallel for a president repudiated by the voters standing up and essentially telling the voters go jump in a lake, he's going to force his powers." We wondered: Is there data to back up Cruz’s contention that in the 2014 elections, "the American people overwhelmingly said we don't want Obamacare … and we don't want amnesty"? No one would question that the Republicans delivered a massive electoral victory in the 2014 midterm elections, and the party’s dominant position against both Obamacare and legalized status for illegal immigrants was hardly a state secret. "The poll that counts is at the ballot box," said Phil Novack, deputy press secretary for Cruz. "In 2015 Republicans will control more legislative seats nationwide than anytime since the 1920s. Across the country, Republican candidates were united with a message to stop Obamacare, to stop its continuing damage to our economy, and to stop Obama’s amnesty, and the American people delivered a clear mandate on these priorities." This was especially true in the competitive Senate races. We rated Mostly True the claim that every new Republican member of the U.S. Senate said they "will vote to repeal and replace Obamacare." So voters undeniably rewarded the party which plainly advocated the views Cruz highlights. Still, the evidence that voters cast ballots as they did because of those policy positions is a lot less clear. Novack said that "polls published before and after the election showed a majority of Americans in opposition to both Obamacare and Obama’s executive action on amnesty." However, the best way to measure how voters on election day actually felt -- which is what Cruz's claim refers to -- is to use responses to the national exit poll. Every two years, a consortium of media outlets collectively samples opinion across the country on Election Day, either as voters leave the polls or through a supplemental phone survey of those who voted early or by absentee ballot. The 2014 exit poll results are summarized here. Fortuitously for this fact-check, the exit poll asked about both Obamacare and illegal immigration. Did the American people say "overwhelmingly" that "we don't want Obamacare"? Exit poll respondents were asked to complete the sentence, "Do you think the 2010 federal health care law…," with one of three options. The most common answer -- 49 percent -- was that the law "went too far." But the other two options -- that the law "was about right," or that it "did not go far enough" -- collectively totaled 46 percent. That’s a pretty tight split -- so tight, in fact, that it’s within the margin of error. This question had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, meaning that, due to imperfect sampling techniques, there actually may have been slightly more Americans who think the law is "about right" or "did not go far enough." Either way, Cruz is wrong to say that the "American people overwhelmingly" opposed Obamacare on Election Day. At most, a small plurality opposed the law -- and maybe not even that. Did Americans on Election Day say "we don't want amnesty"? The term "amnesty" is one open to some debate. Many Republicans use it to describe any process that ultimately leads to legal status for the undocumented, while Democrats counter that Obama’s preferred course -- allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal status only after certain hurdles such as fines and waiting periods are imposed -- is much more rigorous than no-fault "amnesty." We won’t referee this debate here, but the exit poll asked a question that sheds some light on the electorate’s view. The exit poll asked respondents to complete this sentence: "Should most illegal immigrants working in the United States be. …" with one of two options. "Offered a chance to apply for legal status" was chosen by 57 percent of respondents, while "deported to the country they came from" was the choice of 39 percent. (This question also had a 3-percentage-point sampling error margin, but the gap was so big that the error margin doesn’t come into play.) What this means is that voters in Election 2014 didn’t reject "amnesty." If you take the term to mean what Republicans say it means -- a path to legal status -- then voters actually supported that option by an 18-point margin. What is the most important issue facing the country? One more question sheds some light on Cruz’s claim. The exit poll asked respondents to choose the "most important issue facing the country today" from among four choices: foreign policy, health care, the economy and illegal immigration. Health care was the choice of 25 percent, and illegal immigration was named by 14 percent. Both of these options trailed the top choice -- the economy, named by 45 percent of respondents -- by a substantial margin. Even among the 25 percent who cited health care as their top issue, these voters were more likely to be Democrats -- 59 percent to 39 percent. This further weakens Cruz’s case that opposition to Obamacare drove the electorate. (Just 14 percent of Democrats in the exit poll said Obamacare went too far.) In other words, not only was Cruz incorrect in describing the voters’ policy preferences in Election 2014, but he was also off-base in saying that Obamacare and illegal immigration "dominated this last election." If anything dominated the minds of voters, it was the economy. Our ruling Cruz said that in the 2014 elections, "the American people overwhelmingly said we don't want Obamacare … and we don't want amnesty." Exit poll data shows that, at most, Americans were slightly -- not "overwhelmingly" -- against Obamacare, and even that edge is in doubt because the lead for the anti-Obamacare side is within the margin of error. Meanwhile, exit poll data also shows that voters, by a 3-to-2 margin, actually favored offering the possibility of legal status to illegal immigrants. We rate Cruz’s claim False. | null | Ted Cruz | null | null | null | 2014-11-21T11:34:42 | 2014-11-19 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-14157 | You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2016/apr/29/amy-schumer/fact-checking-amy-schumers-welcome-gun-show/ | Searching for a great gift for all ages? Look no further, Amy Schumer has the product for you. In a recent sketch on her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer and fellow comedian Kyle Dunnigan play infomercial hosts pitching viewers on the perfect "stocking stuffer": a handgun. A hopeful buyer laments that he can’t get a gun because he has a criminal record riddled with felonies. "Caller, you bite your tongue, you silly goose!" Schumer’s character says. "You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies, as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show." "If you go to a gun show, you can get an unlicensed seller to sell you a gun, no questions asked," Dunnigan added We’ve looked at similar claims before. Because this sketch is getting a lot of attention, we wanted to recap whether a felon can actually buy a gun on the Internet or at a gun show. This isn’t the first time Schumer has tackled gun issues; she has been a vocal advocate for stricter gun laws since a gunman killed two and injured many others at a showing of her feature film Trainwreck in a Louisiana movie theater in 2015. But it is her first time on the Truth-O-Meter. The 'gun show loophole' To be clear: The kind of transaction Schumer’s character describes is illegal. Federal law prohibits felons from getting a gun unless their rights have been formally restored. Felons can theoretically get around this obstacle, however, by buying guns from unlicensed sellers who are not required to conduct criminal background checks. This is sometimes referred to as the "gun show loophole," even though it refers to all private sales, and not everyone considers it a loophole. Schumer’s sketch was referring to this aspect of current gun law, said a spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, gun control advocacy group Schumer promotes at the end of the sketch. Anyone who repeatedly buys and sells firearms "with the principal motive of making a profit" is supposed to get a dealer’s license, whether they deal out of a brick-and-mortar store, a gun show, or online, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Licensed firearm dealers must run background checks on non-licensed buyers before selling them a gun. But the law does not require a dealer’s license for private hobbyists and others who occasionally buy and sell guns. If an individual buys a gun from someone who is not required to have a license, the purchaser does not have to undergo a background check. So a violent felon could buy a gun from a hobbyist over the Internet or at a gun show because he or she would not be subject to a background check. The purchase would still be illegal, because of the buyer’s felon status, but it would not create an immediate red flag. The same thing can happen at a gun show. There are a few important limitations on these sorts of private transactions. First, it is illegal for private sellers to transfer a gun to someone they either know or reasonably believe is prohibited from owning a gun, for example, if the seller knows the buyer is a felon. But private sellers "can give themselves plausible deniability by not asking the necessary questions," Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, previously told PolitiFact. So in the case of Schumer’s show, she and her co-host would not have that cushion of plausible deniability because the hopeful buyer told them outright that he is a felon. The giant "gun show" banner doesn’t make a difference. Second, private sales, online or otherwise, cannot take place across state lines, so the buyer and seller must be in the same state. And there are many restrictions on shipping guns, so the actual transaction is likely to take place in person, as opposed to the buyer entering credit card information online, and the seller shipping the gun to the buyer’s house. And third, several states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington — and the District of Columbia require background checks for all private gun sales. With all these restrictions, how many people actually buy guns without a background check? The truth is we don’t really know. The only statistics floating around are outdated and flawed. Professors at Northeastern and Harvard universities conducted a gun survey in 2015 that isn’t yet published. The national survey of 4,000 non-institutionalized adults found that 22 percent of the people who purchased guns — at gun shows, stores or elsewhere — underwent no background check, Matthew Miller, professor of Health Sciences and Epidemiology at Northeastern and co-director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told us in January. When researchers excluded purchases between family and friends, that number dropped to 15 percent, which equates to approximately 5 million gun owners whose most recent purchase did not involve a background check. One more thing: Later in Schumer’s sketch, another hopeful buyer calls in to ask if he can get a gun even though he’s a suspected terrorist on the no-fly list. "You’re fine, sweet potato fry," Schumer’s character says. A March 2015 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office examined how many people applying for gun purchases went through the FBI’s instant background check system and also were on the FBI’s list of "those known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity." Between February 2004, and December 2014, 2,233 people on the list applied to buy a weapon. Of those, 2,043 were allowed to proceed. Our ruling Schumer’s character said, "You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies as long as you buy it on the Internet or at a gun show." The kind of transaction Schumer described is possible, though illegal, and far more complicated than her comment suggests. Federal law prohibits felons from buying guns. But with some effort, they could purchase a gun from private sellers over the Internet or at a gun show without getting caught, because private sellers are not required to run background checks. Schumer is doing a comedy bit, but compared with similar claims we’ve checked, her phrasing makes it sound like buying guns with a felony is easy and lawful. That is not the case. The context is significant. We rate her claim Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/ca5b556b-81f3-4a7d-bf47-77c40966a6af | null | Amy Schumer | null | null | null | 2016-04-29T14:28:17 | 2016-04-28 | ['None'] |
tron-00521 | Silent Partner of Red Hen Restaurant is a Registered Sex Offender | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/red-hen-silent-partner-registered-sex-offender/ | null | business | null | null | ['donald trump', 'hillary clinton', 'sarah huckabee sanders'] | Silent Partner of Red Hen Restaurant is a Registered Sex Offender | Jun 26, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02526 | Six of Georgia’s counties have no lawyers at all. | true | /georgia/statements/2014/feb/10/hugh-thompson/access-legal-help-issue-justice-says/ | In his first State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Hugh P. Thompson declared that all Georgians need access to justice, regardless of their economic backgrounds. And in many cases, he said, that means they need the services of a lawyer. Yet in Georgia, Thompson said, that's not as easy as it might seem. He cited statistics showing: 70 percent of Georgia's lawyers work in five metro Atlanta counties. 62 of Georgia's 159 counties have 10 or fewer lawyers. six counties are lawyerless. Too few lawyers? What about the so-called "lawyer glut?" In the interest of truth (and justice), we decided to do some checking. Jane Hansen, spokeswoman for the Georgia Supreme Court, said the chief justice's comments were based, in part, on a report by the State Bar of Georgia titled "Lawyer Distribution in Georgia." The report showed the state with 28,883 active lawyers in 2011, including 20,027 or 69.3 percent, working in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties in metro Atlanta. The State Bar research revealed that there are no lawyers in six rural counties - Baker, Chattahoochee, Clay, Echols, Glasscock and Webster. In three of those counties, Baker, Clay and Echols, at least 30 percent of residents live in poverty, according to U.S. Census data. Follow-up research in August 2013 showed the number of lawyers in the state had grown to 29,973. But none of them had established a practice in those six lawyerless counties, said Michael L. Monahan, an attorney and pro bono director for the State Bar. The findings came directly from the State Bar’s membership data, Monahan said. In Georgia, membership in the State Bar is mandatory for all lawyers. In his address to a joint session of the state Senate and House of Representatives, Thompson recalled the promise of "liberty and justice for all" in the Pledge of Allegiance. "I don’t believe we ever meant ‘liberty and justice only for those who can afford it,’ " he said. "... As Georgia continues to grow in population and diversity, access to justice is a challenge requiring the commitment and hard work of us all." Thompson told lawmakers that many attorneys and two groups -- the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation and the State Bar of Georgia -- have stepped up to offer their services at no cost to the poor. "But these voluntary efforts do not fill the gap," he said. Thompson cited a report from the Supreme Court’s Committee on Civil Justice in 2008 that showed only 9 percent of low-income Georgians with a legal need were able to get help from a lawyer. He also pointed out that two nonprofit law firms, the Georgia Legal Services Program and the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, provide civil legal services to the poor. But both firms have been hard hit financially since the start of the recession in 2007, Thompson said. Phyllis Holmen, the executive director of Georgia Legal Services, said her budget is back up slightly this year but had been cut $2 million since 2008. That meant that the agency had to freeze positions and lay off staff, including 23 of the 75 lawyers who work in 154 counties, Holmen said. Judges, Thompson said, have been reporting that more people are coming into court trying to represent themselves. That creates fairness issues, particularly in family law cases where the opposing party has an attorney, Holmen said. Monahan said the State Bar is looking to address a difficult problem. "The fix is not going to be easy," he said. "The market decides where people work." Thompson said other states are also experiencing a void of lawyers outside their major cities. In South Dakota, where 65 percent of attorneys practice in five cities, the chief justice has warned that the large populated areas of his state are becoming "islands of justice in a rural sea of justice denied," Thompson said. "Georgia’s lack of legal services in rural areas is every bit as severe as South Dakota’s, if not more so," he told lawmakers. "We must take steps to correct the imbalance." So where does this leave us? Thompson said, "Six of Georgia’s counties have no lawyers at all." Credible data from the State Bar of Georgia and other information, including anecdotal evidence from local judges, support his statement. We rate it True. | null | Hugh Thompson | null | null | null | 2014-02-10T00:00:00 | 2014-02-05 | ['None'] |
snes-03101 | Climate Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-house-web-site-trump-changes/ | null | Politicians | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Donald Trump Remove the Terms ‘LGBT’ and ‘Climate Change’ from the White House Web Site? | 20 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06456 | McDonald's beverages contain yucky non-food substances. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-fair-shake/ | null | Automobiles | null | David Mikkelson | null | Do McDonald’s Shakes Contain Yucky Non-Food Substances? | 31 January 2001 | null | ['None'] |
snes-06294 | Jed Babbin said that "going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion." | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jed-babbin-accordian-quote/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Mikkelson | null | Jed Babbin Accordian Quote | 2 October 2003 | null | ['France'] |
snes-00964 | The military has secretly drawn up plans to round up large numbers of privately-owned firearms from American gun owners. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/military-plans-gun-confiscations/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Is the Military Drawing Up Plans for Nationwide Gun Confiscations? | 26 February 2018 | null | ['United_States'] |
snes-02650 | Donald Trump said that the United States should build a fence around New Mexico. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-new-mexico/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Trump: “Build a Fence Around New Mexico”? | 17 August 2015 | null | ['United_States', 'New_Mexico', 'Donald_Trump'] |
faan-00057 | Canada’s corporate tax rate is “way below that of our close trading partners.” | factscan score: false | http://factscan.ca/tom-mulcair-canadas-corporate-tax-rate-trading-partners/ | Canada’s combined federal and provincial corporate tax rate of 26.3 per cent is just below the middle of the pack among close trading partners. The corporate tax rate range for Canada’s top ten import and export trading partners is from a low of 16.5 per cent (Hong Kong) to a high of 39 per cent (United States). | null | Tom Mulcair | null | null | null | 2015-09-24 | mber 17, 2015 | ['Canada'] |
pomt-13110 | FBI confirms evidence of huge underground Clinton sex network. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/04/conservative-daily-post/evidence-ridiculously-thin-sensational-claim-huge-/ | The presidential race has tightened again, this time after the FBI revealed that Hillary Clinton emails might be found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Now some conservative websites are claiming — without offering any evidence — that the probe has uncovered evidence of a pedophile sex ring run under the guise of the Clinton Foundation. "Breaking: FBI confirms evidence of huge underground Clinton sex network," the Conservative Daily Post said on Nov. 1. "A source from the FBI has indicated ... that a massive child trafficking and pedophile sex ring operates in Washington, D.C.," the website reports, saying "there are at least six members of Congress and several leaders from federal agencies that partake in the pedophile ring, which they say was run directly with the Clinton Foundation as a front." No sources are named. No documents are cited. The claim about a child trafficking and a pedophile sex ring links to a New York Post story that makes no reference to either child trafficking or a sex ring. The claim about the Clinton Foundation and members of Congress links to an internet message board where anonymous people have posted under the topic, "Breaking: Its (sic) worse than classified emails. Political Pedophile Sex Ring exposed." "Hillary, Bill, all of them knew/know and were active participants," says the poster, who has the nickname "WartHog76." "DC and the FBI, DOJ fear a complete loss of public support for the federal government. ... Both parties, all levels of government. Its (sic) about to come apart." Subsequent posts by other people range from speculation that the story is part of a Clinton strategy ("Throw out some wild claims, have them proven false, and their real crimes will be dismissed as false") to a link to another website claiming that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are connected to a place called Sex Slave Island. The latter pertain to the real-life story of financier Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to register as a pedophile in 2008 after pleading guilty to a Florida felony charge of soliciting a minor. He had been accused of hiring underage girls for massages and sex at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. Clinton has repeatedly flown on his plane. Trump's phone numbers were found in Epstein's address book. The Conservative Daily Post article doesn't mention Trump's connections to Epstein. We contacted the FBI. Spokesman Andrew Ames said in an email, "We have provided no comment, nor confirmed any investigation, beyond the existence of a letter from the Director to select members of Congress, which was then provided to the media by members of Congress." Another commentator on the message board says, "NYPD has verified it. It's not a false claim." An NYPD spokesman said he was unaware of anyone make such a statement. Our ruling The Conservative Daily Post says, "FBI confirms evidence of huge underground Clinton sex network." We could find no evidence that such a network exists; there is definitely no evidence that the FBI has confirmed it. The blog post seems to be relying on an anonymous claim put up on an internet message board. Here at PolitiFact, we believe it's up to the entity making a claim to support it with real evidence, especially when a claim is as extraordinary as this one. For now, the Post story fails to rise above rumor or hoax. Without anything real to go on, the website is blowing smoke. And in this case, where there's smoke, there's Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Conservative Daily Post | null | null | null | 2016-11-04T11:52:02 | 2016-11-01 | ['Bill_Clinton', 'Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation'] |
pomt-14758 | I have always opposed driver's licenses for illegal aliens. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2015/dec/11/david-simpson/david-simpson-mostly-right-about-his-staunch-oppos/ | Republican candidates for an East Texas state Senate seat disagree over whether one of them has endorsed, and voted for, permitting driver’s licenses for Texas residents lacking legal permission to live in the country. State Rep. David Simpson of Longview emailed reporters a Nov. 30, 2015, statement saying Rep. Bryan Hughes of Mineola had slanderously charged Simpson with supporting licenses for illegal immigrants without delivering the factual goods. Simpson further declared: "I have always opposed driver’s licenses for illegal aliens." We wondered. Some perspective: The Texas Department of Public Safety began requiring license applicants to produce government-issued documents affirming their legal residency status in 2008, and lawmakers voted to require as much in a 2011 special session. Before 2008, according to a July 2011 Texas Tribune news story, no proof of legal residency was required to obtain a Texas license or state identification card. The spat between Hughes and Simpson developed, we suspect, because Republicans who show weakness on illegal immigration can run into trouble, especially in a party primary. The two are both angling to succeed Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, representing the Senate’s District 1. We can’t gauge how someone has always felt about an issue. So we limited our scope to signs of Simpson publicly opposing licenses for such immigrants--finding that while there’s room for contrary speculation, a little of it caused by his own ambiguous statement, Simpson was among the vast bulk of House members who voted for the 2011 Legislature’s mandate to the DPS, arguably a sign he wasn’t intent on ensuring that all residents access licenses. News stories Let’s start with what Simpson has said in public settings. Hughes’ campaign pointed out a July 21, 2014, Tyler Morning Telegraph news story quoting Simpson after he returned from a weeklong tour of the Rio Grande Valley. "We do have a problem with drugs and warlords taking advantage of the situation," Simpson said. "We have to require a fulfillment of promises to appear before immigration courts to enter schools. We need to determine the status of these immigrants and not put them in this limbo. They can get an education but not get a driver’s license. That’s not right." What wasn’t right in Simpson’s view wasn’t entirely clarified. The story further quoted him saying: "We do need to secure the border against crime and terror, in order to defend life, liberty and property. I welcome people to come. We need workers. We do need to limit our health care to emergencies and critical care to immigrants as well as citizens. What’s going on in emergency rooms is not right. We need to stop the freebies, and open the legal pipeline while continuing to secure the border." To our inquiry about Simpson’s consistency, Luke Macias, a consultant to Simpson’s campaign, guided us to Simpson’s 2014 98-slide presentation based on the legislator’s border trip, which included photos of his travels and thoughts about border and immigration policy. Macias urged us to note the slide indicating Simpson thinks Texas should "overturn the mandate to educate aliens who have entered the country illegally or who are still residents of Mexico." A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in Plyler v. Doe, required Texas not to deny public education to "undocumented school-age children." Another Simpson slide, titled "Dysfunctional Policies," including this license line: "We provide K-12 education, but students cannot receive a driver’s license:" SOURCE: Presentation, "A Sobering and Beautiful Week on the Rio Grande," David Simpson, June 30-July 6, 2014 (web link received by email from Luke Macias, general consultant, David Simpson Texas Senate campaign, Dec. 1, 2015) What gives? By phone, Simpson told us he was trying to stress his continuing belief in not giving "handouts and privileges" to immigrants living here without permission; those include driver’s licenses, he said. By email, Simpson noted accurately that while his presentation called for some changes--such as ending the public schooling of children in the country illegally--it "did not advocate for giving driver’s licenses to illegals." Our searches via the Nexis news database and through news stories published by the Longview News-Journal yielded no examples of Simpson previously offering an opinion on driver’s licenses for immigrants. Simpson’s legislative record Next, we took up Simpson’s legislative record. In summer 2011, lawmakers moved to require the DPS to seek proof of legal residency from applicants for driver’s licenses by placing an amendment on a fiscal matters measure. At the time, the move was pitched as bringing Texas into compliance with the federal REAL ID Act, which says applicants for a driver's license must prove legal residency if they want to use the identification to get through airport security. See the agency's explanation here. And on June 9, 2011, nearly all House members (including Simpson) approved the amendment to Senate Bill 1. House video reveals no debate of the matter after Rep. Charles Geren, R-Fort Worth, told colleagues the amendment "addresses an issue of people getting Texas driver’s licenses that don’t live in Texas and it also allows the department to issue a license only for the length of time that a person is entitled to be here." According to the House Journal, eight members, Simpson not among them, asked to be recorded voting against the amendment. Records show too that Simpson voted against the overall fiscal matters proposal several times; the votes occurred on June 9, June 10 and June 28, 2011. By email, Simpsons told us he opposed the measure "due to its accounting gimmicks—namely, the deferment of Foundation School Program payments and the speed-up of tax payments—and its misplaced priorities, not because of the license provision, which I supported." He provided a copy of a May 2012 letter to constituents stating that he "voted for the amendment to add documentation requirements for driver's licenses" but against SB 1 because it extended inequitable school funding, sped tax collections and used "smoke and mirrors" to balance the state budget. So, Simpson backed the mandate that DPS check on each applicant’s legal residency. Two years later, though, Simpson cast a vote at least leaving room for speculation about his consistency on this front. That year, he voted against successful House efforts effectively killing proposals that related to more residents possibly getting driving permits. We know of no independent way of telling if those votes signaled a position on driver’s licenses. But on May 20, 2013, Simpson voted in favor of one of the failed amendments, the Texas House Journal shows. The amendment to Senate Bill 1729 by Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, said that under the legislation, which otherwise authorized a pilot project enabling a few counties to update or renew driver’s licenses, a license should include "any Texas resident driver’s permit authorized by law." And what did that mean? In debate, opponents said Cook’s language related to unauthorized residents getting a driver’s permit. Similarly, Simpson and Hughes’ campaign each nudged, conservative advocacy groups characterized the amendment as opening driver’s licenses to ineligible individuals. In a scorecard of the 2013 Legislature, for instance, the Young Conservatives of Texas said Cook’s amendment "would have allowed for illegal immigrants to receive driver’s licenses." We didn’t reach that conclusion--and by email, Simpson told us Cook’s amendment "in no way authorized illegal aliens to receive driver’s licenses." Asked why he voted for it, Simpson said: "I voted yes to the amendment because it would only include licenses or permits already" authorized by law. In debate, Cook didn’t dispute that his proposal might legalize more drivers; he also stressed that another change in law would be needed for the envisioned permits to become a reality. Cook’s proposal drew 72 votes, with 67 members voting no, but it died because Cook offered the proposal during final consideration of SB 1729; at that stage, 100 House votes were needed to amend legislation. A few days earlier, on May 17, 2013, Cook rolled out a longer amendment to SB 1729. He described the proposal--which was shortly derailed on a parliamentary point of order without members (including Simpson) voting on it--as identical to a committee-approved version of House Bill 3206 by Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas. Alonzo’s amended plan called for state-issued driving permits for residents who lack proof of legal residency, also requiring recipients to obtain auto insurance. Under the proposal, every applicant would have to submit to fingerprinting and clear a criminal background check before qualifying for a permit. The same month, Hughes’ campaign noted, Simpson was on the losing end of an 87-60 House vote setting aside Alonzo’s amendment to a House measure that authorized the state to let public schools and driving schools give the driving test required to get a license. Before that May 21, 2013, action, Alonzo told House colleagues that under his amendment, schools could give driving tests to individuals who obtained resident driving permits, provided such permits were legalized. "Texas has a problem," Alonzo said, with people driving without auto insurance or a driver’s permit. By phone, Alonzo told us he favors giving undocumented individuals an opportunity to legally drive in Texas and his 2013 proposal’s described permits could have nudged the state toward fulfilling the goal though, he said, it didn’t provide for full-fledged licenses. Finally, we spotted no evidence of Simpson trying to legislate about driver’s licenses. In the 2011 session, Simpson authored or co-authored about 50 measures, none touching on giving or denying licenses. In the 2013 and 2015 sessions, Simpson authored or co-authored nearly 150 measures, none of them affecting driver’s licenses. Our ruling Simpson said he’s always been opposed to illegal immigrants having driver’s licenses In 2011, Simpson joined House members in voting for the change in law requiring license applicants to document their legal residency, which we take as a strong indication of his position. But there’s a hint of uncertainty in Simpson’s 2013 vote on a proposal offered in favor of unauthorized residents someday getting resident driver permits as sought by Alonzo and others, which importantly didn’t and don’t exist, and his ambiguous 2014 remark about driver’s licenses. We rate this claim Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | David Simpson | null | null | null | 2015-12-11T13:22:25 | 2015-11-30 | ['None'] |
tron-02429 | Marines show more respect to Bush than to Clinton | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/marinerespect/ | null | military | null | null | null | Marines show more respect to Bush than to Clinton | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['George_W._Bush', 'Bill_Clinton'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.