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afck-00404 | “When 95% of households have access to water, the 5% who still need to be provided for, feel they cannot wait a moment longer. Success is also the breeding ground of rising expectations.” | unproven | https://africacheck.org/reports/a-first-look-at-president-jacob-zumas-2014-state-of-the-nation-address/ | null | null | null | null | null | President Jacob Zuma’s sixth State of the Nation address fact-checked | 2014-02-14 12:39 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05007 | Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell was married to Joe Purcell, a former Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas who served under Bill Clinton. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/helen-purcell-clinton-connection/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Dan Evon | null | Maricopa County Recorder Has a Personal Clinton Connection? | 25 March 2016 | null | ['Bill_Clinton', 'Joe_Purcell', 'Arkansas', 'Maricopa_County,_Arizona'] |
hoer-00879 | '22 Foot 2500 Pound' Crocodile Photo | unsubstantiated messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/niger-river-22-foot-croc.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | '22 Foot 2500 Pound' Crocodile Photo | 23rd April 2012 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03841 | Bees have been classified as an endangered species. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bee-species-endangered/ | null | Critter Country | null | Dan Evon | null | Were Bees Added to the Endangered Species List? | 8 October 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05601 | Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years. | false | /ohio/statements/2012/mar/29/pat-boone/pat-boone-claims-medicare-will-be-bankrupt-nine-ye/ | The 60 Plus Association, an advocacy group that bills itself as "the conservative alternative" to the AARP, has a fondness for golden oldies. The group hired singer Pat Boone as its pitchman in an ad that targets the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, the health reform bill often called Obamacare approved by Congress in 2010. In the ad, Boone warns seniors of potential dangers in the bill and urges them to call Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Look-alike versions aired in other states target four other Democratic senators. PolitiFact already has run several of Boone’s claims in the ad through the Truth-O-Meter. A statement that an independent payment advisory board created by the health care act "can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments" was rated Pants on Fire, as was the claim that the IPAB is "like a Medicare IRS with the power to cut Medicare in order to pay for new government programs." And the statement that the health care law "will cut $500 billion from Medicare" was rated Mostly False. That leaves us with another alarming assertion: "Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years, but Washington politicians, like Sherrod Brown, are ignoring the problem, putting their own re-elections first." The second part of the statement is subjective political rhetoric that we can't rate. We can, however, examine the foundation of the claim about Medicare going bankrupt. PolitiFact Ohio won’t try to predict the future. But the claim about Medicare going bankrupt isn’t a predictions as a result of an ideological debate. Rather, it’s rooted in research and projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. 60 Plus cited two reports from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office when we asked about the claim. The CBO's "March 2011 Medicare Baseline," 60 Plus said, "estimated that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2021." Another CBO report, the "Budget and Economic Outlook" for fiscal 2012 to 2022," estimated that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted by early 2022," it said. That's true -- and it's not what Boone says in the ad. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund to which the reports refer is one of two separate trust funds run by the federal government for Medicare. This trust fund, which collects most of its money from federal payroll taxes, pays for one of four parts of Medicare, Part A, which covers inpatient hospital care, home health care, and services at skilled nursing facilities and hospices. The other trust fund is the Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund. It is mostly covered by the federal government’s general fund and premiums and pays bills for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor visits and other outpatient costs, and Part D, which covers prescription drugs. Medicare Advantage, or Part C, gives recipients the option to receive care through private insurers. It doesn’t have a trust fund. The Supplementary Medical Insurance fund is in good shape. It is "projected to remain in financial balance for all future years," according to a 2011 report by the fund’s trustees. The Hospital Insurance fund does have big problems, but that's not the same thing as being "bankrupt," a legal term of art that doesn’t apply to federal governmental programs. A report by the Congressional Research Service leaves open the question of what would happen if the Hospital Insurance fund were to run out of money. "There are no provisions in the Social Security Act governing what would happen in such an event," the report says. "There is no authority in law for a general revenue funding of the shortfall. The fund would continue to have payroll taxes credited to it though these would be insufficient to pay all the pending claims." But the CRS report also notes that the Hospital Insurance trust fund has faced a projected shortfall "almost from its inception." In 1970, when the program was only four years old, the insolvency date was 1972. For the next 16 years, trustees expected the fund to be exhausted by the 1990s. Congress repeatedly changed legislation to lower fund spending and keep it from going dry. ("Baseline" projections are made with the assumption that current laws and formulas remain unchanged.) Our colleagues at FactCheck.org wrote in 2009 about a TV ad for another conservative group, Americans for Prosperity, which predicted Medicare would be bankrupt in eight years -- 5 1/2 years from now. They checked a nearly identical claim of bankruptcy by Rep. Paul Ryan a year ago. In both cases, FactCheck said, the claim "goes too far." Again, we won’t try to predict the future. But for this claim, we don’t have to. 60 Plus cited reports showing that Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund faces insolvency in nine years. And while it’s worth noting that Congress has always pulled the fund from the brink of insolvency, and that insolvency has been forecast almost from the program’s start, that’s an event in the future that we won’t try to predict. What we do know from research that 60 Plus cited is that that Boone’s claim -- that Medicare will be bankrupt in nine years -- takes a projection for one trust fund and applies it to all of Medicare. By doing so, Boone’s claim overstates what the CBO reports forecast. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund supports just one of the four parts of Medicare. The portions of Medicare that cover regular doctor visits and prescriptions are covered by a different trust fund that trustees say is in good shape. On the Truth-O-Meter, Boone’s claim rates False. | null | Pat Boone | null | null | null | 2012-03-29T06:00:00 | 2012-03-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-09833 | Most of the stimulus money will be spent "not this year, not next year, but in 2011." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/26/george-will/george-will-claims-stimulus-money-will-be-spent-sl/ | Faced with larger deficit projections than expected, the White House is shifting its attention back to the economy and so is conservative columnist George Will. In a round table discussion on the Aug. 23, 2009, episode of This Week with George Stephanopoulos , four commentators including Will lamented the administration's loose fiscal practices, including how little of the $787 billion stimulus package has been spent. "Well, I noticed that the stimulus, which has sent out, what, about 10 percent of what has been voted on this, that most of the stimulus spending will be not this year, not next year, but in 2011," Will said. We've already discussed the difference between stimulus money that's been literally spent and money that's been obligated, and we've already looked at a claim about how quickly the stimulus money will be spent here . For this Truth-O-Meter item, we'll focus on Will's claim that most of the stimulus money will be spent "not this year, not next year, but in 2011." It seems that Will's information springs from a bit of confusion that happened back in January 2009, when the White House and Congress were just starting to hash over the stimulus package. At the time, the White House had released a $825 billion stimulus proposal that included about $355 billion in spending on everything from alternative energy to road construction. Repeatedly, the White House maintained it would spend about 75 percent of the money within the first 18 months of enactment. A flurry of news reports cited a Congressional Budget Office prediction that much of the spending would happen in 2011 or later, but the White House contended that report was incomplete: "The Congressional Budget Office recently released an analysis of a component of the economic recovery proposal; that analysis, however, did not assess the overall package," Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag wrote in a Jan. 22 letter to House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt. "Our analysis indicates that at least 75 percent of the overall package (including its tax component and the other spending provisions that were not analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office) will be spent over the next year and a half." Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the estimate as a way to demonstrate that stimulus money would drip slowly rather than flood into the economy. The final cost estimate of the $787 billion passed by Congress on Feb. 13 shows that about $145.4 billion will be spent on infrastructure and other job-creating projects in 2009 and 2010, and about $162.5 billion will be spent between 2011 and 2019. Just using those numbers, Will would be correct: most discretionary spending — the Washington term for the portion of the budget that Congress controls — will go out in 2011 or after. But discretionary spending is only part of the $787 billion package. Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy for Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, said the rest of the package includes mandatory spending — such as money for food stamps and health care — and spending on tax breaks. That money must also be taken into account to get the most accurate idea of how much cash is literally leaving Washington each year. In that regard, the numbers look very different. According to the CBO, about $185 billion will go out in 2009 and $399 billion will go out in 2010. Together, that's about 75 percent of the $787 billion bill. Also worth noting: Will said "in 2011" not "after 2011." In the heat of debate, it's clear that he slipped up his words. Nevertheless, in this case he's wrong no matter how you crunch the numbers; in every scenario, 2010 is the biggest spending year. To recap: If the government were only considering discretionary spending, Will would be correct; CBO's cost estimates of the White House proposal and the final version of the bill demonstrate that most discretionary funding will go out in 2011 and later. However, that's not the whole story because Will's claim does not take into account mandatory spending or tax breaks. In that case, the bulk of the money will be spent in 2009 and 2010. As a result, we give Will a 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 | George Will | null | null | null | 2009-08-26T18:21:19 | 2009-08-23 | ['None'] |
pomt-00284 | Says Sen. Joe Manchin has a "$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht." | half-true | /west-virginia/statements/2018/sep/28/national-republican-senatorial-committee/does-joe-manchin-have-700000-luxury-yacht/ | The National Republican Senatorial Committee -- the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm -- didn’t hold back in a campaign ad aimed at Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. The ad, released in early August, charged that "West Virginia Joe" had transformed himself into "Washington Joe." And a key exhibit for this argument was a pricey boat he owned. Manchin owns a "$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht," the ad said, illustrating the claim with a photograph showing a docked vessel. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Is this accurate? We took a closer look. Does Manchin own a boat? Manchin’s campaign does not dispute that he owns a boat, "Almost Heaven," saying it is where Manchin has typically lived when in Washington and not back home in West Virginia. In fact, the boat is hardly a secret. It has been written about periodically before; articles often mention sessions he’s held on the boat with other lawmakers to negotiate legislation and strategy. In 2014, for instance, Time magazine wrote that both "Almost Heaven" and Manchin’s previous vessel, the "Black Tie," serve as "a kind of floating incubator of that tenderest of Washington flowers in the first decades of the 21st century: bipartisanship." Is the vessel worth $700,000? To back up its assertion, the NRSC provided PolitiFact with a document labeled "general index or abstract of title continuation sheet No. 1," the cost of the vessel was listed $700,000. Manchin’s campaign instead offered a different document with a lower dollar figure. That document, a memorandum of sale from 2014, said the purchase price for the vessel was $220,000. The document says that Manchin purchased the boat from M&T Bank, with National Liquidators as the broker of the sale. Independent experts we contacted were unable to explain the difference in the two dollar figures, beyond speculating that the vessel was purchased from a seller eager to get rid of it and later insured at the boat’s market value. Is it a "luxury yacht"? According to Boats.com, any vessel "over 40 feet long almost always qualifies" as a yacht. By the length standard alone, that would qualify "Almost Heaven" as a yacht: The vessel, built in 2001, is 65 feet long, according to Coast Guard documents provided to PolitiFact by the NRSC. Whether it’s a "luxury" vessel, however, is in the eye of the beholder. According to the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology, the word "yacht ... connotes elegance and expense." Boats.com adds, "Just as a cocky walk would never be mistaken for a limping shuffle, yacht attitude is the net result of a combination of factors that are easy to spot as a group but hard to quantify individually." The vessel is listed as "recreational" on documents. However, a less confrontational -- but similarly accurate -- description could be "houseboat," since it is Manchin’s residence in Washington. Our ruling The NRSC said that Manchin has a "$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht." There’s no dispute that Manchin has a boat docked in Washington, D.C. Its 40-foot length would generally qualify it as a yacht, but since Manchin lives there when he is in town, it could be just as easily described as a houseboat. The vessel was purchased for much less, but it appears to be insured for $700,000. Whether it qualifies as a "luxury" vessel is a matter of opinion. The information we’ve found backs up elements of both the NRSC’s original assertion and Manchin’s counterargument, so we rate it Half True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | National Republican Senatorial Committee | null | null | null | 2018-09-28T09:39:01 | 2018-08-07 | ['Washington,_D.C.'] |
pomt-02021 | Four (maybe five) Latinos have served on the Austin City Council. | true | /texas/statements/2014/jun/06/mike-martinez/few-hispanic-residents-elected-austin-city-council/ | Austin City Council member Mike Martinez, who declared his candidacy for mayor in April 2014, says he could be part of historic changes in the November 2014 elections. We didn’t catch Martinez’s precise remarks at the May 28, 2014, HABLA Platica gathering in East Austin. Asked later to repeat himself, Martinez said in a voice-mail message: "I think we’ve had four Latinos in the designated ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ seat" on the council," plus, he said, another council member who says he was Latino, the late Robert Barnstone. "That would be five total," Martinez said, adding he speculated at the event that up to five Hispanic residents could be elevated to the council all at once in the November elections. For the first time, voters are poised to fill 10 council seats from within geographic districts with the mayor’s job filled, as before, by citywide balloting. And has Austin, which was incorporated in 1839, only had a few Hispanic council members? News organizations including the Austin American-Statesman have noted the "gentlemen’s agreement" mentioned by Martinez as explaining why the seven-member council, elected citywide, has rarely had more than a black and an Hispanic member. Under the so-called agreement, certain seats on the council were seen among many as reserved for members of those minority groups to seek. The results: A "Milestones" web page created by the city says John Treviño was the first Hispanic citizen elected to the council; he won Place 5 on May 3, 1975. Voters had made Beryl Handcox the council’s first African American in May 1971, according to the page. An Aug. 20, 2010, Statesman news feature story on local Mexican American pioneers called Treviño the first Hispanic on the council and further said Gus Garcia, a former Austin school board trustee, later won election to the council before winning election in 2000 as mayor. Garcia, who like Treviño initially won Place 5 on the council, said Treviño and Richard Moya, the first Mexican American elected to the Travis County Commissioners Court, were "young Turks" who sought to break free from a long-standing system in which a handful of Hispanic leaders and businessmen had access to Anglo leaders, the story said. "We wanted to make it more democratic," Garcia said then. "None of us thought about doing this so we could be recognized. We did it because there was a need in the (Mexican American) community." To our request for detail, city spokeswoman Alicia Dean guided us to the Austin History Center where researcher Jeff Carrillo pointed out city election results through history, posted online. This enabled us to build a chart indicating four Spanish-surnamed winners of council seats. In 2000, environmental activist Raul Alvarez won election to Place 2 on the council, to which Garcia didn’t seek re-election, our chart indicates. Alvarez was re-elected in 2003 but didn’t seek another term in 2006, when Martinez initially won the seat. This leaves Barnstone, who succeeded Treviño in Place 5 in 1988. Garcia, asked for his recollections, told us by email that in Austin’s Mexican-American community, Barnstone wasn’t considered "one of us." Separately, the center’s Molly Hults pointed out Barnstone’s June 25, 2008, Statesman paid obituary stating Barnstone grew up in Laredo as part of a "legendary Texas and Mexican family." At the time, the Statesman’s front-page news story on Barnstone’s passing described him as a charismatic developer and "campaigner who never failed to use his fluent Spanish on the trail - his mother, born in Veracruz, Mexico, raised him; his Anglo father died before Barnstone was born." Our ruling Martinez said there have been four or maybe five Hispanic council members. We'd say five. We rate this statement as True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Mike Martinez | null | null | null | 2014-06-06T12:12:25 | 2014-05-28 | ['None'] |
snes-00443 | Does a Specific Law Mandate Family Separation and Detention of Minors? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-law-family-separation-detention-minors/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does a Specific Law Mandate Family Separation and Detention of Minors? | 19 June 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12632 | Just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these (‘sanctuary city’) policies also violate federal law. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/mar/30/jeff-sessions/jeff-sessions-misleads-saying-inspector-general-fo/ | Attorney General Jeff Sessions said "sanctuary cities" that won’t cooperate immigration authorities are acting unlawfully and stand to lose funds if they don’t comply. The Justice Department’s inspector general has determined that policies in such jurisdictions are illegal, Sessions said March 27. "Not only do these policies endanger lives of every American, just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these policies also violate federal law," Sessions, who began leading the department this year under Trump’s administration, said during a White House press briefing. Is that accurate? Sessions is exaggerating what the inspector general actually said. Inspector general’s memo President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to cut federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities, claiming they harbor criminals and risk public safety. There is not a legal, federal definition for "sanctuary cities," but they’re generally regarded as local governments that limit their cooperation with immigration officials. Usually they do that by refusing to hold people in local jails (beyond the time they would have been released) when asked to do so by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. That’s called a refusal to honor a detainer request. ICE detainers ask local law enforcement agencies to alert the federal agency of upcoming releases of individuals and to detain them for up to 48 hours so that immigration authorities can pick them up. Jurisdictions with "sanctuary" policies argue that they have good reasons not to co-operate with immigration officials. They say that their policies help build trust between local police and their community, and that their cities are not crime magnets. Amid Trump’s call to cut funding for sanctuary cities, some cities such as Boston and New York remain committed to policies that shield immigrants. Others, fearing a loss of money, have walked back their policies. A day after Trump signed an executive order to advance his promise, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez directed county officials to comply with detainer requests, though he had previously claimed his jurisdiction was not a sanctuary. Sessions was basing his claim that the cities were violating the law on an inspector general’s memo. In May 2016, Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general wrote a memo to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs in response to queries on whether jurisdictions receiving department grants were violating the law, specifically 8 U.S. Code Section 1373. Section 1373 says federal, state or local government entities or officials may not prohibit or restrict the exchange of information with federal immigration officers regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual. Of the more than 140 jurisdictions in question, the inspector general’s office took a sample of 10 jurisdictions, which included the state of California, Chicago, and Miami-Dade County in Florida. It reviewed their policies regarding their interaction and communication with ICE and asked ICE officials for feedback. All 10 jurisdictions had policies limiting in some way their cooperation with ICE detainer requests, the May 2016 memo said. But local jails are not required by law to respond to detainers requests, and the handling of detainers is not addressed in Section 1373. Yet the May 2016 memo raised concerns about the wording in some local ordinances and how officials may be interpreting and applying them. For instance, a Chicago ordinance said, "except as otherwise provided under applicable federal law, no agent or agency shall disclose information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any person unless required to do so by legal process." The inspector general’s office raised concerns on whether Chicago city employees were aware of their legal authority to act against the local ordinance and respond to ICE detainer requests. Policies in other jurisdictions besides Chicago "may be causing local officials to believe and apply the policies in a manner that prohibits or restricts cooperation with ICE in all respects. That, of course, would be inconsistent with and prohibited by Section 1373." A spokesman for Sessions highlighted the previous line as backup for the attorney general’s claim. But that line has a footnote, which says: "The ICE officials we spoke with noted that no one at (Department of Homeland Security) or ICE has made a formal legal determination whether certain state and local laws or policies violate Section 1373, and we are unaware of any Department of Justice decision in that regard. These ICE officials were also unaware of any legal action taken by the federal government against a state or local jurisdiction to require cooperation." Experts evaluate Sessions’ interpretation Several immigration law scholars we reached out to disagreed with Sessions’ read of the memo. We spoke with five immigration law scholars; four of them disagreed with Sessions' interpretation of the memo. The closest support for Sessions' claim came from Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a professor and director of clinical legal education at the University of California-Davis law school. The concerns raised by the inspector general give Sessions’ claim some credence, he said. "While there is a little hedge because no jurisdiction has been accused of violating 1373, or found to have done so, my reading is that some jurisdictions are in apparent violation of the law," Chin said. The other were more skeptical. "Sessions went beyond what the report said. The report expresses concern that some cities’ policies might violate section 1373, but in the end the report stops short of finding any violations," said Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. "In fact, the language of the report seems carefully chosen to limit itself to raising concerns without finding violations." The "may" qualification in the report "is far from a definitive conclusion that these policies are against the law," said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has opined in the Washington Post that Trump’s executive order related to so-called sanctuary cities is unconstitutional. "The inspector general had no real information, but merely a vague idea that it was possible that in some jurisdictions policies may be causing a violation of Section 1373," said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who used to run the civil rights office at Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration. The argument in the inspector general's memo seems to be that the policies could violate Section 1373 as applied, noted Huyen Pham, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law. "But the inspector general recognizes that this argument would require a lot more systematic gathering of empirical information than what it did in its investigation," Pham said. "Thus the carefully couched 'may be' language." Our ruling Sessions said, "Just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these (‘sanctuary’) policies also violate federal law." A memo issued by the inspector general raised questions about how local officials may be interpreting and applying ordinances that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But the memo also explicitly said a formal legal determination on whether certain state and local laws or policies violate Section 1373 had not been made by immigration officials and that his office was unaware of any Justice Department decision in that regard. Sessions’ statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. Share the Facts Politifact 4 7 Politifact Rating: Mostly False "Just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these (‘sanctuary city’) policies also violate federal law." Jeff Sessions Attorney General in a press briefing Monday, March 27, 2017 03/27/2017 Read More info | null | Jeff Sessions | null | null | null | 2017-03-30T11:03:13 | 2017-03-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-09439 | Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973 ... A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS!!! | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/11/chain-email/obama-pay-increase-military-based-formula/ | Here at PolitiFact, we're huge fans of social media. So when readers requested we check a claim that had gone viral over Facebook, we jumped at the chance. Here's what they sent us: "Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973! Nice to know that during a time of rampant inflation, while war is fought in 2 theatres, our men and women in uniform get A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS!!! Please repost if you support our troops" This is a first for us; the claim is part status update, part chain e-mail. To check this claim, it's important to understand how the government typically treats military pay raises. By law, the administration is required to propose pay increases that match increases in the Employment Cost Index, a quarterly economic report that details changes in the costs of labor for businesses. Military pay is tied to this measure to ensure that pay keeps up with salaries in the private sector. Now, while the administration is required to match the ECI, the law does give the president some discretion. In national emergencies or "serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare" the president can propose an alternative pay adjustment up or down. In fact, the last president to use this authority was Bill Clinton, who actually proposed no pay increase for the military in 1994, according to Colonel Michael Hayden, deputy director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America. But Congress ultimately approved a 2.2 percent increase. Obama recently released his budget for 2011, and it included a 1.4 percent pay raise for military personnel, which, again, is in line with the ECI. Clearly, that's lower than the 2.9 percent increase Obama requested last year. But that's because wages and salaries in the private sector only increased 1.4 percent during 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects and publishes the data. It's the smallest percentage change since the BLS started collecting such data in 1975. So, it's true that Obama has proposed a 1.4 percent pay increase for the military in 2011. By law, it's what he was required to propose. In fact, because the pay raises come out of the Department of Defense budget, it has asked Congress not to exceed the 1.4 percent pay raise, because the department needs those funds for other programs, including $50 billion to fully fund the Defense Health Program and sustain benefits for about 9.5 million beneficiaries, $2.2 billion for the care of wounded soldiers, and a $500 million increase in funding for family support programs, according to the Department of Defense. But the smallest since 1973, as the Facebook message suggests? It seems that number came from news reports that, if approved, the pay increase would be the smallest since the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973 and military pay rates were overhauled to match private sector pay for civilian workers with similar skills, education and experience. So, setting 1973 as the benchmark sets up a reasonable comparison. But Hayden also sent us the a copy of page 51 of the Fifth Edition of the the Military Compensation Background Papers, which includes data going as far back as 1945. According to that document, military personnel got no pay increase in 1962, making Obama's proposal the smallest since then. The last part of the claim -- that the military pay increase is lower than what welfare recipients are getting this year -- was nearly impossible to sort out. That's because the term "welfare" refers to an array of programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, the Child Nutrition Program and food stamps. Many of these programs are administered by the states. For example, with TANF the federal government gives block grants to states, which use these funds to operate low-income benefits. That funding has not increased since 1996, according to Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It's worth noting that the food stamp program got a funding boost in the stimulus bill; the legislation allocated $295 million to states to administer the program and a $19.9 billion temporary benefits increase for recipients. But Congress doesn't approve an annual "pay increase" for welfare recipients as it does for the military. So, there's really no comparison. So, this viral Facebook update is correct that Obama proposed a 1.4 percent pay increase for military personnel in 2011. Depending on the time frame, it's the smallest since 1973 or 1962. But there are some big inaccuracies about this claim as well. First and foremost, there's really no such thing as a pay increase for welfare recipients, so it's impossible to compare military pay to support for low-income communities. Furthermore, the claim leaves out important details about why Obama chose a 1.4 percent pay increase; in short, he's required to by law. And while Congress can approve a larger number -- and under extenuating circumstances, the president can propose an alternative pay raise -- the administration is discouraging Congress from doing so in order to keep other military programs, such as health care, well funded. Because this claim leaves out important details, we find it Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2010-03-11T13:51:54 | 2010-03-10 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-00837 | Recent solar energy policies in Georgia "have resulted in rate hikes and did not result in solar becoming any more economically viable." | pants on fire! | /florida/statements/2015/mar/24/americans-prosperity-florida/koch-backed-group-says-georgia-solar-policies-cost/ | A group backed by the Koch brothers is arguing a proposed constitutional amendment that would change Florida solar energy regulations will lead the Sunshine State down a dark path. Americans For Prosperity Florida says a petition being circulated by solar advocates Floridians for Solar Choice is the wrong move for the state, and will result in higher costs and decreased competition. The proposal needs nearly 700,000 signatures to get on the 2016 ballot, allowing voters to decide on an amendment that would change current Florida law that says customers can only buy electricity from a utility. If the amendment is approved, customers could buy electricity from solar installers and not just utility companies. We’ve written about it before here. At a March 10, 2015, news conference, AFP members said the amendment was misguided. They backed up their point of view by implying Georgia’s solar policies are "burdensome and expensive government mandates" that shouldn’t be emulated, and cited a Louisiana study that solar power would be very expensive to implement. AFP Florida followed up the conference with a release that read, "In Georgia, similar net metering policies have resulted in rate hikes and did not result in solar becoming any more economically viable." Is it true that energy regulations in Georgia -- often cited as a leader in implementing new solar policies -- have made electric rates go up? Time to rate the rates. Electric move It turns out we’ll be taking a quick look at Louisiana, too, because that’s the state AFP meant to name when citing net metering. They apologized and said they would correct the release, thanking PolitiFact for pointing out the error. We’ll be discussing both states for this check. What is net metering, anyway? In simplest terms, it’s the process of selling self-generated electricity, such as the power made by solar panels on your house, back to a utility company for a credit. The proposed Florida amendment doesn’t really concern itself with that, but rather removes a roadblock to buying power from someone other than a registered electric provider, like Duke Energy or Florida Power & Light. Right now, if a solar provider wants to sell its power, it must sell it to one of these utilities. Critics say being able to end this monopoly is key to expanding solar efforts in Florida, which is ranked 13th in solar installations by the Solar Energy Industries Association. Florida also is one of five states that specifically outlaw buying solar power directly from a provider. The others are Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia. While Georgia isn’t trying to open the market the same way the Florida amendment would, the Peach State is enjoying its own moment in the sunshine on the subject of solar. The state in 2008 offered homeowner tax credits to boost solar installations, a program that expired in 2014.The Georgia Public Service Commission worked with the state’s largest utility, Georgia Power, to create the Georgia Power Advanced Solar Initiative in 2012. The utility created programs to let businesses and homeowners sell solar energy to Georgia Power, as well as working out power-purchase agreements with big solar developers. The plan has been called a success by advocates, the state’s PSC and electric providers, and plans for expanding the amount of solar power in the state are in the works. Georgia Power has said there has been no "upward pressure on consumer rates." Spokesman John Kraft told PolitiFact Florida that from the beginning, part of the initiative was that the company would be able to buy solar-generated electricity at or below rates it would cost the company for traditional means, such as electricity generated by burning fossil fuels or using nuclear power. The program was voluntary from the beginning and not a state mandate. "There isn’t a regulation per se that says you have to do this amount," Kraft said. "The PSC had been asking us for ways to do more solar." So what about Louisiana? AFP Florida told us that’s really the place that saw higher electric rates because of solar policies. They cited a 2015 study for the Louisiana Public Service Commission, which was debating what to charge solar power customers for electricity. The report focused on the state’s 50 percent tax credit for installing new solar panels, and said those credits cost the state at least $89 million. The study became controversial because the study’s author -- consultant and Louisiana State University energy studies professor David Dismukes -- had written favorably about the oil and gas industries before. Solar advocates called the report biased for not focusing on the jobs the industry had created and misrepresenting how the state’s tax credits work. Setting aside the controversy over the study, Louisiana customers outside of New Orleans did see a base rate hike in 2014, which cost the average ratepayer about 47 cents per month. But that increase was approved by the PSC in 2013 and was over several issues, including the cost of maintaining an aging power grid. Electric utility company Entergy did not specifically mention solar as being an issue when announcing the base rate change. Last year, Louisiana voted to end its 50 percent tax credit for solar installations in 2017. Gov. Bobby Jindal is considering cutting it sooner to fill a $1.6 billion budget gap this year. So while Louisiana did see a rate increase, we don’t see evidence that it was specifically related to a solar initiative. Our ruling Americans for Prosperity Florida said recent solar energy policies in Georgia "have resulted in rate hikes and did not result in solar becoming any more economically viable." The group admitted it meant to say Louisiana, which is having its own debate on the issue. But the program in Georgia is thriving. Part of Georgia's implementation plan was that using solar power wouldn’t affect rates, and it hasn’t, Georgia’s largest utility said. Louisiana did see a rate increase, but it doesn't seem to be specifically related to a solar initiative. The statement is completely wrong. We rate it Pants on Fire. | null | Americans for Prosperity: Florida | null | null | null | 2015-03-24T09:52:45 | 2015-03-10 | ['None'] |
hoer-00214 | Send Christmas Cards for Recovering Soldiers to Queen Elizabeth Hospital | misleading recommendations | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/recovering-soldier-queen-elizabeth-hospital.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | False - Send Christmas Cards for Recovering Soldiers to Queen Elizabeth Hospital | November 17, 2011 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13905 | Gov. Terry McAuliffe "has made several statements that he would love to be in a Cabinet secretary position with the Clinton administration." | false | /virginia/statements/2016/jun/27/bryce-reeves/bryce-reeves-falsely-says-terry-mcauliffe-has-voic/ | State Sen. Bryce Reeves is out to prove that Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s restoration of voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who served their time is a ploy to help Democrat Hillary Clinton win the presidency this fall. On June 17, Reeves filed a request under the Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act for all communications between the governor’s office and Clinton’s campaign. In a news release that day, the senator said that McAuliffe’s restoration order was "motivated by his attempt to help Hillary Clinton win Virginia in the fall." Reeves, R-Spotsylvania, elaborated during a June 19 interview on NewsRadio WINA in Charlottesville. "Certainly, he’s looking out for his own skin," Reeves said of McAuliffe. "It goes without saying that he’s made several statements that he would love to be in a Cabinet secretary position with the Clinton administration, and we’re trying to uncover that. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. One way or another, we’re going to find out what’s going on." No doubt McAuliffe, a Democrat, is a longtime close friend and key fundraiser for Clinton and, should she win, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him working for the White House in some capacity. But we hadn’t heard the governor say once - let alone "several" times - that he’s aiming for a Cabinet seat. On the other hand, we have heard the governor promise to serve out his term, ending in January 2018. And during a June 3 interview on radio station WURV (103.7 FM) in Richmond, McAuliffe questioned whether his "temperament is right to be sitting in a Cabinet" and said he’s "never worked for someone else in his life." So we asked Reeves for evidence that McAuliffe has stated his ambition to be in Clinton’s Cabinet. Bill Clinton Reeves, in an email, pointed to a story McAuliffe told in his 2007 autobiography, "What a Party!" McAuliffe devoted a large part of the book to talking about his friendship and fundraising feats for another Clinton - former President Bill Clinton. McAuliffe wrote that during a 1 a.m. game of cards with the Clintons at the White House in May 1999, the president mentioned that Secretary of Commerce Bill Daley would be resigning. Dorothy McAuliffe said her husband would be a good replacement, and both Clintons agreed. "I was excited driving home that night with Dorothy thinking about being in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as secretary of commerce, and was especially pleased by the prospect of not raising money any more," McAuliffe wrote. But the appointment was scrubbed the next morning. McAuliffe wrote that John Podesta, the White House chief of staff, told him it would be hard to win congressional approval of a Cabinet nominee who had such close political ties to the president. McAuliffe wrote that Bill Clinton instead was willing to name him to be ambassador to the United Kingdom - a job he also would "love" to land. But at the request of then-Vice President Al Gore, McAuliffe wrote that he instead agreed to become chairman of the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Hillary Clinton Reeves never mentioned Bill Clinton during the radio interview. But he and radio host Rob Schilling named Hillary Clinton five times during the six-minute chat and referred to her campaign three more times. And, of course, Reeves said the goal of his FOIA request is to uncover what he claims is a political deal between McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton. So what evidence does Reeves offer that McAuliffe has said he would love to be in Hillary Clinton’s Cabinet? The senator points to: •Five articles from newspapers and electronic publications about McAuliffe’s intentions to help Clinton’s campaign. None of them mention a Cabinet position. •A partial transcript of a March 31 radio interview on WVMP in Roanoke during which McAuliffe talks about his friendship with Hillary Clinton and says, if she’s elected, "I’m going to try to convince her that everything should go to Virginia." No mention of an administration post. •An April 22 article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on McAuliffe’s announcement of the blanket restoration of voting rights for felons. Reeves points to a disapproving quote by House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, who said McAuliffe views the governorship "as a stepping stone to a job in Hillary Clinton’s Cabinet." We searched the archives of four newspapers - The Times-Dispatch, The Washington Post, The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press -- from the start of McAuliffe’s term in January 2014 to present. We didn’t find a single article in which the governor said he wanted a Cabinet post, or any White House position, should Hillary Clinton become president. Our ruling Reeves says McAuliffe "has made several statements that he would love to be in a Cabinet secretary position with the Clinton administration." We wouldn’t be surprised to see McAuliffe wind up in the White House if Hillary Clinton becomes president. The two are longtime friends and political allies. Perhaps they’ve had private conversations about this. But Reeves says the governor is pining for a position and uses that statement as the basis of an attack: that McAuliffe has restored voting rights to more than 200,000 felons as part of an agreement to help Clinton win the presidency and to receive a Cabinet seat in return. There’s a burden on Reeves to provide evidence that McAuliffe is seeking a Cabinet seat, and he comes up empty. We rate his statement False.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/813764b8-f84a-42d9-9446-c9da950d443a | null | Bryce Reeves | null | null | null | 2016-06-27T12:00:00 | 2016-06-17 | ['Bill_Clinton'] |
goop-00635 | Emma Stone Pregnant With Justin Theroux’s Baby? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/emma-stone-justin-theroux-pregnant-baby/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Emma Stone Pregnant With Justin Theroux’s Baby? | 12:02 pm, July 16, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00373 | A lunar eclipse occurring on 27 July 2018 will be the longest duration total lunar eclipse of the 21st century. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/longest-lunar-eclipse/ | null | Science | null | Alex Kasprak | null | The Longest Total Lunar Eclipse of the 21st Century Will Occur on July 27 | 5 July 2018 | null | ['None'] |
bove-00292 | Google Takes On Fake News With New Fact Check Feature | none | https://www.boomlive.in/google-launches-fact-check-feature-globally-to-fight-fake-news/ | null | null | null | null | null | Google Takes On Fake News With New Fact Check Feature | Apr 08 2017 11:16 am, Last Updated: Apr 15 2017 3:07 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07106 | Almost 10 percent of Canadians came to visit Florida last year ... (Canadians) buy 7.4 percent of our homes in the state. | true | /florida/statements/2011/jun/21/rick-scott/gov-rick-scott-says-canadians-love-florida-beaches/ | Fresh off a five-day trade mission to Canada, Florida Gov. Rick Scott was eager to drop a few tidbits about the country's relationship with the Sunshine State. In a news conference with the Capitol press corps on June 16, 2011, Scott showed off his Florida-Canada knowledge, claiming that: • "Almost 10 percent of Canadians came to visit Florida last year." • And, "they buy 7.4 percent of our homes in the state." Interesting claims, eh? But true? The number of Canadians visiting Florida each year is collected by Visit Florida, the state's official tourism marketing corporation. Visit Florida bases its data on credit card information and statistics supplied the Canadian government. The agency found that about 3.05 million Canadians visited Florida in 2010. That's about 9 percent of the country's total population of about 34 million. The Toronto Star noted in a recent story -- based on the Visit Florida data -- that the Canadian boost to Florida's tourism happened even as oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster threatened Gulf of Mexico beaches. So Scott is right about the tourists. But what about Canadian homeowners? Scott's press office directed us to a 2010 study on Florida's international home buyers. The study is researched by the National Association of Realtors, which creates an annual report on the country's housing market and additional reports for states with a high rate of sales to foreign buyers. The national group takes a survey of Florida members each year, and that includes a question about foreign clients. Florida has the strongest international home sales market in the country. In 2010, foreign clients were responsible for 22 percent of existing home purchases in the state, according to the study. "Florida has consistently been the No. 1 destination among foreign buyers," said Lawrence Yun, a National Association of Realtors economist. And Canadians are a big part of that distinction. They out-bought all international buyers in 2010, accounting for 36 percent of Florida's foreign sales in 2010. United Kingdom residents are the next-best buyers at 15 percent. Sure, residents of the Great White North love the state's beaches and toasty climate. What's more, Yun said, is that these slices of paradise don't cost nearly as much as they used to, and the Canadian dollar is stronger than its weakened U.S. counterpart. There's greater consumer confidence among Canadians, which is not a bad thing for Florida. "It's absolutely helpful," Yun said. "Anytime the market is down, one way to help alleviate the pain or help the healing process is for buyers to come into the market and absorb the inventory." We wanted to find the percentage of Canadians who bought homes in Florida in 2010. So we multiplied 0.22 (portion of Florida home sales to foreign buyers in 2010) by 0.36 (Canada's share of international sales among foreign buyers) to get 0.0792. That's 7.92 percent. Scott's office did not specify how he arrived at 7.4 percent, but he's close enough. He's right that there's a clear Canadian infatuation with Florida. As one Canadian-turned-Floridian-real-estate-agent joked in a National Public Radio report on the housing phenomenon, "If there ever was an 11th (Canadian) province, it probably would be Florida." Scott has his Canada trivia down cold, and we were unable to find any statistics that contradict him. We rate his claim True. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2011-06-21T12:01:45 | 2011-06-16 | ['Canada'] |
pomt-10249 | John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/28/barack-obama/update-obama-nailed-it/ | Update: This item has been updated, but the new information didn't change the ruling. If you've been following the Democratic National Convention, you've doubtless heard any number of speakers cite the statistic that Sen. John McCain has voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time. There's no mystery to the Democratic strategy here: A vote for McCain amounts to four more years of Bush, whose approval rating is hovering near an abysmal 30 percent. So it came as no surprise when Sen. Barack Obama cited the statistic in his major convention address. "But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change." The number is based on a "presidential support" score from Congressional Quarterly, which rates how often lawmakers back or oppose the president. Since 2001, McCain has, in fact, backed the president's position an average of 90 percent of the time. By congressional standards, that's solidly partisan, but hardly marching in lockstep. McCain supported Bush as infrequently as 77 percent of the time in 2005; and as high as 95 percent of the time in 2007. We should also note some factors that helped to drive up McCain's 2007 score, which was partly a reflection of the new political calculus in the Democratic-controlled Congress. That year, McCain missed more than half the votes on which Bush had a position, as he campaigned for the White House. But repeated votes on immigration and the Iraq war — two issues on which he was closely allied with Bush — as well as filibuster votes helped elevate McCain from one of the president's chief Republican adversaries three years ago to one of his biggest supporters. Over the course of the election, we've looked at this statistic a couple of times, and in a couple variations. In June, we ruled it True when Obama said "McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time (last year)." But we dinged running mate Joe Biden a bit when he said at an Aug. 23, 2008, rally in Springfield, Ill., "You can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95 percent of the time." Because Biden didn't note a year when he cited McCain's highest "presidential support" score — thereby suggesting an overall score — we ruled his statement only Half True. Here, Obama cites McCain's average presidential support score since Bush was elected. We checked our math, and although we had first said Obama was off by 1 percent, we have since realized that Obama wasn't, we were. It's 90 percent on the nose. True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-08-28T00:00:00 | 2008-08-28 | ['John_McCain', 'George_W._Bush'] |
pomt-07305 | Says there are more federal dollars in Gov. John Kasich's budget plan than in the previous state budget. | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2011/may/18/jay-goyal/state-rep-jay-goyal-says-new-kasich-budget-plan-us/ | A long-running debate at the Statehouse has focused on the role that federal stimulus money played in former Gov. Ted Strickland’s last state budget. From the day it was first introduced in February 2009, Republicans ripped Strickland’s budget for relying on billions in federal stimulus dollars to help Ohio shore its state budget. The now-absent federal stimulus dollars are the chief reason, Republicans have long argued, that they are now forced to make gouging cuts in education and local government funds to keep the next state budget in balance. House Democrats tried to turn the tables on that GOP argument during the seven-hour-long floor debate May 5, 2011, over the next state budget. They did so by noting that the state budget proposed by Republican Gov. John Kasich actually had more federal dollars in it then the one crafted by Democrats in 2009. "I think it’s important to note that even accounting for the federal stimulus dollars, there are more federal dollars in this biennial than there are federal dollars in the previous biennial budget," said Rep. Jay Goyal, a Mansfield lawmaker. "I think that’s an important fact to note." House Republicans immediately jumped on Goyal’s statement with Rep. Ron Amstutz, a Wooster Republican, even invoking PolitiFact Ohio saying that should be awarded a Pants on Fire rating. Does it? House Democratic Caucus spokeswoman Melissa Fazekas pulled some numbers from Strickland’s current state budget, which runs through June 30, as well as Kasich’s proposal for the next state budget. The House Democratic numbers — taken from the state budget summary put together by the Office of Budget and Management under Kasich — show a total of $6.9 billion in federal dollars in 2010 and $8.2 billion in 2011 deposited into Ohio’s general revenue fund. That’s a total of $15.1 billion in federal dollars over both years of Strickland’s budget. Meanwhile, Kasich’s proposed budget for 2012-13 relies on $7.55 billion in 2012 and $8.49 billion in 2013. That’s a total of $16.04 billion — or about $940 million more than what Strickland had to used in his budget, according to the chart Democrats relied upon. So Goyal’s right? Not so fast. The chart on which House Democrats relied only compares the federal dollars in the state’s general revenue fund in both budgets. And while that’s the usual place where federal dollars end up in state budgets, Strickland’s budget director Pari Sabety moved portions of the state’s Medicaid program "off-budget" in 2009, so not all the federal money went into the state’s general revenue fund. In fact, a state budget document titled "estimated one-time revenue source" prepared by the Strickland administration has a notation marked "footnote D" concerning a pot of federal money known as enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, or FMAP. Basically, federal officials decided to reimburse states at a higher rate for Medicare and Medicaid costs than they normally do—picking up 73 cents of every dollar spent on medical care instead of the usual rate of 64 cents. The footnote explains that only a small portion of that enhanced FMAP money was funneled into the state’s general revenue fund. "Under budget framework, an additional $1.3 billion in FY 2010 and $590 million in FY 2011 is deposited into non-GRF funds," the footnote says. Put simply, there was nearly $1.9 billion in federal dollars in the last budget beyond what was in Ohio’s general revenue fund. And that’s not all. That’s because federal officials added even more money to the enhanced FMAP program in September 2010—about $293 million funneled "off-budget" which was ladled out to Ohio hospitals, mental health providers and drug assistance for HIV positive patients as well as the state departments of aging and mental health. Add this to our previous pile of federal money and you have about $17.3 billion in federal dollars that flowed into Ohio in the last budget cycle -- roughly $1.26 billion more than the budget proposed by Kasich. Goyal’s statement did contain some element of truth, but the phrase he used was "more federal dollars" which should include all of the money coming from the federal government, not just funds flowing into the GRF. Not including the Medicaid dollars ignores a critical fact that would give the listener a different impression. On the Truth-O-Meter, that mean’s Goyal’s statement rates as 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 | Jay Goyal | null | null | null | 2011-05-18T06:00:00 | 2011-05-05 | ['John_Kasich'] |
snes-02384 | President Trump praised KFC founder Colonel Sanders, who wasn't born until 1890, for his service during the Civil War. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-praises-colonel-sanders/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Donald Trump Praises Colonel Sanders for His Service in the Civil War? | 22 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07216 | Virginia is "headed towards another surplus this year, unlike most states." | mostly true | /virginia/statements/2011/jun/04/bob-mcdonnell/mcdonnell-says-virginia-among-few-state-heading-to/ | While touring Asia to drum up business for Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell boasted about the Old Dominion’s prudent state government. "We’re headed towards another surplus this year, unlike most states," McDonnell said in a Skype interview from Beijing with NBC 12 reporter Ryan Nobles. After years of budget cutting in Richmond and other state capitols, is Virginia really among an elite group of states in the black? We decided to find out. Like many states, Virginia has cut spending in recent years. McDonnell and his predecessor, Tim Kaine, worked with legislators to overcome about $6 billion in budget shortfalls. Virginia, like just about every state, is required to have a balanced budget. About $2.34 billion of the shortfall was mended through budget cuts. The rest of the shortfall was closed with federal stimulus money, transfers from the state’s "rainy day" fund and other one-time bookkeeping maneuvers, including the deferment of $850 million in contributions to the state retirement system. In addition, the state required businesses to pay one month of sales tax revenue early. Virginia’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. Last summer, McDonnell announced the state closed the 2010 budget with a $403 million surplus. About $175 million came from lower-than-expected spending by stage agencies. The rest came from tax revenues that were higher than projected. So with one month left in the 2011 fiscal year, is another surplus on its way? Finance Secretary Ric Brown estimated that state tax revenues in fiscal 2011 would be 3.5 percent higher than the prior year. But through 10 months, receipts have actually climbed by 4.5 percent. That extra money, if it holds, would yield a surplus in the state’s $15.4 billion general fund which pays for education, health programs and public safety. The McDonnell administration has not publicly estimated of the amount of left-over money it expects. But that doesn’t mean Virginia is back to full financial health. The 2010 surplus, even if supplemented by a 2011 windfall, is far smaller than the cuts made by Virginia during past years. And the $1.9 billion in federal stimulus money used by the state won’t be in future budgets. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Virginia’s general tax revenues peaked in at $17 billion in 2008 and probably won’t return to that pre-recession high until 2013. So Virginia is indeed on track to post its second consecutive surplus. But the state will also need to make up deferred pension contributions in future budgets. Robert Vaughn, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, said the pension retributions will be made over a number of years and won’t necessarily match the $850 million in contributions Virginia skipped during the recession. What’s the story in other states? Todd Haggerty, a fiscal policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said most states expect 2011 revenue to climb from 2010. Despite the growth, he said all states except North Dakota are still below their peak revenue levels, which most reached in 2008. A majority of states are not expected to return to peak revenues until 2014 or later, according to a study. Michigan does not anticipate hitting that mark before 2020 -- at least seven years after Virginia. Haggerty pointed out that states try to match spending to revenue as closely as possible, and posting a surplus means those estimates were off. Still, he said, it is "better to be off towards a surplus rather than a deficit." In March, the NCSL said 21 states were reporting that personal income taxes were coming in above estimates, while 17 more said the receipts were on target. The National Association of State Budget Officers came up with similar numbers in a June 2 report. The group said that fiscal 2011 tax revenues are exceeding projections in 22 states, on target in 11 states, and below estimates in 17 states. That may sound like good news, but NASBO says there is more to these possible surpluses than meets the eye. "While any surplus is a positive sign, such surpluses are more likely the result of cuts in spending from previous fiscal years as well as conservative revenue forecasts," the group said in its June report. Let’s review our findings. McDonnell said, "We’re heading towards a surplus this year, unlike most states." With 10 months of revenue data in hand, Virginia is on track to post a surplus in the 2011 fiscal year. That would follow a surplus in 2010, but state revenue is still below pre-recession levels. McDonnell seems correct that a minority of states are heading towards surpluses. The NCSL said in March that 21 states were reporting personal income tax revenues were exceeding projections. In June, NASBO reported that overall tax revenues were coming in over estimates in 22 states. Even with a surplus, Virginia will be working for years to make up for contributions it withheld from the state pension fund to balance the budget during the recession. The state has also relied on federal stimulus dollars that will not be available in the future. So it’s reasonable to question whether the state is really in the black. For that reason, we rate the governor’s statement Mostly True. | null | Bob McDonnell | null | null | null | 2011-06-04T06:00:00 | 2011-05-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-00261 | Viral internet photo shows a young Christine Blasey Ford | pants on fire! | /north-carolina/statements/2018/oct/04/lanny-lancaster/gop-county-leader-shares-fake-photo-ford-blasey/ | The internet meme machine went into overdrive when sexual assault allegations were made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Dallas Woodhouse, director of the North Carolina Republican Party, tweeted that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Julie Swetnick, should be arrested, The News & Observer reported. Bloggers claimed to have photos of professor Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to bring forward allegations against Kavanaugh, has been pictured George Soros, and that Ford’s lawyer was pictured with Hillary Clinton. As PolitiFact shows, it’s not Ford in the photos. Now, Lanny Lancaster, Cabarrus County GOP chairman, has shared a photo allegedly of Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, that was originally posted on Facebook by an account under the name Joseph T. Mannarino. Lancaster shared the photo, which shows a young woman wearing braces and large glasses, adding the comment: "This is the alleged sexual assault victim. Wow." On Oct. 2, Democratic congressional candidate Frank McNeill included the post in an email newsletter as an example of a Republican "assault on the safety and dignity of American women." McNeill is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson in the 8th district, which runs from Fayetteville in southeastern North Carolina to the north Charlotte area. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Mannarino’s post has been shared over 12,000 times, and has around 800 comments. Contacted by The News & Observer, Lancaster said in a phone interview that there’s nothing inappropriate about his post. "I didn’t say anything. I just said this is her picture. Basically, the media is distorting the facts on this lady. Everything she’s said is made up. She has no evidence whatsoever. I support that theory," Lancaster said. In addition, Lancaster shared why he shared the photo. "The media wants you to think she was a beautiful young lady who was on her way home from the tennis courts ... " Lancaster said. "I just wanted you to see the real person. I wanted people to see that this is really her." This caught our attention because several photos of Ford from her teenage years are circulating, and they don’t look like the one Lancaster shared. If there are different photos of Ford, then which is real? A member of Ford’s legal team confirmed the photo from Mannarino's post isn’t Ford. The picture was circulating as early as 2012 in a Daily Mail article, though no name was provided. The first known claim the person in the photo is Ford appears on Oct. 1 on the messaging board 4Chan -- a site known for spreading false information. (PolitiFact explained how 4Chan was used to spread false information during the 2016 presidential elections.) The image also appeared on Reddit, and has been used in lists focusing on bad yearbook photos or hairstyles, like this one. Our ruling The photo shared by Lanny Lancaster is not Ford. Her legal team has confirmed that. In addition, the picture has appeared as early as six years prior to the allegation, and has since been circulating as a meme. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! This story was produced by the North Carolina Fact-Checking Project, a partnership of McClatchy Carolinas, the Duke University Reporters’ Lab and PolitiFact. The NC Local News Lab Fund and the International Center for Journalists provide support for the project, which shares fact-checks with newsrooms statewide. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Lanny Lancaster | null | null | null | 2018-10-04T12:15:23 | 2018-10-01 | ['None'] |
goop-01189 | Khloe Kardashian “Done” With Tristan Thompson, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/khloe-kardashian-tristan-thompson-done-split-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Khloe Kardashian NOT “Done” With Tristan Thompson, Despite Report | 8:50 pm, April 13, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03607 | A daughter expressed her not-so-warm feelings about her deceased mother by running a scathing and caustic obituary. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/death-penalty/ | null | Humor | null | David Mikkelson | null | Death Be Not Proud | 20 August 2008 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10644 | Ronald Reagan did amnesty. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/06/rudy-giuliani/yep-reagan-did-the-a-word/ | The GOP candidates keep sparring over who's tougher on immigration. In this climate, dem is fightin' words to say your opponent supports "sanctuary" or "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. But as Giuliani reminded his foes during the Jan. 5, 2008, Republican debate, none other than Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of modern-day conservatism, signed the very law that Republicans call amnesty. Say it ain't so! Sorry. It's so. In 1986, Reagan signed an immigration reform bill, the first in 20 years, that legalized the status for 1.7-million people. Some defenders of the law dispute the term "amnesty." But here's how Edwin Meese, Reagan's former attorney general, characterizes what his boss did: "President Reagan called this what it was: amnesty. Indeed, look up the term 'amnesty' in Black's Law Dictionary, and you'll find it says, 'the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act provided amnesty for undocumented aliens already in the country.' " Reagan signed the bill after Republicans and Democrats cobbled together an amnesty program in response to concerns from farmers worried about harvesting profits. The official record of congressional debates shows that lawmakers intended the program to provide a steady supply of labor for growers of perishable crops, such as cherries, grapes, peaches, etc. At the time the bill was written, however, "perishable" was defined so loosely that more durable crops such as potted plants, tobacco and seedlings were lumped in as well. So even at the start, this program could be interpreted in ways that would benefit employers looking to save on wages. To qualify for temporary status, migrants had to show they entered the United States before Jan. 1, 1982, and that they had continuously resided since then. They could get permanent residency within 18 months after that if they met certain requirements, such as learning English. The program took effect in 1987, also covering up to 350,000 people who had worked in U.S. agriculture at least 90 days in each of the preceding three years. Many have called the program a success because it awarded green cards to 2.7-million migrants, giving them the hope of entry to the American middle class. In exchange for the amnesty, the new law was supposed to have beefed up border patrols and stiffened fines for both the migrant workers and employers in cases of violation. Alas, the law failed to stop illegal immigration, and many critics of the law say the government never thoroughly regulated employers who skirted the law's requirements. This much is certain: If the law aimed to curb illegal immigration, it failed: When the law was passed, there were about 5-million illegal immigrants; now, there's an estimated 12-million. When Reagan signed the law, many predicted it would encourage the hiring of more migrants, especially outside of agriculture, and that this would spur the backlash against immigration that we're seeing today. Giuliani, it would seem, brought up Reagan's legacy to show how difficult the immigration issue is. In doing so, he didn't trip any alarms on the Truth-O-Meter, which scores him a True. | null | Rudy Giuliani | null | null | null | 2008-01-06T00:00:00 | 2008-01-05 | ['None'] |
hoer-00683 | Wrench 3D Printing Viral Video | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/3D-printer-video.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Wrench 3D Printing Viral Video | 13th July 2011 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00300 | “For every 25 men brought to trial for rape, 24 will walk free…” | unproven | https://africacheck.org/reports/british-paper-mangles-sa-rape-statistics/ | null | null | null | null | null | British paper mangles SA rape statistics | 2015-05-28 03:00 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03681 | A photograph shows Hillary Clinton and her college roommate walking topless in the 1960s. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-topless-1960s/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Hillary Clinton Went Topless in the 1960s? | 28 October 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08784 | Reporters have uncovered another Scott company accused of criminal acts. But Scott won't come clean. | false | /florida/statements/2010/aug/20/florida-first-initiative/bill-mccollum-group-attacks-rick-scotts-new-health/ | Can you believe it? There's another ad in the Republican primary for governor accusing Rick Scott of fraud. This one comes from the Bill McCollum-backed group Florida First Initiative. But the subject isn't Columbia/HCA, the for-profit hospital company Scott helped build to become the nation's largest. This ad is talking about some other, unnamed company. The ad is called "Private." It opens with a narrator talking over newspaper headlines. "Rick Scott's company pleaded guilty to one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history," the narrator says, referring to Columbia/HCA. Then, the screen flips to an image of Scott ripped from one of his commercials. It shows Scott saying: "And as CEO, I take responsibility." The narrator returns. "And now, reporters have uncovered another Scott company accused of criminal acts. But Scott won't come clean." Video returns to Scott. "It's a private matter," an angry-looking Scott says. Then, the narrator responds. "Rick Scott, it's not a private matter. It's a failure of character." The ad's final frame includes big type that spells out "Rick Scott," only the C and O of Scott's last name have been replaced by handcuffs. As the ad ends, the handcuffs interlock. If our meter measured tackiness, that over-the-top symbolism would rate pretty high, but in this case we can only examine the facts surrounding the ad. So we decided to look at this statement: "Reporters have uncovered another Scott company accused of criminal acts. But Scott won't come clean." Scott company background The narrator doesn't identify the company in question by name, but when he makes the claim a tearsheet of an Aug. 5, 2010, St. Petersburg Times article appears on the screen. The article is titled "Lawsuits point to trouble at Rick Scott's current health care business." That headline refers to this story about a company Scott co-founded in 2001, Solantic. Solantic is a chain of walk-in urgent care centers, primarily around northeast Florida. The company currently operates 30 walk-in centers across the state. The article, which was written by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times reported that Scott was deposed in a Solantic civil suit just six days before he announced his bid for governor. The suit, brought by Dr. P. Mark Glencross, alleged that Glencross' medical license was misused by the Jacksonville-based chain of walk-in clinics. Glencross said Solantic, without his knowledge, used his name in 2004 when it filed state paperwork designed to ensure that clinics have a medical director in charge. Within a month of Scott's deposition, the 2-year-old case was settled and both parties signed a confidentiality agreement. The story went on to mention nine other court actions filed against Solantic since 2001, which were settled. Solantic chief executive Karen Bowling told Herald/Times reporter Marc Caputo that Solantic settled the cases at the request of its insurance company, which found protracted court fights too expensive. A spokesman for Scott noted that while he is a major investor in Solantic, he doesn't run its day-to-day operations, and that Scott was involved in only two of the suits. A few days later, on Aug. 10, Scott appeared at a Tallahassee press conference where reporters asked him repeatedly if he would release the sealed deposition in the Glencross case. That's when Scott provided the line used in the Florida First Initiative ad: "It's a private matter," he said. Later in the press conference he said: "It's a private matter and I will not release the deposition." Glencross case is civil, not criminal Based on the whole of the ad -- the words of the narrator, the clips flashed on the screen, and the choice of Scott's words -- viewers and fact-checkers are left to assume that the ad is talking about the Solantic/Glencross case. In that case, there are two large distortions. First, the Solantic/Glencross case is a civil matter, not a criminal one. There are no charges of criminal wrongdoing. Second, the allegation that Scott won't come clean is misleading. He gave a deposition. He just has said he won't share that deposition with reporters. He has no legal requirement to do so, either. We tried to reach the registered agent of Florida First Initiative, J. Nottingham, for an explanation. But the number on file at the Florida Division of Elections rang dead. We should note that there is another allegation surrounding Solantic currently making news. Another former Solantic physician, Dr. Randy Prokes, sent an e-mail to the McCollum campaign claiming that Solantic billed Medicare at full rates for patients seen by a nurse practitioner, when federal rules require that billing be at 85 percent of the fee paid for physician examinations. The McCollum campaign passed the letter on to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE then sent the letter on to the inspector general’s office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That's where the letter sits today. There is no formal investigation. Solantic executives, meanwhile, have described Prokes as a disgruntled former employee who was fired in 2009 for fraudulently prescribing drugs last year. Even if Prokes' claim has merit, it's not what the Florida First Initiative ad is referencing based on the ads visuals and wording. So we're not considering it. Our ruling The ad says that "reporters have uncovered another Scott company accused of criminal acts. But Scott won't come clean." The line refers to a civil lawsuit involving Solantic, a company Scott co-founded, and Dr. Gary Glencross. Glencross alleged that his medical license was misused by the Jacksonville-based chain of walk-in clinics. A month after Scott gave a deposition in the case, it was settled. Terms of the settlement are confidential. The case was a civil one, not criminal. And Scott provided a deposition as required. The only instance of him failing to "come clean" is not providing the results of that deposition to the public. Which he doesn't have to. We rate the accusation False. | null | Florida First Initiative | null | null | null | 2010-08-20T16:38:45 | 2010-08-17 | ['None'] |
pomt-08639 | Taxes went down under Jerry Brown. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/17/jerry-brown/jerry-brown-raised-taxes-not-overall/ | The California governor's race between Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown has turned into a political retrospective of the '70s, '80s and '90s, with a special guest appearance from Bill Clinton. Our story begins with an ad from the Whitman campaign and goes on to check a claim in a campaign ad by Brown. "Jerry Brown's good old days -- but what really happened?" asks a narrator in the Whitman ad. Cut to Clinton himself in his 1992 prime. "CNN -- not me, CNN -- says his assertion about his tax record was quote, just plain wrong. Jerry Brown went out there and took credit for the fact that the people of California voted for Proposition 13, which lowered taxes, which he opposed. And now he's going around and taking credit for it. He raised taxes as governor of California. He had a surplus when he took office and a deficit when he left. He doesn't tell the people the truth." Clinton's words were from the 1992 Democratic primary for president, when Brown and Clinton ran against each other and regularly traded barbs. Today, of course, Clinton is the former president considered to be one of the best at getting the Democratic base to turn out in elections. Brown responded to the new ad with the old footage at a meeting with his supporters on a Sunday just days after the ad ran. Either the ad touched a nerve or maybe Brown didn't know there was a camera in the room, but he lashed out -- not at the Whitman campaign, but at Clinton himself. "I mean, Clinton's a nice guy, but who ever said he always told the truth?" Brown said on Sept. 12, 2010. "You remember, right? There's that whole story there about 'did he or didn't he.' ... I did not have taxes with this state, so let's be clear about that." That's a not-so-subtle reference to Clinton's impeachment. It's not clear that Brown knew he was being taped that Sunday. He apologized to Clinton on Monday, and Clinton endorsed Brown on Tuesday. In a statement, Clinton said the ad is misleading because the CNN report he cited was "erroneous." "Moreover the tough campaign we fought 18 years ago is not relevant to the choice facing Californians today. Jerry and I put that behind us a long time ago," Clinton wrote. Brown defended his record on taxes again in his own ad. His ad says, "Wouldn't it be nice if every time Meg Whitman told a lie her nose would grow? Newspapers report that claims in this Meg Whitman ad are false, and she knows it. Taxes went down under Jerry Brown. But Whitman's nose keeps growing by the millions." Here, we're checking Brown's statement that, "Taxes went down under Jerry Brown." We started by going back to Clinton's statements in the Whitman ad and then looking at the former governor's record. The metric that the CNN report used was a calculation put together by the California Department of Finance showing the tax burden per $100 of income. In 2010, for example, the tax burden was estimated at $6.48 per $100 of personal income. (See the historical chart here.) Back in 1992, CNN's fact-check looked at the wrong years and reported that taxes went up. The most recent data shows that the tax burden went down. Factcheck.org's Brooks Jackson -- who worked for CNN back then -- explained the issue with the data in a post at the Factcheck.org website. The budgets Jerry Brown oversaw were for fiscal years 1975 to 1982. The tax burden during that time started at $6.95, increased to a high of $7.74 in 1977, then declined to $6.56 in 1982. There were no major laws passed increasing taxes during that time, so what made the collections rise and fall? We had a hard time finding consensus on this 20-year-old question. Property values were rising, which led to Proposition 13 in 1978, which lowered property taxes and made it harder to increase other taxes. But there's a dispute over whether Proposition 13 affected state tax revenues that much; some say that it curtailed local taxes, not state taxes. The reason for the state tax decline, according to this view, is that a poor economy depressed tax revenues. We also wanted to check and see if Brown had signed any major new tax changes into law while he was governor. We looked through old news stories and found that Brown approved a two-cent per gallon gasoline tax for highways toward the end of his term. But he also approved a measure to index income tax brackets for inflation, a move that had the effect of reducing taxes for some. We also found news coverage of various business-related taxes; Brown signed measures that both increased and decreased taxes for some businesses. In fact, Brown oversaw large state surpluses in his early years as governor, which happened without any new tax increases. Some people blame Brown for sitting on the surpluses, which allowed the tax revolt movement for Proposition 13 to gain steam. Brown opposed Proposition 13 before it passed, but after it did, he became an ardent defender. Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton wrote about Brown's reversal in a column recently, reminding Californians that Brown called himself a "born-again tax-cutter" after the vote, and won the endorsement of Howard Jarvis, the proposition's chief backer. In this year's race, Brown says there should be no tax increases without a vote. We found that when Brown was governor, he signed an increase to gas taxes, a decrease to income taxes through indexing, and various increases and decreases for business. He had significant surpluses for the first part of his governorship and in all likelihood didn't need to raise taxes. The most significant evidence in favor of Brown's statement are the state numbers that show taxes per $100 of resident income. By that metric, taxes went up, and then down under Brown, and finished a little lower than when he started. Those numbers sway the meter in a positive direction. We rate the statement "Taxes went down under Jerry Brown," as Mostly True. | null | Jerry Brown | null | null | null | 2010-09-17T09:58:59 | 2010-09-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-10128 | (Bill) Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/10/john-mccain/not-a-radical-group-and-ayers-didnt-run-it/ | For most of the election, Sen. John McCain's campaign has been somewhat subtle about trying to tie Sen. Barack Obama to the former '60s radical William Ayers. No longer. A 90-second Web ad released Oct. 8, 2008, features sinister music, side-by-side photographs of Obama and Ayers, and a series of dubious allegations about their past connections, including this one: "Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together." Ayers was a founding member of the militant Vietnam-era anti-war group the Weathermen. He was investigated for his role in a series of domestic bombings, but the charges were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct. He is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and actively engaged in the city's civic life. The McCain campaign said the "radical education foundation" to which they were referring is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity endowed by publishing magnate Walter Annenberg that funded public-school programs in Chicago from 1995 to 2001. We'll look at whether the foundation was radical. But first we have to grapple with whether Obama and Ayers ran it. Obama served on the foundation's volunteer board from its inception in 1995 through its dissolution in 2001, and was chair for the first four years. So an argument can be made that he ran it, though an executive director handled day-to-day operations. Ayers, who received his doctorate in education from Columbia University in 1987 and is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was active in getting the foundation up and running. He and two other activists led the effort to secure the grant from Annenberg, and he worked without pay in the early months of 1995, prior to the board's hiring of an executive director, to help the foundation get incorporated and formulate its bylaws, said Ken Rolling, who was the foundation's only executive director. Ayers went on to become a member of the "collaborative," an advisory group that advised the board of directors and the staff. However, Ayers "was never on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge," and he "never made a decision programmatically or had a vote," Rolling said. "He (Ayers) was at board meetings — which, by the way, were open — as a guest," Rolling said. "That is not anything near Bill Ayers and Barack Obama running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge." Now, was the foundation radical? The McCain campaign cited several pieces of evidence for that allegation, including a 1995 invitation from the foundation for applications from schools "that want to make radical changes in the way teachers teach and students learn." The campaign appears to have confused two different definitions of the word "radical." Clearly the invitation referred to "a considerable departure from the usual or traditional," rather than "advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs." The campaign also cited two projects the foundation funded, one having to do with a United Nations-themed Peace School and another that focused on African-American studies. "That is radical in the eye of this campaign and we imagine in the eyes of most Americans," said Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for McCain. "It is a subjective thing, and there are going to be people in Berkeley and Chicago who think that is totally legitimate." Teaching about the United Nations and African-American studies may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's hardly "radical" in the same way Ayers' Vietnam-era activities were. Moreover, most of the projects the foundation funded (more on that below) were not remotely controversial. The McCain campaign also cited an opinion piece by conservative commentator Stanley Kurtz in the Sept. 23, 2008, Wall Street Journal as evidence of the foundation's radicalism. Kurtz wrote that Ayers was the "guiding spirit" of the foundation, and it "translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice." But Ayers' views on education, though certainly reform-oriented and left-of-center, are not considered anywhere near as radical as his Vietnam-era views on war. And even if they were, there was a long list of individuals involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge whose positions provided them far more authority over its direction than Ayers' advisory role gave him. Let's look at a few, starting with the funder. Annenberg was a lifelong Republican and former ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Richard Nixon. His widow, Leonore, has endorsed McCain. Kurtz might just as plausibly have accused Obama and the foundation of "translating Annenberg's conservatism into practice." Among the other board members who served with Obama were: Stanley Ikenberry, former president of the University of Illinois; Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University and assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration; Scott Smith, then publisher of the Chicago Tribune; venture capitalist Edward Bottum; John McCarter, president of the Field Museum; Patricia Albjerg Graham, former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a host of other mainstream folks. "The whole idea of it being radical when it was this tie of blue-chip, white-collar, CEOs and civic leaders is just ridiculous," said the foundation's former development director, Marianne Philbin. The foundation gave money to groups of public schools – usually three to 10 – who partnered with some sort of outside organization to improve their students' achievement. In his opinion piece, Kurtz puts a sinister spin on this: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with 'external partners,' which actually got the money...CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or ACORN)." Rollings said the foundation tried to fund the schools directly, but doing so proved to be a "bureaucratic nightmare." But any external group that received money had to have created a program in partnership with a network of public schools. And though ACORN is considered a liberal organization, the vast majority of the foundation's external partners were not remotely controversial. Here are a few examples: the Chicago Symphony, the University of Chicago, Loyola University, Northwestern University, the Chicago Children's Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. Had Kurtz chosen to accuse Obama of carrying water for the conservative Annenberg, he might have written: "CAC disbursed money to various business-friendly entities, such as the Museum of Science and Industry and the Commercial Club of Chicago." See how easy it is? The programs the foundation funded were designed to allow individuals from the "external partners" – whether the musicians in the symphony or the business leaders in the commercial club – to help improve student achievement. They were along the lines of mentoring by artists, literacy instruction, professional development for teachers and administrators, and training for parents in everything from computer skills to helping their children with homework to advocating for their children at school. This last activity – something suburban parents practice with zeal – is also suspect in Kurtz's view: "CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents 'organized' by community groups might be viewed by school principals 'as a political threat.'" That is typical of Kurtz's essay – relatively innocuous facts cast in the worst possible light. That's appropriate for an opinion piece, perhaps, but hardly grounds for a purportedly factual political ad accusing the group of radicalism. We could go on and on with evidence that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a rather vanilla charitable group. For example, under the deal with Annenberg every dollar from him had to be matched by two from elsewhere. The co-funders were a host of respected, mainstream institutions, such as the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Chicago Public Schools. In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals. Ayers' involvement in its inception and on an advisory committee do not make it radical – nor does the funding of programs involving the United Nations and African-American studies. This attack is false, but it's more than that – it's malicious. It unfairly tars not just Obama, but all the other prominent, well-respected Chicagoans who also volunteered their time to the foundation. They came from all walks of life and all political backgrounds, and there's ample evidence their mission was nothing more than improving ailing public schools in Chicago. Yet in the heat of a political campaign they have been accused of financing radicalism. That's Pants on Fire wrong. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-10-10T00:00:00 | 2008-10-09 | ['None'] |
pomt-04056 | Says "Abortion clinics in Oregon, as in most states, have no state oversight and are not held to basic health or safety standards." | mostly false | /oregon/statements/2013/jan/26/gayle-atteberry/are-abortion-clinics-oregon-not-held-basic-health-/ | Gayle Atteberry, the executive director of anti-abortion group Oregon Right to Life, wrote a recent post on the organization’s website titled "About those safe abortions." She goes on to write about how abortions are "anything but safe." Part of the problem here, she writes, is that "abortion clinics in Oregon, as in most states, have no state oversight and are not held to basic health or safety standards." Even tattoo parlors and veterinary clinics follow state-imposed health standards, she wrote. We wondered whether that was true. Do abortion clinics in Oregon really face no state oversight? Is it true that they don’t have to meet basic health and safety standards? In an interview, Atteberry said that "ambulatory surgical" clinics, such as ones for eye or shoulder surgery, are subject to state oversight, but that "abortion clinics are exempted specifically from abiding by these restrictions and safety guidelines." She directed us to three Oregon administrative rules.The first rule includes a definition of a state-licensed "ambulatory surgical center," which includes many outpatient surgery clinics, and goes on to list safety regulations the clinics must meet. Sure enough, there’s an exemption for abortion clinics. The other rules spell out safety provisions for tattoo parlors and veterinary facilities. Next, we researched abortions in Oregon. In 2011, 9,566 abortions were performed in the state, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Of those, about 6 percent were performed in hospitals and doctors’ offices. The rest were performed in ambulatory surgical centers and at free-standing clinics. At least one abortion clinic, Lovejoy Surgicenter in Northwest Portland, is a state-licensed ambulatory surgical center. The Oregon Health Authority’s Health Care Regulation and Quality Improvement program regulates abortion clinics that fall under this category. Lovejoy is subject to unannounced site visits every year and a half to three or four years, said administrator Kayla Reich. "They’ll pull patient charts, look at medications, make sure there’s nothing out of date," she said. "We’ll have surveyors here for two or three days going through everything." Lovejoy performed about 2,400 abortions last year and about 2,500 in 2011, just more than a quarter of the abortions performed in the state in 2011. Also, some abortion clinics are satellite hospital clinics that operate under hospital licenses, said Alissa Robbins, a spokeswoman with the Oregon Health Authority. So we’ve learned that some locations that provide abortions are regulated and some aren’t. Most free-standing abortion clinics, however, face multiple layers of state and federal oversight because they accept Medicaid patients and seek reimbursements. For example, Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette’s eight clinics in Oregon, which are categorized as free-standing clinics, are subject to inspections, audits and other health and safety oversight. The three co-medical directors who oversee medical care at the clinics are all licensed doctors on the obstetrics and gynecology faculty of OHSU, spokeswoman Liz Delapoer said. There is a chance an abortion clinic could refuse to see Medicaid patients, meaning those clinics wouldn’t be subject to some of the layers of oversight Planned Parenthood experiences, but many do. We also looked at who performs abortions. Those people -- doctors and some physician assistants and nurse practitioners -- are licensed and overseen by the state. Kathleen Haley, executive director of the Oregon Medical Board, which licenses doctors, said the agency has not received any complaints about abortion providers or unsafe abortions in the 18 years she has worked there. Atteberry, in a follow-up interview, said that having state-licensed doctors does not guarantee they meet health standards. "The state does not come into where they’re doing an abortion, making sure they’re doing it under health and safety standards, or in a building that (meets) health and safety standards." We understand the larger political context here: Opponents of abortion in Oregon and nationally have tried to seek more regulation for abortion clinics, but supporters of abortion rights say these types of structural regulations have no bearing on the safety of the procedures. PolitiFact Oregon will stay clear of that debate. We’re looking into the factual basis of Atteberry’s statement that abortion clinics in Oregon have no state oversight and are not held to basic health or safety standards. There is an element of truth to this statement. Some abortion clinics are not licensed in the way other outpatient medical offices are regulated. But we found at least one abortion clinic, Lovejoy, which does roughly 25 percent of Oregon abortions, that is regulated as a state-licensed ambulatory surgical center. Atteberry acknowledged Lovejoy’s regulation in our initial interview. Some other clinics operate under a hospital license. All of those are subject to health and safety regulations. Plus, the people who perform the abortions are licensed medical personnel subject to state oversight. While some abortion clinics are not subject to the state oversight that veterinary clinics or tattoo parlors receive, that doesn’t mean they and the people who work in them are not held to basic health standards. Those are critical facts that would give readers a different impression. We rate this statement Mostly False. | null | Gayle Atteberry | null | null | null | 2013-01-26T03:00:00 | 2012-12-26 | ['Oregon'] |
pomt-06093 | Says he lived up to a 2008 promise when he "closed corporate tax loopholes that were sending profits overseas." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/05/barack-obama/barack-obama-reelection-video-says-he-closed-corpo/ | With all eyes on Iowa for the Republican caucuses, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign reminded watchers of his own Iowa win — and what he has done to keep his campaign promises. Obama for America bought banner ads across the home page of the online Des Moines Register on Jan. 3, 2012, with a link to Obama's 2008 victory speech in the state. Music plays as candidate Obama promises action on health care, taxes, energy independence and the war in Iraq. Between clips, white text across the screen highlights Obama's policy accomplishments. For example, candidate Obama declares, "I’ll be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." At that point, an on-screen visual reads: "Closed corporate tax loopholes that were sending profits overseas." We wondered whether the ad’s claim about Obama’s accomplishment is justified. We asked the Obama campaign for supporting material, and they said they were referring to Public Law 111-226, a measure that was primarily aimed at providing economic aid to states. To offset the cost of new spending, however, the bill included a few provisions related to taxation of international corporations -- what a number of tax experts have told us can be fairly described as loopholes. As we explained in a previous item, Obama signed the bill into law on Aug. 10, 2010. The tax provisions took away more than a half dozen existing exemptions and credits estimated to be worth $9.8 billion over the subsequent 10 years. Here’s how it worked. The United States, unlike a variety of other countries, taxes its companies on the foreign profits they earn. But the companies don't have to pay taxes on their foreign earnings until they bring those profits back to the U.S. So companies tend to keep the money with their foreign subsidiaries as long as they can. But companies also get U.S. tax credits for taxes they pay to foreign governments, and some companies figured out how to game the system by keeping their profits overseas while still claiming a tax credit for taxes paid on the same income to foreign governments. That's what the law tried to address. It said that companies can't claim the foreign tax credit until they report their income. But while there is some truth to the claim that the president signed legislation that "closed corporate tax loopholes thta were sending profits overseas," we should point out a few issues. First, under the old law, companies weren’t necessarily "sending profits overseas," as the ad states, but may have been keeping in place profits that were already being generated overseas. Still, this strikes us as a fairly minor linguistic quibble. A more pertinent question is whether the legislation Obama signed fulfills the pledge he made in Iowa in 2008 -- that he’ll "be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." H. David Rosenbloom, director of the International Tax Program at the New York University School of Law, calls the legislation "very narrow." "It addresses a specific tax planning strategy whereby foreign taxes and credits are ‘split’ from the foreign income that gave rise to them," he said. Left relatively unscathed is the broader "deferral regime" that allows companies to avoid U.S. taxes on foreign income as long as they do not "repatriate" -- bring home -- the money and avoid a few other hurdles. For instance, one proposal by former Walt Disney Co. executive Preston Padden, now an adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado, urges a reduction in the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent, which would be aligned with most foreign countries, paired with stricter "anti-deferral" rules. "A tax rate comparable to foreign countries would greatly eliminate the incentives to move operations and jobs offshore because of rate differentials, and the anti-deferral regime would minimize the benefits to U.S. companies from offshoring operations and jobs," Padden wrote in a recent op-ed. The narrower law signed by Obama, by contrast, "will hardly prevent companies from sending profits abroad, keeping them abroad, and otherwise profiting from the current set of international tax rules," Rosenbloom said. Even after passage of the 2010 law, "most experts would agree that the U.S. international tax system encourages U.S. multinationals to accumulate profits offshore," said Lawrence Lokken, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Florida. Our ruling While there is some truth to the claim that Obama signed legislation that "closed corporate tax loopholes that were sending profits overseas," experts say the law by itself doesn’t live up to Obama’s promise in Iowa to "be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas." Incentives deeply embedded in the tax code still exist. We rate the statement Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-01-05T18:04:26 | 2012-01-03 | ['None'] |
tron-00626 | “I’m With Jeff” or “A Country Founded by Geniuses But Run By Idiots” by Jeff Foxworthy | incorrect attribution! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/im-jeff-country-founded-geniuses-run-idiots-jeff-foxworthy/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | “I’m With Jeff” or “A Country Founded by Geniuses But Run By Idiots” by Jeff Foxworthy | Jun 1, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01334 | A billionaire avoided jail despite raping his infant daughter, while another man was sentenced to 50 years in jail for stealing a rack of ribs. | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/50-years-ribs-theft/ | null | Crime | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Probation for Child Rape Vs. Prison for Stealing Ribs? | 13 December 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04006 | Says the pension and health benefits reform "eliminated collective bargaining for health benefits." | half-true | /new-jersey/statements/2013/feb/07/barbara-buono/barbara-buono-claims-state-reform-eliminated-colle/ | Just as Gov. Chris Christie celebrates how he approved pension and health benefits reform in June 2011, state Sen. Barbara Buono says she stood up for her beliefs by opposing the landmark bill. As the senator emerged last week as the most likely Democrat to take on the Republican governor in his re-election bid this year, Buono claimed in TV interviews that she rejected the legislation because it eliminated collective bargaining for public employees’ health benefits. Buono, who was Senate Majority Leader when the reform passed, broke with Senate President Stephen Sweeney when she voted against the legislation. That vote likely contributed to her ultimately losing the leadership post. In a Jan. 28 interview on NJToday, Buono (D-Middlesex) said she "drew a line in the sand when it came to eliminating collective bargaining for employee health benefits." The senator repeated that claim in an interview the following day on Fox 5’s Good Day New York. "I’ll continue to stand up for what I believe in, even if it’s not politically expedient -- and that is, I opposed this last piece of legislation that also eliminated collective bargaining for health benefits," Buono said. The 2011 reform mandates increases in health care contributions without employees’ approval through negotiations, but the senator’s wrong to suggest that bargaining right is eliminated forever. Once the increases are fully implemented after a four-year period, unions can resume negotiating those contribution levels. Let’s review the legislation. Signed into law by Christie on June 28, 2011, the reform requires employees to contribute higher payments toward their pension and health care benefits. Phased in over four years, the health care contributions are based on a percentage of one’s premium and vary according to salaries and levels of coverage. The new contribution levels took effect immediately for employees whose union contracts had expired. For workers under an existing contract when the law went into effect, the payment levels and four-year time frame begin when their contract expires. Those increases are non-negotiable, but after the fourth year of implementation, the health care contributions can become part of union negotiations. Here’s what the law says: "After full implementation, those contribution levels shall become part of the parties’ collective negotiations and shall then be subject to collective negotiations in a manner similar to other negotiable items between the parties." But David Turner, communications director for the Buono campaign, argued in an e-mail that the legislation took away workers’ bargaining right to negotiate health benefits when it imposed higher costs without their consent. "Sen. Buono strongly believes in the right of workers to collectively bargain for their health benefits," Turner said. "Governor Christie's legislation explicitly takes away this right by unilaterally imposing higher costs without workers' consent. "This is by definition eliminating employees right to negotiate their healthcare. Collective bargaining was vital in building the middle class in New Jersey and America and Sen. Buono will continue to support this fundamental right." Our ruling In a TV interview, Buono claimed that the pension and health benefits reform "eliminated collective bargaining for health benefits." The reform does mandate higher health care contributions over a four-year period without the employees’ approval through negotiations, but the senator is wrong to suggest that bargaining right is eliminated indefinitely. After the payment increases have been fully implemented, those contribution levels return to the bargaining table as a part of union negotiations. We rate the statement Half True. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Barbara Buono | null | null | null | 2013-02-07T07:30:00 | 2013-01-29 | ['None'] |
pomt-10820 | Obama "won health care for 150,000 people." | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2007/sep/20/barack-obama/making-more-families-eligible-expanded-coverage/ | In a campaign ad, an announcer says Obama "won health care for 150,000 people." The statement is based on a 2003 law Obama sponsored when he was an Illinois state senator. His bill expanded income eligibility for KidsCare and FamilyCare, the state health insurance programs low-income families. Both programs saw sizable increases in enrollment after the law was passed. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation looked at the Illinois program and found that the children's enrollment increased by 55,421 between 2003 and 2005, the year Illinois abolished an income requirement. Adult enrollment increased by 100,458 between 2003 and 2006. That comes to a total of 155,879. Of course, it bears noting that expansion of health insurance was a big goal of the Democratic governor who signed the bill, and Obama's legislation had a co-sponsor, a Republican, in the Illinois House. But the simplicity of his claim is hard to dispute, and being able to work with others to achieve goals is a theme of the ad in which he makes the claim. It all ads up to true. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2007-09-20T00:00:00 | 2007-08-08 | ['None'] |
farg-00177 | President Donald Trump's deal with Democratic leaders “basically freezes last year’s funding in place, which is a cut of $52 billion” in the defense budget. | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/explaining-mccains-defense-cut/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | John McCain | Eugene Kiely | ['defense spending'] | Explaining McCain’s Defense ‘Cut’ | September 12, 2017 | [" CNN's State of the Union – Sunday, September 10, 2017 "] | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Donald_Trump'] |
tron-01281 | Graduating student sneezes so fellow students can say God Bless you | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/graduationsneeze/ | null | education | null | null | null | Graduating student sneezes so fellow students can say God Bless you | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['God'] |
tron-00651 | Gene Roddenberry Survived a Plane Crash | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/gene-roddenberry-survived-a-plane-crash/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Gene Roddenberry Survived a Plane Crash | Nov 12, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00317 | Angelina Jolie Using “Indecent Exposure” Charge Against Brad Pitt in Custody Battle, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-brad-pitt-indecent-exposure-custody-battle-not-true/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Angelina Jolie NOT Using “Indecent Exposure” Charge Against Brad Pitt in Custody Battle, Despite Reports | 10:16 am, September 6, 2018 | null | ['Brad_Pitt', 'Angelina_Jolie'] |
pomt-09789 | Mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/20/barack-obama/obama-says-white-sox-can-still-make-playoffs/ | At the conclusion of a wide-ranging interview on NBC's Meet the Press , President Barack Obama said he was holding out hope that his beloved Chicago White Sox can still make the playoffs. Host David Gregory asked him, "On a lighter note, before I let you go, Mr. President, you were brazen this summer at the All-Star Game wearing your Chicago White Sox jacket out there to throw out the first pitch. Hate to break it to you, but doesn't look so good for your White Sox here. So I want to know who is your pick to win the World Series?" Obama replied, "You know — I am — I think mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs." Here at PolitiFact, we're focused more on the American League East (Go Rays!), so we had lost track of how the White Sox were doing in the AL Central. We turned to our favorite baseball writer, Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times , to find out if Obama was right. Topkin told us that while the White Sox are out of the running to be the wild-card team for the American League, it's mathematically possible they could still win their division and then be in the playoffs. As of Sunday morning when Meet the Press aired, the White Sox were 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. Topkin told us the White Sox "wouldn't be mathematically eliminated until there were 6 games left, and going into today they have 13 left." So Obama can hold out hope for at least another week or so. The odds are against the Sox — they play the Tigers and the Minnesota Twins, the No. 2 team in the division, in the next week. And Topkin noted that a lot of things have to break in favor of the Sox. But Obama is right that it's at least mathematically possible, so he earns a True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2009-09-20T19:12:55 | 2009-09-20 | ['None'] |
pomt-01388 | The Greenlight Pinellas 1-cent sales tax "is permanent, we never get to vote on this again." | half-true | /florida/statements/2014/oct/14/no-tax-tracks/greenlight-pinellas-opponents-says-residents-will-/ | When it comes to discussing the Greenlight Pinellas mass transit initiative, two things are certain: Taxes and citizens complaining about taxes. If the measure passes on Election Day, the county’s sales tax would go up 1 cent. So an opposition group has made the alleged unfairness of it all a cornerstone of their campaign. No Tax For Tracks, a grassroots group opposed to Greenlight Pinellas, said in an email to voters that not only is the switch from a property tax for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority to an increased sales tax unfair, it’s going to last forever. "They call it a ‘tax swap,’ but PSTA's revenue will increase from $32 million per year to $148 million per year," the email reads. "Any financial dictionary will tell you that this is not a ‘tax swap’, this is a revenue increase of over 300 percent! And the tax is permanent, we never get to vote on this again." The group has notably been mindful of its wording here, because they have said in the past that the swap was a "300 percent tax increase." We rated that False, because that number would be the change to the PSTA operating budget, and not any individual taxpayer. Will the tax swap be permanent, though? We decided to find out. The swap The countywide transportation plan aims to expand bus service by adding routes and extending hours, but also would add a 24-mile light rail line between St. Petersburg and Clearwater. In order to pay for the changes, the county’s sales tax would go up from 7 percent to 8 percent, becoming the highest tax rate in the state. Some things, like medicine, groceries, and certain agricultural and manufacturing startup equipment, would be exempt from the sales tax, and the increase would be limited to the first $5,000 of major purchases. This would replace the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority’s current county funding through a property tax. Greenlight Pinellas is different from something like Penny for Pinellas, the county's 1-cent capital improvement tax. The Penny for Pinellas has to be reauthorized by voters every 10 years. Here, the interlocal agreement the PSTA and the county commission created for the plan does not specifically guarantee a future vote on the sales tax increase. The "tax swap," as Greenlight Pinellas organizers call it, would boost the authority’s budget from about $34 million to as high as $120 million to $130 million, PSTA calculates. If voters approve the change in November, the change would take effect Jan. 1, 2016. Any future changes to the Greenlight plan, such as an extension of the proposed rail line or other major alteration, would be subject to a referendum. The property tax technically wouldn’t go away, as the PSTA needs the state to approve its elimination. Gov. Rick Scott vetoed a bill in 2012 that would have done this, getting rid of the property tax and replacing it with the increased sales tax if voters choose. Now, if Greenlight Pinellas passes, the PSTA would set the millage rate to zero and start collecting the sales tax. The property tax could be eliminated by the Legislature in the future, but the fact that it would still exist on property tax bills has led No Tax For Tracks to speculate this could lead to double taxation. Greenlight Pinellas rules say PSTA can’t have both sets of tax revenue. The new sales tax itself stays in place "until repealed," as the ballot language for Nov. 4 says. No Tax For Tracks argues that repeal won’t ever take place, because of how the PSTA and Pinellas County agreed to fund the project. The interlocal agreement says the surtax money can only be used to fund Greenlight projects, PSTA chief development officer Cassandra Borchers told us. It also specifies that the county has to continue to fund PSTA operations and maintenance. There are ways for the tax to be rescinded written into the agreement, however. If the plan isn’t implemented as promised or in the time frame allotted, if the money from the sales tax is used for something other than the Greenlight plan, if there is a payment default or some unforeseen calamity in the future, the tax can be reduced or terminated. It also is slated for review in 50 years, and every 20 years thereafter. But overall, it won’t be easy to stop the tax once it starts. That’s because the tax money is going to pay for a major construction project. Jewel White from the Pinellas County Attorney’s Office said there are clauses written into the contract that allow for decades of guaranteed tax money in order to secure financing for capital projects, like more buses and the proposed light rail line. Unless one of the triggers to end the sales tax is met, the county commission likely wouldn’t examine the issue, White said. Because the sales tax is under the same ordinance that governs initiatives like Penny For Pinellas, it has to be put to voters to be enacted, she said. After that, options for repeal are few. Pinellas residents could ask the commission to address the issue, but that would probably not get any results either, White said. Residents could not force the commission to put the issue back on the ballot. "Certainly, anyone can approach the commission at any time," she said. "Once money gets bonded, though, it’s pretty hard to undo." No Tax For Tracks activists also said these steps are wholly improbable, because if the county ended the tax, they would have to find some way to continue to pay its obligations to PSTA. Borchers agreed that just ending the sales tax or reinstituting the property tax -- which would bring in much less money for the operating budget -- would result in major problems. "You couldn’t just stop it without some consequences," Borchers said, noting that not only is the operating budget at issue, there is a lot of promised state and federal money tied up in the plan. "You’d have to pay back all those grants." Our ruling No Tax For Tracks said the Greenlight Pinellas 1-cent sales tax "is permanent, we never get to vote on this again." There is no clause or provision in the proposal that allows for another vote. However, saying the tax is "permanent" also goes too far. While it is certainly likely that the sales tax would be in place for the foreseeable future if passed, the tax has a review clause set for 50 years from now. The long time frame is because the taxes are dedicated to paying for major long-term construction projects like light rail. As to whether the county commission would ever bring the question back to voters, it’s improbable but not impossible. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True. | null | No Tax For Tracks | null | null | null | 2014-10-14T18:01:09 | 2014-09-30 | ['None'] |
snes-04174 | During a radio interview, Rosie O'Donnell said, "I'd like to take my period blood and smear it all over Christians' [or pro-life people's] faces." | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rosie-odonnell-period-blood/ | null | Questionable Quotes | null | David Emery | null | What Rosie O’Donnell Really Said She’d Like to Do with Her Period Blood | 25 August 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03233 | Two handfuls of cashews are equivalent to one dose of Prozac in treating depression, and can be safely substituted for prescribed drugs. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cashews-equivalent-to-a-dose-of-prozac/ | null | Medical | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Are Two Handfuls of Cashews Equivalent to a Dose of Prozac for Depression? | 30 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00071 | Reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold if they guarantee such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers' premiums. | compromise | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/74/reimburse-employer-health-plans-for-a-portion-of--/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Reimburse employer health plans for a portion of catastrophic costs | 2010-01-07T13:26:47 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02640 | White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the United States was "absolutely ready for World War III" under President Donald Trump's strong leadership. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spicer-trump-ready-wwiii/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Sean Spicer Say ‘We’re Absolutely Ready for WWIII’ Under Trump? | 11 April 2017 | null | ['United_States', 'White_House', 'Donald_Trump'] |
hoer-00704 | Chinese Hair Bands Made From Used Condoms | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/used-condom-hairbands.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Chinese Hair Bands Made From Used Condoms | 16th December 2010 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10144 | Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers's home. And they've worked together on various projects in Chicago. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/06/sarah-palin/obama-and-ayers-round-ii/ | We at PolitiFact wondered when the toaster would pop on the William Ayers -Sen. Barack Obama connection. Back in the primary, Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain made some political hay of Obama’s relationship with Ayers, a onetime member of the Weather Underground, a leftist fringe of the 1960s antiwar movement that was responsible for bombings at several federal buildings in the early 1970s. PolitiFact looked at the claim then and found from 1999 to 2001, Obama and Ayers served overlapping terms on the board of directors for the Woods Fund, a philanthropic organization in Chicago. We also noted that campaign finance reports show Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s state senate re-election campaign in 2001. Since the general election began, the McCain campaign had largely kept the issue on the shelf. But with the economy sagging and McCain’s numbers dipping in the polls, an Oct. 3, 2008, a story in the New York Times that added some new details to the association between the two provided the McCain campaign just enough kindling to revisit Obama’s long-ago association with the controversial figure. And now, Gov. Sarah Palin is running with it. "Well, I was reading my copy of The New York Times the other day, and I was really interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago," Palin said at a rally in Clearwater, Fla., on Oct. 6. "Turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers. And according to The New York Times , he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.’ Wow. "And there’s even more to the story," Palin said. "Barack Obama said Ayers was just someone in the neighborhood. But that’s less than truthful. His own top advisor said they were, quote, ‘certainly friendly.’ In fact, Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’s home. And they’ve worked together on various projects in Chicago." First, a little background on Ayers. He was, in fact, a founding member of a group known as the Weathermen, who were responsible for bombings of the New York City police headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971 and of the Pentagon in 1972 in protest of the Vietnam War. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a Weather Underground member, spent years as fugitives in the 1970s, but federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct. Since then, Ayers has rehabilitated his image with many in the Chicago community, including Mayor Richard M. Daley. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has developed a reputation as an advocate for school reform. Which is, according to Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, how the two met. The recent New York Times story added to the understanding of Obama's association with Ayers, through an education project. Ayers helped Chicago win nearly $50 million for Chicago schools as part of a national school reform project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In March 1995, Obama was named chair of the six-member Chicago Annenberg Challenge board that distributed the grants. A New York Times review of archives of the Chicago Annenberg project found that the two attended six board meetings together. Later that year, the Ayers’ hosted a coffee at which Illinois State Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Obama to some of her long-time supporters as her chosen successor. According to the New York Times story, it was one of several neighborhood events held that year on Obama’s behalf, and it was not the first. Obama campaign officials also note the event at Ayers’ home was not a fundraiser. And they claim that Obama did not know Ayers’ history with the Weather Underground at that time. They did not say when Obama found that out. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told PolitiFact the two have not communicated by phone or e-mail since Obama became a U.S. senator in 2005, and that they last spoke to one another about a year ago, when they bumped into each other in the neighborhood - they live just a few blocks apart. "The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false," LaBolt said. "As the New York Times confirmed, the two were not close." Asked about his relationship at a Democratic debate on April 16, 2008, Obama said, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. "And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense." For what it’s worth, the story Palin cited in her comments, the Oct. 3, 2008, New York Times piece, concluded after a review of Chicago Annenberg archives and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, that Obama "has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers...But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers." In previous speeches the day before her appearance in Clearwater, Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." We think that statement goes too far, and is just false, as there is no evidence that Obama has had any relationship with Ayers as a U.S. senator. But let’s review what Palin said in Clearwater, and weigh it against the facts as we know them. Palin called Ayers one of Obama’s "earliest supporters" and said Obama "held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’ home." Obama campaign officials acknowledge Ayers hosted a coffee in 1995, the purpose of which was to introduce Obama to some local political players leading up to his first run for public office. Obama campaign officials say Obama didn’t know Ayers’ past at that time, and McCain campaign officials wonder why this week was the first time that has ever been mentioned. Make of that what you will, but that part of Palin’s statement is true. Palin said Ayers was a "domestic terrorist." The Weather Undergound group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers was a founding member of the group, but charges against him were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct. Palin said Obama claimed Ayers was "just someone in the neighborhood," but her remark ignored Obama's condemnation of Ayers in that very sentence she quotes. Obama did seem to downplay his relationship with Ayers, stating that he was "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," but Obama in that same answer acknowledged that he knew Ayers and called his actions 40 years ago "detestable" and said they do not reflect his own values. Lastly, Palin said Obama and Ayers have "worked together on various projects in Chicago." They were both involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. And they both served for a time as directors of the Woods Fund. Neither chose the other to work with either group. Voters can decide for themselves how much stock to put in all that. And they may disagree with the implications that are inherent in Palin mentioning such connections. Palin generally has her facts right here, but she ignores an important element -- Obama's condemnation of Ayers' history -- and implies a closer relationship than the record supports. We find her claim Mostly True. | null | Sarah Palin | null | null | null | 2008-10-06T00:00:00 | 2008-10-06 | ['Chicago', 'Barack_Obama', 'Bill_Ayers'] |
snes-01344 | A video shows a man demonstrating an invisibility cloak. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-invisibility-cloak-video-real/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This ‘Invisibility Cloak’ Video Real? | 11 December 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11314 | Greitens accuser admits photo session may have been a ‘dream.’ | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2018/apr/13/sentinel/headline-about-greitens-accuser-sex-case-doesn/ | Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is expected to go to trial in May on a felony indictment of invasion of privacy related to an allegation that he took a photo of a woman who was partially nude without her consent. Greitens admitted the extramarital affair with his former hairdresser in January, but described it as consensual and denied allegations that he threatened her. Greitens, a combat veteran and a Republican, was elected governor in 2016. How Greitens behaved during the affair, and especially whether he had specific sexual interactions with the woman without her consent, have become key points of dispute. An April 8 headline on the Sentinel, a website that writes about government in Missouri, said that his accuser "admits photo session may have been a dream." Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. We found news reports show the woman did make this statement in a deposition, but the Sentinel omitted a complete explanation about the woman’s testimony. The Sentinel quoted from a few paragraphs in a defense motion filed on behalf of Greitens April 8. When the defense counsel asked the woman, "Did you ever see (Greitens) in possession of a camera or phone?" she answered: "Not to my knowledge. I didn’t see him with it." An assistant circuit attorney asked the woman, "Did you see what you believed to be a phone?" She answered, "… I haven’t talked about it because I don’t know if it’s because I’m remembering it through a dream or I – I’m not sure, but yes, I feel like I saw it after that happened, but I haven’t spoken about it because of that." Jack Cashill, co-editor of the Sentinel, told PolitiFact that he didn’t have the full deposition and relied on excerpts in the court filing. "It is for this reason I used the subjunctive in the headline ‘may have,’ " he said, noting that other news outlets including the Daily Mail used a similar approach in headlines. Greitens has seized on the dream portion of the woman’s statement, telling media that the case is "a political witch hunt now based on the testimony of somebody who said under oath that they may be remembering this through a dream." Other news reports state that that the woman’s testimony came during a deposition that lasted for several hours. The Associated Press wrote that "the prosecutor in the case says the defense ‘cherry picked bits and pieces’ of her nine-hour deposition and the woman's attorney says the comment referred to one particular instance concerning the photo." The Missouri House committee investigation into the allegations against Greitens also mentioned the dream comment, but stated in a footnote that the committee "includes these quotes in the absence of a full transcript from the deposition." The woman told the committee that during an encounter with Greitens, "I can hear like a, like a cell phone – like a picture, and I can see a flash through the blindfold." The committee concluded that the woman was a credible witness. Greitens did not testify before the House committee. St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison issued a gag order in the case which prohibits comments related to the deposition and requires the judge to sign off on certain court filings before they're made public. Without the deposition, we can’t fully evaluate the woman’s comments. The woman’s attorney, Scott Simpson, said in statement to media that the woman supports the release of the full transcript. Simpson said that Greitens "has admitted to my client, on multiple occasions that he took her photograph without her consent, and threatened to release it if she ever told anyone about their relationship." Our ruling A headline by the Sentinel website said that "Greitens accuser admits photo session may have been a ‘dream.’ " News articles state that the woman made that comment during a lengthy deposition. Since we don’t have a transcript of the deposition, it is difficult to evaluate her comment but it appears to be cherry-picking from a deposition that lasted several hours. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | The Sentinel | null | null | null | 2018-04-13T13:44:27 | 2018-04-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-08881 | As President George W. Bush’s trade representative, Portman failed to address China’s currency manipulation, which was inflated to as much as 40 percent in 2006. | mostly false | /ohio/statements/2010/aug/02/lee-fisher/fisher-claim-portman-failed-address-china-currency/ | China makes the goods that Americans used to make, but that’s because politicians failed to stop China’s unfair trade practices. It’s a theme as recurrent as the buzzards returning to Hinckley, and Ohio campaign managers know it works. But Lee Fisher’s campaign presented a new angle on the theme, and it is intriguing. Fisher, the Democratic lieutenant governor, is running for U.S. Senate against Rob Portman, a Republican who served for a year as President George W. Bush’s trade ambassador. Portman played a key advisory role in helping the president deal with economic competition from China, whose manufacturing might rose as Ohio’s declined. You’ll hear plenty more about that before November, and The Plain Dealer examined Portman’s trade record in May. But Fisher presented a brand new perspective in a news release on July 13 when he complained about currency manipulation by China. Although this has been an issue for years, Fisher put some of the blame on Portman. His news release said, "As President George W. Bush’s trade representative, Portman failed to address China’s currency manipulation, which was inflated to as much as 40 percent in 2006." That’s shorthand for saying that China propped up its currency rather than letting it rise and fall against the dollar, enabling China’s factories to make steel, auto parts and toys and ship them to the United States at artificially low prices that undercut American manufacturers. It was little different from other unfair trade practices, many American manufacturers say. You’ll hear few disputes about that, whether the president is named Bush or Barack Obama. But there’s plenty of bickering over what to do about it. That’s where Portman comes in. Portman, a Republican, could have used his authority as trade representative to take China to the World Trade Organization and push for penalties, according to critics. But Portman was such an unabashed proponent of free trade that he gave China a pass, Fisher says. We asked Fisher’s spokesman, John Collins (who recently left to work for a candidate in Kentucky), to provide support for the claim, and he cited several news articles from early 2006. That’s when Portman’s office issued a lengthy and critical report on other trade practices by China. But Portman’s report gave little space to currency manipulation – and that angered Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. According to news articles and congressional transcripts we reviewed, Schumer blasted Portman’s report for failing to fully deal with the "800-pound gorilla" – currency manipulation -- that had to be tamed for any trade balance to occur. OK, so Portman failed to adequately mention China’s currency manipulation -- according to a senator from New York -- in a report. Was that really a failure to "address" the problem? It turns out the issue gets more complex. Portman didn’t address the currency issue in the broader sense -- that is, embrace it as a problem he could solve -- because, his campaign says, it wasn’t even under his jurisdiction. Transcripts of a confirmation hearing for Portman on April 21, 2005, show that he voiced concern about the issue but said, "By the same token, as you know, the Treasury Department has the lead on this, appropriately. It’s a currency issue, not USTR," he said, using the initials of U.S. Trade Representative’s office. He mentioned the jurisdictional issue several more times during his stint as trade ambassador. On Feb. 16, 2006, he told Schumer during a Senate Finance Committee hearing that "currency policy is very distinctly not within the ambit of the USTR. And I'm reminded of that constantly in the inter-agency process, which is appropriate that Treasury take the lead and that they speak for us on currency policy." Four days later he told it to another congressional committee: "We need to address the currency issue, which the Treasury Department takes the lead on and not USTR." So is Fisher blaming Portman for something he bore no responsibility for? That’s what Portman’s spokeswoman, Jessica Towhey, suggested, citing the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. The act says it is the Treasury secretary’s job to analyze exchange rate policies of other countries, in consultation with the International Monetary Fund, and consider whether countries manipulate their currencies. If the answer is yes, Treasury is to negotiate with the offending country through the IMF. We contacted the office of the current trade representative, Ron Kirk, an Obama appointee, to see if it agreed on the jurisdiction issue. It did. We asked Treasury as well, and Treasury said it was in fact in charge. We asked the Obama White House, too, just in case the agencies had a fuzzy view. No, said the White House. Currency manipulation is on Treasury’s watch. That cast significant doubt on Fisher’s claim, then, that Portman "failed to address" the problem. It wasn’t his job. But we wondered if small American manufacturers agreed, so we asked a few trade experts in Washington, including attorneys who take cases to the trade courts. It turned out that the story was more complex, because on April 20, 2005, nine days before Portman was sworn in, a group of 35 senators and representatives filed a petition asking the trade representative’s office to haul China before the WTO and press the currency issue as an unfair trade practice. The Congress members -- nearly all Democrats -- had grown frustrated with Treasury, saying it had failed to stop China’s manipulation and that the right recourse was for the trade ambassador to go to the trade courts and ask for tariffs against Chinese imports. A coalition of labor unions and manufacturing groups had tried this twice before, but their petitions had been rejected. But this 2005 congressional petition was different because members of Congress filed it. They included several U.S. House members from Ohio, including Democrats Tim Ryan, Stephanie Tubbs Jones (since deceased), Sherrod Brown (now a senator) and Ted Strickland (now Ohio’s governor). They also included a dozen U.S. senators, including one from Illinois named Barack Obama. On May 27, 2005, not quite a month into his term, Portman’s office turned them down. His spokesman at the agency, Richard Mills, said at the time that the Treasury secretary, John Snow, had the lead in talks with China on the currency matter and, as a result, "Chinese officials have publicly committed that they will move to a more flexible system." A notice in the Federal Register said the trade office turned down the lawmakers’ request "because, among other reasons, an investigation would not be effective in addressing the acts, policies, and practices covered in the petition." The Bush administration was already dealing with China through Treasury, and launching a trade office investigation "would hamper, rather than advance, administration efforts to address China’s currency valuation policies." Neither Mills’ statement nor the Federal Register notice said it was strictly a matter of jurisdiction. Mills said at the time that many tools were available "to ensure a level playing field," but that the administration preferred to put Treasury in the lead. This suggested some leeway on choice, not just jurisdiction, or so say the parties who wanted the trade representative’s involvement. "That is a major issue, and we’ve always argued that it is a hybrid issue," says David Hartquist, a Washington trade attorney who had filed a similar petition earlier that was turned down by a Portman predecessor.. Charles Blum, a trade office official in the 1980s who is now executive director of the Fair Currency Coalition, representing manufacturers, labor and agricultural interests, says that Portman "was essentially saying, ‘I refuse to enforce the law because diplomacy is the proper venue.’" The question then becomes: Did Portman lack jurisdiction, or did he just believe that Treasury was the better agency to deal with the issue? Kevin Dempsey, a trade lawyer and senior vice president at the American Iron and Steel Institute, which also has tried to halt unfairly priced imports, says that Congress has been fairly clear: It intended for Treasury to take the lead. Portman "had some discretion," Dempsey says. "But it’s been established for some years, before Portman and after Portman, that Treasury does have the lead." Congress has considered changing that so currency could be treated as a trade issue in certain circumstances. Ryan and Brown are involved in these efforts. But their measures have stalled repeatedly. And now that he’s president, even Obama has kept Treasury in the lead – and frustrated those who want more forceful action. So we’re persuaded that in a narrow sense, Portman "failed to address China’s currency manipulation," as Fisher’s campaign says. But he was following a long-held policy that has been articulated by Congress and presidents. The Obama administration agrees with Portman: Currency is not the trade ambassador’s job. And Portman "addressed" it repeatedly in congressional hearings, telling Congress exactly what his campaign says today. That’s why we rate Fisher’s claim Barely True. Comment on this item. 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 | Lee Fisher | null | null | null | 2010-08-02T12:30:00 | 2010-07-13 | ['China'] |
pomt-05505 | Georgia is one of three states that "effectively have no regulations whatsoever on lobbyists giving to legislators." | true | /georgia/statements/2012/apr/15/joshua-mckoon/no-limit-gifts-ga-legislature-senator-says/ | Georgia state Sen. Joshua McKoon, by some accounts, committed political suicide this year. The freshman Republican from Columbus proposed legislation to cap gifts from lobbyists to state lawmakers at $100. Statehouse leaders apparently didn’t care for his approach, removing McKoon from a committee to study the idea. There’s been mumbling, as one former senator put it, that Republicans were recruiting a candidate to run against McKoon. "I have not been making a lot of friends inside the Capitol," McKoon said, when asked by PolitiFact Georgia about his proposal. Throughout the legislative session, McKoon attempted to buttress his argument with a fact to help fellow lawmakers see the light. Georgia, he said, is one of three states that "effectively have no regulations whatsoever on lobbyists giving to legislators." The other states, he says, are Indiana and South Dakota. McKoon held a news conference last month and pointed to a map of the United States with those three states in red. So, is McKoon correct? Government watchdog groups have argued ardently in recent years that Georgia needs to tighten its ethics laws and make it more difficult for lobbyists to influence state lawmakers with gifts of meals or trips. A recent joint report by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity ranked Georgia last in the nation in the strength of its laws on public corruption and government openness. Some state lawmakers called the report biased. Georgia code section 21-5-11 spells out the policy on gifts. It says that only statewide elected officials can accept gifts of more than $100 for a speech, seminar or panel discussion that directly relates to the duties of that official, but prohibits it otherwise. It states no rules for members of the Georgia Legislature or other types of gifts. A section on prohibited lobbying practices, Title 28, Chapter 7, mentions nothing about gift limits. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution took a close look at lobbyists during the recent legislative session. A recent AJC story found lobbyists spent $866,747 --- the equivalent of $9,525 per day --- on gifts for lawmakers from Jan. 1 through March 31. Many of the gifts would have easily surpassed the $100 limit McKoon proposed. For example, the AJC found lobbyists took Rep. Mickey Channell, R-Greensboro, and his wife to dinner on Valentine’s Day, spending about $230. Another House member, Rahn Mayo, D-Decatur, said he was unaware that the four Atlanta Hawks basketball tickets that lobbyists gave him cost about $500. House Speaker David Ralston has defended the current system, saying eliminating lobbying gifts would drive the practice "underground," where the public would know less about what is happening between lawmakers and special interests. So how does Georgia compare with other states when it comes to laws on gifts from lobbyists? The National Conference of State Legislatures has a chart that examines gift policy in each state. McKoon said he used the NCSL chart to make his claim. Many states employ what’s referred to as the "cup of coffee" policy, which prohibits any gifts whatsoever from lobbyists. About a dozen states set the limit at $100. Four states set the limit at $250. A handful limit gifts from lobbyists to between $250 and $1,000. The NCSL chart says Indiana requires lobbyists to report gifts, but does not specify any limits of what they can give lawmakers. In 2010, state lawmakers changed some of the rules on gifts from lobbyists. They must now disclose any gifts in a day greater than $50. Before, the limit was $100, said Julia Vaughn, Common Cause Indiana policy director. "We don’t limit. We require some disclosure," Vaughn said. Vaughn said some state lawmakers argue a gift ban isn’t necessary because it’s better for the public to know what they’re getting from lobbyists. In South Dakota, the code section on lobbyists mentions nothing about gift limits for lobbyists. The NCSL lists South Dakota as having "no restrictions." We found no discrepancies in the NCSL’s research. The current laws in Georgia, Indiana and South Dakota afford lobbyists freedom to give state lawmakers as much as they want. We rate McKoon’s claim as True. | null | Josh McKoon | null | null | null | 2012-04-15T06:00:00 | 2012-04-03 | ['None'] |
goop-02499 | Usher, Quantasia Sharpton Lawsuit Settled, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/usher-quantasia-sharpton-lawsuit-not-settled-herpes-paid-off-settlement/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Usher, Quantasia Sharpton Lawsuit NOT Settled, Despite Claim | 3:44 pm, September 4, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05038 | An image depicts rare purple ladybugs found only in Hawaii. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/purple-ladybugs/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Purple Ladybugs | 21 March 2016 | null | ['Hawaii'] |
goop-02217 | Angelina Jolie Getting “Style Inspiration” From Selena Gomez To “Lure” Brad Pitt, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-style-inspiration-selena-gomez-same-dress-brad-pitt/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Angelina Jolie NOT Getting “Style Inspiration” From Selena Gomez To “Lure” Brad Pitt, Despite Reports | 1:35 pm, November 11, 2017 | null | ['Brad_Pitt'] |
snes-04987 | After unlocking an iPhone belonging to one of the people involved in the San Bernardino shooting, the FBI ruined the device by spilling water on it. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fbi-spills-water-iphone/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Dan Evon | null | FBI Spilled Water on San Bernardino iPhone | 30 March 2016 | null | ['San_Bernardino,_California', 'Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation'] |
pomt-03838 | Rhode Island is the last state still using the Optech III P voting machines and they don’t meet suggested federal standards. | half-true | /rhode-island/statements/2013/mar/16/robert-kando/head-rhode-island-board-elections-says-state-last-/ | Robert Kando, executive director of the Rhode Island Board of Elections, appeared before the House Oversight Committee earlier this month as it continued its inquiry into what caused long lines at some polling places during the November general election. Among suggestions Kando made to ease problems in the future was replacing the machines Rhode Island uses at its voting precincts to count ballots. The optical scanners -- known by their trade name, the Optech III P Eagle -- were purchased in 1997. In fact, said Kando, Rhode Island is the last state still using them and they don’t meet the suggested standards set by the federal Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA. Kando’s comments, implying that our voting machines are deficient, caught our attention. When we contacted Kando he was adamant that Rhode Island is the last state still using the Optech III P Eagles. But he was less sure what exactly made our voting machines non-compliant with some new -- and the important word here is "voluntary" -- federal guidelines for voting machines. "You would have to be an engineer to figure that out," he replied. Kando said he would contact the company that maintained Rhode Island’s machines -- Election Systems and Software (ES&S), based in Nebraska -- and get back to us with the reasons. In the meantime, we did some research. Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002 in response to the "hanging chad" debacle of the 2000 presidential election. In that contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, confusion with reading paper ballots in Florida and deciphering voters’ intent eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court intervening and stopping the recount, putting Bush in the White House. HAVA provided money to states to upgrade their voting systems to assure a higher level of accuracy, a better recount system and improved access for voters with disabilities. The act also created a new federal agency called the Elections Assistance Commission to advise states on how to comply with HAVA. The commission wrote up some technical guidelines for voting machines -- dealing with among other things software and electrical capabilities -- but made these guidelines voluntary. States could use the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines if they wanted to have the EAC certify that their voting machines met HAVA requirements. But states such as Rhode Island, which used machines purchased before the 2002 HAVA requirements, weren’t required to do so. We found through various sources, including verifiedvoting.org, that more than 200 counties and communities in at least at least seven other states -- Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Wisconsin and Virginia -- were still using Optech III P Eagle voting machines. (Unlike Rhode Island, most states don’t use the same machine statewide.) We also checked in with Rhode Island’s Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis on whether our voting machines meet the voluntary standards. Spokesman Chris Barnett wouldn’t answer that question directly, but issued a general statement: "We agree that Rhode Island’s voting machines are beyond their useful life," and he said his office hoped the machines would be replaced before the next election in 2014. Finally Kando forwarded to us an e-mail he had received from ES&S which cited three specific areas in which Rhode Island’s voting machines were "non-compliant" with the voluntary standards. And we quote: "No operating system -- all OS type functions included in the assembler firmware" "No life cycle counter" "No poll open process - power on allows ballots to be read." When we asked Kando to explain, noting that legislators would likely need something in English if they were to approve spending $5 million to replace the machines, Kando replied: "While I have my own understanding of the three deficiencies . . . I am fearful that any answer that I provide will be dissected to uncover any flaw and that the best source of information is the vendor." In a phone interview, Kathy A. Rogers, vice president of government affairs with ES&S, explained the three deficiencies. "No operating system . . . " pertains to the machine’s aging hardware and software no longer being capable of tabulating votes at the speed and efficiency the suggested standards recommend. "No life cycle counter" means that Rhode Island’s machines, unlike newer models, can’t keep a running count of how many votes were counted through them in their lifetimes. And finally "no poll open process" concerns turning the machines on. For security reasons, the standards require that voting machines have a password or a lock system in order to turn them on. The Optech Eagles, however, "were designed to begin counting ballots as soon as you plugged it in," said Rogers In a follow up interview, Kando said the point he was trying to make with his statement is that Rhode Island’s voting machines are substandard, not obsolete. They still assure "an accurate and fair" tabulation of votes, he said. And ES&S did say in an e-mail to Kando that while the machines don’t comply with some new standards, they are "performing accurately, reliably and securely if used and maintained according to recommendations." Our ruling Robert Kando said that Rhode Island is the only state still using the Optech III P Eagle voting machine, and that the machines do not meet suggested federal standards. He’s wrong on the first count: a quick search found at least seven other states still using the old machines. He’s right on the second: the vendor confirmed to us that the machines aren’t compliant with some voluntary federal standards. We rule his statement Half True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) Editor’s note: This item was revised on March 25, 2013, to include a list of states where Optech III P Eagle voting machines were in use. | null | Robert Kando | null | null | null | 2013-03-16T00:01:00 | 2013-03-07 | ['None'] |
vogo-00650 | Statement: San Ysidro is the busiest land crossing in the country. | determination: true | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/san-ysidro-the-nations-busiest-crossing/ | Analysis: Here’s a list of the country’s top five crossings from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This data includes the estimated number of passengers and pedestrians in the last fiscal year. | null | null | null | null | San Ysidro: The Nation's Busiest Crossing? | January 29, 2010 | null | ['San_Ysidro,_San_Diego'] |
goop-02896 | Selena Gomez, The Weeknd “Summer Wedding” Claim Tru | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/selena-gomez-wedding-the-weeknd-getting-married-summer-august/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Selena Gomez, The Weeknd “Summer Wedding” Claim NOT True | 3:49 pm, March 29, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12475 | Donald Trump’s "golf course on the island defaulted, like so many of his other failed business schemes. The failure left Puerto Rican taxpayers with a nearly $33 million bill." | half-true | /florida/statements/2017/may/04/florida-democratic-party/did-bankrupt-trump-golf-course-puerto-rico-leave-t/ | President Donald Trump accused Democrats of using Puerto Rico’s debt as a bargaining chip before the deadline to settle the federal budget. "The Democrats want to shut government if we don't bail out Puerto Rico and give billions to their insurance companies for OCare failure. NO!" Trump tweeted April 27. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Trump appeared to be referring to an effort by Democrats including Florida Sen. Bill Nelson to address a Medicaid shortfall in Puerto Rico, which became the largest municipal bankruptcy May 3. The Florida Democratic Party fired back at Trump’s tweet in a press release suggesting that Trump shares blame in the island’s economic downfall. A Trump golf resort, the party said, crashed in Puerto Rico and hurt taxpayers. "Trump conveniently left out the fact that his golf course on the island defaulted, like so many of his other failed business schemes. The failure left Puerto Rican taxpayers with a nearly $33 million bill, another example of Trump's many scams that make him wealthier and con hardworking families," the party wrote. Did Trump really leave the island with a bungled investment? We found that the bankruptcy of the golf resort did leave taxpayers with a bill, and that Trump had pledged to turn things around. But the Democrats portrayed the situation in a misleading light by omitting that the business was in dire financial straits years before Trump entered the picture. The Trump family has tried to create space in the years since between the resort and their business. Golf resort’s pre-Trump financial woes The resort in Rio Grande opened as Coco Beach Golf & Country Club in 2004 and ultimately included two 18-hole golf courses and a clubhouse. Trump entered the picture in 2008. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com The resort was built with support from the Puerto Rican government through the Puerto Rico Tourism Development Fund. The fund issued about $25 million in bonds in 2000 and 2004, according to a 2016 BuzzFeed article that included documents about the golf resort’s bankruptcy. The tourism development fund is paid for by tax dollars. If a private entity defaults on its obligations -- as the golf resort did in this case -- the fund has to make good on the principal and interest. The resort suffered amid the recession that hit Puerto Rico a few years before Trump got involved. To learn more about what went wrong, we interviewed Craig McCann, a principal at Securities Litigation and Consulting Group, who has testified several times in arbitrations about Puerto Rican municipal bonds but has had no role in this particular case. McCann was a key source for the BuzzFeed article, and his firm reviewed annual financial reports that were included. The recession in Puerto Rico was much worse than the mainland and started earlier as manufacturers left in 2006-07 due to the elimination of a tax subsidy for manufacturers, McCann told PolitiFact. Then the island got a second financial hit, this time rattled by the recession in the United States. The resort lost about $5.7 million in 2007 and $6.3 million in 2008. "This resort just got hammered and is hemorrhaging money before the Trump Organization’s involvement," McCann told PolitiFact. As the losses piled up, property owners went looking for help. Enter Trump. Problems continued under Trump In 2008, Trump signed two deals: a licensing agreement to rename the club as Trump International Golf Club Puerto Rico, and a management agreement to position Trump to handle the club’s operations in exchange for a share of its annual revenue and a slice of the profit. A document stated that as manager, Trump International Co had developed a plan to maintain positive operating cash flow. Trump claimed more than $600,000 in profits by the end of 2012. "Puerto Rico is a fantastic place and deserves the best, which is what we will deliver," Trump said at a 2008 news conference on the island, according to the Washington Post. "Every detail will be important to me." It isn’t clear from the documents how involved Trump really was. It is clear, however, that he didn’t solve the resort’s problems. There was at least one bright spot as the resort racked up losses: The course landed on the PGA tour in 2008. But in 2011, the resort sought more bonds to repay the earlier bonds. McCann said that even if Trump had not gotten involved, the resort was headed toward bankruptcy because the 2000 and 2004 bonds were about to default. In 2015, the resort filed for bankruptcy under its original name, the Coco Beach Golf and Country Club. The resort claimed it owed more than $78 million but only had $9 million in assets. Johanna Cervone, spokeswoman for the Democrats, says Trump was brought in to save the golf course but left taxpayers on the hook. "He was tasked with turning it around, he made revenue off of it, and it failed," she said. Eric Trump distanced his father from the project when it fell into bankruptcy "We have zero financial investment in this course," Eric Trump told Bloomberg News in July 2015. "This has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. This is a separate owner. We purely manage the golf course." (Eric Trump filed a bankruptcy claim for about $927,000 for unpaid fees on behalf of Trump Golf Coco Beach LLC.) Bankruptcy court records show that the Puerto Rico Tourism Development Fund, the largest creditor, filed a claim for $32.67 million for the real estate mortgage in 2015. The resort later sold for about $2 million to OHorizons Global, a private investment firm. This left the Government Development Bank -- the tourism fund is a subsidiary of the bank -- to make payments on the outstanding bonds. We sent a summary of the golf course’s financial problems to a few experts and asked if Trump should be blamed for the bankruptcy. (These experts on bankruptcy or corporate law received our summary with links to news reports but didn’t pore over financial records for days, as McCann’s firm did.) John A. E. Pottow, a University of Michigan law professor and bankruptcy expert, said Trump bears some blame for the failure of the golf course because he failed to turn it around. But he said it is debatable if management is to blame for bankruptcy because the context of the recession is a factor. "I don't know if I like to ‘blame’ anyone for bankruptcy, but to the extent you want to blame people, sure, blame the president (or his company)," Pottow said. Miami attorney Milton Vescovacci, of Gray Robinson law firm, says the only way to blame Trump for the bankruptcy would be if his involvement was so costly to the operation that it caused the business to fail, and that didn’t appear to be the case here. (Vescovacci is an expert on banking and finance and is currently working with an organization to lobby the U.S. government to allow Puerto Rico to restructure its debt) The golf course bankruptcy is different from bankruptcies of multiple Trump casinos, McCann said. With the casinos, Trump was a major investor and had a significant role such as controlling shareholder or as an executive. In Puerto Rico, he said, "The Trump Organization was providing services and a brand all for a fee. No equity interest. No deep involvement." The Trump Organization sent PolitiFact a statement: "The Trump Organization was neither the owner nor the developer of this property and had nothing to do with the financing of the development. Our role was to operate and manage the property." Our ruling The Florida Democratic Party said that Trump’s "golf course on the island defaulted, like so many of his other failed business schemes. The failure left Puerto Rican taxpayers with a nearly $33 million bill." Trump entered into a licensing and management agreement in 2008 -- after the golf course resort had fallen into debt. Trump failed to turn around the resort and it declared bankruptcy in 2015. The Puerto Rico Tourism Development Fund, which provided project financing in 2000 and 2004, filed a claim in bankruptcy court for $32.7 million. The fund is paid for with tax dollars. The Democratic Party is correct that taxpayers are left with a nearly $33 million bill, but it exaggerates when it points the finger exclusively at Trump, omitting important details about the recession’s impact on the resort and its financial woes years before Trump’s involvement. We rate this claim Half True. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Florida Democratic Party | null | null | null | 2017-05-04T16:09:59 | 2017-04-27 | ['Puerto_Rico'] |
tron-02530 | Laminin, a protein important to the body, is in the shape of a cross | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/laminin/ | null | miscellaneous | null | null | null | Laminin, a protein important to the body, is in the shape of a cross | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
huca-00005 | "The (Canada Child Benefit) means more money for nine out of 10 Canadian families, and it means 300,000 fewer kids living in poverty across this country." | a lot of baloney | https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/27/liberal-claim-about-canada-child-benefit-slashing-child-poverty_a_23052522/?utm_hp_ref=ca-baloney-meter | null | null | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau | Jordan Press | null | Liberal Claim About Canada Child Benefit Slashing Child Poverty Rates Contains 'A Lot Of Baloney' | 07/27/2017 11:52 EDT | null | ['Canada'] |
pomt-03941 | Nobody in total is proposing cutting anything. We’re trying to reduce the rate of growth in government. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2013/feb/20/ron-johnson/ron-johnson-says-republican-budget-proposals-dont-/ | Making the rounds reacting to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was asked why Republicans didn’t "cut their way to solvency" during the Bush administration in the 1990s. Johnson, a deficit hawk elected in 2010, reacted to the word "cut." "Nobody in total is proposing cutting anything. We’re trying to reduce the rate of growth in government," he said Feb. 13, 2013, on public radio station WUWM-FM (89.7) in Milwaukee. "And that’s what we need to do. The fact of the matter is, the extreme position is to do nothing on either Social Security or Medicare, because those programs are going broke." The bitter partisan warfare over who is cutting what and by how much can obscure the true nature of various deficit-relief plans. So let’s test Johnson’s claim that "nobody in total is proposing cutting anything." Rather, he claims, officials are "trying to reduce the rate of growth in government." In the case of Johnson, we’ve been down this road before, but with the shoe on the other foot. In defeating liberal Democrat Russ Feingold in 2010, it was Johnson who portrayed limits on spending growth in Medicare -- supported by Feingold in the federal health care law -- as "cuts" that would harm seniors. Now it’s Johnson who complains that critics misconstrue caps on the rate of spending growth as "cuts." Such is politics. But let’s look at the core issue raised by Johnson’s comments. In Johnson’s two years, have he and fellow Republicans advocated limits on federal spending growth -- or have they actually tried to shrink the budget from its current size? Over the next decade, looking at federal spending as a whole, it’s clear that the intent is to slow the growth rate. You can see that in U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposals, in the sequester set to take effect in March 2013 and in various spending-cap proposals pushed by Republican lawmakers. To be sure, the measures propose significant and often controversial reductions in spending over multiple years compared with current rates of growth, but they do not shrink the budget below current spending over the course of a decade. A few Johnson-specific examples: He supported both Ryan budgets. He signed onto the Contract from America plan to put a per-capita inflation cap on spending growth. He backed a spending-cap proposal by U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that tied spending to economic growth. And Johnson’s comments in various forums, most recently in January, make clear he endorses limits on total growth. In the Ryan budgets, it’s notable that in the first year of the 10-year projections, his blueprints called for spending less in year one than the year before. Federal budget plans typically are framed in 10-year increments, though, and spending rises in every year but the first under his plans. So Johnson’s point is not knocked down by this, but it’s something to consider when evaluating his claim. It’s also worth noting that Johnson praised the 2012 Ryan proposal but said it wasn’t aggressive enough in limiting growth. When you look more narrowly at specific categories of spending, instead of the whole budget, Ryan’s proposals did indeed make actual year-to-year cuts -- and over the long-term. Example: Ryan’s fiscal year 2012 plan proposed a cut in Medicaid outlays for that year, and didn’t get them back to the previous level until 2019. And Ryan’s 2012 plan cut non-defense discretionary programs by 25 percent over 10 years. Johnson, for his part, has endorsed enormous cuts on an agency-by-agency basis -- and even talks of eliminating some agencies entirely. In a January 2013 interview with The Daily Caller, Johnson said he’d go across the board. "I truly believe that any of these agencies could easily withstand a 10 or 20 percent across the board cut and still be able to perform their function," he told reporter Alex Pappas. Pappas quoted Johnson saying "an awful lot of these" agencies "probably have a harmful effect on the economy anyways, so I don’t necessarily want to maintain their function." Johnson has also scoffed at the size of the looming cuts called for in the sequester, which supposedly was a poison pill so horrible that it would force lawmakers to compromise to avoid swallowing the automatic, across-the-board cuts. A recent Congressional Budget Office estimate said the sequester would cost the United States 750,000 jobs in 2013 alone. Johnson said the sequester’s cuts over 10 years amount to "barely a rounding error" in the giant federal budget. He spoke on WTMJ-AM (620) radio in Milwaukee on February 14, 2013, about the sequester, which totals more than $1 trillion over a decade. So it’s clear Johnson supports steep budget cuts in some areas in order to slow the overall budget’s growth curve. Our rating Johnson said: "Nobody in total is proposing cutting anything. We’re trying to reduce the rate of growth in government." While Johnson supports deep cutbacks in some budget areas, he and fellow Republicans repeatedly have made clear that in Washington budget-speak -- which typically covers 10-year increments -- they are talking about limiting the size of future spending increases. Those growth limits likely would mean significant program changes and fewer federal employees. But the budget would still grow overall. We’ve examined similar claims. PolitiFact National debunked Democrats’ claims in 2011 that Ryan’s budget would "end" Medicare. And it declared Mostly False claims in 2010 by Republicans that the federal health care law cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare at the elderly’s expense. Both ratings rested in part on the recognition that Medicare’s budget would continue to grow, just at a slower pace, under the cost-savings plans. Johnson’s claim is something of a reverse image of those claims, though on a grander scale. With the points of clarification noted above, we think his main point is on target. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Ron Johnson | null | null | null | 2013-02-20T09:00:00 | 2013-02-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-03328 | Homicides against blacks have tripled since Florida’s "stand your ground" law has been in existence. | false | /florida/statements/2013/jul/24/jesse-jackson/homicides-blacks-have-tripled-stand-your-ground-wa/ | Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of Florida, which he labeled an "apartheid state" after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. "No doubt ... the inclination (is) to boycott Florida, to stop conventions, to isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state given this whole 'stand your ground' laws,"Jackson said on CNN July 18. "Homicides against blacks have tripled since this law has been in existence. Now more homicides and more guns make us less secure." On July 13, a jury acquitted Zimmerman, a white Hispanic volunteer neighborhood watchman, in the death of Martin, an unarmed black teenager killed in Sanford in 2012. Zimmerman claimed self-defense. The case has sparked much discussion about the impact of the "stand your ground" law in Florida -- particularly for the black community. After Jackson made his remarks, several readers emailed us: Is Jackson correct that since the law passed, homicides of black victims have tripled? Data on black homicide victims in Florida Signed into law by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in 2005, Florida’s "stand your ground" law says a person has "no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." The Florida Department of Law Enforcement emailed PolitiFact data showing the number of black homicide victims each year. Since "stand your ground" went into effect part way through 2005, we started the clock ticking in 2006. Here are the number of black homicide victims each year: 2006: 524 2007: 573 2008: 564 2009: 494 2010: 452 2011: 476 2012: 532 That shows the sheer number of black homicide victims between 2006 and 2012 barely changed: it rose from 524 to 532. (Even if we did include 2005 -- which wouldn’t be a fair analysis since the law went into effect part way through the year -- we would not find the number of homicides of black people tripled. The number rose from 428 in 2005 to 532 in 2012, or a 24 percent increase.) We also looked at the number of homicides of black people as a percentage of the total number of homicides and did not find they tripled. Justifiable homicides So where did Jackson get this idea that homicides of black people had tripled? We aren’t certain, since Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition did not respond to our questions. However, we suspect that he might have been referring to justifiable homicides by civilians. Reports of justifiable homicides tripled after "stand your ground" went into effect, the Tampa Bay Times reported in October 2010 based on FDLE data. (The Times and Miami Herald are partners in PolitiFact Florida.) Later in the CNN interview, Jackson seems to be referring to these numbers. After a question specifically about the "stand your ground," Jackson said, "There has been a triple increase in these shootings since this law has been in effect." If what he meant by "these shootings" were justifiable homicides, then Jackson was on track. But that’s different from the statement he made earlier. (Read more about the increase in justifiable homicides.) Our ruling During an interview on CNN about Florida’s "stand your ground" law Jackson said: "Homicides against blacks have tripled since this law has been in existence." The law was enacted part way through 2005. The number of homicides in which black people were the victims fluctuated from year to year between 2006 and 2012 and didn’t come anywhere close to tripling. It’s possible Jackson is confusing homicides with justifiable homicides, but that’s a key qualifier that he omitted in part of his comments. We’re rating his statement that homicides against blacks have tripled. That’s not accurate, so we rate the statement False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/f87b2e8f-1ede-48fa-a331-d1dca3f923e7 | null | Jesse Jackson | null | null | null | 2013-07-24T16:42:41 | 2013-07-18 | ['None'] |
faly-00026 | Claim: Converting at least 50% of all the government buildings in the national capital and all state capitals fully accessible. | unverified | https://factly.in/fact-check-has-accessibility-for-pwds-improved-in-the-last-four-years/ | Fact: 58 out of the 75 selected central government buildings in 39 cities have been retrofitted as of March 2018. Since the claim is talking about a future target and not an achievement, it remains UNVERIFIED | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Has Accessibility for PwDs improved in the last four years? | null | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10140 | I have disagreed strongly with the Bush administration on this issue of global warming. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/07/john-mccain/mccain-proud-to-have-parted-ways-with-bush/ | During the second presidential debate, Sen. John McCain drew a distinction with President Bush on the issue of global warming. "We have an issue that we may hand our children and our grandchildren a damaged planet," McCain said when environmental issues arose during the Oct. 7, 2008, debate. "I have disagreed strongly with the Bush administration on this issue." He went on to say he traveled all over the world looking at the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and introduced legislation on the subject of global warming. But let's check the record – as we have in the past when McCain made similar claims on the campaign trail – and see if he was in fact at odds with Bush on global warming. McCain spoke up about global warming in January 2003. And as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he held hearings on the issue several years before that. On Jan. 9, 2003, McCain and Sen. Joe Liberman introduced the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capping them and allowing companies and utilities to sell or trade their emission rights. When he introduced the bill, McCain called it "the first comprehensive piece of legislation" in capping emissions. "The U.S. is responsible for 25 percent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "It is time for the U.S. government to do its part to address this global problem, and legislation on mandatory reductions is the form of leadership that is required to address this global problem." By contrast, the Bush administration has opposed cap-and-trade programs and preferred voluntary efforts on climate change. Manik Roy, director of congressional affairs for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said McCain had actually been working on the climate change bill in 2001, but it got delayed after the 9/11 attacks. The Lieberman-McCain bill ultimately failed in October 2003 by a 43-55 vote, but Roy said it was a key step in "educating the Senate" about how government could respond to global warming. "It is absolutely correct that McCain stood up on this issue, forced the Senate to focus on this issue when nobody else thought it made sense and did it with strong opposition from the White House," Roy said. He called McCain "a huge leader on this issue in the Senate." And so we find McCain's statement to be True. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-10-07T00:00:00 | 2008-10-07 | ['George_W._Bush'] |
snes-00211 | Ohio's 12th Congressional District recorded 170 fraudulent votes cast in August 2018 by persons with birthdates earlier than 1902. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ohio-voter-fraud/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Ohio’s 12th Congressional District Have 170 Fraudulent ‘Voters’ Over 116 Years Old? | 16 August 2018 | null | ['Ohio', 'Congressional_district'] |
tron-02703 | Tornado Carries Mobile Home 130 Miles with Family Inside | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/tornado-carries-mobile-home-130-miles/ | null | natural-disasters | null | null | ['satire', 'tornados', 'weather'] | Tornado Carries Mobile Home 130 Miles with Family Inside | May 2, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00941 | Important Notice from Netflix | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/netflix-notice/ | null | computers | null | null | null | Important Notice from Netflix | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14988 | On the Keystone XL pipeline | no flip | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/14/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-her-keystone-xl-position-isnt-flip-fl/ | Hillary Clinton says she now opposes the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Is that a flip-flop? Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said yes during the first Democratic presidential debate on Oct. 13. "Secretary Clinton's campaign put out a lot of reversals on positions on Keystone and many other things," he said. Clinton said no. "You know, we know that if you are learning, you're going to change your position," Clinton said in response. "I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone." We wanted to look at Clinton’s comments, which drew the ire of some critics. They pointed to something Clinton said in 2010. Then, she said the administration was "inclined" to approve the pipeline extension. But isolating that single word leaves out a good bit of context. The Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil mixture from Western Canada to the United States, has long been on hold pending a review by President Barack Obama and the State Department. The administration must first determine if the pipeline "serves the national interest" because it crosses an international border. Chief opposition to the project comes from environmental groups. Throughout her campaign in 2015, Clinton has avoided taking a position on the pipeline -- until she announced in September that she opposes it. Prior to that, Clinton’s last substantial comment on her Keystone position was in 2010 when she was secretary of state. Speaking on Oct. 15, 2010, with the Commonwealth Club, a public forum in California, Clinton took a question asking if the administration would be willing to "reconsider" the pipeline. Here’s Clinton’s response: "Well, there hasn't been a final decision made. (Crosstalk) Probably not. And we -- but we haven't finished all of the analysis. So as I say, we've not yet signed off on it. But we are inclined to do so, and we are for several reasons -- going back to one of your original questions -- we're either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada. And until we can get our act together as a country and figure out that clean, renewable energy is in both our economic interests and the interests of our planet -- (applause) -- I mean, I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone how deeply disappointed the president and I are about our inability to get the kind of legislation through the Senate that the United States was seeking." A couple of days later in 2010, a State Department spokesman said, "her words obviously stand," and "her response reflected the status of the Keystone XL pipeline." So yes, Clinton indicated that the administration at the time was "inclined" to sign off on the pipeline. But she did say multiple times that the analysis was not complete -- leaving open the possibility that the administration could backtrack if negative information were to come forward. The answer was positive toward the pipeline’s prospects, but she did not in any way say she supported it unequivocally. In a 2011 news conference with the Canadian foreign minister, Clinton answered a couple questions about the administration’s preliminary Keystone XL review. But she did not indicate her position beyond vague comments such as, "We are leaving no stone unturned in this process." Our conclusion Clinton said, "I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone." In 2010, she said the administration was "inclined" to back it, but she qualified that statement by noting that the analysis was not complete, and the administration had not taken a final position. While this shows a more positive attitude toward Keystone XL than Clinton’s position today, it was not a firm stance. Other than that one comment, Clinton did not indicate her position on Keystone until she announced that she opposed it in September 2015. We rate Clinton's position a No Flip. | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2015-10-14T10:50:30 | 2015-10-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-14367 | Requiring photo ID would keep about 200,000 Missourians from voting. | half-true | /missouri/statements/2016/mar/21/kip-kendrick/rep-kip-kendrick-half-right-voter-id-statement/ | What documents should voters have to show to make it to the polls? The question continues to spark debate in state legislatures across the country, with new voter ID legislation coming to the forefront in a number of states. The Missouri legislature is discussing measures that would narrow the acceptable forms of voter ID to non-expired photo identification issued by the state or federal government. The proposed legislation would exclude currently acceptable forms of voter identification like student IDs, out-of-state driver’s licenses, or bank statements and utility bills. State Rep. Kip Kendrick, D-Columbia, recently weighed in on the legislation’s potential for disenfranchising voters, saying "requiring photo ID would keep about 200,000 Missourians from voting." That number caught our attention. We decided to dig into the details of the proposed legislation, and take a closer look at just how many Missouri voters would be affected by photo ID requirements. Numbers from the Secretary of State Kendrick said he got his estimate of those who would be kept from voting — "more than 200,000" — from Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. A report from Kander’s office corroborates Kendrick’s statement, showing 220,000 people potentially disenfranchised. According to the Secretary of State’s office, that number came from comparing the list of registered voters in Missouri to the Department of Revenue’s accounting of those without driver’s licenses (about 150,000 people) and those with expired driver’s licenses (about 70,000). Those numbers are at best a rough approximation. Marvin Overby, political science professor at MU, said he can think of two factors that would make the Secretary of State’s estimate too high. "A number of people who don’t have driver’s licenses do have photo identification, it’s just in a non-driver’s license form," Overby said. "And those in prison or on parole or probation can’t vote, regardless of their ID status." Numbers from the proposed legislation An even higher estimate of Missourians without non-expired photo identification — almost 400,000 people — actually is cited in the proposed legislation’s fiscal note. The note sets aside up to $10.7 million to cover costs associated with providing new photo IDs. That’s because unless the House Budget and Senate Appropriations committees allocate the necessary funding to provide photo ID at no charge for those currently without, the state would be barred from implementing the new requirements. Kendrick’s source, Secretary of State Jason Kander’s report, doesn’t take this information into account. Kander’s report is two years old and refers to an older bill that did not require the state to bear the cost of providing supporting documentation necessary for photo ID — theoretically making the requirement of photo ID a poll tax. But the current proposed legislation does hold the state responsible for providing birth certificates or other necessary documents free of charge for photo ID. In theory, this would reduce the chances that any new ID requirements might disenfranchise voters currently lacking photo identification. The cost of photo ID The $10.7 million suggested in the proposed legislation’s fiscal note would cover other costs as well as providing supporting documentation for IDs, like manufacturing and postage for new photo IDs. It also includes funding for an updated DMV website; new hires in the Department of Revenue, the Department of Health and Senior Service, and the Bureau of Vital records; and pre-election TV, radio, and print ads to let voters know of the change in ID requirements. But it doesn’t mention any plans for in-person help for Missouri residents unfamiliar with navigating a bureaucracy — a lack of familiarity that could easily be a symptom of not needing to procure a photo ID in the past. And for some, even a photo ID supplied for no charge isn’t free. Missouri League of Women Voters President Elaine Blodgett said the costs associated with the new IDs go beyond creating a new document. "There’s an undue burden on women, who might have to get their birth certificates and marriage certificates and divorce certificates in order to get photo ID, if they’ve changed their names," she said. "Also, simply getting to all the offices needed can be nearly impossible for some of our disabled or elderly voters." Kendrick told Politifact Missouri that older adults may have issues tracking down birth certificates because states don’t necessarily have the same standards for maintaining birth records. He also added a time qualifier to his earlier statement and said "if voter photo ID was in place right now, over 200,000 registered MO voters would not be able to vote." In addition, even with the plan outlined in the bill’s fiscal note, some voters may still remain unaware of the new requirements. If voters came to the polls without the correct ID, they could cast provisional ballots; but in the 2012 presidential election, fewer than 3 in 10 provisional ballots were counted because many voters did not return to verify their address or identity after casting a provisional ballot. Our ruling While requiring a photo ID could be expensive and might affect or inconvenience between 220,000 and 400,000 Missourians, it wouldn’t necessarily keep them from voting. Unlike past bills, the legislation currently proposed does address the cost of supplying supporting documentation necessary for obtaining photo ID, making it difficult to say it would financially "keep people from voting." No one knows exactly how many Missourians would be affected by new photo ID requirements — but there is consensus that the number who would need new photo IDs is in the hundreds of thousands. We rate Kendrick’s statement Half True. | null | Kip Kendrick | null | null | null | 2016-03-21T09:49:33 | 2016-02-04 | ['Missouri'] |
pomt-02546 | Pinellas County voters "elected me as their chief financial officer … (and) elected me as (their) governor four years ago." | true | /florida/statements/2014/feb/05/alex-sink/alex-sink-says-pinellas-county-voted-her-be-cfo-go/ | Democrat Alex Sink’s bid for the late C.W. Bill Young’s vacant U.S. House seat hasn’t exactly been helped by the fact that she isn’t a Pinellas native, though she did rent a condo and move there while launching her campaign. Republicans have harped on this point for months, calling Sink a "carpetbagger." They ask how could she well represent an area she didn’t grow up in. So it was no surprise that Sink addressed this concern at Monday night’s debate at St. Petersburg College. "One of the things that sets me apart is that I’ve actually been elected by the people of Pinellas County," she said, responding to a moderator’s question about how she differs from Jolly and Libertarian Lucas Overby, both of whom have never ran for elected office before. "They elected me as their chief financial officer and I served them and their interests. And they actually elected me as governor four years ago." PolitiFact Florida revisited 2006 and 2010 election results to see if Sink was right that a majority of Pinellas County voters supported her. Sink won her bid for chief financial officer in 2006, beating out Republican Tom Lee with 55.5 percent of the vote in Pinellas and 53.5 percent statewide. That’s different than what happened in 2010, when Sink lost a tight gubernatorial race to Republican Rick Scott. She netted 47.7 percent of the statewide vote, shy of Scott’s 48.9 percent. In Pinellas, though, the story was different. There, Sink came out on top, and by a bigger margin, with 50.7 percent to Scott’s 45 percent. We chose to focus on Pinellas County percentages because that’s what Sink referred to in her claim. But for the March 11 special election, not all Pinellas voters are eligible to weigh in. Florida’s 13th congressional district spans from Fort de Soto Park up to Dunedin, but excludes parts of downtown and southern St. Petersburg. Our ruling Sink claimed that Pinellas County voters supported her in both her 2006 run for chief financial officer and her 2010 bid for governor. On both counts, the election results support her point. We rated her claim True. | null | Alex Sink | null | null | null | 2014-02-05T15:15:53 | 2014-02-03 | ['None'] |
pomt-11054 | Most (immigrants) do show up in court. | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2018/jun/26/wolf-blitzer/majority-undocumented-immigrants-show-court-data-s/ | Defenders of President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach to illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings say the country faces a binary choice: hold offenders in detention centers while their cases are adjudicated, or allow them to fall off immigration authorities’ radar. The argument hinges on the belief that undocumented border-crossers released from federal custody are more likely to skip court and abscond than show up for mandatory court hearings. This rationale led the Trump administration to hold border-crossers in detention facilities without the possibility of being released on bond, in a break with the previous administration’s so-called "catch-and-release" practice. The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan pressed the "no show" argument on CNN’s Situation Room, before anchor Wolf Blitzer pushed back. "They'll say the right thing to get released from detention, then they won't show up in court," Homan said June 19. "But they're already in the United States. They're lost in society. They never get removed. So as long as we send the world this message — ‘Come and say the right thing, get released, never to show up in court’ — you're never going to fix this." Blitzer countered, "Most of them do show up in court. They don't necessarily disappear." Immigrants’ purported low court attendance rate has become a popular talking point, from Trump himself ("When we release the people, they never come back to the judge, anyway — they're gone"), to White House staff and law enforcement officials, to the administration’s conservative media allies. In absolute terms, more than 100,000 non-detained immigrants have been ordered to be deported in recent years because they failed to appear before an immigration judge. However, as a percentage, most undocumented immigrants do show up for court. Court attendance by all types of immigrants According to Justice Department data from the last five available years, around 60 to 75 percent of non-detained migrants have attended their immigration court proceedings. That’s determined by subtracting the percentage of judgments entered against migrants in their absence (known as an in absentia ruling) from total judgments entered. So Blitzer is right, in percentage terms: Most of them do show up in court. But it’s worth noting that in absolute terms, that’s nearly 140,000 non-detained immigrants who were ordered to be deported between 2012-16 because they were not present in the courtroom, according to Justice Department data. (Though some immigration advocates say that count is high.) "On the overall question of the importance immigration officials should attach to no-shows: the glass is either half full or half empty," said Peter Margulies, an immigration law and national security law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. Despite a majority attending their hearings, he said, "that still yields a significant number of no-shows (and) noncitizens unaccounted for." Several experts emphasized that using monitoring devices and providing immigrants with legal counsel correlated with higher attendance. "I do think having appropriate legal representation for asylum claimants would help a lot," Margulies said. "Many may not know that they have good claims. Better legal advice would further improve the attendance rate." Court attendance by asylum-seekers As the CNN transcript shows, Homan and Blitzer were discussing asylees, so it’s worth distinguishing that group from other migrants. Asylum-seekers flee to the United States out of fear of persecution in their home country due to race, religion, nationality, or because their social or political activities have put a target on their back. One example is the case of an asylee identified in court documents only as M.G.U., who is suing the Trump administration in relation to its family separation policy. M.G.U. fled Guatemala with her three minor-age sons after her husband received death threats for his community organizing efforts there, according the lawsuit. M.G.U. and her sons appeared at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry in May to request asylum due to their fear of returning to Guatemala. As a technical matter, M.G.U. and her family’s case is considered an "affirmative" application for asylum because the applicants went to U.S. authorities to make the request. In contrast, undocumented migrants requesting asylum during a deportation proceeding make a "defensive" application. In either case, immigrants must be found to have a credible fear of persecution to be considered for asylum. As we’ve noted before, there’s been a nearly 1,700 percent increase in U.S. asylum claims over the last 10 years. What’s fueling the increase is growing instability, gang violence and worsening economic conditions in Central America’s "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. "Initially, a lot of migration was single males from Mexico coming for work," said Joshua Breisblatt, a senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. "Now you’re seeing a shift to Central American families fleeing record levels of violence in the Northern Triangle." So what do the court attendance rates of asylees look like? While the data is scarce, they show higher rates, compared to when all migrants are tallied together. One source of data comes from an Obama-era program that released asylees from detention and matched them with case managers who encouraged compliance with court-ordered obligations. As of April, the Family Case Management Program, or FCMP, had 630 enrolled families. Before the Trump administration ended the program in June, participants had a 100 percent attendance record at court hearings. They also had a 99 percent rate of check-ins and appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report. "According to ICE, overall program compliance for all five regions is an average of 99 percent for ICE check-ins and appointments, as well as 100 percent attendance at court hearings," the report said. "Since the inception of FCMP, 23 out of 954 participants (2 percent) were reported as absconders." In 2015, the immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council published a report that looked at studies from over the previous two decades that examined how well asylum seekers fulfilled their legal obligations. It found studies showed "very high rates of compliance with proceedings by asylum seekers who were placed into alternatives to detention." The report cited a 2000 U.S. government-commissioned study that found an "83 percent rate of compliance with court proceedings among asylum seekers who were found to have a credible fear in the expedited removal process." It also showed an 84 percent compliance rate among asylees under minimal supervision, and 78 percent among those who were unsupervised. A 2013 study sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that looked at asylees in Toronto and Geneva noted a "cooperative predisposition" among asylum seekers. While the study did not look specifically at U.S.-bound asylees, it cited characteristics common among asylees, including an "inclination towards law-abidingness," perhaps in relation to having fled home counties lacking in rule of law. It also noted asylum-seekers "lack of a plan B" due to the "impossibility of returning home." Our ruling Blitzer said "most (immigrants) do show up in court." Around 60-75 percent of non-detained migrants have attended their immigration court proceedings, according to Justice Department data from the last five available years. Some limited data suggests rates may be higher for asylum-seekers. That said, it’s important to note that in absolute terms, a significant number of migrants have had in absentia deportation orders filed against them for failure to appear in court, which Blitzer’s statement overlooks. We rate this Mostly True. | null | Wolf Blitzer | null | null | null | 2018-06-26T11:22:49 | 2018-06-19 | ['None'] |
tron-01251 | Beware of crooks who use a technique to get your ATM card | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/lebaneseloop/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Beware of crooks who use a technique to get your ATM card | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03176 | A man was sentenced to 22 years in prison for stealing a remote control. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-sentenced-22-years-remote/ | null | Crime | null | Dan Evon | null | Was a Man Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison Just for Stealing a Remote? | 9 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04241 | A video captures African-American protesters targeting white people for mob violence during unrest in Milwaukee over the weekend of 13 August 2016. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-protesters-targeted-whites-in-milwaukee/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Bethania Palma | null | Video: Black Protesters Targeted Whites in Milwaukee? | 15 August 2016 | null | ['Milwaukee'] |
pomt-03624 | Says Gov. Rick Scott allowed Republican legislators to cut his teacher pay raise proposal by 60 percent. | false | /florida/statements/2013/may/06/allison-tant/democratic-party-chair-allison-tant-attacks-gov-ri/ | Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Allison Tant attacked Gov. Rick Scott as a feckless chief executive who let the Florida Legislature steamroll his session priorities. "He boasted that his No. 1 priority for the 2013 session was a $2,500 across-the-board raise for classroom teachers," Tant wrote in an April 30 column for Florida Voices. "Seven weeks later his abject failure to defend his top issue has allowed Republican legislators to cut that raise by 60 percent with a multitude of strings attached." We detailed the Legislature’s compromise with Scott on teacher pay raises in this fact-check. In this case, we were intrigued by Tant’s claim that legislators cut Scott’s requested pay raise by 60 percent. (Tant’s column ran a few days before the Legislature lifted some of the more controversial strings on the raises, including the requirement that they be paid no sooner than June 2014.) Before the session, Scott asked for a pot of $480 million from which to dole out a $2,500 raise to every teacher. The Legislature set aside the amount he wanted, on top of adding $1 billion to education spending. But lawmakers did not exactly follow his request. The raises will not go just to teachers. Principals, vice principals, guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists and librarians are also eligible for raises. Scott said every teacher will get a raise. While a raise is likely for most, it is not guaranteed. School districts in negotiations with unions will ultimately decide who gets raises and how much. Lawmakers outlined a merit-pay system but gave districts the choice to implement their own merit plans. Adding thousands of noninstructional personnel into the pool for raises is another point of consideration, as superintendents may have to shuffle the amount of raises for teachers or the number of people who get them to make everyone fit. Bottom line: The specifics are TBD, to be determined. We asked the Democrats to support the 60 percent figure. Did Tant crunch the numbers and find that teachers will get raises of just $1,000, or 60 percent less than what Scott wanted? The Democrats: The line was a mistake. Tant’s column conflated money for teacher pay raises with money that was set aside for raises for state workers. "It was an error," said party spokesman Max Steele. State and university workers will receive a $1,000 or $1,400 raise depending on income (some may earn an extra $600 for performance) for the first time in seven years starting in October. Law enforcement officers will get even higher raises. What the Democrats did is divide the $200 million pot for state and university workers by the $480 million Scott asked for. Using that (flawed) math, Scott got about 40 percent of his request -- or, viewed another way, a 60 percent cut of what he asked for. Our ruling Tant said Scott only got 60 percent of the teacher pay raise he wanted. The final budget compromise adds thousands of noninstructors into the pay raise mix, which could affect the number of teachers who get raises or at least how much those raises are. Still, we don’t know what that will mean on a statewide level because teacher pay is worked out by local districts and their unions. Still, this isn’t even what Tant was trying to analyze. She just used a mismatched number. We give the Democrats props for coming clean with their mistake. But we rate Tant’s statement False. | null | Allison Tant | null | null | null | 2013-05-06T16:09:37 | 2013-04-30 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-09182 | Sixty-four percent of Americans support the Arizona immigration law.'' mostly true /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/03/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-says-president-obama-out-step-nation-ar/ With the stroke of a pen, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer catapulted herself into the national spotlight. On April 23, 2010, she signed into law what many call the toughest bill on illegal immigration in the country. The bill makes it a crime to stay in the country illegally, requires all aliens to carry immigration paperwork, and sanctions employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. Facing criticism that the law would legalize racial profiling, the Arizona Legislature modified the law on May 1, 2010. It now states that police officers cannot use race as the sole grounds for suspecting that someone is in the country illegally. The law produced mixed reactions among political leaders. President Barack Obama commented that it threatened ''to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.'' But some people argue that President Obama's reaction is unfounded, given that the majority of Americans actually supports Arizona's immigration law. During his May 27 show, talk host Glenn Beck said that Sixty-four percent of Americans support the Arizona immigration law. Yet we're going to -- we're actually -- our government is going down there to fight them. Eric Holder is fighting them in court. They're becoming more and more brazen each and every day." Beck is referring to an announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the U.S. Department of Justice may challenge the law in court. Given the public outrage over the law, is Beck correct that more than 6 in 10 Americans stand behind Arizona? We decided to find out. The number that Beck cites comes from a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that was conducted in early May. The poll found that 64 percent of Americans were either somewhat or strongly supportive of the law. There are other polls, however, that show a slightly different result. • An April 27-28 Gallup poll found that of those Americans who have heard of the law, 51 percent support it. Among all Americans, 39 percent favor it, 30 percent oppose it, and 31 percent either had no opinion or have not heard of the law. • A Pew Research Center poll conducted between May 6 and May 9 found that 59 percent approve of the law. • A May 19-24 poll by the Quinnipiac University found 51 percent of American voters support the Arizona law. Moreover, 48 percent say that they want their state to pass an immigration law similar to Arizona's. All of the polls that we've looked at show that more Americans favor the law than oppose it, but the numbers vary widely. To recap. Glenn Beck said on his program that 64 percent of Americans support Arizona's new immigration law. That statistic, however, comes from a single poll. Other polls show slightly lower approval ratings. Still, his underlying point that most Americans agree with Arizona is correct. We rate this one Mostly True. | null | Glenn Beck | null | null | null | 2010-06-03T13:22:07 | 2010-05-27 | ['United_States', 'Arizona'] | null | null | null |
tron-01947 | Should Math be Taught in Schools? | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/miss-america-math/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | Should Math be Taught in Schools? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12521 | The pace of missile development between (Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un) has increased the testing about twenty-fold. | mostly true | /north-carolina/statements/2017/apr/24/richard-burr/north-koreas-missile-testing-and-development-has-i/ | Shortly after North Korea failed to launch a missile in an attempted show of force, one of the U.S. congressmen who keeps a particularly close eye on the erratic dictatorship had a warning. North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told a group of constituents at a meeting in Youngsville, N.C., that North Korea’s latest actions were "something to really be concerned about." Burr went on to explain two reasons for his warning. One, he said, is that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might be crazy. The other, he said, is that Kim has significantly ramped up missile development and testing since taking over for his father, the late Kim Jong-il. "When you do things like he does, you automatically assume he’s crazy," Burr said of Kim Jong Un. "The pace of missile development between his father’s term and his term has increased the testing about twenty-fold." There has been plenty of bluster and confusion surrounding the country’s missile launch lately – including the launch itself, a pre-launch parade replete with new military technology, and the Trump administration saying it had sent an aircraft carrier strike force to the area when, in reality, the ships were thousands of miles away and sailing in the opposite direction. So in the midst of so much noise, we wanted to know if Burr was right. Specifically, we looked into his claim that "the pace of missile development between (Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un) has increased the testing about twenty-fold." A tiny but well-armed country In terms of troops, North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, along with the United States (a major adversary), China (its biggest ally) and India. Kim Jong Il wasn’t hesitant to build and test missiles, much to the dismay of neighboring countries. So increasing missile activity by a factor of 20 would require serious commitment by the younger Kim. Burr’s office didn’t respond when we asked where he got his information. He is, of course, privy to all sorts of secret reports and briefings we don’t have at our own disposal. He’s the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which oversees the 17 U.S. spy agencies. But we don’t think he would have unveiled classified information. And from the information that is public, it appears Burr is more or less correct. Missile testing and development We interviewed multiple North Korea experts, none of whom said they could verify the numerical accuracy of Burr’s claim – especially as it relates to missile development. Missile tests can be counted, but it’s harder to quantify the speed at which new technologies are being developed and perfected. "Perhaps saying the ‘pace of missile development’ is not quite accurate wording, but the pace of testing has indeed been unprecedented under Kim Jong Un," said Jean H. Lee. Lee is a former journalist who covered North Korea and now works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She said even failed tests are worrisome because North Korea is trying to create a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the United States. "With every test, they get closer to mastering that technology," she said. We couldn’t find any report from the Department of Defense that might vouch for Burr’s numbers. But we did find a February speech by Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the DoD’s Pacific Command. He spoke about North Korea’s "aggressive weapons test schedule" and a growing missile threat in the Pacific, which is in keeping with the general theme of Burr’s claim. The North Korea experts we interviewed all said something like Lee’s assessment: That Burr is correct to say Kim Jong Un put a greater focus on missiles, even if it’s hard to define how much. "The range of their missiles is being extended," said T.J. Pempel, a University of California, Berkeley, political science professor who specializes in northeast Asia. "They have substantial submarine launched missiles; they have ICBMs. The frequency and number of their tests is also going up." Joseph Bermudez, an expert with the North Korea analysis group 38 North who has testified before Congress and the United Nations on the country’s missiles, said Burr is right about the increased pace of testing. One of Bermudez’s colleagues at 38 North put together a timeline of missile tests by North Korea, along with an assessment that nearly backs up Burr’s point – at least about testing, if not about development. It said North Korea tested only one missile in 2006 (under Kim Jong Il) but tested 15 in 2014 (under Kim Jong Un). In 2016, the DoD’s annual report to Congress made a similar point. "Kim Jong Un seems to prioritize the development of new weapons systems, as demonstrated by his numerous appearances with military units and research and development organizations," the report read. But Bermudez said Burr’s not necessarily right to say an increase in testing equates to breakthroughs in development. Every missile program requires research and development, testing, training, tweaking and more testing. It’s not a fluid timeline, Bermudez said. There are spikes in activity surrounded by relatively dormant periods. "Now if you have multiple missile programs going on, these cycles overlap," he said. "... It might give the false impression that something is happening that isn't happening." Furthermore, he said, many North Korean missile tests are conducted for political reasons, intended to send a message instead of to further research and development. That’s another factor making it difficult to tell if the pace of development has driven the increase in the pace of testing, as Burr had claimed. Our ruling Sen. Richard Burr said that in North Korea, "the pace of missile development between (Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un) has increased the testing about twenty-fold." Experts say missile testing has certainly increased, and at least one analysis shows that increase was close to what Burr said. What’s less clear is if the increased testing has gone hand-in-hand with increased development, or if the tests aren’t moving the country’s missile program forward as much as they might seem. We rate this claim Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Richard Burr | null | null | null | 2017-04-24T12:56:05 | 2017-04-18 | ['None'] |
vogo-00251 | Pension Reform's Impact: Fact Check TV | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/election/pension-reforms-impact-fact-check-tv/ | null | null | null | null | null | Pension Reform's Impact: Fact Check TV | April 16, 2012 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13034 | Lady Gaga announced she would cover her face "until Trump gets fired from office." | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2016/dec/01/blog-posting/lady-gaga-did-not-say-she-would-cover-her-face-unt/ | A story about recording artist Lady Gaga announcing she would cover her face until President-elect Donald Trump is out of office appears to be masking the truth. A Nov. 25, 2016, post on TheRightists.com claimed that Gaga — née Stefani Germanotta — revealed her protest plan on a CBS Sunday Morning interview. The original post, with the headline "Lady Gaga Reveals Plan To Cover Her Face Again ‘Until Trump Gets Fired From Office And I Feel Free Once More,’" was temporarily missing after the interview aired, but has reappeared. The story also was posted practically verbatim on several other sites. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com After a brief synopsis of Gaga saying she lamented losing her privacy to the paparazzi as a pop singer, the post quoted her as saying she was opposed to a Trump presidency. "I might have to go back to hiding my face again until he gets kicked out of the White House," the story quoted her as saying. She allegedly told CBS correspondent Lee Cowan that she had moved past "wearing a mask" as she had done with elaborate costumes earlier in her career. She thought Trump was a real monster who would drive her back to the practice, whether it was with makeup or an actual mask. "I’m sorry to have to disappoint my fans, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to revert to wearing a mask whenever I’m out in public, and that includes performing during live shows and on television as well," the story quoted her as saying. "Until Donald Trump is fired from office and stops making everybody’s life miserable, and simultaneously, until things quiet down around me a bit to a point where I’m able to go out to lunch and not have my picture taken 10,000 times on the way to the diner, I’ll be going back to wearing a mask." While Gaga did appear in a CBS Sunday Morning segment on Nov. 27, the idea that she announced a new kind of poker face turned out to be a bald-faced lie. She said no such thing in the nine-minute interview. We also could find no mention of it on her profiles at Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or her website. (Our inquiries to her Interscope Records label and CBS News went unanswered.) Gaga, a Hillary Clinton supporter, did make a number of moves after Election Day, protesting Trump’s victory in front of Trump Tower, signing a Change.org petition asking Republican electors to switch their votes to Clinton and recently admonishing Melania Trump’s "hypocrisy" for the future first lady’s plans for an anti-bullying campaign. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com Gaga also really discussed with Cowan how she felt trapped in a bad romance with her public persona, unable to freely express herself outside of her own home: "I’m very acutely aware that once I cross that property line, I’m not free anymore. As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It’s legal to follow me. It’s legal to stalk me at the beach. I can’t call the police or ask them to leave. And I took a long, hard look at that property line, and I said, ‘Well, you know, if I can’t be free out there, I can be free in here.’" The Nov. 25 story on TheRightists.com used similar, but not identical, wording before launching into the alleged Trump tirade. It’s possible the site was able to lift the initial gist of the interview before it aired thanks to a Nov. 23 preview of the segment on CBSNews.com. The site bills itself as a "HYBRID site of news and satire," and that "part of our stories already happens, part, not yet." It also admits that "NOT all of our stories are true!" There was no indication which part of the Gaga story might be true and which part was not. Other sites that posted the story didn’t specify, either. That gives us a million reasons to find their claims unreliable. Our ruling Bloggers said Lady Gaga announced she would cover her face "until Trump gets fired from office." The original post, which has been taken down, was on a site that billed itself as a hybrid of news and satire, and referenced a real interview on CBS Sunday Morning. There was no indication of what was real and what was made up in the story, and it was copied by several other sites that also didn’t identify the fabricated portions. Although Gaga has spoken out against Trump, there’s no mention of him in the CBS interview — nor did she announce a plan to shield her face out of grief. Bloggers may have been looking to garner applause for this one, but Gaga’s supposed mask appears to be made out of whole cloth. We rate it Pants on Fire! https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/bace1b99-594a-4d75-9f55-d40d49a08928 | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2016-12-01T13:23:56 | 2016-11-25 | ['Lady_Gaga'] |
tron-03588 | Halliburton docks the pay of employee hostage of Iraqis? | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/halliburtion-hamill/ | null | war | null | null | null | Halliburton docks the pay of employee hostage of Iraqis? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09718 | Forcing Americans off of their current health coverage and onto a government-run plan isn't the answer, but that's exactly what the Democrats' plan would do. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/28/john-boehner/health-care-reform-will-not-force-people-governmen/ | When Democratic Sen. Harry Reid announced this week that he was including a form of a public option in health care reform, Republicans didn't like it. "Whether you call it a public option, an opt-out, a trigger, or a co-op, the fact is all of these proposals put us on the path to government-run health care," said Republican House leader John Boehner. "Forcing Americans off of their current health coverage and onto a government-run plan isn't the answer, but that's exactly what the Democrats' plan would do." We've been studying the health care reform proposals in both the House and the Senate for some time now. All the plans have rules that would prevent people from being "forced" off their current health coverage and into a government-run plan. We asked Boehner's office for a response. Staffers sent us to a study by the Lewin Group , which predicts that 123 million people would be enrolled in a public plan three years after the exchange is opened. (The Lewin Group is respected by many health care analysts and operates with editorial independence, but it is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, whose primary business is private health insurance.) Here's an outline of the general argument on how 123 million people could become enrolled in a public plan: The public option will be a health insurance plan backed by the U.S. government, so it will have access to unlimited taxpayer funds and have unsurpassed bargaining power with hospitals and doctors. It will be able to force providers to accept low payments, such as what Medicare, the government-run health program for seniors, pays. So the public option will be the cheapest insurance option available on the exchange. Employers will see this and decide to sign up all their workers for the public option. The private insurance industry will wither and die. A single-payer system is upon us. The problem with this line of reasoning is that the Democratic proposals so far include rules specifically to stop this from happening. We'll take it point-by-point: • The public option is not to be supplemented with unlimited taxpayer funds. The House and Senate bills say the federal government can support its administrative expenses when it begins, but it will have to be self-sustaining with patient premiums. • It will not be able to force hospitals and doctors to accept Medicare rates. The details of how the public option will work are still being developed, but committees in the House and Senate have indicated the public option should have to negotiate rates with providers, not pay Medicare rates. • Most employers will not have access to the health care exchange. The Senate Finance Committee proposal is very clear on this point; only small businesses will have access to the exchange. The House proposal is a little less clear. In the third year, it gives a health commissioner the power to allow businesses into the exchange. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office seemed to think the exchange would continue to be restricted to smaller businesses. The CBO projected only 30 million people would be in the exchange by 2019, a number too small to imply that all employers would be given access. • Employers can't sign up their employees for a health care plan. The House and Senate proposals specifically forbid that. The employer can provide a set amount of money as a benefit, but the employee decides which plan to buy. If an employee is willing to pay more for a more generous plan, the employer can't stop him. And employers definitely can't force employees to enroll in the public option against their will. An argument others have made along these same lines: If a public option is offered on the exchange, employers will dump their coverage and send them into the exchange to buy their own insurance. This is a largely speculative argument, however. Employers are under significant competitive pressure to offer health plans to recruit and retain workers, according to experts we've spoken with. Surveys show that workers see health insurance as the top benefit affecting their decisions on where they work. If there's evidence to indicate that the availability of a public option would overcome that dynamic, we haven't found it. There's another argument specific to seniors that Boehner's staff pointed to as evidence for his statement. They said that under the Democratic plans, seniors in Medicare Advantage would have to switch to regular Medicare. We've looked at this argument before: Medicare Advantage is a government program that pays private insurance companies a set rate to treat Medicare beneficiaries. It was conceived as a cost-containment measure on the theory that competition among private plans would drive down costs. That has not happened. The health care proposals would stop the extra payments that Medicare Advantage receives. (About 23 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.) So it is conceivable that some people in Medicare Advantage will lose some of their current benefits , and they might have to enroll in regular Medicare. But does this really fit the criteria of "forcing Americans off of their current health coverage and onto a government-run plan"? While private companies are contractors in the Medicare Advantage program — so it does have more of a free market element to it — at the end of the day, Medicare and Medicare Advantage are both government-run plans, where the government decides how much it will pay for a basic package of benefits. In refuting this argument, we are not trying to imply that no one will ever have to switch plans if health care reform passes. Indeed, we looked at President Obama's statement, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan ," and rated it Half True, because health care reform will change many aspects of health care regulation, and it seems likely that will prompt insurers, employers and consumers to re-evaluate their health care plans and make changes. Obama later made a more accurate statement, that if you "already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have ." We rated that True. But we've also found nothing in the proposals so far that would force people off their current coverage into a government-run plan, if they prefer and can pay for private coverage. Boehner said that was "exactly what the Democrats' plan would do." So we rate Boehner's statement False. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2009-10-28T16:45:05 | 2009-10-26 | ['Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'United_States'] |
pomt-14434 | Donald Trump has "described Hillary Clinton as one of the best secretaries of state in history." | mostly false | /texas/statements/2016/mar/08/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-best-secreta/ | Just before Ted Cruz won the Republican presidential primaries in Texas and Oklahoma plus the GOP caucuses in Alaska, the Texas senator hammered Donald Trump as ill-equipped to face Democrat Hillary Clinton on the November 2016 ballot. On the Feb. 28, 2016, edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Cruz confirmed he personally will support whoever lands his party’s presidential nomination, "period, the end." "But I will tell you this," Cruz said to host Jake Tapper. "Listen, I think, if we nominate Donald, Hillary probably beats him. Not only does she get to attack him on a whole host of issues where he agrees with her, but… he's described Hillary Clinton as... one of the best secretaries of state in history." Cruz leveled a similar claim during the Feb. 25, 2016, Republican presidential debate in Houston, saying: "And on substance, how do we nominate a candidate who has said Hillary Clinton was the best secretary of state of modern times…?" We wondered. Did Trump truly rate Clinton’s performance as secretary of state among the best ever? In response to our request for backup, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier emailed us a link to a Jan. 17, 2016, web post by The Daily Caller, a conservative news site, presenting video of Trump saying on camera: "And how did she do as secretary of state? Probably above and beyond everybody else and everything else." A portion of the same video earlier appeared in a January 2016 Cruz campaign video suggesting tight ties between Trump and Clinton. Web searches led us to the Trump clip, posted by someone on LiveLeak.com, a British video-sharing site, Dec. 8, 2015. Asked where the video originated, the same individual (with the screen name Exec) pointed us to video from an NBC News interview of Trump after the builder-developer gave an Iowa talk on politics in August 2013. NBC News headlined the interview by reporter Kasie Hunt: "Trump: Clinton will have to defend record as secretary of state." Our transcript of Trump talking to Hunt on Aug. 10 or 11, 2013, about Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton: "Well first of all, I know her very well and I know her husband very well and I like them both. And they are, uh, you know, just really terrific people. I like them both very much. "But I think you’ll be, you know, you’ll be looking at the record of Hillary Clinton. And how did she do as secretary of state? Probably above and beyond everybody else and everything else. You’ll be looking at her record and everybody else is, will be looking at her record. "I don’t know that Benghazi, it doesn’t seem to have resonated like perhaps it should have. But many other things have come up and the world is in turmoil. And I think that a lot of people will be looking at Hillary’s record as secretary of state and she will be defending that record. And I’m sure she’ll do a good job of defending it. But that will be the thing they will be going for." No doubt, Trump said: "And how did she do as secretary of state? Probably above and beyond everybody else and everything else." That’s not explicitly best-in-history, but could be bandied in that way. Then again, it occurred to us, that comment could be taken as having a different scope; that is, Trump saying only that anyone appraising Clinton would focus on her record as secretary of state. (We encourage you to watch for yourself.) Consider this change of punctuation: "And how did she do as secretary of state, probably above and beyond everybody else and everything else." Note too that Trump said next: "You’ll be looking at her record and everybody else is, will be looking at her record," a point he made several times in the interview. Trump praised Clinton in 2012-13 Web searches led us to other instances of Trump making positive comments about Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, which ran from the start of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009 through January 2013. From a Trump-Greta Van Susteren exchange on the March 28, 2012 episode of "On the Record," a Fox News program: VAN SUSTEREN: "Looking at the administration, how do you think the vice president has done? (Joe) Biden, although, being a vice-president is not a job that is very visible, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I'm curious what you think about those two." TRUMP: "I think Biden has been a very loyal person, to be honest with you. I think he has been a good vice president for the agenda that they set and he has been a very, very loyal person. I respect him for that. "Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman. I am biased because I have known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. I really like her and her husband both a lot. I think she really works hard. And I think, again, she's given an agenda, it is not all of her, but I think she really works hard and I think she does a good job. I like her." VAN SUSTEREN: "She says she's out at the end of this term. Do you think we will see her again running for office?" TRUMP: "I think so. Assuming she is healthy, I think she probably runs after the next four years, I would imagine." VAN SUSTEREN: "Do you support her?" TRUMP: "I don't want to get into this because I will get myself into trouble --" VAN SUSTEREN: "That's why I asked you." TRUMP: "I just like her. I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday and was very well received. He is -- he is a really good guy, and she's a really good person and woman." Also, a July 2012 MSNBC news story noted Trump’s statement in an October 2013 interview with Larry King about Hillary and Bill Clinton: "I like them both very much." (See Trump’s "like" about the 15:46 mark of the King interview posted here.) So, Trump in 2012 and 2013 indicated he personally liked Clinton and in 2012, when Clinton was still the secretary, Trump said she "works hard and I think she does a good job." Trump in 2015 But, unnoted by Cruz, Trump has most recently been critical of Clinton's work, calling her one of the country’s worst secretaries of state. On July 8, 2015, he sent a statement to the Business Insider calling Clinton "the worst secretary of state in the history of the United States." The publication said Trump issued his statement after Clinton told CNN she was disappointed in Trump’s campaign-opening remarks about Mexican immigrants. In his June 14, 2015, kickoff, Trump said: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Our ruling Cruz said Trump has "described Hillary Clinton as one of the best secretaries of state in history." To the contrary, Trump last year called Clinton the worst secretary of state in history and we didn't find any instance of Trump calling Clinton one of the best ever. Still, Trump previously said he liked Clinton and even that she was doing a good job as secretary -- while, in the 2013 NBC News interview, he said: "And how did she do as secretary of state, probably above and beyond everybody else and everything else." We see ambiguity in this phrasing, which could be taken as high praise or, more logically, as a clumsy rehash of Trump’s repeatedly expressed prediction in the interview that Clinton’s record would be a target of scrutiny. On balance, we rate this claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Ted Cruz | null | null | null | 2016-03-08T18:09:35 | 2016-02-28 | ['Donald_Trump', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
hoer-00837 | Photo of Chopper Landing on Rooftop in Afghanistan | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/chopper-rooftop-landing.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Photo of Chopper Landing on Rooftop in Afghanistan | October 2006 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00318 | “Despite all his past promises, what President Zuma failed to tell us last week was that, today, there are 1.6-million more South Africans without jobs than when he took office in 2009.” | incorrect | https://africacheck.org/reports/mmusi-maimane-sona-2015-response-fact-checked/ | null | null | null | null | null | Mmusi Maimane’s SONA 2015 response fact-checked | 2015-02-25 01:20 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00980 | Donald Trump registered his "Make America Great Again" slogan in November 2012. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-patent-maga-2012/ | null | Politics | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Did Donald Trump Register ‘Make America Great Again’ in 2012? | 21 February 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00574 | Johnson & Johnson Removes Formaldehyde from Baby Products | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/johnson-johnson-removes-formaldehyde-from-baby-products-truth/ | null | business | null | null | null | Johnson & Johnson Removes Formaldehyde from Baby Products | Sep 21, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
faan-00114 | “The Security Intelligence Review Committee … is a robust mechanism for independent, expert, third party oversight.” | factscan score: false | http://factscan.ca/stephen-harper-the-security-intelligence-review-committee-is-a-robust-mechanism-for-independent-expert-third-party-oversight/ | An oversight mechanism? False. The CSIS Act and SIRC’s last annual report call SIRC a review body (the annual report adds: not an oversight body). | null | Stephen Harper | null | null | null | 2015-02-12 | ruary 3, 2015 | ['None'] |
pomt-10422 | Iran "might not be a superpower, but the threat the government of Iran poses is anything but 'tiny,'" as Obama says. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/may/21/john-mccain/mccain-twists-obamas-words/ | In trying to portray Sen. Barack Obama as a neophyte when it comes to international relations, Sen. John McCain seized on some comparisons Obama made between the relative threat of Iran now vs. the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "Senator Obama claimed that the threat Iran poses to our security is 'tiny' compared to the threat once posed by the former Soviet Union," McCain said before the National Restaurant Association in Chicago on May 19, 2008. "Obviously, Iran isn't a superpower and doesn't possess the military power the Soviet Union had. But that does not mean that the threat posed by Iran is insignificant. "On the contrary, right now Iran provides some of the deadliest explosive devices used in Iraq to kill our soldiers. They are the chief sponsor of Shia extremists in Iraq, and terrorist organizations in the Middle East. ... Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, that danger would become very dire, indeed. They might not be a superpower, but the threat the government of Iran poses is anything but 'tiny.' " The jab provides the backdrop for McCain's repeated criticism of Obama for saying that he would meet without preconditions with leaders of rogue nations, like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here's the full context of Obama's remarks in Pendelton, Ore., on May 18, 2008: "Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries," Obama said. "That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet. And ultimately that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall. Now, that has to be the kind of approach that we take. "You know, Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. That doesn't mean we agree with them on everything. We might not compromise on any issues, but at least we should find out other areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world." The first part of McCain's recap of Obama's quote puts the context accurately, that Obama noted the threat from Iran was tiny "compared to the threat once posed by the Soviet Union." But McCain veers off the rails when he takes the next step, claiming that Obama characterized the threat from Iran as tiny or insignificant. Obama never said that. Later in the same day, Obama issued a retort to McCain's comments: "So John McCain, he said, 'Oh, Obama doesn't understand the threat of Iran.' I understand the threat of Iran. But what I know is that the Soviet Union had the ability to destroy the world several times over, had satellites spanning the globe, had huge masses of conventional military power all directed at destroying us, and so I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave, but what I've said is that we should not just talk to our friends, we should be willing to engage our enemies as well, that's what diplomacy is all about. "So let me be absolutely clear: Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program, it supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq, it threatens Israel's existence, it denies the Holocaust. But this threat has grown, primarily – and this is the irony - the reason Iran is so much more powerful now than it was a few years ago is because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting an endless war in Iraq and refusing to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran." This isn't the first time Obama has talked about the grave threat posed by Iran. Obama has repeatedly characterized it as such during his campaign. Still, Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Obama's comparisons of the threats posed by Iran versus the Soviet Union during the Cold War are misguided. "Iran is a completely different threat," Dale said. During the Cold War, both sides had stockpiles of nuclear weapons. There was mutually assured destruction. "They could negotiate like people who are equals," Dale said. "Neither side wanted to fire first. Both sides knew, more or less, how the other would behave." That provided some stability, he said. Iran, on the other hand, presents an "asymmetrical" warfare problem, he said. "It's not one super power facing another super power," Dale said. Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons, Dale said, while unapologetically supporting terrorist groups like Hamas, who would have little hesitation about setting off a nuclear weapon in the United States. "You could definitely say it's more dangerous than the Cold War," he said. One could argue whether it's wise to meet with leaders of rogue nations. One could also debate whether Obama wrongly downplayed the threat posed by Iran. But Obama never said the threat from Iran was "tiny" or "insignificant," only that the threat was tiny in comparison to the threat once posed by the Soviet Union. In fact, Obama has repeatedly called Iran a grave threat. We rule McCain's statement False. | null | John McCain | null | null | null | 2008-05-21T00:00:00 | 2008-05-19 | ['Iran', 'Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02772 | After releasing a music video in which he fires a prank "Bang!" flag gun at a clown resembling Donald Trump, rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested for conspiracy by the Secret Service for suggesting that "someone should do what I did with a real gun." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snoop-dogg-arrested-conspiracy/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Snoop Dogg Arrested for Conspiracy After Talking About ‘Murder Trump’ Video? | 15 March 2017 | null | ['Snoop_Dogg', 'Donald_Trump', 'United_States_Secret_Service'] |
goop-02034 | John Travolta “Gotti” Movie Release Stopped By Mob? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/john-travolta-gotti-movie-release-mob/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | John Travolta “Gotti” Movie Release Stopped By Mob? | 10:58 am, December 14, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05600 | The NAACP is calling for the removal of an historical Civil War carving from Stone Mountain, Georgia. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/naacp-wants-stone-mountain-sandblasted/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does the NAACP Want to Sandblast Confederate Figures Off Stone Mountain? | 10 August 2015 | null | ['Stone_Mountain', 'Georgia_(U.S._state)', 'National_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Colored_People', 'American_Civil_War'] |
wast-00147 | How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! | 4 pinnochios | ERROR: type should be string, got " https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/09/22/is-president-trump-vindicated-on-his-claim-of-wires-tapped-by-obama/" | null | null | Donald Trump | Michelle Ye Hee Lee | null | Is President Trump vindicated on his claim of \xe2\x80\x98wires tapped' by Obama? | September 22, 2017 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
snes-02717 | Sweden has the highest rate of rape among European countries. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crime-sweden-rape-capital-europe/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Bethania Palma | null | Crime In Sweden, Part I: Is Sweden the ‘Rape Capital’ of Europe? | 29 March 2017 | null | ['Sweden', 'Europe'] |
pose-01357 | Moving forward, Rick Kriseman will "add more recreational and entertainment amenities to South St. Pete. Florida’s largest skate park is currently being constructed at Campbell Park." | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/krise-o-meter/promise/1449/add-more-amenities-south-st-pete/ | null | krise-o-meter | Rick Kriseman | null | null | Add more amenities to South St. Pete | 2018-01-02T12:19:15 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00449 | Half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012. | promise broken | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/469/require-federal-fleet-to-be-half-hybrids-or-electr/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Require new federal fleet purchases to be half plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles | 2010-01-07T13:26:59 | null | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
SQL Console for pszemraj/multi_fc
Filters dataset entries containing 'law' in categories, tags, or reason fields, providing basic topic classification but offering limited analytical insight beyond simple keyword matching.
Healthcare Related Entries
Retrieves sample records containing healthcare-related keywords but doesn't provide meaningful analysis or patterns beyond basic filtering.