claimID
stringlengths 10
10
| claim
stringlengths 4
8.61k
⌀ | label
stringlengths 1
34
⌀ | claimURL
stringlengths 10
303
| reason
stringlengths 3
31.1k
⌀ | categories
stringlengths 3
315
⌀ | speaker
stringlengths 3
168
⌀ | checker
stringlengths 6
70
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 3
315
⌀ | article title
stringlengths 2
226
⌀ | publish date
stringlengths 1
64
⌀ | climate
stringlengths 5
154
⌀ | entities
stringlengths 6
332
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
goop-02616 | Kelly Ripa Quitting ‘Live’ Over Ryan Seacrest’s “Betrayal,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kelly-ripa-quitting-live-ryan-seacrests-betrayed-moving-los-angeles/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kelly Ripa NOT Quitting ‘Live’ Over Ryan Seacrest’s “Betrayal,” Despite Tabloid Cover | 10:50 am, August 2, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06629 | Says an amendment specifying when military members may use deadly force "does nothing to change existing rules of engagement for American service members." | true | /rhode-island/statements/2011/sep/18/david-cicilline/cicilline-says-he-opposed-measure-use-deadly-force/ | In recent weeks, U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline, D-R.I., has come under fire for voting against an amendment which a Florida lawmaker says would give U.S. troops in conflict areas the right to "proactively defend themselves." Talk show host Helen Glover took Cicilline to task earlier this month for the vote on the amendment to the military’s "rules of engagement." She was joined on WHJJ’s "Helen Glover Show" by Michael Napolitano, spokesman for John Loughlin, who was Cicilline’s Republican opponent in 2010. Loughlin, an Army lieutenant colonel currently serving in Iraq, is one of two Republicans seeking to knock Cicilline from the seat in 2012. Monique Chartier, a columnist for the conservative Anchor Rising blog, also took aim at Cicilline, challenging him in a blog posting to explain his vote "without platitudes and with specificity." Cicilline responded in a letter addressed to Chartier. He said that he joined 141 other Democrats and 18 Republicans in voting against the amendment in May "because it does nothing to change existing rules of engagement for American service members...." Cicilline went on to say that "our men and women in uniform already possess the right to bear arms whenever they are in harm’s way. Furthermore, when they are instructed on the rules of engagement, our troops are explicitly told that nothing prevents them from using deadly force to defend themselves." We wondered whether Cicilline was right when he said the amendment would do nothing to change existing rules. U.S. Rep. John L. Mica, a Florida Republican, introduced the amendment to the 2012 Defense Reauthorization Act in response to conversations he’d had with troops in Afghanistan during a congressional visit. He told The Wall Street Journal that when he asked the troops if there was anything he could do to help them do their job better, they told him they "felt constrained" by the current rules of engagement. Gerry Lynam, Mica’s legislative assistant, explained Mica’s amendment this way: The military’s counterinsurgency strategy requires a soldier to "go through a whole checklist" prior to taking any defensive action, Lynman said, and soldiers lose "the ability to defend themselves." "The purpose of this amendment was to have the military give them (troops) a little more leeway to protect themselves." Mica’s amendment to the 2012 defense reauthorization act, passed in the House by a vote of 260 to 160. (Voting for the bill were 127 Republicans and 43 Democrats, including U.S. Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I. The amendment is now before a Senate committee.) The amendment reads: "The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that the rules of engagement applicable to members of the Armed Forces assigned to duty in any hostile fire area designated for purposes of section 310 or 351 (a) (1) of title 37, Unites States Code -- (1) fully protect the members’ right to bear arms; and (2) authorize the members to fully defend themselves from hostile actions." So, would change the current rules of engagement for troops in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq? We asked three military experts. They all said no. "The ROE (rules of engagement) never constrain a soldier’s right to self defense," said Gary D. Solis, an author, law professor and 26-year veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam. "You can always defend yourself. Always." Solis has a Ph.D. in the law of war from the London School of Economics and formerly headed the Law War program at West Point. He now teaches several courses at George Washington University Law School and Georgetown University Law Center. The "rules of engagement,’’ Solis said, are specific directives used by senior commanders to regulate the use of force in armed conflict. "They tell a soldier, Marine or sailor when he or she may use deadly force," he said. Anyone who understands the rules of engagement, he said, knows that the troops always have the right to defend themselves. "This (Mica’s amendment) is not a matter of protecting soldiers,’’ Solis said. "This is military ignorance combined with political opportunism." Victor Hansen, a professor at New England Law in Boston, described the language in Mica’s amendment -- "to proactively defend" -- as "loaded" and so broad that it was impossible to define for a practical purpose. "I’m not sure I know what that means," Hansen said, "nor am I sure that those who voted for the amendment could give a very clear definition of what it means." If the amendment became law, we asked, would it have any effect on the troops in Afghanistan or Iraq? "I doubt it," Hansen said. "This is so vague it’s not providing any clear guidance. I can’t see as it would have any practical effect on the ground." We also talked to Francis J. "Bing" West, a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs during the Reagan administration and award-winning author who lives in Newport. His most recent book, "The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan,’’ was published by Random House in February. What did West think the amendment would do? Nothing, he said, except to create years of "arguments among lawyers" over what it means. To test the experts’ view that the amendment doesn’t change anything, we asked the U.S. Army press office: Do the current rules of engagement allow U.S. military personnel to proactively defend themselves from hostile actions? "Yes," U.S. Major Jason Waggoner, an Army press spokesman, replied in an e-mail. "U.S. Forces always retain the inherent right of self defense. Nothing in the current Rules of Engagement (ROE) limits this right." In summary, Cicilline said Mica’s amendment would do nothing to change existing rules of engagement for service members. The experts we consulted agreed. We rule his statement True. | null | David Cicilline | null | null | null | 2011-09-18T00:01:00 | 2011-09-04 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-07304 | Says people who signed recall petitions against Wisconsin state Sen. Jim Holperin received "harassing phone calls from out-of-state telemarketers claiming to represent the Democratic Party and insinuating foul play by petition circulators." | true | /wisconsin/statements/2011/may/18/kim-simac/wisconsin-tea-party-leader-says-democrat-hired-tel/ | Kim Simac, a Wisconsin tea party leader, took aim at state Sen. Jim Holperin after the Conover Democrat fled to Illinois in February 2011. Like 13 other Democratic senators, Holperin, who represents a North Woods district where Simac lives, spent three weeks in Illinois. The move delayed a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill, which curtails the collective bargaining power of most state and local government employees, although the bill eventually became law. Court challenges have kept the collective bargaining changes from taking effect. But the law, and the Democrats’ reaction to it, spurred a recall movement of historic proportions. Campaigns were launched against all 16 state senators -- eight Democrats and eight Republicans -- who were eligible to be recalled. Simac, vice-chairwoman of the Vilas County Republican Party and founder of Christian values group called Northwoods Patriots, headed the signature-collecting campaign to recall Holperin, a first-term senator who previously served 10 years in the state Assembly. On April 21, 2011, Simac submitted some 23,000 signatures to the Government Accountability Board, which has not completed its review. She has announced plans to run against Holperin if a recall election is set. Eight days after the petitions were filed, Simac issued a news release that claimed petition signers, "are being subjected to harassing phone calls from out-of-state telemarketers claiming to represent the Democratic Party and insinuating foul play by petition circulators." Let’s see if that’s what happened. When we asked Simac for evidence to back her claim, she asked people who received the calls to contact PolitiFact Wisconsin directly. We received calls from 17 people and e-mails from more than 30 others. We interviewed 10 of the people who called. Here’s what we found: The calls began days after the Holperin recall committee filed its petitions in Madison on April 21, 2011. Some people said they received one call, while others said they received two or more. Many of the people, including five we interviewed, said the callers identified themselves as representing the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Some of the people said the callers identified themselves as being from Minnesota. And one caller, when pressed by a woman he called, said he was being paid by Meyer Teleservices, a telemarketing company in St. Cloud, Minn. Nearly everyone who contacted us said they were asked if they understood what they had signed. "It was questions as though, ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ It was very irritating," said Robert Means of Eagle River. Others said the callers were polite and they didn’t feel harassed. Some people said the callers told them that some people had been misled about what they were signing. "They stated the signers were lied to on what the petitions were for," said Jeff Kirschmann of Eagle River, one of five people we interviewed who signed petitions and also circulated them. "It really irritates me that they called us liars." Those statements back the claim made by Simac. What did Holperin and the Democrats have to say about it? Holperin said he authorized the Wisconsin Democratic Party to call about 5,000 of the people who signed recall petitions against him. Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the party, said the Minnesota telemarketing firm was hired to call people who signed petitions against Holperin and against two other Democrats who are facing possible recall elections. Holperin said he authorized the calls because, although petition circulators who worked under Simac were "earnest, honest and friendly," more than a third of the 23,000 signatures were collected by Kennedy Enterprises, a Colorado marketing and consulting firm hired by the Wisconsin Republican Party. Those petition circulators were often aggressive and misleading when they asked residents to sign petitions, Holperin said. According to Holperin, 534 petition signers -- about 10 percent of those who were called by the Minnesota telemarketing firm -- said they were given misleading information and that they asked to have their names removed from the petitions. He said that was the basis for a complaint he filed with the Government Accountability Board challenging the petitions. Holperin provided a script that he said the firm used in asking questions of people who signed recall petitions against him. The script shows that, among other things, callers were to: identify themselves as representing the Wisconsin Democratic Party; ask people whether they were aware their signatures appeared on a Holperin recall petition; and state that reports had been received that "out-of-state paid circulators were misleading people about what they were being asked to sign." "So, did we ‘insinuate’ that foul play had occurred?," Holperin said. "You bet we did, and we think we offered ample evidence that backs up our claim." Let’s wrap up. Simac said people who signed Holperin recall petitions received "harassing phone calls from out-of-state telemarketers claiming to represent the Democratic Party and insinuating foul play by petition circulators." Some people who received calls said they felt harassed even if they received just one call because they didn’t expect to be questioned about signing a petition. The callers were employed by an out-of-state firm, they did identify themselves as representing the Wisconsin Democratic Party and did claim that petition circulators misled signers of the petitions. We rate Simac’s claim as True. | null | Kim Simac | null | null | null | 2011-05-18T09:00:00 | 2011-04-29 | ['Jim_Holperin', 'Wisconsin', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
vogo-00520 | Statement: “We’ve reduced over 1,400 positions in the city. And that includes 200 public safety people. We’ve cut over $300 million in our budget since ’06, $180 million which are permanent cuts,” Sanders told the Union-Tribune for an Aug. 29 Q&A he did in support of Proposition D. | determination: true | statement: “we’ve reduced over 1,400 positions in the city. and that includes 200 public safety people. we’ve cut over $300 million in our budget since ’06, $180 million which are permanent cuts,” sanders told the union-tribune for an aug. 29 q&a he did in support of proposition d. determination: true. | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-roundup-mayor-jerry-sanders/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Check Roundup: Mayor Jerry Sanders | September 20, 2010 | ['None'] |
snes-01190 | Did a CDC Doctor Say the Flu Shot Is Causing a Deadly Outbreak? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-cdc-flu-shot-causing-outbreak/ | null | Medical | null | Bethania Palma | null | Did a CDC Doctor Say the Flu Shot Is Causing a Deadly Outbreak? | 17 January 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01405 | Leonardo da Vinci's dying words were "I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have." | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/da-vinci-last-words/ | null | History | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Leonardo Da Vinci’s Surprising Last Words? | 22 November 2017 | null | ['God', 'Leonardo_da_Vinci'] |
pomt-01789 | Says a 9-year-old girl was recently raped in Austin, Texas, by a guy previously "caught four times and released." | half-true | /texas/statements/2014/jul/25/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-says-9-year-old-girl-raped-austin-man-p/ | When talk-show host Glenn Beck said a horrific crime occurred in Austin, we wondered what he was talking about. Beck made his statement, in a July 17, 2014, interview of Gov. Rick Perry shared online more than 32,000 times by the next day, after Perry said he was looking at deploying National Guard troops to secure the Texas-Mexico border; he later said up to 1,000 troops would be dispatched. In the interview, Perry expressed concern that over 3,000 homicides had been committed "by illegal aliens over the" last six years. "That’s unacceptable," Perry said, "and that’s the reason that we have to secure that border." We rated this murder count as Pants on Fire; the state-gathered information behind Perry’s claim had to do with homicide charges (not convictions) leveled against both legally authorized and unauthorized U.S. residents over an unstated period of time. Beck replied to Perry: "OK. In Austin Texas yesterday, a rape of a 9-year-old girl, of a guy who had been caught four times and released," his implication being the attacker wasn’t living in the country with legal permission. We were unable to reach Beck to glean the basis of his claim--and we didn’t find other reports of such a crime in Austin. But an online search revealed an alleged crime committed near Fort Worth with some details aligning with Beck’s statement. Perpetrator northwest of Fort Worth? According to a July 13, 2014, news story in the Dallas Morning News, a man previously deported to Mexico four times had been arrested in Parker County the day before after he entered a house through a window and fondled a 9-year-old girl. The story, quoting county authorities, said the incident in Springtown, 20 miles northwest of Fort Worth, resulted in the arrest of Israel Andrade, 35, who was jailed on a charge of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit another felony. A blog post by the Parker County Sheriff’s Department said the other felony was "indecency with a child by sexual contact." By telephone, Sheriff Larry Fowler told us the attacker did not commit a rape; he was groping and fondling, Fowler said. The News’ story said the girl told investigators she had been awakened where she slept on a couch by a man who groped her. The man spoke in broken English, the story said, and motioned for her to follow him back to the bedroom, but the girl screamed and he fled. Authorities said they later found him at a relative’s home, also finding two pair of children’s underwear in a pair of his jeans, and tennis shoes with a tread pattern matching the footprints outside the girl’s home, the newspaper reported. The child’s mother identified the underwear as her daughter’s, the story said. His relatives told authorities he’d returned to the U.S. from Mexico a month before, the story said. According to a web page drawing on Parker County records, Andrade was held on $500,000 bail and had an INS "detainer" placed on him. A detainer, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement says, means the agency intends to assume custody of an individual once the person is no longer subject to local detention. Three confirmed deportations, no Austin arrest Parker County’s blog post said that according to federal records, Andrade had been deported in July 2003, February 2004, September 2009 and December 2010. Carl Rusnok, a Dallas-based ICE spokesman, confirmed three deportations of Andrade, telling us by email they occurred in 2004, 2006 and 2012. Also, Andrade was thrice sentenced to federal prison for illegally entering or re-entering the country, Rusnok said. Finally, we looked into whether Andrade had been arrested in Austin. Roger Wade, spokesman for the Travis County Sheriff’s Department, emailed that no one by that name showed up in the agency’s computer records. Veneza Bremner, spokeswoman for the Austin Police Department, said by phone Andrade’s name wasn’t in department arrest records. Our ruling Beck said a 9-year-old girl was recently raped in Austin, Texas, by a guy previously "caught four times and released." Beck got the alleged crime and location wrong, but authorities northwest of Fort Worth did detain Israel Andrade, an unauthorized U.S. resident previously deported three times, on a charge of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit another felony, which local officials referred to as indecency with a child by sexual contact. There was no rape. On balance, we find this claim Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Glenn Beck | null | null | null | 2014-07-25T09:00:00 | 2014-07-17 | ['Texas', 'Austin,_Texas'] |
pomt-13899 | After Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, "within 24 hours, Americans lost $100 billion from our 401(k)s." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/28/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-american-401ks-lost-100-billi/ | In a speech attacking her opponent, Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump cheered while the economy reeled in the aftermath of Britain’s shocking vote to leave the European Union. "On Friday, when Britain voted to leave the European Union, he crowed from his golf course about how the disruption could end up creating higher profits for that golf course, even though, within 24 hours, Americans lost $100 billion from our 401(k)s," Clinton said in Ohio June 27. "He tried to turn a global economics challenge into an infomercial." Trump did say last week that Brexit would benefit Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland, because a weaker pound would bring more tourists. We wondered, though, about the other part of Clinton’s claim: that Brexit caused 50 million Americans with 401(k) retirement savings accounts to lose $100 billion in just 24 hours. The nitty-gritty Most 401(k) accounts are tied, at least in part, to the stock market. And the market took a pretty big hit from the British referendum, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 3.4 percent and the S&P 500 index falling 3.6 percent. However, we couldn’t find an ongoing daily log of the total value of Americans’ 401(k)s. The Investment Company Institute puts the figure at $4.8 trillion as of March 31, 2016. The Clinton campaign explained to us how they calculated that $100 billion figure, and experts told us the reasoning was sound. Basically, the campaign took that March figure for the total value of all 401(k) accounts, $4.8 trillion, and calculated any growth through June 23, the day before the Brexit vote, and then the subsequent fall. They based the growth on changes in the U.S. stock market, as stocks account for about 66 percent of 401(k) assets, and fixed income, which accounts for 27 percent. Their end result: An estimated drop of $110 billion in 401(k) assets from June 23 to June 24. Click here to see the full explanation of the campaign’s math. The campaign approached this analysis correctly, said Wade Pfau, an expert in retirement finance and founder of RetirementResearcher.com. "They may have even underestimated the loss by assuming all stocks are U.S. stocks. International stocks fell a lot further," he said. "But, certainly, I think their analysis is a fair and reasonable assessment about the extent of the impact on 401(k)s." Jack VanDerHei, research director of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, also said the campaign’s calculation was a decent approximation of 401(k) losses after the Brexit vote. Running his own numbers, he came up with an estimated $104 billion loss. Experts said, though, that average 401(k) account holders don’t need to panic. The big picture "The number sounds big, but it is a small percent of the total, and it is not as though this money is lost forever," Pfau said. Four days after the Brexit vote, the U.S. stock market is starting to stabilize and creep back up. Consequently, so are the values of Americans’ 401(k)s. Spokesmen at 401(k) providers Charles Schwab and Fidelity told us they had received many calls from account holders worried about their assets following the Brexit vote. They both said they encourage clients to stay the course and remember that saving for retirement is a long-term investment that shouldn’t be irreparably harmed by last week’s market volatility. Generally, 401(k) accounts belonging to younger people have a higher concentration of stocks, in order to maximize growth for as long as possible. But as account holders get closer to retirement, they should reduce that concentration, effectively reducing their accounts’ exposure to market volatility, said Fidelity spokesman Mike Shamrell. "People who have the most stock in 401(k) are those who will be impacted the most, so young people," Shamrell said. "But they’ve got the longest until they retire, so years and years and years to make it up." Alternatively, if someone were to sell some of his or her assets amid the post-Brexit vote market turmoil, that would permanently lock in some of their losses, Pfau said. Our ruling After Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, "within 24 hours, Americans lost $100 billion from our 401(k)s," Clinton said. Experts told us that Clinton’s calculation was a reasonable approximation of the loss of 401(k) assets amid market turmoil following the Brexit vote. That being said, those losses are very likely impermanent. 401(k) accounts are long-term investments designed to withstand brief shocks like this. The claim is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate Clinton’s claim Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/84b364ce-64ad-4ea9-adc6-8ec227f42988 | null | Hillary Clinton | null | null | null | 2016-06-28T16:46:58 | 2016-06-27 | ['United_Kingdom', 'European_Union', 'United_States'] |
pomt-08226 | We’ve been able to create about 60,000 net new jobs in Virginia since February. | mostly true | /virginia/statements/2010/nov/17/bob-mcdonnell/bob-mcdonnell-says-virginia-has-gained-60000-jobs-/ | It’s all about jobs, Gov. Bob McDonnell says. During an Election Day interview, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough hailed McDonnell as the "Elvis" of the job creation message that moved voters this fall. "You started this in 2009 before anyone got this," Scarborough told the governor, referring to McDonnell’s pledge to create jobs during his successful campaign last year. McDonnell replied that since taking office in January, "we’ve been able to create about 60,000 net new jobs" in Virginia. We had two questions about McDonnell’s statement: Is his number right; and how much credit does the governor deserve for any upswing in Virginia employment since he took office? We first checked the claim of "about 60,000 net new jobs." Stacey Johnson, McDonnell’s press secretary, said the number came from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our next call went to the office of Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who heads McDonnell’s jobs team. Randy Marcus, Bolling’s chief of staff, compiles the job-creation figures for the administration. Marcus said he takes the most current BLS monthly figure for non-farm jobs in Virginia. Then he subtracts the number of non-farm jobs in Virginia in February, McDonnell’s first full month in office. The remainder is what the administration considers to be Virginia’s net job gain under McDonnell. It includes full and part-time jobs in the public and private sectors. We ran the computation, based on the latest BLS numbers that had been posted more than a week before McDonnell’s appearance on MSNBC. Here’s our result: Virginia Workers, Sept. 2010 3,637,200 Virginia Workers, Feb. 2010 3,581,800 Net job gain under McDonnell 55,400 The governor’s claim of creating about 60,000 new jobs was a tad inflated, but certainly in the ballpark. In July, McDonnell claimed 71,500 new Virginia jobs had been created since he took office. We checked those numbers and found them dead on. Much of the job loss since then was caused by the layoff of federal census workers and the slowing of construction. McDonnell also said on MSNBC that only Texas has gained more jobs than Virginia since February. He’s right, according to BLS statistics. Texas has added 128,800 jobs since February. Virginia has experienced a 1.55 percent increase in jobs since February. That ranks sixth. The District of Columbia leads everyone with 2.38 percent growth. Now, let’s look at McDonnell’s statement "we’ve" created about 60,000 jobs. It suggests the new slots are the result of his administration’s actions. "It’s not unique to the Governor, but it bothers me how all politicians take credit for creating jobs," said John Knapp, senior economist for the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at The University of Virginia. "Barack Obama is not president of the economy and Bob McDonnell is not governor of the economy. Of course, what they do can have a marginal affect on things, but there are many other elements involved in creating jobs." Knapp added that state policies affect job creation development over the long run. "But as year or two out, new state policies are not going to have a major impact on the economy." During recent decades, an array of prominent publications have consistently rated Virginia in the top handful of business-friendly states, noting the Commonwealth’s low tax rates, and laws barring compulsory union membership. Johnson said it is not McDonnell’s intention to claim credit for all new jobs under his watch. "It’s a cumulative effort," she said. "It’s the private sector that creates jobs; government can merely help set a conducive climate." Johnson said that when McDonnell said "we’ve" created about 60,000 net new jobs, "he was referring to Virginia." It’s noteworthy that this February -- the month McDonnell uses as the starting benchmark for his administration’s job efforts -- Virginia’s unemployment rate was 7.2 percent, the highest in 28 years. The unemployment rate in September dipped to 6.8 percent, ranking Virginia as the eighth lowest state. The national unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in February and 9.6 percent in September. The vast majority of new Virginia jobs since February fell into one of three broad categories: leisure and hospitality; professional and business services; or trade, transportation and utilities. McDonnell, a Republican, has been praised by legislators from both political parties for aggressively recruiting new businesses. Over the first nine months of his administration -- starting in February, as the governor prefers -- the state has announced 186 business development deals promising 12,249 new jobs, according to statistics kept by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. In comparison, the state announced 213 development deals promising 11,656 new jobs during the final nine months of Gov. Tim Kaine’s term, ending in January. It’s impossible to know how many how many of the jobs promised in state economic development announcements actually translate into employment gains recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many of the jobs are speculative and depend on construction and expansion of plants before people are hired. So let’s review. It’s clear the governor wants credit for the new jobs created in Virginia since February. But many factors beyond a governor’s purview influence employment figures and Virginia has benefited a strong business climate for decades. Some of the jobs filled since McDonnell took office were no doubt spawned by economic developments deals announced Kaine. It’s impossible to assign full credit to anyone. Regardless of credit, have "about 60,000 net new jobs" been created in Virginia since February? It depends how you measure "about." The correct number at the time was 55,400. The governor was a little bit off, but he wasn’t blowing smoke. For that reason, we rate his claim Mostly True. | null | Bob McDonnell | null | null | null | 2010-11-17T09:30:00 | 2010-11-02 | ['Virginia'] |
pomt-05951 | The InterLink at T.F. Green Airport is the closest air-rail link in the country. | false | /rhode-island/statements/2012/jan/26/lincoln-chafee/rhode-island-governor-lincoln-chafee-says-interlin/ | One of the key selling points of the new $267-million InterLink at T.F. Green Airport is the easy access it gives passengers coming in by rail to get to their flights. Because of the intermodal transportation hub that was largely completed in 2010, they can simply hop on a train, get off at the airport’s rail station, and travel a mere 1,570 feet on moving walkways into the terminal. At a news conference at T.F. Green on Jan. 11, Governor Lincoln Chafee, a longtime champion of the project, called it "the closest air-rail link in the country," according to a story in The Journal. He was repeating a claim that has been made in various ways by numerous state officials and agencies, including Warwick Mayor Scott Avedesian, the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and the Federal Highway Administration. Most used the superlative "closest." A PolitiFact Rhode Island reader asked us to check out Chafee’s claim, noting that he had visited several airports that seemed to have closer rail links. Because we had a request -- and because taxpayers footed most of the $267-million bill for the InterLink -- we decided to get to the bottom of it. We called T.F. Green, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation and Chafee’s office to see if any studies had been done that could answer the question. While we waited for answers, we found a number of online railroad and airport forums with discussions of this very topic. Although none had clear-cut answers, they included anecdotal information that we used as a jumping-off point. From that start, we put together a partial list of airports with rail connections. They include Hopkins International Airport, in Cleveland, which in 1968 became the first airport in the country to be connected to a commuter rail system; and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which is connected to a light rail commuter system. Other major airports also have commuter rail links, including Reagan National Airport, in Washington, D.C., Chicago Midway International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. We also found that Philadelphia International Airport has multiple rail stops that are very close to its terminals. The rail line bisects the airport, with the terminals on one side and baggage claim areas and parking facilities on the other, according to a map of the complex. Victoria Lupica, spokeswoman for the airport, said that passengers who get off at any of the airport stations can get into the terminals by riding an escalator one floor up. "The airport line was designed so you can get off the train and go directly into the airport," she said. We couldn’t find any measurements of the distances from the train stops to the terminals, so we asked Lupica how long it takes to get from one of the platforms into the airport. "Thirty seconds," said Lupica, who rides the train daily. "You literally get off the train and walk into the building. While we continued our search, we heard from Dana Alexander Nolfe, a spokeswoman for the DOT, and Patti Goldstein, a spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Airport Corporation. Nolfe said T.F. Green’s InterLink should accurately be called "the closest air-to-Amtrak rail line in the country." "We do not have the closest air-to-commuter rail line in the country," she said. Goldstein agreed and said the Amtrak claim was first made in 1998 at a news conference attended by then-Warwick Mayor Lincoln Chafee, Governor Almond and officials from the Federal Railroad Administration. She gave us subsequent published references to the distance to the rail line made by Chafee (1,200 feet) and former Governor Bruce Sundlun (1,170 feet). Meanwhile, we heard that Bob Hope Airport, in Burbank, Calif. also has a nearby rail line that serves both commuter trains and Amtrak. There are stops for the two train services outside the airport. We asked Victor Gill, a spokesman for that airport, how far the Amtrak line is from the closest terminal and he estimated the distance at 300 yards, or 900 feet. We checked for ourselves on Google Maps and found that the walking distance from the Amtrak station to Terminal B is about 1,056 feet and from the station to Terminal A is about 1,584 feet. The rail line itself is literally across the street from a runway on the southwest side of the airport. Our ruling Governor Chafee said the T.F. Green InterLink is the closest air-rail link in the country. Whether he meant closest commuter link or closest Amtrak link, he’s wrong. Several major airports have closer commuter links, including some that run adjacent to or through their terminals. And Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport is closer to an Amtrak line. Plus, it has something T.F. Green does not: an actual Amtrak station. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor does indeed pass near T.F. Green, but Amtrak trains do not stop at the InterLink. Only commuter trains that are operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority -- and use the Amtrak line -- do. Officials have talked of having Amtrak trains stop at the InterLink eventually, but it hasn’t happened yet. So at this point it seems irrelevant that the airport is so close to the Amtrak rail line. We rule Chafee’s statement False. (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.) | null | Lincoln Chafee | null | null | null | 2012-01-26T06:00:00 | 2012-01-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-05947 | Says Steve Jobs was responsible for creating more jobs than the stimulus bill. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/26/mitch-daniels/mitch-daniels-says-steve-jobs-created-more-jobs-st/ | Did Apple founder Steve Jobs do more to boost American employment than the $800 billion federal stimulus program? In the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said just that. "Contrary to the president's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew." Many readers suggested that we check this comparison. First we’ll look at jobs numbers for both Apple and the stimulus, then we’ll discuss whether this comparison is valid. Apple Apple, the iconic technology company, was started in 1973. According to its 2011 SEC filing, Apple now employs about 60,000 people, 43,000 of whom work in the United States. Its contractors add another 700,000 to its overall workforce, but few of them work in the U.S. Daniels didn’t specify in his speech if he was including overseas jobs. But we aren’t in this analysis. So the job tally for Jobs stands at 43,000. The stimulus The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed Congress along party lines and was signed by Obama in early 2009. Its purpose was to save and create jobs immediately. How well the program worked in jump-starting employment is a matter of great controversy. Numerous Republicans have said the stimulus created zero jobs, a claim we rated Pants on Fire. In this case, we’ll rely on the same figures we have in the past, which come from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. In this report (see the chart on page 3), the CBO provides high and low estimates for how the stimulus affected the number of people employed and how many jobs it generated. Bear in mind, some of those were temporary jobs (such as work on construction projects) that came and went. On the other hand, jobs that were created and still existed year after year were counted in each year’s totals. That said, the CBO report credits the stimulus with creating between 900,000 and 4.7 million jobs in 2010 and between 600,000 and 3.6 million in 2011. It projects between 200,000 and 1.3 million jobs will be created in 2012. We’ve also looked at estimates by other private analysis. IMH/Global Insight estimated that 1.25 million jobs were created or saved by the end of 2009, 2.45 million were created or saved by the end of 2010, and 1.97 million were created or saved by the end of 2011. Macroeconomic Advisers projects 2.1 million jobs will be created or saved through early 2012. Moody’s economy.com put the peak of the employment impact in the third quarter of 2010, when the stimulus was responsible for an additional 2.5 million jobs. This report from the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, released in July, estimates the Recovery Act "raised employment by 2.4 to 3.6 million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been." Of all these studies, the single lowest estimate -- CBO’s -- was 1.5 million jobs through the end of 2011. So based on the raw numbers, the stimulus created about 35 times as many jobs as Apple did. Even the CBO’s lowest estimate of jobs created in a single quarter (200,000 in the second quarter of 2009, right after the law was passed) is more than four times larger than Apple’s current workforce. "Daniels is not in the ballpark," said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. Beyond the numbers But there are issues that complicate any Apple-stimulus comparison. Bruce Bartlett, a economist and former official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, calls it an "apples and oranges comparison." Here are some of the issues raise by Bartlett and other economists: • The job figures for Apple’s full-time U.S. staff are solid, but the stimulus job statistics are only estimates. J.D. Foster, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation, discounts the stimulus job estimates and says "no one knows, or will ever know" how many it created. "In my view, the best one could hope for is that the stimulus did not destroy any jobs, on net," Foster said in an email. • It’s difficult to gauge the indirect impact of Apple on jobs created among suppliers -- or jobs lost by companies that faced competition from Apple. On the upside, for every U.S. staff job at Apple, some number of additional full- or part-time jobs has been created indirectly, from freelance app designers to short-order cooks in restaurants near Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Estimating how many additional jobs owe their existence to Apple is tricky, but it’s likely a substantial number, making Apple’s actual job footprint bigger than the 43,000 jobs cited above. Although Daniels' office didn't respond to our request for back-up for his statement, Jane Jankowski, a spokeswoman for Daniels, told CNNMoney: "Between Apple and its suppliers, there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been created and sustained over years and years ... Meanwhile, a number of credible economists, including Robert Barro of Harvard have questioned whether the stimulus created any net new jobs; if they did, the jobs were temporary and disappeared as the stimulus money ended." On the other hand, as Apple has grown, some new jobs have come at the expense of its competitors. As the iPhone took off, did Motorola fire workers when its phone sales slipped? The aggregate loss among competitors is hard to calculate, but it’s likely not a trivial number. And the number is one that should be considered if a full comparison is desired. "Once you look at what Apple's success does to competitors, then you must eventually conclude that all job creation is a zero-sum game, which bodes ill for unemployment," Foster said. • Apple is a company that created jobs continuously over 30 years, while the stimulus was a government program that was largely over within a couple years. It’s not clear whether a 30-year, ongoing business concern should be compared directly to a two- to three-year federal program. There are too many differences in scope, duration and mission. Even so, Foster argues that Daniels’ comparison is valid. "There's nothing wrong with comparing a company to a nation," he said. "Nationally, jobs are created and destroyed. Even within Apple, not every division grew monotonically. They fired people, and hired them. It's not a common comparison, but that's what makes it interesting and still valid." Other economists, including Gary Burtless, an economist for the Brookings Institution, suggest that Daniels’ comparison is speculative at best, and incorrect at worst. "Perhaps if we assume there were large spillover effects of Apple employees’ consumption and Apple supplier contracts on U.S.-based employment, we might reach an estimated impact of Apple that reaches or exceeds the stimulus total," Burtless said. "On the other hand, some of Apple’s success has come at the expense of competitors who have shrunk, disappeared, or grown more slowly than would have been the case if Apple had not been founded. No one knows the number of people who lost their jobs or failed to find jobs in those competing companies as a result of Apple’s existence, but it is likely to represent a sizeable percentage -- far more than half -- of the employees that Apple hired or caused to be hired by its suppliers within the United States." Our ruling There’s no question that the lack of information -- particularly about Apple’s indirect impact on jobs and how many jobs were lost at its competitors -- weakens how certain we can be about the exact numbers. There’s also a more fundamental question of whether it’s fair to compare Apple (an ongoing business) to the stimulus (a short-term federal program). But even if you were to assume that Apple's net impact on job creation was five times the 43,000 jobs the company listed in its SEC report, that would still be just one-seventh of the lowest estimate of jobs created by the stimulus. The "hundreds of thousands" of additional jobs from Apple and related companies, cited by Daniels' spokeswoman, also falls far short of the most cautious estimates of the stimulus by a large margin. In addition to the huge discrepancy in the numbers, one of the principles of the Truth-O-Meter is that people who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up. We will try to verify their statements, but we believe the burden of proof is on the person making the statement. In this case, the best we have from Daniels' staff is a vague extrapolation that Apple created "hundreds of thousands" of jobs. We rate Daniels’ statement False. | null | Mitch Daniels | null | null | null | 2012-01-26T14:22:36 | 2012-01-24 | ['None'] |
pomt-03326 | In Providence, R.I., it's illegal to sell toothpaste and a toothbrush to the same customer on a Sunday. | pants on fire! | /rhode-island/statements/2013/jul/25/buzzfeed/buzzfeed-awesome-fact-about-toothbrush-and-toothpa/ | Hey fans of Rhode Island trivia! Did you know that in the capital city of Providence "it's illegal to sell toothpaste and a toothbrush to the same customer on a Sunday"? Neither did we. But that's what we were told in a July 14 feature titled "11 Awesome Facts You Never Knew About Rhode Island," listed on the popular news and entertainment website BuzzFeed. Here at PolitiFact, we had two questions. First: Is that really true? Second: Who thinks the inability to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste together on a Sunday is awesome? For the uninitiated, BuzzFeed, which regards itself as a legitimate news website, is always trying to take a hot topic and make it hotter. BuzzFeed loves lists. Its July 19, 2013 home page featured "The 33 Fluffiest Animals On The Planet," "38 Things Catholic Girls Love" (#7 is "Pancakes." No explanation is offered), and "14 Not-At-All Gratuitous Breast Ads (Note to BuzzFeed: They ARE gratuitous)." We had our doubts about some of the other items on the Rhode Island list. (For example, we couldn't find any reference in state law to BuzzFeed's contention that "It is illegal to throw pickle juice on a trolley in Rhode Island.") We decided to focus on the toothbrush claim because we don't want Providence residents to be at a disadvantage when it comes to dental hygiene. We emailed BuzzFeed and asked for its source. We also checked Rhode Island law to see if there was a toothpaste-toothbrush statute that applied to Providence (or any community). We came up with nothing. We also checked the online version of Providence's city ordinances. We found nada. Then we called Providence City Hall and spoke to Deputy City Clerk Lori Hagen, who indulged us and did her own check. She found zip. The ordinances don't contain any derivative of the word "tooth." If it existed, "it would be in the code of ordinances," Hagen said, adding that she's never heard of any such restriction. She's worked for the city for 24 years. We thought it might be an old ordinance, repealed long ago. City Archivist Paul Campbell came up with bupkis. When we heard back from BuzzFeed, spokeswoman Augusta Mellon said in an email that a Google search for "sell toothbrush toothpaste sunday rhode island" produced over 8 million hits. (We checked that claim as well. Actual number of hits: about 650, and some of those didn't even refer to the "law.") Mellon said, "There's multiple accredited sources that have written about it, including the Brown Daily Herald and the Telegraph" in Australia. The unnamed blogger for the Herald, Brown University's student newspaper, reported buying both items at a local CVS, insisted that the prohibition was real, and treated the purchase like an act of civil disobedience. The blogger's source turned out to be a list at DumbLaws.com, which cites no actual law, past or present. At least the Telegraph story begins: "Here is a list of the world's most ridiculous laws or urban myths - we’re not quite sure." BuzzFeed's Mellon ended her email by saying, "It seems like it's a commonly referenced piece of information." She should have added, "Which nobody ever checks." So oral hygiene fans can breathe a minty-fresh sigh of relief. A toothbrush and toothpaste can legally be purchased together any Sunday in Providence. Maybe someday this PolitiFact item will be part of a BuzzFeed list titled "217 Examples of How BuzzFeed Didn't Check Its Facts." It'll be a hot one because we give the website a Pants on Fire! (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.) | null | BuzzFeed | null | null | null | 2013-07-25T00:01:00 | 2013-07-14 | ['Providence,_Rhode_Island', 'Rhode_Island'] |
pomt-07327 | (George) LeMieux never requested a single earmark and pushed to ban them all. | half-true | /florida/statements/2011/may/12/george-lemieux/emigeorge-lemieux-claims-he-never-requested-single/ | A new Web ad from the campaign for former Sen. George LeMieux claims there's a big difference between him and Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on the issue of earmarks. A narrator in the ad, called "The Choice," says, "Nelson voted for billions in wasteful spending earmarks like the Bridge to Nowhere. LeMieux never requested a single earmark and pushed to ban them all." We broke this claim into two fact-checks. In a separate item, we explore the claim that, "Nelson voted for billions in wasteful spending earmarks like the Bridge to Nowhere. " In this item, we will address the second half of the equation, the claim that, "LeMieux never requested a single earmark and pushed to ban them all." While this is technically true, the contrast isn't as black-and-white as the ad suggests. Here's why: LeMieux was appointed to the Senate by then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to fill the remaining term of retiring Sen. Mel Martinez. LeMieux took office on Sept. 10, 2009, and served until Jan. 3, 2011. Soon after taking office, LeMieux voted in favor of a handful of appropriations bills that included thousands of earmarks worth billions of dollars. We'll break it down. On Oct. 15, 2009, LeMieux voted in favor of an appropriations bill for energy and water development and related agencies for the 2010 fiscal year. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the bill included 2,293 earmarks at a cost of $5.7 billion. On Oct. 6, 2009, and Dec. 19, 2009, LeMieux voted in favor of appropriations bills for the Department of Defense. They included 1,719 earmarks at a cost of $4.2 billion. On Oct. 20, 2009, LeMieux voted in favor of an appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security. It included 192 earmarks at a cost of $420 million. On Nov. 5, 2009, LeMieux voted in favor of an appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies. The bill included 1,513 earmarks at a cost of $781 million. On Nov. 17, LeMieux voted in favor of an appropriations bill for military construction and veterans affairs. It included 745 earmarks at a cost of $14.5 billion. In other words, LeMieux voted for bills containing billions of dollars in earmarks, the very thing the ad criticized Nelson for in the previous sentence. But the ad is artfully worded. It doesn't say LeMieux never voted for an earmark, it says he never requested a single one. That's true, but it's also true that earmarks bound for Florida were already packed into the appropriations bills before LeMieux took over for Martinez. We checked the earmark database for the 2010 fiscal year compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense -- a group that tracks federal earmarks -- and found several dozen earmarks at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars requested by Martinez (sometimes jointly requested with Nelson and others) for various Florida projects, which were included in the appropriations bills that LeMieux voted for. We didn't find any evidence that LeMieux tried to remove those Florida earmarks. We asked LeMieux about those votes via e-mail. "I never requested an earmark," LeMieux said. "It became clear to me after my first couple months in D.C., and those first appropriation bills, that earmarks are the engine that drive the train of increased spending. After that experience I had a press conference with Sens. DeMint, Graham and others pledging not to seek an earmark." In that press conference, the Republican legislators called for a one-year moratorium on all earmarks. "Let me tell you why I think earmarks are a problem," LeMieux said at the press conference. "They're not just a problem for the amount of the budget that they are, because it's not a huge amount. They are a problem because they are the enabler. "In my short time here, I have seen that if you ask for a project and you bring it back for your home state, then when the budget that they bring before you on a particular appropriations bill is 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent more than last year, you can't vote against it or you'll never get another project again. So I haven't done earmarks since I've been here, and I made a decision last month not to do them for the rest of the time I'm here, because the nation is in dire financial straits." So there's no question LeMieux pushed to ban earmarks, as the ad claims. But to back up that point, the ad cites LeMieux's vote on Nov. 30, 2010, in favor of an amendment that sought to establish a moratorium on earmarks through the 2013 fiscal year. The amendment failed with 39 senators voting in favor (including LeMieux) and 56 against. But here's what the ad doesn't say: Nelson also voted for the moratorium. "Sen. Nelson may have voted to ban all earmarks, but he still sought them and still supports them," LeMieux wrote to us in an e-mail. "My vote was sincere." Also, LeMieux stated, "I have signed a pledge not to seek any earmarks if I have the honor of serving again." We contacted Nelson's press office for comment but did not hear back. Again, the wording of the earmark claims in LeMieux's ad are technically true. LeMieux has not personally requested any earmarks, and he has pushed to ban them all. But we think it's a bit hypocritical for LeMieux to call out Nelson for voting for a bill that included billions of dollars worth of earmarks (and specifically the infamous Bridge to Nowhere). LeMieux also voted for bills that included thousands of earmarks worth billions of dollars. By the same logic in LeMieux's ad, Nelson could counter with an ad that says LeMieux voted for billions in earmarks including any number of outrageous-sounding pet projects from around the country that were included in the handful of appropriations bills LeMieux voted for in late 2009. LeMieux makes the distinction that he never personally requested earmarks (while Nelson certainly has). But again, we think it's worth noting that the appropriations bills LeMieux voted in favor of were stuffed with dozens of Florida earmarks -- costing hundreds of millions of dollars -- that were requested by his Republican predecessor, Martinez. LeMieux has put himself out front on the issue of reining in earmarks, taking a stand early in 2010 calling for a complete ban. And LeMieux may not buy that Nelson has found religion on earmarks, but Nelson was among only a half dozen Democrats in the Senate who also voted for the earmark moratorium. We think that's a lot of missing context, and so we rate the claim Half True. | null | George LeMieux | null | null | null | 2011-05-12T18:46:33 | 2011-05-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-07951 | Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known ... corporate profits are up. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/25/barack-obama/barack-obama-state-union-says-corporate-profits-ar/ | In his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 2011, President Barack Obama suggested that the economy is in recovery mode. "We are poised for progress," the president told a joint session of Congress. "Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again." We decided to see if corporate profits are indeed up in the past two years. Statistics on corporate profits are calculated by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. They are determined both on an annual and a quarterly basis. According to BEA, corporate profits -- officially known as "corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments" -- were as follows: 2007: $1.511 trillion 2008: $1.263 trillion 2009: $1.258 trillion Unfortunately, since we’re only 25 days into 2011, BEA has yet not calculated the figure for 2010, so we’re left to use annualized estimates based on the quarterly figures. The most recent quarterly estimate, based on the third quarter of 2010, produced annualized corporate profits of $1.659 trillion. Even the lowest annualized estimate for corporate profits, based on the first quarter of 2010, pegged them at $1.567 trillion -- still well above either of the full-year amounts for 2008 and 2009. So, the only thing that could make Obama’s statement incorrect would be a woeful under performance in the fourth quarter of 2010, but that seems unlikely based on current expert estimates. Prasad Patkar, who helps manage about $1.8 billion at Platypus Asset Management in Sydney, told Bloomberg Businessweek in mid-January that "the earnings recovery in the U.S. has been exceptional post-crisis. It seems the recovery in the U.S. economy is starting to broaden, which will support revenue and earnings growth. China’s economy is robust, but it’ll take at least six months of strong data to silence those calling a policy-induced hard landing." Indeed, if the third-quarter rate holds, corporate profits for 2010 would set a record. The current record was set in 2006 -- the last full year before the onset of the recent recession. That year, corporate profits hit $1.608 trillion. Of course, corporate profits are just one component of the economy -- and just one part of Americans’ perceptions of how well the nation is doing economically. Unemployment is still stubbornly high, and indeed, some commentators have been critical of companies’ hesitancy to invest on new hires amid such high profits. Still, Obama was correct in his description of the trend in corporate profits. One could say that he’s being presumptuous by assuming what the full 2010 figure will be before it’s officially announced, but we think that the current trendlines for corporate profits, combined with recent fourth-quarter reports, put the level so far above the 2009 level that it’s highly unlikely to drop once the full-year numbers have been released. So we rate Obama’s statement True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2011-01-25T21:06:04 | 2011-01-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-03081 | Warren Buffett says stop Obamacare now and start over. | pants on fire! | /georgia/statements/2013/sep/27/tom-graves/rep-graves-wrong-about-buffetts-health-law-stance/ | As the nation winds down to a government shutdown and possible default on its debt, the fight over President Barack Obama’s health care law continues. PolitiFact Georgia was asked to check a claim made by Georgia Congressman Tom Graves about the law, more commonly referred to as Obamacare. Graves, a Republican from Ranger, has become one of the legislative leaders for a GOP push in the U.S. House to defund Obama’s health care law in order to prevent the government shutdown. During an appearance last weekend on ABC’s "This Week," Graves defended his plan and cited additional evidence to show that support for Obamacare is dwindling. In response to a question about a Wall Street Journal editorial regarding the GOPs inept strategizing on budget issues, Graves said: "That’s their opinion. An editorial clearly is what that is. But when you read the Chicago Tribune, they say delay and stop Obamacare," Graves said. "Warren Buffett says stop it now, start over. … It’s not just Republicans, this is widespread." Graves’ comments about Buffett were familiar to us and to our audience, which asked us to review the claim. Did Warren Buffett, one of Obama’s early presidential backers, withdraw support for the president’s signature public policy legacy? Graves’ claim about Buffett was set in motion by posts from conservative bloggers, who began posting earlier this month, that the Omaha billionaire recently said "scrap Obamacare and start all over." The claim originated with a Sept. 13 post on Money Morning website titled "Buffett: Scrap Obamacare and Start Over." That post used a portion of Buffett’s comments from three years ago, before the health care law was passed. Other sites, including the Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal, linked to or included portions of the Money Morning post in their stories. Our PolitiFact national colleagues recently completed a fact check of the bloggers’ claim, and found the statements were taken out of context and not representative of Buffett’s opinions. The claim was rated Pants On Fire. The same day as the Sept. 17 PolitiFact article, the Washington Examiner also ran a story discrediting the bloggers’ Buffett claim. And FactCheck.org reviewed the claim this week. We asked Graves’ office about his ABC News statements. The office noted that the Money Morning claim, along with follow-up stories by other media outlets, included inaccurate timeline context with their Buffett claim. But outside of the faulty time element, Buffett did say he would stop Obamacare, start over and explain how to do that, Graves’ office said. And, because Graves did not attribute an inaccurate time frame to Buffett’s comments, they believe his statement was true, the office said. But what exactly did Buffett say about Obamacare, when did he say it and what are his current thoughts on the matter? Buffett’s Obamacare statements included in the Money Morning blog were taken from an interview he gave with CNBC on March 1, 2010. A Politico article from the same year -- which was also quoted by Graves’ office in response to our questions -- summarized the interview. In that interview, Buffett was asked whether he was "in favor of scrapping this and going back to start over." He said: "I would be if I were President Obama." What the blog posts and Graves did not include in their comments was the full context of Buffett’s statements. At the time, Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., was referring to a pending health care bill. (The Affordable Care Act was signed into law days later on March 23, 2010.) Buffett went on to say that he would be in favor of scrapping the Senate version of the bill, but that he’d vote for it instead of doing nothing. Ultimately, Buffett said he’d like to see a plan that really attacked (health care) costs. Last week, Buffett refuted the assertion that he did not support Obamacare. "I’ve never suggested nor thought Obamacare should be scrapped," Buffett said in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald. "I support it. It relates to providing medical care for all Americans. That’s something I’ve thought should be done for a long, long time." Buffett’s assistant, Debbie Bosanek, told us in an email that Buffett’s office set the record straight for any news organization that contacted them. She also mentioned her boss’s explanation during a CNBC news interview last week. After fact checkers began exploring the claim, the Weekly Standard updated its original blog post to say: "It appears that Buffett made his anti-Obamacare comments in 2010, thereby showing that he, like most of the American people, has opposed Obamacare since even before it was passed …" So what about Graves’ claim? The Georgia congressman stated that Warren Buffett said stop Obamacare now and start over. The claim was similar to other blogger claims debunked by fact checkers, and based on an interview Buffett gave three years ago before Obamacare was signed into law. Buffett did say he would scrap the then Senate bill, but also noted that he would vote for it instead of continuing with the existing health care situation. Graves’ claim may not have misrepresented Buffett’s comments as being recent like the bloggers did, but his comments were made after similar claims about Buffett were found to be misleading. And Graves still made the claim, without any additional context, five days after several fact checkers debunked the claim. We rate Graves’ statement Pants on Fire. | null | Tom Graves | null | null | null | 2013-09-27T00:00:00 | 2013-09-22 | ['Warren_Buffett'] |
pomt-06479 | Says the reforms in state Issue 2 "will save taxpayer dollars" | mostly true | /ohio/statements/2011/oct/17/building-better-ohio/building-better-ohio-touts-issue-2-potential-savin/ | A key thrust of Issue 2 proponents is that public employees need to pay their fair share of the cost of health and pension benefits. The issue, a referendum on Senate Bill 5 and its overhaul of Ohio’s collective bargaining laws for public workers, would require public employees to contribute at least 15 percent of the cost of their health benefits and 10 percent of their salaries toward pensions. Gov. John Kasich has repeatedly said it’s only fair to demand such participation in light of what private sector employees pay for their health care and retirement benefits. A campaign ad from Building a Better Ohio, an organization pushing for passage of Issue 2, focuses specifically on those two figures, and touts the savings they could yield. "Issue 2’s reasonable reforms will save taxpayer dollars," the ad claims. We’ll leave it to others to debate the phrase "reasonable," but PolitiFact Ohio decided to explore the purported savings. We’re focusing here on health care and pension costs because that’s what the ad discussed. It’s clear governments will save money if their employees contribute more toward the costs of their benefits, but those savings are not across the board, applying to each level of government. Savings in those two areas will not come at the state government level because its employees already pay 15 percent of their health care costs and put 10 percent of their wages toward their pensions. But what about the counties, cities, townships, school districts and the like across the state that employ more than 300,000 workers? For health care benefits, the savings would vary greatly from community to community, . Cities like Akron, for instance — where union and nonunion workers alike do not pay for health insurance — could save millions in personnel costs. The city’s tab for health care in 2010 was $23.5 million. If the new law had been in effect, Akron workers would have paid more than $3.5 million of the cost. For the 1,941 workers with health care, that would amount to about $1,800 each. Employees in Avon, on the other hand, already pay 20 percent of their health care costs. So they wouldn’t pay a dime extra for coverage under the law, and there would be no savings to the community. In an analysis of the fiscal impact of SB 5, The Department of Administrative Services estimates that localities will save about $98 million a year in health care costs if their employees are made to pay at least 15 percent of their health care costs. DAS calculated the estimate using State Employment Relations Board statistics from 2010 (2011 numbers were not available at the time) that show employees of cities, school boards, townships and counties now pay a combined average of 10.8 percent of their health care costs. That comes to a total of $255.9 million. If the average contribution is raised to 15 percent, the total increases to $353.9 million. That translates into a combined savings of $98 million with school districts saving the most at $61.4 million, cities at $30.6 million, townships at $4.1 million and counties at $1.8 million. Still, these numbers are estimates, based on a self-reporting survey in which only 79 percent of the 1,359 governmental jurisdictions in the state participated. Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for Issue 2 opponent We Are Ohio, said the numbers can’t be trusted because they are based on an incomplete survey. The state contends the sample size far exceeds the required number and has a margin of error of three percent. Coming up with an estimated savings on the pension side is more difficult, and the state makes no attempt to do so. But we’ll offer up a few figures to ponder. As it stands, state law requires all employees to contribute 10 percent of their wages toward their pension. In some cases the employer pays some or all of that amount, a benefit that’s known as a "pension pickup." There are 3,285 union contracts at the local level, according to the State Employment Relations Board. Of those contracts, 2,504 do not include pension pickups, so on those there would be no savings. Another 245 do have pickups. The remaining 781 have not been reviewed sufficiently to say one way or the other. It’s also worth looking possible savings in the five state pensions plans that represent public employees in Ohio. We can check the Ohio Highway Patrol Retirement System off the list because its members are all state employees who already meet the requirements of SB 5. The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the largest pension plan in the state and the eleventh largest in the country, represents 3,700 employers, but only about 9 percent of those employers offer their employees some level of pension pickup, said spokeswoman Julie Graham-Price. The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio estimates that 92 percent of its nearly 176,000 members already pay their full 10 percent, and of the 8 percent who don’t, most get only a partial pickup, said spokesman Nick Treneff. The School Employees Retirement System of Ohio estimates that 95 to 97 percent of its 126,000 members pay their 10 percent share, said spokesman Tim Barbour. The only pension plan that can attach a dollar figure to its volume of pension pickups is the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund. Fund members paid more than $197 million in pension contributions last year with nearly $60 million of that amount picked up by their employers, said spokesman Dave Graham. So, clearly, the evidence suggests that taxpayer dollars -- perhaps millions -- will be saved if the health care and pension mandates in SB 5 become law. On that count, the statement in the Building a Better Ohio ad is accurate. But there are some points to keep in mind. At the state level, employees already are contributing at the 10 and 15 percent thresholds, something the ad does not mention. Without examining each and every contract, it’s impossible to know exactly where the savings will occur and how large the savings will be at the local level. For communities in which the employees already meet those thresholds, there won’t be a savings. For others, the savings would vary depending on how much of the cost the communities pickup now with taxpayer dollars. In the case of pension pickups, we can deduce that many localities will see little to no savings because employees already meet the mandates. And there’s one other thing to consider. If union employees lose pension and health care benefits, they may be able to negotiate to get some of it back in the form of higher wages. And that could cancel out some of the savings to the taxpayer. Those points provide additional information and clarification. On the Truth-O-Meter, the claim rates Mostly True. | null | Building a Better Ohio | null | null | null | 2011-10-17T06:00:00 | 2011-09-15 | ['None'] |
vees-00368 | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Palimbang massacre and Marcos’ other transgressions against the Bangsamoro | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-sheet-palimbang-massacre-and-marcos-other-tr | null | null | null | null | Bangsamoro,Martial Law,palimbang massacre | VERA FILES FACT SHEET: Palimbang massacre and Marcos’ other transgressions against the Bangsamoro | September 24, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-01136 | Margot Robbie, Emma Stone In Running For Female ‘Indiana Jones’ Reboot? | 3 | https://www.gossipcop.com/margot-robbie-emma-stone-indiana-jones-reboot-female/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Margot Robbie, Emma Stone In Running For Female ‘Indiana Jones’ Reboot? | 4:04 pm, April 26, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11212 | In San Francisco, we were successful in reducing our street population 40 percent. We got 12,000 people off the street. | half-true | /california/statements/2018/may/10/gavin-newsom/did-gavin-newsom-help-san-francisco-reduce-its-hom/ | Candidate for California governor Gavin Newsom recently claimed San Francisco dramatically shrunk its homeless street population, implying the change took place under his leadership. "In San Francisco, we were successful in reducing our street population 40 percent. We got 12,000 people off the street," Newsom said during a gubernatorial debate in San Jose on May 8, 2018. The event was broadcast statewide on NBC and NPR stations. Newsom is a Democrat and California’s lieutenant governor. He was San Francisco’s mayor from January 2004 through January 2011. Before that, he served eight years on the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors starting in January 1997. Polls show Newsom is currently the favorite in the race to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown. Whoever becomes California’s next governor will be faced with a growing homeless crisis, one made worse by a lack of affordable housing. Homelessness in the state shot up nearly 14 percent in 2017, as it remained flat nationwide, according to federal data and our recent fact check on the topic. Given the importance of the issue, we wanted to know whether Newsom got his facts right. We set out on a fact check. Our research We started by examining Newsom’s claim about a 40 percent reduction in the city’s "street population," which includes people living outside, in abandoned buildings, tents, cars and storage structures. It’s a subset of the city’s overall homeless population, which includes people living in emergency shelters and transitional housing. Some might interpret Newsom’s statement as meaning the city’s overall homeless population dropped significantly during his time in office. That’s not the case. But because Newsom twice referenced "street population," we examined that category. Though he doesn’t give a timeframe, we assumed Newsom was speaking mainly about his tenure as mayor. Nathan Click, Newsom’s campaign spokesman, said the candidate’s statement is supported when comparing street population totals from 2002 to 2009, or two years before he became mayor to two years before he left that office. A 2009 San Francisco Homeless Count and Survey does show the total dropped 40 percent, from 4,535 individuals to 2,709. By 2011, however, the city’s street total climbed to 3,100, a gain of about 400 people over Newsom’s final two years as mayor, according to the city survey from that year. Trent Rhorer, who served as Newsom’s homeless czar, has worked as executive director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency since 2000. He said the increase during the last part of Newsom’s tenure took place "in the context of a massive recession" that forced many onto the streets. Rhorer said it was also driven by the shuttering of several nonprofit homeless programs, including two drop-in centers, a shelter and a treatment program when private landlords sold buildings housing those services. Even considering the uptick in the last two years of Newsom’s term, the city’s unsheltered total still decreased by 31 percent from 2002 to 2011, he noted. The executive director added that the city’s overall homeless population held steady from 2009 to 2011, hovering near 6,500. "Is homelessness solved? Absolutely not," Rhorer said, but Newsom "got results." 12,000 people off the streets? Rohrer also explained the 12,000 figure. He said it represents the total number of people removed from the streets through two strategies from January 2004 through November 2010, a period that nearly spans Newsom’s time as mayor. The city placed about 7,000 in permanent housing programs, while the remainder left the streets with a bus ticket through Homeward Bound, a program that’s been criticized by some homeless advocacy groups as simply moving the problem to another city. Chris Herring, a doctoral candidate of sociology at UC Berkeley who studies homelessness, told The San Francisco Examiner in June 2016 the program "should not be used as a policy to boost up numbers or some vision that San Francisco is ending homelessness." Rohrer described Homeward Bound as a well-vetted and voluntary program that connected homeless street people with caretakers who agreed to take them in. It included three follow-up phone calls by city officials, he said. Overall homeless numbers Newsom’s statement does not reflect the slight increase in San Francisco’s overall homeless population during his time as mayor. The first available report during his tenure, from January 2005, shows a total of 6,248. By January 2011, Newsom’s final month in office, that number was 6,455. San Francisco’s most recent overall count, from June 2017, places the total at 7,499. While the homeless crisis continues in San Francisco, Newsom has been credited as a leader on the topic. A 2010 San Francisco Chronicle article said Newsom had "moved more homeless people into supportive housing in his seven years in office than any other mayor in the city's history - and has one of the best track records of any mayor in the country on that score." "Yet many of San Francisco's neighborhoods," the article continued, "remain plagued with panhandlers, and residents and tourists alike complain of feeling scared or just plain disgusted." Our rating Candidate for California governor Gavin Newsom recently claimed at a gubernatorial debate that, "In San Francisco, we were successful in reducing our street population 40 percent. We got 12,000 people off the street." His campaign spokesman pointed to a city homeless survey that shows for one selective window of time, 2002 to 2009, San Francisco reduced its homeless street population by 40 percent. But that report ignores the last two years of Newsom’s tenure as mayor. Looking at those years, we found San Francisco’s homeless street population jumped by 400, diminishing the reduction Newsom described at the debate. We interpreted his statement as reflecting his full tenure as mayor, not part of it. Newsom also spoke of just one segment of the homeless population -- those on the streets, but not the overall total including people in shelters. The overall total has gone up, not down. His claim that "We got 12,000 people off the street," is supported by statements from his former homeless czar. It’s important to note, however, that the city used Homeward Bound, a bus ticket program, to move about 5,000 of those people out of San Francisco. Newsom’s overall statement is partially accurate. But the first portion uses a cherry-picked timeframe that ignores the last quarter of Newsom’s term as mayor. The second part of his claim leaves out some key context. We rate Newsom’s claim Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Gavin Newsom | null | null | null | 2018-05-10T14:05:02 | 2018-05-08 | ['San_Francisco'] |
pomt-01788 | A tax plan promoted by North Carolina Senate candidate Thom Tillis will "overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/25/patriot-majority-usa/liberal-pac-says-senate-candidate-thom-tillis-tax-/ | Controversial changes to North Carolina’s tax code passed under Thom Tillis’ leadership are now a target in his Senate campaign. In 2013, the North Carolina government received national attention for a wave of conservative legislation. The Republican-dominated General Assembly -- with Tillis as speaker of the House -- passed laws increasing voter ID requirements, lowering business regulations, upping restrictions on abortion providers, tightening education spending and trimming unemployment benefits. Now, Patriot Majority USA, a liberal political action committee, has released a television ad saying Tillis’ policies have disproportionately benefited the wealthy. The ad notes in particular the tax legislation enacted last summer -- which Tillis touts in his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. The ad says Tillis is cozy with Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who cofounded Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative PAC. And his policies are designed to benefit people like them. "Thom Tillis thinks the wealthy, like the Koch brothers, deserve tax breaks, while teachers get a pay freeze," the ad says. "Tillis thinks corporations like the ones owned by the Koch brothers should also get tax breaks, while seniors see their pensions taxed and pay more for prescription drugs. Thom Tillis: He may not be a Koch brother, but he certainly treats them like family." At one point, text on the screen says the Tillis tax plan will "overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy." We looked into it and found that the law does not overtly harm those at lower-income levels, but the wealthy reap more of the benefits. Let’s go to the numbers. Income taxes Supporters of the tax plan most often point to the reduced income tax rate, which they say cuts taxes for people in every income bracket. That’s true. However, people in higher-income brackets get bigger cuts than those in the lowest brackets. The income tax part of the law sets the rate for everyone at 5.75 percent. Previously, the state had a graduated three-tier system, with rates of 6 percent for the lowest earners, and rates of 7 percent and 7.75 percent for higher earners. The lowest earners’ tax rates shrunk only marginally -- 0.25 points, while higher earners’ rates went down 1.25 and 2 points, respectively. Lower earners get a small break, though, in the income tax changes. The child tax credit goes from $100 to $125 per child for those earning below $40,000. The North Carolina Legislature’s Fiscal Research Division calculated how much people in various scenarios would owe on average based on the changes to the income tax (other tax changes not included). Here’s a sample of what they found: Scenario Tax owed before change Tax owed after change Change in taxes owed Married, two children, $20,000 income $40 $38 -$2 -5% change Married, two children, $250,000 income $15,832 $13,398 -$2,434 -15% change Married, no children, $20,000 income $540 $288 -$252 -47% change Married, no children, $250,000 income $16,142 $13,398 -$2,744 -17% change Single, $20,000 income $870 $719 -$151 -17% change Single, $250,000 income $17,858 $13,786 -$4,072 -22% change In none of the scenarios examined by the Fiscal Research Division do people owe more in income taxes than they did under the previous tax code. But some benefit more than others. "There’s no question who benefits the most -- the people at the upper end of the income distribution," said Lawrence Zelenak, a tax law professor at the Duke University School of Law, which is in North Carolina. "For most people, it hardly makes any difference. But the people who get the major decrease have incomes of $200,000 or more." Other changes Critics say the new tax law also disproportionately benefits the wealthy because the Legislature did not renew -- effectively eliminating -- the State Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a refundable tax credit for low-income workers. In 2011, about 907,000 North Carolina tax filers claimed the state EITC, according to the North Carolina Justice Center, a liberal advocacy group. The maximum credit ranges between $24 for a single person and $302 for a family with three or more children. Additionally, the Legislature expanded the sales tax base -- making more goods and services subject to the tax, which everyone pays regardless of income. The tax base widened to include natural gas, electricity and some entertainment services, including admissions charges. The law also eliminated North Carolina’s sales tax holidays and several sales tax exemptions, such as those for newspapers, vending machines and meals sold in schools. Opponents of raising the sales tax and other regressive taxes say they are unfairly burdensome on lower-income people because a higher percentage of their income is subject to these taxes than wealthier people. For example, if two people -- one making $500 a week and the other making $2,000 a week -- spend $100 each on groceries, the person with the lower income is spending a greater share of their income on these taxed items than the person with a higher income. It’s worth noting that in 2011 -- Tillis’ first year as speaker -- the Legislature reduced sales tax rates from 5.75 percent to 4.75 percent. Tillis and other Republicans also say the new law’s reductions in corporate tax rates (down from 6.9 percent to 5 percent, and 3 percent if certain parameters are met) will bring business and jobs to North Carolina, which will benefit everyone and bring in more revenue over the long term. In total, the new tax code will reduce tax-collected revenue by about $684 million between 2013 and 2015, according to the Fiscal Research Division. Less revenue means less money for the state to spend on social programs, which hurts people in low income brackets, Zelenak said. Even if the law does not obviously harm poor people, this is a possible indirect effect. Our ruling A Patriot Majority USA ad said Tillis’ tax plan would "overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy." North Carolina’s tax code saw a wide array of changes in 2013 under Tillis’ leadership. We found that changes to the income tax code reduced taxes for everyone, but much more for wealthier people than lower-income people. Additionally, sales tax expansions, less government revenue and eliminating the state EITC are especially burdensome on poorer people. But some changes -- such as the increased child credit for lower-income tax filers and the possibility of more jobs and business due to lowered corporate tax rates -- could benefit the whole. "Overwhelmingly" is a strong word. For that reason, we rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Patriot Majority USA | null | null | null | 2014-07-25T11:25:27 | 2014-07-22 | ['None'] |
snes-05230 | Tesla CEO Elon Musk was an illegal immigrant. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elon-musk-illegal-immigrant/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Dan Evon | null | Elon Musk Was an Illegal Immigrant? | 11 February 2016 | null | ['Elon_Musk'] |
pomt-00173 | Says Ted Budd "voted to gut protections for pre-existing conditions … letting insurance companies deny coverage for (necessary) treatment." | half-true | /north-carolina/statements/2018/oct/22/kathy-manning/fact-checking-kathy-mannings-ad-ted-budd-and-pre-e/ | Two years ago, Republicans were attacking Democrats for backing the Affordable Care Act. But the tables have turned. These days, Democrats across the country are citing the popularity of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, and blasting Republicans for their repeated efforts to chip away at it. In North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, which includes Statesville, High Point and parts of Greensboro, a 30-second television ad from Democratic congressional candidate Kathy Manning targets incumbent Republican Rep. Ted Budd for his vote on a "repeal and replace" bill. The ad cites the case of a woman named Lilly who "worked her way through UNC while living with a tumor that radiation and surgery could not cure." "But Lilly’s congressman, Ted Budd, voted to gut protections for pre-existing conditions like hers, letting insurance companies deny coverage for the treatment she needs," the ad says. Budd is not the first Republican to see this attack. In the last several weeks, PolitiFact’s state affiliates have awarded Half True ratings to nearly identical ads and statements from Democrats in Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia and California. Manning’s ad has been active on Facebook for more than a month, and the Manning campaign even set up a special website to showcase it. So we decided to give it a fresh look and see how it stacks up against the facts. The American Health Care Act and the MacArthur amendment The Manning campaign declined to comment, but its website cited articles from Time, CNN and the AARP to back up the claim. The website noted that the vote in question was related to the American Health Care Act of 2017, a Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare. The AHCA, as the bill was called, passed the House with a 217-213 margin before ultimately failing in the Senate. The AHCA would have retained some components of Obamacare while eliminating the individual mandate and making other modifications. Budd voted yes on the AHCA, and while it did not allow states to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, it did open the door for insurers to hike premiums for those people under certain circumstances. Specifically, an April 2017 amendment from Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., would have allowed states to apply for waivers to some requirements of the Affordable Care Act. As PolitiFact noted in its guide to the MacArthur amendment, the amendment would have let states seek waivers from the AHCA’s "continuous coverage" provision, which was supposed to require that Americans continuously carry health insurance or else face higher premiums for one year. Insurers in states receiving waivers would have been permitted to consider a person’s health status when setting premiums in the individual market for the year of penalty. In other words, they would have been able to raise the premiums, for one year, of a person with a pre-existing condition so long as that person had been uninsured for 63 consecutive days the previous year. Currently under Obamacare, premiums can only vary based on certain conditions, such as age, location or tobacco use. Any person without employer or government-provided health insurance is guaranteed access to coverage in the individual market — regardless of his or her health status — and cannot be charged a higher rate because of a pre-existing condition. What would the AHCA have meant for pre-existing conditions? Elizabeth Oglesby, Budd’s campaign manager, said Manning’s claim about protections for pre-existing conditions was inaccurate. "Not one person would be denied health insurance for pre-existing conditions, and (Manning) should apologize for her false, smear campaign and take down her ad," she said. Indeed, the MacArthur amendment explicitly stated that "nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting insurers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions." But there’s more nuance to unpack here. As we mentioned before, the amendment would have allowed insurers to consider pre-existing conditions when writing policies for people who had lapses in their coverage the previous year. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that could mean that 6.3 million people could have faced higher premiums under the AHCA because of pre-existing health conditions. That’s a significant number, but a small portion of the estimated 50 to 120 million people under 65 with pre-existing conditions. That means somewhere between 4 and 13 percent of people under 65 with pre-existing conditions could have experienced heightened premiums under the AHCA. As PolitiFact has noted before, many low-income people have trouble staying covered without lapses, and the waiver system could have led insurers to drive premiums too high for these people during penalty years. The ACHA would have appropriated $8 billion over five years to assist people who could not afford the penalty premiums. The waivers would have also allowed states to set up high-risk pools or participate in a federal invisible risk-sharing program to reimburse insurers for taking on high-risk individuals. But it’s not clear how effective either measure would have been. In a press release, the American Medical Association warned that the AHCA’s waiver program "could make coverage unaffordable for people with pre-existing conditions." That’s why, when President Donald Trump and North Carolina Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger said the AHCA included coverage for pre-existing conditions, PolitiFact gave them both Mostly False ratings. Our ruling Manning’s ad said Ted Budd "voted to gut protections for pre-existing conditions … letting insurance companies deny coverage for the treatment (Lilly) needs." The bill included a line stating that insurers would not have been allowed to restrict access to healthcare for people with pre-existing conditions. But in a limited way, the AHCA would have rolled back protections for pre-existing conditions by letting some insurers raise premiums based on a person’s health status under certain circumstances. This could have led to somewhere between 4 and 13 percent of people under 65 with pre-existing conditions facing higher premiums. Overall, Manning’s ad is partially accurate, but leaves out important details and context. We rate this statement Half True. 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 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Kathy Manning | null | null | null | 2018-10-22T16:57:47 | 2018-10-09 | ['None'] |
pose-01082 | In 2010, then-Congressman Nathan Deal unveiled a series of education initiatives he pledged to enact if voters would sign off on his plans for a job change and elect him Georgia’s 82nd governor. Among them was the promise that teachers would have a big financial incentive to work in bad schools. "Teachers who agree to dedicate their time in one of our state's most underperforming schools would further be rewarded by accruing service credit at twice the rate, earning two years of credit for each calendar year served,” Deal said in a press release dated Sept. 7, 2010. At that time, 503, or 22.6 percent, of the state’s 2,221 public schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress, the measure of achievement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. We checked in with some in-the-know education advocates to see whether they’d heard of any action on this Deal campaign promise. None had. “That’s a campaign promise that probably fell victim to a comfortable electoral margin,” one said. We went to Deal’s re-election campaign and spokeswoman Jennifer Talaber with some basic questions. Has the governor taken any steps to see whether this could become a reality or is feasible? Has he gotten any projections on the potential costs? Is he still pursuing this? In one of several email exchanges that followed, Talaber said: “It’s still a goal.” But other things had to come first, she said. “In order to enact any merit-based incentives, we first had to fix the flawed (teacher) evaluation system which, when Deal came to office in 2011, was rating 99 percent of teachers as ‘satisfactory’,” Talaber said. “We did that in 2013.” The new evaluation system will be fully implemented during the 2014-2015 school year, she said. “Once that groundwork is laid, we can begin pursuing new initiatives,” Talaber said. Deal’s plan would allow teachers to earn two years of credit toward retirement for every one year they work in one of the state’s most underperforming schools, the spokeswoman said. No study has been done to determine the costs, Talaber said. Under the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia, a teacher who retires with 30 years of service can draw about 60 percent of the average of his or her highest two consecutive years of pay. Some districts also offer their teachers a local pension or allow them to participate in Social Security. As of May 31, the state’s teacher retirement system had 214,567 active members and 104,091 retired members. The system paid out more than $3.5 billion in fiscal 2013 and expects to pay out $3.7 billion for the year ending June 30, said Jeff Ezell, the system’s executive director. Deal “remains committed to improving the quality of students’ education and rewarding Georgia’s most effective teachers,” Talaber said. | stalled | https://www.politifact.com/georgia/promises/deal-o-meter/promise/1165/pay-working-tough-schools-still-goal-spokeswoman-s/ | null | deal-o-meter | Nathan Deal | null | null | Pay off for working in tough schools 'still a goal,' spokeswoman says | 2014-06-10T00:00:00 | null | ['Nathan_Deal', 'Georgia_(U.S._state)', 'Social_Security_(United_States)'] |
pomt-03958 | Employers and schools have no right to conduct "surveillance of a dorm room or a worker’s cubicle." | mostly false | /rhode-island/statements/2013/feb/17/brian-patrick-kennedy/rep-brian-patrick-kennedy-suggests-employers-and-s/ | These days, it can be hard to figure out what is private and what is not. At the same time people are concerned about the type of information collected by companies when they go on the Internet, people are also posting a lot of very personal information online via Facebook, Twitter and blogs. State Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat from Hopkinton, R.I., wants to put some limitations on how much private information you must reveal if you apply for a job or enroll in a school. He is proposing legislation that would prohibit employers or schools from requesting social media information, including an applicant's personal username or password. For example, it would be illegal for an employer or education official to ask to be added to the applicant's Facebook friend's list. It was this sentence in his news release that caught our eye, particularly the reference to employer rights: "Employers and schools have no more right to this private information than they do in providing surveillance of a dorm room or a worker's cubicle." We were under the impression that employers had every right to keep an eye on you while on the job. If you use a company-owned computer on a company-owned network, for example, the company has the right to track every e-mail, every web-page visit, and even every keystroke you make on that machine. So we decided to investigate. We made two phone calls over two days to Kennedy asking him for his source. He never responded. But if such monitoring is illegal, as Kennedy maintains, a lot of companies are already doing it. We found a 2007 survey of 304 U.S. companies conducted by the American Management Association in which 7 percent said they use video surveillance to track employee's performance on the job. But 48 percent reported that they use video monitoring to some degree to look for theft, violence and sabotage. Most of the time workers are informed of the surveillance, but not always. Is it legal to monitor workers that way? "In some workplaces, the answer is pretty clearly yes," said Michael Yelnosky, who specializes in labor law at Roger Williams University School of Law. In a private workplace with no union, placing a surveillance camera is no different from having a supervisor sit behind the worker and watching everything, he said. "It might come out differently if there's a union in place," he said. "The employer would have to bargain that issue before he went ahead and unilaterally made that change" because it would be a change in working conditions. The rules are a bit different if the employer is the government, he said. "The Supreme Court has said you have some protections in the workplace against your public employer that you wouldn't have from your private employer because the Constitution prohibits some state invasions of privacy where it doesn't say anything about private employers." And there are other limitations. Rhode Island has an overall privacy law, passed in 1980, that protects against "unreasonable intrusion upon one's physical solitude or seclusion," the "appropriation of one's name or likeness," "unreasonable publicity given to one's private life," and publicity that "places another in a false light before the public." There is also a state law that deals specifically with privacy in the workplace; it has special rules regarding areas of the workplace where people might expect an extra degree of privacy, such as a bathroom or locker room. In general, video monitoring of workplaces is allowed, but there are restrictions if you want to add sound to that surveillance. "You have to give your consent to personal conversations," said Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of Privacy Journal, a 38-year-old monthly publication. "If The [Providence] Journal were to install microphones in the city room, they can overhear business-related conversations. But once they turned personal, then the employer is not supposed to listen in. Rhode Island law pretty well tracks federal law [on this matter]. Courts have said employers have latitude to listen in on conversations, but they must be business related." The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union's pamphlet on "Your Rights to Workplace Privacy in Rhode Island," agrees that in most private workplaces, video surveillance is legal. But it is not legal if it's done to monitor employee activities related to the exercise of collective bargaining rights or the forming of a labor union. While Rhode Island may not have a specific law about monitoring a cubicle or dorm room, said Steven Brown of the ACLU, the state’s general "right to privacy" law would apply. Smith, of Privacy Journal, also said there is no ban on monitoring in dormitory rooms. "They're the landlord," he said. Installing a camera might be permissible, said Smith, however, "there could be a lawsuit if it picked up nudity, near-nudity, and sensitive areas but there's no law on it either way. It goes to the content of what's being picked up and how sensitive it is." Audio surveillance in a dorm room would not be allowed without permission. "It's only employers who have that latitude," said Smith. We also checked with Brown University, where spokesman Mark Nickel said the university's lawyers are "not aware of any legislation that either permits or forbids surveillance in dorm rooms. As a matter of well-established practice, Brown does not allow surveillance in private areas like dormitory rooms, and the general counsel's office is unaware of any college or university that does." Our ruling State Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy said: "Employers and schools have no more right to this private [social media] information than they do in providing surveillance of a dorm room or a worker's cubicle." Kennedy didn’t return our phone calls seeking backup for his claim. One could read his statement two ways. In one reading, Kennedy could be giving an opinion that employers shouldn’t have rights to that type of surveillance. PolitiFact doesn’t rule on opinions. But in our reading of his news release, Kennedy is asserting a fact -- that employers and schools don’t have such rights. From that standpoint, it is clear that state and federal law does not prohibit schools and employers -- with some important restrictions -- from monitoring workers and students on their property, although we can't imagine anyone, other than students wanting to be in some sort of reality TV series, being willing to move into a dorm where school officials can watch you in your room. Kennedy’s statement has some element of fact -- there are existing protections in the law. But it ignores important facts that would give a different impression -- the right of employers and landlords to monitor workplaces and living spaces. We rate his claim Mostly False. (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.) | null | Brian Patrick Kennedy | null | null | null | 2013-02-17T00:01:00 | 2013-02-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-01405 | If Florida had not taken the stimulus, it "would have led to the firing of 20,000 teachers." | mostly true | /florida/statements/2014/oct/10/charlie-crist/charlie-crist-says-debate-stimulus-saved-20000-tea/ | During the first debate between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Charlie Crist, Scott repeatedly hammered Crist for jobs lost during his tenure. Scott said that 832,000 jobs were lost during Crist’s tenure. Crist -- who served from January 2007 through January 2011 as a Republican but is now running as a Democrat -- countered that he governed during a global economic meltdown. "One of the decisions I made to get us through it was to work with the president so that we would have funds available to keep teachers on the job. Now, Rick Scott has said taking the recovery was an absolute mistake, which would have led to the firing of 20,000 teachers." Crist used the term firing, which isn't quite accurate, since these would have been layoffs. However, we don't see this as a serious issue, because the context makes clear the kind of job losses he's talking about. Is it true that by taking federal stimulus dollars Crist saved 20,000 teachers from being laid off? Stimulus money saved jobs Crist made a similar statement when he announced he was running for governor in St. Petersburg in November. It is one of many back-and-forth attacks about education funding and teacher layoffs hurled between the two candidates. Crist’s statement refers to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the $787 billion federal stimulus bill pushed by President Barack Obama and passed by Congress in 2009. The Florida Department of Education published information in 2010 about how many "instructional personnel" the Recovery Act affected. The department identified 19,166 full-time equivalent jobs affecting a total 31,003 employees for the quarter ending June 30, 2010. Instructional personnel included classroom teachers as well as other school employees including guidance counselors, librarians and audio-visual workers. The state’s education commissioner at the time, Eric Smith, said that the stimulus dollars saved 26,000 teacher jobs. (Smith was appointed by Crist.) The stimulus money was paid out over two years: In 2009-10, nearly $908 million went to K-12 education, and another $873 million the year after, according to Ruth Melton, director of government relations for the Florida School Boards Association. "The infusion of this federal cash was tremendously important in keeping school districts solvent during the recession," Melton told PolitiFact Florida when we first looked into this claim in 2013. But it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of teachers who would have been laid off without the federal infusion of money, because we can’t predict how each district would have handled their own budgets. Some districts with healthier reserves might have avoided or minimized layoffs more than other districts. Or perhaps they would have found ways other than teacher cuts to reduce their budgets. "It could have meant actually more teachers than reported," Melton said. At the other extreme, some districts could have laid off more expensive teachers who were close to retirement -- and that could have lowered the number. Our ruling Crist said that if Florida had not taken the stimulus it "would have led to the firing of 20,000 teachers." The Education Department identified 19,166 full-time equivalent jobs affected by the stimulus money. That’s close to what Crist said, but that figure includes not just teachers but other types of school workers as well. In addition, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of teachers who would have been laid off statewide, since districts would have had discretion in how to handle budget cutting and may have had other options to reduce spending beyond laying off teachers. The statement is accurate but needs clarification, so we rate it Mostly True. | null | Charlie Crist | null | null | null | 2014-10-10T16:51:19 | 2014-10-10 | ['None'] |
pomt-11731 | Even with full control of the House, Senate and White House, Republicans have still failed to deliver on their promise of higher wages for working families. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec/12/nancy-pelosi/have-wages-failed-go-donald-trumps-watch/ | On the heels of a generally favorable jobs report, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., criticized Republicans for failing to boost wages for American workers. "November’s jobs report reveals that hard-working Americans still aren’t getting the bigger paychecks they deserve," Pelosi said in a statement that she tweeted out. "Even with full control of the House, Senate and White House, Republicans have still failed to deliver on their promise of higher wages for working families." See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Her talking point is a stretch: Federal data shows wage growth since President Donald Trump took office in January, though one of the two measurements shows the gains barely outpacing inflation. One of the two key statistics for judging this statement is median usual weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for full-time wage and salary workers age 16 years and over. This information is collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is available quarterly. For the last quarter fully under President Barack Obama -- the fourth quarter of 2016 -- this amount stood at $348. After Trump took office, it rose to $350 in the first quarter of 2017, rose again to $354 in the second quarter, and remained the same at $354 in the third and most recent quarter. The $6 increase may not seem like much, but it's still almost a 2 percent increase above the rate of inflation over the course of just three quarters, and that runs counter to the point Pelosi was trying to make. Here’s the full chart, which shows that earnings continued to rise after Trump took office (the three most recent quarters shaded in red). See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com "Generally speaking, earnings increase during economic expansions," said Chris Lafakis, a director at Moody's Analytics. "There can be some debate over how much wage growth a healthy economy should have, and who is responsible for the growth, but it can’t be debated that earnings increased under President Obama and they have continued to increase under President Trump." We also looked for wage growth in another BLS statistic, namely average hourly earnings for all private-sector employees. This statistic shows a slow but steady rise in wages, from $25.98 in December 2016 to $26.55 in November. (The chart below shows the final year under Obama in blue and the months so far under Trump in red): See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com There’s a reason that these two statistics can look a little different. The time period studied is different (hourly vs. weekly), as is the typical case studied (median vs. average). This statistic is also released every month rather than every quarter. The most important difference, however, is that the BLS does not adjust the hourly earnings data for inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the earnings gains on Trump’s watch shrink, though they do not disappear. When Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist, ran an inflation adjustment for us, he found that in 2017, average hourly earnings rose by 0.05 percent. That’s an increase, but it’s barely outpacing inflation. When we checked with Pelosi’s office, they cited a statement by Gary Cohn, the White House’s own National Economic Council director, who said on CNBC’s Squawk Box that "we're still not growing wages in this country." They also said that in January 2016, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., tweeted that "wages are stagnant" even though at the time, they were growing at least as fast as they are today. Our ruling Pelosi said, "Even with full control of the House, Senate and White House, Republicans have still failed to deliver on their promise of higher wages for working families." The two best statistics for judging this assertion both show wage growth. One of them, however, shows growth that’s barely above inflation, meaning that Americans wouldn’t necessarily keep any more of their income in their pocket. We rate her statement Mostly False. See Figure 5 on PolitiFact.com | null | Nancy Pelosi | null | null | null | 2017-12-12T13:45:52 | 2017-12-08 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'White_House'] |
pomt-05877 | President Obama told people "to skip coming here (Las Vegas) for conventions and meetings." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/08/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-president-told-people-skip-vegas-/ | Fired up from a victory in Nevada’s caucuses, Mitt Romney used his stump speech in Las Vegas to remind supporters that President Barack Obama has not fixed the state’s economic woes. "Four years ago, candidate Obama came to Nevada, promising to help. But after he was elected, his help was telling people to skip coming here for conventions and meetings," Romney told the crowd at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa on Feb. 4, 2012. Did we hear that right? Was the president urging a business boycott of Sin City? Time for a fact-check. Obama’s remarks on Vegas Asked for the source of Romney's remark, his campaign pointed us to this story, which covers the president's prickly history with Las Vegas. Romney was right, at least, in saying that Obama has spoken unflatteringly of the city in the past. Twice he has landed in hot water for grasping at a metaphor linking trips to Vegas with extravagance and irresponsibility. But was Romney right that the president wasn’t just dissing all-American weekend trips of debauchery to Vegas -- he was hating on business meetings? On Feb. 11, 2009, Obama spoke about excess on Wall Street to a crowd in Elkhart, Ind. "You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back," Obama said. "You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility." Okay, so CEOs shouldn’t blow federal bailout money at the $10,000 minimum blackjack tables. We get it. But we didn’t hear anything about blowing off conventions. What else? A year later, in February 2010, Obama infuriated the oddsmakers again by drawing an analogy between the federal government’s fiscal practices and those of an average family. "Responsible families don't do their budgets the way the federal government does. Right? When times are tough, you tighten your belts," Obama said at a town hall-style meeting in Nashua N.H. "You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same." Please, Mom and Dad, don’t raid our college fund for a night in the Rain Man suite! Again, the comparison is clear; the reference to conventions and meetings is nonexistent. The backlash Obama’s words landed with a loud thud. The mayor of Las Vegas demanded an apology. Several major companies canceled meetings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars "not because of costs but because of appearances," according to Newsday. "The president needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who is normally an ally of the president. "Las Vegas is suffering through one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and we cannot afford for the president to bring us down any further," added Republican Sen. John Ensign. Obama had to clarify his love of The Strip, telling the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce in February 2010, "Let me set the record straight: I love Vegas...There you go. Always have. I love Vegas." Our ruling Romney said that Obama told people "to skip coming here (Las Vegas) for conventions and meetings." Obama said heads of corporations shouldn’t use taxpayer money for Vegas jaunts (or corporate jets or Super Bowl excursions or any other flight of luxury paid for by the rest of us). And he said parents shouldn’t spend their money on Vegas trips when they need to be saving for kids’ college. That could certainly be construed as a rap on tourism. But a suggestion to skip meetings and conventions? The president said no such thing. Romney’s claim, like so much about Las Vegas, was over the top. We rate it Mostly False. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2012-02-08T18:34:16 | 2012-02-04 | ['Barack_Obama', 'Las_Vegas'] |
goop-00189 | Jessica Simpson Having Twins, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jessica-simpson-twins-baby-girls-not-true/ | null | null | null | Gossip Cop Staff | null | Jessica Simpson NOT Having Twins, Despite Report | 11:36 am, October 3, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04391 | Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have "Iranian advisers by their sides at all times." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/muslim-government-in-the-us/ | null | Politicians | null | David Mikkelson | null | Obama and Clinton Have Iranian Advisers? | 22 July 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'Iran', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
goop-01708 | Grammys Performers List 2018: Who’s Performing At Grammy Awards? | 10 | https://www.gossipcop.com/grammys-performers-list-2018-stars-artists-performing-grammy-awards/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Grammys Performers List 2018: Who’s Performing At Grammy Awards? | 5:01 pm, January 27, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00638 | Says Jeb Bush "once held $1 million in family planning grants hostage until the programs receiving the money agreed not to discuss birth control at all." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2015/may/20/emilys-list/jeb-bush-held-1-million-hostage-abstinence-only-ed/ | A Democratic political action committee ripped Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, saying his positions as Florida’s governor preview what he’d be like as commander in chief -- particularly when it comes to women’s issues. Stephanie Schriock, president of the group Emily’s List, said in an essay on Medium that Bush spent his two terms curbing women’s reproductive and health rights. (Emily’s List helps Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights.) Schriock ticked off several actions that ran counter to the group’s stance, including Bush’s support of abstinence-only sex education. "And let’s not forget that Jeb once held $1 million in family planning grants hostage until the programs receiving the money agreed not to discuss birth control at all," she wrote. We wondered what Schriock meant about Bush holding grant money hostage, so we took a closer look at the books. Not talking about it We found only a few media mentions of a situation resembling a hostage crisis, and they were the same ones Emily’s List sent to us as proof. The primary source was a March 2001 story in the Tampa Bay Times that focused on a budget request from Bush for lawmakers to consider during the legislative session. The story detailed how Bush wanted $1 million of the state Department of Health’s $5.7 million family planning allocation to create education grants for chastity counseling. This would have mirrored some federally funded programs in the state that told teens to wait until marriage to have sex, without discussing birth control methods. Those programs, many of which were privately run by religious groups, operated under names like Best Friends, Sex Can Wait and Everyone's Not Doing It. The request would have marked the first time the state would have funded an abstinence-based counseling program. The idea was criticized by sex education advocates and legislators who said teaching abstinence didn’t work. They also said diverting $1 million would keep many poor women from getting HIV tests, pap smears, birth control counseling and other services at clinics and county health departments. But except for a couple of mentions in other articles about the proposal, the March 2001 Times article was the only place we found that the request was fully examined. Even Emily’s List couldn’t tell us what happened to Bush’s proposal. They did tell us their aim was to point out Bush had made clear he preferred abstinence-only counseling, and was willing to put conditions on funding to achieve that goal. That doesn’t strike us as Bush literally preventing that money from being used for regular family planning services, however. Though the Times story says the request was supported by then-health secretary Bob Brooks, it was still just a request. Florida governors routinely submit a proposed budget each year before the session, but the Legislature has the final say on how money is spent. It appears in 2001 lawmakers didn’t follow Bush’s wishes. The state Department of Health shared appropriations for family planning services going back to 2000 and found nothing specifying funds had to go to abstinence education exclusively. "It does not appear that there was any proviso language that directed $1 million to be spent on chastity programs from the family planning category," spokeswoman Mara Burger told us. The 2001 appropriation for family planning was almost $5.8 million, a figure that has since fallen to $4.2 million today. Florida continues to specify abstinence should be taught as a part of sex ed classes, although school districts are given plenty of leeway. The state is still one of the biggest recipients of federal money for chastity programs. Even anti-Obamacare Republicans in the Legislature agreed in 2012 to take millions set aside for abstinence education in the Affordable Care Act, even while rejecting other aid tied to the law. Our ruling Emily’s List said, "Jeb once held $1 million in family planning grants hostage until the programs receiving the money agreed not to discuss birth control at all." There are a handful of news stories that say Bush in 2001 asked the Legislature to set aside $1 million for chastity programs out of the state’s almost $5.8 million for family planning. That's a bit different from threatening existing programs with a gag order. More importantly, there's no evidence Bush's proposal went into effect. The health department said no requirements for abstinence programs were passed by lawmakers. We rate the statement Mostly False. | null | EMILY's List | null | null | null | 2015-05-20T15:00:00 | 2015-05-14 | ['None'] |
pomt-02665 | The amount of attention paid this week to Chris Christie makes the coverage of Benghazi ... pale in significance. | false | /punditfact/statements/2014/jan/12/karl-rove/karl-rove-says-media-coverage-benghazi-pales-signi/ | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has always attracted a fair amount of media attention. But when news broke last week that a close adviser and a top appointee allegedly orchestrated a traffic jam for political retribution, the Republican leader became the top news story of the day. In fact, Christie’s apology press conference, which lasted nearly two hours and attracted dozens of reporters and cameras, was aired in its entirety on CNN and MSNBC. On Fox News Sunday, Bob Woodward, the Washington Post journalist who helped uncover the Watergate scandal, said he wanted to see more reporting on how the events in New Jersey transpired. But Republican strategist and Fox News contributor Karl Rove said he also wanted more reporting on Benghazi and other incidents involving President Barack Obama. "The amount of attention paid to Chris Christie makes the coverage of Benghazi, at the same time, the coverage of the IRS, pale in significance." Rove said. In this fact-check we decided to focus on the comparison between the events, and the media coverage, in New Jersey and in Libya. Counting the stories Conservatives have long accused the media of covering up controversies in the Obama administration, including the attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya that resulted in the deaths of ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, and reports that the IRS targeted tea party groups. Rove pointed us to reports from the Media Research Center, a conservative website critical of the press, highlighting what they say are disparities in the amount of coverage Christie garnered versus other scandals. We link to them here and here for your consideration. But we also conducted our own analysis to see if Christie’s coverage pales in significance to Benghazi. It’s fair to say the coverage of Christie’s week was significant. When the story first broke in New Jersey newspapers, every major outlet quickly followed their lead. By Sunday, Christie was a topic of debate on all of the political talk shows. Just how much was Christie in the news? A quick search through Lexis-Nexis, a research service that tracks the work of the media, found Christie’s name mentioned in 203 transcripts posted from the cable (CNN, Fox and MSNBC) and network (ABC, CBS and NBC) news outlets, plus National Public Radio. CNN led the way with 83 mentions. A simple search of "Chris Christie" and "bridge" also came up in 30 New York Times articles and 27 Washington Post articles, and 778 times in newspapers and wire stories across the country. Clearly, Christie became a national story. He is a well-known figure thought by many to be the GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2016, and a potential scandal in his administration instantly attracted widespread press attention. But how does that compare to the coverage of Benghazi? It’s tough to put the two controversies side-by-side. The Christie news, which broke under the nose of the New York media, has a clear starting point (when the New Jersey media first reported on it) and climax (Christie’s news conference). The events surrounding Benghazi garnered immediate attention, but had several watershed moments: Obama’s statement from the White House Rose Garden, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice’s news blitz pinning the attacks to an anti-Muslim YouTube video, the presidential debate between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney during which Benghazi was an issue, and the congressional hearings featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among other events. We decided to focus on the week after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which occurred Sept. 11, 2012. It’s a little bit longer of a time period to track (the Christie news broke mid-week so we have just four days of search results), but stick with us. Using the same news outlets we tracked for Christie, we found 250 transcripts that mentioned "Benghazi." Again, CNN led the way with 100 mentions. There were more than 2,800 stories that contain "Benghazi" in newspapers and wire services, though that also includes international newspapers. Domestically, the New York Times wrote 69 stories and the Washington Post had 49. Mainstream news outlets also gave airtime and space to Republicans who alleged a cover up on the part of the administration. During Oct. 18-25, 2012, when accusations were especially frequent, CNN and MSNBC referred to "Benghazi cover up" a combined 13 times. Benghazi was also competing for airtime against other large national news events, like the presidential election and later Hurricane Sandy. With Congress just returning to town, the scandal in Christie’s office broke during a relatively slow week in politics. How in-depth did they go? So that’s a quantitative breakdown. How about a qualitative analysis? Benghazi was a rare international story in 2012 in that Americans actually cared about it. According to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, a nonpartisan think tank, 43 percent of the country told pollsters they "closely followed" the attacks in Benghazi. That made it the eighth most followed news event, trailing continued coverage of the economy and the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Obama’s health care law. It was the only international event in the top 10. Another 31 percent said they specifically followed the Libya investigation very closely. That says volumes about how much Americans were exposed to Benghazi reports in the media. And how about how closely media followed the events in Libya? Well, the New York Times, for starters, had three stories the day after the attack, Sept. 12, 2012. And soon they were starting to challenge early reports on what caused the attacks. By Sept. 13, the New York Times reported that there were actually two attacks on the embassy, "the first one spontaneous and the second highly organized and possibly aided by anti-American infiltrators of Libya’s young government." The New York Times did receive criticism from its own ombudsmen, public editor Margaret Sullivan, after the paper did not put on the front page an October congressional hearing on Benghazi. Instead, it was on A3. But after conservatives held up her column as proof of bias in the press, she penned another column on Oct. 20, 2012, stating "it is utterly wrong to say that the Times has ignored or buried the Libya story. As of Friday, editors had placed it on the front page on 18 days out of 38, sometimes with news, sometimes with analysis. The coverage has been extensive, aggressive and sweeping." The New York Times published an extensive investigation into the Benghazi attack last month. CNN was criticized strongly by the Obama administration for its initial coverage of Benghazi while questioning the White House narrative. The news outlet ran a heavily cited story documenting the final days of Ambassador Stevens from witness accounts. And when reporting on scene in Libya, CNN found Stevens’ personal diary and aired excerpts from the journal against the wishes of the U.S. State Department (and Stevens’ family). The network went on to win an award for its coverage of Benghazi. The New York Times and CNN are just singular examples, and there are others. Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of media and politics at University of Mary Washington, said "at the end of the day, the media was an equal opportunity offender." "The coverage of Benghazi was heavy, in part because Republicans made an issue of it," said Farnsworth, author of Spinner in Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and Themselves. "The coverage of the ‘bridgegate,’ if you raise it to the level of a a ‘-gate’ scandal, is a reflection of Christie’s prominence in national politics." Our ruling Rove said that the coverage of Christie pales "in significance" to the coverage of Benghazi. When news of the attacks on Benghazi broke, coverage was widespread, and it continued through congressional hearings. Moreover, a lot of the coverage questioned the administration’s narrative and response to the attacks. Indeed, Christie has occupied much of the conversation, but it was also in a relatively slow news week. Benghazi garnered significant coverage, even during the height of the presidential election. Perhaps the outcome of those reports didn’t unearth the conspiracy conservatives alleged and hoped for. More is still likely to come out, and Republicans continue to keep it in the news. But to insinuate the mainstream media ignored the attacks while putting Christie through the ringer goes too far. We rate Rove’s statement False. | null | Karl Rove | null | null | null | 2014-01-12T18:46:33 | 2014-01-12 | ['Chris_Christie'] |
snes-06064 | A clown statue that spooked a babysitter turns out to be a knife-wielding intruder hiding in the house. | legend | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/statue-of-limitations-2/ | null | Horrors | null | David Mikkelson | null | Home Intruder Poses as Clown Statue | 20 June 2014 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03215 | Houston Mayor Annise Parker Subpoenas Sermons | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/annise-parker-subpoenas/ | null | politics | null | null | null | Houston Mayor Annise Parker Subpoenas Sermons | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
snes-01429 | Is This a 'Flaming Tire' Rocketing Past a Car? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/video-flaming-tire-car/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Is This a ‘Flaming Tire’ Rocketing Past a Car? | 16 November 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13279 | Says Deborah Ross "supports the Iran nuclear deal and the ransom it paid for hostages." | half-true | /north-carolina/statements/2016/oct/12/john-bolton-superpac/attack-ad-gets-deborah-ross-stance-iran-nuclear-de/ | North Carolina’s incumbent senator, Republican Richard Burr, is facing a closer-than-expected re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Deborah Ross. Now a national conservative group is coming to Burr’s aid, with a $1 million ad campaign that criticizes Ross’ views on foreign policy and national security. "Now she supports the Iran nuclear deal and the ransom it paid for hostages, despite it being bad for America," the ad says. It was paid for by the John Bolton SuperPAC, run by the former U.N. ambassador and Republican political advisor John Bolton. Burr is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and has had several prominent moments in that position. He helped lead the government’s fight against Apple to try to make the company unlock the phones used by the terrorists in the San Bernardino attack last year. He also spearheaded efforts to keep a report on the CIA’s torture program out of the public eye, calling it politically motivated. Ross has no foreign policy experience. She was formerly a state legislator and executive director of the North Carolina ACLU. The new ad campaign attempts to tie her to the policies of the Obama administration. But is it true that Ross supports "the Iran nuclear deal and the ransom it paid for hostages" like the ad claims? A refresher on the Iran deal The nuclear deal was an exchange: Iran would give up its aspirations for a nuclear weapon, and in return the international community would lift many of the economic sanctions on the country. We’ve previously written summaries of both the negotiations and the technical details of the deal and its enforcement. It can be a tricky subject to talk about, and claims on both sides often lack nuance. Burr previously received a Half True for his claim that Obama and Hillary Clinton were "responsible for leading America into a deal that will arm Iran." And for a more complete picture on the billions of dollars Iran will receive via the deal – largely coming from overseas bank accounts that had previously been frozen – and whether that money could be put toward terrorism, see this Half True claim from Rudy Giuliani. Support for the deal? Ross does say she supports the nuclear deal, although she adds a caveat. "In the future, the U.S. should extend Iranian sanctions and consider increasing them to stop Iran from financing terrorism around the globe," Ross says on the foreign policy section of her website. This position seems to be contradictory, since the main part of the deal was to remove many sanctions from the country. So does she support it or not? Experts told us that while Ross’ two sentiments seem at odds with one another, they actually aren’t – as long as any new sanctions are added due to Iran’s financing of terrorist groups, like Hezbollah. But it’s a slippery slope. "Iran could pull out of the deal" if the United States adds sanctions for the wrong reason, said Aaron Arnold, an international affairs expert at Harvard University. According to Jim Walsh, who leads the Security Studies Program at MIT: "If Iran does something new and egregious that warrants new sanctions, the U.S. has every right under the deal to respond any way it wants, including sanctions. But if this is just, ‘I hate Iran so we should have more sanctions,’ that is an agreement killer." Duke University professor Peter Feaver referred to Ross’ support of both the Iran deal and extra sanctions as "tip-toeing through a minefield." Feaver worked in defense policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He said Ross’ seemingly contradictory position is technically possible since the deal had to allow the possibility for future American sanctions in order to survive Congress. Republicans have tried to pass legislation killing the deal but don’t have enough votes in the Senate. "While in practice those objectives have been in tension with each other, increasingly so as the Obama Administration resorts to ever more desperate measures to prop up the Iran deal, they are not fundamentally at odds," Feaver said. Prisoners and ransom? So Ross supports the Iran nuclear deal, even with the caveat that she also supports new sanctions on Iran. But what about her support for "ransom" payments? PolitiFact has previously looked into whether the $400 million the United States sent to Iran, shortly before several Americans were freed in January, was actually a ransom. We ruled that Mostly False. It was the first part of a $1.7 billion settlement the U.S. agreed to pay in an international arbitration tribunal, related to a failed 1979 arms deal. Yet at the same time, U.S. officials have acknowledged they withheld the money until they were sure that five Americans held in Iranian jails had been released. That previous fact check concluded that, "While some in the national security community might consider the transaction unsavory, ineffectual, or legally questionable, calling it ‘ransom’ isn’t quite accurate." Whatever the appropriate phrase for that payment, Deborah Ross has clearly said she does not support it. She said as much in a TV interview earlier this month, and in a paper outlining her foreign policy positions. "The United States government should not pay Tehran for the return of American prisoners," Ross wrote. So we asked Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the PAC, if there were examples of Ross saying anything that could back up the ad’s claim. Marquis didn’t point to any examples, but he said that doesn’t matter. "You can’t have one without the other," he said. "Of course she’s not going to say she’s for ransom payments. But she supports the Iran deal which included the payment. It seems that Ross is trying to have her cake and eat it too." However, several legal experts we spoke with said it’s not necessarily true that the payment was part of the Iran deal. Eric Lorber, a terrorism financing expert and senior associate with the Financial Integrity Network consulting firm, testified before Congress last month regarding the payment. He said in an interview the timing had more to do with the release of the prisoners than with the implementation of the nuclear deal, even though all three happened around the same time. "The bottom line is that the payment wasn't part of the nuclear deal," he said. Our ruling A new ad attacking Richard Burr’s challenger Deborah Ross says Ross "supports the Iran nuclear deal and the ransom it paid for hostages." Ross does support the nuclear deal. She does not support "ransom" payments for American prisoners. The group behind the ad said she can’t support the Iran deal and also oppose the payment, arguing that the payment was part of the deal, but experts say that isn’t correct. Since the ad gets one part right and one part wrong, we rate this claim Half True. Correction: The payment from the U.S. to Iran was agreed to in a settlement in an international tribunal. It was not from an order from that tribunal. This correction does not change our ruling. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/80b12778-8fbb-4312-8585-24c71767571e | null | John Bolton SuperPAC | null | null | null | 2016-10-12T11:58:42 | 2016-09-27 | ['Iran'] |
snes-00665 | An exorcism in 1988 saved a house from destruction during Hurricane Ike in 2008. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/house-exorcism-hurricane/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did an Exorcism Save a House from Destruction During a Hurricane? | 3 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05442 | In the "Obama economy ... the youth unemployment rate is double the unemployment rate for all Americans." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/26/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-youth-unemployment-rate-double-wh/ | For the third time in recent weeks, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has released an "infographic" that criticizes President Barack Obama’s jobs record for key demographic groups. First came women, then Hispanics, and now youth. One of its claims got our attention: "The youth unemployment rate is double the unemployment rate for all Americans." The graphic goes on to say that the unemployment rate is 8.2 percent overall and 16.4 percent for youth. When we looked at data compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, we found that these numbers referred to the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Americans 16 years and older (the category the graphic calls "all") and ages 16 to 24 (the category it calls "youth"). We confirmed that those numbers are correct. However, we wondered the 2-to-1 ratio was unique to Obama. It’s not. Not by a long shot. We downloaded historical BLS unemployment rate data for the two age ranges, then divided the "all" number by the "youth" number. Going back to January 2001, the month President George W. Bush took office, the ratio of the two unemployment rates has been remarkably consistent. Over that 135-month period, the ratio has barely budged, ranging only from 1.9 to 2.4. That’s essentially the same 2-to-1 ratio that the Romney graphic used to criticize Obama’s record on youth jobs. In other words, the two statistics essentially move in lockstep, regardless of whether the broader job market is in a period of modest growth, general stability or precipitous decline. In fact, if you average together all the monthly ratios under Obama, it’s lower than it was under Bush. The average ratio under Obama was 1.9, compared to 2.2 under Bush. While it’s accurate to say the two unemployment figures are in a 2-to-1 ratio today, "it’s a meaningless, or perhaps misleading, statistic for people who are unaware that the youth unemployment rate is always well above the unemployment rate of people 25 and older," said Gary Burtless, a labor and employment economist at the Brookings Institution. (Burtless contributed $750 to Obama’s campaign in 2011. However, in 2008 he provided advice on aspects of labor policy to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and he has worked as a government economist and served on federal advisory panels under presidents of both parties.) Romney does have a point that younger Americans are suffering during the current recession. We found that in January 2008 -- a year before Obama took office and right after the most recent recession began -- the unemployment rate for Americans 16 to 24 years of age was 11.7 percent. By January 2009, that had surged to 14.9 percent, and it surged again by January 2010 to 18.7 percent. By January 2011, it had begun to recover, dropping to 17.9 percent and falling again by January 2012 to 16.0 percent. So the unemployment rate has recovered from its high point under Obama, but it’s still significantly above its pre-recession level. Our ruling Romney has a point that young Americans are hurting in today’s job market. There’s no question that employment prospects have dried up for many recent high-school and college graduates. But bolstering this argument by making the claim that the "youth unemployment rate is double the unemployment rate for all Americans" is silly, since that's consistently been the case under both President George W. Bush and Obama. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2012-04-26T15:27:55 | 2012-04-24 | ['Barack_Obama', 'United_States'] |
pomt-05115 | The median income in America has dropped by 10 percent in the last four years. | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2012/jun/27/mitt-romney/romney-says-median-income-has-dropped-10-percent-l/ | Milking an opponent’s mistake is a campaign staple, especially if you happen to be a presidential candidate visiting the Dairy State. During his June 18, 2012, trip to Janesville, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney again mocked President Barack Obama’s recent declaration that the private sector is "doing fine." And he used a recycled line to make his case that Obama was dead wrong in his perception. "The median income in America has dropped by 10 percent in the last four years," Romney told a sweat-drenched crowd at a manufacturing plant, "even as gasoline prices have doubled and the prices on many things we buy have gone up and up and up." Romney used the same line about falling incomes in a GOP presidential debate on January 23, 2012. It earned a Half True from PolitiFact National, which said the numbers were outdated by six months, somewhat off the mark and from a respected but unproven data-analysis firm. We wondered what the numbers look like now, with another 10 months in the books. In this case, we’ll look only at the income trend, not to what degree Obama is to blame for any decline. In Janesville, Romney surely was out to criticize Obama, but his remarks show it was more for being out of touch than saying he was responsible for creating the problem. The gold standard of income data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey -- Annual Social and Economic Supplements. But it is generated only once a year, so it is not very timely. The 2011 data is not out yet. More on that later. In both instances, Romney turned to household income figures generated by a private economic research agency, Maryland-based Sentier Research. The firm uses other Census Bureau income data that is released monthly and adjusts it to provide a more timely look at income trends. Its reports have become widely quoted in media accounts. In January, and again in Janesville, Romney said he was comparing changes in the "last four years," which takes us to different periods in the George W. Bush presidency as the starting point. We examined Sentier’s reports from April 2008 to April 2012, the latest available from the firm at the time of Romney’s speech. The inflation-adjusted median household income declined 8.3 percent when comparing those two points in time, a decline of $4,596 per household. So by the latest numbers in the report Romney used, he’s in the ballpark but off more than a percentage point. Case closed? Not quite. Romney’s campaign told us relied on a reference to earlier Sentier research that was highlighted in an April 30, 2012, Bloomberg news report. That piece referred to February 2012 data from Sentier showing a 9.7 percent drop compared with the same month in 2008. The big swing in just a couple months is not unusual in the month-to-month data. So, as in the presidential debate reference, Romney was very close using outdated data, but high compared to the latest data available when he spoke. Either way, according to the Sentier data, the income trend has gone the wrong direction in the last four years. Median household incomes move up and down, but overall trended sharply downward during Obama’s first two and a half years before recovering somewhat since summer 2011, according to the firm’s index. The more standard source of income statistics, the annual Census Bureau data, has figures only through 2010 because 2011 is not out yet. That survey asks people in the spring what they earned for the previous calendar year. Using that annual data for a four-year comparison going back to 2007, incomes declined 6.4 percent from 2007 to 2010. Because the reference periods are different, the trends identified by the annual census data can’t really be compared directly to monthly census data that Sentier uses. PolitiFact National has examined in detail the data source that Romney uses, Sentier Research. The firm is run by two retired Census Bureau officials (one of whom, Gordon Green, directed the income statistics program) whose work has been cited in many national news publications. Sentier’s client list has included major government clients and think tanks on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Economists have said the Sentier-created income index fills a knowledge gap in a timely way, but still has to stand the test of time. Our rating Romney chided Obama for being out of touch, saying that median household incomes have fallen 10 percent. He uses data from a reputable private firm that used census data to create a new income index. At one point in Obama’s term incomes were down about 10 percent from four years earlier, but the decline is now closer to 8 percent, based on the firm’s data. Romney continues to use the outdated figure, making the decline sound somewhat larger than it is. We’ll stick with the Half True rating he received in January, based on the Truth-O-Meter definition of a claim that is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context." | null | Mitt Romney | null | null | null | 2012-06-27T09:00:00 | 2012-06-18 | ['United_States'] |
ranz-00004 | We have the lowest home-ownership rate in 60 years, we need to build houses. | fact | https://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/election17-fact-or-fiction/story/201857236/fact-or-fiction-do-the-leaders-know | Home ownership is indeed at its lowest in 66 years, sitting at a rate of 63.2 percent, as shown in Statistics NZ's Dwelling and Household Estimates. This rate has been steadily trending down in the last two or so decades since the historic high of 73.8 percent in 1991. The lowest home-ownership rate recorded was in 1951, with a rate of 61.2 percent. | Elections | Labour leader Jacinda Ardern | null | null | Fact or Fiction: Do the leaders know? | 4 September 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06424 | Every month since 9/11, there have been as many suicide attacks against the United States and its allies as there were in all the years leading up to 9/11. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/24/ron-paul/ron-paul-says-terror-attacks-have-increased/ | Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., has made a name for himself by railing against federal government overreach. After remarks at Politics & Eggs, a popular political forum in Manchester, N.H., one Granite Stater in attendance asked Paul to describe his foreign policy position. Again, Paul mentioned federal government intervention, this time our behavior as "policeman of the world." That activity, according to Paul, has cost America money, safety and created foreign enemies in the process. Paul cited the animosity that our foreign entanglements have created, comparing suicide attacks against the U.S. and its allies before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Suicide terrorism has been around for awhile," Paul said. "There was a bit of it before 9/11, obviously, but if you look at all the suicide terrorist attacks prior to 9/11, if you equate that number, it’s equivalent to the attacks on us and our allies every month, compared to all the years before 9/11, which means that we’re under systematic attack." Really? As many per month as all the years before? His campaign e-mailed us a list of articles and news stories before 9/11 with a list of four al-Qaeda plots and attacks against the U.S., including its embassies, before 9/11. Not all of the incidents listed were suicide attacks (the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center) or even carried out (the thwarted Bojinka plot in 1994). The list of attacks post-9/11 provided by Paul’s campaign included 30 or more al-Qaeda actions against U.S. troops, foreign citizens working for the Defense Department, attacks in foreign nations in which Western tourists — including Americans — were killed, and suicide attacks carried out against U.S. allies, including Israel, Great Britain and Australia. The links ranged from October 2002 to January 2011, but the incidents were sporadic and not monthly. So what Paul's office provided didn't square with what Paul had said. When we tried to get additional information, Paul’s campaign did not respond. We decided to look for additional resources for a more accurate listing of the suicide attacks that have occurred against America and its allies before and after 9/11. The University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST), features a database of all suicide attacks from 1981 to 2011, which includes the location of attacks, the target type, the weapon used, as well as information on the demographic and general biographical characteristics of the suicide attackers. The database, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense since 2004, according to Robert A. Pape, Professor and Director of the CPOST project, uses 1981-2011 as parameters because that's when suicide missions as they are understood today began. "It goes back to the early ‘80s because that’s when suicide attack really begins," said Pape, who is also the author of Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. "Before that you have people who kill themselves to avoid capture -- that’s different than killing yourself to kill someone else. Then you have the Kamikazes in World War II. …But in terms of the modern phenomenon – it goes back to the early ‘80s." Because Paul’s campaign specified al-Qaeda as attackers in their lists of sources, we searched the CPOST database for its category "al-Qaeda vs. U.S. & Allies" suicide campaigns from 1981-2011. Pape said CPOST means by that category, "Americans and those working with or for Americans." The database revealed al-Qaeda carried out 42 suicide missions against the U.S. and its allies from 1981-2011. Four were prior to 9/11, in 1995, 1996, 1998 and 2000. After Sept. 11, 2001, there were 37 suicide attacks. With 37 suicide attacks in the 121 months post-9/11, clearly there are some months with no attacks. In the months when attacks occurred, they numbered from one to three a month. The maximum number occurred twice: in April 2007 and January 2011. So the monthly levels of al-Qaeda attacks post-9/11 is not equivalent to all the suicide attacks on the U.S. and its allies that predated that date. But since Paul’s campaign provided a list that was broader than just suicide attacks by al-Qaeda — some of them were not suicide attacks, and others, foiled plots — we figured they might have also misinterpreted which group Paul meant in his remarks. Paul didn’t actually identify a specific group. We decided to see how the data compared if we searched all suicide attacks committed against the U.S. and allies before and after 9/11 — not limited to al-Qaeda attacks, but also those carried out by Afghani rebels, Hezbollah, Iraqi rebels, Pakistani militants and Uzbek rebels. With expanded parameters, the database revealed 1,844 suicide attacks against the U.S. and its allies —10 of which happened before 9/11. The 1,833 suicide attacks in the months following 9/11, from the end of 2001 into 2011, occurred from once a month (Nov. 2002) to 48 times (July 2007). We posed Paul’s claim to Pape. He said the number of suicide attacks committed against Americans and their Allies each month after 9/11 is substantially greater than the years before. "What happens is, the more we put troops overseas, the more we’ve had this explosion of anti-American inspired suicide terrorism. "A good way to think about that, the year before 9/11, the year 2000, there was one suicide attack against the USS Cole that was anti-American inspired and killed US troops abroad," Pape said. "Last year, there were nearly 300 suicide attacks around the world, about 270 of them were anti-American inspired -- that is, against Americans or people working with or for Americans." "Even when they’re attacking Muslims, they’re very often attacking people directly for America." "We have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, then on the border of Pakistan, that’s where the hotbeds of suicide terrorism are. They’re not happening in Bangladesh. The real hotbeds of suicide terrorism are exactly where we put the troops after we put the troops there, not before. …There was no suicide terrorism in Iraq period until we put our troops there." We asked Pape if it was accurate to say that "each month" suicide attacks against Americans and their allies are "equivalent" to the total that occurred before 9/11. "Each month -- that would probably be about right," Pape said. "It’s going to vary month to month, and the year 2000 is a good proxy for before 9/11. … If anything, he’s still sort of under-counting." To be certain, PolitiFact went through each the 1,833 suicide attacks that have occurred against the U.S. and its allies in the months since 9/11, tallied up the number of incidents each month since the tragedy, and found the median. The median was 18 suicide attacks per month—more than the 10 total suicide attacks against the US and Allies CPOST cited before Sept. 11, 2001. So, like Pape said, Paul actually is under-counting when he suggests that the number of suicide attacks against the U.S. and its Allies each month is equivalent to the total attacks before Sept. 11. "It’s overwhelmingly born out by the data, the truth is we just don’t like to hear this," Pape said. "(Paul) is just pointing out an inconvenient fact." Pape said the suicide attacks of more recent years contain the significant months to compare. "In recent years, it’s more like the difference is between 10-25 (suicide attacks a month) around the world," Pape said. "In Afghanistan and much less now in Iraq, as we’ve pulled our troops out, the suicide attacks are falling like a rock." Our ruling: Whether Paul meant al-Qaeda suicide attacks only, or all groups who have executed suicide campaigns against the U.S. and its allies, was unclear. Either way, the number of suicide attacks against the U.S. and its allies since 9/11 is not "equivalent" to the total before 9/11. The average number each month is actually greater than the total number that predated that day, so Paul is actually understating the magnitude. And the data support his underlying point that the number of attacks since Sept. 11, 2011, has grown. We rate Paul's claim Mostly True. | null | Ron Paul | null | null | null | 2011-10-24T14:21:29 | 2011-09-30 | ['United_States'] |
vogo-00628 | Statement: “PLAs deny nearly 85 percent of California’s construction workforce the ability to do public work projects … PLAs put special interests ahead of the public interest by restricting the bidding process to ONLY contractors backed by big labor unions…,” Eric Christen, executive director of Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, wrote in an editorial published in the San Diego Daily Transcript on March 1. | determination: huckster propaganda | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/who-can-bid-work-for-pla-projects/ | Analysis: Christen’s editorial blasted project labor agreements, or PLAs, which are pre-hire agreements used by government for some public works contracts. The San Diego Unified School District has instituted one but the county and other local municipalities want to ban them. | null | null | null | null | Who Can Bid, Work For PLA Projects? | March 3, 2010 | null | ['California'] |
goop-02780 | Jennifer Lopez Pregnant With Alex Rodriguez’s Baby Boy, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-lopez-pregnant-alex-rodriguez-baby-boy/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Lopez NOT Pregnant With Alex Rodriguez’s Baby Boy, Despite Fake News | 11:17 am, May 24, 2017 | null | ['Alex_Rodriguez', 'Jennifer_Lopez'] |
snes-05414 | President Obama said that "if we pass more gun laws, crime will go away." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-gun-laws-crime/ | null | Politics | null | Dan Evon | null | False: Obama Said Gun Laws Will Eliminate Crime | 5 January 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama'] |
tron-02294 | Major General Craig Olson Faces Court Martial for Thanking God | previously truth! now resolved! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/major-general-craig-olson-faces-court-martial-for-thanking-god/ | null | military | null | null | null | Major General Craig Olson Faces Court Martial for Thanking God | May 29, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00067 | Nicole Kidman Binging On Botox And Fillers? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/nicole-kidman-botox-fillers/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Nicole Kidman Binging On Botox And Fillers? | 4:33 pm, October 29, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01617 | Comrades Allege Bergdahl Desertion | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/bowe-bergdahl/ | null | government | null | null | null | Comrades Allege Bergdahl Desertion | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13526 | Says GOP U.S. Senate candidate Darryl Glenn "wants to eliminate the Department of Education" and jeopardize college funding for 320,000 Coloradans. | true | /colorado/statements/2016/aug/31/colorado-democratic-party/colorado-dems-say-darryl-glenn-wants-eliminate-dep/ | The Colorado Democratic Party says Republican U.S. Senate candidate Darryl Glenn wants to eliminate the Education Department and "jeopardize" federal student funding for more than 300,000 Coloradans. "Darryl Glenn as a United States senator would be no friend to students," Chris Meagher, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a news release. "Glenn wants to eliminate the Department of Education and jeopardize Pell Grants and federal student loans for 320,000 Coloradans. He opposes student loan forgiveness programs and even believes the government has no responsibility to help curb the rising costs of a college education." The state Democratic Party took its message to events at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado in Boulder. Republicans have called for abolishing the federal Education Department since President Ronald Reagan vowed to do so in his 1980 presidential campaign. The department was created in 1867 but did not become a Cabinet-level agency until 1980. It "establishes policy for, administers and coordinates most federal assistance to education," according to the department website. President Barack Obama has requested a $69.4 billion department budget for fiscal year 2017. The agency's kindergarten-through-12th grade programs annually serve about 50 million students attending more than 98,000 public schools and 28,000 private schools. Department programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study assistance to more than 13 million students attending college and other postsecondary programs. We wanted to fact-check this statement by the state Democratic Party: "(Darryl) Glenn wants to eliminate the Education Department and jeopardize Pell Grants and federal student loans for 320,000 Coloradans." The Colorado Department of Higher Education, the agency that oversees the state’s public university and college system, confirms that nearly 324,000 people in the state received federal student aid in fiscal year 2015. State students received a total of $1.4 billion in federal student aid. We asked the Democratic Party for information supporting the claim about Glenn’s intentions for the Education Department and federal grants and loans. Meagher pointed to responses Glenn made to a candidate survey for the Denver Post’s June Voter Guide. Asked what significant spending cuts he would support to balance the budget and reduce the annual deficit, Glenn replied in part: "I support the elimination and defunding of all agencies like the Education and Energy Departments because they fall outside of the framework of the Constitution." "Does the federal government have a responsibility to help with student debt, and what ideas do you think would make a difference?" the Post asked. "No," Glenn said. "There is no constitutional basis for the federal government to be mandated to assist with student debt. Better educating our college students on the risks of high student debt and helping them to find alternatives to taking out student loans would help make the difference to their financial future." Glenn put his position a little differently on his campaign website, saying he puts more stock in parents managing students’ financial burdens than the federal government. "I'm not talking about cutting one dime out of education. I’m talking about who is in charge," Glenn wrote. "I trust Colorado families and teachers way more than I trust D.C. central planners who think they know better than parents do." Glenn says instead of sending millions of dollars to the Education Department, "I believe those dollars should be returned to Colorado so parents, teachers and superintendents have the freedom to make choices and direct the education of their kids." Glenn campaign spokeswoman Katey Price told PolitiFact, "Eliminating the Department of Education doesn't mean cutting education; it means returning all those dollars back to the states. These things aren’t in conflict." How would it work? Glenn has not said how the federal funding should be "returned" to Colorado parents and local school districts. For example, would state government administer the funding? Price also did not elaborate. An expert on student financial aid systems said state-run programs lack the federal government’s ability to leverage better interest rates for students. "What the federal government does when it makes student loans is to use its size to get lower rates than states and MUCH lower than students are able to get on unsecured loans," Robert Shireman, a former deputy undersecretary in the Department of Education for the Obama administration, said in an email to PolitiFact. Shireman was the architect of a 2010 financial aid overhaul by the Obama administration and Congress, which had the federal government lend directly to students -- eliminating the government-subsidized private sector loan program. "While there have been state loan programs, they tend to be small and usually lack helpful protections like income-based repayment (which is possible because the federal government has income information through the IRS)," added Shireman, who is now a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. The New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, the largest state-based program in the nation, has become a symbol of the pitfalls of state loan programs. A ProPublica and New York Times investigation found the New Jersey program charged higher interest rates than similar federal programs and, in disputes, the state aggressively uses lawsuits against borrowers along with its power to garnish wages, seize state income tax refunds, revoke professional licenses and even take away lottery winnings. A 2015 story titled, "What Happens If We Abolish the Department of Education?" by the New America think tank, said eliminating the department and its student aid funding would likely lead to the closure of some private schools and community colleges and a decrease in the number of people going to college. The story said it would also increase the number of people seeking to attend state schools, and likely require a jump in state taxes to support public colleges and universities. Our Ruling The Colorado Democratic Party said Darryl Glenn "wants to eliminate the Department of Education and jeopardize Pell Grants and federal student loans for 320,000 Coloradans." Glenn has acknowledged he wants to abolish and defund the department, adding "there is no constitutional basis for the federal government to be mandated to assist with student debt." He said he wants the federal education department’s funding to be "returned to Colorado so parents, teachers and superintendents have the freedom to make choices and direct the education of their kids." But he doesn’t propose an alternative, such as an organization to administer a state loan program. We rate the claim True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/4c87d10a-fc99-416b-a8b5-a6142536a47d | null | Colorado Democratic Party | null | null | null | 2016-08-31T16:26:46 | 2016-08-23 | ['United_States', 'Colorado'] |
farg-00322 | McCain ‘Accidentally’ Killed 134 U.S. Soldiers While Serving In Navy | false | https://www.factcheck.org/2018/08/after-mccains-death-a-false-claim-resurfaces/ | null | askfactcheck | FactCheck.org | Angelo Fichera | ['military deaths'] | After McCain’s Death, a False Claim Resurfaces | August 28, 2018 | 2018-08-28 20:42:20 UTC | ['United_States'] |
goop-02680 | Miranda Kerr Pregnant, | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/miranda-kerr-not-pregnant-evan-spiegel-baby/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Miranda Kerr NOT Pregnant, Despite Report | 10:47 am, July 11, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01694 | Obama White House Intentionally Omits American Flags from Press Conferences | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-east-room-flag-flap/ | null | government | null | null | null | Obama White House Intentionally Omits American Flags from Press Conferences | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00393 | The claim: Joe Hockey says within six years Australia will have "the biggest medical research endowment fund in the world". | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-21/will-australia-have-the-biggest-medical-research-fund/5454810 | The claim: Joe Hockey says within six years Australia will have "the biggest medical research endowment fund in the world". | ['medical-research', 'health', 'doctors-and-medical-professionals', 'liberals', 'government-and-politics', 'budget', 'hockey-joe', 'australia'] | null | null | ['medical-research', 'health', 'doctors-and-medical-professionals', 'liberals', 'government-and-politics', 'budget', 'hockey-joe', 'australia'] | Will Australia's new medical research fund be the biggest in the world? | Wed 21 May 2014, 3:05am | null | ['None'] |
goop-00652 | Rachel Bilson, Eddie Cibrian Feuding On “Take Two” Set? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/rachel-bilson-eddie-cibrian-feud-rivalry-take-two/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Rachel Bilson, Eddie Cibrian Feuding On “Take Two” Set? | 11:13 am, July 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09476 | The Republicans have repeatedly said that they agree with 80 percent of what's in our bill. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/01/debbie-wasserman-schultz/wasserman-schultz-says-republicans-regularly-say-t/ | On the Feb. 28, 2010, edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., urged congressional Republicans to join negotiations over a health care bill, citing what she said were their own past statements about the health care reform process. "The Republicans have repeatedly said that they agree with 80 percent of what's in our bill," she said. "And, at the end of the day, what we need to do is sit down and negotiate over the differences on the 20 percent. The Republicans right now are focused all about regaining power. They don't have any interest in us accomplishing comprehensive health care reform. That's been evident. There isn't anyone that is saying, 'Come on, let's just work this out.' What they're saying is, 'Start over.' 'Start over,' the American people understand, means, 'Do nothing.' " The part that caught our eye was her claim that "Republicans have repeatedly said that they agree with 80 percent of what's in our bill." We wish we could have tested whether there actually is 80 percent agreement between the parties on health care, but we couldn't think of a way to pull it off. So we'll do the next best thing and see whether Wasserman Schultz is correct that Republicans have made this argument repeatedly. Wasserman Schultz is in good Democratic company in making a claim of wide bipartisan agreement on health care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., once put the level of agreement at 90 percent, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put the figure at "at least 80, 85 percent." Most notably, President Barack Obama used the figure near the close of his Sept. 9, 2009, health care address to Congress, saying that "there is agreement in this chamber on about 80 percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been." We can see why Democrats seeking to pass a health care bill would like to play up the common ground they share with their political rivals. But what about Republicans? Using Lexis-Nexis and Google, we looked through news coverage, transcripts and news releases to see if Republicans had indeed invoked the 80 percent figure with any frequency. We'll start with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz referred to agreeing "with 80 percent of what's in our bill." To some, that suggests she's referring to the bill in her own chamber, the House. In the examples we found, it's sometimes hard to tell which of the various Democratic proposals a speaker is referring to. But we do think that Wasserman Schultz could just as easily have been speaking as a Democrat, rather than a House member, when she used the term "our" bill. So we'll note two instances -- the first two listed below -- that fit the strict definition of referring to the House bill after passage, as well as four others in which Republicans were talking about Democratic bills more generally. • Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La. Boustany -- a physician who was tapped by Republicans to deliver the response to President Barack Obama's Sep. 9, 2009, address to Congress on health care -- issued a news release on Feb. 25, 2010, after the conclusion of the president's Blair House health care summit, which Boustany attended as a delegate. In the statement, Boustany said, "Most Democrats, Independents and Republicans do agree on 80 percent of the solutions to bring down health care costs, but these bills focus where we disagree. Rather, we should scrap these bills, like the American people want us to, and focus on bringing down health costs. As a doctor, I know people want to buy insurance across state lines, pool together to get a better price and limit frivolous lawsuits -- all of these will lower costs, and they can be done in a simple way. Unfortunately, Democrats' 2,000-plus page bills complicate health care instead of lowering costs when families struggle to make ends meet." • Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. On Jan. 21, 2010, LaTourette, an eight-term House member, took to the House floor and said, "Let's get a bill. Let's get something done on the 80 percent that we can agree about. We can fight for the rest of the couple years on the 20 percent we don't. But let's get something done for the American people." • Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss. On the Nov. 8, 2009, edition of Meet the Press, two politicians -- Barbour and Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa. -- both cited the 80 percent. Taking his cue from Rendell, who first cited the percentage, host David Gregory asked Barbour whether it's "a problem, politically, for Republicans to be the party of 'No'" on a health care bill. Barbour responded, "Well, I think, first of all, most people in America don't want this. So to be the people that defeat it will be popular. But Ed said something very important -- 60 percent, 80 percent of the things that we talk about in health care could have passed the House last night 400 to 20. But instead the (Democratic) leadership chose not to stop there but to try to cram down the country's throat a government-run health care system that CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, says it's going to drive up health insurance premiums. ... Yes, we could have a very good health care reform bill that will pass overwhelmingly, but about 10 things in here wouldn't be included." • Wisconsin Republican Party. On Oct. 9, 2009, the Wisconsin Republican Party issued a press release titled, "The Truth About Democrat's (sic) Health Care Experiment." The release said in part, "Both parties agree on 80 percent of these common-sense health care reforms and these ideas could quickly pass if Democrats began working with Republicans on these issues." • Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Cornyn -- a member of the Senate Republican leadership -- said the following on the Sept. 13, 2009, edition of Meet the Press -- and then sent out a news release touting his comments. "I would suggest," Cornyn said, "that this is a case where the 80/20 rule applies -- that 80 percent of this we could probably agree with, as long as people would agree to leave the 20 percent we can't agree with out." • Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. On June 11, 2009, several Republican senators held a news conference on health care. Enzi, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was asked by a reporter, "Senator, you often speak of an 80-20 rule, that if people can agree on the 80 percent, then you -- (off mike). What's the 80 percent that you could see agreement on?" Enzi acknowledged that the bill emerging from his committee was "very complicated. ... So if I tried to point out what the 80 percent is, it would take me a real long time. But there is 80 percent there that we can have agreement on." It's important to note that some think the notion that the parties agree on 80 percent is bunk. "I don't know what that number means. I have no idea how you'd calculate something like that," said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., according to a McClatchy Newspapers column by David Lightman that was titled: "80 percent agreement on health care? No way that's true." Lightman also quoted Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, saying, "I don't see it," and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, joking, "Most of the 80 percent doesn't involve money." Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., also pointed out a small but potentially significant difference in wording. "Republicans and Democrats probably agree on what 80 percent of the problems are with health care -- but those problems and various solutions are entirely different than agreeing on 80 percent of a bill, especially one to the size, scope and costs that Democrats keep trying to force," Dayspring said. He suggested, for instance, that both parties may agree on the need to address pre-existing conditions, to improve access to insurance for small businesses, and to reduce costs. "Even though there are differences as to the precise remedy or method of the solution, these are issues that could probably be worked out," Dayspring said. "Unfortunately, Democrats ... are fixated on the 20 percent where there will never be agreement, namely a much more expansive government role." Wasserman Schultz is correct that Republicans have been using the "80 percent" talking point. We found at least six examples in which Republicans used it, several in high-profile settings, including two tapings of Meet the Press and a televised House floor speech. But it's unclear in many of those instances what precisely the Republicans are referring to. We rate her statement Mostly True. | null | Debbie Wasserman Schultz | null | null | null | 2010-03-01T18:59:17 | 2010-02-28 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-12025 | Says "92 percent of the people agree on DACA." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep/18/donald-trump/president-donald-trumps-half-true-claim-support-da/ | President Donald Trump has questioned why undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children should be deported, a sharp departure from the campaign when he advocated for the removal of all who were violating immigration laws. Trump’s administration is phasing out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation. At the same time, Trump wants Congress to pass a permanent solution for the so-called "Dreamers," saying the idea has very high support among Americans. (DACA recipients are commonly called "Dreamers.") "Look, 92 percent of the people agree on DACA, but what we want is we want very, very powerful border security," Trump said Sept. 14 before traveling from Washington to meet with Floridians affected by Hurricane Irma. He said Republican congressional leaders were also on board. Later in Florida, he said they were not looking at amnesty or citizenship, but "looking at allowing people to stay here." If and when funding for Trump’s border wall will come or what will be part of a DACA deal is still unclear. For now, we were curious about Trump’s claim that 92 percent of people agree on a solution for DACA recipients. We did not find a poll showing support that high, but several polls do show that the majority of Americans want a favorable outcome for Dreamers. The White House declined to comment for this fact-check. Public opinion on DACA We found several polls that asked about DACA and showed majority support for not deporting Dreamers. But we did not find nearly universal support that Trump described. • A Morning Consult and Politico poll conducted between Sept. 7-11, after the Trump administration announced it was eliminating DACA, found that of 1,976 registered voters polled, 45 percent said it was the wrong thing to do; 35 percent said it was the right thing to do; 20 percent did not know or had no opinion. Asked about the issue in a different way — "When it comes to legislation regarding Dreamers, which of the following would you most like Congress to pass?" — 54 percent of respondents said they would want legislation that allowed Dreamers to stay and become citizens if they met certain requirements; 19 percent favored legislation that would allow them to stay legally but not become citizens, if they met certain requirements; 12 percent wanted legislation that removes or deports them; and 15 percent did not know or had no opinion. So, for this second question, 73 percent favored legislation that would protect Dreamers from deportation. A previous Morning Consult and Politico poll, conducted from April 20-24 asked about 2,000 registered voters what they thought was the best way to handle Dreamers. Fifty-six percent said they should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they met certain requirements, and 22 percent favored allowing them to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens, if they met certain requirements. Overall, 78 percent definitely did not want Dreamers to be deported. • An NBC News and SurveyMonkey poll, conducted online from August 24-29 among a national sample of 10,129 adults, found 64 percent support for DACA. • A Sept. 3-5 poll from The Economist and YouGov of 1,500 U.S. adults also found that 55 percent of responders somewhat or strongly supported DACA, though support for the program was lower among Trump voters and Republicans. Several polling and public opinion experts we reached out to say they were not aware of any recent poll showing a 92 percent support for DACA, but that a solid majority does seem to favor the program. Our ruling Trump said "92 percent of the people agree on DACA." We found several polls in which a majority of people said they supported DACA or favored legislation that would allow Dreamers to stay in the United States. But the level of support was not as high as 92 percent. Overall, we rate Trump’s statement Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-09-18T16:37:28 | 2017-09-14 | ['None'] |
tron-03483 | NASA Received an Alien Distress Call | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/nasa-received-an-alien-distress-call/ | null | space-aviation | null | null | null | NASA Received an Alien Distress Call | May 14, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00348 | “The number of children attending Grade R has more than doubled, moving from about 300,000 to more than 700,000 between 2003 and 2011.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/2014-sona-claims-revisited-zuma-on-education/ | null | null | null | null | null | 2014 SONA claims revisited: Zuma on education | 2015-02-10 08:55 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-00390 | Facebook Will Donate $1 Per Share to Help Sick Baby | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/sick-baby-dollar-share-hoax.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Hoax - Facebook Will Donate $1 Per Share to Help Sick Baby | 18th January 2012 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11446 | Says Richard Cordray directed an Ohio commission to "permit an armed group to have a rally on the statehouse grounds, even taking the extraordinary step of assuming personal responsibility for waiving an insurance requirement in the event of an incident." | true | /ohio/statements/2018/mar/13/dennis-kucinich/richard-cordray-helped-pro-gun-group-get-go-ahead-/ | In a speech after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Dennis Kucinich said fellow Democrat Richard Cordray ran his attorney general’s office as "an extension of the NRA." That included Cordray helping a gun rights group hold a rally outside of the statehouse, Kucinich said in a Feb. 27 speech to the City Club in Cleveland. Kucinich has vowed to make guns a key topic as he competes with Democrats, including Cordray, in the May 8 primary for governor. "One unpublicized official act was a very unusual intervention with the Capitol Square Commission," Kucinich said. "As the commission’s attorney, the attorney general directed it to permit an armed group to have a rally on the statehouse grounds, even taking the extraordinary step of assuming personal responsibility for waiving an insurance requirement in the event of an incident." Our fact-checking ears perked up with an "unpublicized official act," so we went in search of the facts about Cordray’s actions related to a 2010 gun-rights rally. Cordray’s actions related to a 2010 gun rights rally Kucinich was referring to the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board, which oversees the statehouse in Columbus. The Attorney General’s office serves as legal counsel to the board. Although he has shown support for some gun control measures after the Parkland shooting, Cordray has had strong support in the past from gun rights groups. Kucinich was talking about a rally organized by Ohioans for Concealed Carry. The event was part of a national wave of marches leading up to the national Second Amendment March in Washington in April 2010. Kucinich’s campaign website linked to a YouTube video clip posted by Progress Ohio, a liberal group, showing about 10 minutes of the April 10, 2010, rally. The clip starts with Dan White, who was active with Ohioans for Concealed Carry, saying: "I’m not lying, if it wasn’t for them I don’t think we would be on the square right now today. They were instrumental. They did their jobs very well." Cordray, as attorney general, then followed: "Thank you, Dan. So as he said, I’m counting on all of you because if there are any troubles it's my responsibility, but I am comfortable with that. I’m pleased to be here today at this Second Amendment rally." Months later while speaking at an Ohioans for Concealed Carry rally in August 2010, Cordray recounted the difficulties in pulling off the April rally. The Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board was "very unhappy and resistant" about the planned rally, Cordray said. "In the end, after having no real leg to stand on and denying a permit, they decided at the last minute they were going to require some giant insurance policy to have to be obtained for people to be able to have a rally on the statehouse grounds," Cordray said. Cordray said he spoke with board chair Richard Finan and asked, "Look, you don’t require this of other groups, why would you be requiring this here?" According to Cordray, Finan then asked, "Are you willing to take responsibility?" "And I said, yes, I am willing to take responsibility," Cordray told the group. Finan, who has since retired from the board, told PolitiFact that he recalled Cordray reaching out to him before the rally. "He told us we could go ahead and allow the rally to occur on the statehouse grounds," Finan said. Concealed Carry group exchanged letters with state board We sought records from the board related to the 2010 rally, but a spokesman told us that it only keeps records for four years. However, Jeff Garvas, who organized the 2010 rally and is the president of Ohioans for Concealed Carry, shared with PolitiFact some of his correspondence with the board. Garvas told PolitiFact that his group obtained a permit from the advisory board about eight months before the event. Then, about two weeks before the rally, he said the board told the group that it had to pay for 10 state troopers and promise that no one would show up with a firearm. At some point, the board also told the group that it would have to obtain a half-million dollar insurance policy, he said. (Its special events policy states that the board may require the permit holder to file a certificate of insurance at least seven days prior to the event.) Garvas sent the board’s executive director, William Carleton, a letter raising objections to the firearm ban at the rally. Carleton wrote in an April 10 letter that Garvas had also verbally sought a waiver for the bond requirement and proof of insurance. Carleton granted the waiver as long as the group met certain conditions including holstering firearms and paying $1,000 for five state troopers. Carleton waived the requirement for a bond and proof of insurance. Carleton’s letter doesn’t mention Cordray, but an assistant attorney general was copied on the letter. Cordray’s spokesman Mike Gwin didn’t dispute Kucinich’s statement. Gwin said that the Attorney General’s office "provided legal advice during the course of the permitting process that denying this group a rally permit would likely result in a costly and successful lawsuit by the protest organizers, as had happened with similar denied permits for statehouse rallies in the past." Our ruling Kucinich said Cordray directed an Ohio commission to "permit an armed group to have a rally on the statehouse grounds, even taking the extraordinary step of assuming personal responsibility for waiving an insurance requirement in the event of an incident." Kucinich was referring to a rally held in April 2010. A video shows Cordray speaking at the rally where he said "if there are any troubles it's my responsibility but I am comfortable with that." Months later, in another video, Cordray said that when the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board denied a permit and required a "giant insurance policy" Cordray spoke with the board’s president and agreed to take responsibility for the event. Finan, the advisory board chair at the time, told PolitiFact that Cordray gave the go-ahead for the rally. Cordray didn’t appear to play the only role in allowing the group to hold the rally. The executive director of the board ultimately granted the waiver after exchanging communications with Ohioans for Concealed Carry. We rate this claim True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Dennis Kucinich | null | null | null | 2018-03-13T09:00:00 | 2018-02-27 | ['Ohio'] |
snes-03031 | President Trump needs Senate confirmation in order for Steve Bannon to sit on the National Security Council. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/steve-bannon-need-senate-confirmation-hearing-sit-nsc/ | null | Politics | null | Bethania Palma | null | Does Steve Bannon Need a Senate Confirmation Hearing to Sit on the NSC? | 31 January 2017 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02512 | Department of Health and Human Services appointee Charmaine Yoest repeated the false claim abortion causes breast cancer. | mostly true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/breast-cancer-abortion-yoest/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Does Health and Human Services Appointee Charmaine Yoest Believe Abortion Causes Breast Cancer? | 2 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04879 | Ninety percent of the topsoil has inadequate moisture to grow crops. | true | /ohio/statements/2012/aug/08/john-kasich/ohio-gov-john-kasich-says-drought-has-left-90-perc/ | Ohio Gov. John Kasich may not know much about planting crops, but he knows how to pick an audience. When the GOP governor was looking for a place on July 25 to announce the state's plans to ask the federal government to declare a drought emergency in Ohio, he headed for the Ohio State Fair. Before a farming crowd at the fairgrounds in Columbus, Kasich portrayed the drought's impact in fairly stark terms, calling it "devastating" to Ohio's number one industry. After mentioning that a majority of Ohio's crops are rated either poor or very poor, Kasich asserted that nearly all of the topsoil in Ohio was in terrible shape. "Ninety percent of the topsoil has inadequate moisture to grow crops," Kasich said. While the drought had brought declarations of emergency to more than two dozen states across the country, was the soil in the Buckeye State really in that poor of shape? Or was the governor exaggerating the problem? We slipped on a pair of overalls down at PolitiFact Ohio headquarters and started digging. Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said the governor's July 25 statement was based on a weekly crop weather report produced by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which is a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture. The crop weather report for July 23 rated the topsoil moisture in four categories, from short to surplus. The report said that topsoil moisture was rated at 53 percent very short, 37 percent short, 10 percent adequate and zero percent surplus. The report notes that "there has been more rain this week, some areas throughout the state report 1-2 days of rain; however topsoil moisture is still far below normal conditions." Trying to find out more about how the reports are produced, we reached Richard Snead, an agricultural statistician with the Ohio Field Office for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Snead said the soil reports are the average of about 100 weekly reports forwarded from the Farm Service Agency, National Resources Conservation Agency and Ohio State University agricultural extension agents out checking soil conditions in Ohio fields every week. The four categories in the report have specific definitions, with "short" being defined as dry soil where plant growth would be curtailed. Meanwhile, "very short" means growth has been stopped and there are visible signs of stress in the plants, Snead explained. In the very short conditions, the plants would suffer "irreparable damage" if the conditions continued, he said. A check of the weekly reports for three preceding weeks of July show that throughout the month the "very short" and "short" categories combined to account for between 88 and 94 percent of the ratings. That means that the weekly report cited by Kasich clearly was not an aberration. But are the weekly USDA reports the best measurement of soil conditions in Ohio? We checked with one of the leading crop-watchers in the state, Harold Watters, an assistant professor at OSU. "It is dry, and the driest we have been in a very long time, drier than 1988," wrote Watters, an OSU Extension Field Agronomist, in an email response to PolitiFact. Watters said the governor's assessment based on the July 23 report is "pretty close" to accurate. "I read the weekly crop reports and visit fields across western Ohio and am confident they are pretty close," Watters wrote. "We have been well below average on rainfall since very early summer. Does that mean we have inadequate soil moisture to grow a normal crop? Absolutely." In the email, Watters did allow that the reporting process for soil conditions is subjective "so we cannot say they are entirely accurate and people’s emotions get involved when we are under this much stress in the crops across Ohio." So where does that leave our agrarian-minded governor as we harvest our crop of facts? While an argument could be made that the weekly crop weather report shows only that 90 percent of the Ohio topsoil is inadequate to grow "normal" crops, we think it’s clear that’s what Kasich meant in his remarks, even though he didn't use the word normal. We rate his statement True. | null | John Kasich | null | null | null | 2012-08-08T06:00:00 | 2012-07-25 | ['None'] |
pomt-12898 | Pads and tampons (are) still taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2017/jan/22/ashley-judd/are-pads-and-tampons-taxed-viagra-and-rogaine-not/ | Actress Ashley Judd declared herself a nasty woman at the Women’s March in Washington D.C., referring to President Donald Trump’s comment about Hillary Clinton during the general election campaign. Reciting a poem from 19-year-old Nina Donovan of Tennessee, Judd said she is nasty as in "loud, vulgar and proud" but not as nasty as "racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege." "I am not nasty like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booths. I'm nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth," Judd said. "Tell me, why are pads and tampons still taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not?" We’re happy to oblige, because Judd’s claim isn’t fully accurate. (We tried to reach Judd the day after the march but didn't hear back; we'll update this item if we do.) When it comes to sales taxes on purchases, states typically set the rules. Seven states currently exempt tampons, menstrual cups and pads from taxation, the latest of which came into effect Jan. 1, 2017 (Illinois), said sales tax consultant Diane Yetter. Washington D.C.’s exemption, passed in December 2016, is pending congressional approval, and Connecticut's will kick in July 1, 2018. Five states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon) have no sales tax at all. So, as of Jan. 22, 2017, 38 states and D.C. tax feminine hygiene products. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Because it is a prescription drug, Viagra, an erectile dysfunction medicine, isn’t taxed in any state except Illinois. Rogaine, a product for hair loss, is exempt from taxes in eight states because it is an over-the-counter treatment and doesn’t require a prescription. (Four states have qualified exemptions for nonprescription that Rogaine does not appear to qualify for.) See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com We won’t weigh in on whether the disparity between taxation of feminine hygiene and erectile dysfunction drugs is ethical or sexist. But there is context for how that disparity came to exist. Nicole Kaeding, a state tax policy analyst at the free-market oriented Tax Foundation, stressed that the term "tampon tax" is a misnomer because feminine hygiene products are not subject to a specific tax in any state. "There is no more a tampon tax than there is a soap tax, shampoo tax, or toilet paper tax," Kaeding said. As we mentioned, many states do provide exemptions for necessities like food and medicine. (Kaeding and the Tax Analysts’ David Brunori believe these items should be taxed as well.) But "menstruation isn’t considered a disease or illness," said Yetter. "Tampons and pads are often included in the category of grooming and hygiene products." It’s also important to note that tax exemptions apply to broad categories and not any male product explicitly. "You could easily pick a drug that only applies to females, say birth control pills, and those would fall under the same sales tax exemptions as Viagra or Rogaine," said Kaeding. Our ruling Judd said, "Pads and tampons (are) still taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not." Most states do tax tampons and pads, but not Viagra. Judd is off the mark for Rogaine, which is taxed in most states. But it’s important to note that these taxes apply to broad categories and are not specific to tampons or Viagra. Birth control, for example, would also be exempt from taxation in most states because it, like Viagra, is a prescription drug. We rate Judd’s claim Half True. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com | null | Ashley Judd | null | null | null | 2017-01-22T15:51:19 | 2017-01-21 | ['None'] |
pomt-05571 | Richard Hayne, president and CEO of Urban Outfitters … (is) a supporter of Rick Santorum and donated over $13,000 to him. | half-true | /florida/statements/2012/apr/04/facebook-posts/facebook-post-claims-urban-outfitters-ceo-backs-sa/ | Somewhere between the pictures of cute Corgi puppies or tucked in with requests to play "Hidden Chronicles" and the 14th not-so-clever Happy Birthday wish for a friend, you might have seen a Facebook post about the CEO of Urban Outfitters -- a man named Richard Hayne. "This is Richard Hayne, president and CEO of Urban Outfitters. He’s also a supporter of Rick Santorum and donated over $13,000 to him. He’s against gay marriage and abortion," says the post, with an attached photo. "His company pulled a pro-gay shirt back in ‘08, they also blatantly ripped off an Etsy designers work, featured a T-shirt for women that said ‘eat less’ and most recently had a card with a ‘tranny’ slur on (it). "He also owns Anthropologie and Free People." Hayne, 64, is indeed the chairman and CEO of Urban Outfitters Inc., a company that owns Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People -- popular stores with locations across the country. Hayne is worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes. Friends here in Florida who saw the Facebook post asked us to look into the connection between Hayne and Santorum, the former Republican U.S. senator who is running for president. Hayne is from Philadelphia and attended Lehigh University near Allentown. Santorum was elected to the U.S. House to represent a western Pennsylvania district in 1990, then was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, where he served two terms. The campaign donations Hayne has not contributed to Santorum’s presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tabulates campaign contributions. But Hayne and his wife Margaret have contributed to Santorum and his political action committee in the past. From 1994-2005 the Haynes contributed $13,900 to Santorum or a PAC he started, Fight-PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Margaret Hayne donated $2,400 to Santorum directly and $5,000 to his political committee. Her donations came in 1997 and 1998. Richard Hayne gave $3,500 to Santorum and $3,000 to Fight-PAC. Hayne’s first donation was in October 1994; his last contribution was recorded in May 2005. The donations ended when Santorum lost his Senate seat in 2006 to Democrat Bob Casey Jr. The Haynes, over time, also have contributed to former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican political committee and more recently to Joseph Torsella, a Democrat who briefly ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and Republican Rep. Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania. Hayne’s political stances The record on Hayne’s personal and political beliefs is less clear. For his part, Hayne has tried to avoid the topic. (Santorum is a known opponent of abortion and gay marriage.) In a profile in Philadelphia Weekly from 2003, Hayne was asked about his support for Santorum. He at first denied contributing to Santorum, according to the article. Asked to clarify after being shown proof of his contributions, Hayne said: "I don't want to mislead you. Like many people, I have some affinity for Rick Santorum, and I have problems with some of his positions." The author of the article, Jonathan Valania, then asked where does Santorum's position on homosexuality (Santorum opposes same-sex marriage and has suggested homosexual sex should be illegal) fit in Hayne’s comfort zone? "I'm not going to comment on it," the magazine quoted Hayne as saying. "I have my own opinion, but I am not going to share it. Our job as a business is not to promote a political agenda. That's not what we do. There are all kinds of political views held by my employees. Some would be horrified to learn that we contributed to Santorum's campaign, and others would be fine with it. We openly discuss and joke about our political differences." In a 2007 interview with Philadelphia Magazine, Hayne explained the contributions and support of Santorum this way: "I don't like paying taxes -- is that a sin?" he asks. "I like small government," Hayne said, explaining a libertarian streak. The company, for the record, has not commented on this latest kerfuffle or a similar uproar started in 2011 by a tweet from pop-star Miley Cyrus. Snopes.com failed to turn up anything additional on Hayne’s political positions, though they do a fine job in explaining the rest of the Facebook post if you’re looking to read more. Our ruling We’re focusing here on the Facebook claim that Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne is a supporter of Rick Santorum and donated over $13,000 to him. What we know is that Hayne was at one time a supporter of Santorum, who donated -- between him and his wife -- more than $13,000 to Santorum and one of his political action committees. Hayne has not contributed to Santorum’s run for president, and we do not know if Hayne is supporting Santorum this time around. That, combined with the fact that the donations are nearly 7-18 years old, is enough for us to rate this claim Half True. | null | Facebook posts | null | null | null | 2012-04-04T11:32:37 | 2012-04-04 | ['Rick_Santorum'] |
pomt-06495 | The poverty rate for families in which a husband and a wife work is 5 percent, but in families headed by one person … "it's 30 percent today." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/13/rick-santorum/rick-santorum/ | Rick Santorum wants to fight poverty at the altar. In a Republican presidential primary debate on Oct. 11, 2011, the former Pennsylvania senator and ardent social conservative said one answer to reducing the economic disparity in the U.S. is to support two-parent families. "The biggest problem with poverty in America, and we don't talk about here, because it's an economic discussion -- and that is the breakdown of the American family," Santorum said. "You want to look at the poverty rate among families that have two -- that have a husband and wife working in them? It's 5 percent today. A family that's headed by one person? It's 30 percent today. ... We need to have a policy that supports families, that encourages marriage." That’s an interesting statistic, so we decided to see if it holds up. The U.S. Census Bureau collects and maintains that kind of data in many forms. According to its chart "People and Families in Poverty by Selected Characteristics: 2009 and 2010," the percentage of married-couple families living below the poverty line was 5.8 in 2009. It ticked up to 6.2 in 2010. For a single householder, the poverty rate was 26.3 percent in 2009 and 27.3 percent in 2010. The numbers are different, however, based on if the single parent is a man or a woman, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Among "female householder, no husband present" families, the poverty rate was 29.9 percent in 2009 and 31.6 percent in 2010. In "male householder, no wife present" families, the rate was 16.9 percent in 2009, and down slightly in 2010 to 15.8. Male-headed households compromised more than 15 percent of all single-parent households, the Census found. There are many different factors that contribute to poverty such as age, education, race and the health of the economy. Austin Nichols, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, wrote a paper in 2006 about changes in child poverty rates. He said child poverty spiked in the 1970s, and that was directly attributable to a rise in single-parent households. Then the rate dropped in the 1990s as the labor market improved for nearly all economic levels. Since then, Nichols said, changes to the child poverty rate have consistently been tied to economic factors. Take the current recession, for example. "There hasn’t been a rise in single-parent families during this time that child poverty has increased, whereas the job market you can see directly. The parents are losing their jobs, whether there are two parents or one," he said. "All the recent changes in child poverty and more broadly in all poverty have been due to changes in the job market." Nichols added that separating out single-parent households headed by men in a statistical group isn’t relevant because there are relatively few of them -- only about 15 percent of all single-parent homes are headed by men. And single-parent homes, Nichols said, always suffer higher poverty rates than two-parent homes. Our ruling Santorum said the poverty rate "among families that have two -- that have a husband and wife working in them? It's 5 percent today. A family that's headed by one person? It's 30 percent today." U.S. Census data backs the general point Santorum is making, that households with two adults fare better than those with a single head of household. But his numbers are off on both ends, so the difference is not as great as he suggests. For married couples, the percentage in poverty is higher than he said -- 5.8 percent in 2009 and 6.2 percent in 2010, versus 5 percent. And for households with a single head, it was lower -- roughly 27 percent for both 2009 and 2010. Santorum represented the general trend correctly, but his numbers were off in both cases. More importantly, not only marriage, but also the job market is important to families staying out of poverty. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Rick Santorum | null | null | null | 2011-10-13T18:35:24 | 2011-10-11 | ['None'] |
pomt-13978 | The labor force participation rate -- the share of the potential workforce that is actually working or looking for work-- currently stands below 63%, the lowest level since the 1970s. | true | /virginia/statements/2016/jun/13/dave-brat/dave-brat-us-labor-participation-rate-lowest-70s/ | Rep. Dave Brat says the U.S. economy is stuck in the doldrums. "The labor force participation rate - the share of the potential workforce that is actually working or looking for work - currently stands below 63%, the lowest level since the 1970s," Brat, R-7th, said in a May 24 Facebook post. No doubt, the economy has had a choppy recovery from the Great Recession. But we wondered if it’s true that the percentage of potential workers who are employed or trying to find a job is at the lowest level in 40 years. Ivan Schwartz, spokesman for Brat’s re-election campaign, backed his statement by pointing to monthly tallies by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. They show that in April, the latest month for which figures were available when Brat made his comment, 62.8 percent of people who were 16 or older either were employed or actively seeking work. We should start by noting that 62.8 percent was not the lowest proportion of people in the labor force during the past several decades. The bottom came in September 2015, when the rate was 62.4 percent. You’d have to go back to October 1977 to find a time when the rate sank to that level. Still, Brat has a point in that the share of potential workers has been hovering near its lowest point in several decades. From the late 1970s up until the Great Recession, the percentage of people in the labor force for the most part was on the upswing. But in 2007, the year the recession started, the proportion of people in the labor force started to fall from 66.3 percent and continued that decline after the official end of the recession in June 2009. The drop continued until the September 2015 low point. Daniel Culbertson, an economist at the Indeed.com hiring website, told us that the economic downturn and simple demographics are the commonly cited cause of the drop in the percentage of people who are in the labor force. "Those that cite a deteriorating economy believe more workers are becoming discouraged and leaving the labor force altogether due to lack of opportunity, low wages, etc.," Culbertson wrote in an email. "Others opine that the majority of the decline can be explained by aging baby boomers leaving the labor force as they begin to retire en masse. How much of the LFPR (labor force participation rate) decline is attributable to each is a common topic of debate among economists." Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, attributes at least half of the drop to baby boomer retirements. That would have happened even if the recession never had occurred and the economy kept growing at the pace it had been in 2007, Burtless told us in an interview. Other factors are at play, Burtless said. Younger people who could enter the workforce are staying in college longer, he said. Some of the dropoff, particularly among potential workers ages 25 to 54 not in the labor force, remains a mystery, Burtless said. As we noted above, there’s been a bit of an uptick in the percentage of people who are in the workforce since last September - but not much. It rose from 62.4 percent to 63 percent in March. But then it fell to 62.6 percent in May - a figure that was not available when Brat made his statement. Even so, it’s still up a bit from the September 2015 low point. A final note, our colleagues at PolitiFact National have examined a similar claim that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas has made over the years that the percentage of people working is at its lowest level since the 1970s, a statement Cruz has made to argue that Obama shares blame for the trend. PolitiFact has rated the statement Mostly True, saying the trend is real, but at least some of the drop is due to demographics beyond the president’s control. Brat, in his post, did not assign political blame for the drop. He predicted, however, that the situation will get worse if people "buy into solutions being offered by Democrats." Our ruling Brat said the labor force participation rate "currently stands below 63%, the lowest level since the 1970s." His percentage is right, and the congressman is correct that the rate of potential workers in the labor force has been hovering near a four-decade low since the start of 2014. Our one minor quibble is that the actual low point occurred in September 2015, when the labor participation rate fell to 62.4 percent. It’s been slightly higher this year. Still, we rate Brat’s statement True.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/d80c1293-0d5b-462f-a4a6-32eeaaaf2a88 | null | Dave Brat | null | null | null | 2016-06-13T08:59:42 | 2016-05-24 | ['None'] |
snes-05012 | A white strawberry that tastes like pineapple is available in certain markets. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-strawberries-taste-pineapples/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Brooke Binkowski | null | Do White Strawberries That Taste Like Pineapples Exist? | 24 March 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00631 | Singer James Blunt once refused to follow orders that could have triggered World War III while serving with the British Army in Kosovo. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/singer-james-blunt-prevent-world-war-iii/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Did Singer James Blunt Prevent World War III? | 8 May 2018 | null | ['British_Army', 'Kosovo', 'World_War_III'] |
pomt-13144 | Joe Morrissey "has been a delegate in the General Assembly for eight years with no laws passed to help our black community with education or workforce." | half-true | /virginia/statements/2016/nov/01/michelle-mosby/michelle-mosby-soft-ground-about-joe-morrisseys-la/ | Richmond City Council President Michelle Mosby pulled no punches in a recent radio ad that took aim at Joe Morrissey, one of her opponents in the city’s mayoral race. "Joe has been a delegate in the General Assembly for eight years with no laws passed to help our black community with education or workforce," Mosby said in the 60-second clip that started running in early October. The ad began airing with polls showing Morrissey drawing substantial support from the black community. Mosby warns voters, "Don’t trust him." Mosby told us back-up information for her claim about Morrissey’s General Assembly record can be found on the state’s Legislative Information System, which tracks measures that lawmakers write and pass every year. So we took a look. Morrissey served in the House from 2008 to 2015. We found a dozen bills that were signed into law for which Morrissey was listed either as the patron or chief co-patron. But almost all fell outside of Mosby’s specification regarding laws "to help our black community with education or workforce." The lone exception we found was a 2009 law Morrissey wrote that required colleges, in the middle of a semester, to give full course credit to students who are deployed on active military duty. We asked Morrissey for his take on Mosby’s statement, and he sent us a letter pointing to 26 laws that he said "had some connectivity to either education or workforce." Only three of the laws Morrissey cited were measures where he was chief patron: • The 2009 military academic credit law mentioned above. • A 2008 law to allow people who had their driver's license suspended for failure to pay fines to get a restricted driving permit if they showed there was a good reason they didn't pay their parking tickets. Morrissey's legislation was rolled into a similar bill sponsored by then-Del. Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, that was signed into law. • A 2009 law that established guidelines for state investigations of licensed health professionals. Of the 26 laws Morrissey cited, the other 23 were measures he co-sponsored. Sometimes he was one of a few delegates backing a bill, but often he was among dozens of fellow lawmakers who supported a bill. Sometimes the connection between the statutes to which Morrissey points and the categories Mosby cites is tenuous. But we did find some that could fall into the broad categories of education and workforce issues: • Morrissey was one of 21 legislators who co-sponsored a 2010 law establishing virtual schools that allow public school students to take classes online. • In 2013, Morrissey was one of 26 co-sponsors of a law that established guidelines for school districts to tackle bullying. • In 2008, Morrissey was among 37 co-sponsors of a law authorizing $350 million in bonds for construction projects at colleges. In 2009, he was among nine sponsors of a law to establish guidelines for teaching financial literacy to K-12 students. Our ruling Mosby said "Joe (Morrissey) has been a delegate in the General Assembly for eight years with no laws passed to help our black community with education or workforce." A review of Morrissey’s record shows he was not a prolific writer of laws that helped the black community in those two categories. But we don’t come up empty. Morrissey introduced a bill - which became a law under another legislator’s name - that allows people who can’t afford to pay traffic fines to keep driving. That will help some people - black and white - get to work. Morrissey wrote a law that requires colleges to give credit to students who are deployed by the military during mid-semester. That will help some people - black and white - complete college. So Mosby’s statement has some basis but also overlooks some of Morrissey’s broad legislative accomplishments. We rate it Half True. | null | Michelle Mosby | null | null | null | 2016-11-01T00:00:00 | 2016-10-11 | ['None'] |
vees-00218 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Website posts report rehashing outdated story on plunder case vs Aquino and allies | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-website-posts-fake-report-rehashing-ou | null | null | null | null | fake news,Aquino,marcos gold | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Website posts FAKE report rehashing outdated story on plunder case vs Aquino and allies | May 07, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02657 | If you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes under the state income-tax cut, but "it didn’t show up in your paycheck." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2014/jan/14/kathleen-vinehout/vinehout-says-160-tax-cut-didnt-show-weekly-payche/ | Despite lower income-tax rates enacted by lawmakers, Wisconsin workers didn’t see the result in their paychecks in 2013 unless they took special action. Taxpayers will see the benefit when they file their tax returns this year and get either a larger refund or a smaller bill. Why? The state did not change the tax withholding tables to reflect the new, lower rates -- following a long tradition in Madison. The state currently has no plan to update the withholding tables in 2014, either. That’s the sum of what we learned as we checked out a claim by state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, about what the average worker would save from the tax cut approved in 2013 by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker. Vinehout, who is mulling a run for governor this fall, opposed the tax cut, as did many Democrats. She says the savings for individual families wasn’t worth the $650 million in lost revenue to the state over two years. This is what she told a small audience in Waukesha on Dec. 5, 2013: "Get rid of the tax decrease," Vinehout said. "Did you know -- you might not know this -- if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes? You might not have known that because they didn’t change the withholding tables, so it didn’t show up in your paycheck." She added: "But, if you file for your refund, and let’s say you file it a little late, and you get that refund sometime in June, you’ll maybe have a little more money, which might be just about the time the governor’s is out there on the campaign trail saying, hmm, you got more money in your pocket because of what I gave you." Let’s examine the elements of Vinehout’s claim. Check’s in the mail Wisconsin Revenue Department spokesperson Laurel Patrick confirmed that withholding tables were not updated after the tax cut, and said no decision has been made to do so in 2014 either. The tax cut reduced rates in all five tax brackets. That means the tax-rate changes are not automatically reflected on people’s paychecks. To get the tax savings on their regular paycheck, employees must file a new WT-4 or WT-4A form with their employer. Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said the state, with a few exceptions, has long tried to help its immediate cash flow needs by not automatically making tax cuts show up on people’s paychecks. The practice predates Walker. The state is now over-withholding by 20 percent or more because it has typically not adjusted the tables, Berry said. Many taxpayers may prefer getting a lump sum at refund time, Berry said, but they should understand that as a group they essentially are giving state government a billion-dollar annual no-interest loan that adds to the state deficit under generally accepted accounting principles. "Politicians know it’s more politically valuable for people to get a nice refund in 2014," Berry said. What’s the savings? The rest of Vinehout’s claim was that "if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes" under the income tax cut. When we asked for evidence, Vinehout’s office pointed to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis of the tax savings from the income-tax changes, and to separate state figures on tax burdens. The average Wisconsin adjusted gross income, across all types of filers, was $47,310 for tax year 2010, according to a Revenue Department analysis. There is 2011 data, the latest available, that puts the figure at $48,537, according to Dale Knapp, research director at the Taxpayers Alliance. Vinehout looked up that average income in the June 2013 memo by the non-partisan Fiscal Bureau, which presents ranges of income along with tax changes estimated for 2014. The Fiscal Bureau is the independent budget scorekeeper in Madison, and its reports on taxes are used by both parties to gauge the impact of proposals. The bureau’s analysis said that in the $40,000 to $50,000 range, the average savings is $85 for one year. That works out to $1.63 a week, which Vinehout referred to as $1.60 in her claim. So, Vinehout puts the average income into the slot, and with a bit of rounding her figure for the average tax change is on target. There’s some imprecision built in here, though, because the Fiscal Bureau memo uses income ranges rather than one particular income. So while Vinehout mentions $50,000, she gets the $1.60 average tax change from an income range of $40,000 to $50,000. And because the average state income is above the midpoint of that range, it’s likely the average tax change would differ slightly from the $1.60. There are other ways to illustrate the impact of the tax cut. One is to look at the types of filers rather than just the composite income brackets as in the Fiscal Bureau memo. Depending on the example used, one approach yields a smaller tax change figure than Vinehout’s approach, the other a larger one. The average single person who filed taxes had $26,556 in income, while married couples had an average of $83,480, said Knapp. Walker, for his part, chooses the married couple example. Such a couple with two children would save about $173 a year, or $3.33 per week over the two years. On the lower end, the average single would see a weekly savings of about 73 cents. The overall state average that Vinehout cites is a middle ground between those two numbers. Our rating Vinehout said that "if you make the average amount of people in Wisconsin, $50,000, you got $1.60 less a week in taxes" under the $650 million state income-tax cut, but "it didn’t show up in your paycheck." The average income she cites is slightly high but within reasonable rounding range. She uses a reliable source for her tax-change numbers, and they are on target or very close, with the caveat that the analysis is set up for income ranges rather than a precise income. She’s right that the tax cut did not just show up in workers’ paychecks, due to inaction by the state. With the clarifications noted, we rate her claim Mostly True. If you wish to comment on this item, please click here to go to JSOnline.com. | null | Kathleen Vinehout | null | null | null | 2014-01-14T05:00:00 | 2013-12-05 | ['Wisconsin'] |
goop-00282 | Jennifer Garner Taking Karate Classes To Cope With Ben Affleck Divorce? | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-garner-ben-affleck-divorce-karate/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Garner Taking Karate Classes To Cope With Ben Affleck Divorce? | 3:53 pm, September 12, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01102 | As Governor, I will institute a Homeowners Bill of Rights (that will) . . . require banks to prove that the value of foreclosure outweighs the value of modifying the home before denying homeowners the opportunity to modify their loan . . . require all lenders to make a filing of all foreclosure notices with the state within three days . . . (maintain) a registry of all lenders who have had complaints lodged against them . . . (ban) all mortgage originators who have been found to engaged in dishonest and fraudulent practices . . . (require) background checks on all mortgage originators . . . (enact) stiffer penalties for lenders that make procedural omissions and errors, produce fraudulent documents, or otherwise act in bad faith during the foreclosures process. | not yet rated | https://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/promises/gina-meter/promise/1185/institute-homeowners-bill-rights/ | null | gina-meter | Gina Raimondo | null | null | Institute a Homeowners Bill of Rights | 2014-12-19T07:57:45 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09596 | The Washington Times ... pointed out that we had succeeded where previous administrations had failed on spending cuts. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/20/barack-obama/Obama-Washington-Times-budget-cutting/ | Under fire from Republicans for his sweeping plans to reform health care and the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, President Barack Obama is trying to portray himself as a budget-cutter. So in a recent speech, he said the Washington Times, a newspaper famous for its conservative editorial page, had given him a shoutout. During a speech at a retreat of the House Democratic Caucus on Jan. 14, 2010, Obama said, "The Washington Times -- not known for (being) a big promoter of the Obama agenda -- pointed out that we had succeeded where previous administrations had failed because of the work that was done here in this Congress to finally get serious on some of these spending cuts that had been talked about for years." That surprised us, so we looked into it. Indeed, we found that on the same day the president delivered the speech, the Washington Times had published a story with the headline "Obama wins more spending cuts than Bush." Anyone who heard Obama's speech or read the transcript very well could have thought he was referring to praise from the Times' conservative editorial page. In the parlance of the nation's capital, references like this are usually referring to editorials, not news stories. But in this case, it was a news story. It began: "President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years." The story offered a remarkably positive account of Obama's budget cutting, saying that he "was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs." It called the cuts a "bright spot in an otherwise dreary budget picture" and said Obama's "success rate at cutting programs was significantly higher than President Bush. But the article noted that the cuts would barely put a dent in the overall federal deficit, pointing out that they accounted for "well less than one-half of 1 percent of the total federal budget." So Obama was right that the Washington Times had run such an article. But his comment suggested it was editorial praise when it wasn't. So we'll take Obama down one notch for not noting it was a news story and rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2010-01-20T18:18:13 | 2010-01-14 | ['The_Washington_Times'] |
snes-02369 | Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has resigned in the face of compromising material held by the White House. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chuck-schumer-resigns-disgrace/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Chuck Schumer Resigns ‘in Disgrace’? | 23 May 2017 | null | ['Chuck_Schumer', 'White_House'] |
goop-00981 | Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal Date Set Up By Reese Witherspoon? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-jake-gyllenhaal-date-reese-witherspoon/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal Date Set Up By Reese Witherspoon? | 1:45 pm, May 17, 2018 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston'] |
snes-03959 | President Obama is purging military leaders who refuse to fire on U.S. citizens. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/citizen-pain/ | null | Uncategorized | null | David Mikkelson | null | Obama Purging Military for Not Shooting Citizens | 25 January 2013 | null | ['United_States', 'Barack_Obama'] |
vees-00139 | THIS WEEK: Story on Catholic group criticizing Fr. Robert Reyes MISLEADING | misleading | http://verafiles.org/articles/week-fake-news-story-catholic-group-criticizing-fr-robert-re | null | null | null | null | fake news,Fr. Robert Reyes | THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS: Story on Catholic group criticizing Fr. Robert Reyes MISLEADING | July 13, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
abbc-00283 | A panel of experts has agreed to advise ABC Fact Check for its work on economic issues. | in-between | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-18/fact-check-were-300000-jobs-created-in-2015/7135894 | A panel of experts has agreed to advise ABC Fact Check for its work on economic issues. | ['unemployment', 'economic-trends', 'turnbull-malcolm', 'liberals', 'australia'] | null | null | ['unemployment', 'economic-trends', 'turnbull-malcolm', 'liberals', 'australia'] | Fact check: Were 301,000 jobs created in 2015? | Thu 3 Mar 2016, 1:14am | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00121 | Statement: “The school Academic Performance Index jumped a record 52 points in 2010 to 754,” Cindy Marten, San Diego Unified School District incoming Superintendent wrote in a press release distributed at a school board meeting on Feb. 27. | determination: misleading | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/record-test-scores-at-central-elementary-fact-check/ | Analysis: At the San Diego Unified School board meeting announcing the appointment of Cindy Marten as the district’s new superintendent, news reporters were handed two pieces of paper. | null | null | null | null | 'Record' Test Scores at Central Elementary: Fact Check | April 3, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00391 | Opossums Kill Ticks, Help Stop the Spread of Lyme Disease | mostly truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/opossums-kill-ticks-help-stop-spread-lyme-disease/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Opossums Kill Ticks, Help Stop the Spread of Lyme Disease | Mar 23, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00056 | Says Walker "wants to get rid of" students’ ability to stay on their parents’ health insurance. | false | /wisconsin/statements/2018/nov/02/tony-evers/tony-evers-claim-against-scott-walker-student-heal/ | In a final push before the Nov. 6, 2018 election, Democrat Tony Evers levied a new claim against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s health care policy. Health insurance has been a key issue throughout the campaign — Walker wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Wisconsin is suing in federal court in Texas to try to make that happen. Meanwhile, Walker offered a last-minute proposal on pre-existing conditions, saying he would codify into state law the same protections offered by the ACA. Speaking Nov. 1, 2018, in Eau Claire, Evers reiterated that he would protect Wisconsinites with pre-existing conditions, then pivoted to new anti-Walker claim. "How many students here are still under their parents' health care (insurance)? There’s more than a handful," Evers said, then added: "He wants to get rid of that, too." Does Walker really want to force students off their parents’ health insurance? Evers offers no specific evidence Asked for back up for the claim, Evers spokesman Sam Lau pointed only to Walker’s opposition to the ACA, commonly called Obamacare. "The Affordable Care Act allows you to stay on your parents’ health care until you are 26, and Walker is suing to get rid of the Affordable Care Act," Lau said. True enough. The Affordable Care Act does require that insurers offering dependent child coverage make that coverage available until the child turns 26. But Wisconsin law also has a similar – though less comprehensive – requirement that would remain in place even if the ACA is repealed. The provision was put into place as part of the 2011-’13 budget, based on wording added by the Joint Finance Committee to comply with ACA requirements. The Wisconsin language would not apply to employer-sponsored insurance that is self-funded — about half the employer plans in the state. That exemption, which is part of federal law, means half the employer plans wouldn’t be required to cover children up to age 26, said Jon Peacock, research director for Kids Forward, a Madison-based advocacy group. Nevertheless, Walker has already signed a provision that does what Evers says Walker opposes -- provides the ability for "kids" to be on the health plans of their parents. What's more, past statements from Walker have gone further. And Walker campaign spokesman Ben Voelkel said the governor continues to support leaving the provision as it is in the ACA. He cited several articles, including an Aug. 18, 2015 one from the website Becker’s Hospital Review. That article, in the midst of Walker’s brief presidential campaign, looked at key points from Walker’s plan to replace the ACA. Among the points noted: "Under his proposal, Americans would not be fined for not having health insurance and those under 26 years old can stay on their parents' plans." He also noted a 2017 Washington Post interview, in which Walker identified coverage "for young people" as among the things he’d keep from the Affordable Care Act if he were creating new policy after a repeal. Our rating Evers says Walker "wants to get rid of" students’ ability to stay on their parents’ health insurance. But Evers offers no direct evidence of that claim. The only evidence offered — that Walker opposes the ACA, which also includes coverage through age 26 — does not logically connect. It’s not reasonable to extrapolate from Walker’s opposition of the ACA that he opposes each and every individual policy position within it. And the claim ignores the fact that Walker has already signed into law a requirement that health insurers in Wisconsin allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26. We rate Evers’ claim False. Editor's note: This item was updated on Nov. 5, 2018 to reflect information from Joe Peacock of the Kids Forward about how the provision in state law compares to the ACA. The rating remains False. | null | Tony Evers | null | null | null | 2018-11-02T18:35:54 | 2018-11-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-12872 | New York state law says you are alive when you begin to breathe. | mostly true | /new-york/statements/2017/jan/30/deborah-glick/new-yorks-definition-when-fetus-becomes-person/ | Assembly Democrats want to guarantee access to abortion for New York state residents if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. A bill, commonly referred to as the Reproductive Health Act, would change state law to guarantee women the choice to have or refuse an abortion or contraception if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade. Different versions of the bill have been introduced for at least seven years in the Legislature. This year’s debate over the measure included tough questions to the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick, from members opposed to the bill. "So, if a baby is born intact and alive but has not yet taken its first breath, it has no rights?" Assemblymember Steven F. McLaughlin asked. "Is that the position you are taking?" "New York state law says you are alive when you begin to breathe," Glick said. "That’s not me, that’s just the law." Is Glick right? Is that the law? State abortion law Glick said her definition comes from the current state law on abortion. The definition is included in the state’s penal law, or criminal code, which defines the crime of abortion, where someone intentionally causes a pregnancy to be terminated without consent or justification. The law says a person, "when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive." So a fetus inside the womb is not considered a person, and therefore does not have rights under state law. That is why someone can legally have an abortion after being pregnant for 24 weeks to preserve the life of the mother. State health law State health law goes a step further in defining when someone is considered born. Under Public Health Law, live birth is defined as "the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached; each product of such a birth is considered live born." It is up to a medical professional to determine if there is evidence of life in the infant. If the medical professional finds evidence, it is legally considered the birth of a person. "The reality is that if they are born and alive they are a person and have full rights," Glick said in a phone interview. "And that is the determination of a medical person at the time." Our ruling Glick said during an Assembly debate that "New York state law says you are alive when you begin to breathe." State law says a person has been born alive when the fetus has exited the woman’s body and shows signs of life. The law specifically mentions breathing as one of the signs. But the law also mentions other evidence of life, such as a beating heart. We rate this claim as Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/d7c7b893-a127-4f3a-a477-ae2ef6cc526a | null | Deborah Glick | null | null | null | 2017-01-30T12:00:00 | 2017-01-17 | ['None'] |
hoer-01182 | New Unknown Species Facebook Video Survey | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/new-unknown-species-facebook-video-survey-scam/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | New Unknown Species Facebook Video Survey Scam | April 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07547 | Since Oregon’s prescription-only law took effect, meth lab incidents have dropped by 96 percent and meth-related arrests by 32 percent. | true | /oregon/statements/2011/apr/02/rob-bovett/oregon-district-attorney-says-meth-lab-seizures-an/ | Oregon got some press in a recent New York Times articleabout a growing methamphetamine problem in Southern and Midwestern states and their efforts to stanch it. According to the article, a laundry list of states -- Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and "several other(s)" -- are trying to reverse the growth of home-grown producers and Oregon might be a model. Since 2006, Oregon has required a prescription for drugs that contain pseudoephedrine, like Sudafed. For those who don’t know the intricacies of meth production, pseudoephedrine is a key ingredient in the drug and can be leeched out of some over-the-counter medications. The thinking goes that if you put drugs like Sudafed behind a prescription barrier, meth manufactures will have to close shop. The New York Times talks to one of Oregon’s very own, Lincoln County District Attorney Rob Bovett, about the state’s results. Bovett tells the Times that the law is working well in Oregon. Specifically, he says, the rate of meth lab incidents has tumbled 96 percent since the law took effect while the number of meth-related arrests has shrunk by 32 percent. Those are not numbers to ignore -- provided they’re accurate. We gave Bovett a call and he pointed us in the direction of the data he used. First up was the claim that meth lab incidents are down by 96 percent. For this statistic, Bovett gathered numbers from the Department of Justice’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program. The program keeps tabs on the number of "meth lab incidents." These incidents, Bovett said, include three scenarios: full labs (whether operating or not), partial labs (a lab that’s not set up) and dump sites (discarded labs). Bovett gathered month-by-month data from the organization going as far back as January 2003. The information is now in a handy tableon the Oregon Alliance for Drug Endangered Children website. We looked over the data and calculated an average number of incidents per month in 2003 (roughly 40) and then did the same for 2010 (roughly 1.5). These numbers do, indeed, show a 96 percent drop in the number of meth lab incidents per month. The New York Times article specifically talks about the drop occurring between now and 2006, so why did we look at numbers in 2003? Well, between the end of 2004 and the middle of 2006, Oregon instituted progressively more onerous requirements for the purchasing of products containing pseudoephedrine. First, the state put them behind the counter (November 2004 through May 2005) and then we started requiring an ID and logging the number of purchases (June 2005 through June 2006). If you look at the numbers, these two moves actually reduced the number of meth lab incidents by 77 percent on their own. It might be easy, then, to assume that the prescription-only policy reduced incidents by only the remaining 19 percent. But, the 96 percent reduction has been sustained for more than four years now. We feel comfortable giving the prescription-only law the credit here. So on the first statistic, Bovett is right. Now for the claim that the number of meth-related arrests has shrunk by 32 percent. For this statistic, Bovett relied on a data setpublished by Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. To avoid problems with changing populations, we went with the number of arrests per 100,000 Oregonians. This is typically how crime rates are assessed. The prescription-only law went into effect in November 2006. We reached a peak of meth-related arrests in March 2007 when there were 25.3 arrests per 100,000. The number reached its lowest point since then in December 2009, 14.2 arrests for every 100,000. It’s seen a slight bump since that low and, as of February 2011, sits at 17 arrests per 100,000. Compare that peak of 25.3 to our current 17, and you do, indeed, find a drop of roughly 33 percent. Again, Bovett appears to be right. (It’s worth noting here -- though it doesn’t affect the rating of these claims -- that overall drug-related arrests per 100,000 have declined by nearly 11 percent over the same time frame.) We could be harder on Bovett’s number here and use the November 2006 figure of 23.7 per 100,000, which would cut into the decline somewhat, leaving it at 28 percent. That said, it seems reasonable that it might take some time for the new law to really take hold and for current manufacturers to run out of whatever back-stock they might have held at the time. Even so, 28 percent is still a pretty nice drop and not all that far from 32 percent. For our rating, Bovett’s statistics hold up to scrutiny: Since our prescription-only law went into effect, we have, in fact, seen meth lab incidents decline by 96 percent and meth-related arrests dip by about 32 percent. We rate Bovett’s claim True. Comment on this item. | null | Rob Bovett | null | null | null | 2011-04-02T06:00:00 | 2011-03-28 | ['None'] |
snes-05764 | The ingestion of raisins or grapes can produce acute renal failure in dogs. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/grapes-and-raisins-harmful-to-dogs/ | null | Critter Country | null | Snopes Staff | null | Are Raisins and Grapes Toxic to Dogs? | 8 February 2007 | null | ['None'] |
hoer-01156 | 2016 Version of Free Range Rover | facebook scams | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/2016-version-of-free-range-rover-facebook-scam-spreading-rapidly/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | 2016 Version of Free Range Rover Facebook Scam Spreading Rapidly | March 21, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04656 | Says Georgia will send more state money per child to state charter schools and that budget cuts are not applied to those charter schools. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2012/sep/11/herb-garrett/charter-school-funding-claim-hits-close-mark/ | A math exercise by one prominent education advocate in Georgia had folks asking some questions. Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, recently sent a letter to education officials and other interested parties noting that state special charter schools will receive more money per pupil than those attending traditional public schools under a revised formula set by the Georgia Legislature. Garrett sent his letter to Atlanta Journal-Constitution education columnist Maureen Downey, who then posted it on the AJC’s Get Schooled blog. It’s complicated, but he concluded that state-approved charter schools actually come out ahead when the budget cuts are applied. Some well-versed on education wondered if Garrett’s conclusion about which schools will get more money from the state is correct. Some read the part about austerity cuts and said Garrett was just wrong. PolitiFact Georgia thought it would be worthwhile to do some homework on all of this. Charter schools will be a hot political issue this fall. These are public schools that are independently managed and given organizational and curriculum flexibility while meeting state and federal education standards. Such schools are approved by local school boards or, if rejected by the local board, by the state Board of Education. On Election Day in November, Georgia voters will decide by referendum whether the state constitution should be amended to allow the state to authorize and pay for more charters. Georgia Schools Superintendent John Barge surprised many fellow Republicans last month when he announced his opposition to the amendment, citing concerns that the state is having trouble funding public schools. There are currently 15 state-approved charter schools. Now, back to Garrett’s statements. PolitiFact Georgia decided to examine the second part first. In 2003, the state began the first of several austerity cuts, due to declining revenue. For four of the prior past five years, local school districts were shorted millions that they were due under the Quality Basic Education Act, the state formula for funding public education, the AJC reported in 2010. Garrett admitted he erred when he wrote that austerity cuts differed between traditional public schools and state-approved charter schools. "I wish to correct one piece of information about the funding of state special charter schools that I included in the version of Friday notes that I sent earlier today," Garrett wrote in an email he sent to the state Department of Education. "In fact, it appears that the allotment sheets for state special charter schools DO, in fact, reflect a reduction based on austerity cuts. Thus, the paragraph in which I stated that those state special charter schools are not subject to the same austerity cuts as traditional k-12 schools was in error." Garrett confirmed he sent that email to the state, but said his larger point was state charter schools will get more money than traditional public schools under the amendment, which brings us back to the first part of his claim. The QBE formula gives money to schools based on each student and "indirect" costs, such as administration. Georgia requires local systems to pay an amount equal to five mills of property tax generated within their taxing authority for those educational costs within the school district. Downey asked state Education Department spokesman Matt Cardoza to review Garrett’s claim that state charter schools will receive more money per pupil under the new formula. His answer: "I’ve confirmed that those numbers are correct. Our financial review team ran the numbers based on what the legislation says." The AJC recently examined the question of which types of schools get more money. An article concluded that state-approved charter schools would get more money per pupil, citing an analysis of school funding completed for Gov. Nathan Deal, who backs the amendment. However, traditional schools will get local money that state-approved charter schools do not. In 2011, the state Supreme Court ruled state lawmakers do not have the power to grant the state authority to approve and fund charter schools over the objection of local school boards. In conclusion, Garrett was correct on his larger point that state-approved charter schools will get more money per pupil under the proposed amendment than traditional public schools. Garrett admitted he was incorrect about the secondary part of his claim that state-approved charter schools are exempt from austerity cuts. We give Garrett a grade of Mostly True. | null | Herb Garrett | null | null | null | 2012-09-11T06:00:00 | 2012-08-03 | ['None'] |
hoer-01202 | Police Officer Sexually Assaulted by Kangaroo | fake news | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-news-police-officer-sexually-assaulted-by-kangaroo/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Fake-News Police Officer Sexually Assaulted by Kangaroo | October 2, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00971 | Changes at the Department of Justice Website | truth! & fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/doj-website/ | null | computers | null | null | null | Changes at the Department of Justice Website | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14463 | Spending on welfare, on prisons, and education, all of those have dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars because of Arizona’s immigration laws that drove out undocumented immigrants. | mostly false | /arizona/statements/2016/mar/03/ted-cruz/has-arizonas-economy-improved-because-its-immigrat/ | Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has talked tough on immigration, saying he would deport all 12 million undocumented immigrants. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Cruz what is wrong with letting the "good ones" come back to the United States during the Feb. 25 GOP debate in Houston. Cruz referenced a Feb. 9 Wall Street Journal article and said Arizona’s strict immigration laws have prompted undocumented immigrants to flee the state. As a result, it has become tougher for business owners in the state to find skilled workers, but at the same time state spending decreased. "Arizona put in very tough laws on illegal immigration, and the result was illegal immigrants fled the state. ... Some of the business owners complained that the wages they had to pay workers went up, and from their perspective that was a bad thing. But what the state of Arizona has seen is the dollars they're spending on welfare, on prisons, and education, all of those have dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars," Cruz said. "And, the Americans, and for that matter, the legal immigrants who are in Arizona, are seeing unemployment drop, are seeing wages rise. That's who we need to be fighting for." Arizona is no stranger to controversy with some of its immigration laws. But has the departure of undocumented immigrants after legislation helped Arizona’s economy to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars? We decided to fact-check Cruz’s complex immigration claim. But first, some background on Arizona immigration policy. Why did immigrants leave? Arizona’s undocumented immigrant population was on the climb prior to 2007, according to a Pew Research Center study. The population peaked in 2007 with about 500,000 undocumented immigrants in-state. But from 2007 to 2012, the undocumented immigrant population dropped 40 percent. However, immigrants across the state were already leaving because of the December 2007 recession. Arizona’s housing market crashed and construction jobs, one of the state’s major sectors, dried up. Immigrants "have left long before the passage of these anti-immigration laws," said Lisa Magaña, an associate professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Arizona passed Proposition 200 in 2004, which requires citizenship to receive social services such as childcare and housing assistance. The state passed Proposition 300 two years later, which bars in-state tuition for college students without a lawful immigration status. But the meat of Arizona’s policies toward undocumented immigrants did not start until 2008. Arizona required employers to use the federal E-Verify system in 2008, which requires an employee to have a Social Security number to legally work. Finally, then-Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law in April 2010. The measure allowed law enforcement officers with "reasonable suspicion" to ask for a person’s immigration papers when engaging in a stop. Most of the law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, but last September a U.S. District Court Judge upheld the law’s provision that allows police to question the immigration status of those they suspect are undocumented. Welfare Welfare has "never gone" to undocumented immigrants, Liz Schott, a senior fellow and welfare expert at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said. However, some children of undocumented immigrants are eligible for benefits if they were born in the United States and are citizens. Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors reduced immigration, noted that these U.S.-born children could share their cash welfare benefits with their undocumented parents. In 2008, Arizona spent more than $121 million in cash welfare. In 2014, they spent more than $32 million on cash welfare. According to Schott, Arizona just spends more in other welfare areas, such as child-care assistance for those working and/or attending school. "They’re spending it all, they’re just spending it elsewhere," Schott said. Because it is difficult to determine how many undocumented immigrants receive cash welfare, it’s hard to credit this drop to people leaving the state. Prisons As for state prisons, Arizona’s Department of Corrections tracks noncitizens, either documented or undocumented, with a felony conviction. From fiscal year 2010, which ran from July 2009 to June 2010, to fiscal year 2015, the state’s noncitizen prison population has declined almost 23 percent, but that’s just about 1,400 inmates. The daily cost of keeping a noncitizen in a state prison hasn’t changed much, either. In fiscal year 2010, it cost $59.85 per day to house a noncitizen. In fiscal year 2015, it cost $61.55. Because of the dip in noncitizen inmates, that’s a savings of almost $28 million. However, overall state spending on prisons has increased almost 17 percent between 2008 and 2015. Elliott Pollack, CEO of his own Scottsdale-based economic consulting firm, said Cruz’s rationale bothers him. "The cause and effect might be there to some extent, but I just don’t see how it saves hundreds of millions of dollars," Pollack said. "There’s no evidence of that." Meanwhile, Camarota said the departure of undocumented immigrants "makes things a little better." "Could he (Cruz) be right? He could be," Camarota said. However, Cruz’s points are subject to error. Camarota also notes that undocumented immigrants "paid something" in taxes. A February 2016 report from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that Arizona’s undocumented immigrants pay more than $231 million a year in state and local taxes. Education On education, the state also does not track spending on undocumented immigrants in schools. The Wall Street Journal article Cruz described uses the state’s decline in intensive English student enrollment -- about 80,000 students between 2008 and 2012 -- as a potential cost-saving measure, noting that it could save the state about $350 million per year. But it’s not that simple. "I think it’s a combination of factors," Arizona Department of Education spokesman Charles Tack said, noting that the decline could be attributed to students leaving the system or being reclassified elsewhere. Plus, that measure correlates intensive English with undocumented immigrants, which isn’t tracked to begin with. We reached out to the Cruz campaign for comment but did not hear back. Our ruling Cruz said, "spending on welfare, on prisons, and education, all of those have dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars" because of Arizona’s exodus of undocumented immigrants. That’s far from clear. While it’s technically possible to receive cash welfare through U.S.-born children, undocumented immigrants do not receive cash welfare directly. And, the state’s prison and education budgets do not solely account for those without papers. Even then, any potential savings would be hard to calculate. It is not an apples to oranges comparison. The recession played a significant role in Arizona’s immigrant population decline, too. There’s been no noticeable windfall in the state budget for welfare, education and prisons that we could document. We rate Cruz’s claim as Mostly False. | null | Ted Cruz | null | null | null | 2016-03-03T19:19:21 | 2016-02-25 | ['Arizona'] |
pomt-08299 | Robert Hurt supported a bill that helped the uranium industry after taking contributions from the industry and because his father had a stake in it. | mostly false | /virginia/statements/2010/oct/31/sierra-club/conservation-groups-accuse-robert-hurt-conflict-in/ | The television and direct-mail ads aimed at state Sen. Robert Hurt’s vote on a uranium mining study say he’s guilty of a "shocking conflict of interest." The ads are shocking all right, but not necessarily for the reasons stated by the conservation groups that produced the ads. Hurt, a Republican, is running to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. The TV ad, "Robert Hurt’s Shocking Conflict of Interest," challenges Hurt’s decision to vote in 2008 on a Senate bill that would have created a commission to study the potential for uranium mining in Virginia, which has been banned since 1982. The ads produced by the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters call Hurt’s decision to vote yes on the bill "a shocking conflict of interest ... maybe it’s because Hurt’s father has a financial interest in uranium mining, or because Hurt has taken thousands from uranium interests." A subsequent direct-mail ad goes further, saying:. "When family money is involved, a radioactive conflict of interest means nothing to Robert Hurt." That’s a nuclear statement that ends up half-baked. The TV ad overstates Hurt’s personal ties to the uranium industry, and three direct-mail ads take the issue over the top. One, showing a young girl on a swing and bearing the headline, "There’s a hidden danger lurking underground ...," resembles an infamous Lyndon Johnson ad in the 1964 presidential race that featured a girl picking flower petals moments before a nuclear explosion. Hurt’s campaign called the ad "a despicable, false negative attack" run by "liberal special-interest groups on Congressman Perriello’s behalf." Perriello’s campaign said the issue demonstrates the danger of accepting political contributions from corporate interests. We agree the ads go too far, but the issue of uranium mining is legitimate and timely. Last Tuesday, the National Academy of Sciences convened the first meeting of a one-year study requested by the state and paid for by a uranium company headquartered in Chatham, Hurt’s hometown in Pittsylvania County. Hurt’s father, Henry C. Hurt Jr., is an investor in the company, Virginia Uranium Inc. It was formed in 2007 by Walter Coles Sr., whose farm, Coles Hill, contains a major deposit of uranium discovered in the late 1970s. The study was requested by the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission last year, but Hurt’s alleged conflict occurred more than a year earlier in a vote in the Virginia Senate on a bill to authorize the study. That bill eventually died in the House of Delegates but Virginia Uranium is paying $1.4 million for the National Academy of Sciences Study, which will examine the potential socioeconomic impact of allowing uranium mining in Virginia. It is indisputable that Hurt’s father -- a writer, local bookseller and former Reader’s Digest editor -- invested in Virginia Uranium in 2007. The connection was documented in articles published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Washington Post that were cited in the ads. The elder Hurt is unabashed about his support for the business. "I am delighted to be one of the founding investors in the company," Hurt told us. Prior to the uranium study bill coming to the Senate floor, Hurt asked the Senate ethics panel if it would be a conflict of interest for him to vote on the matter. The panel, controlled by Democrats, advised that he was not in conflict and gave him a green light to vote. The panel ruled that under Virginia’s ethics laws, Hurt’s father is not part of the senator’s "immediate family" and their financial interests were not entwined. It also said Hurt could vote "because the impact of a proposed study on his father’s financial interests are speculative and because the study may have a broad impact on persons interested in uranium mining." The bill passed the Senate by a 36-4 vote, with Hurt voting yes. The conservation groups correctly say voters have a right to make up their own minds about whether the vote was a conflict. While the bill only would have created a study, opponents of uranium mining -- including the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club -- prefer maintaining the ban. Technically, the ads are correct about Hurt’s contributions from uranium interests, but by the barest of margins. Walter Coles Jr., a vice president of Virginia Uranium and son of its CEO, gave three checks totaling $1,500 over a period of seven years to then-Del. Hurt, who ran for the state Senate in 2007. Norman W. Reynolds, who was the first CEO of Virginia Uranium, gave Hurt’s campaign $500 in 2007. Together, that’s $2,000, just qualifying for the "thousands," in contributions claimed in the TV ad. The conservation groups also based the claim on $7,054 in contributions made to Hurt over five years by his father, who presumably had plenty of reasons other than uranium mining for supporting his son. All of the father’s donations were made before 2006, when Henry Hurt said he began exploring investing in mining for uranium. Further, most of the contributions weren’t cash at all. About $5,300 came in donations of office space, a political luncheon, and food for a police dinner. "It’s just despicable, scurrilous," Henry Hurt said of the ads in an interview with PolitiFact. So let’s review the key facts in the claim that Hurt put his own interests ahead of the public by voting on the Senate uranium study bill. Hurt did vote for the bill, and he accepted $2,000 cash contributions from uranium industry executives, barely justifyinghe Sierra Club’s claim. His father also contributed to his campaigns, but those donations came before the elder Hurt invested in uranium. There is no question his father stands to gain if uranium mining is allowed in Virginia, but Hurt disclosed that and was cleared by the Senate ethics panel to vote on the issue. Therefore, we find the claim to be 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 | Sierra Club | null | null | null | 2010-10-31T22:30:20 | 2010-10-13 | ['Robert_Hurt_(politician)'] |
pose-01271 | That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do, too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states.” in the works https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1362/expand-national-right-carry-all-50-states/ None trumpometer Donald Trump None None Expand national right to carry to all 50 states 2017-01-17T09:09:40 None ['United_States']
pomt-03598 Two years ago Providence alone spent $50,000 a year notifying the school department" about residents in the state's sex offender registry. | half-true | /rhode-island/statements/2013/may/12/joee-lindbeck/assistant-attorney-general-joee-lindbeck-says-prov/ | Rhode Island state law and state Parole Board guidelines say residents in the community must be notified if a Level 2 or Level 3 (moderate or high-risk) sex offender is living in their neighborhood. Notifications are also supposed to be sent to schools, police departments, daycare centers and community organizations that might have contact with the offender. The costs associated with that requirement were raised at an April 11 hearing before the House Finance Committee. At issue was House bill 5557, submitted at the request of the attorney general's office, which would revise the state's sex offender registry system to comply with federal guidelines. Under the bill, responsibility for notifying residents, schools, community organizations and businesses such as daycare centers about sex offenders living in the vicinity would shift from city and town police departments to the Rhode Island Department of Public Safety, which includes the state police. During the hearing, two witnesses made interesting comments about how the proposal would cut notification costs for cities and towns. One was Rep. Peter Palumbo, D-Cranston, whose statement is being fact-checked separately. The other -- and the subject of this item -- was Joee (pronounced Joey) Lindbeck, a special assistant attorney general who heads the office's Legislation and Policy Unit. "Two years ago Providence alone spent $50,000 a year notifying the School Department" about sex offenders. "This act would allow for e-mail notification alone," she said. That seemed like a lot of money, so we decided to check that portion of her statement. Because the data came from a report from the attorney general’s office, we made that our first stop. That office sent us a 2012 PowerPoint presentation that included cost estimates from several communities. There was quite a range. We've ranked the communities by the number of current Level 2 and Level 3 offenders (listed in parentheses) because a community that tends to have more offenders is going to have to spend more. It's important to note that the number of offenders may have been different when these cost estimates were developed and that some may have ended up back in the Adult Correctional Institutions on a new charge or violating probation after they registered. Per notification Per year Providence (163) $50,000 Cranston (124) $9,137 Pawtucket (39) $3,261 Woonsocket (38) $1,500 West Warwick (16) $22,784 Central Falls (16) $123 Warwick (15) $1,365 Coventry (11) $5,657 Cumberland (5) $4,000 Newport (4) $2,000 West Greenwich (4) $2,000 Johnston (3) $11,000 Hopkinton (3) $2,550 Smithfield (2) "Minimal" Middletown (1) $1,000 Richmond (0) $1,000 When we asked about the source of the Providence number, the attorney general's office produced a memo from Police Chief Hugh Clements reporting the cost was "approximately $50,000 [that year] for the registry and notifications. [Detective Teddy Michael] indicated that the bulk of the cost is related to the notifications to the schools." Providence currently has 39 schools. So the $50,000 was not just for school notifications, although most of it was. David Ortiz, spokesman for Mayor Angel Taveras, said the total was $65,000 in 2009, $36,000 in 2010 and $55,000 in 2011. How much of that was spent on school notifications? Ortiz referred us to the Police Department, where Detective Sgt. Philip Hartnett, recently put in charge of Providence police's special victims unit, said firm numbers are not available. He said Detective Michael estimated that the schools took up roughly 60 percent to 65 percent of the money. The costs were high, Hartnett said, because in 2011, the department has routinely sent notices to individual homes of students, although it was not required. "There are 26,000 students in Providence and it had to be something like that two years ago," he said. "I was amazed by that myself, but it was out of an abundance of caution. The law actually says to notify the schools. They took the step to notify the parents of all the students." Christina O'Reilly, spokeswoman for the Providence School Department, said when it gets a notice from police, it generates labels for all the students attending each school located within a half mile of a Level 2 offender or within one mile of a Level 3 offender. The labels go to the Police Department, which sends out the mailings, 45 of which have gone out since September. Bus drivers and principals are also notified by the School Department. Hartnett said there are efforts underway to streamline the system. "Now we are trying to set up an automated telephone system so that a call would go out to each student when we notify the school." The department was also trying to come up with posters, but with so many sex offenders to track in Providence, the posters quickly became outdated, he said. As Lindbeck told us, "The real problem is, they move so much and you have to redo this every time they move." Our ruling Special Assistant Attorney General Joee Lindbeck testified that "two years ago Providence alone spent $50,000 a year notifying the School Department" about residents in the state's sex offender registry. She was correctly quoting a memo regarding the approximate dollar amount but incorrectly attributed all of the spending on notifications to the School Department. On the one hand, everyone we spoke with said the biggest chunk of money went for school notifications. On the other, it's clear from the people with whom we spoke that a significant chunk of that money went to notifying other entities as well. We rate her 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.) | null | Joee Lindbeck | null | null | null | 2013-05-12T00:02:00 | 2013-04-11 | ['None'] |
tron-00394 | Florida Man Emasculated in Attempted Pit Bull Rape | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/florida-man-emasculated-in-attempted-pit-bull-rape/ | null | animals | null | null | null | Florida Man Emasculated in Attempted Pit Bull Rape | Jan 15, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08277 | The interest on the debt now is going to approach in the next couple of years ... what we spend in the national defense budget. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/nov/08/rand-paul/rand-paul-says-federal-interest-burden-will-approa/ | As one of the highest-profile Tea Party candidates of 2010, Rand Paul made reducing federal spending a centerpiece of his successful campaign for a Senate seat from Kentucky. In a Nov. 7, 2010, appearance on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Paul -- who easily defeated Democrat Jack Conway on Election Day -- suggested the debt is growing to staggering levels. "The interest on the debt now is going to approach in the next couple of years -- just the interest on the debt -- will approach what we spend in the national defense budget," Paul said. We hadn't heard that comparison before, so we wanted to check it out. The first place we turned to was a historical table in the president's budget proposal for 2011. (Budget geeks will know it as Table 3.1: "Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940–2015.") Among the categories in this table are amounts for national defense spending and for net interest owed by the federal government. The defense spending figure begins at $719 billion for 2010, then rises a bit before declining to $685 billion in 2015. The net interest figure is smaller to start, but it rises more quickly. It starts at $188 billion in 2010, but ends up at $571 billion in 2015. That's roughly a tripling in five years. If you compare the two figures year by year, you find that in 2010, net interest is equivalent to 26 percent of defense spending. That percentage rises to 33 percent for 2011, 50 percent for 2012, 66 percent for 2013, 76 percent for 2014 and 83 percent for 2015. Paul has certainly characterized the general trendline correctly: Through 2015, net interest climbs closer and closer to the level of defense spending. But whether this counts as "in the next couple of years" -- and how close the percentage has to get to qualify as "approach(ing) ... what we spend in the national defense budget" -- is more of a judgment call. He would be more acccurate if he said 5 to 6 years instead of "couple of years" and relied on 90 percent as the threshold for "approaching." But both terms Paul used might be elastic enough to cover the numbers we found. We will add that these figures are projections that may or may not come to pass, depending on what happens with the economy, policy changes, and military threats over the next decade. And we'll note that we're using the statistic called net interest, which includes interest owed the public, not interest that the government owes itself. If we used gross interest instead, the amount of interest would be higher, making interest a higher proportion of defense spending in each year. But the economists we spoke to said the best statistic to use for this evaluation is the smaller, net interest figure, so we'll stick with that one. A Paul spokesman, Doug Stafford, added that "interest rates are historically low. There is no reason to believe that will continue. If they edged up to anywhere near historically average numbers, the interest on the debt would skyrocket as a percentage of the budget and would do so very rapidly." The economists we spoke to said that's a valid concern, but we won't use it to grade Paul's statement on This Week, since it's based on speculation. So let's put it all together. Paul is correct to point out the coming explosion in net interest payments -- a level that will rise steadily in comparison to defense spending over the next decade as defense spending falls modestly. He's a bit too aggressive when he says the interest burden will "approach ... what we spend in the national defense budget" in "the next couple of years." It will probably do so by 2015 or 2016, which would be the final two years of Barack Obama's second term, if he wins one. For a president who just survived his first midterm election, that seems pretty far away. Still, even if Paul's time span is slightly exaggerated, we don't think it's a fatal error, since his point about the trend is accurate. So we rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Rand Paul | null | null | null | 2010-11-08T16:36:10 | 2010-11-07 | ['None'] |
snes-02006 | Walmart has been adding a "phantom charge" of $10 to shoppers' bills for 10 years. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/walmart-jajket/ | null | Business | null | Kim LaCapria | null | If You See This on a Walmart Receipt, Call the Police? | 26 July 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01199 | The National Anthem isn’t a Pop Song | opinion! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/national-anthem-not-a-pop-song/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | The National Anthem isn’t a Pop Song | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-04546 | Deficit spending ‘exploded during the Obama administration’ to $5.3 trillion over four years, compared to $2 trillion in eight years under President George W. Bush. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/28/ron-johnson/sen-ron-johnson-says-deficits-under-obama-total-53/ | Remember those nerdy charts that Ross Perot flashed during his third-party run for president in 1992? The Texas billionaire’s visual aids warned of the perils of America’s mounting government debt. Twenty years later, Wisconsin’s junior U.S. Senator, Republican Ron Johnson, is taking a page from Perot as he acts as a surrogate for Mitt Romney and advocates for a spending slowdown. Explaining one of his digital charts during a Sept. 11, 2012 campaign stop in Sheboygan, Johnson ripped Obama for saying his administration’s proposed "Buffett rule" tax plan for million-dollar earners would "stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade." "I haven’t yet publicly called President Obama a liar," Johnson told his audience. "But I’m saying he lies. Slight diplomatic difference." Johnson said the "Buffett rule" would raise just $5 billion a year. He’s right, as PolitiFact Ohio found in rating True a claim by Sen. Rob Portman that it would "bring in less than $5 billion per year. ... Enough to pay one week’s interest on the national debt." Johnson’s presentation uses a chart to contrast the "Buffett Rule’s" revenue potential to the deficits accumulated under Obama (2009-2012) and over the two terms of his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush (2001-2008). The chart shows deficits totalling $2 trillion in eight years under Bush, and $5.3 trillion under Obama in just four years. A caption on the chart says those deficits "exploded during the Obama administration." Is Johnson right on the deficit numbers and their rapid growth? As backup, Johnson’s campaign cited numbers from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The figures show red-ink budgets in seven of eight years that coincide with Bush’s term. The annual deficits totalled $820 billion in his first term and nearly $1.2 trillion in his second. Add them up and there’s the $2 trillion figure cited by Johnson. That same White House table shows four years of deficits for 2009-’12, the time frame that coincides with the Obama era, ranging from $1.29 trillion to $1.4 trillion. The total, including estimated figures for 2012, is $5.33 trillion. That’s nearly triple the Bush deficit figure, in half the time. It seems simple, with the numbers and the trend matching up with Perot’s, er, Johnson’s chart. We wish it were that simple. But there is considerable disagreement in academic and political circles over how to assign responsibility to presidents for spending and deficits. Using the same table and a slightly different approach can put a somewhat different spin on the trend line -- though we found no scenario under which the Bush-era deficits top those under Obama. Here’s why. The big question any researcher faces is when to start and end the clock when looking at spending and deficit by presidents. It would be tidy to start the clock on Inauguration Day, but the federal budget year begins Oct. 1. That means an incoming president inherits a budget-in-progress from his predecessor, though he often makes changes. That timing mismatch makes a pretty big difference, for example, in pinning deficit numbers on Bush and Obama. To wit: Democrat Bill Clinton’s last budget, for fiscal 2001, resulted in a surplus of $128 billion -- the last black-ink budget on record. But Johnson attributed that surplus to Bush, who entered office Jan. 20, 2001. Johnson argues that once elected the budget can be changed by the new president. Similarly, on the back end of the Bush years, Johnson gives the eye-popping 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion all to Obama -- even though Obama was working with Bush’s last budget, which took effect in October 2008, during the final months of Bush’s second term. That methodology becomes even more important when you consider that just before Bush left office, the deficit for fiscal year 2009 already was projected to be $1.2 trillion, according to the scorekeeping agency for Congress, as reported by PolitiFact. So, Johnson attributes the 2009 deficit entirely to Obama even though much it was already anticipated before the Democrat’s inauguration. (By the end of the 2009 fiscal year, the deficit rose to $1.4 trillion in part due to Obama’s economic stimulus plan). What about Johnson’s methodology? We asked three experts who closely follow the budget, and each said there is no consensus on how to attribute the overlapping budget years. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said apportioning responsibility is "really tricky." "Looking at what has happened -- budget deficit-wise -- during the Bush and the Obama presidencies doesn’t tell the whole picture because of the differences of the fiscal year and impacts of policies that were enacted prior to either of them assuming office," Ellis wrote in an email. Still, Ellis said he considered Johnson’s numbers correct even if the presentation was simplistic. What’s more, there are some extra complicating factors unique to the Bush-Obama changeover, such as how best to parcel out the deficit blame for such things as Bush’s major tax cuts and Obama’s more modest tax trims, two wars that overlap their presidencies, two recessions, a Wall Street bailout that each supported, and major new programs under each (Medicare prescription drugs, stimulus). The Great Recession of 2007-2009, which fueled deficits when tax collections fell, also overlapped the two presidencies. Jason Peuquet, research director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Johnson’s numbers were defensible. He suggested looking at the increase in debt -- as opposed to deficits -- because it can be tracked to the day a president starts and ends a term. By that measure, we found a $4.9 trillion increase in gross public debt in Bush’s two terms vs. $5.4 trillion so far in Obama’s single term. Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said "there is no good answer to your question that is going to satisfy everyone." Our rating Johnson’s chart showed $2 trillion in deficits under Bush and $5.3 trillion under Obama, and concluded that deficits "exploded" during the Obama administration. The numbers check out, but comparing presidents’ budget records is not as simple as Johnson’s chart suggests. For instance, Bush owns some debatable piece of the Obama deficits. We rate Johnson’s claim Mostly True. | null | Ron Johnson | null | null | null | 2012-09-28T09:00:00 | 2012-09-11 | ['George_W._Bush', 'Barack_Obama'] |
snes-03993 | The popular Gummi Bears (and similar fruit-flavored candies) are made with carnauba wax, the same ingredient that is found in car polish. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gummi-bears-car-wax/ | null | Food | null | Stephanie Larsen | null | Are Gummi Bears Made with Car Wax? | 20 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06319 | The federal "limousine fleet has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office." | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2011/nov/13/mark-neumann/gop-wisconsin-senate-candidate-mark-neumann-sees-m/ | Wisconsin Republican Mark Neumann says he is running for the U.S. Senate "because our $14.6 trillion debt is destroying our country." "We must cut spending, balance the budget and repeal ‘Obamacare’ to create jobs," he declares on his campaign website. To cut spending, the former congressman and 2010 gubernatorial candidate announced on Nov. 9, 2011 a proposal to save $2 trillion by trimming or eliminating 82 programs. The same day, Neumann discussed his plan with Jay Weber, a conservative talk show host on WISN-AM in Milwaukee. He said he would eliminate an ethanol subsidy, make federal employees contribute more toward their pensions and save $10 million by reducing the size of the federal limousine fleet to what it was before President Barack Obama took office. "Tell me why the limousine fleet has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office," Neumann said. "Why are we spending taxpayers’ money on that? Limos should be for weddings and proms, certainly not for government officials to be riding around in." Well, we at PolitiFact Wisconsin take limos to work every day, so we’re not sure what all the fuss is about .... But, seriously, Neumann’s claim made us wonder whether the federal fancy fleet has indeed grown by 42 percent since Obama was inaugurated in January 2009. Fortunately for us, our colleagues at PolitiFact National have already been down this road. In June 2011, presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., made a claim similar to Neumann’s. She said on CBS’ "Face the Nation" that "the number of federal limousines for bureaucrats has increased 73 percent" under Obama. That earned her a Mostly False. Bachmann’s claim was based on an article by the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, which does investigative journalism. The article, citing annual federal fleet reports, said the number of limousines rose from 238 in fiscal 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 412 -- including 259 limos in the State Department -- in 2010. That would be a 73 percent increase. But as our colleagues pointed out, the article itself quoted a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, which tracks federal vehicles, as saying the limo figures were not reliable. The spokeswoman said limousine had not been defined in the reports, which meant some vehicles listed as limos actually ranged from protective-duty vehicles to sedans. She also said her agency "cannot say that its report accurately reflects the number of limousines." In other words, there weren’t any good numbers on the number of federal limos. The General Services Administration promised at the time to fix its record keeping, so we contacted spokesman Gregory Mecher. He told us his agency issued a memo after PolitiFact National’s story was published, directing federal agencies on how to identify limos in their fleet reports. But those limo figures won’t be available until January 2012, he said. So, the limo numbers are still in limbo. We asked Neumann campaign spokesman Chris Lato for evidence to back Neumann’s claim. He cited the same flawed federal figures Bachmann did. If the government reduced the number of limos from 412 to 238, as Neumann proposes, that would be a 42 percent decrease. But again, the agency that tracks federal vehicles says that, despite the published fleet statistics, it really doesn’t know how many limos the federal government has -- and at least some in the count are not limos at all. Our conclusion Neumann said the federal limousine fleet "has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office." Figures from the agency that tracks federal vehicles indicate the number of limos is up. But the agency says its record keeping is such that it doesn’t know how many limos there are, and won’t be able to calculate any level of increase under Obama until January 2012. We rate Neumann’s statement Mostly False. | null | Mark Neumann | null | null | null | 2011-11-13T09:00:00 | 2011-11-09 | ['None'] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.