Datasets:

pszemraj

/

multi_fc

like 1

pomt-03627

Six out of 10 of the highest unemployment rates are also in so-called right to work states.

half-true

/ohio/statements/2013/may/06/chris-redfern/ohio-democratic-party-chairman-chris-redfern-ties-/

When a couple of Statehouse Republicans prepared to introduce bills to make Ohio a "right to work" state last week, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern lost no time going on the attack. Hours after Reps. Ron Maag and Kristina Roegner sent letters to House colleagues seeking co-sponsorship for what they called "Workplace Freedom" legislation, Redfern sent out a fundraising email saying such laws were "controversial, confusing, and wrong for workers and the middle class." "Six out of 10 of the highest unemployment rates are also in so-called right to work states," he wrote. PolitiFact Ohio thought we'd check. According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, 24 states have passed some form of right-to-work law. (The exact provisions can vary; generally they ban public and private employers from forcing workers to join or pay dues to unions or other employee organizations.) They are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. For unemployment data, we went to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation's official source for unemployment statistics. Its most recent numbers are the preliminary figures for March 2013. The states with the highest unemployment rates, from the bottom up, were Nevada, Illinois, Mississippi, California, North Carolina, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan and (tied) South Carolina and Georgia. Six of the 10 are right-to-work states -- or, including the tie, 7 of the 11. But there is a question about causation vs. correlation -- whether right-to-work status produces lower or higher unemployment. Two of the right-to-work states are relatively recent. Indiana (where similar legislation was passed in 1957 and repealed in 1965) in February 2012 became the first state to adopt right-to-work status since Oklahoma a decade earlier. Michigan followed in December 2012. Of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates, eight were right-to-work states. Of those, as we noted in an earlier check, seven states -- North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Wyoming and Oklahoma -- are from the Great Plains and the Mountain West, which in general were less hard-hit during the recession. So Redfern's statement about 6 of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates is technically accurate. But it is misleading because it implies a cause-and-effect relationship that is bogus. We rate it Half True.

Chris Redfern

2013-05-06T06:00:00

2013-04-30

['None']

pomt-09611

No Democratic campaign for (Fla.) governor has ever had these kinds of resources this early on in an election cycle.

true

/florida/statements/2010/jan/15/alex-sink/floridas-alex-sink-says-2009-fundraising-tops-for-/

Florida's leading Republican candidate for governor, Bill McCollum, is bragging that he raised more money in the last three months of 2009 than any other candidate running for the state's top elected post. That produced some crowing in response from Alex Sink, the major Democratic candidate. Sink raised more than $5 million in cash and check contributions in 2009, state campaign finance records show. "No Democratic campaign for governor has ever had these kinds of resources this early on in an election cycle, proving what a strong position our campaign is in going into 2010," Sink campaign manager Paul Dunn said on Jan. 6, 2010. We wanted to see if Sink, the state's chief financial officer, has built a war chest so large it's unusual for Florida Democrats. The state Division of Elections maintains an online database of campaign finance information for candidates going back to 1996. The online database covers gubernatorial elections in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. We searched the years prior to each election to see if anyone matches or comes cl ose. Sink's 2009 total -- not including in-kind donations -- was $5,050,000. There were two leading Democrats running for governor in 2006, former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and former state Sen. Rod Smith. Davis reported raising $1.65 million in 2005; Smith reported a total of $1.26 million in cash and check contributions. That's a little short of $3 million combined ($3.3 million when adjusted for inflation), way short of Sink's haul. Davis ultimately won the party's nomination, but was defeated by Republican Charlie Crist. In 2002, the two frontline Democrats were former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Sink's husband, lawyer Bill McBride. Reno raised $570,000 in the year ahead of the election; McBride raised $743,000. McBride won that primary, but lost in November to incumbent Gov. Jeb Bush. The Democrat in 1998 was Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, who was trying to hold the governor's mansion following Lawton Chiles. MacKay raised $1.57 million the year ahead of the election. MacKay lost to Bush. We also checked back to the 1994 gubernatorial election, the last time Democrats won in Florida. Chiles raised a total of $2.7 million in private donations for that campaign, the St. Petersburg Times reported. That's worth nearly $4 million in today's dollars, but Chiles' total includes contributions made in the year prior and year of the election. Sink, on the other hand, still has 11 months of fundraising ahead. Prior to 1994, eclipsing $5 million a year before the election was inconceivable. Sink clearly has benefited by being the only major Democrat running for governor. She's also campaigning at a time that simply requires candidates to raise more money. Yet the $5 million Sink raised in cash and check contributions in 2009 is more than what Jim Davis and Rod Smith raised in 2005, combined. It's also more than what her husband, McBride, and Reno raised a year ahead of the 2002 election. MacKay in 1997 and Chiles in 1993 don't come close, either. We rate Sink's statement True.

Alex Sink

2010-01-15T13:59:00

2010-01-06

['None']

tron-00214

Forward an email for Jasmine

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/jasmine/

9-11-attack

Forward an email for Jasmine

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

snes-04484

Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump for president.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pope-francis-donald-trump-endorsement/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President

10 July 2016

['None']

pomt-06704

Says Ron Paul insisted FEMA should be shut down.

true

/texas/statements/2011/sep/03/maureen-dowd/maureen-dowd-says-ron-paul-insisted-closing-fema/

Commenting on the federal response to Hurricane Irene, New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd wrote Aug. 30, 2011 that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s scorn of government is "so great that he doesn’t even want it to coordinate (relief) in natural disasters." Dowd’s column says next that the Texas congressman insisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "which (Paul) calls ‘a giant contributor to deficit financing,’ should be shut down." Paul has long advocated less dependence on government. But does he want to fold FEMA, the agency entrusted with coordinating disaster response? Some background: President Jimmy Carter created FEMA through a 1979 executive order merging disaster-aid agencies across the government. Yet the agency says federal involvement in disaster relief began with an 1803 law enabling federal aid to a New Hampshire town after a fire. "In the century that followed," FEMA says, "ad hoc legislation was passed more than 100 times in response to hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters." After asking Paul’s campaign about his FEMA position, we found a CNN transcript of a May 13, 2011, interview of Paul by the network’s Wolf Blitzer, who asked if Paul wants to see the agency ended. Paul replied: "Well, if you want to live in a free society, if you want to pay attention to the Constitution, why not? I think it's bad economics. I think it's bad morality. And it's bad constitutional law." Paul continued: "Why should people like myself, who had, not too long ago, a house on the Gulf Coast and it's — it's expensive there, it's risky and it's dangerous. Why should somebody from the central part of the United States rebuild my house? Why shouldn't I have to buy my own insurance and protect about the potential danger? "Well, the reason we don't have market insurance is it's too expensive. Well, why is it expensive? Because it's dangerous. Well, so why should — why should we take money from somebody else who (doesn’t) get the chance to live on the Gulf and make them pay to rebuild my house?" "I mean it's — it's a moral hazard to say that government is always going to take care of us when we do dumb things. I'm trying to get people to not do dumb things. Besides, it's not authorized in the Constitution." More recently, according to MSNBC, Paul said in New Hampshire on Aug. 26, 2011 that "there’s no magic about FEMA," adding that it’s a "great contributor to deficit financing and quite frankly they don't have a penny in the bank. We should be coordinated but coordinated voluntarily with the states. A state can decide. We don't need somebody in Washington," the network quoted Paul saying. On Aug. 28, 2011, Paul spoke again about FEMA. According to video posted by Fox News, "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace asked if Paul would do away with the agency and the things it was doing to help Americans faced with Hurricane Irene. Paul then described FEMA as inept in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, though he indicated he’s not inclined to shutter the agency immediately. "No, you don’t get rid of something like that in one day," Paul said. On Aug. 30, 2011, CNN’s Anderson Cooper prefaced a Paul interview by saying if elected president, Paul has said he’d do away with FEMA. Cooper shortly asked Paul: "So you say we don't need FEMA. Why?" Paul replied that "they don't have a very good record. I mean, these natural disasters are very, very dangerous, so I don’t understand why we’d turn it over to a federal bureaucracy. Federal bureaucracies as a whole don’t do a very good job, but FEMA has the worst reputation of almost any of them." He also said that the government should "look at how things were handled before we had FEMA." Later in the interview, Paul said the federal government should be available for disaster-related rescues. Paul’s campaign didn’t respond to our inquiry. We rate Dowd’s statement True.

Maureen Dowd

2011-09-03T06:00:00

2011-08-30

['None']

pomt-15232

Says Hillary Clinton has "been in office and in government longer than anybody else running here tonight."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/07/marco-rubio/rubio-says-hillary-clinton-office-longer-any-repub/

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says the electorate should pick a candidate based on more than his or her resume. At the first prime-time debate for the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Rubio said he’s qualified even though he doesn’t have executive experience. "This election cannot be a resume competition," he said. "It’s important to be qualified, but if this election is going to be a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton's going to be the next president, because she's been in office and in government longer than anybody else running here tonight." Does Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton really have a longer government resume than all 17 candidates on the GOP side? If you only count Clinton’s years as a U.S. senator (2001-08) and and a secretary of state (2009-13), then Clinton has 12 years in office, and that’s easily outpaced by many of the GOP candidates. Rubio is likely counting her time as first lady of the United States, from 1993-2000, when she had a more formal role with her own administrative office and a voice in national policy discussions. While counting her First Lady years is debatable -- it’s not an elected or appointed office -- counting it would bring her total to about 20 years. If you counted her time as first lady of Arkansas from 1979-80 and 1983-92, that would bring the total to 31 years. (Clinton had a private position as a lawyer for the Rose Law Firm during much of this time, so it’s not equivalent to the responsibilities of first lady of the United States.) We think it’s a stretch to count the Arkansas years, so we would put Clinton’s experience at about 20 years. As we’ll see, there are several Republicans who have 20 years or more in public office. Among Republicans, there are three candidates who have no government experience: real estate mogul Donald Trump, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Then there are the candidates who do not have at least 12 years in public office (the number of years Clinton has, minus her years as first lady): former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. That leaves the candidates who have at least 12 years of experience: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: 14 years In 1993, he became Arkansas’ lieutenant governor. He served as the state’s governor from 1996 through the beginning of 2007. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 17 years From 1994-98, he held a county-level representative position in New Jersey. He returned to government as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney from 2002-08, and he won election for governor in 2010. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: 17 years Jindal held various administrative positions in Louisiana and at the national level from 1996 through 2003. He then served in the U.S. House from 2005 through 2008, when he was elected governor. Rubio: 17 years experience In 2000, he joined the Florida House of Representatives after two years as a city commissioner in West Miami, Fla. He has served in the U.S. Senate since the 2010 election. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.: 20 years Santorum held various state-level positions from 1981-86. Then, he served in the U.S. House from 1991 through 1995 and then the Senate through the beginning of 2007. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 22 years In 1993, he became a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly. In 2002, Walker became Milwaukee County Executive. He has served as governor since winning election in 2010. Former New York Gov. George Pataki: 25 years Pataki was mayor of Peekskill, N.Y., from 1981 through 1984, then he served in the New York State legislature from 1985 through 1994. He served as governor 1995 through 2006. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: 28 years Graham had state and local attorney positions from 1988-94. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1993-95, when he entered the national House. He became a senator in 2003. Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 30 years In 1979, Kasich joined the Ohio Senate at age 26, following two years as a Senate aide. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 through 2001. After time in the private sector, he became governor in 2011. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry: 30 years In 1984, Perry was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. He became the state’s agriculture commissioner in 1990, lieutenant governor in 1998 and governor from 2000 through 2014. Our ruling Rubio said that Clinton has "been in office and in government longer than anybody else running here tonight." The only way Rubio gets near this is to count her years as first lady of Arkansas, which we think is a stretch. There are several Republicans who can make a good case that they have just as much experience if not more than Clinton, especially Perry of Texas and Kasich of Ohio. We rate Rubio’s statement Mostly False.

Marco Rubio

2015-08-07T00:55:38

2015-08-06

['None']

pomt-02638

In 1916, the U.S. government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees would need to be cut down.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/17/facebook-posts/viral-internet-meme-says-us-government-predicted-1/

With the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, pot is hot. So when a reader was curious about the accuracy of an Internet meme about hemp -- a close botanical cousin of marijuana that has been caught up on in the war on drugs -- they sent it our way. The graphic says: "In 1916, the U.S. government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees would need to be cut down." The claim has proliferated all over the Internet. Sometimes a source is listed (such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture archives), but none of the repetitions ever seems to have a checkable citation, much less a direct link to a verifiable source. We decided to take a closer look. First, some background on hemp. Hemp and marijuana are both varieties of the cannabis plant, but hemp has much lower levels of THC, the psychoactive compound that makes marijuana a drug. Over the years, hemp has been used to make a wide variety of products, from rope, fabrics and paper to food and fuel, but its use in the United States dwindled after World War II. After more than a decade of dormancy as a crop in the United States, hemp was effectively outlawed by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which drew no distinctions between hemp and cannabis, presumably because the two plants look so similar that it would be easy to conceal illegal marijuana plants in a field of hemp. Some states have since loosened their laws about hemp cultivation, but federal law remains a steep obstacle to efforts to revive the domestic hemp industry. Because the legal fates of marijuana and hemp have been closely intertwined over the years, supporters of decriminalizing marijuana have often made common cause with those who would like to revive hemp as a crop in the United States. That’s why the Internet meme we are checking struck a chord among marijuana-legalization supporters on social media. Still, widely believed doesn’t necessarily mean correct. Did the U.S. government really predict that hemp would, in the course of three decades, make wood obsolete as the raw material for making paper? The notion is not entirely implausible. The Agriculture Department does have "a lot of pre-World War II material on hemp," said Wayne Olson, a librarian at the National Agricultural Library, which is part of the Agriculture Department. That’s because hemp was once a cultivated crop in many states, especially Kentucky. The best known of these Agriculture Department documents is Bulletin 404, which features a pair of studies published in 1916 that investigate the plausibility of using hemp hurds -- a part of the hemp plant -- to make paper. This document has played a key role in the arguments of those who support legalizing hemp and marijuana, due partly to numerous citations in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a book initially published in 1985 by the late Jack Herer, a pro-cannabis activist. Herer’s volume has been widely read within the pro-cannabis community, though it’s been questioned by historians for the quality of its scholarship. Even though Bulletin 404 was mentioned at several points in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Herer’s book never makes the claim circulating in the Internet meme we’re checking. More to the point, when we looked at Bulletin 404 itself, we couldn’t find any reference to a prediction that "by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp." The papers that comprise Bulletin 404 are highly technical, dwelling on matters such as how much caustic soda was used in the tests and how to measure "unsieved hurds." Truth be told, the authors’ powers of prediction were rather faulty. They wrote that "there appears to be little doubt that under the present system of forest use and consumption, the present supply can not withstand the demands placed upon it." As anyone who uses paper knows, that certainly didn’t come to pass. Nor did the authors’ prediction that, "without doubt, hemp will continue to be one of the staple agricultural crops of the United States." And even that is not the same thing as predicting that all paper will eventually come from hemp. So Bulletin 404 is a dead end. What about other papers? Tom Murphy, the National Outreach Coordinator with the group Vote Hemp, pointed us to one additional document dating from around the same time -- a 72-page chapter from the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1913. But this document didn’t make the claim we’re checking, either. Olson of the National Agricultural Laboratory was skeptical that the claim actually exists somewhere in the department’s archives. "I have been here since 1987 and have a pretty good idea what’s in the collection, but I have not heard that quote," he said. And Joseph Schwarz of the National Archives and Records Administration said that his office, at our request, searched the general correspondence on hemp for 1916 and 1917 as well as the Online Public Access Catalog. Such a claim could not be located, he said. Academics expressed skepticism that the claim was made. "I never encountered this statement," said Michael Schaller, a University of Arizona historian. "At various times there have been many claims about hemp, so it is possible someone, somewhere, sometime, said it. But I have not seen it in any original source." Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice sciences at Illinois State University and author of Domestic Marijuana: A Neglected Industry, agreed that "it doesn't sound right. This was a time in our nation's history when trees were abundant, and I'd be surprised if a government agency was completely ruling them out as a source for paper." Ten other experts told PolitiFact that they had never heard of this claim, had never seen it persuasively documented, or both. "I have read Bulletin 404 carefully and can see no such claim," said Samuel Thayer, an expert in edible wild plants, author of The Forager’s Harvest, and creator of the Hemphoax.org website, which casts doubt on a wide variety of claims by hemp advocates. "It is possible the source is something else, but since I have not seen the claim referenced to any document in particular, and I know of no other USDA document regarding hemp from that year, that is my working hypothesis about where it came from." Our ruling The Facebook post said that "in 1916, the U.S. government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees would need to be cut down." The most plausible source for this -- Bulletin 404 -- is silent on this claim, and neither our own research nor any of the dozen experts we asked was able to come up with a definitive source. As with all claims of this type, it’s impossible to prove a negative, so we are willing to re-rate this claim if credible evidence emerges. However, our best efforts have turned up nothing more than a puff of smoke. Since the claim is unsupported, we rate it False.

Facebook posts

2014-01-17T14:19:04

2014-01-16

['United_States']

vogo-00562

Statement: “In total, the City Auditor’s Office identified $7,425,271 in potential monetary recoveries and cost savings for the City, which equates to $3 in potential savings for every $1 of audit costs,” wrote Eduardo Luna, San Diego auditor, in a memorandum to City Hall’s audit committee.

determination: mostly true

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-the-auditors-worth/

Analysis: “Potential” is the key word in the statement we’re evaluating. The city of San Diego’s auditor and his staff have indeed recommended hundreds of changes in the way the city does business.

Fact Check: The Auditor's Worth

June 25, 2010

['San_Diego']

tron-00513

Pray for Chad, a soldier shot in the head in Iraq

truth!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/chad-snowden/

appeals

Pray for Chad, a soldier shot in the head in Iraq

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-08426

On privatization of Social Security.

full flop

/ohio/statements/2010/oct/19/jim-renacci/jim-renacci-has-come-down-both-sides-privatizing-s/

In the latest campaign ad for Alliance Democratic Rep. John Boccieri, a Greek chorus of indignant senior citizens ties Republican congressional candidate Jim Renacci to the third rail of politics. "Mr. Renacci. I’d rather put my Social Security money in here, or in here, or in here, than let you privatize MY Social Security," a group of them scold, throwing cash into a hole in the ground, a coffee can, and a dresser drawer. "I paid into Social Security for 40 years, it’s all I have, and you want to gamble it away on Wall Street, Mr. Renacci?" ask another pair of seniors, as the words "Jim Renacci wants to privatize Social Security" flash onto the screen, as if to answer their question. We thought we'd run Renacci's position on privatizing Social Security through the Flip-O-Meter, in light of Boccieri’s ad, to see if his position has been consistent. Renacci campaign manager Jim Slepian says the ad is false, and that Renacci does not want to privatize Social Security. He points to a spot on Renacci's website where the former Wadsworth mayor says the federal government must "implement reforms to address the growing fiscal crisis that is facing the Social Security balance sheet." On his website, Renacci stipulates Washington must "ensure that Social Security benefits are protected and that needed reforms are brought to bear that would not raise taxes or privatize the system." Slepian said that's still Renacci's position. "He has said time and time again that we cannot and should not privatize the system." We asked the Boccieri campaign what information they had that showed something different. Boccieri spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw pointed us to a survey Renacci filled out for "Project Vote Smart." In that survey, Renacci said he favored of privatizing parts of the Social Security system. "To the extent that I support privatizing elements of Social Security, I support allowing workers to privately invest a portion of their payroll taxes," Renacci explained on the Vote Smart website. We do not think that Renacci is advocating measures that amount to turning the entire Social Security system over to Wall Street. But that's not been the case, either, for previous privatization proposals. In 2005, for example, President George W. Bush promoted moving toward a government-funded program that also allowed for personal accounts. Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has proposed a similar blend of programs as part of an overall budget plan he calls "The Roadmap." His plan, too, is a far cry from a wholly privatized system. So while Renacci's opposition to privatization is firm on his website, his answers to Project Vote Smart's survey suggest support for privatization as it has been proposed in the past. Reconciling those two positions and landing on two feet requires a Full Flop. Comment on this item.

Jim Renacci

2010-10-19T06:00:00

2010-10-18

['None']

pomt-06491

Current projections indicate that Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017, while Social Security will bottom out by 2037.

half-true

/georgia/statements/2011/oct/14/herman-cain/cain-says-medicare-social-security-financial-troub/

You can’t accuse Herman Cain of lacking confidence. Metro Atlanta’s Republican hopeful for president ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004 without a lick of experience as an elected official. Now he’s running for president without ever having served in public office. His new book, "This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House," treats victory as a foregone conclusion. Already, he’s referring to himself as "President Herman Cain." It’s in more than a few places, including the title of Appendix A, "The Major Issues of the Day, According to President Herman Cain." And President Herman Cain does not like what he sees. Entitlements, he said, are compromising the nation’s financial stability. "Current projections indicate that Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017, while Social Security will bottom out by 2037," Cain said. These figures -- especially the Medicare estimate -- seemed awfully pessimistic. 2017 is only six years away. We contacted the Cain campaign and received no response, so we did our own research. We found that FactCheck.org, another fact-checking group, looked at similar statements. Cain’s campaign website also offered some clues. His policy page makes an almost identical claim, citing a May 2009 article in Newsweek as support. The op-ed is by columnist Robert J. Samuelson, who argued that Medicare, which provides health care for seniors, and Social Security, which provides retirement income, will have to go bankrupt before lawmakers take funding problems seriously. Samuelson said current projections show those programs will go bankrupt in 2017 and 2037, the dates when the "trust funds" that back them are slated to run dry. Those are the same years Cain cited. First, we’ll deal with Cain’s statement that projections show Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017. FactCheck.org wrote in 2009 about a nearly identical claim made in a TV ad for Americans for Prosperity, where Mark Block, the Cain campaign’s chief operating officer, used to work. It checked another in April by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. As FactCheck.org concluded, Medicare does have big financial problems, but there’s no reason to think it’s going out of business. There are four parts to Medicare, and they’re funded by two separate trust funds run by the federal government. Part A covers inpatient hospital care, home health care, and services at skilled nursing facilities and hospices. It’s paid for by the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which collects most of its money from federal payroll taxes. Part B covers doctor visits and other outpatient costs, while Part D covers prescription drugs. The Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund pays their bills, which are mostly covered by the federal government’s general fund and premiums. Medicare Advantage, or Part C, gives recipients the option to receive care through private insurers. It doesn’t have a trust fund. FactCheck.org’s articles said that the SMI fund is in good shape, and we found it still is. It’s "projected to remain in financial balance for all future years," according to a 2011 report by the fund’s trustees But the the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund? Not so much. As of this year, it’s expected to be exhausted by 2024, according to midrange assumptions. If conditions worsen, the trust fund will run out by 2016. This is better than the 2009 projections, where trustees expected funds to dry up by 2017, according to midrange assumptions. That’s the same date that Cain used. Still, as bad as the news is about the hospital insurance fund, FactCheck.org decided it didn’t truly signal bankruptcy. The fund is only a portion of Medicare. The remainder is solvent for the foreseeable future. It’s also worth noting that Congress has always pulled the hospital insurance fund from the brink of insolvency. According to a Congressional Research Service report, in 1970, the insolvency date was 1972. For the next 16 years, trustees expected its funds to be exhausted by the 1990s. Congress repeatedly changed legislation to lower fund spending and keep it from going dry. Now, let’s deal with Cain’s claim that Social Security will "bottom out" by 2037. There are two Social Security trust funds: Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, which pays for benefits to retired workers, their families and to families of deceased workers; and Disability Insurance, which pays for benefits to disabled workers and their families. In 2009, midrange projections by the Social Security Board of Trustees said these trust funds combined will be exhausted in 2037, while the Disability Insurance fund will be gone by 2020. The outlook worsened this year. The Disability Insurance fund will be exhausted in 2018. Combined, their assets will be exhausted by 2036. When those funds run dry, Social Security will struggle to pay out benefits as promised, according to trustees. Cain’s information was based on a 2009 op-ed. He got that year’s data correct, and projections have not changed dramatically since then. But while it’s fair for him to say that Social Security will "bottom out" by 2037, saying Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017 is a bit extreme. Only one of Medicare’s funds is expected to be exhausted by that date, and Congress has never let it run dry. Lawmakers have bailed out the fund without fail for 40 years. Since Cain’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details about the Medicare trust fund, it meets our definition of Half True.

Herman Cain

2011-10-14T06:00:00

2011-10-04

['Medicare_(United_States)', 'Social_Security_(United_States)']

pomt-00986

The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that up to half of daily marijuana smokers become addicted -- an estimated 2.7 million people in the U.S.

true

/rhode-island/statements/2015/feb/09/susan-shapiro/foe-legalizing-marijuana-says-half-daily-users-bec/

Vigorous debate surrounds efforts to legalize marijuana around the nation and in Rhode Island, where advocates are pushing legalization proposals in the General Assembly. (In 2013, the state decriminalized possession of small amounts of non-medical marijuana.) Author Susan Shapiro, who says she is ambivalent about legalizing marijuana, shared her story about what she called her "extreme addiction" to marijuana in a commentary published Jan. 10, 2015, in The Providence Journal entitled "Susan Shapiro: My pot addiction nearly ruined my life." She told of marijuana’s "dark side," and included statistics to reinforce her point. "The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that up to half of daily marijuana smokers become addicted -- an estimated 2.7 million people in the U.S," she wrote. We wondered if the figure Shapiro used is true. We called her to find out how she backed up her claim. She referred us to a story that ran July 14, 2014, in USA Today entitled "Marijuana poses more risks than many realize" by reporter Liz Szabo. She took the information from that piece, she said. The story quoted Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, a federal agency that supports research on drug abuse and addiction. The relevant section in the story Shapiro cited reads: "Up to half of people who smoke marijuana daily become addicted. According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2.7 million people over age 12 meet criteria for addiction to marijuana." We contacted the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which produced the survey cited by Shapiro and Volkow. We also reached out to Volkow’s organization, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The SAMHSA survey found that 5.4 million people said they used marijuana daily or almost daily in 2012. Almost daily was defined as 300 or more days in the past year. (Another 18.9 million said they had used marijuana at least once in the past month.) NIDA forwarded us a detailed table from the SAMHSA’s 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It showed that 2.69 million people over age 12 with dependence on marijuana and hashish in the past year. That’s roughly half the number of daily marijuana smokers, as Shapiro said. Tamara Ward, a SAMHSA spokeswoman, told us that dependence on illicit drugs or alcohol is defined as meeting three out of seven criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, including the need for markedly increased amounts of the substance, withdrawal symptoms, and reduction or abandonment of social, work or recreational activities because of use. That sounded like addiction to us, but to be sure, we also reached out to Wayne D. Hall, a professor and director of the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research at the University of Queensland, in Australia. We asked Hall if dependence amounted to addiction. He said he used the words interchangeably but that not everyone does, especially not in the case of opioid drugs. We also contacted Dr. Stuart Gitlow, an addiction medicine specialist in Woonsocket and president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He agreed. "Clearly, all those who have dependence also have addiction, but it's not as clear that all those with abuse also have addiction. Some probably do not," Gitlow said. Our ruling Susan Shapiro wrote "The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that up to half of daily marijuana smokers become addicted -- an estimated 2.7 million people in the U.S." The survey found that 5.4 million people reported using marijuana daily or almost daily. A more detailed table from the same survey shows 2.69 million people -- just shy of 2.7 million -- with dependence on marijuana and hashish. Based on that number, and the definitions of addiction from SAMHSA, Hall and Gitlow, we rate Shapiro’s claim True. (Correction: Susan Shapiro says she is ambivalent about legalizing marijuana. The original version of this item and the headline incorrectly said she opposes legalization.)

Susan Shapiro

2015-02-09T00:01:00

2015-01-15

['United_States']

pomt-14885

Says the United States is in "the worst recovery from an economic recession since World War II."

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/10/chris-christie/christie-us-worst-recovery-wwii/

The central theme of the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wis., was business and economics. Fox Business moderator Sandra Smith laid out a bleak employment picture for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. She said there are 90 million Americans unemployed or not in the workforce at all. For those that are working, Smith said wages aren’t budging. Christie responded with an anecdote of a woman he met in New Hampshire who told him how she worried each month that she wouldn’t have enough to pay her bills. "There are tens of millions of Americans living that way after the worst recovery from an economic recession since World War II," Christie said. Is the United States in the middle of "the worst recovery from an economic recession since World War II"? Conveniently, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis website has a tool that allows you to compare recessions back to 1948. Here’s what the Fed’s site tells us. This recovery is not the worst when it comes to jobs. The Federal Reserve measures the cumulative percentage gain in employment from the point when each recession ended and the recovery began. During the recovery from the 2001 recession, employment didn’t crawl out of negative territory for about 28 months. By comparison, in the recovery following the 2007 recession, at the 21-month mark, the United States began adding jobs beyond the number that existed at the start of the recovery. The following chart measures the jobs picture following every recession since World War II. The red line is the current recovery: Seventy-six months from the start of the recovery, the economy today has produced a cumulative jobs gain of 8.9 percent. After 76 months in the recovery from the 2001 recession, the cumulative gain was 5.4 percent. There is another way to measure job trends. You can look at gains compared to the pre-recession employment peak. By that yardstick, it took 76 months to match the number of jobs in the economy before the 2007 downturn, which was the worst since World War II. It took 46 months for the recovery after the 2001 recession to reach the same point. But the job losses in 2001 were much smaller, so that recovery had less ground to regain. Economic output But Christie does have a point if you look at economic output, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. Looking at GDP growth, the current recovery is indeed the slowest since the Depression. Again here’s the chart: For a few quarters, the current recovery did better than the one that followed the 1980 recession, but while the current recession generally has showed slow gains, the 1980 recovery took off. The cumulative increase in real Gross Domestic Product for the present recovery is 14.2 percent. That is worse than the 17.2 percent for the 2001 recovery. Tara Sinclair is chief economist at Indeed and economics professor at George Washington University. "We've just passed 61 months of consistent employment growth, and longer if you just look at private employment," Sinclair told PolitiFact. "On that metric, the recovery is the longest since WWII, so that hardly seems the worst. On the other hand, the recovery has been notably slow, and we are not back to the trend level of GDP or employment that we would have expected without the recession." Sinclair added that even in terms of GDP it’s hard to call this the worst recovery because the country is emerging from what economists count as the deepest recession since World War II. Our ruling Christie said the United States is in the worst economic recovery from a recession since World War II. Christie’s campaign did not respond to our request for comment. The truth is it depends on what you measure. Looking at GDP growth, he’s right. Looking at the employment picture, the 2001 recovery was worse. Christie’s claim is partially accurate. We rate it Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/600cb3a9-686a-4390-8d06-4de6d4b7bec4

Chris Christie

2015-11-10T21:50:05

2015-11-10

['United_States']

snes-03162

A law firm working with Donald Trump was named "Russia Law Firm of the Year."

mixture

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-law-firm-of-the-year/

Politicians

Dan Evon

Did Donald Trump Engage the ‘Russian Law Firm of the Year’?

11 January 2017

['None']

tron-00133

Muslims Were Banned from U.S. in 1952

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/muslims-were-banned-from-u-s-in-1952/

9-11-attack

Muslims Were Banned from U.S. in 1952

Dec 11, 2015

['United_States']

pomt-09814

Van Jones "is an avowed, self-avowed radical revolutionary communist."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/08/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-says-van-jones-avowed-communist/

Radio and TV political commentator Glenn Beck has spent weeks detailing what he says is a web of Obama administration officials with socialist or communist ties. And Exhibit A in the Beck argument has been Van Jones, Obama's so-called green jobs czar (his actual title was special adviser for green jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality). Conservative commentators and bloggers criticized Jones because of his past remarks and his involvement with controversial groups. His resignation was announced shortly after midnight on Sept. 6, 2009. Beck has repeatedly claimed Jones is a communist. For purposes of a fact-check statement, we selected a Sept. 1, 2009, remark Beck made on his radio program that Jones "is an avowed, self-avowed radical revolutionary communist." There's little question that Jones was an avowed communist. In a Nov. 2, 2005, profile of Jones in the East Bay Express , an alternative weekly in Berkeley, Calif., Jones said his life hit a turning point in the spring of 1992 when he was swept up in mass arrests while protesting the acquittal of police officers accused of beating Rodney King. Although the charges against Jones were dropped, Jones said that while in jail, "I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next 10 years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." "In the months that followed," the Express article said, "he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. 'I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,' he said. 'By August, I was a communist.'" In 1994, the story states, Jones formed a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. According to a history of STORM written in the spring of 2004, the group held "structured political education" training at every meeting "to help members develop an understanding of the basics of Marxist politics." They "trained members on capitalism and wage exploitation, the state and revolution, imperialism and the revolutionary party." So Jones was a self-avowed communist. But is he still? The answer lies in the very same article. Even before the group disbanded in 2002, the Express article says, "Jones began transforming his politics and work..." According to the article, "He took an objective look at the movement's effectiveness and decided that the changes he was seeking were actually getting farther away. Not only did the left need to be more unified, he decided, it might also benefit from a fundamental shift in tactics. 'I realized that there are a lot of people who are capitalists — shudder, shudder — who are really committed to fairly significant change in the economy, and were having bigger impacts than me and a lot of my friends with our protest signs,' he said." In recent years, Jones established himself as a leading, charismatic cheerleader for transitioning the American economy to green jobs. We weren't able to find any recent interviews where Jones directly addresses the question of where he stands on communism. When he resigned this week, Jones said he was the victim of a "vicious smear campaign" by conservatives and decided to resign so as not to be a distraction. "I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past," he said in a released statement. But check out these two statements and see if this sounds like a communist. This, from his book, The Green Collar Economy , released in October 2008: "There will surely be an important role for nonprofit voluntary, cooperative, and community-based solutions," Jones writes on page 86. "But the reality is that we are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither the government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely. "So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world — and everyone else." Or how about this, from an address before the Center for American Progress on Nov. 19, 2008 (well before Jones was brought into the Obama administration): "Everything that is good for the environment, everything that's needed to beat global warming, is a job," Jones said. "Solar panels don't manufacture themselves. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Homes don't weatherize themselves. Every single thing that we need to beat global warming will also beat the recession. And the challenge is, how do we get the government to be a smart, and limited, catalyst in getting the private sector to take on this challenge?" That doesn't sound Marxist to us. Beck would have been on solid ground if he said Jones used to be a communist. Jones has been up front about that. But Beck has repeatedly said Jones is a communist. Present tense. Although we could not find a comment in which Jones explicitly said why he is no longer one, we found ample evidence that he now believes capitalism is the best force for the social change he is seeking. So there's truth to Beck's claim in that Jones was a communist, but it's apparent he isn't any longer, as Beck suggests. So we find the claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Glenn Beck

2009-09-08T18:42:27

2009-09-01

['None']

snes-05436

McDonald's is getting rid of its "Dollar Menu" come 2016.

mostly false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-getting-rid-dollar-menu/

Business

Kim LaCapria

McDonald’s Getting Rid of the Dollar Menu?

29 December 2015

['None']

pomt-09496

Bill McCollum said tax cuts don't work.

mostly false

/florida/statements/2010/feb/24/alex-sink/sink-says-mccollum-said-tax-cuts-dont-work/

A Republican candidate against tax cuts would be like President Barack Obama being against hope, right? But that's the accusation that Florida's Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democratic candidate for governor, makes against Republican opponent Bill McCollum, the state's attorney general. On her Facebook page Feb. 16, 2010, Sink wrote: "Career politician Bill McCollum said tax cuts don't work. That's just plain wrong -- wrong for businesses, our economy, and everyday Floridians." The charge refers to comments McCollum has made over the years, but the Sink campaign also cited some of McCollum's votes while in Congress from 1981 to 2001. First, his words. Sink's Facebook statement refers to a Feb. 15, 2010, article from the News Service of Florida about comments from three candidates for governor -- Sink, McCollum and Republican Paula Dockery -- at a Tallahassee forum sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business and Florida TaxWatch. Here is what the article said about McCollum's comments on tax cuts: While Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Paula Dockery both promoted the idea of offering tax breaks to spur job-creation, Republican Bill McCollum said the approach is not a panacea. "Targeted tax credits, in my experience in Washington, were minimally effective," said McCollum, a former 10-term Congressman from the Orlando-area. "They can be in the short run, but in the long run they are not effective," he added. "But I think all of us wish there were a simple solution to the re-creation of jobs in Florida." The article also stated that all three candidates "vowed to steer clear from tax increases" and "supported delaying a sharp increase in the state's unemployment compensation tax that businesses now face paying on April 1." Sink's campaign also cited a Nov. 5, 2000, South Florida Sun-Sentinel article in which McCollum, then a U.S. Senate candidate, discussed tax cuts. The article said that McCollum's "stump speeches Saturday repeated his themes of 'better government, not bigger government.' And he continued his attack on [Democrat Bill] Nelson for his support of $500 billion in targeted cuts, rather than the $1.3 trillion in across-the-board cuts favored by Bush. "'Targeted tax cuts are just a liberal's fancy way of saying they want government to decide who gets the money,' McCollum told a handful of supporters at a Punta Gorda retirement community." Those passages indicate that McCollum's position on tax cuts has followed party lines; he was opposed to the Democrat's "targeted cuts," but he appears to have supported an across-the-board tax cut favored by Republicans. To rebut the Sink claim, McCollum's campaign provided us with a few articles quoting him in favor of tax cuts. A Feb. 15, 2010, Newsmax article quotes McCollum saying, "We need to reduce the capital gains tax" and that he wants to reduce the corporate tax rate. In that article, he criticized Obama's proposal for a tax credit for businesses that hire new workers. "I never thought targeted tax credits were very effective," McCollum said. In a transcript of a McCollum speech printed in the Florida Times-Union on July 31, 2000, McCollum said that Congress could "not only cut taxes, but restructure the tax code." To get a more complete picture of McCollum's position, we also looked at his votes on various tax cuts. His record shows that, contrary to Sink's claim, he voted for tax cuts several times. Even the Florida Democratic Party has noted that; it issued a news release Dec. 29, 2009, stating that McCollum has repeatedly voted in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy. Sink's campaign provided two examples of when McCollum voted against tax cuts in the 1990s, but they were party-line votes that indicate he was voting with other Republicans in opposition to a Democratic proposal. By contrast, McCollum's campaign cited many other votes that McCollum took in favor of tax cuts, including votes to eliminate the marriage tax penalty and the estate tax. So based on the news articles and our examination of McCollum's voting record, it's clear that he has often supported tax cuts -- particularly Republican proposals. So Sink is cherry-picking here. Although McCollum did say he was opposed to "targeted" (read: Democratic) tax cuts, he has spoken and voted in favor of them many other times, particularly the across-the-board proposals favored by Republicans. We find her statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Alex Sink

2010-02-24T19:37:59

2010-02-16

['None']

tron-00176

The 9/11 story of Robert Matthews

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/jakematthews/

9-11-attack

The 9/11 story of Robert Matthews

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

snes-02597

A teacher's letter home upbraids student for correcting him in class.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/letter-go/

Humor

David Mikkelson

Adam Hilliker Detention Letter

29 November 2006

['None']

abbc-00400

The claim: Mike Baird says other countries like the UK and Canada have lower GST thresholds for online shopping and that these thresholds can also be achieved in Australia.

in-between

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-12/mike-baird-online-gst-claim-uncertain/5134960

The claim: Mike Baird says other countries like the UK and Canada have lower GST thresholds for online shopping and that these thresholds can also be achieved in Australia.

['retail', 'states-and-territories', 'nsw', 'australia']

['retail', 'states-and-territories', 'nsw', 'australia']

Can a lower GST threshold for online purchases be achieved in Australia?

Wed 11 Dec 2013, 11:23pm

['Australia', 'Canada']

pose-00727

Will "support an increase in the cigarette tax" if it is proposed and passes through the legislature.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/oregon/promises/kitz-o-meter/promise/757/would-support-increase-in-cigarette-tax-if-one-wer/

kitz-o-meter

John Kitzhaber

Would support increase in cigarette tax if one were to pass legislature

2011-01-04T21:58:42

['None']

pomt-05681

Says Gov. Scott Walker cut aid to local schools despite campaigning on trying to restore two-thirds state funding for education

mostly true

/wisconsin/statements/2012/mar/14/kathleen-falk/kathleen-falk-says-gov-scott-walker-cut-school-aid/

Kathleen Falk has a theory about what drove the recall campaign against Gov. Scott Walker -- and it’s not all about his move to sharply curtail collective bargaining by public employees. The Dane County Democrat, a candidate in the all-but-certain recall race, says the recall was rooted in people’s anger at what she considers Walker’s dishonesty in how he balanced the state budget. She offered this example on Feb. 29, 2011 in an appearance at Marquette University for the "On the Issues" series with Mike Gousha. "He said he was going to try to fully fund the two-thirds state commitment to education. That’s what he said he would try to do. But then what did he do? He made the largest cut in public education in our state’s history, a billion dollars." We previously rated True a claim from Falk that Walker’s education cuts -- including higher ed -- were the largest in state history. In that item, we noted Walker’s limits on unions also paved the way for many school districts to cut costs on pension, health insurance and other expenses. In at least some cases, the money the districts generated from employees paying more for pensions and health care totally offset their aid cut. But Falk’s claim about the two-thirds funding is new. It relates to an earlier period and a separate issue: Walker’s positions during the 2010 campaign. During that election, it was clear the next governor would face a huge budget shortfall, one tallying billions of dollars. And Walker was promising a series of tax cuts. But did Walker also talk about trying to "fully fund the two-thirds state commitment to education"? First, a quick word on what’s so magical about "two-thirds" funding. In the mid-1990s, the state pledged to provide two-thirds of school revenue, a move aimed at holding down local property taxes. The change, enacted when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor, marked a major shift in how education was funded. But in 2003, lawmakers repealed the commitment. And by 2010, the state’s overall share had slipped to about 63 percent. That may seem small on a percentage basis, but was very significant for many districts. In his first bid for governor, in 2006, Walker explicitly promised to "maintain" two thirds funding. What about in the 2010 campaign? In that race, Walker did not go that far -- nor does Falk’s claim go that far. She claims Walker said he would "try" to fully fund schools at the two-thirds level. (In her recall bid, Falk has said she supports a goal of two-thirds funding, but hasn’t committed to a specific funding level.) When asked for evidence to support her claim, Falk’s staff pointed us to an October 2010 story in the Appleton Post-Crescent that quoted Walker saying he would "aim" to return to two-thirds state funding. The quote originated in a Tomah Journal story on Sept. 8, 2010, before Walker won the GOP primary. The Tomah Journal reported that on education, Walker said "it would be an aim" to restore two-thirds funding of local school costs. Walker noted Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle had "chipped away at that." We looked for other clues on Walker’s position. On July 24, 2010, Walker was quoted in a Wisconsin State Journal article that described him as saying he supported two-thirds funding "in principle." Meanwhile, when asked on Sept. 2, 2010 by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel if he supported two-thirds state funding for schools, Walker did not directly answer the question. Instead, he emphasized restoring limits on school employee compensation and helping school districts control insurance costs. A Walker administration spokesman told us Walker did back the goal, but did not explicitly promise to do it. Once in office, other priorities and fiscal challenges overtook his aim, said spokesman Cullen Werwie. In the end, Walker moved dramatically in the opposite direction. His budget proposed dropping the state commitment to 61 percent for the two years, down from 62 percent to 63 percent the previous two years. Walker still has two-thirds as a goal. Said Werwie: "We still have one budget to go and because of the tough decisions that were made in the first budget we will be in a much better position to try and make progress towards this aim." In any case, Falk framed her claim around actions by Walker in his first budget. So let’s take a closer look at what he told voters about the prospect the goal could be reached that quickly. In the State Journal piece, Walker doused the idea that he would accomplish a restoration to two thirds in the 2011-’13 budget. He emphasized that "the multibillion dollar hole left by (Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle)" makes it difficult to maintain in the 2011-’13 budget. And in the Tomah Journal story -- in which Walker said he would "aim" to restore two-thirds -- he put his main emphasis on limiting schools’ compensation costs. So Walker sent clear signals his first budget might not be able to meet the goal. Our conclusion Falk claimed Walker proposed a big cut in state school aid, even though in the campaign, he said "said he was going to try to fully fund the two-thirds state commitment to education." Walker did support it in principle and says it remains a goal for the next budget. But Falk’s critique of Walker fails to note that before election day he signalled it may not be possible to be able to move back to two-thirds funding in the first year. We rate Falk’s claim Mostly True.

Kathleen Falk

2012-03-14T09:00:00

2012-02-29

['None']

pomt-04246

Says New Hampshire had the fourth-lowest unemployment rate in the country during Maggie Hassan’s time in the state Senate.

half-true

/new-hampshire/statements/2012/nov/16/maggie-hassan/new-hampshires-new-governor-maggie-hassan-claims-l/

Throughout her campaign, Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire’s new governor-elect, vowed repeatedly to veto any statewide income or sales tax that crossed her desk. But, even as she celebrated her victory, Hassan was asked to address the matter one more time last week, this time before a national audience. Interviewing Hassan the morning after the election on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown, anchor Chuck Todd asked the newly elected governor about the prospects of a broad-based tax. "I served in the state Senate for six years with retiring Gov. John Lynch. During that time, we had the fourth lowest unemployment rate in the country," Hassan told Todd during the November 7 interview. "Our economy works really well without an income or a sales tax." Throughout campaign season and beyond, candidates commonly refer to New Hampshire’s unemployment rate as one of the country’s lowest. But, was it really fourth best in the country during Hassan’s time in office? We decided to check the books. Federal counts show that the numbers fluctuated slightly during Hassan’s time in the Senate. She she served three terms between 2004-10 before running for governor this year. Amid the changes, New Hampshire’s rate remained among the lowest. Here’s a year-by-year review. 2005: 3.6 percent unemployment, tied with Montana for fourth lowest. 2006: 3.5 percent, tied with Alabama, Delaware for seventh lowest. 2007: 3.5 percent, tied with Delaware, New Mexico for eighth lowest. 2008: 3.9 percent, sixth lowest 2009: 6.2 percent, tied with Iowa for fifth lowest 2010: 6.1 percent, fourth lowest (As a side note, New Hampshire retained its spot as the fourth-lowest unemployment rate, 5.4 percent, in 2011, the year after Hassan left office.) So, the numbers show Hassan’s claim to be in the ballpark. The state’s unemployment rate ranked fourth lowest in both her first year in office and her last, and even when it rose, it remained among the country’s lowest. But, Hassan cited the state’s unemployment rate as evidence the state doesn’t need an income or sales tax. For purposes of this check, we wanted to look at the connection between taxes and unemployment rates to see if there’s a link as Hassan suggests. Analysts say there’s no direct correlation. Across the country, tax policy may contribute to a strong jobs environment, but a variety of other, more local factors likely weigh heavier in determining the unemployment rate, according to Scott Drenkard, an economist with the business-backed Tax Foundation. "New Hampshire fits with the pattern of having low unemployment and having a good tax system, but there are lots of contributing factors," Drenkard said. "I can't say there's a very robust correlation (with the tax structure)." Among the other states that rank among the lowest unemployment rates, for instance, Idaho, Vermont and Virginia all have both income and sales taxes. Hawaii, which had the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, had the nation’s highest income tax rate in 2005 and 2006, Hassan’s first two years in office, according to the Tax Foundation. In New Hampshire, factors such as the state’s small population, its lack of big population centers and its demographics -- older and educated -- contribute heavily to its strong employment, according to Dennis Delay, an economist with the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. "For an older population, they're more likely to have jobs and hold on to jobs than the younger population is," Delay said. Further, New Hampshire features strong manufacturing and health care sectors, among others, that keep employment strong, even in economic downturns, said Annette Nielsen, an economist for the state Employment Security office. "It’s a whole mix of things. We have fairly strong high-tech manufacturing, and that combined with not a huge population, it doesn’t take a whole lot to create (good employment numbers)," Nielsen said. Put more succinctly, "There’s no real connection between unemployment and tax structure," said Jon Shure, director of state fiscal strategies at the national Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. "The key thing to creating jobs in any state is to make sure that you're investing in infrastructure, transportation, health care, all the components of a strong economy. … It’s not necessarily taxes." Our ruling: New Hampshire’s unemployment rate fluctuated a little through Hassan’s tenure. But, even as it reached No. 7 among states in 2006 and No. 8 in 2007, New Hampshire’s rate remained among the country’s lowest. And, by the time Hassan left office in 2010, New Hampshire’s rate had returned to fourth, where it stood in her first year. We’ll give the new governor credit for getting her numbers right (mostly). But, her stated connection between the unemployment rate and New Hampshire’s tax structure doesn’t hold up. Analysts in New Hampshire and around the country suggest that other factors -- including states’ size, demographics and work base -- drive unemployment more than taxes. We rate this claim Half True.

Maggie Hassan

2012-11-16T17:06:38

2012-11-07

['None']

pomt-14686

Says Bernie Sanders’ health care plan would "empower Republican governors to take away Medicaid, to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/14/chelsea-clinton/chelsea-clinton-mischaracterizes-bernie-sanders-he/

Hitting the campaign trail on her mother’s behalf, Chelsea Clinton attacked Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ universal health care plan. "Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance," Clinton said in New Hampshire Jan. 12. "I don't want to empower Republican governors to take away Medicaid, to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans. And I think very much that's what Sen. Sanders' plan would do." The Sanders campaign and his supporters swiftly called Clinton’s statements inaccurate, so we decided to look into them ourselves — in particular, her claim that Sanders’ plan would "empower" governors "to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans." Given that Sanders’ proposed plan specifically calls health insurance an entitlement for all, we found that this is a mischaracterization at best. Sanders hasn’t released a health care proposal as a presidential candidate, but his campaign has said a bill he introduced in the Senate in 2013 would serve as the model. Sanders has called the plan "Medicare for all," referring to the the health safety net that covers those over 65. Clinton has a point that enacting the law would disrupt health insurance as we know it, said Gerald Friedman, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who has analyzed similar proposals. The bill, the American Health Security Act of 2013, specifically strips insurance benefits from the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicare and Medicaid. The bill also bans the sale of private health insurance that duplicates benefits provided by the government program. And she is also right that states would be the primary administrators of the system. The bill calls it a "state-based American Health Security Program." However, the assertion that it would empower Republican governors to take away individual’s health insurance is misleading. Sanders’ plan requires states to set up the specifics of their health care system, though they must meet federal standards for various administrative details. For example, states must identify a single agency to manage the program. If a state does not set up a system, or if they refuse to meet the federal standards, the federal government will step in and run that state’s program. Clinton’s comments seem to be based on how many Republican governors have reacted to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, deciding not to accept an expansion of Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income individuals. The Sanders’ campaign said the provision that allows the federal government to step in and run state programs would prevent governors who oppose the law from refusing to provide health coverage for their residents or offering subpar programs. The bill also states that every U.S. resident "is entitled to benefits for health care services" and would require auto-enrollment at birth or at the point when someone becomes a legal resident. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign told us that Chelsea Clinton’s point was that the law would get rid of all of the existing benefits — Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, etc. — for everyone. That may be true, but Sanders’ health care seeks to immediately replace all of these programs, as well as attempt to cover all those currently uninsured. That would be a federal-level change, rather than governors choosing to scrap those federal programs, and Sanders’ bill does make an effort to establish measures to circumvent the states that try to undermine the law. It sounds like Clinton is saying that millions would be left totally uninsured as a result of Sanders' plan giving more authority to governors, which isn't the case. "Her claim is analogous to saying that Medicare dismantled private insurance for the elderly," said David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and an advocate for a national health insurance system. "It replaced defective private coverage with something better." Hillary Clinton’s campaign also emphasized that at the very least, state governments could administer the program in such a way that they provide low-quality insurance compared to other states, such as by limiting reimbursement rates for providers. The campaign noted that Sanders' bill says the federal government must fund between 81 and 91 percent of each state’s program, so if a state doesn't cover the remaining costs, that could affect the services provided. One final note: It’s not at all clear that Sanders’ plan would pay for itself or be practical to implement. (We explored those issues in a separate story.) And his plan would certainly get rid of many existing programs. But Chelsea Clinton attacked the plan for one area that seems pretty clear, and that’s its coverage provisions. The plan’s defining feature is that it offers health insurance coverage to every American. Our ruling Chelsea Clinton said Sanders’ health care plan would "empower" governors "to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans." Under Sanders’ plan, Americans would lose their current health insurance. However, his proposal would replace their health insurance and cover the currently uninsured. The program would auto-enroll every citizen and legal resident, all of whom would be entitled to benefits. While the plan would give governors authority to administer health insurance within their states, it includes provisions to allow federal authorities to take over if the governors refuse to implement it. It’s impossible to predict with certainty how Sanders’ plan would play out in real life. But Clinton’s statement makes it sound like Sanders’ plan would leave many people uninsured, which is antithetical to the goal of Sanders’ proposal: universal health care. We rate her claim Mostly False.

Chelsea Clinton

2016-01-14T14:59:30

2016-01-12

['United_States', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Bernie_Sanders']

pomt-07590

Withheld union dues fund half of Dem (Democratic) campaigns in Florida.

pants on fire!

/florida/statements/2011/mar/25/grover-norquist/anti-tax-leader-grover-norquist-said-union-dues-fu/

Grover Norquist, whom a Miami Herald writer recently called the "the high priest of anti-taxation," is interjecting himself -- accidentally or on purpose -- into a debate over whether Florida governments should collect union dues through automatic payroll deduction. Norquist, the president and founder of the group Americans for Tax Reform, went to his Twitter account on March 24, 2011, to praise Gov. Rick Scott's decision to sign a bill that would link teachers' raises to their students' performance on end-of-year exams. But in his support for the signing of SB 736, Norquist also touched on another hot-button issue being considered by the Florida Legislature -- "paycheck protection." Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, and Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, have offered HB 1021 and its companion SB 830, which would prohibit public-sector unions from using automatic payroll deductions to collect union dues. The bills also would require union members to sign an authorization each year allowing the union to use their dues for political purposes. The bill passed the House 73-40 on March 25, and is awaiting action in the Senate. Dorworth and Thrasher have argued that the legislation will empower union members because it gives them more control over how their money is spent. Thrasher also has claimed that eliminating payroll deductions would save government resources, a notion PolitiFact Florida found Barely True. Norquist offered a more pointed, and political effect of the legislation. "FYI," he wrote. "Withheld union dues fund half of Dem (Democratic) campaigns in Florida." That's an awfully big number. So, FYI, we decided to check it out. We sent e-mails to Norquist, who has talked to us before, and his spokesman John Kartch but did not hear back. The not-for-profit, nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics is the only organization that we know of that analyzes and organizes state-level campaign contributions for all 50 states. The institute separates campaign donations received by party, and also 19 different industry sectors. In 2010, Florida state candidates received a total of $332 million in contributions, according to the institute. Of that sum, $89 million went to Democrats and $195 million went to Republicans (the remainder went to third-party candidates or ballot measures). One of the industry sectors that the institute uses is classified as "labor" and is made up of general trade unions, public-sector unions and transportation unions. Contributions classified as "labor" went heavily to Democrats, according to the institute. But nowhere near the percentage that Norquist suggested. Labor contributed a total of $13.8 million to Florida political campaigns in 2010 -- $10.2 million to Democrats, about $1 million to Republicans and the rest to third-party candidates or campaigns for ballot measures. That translates to about 11 percent of total Democratic donations -- way lower than Norquist said. Moreover, he said "union dues" were funding 50 percent of Democratic campaigns. The institute's 11 percent figure includes direct contributions made by unions through dues, but it also attempts to include members of unions who contributed individually, either on top of or in lieu of their union dues. It also includes "union" contributions that are made to candidates from a separate political fund that members participate in voluntarily, said Doug Martin, lobbyist and political director the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees in Florida. The biggest union contributor was the Florida Education Association, which spent $4.1 million in 2010 ($3.5 million of it on Democrats). As its name suggests, the National Institute on Money in State Politics only covers state races and does not cover races for the U.S. House or U.S. Senate. We were not able to find as good a way to track donations to Florida Democrats in federal races. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that during the 2009-2010 federal campaign season, Democratic candidates in Florida received a total $35.9 million (compared to $48.7 million for Republicans). But the center doesn't parse out donations to political party by sector. We were able to examine a few specific candidates, including the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 2010, Kendrick Meek, who raised about $9 million. According to the center, lawyers and law firms contributed more to Meek than any other industry, about $1 million. The "education" industry, which would include education unions, contributed about $106,000. Building trade unions contributed an additional $75,000. Ron Klein, who raised around $4 million in his unsuccessful attempt to win re-election to the U.S. House, received $75,000 from public-sector unions, $67,000 from public trade unions and about $50,000 from transportation unions. In both cases, not chump change. But hardly half of what the candidates raised. Norquist said union dues fund half of Democratic campaigns in Florida. While unions predominantly donate to Democrats, according to research from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, there's no evidence union dues fund anywhere close to half of state Democratic campaigns. About 11 percent of all contributions to state-level Democrats came from unions and their members, but not even all of that came from dues. Some of the contributions are made individually by members. Others are pooled through voluntary political action committees. This claim is way off. We rate it Pants on Fire!

Grover Norquist

2011-03-25T11:24:23

2011-03-24

['Democratic_Party_(United_States)']

pomt-08043

Rhode Island has the highest percentage of uninsured adults of any state in New England.

mostly true

/rhode-island/statements/2011/jan/04/marie-ghazal/health-clinic-executive-says-rhode-island-has-high/

The cost of health care is a huge issue for everyone. If you have health insurance, the chances are excellent that you've seen your costs, along with co-payments and deductibles, go up significantly. If you don't have health insurance, the bill you get from your doctor or hospital is strikingly higher than what people with health insurance are charged. That's because insurance companies negotiate deep discounts that uninsured people never see. And because people who don't have insurance are seven times more likely to skip the care they need, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that typically makes your care more expensive when you do seek it. If, on top of everything else, you can't pay for that care and a hospital provides it for free, as a hospital is obligated to do, those costs are passed on to everyone else. So it caught our attention when Marie Ghazal, chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Free Clinic, the Providence nonprofit organization that treats the uninsured, began an opinion column in The Providence Journal by asserting that "Rhode Island has the highest percentage of uninsured adults of any state in New England." She stated that between 13.9 percent and 21.4 percent of residents are not insured, which translates to 139,000 to 214,000 Rhode Islanders. We wondered if our ranking was really that poor, and why the range was so large. When we contacted Ghazal, she said she got the information from a story in the Providence Business News. The article gives no specific numbers for Rhode Island or most other states. It was based on a map developed by the CDC that breaks the states into three categories: those having the highest proportion of people with health insurance, those having the lowest and those in between. Rhode Island -- like New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia and most of the states in the Midwest -- is in the in-between category. Ghazal said our rate of uninsured adults was 13.9 percent to 21.4 percent because, as it turns out, that's how the CDC defined the in-between group. We asked if she had specific numbers. She said she didn't. So we went searching. When we contacted CDC, they directed us to state-by-state numbers, as collected by Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a telephone survey that counts how many people are without health insurance at the time of the call. According to the BRFSS statistics, which served as the basis for the map cited by Ghazal, the 2009 telephone survey of 4,318 Rhode Islands found that the percentage of uninsured adults in Rhode Island was 14.2 percent, below the national average of 16.9 percent. Thirty-two states had a lower rate of health insurance coverage than Rhode Island. The worst rate was in Texas, where 29.1 percent of the population was not covered. In 15 states, at least 20 percent of the adult population younger than 65 was without health insurance. But we found something else while digging into the numbers. The margin of error in the survey was plus or minus 1.9 percentage points. If you ignore the margin of error, it is true that Rhode Island had the highest rate of uninsured adults in New England. Maine, where 13.7 percent were uninsured, was closest to Rhode Island. But that's a difference of only 0.5 percentage points. Massachusetts, in contrast, had the lowest rate of uninsured -- 6.2 percent -- because the Bay State has mandatory health insurance. However, if you consider the margin of error in the poll, we could rank ahead of New Hampshire (where 13.1 were uninsured) and Maine. For additional context, we looked at the percentages going back to 1995 (excluding 2001 and 2002, two years when the survey results are not on the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion website). It turns out that in 2004, the level of uninsured in Rhode Island was a bit higher -- 14.4 percent; 15 years ago it was at about 13 percent. The rate did dip to 11.7 percent in the 1998 survey but, in general, the numbers have stayed consistent. By any measure, that's still a lot of people walking around without health insurance. Ultimately, if you ignore the margin of error, Ghazal is correct about our ranking compared with other New England states. But if you take that into account, its possible that her statement could be inaccurate. More importantly, she's making a selective comparison. When you compare us with the rest of the country, we're better than average. Because of those omissions, we rate her statement Mostly True.

Marie Ghazal

2011-01-04T00:01:00

2010-12-17

['New_England', 'Rhode_Island']

pose-01310

“And if people don't like it, we've got to have a country folks. Got to have a country. Countries in which immigration will be suspended would include places like Syria and Libya. And we are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria.”

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1402/suspend-immigration-terror-prone-places/

trumpometer

Donald Trump

Suspend immigration from terror-prone places

2017-01-17T09:12:17

['Syria', 'Libya']

pomt-13817

Do you know what the second sport with the most concussions is? Women’s soccer… And the third most dangerous sport? Cheerleading.

half-true

/texas/statements/2016/jul/15/drew-brees/drew-brees-says-womens-soccer-cheerleading-pose-co/

Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback headed into his 16th NFL season, insists he doesn’t fret about concussions. But the Austin native, who led the Westlake High School Chaparrals to a state football championship in 1996, stirred our curiosity in his June 2016 interview with Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman when he said: "Do you know what the second sport with the most concussions is? Women’s soccer. But do you see anyone telling their daughters not to play soccer? And the third most dangerous sport? Cheerleading. You understand the risk with every sport you play." Our attempts to draw Brees’ backup information failed. But we took him to be saying women’s soccer and cheerleading rank second and third, respectively, in the incidence of concussions. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we confirmed that football consistently poses the greatest concussion risks. Women's or girls soccer, which has surged in popularity since the 1980s, often places a distant second by this metric, we found, with the chances of a concussion from cheerleading much lower. Women's soccer As we looked into the soccer portion of Brees' claim, experts pointed out a 2014 report, "Sports-related Concussions in Youth," sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with backing from the National Football League, the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health. The report, collating several studies, said: "Soccer, lacrosse, and basketball are associated with the highest rates of reported concussions for U.S. female athletes at the high school and college levels." A report chart shows that according to four studies of concussions in sports, football consistently placed first with six to 11.2 concussions per 10,000 "athletic exposures," a term meaning the number of practices and competitions in which an individual actively participates (i.e., in which he or she is exposed to the possibility of athletic injury). Significantly, two of the cited studies showed women’s soccer with the second-highest concussion rate, 3.6 or 3.5 per 10,000 athletic exposures while the sport was close to No. 2 in the other studies. Per one study, men’s lacrosse had higher concussion rates and in the other, men’s hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse had higher rates. The chart: SOURCE: Chart in report, "Sports-related Concussions in Youth," National Academies Press, 2014 In a 2015 report, Dawn Comstock, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, and others synthesized nearly 50 studies to pinpoint the causes of concussions among American youth soccer players. According to a summary, the authors found that contact with another player was the most common cause with heading the ball the reason for 25 percent of concussions among girls. We reached out to Comstock for more perspective. By phone, she told us that a general factor to acknowledge is the likelihood of female athletes more likely revealing concussion symptoms because females are more likely than males to discuss health-related issues. "We honestly don’t know if girl soccer players are sustaining more concussions than boy ice hockey and lacrosse players or if they’re just more likely to be diagnosed because they’re more likely to report their symptoms," Comstock said. Cheerleading The 2014 national report says of cheerleading: "Concussions and other closed-head injuries account for 4 to 6 percent of all cheerleading injuries," a conclusion attributed to a "policy statement" from the American Academy of Pediatrics, "Cheerleading injuries: Epidemiology and recommendations for prevention." But the 2012 statement says concussion rates in cheerleading, 0.6 per 10,000 athletic exposures, have been relatively low compared with other girls’ high school sports such as soccer (3.6), basketball (1.6-2.1), lacrosse (2.0), softball (0.7-1.1), and field hockey (1.0). Troubling note: From 1998 to 2008, the academy says, concussion rates in cheerleading increased by 26 percent a year, greater than any of the other girls sports studied. "Concussion rates increase with age and competitive level," the statement says, "likely because of the increasing difficulty of stunts." The 26 percent figure traces to a regional 2011 study of concussions among high school boys and girls in a dozen sports in 25 Fairfax County, Virginia schools from 1997-98 through 2007-08. In that study, football and girls soccer posed far greater concussion risks. By a wide margin, football ranked first in total concussions with 1,407 or 53 percent of all the tallied concussions. Considerably behind in second place was boys’ lacrosse, which accounted for 244 concussions, 9 percent of the total--with girls’ soccer landing third with 195 concussions, 7 percent of the total. Football also had the highest concussion rate, the study says, with 6.0 concussions for every 10,000 athletic exposures. Among the studied girls sports, the concussion rate for girls soccer, 3.5/10,000 AEs, far outpaced the 0.6 rate for cheerleading--with the latter having the lowest rate of the girls sports including basketball, lacrosse, field hockey and softball. By phone, the study’s lead author, Andrew Lincoln, director of the MedStar Sports Medicine Research Center, told us that while cheerleading can be dangerous, its concussion rate is low. Lincoln pointed us to the North Carolina-based National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury which issued a 2015 report indicating that from fall 1982 through spring 2014, female cheerleading ranked only behind football, in U.S. high schools, for its number of "direct catastrophic events," meaning severe injuries such as fractured vertebra to incidents resulting in paralysis or even death. Worse, once the number of participants in each sport is factored in, cheerleading ranked No. 1 for its rate of such events. Among college sports, the report said, football had the highest number of direct catastrophic events, followed by female cheerleading and baseball. We heard more about cheerleading risks from Chris Nowinski of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine. By email, Nowinski pointed out a May 2014 analysis on FiveThirtyEight.com that quoted Comstock saying: "Cheerleading is not nearly as dangerous a sport as some of the previous research painted it to be." Comstock’s focus was on concussions. Among a set of high school athletes tracked across 20 sports from 2008 through 2010, Comstock said, cheerleading had the 10th-highest concussion rate. An accompanying chart indicates 1.4 concussions per 10,000 AEs for cheerleading. In contrast, football had a 6.4 rate, per the chart, girls soccer had a 3.4 rate--and five boys sports plus girls lacrosse, field hockey, basketball and softball each had higher concussion rates than cheerleading. A wrinkle: Cheerleading was the only sport in the study with a higher risk of concussion in practice (1.4 per 10,000 AEs) than in competition (1.2 per 10,000)--a result Comstock attributed to cheerleading not widely being recognized as a sport, hence subject to practices in parking lots and on other sketchy surfaces. Comstock, asked for the latest data, told us that across 22 high school sports in 2014-15, football games by far accounted for the highest concussion rates. For every 10,000 players in a given Friday night’s games, she said, 31 sustained a concussion. In second place came girls soccer, she said, with about 21 of every 10,000 players on a given game night sustaining concussions. Far less frequent were concussions among participants in cheerleading competitions, Comstock said, at a rate of 1.8 for every 10,000 AEs. The professor also pointed us to a 2015 study she helped author stating that from 2009-10 through 2013-14, concussions were nationally the most common cheerleading injury even though concussion rates were significantly lower than in other sports. Our ruling Brees said: "Do you know what the second sport with the most concussions is? Women’s soccer… And the third most dangerous sport? Cheerleading." Football by far poses the greatest concussion risks, studies show, with women’s/girls soccer often placing a distant second. Cheerleading poses risks too, more so in practices, yet concussion chances are relatively slight compared to numerous sports. We rate 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.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/e7766835-dafa-4b37-b770-0e11fd993e56

Drew Brees

2016-07-15T14:51:46

2016-06-12

['None']

goop-00935

Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick Marriage “On The Rocks”?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/sarah-jessica-parker-matthew-broderick-marriage-rocks-trouble/

Shari Weiss

Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick Marriage “On The Rocks”?

11:01 am, May 25, 2018

['None']

pomt-11794

Says Doug Jones "is for full-term abortion."

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/nov/21/kayla-moore/moores-wife-coins-new-anti-abortion-term-attack-hi/

As Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore wrestles with accounts of sexual encounters with underaged teens, his Democratic opponent faces political attacks about abortion. Doug Jones is unabashedly pro-abortion rights, and Moore’s wife Kayla spoke at a rally in Montgomery, Ala., about his position. Reading from a prepared statement, Moore called Jones "an ultra-liberal." "Who was an Obama delegate," she said of Jones on Nov. 17. "Who is for full-term abortion? Who is for more gun restrictions? Who is for transgender bathrooms? Who is for transgender in the military?" The list continued, but we wanted to look at whether Jones is for full-term abortions. First of all, while the phrase "late-term abortion" is familiar, "full-term abortion" is not. We asked the Moore campaign what Kayla Moore meant. "Kayla was referring to Doug's statement on Chuck Todd (on Meet the Press) where he refused to support an abortion ban after 20 weeks," said Hannah Ford, deputy campaign manager. We’ll take a look at that Meet the Press segment, as well as another interview Jones gave to Alabama newspapers when he talked about late-term abortion law. Regarding "full-term abortion," Moore has used a phrase that virtually didn’t exist before she said it. Key interview No. 1 Jones appeared on MSNBC’s Meet the Press in late September. Near the end, host Chuck Todd pressed him on abortion. Here’s the full exchange: Todd: "What are the limitations that you believe should be in the law when it comes to an abortion?" Jones: "I am a firm believer that a woman should have the freedom to choose what happens to her own body. And I’m going to stand up for that, and I’m going to make sure that continues to happen. I want to make sure that as we go forward, people have access to contraception, they have access to the abortion that they might need, if that's what they choose to do. I think that’s an issue that we can work with and talk to people about on both sides of the aisle." Todd: "So you wouldn't be in favor of legislation that said, ban abortion after 20 weeks or something like that?" Jones: "I'm not in favor of anything that is going to infringe on a woman's right and her freedom to choose. That's just the position that I've had for many years. It's a position I continue to have. But I want people to understand that once that baby is born, I’m going to be there for that child. That’s where I become a right-to-lifer." Key interview No. 2 Jones added more detail to his position on abortion in a Nov. 2 interview with AL.com. "I fully support a woman's freedom to choose to what happens to her own body," Jones said. "Having said that, the law for decades has been that late-term procedures are generally restricted except in the case of medical necessity. That's what I support. I don't see any changes in that." Jones had said largely the same thing in mid October in a statement released by the campaign. "This is a deeply personal decision," the statement said. "I support the current law on a woman’s freedom to choose, which has been in place for decades, where late-term abortions are permitted to protect the life or health of the mother." While Jones spoke of late-term abortions, the phrase itself has no fixed legal definition. Broadly speaking, the term refers to a dividing line set at different points in different states. Before that point (20 weeks post-fertilization in Alabama, for example) a woman can have an abortion for any reason. After that point, she can have one only if her life is endangered or her physical health is severely compromised. So Jones has said he supports laws that allow abortions beyond a certain number of weeks in order to protect the health of the mother. Fuzzy language The Moore campaign’s definition of what qualifies as a full-term abortion — meaning, abortions that occur after 20 weeks — does not match the medical definition. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a full-term pregnancy falls between 39 weeks of gestation to 40 weeks and six days. That span falls well beyond the 18 to 25 weeks set by state law that determine when abortion restrictions apply. From the earliest days when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed abortion’s legality based on the rights of the mother, fetal viability has helped define the dividing line. But as medical knowledge has pushed back the time when a premature infant can survive, the breakpoint has changed. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists focuses on the period in which independent life outside the womb is at tipping point. In 2017, a panel of doctors determined that period ranges from as early as 20 weeks after fertilization to just under 26 weeks. In that span, "outcomes range from certain or near-certain death to likely survival with a high likelihood of serious morbidities." In common parlance, anything beyond 20 or 25 weeks is often referred to as a late-term abortion. So where does Moore’s use of full-term abortion fit? And Jones’ use of late-term? "I have not heard the phrase ‘full-term abortion’ used in the debates over abortion, but neither have I heard the phrase ‘late-term’ abortion used without specifying gestational limits," said O. Carter Snead, associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. "They are both speaking in more colloquial terms rather than using terms of art deployed in the legal and political debates." That said, the use of the phrase late-term abortion empirically is far more common. A Nexis search for it between New Year’s Day 2017 and the day before Moore gave her speech produced 569 hits. The same search for full-term abortion produced one. It was in a letter to the editor that appeared in a Maine newspaper. Law professor I. Glenn Cohen at Harvard University said he hadn’t heard the term and found it "puzzling." Lisa Harris, a physician who studies abortion practice, law, policy and ethics at the University of Michigan Medical School, said " ‘full-term abortion’ is not a term I have heard before, and doesn’t exist as a matter of routine practice." "If there's a reason someone needs to deliver early, then you induce labor, or you perform a C-section," she said. Harris said the only situation that might match Moore’s "full-term abortion" are rare cases of third trimester abortion. "Third trimester abortions are incredibly infrequent," Harris said. "My understanding is that these are difficult and unusual situations that generally involve a fetal anomaly that makes life untenable for the fetus." At its roots, abortion law sorts out the moral rules during the time when the baby depends on the mother for survival. The idea of full-term abortion lies beyond that window of time. By definition, at full-term a baby without significant anomalies is able to survive outside the womb. Our ruling Kayla Moore said Jones is for full-term abortion. The language of the abortion debate is imprecise, but the phrase "full-term abortion" had virtually no track-record before Moore said it. Jones said he supports laws that allow abortions after 20 weeks or so of gestation, commonly known as late-term abortions, to protect a mother’s life or health. He hasn’t addressed a situation that, in the view of a leading medical researcher, doesn’t exist in practice. Moore measured Jones against a term that is disconnected from reality. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Kayla Moore

2017-11-21T13:53:21

2017-11-17

['None']

goop-02804

Selena Gomez “So Upset” Over “13 Reasons Why” Backlash,

2

https://www.gossipcop.com/selena-gomez-upset-13-reasons-why-backlash-controversy/

Shari Weiss

Selena Gomez NOT “So Upset” Over “13 Reasons Why” Backlash, Despite Report

10:40 am, May 11, 2017

['None']

vogo-00464

50 False Claims, Visualized

none

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/50-false-claims-visualized/

50 False Claims, Visualized

December 20, 2010

['None']

pomt-08487

For the first time in history, Wisconsin has more government jobs than manufacturing jobs.

mostly true

/wisconsin/statements/2010/oct/11/leah-vukmir/gop-state-senate-candidate-leah-vukmir-says-wiscon/

Ever since achieving statehood in 1848, Wisconsin has stood proudly as a Goliath of manufacturing: Milwaukee became "the machine shop of the world," Green Bay was home to the world’s largest cheese maker, an internationally known steam valve manufacturer emerged in La Crosse. The Badger State remains a national leader in making things, with manufacturing providing jobs to 15 percent of the workforce. But recent decades have been marked by factory shutdowns, including the loss of one of every four manufacturing jobs since 2000. In several 2010 races for the state Senate, the decline in manufacturing has been highlighted by Republicans, including state Rep. Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa. Her challenge to Democratic Sen. Jim Sullivan, also of Wauwatosa, is one of several races that could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate. "For the first time in history," Vukmir declares in a flier that she distributes door to door in the district, "Wisconsin has more government jobs than manufacturing jobs." Such a statistic, if true, would indicate a profound change in the very complexion of the state. Vukmir, according to her campaign staff, based her statement on a December 2009 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The article was about a state Department of Workforce Development report on unemployment in the previous month. The report said the state had 438,200 government jobs (federal, state and local, including schools) in November 2009. That was 2,400 more than the 435,800 jobs in manufacturing. The article went on to say government employment had exceeded manufacturing employment in April and May of 2009, as well. Those developments were notable because, on an annual basis, manufacturing jobs exceeded government jobs in every year since 1966, which is as far back as the state statistics go. In her flier, Vukmir presented the change as a done deal. But the reality is much fuzzier. Picture it as a race, with two runners taking turns as the leader. Our review of more recent monthly data showed that November 2009 was the first of seven consecutive months in which government jobs outpaced manufacturing jobs. That ended in May 2010. But manufacturing regained the lead in June through August 2010. September numbers have not yet been released. As for annual figures, which are more telling and the common measuring stick, in 2009 manufacturing employment outpaced government employment by 10,800 jobs. It remains to be seen where 2010 winds up. There are many factors at work when it comes to what is happening in the Wisconsin labor market. Beyond the long-term trends, the recession hit manufacturing jobs hard, while government employment has been supported by federal stimulus money aimed at preventing layoffs. Additionally, the count of manufacturing jobs has been artificially low in recent years, according to state labor economist Dennis Winters, because factories are hiring more temporary workers. The state classifies temporary workers as service employees, even if they work in manufacturing. So, where does that leave us? To press her case that more needs to be done to help create private-sector jobs, state Senate candidate Leah Vukmir said that for the first time in history, government jobs outnumber manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin. At various points in 2009, that was indeed the case -- though for the year as a whole, manufacturing jobs narrowly led. The jury is still out for 2010, though manufacturing jobs lead in five of the first eight months of the year. We rate Vukmir’s statement Mostly True.

Leah Vukmir

2010-10-11T09:00:00

2010-10-09

['Wisconsin']

vogo-00204

Statement: “That thing which occurred at Dulles airport was a complete fraud made up by the lady in question. She never appeared in court. The court threw it out. And that was the end of that,” Bob Filner, a San Diego mayoral candidate, said on the Mike Slater radio show, Aug. 16.

determination: misleading

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/mayor-2012/fact-check-filners-legal-problem/

Analysis: Congressman Bob Filner made national headlines in 2007 following a run-in at Dulles International Airport outside Washington D.C.

Fact Check: Filner’s Legal Problem

August 22, 2012

['San_Diego', 'Bob_Filner']

snes-02901

A 2016 bill before the Kentucky legislature would have required men to get their wives' permission before obtaining a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drug.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kentucky-bill-wives-permission-viagra/

Politics

David Emery

Kentucky Lawmaker Introduced Bill Requiring Men to Get Wives’ Permission to Take Viagra

20 February 2017

['Kentucky']

pomt-00725

Fifteen years ago, you couldn't even get a pizza delivered in that neighborhood.

mostly false

/texas/statements/2015/apr/24/sabino-pio-renteria/councilman-sabino-renteria-says-15-years-ago-pizza/

East Austin neighborhoods near downtown Austin north of Lady Bird Lake have gentrified rapidly, the Austin Chronicle noted in a recent cover story. "The lower Eastside is increasingly dotted with high-end restaurants and chic bars where homes once stood. Many residents seem surprised at the brisk pace of new development," reporter Tony Cantú wrote, going on to say the "transformation" started in the early 2000s. There’s ample additional detail. But we chewed on a comment by Sabino "Pio" Renteria, a resident elected to the District 3 seat on the Austin City Council in November 2014. After mention of the area’s fluctuating home values, Renteria indicated conditions have noticeably changed. "Fifteen years ago," he said, "you couldn't even get a pizza delivered in that neighborhood." Really? To our request for elaboration, Renteria, who lives near Martin Middle School, told us he was referring to the largely residential blocks just east of downtown Austin, specifically the region bounded by Interstate 35 to the west, the lake to the south, Pleasant Valley Road to the east and East Seventh Street to the north, all of which was considered too dangerous for pizza deliveries 15 years ago and earlier, he said by phone. If he wanted a pizza delivered, Renteria said, he had to meet the delivery driver in the parking lot of the lakeside Holiday Inn on the west side of I-35, then drive his pie the several blocks home. "No one wanted to come into the Eastside," he said. Varied accounts We gathered a range of recollections while looking into this claim: --By phone, Zach Rogers said that in 1999-2000, he was a delivery driver for Pizza Classics, on 29th Street near the University of Texas, and his boss insisted he deliver pizzas everywhere; --Hoover Alexander, 60, who has a landmark restaurant on East Austin’s Manor Road, said by email that while he grew up north of Renteria’s neighborhood and north of 12th Street, "the collective black & brown neighbors east of IH 35, from the river to Manor Rd., knew we were in the ‘no delivery zone’ that stemmed from the belief that East Austin was unsafe & crime ridden, and there was a fear of drivers getting robbed. Rightly or wrongly, the perception became the reality of no deliveries." Alexander specified: "No pizza delivery for my neighborhood for sure until '00 - '05," so Alexander would drive about five minutes west to pick up orders. --Jane and Gilberto Rivera, residents of East Austin’s Rosewood neighborhood, north of Renteria’s area, recalled not being able to lure a pizza delivery through the 1990s, though they said it’s possible that changed by 2000. Gilberto Rivera said pizza places on East Riverside Drive south of the lake would hand off their order at a gas station near the Holiday Inn, "almost like a drug transaction." Eventually pizza was delivered from a Pizza Hut on Airport Boulevard, he said. Jane Rivera said: "You can safely say that at least up until 2000, (in) all of East Austin, you could not get pizza delivered." --East Austin resident Todd Campbell said by phone he could recall not being able to get a pizza delivered to the home he shared with others at Second and Navasota in 2000. Then again, Eastside resident Marisol Prins described Mr. Gatti’s delivering to the area from its downtown location. Prins said pizza stores on Riverside wouldn’t deliver. --Down the street from Renteria’s home, we spoke with Ernest Vargas, 59, who said he couldn’t recall ever not being able to get a pizza delivered. He said his family, which bought its house in 1969, used to get pizzas delivered by Pizza Hut. --Close to I-35, on the western edge of the neighborhood, the principal of Sanchez Elementary School, Azucena Garcia, said by phone she couldn’t recall any trouble getting pizzas delivered over her 23 years at the school. Pizzas were brought by various stores, she said, with the school shopping for deals. By phone, another school employee, Jennifer Riojas-Santos, said that while living and working in the area in the 1990s, she experienced "very limited" pizza delivery options--including a Pizza Hut south of the lake, she said. On first pass, then, it appears that pizzas weren’t uniformly delivered in East Austin at some time in the past. Checking telephone books We couldn’t devise a wayback machine for checking 2000-era deliveries. But we test-kitchened an approach by visiting the Austin History Center to pinpoint pizza places that were then arguably close enough to Renteria’s neighborhood to bring a pie. Telephone books for 1999-2000, one published by Southwestern Bell and the other by Great Western Directories, Inc., listed more than 30 Austin pizza restaurants at the time with several saying they delivered--including Domino’s, Little Caesars, and Papa John’s. We also identified a pizza place in Renteria’s neighborhood at the time, La Pizza Loca, which was at 2727 East Seventh. In 1996, in fact, the Chronicle’s food critics credited La Pizza Loca with having the "best eastside delivery." The critics also said: "As those of us who reside east of I-35 can attest, options are pretty slim where dinner delivery is concerned." Otherwise, according to the phone books, pizza places with delivery closest to Renteria’s neighborhood were downtown west of I-35 (a Pizza Hut at 1201 W. Sixth St.) or along Riverside south of the lake (where University of Texas students already filled multiple apartment complexes): specifically, a Doubledave’s Pizzawork; a Pizza Hut; a Mr. Gatti’s; and a Little Caesars. Noted: Phone-book ads for Papa John’s and Domino’s said delivery wasn’t available everywhere. The Domino’s ad said: "Delivery area limited to ensure safe driving. Our drivers carry less than $20.00." In contrast, Mr. Gatti’s, which had more than 20 Austin-area locations, touted its phone number as the "one number that’s good for pickup and delivery all over Austin." Spokesman: Gatti’s ‘would have delivered’ We tried to reach representatives of the identified pizza stores; most didn’t engage. But by phone and email, a Gatti’s spokesman insisted its stores on East Riverside and West Sixth made deliveries throughout the Eastside in 1999 and 2000. Ronnie Steck said he’d confirmed that Gatti’s Pizza restaurant #160 on W 6th St. and Rio Grande opened in June 1999, closing in March 2014. "During that time," he wrote, "our delivery area extended west to the lake in the" Tarrytown area "and all the way east to Pleasant Valley, easily encompassing the area in question. In addition, the Oltorf location we had at the time picked up any delivery needs that fell south of the #160 delivery area." "We’ve been serving pizza to people all throughout this great city for going on 46 years and we’ve certainly witnessed and marveled at the rapid change happening on the East side. That said, had Council Member Renteria called 459-2222, Gatti’s would have gladly delivered," Steck said. Asked if the pizza chain was concerned about the safety of its drivers in the neighborhood, Steck said not, adding: "That gentrification didn’t just happen yesterday." We alerted Renteria’s office to Steck’s comments and didn’t hear back from him. A store owner’s recollection To our inquiry, a founder and former owner of Austin’s Pizza, Clay McLaughlin, said by phone its first store opened in 1999 at 12th Street and West Avenue near the main campus of Austin Community College west of downtown Austin. McLaughlin said that store, like nearby competitors, did not deliver east of I-35. "We really tried to stay more toward campus," he said. "To be totally candid, I don’t know that was our market." Also, he said, "safety was definitely a concern. Going up to somebody’s house, cash in the pocket... we didn’t want to get any of our drivers in jeopardy," he said. Our ruling Renteria said that 15 years ago, you couldn’t get a pizza delivered in his neighborhood just east of downtown Austin. We see a dash of truth here; not every pizza place delivered there at the time and earlier, into the 1990s, you evidently couldn’t get a pizza delivered at all. But it looks to us like you could get a pizza delivered 15 years ago if you knew which vendors to call. We rate the claim Mostly False. MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.

Sabino "Pio" Renteria

2015-04-24T10:00:00

2015-04-10

['None']

tron-01163

A List of New California Laws effective July 1

mostly fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/california-tickets/

crime-police

A List of New California Laws effective July 1

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-00847

In an average grocery store, roughly 75 percent of processed foods contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

half-true

/rhode-island/statements/2015/mar/22/donna-nesselbush/sen-donna-nesselbush-three-quarters-processed-food/

There’s a longstanding campaign to require special labels for foods made from genetically modified organisms -- plants or animals created by precisely manipulating their DNA, in ways that don’t occur in nature. In Rhode Island, Sen. Donna Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket, has submitted legislation requiring such GMO labeling. "Are [genetically modified foods] good for us or bad for us? The problem is that we really don’t know," she asserted in a commentary supporting her legislation. "In an average grocery store, roughly 75 percent of processed foods contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs." She made a similar comment in a news release, saying that most processed foods contain GMOs. There’s little solid evidence that foods made from genetically modified organisms pose a greater risk to consumers than their non-modified counterparts, a fact noted by major scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization. They have been on the shelves for nearly two decades. U.S. products have been approved for market by as many as three different federal agencies. Independent safety testing has been done in Europe. We were interested in whether these products have become as commonplace as Nesselbush says. But first, we note a distinction that will be important in evaluating part of Nesselbush’s claim. She references foods that contain genetically modified organisms, which sounds scary to many people. But in reality, GMO foods typically don’t contain organisms; they’re derived from organisms that have been genetically modified. For example, if you eat a genetically modified ear of corn, you’re eating the once-living cells of a genetically modified organism. But if you eat a brownie baked with corn syrup extracted from genetically modified corn, you’re only eating the syrup, not the organism. When we asked Nesselbush for a source, she didn’t have an immediate answer, saying that the information came from her staff. She promised to check further. In the meantime, we did our own research. It appears that the number, although widely reported, is mostly an educated guess. We contacted the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group critical of biotechnology, which told PolitiFact National in 2007 that 60 to 70 percent of processed foods contain at least some residual genetically modified organisms. When we asked where their numbers came from, spokeswoman Abigail Seiler said they came from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group opposed to labeling for products manufactured through genetic modification. The latest grocery association statement says, "70-80 percent of the foods we eat in the United States, both at home and away from home, contain ingredients that have been genetically modified." When we heard back from Nesselbush, she cited the same statement as her evidence. We noted that the percentage is on target but her characterization wasn’t. The grocery association says it’s 70 to 80 percent of ALL foods we consume. She said it applies to processed foods in a grocery store. The federal Food and Drug Administration defines processed foods as "raw agricultural commodities" that have been "subject to canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration or milling." Processed foods also include any foods that are not raw agricultural commodities under the FDA’s legal definition. It turns out that there’s little consistency in how the estimate is used. For example, Whole Foods in 2010, citing the grocery association, said "GMOs are now present in 75 to 80 percent of conventional processed food in the U.S." (We’re not sure if there are "unconventional" processed foods.) And where does the grocery association get its figure? Spokesman Brian Kennedy said it was an estimate based on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We found updated numbers showing that in 2013, genetic engineering had been done on 90 percent of all cotton planted in the United States, 93 percent of all soybeans and 90 percent of all corn. Cottonseed and soybean oils are used in mayonnaise, salad dressings, cereals, breads and snack foods. Corn syrup is a widely used sweetener and corn starch is used in soups and sauces. "Also, more than half of the sugar sold in the U.S. comes from sugar beets," Kennedy said. "Sugar beets crops are 90 percent [genetically modified]." We asked the association to detail how it settled on the 70 to 80 percentage. Kennedy repeated that it was an estimate. "And it's important to keep in mind that these particular crops, though widely used, are not used in all processed food products. Plus you’re also overlooking all of the organic and non-GM processed food products on the market today," he said. John Ruff, past president of the Institute of Food Technologists, told us in an email that estimates of around 75 percent are widely quoted and are based on data from the late 1990s. "I’m not aware of any definitive studies, perhaps because the presence of GMO derived ingredients often cannot be detected in the finished product," he said. "This is because the GMO itself is not present in the product." Nesselbush is incorrect when she says that such foods contain genetically modified organisms. Often they only contain substances created by genetically modified organisms, such as sugars, which may be identical to the sugars created by non-modified plants. Our ruling Donna Nesselbush said, "In an average grocery store, roughly 75 percent of processed foods contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs." Nesselbush quoted a percentage intended to apply to all foods and not restricted to processed foods. Although the figure is widely cited by both sides in the debate, it’s not clear that this is anything more than an estimate. And finally, in the cases of many processed foods created using the sugars, oils and other products of genetically modified organisms, the organisms themselves aren’t present in the food at all. Because the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context, we rate it Half True. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) (Correction: Rhode Island state Rep. Donna Nesselbush represents House District 15, which includes portions of Pawtucket and North Providence. The original version of this item incorrectly reported the community she represents.)

Donna Nesselbush

2015-03-22T00:01:00

2015-03-06

['Genetically_modified_organism']

tron-00457

15 Foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake Caught in Florida

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/stjohn-rattlesnake/

animals

15 Foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake Caught in Florida

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

snes-03290

Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, canceled a Christmas play because two parents complained about reference to God.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lancasters-centerville-elementary-school-cancels-offensive-christmas-play/

Religion

Kim LaCapria

Lancaster’s Centerville Elementary School Cancels ‘Offensive’ Christmas Play

20 December 2016

['Pennsylvania', 'God', 'Lancaster,_Pennsylvania']

pomt-04845

We actually made history in 2010. We came the closest in 24 years to defeating Frank Pallone.

false

/new-jersey/statements/2012/aug/13/anna-little/congressional-candidate-anna-little-claims-she-mad/

Even though her 2010 bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone ended in defeat, Republican congressional candidate Anna Little says she still made history. As Little prepares for a rematch against Pallone in the Nov. 6 general election, the Monmouth County native has said the 2010 victory was his narrowest win in more than two decades. "We actually made history in 2010. We came the closest in 24 years to defeating Frank Pallone," Little, a former county freeholder and mayor, said in an Aug. 2 interview on NJToday. "We think we’ve got a great foundation and we want to pick up where we left off." The 2010 election did mark the closest Pallone victory in two decades, but it wasn’t exactly the historic outcome that Little described in her TV interview. As of 2010, the Democratic congressman was only first elected 22 years beforehand -- not "24 years," as Little claimed. Yet even over those 22 years, Pallone’s margin of victory in 2010 was not the closest. He had tighter victories in his first two elections for a two-year House seat. Here’s how the election results break down: When Republicans took control of the House in 2010, Pallone narrowly defeated Little by 16,520 votes to continue representing the Sixth Congressional District. Little’s candidacy was backed by the Tea Party movement, which played a key role in securing wins for GOP House candidates across the country. The close election in 2010 was a stark change from most of Pallone's preceding victories. Just in 2008, the congressman had won by more than 86,000 votes for the largest margin of victory in his career. In fact, the 2010 election represented the closest Pallone victory in 20 years. But in 1988 and 1990, the congressman faced even closer calls. Pallone defeated Republican Joseph Azzolina in 1988 by 9,545 votes for his first two-year term. In 1990, Pallone tallied 4,170 more votes than Republican Paul Kapalko. The following chart shows Pallone’s GOP challengers and margins of victory since winning his first two-year seat in 1988. Year Republican challenger Pallone’s margin of victory 2010 Anna Little 16,520 2008 Robert McLeod 86,608 2006 Leigh-Ann Bellew 55,076 2004 Sylvester Fernandez 83,039 2002 Ric Medrow 48,900 2000 Brian Kennedy 79,244 1998 Michael Ferguson 22,922 1996 Steven Corodemus 51,233 1994 Mike Herson 33,635 1992 Joseph Kyrillos 17,317 1990 Paul Kapalko 4,170 1988 Joseph Azzolina 9,545 For trivia buffs out there, you’ll notice that Kyrillos -- Pallone’s 1992 challenger -- is the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate this year, looking to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez in the general election. Our ruling In a TV interview, Little claimed: "We actually made history in 2010. We came the closest in 24 years to defeating Frank Pallone." There’s no doubt that Pallone’s victory over Little in 2010 was one of the closest wins of his career, but the timing of Little’s claim is off. The congressman’s margin of victory represented his tightest win in 20 years -- not 24 years -- and the third-closest finish of all his races for a two-year House seat. Pallone won by even fewer votes in 1988 and 1990. We rate the statement False. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com.

Anna Little

2012-08-13T07:30:00

2012-08-02

['None']

vees-00258

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: News of Rappler CEO Ressa as FOCAP president

none

http://verafiles.org/articles/news-rappler-ceo-ressa-focap-president-satirical

Rappler,Maria Ressa,Adobo Chronicles,satire

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: News of Rappler CEO Ressa as FOCAP president satirical

April 17, 2018

['None']

pomt-01583

Obama admin gutted @ProjChildSafe budget to provide trigger locks and safety kits.

false

/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/08/dana-loesch/loesch-obama-slashed-funding-gun-safety-program/

For well over a decade, gun owner groups have promoted the use of trigger locks to protect children from weapons around the home. One long-standing effort is Project Child Safe, run by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the voice of gun makers, shooting ranges, and retailers. Conservative radio host and commentator Dana Loesch went to Twitter to berate President Barack Obama for neglecting this approach. "Obama admin gutted @ProjChildSafe budget to provide trigger locks and safety kits," Loesch tweeted Sept. 4, 2014. We wanted to see whether the current administration drove down spending for this particular trigger lock program. We emailed Loesch’s show for evidence to back up the statement, but we did not hear back. The senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Lawrence Keane, explained that Project Child Safe is a nonprofit run by his group and is largely sustained by the foundation and private donations. But during the administration of President George W. Bush, it received a great deal of government support. "There was grant funding from the Department of Justice," Keane said. "There were a number of different grants. They varied in size. Over time, they totaled $90 million over 8 years." The foundation used the money to buy trigger locks and safety manuals. It partnered with over 15,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across all 50 states to distribute these safety kits for free to gun owners. Keane said since 2001, the program has provided over 36 million kits, with no government money going toward salaries or overhead. There’s no question the federal money is a fraction of what it was. Whether that happened on Obama’s watch is another matter. A more complicated picture We went to USA Spending, a government website that gives anyone the chance to see how federal agencies spend the taxpayers’ money. 2002 was the high-water mark for federal grants to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. That year, the Justice Department awarded it nearly $50 million to cover the costs of trigger locks and other safety materials. 2003 was also a strong year. Washington provided another $25 million. But as this chart shows, after that, the flow of government dollars to the foundation plummeted. In 2006, the Department of Justice gave the foundation $917,850. By 2008, the amount fell to $500,000. These declines took place under the Bush administration, three years before Obama took office. The chart also shows a shift in the federal agency that supported the distribution of safety kits. In 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs began granting the National Shooting Sports Foundation to provide the kits to veterans. "The VA approached the National Shooting Sports Foundation because of concerns they had, and have, with returning vets having post-traumatic stress disorder," Keane said. Under the Obama administration, the VA provided the foundation about $3 million through 2012 to deliver about 1.5 million Project Child Safe safety kits, according to Keane. On an annual basis, that is slightly more than the amount spent in the last year of the Bush administration. Keane said the work with the VA is ongoing with an estimated additional $2 million in the pipeline. According to the Justice Department, the foundation had provided 32 million kits by 2005. In the seven years since, about 4 million kits have been delivered. Our ruling Loesch said that the Obama administration gutted the budget for Project Child Safe. In reality, the deepest cuts took place during the Bush years. Obama inherited a program funded at $500,000. In 2009, the funding agency changed from the Justice Department to Veterans Affairs. While the funding for Project Child Safe itself ended, the same kind of kits were distributed to peoples’ homes, although through different channels. Funding increased very slightly from the last year of the Bush administration. The work between the foundation and Veterans Affairs continues. We rate the claim False.

Dana Loesch

2014-09-08T11:10:45

2014-09-04

['None']

snes-03347

Everyone with cancer has a pH that is too acidic.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/everyone-who-has-cancer-has-a-ph-that-is-too-acidic/

Medical

Alex Kasprak

Does Everyone with Cancer Have a pH That Is Too Acidic?

14 December 2016

['None']

goop-01139

Gwen Stefani Pregnant With Blake Shelton’s Baby Because She Was Spotted At Hospital?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/gwen-stefani-pregnant-hospital-blake-shelton-baby/

Shari Weiss

Gwen Stefani Pregnant With Blake Shelton’s Baby Because She Was Spotted At Hospital?

4:26 pm, April 21, 2018

['Blake_Shelton', 'Gwen_Stefani']

pomt-13880

Says Donald Trump’s proposed tax treatment of hedge fund managers "makes the current loophole even worse."

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/01/hillary-clinton/clinton-right-say-trumps-plan-good-hedge-funders/

Hillary Clinton is attacking Donald Trump’s tax plan, saying it actually benefits the hedge fund managers Trump had promised to cut down to size. "Now, before releasing his plan, Trump said, ‘Hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.’ And he added, ‘They’ll pay more,’ " Clinton said. "Then his plan came out. And it actually makes the current loophole even worse. "It gives hedge-fund managers a special tax rate that’s lower than what many middle-class families pay," Clinton continued in the June 21, 2016, speech. "And I did have to look twice because I didn’t believe it. Under Donald Trump’s plan, these Wall Street millionaires will pay a lower tax rate than many working people." Trump’s plan does roll back one high-profile advantage for hedge fund partners. Is Clinton right to say they still come out ahead? Trump took an aggressive position on tax rates for hedge fund managers during his fight for the Republican nomination. In an interview with CBS in August, Trump called them "paper pushers" who "did not build this country." In a Republican debate in September, Trump said his tax plan would make them pay more. "The hedge fund guys won’t like me as much as they like me right now. I know them all, but they’ll pay more," Trump said. After the Republican debate, Trump released the outline of his tax plan. Trump’s plan eliminates the so-called carried interest tax loophole, which allows general partners in private investment firms (including most hedge fund managers) to treat some of their income as income from investments, or capital gains, subject to a top tax rate of 23.8 percent, instead of the much higher tax rate for ordinary income (43.4 percent). Under Trump’s plan, income from carried interest would no longer be treated as capital gains. Tax rates for ordinary income tops out at 25 percent under Trump’s plan. This looks like a hike in line with Trump’s promises. Except. Along with private equity and venture capital funds, many hedge funds are structured as partnerships. Under Trump’s plan, income through a business partnership is taxed at a rate of no more than 15 percent, significantly less than the 23.8 percent they previously paid, according to an analysis of Trump’s tax plan from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Eliminating the carried interest "loophole" actually helps these hedge fund managers under Trump’s plan. If carried interest was still treated as capital gains, it could be taxed at the top rate for capital gains in the plan (20 percent), higher than the fixed 15 percent tax for partnership income. Trump’s plan presents the discounted rate for partnership income as a way to help "the small businesses that are the true engine of our economy." It also helps large businesses and wealthy financiers who structure their businesses as partnerships, including the hedge funds managers he attacked in his campaign. Clinton also said that rates for hedge fund managers would be lower than for middle-class families under Trump’s plan. Defining the middle class can be tricky, but in the Pew Research Center’s range of $42,000 to $125,000 for a household of three in 2014, a substantial number of middle-class households would make enough to qualify for a marginal tax rate of more than 15 percent if Trump’s plan were enacted. Not all of these people would pay more than 15 percent overall, according to Bob Williams at the Tax Policy Center, and it would be difficult to say how many middle-income people would pay more than hedge fund managers once the many different variables involved played out. But some would, Williams wrote in an email. In May, Politico reported that the Trump campaign had engaged two economists to craft a new tax plan. The Trump campaign has not confirmed whether they plan to re-write their tax plan, and did not respond to Politico’s request for comment. The tax plan announced in September remains on Trump's website, and is the basis of this article. The Trump campaign did not respond to our request for comment on this article. Our ruling Clinton said Trump’s proposed tax rate for hedge fund managers "makes the current loophole even worse." She has a point. By setting a lower tax rate for income from business partnerships, Trump’s tax plan would benefit many hedge fund managers. Though the plan would cut tax rates for middle-class families as well, the cuts that would apply to most hedge fund managers are steeper and their resulting tax rate is lower. Trump promised that his tax plan would roll back advantages for hedge fund managers. Instead, in most cases, it would improve their position. We rate the statement True.

Hillary Clinton

2016-07-01T11:54:08

2016-06-21

['None']

snes-06191

Ordinary use of canola oil is dangerous to consumers.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oil-of-oleacute/

Medical

David Mikkelson

Canola Oil and Rape Seed

7 February 2001

['None']

goop-00979

Angelina Jolie Attending Royal Wedding,

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-royal-wedding-guest-not-true-prince-harry-meghan-markle/

Shari Weiss

Angelina Jolie NOT Attending Royal Wedding, Despite Speculation

8:32 pm, May 17, 2018

['None']

thet-00036

New Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard just gave a speech demanding Scottish Water be “taken back into public ownership”. But it already is.

mostly true

https://theferret.scot/scottish-water-public-ownership/

Environment Fact check

John Nicolson

Claim that Scottish water is in public hands is Mostly True

December 1, 2017

['None']

snes-02144

Actor Johnny Depp will be charged with conspiracy to assassinate the president and held as a terrorist enemy combatant after joking about assassinating President Trump.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/johnny-depp-charged-patriot-act/

Junk News

David Emery

Johnny Depp to Be Charged and Held Under the Patriot Act?

26 June 2017

['Johnny_Depp']

hoer-00137

Automation Labs Facebook Privacy Warning

bogus warning

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/automation-labs-facebook-warning.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Automation Labs Facebook Privacy Warning Hoax

4th February 2010

['None']

tron-00340

Iranian pilot of hijacked flight 93 to be presented with Medal of Honor

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/iranianpilot/

9-11-attack

Iranian pilot of hijacked flight 93 to be presented with Medal of Honor

Mar 17, 2015

['Iran']

pomt-07855

More than one-quarter of America’s young adults are too fat to serve in the U.S. military

true

/georgia/statements/2011/feb/11/michelle-obama/michelle-obama-says-many-too-fat-fight-military/

America, the first lady says, has a pudgy problem. A significant percentage of its youths are too fat to fit in military uniforms. First lady Michelle Obama talked about the issue during her visit Wednesday to the Atlanta area to promote healthy eating. In a speech at Alpharetta’s North Point Community Church to highlight her "Let’s Move" healthy living campaign, Obama relayed a gaudy statistic. "Believe it or not, right now, nearly 27 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds are too overweight to serve in our military," she said. Perhaps the military needs its own "Biggest Loser" contest for recruits. AJC PolitiFact Georgia had another thought. Should we believe the first lady? Obama’s claim apparently came from a study released last year that was titled -- aptly perhaps -- "Too Fat to Fight." It was released by more than 100 high-ranking retired military officials and other enlisted leaders who want high-calorie food and sugar-sweetened drinks removed from the nation’s public schools. That doesn’t include sweet tea, does it? The report said: "over 27 percent of all Americans 17 to 24 years of age -- over nine million young men and women -- are too heavy to join the military if they want to do so." The estimate was based on a 2005 national survey conducted by the Lewin Group. "The estimate uses a weight-for-height cutoff that allows somewhat higher weights than the cutoff used by civilian organizations, such as the National Institutes of Health," the report said. In 2008, there were 11,472,200 Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who were obese or overweight, the study reported, citing research by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 29.8 million Americans between those ages, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That equals nearly 39 percent of Americans in that age range who were obese or overweight, an even higher percentage than those found in the "Too Fat to Fight" study who couldn’t serve in the military. Stay away from the cheeseburger, soldier! Military officials say this is serious business. "The United States military stands ready to protect the American people, but if our nation does not help ensure that future generations grow up to be healthy and fit ... the health of our children and our national security are at risk," the report says. It also affects the federal budget. The military discharges about 1,200 recruits a year because they are not fit enough to serve. The military estimates it costs $50,000 to recruit and train a soldier. Add it up and that’s $60 million a year the federal government loses on enlistees too heavy to fight. The average American man is 5 foot 9 and weighs 195 pounds, according to the CDC. The average American woman is nearly 5 foot 4 and weighs 165 pounds. The mean height and weight for an 18-year-old man is 5 foot 9 and 166 pounds, according to the most recent data we could find. The mean height and weight and BMI for an 18-year-old woman is 5 foot 4 and 143.5 pounds. We couldn’t find data detailing the percentage of 18-year-olds who are overweight or obese. The CDC does report that 18 percent of 12- to 19-year-old Americans are obese. So what constitutes too fat to fight? Each military branch has its own rules. An 18-year-old, 5-foot-9 man who weighs more than 175 pounds would raise eyebrows for the Army, according to Military.com. The Army would be similarly concerned about a 5-foot-4, 18-year-old woman who weighs more than 133 pounds. For 40-year-old women that height, the Army would be worried if they weighed more than 145 pounds. The Air Force and Navy are a little easier on their enlistees. The Navy considers a 5-foot-9 man greater than 186 pounds overweight, and its maximum standard weight for a 5-foot-4 woman is 156 pounds. The Air Force says the maximum weight for a 5-foot-9 recruit is 186 pounds. A New York Times article in August highlighted the problem. One U.S. Army general said 4 percent of male recruits at one training center in 2000 failed the most basic fitness. By 2006, more than 20 percent of male recruits failed the same test. The percentages were higher for women. PolitiFact Georgia has tackled such weighty issues before. Before Thanksgiving, the American holiday of gastronomical gluttony, we checked a claim that Georgia has the second-highest rate of childhood obesity in the nation. Our finding? True. According to the CDC figures, the mean American 18-year-old is close to being considered overweight but would still be accepted in the military in most cases. But about one in five of them is considered obese, the CDC says, and would be at least 15 to 20 pounds too heavy to fight. Based on the CDC study, we believe it’s reasonable to think that at least an additional 7 percent of America’s remaining 17- to 24-year-olds would have trouble meeting the military’s weight guidelines. The "Too Fat to Fight" study supports the theory that 27 percent of America’s youths couldn’t serve in the military. We rate the first lady’s statement as True.

Michelle Obama

2011-02-11T06:00:00

2011-02-09

['United_States']

goop-00629

Roseanne Begging Jerry Seinfeld For ‘Career Comeback,’

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/roseanne-beg-jerry-seinfeld-career-comeback-not-true/

Gossip Cop Staff

Roseanne NOT Begging Jerry Seinfeld For ‘Career Comeback,’ Despite Report

2:12 pm, July 17, 2018

['None']

vogo-00288

Statement: “To make the most of each high school senior’s final year before college, state law should be revised to allow for students to ‘dual enroll’ in a local community college for some classes. State law currently does not allow for this,” mayoral candidate Bonnie Dumanis’ education plan, released Jan. 5, said.

determination: false

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/mayor-2012/fact-check-whats-illegal-in-schools/

Analysis: Dumanis unveiled her mayoral campaign’s first major initiative last week and it didn’t address San Diego’s financial challenges or any city policies. Instead, she proposed a step toward mayoral control of local schools.

Fact Check: What's Illegal in Schools

January 10, 2012

['None']

pomt-14763

Says Marco Rubio said "we should be considering internment" of Muslims, and "maybe we should close down cafes and diners where Muslims gather and in fact compared them to the Nazi party."

pants on fire!

/florida/statements/2015/dec/10/debbie-wasserman-schultz/debbie-wasserman-schultz-wrongly-says-marco-rubio-/

Democrats are trying to link Donald Trump’s incendiary statements about Muslims to comments by other Republicans in the presidential race. Democratic National Committee chairwoman and South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz bashed several GOP candidates, most notably fellow Floridian U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, in a Dec. 9 interview on CNN. "It's not just Donald Trump that has said that Muslims are unacceptable for admission to this country," said Wasserman Schultz, highlighting comments about refugees by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie before turning to Rubio. "Marco Rubio after the Paris attacks said not only that we should be considering internment, he actually suggested that maybe we should close down cafes and diners where Muslims gather, and in fact, compared them to the Nazi party," Wasserman Schultz said. Did Rubio actually say those things about Muslims? Our research shows Wasserman Schultz distorted Rubio’s recent TV interviews. We will explain each portion of her statement and why it creates an inaccurate picture of Rubio’s comments. Rubio has not called for internment of Muslims Even the DNC admitted the "internment" part of her attack on Rubio is completely inaccurate. Rubio has not proposed anything similar to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II for Muslims. DNC spokesman Sean Bartlett claimed Wasserman Schultz had comments by Trump in mind during this part of her interview. In December, Trump told TIME magazine he wasn’t certain if he would have supported internment of Japanese during World War ll. "I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer," he said. "I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer." Trump told Morning Joe on Dec. 8 that he wasn’t proposing internment camps for Muslims. But in an interview on Good Morning America, he compared himself to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ordered the Japanese internment. "What I'm doing is no different than FDR," Trump said. "I mean, take a look at what FDR did many years ago and he's one of the most highly respected presidents. I mean respected by most people. They named highways after him," he said, referencing a highway in New York City named for the former president. When asked if he supports internment camps, Trump said no. These comments by Trump, however, don’t add validity to what Wasserman Schultz said about Rubio. Rubio on Muslim cafes and diners According to Wasserman Schultz, Rubio "actually suggested that maybe we should close down cafes and diners where Muslims gather." Rubio did talk about closing down cafes in an interview Nov. 19 with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, but Wasserman Schultz fails to mention a key qualifier. Rubio said any place should be closed down if it is a site "where radicals are being inspired." In the interview, Kelly asked Rubio, "Donald Trump is suggesting we may need to close mosques that have problems with radicals at the top. What do you say?" Rubio replied, "Well, I think we need to target radicalism. A lot of it is actually happening online, not simply in mosques. The vast majority of the mosques in America is not..." Kelly asked: "But the mosques piece is a controversial piece, so where do you stand on that?" Rubio then said: "Well, I think it's not about closing down mosques. It's about closing down any place. Whether it's a cafe, a diner, an internet spot. Any place where radicals are being inspired. "And that we have — the biggest problem we have is our inability to find out what these places are because we've crippled our intelligence programs, both through an authorized disclosure by a traitor, in other words, [Edward] Snowden, or by some of the things that this president has put in place for the support even of some from my own party to diminish our intelligence capabilities. "So, whatever facilities being used, it's not just a mosques. Any facility that's being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States should be a place that we look at." Closing down any place if it is being used to "inspire attacks" is different from flat-out calling for shuttering cafes and diners simply because Muslims gather there. Nazi comparison The last part of Wasserman Schultz’s attack is that Rubio compared Muslims "to the Nazi party." This is also a case of Wasserman Schultz twisting Rubio’s words out of context. Bartlett of the DNC pointed to Rubio’s interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week Nov. 15, the night after a Democratic debate. Stephanopoulos asked Rubio: "You saw Secretary Clinton there did not want to use the words ‘radical Islam.’ What is your response?" Rubio replied, "I don’t understand it. That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi party but weren’t violent themselves. We are at war with radical Islam, with an interpretation of Islam by a significant number of people around the world, who they believe now justifies them in killing those who don't agree with their ideology. This is a clash of civilizations. ... Of course all Muslims are not members of violent jihadist groups." Rubio was trying to use an analogy to suggest it would have been ridiculous to avoid using the word "Nazis" during World War II out of fear of offending some Germans who were members of the Nazi party. We emailed a spokesman for Rubio to ask if he had addressed this comparison again but did not hear back, and a Nexis search did not turn up other examples of him talking about this. Our ruling According to Wasserman Schultz, Rubio has said "we should be considering internment" of Muslims, and "maybe we should close down cafes and diners where Muslims gather and in fact compared them to the Nazi party." Rubio has not called for internment of Muslims. This is flatly wrong. Her paraphrases about Rubio wanting to close Muslim cafes and diners and comparing Muslims to Nazis are at least missing context. But to suggest he wants internment of Muslims — to take away their freedom and rights in the United States and separate them from the rest of society — is a grave accusation that leaves listeners with a grossly misleading impression of Rubio’s statements. We rate her claim Pants on Fire. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/51f9656b-4a00-401b-a3df-dafa0dd1c43f

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

2015-12-10T17:33:33

2015-12-09

['Marco_Rubio', 'Islam']

goop-02024

North West “In Denial” About Getting A Sister?

1

https://www.gossipcop.com/north-west-denial-sister/

Shari Weiss

North West “In Denial” About Getting A Sister?

9:33 pm, December 15, 2017

['None']

pomt-14594

Arizona is spending "less on a per-capita basis than every single state in this country in higher education."

mostly true

/arizona/statements/2016/feb/04/michael-m-crow/arizona-worst-higher-education-funding/

Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow said Arizona is the worst per-capita in terms of investing in higher education. He made these remarks as he lobbied for more state dollars in front of a state Senate Appropriations Committee Jan. 26. "We need to think seriously what it is about us that has put us in a position where we are now investing, not just a little bit less than other places, (but) markedly less on a per-capita basis than every single state in this country in higher education," said Crow. The Legislature is currently finalizing a budget for fiscal year 2017, which runs from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017. Crow’s statement intrigued us, especially as he laid out the university’s strategic plan in front of the Arizona Board of Regents Thursday, so we put it to a fact-check. Makes the grade The basis of Crow’s remarks is a Jan. 25 survey done by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, a Colorado-based group of education executives. In the study, which ranks all 50 states, Arizona is ranked 49th per capita in state higher education funding for fiscal year 2016, second to New Hampshire. Arizona spent $136.72 per resident on higher education in fiscal year 2015 and is expected to spend $115.83 per resident in the current fiscal year. New Hampshire spent $92.74 in fiscal year 2015 and is expected to spend $92.50 in the current fiscal year. Wyoming gives the most state funding to higher education. They spent $645.19 per resident in fiscal year 2015 and will spend $715.14 in the current fiscal year. The survey leaves out fiscal year 2016 data for Illinois and Pennsylvania, noting that these states haven’t finalized their budgets. In our map, we used fiscal year 2015 data for these states, with Pennsylvania and Illinois ranking as 48th and 7th, respectively. Crow said he used conservative states "with conservative legislatures and conservative executives" as his basis for comparison. ASU spokesman Mark Johnson told us the same thing, noting that the comparison group was not every state. Nonetheless, Arizona is not the worst when it comes to higher education funding per-capita -- New Hampshire is. Whether or not New Hampshire can be considered a "conservative" state is debatable given its Republican-led Legislature and Democratic governor. However, Arizona is at the bottom of several other higher education funding categories. The survey shows that Arizona has the biggest year to year drop in state higher education funding at 14 percent. In March, the Grand Canyon State also cut $99 million in funding to universities, which pales in comparison to the $8 million in new funding Gov. Doug Ducey has pitched for the state’s fiscal year 2017 budget. "Our data is pretty straightforward," Grapevine editor Jim Palmer said, noting that the survey uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Commerce. "Arizona did experience the biggest decrease in funding from ‘15 to ‘16." Arizona also had the steepest decline, 47 percent, in state higher education spending per student from 2008 to 2015. But the state isn’t alone, either. A December 2014 Government Accountability Office report found that "state funding for all public colleges decreased" between fiscal years 2003 and 2012. Eileen Klein is president of the Arizona Board of Regents. She said the additional $8 million in state higher education funding is an encouraging first start. However, the objective isn’t to "catapult" through the rankings. "The point is to make sure that we have sufficient dollars to support Arizona students," Klein said. "Today, our universities operate at a loss for every Arizona resident student because the state is only committing, at this point, 34 percent towards the cost of educating our Arizona students." Our ruling Crow said, "We are now investing, not just a little bit less than other places, (but) markedly less on a per-capita basis than every single state in this country in higher education." Arizona is not the worst, they’re 49th, for the current fiscal year in funding higher education. Crow said he made his comparison among conservative states, but New Hampshire, the worst for higher education funding based on the study he cited, appears to be in the middle of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, Arizona has endured the sharpest decline in state higher education funding from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2016. Even on a per student basis, their spending dropped 47 percent, more than any other state, from 2008 to 2015. Given the context, we rate Crow’s claim as Mostly True.

Michael M. Crow

2016-02-04T20:00:00

2016-01-26

['Arizona']

snes-00012

Facebook users who donated to charities on a one-time basis were actually debited that amount every month for one year.

mostly false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-birthday-donations/

Technology

Dan MacGuill

Do Facebook Donations Recur Every Month Even When a User Chooses a One-Time Contribution?

5 October 2018

['None']

tron-03077

Donald Trump Spills the Beans About Ted Cruz’s Wife: She Was a Call Girl

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/donald-trump-spills-beans-ted-cruzs-wife-call-girl/

politics

Donald Trump Spills the Beans About Ted Cruz’s Wife: She Was a Call Girl

Mar 24, 2016

['Ted_Cruz']

wast-00160

I look at the 20,000 jobs that have left America because of the irresponsible medical-device tax"

2 pinnochios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/16/the-claim-that-the-medical-device-tax-led-to-the-loss-of-20000-u-s-jobs/

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas)

Michelle Ye Hee Lee

The claim that the medical-device tax led to the loss of 20,000 U.S. jobs

March 16, 2017

['United_States']

pomt-01932

Candidates for governor routinely disclose their spouses’ tax returns.

mostly true

/florida/statements/2014/jun/26/rick-scott/rick-scott-says-gubernatorial-candidates-routinely/

A new ad by Gov. Rick Scott’s campaign has a simple message: Scott and his wife Ann have shown Florida their tax returns, so it’s only fair that former Gov. Charlie Crist and wife Carole show theirs. In the ad released June 25 called "What’s He Hiding," Scott’s political group Let’s Get To Work demands that Crist release not only his tax returns, but Carole’s, too. The ad says the Scotts have released tax returns both in 2010 and for this year’s election. "But millionaire Charlie Crist refuses to release his spouse’s tax returns," the ad says. "Candidates for governor routinely disclose those returns. Alex Sink and Rick Scott both did it four years ago." Crist has said he won’t be releasing his wife’s tax returns, saying Scott was "out of bounds" for making the request and should apologize. PolitiFact Florida wondered, however, if spouses truly do "routinely disclose" their tax returns. Here’s our disclosure: It depends on what you consider routine. A separate issue The practice of gubernatorial candidates themselves disclosing tax returns goes back a long time, but for this check we’ll head as far back as Reubin Askew, who became governor in 1971 and released several years’ worth. Florida elected officials are required by law to file an annual statement showing their assets and liabilities. They are not required to release tax returns, but candidates for governor have traditionally done so. We should note that this generally applies to the general election candidates, and not always primary candidates. For example, Bill McCollum did not release his returns in 2010 while running in the primary against Rick Scott. As to whether spouses fess up their finances, well, that’s an interesting history. Most candidates have filed jointly with their spouses. Jeb Bush and his wife Columba released several years’ worth of joint returns during Bush’s years in office, and Rick and Ann Scott filed jointly. It wasn’t until 2002, when Democrat Bill McBride ran against Bush, that the issue of a spouse filing separately came up. McBride’s wife, Alex Sink, began to file separately from her husband specifically because her husband was running for governor, but in 2002 she released two years of tax returns under pressure from the Bush campaign. Sink had retired as president of Bank of America’s Florida operations in 2000. McBride, a lawyer who worked at Tampa firm Holland & Knight for many years, returned the favor in 2010 and released his returns when his wife ran for governor against Rick Scott (McBride died in 2012). Crist was a solo filer when he ran for governor in 2006, because he was single. He didn’t marry Carole Crist until 2008. He has said they continue to file separately because he "was a single guy for a long time. She's got her own business, and it's her business." Carole Crist is an owner of a family Halloween costume and novelty business, Franco-American Novelty Co., and has created a second company, Goddessey. Crist, a lawyer by trade like McBride, announced the release of three years of tax returns as the ad began airing. The next day, he released returns going back to 2001, with promises to release more, going back to 1991. Candidates releasing their spouses separate returns has become more of an issue in the last couple of decades as more women become entrepreneurs independently of their spouses. Susan McManus, a University of South Florida political science professor, says the expectation of disclosing separate returns really took off when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his Democratic running mate during the 1984 presidential campaign. Ferraro faced many questions from political opponents and the media about her husband John Zaccaro’s real estate company. They ultimately released the returns, and Ferraro admitted she was an officer in the company, albeit without the authority to sign company checks. In recent years the same expectation has come up in presidential campaigns; Sen. John McCain’s millionaire wife Cindy eventually released two years of individual tax returns during the 2008 presidential campaign amid Democratic pressure. But those are examples from presidential politics. In Florida, the question is whether two instances -- by the same couple, in McBride and Sink -- over the last 12 years constitutes spouses’ tax returns being released "routinely," as Scott alleges. It’s only recently that we’ve seen candidates’ spouses filing separate returns. How you feel about it as a voter likely depends on how you feel about the race and the candidates, McManus said. "The interesting thing in this case is that attitudes about this are changing," she said. "In the future we’re likely to see everyone routinely releasing everything." Our ruling Scott said "candidates for governor routinely disclose" spouses’ tax returns. It is routine when candidates file joint returns with their spouses. It’s only recently that gubernatorial candidates and their spouses have started filing separate tax returns, though. When spouses file separately, there are two instances to look to, when first Alex Sink and then her husband Bill McBride disclosed individual returns for their spouse’s respective gubernatorial runs in 2002 and 2010. So the trend of spouses who file separately is a new one, but one way or the other, spouses' returns have been released over the years. We rate the statement Mostly True.

Rick Scott

2014-06-26T17:51:25

2014-06-25

['None']

pomt-13143

Says Gerald Daugherty is endorsed by the Austin American-Statesman.

false

/texas/statements/2016/nov/01/austin-board-realtors-pac/austin-realtors-group-incorrect-saying-gerald-daug/

Republican Gerald Daugherty, seeking re-election to the Travis County commissioners court, is "endorsed by" Austin’s daily newspaper, an advocacy group told select members. Hold that pony. The Austin American-Statesman, which is headquarters for PolitiFact Texas, announced in May 2016 its editorial board wouldn’t be endorsing candidates going forward. So we were curious when a reader asked us to check the Daugherty endorsement claim spotted in an Austin Board of Realtors PAC mailer. Separately, we fielded a copy of the mailer from Jonathan Panzer, campaign manager for David Holmes, a mediator and the Democratic nominee facing Daugherty, a businessman, to represent the county’s Precinct 3. To be sure, Daugherty was endorsed by the newspaper in early 2016. That February, the American-Statesman editorial board urged readers to favor Daugherty over Jason Nassour in the March 2016 Republican primary. "Republicans should stick with the incumbent," that editorial said after calling Daugherty "an important compass for the commissioners court on matters of fiscal responsibility" who "has shown an ability to prod his predictably blue colleagues to the right despite his minority status." But in May 2016, American-Statesman editors announced the newspaper would no longer endorse candidates for office--and that announcement was followed by the paper making no candidate endorsements leading up to the November 2016 general election. In a May 21, 2016, article describing changes in the paper's opinion pages, editors said: "Perhaps the most significant philosophical change as we adjust resources is that we will no longer endorse political candidates, although we will weigh in as necessary on ballot measures and other issues." That article, by the paper’s editor, Debbie Hiott, and Viewpoints editor, Tara Trower Doolittle, went on: "The sheer number of candidates in a metropolitan area this size and the number of editorial writers we have makes it challenging to add to the contours of the electoral debate. In the last" Austin City Council "cycle, our board met with more than 120 political candidates. In the most recent primary season, we held more than two dozen meetings and we declined to endorse in a number of statewide and county races in our readership area. We also have been increasingly forced to not endorse in races where candidates have chosen to skip the interview process altogether." So, we wondered how the Realtors group concluded Daugherty had snagged the paper's general-election backing. By phone and email, an ABOR representative, Emily Chenevert, said the mailer--sent independently and not in coordination with Daugherty, she said--was incorrect and 3,000 recipients, among the group’s more than 11,000 members, would receive a corrective email. Chenevert further told us that "we made the mistake of not clarifying that Commissioner Daugherty was endorsed by the Statesman in the primary. We recognize that no endorsement was made by the Statesman for the general election." Earlier the same day, we confirmed that Daugherty’s campaign website said he was endorsed by the American-Statesman, an element brought to our attention by the reader: SOURCE: Gerald Daugherty’s campaign website (screen grab, Oct. 31, 2016) To our queries about that, Daugherty noted by phone that he had been endorsed by the newspaper before the primary. Since then, he said, he’s guilty of not changing the pre-primary endorsement mention on his site. "I probably should have gone in there and said ‘in the primary,’" Daugherty said. The same day, he called back to say his site had since been amended to say he was "endorsed in the March Republican primary only," a change we confirmed. Generally too, we asked Hiott to weigh in on anyone touting pre-primary endorsements in the context of the 2016 general elections. She replied by email: "Every candidate knows that an endorsement is made within the context of a particular race and particular opponents. To then present it as an endorsement in another race is disingenuous at best." Our ruling ABOR’s mailer says Daugherty is endorsed by the American-Statesman. The newspaper did not endorse Daugherty or any candidate before the November 2016 general election after editors earlier announced the paper wouldn’t endorse candidates going forward. We rate this claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/cb90665b-e2b8-4b14-86f5-1da3303b75b3

Austin Board of Realtors PAC

2016-11-01T11:34:40

2016-10-29

['Austin_American-Statesman']

snes-05369

An image shows musicians David Bowie and Lemmy Kilmister together at a party.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/david-bowie-lemmy-photo/

Fauxtography

Dan Evon

FALSE: Photograph Shows Bowie and Lemmy

13 January 2016

['David_Bowie', 'Lemmy']

snes-04948

Mississippi has passed a bill granting churchgoers the right to shoot and kill citizens at will.

mostly false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mississippi-bill-churches-lethal/

Ballot Box

Kim LaCapria

Mississippi Bill Grants Churches ‘Lethal Force’ Powers

6 April 2016

['None']

snes-01562

In October 2017, a "demonic" drag queen read a "sexually explicit" book to children at a Long Beach public library named after Michelle Obama.

mixture

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/drag-queen-library/

Viral Phenomena

Dan MacGuill

Did a Drag Queen in a ‘Demonic’ Outfit Read a Sexually Explicit Book to Children at a Public Library?

18 October 2017

['Long_Beach,_California', 'Michelle_Obama']

pomt-10991

Says Mark Pocan’s proposal to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would "eliminate border enforcement."

pants on fire!

/wisconsin/statements/2018/jul/13/leah-vukmir/gop-us-senate-hopeful-leah-vukmirs-pants-fire-clai/

Would a Wisconsin congressman’s proposal to eliminate ICE really mean no more enforcement of the U.S. borders? No. But that’s the claim by Leah Vukmir, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin. Here’s why Vukmir’s blanket statement goes way wrong. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter: @PolitiFactWisc. Pocan’s proposal On June 25, 2018, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Madison-area Democrat, announced his proposal to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That was five days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the separation of families who were trying to enter the United States illegally at the Mexican border. To be clear, ICE was not involved in those border actions, which resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children and their parents. Pocan instead alluded to ICE actions taken inside the United States, accusing a unit of the agency of "hunting down and tearing apart families" at churches and schools, and raiding places such as garden centers and meatpacking plants. His proposal drew the wrath of Vukmir, who faces Kevin Nicholson in the Aug. 14, 2018, Republican primary for the Senate. The winner will take on Baldwin on Nov. 6, 2018. In a news release on July 5, 2018, Vukmir raised the prospect of open borders, saying Pocan’s proposal would be "effectively eliminating our border" She added: "Sen. Baldwin, where do you stand? Do you believe we should eliminate border enforcement? Americans deserve to know." (Baldwin doesn’t support Pocan’s proposal, which was introduced as legislation on July 12, 2018. In an odd twist, Pocan and other Democrats who introduced the measure said the same day that if GOP leadership follows through with their vow to bring it to the House floor, they would vote against it. "We know" Speaker Paul Ryan "is not serious about passing our" bill, the Democrats declared in a statement, saying they "will not engage in this political stunt." So, Vukmir is claiming that Pocan’s proposal to eliminate ICE would "eliminate border enforcement" — a broad statement essentially echoed later by her campaign spokeswoman. But Pocan isn’t proposing to get rid of border enforcement — and ICE isn’t the agency that patrols the borders, anyway. What is ICE? Many Americans might associate ICE with border enforcement. But as University of Texas professor and immigration expert Ruth Ellen Wasem put it, "most do not know that ICE’s role in immigration enforcement is not at the border." Border security is actually the responsibility of another federal agency — Customs and Border Protection. CBP is the parent agency for the Border Patrol, which patrols the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. It is the Border Patrol that did the recent separation of parents from children at the Mexican border. Elizabeth Cohen, a Syracuse University political science professor and immigration expert, told us: Customs and Border Protection is responsible for enforcement at the border and 100 miles in from any point on the border of the U.S., land and water. Eliminating ICE would not eliminate CBP or enforcement at the border. What ICE does is arrest, detain and deport unauthorized immigrants who are already inside the United States. This focus on the interior of the country is made clear on the ICE website: While certain responsibilities and close cooperation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and others require significant ICE assets near the border, the majority of immigration enforcement work for ICE takes place in the country’s interior. For example, in what The Atlantic described as two of ICE’s largest raids, both in Ohio in June 2018, the agency arrested 146 employees at a meat-processing plant and detained 114 workers at a nursery for suspected immigration violations. Not abandoning enforcement Indeed, Pocan has been clear that he is not proposing to end border enforcement. In a USA Today opinion column published two days before Vukmir made her claim, he wrote: Abolishing ICE does not mean open borders. ICE is the agency directed by the president to aggressively round up and detain individuals already living in our country, not the agency tasked with patrolling the border. Under my legislation, we would still have agents stationed to secure the border. FactCheck.org found that Pocan, as well as all other Democrats in Congress who are calling for the end of ICE, have not called for abandoning border enforcement. See all of our fact checks in the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race. Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for low levels of immigration, argued that eliminating ICE would hamper immigration enforcement. He told us that while some people entering the United States illegally are immediately returned to Mexico, those detained for any length of time are placed in the custody of ICE. So, eliminating ICE would result in a "catch and release policy," he said. But Stephen Legomsky, a Washington University law professor emeritus and immigration expert, told us that CBP or any agency that replaces ICE could take on the detention function. As for Vukmir, when we asked her campaign for information to support her statement, spokesman Mattias Gugel sent us a link to an animation that shows how to do a Google search. Amusing, perhaps, but it didn’t help his boss. Our rating Vukmir says Pocan’s proposal to eliminate ICE would "eliminate border enforcement." But enforcing the border is not even ICE’s job. Rather, the federal agency pursues unauthorized immigrants who are already inside the country. A different federal agency is responsible for patrolling the border, so border enforcement would continue even if ICE were eliminated. And, in any case, Pocan is not proposing to end border enforcement. For a statement that is false and ridiculous, we rate Vukmir’s claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Leah Vukmir

2018-07-13T06:00:00

2018-07-05

['None']

pomt-03107

One out of 10 minimum-wage workers in the U.S. live in Texas.

true

/texas/statements/2013/sep/20/stephanie-cutter/crossfire-anchor-undershoots-texans-comprising-one/

As of July 2012, Texans accounted for nearly one in 10 Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. On CNN’S Crossfire Sept. 18, 2013, from-the-left co-host Stephanie Cutter prefaced questions of Texas Gov. Rick Perry by saying: "One out of 10 minimum-wage workers in the U.S. live in Texas." She undershot. In 2012, according to Cheryl Abbot, a regional economist for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Texas workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour accounted for 452,000, or nearly 13 percent, of the nation’s 3,550,000 workers paid minimum wage or less. "Another way of stating that is that in Texas, 7.5 (percent) of all hourly-paid workers were paid at or below the federal minimum wage," Abbot said by email. The same year, Abbot said, nearly 12.7 million Texas workers in total amounted to 8 percent of the nation’s 155-million-strong labor force. Abbot pointed us to a bureau chart showing each state’s share of workers earning minimum wage or less in 2012 — which showed, too, that Texas had far more workers in this dual category than the second-place state in this way, New York, which had 224,000 workers earning the minimum wage or less, equal to 6.3 percent of the nation’s workers in those pay categories. Nationally, Abbot said, some 75 million hourly workers accounted for 59 percent of all salaried and hourly paid workers. In Texas, the state’s 6 million hourly workers represented 57 percent of all wage and salary workers, she said. To our inquiry, Austin economist Stuart Greenfield agreed with Abbot’s analysis, though he pointed out by telephone that strictly speaking, according to the bureau chart, nearly two in 10 of the country’s minimum-wage workers lived in Texas. That is, Texans accounted for 282,000 of 1,566,000 U.S. workers paid the minimum wage, according to the chart, with 170,000 Texans paid less than the minimum wage. The Texas share of U.S. minimum-wage-only workers, 18 percent, far outpaced the No. 2 state in this category, Pennsylvania, which was home to nearly 6 percent of such workers, according to the chart. Also, Texas led other states with its 8.6 percent share of hourly U.S. workers paid below the minimum wage, though Florida landed a close second by having 8.3 percent of such hourly workers, the chart indicates. Our ruling Cutter said one of 10 minimum-wage workers in the U.S. lives in Texas. Actually, 18 percent of U.S. workers paid the minimum wage in 2012 toiled in Texas, according to government figures, while Texas was home to 13 percent of the nation’s hourly employees paid minimum wage or less. Since Cutter was arguing that Texas is not a land of plenty, the fact that she understated the state’s share of minimum-wage workers doesn’t short the Truth-O-Meter. We rate this claim as True.

Stephanie Cutter

2013-09-20T17:58:15

2013-09-18

['United_States', 'Texas']

tron-01211

Discussion of Canadian Health Care

mostly truth!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/hillarys-health-care-plan/

crime-police

Discussion of Canadian Health Care

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-02081

Governor Scott Cut Taxes 40 Times For Florida Families

half-true

/florida/statements/2014/may/21/rick-scott/gov-scott-claims-he-cut-taxes-40-times-florida-fam/

It seems like just yesterday we were analyzing Gov. Rick Scott’s claim that he had cut taxes for Floridians 24 times. But on May 13, Scott’s campaign raised the count to 40. "Governor Scott Cut Taxes 40 Times For Florida Families," Scott for Florida announced on Twitter. "40 tax cuts in 4 years. #letskeepworking." Scott and the Legislature don’t have the budget shortfalls of years past, so tax cuts were the name of the game in Tallahassee in 2014, especially with Scott up for re-election. What were these new cuts he was touting? We hit the lawbooks to find out. Counting the ways In 2013, Scott defined a "tax cut" as anything that reduced government revenue by $3 million in a given year. That involved a lot of creative interpretation, such as considering a sales tax holiday a tax cut, then counting it each year. He also ruled reductions in automatic fee increases, tax credits and temporary measures as tax cuts. For 2014, this definition changed slightly, and Scott’s team also counted things that reduced government revenue by less than that. In the 2014 legislative session, freed from having to deal with budget deficits, lawmakers passed two major bills for the governor to tout. One was SB 156, which reduced auto registration fees. The other was HB 5601, a wide-ranging tax cut package that included more sales tax holidays, business tax credits and tax exemptions for child booster seats, college meal plans and even certain pet foods. After tweeting the good news, Scott’s campaign shared with us their list of 40 items, which actually totaled 41 things. Here’s a closer look at all of them: 1, 2.) Unemployment compensation taxes: Businesses saved $124.5 million when Tallahassee reduced the number of weeks and payout for unemployment compensation in 2011. A tax increase for businesses was rolled back in 2012, although not eliminated. The projected savings were $830 million for tax years 2012 through 2014. 3, 4.) Manufacturing equipment: A 2012 sales tax exemption on machinery purchases was expanded, saving $56 million. The next year the Legislature eliminated the sales tax entirely for three years, starting April 30, 2014. It was slated to cost the state $370 million and local governments $83 million through 2017. 5.) Property taxes: Scott and legislators forced state water management districts (except northwest Florida) to reduce their property tax collections by 30 percent in 2011. The $210 million cut led to modest savings for property owners. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.) Sales tax holiday: Scott counted the mostly annual tax-free shopping holiday four different times prior to 2013, at a cost of about $30 million to the state. It applied to shoes and clothing (up to $75 per item) and school supply purchases (up to $15). The state has offered the holiday every year since 1998 except in 2002, 2003, 2008 and 2009. The 2013 tax holiday (Aug. 2-4) counted twice, according to Scott, because it also exempted sales taxes on electronic equipment, such as E-readers, laptops and tablets, up to $750. For 2014, there will be three sales tax holidays: The first is a nine-day sales tax holiday for hurricane preparation supplies. Starting May 31, Floridians can purchase batteries, flashlights, tarps, and even generators worth $750 or less, without having to pay the state's 6 percent sales tax. That should reduce state revenues by about $2.9 million. Another sales tax holiday is a three-day back-to-school shopping period from Aug. 1-3, during which shoppers would not have to pay sales taxes on any clothes worth $100 or less, school supplies worth $15 or less, or on the first $750 of the cost of a personal computer. It accounts for $30 million or so. The third sales tax holiday will be held Sept. 19-21 on the purchase of energy- and water-efficient appliances costing $1,500 or less. That will reduce state revenues by about $1.7 million. 13, 14.) Corporate Income Tax exemptions: Scott asked lawmakers to expand the exemption for corporate income taxes from $5,000 to $25,000 in 2011, and then all the way up to $50,000 in 2012. Both cost the state about $60 million. 15.) Tax credit scholarships: This measure expanded a program that gives businesses a tax credit if they purchase tuition vouchers for low-income families to go to private schools, costing the state $25 million. 16, 17, 18.) Energy breaks: A 2013 law implemented part of a 2008 constitutional amendment that says a property appraiser may not base an increase in a property’s just value on the installation of a "renewable energy source device," including windmills, solar panels and roof pools. The law, effective this year, may lead to local revenue losses of $12.6 million by 2017. Two other credits are in a 2012 bill, HB 7117, aimed at inspiring more renewable energy production in our natural gas-dependent state. Credits aimed at helping agribusiness and renewable energy production facilities are set to expire in 2016. Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.) Various business tax incentives: Since 2011, Scott and the Legislature have expanded tax credits available to businesses under a federal/state "new markets" program, allowing businesses to take it against their corporate income tax bill or insurance premium tax bill. It costs the budget $12.9 million per year. They’ve allowed companies that spent at least $250 million on capital costs from 2011-13 to write-down a portion of their Florida business taxes for a $7.5 million revenue loss. They temporarily waived a requirement that a new facility creating at least 100 jobs be in certain technology fields in order to qualify for the Capital Investment Tax Credit, though only if they are located in certain Panhandle counties. The exemption, which costs the state $4.4 million per year, lasts through June 30, 2014. They also created an annual corporate income tax credit for certain research and development expenses of up to $9 million a year. HB 5601 this year gave businesses a small decrease on the tax rate on electricity, saving $3 million, and allowed a sales tax refund on bad credit card debt, for about $6.7 million. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33.) Targeted breaks: Lawmakers eliminated sales taxes on repairs to planes between 2,000 and 15,000 pounds, worth $12.3 million. The same bill tweaked requirements for a tax credit for businesses in an urban high-crime area, costing the state $3.5 million per year. The Legislature blocked a July 2013 automatic inflation adjustment factored in registration for hunting and fishing license fees every five years, costing the state $4.4 million for 2012-13. A wide-ranging 2012 law eliminated the annual adjustment and surcharge for severing phosphate for an annual cost of $12.6 million. A person licensed as a real estate salesperson or broker associate does not have to apply for an exemption from a local business tax when he or she is an employee of someone else under a 2012 law. That resulted in a $3.8 million hit to local government per year. A portion of the 2014 tax cut package clarified how prepaid calling plans were taxed, costing $7.2 million in revenue. It also contained provisions to cut taxes for premiums on bail bonds ($700,000) and title insurance ($5.4 million). The bill also extended and increased financial incentives for businesses to donate to community development and housing projects for low-income residents by providing a tax credit or sales tax refund. These changes to the Community Contribution Tax Credits program cost $14.7 million. 34.) Communications dealers: HB 809 in 2012 spared communications dealers, in certain situations, from being liable for penalties if they assign a customer to the wrong local tax jurisdiction. The change will result in annual savings of about $4.7 million for the communications industry. 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.) Sales tax exemptions: The tax cut package from 2014’s HB 5601 included several exemptions for more than just businesses. There was a temporary $3.3 million cut for the purchase of cement mixing drums for cement trucks, but the list also includes child car seats and youth bike helmets (at a combined cost to the state of about $2.5 million), prescribed diet pet food (another $2.5 million or so) and prepaid college meal plans (in the neighborhood of $12 million). These exemptions are in effect until 2017. 41.) Car registration fees: With no budget shortfall to deal with, the Legislature quickly passed SB 156, which rolled back the 2009 annual auto tag fee increase. Those fees had gone up to deal with a budget shortfall. It’s an especially big feather in Scott’s cap, who has been using the past increase as an attack against presumptive gubernatorial opponent Charlie Crist. The fee cut will save motorists about $25 a year per vehicle registration, with about $395 million in savings annually. Scott signed the bill into law April 2, but it won’t take effect until September, reducing revenue by $309 million for 2015. Tax cut tally If you’re still with us at this point, you must really want to know if Scott’s list counts as 40 tax cuts. The bottom line is, it depends on how you look at it. Experts PolitiFact Florida spoke with -- both after this claim was made and last year when Scott was trumpeting 25 cuts -- said the list contained several kinds of tax alterations that may or may not apply. The sales tax holidays, like the sales tax exemptions, are based on consuming the goods covered by the policies. The exemptions are temporary, and the holidays, which have been offered off and on since 1998, can be suspended from year to year. Counting tax credits is dubious, because that means you have to spend in one place to save in another. Preventing appraisers from raising property taxes for making an energy efficient improvement, for example, only benefits people who have already made capital improvements. Similar is the elimination of scheduled increases in hunting and fishing licenses. The fee is still being paid, just not at a higher rate than it was. Cuts in unemployment compensation may save businesses money, but they cost out-of-work Floridians money they would normally have. In fact, the bulk of the list is very friendly to businesses, but not your average taxpayer. These changes also don’t take into account whether local governments have to raise taxes to offset losses to their revenue. Our ruling Scott for Florida tweeted, "Governor Scott Cut Taxes 40 Times For Florida Families," highlighting a list that actually contained 41 items. These tax cuts range from credits to exemptions to changing rates and penalties. The list focuses heavily on businesses, and like his original 24 cuts, is full of caveats. Some are counted more than once, some are only changes to scheduled increases. This year’s legislative session added a few more measures aimed at consumers, but businesses still benefit from much of it. Scott’s tax claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.

Rick Scott

2014-05-21T14:48:38

2014-05-13

['None']

pomt-12293

Says Donald Trump "wants to kick thousands of kids off of BadgerCare."

half-true

/wisconsin/statements/2017/jun/28/tammy-baldwin/tammy-baldwins-half-true-claim-donald-trump-wants-/

Addressing the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s annual convention, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin laid into Republicans, particularly President Donald Trump. "You know, I remember Donald Trump coming to Wisconsin during the campaign and saying the same things Republicans always say here: I’m on the side of the little guy, I’m for working families, I’ll fight for you," the Baldwin said on June 2, 2017. "But it was another scam." Baldwin, a Democrat who faces re-election in 2018, then criticized several proposals backed by Trump, including the GOP replacement plan for Obamacare. "He wants to kick thousands of kids off of BadgerCare," Baldwin charged, echoing comments she made a few days earlier on MSNBC. "Who would cut health care for children?" Let’s see if she’s right. What is BadgerCare? BadgerCare (also known as BadgerCare Plus) provides health insurance coverage to low-income Wisconsin residents, including pregnant women, childless adults and children. It is funded through Medicaid. The latest enrollment numbers, from May 2017, show 790,189 residents enrolled, including 412,208 children. Several days after Baldwin’s speech, GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker proposed changes in the program for able-bodied adults, saying he wants to move them "from government dependence to true independence," partly through drug testing. If the federal government gives Walker permission, Wisconsin would become the first state to do such drug testing. Under the plan, those who fail and refuse substance abuse treatment would have their coverage rejected. Baldwin’s evidence To back Baldwin’s attack on Trump, her campaign cited estimates made in May 2017 by two left-leaning research groups. The Wisconsin Budget Project, a program of the nonprofit Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, said in a blog post that a group of about 5,000 children in Wisconsin is particularly at risk of losing their eligibility for BadgerCare as a result of funding reductions to the Children’s Health Insurance Program that would be made under Trump’s 2018 budget proposal. Jon Peacock, the group’s research director, told us that while the budget would not dictate that children be removed from BadgerCare, Wisconsin would have to make up for the funding reductions in order to keep those children on BadgerCare. He said a total of 80,000 children would be put at risk of losing BadgerCare. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress made a longer-term estimate, saying 53,600 children would lose BadgerCare in 2026 because of Medicaid funding reductions proposed by the GOP’s replacement for Obamacare that has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. That figure was based on estimates done by David Cutler, a professor of applied economics at Harvard University who was a campaign adviser to Barack Obama; and Emily Gee, a health economist at the center who formerly worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Other evidence A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, which administers BadgerCare, said the department has not done a full analysis of Trump’s budget or the GOP health plan, but told us the state is committed to ensuring that "everyone living in poverty has access to affordable health insurance." The two estimates, however, include people with family incomes above the federal poverty level. So, they would not be covered by such a commitment from the Walker administration. Zach Hunter, a spokesman for a House committee that wrote much of the GOP replacement bill, said the bill contains tax credits that would provide families up to $14,000 a year to purchase insurance. He also said the Center for American Progress estimate is based on projections made by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which he said has "repeatedly struggled to estimate coverage impacts with accuracy" when it comes to Obamacare. Our rating Baldwin says Trump "wants to kick thousands of kids off of BadgerCare." The president’s budget proposal and the GOP replacement for Obamacare, which he supports, don’t dictate that children lose their BadgerCare health insurance. But both would make cuts to federal spending that two left-leaning research groups say would threaten the BadgerCare eligibility of thousands of children. We rate the statement Half True.

Tammy Baldwin

2017-06-28T05:00:00

2017-06-02

['None']

tron-00616

Clinton Campaign Paid Beyonce, Jay-Z $62 Million to Secure Black Vote

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/clinton-campaign-paid-beyonce-jay-z-62-million-to-secure-black-vote/

celebrities

['2016 election', 'hillary clinton', 'the clintons']

Clinton Campaign Paid Beyonce, Jay-Z $62 Million to Secure Black Vote

Nov 8, 2016

['None']

tron-02756

Sylvia Thompson on President Obama’s Legacy

confirmed authorship!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/sylvia-thompson-president-obamas-legacy/

obama

Sylvia Thompson on President Obama’s Legacy

May 2, 2016

['Barack_Obama']

snes-03314

U.S. national security agencies went on "high alert" after President-Elect Donald Trump was caught telling "a dangerous lie."

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/national-security-agencies-on-high-alert-after-trump-caught-telling-dangerous-lie/

Ballot Box

Kim LaCapria

National Security Agencies on High Alert After Trump Caught Telling Dangerous Lie

19 December 2016

['United_States', 'Donald_Trump']

pomt-02143

Every single one of the 41 Republican senators who just blocked a raise in the minimum wage will receive a $2,800 cost-of-living adjustment on January 1, 2015.

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/06/facebook-posts/social-media-meme-says-lawmakers-will-get-2800-rai/

There are few things that inspire as much popular outrage as examples of politicians behaving hypocritically. That’s why a recent Facebook post packed such a punch. "Every single one of the 41 Republican senators who just blocked a raise in the minimum wage will receive a $2,800 cost-of-living adjustment on January 1, 2015," said the meme, which was posted by the creators of the "Raise the Minimum Wage" Facebook page. That page has attracted almost 132,000 supporters, and the meme, when it was posted on May 1, 2014, drew 1,984 likes. But is the meme’s claim accurate? Not exactly. Since passage of the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, congressional pay raises are calculated by a formula that involves changes in private-sector wages and salaries, according to the Congressional Research Service. The annual pay hike automatically goes into effect unless Congress either votes to reject the adjustment or votes to change the amount. However, lawmakers have often been loath to raise their own pay. Even though the 1989 law makes it easier for politicians to get a raise without having to affirmatively vote for one, it hasn’t led to raises year after year. In fact, almost half the time, lawmakers have gone out of their way to reject the automatic pay raise. According to CRS, lawmakers let their pay be raised 13 times (those scheduled for January 1991, 1992, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009) and denied raises 11 times (those scheduled for January 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014). That means the last time lawmakers let an impending raise stand was for the one scheduled for January 2009. That was when George W. Bush was president and the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. At that time, the basic congressional salary went from $169,300 to $174,000, its current level. Since then, for five years running, Congress has passed language forgoing a pay raise. The CRS report confirms the numbers cited in the meme -- the maximum potential January 2015 pay adjustment would be 1.6 percent, or $2,800, an amount established by calculations made in January 2014. But the recent history of pay-raise rejections provides a crucial asterisk to the meme’s claim. If Congress refuses to act, lawmakers will get the raise specified in the meme -- but for the past five years, Congress has acted to reject the increase, and this year, there are solid reasons why lawmakers would want to avoid a raise again. "The economy, while showing signs of recovery, is still shaky, especially when it comes to steady private-sector job creation," said Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, which has long tracked congressional pay and benefits. "Furthermore, it would be politically suicidal for Congress to debate, much less affirm, the raise before the November election." Sepp added, though, that it’s possible that lawmakers could go into a lame-duck session after the election. Then, he said, "the political pressure is off to act like they feel their constituents' pain, and who knows what could happen? Opponents of allowing the raise to take effect might introduce a provision blocking the pay increase, only to be outmaneuvered in the rush to approve final business for the year." In other words, a hike by january 2015 is far from the slam dunk the meme suggests. Our ruling The pro-minimum-wage group said in a Facebook meme that "every single one of the 41 Republican senators who just blocked a raise in the minimum wage will receive a $2,800 cost-of-living adjustment on January 1, 2015." That is what would happen if Congress fails to affirmatively reject a raise. But there is hardly a guarantee that lawmakers would simply go along with this pay hike. Accepting a pay raise is so politically unpopular that Congress has rejected such an increase for five years running. The difference between "will receive" a raise and "could receive" a raise is significant enough for us to rate this claim Half True.

Facebook posts

2014-05-06T15:57:46

2014-05-01

['Republican_Party_(United_States)']

bove-00110

2) CLAIM: Congress is 100% responsible for NPAs

none

https://www.boomlive.in/npas-are-congress-sin-says-pm-modi-a-factcheck/

NPAs Are Congress’ Sin Says PM Modi: A FactCheck

Feb 08 2018 8:56 pm, Last Updated: Feb 08 2018 11:11 pm

['None']

pomt-11957

Says the Dickey Amendment "prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. ... The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits."

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/oct/05/steve-israel/former-democratic-congressman-compares-gun-violenc/

The mass shooting in Las Vegas prompted former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of New York to write that these horrific events have little impact on public policy. In a New York Times op-ed, Israel walked through a list of shootings -- the murder of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, the June 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, and others -- and noted that despite the hand-wringing after each one, nothing changed. Israel said Democrats were unable to enact reforms, including "our attempts to rescind the infamous Dickey Amendment, which prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health." "The result?" Israel wrote Oct. 2. "The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits." There are two elements to sift through here: Does the Dickey Amendment block government research into gun violence and public health? And is Washington studying Swedish massage on rabbits? The Dickey Amendment In 1996, with strong support from the National Rifle Association, Congress included an amendment by Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., in its omnibus spending bill. The amendment said "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." In the same bill, Congress pulled $2.8 million aimed at gun injury research and assigned it elsewhere in the CDC. Ever since, Washington and the CDC have steered clear of funding research that could run afoul of that amendment. Israel said the provision prevents government-funded studies of the ties between guns and public health, but plenty of people say the rule is not binding. Dickey himself joined with the former head of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Mark Rosenberg to challenge that long-held assumption. "We believe strongly that funding for research into gun-violence prevention should be dramatically increased," they wrote in a 2016 public letter. "We do not see the congressional language against using federal funds ‘to promote or advocate gun control’ as a barrier to this research." An article on the Harvard Law Petrie-Flom Center blog argued that the amendment bars research aimed at promoting gun control and not all research. U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., echoed that point in a letter to the CDC, saying the meaning had been "misconstrued." But that belief had its own consequences. "As a result, public health researchers at the CDC and other federal agencies have been discouraged from conducting scientific research on gun violence," Carper wrote March 17, 2016. "Although the CDC self-directs a portion of its nearly $6.2 billion annual budget to a wide variety of intra- and extramural research, the CDC has been reluctant to devote funding to gun violence research without a specific appropriation from Congress." Carper offered proof that the Dickey Amendment can co-exist with government gun violence studies. He noted that in 2015, the CDC assessed the causes of a rise in gun violence in Wilmington, Del. In general, the impact of the Dickey Amendment is more political than legal. Research could move forward, but without an explicit signoff from Congress, there’s been limited activity. After the 2012 Newtown slayings, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to conduct or fund research into the causes of gun violence. The impact was modest. "As far as I can tell the CDC still correctly believes that gun research, or even mentioning guns, is too hot to handle," said director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center David Hemenway. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research director Daniel Webster also said there’s been no new funding from CDC or the National Institutes of Health. Rosenberg told us, "The research scientists at CDC are very anxious to do this research, but the recent directors of CDC have been willing to let this eminently solvable problem fester because they fear that the NRA will prod Congress into cutting public health programs that are viewed as more central and critical to CDC's mission." Rabbit massage As for the $400,000 spent on studying the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits that Israel mentioned, yes, the government did that. (The exact amount was closer to $387,000.) It gave the Ohio State University Sports Medicine Center money to build a small device that mimics the action of Swedish massage to see if the treatment reduced pain and inflammation. Rabbits were the test subjects. The treatment helped, by the way. Researchers found that with the right mix of force, duration and frequency, there was "maximal recovery of muscle and joint function." However, there’s an issue of timing with Israel’s statement. He said the government is currently spending money on this research. In fact, the study ended in 2014. Israel spokesman Harrison Feuer didn’t argue that detail. "The larger point that Congressman Israel was looking to accurately make is that the government has funded studies into various endeavors that are less impactful than guns on public health," Feuer said. Our ruling Israel said the Dickey Amendment prevents the CDC from researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. As a matter of law, it only prevents money going toward research aimed at promoting gun control. But as a matter of politics, that distinction is murky, and as a result, research has been limited. Israel’s point about Swedish massage on rabbits is off on the timing, but right on the substance. Israel’s statement has some technical flaws, but the broader thrust is accurate. We rate it Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Steve Israel

2017-10-05T13:11:53

2017-10-02

['Sweden']

pomt-11802

Bump stocks are already illegal in the state of New York. You can't buy one.

mostly false

/new-york/statements/2017/nov/17/andrew-cuomo/bump-stocks-are-still-legal-own-and-sell-new-york-/

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says New York state law already bans the accessory a gunman used to kill 58 people in Las Vegas last month. The accessory, called a bump stock, allows someone to convert a semi-automatic firearm to a nearly fully automatic one. Lawmakers in New York state have introduced legislation to ban the accessory, but Cuomo during a conference call with reporters called the bill unnecessary. "The bump stocks are already illegal in the state of New York," Cuomo said. "You can't buy one." Is Cuomo right? What’s in state law Technically, New York state has banned the use of bump stocks for more than 80 years. The State Legislature passed a law in 1931 that said "a person who sells or keeps for sale, or offers, or gives, or disposes of any instrument or weapon of the kind usually known as a machine-gun to any person is guilty of a felony." That statute exists today, but instead says anyone who owns, "manufactures or causes to be manufactured any machine-gun" or weapon simulating a machine gun is guilty of a felony. A machine gun is defined as a weapon that can fire a number of shots with one continuous pull of the trigger. A bump stock modifies a gun to simulate that. What’s not in state law Assemblywoman Patricia A. Fahy was one of the first lawmakers to introduce legislation banning bump stocks in New York state after the Las Vegas shooting. She contended that while using a bump stock might be illegal in New York state, owning or selling one is not. The New York State Police agree with her. "It’s OK to have a bump stock in the back of your car," State Police Spokesperson Beau Duffy said. "But the minute you attach it to a semiautomatic rifle, it’s illegal in New York state." Bump stocks are not regulated by the state or federal government, so just having one is not a crime, Duffy said. You can also sell them in New York state without penalty. That means you can also legally buy one in New York state without going through a background check, whether it’s through a gun shop or a private seller. National gun law experts have the same understanding of the law. "Though this current law functionally prohibits New Yorkers from possessing firearms that are equipped with bump stocks or similar devices, our understanding is that it does not prohibit possession of bump stock devices that are un-attached to a firearm," said Ari Freilich, a staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Many of the guns a bump stock would work with are now illegal for new gun owners under the SAFE Act in New York state. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Residents were allowed to keep guns outlawed by the SAFE Act as long as they registered them with the state by April 2014. Cuomo’s response A spokeswoman for Cuomo clarified that the governor meant to say that someone could not buy and then use a bump stock in New York. "The governor was stating you cannot buy a bump stock in New York and affix it to a weapon, which is banned under the state’s penal law," Abbey Fashouer said. Our ruling Cuomo said "bump stocks are already illegal in the state of New York. You can't buy one." That’s not true. It’s illegal to use a bump stock in New York state but you can buy and own one. We rate his claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Andrew Cuomo

2017-11-17T15:39:25

2017-11-06

['New_York_City']

pomt-14516

In Sauk City, Wisconsin, "the ID office" that provides identification for voting "is only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month" -- a total of four days in 2016.

mostly true

/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/john-oliver/office-provides-id-voting-one-wisconsin-burg-open-/

Sauk City, which prides itself on being the oldest incorporated village in Wisconsin (yeah, it’s a little confusing), made HBO on Feb. 14, 2016. The mention came on "Last Week Tonight," a Sunday show that takes a satirical look at news, politics and current events. The program is hosted by John Oliver, who used to be a correspondent for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central. Opening the segment by noting "we are finally in an election year," Oliver talked about voting in America -- in particular, identification requirements for voting. (The show happened to air two days before Wisconsin’s primary election, when voters cast ballots for the a state Supreme Court seat and a variety of local offices.) Several minutes later, Wisconsin and a few other states, along with Sauk City (pop. 3,410), were singled out. "And in some parts of the country, the offices that issue IDs are hardly ever open," an incredulous Oliver said. "In 2012, a study found that in Wisconsin, Alabama and Mississippi, fewer than half of all ID-issuing offices in the state are open five days a week. "And in Sauk City, Wisconsin," Oliver continued, "the ID office is only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month -- and only four months in 2016 even have five Wednesdays." Oliver’s Sauk City claim later got online attention from Vox and Bustle. A graphic that flashed on the screen during Oliver’s monologue carried a screenshot of a website page that listed the hours of operation for a state Division of Motor Vehicles office in Sauk City. That appeared to back up Oliver’s claim. But Oliver’s claim could leave the impression that the only place Sauk City residents can get an ID for voting is at an office that’s open only on fifth Wednesdays, as in four days for all of 2016. Voter ID law In 2011, Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that requires residents to present a photo identification in order to vote. The law was used for the first time in the February 2012 primary election. But after that, the law was put on ice while it was challenged in court. In 2014, the challenge reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. That meant the law was put back into effect. The first time it was used again was in the primary held two days after Oliver made his claim. Oliver’s claim Let’s be clear that Wisconsin has no "voter ID." Rather, under the voter ID law, Wisconsin voters must present an existing ID. Generally, it’s one of these: drivers license; state-issued ID (often in lieu of a drivers license); a military ID card issued by a U.S. uniformed service; a U.S. passport; or an identification card issued by a federally recognized Indian tribe. To get a drivers licensed or state-issued ID, residents are directed to the state Division of Motor Vehicles. You need to go to a DMV customer service center, fill out two forms and present documents (such as a marriage certificate) to prove your identity, as well as documents (such as a pay stub, a utility bill or a bank statement) to prove you’re a Wisconsin resident. So, if you’re in Sauk City, which is about 30 miles northwest of Madison, how do you find the nearest DMV office? We went to the DMV’s online locator for DMV offices by city and chose the listing for Sauk City. That DMV service center is inside the Sauk City Community Center. And, sure enough, as Oliver’s piece stated, it’s open only on the fifth Wednesday of every month, from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. The DMV doesn’t list the actual dates, so we looked them up. The four fifth Wednesdays in 2016 are in, as Oliver noted, March, June, August and November. (Oliver even offered a clever rhyme to remember when the fifth Wednesdays fall, but it’s a little profane.) A number of DMV locations relatively nearby, however, are open more often. The one in Baraboo (home to Circus World), about 20 miles away, is open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. The one in Reedsburg ("fastest available" Internet speeds in Wisconsin), about 30 miles away, is open the first, second and third Wednesday of each month from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. And in Madison, the nearest major city, there are three DMV facilities that are open even more during the week, plus Saturday mornings. To be sure, Sauk City isn't the only small town where DMV hours are limited, but no DMV site is open less. Our rating Oliver said that in Sauk City, Wis., "the ID office" that provides identification for voting "is only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month" -- a total of four days in 2016. He’s correct that the state DMV office in Sauk City is only open on those four days in 2016, but that isn’t the only place where residents can go to get a state ID that they can use for voting. Several other locations within a relatively short drive of Sauk City are open much more often. For a statement that is accurate but needs clarification, our rating is Mostly True.

John Oliver

2016-02-19T09:00:00

2016-02-14

['Wisconsin']

snes-01311

A photograph shows vintage box of fake snow decor made of the carcinogen asbestos.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-fake-snow-made-from-asbestos-marketed-as-christmas-decor/

Uncategorized

Bethania Palma

Was Fake Snow Made From Asbestos Marketed As Christmas Decor?

22 December 2017

['None']

hoer-00624

Warning - Grapes and Raisins Toxic to Dogs And Cats

true messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/grapes-raisins-dogs-cats-warning.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Warning - Grapes and Raisins Toxic to Dogs And Cats

July 29, 2013

['None']

snes-05027

Do Opossums Kill Ticks, Inhibit the Spread of Lyme Disease?

mostly true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/opossums-kill-ticks-inhibit-the-spread-of-lyme-disease/

Critter Country

Kim LaCapria

Do Opossums Kill Ticks, Inhibit the Spread of Lyme Disease?

22 March 2016

['None']

snes-02885

Thousands of Marines applied for White House detail after Trump became president, and none applied during President Obama's 8 years in office.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marine-white-house-detail/

Politics

Dan Evon

Did Thousands of Marines Apply for White House Detail After Trump Became President?

24 February 2017

['White_House', 'Barack_Obama', 'United_States_Marine_Corps']

snes-01525

A teenage schoolgirl in Texas became pregnant through a flu vaccination.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/14-year-old-pregnant-flu-shot/

Junk News

Kim LaCapria

Did a 14-Year Old Virgin Fall Pregnant After a Flu Shot?

5 October 2015

['Texas']

pomt-14031

I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not (Hillary Clinton's) position.

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/29/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-says-only-he-supports-carbon-tax-an/

Bernie Sanders still doesn’t want to talk about Hillary Clinton’s damn emails. Asked for his reaction to the State Department report of Clinton’s use of a private email server, Sanders told Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that he’d rather talk policy differences. "Our campaign is about defeating Secretary Clinton on the real issues," he responded. "I want to break up the Wall Street banks. She doesn’t. I want to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. She wants $12 an hour. I voted against the war in Iraq. She voted for the war in Iraq. I believe we should ban fracking. She does not. I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position. Those are some of the issues that I am campaigning on." Sanders is right about Clinton’s Iraq war vote and where she stands on breaking up banks, a $15 minimum wage and fracking. (For more of their policy differences, read this.) But is he also right about their differences on carbon tax and climate change? There’s no doubt that Sanders’ rhetoric on climate change and his plan to deal with it are aggressive and, unlike Clinton, he has advocated for a carbon tax. Clinton does, however, have a climate change plan. While some environmentalists have said it isn’t tough enough, others have given it positive reviews. Both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns referred us to each candidate’s climate change plan. Sanders’ plan is long and comprehensive. Beyond a tax on carbon, it includes an array of proposals from banning certain drilling and mining practices to improving the national public transit system. Clinton’s plan is shorter and, though it doesn’t include a tax on carbon, contains similar provisions on renewables. Here’s an overview: Sanders’ plan Clinton’s plan Fossil fuel influence • Cut tax subsidies for oil and gas companies • Prohibit fossil fuel lobbyists from working in the White House • Investigate climate change deniers • Cut tax subsidies for oil and gas companies Environmental standards • Enact a tax on carbon • Ban fossil fuel leasing on public lands and promote conservation and habitat preservation • Ban Arctic oil drilling, offshore drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal coal mining and pipeline projects • Stop exports of natural gas and crude oil • Defend and close loopholes in the Clean Air Act • Increase fuel efficiency standards • Begin a moratorium on nuclear power • Create a national environmental and climate justice plan • Reform fossil fuel leasing and expand clean energy production on public lands • Defend and extend environmental standards like the Clean Power Plan • Eliminate lead poisoning, clean up brownfield sites, and create an Environmental Justice Task Force Renewables • Invest in clean energy infrastructure and modernize the energy grid • Invest in clean energy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency programs • Invest in clean energy infrastructure • Launch a $60 billion local-state-federal clean energy partnership As in her plan, Clinton prefers to focus on renewables on the stump. In a January Medium post responding to the Sanders camp, Clinton’s campaign manager highlighted her pledge to "make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century" in her launch speech. Clinton, who played a role in negotiating the Paris climate change agreement, herself touted her goals for more solar panel and clean electricity as "big" and "bold." Clinton has gotten her best reviews from the League of Conservation Voters, who endorsed Clinton last fall (to some controversy). The green group considers Clinton’s plan strong and aggressive and, more importantly, achievable, Tiernan Sittenfeld, its senior vice president of government affairs, told PolitiFact. "Hillary is focused on practical solutions," Sittenfeld said, pointing out that there are many lawmakers in Congress who still deny climate change science. "So (a carbon tax) is pretty remote possibility." But some are skeptical of Clinton’s "boldness." Pulitzer Prize-winning website InsideClimate News called Clinton’s plan ambitious but said it "falls short of bold." The Washington Post’s editorial board said her ideas are "second best." Environmental news magazine Grist summed up her positions as not bad but "not quite the climate hawkishness we need." Our ruling Sanders said, "I believe we should have tax on carbon and deal aggressively with climate change. That is not her position." Unlike Sanders, Clinton doesn’t advocate for a carbon tax. And while Clinton doesn’t go as far as Sanders in her climate change plan, she does have one. The League of Conservation Voters supports her plan as realistic and achievable. We rate Sanders’ claim Mostly True.

Bernie Sanders

2016-05-29T17:21:44

2016-05-29

['None']

pomt-06991

There are actually half a million fewer government employees now than there were when (President Barack) Obama took office.

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/11/paul-krugman/paul-krugman-says-government-jobs-have-fallen-half/

In the July 11, 2011, edition of the New York Times, Paul Krugman -- a Nobel Prize-winning economist and liberal columnist -- noted a statistic about recent trends in government employment. He wrote, "Everybody knows that President (Barack) Obama tried to stimulate the economy with a huge increase in government spending, and that it didn’t work. But what everyone knows is wrong. Think about it: Where are the big public works projects? Where are the armies of government workers? There are actually half a million fewer government employees now than there were when Mr. Obama took office." Has government employment really gone down in the past two and a half years? We looked in the databases for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government’s official tabulator of employment statistics. We found that between January 2009 (when Obama took office) and June 2011 (the most recent month available), Krugman was right for overall government employment -- the combination of federal, state and local government workers. Overall government employment declined by 518,000 workers, or about 2.3 percent of the January 2009 level. So his statistic is correct. But the closer you look at the data, the more varied the data becomes. First, let’s look at federal government employment, which accounts for just 13 percent of all government employment. The number of federal workers has increased by 38,000 over the same period -- an increase of 1.4 percent. And if you separate out the U.S. Postal Service, the growth was even bigger. Non-postal federal employment -- about 10 percent of all government employment -- increased over the same period by 139,000 workers, or 6.7 percent. The decline in government employment clearly wasn’t driven by job losses at the federal level. It came from state and local government. So we’ll look at the trends for those categories here. State employment accounts for 23 percent of the government workforce. State government payrolls declined by 113,000 over the same period, or 2.2 percent. Within this category, state education workers -- who account for a little under half of state workers -- actually rose slightly over the period. The hits were taken in the remainder of the state workforce -- a decline of 115,500, or 4.1 percent. But the biggest declines in the government sector came in local government. Local government -- which accounts for 64 percent of all government employment -- fell by 443,000 workers, or 3 percent. That accounts for a huge portion of the half-million decrease in jobs that Krugman cited. Education workers at the local level fared worse than those at the state level. Local education workers declined by 204,800, or 2.5 percent. Non-education workers in local government fared even worse -- employment was down 238,400, or 3.7 percent. The decline in government workers has certainly had an impact on the overall employment picture. Since the recession officially ended in June 2009, private payrolls have increased by more than 1 million workers, but government payrolls have declined by 493,000 -- cutting the number of jobs created almost in half. So how does all this relate to Krugman’s comment? The fact that federal employment outside the Postal Service has risen by 6.7 percent in the past two and a half years is an important point to recognize for anyone studying employment trends. But Krugman was careful enough to avoid suggesting that federal employment declined by a half-million jobs. In fact, since a large chunk of the stimulus came in the form of aid to states -- specifically to help save jobs in education and other government sectors -- using total government employment figures as a yardstick seems reasonable to us. So we rate his statement True.

Paul Krugman

2011-07-11T14:40:33

2011-07-11

['Barack_Obama']

snes-04348

[Name of celebrity] has been summoned for jury duty in [name of town] because he or she supposedly owns property there.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/celebrity-summoned-to-jury-duty-in-your-town/

Junk News

David Emery

Celebrity Summoned to Jury Duty in Your Town!

29 July 2016

['None']

afck-00067

“[Of those] fortunate enough to get to matric and pass and enter university, half will drop out before they reach their second year.”

incorrect

https://africacheck.org/reports/verifying-key-claims-in-the-2018-state-of-the-nation-debate/

Verifying key claims in SA’s 2018 State of the Nation address debate

2018-02-19 02:56

['None']

snes-05236

The pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 reappeared in Taiwan two years after the plane disappeared.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mh370-pilot-mysteriously-resurfaces/

Junk News

Kim LaCapria

Did an MH370 Pilot Mysteriously Resurface Two Years Later?

10 February 2016

['Taiwan']

pomt-09242

On military recruiters at Harvard, Elena Kagan "took a position and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that she was wrong."

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/10/john-barrasso/supreme-court-rejected-arguments-kagan-promoted/

One of Elena Kagan's top credentials -- that she was dean of Harvard Law School -- created some controversy on the day that President Barack Obama announced her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. As dean, Kagan took a lead role in trying to keep military recruiters off campus because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Several Republicans pointed to that episode in their initial comments on Kagan, calling the incident troubling. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., also pointed out that the incident put her on the losing side of a Supreme Court ruling. At Harvard Law School, Barrasso said, "She took a position and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that she was wrong." Barrasso said he was keeping an open mind on the nomination. We were interested in fact-checking his statement that the Supreme Court "ruled unanimously that she was wrong." The controversy over military recruiters began even before Kagan became dean of Harvard Law in 2003. Harvard was one of several top-tier law schools that attempted to ban military recruiters because of the policy that prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. In 2003, Kagan penned a letter to the law school community expressing her thoughts on the issue: "I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy. The importance of the military to our society -- and the extraordinary service that members of the military provide to all the rest of us -- makes this discrimination more, not less, repugnant. The military's policy deprives many men and women of courage and character from having the opportunity to serve their country in the greatest way possible. This is a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order. And it is a wrong that tears at the fabric of our own community, because some of our members cannot, while others can, devote their professional careers to their country." Congress threatened to yank federal funding for schools that banned recruiters through a measure known as the Solomon Amendment, named for Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., and first passed in 1996. Schools and recruiters tried to sort out their differences in the intervening years, with some schools providing partial access. But eventually the issue came before the Supreme Court in 2004 in a case known as Rumsfeld vs. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, known as FAIR. FAIR was an association of law schools that opposed the Solomon Amendment. In her role as a professor of law at Havard, Kagan signed onto an amicus brief (sometimes known as a "friend of the court" brief) filed by 40 Harvard professors that argued that the federal government should not be able to withhold funding if the schools applied the same policies to all recruiters. Harvard, for example, required all recruiters to sign forms indicating they would not discriminate against applicants based on sexual orientation. The withholding of funds interfered with the schools' freedom of expression to oppose what they felt were discriminatory policies. The Harvard law professors argued in their brief that "this case is not -- and has never been -- about whether law schools may 'discriminate' against the military or whether they must provide 'equal access' to military recruiters. Instead, the question is whether the Solomon Amendment confers upon military recruiters the unprecedented entitlement to disregard neutral and generally applicable recruiting rules whenever a school's failure to make a special exception might incidentally hinger or preclude military recruiting. The answer is 'no.'" The Supreme Court, however, disagreed in an 8-0 ruling on March 6, 2006. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled against FAIR and, in doing so, rejected the claims of Kagan and the other law professors that the school had the right to enforce non-discrimination policies against the military. "Under the statute, military recruiters must be given the same access as recruiters who comply with the policy," the opinion said. The court also rejected arguments that claimed that the law schools' treatment of military recruiters could be considered expression under the First Amendment. If the action itself were purely expressive, the court reasoned, the schools would not have to issue statements explaining their actions. The court compared the situation to someone who says he won't pay his income taxes because he disapproves of the Internal Revenue Service. The disapproval is protected speech, but the non-payment of taxes is not. The opinion was supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer joining Roberts. Justice Samuel Alito did not participate because he had not yet been seated to the court when oral arguments were made. Barrasso said Kagan "took a position and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that she was wrong." The court did reject the arguments put forward by the law schools, which included FAIR and the brief filed by the Harvard professors. All of the justices who voted opposed the law schools' arguments. So we rate Barrasso's statement True.

John Barrasso

2010-05-10T18:24:15

2010-05-10

['Elena_Kagan', 'Harvard_University']

pose-00547

Will create A-to-F grading scale for school quality. "Schools should be graded just like students on a scale of A to F. Grades awarded under this rating system will be based on objective criteria such as graduation rates, passing rates, enrollment in Advanced Placement courses, standardized test scores, and teacher and administrator evaluations. Schools that fail for three consecutive years must select an alternate model."

compromise

https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/promises/walk-o-meter/promise/570/create-a-to-f-grading-scale-for-school-quality/

walk-o-meter

Scott Walker

Create A-to-F grading scale for school quality

2010-12-20T23:16:36

['None']

pomt-15075

Eighty-three law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty this year. Twenty-four of them were shot and killed in cold blood.

true

/georgia/statements/2015/sep/22/casey-cagle/cagle-right-law-enforcement-death-count/

Years have passed, but not the collective chill that comes when our minds are drawn back to Sept. 11, 2001. In the days leading up to this year’s 14th anniversary of the terrorists’ attacks, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle issued a press release, urging Georgians to stop to reflect on the critical role that law enforcement officers play in our communities. "Eighty-three law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty this year," Cagle said in the statement issued Sept. 8, "Twenty-four of them were shot and killed in cold blood." Those are sobering national statistics, the sort that have been replayed more lately -- the result of angry displays and discourse that have escalated since the August 2014 killing of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. But are the stats accurate? PolitiFact decided to check. We contacted Ben Fry, Cagle’s chief of staff, who said the numbers came from the Officer Down Memorial Page, a resource that he said was recommended by the Georgia Sheriffs Association. The privately run website is dedicated to memorializing police officers who die in the line of duty and is constantly updated. It showed a 2015 death count of 92 by Sunday, Sept. 20, that included seven Georgia law enforcement officers. The causes of death varied. Twenty-eight died from gunfire, two accidentally. Auto and motorcycle accidents claimed 24 lives. Vehicle pursuits killed four, and vehicle assaults three. Heart attacks accounted for 15 deaths, and a fall caused one death. Five law enforcement officers died in 2015 of illnesses related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to the website. Texas and Louisiana have had the most officers die this year, 10 and 9, respectively. The website numbers track those in Cagle’s statement; they’re more current and so higher. We decided to spot check the website’s data against information gathered for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, as well media reports. The names of officers who die in the line of duty are etched in marble each spring, in conjunction with National Police Week, at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington D.C. That group keeps up-to-date data on law enforcement deaths and reported 92 on Sunday (identical to what the Officer Down Memorial Page was reporting that day.) We also used Google to verify all seven of the officer deaths in Georgia noted on the Officer Down Memorial Page. This included DeKalb County Police Officer Kevin Toatley, who was killed Saturday night when his patrol car was struck head on by a vehicle traveling in the wrong direction on South Fulton Parkway. The Officer Down Memorial Page, which has data that appears spot on, says that with the count of 92 deaths as of Sept. 20, all law enforcement deaths for 2015 are down 1 percent this year, compared to 2014. Gunfire deaths are down 26 percent; and auto-related deaths, at 36, are up 13 percent. (In May of this year. the FBI released its preliminary stats for 2014 law enforcement deaths in the line of duty. It showed 51 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed, meaning they were killed with "criminal intent, as opposed to by accident), an increase of almost 89 percent from 2013 when the death count was 27. Between 1980 and 2014, an average of 64 law enforcement officers died this way each year. The 2013 death count was the lowest in this 35-year period.) With all the conversation about relations between the police and the communities they serve, that’s valuable information to know, especially when a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports.com suggests that all those discussions may be influencing public thinking. The telephone survey showed that 58 percent of likely U.S. voters believe there’s a war on police in America today. Our conclusion: In the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle issued a press release, urging Georgians to stop to reflect on the critical role that law enforcement officers play in our communities. "Eighty-three law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty this year. Twenty-four of them were shot and killed in cold blood," he said. His numbers come from a group that works to diligently track data and pay tribute to law enforcement officers who die in the line of duty. We rate Cagle’s statement True.

Casey Cagle

2015-09-22T00:00:00

2015-09-08

['None']

goop-02581

Ellen DeGeneres Warning Justin Bieber To Get Help,

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/ellen-degeneres-justin-bieber-help-worried-intervention/

Andrew Shuster

Ellen DeGeneres NOT Warning Justin Bieber To Get Help, Despite Report

12:46 pm, August 14, 2017

['None']

tron-02642

Arizona Billboard Directs Illegal Immigrants To California

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/arizona-billboard/

miscellaneous

Arizona Billboard Directs Illegal Immigrants To California

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-01498

Every time [the people from Newport Tent] work in a city or town they have a whole different set of permits that they have to get in order to pitch a tent.

true

/rhode-island/statements/2014/sep/25/catherine-taylor/catherine-taylor-says-plethora-rules-tent-permits-/

In her campaign for lieutenant governor, Catherine Taylor has talked broadly of boosting the Rhode Island economy by, among other things, streamlining business regulations. During a recent appearance on Channel 6’s "On the Record," Taylor, a Republican who resigned from her position as head of the state Division of Elderly Affairs to run for office, argued that red tape at the local level is impeding business. She referred to the experience of one Rhode Island company to illustrate her point. "I go back to the Newport Tent example," she said on the show that aired Sept. 7. "Every time they work in a city or town they have a whole different set of permits that they have to get in order to pitch a tent." This particular claim about Newport Tent sounded familiar to us. It turns out that former Journal staff writer Cynthia Needham (now an editor at the Boston Globe) wrote about the company’s struggles with permitting in a May 4, 2010 story with the headline "New bills could reduce red tape." In the story, Newport Tent owner Bill Corcoran complained about the time and effort it takes to comply with all the differing rules in Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns. During the busy season in spring and summer, one employee devotes her time to driving around the state getting all the necessary permits, he said at the time. But that was four years ago. Weren’t the nine proposed bills written about in that article supposed to create more uniform permitting processes and put time limits on how long communities have to complete requests? When we contacted Taylor’s campaign, her campaign manager, Zach Sherman, first pointed us to the Rhode Island statute that requires Newport Tent -- or any other tent company - to obtain permits from local authorities. The link he sent was out-of-date. The General Assembly recently changed the law, increasing the minimum size of tents subject to local approvals from 120 square feet to 350 square feet. Sherman also gave us Corcoran’s number, so we called him. Our first question was the obvious one. Haven’t things gotten better since that 2010 package of legislation won passage? No, he said flatly. The problem isn’t so much that each of the state’s cities and towns requires a permit before Corcoran’s company can put up a tent, it’s that the requirements for those permits vary so widely, he said. Some communities require a trip to the building inspector and then the fire department. Some reverse the process. Others call for two visits to the building department. There is little consistency, he said. For example, he said, Providence requires a signed form from a property owner authorizing a tent to be put up. No other community requires such an authorization. We looked at regulations in other cities and towns and found more differences. In Cranston, tent stakes must be installed at least 10 feet apart and aisles must be at least 44 inches wide, according to rules posted by that city’s Fire Department. The Watch Hill Fire Department in Westerly isn’t so specific, requiring only that there be no trip hazards in the tent. Corcoran also said Newport is the only community in the state that allows his company to do business by phone or mail, largely because of the company’s 40-years-plus year history of work there. Permit applications in all other cities and towns must be done in person. Corcoran says there’s more flexibility in Connecticut and Massachusetts. In Connecticut, where his company erected a tent last weekend, everything was done by phone and email, he said. "That was easy," he said. "They had the forms right online." In Rhode Island, he said, he still has an employee who works nearly full-time on permitting in the state. Our ruling Catherine Taylor said that tent companies such as Newport Tent must meet different permit requirements in each of Rhode Island’s cities and towns. Although the state legislature has worked to ease the regulations governing Newport Tent and other tent companies, one thing hasn’t changed. Those companies must still seek permits from cities and towns through processes that vary widely and have differing requirements. We rule Taylor’s claim 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.)

Catherine Taylor

2014-09-25T00:01:00

2014-09-07

['None']

vees-00391

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Duterte 'jokes' about abolishing CHR, meddling with Ombudsman probes

none

http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-duterte-jokes-about-abolishing-chr-med

Duterte,CHR

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Duterte 'jokes' about abolishing CHR, meddling with Ombudsman probes

August 11, 2017

['None']

snes-00644

Does Stepping on a Rusty Nail Cause Tetanus?

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stepping-rusty-nail-cause-tetanus/

Medical

Alex Kasprak

Does Stepping on a Rusty Nail Cause Tetanus?

7 May 2018

['None']

tron-01366

Samuel Adams Set to Release New Helium Beer

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/samuel-adams-set-to-release-new-helium-beer/

food

Samuel Adams Set to Release New Helium Beer

Aug 12, 2015

['None']

snes-04023

Tens of thousands of Russian troops are surrounding U.S. borders.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russia-troops-us-borders/

Conspiracy Theories

Bethania Palma

Russia Has Amassed Troops to Surround the U.S. Borders

15 September 2016

['United_States', 'Russia']