Datasets:

pszemraj

/

multi_fc

like 1

pomt-04958

We created as many jobs in the first six months of this year as we did in all of 2011 and 2011 was the best single year for private-sector job growth since the year 2000.

true

/new-jersey/statements/2012/jul/26/chris-christie/chris-christie-new-jersey-gained-more-jobs-first-s/

Gov. Chris Christie said his self-proclaimed "Jersey Comeback" continues to gain momentum, despite a rising unemployment rate. At a July 23 news conference in Trenton, Christie said he would like to see the unemployment rate -- which jumped to 9.6 percent in June from 9.2 percent in May -- drop, but cited other labor statistics to show a more optimistic picture of the state’s employment market. "By the way, the numbers indicate that the comeback is still very strong -- 9,900 new jobs last month. We created as many jobs in the first six months of this year as we did in all of 2011 and 2011 was the best single year for private-sector job growth since the year 2000," Christie said. Is job growth as vibrant as the governor claims? In this fact-check, we are strictly examining whether the numbers are correct, not whether Christie's policies deserve credit for them. We found Christie’s numbers are on target. In June, the state added 9,900 jobs overall, including private-sector and public-sector employment. Adding that to the jobs gained since the beginning of the year puts 2012’s total so far at 39,600 jobs overall, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year the state gained 31,100 jobs. So the first six months of job gains in 2012 have already outpaced job growth in 2011 by 8,500 jobs, supporting the governor’s point. Christie also said "2011 was the best single year for private-sector job growth since the year 2000." That is accurate as well. New Jersey added 33,400 private-sector jobs in 2011. The year before that, the state gained 10,200 jobs. And in 2008 and 2009 -- in the peak of the recession -- the state lost 224,900 private-sector jobs in total. Over the last decade, New Jersey only experienced better job growth in 2000 than it did in 2011. In 2000, the state added 64,500 private-sector jobs. Our ruling Christie said that "we created as many jobs in the first six months of this year as we did in all of 2011 and 2011 was the best single year for private-sector job growth since the year 2000." So far this year New Jersey added 39, 600 jobs in total. That’s 8,500 more jobs than the state gained in all of 2011. And in 2011, the state added more private-sector jobs than any year since 2000. The governor earns a True on this claim. To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com.

Chris Christie

2012-07-26T07:30:00

2012-07-23

['None']

pomt-01656

Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts.

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/21/rand-paul/rand-paul-says-federal-program-incentivizes-police/

With heavily armored vehicles stationed in the streets and law enforcement officers dressed in camouflage, many have dubbed Ferguson, Mo., a "war zone." After a white Ferguson police officer shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown Aug. 9, much of the conversation has focused on race relations, and the interactions between police and the community. There’s also been criticism of local police forces using military-style equipment and generally giving the appearance of conducting a military operation. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., weighed in on this topic in a Time magazine column, where he said big government’s to blame for this trend. "Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement." Many recent media reports have tied police militarization to a federal program that gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., has announced that he’s working on a bill to amend this program, in order to scale back police militarization, in light of the situation in Ferguson. We wanted to know more about the program and what experts had to say about it. They told us that the program certainly has contributed to a militarized police force, but that's not the only reason. What is this program, and is it to blame? Paul’s talking about the 1033 program, known as such because it’s outlined in section 1033 of the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act. Congress first approved the program in the 1990 National Defense Authorization Act (then section 1208), as part of the country’s war on drugs, which began in the 1970s. Law enforcement agencies felt outgunned -- police carried handguns, while drug criminals wielded assault rifles. However, much of the equipment the agencies wanted was far out of their price range. The 1033 program allows local law enforcement agencies to acquire surplus military equipment, at nearly no cost (they have to pay for transporting the equipment). This ranges from field gear -- like assault weapons, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles and bulletproof vests -- to office supplies -- like filing cabinets, computers and desks. More than 8,000 agencies participate in the 1033 program, which has given out more than $5 billion in property since it started, according to the website of the Defense Logistics Agency, the government body that oversees the program. (To be clear, the incentive here is the free equipment alone, not any additional payment or reward for accepting it.) Law enforcement agencies apply for specific equipment through the Defense Logistics Agency. Agencies are given preference if they request equipment specifically for counter-drug and counter-terrorism purposes. Additionally, since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have received grants from the Department of Homeland Security to address potential terrorist threats, and some have used those grants to purchase military gear. Public opinion on police using military equipment varies with context, said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation and a former police chief. For example, in the case of a major bank robbery where multiple robbers have machine guns and are holding people hostage, the community would likely be glad their local police has comparable weapons, an armored vehicle and protective gear. However, when police break out that sort of equipment and military-style tactics at a peaceful protest, they look understandably bad, Bueermann said. For example, HBO television host John Oliver ridiculed police in Keene, N.H., recently for requesting a "military-grade armored personnel truck," citing the town’s annual pumpkin festival as a potential terrorist target. (We rated Oliver’s statement True.) What else is at play? We spoke with many experts, and all agreed that there is an upward trend of police militarization. They said the 1033 program has accelerated this trend, but it’s not the sole cause. Much of the change is rooted in police culture. In fact, many of the experts we spoke with said that absent the 1033 program, police would still want military-grade equipment -- they just wouldn’t be able to afford it. "Militarization is not just equipment -- it’s an ideology and a mindset," said Victor Kappeler, associate dean of justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University. The shift from a community service culture to one that is more militaristic began in the 1960s with the rise of SWAT teams -- made prominent by the Los Angeles Police Department and their response to the violent Watts Riots, said Brian Buchner, president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Police departments across the country quickly created their own SWAT teams elite squads that used military-like tactics. Police started to use SWAT-like tactics in less hostile situations -- such as no-knock raids to execute low-level drug busts -- because of a small (and in some cases unreasonable) fear that they would encounter heavily armed suspects, Buchner said. "That training seeped into other parts of police operations and police culture," Buchner said. The 1033 program has exacerbated the problem, because in the past, when police agencies didn’t have this equipment, they were unable to act as a military force, Kappeler said. Instead of responding to a protest with armored vehicles, they would have had to address the issue in a "community-based" way. But it’s not just the government pushing this equipment on law enforcement agencies. Private defense manufacturers have also started to make dual-purpose equipment that they can market to the military, as well as civilian law enforcement agencies, said Kathleen Campbell, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who studies role convergence between police and the military. (Campbell asked us to note that her views and research are her own and do not reflect the views of West Point, the army or the federal government.) Now when police officers see military-style equipment and uniforms in catalogs, they think that’s what they’re supposed to look like -- perpetuating the culture, said John DeCarlo, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former police chief, in a Washington Post interview. Culture spillover also comes from interactions between the police and military, Campbell said, noting that the two collaborate in anti-drug and anti-terror efforts. Aspects of police work that mirror the military -- like officer hierarchy and a focus on discipline -- make the profession a good fit for former military personnel. A 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that 10 percent of all employed male veterans ages 18 to 54 work in some sort of protective service, which includes police, sheriff officers, correctional officers, bailiffs and security workers. The recent recession also could have forced police to lose sight of community policing, Bueermann said. Stripped down to their bare bones, some agencies have lost community policing positions, like school resource officers, and are left only with the law enforcement positions. This makes them appear less like they are there to help the community and more like they are there to control it. And it has made agencies more inclined to take advantage of programs like 1033 because they can get free equipment. Our ruling Paul said, "Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts." We found that the government’s 1033 program, which gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, has contributed to police militarization by offering free equipment. But it’s not the only thing. Police culture has shifted toward militarization for a number of reasons over the past 40 years. The program (and Washington) might not be the cause of police militarization, but it does incentivize and allow that culture to continue. We rate Paul’s statement True.

Rand Paul

2014-08-21T13:52:02

2014-08-14

['None']

pomt-09968

We were not, I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/may/12/nancy-pelosi/cia-documents-claim-speaker-pelosi-was-told-about-/

Republicans who oppose efforts to pursue legal action against government lawyers who signed off on waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques used after 9/11 have settled on a high-profile target: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the latest game of "What did she know and when?" Republicans claim Democrats' outrage is hypocritical because Pelosi and other Democrats were briefed on waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" back in 2002 and 2003 and did not raise objections. In an April 23, 2009, news conference, Pelosi was asked if, during the fall of 2002, she and other key members of the intelligence committee were briefed on interrogation methods, including waterboarding. Pelosi said that on only one occasion had she received a CIA briefing on interrogation techniques, but that "we were not, I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel — the Office of Legislative Counsel opinions that they could be used, but not that they would." "Further," she said, "the point was that if and when they would be used, they could brief Congress at that time. ... My experience was they did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any contention to the contrary is simply not true." But her comments are directly contradicted by a CIA timeline prepared by the director of national intelligence that indicates that Pelosi and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques. Specifically, the CIA timeline states that on Sept. 4, 2002, Pelosi and Goss received a "Briefing on EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) including use of EITs on (alleged al-Qaida operative) Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed." That briefing came a month after the CIA began using Justice Department-approved enhanced interrogation techniques — including the drowning simulation technique known as waterboarding — on Abu Zubaydah, according to a Justice Department memo released in March 2009. The CIA version is backed up by Goss, who resigned from Congress in 2004 to become CIA director under President George W. Bush, a post Goss held until 2006. In an April 25, 2009, commentary for the Washington Post, Goss said "a disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill." Goss said he was "slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as 'waterboarding' were never mentioned." "Let me be clear," Goss wrote, "It is my recollection that: The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four (including Pelosi), were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists; we understood what the CIA was doing; we gave the CIA our bipartisan support; we gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities." Pelosi has been adamant that her briefing was not about interrogation techniques that had been done in the past or present, but only were under consideration for the future. "They can say whatever they want, but the fact is they did not brief us in that regard," Pelosi said. The timeline — and Goss' corroboration — contradicts her, although we should add one caveat about specific discussions of waterboarding. Although Goss says waterboarding was part of the discussion, there's nothing in the CIA timeline that states it was specifically discussed in the briefing Pelosi attended. So if we stick strictly to public documents released so far, there's no conclusive evidence that Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding. However, waterboarding was specifically mentioned elsewhere in the timeline for briefings for other members of the intelligence committee who presumably would be covered by her reference to "we." The timeline says waterboarding was mentioned in a Feb. 4, 2003, briefing with Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., during which, according to the CIA data, enhanced interrogation techniques were "described in considerable detail," including "how the water board was used." Roberts was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, and Rockefeller was ranking Democrat. Jamie Smith, a Rockefeller spokeswoman, told the Chicago Tribune "Sen. Rockefeller was briefed but was not presented with the full picture, nor was he told critical information that would have cast significant doubt on the program's legality and effectiveness." In a May 5, 2009, memo submitted with the timeline, CIA director Leon Panetta acknowledged the differing accounts of the meeting that Pelosi and Goss attended. But he said the CIA's version is based in part on records created at the time of the meeting. "This letter presents the most thorough information we have on dates, locations, and names of all members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques," Panetta stated in his letter to Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "This information, however, is drawn from the past files of the CIA and represents MFRs (memorandums for the record) completed at the time and notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals. In the end, you and the committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened." At PolitiFact, we normally would be reluctant to make a Truth-O-Meter ruling in a he-said, she-said situation, but in this case, the evidence goes beyond the competing accounts from Pelosi and Goss. We are persuaded by the CIA timeline, which the agency says is based on "an extensive review of (the CIA's) electronic and hard copy files." It's also important to note that the timeline that contradicts Pelosi was put together at the behest of an administration controlled by her own party. That document provides compelling — albeit sparsely worded — evidence that Pelosi's recollection is incorrect. There may be further evidence on this that emerges in the future. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has asked director of national intelligence Dennis Blair and CIA director Leon Panetta to release the CIA briefing notes that the timeline is based on. We reserve the right to change our ruling if new information emerges that contradicts the CIA timeline, but for now, we rule Pelosi's statement False.

Nancy Pelosi

2009-05-12T14:03:43

2009-04-23

['None']

vogo-00356

Statement: “If you look at it over 40 years, that’s over $1 billion of tax money we’re giving over to marketing,” San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez, referring to a potential long-term renewal of a 2 percent charge on hotel guests, in a July 31 voiceofsandiego.org story.

determination: true

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-the-1-billion-tourist-tax/

Analysis: Visitors who stay in large San Diego hotels pay multiple city taxes. There’s the regular 10.5 percent hotel-room tax. Plus, there’s an additional 2 percent charge that goes to marketing San Diego as a tourist destination.

Fact Check: The $1 Billion Tourist Tax

August 2, 2011

['None']

pose-00381

Will improve science and math education in K through 12, to prepare more students for these studies in college. They will work to increase our number of science and engineering graduates and encourage undergraduates studying math and science to pursue graduate studies. They will also work to increase the representation of minorities and women in the science and technology pipeline, tapping the diversity of America to meet the increasing demand for a skilled workforce. The challenges of the 21st century can only be met by combining many skills from people with many backgrounds.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/400/attract-more-students-to-science-and-math/

obameter

Barack Obama

Attract more students to science and math

2010-01-07T13:26:57

['United_States']

pomt-05859

Says a federal judge in San Antonio "issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail."

half-true

/texas/statements/2012/feb/12/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-says-judge-threatened-jail-texas-sup/

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has his eye on a U.S. district judge in San Antonio. Gingrich has mentioned Fred Biery on the stump when arguing that the legislative and executive branches of government should remove judges perceived as abusing their power and acting out of sync with the nation’s culture. On Jan. 21, 2012, after winning the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, Gingrich again referenced Biery, urging voters to check out a position paper on his campaign website about "the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role and eliminating dictatorial religious bigots such as Judge Biery in San Antonio, who issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail." A reader alerted us to Gingrich’s talk of Biery after the candidate mentioned the judge during a Dec. 18, 2011, appearance on the CBS News show Face the Nation. For this article, we’re checking the accuracy of the candidate’s description of Biery’s order during his South Carolina speech. We’re not going to delve into whether Biery is a "dictatorial religious bigot" — that’s Gingrich’s opinion — or whether his decision on prayer at graduation is an example of the judiciary overstepping its role. The case Taking Gingrich’s suggestion in his victory speech, we checked out the 54-page paper on his website, "Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution." Its Appendix B is devoted to Biery, chief judge of the federal Western District of Texas, and is headlined: "Federal district court judge orders the censoring of high school graduation speech." At issue: A June 1, 2011, order from Biery granting an agnostic family’s request for a temporary order prohibiting the 3,000-student Medina Valley school district, west of San Antonio, from including a prayer in its high school’s then-pending graduation ceremony. Gingrich spokesman Joe DeSantis pointed out the order when we asked for the backup for Gingrich’s victory-speech statement. In a May 26, 2011, lawsuit, the family challenged Medina Valley High School’s tradition of having students deliver an invocation and benediction as part of the graduation, a practice that the family said amounted to unconstitutional school-sponsored prayer. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the family by the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Christa and Danny Schultz were exposed to the "unwelcome prayers" at the high school’s 2009 ceremony, when their oldest child graduated. The couple’s younger son was in the 2011 graduating class. The lawsuit said: "If the Schultzes were to attend the graduation of their son, they would once again be exposed to the school district’s longstanding practice of presenting prayers as part of graduation ceremonies" unless the court stopped it. The lawsuit alleged that the graduation prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment — "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" — and included a request that the judge issue an emergency order prohibiting the district "from including any prayer … whether denominated an ‘invocation,’ ‘benediction,’ or otherwise" at the graduation on June 4, 2011. During a May 31, 2011, hearing on the request, Craig Wood, a lawyer representing the school district, argued that with respect to the graduation speeches, the district was adhering to a 2007 state law that Wood said was enacted "to honor the fact that students do sometimes wish to express religious viewpoints and ought not be penalized for doing so." Wood was referring to the Texas Religious Viewpoints Anti-discrimination Act, which requires each school district to adopt a policy enabling student speakers at school events, including graduation ceremonies, to voluntarily express a religious viewpoint. At graduations, the law says, districts must "state, in writing, orally, or both, that the student's speech does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position, or expression of the district." "We're attempting to balance those First Amendment interests of all parties involved," Wood told Biery. "And I will acknowledge, your honor, in a community like Medina Valley, it is not unusual for there to be a student selected (to speak at graduation) who would, in fact, make some sort of reference to some sort of religious deity. I will also tell you that in the last couple of years that the closing remarks made by the student had no religious connotation whatsoever." By the end of the hearing, Biery had made it clear that he planned to grant the Schultzes’ request, articulating in court essentially what appeared the following day in his injunction. Ayesha Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represented the family at the hearing, requested that Biery’s order specify that the students’ remarks could not include a prayer. "Well, I will put that in there: It’s not to be a prayer," Biery said. "On the other hand, if these young ladies get up and say the same thing without invoking a deity, or they make a personal statement: I believe, myself, in a higher being, like I think Mr. Wood used that phrase. And they can make a personal statement of their own belief. I think that's certainly acceptable." The order Biery’s order, dated June 1, says the district and "its officials, agents, servants, and employees, as well as all persons acting in concert with them, are prohibited from allowing a prayer (as defined in paragraph (b) below) to be included" in the ceremony. Paragraph b mandates that: ** the district instruct the students chosen to deliver the "invocation" and "benediction" to change their remarks to be "statements of their own beliefs as opposed to leading the audience in prayer." ** everyone scheduled to speak at the graduation be instructed not to present a prayer, "to wit, they shall be instructed that they may not ask audience members to ‘stand,’ ‘join in prayer,’ or ‘bow their heads,’ they may not end their remarks with ‘amen’ or ‘in [a deity’s name] we pray,’ and they shall not otherwise deliver a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer, nor use the word ‘prayer’ unless it is used in the student’s expression of the student’s personal belief, as opposed to encouraging others who may not believe in the concept of prayer to join in and believe the same concept." At the end of paragraph B, Biery says that "in stating their own personal beliefs," students may "speak through conduct such as kneeling to face Mecca, the wearing of a yarmulke or hijab or making the sign of the cross." Also in the order, Biery says that the district must remove the terms "invocation" and "benediction" from the "program of ceremonies for the graduation exercises" and that they are to be replaced with "opening remarks" and "closing remarks." Finally, the order says the injunction goes into effect immediately and "shall be enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of court if not obeyed by district official(s) and their agents." The fact-check So how does Gingrich’s statement describing Biery’s order stand up? Let’s break it down: ** Gingrich’s first claim — that the judge’s order said students could not pray at their graduation — has a basis. The order prohibits student speakers from leading the audience in prayer or delivering "a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer." Then again, Biery’s order allows the students to talk about their personal beliefs and use the word "prayer" in that context. ** Next, Gingrich says Biery banned the words "benediction" and "invocation" from being spoken. That’s pretty close. Although the order did not specifically prohibit students from uttering "benediction" and "invocation," the district was told to banish the terms from the paper program. And Biery said at the pivotal hearing that "there will be no words ‘invocation,’ ‘benediction’ in the ceremony." ** Gingrich says "God" was also not to be mentioned during graduation speeches. That seems like a reach since Biery’s order has only one curb on mentions of God; it bars speakers from using the phrase "in God’s name we pray." ** Also prohibited, according to Gingrich: asking the audience to stand or asking for a moment of silence. In fact, the order says speakers cannot ask the audience to " ‘stand,’ ‘join in prayer’ or ‘bow their heads’ " — actions that often precede organized prayer. The order does not mention moments of silence. ** Finally, Gingrich says that Biery’s order says the district’s superintendent would go to jail if the boundaries set by the injunction were crossed. That appears to be an overstatement in that the order says it "shall be enforced by incarceration or other sanctions." That is, punishments short of going to jail were possible. In a July 3, 2011, news article about the case, the San Antonio Express-News reported that Biery’s order said "school administrators could be jailed if they didn’t comply." We consulted two legal experts about the wording of that section of Biery’s order. Charles Silver, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told us: "It’s possible for someone who has violated a court order to be put in jail, but it would be unusual for that to happen. It would be much more likely for the punishment to involve a fine." Mechele Dickerson, a UT law professor who teaches civil procedure, agreed that the most likely punishment for a violation of Biery’s order would have been a fine for the district. Also, she said, had the judge wanted to jail someone, the order’s language doesn’t necessitate that the person be the superintendent — unlike what Gingrich said. The punished person could be another "agent" of the district — the high school’s principal, for example — Dickerson said. Silver and Dickerson each said the punishment section of the order was fairly common. Silver said: "It’s pretty much boilerplate language. The function is really to put people on notice: ‘Hey, the court means this.’ " Each professor also noted that if the order was violated in some way, procedural steps would have to take place before anyone was punished. First, the plaintiffs in the case — the Schultz family — would have to file a motion with the court; and then a hearing would be held so that the judge could decide whether someone — possibly the superintendent — was in contempt. If so, the judge would then decide on punishment. Biery declined our request for an interview. In a telephone interview, Wood, the district’s lawyer, generally supported the views of Silver and Dickerson and said he thought Gingrich’s statement about Biery’s order wasn’t quite right. He agreed that the order’s language about the possible sanctions was standard and was informing the district that "a violation was enforceable vis a vis the regular methods." The sanctions imposed by the judge would most likely have depended upon the circumstances of the violation, Wood said, such as who had done it and "the degree to which they thumbed their nose at the order." The rest of the story Biery’s order survived for two days. On June 2, 2011, the district asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to dissolve Biery’s order barring the students from praying at the graduation, arguing that the court had abused its discretion, that the district had not violated the Establishment Clause and that the injunction had violated the graduation speakers’ "free speech and free exercise of religion rights as well as state law." The Texas attorney general’s office announced that it had filed a brief with the appeals court supporting the district’s appeal. On June 3, a three-judge panel of the appeals court vacated the injunction, saying that they were "not persuaded that plaintiffs have shown that they are substantially likely to prevail on the merits, particularly on the issue that the individual prayers or other remarks to be given by students at graduation are, in fact, school-sponsored." The judges also said the Schultzes’ request for an injunction "may be rooted at least in part in circumstances that no longer exist," pointing to the statement in the district’s appeal that it had agreed not to include the words "invocation" and "benediction" in the graduation program distributed at the event. The panel sent the case — which included more than simply the injunction request — back to the district court, and on Feb. 9, 2012, it was settled. On the issue of speeches at graduation, the settlement says the district will not include a prayer as part of the official program or invite nonstudent speakers that it "has reason to believe will proselytize, promote religion, or disparage the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of students or members of the community during their remarks." Student speakers will, however, be allowed to pray or ask the audience to join them in prayer. For its part, Wood said, the district agreed to honor "the students’ right to free expression whether it be religious or otherwise, taking careful steps to clarify that it’s not the district’s speech or sponsorship." For example, if a student leads a prayer at the ceremony, district officials must remain seated. Our ruling To recap, Gingrich’s claim is that Biery "issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail." The judge’s ruling did not broadly say students could not pray. However, his order prohibited students speaking at the graduation from leading the audience in prayer or delivering "a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer." Gingrich is close on this part. Also, the judge told the district to banish "benediction" and "invocation" from the event. The rest of Gingrich’s claim, including its crescendo reference to putting the superintendent in jail, has weaknesses. The order did not bar "God" from any mention during the ceremony, only ruling out the phrase "in God’s name we pray." The judge’s order barred students from asking the audience to stand, presumably in preparation for organized prayer, but it did not forbid a moment of silence. The punch line of Gingrich’s primary-night claim — that the Texas order said the superintendent would be jailed if his ruling was violated — overstates things. The order lists incarceration or "other sanctions" as possible penalties, though nothing as a certainty, and doesn’t specify the superintendent as potential inmate. Also, the punishment language appears to have been standard. We rate Gingrich’s statement Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/c5674cd1-9b64-4cb6-acd3-d197cd1abe5d

Newt Gingrich

2012-02-12T06:00:00

2012-01-21

['God', 'San_Antonio']

tron-02010

Paris At War Greeted by Media Silence

mostly fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/paris-at-war-media-silence/

immigration

['foreign leaders', 'international', 'islam']

Paris At War Greeted by Media Silence

Nov 30, 2016

['None']

wast-00171

I did not support the war in Iraq.

4 pinnochios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/27/fact-checking-the-first-clinton-trump-presidential-debate/

Donald Trump

Glenn Kessler

Fact-checking the first Clinton-Trump presidential debate

September 27, 2016

['Iraq']

pomt-12466

Sixty-two percent of all (Texas) property taxes are paid by businesses.

half-true

/texas/statements/2017/may/05/don-huffines/don-huffines-overstates-share-texas-property-taxes/

State Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, all but scolded students and parents visiting the Texas Capitol who insisted their tax dollars should help improve public schools rather than help fund private schools. Huffines, who has pushed for private school vouchers and "school choice" legislation, asked the visitors from the Richardson school district why they feel they can decide where tax dollars should go when, he said, "62 percent of all property taxes are paid by businesses," not individuals, according to a video of his Feb. 27, 2017, appearance taken by an audience member and posted on YouTube by the pro-Democratic Lone Star Project. Readers asked us to check the share of property taxes paid by businesses, which turned out not to be as straightforward a calculation as hoped. Huffines points to all taxes paid by businesses To our inquiry, a Huffines’ Senate aide, Brent Connett, said by phone the senator drew his "62 percent" figure for the business share of property taxes from data cited in a January 2017 research report by the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a nonpartisan business group. The report attributed the data to the Council on State Taxation, a Washington-based trade association for corporate businesses, "Nationally," the Texas group reported, "business accounts for 44.1 percent of all state and local taxes. In Texas, business foots 61.5 percent of the total bill." That’s a bit up from what we confirmed in a 2013 fact check finding Mostly True a claim by a Texas Association of Business leader that businesses were paying roughly 60 percent of all state and local taxes – not just property taxes. At the time, a state projection indicated businesses would soon foot 52 percent of all state taxes with residents covering 48 percent. Estimates of property taxes alone But in his appearance before the Richardson visitors, Huffines was speaking solely about the business share of property taxes collected by local jurisdictions including school districts and city and county governments. Hunting figures specific to property taxes only, we turned to the council’s December 2016 report, the same one cited by TTARA, analyzing taxes paid by businesses in the 50 states the year before. In fiscal 2015, the report says, "Texas had the largest dollar increase in business property tax revenue for the third year in a row, collecting $1.3 billion more than in 2014." We didn’t spot any breakdown of the business share of property taxes alone; otherwise, a chart says Texas businesses paid $35 billion in local taxes that year, amounting to 63 percent of $55.3 billion in locally levied taxes including sales and property taxes. We had better luck with TTARA’s president, Dale Craymer, who told us its latest published foray into estimating the business share of property taxes was a May 2008 TTARA research report stating that in 2007, businesses paid 56.4 percent, or $19.5 billion, of $34.6 billion in property taxes collected statewide. Craymer said the association estimated the business share of property taxes starting from biennial reports by the Texas state comptroller breaking down the types of property of businesses and residents, also drawing on research by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which analyzes property taxes paid by different types of industry. The comptroller’s latest data, covering fiscal 2014-15 and published in December 2016, lists categories of property-taxpayers, but that data are hard to decipher because each one is further sorted by governmental jurisdictions with school districts and city governments, for instance, analyzed separately. Most of the 18 categories of property struck us as hard to divide into paid-by-business versus paid-by-others. Fair point, said Austin economist Stuart Greenfield and TTARA analyst John Kennedy. Both said that grouping the categories presented by the comptroller into "businesses" and "residents" isn’t a black-and-white exercise. For instance, Greenfield said, property taxes classified as "multi-family residential" lumps together taxes paid by residents and business owners. That said, the comptroller’s figures applicable to school districts alone suggest that homeowners through 2014-15 paid 43 percent of all school property taxes with others, including businesses, accounting for 57 percent. The 2008 TTARA report says Texas residents in 2007 paid $15.2 billion, or 43.7 percent, of all property taxes. Craymer told us the association subsequently analyzed property taxes collected in more recent years. Those results weren’t published, he said, but it looks like Texas businesses most recently have paid closer to 60 percent of all property taxes, though the percentage also fluctuates. So, per the comptroller’s research, businesses and other non-homeowners have lately accounted for 57 percent of all school property taxes and, according to TTARA, 60 percent of all property taxes. State comptroller’s projections Seeking a state estimate covering all property taxes paid by businesses, we connected with Kevin Lyons, spokesman for Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who gently said no dice. Lyons told us that the agency doesn’t track the business share of property taxes. Then again, he pointed us to biennial comptroller reports projecting business and consumer shares of property taxes levied by type of jurisdiction two years down the road. The latest report, published about three weeks before Huffines spoke, states that businesses in fiscal 2019, beginning Sept. 1, 2018, will likely account for 51.4 percent of what school districts raise in property taxes with individual consumers ponying up 48.6 percent. Among businesses, corporations, partnerships and sole proprietors are projected to provide 41.5, 8.3, and 1.6 percent shares, respectively. Greenfield, a former analyst for the comptroller’s office, said by phone the predicted shares of property taxes funded by "individual consumers" and businesses has remained consistent over time at around 48 percent and 52 percent, respectively, a point that held up in our review of the comptroller’s projections for fiscal 2013, 2015 and 2017. Our ruling Huffines said businesses pay 62 percent of all property taxes. That figure reflects the business share of all state and local taxes including sales taxes--not property taxes alone. Most recently, in contrast, a state projection predicts businesses will account for 51 percent of what school districts raise from property taxes in 2018-19--a share in keeping with previous projections. On the high side, an unpublished TTARA estimate pegs the business share of property taxes at closer to 60 percent. We rate Huffines' 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. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Don Huffines

2017-05-05T18:20:40

2017-02-27

['Texas']

pomt-00427

If you are a gun store owner and you decide to go out of business … you right now are allowed to convert your entire gun store inventory to ‘personal use’ and once it is a personal use weapon, you can sell it without background checks.

true

/illinois/statements/2018/aug/26/tammy-duckworth/duckworks-background-check-claim-checks-out/

The so-called "gun show loophole," which says private individuals can sell their guns without conducting a federal background check, has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Speaking at a community center on Chicago’s South Side following the city’s most violent weekend this year, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth added another wrinkle to that criticism by highlighting an implication of the law that hasn’t received as much attention. "If you are a gun store owner and you decide to go out of business—you retire, you don’t want to do this anymore for whatever reason—you right now are allowed to convert your entire gun store inventory to ‘personal use,’" Duckworth said. "And once it is a personal use weapon, you can sell it without background checks." The first-term Illinois senator made the comment while expressing her support for federal legislation that would require universal background checks for gun purchases, a policy which polls show more than 80 percent of Americans support. The federal government places few restrictions on private sales by people who aren’t legally considered gun dealers. But could a former gun store owner really sell off the remainder of his or her inventory—a veritable arsenal, potentially—without running afoul of the law? The short answer: Yes, generally speaking. PolitiFact Rhode Island rated as True a similar claim in 2013. The more interesting question is why. Private sales Former gun dealers who no longer are licensed to sell guns have the same legal right to sell guns as any other private citizen. The federal rules for private sellers state they can’t give or sell a firearm to someone they know or reasonably believe is prohibited from owning a gun. They also can’t sell or transport firearms across state lines. But that’s pretty much it—although 19 states have instituted their own background check requirements beyond federal law. Illinois, for instance, requires all firearm purchasers to obtain a state permit, which can only be issued after a background check. But when a federally licensed gun dealer sells a gun in any state, the buyer must go through a background check. And the law says anyone who repeatedly buys and sells guns "with the principal motive of making a profit" must obtain such a license from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. That’s different than occasionally buying and selling guns to enhance or liquidate a collection. From business stock to personal collection So how do guns from a retailer’s business inventory wind up in their personal collection? Federal rules permit licensed dealers to transfer firearms out of their business inventory and into their personal collection—whether they are planning on leaving the trade or not. If they maintain their license, those weapons must sit in their collection for a year before they can be sold in a private, potentially background check-free transaction. If they let their license lapse or it is revoked, they become just like any other private individual, meaning their property and sales no longer fall under the ATF’s purview—unless, of course, they cross the line by buying and selling in a way that resembles doing business. According to Mark Jones, project director for the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence and a former ATF agent, the burden of proof for that crime is high. "It’s a pretty big mountain to climb to go after an FFL (federal firearm licensee) and prove that they’re actually criminally culpable or to go after someone who’s not an FFL but who’s dealing without a license," said Jones. A particularly striking case from 2006 illustrates that point. Sanford Abrams, a Maryland gun store owner and National Rifle Association board member, had his license revoked for a litany of violations, including that he couldn’t account for more than a quarter of his inventory. Between 1996 and 2000, 483 guns that were used in crimes were traced back to Abrams’ store, according to a report from the Brady Center. Yet Abrams maintained he could continue selling off his inventory as part of his personal collection. And in June 2006, the ATF affirmed that he could do so because he would only be acting as a dealer if he repeatedly purchased and resold firearms. Our ruling Duckworth said former firearms dealers can transfer guns from their inventory into their personal collections, and then sell those guns without background checks. Federal law permits gun dealers to transfer inventory to their personal collections, and private gun sales under federal law do not require background checks. Many states, including Illinois, have added their own requirements, though. A former dealer—and any other private individual—could still get into trouble by continuing to buy and sell with profit as their main motive rather than enhancing or liquidating their collection. But there’s no definitive legal yardstick—such as the number of guns sold—for determining compliance. Duckworth’s statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. That’s our definition for a statement that’s True.

Tammy Duckworth

2018-08-26T15:00:00

2018-08-07

['None']

pomt-05540

Lean, finely textured beef is the proper name [not pink slime], and it is a safe, widely used product.

mostly true

/georgia/statements/2012/apr/10/gary-black/dont-call-it-pink-slime-georgia-official-says/

There’s a meaty political campaign going on across the nation with slimy accusations being hurled -- and it has nothing to do with the race for the White House. It began in earnest April 2, when the governor and lieutenant governor of Iowa sent letters to their colleagues in other states to fight against what they said are media misperceptions about a form of ground beef maliciously maligned as "pink slime." Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black quickly joined the effort to defend this form of beef, holding a news conference two days afterward. "Lean, finely textured beef is the proper name, and it is a safe, widely used product," Black told reporters. Officials in Kansas and Texas have begun their own public relations campaigns in support of the beef that is a cash cow, pardon the pun, in those states. So, too, has U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor. Proponents say beef prices would rise with less meat on the market. Although the Department of Agriculture maintains the meat is safe, the federal agency announced in March that it would give schools more beef choices in the wake of public concerns about children eating "pink slime." McDonald’s and some major grocery stores have said they will no longer sell the meat. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver last year showed how the meat is made to horrify a studio audience. "Everything about this process is about no respect for food or people or children," he said. So is it really safe? First, let’s explain how it is made. The meat is taken from slaughterhouse trimmings with high fat content that are more susceptible to contamination because the meat is often close to the hide, which is highly exposed to fecal matter. The trimmings are warmed to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit in equipment that looks like a large, high-speed mixing bowl that spins these trimmings to separate meat from the fat that has been liquefied. Ammonium hydroxide is mixed in to destroy bacteria and E. coli that could make someone ill if a raw product is not cooked thoroughly. It is then mixed with regular ground beef. The federal government has approved the practice for slightly more than a decade. The use of this meat gained national attention in recent months when a blogger who writes about kids’ food began an online petition to urge federal officials to remove it from school cafeterias. It may sound disgusting to know that beef contains ammonia, but the companies that produce the beef and experts say ammonia hydroxide is used in other foods such as cheese and chocolate to reduce acidity and kill bacteria. The beef is produced by a handful of companies nationwide. Federal officials inspect the process daily. Because this type of beef is not mentioned in packaging, there’s been little discussion about it or its safety. The New York Times, however, reported in late 2009 that E. coli was detected three times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat in question, produced by the nation’s largest distributor of the product, Beef Products Inc., was caught before reaching lunchroom trays. BPI told the Times it found E. coli in what was described as a low 0.06 percent of samples that year. The Times also reported that from 2005 to 2009, BPI had a rate of 36 positive results for salmonella per 1,000 tests, compared with a rate of nine positive results per 1,000 tests for the other suppliers, according to statistics from the program. BPI said its testing regime was more likely to detect contamination. Some federal officials were concerned that the beef hadn’t been studied enough before it was approved. The Times reported that one federal microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 email to colleagues. A University of Arkansas student did a study of the beef last year. The student, Courtney Moon, found the beef held up better than regular ground beef. "I was surprised," Jason Apple, a meat science professor at the school, said in a news release sent by the university. "I just assumed the lean beef trim would negatively impact the quality of the burgers, but it actually made them better in this study." Researchers at other colleges have come forward in recent days offering similar conclusions. We were curious whether this beef was sold in other parts of the globe. A Canadian government health spokeswoman told PolitiFact Georgia that the country does not allow ammonia to be used in ground beef during production nor does it allow such food to be sold there. Ammonium hydroxide would be considered a food additive and require a safety evaluation, the official said. "Only if a safety evaluation identified no safety concerns would the requested use be considered for approval," Olivia Caron, a media relations official for Health Canada, said via email. Interestingly, Caron used "pink slime" in the subject line of her email. Several food safety experts we interviewed were well-versed on the beef treating process and didn’t have what one of them called "the ick factor" that many Americans are feeling about it. For the most part, they consider it safe to eat. The main problem, they said, was the lack of information about the beef provided by manufacturers and the federal government, particularly at a time when Americans want fewer chemicals and preservatives in their food. "Right now, we’re in a situation where you don’t know, and that’s why people are so infuriated," said Michael Batz, executive director of the Food Safety Research Consortium. "The lack of disclosure and the lack of transparency is very troubling." The USDA recently gave meat processors and supermarkets the option to put labels on ground beef packages identifying it as "lean finely textured beef." So where does this leave us? It is correct that the meat is called lean, finely textured beef and it has been widely used in fast-food restaurants and school cafeterias, and is sold in stores. But is it safe? The federal government says it’s safe. So do some state officials. Some research has concluded it is safe. Still, there are reasons for concern, such as those listed in the 2009 New York Times report. We also find it interesting that our neighbor to the north, Canada, has not permitted the beef to be sold there. With those caveats, we rate Black’s entire statement that the beef is safe as Mostly True.

Gary Black

2012-04-10T06:00:00

2012-04-04

['None']

pomt-14451

A single mother of two can’t qualify for basic healthcare through Medicaid if she makes more than $3,504 dollars a year.

mostly true

/missouri/statements/2016/mar/06/chris-koster/koster-doesnt-exaggerate-income-threshold-qualify-/

Medicaid expansion in Missouri continues to be a major item of partisan contention within the state legislature, and now, candidates for governor have begun weighing in on the issue. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, recently tweeted: "A single mother of two can’t qualify for basic healthcare through Medicaid if she makes more than $3,504 dollars a year." Koster’s statistic seemed pretty low, and we decided to take a closer look at the state’s Medicaid eligibility requirements. Qualifying for Medicaid in Missouri Across the country, eligibility for Medicaid is determined by a person's or family's yearly income compared to the Federal Poverty Level. Each state gets to decide how poor a household must be in order to qualify. Missouri covers children newborn to age 1 at 196 percent of the poverty level, meaning babies qualify as long as their families make just less than $40,000 dollars a year. For children 1 to 18 years old, Missouri covers them at 150 percent of the poverty level, or a yearly family income of about $30,000 dollars, according to Medicaid.gov. However, their parents are only covered if they make less than about 18 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, or about $3,600 dollars per year. The Missouri Department of Social Services charts income guidelines for parents to qualify for Medicaid; it shows the maximum income to qualify for a family of three is $301 dollars per month, or $3,612 dollars per year. We reached out to Koster’s campaign, but did not get a response as to where he got the number he tweeted ($3,504). Carolyn Orbann, associate professor of health sciences at MU, said it’s important to note that because Missouri has not expanded Medicaid, childless adults are not covered regardless of their poverty level. That’s not the case in 32 other states. "The states that have expanded Medicaid qualify adults without children who make 138 percent of the poverty level — in some states, even those who make more than that," Orbann said. In other words, a woman without children in Illinois or Arkansas could make around $16,000 dollars per year and be covered by Medicaid, but a woman in Missouri with two children making above $3,600 would not. Even among states that have not expanded Medicaid, only Texas and Alabama had lower maximum income caps for parents on Medicaid than Missouri, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan information source on health issues. Kansas, which also has not expanded Medicaid, covers parents at 38 percent of the poverty level — more than double Missouri’s 18 percent of the poverty level standard. Our Ruling Koster may be off by a little more than $100 when it comes to the maximum income a single mother of two can have and still qualify for Medicaid. But his point that Missouri’s maximum yearly income for parents on Medicaid is one of the lowest in the nation is on target. The statement is accurate but benefits from additional context.We rate this claim Mostly True.

Chris Koster

2016-03-06T22:25:06

2016-01-20

['None']

pomt-13383

Says "Hillary Clinton's plan would bring in 620,000 refugees in her first term, alone, with no effective way to screen or vet them. Her plan would cost $400 billion in terms of lifetime welfare and entitlement costs."

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/27/donald-trump/trump-says-clinton-would-bring-620000-refugees-her/

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in a stump speech that immigration is a national security issue, and he criticized Hillary Clinton for refugee policies that he says will make the country less safe. "Altogether, Hillary Clinton's plan would bring in 620,000 refugees in her first term, alone, with no effective way to screen or vet them," Trump said Sept. 20. "Her plan would cost $400 billion in terms of lifetime welfare and entitlement costs." We decided to look into Clinton’s plan and its costs. We found that Trump is doing some embellishing. Refugee math Clinton has not laid out a four-year plan for refugees as Trump described. She’s actually only talked about how many refugees should have been admitted for a single year. Clinton called President Barack Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in fiscal year 2016 a good start in a September 2015 interview on CBS Face the Nation, but she said the "United States has to do more." She suggested admitting 65,000 refugees, amounting to a 550 percent increase. We asked Clinton’s campaign how many refugees her administration would admit in the future and how much it would cost, but a spokesman said they had no new details. Trump’s campaign referenced a June 2016 analysis of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a Trump supporter. It makes the assumption that Clinton would bring in 155,000 refugees each fiscal year, totaling 620,000 in four years. Here’s the subcommittee’s math: It finds that Clinton would increase Syrian refugee admissions by 55,000. (Her suggestion of 65,000 minus Obama’s 10,000 for 2016). To determine how many total refugees Clinton would admit per year, it adds 55,000 to 100,000 -- the Obama administration’s previously stated refugee admission goal for fiscal year 2017. (He recently raised it to 110,000.) To conclude how many total refugees Clinton would admit in her first term, it multiplies 155,000 times 4 (total years in a presidential term) to total 620,000 refugees. The vetting process The United States has a refugee vetting process, and Clinton has not said she would move away from it. In fact, she’s stressed the vetting process in public remarks, including at a November 2015 speech about national security at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Our highest priority, of course, must always be protecting the American people," Clinton said. "So yes, we do need to be vigilant in screening and vetting any refugees from Syria, guided by the best judgment of our security professionals in close coordination with our allies and partners." Congress needs to make sure resources are available for background checks and a close look should be placed on visa programs, she said. There’s no precise dollar amount specified on Clinton’s immigration reform page on her website. It says Clinton would create a national Office of Immigrant Affairs and "support affordable integration services through $15 million in new grant funding." '$400 billion in terms of lifetime welfare and entitlement costs' This summer, Trump said "for the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America." We rated that claim Pants on Fire. In that fact-check, we noted that the Obama administration requested under $2.2 billion for refugee and entrant assistance for fiscal year 2017, when the goal was 100,000 refugees. If Clinton tripled the requested amount for refugee funding in fiscal year 2017 and multiplied it over a 4-year term, it would not reach anywhere near Trump’s $400 billion claim. However, in its June analysis, the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest said the annual budget for refugee resettlement does not encompass all costs, including those related to refugees who qualify for public assistance programs such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income. That budget also leaves out social services costs at local and state governments and costs of future benefits once refugees become lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens, the analysis said. "The true lifetime cost of admitting a single refugee must include an accounting of all benefits received by that refugee -- at the federal, state, and local levels, and over the course of that‎ refugee's lifespan," the analysis said. "Any other calculation is akin to saying that the total cost of owning a new car is encapsulated in the down payment." Refugees come to the United States legally and are required to apply for lawful permanent residence a year after their arrival. But they also contribute to the economy. Refugees are qualified to get Social Security cards and are authorized to work. And like U.S. citizens, they have to pay employment, property, sales and other taxes, such as Social Security and Medicare. "The only way to arrive at the large negative effects that Trump claims is to adopt the belief that refugees neither work nor pay taxes after they arrive," said Michael Clemens, an expert on migration and a senior fellow at Center for Global Development. "That is untrue, and a method of counting only fiscal outflows while ignoring fiscal inflows is not a method that would be countenanced by any respected economist." Based on estimates from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as well as data from Health and Human Services, a reasonably conservative figure for the total short-term, gross fiscal burden of each refugee is around $22,000, Clemens said. But that’s not the long-term net fiscal impact, he said. "The lifetime fiscal effect of a refugee admission -- including the tax revenue they are likely to generate over the course of their working lives, and both the up-front cost of assisting them and the other government services they are likely to use, is likely to be small and positive," Clemens said, citing studies that found refugees tend to perform better in the labor market than non-refugee immigrants over the long-term. At a minimum, the true costs of refugees is disputed and hard to put an exact figure on. Our ruling Trump said, "Altogether, Hillary Clinton's plan would bring in 620,000 refugees in her first term, alone, with no effective way to screen or vet them. Her plan would cost $400 billion in terms of lifetime welfare and entitlement costs." Clinton has not said she would bring anywhere near that number; that’s an extrapolation put together by the Trump campaign. Additionally, there are established protocols for screening and vetting refugees. Finally, the $400 billion figure only looks at potential benefits refugees might draw on without considering their economic output or taxes they might pay. Overall, we rate Trump’s statement False.https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/3be9a5bb-4fff-42a8-a63c-1c461f666b1e

Donald Trump

2016-09-27T16:04:05

2016-09-20

['None']

pomt-13346

First, Donald Trump said wages are too high, and both Donald Trump and Mike Pence think we ought to eliminate the federal minimum wage.

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/04/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-says-donald-trump-mike-pence-want-elimin/

Sen. Tim Kaine tried to align himself and Hillary Clinton with working people while portraying Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Pence as representing the wealthy. "First, Donald Trump said wages are too high, and both Donald Trump and Mike Pence think we ought to eliminate the federal minimum wage," Kaine said during the vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. We found that Trump has been all over the map about wages and the federal minimum wage, while Pence opposed raising the minimum wage as a member of in Congress. Trump and the minimum wage No state can set a minimum wage lower than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. But states can set a higher wage. Trump has made some conflicting statements about wages. Early in the campaign, he often said wages were too high and showed no interest in raising the federal minimum wage. "We have to become competitive with the world," he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in November 2015. "Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high, everything is too high. What's going to happen is now people are going to start firing people." That echoed similar comments he made during the Republican presidential debate in November that wages are "too high" and, when asked whether he would raise the minimum wage, said, "I would not do it." But later in the campaign, Trump showed more interest in raising the minimum wage, though he often said that he would leave that up to the states. On ABC’s This Week on May 8, 2016, host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump, "Minimum wage -- all through the primaries, you were against an increase. Now you're saying you're looking at it. So what's your bottom line on this?" Trump responded, "Well, I am looking at it and I haven't decided in terms of numbers. But I think people have to get more." When Stephanopoulos asked whether that’s a change, Trump answered, "Well, sure it's a change. I'm allowed to change. You need flexibility." Also on May 8, on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said that he doesn’t understand how people survive on the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Trump said that while he would personally like to see a higher minimum wage, he would leave that up to the states. "I would like to see an increase of some magnitude," Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd. "But I'd rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide. Because don't forget, the states have to compete with each other." Todd followed that up by asking if Trump thought the states should only be able to decide whether to raise their minimum wages from the $7.25 federally mandated minimum wage, or if there should be no federal minimum wage at all – giving states the option to go lower than $7.25 or have no minimum wage at all. "But should the federal government set a floor?" Todd asked. "No," Trump replied. "I'd rather have the states go out and do what they have to do." Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung referred us to Trump’s statement about letting the states set the minimum wage from his July 27 press conference in South Florida. Here’s what Trump said: "The minimum wage has to go up. People are -- at least $10, but it has to go up. But I think that states -- federal -- I think that states should really call the shot. As an example, I live in New York. It's very expensive in New York. You can't buy a hot dog for the money you're talking about. You go to other states and it's not expensive at all. Now what it does is puts New York at a disadvantage if the minimum wage is up, companies move out and things, bad things happen. At the same time, people have to be taken care of. But what I'm really going to do on the minimum wage -- but it has to go up... So I would like to raise it to at least $10." We gave him a Full Flop for his stance on whether the federal government should set the minimum wage. Pence statements on minimum wage Pence has a record of opposing minimum wage increases and bashing the minimum wage in general while in Congress. However, we could not find evidence he wants to eliminate it as Kaine claimed. In July 2006 while in Congress, Pence said in a statement to the press that he opposed legislation that he said would raise the federal minimum wage by 41 percent. "Minimum wage increases raise unemployment among teenagers, minorities and part-time workers," he said. "The minimum wage violates fundamental free market economics. It costs jobs, and I cannot support policies that will take jobs from those who need a paycheck the most. Pence was one of 21 House Republicans who voted against a bill that included an increase in the minimum wage. Pence voted against raising the minimum wage in January 2007 over two years from $5.15 to $7.25. "An excessive increase in the minimum wage will hurt the working poor, Mr. Speaker, and especially those who are trying to begin the American Dream by entering the workforce at entry level jobs," he said. "Minimum wage increases, the unbroken record of our economic history attests, raise unemployment among the young, minorities and part-time workers -- the very people that a minimum wage is thought to help." In 2013 as governor, Pence signed a law that prohibits local governments from requiring businesses to pay a higher minimum wage beyond what is required in federal law. We asked a Trump spokesman about Pence’s current position on the minimum wage and did not get a response to that specific question. But when we asked if Pence ever called for eliminating the federal minimum wage, Cheung said "No. He voted against raising the (federal) minimum wage in 2007." We told Clinton’s spokesman we found examples of Pence opposing an increase in the minimum wage but not calling for eliminating it. Spokesman Josh Schwerin said that Kaine was referring to the "Trump ticket" and that it is Trump who "dictates the agenda." Our ruling Kaine said "First, Donald Trump said wages are too high, and both Donald Trump and Mike Pence think we ought to eliminate the federal minimum wage." He’s right that Trump has said that about wages, but Kaine exaggerates by saying Trump and Pence want to eliminate the minimum wage. Trump has been all over the map on wages and the federal minimum wage. He has said he wouldn’t raise the minimum wage. He later seemed open to raising the minimum wage but has said that states should make the decision. Pence’s record in Congress showed he was against raising the minimum wage and made some critical comments about the idea of a minimum wage, but we didn’t find him calling for eliminating it. We rate this claim Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/52d80a8e-d8ca-4fa4-aca2-861eb5fbfb87

Tim Kaine

2016-10-04T21:47:03

2016-10-04

['Donald_Trump']

pomt-02923

Natalyn Archibong skipped (Atlanta) City Council meetings or was late 90% of the time. Then she voted herself a pay raise.

mostly false

/georgia/statements/2013/nov/02/matt-rinker/flier-takes-issue-councilwomans-record/

Atlanta residents are finding their mailboxes flooded with fliers from politicians vying for the City Council, the school board and the mayor’s office. One flier attacking the record of a veteran city councilwoman gained our attention. "Natalyn Archibong skipped City Council meetings or was late 90% of the time," Matt Rinker’s flier says. "Then She Voted Herself a Pay Raise," the flier says in red letters. PolitiFact Georgia wondered about the accuracy of the flier, particularly the part about Archibong voting herself a pay raise. In 2012, Archibong was one of four council members who voted against a pay raise that still passed by a 10-4 margin. Archibong represents the District 5 seat on the council, which includes several east Atlanta neighborhoods located in Fulton and DeKalb counties. An attorney in private practice, Archibong was first elected in 2001 and is hoping to be re-elected to a fourth four-year term. The District 5 council race has become particularly nasty in its final days, with accusations flying back and forth among the four candidates. On Thursday, Archibong filed a lawsuit in DeKalb County against Rinker and candidate Christian Enterkin, accusing them of slander. Enterkin also claimed in a flier that Archibong was late or absent to council meetings 90 percent of the time in 2011 and 2012. Enterkin’s flier did not mention Rinker’s claim that Archibong voted herself a pay raise. DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams denied Archibong’s motion for a temporary restraining order of statements about the councilwoman’s attendance record and other claims about her. The city convenes a panel of citizens once every four years to review the salaries of the mayor and the council. In 2004, the panel met and proposed raising the council’s pay from about $32,000 to $39,473. In March 2005, the council voted by a 9-3 margin to approve the pay raise. Archibong supported the salary increase and voted in favor of it. Rinker said via email he was referring to the 2005 vote. The 2012 vote raised the salaries of council members from $39,473 to $60,000 and takes effect in 2014. Archibong also sent PolitiFact Georgia attendance records that were certified by the city clerk’s office. Those records show Archibong has missed just one council meeting this year and two meetings per year in 2011 and 2012. They show she didn’t miss any council meetings in 2009 and 2010. Council records, though, raised some questions about Archibong’s punctuality. Our review of City Council meeting minutes since the beginning of 2010 shows Archibong was either absent or not listed as present when the meeting convened about 75 percent of the time. In most cases, Archibong’s arrival time was listed about one hour after the meeting was convened. The news website East Atlanta Patch published a spreadsheet that concluded Archibong was either absent or late 78.6 percent of the time during the same time frame. The council often hands out proclamations to citizens and visiting dignitaries at the beginning of meetings and then allows time for public comments before voting on legislation that is on its agenda. It is often 30 minutes to one hour before the council actually gets to the agenda. Most council members sit through the proclamations and public comments. Others, instead, hold sidebar conversations with their colleagues or administration officials or conduct other activities. "I don't sit through proclamations," Archibong told us. "I'm at work though, because the Committee on Council precedes the full council meeting." The Committee on Council is a semimonthly gathering of select council members who discuss council administrative issues. The committee typically meets less than two hours before council meetings. Was Archibong around when the council took its first vote of the day? She was nearly every time, council records show. So, what does this mean about the accuracy of Rinker’s flier? He’s right that Archibong voted to increase her pay, but that was eight years ago. The councilwoman voted against a pay raise in 2012. This makes Rinker’s flier confusing, if not misleading. As for her attendance record, Rinker’s number comes close to our count concerning how often Archibong is either absent or was not present when the council convened. Council records show Archibong is usually present when the council makes its first vote of the day. Rinker’s claim contains some elements of truth, but there is a lot of context that needs to be considered before fully understanding what he put in the flier. On our rating scale, this one gets a Mostly False.

Matt Rinker

2013-11-02T00:00:00

2013-10-29

['Atlanta']

snes-01065

Did Trump Tweet in 2015 That the President Should Be Shot Out of a Cannon if the 'Dow Joans' Tanks?

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-trump-tweet-president-dow-joans/

Politics

Bethania Palma

Did Trump Tweet in 2015 That the President Should Be Shot Out of a Cannon if the ‘Dow Joans’ Tanks?

5 February 2018

['None']

pomt-12906

Says North Carolinians are "already paying for" Medicaid expansion, even though the state hasn’t expanded Medicaid.

mostly true

/north-carolina/statements/2017/jan/19/roy-cooper/nc-gov-roy-cooper-medicaid-expansion-north-carolin/

One of Gov. Roy Cooper’s arguments for accepting an expansion of Medicaid health care coverage into North Carolina is that the state is already paying into the program – and thus might as well get something out of it. The Medicaid expansion debate is currently the subject of a court battle between Cooper ( a Democrat) and the state’s Republican-led legislature. Meanwhile, the governor is trying to drum up support for expansion. "You’re already paying for it," Cooper told a meeting of business officials on Jan. 4. "North Carolina is paying federal taxes that is going to other states (for Medicaid). There have been conservative Republican governors like Mike Pence, who is our vice president, like Chris Christie, like John Kasich, who understood that this was an economic decision for their state and that it was important to do. So we’re already paying for it. The decision has been made." It’s common knowledge that many Republican governors have accepted the Medicaid expansion, and Cooper is right that Indiana, New Jersey and Ohio all accepted the expansion under conservative leadership. We’re more interested in the claim that North Carolina is paying for a program that gives it nothing in return. Two versions of Medicaid The expansion of Medicaid – which the Affordable Care Act made possible – is a separate piece of the regular Medicaid program. North Carolina has been part of the regular Medicaid program since 1970. But it remains one of 18 states that have not accepted the expansion. Medicaid provides government health insurance for low-income people. In 2015, the state reported, 1.8 million North Carolinians were enrolled – most of them children. The expansion would cover people who don’t qualify for either the Affordable Care Act health care subsidies or for regular Medicaid coverage. The state pays about one-fourth of the costs for regular Medicaid expenses in North Carolina, according to the N.C. General Assembly Fiscal Research Division. The federal government pays 60 percent, and the rest is funded by drug companies and other sources. In 2015, when the bill came out to $13.8 billion for North Carolina, the state paid $3.7 billion. But that’s not what Cooper is talking about. He’s referring to the optional expansion of Medicaid – which North Carolina and 17 other states have so far declined to accept. And Cooper is right that, nevertheless, North Carolinians are paying for the expansion in other states. The expansion is funded almost entirely by the federal government – 95 percent now, and dropping to 90 percent by 2020. "Right now, North Carolina tax dollars are going to Washington, where they are being redistributed to states that have expanded Medicaid," Cooper said in a written statement after his speech. But is he right? The federal government does get a lot of money from taxes. But it also makes money from fees, leases, investments and other sources. The government also engages in deficit spending. With all those non-tax options, we wondered about Cooper’s claim. Digging into the numbers According to a 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid expansion in the decade from 2015-24 is estimated to cost $717 billion. That includes $667 billion from the federal government. And Cooper is right that the cost falls onto states, including those that haven’t expanded the program. In fact, North Carolina taxpayers are likely paying more than $1 billion dollars a year into the program. Donald Taylor, a Duke University professor and health care policy expert, said the federal government’s share of Medicaid expansion (unlike the regular Medicaid program) is mostly funded by income taxes and new taxes the ACA created. For overall taxes as well as income tax in particular, North Carolina’s people and businesses contribute 2.4 percent of the federal government’s tax revenue – at least as of the 2014 fiscal year, which is the most recent state-by-state IRS data available. Going by the HHS report that estimated $667 billion in federal spending on Medicaid expansion over a decade, 2.4 percent is $16 billion. That’s $1.6 billion per year, on average. In reality, of course, government accountants don’t go through taxpayers’ checks to see which ones come from which state and then apportion out funds that way. So the 2.4 percent number is the state’s approximate share, not an actual bill. And it’s possible that figures from the 2014 tax data and 2015 Medicaid cost study could have changed by now, or might fluctuate in the future. Regardless, Cooper is certainly right that North Carolinians are paying into this program. Another interpretation However, there’s a second way that a listener might interperet Cooper’s claim – that by telling people "you’re already paying for it," he’s implying that North Carolina could accept the expansion of Medicaid with no further costs. That is not accurate. Yes, North Carolina is paying into Medicaid, but the state’s costs would absolutely rise if it were to accept the expansion. In various studies by researchers from Georgetown University and the Wake Forest University School of Law, and depending on whether the federal government is paying for 90 or 95 percent of the costs, estimates show North Carolina’s state government would be on the hook for between $210 million and $600 million per year in the near future if it did expand Medicaid. The federal government would also pitch in billions more each year, those studies estimate, of which North Carolina taxpayers – as we already explored – would be responsible for tens of millions of dollars. Our ruling Roy Cooper said North Carolinians are "already paying for" Medicaid expansion, even though the state hasn’t expanded Medicaid. He was arguing for the state to go ahead and accept the expansion. He’s right that North Carolinians are already paying into the program, via federal taxes. Yet what he doesn’t mention is that the state government currently pays nothing into the program but would have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year if it did accept the expansion. Doing so would also increase the federal tax burden on people all over the country, including in North Carolina. We rate this claim Mostly True.

Roy Cooper

2017-01-19T15:14:42

2017-01-19

['None']

huca-00007

"If he (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) is trying to dismantle universal health care by stealth, this is the way to do it: underfund it and have separate agreements with the provinces."

a lot of baloney

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/01/12/lots-of-baloney-in-claims-that-bilateral-health-deals-could-harm-overall-system_n_14129736.html?utm_hp_ref=ca-baloney-meter

Manitoba Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen

Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press

'A Lot Of Baloney' In Claim That Liberals' Bilateral Health Deals Threaten System

01/12/2017 10:13 EST

2017.

['Justin_Trudeau']

pomt-03715

Says a gun bill before the Senate would make it a federal felony to "leave town for more than seven days, and leave someone else at home with your firearms."

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/16/Arizona-Citizens-Defense-League/gun-rights-group-says-bill-would-criminalize-leavi/

As gun legislation works its way through the U.S. Senate, gun rights groups warn that some proposals in the original bill could create accidental felons. One such email warning, from an Arizona group, says, "You would be committing a federal felony if you leave town for more than seven days, and leave someone else at home with your firearms." Could hosting a house-sitter become a crime? Could your unsuspecting roommates face a felony? The bill, known as the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013, faces votes on a series of amendments, most prominently one proposed by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. So all bets are off on the bill’s final language. Still, as the debate unfolds, we were curious: Does Senate Bill 649 make felons of vacationing gun owners with roommates or house guests? Gun transfers As introduced in the Senate in March, S. 649 requires background checks for all gun sales, with a limited set of exceptions. And it’s not just sales that are subject to the law — but gun "transfers." In general, it would be illegal to give your gun to someone else without seeking a federal background check. But there are a series of exceptions that seek to loosen the requirement in some situations — for example, handing your gun to a friend at a shooting range or while hunting legally together, giving a gun as a gift to a close relative or leaving a gun in a will. It’s also okay under the bill to lend your gun to someone in your own home or yard — as long as that "temporary transfer" lasts less than seven days. Thus, the issue raised by the Arizona Citizens Defense League. "While the proposed legislation contains limited exceptions for transfers such as between family members," says the email, sent to supporters April 10, "a little digging shows that you would be committing a federal felony if you ... leave town for more than seven days, and leave someone else at home with your firearms." So, what happens if a buddy house-sits or a roommate stays home during your eight-day vacation? The answer: It would likely depend on the circumstances. "I would say it should be changed to ‘you might be committing a federal felony if you leave town for more than seven days, and leave someone else at home with your firearms,’" said Clark Neily, who helped represent security guard Dick Heller in his successful Supreme Court challenge to D.C.’s handgun ban. If you locked up your guns and expressly forbade others from using them, you would have a pretty good argument that you hadn’t transferred possession, attorneys told us. But say your weapons were available to guests or roommates — that nothing would prevent them from using your guns while you were out of town. Then you might have a problem. The federal government tends to have an expansive definition of "possession," under various laws, Neily said. "I would say there is a real possibility that someone could be convicted under S. 649 for leaving town for more than seven days while someone else is at home with their guns," he said. Still, a house guest’s mere "access" to your weapons wouldn’t necessarily qualify as possession, said Larry Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law who has worked as a federal prosecutor and argued before the Supreme Court as an attorney for the City of Chicago. He pointed to a 2012 case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals’ Seventh Circuit, United States vs. Griffin, in which a felon had been convicted of illegally possessing firearms and ammunition because he lived with his dad, who had hunting gear around the house. The court overturned the conviction, explaining the government’s argument "confuses access with possession," Rosenthal said. Meanwhile, just staying in a home with weapons — especially if the house-sitter or roommate didn’t know they were there — wouldn’t plausibly qualify as a "transfer" of a firearm, Rosenthal said. There would have to be a "knowing passage of control." So leaving your roommate home alone for weeks, oblivious to the shotgun under your bed, likely wouldn’t violate the bill’s provisions. Our ruling An Arizona group says a gun bill before the Senate would make it a federal felony to "leave town for more than seven days, and leave someone else at home with your firearms." Indeed, S. 649, as introduced in the Senate, allows for "temporary transfers" of guns in your own home that last less than seven days. But leaving a house-sitter or roommate with access to weapons while you’re away for a longer stretch, attorneys explained to PolitiFact, could raise the possibility of violating federal law under the bill’s provisions. Still, experts told us a gun owner might avoid such a consequence by locking up weapons and denying permission to use them. And it’s not clear courts would interpret mere access as a transfer of possession. The claim is just partially accurate. We rate it Half True.

Arizona Citizens Defense League

2013-04-16T14:48:38

2013-04-10

['None']

pose-01128

Gov. Scott will direct the Commissioner of Education to conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation of every standardized test that school districts are requiring their students to take.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/scott-o-meter/promise/1214/investigate-every-standardized-test/

scott-o-meter

Rick Scott

Investigate every standardized test

2014-12-30T10:50:09

['None']

goop-00736

Caitlyn Jenner Bought Porsche For Sophia Hutchins?

2

https://www.gossipcop.com/caitlyn-jenner-sophia-hutchins-bought-porsche-car/

Shari Weiss

Caitlyn Jenner Bought Porsche For Sophia Hutchins?

4:01 pm, June 27, 2018

['None']

pomt-06906

The nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, has said that the No. 1 policy decision that brought us to the need to prevent the nation from defaulting on our debt for the first time in history were the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

half-true

/florida/statements/2011/jul/25/debbie-wasserman-schultz/rep-debbie-wasserman-schultz-says-nonpartisan-cbo-/

If you watch TV news, you've probably seen clips of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's speech from the House floor July 19, 2011, on the Republican "cut, cap and balance" plan to slash the federal debt — it's the one that prompted fellow South Florida Rep. Allen West to call her vile and despicable. But you may have missed a line about the 2001 and 2003 George W. Bush tax cuts that raised our curiosity. Here's a recap. Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, argued during House debate that deep spending cuts required by the Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011 would "end Medicare as we know it," increasing costs for Medicare beneficiaries. She added it was "unbelievable" that West, a Republican tea-party favorite, would support it, given the number of South Florida seniors. She urged colleagues to reject the "reckless bill" for something that instead "engages us all in shared sacrifice" — for example, legislation that also targeted the Bush tax breaks. West then fired off a name-calling e-mail, setting off a days-long public spat that echoed Washington's partisan wrangling over raising the nation's debt limit. (There's more to say about Wasserman Schultz and West's tumultuous history, but that's not our focus here.) Many conservatives oppose any debt limit increase unless lawmakers cut spending to reduce the deficit, enact "enforceable" spending caps and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The GOP-led House ultimately passed the Cut, Cap and Balance Act; the Democratic Senate tabled it July 22, effectively killing the plan. Officials expect the debt ceiling to be reached Aug. 2. As negotiations continue, we were interested in Wasserman Schultz's claim on the House floor about the buildup of the federal debt: "The nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, has said that the No. 1 policy decision that brought us to the need to prevent the nation from defaulting on our debt for the first time in history were the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans." We wondered if the Congressional Budget Office — which has a mandate to provide "objective, impartial analysis" for lawmakers and doesn't make policy recommendations — really said that? Warning sign No. 1: When we asked Wasserman Schultz's communications director, Jonathan Beeton about her statement, he provided us not with a CBO report, but with work done by a liberal think-tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Warning sign No. 2: When we contacted the CBO, associate director for communications Deborah Kilroe provided us not with something that sounded like a source for Wasserman Schultz's claim, but with a table of numbers. The table — published within a May 2011 CBO report — does not include a qualitative analysis to support Wasserman Schultz's statement. Instead, the table assigns dollar values to the major revenue and spending decisions that took the country from budget surpluses to budget deficits. On the revenue side, the Bush tax cuts — formally the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 — were the biggest chunk of lost income: $1.5 trillion. That dwarfs all other revenue changes, including tax cuts in the 2009 stimulus. The 2001 tax cut alone is bigger than any other single change, representing $1.2 trillion from 2002-11. On the spending side, the only item in CBO's table bigger than the 2001 tax cut — or the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts together — was lawmakers' discretionary spending. So, the impact of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003? $1.5 trillion. The impact of discretionary spending? $2.9 trillion. Of course, discretionary spending likely represented a series of "policy decisions," individually perhaps smaller than the impact of the tax cuts. And that's exactly what Beeton of Wasserman Schultz's office argued: "The biggest legislative number is for discretionary changes. The 2001 Bush tax cut is the second-biggest," he said. "However, the discretionary number is an aggregation of several different policies enacted at different times. ... In terms of a single piece of legislation's impact on the deficit, the Bush 2001 tax cuts probably still wins the prize for generating the biggest deficit increase." In short, the May 2011 CBO report doesn't say what Wasserman Schultz said, that "the No. 1 policy decision that brought us to the need to prevent the nation from defaulting on our debt for the first time in history were the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003." But the CBO numbers back that claim up, Beeton argues. So does an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Beeton said. (The study actually widens its analysis beyond the Bush tax cuts, ascribing the bulk of recent and projected deficits to the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) "Her statement clearly has a lot of strength to it," added Bob Williams, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. (Editor's note: We updated the description of the Tax Policy Center on July 28, 2011.) But another think-tank that also analyzes CBO data, the business-backed Tax Foundation, interpreted the same CBO data differently. The Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge and Will McBride make spirited arguments that spending, not tax cuts, provides a more potent explanation for America's debt crisis. The discrepancy in the analyses explains the central problem with Wasserman Schultz's claim. The CBO provides data. Think-tank analysts provide varying interpretations of the data. Wasserman Schultz got up before fellow lawmakers, repeated a think-tank interpretation and passed it off as the objective stance of CBO. (She even slowed down to make sure we understood her source: "The nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office ...") What does the Truth-O-Meter make of this? Wasserman Schultz said that "the nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, has said that the No. 1 policy decision that brought us to the need to prevent the nation from defaulting on our debt for the first time in history were the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003." The CBO never actually said that, but data from a May 2011 CBO report can reasonably support Wasserman Schultz's position. The CBO found that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts resulted in the biggest revenue drop since 2001. Experts say the cuts were hefty enough they likely outweighed individual spending decisions. We rate her statement Half True.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

2011-07-25T14:45:13

2011-07-19

['George_W._Bush', 'Congressional_Budget_Office']

snes-02184

President Trump's son Barron won a national academic award in June 2017.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barron-trump-wins-national-academic-award/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Barron Trump Wins National Academic Award?

19 June 2017

['None']

snes-06405

Secret flights whisked bin Laden family members and Saudi nationals out of the U.S. immediately after September 11 while a general ban on air travel was still in effect, and before the FBI had any opportunity to question any of the passengers.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flights-of-fancy/

September 11th

David Mikkelson

Flights of Fancy

31 March 2004

['United_States', 'Saudi_Arabia', 'Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation']

pomt-13861

For 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, "we simply do not have data to say anything about trends in poverty."

mostly true

/global-news/statements/2016/jul/07/morten-jerven/tracking-global-poverty-have-real-numbers/

The success story of aid groups in developing countries often includes a line about lifting people out of poverty. But what if the data behind such claims was suspect? That’s the contention of economist Morten Jerven at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Jerven, a noted skeptic of African development statistics, says it’s a case of the "PR department getting ahead of the knowledge department." For 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, "we simply do not have data to say anything about trends in poverty," Jerven wrote recently. As fact-checkers, we at PolitiFact can be asked to rely on the data Jerven is calling into question. So we decided to put his claim to the test. It takes two data points to tango Jerven based his claim on a simple law about measuring things: If you want to spot a trend, you need to have a starting point and an end point. Importantly, you need to measure the same thing at both times. To give a crude example, if one year you ask people how much they earn and 10 years later ask them how much their entire household makes, you can see how it would be difficult to make comparisons and draw conclusions. The World Bank identified problems with the data points for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. "By 2012, only 27 of the region’s 48 countries had conducted at least two comparable surveys since 1990 to track poverty," a 2016 report said. Do the math, and you get Jerven’s 21 countries without a starting and an end point on poverty. Andrew Dabalen, lead economist in the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Practice, doesn’t quibble with Jerven’s statement, at least not too much. He and his colleagues vet the data that comes out of Africa. In some countries, such as Liberia and Sudan, there’s just one survey. Somalia has none. Kenya has four, but each was too different from the others to make any firm conclusions. Where do surveys run into issues? They might not match because they drew from different areas -- say a national sample versus urban residents. Some had people fill out daily diaries, while others asked people after the fact to remember what they bought or produced for themselves. Simply taking a survey at different times of the year, harvest versus planting season, could radically change the results. "Based on the review using these criteria, we find that indeed 21 countries did not have at least two comparable surveys to say something about trends," Dabalen told us. Keeping things consistent is not a trivial issue, or a new one. In the mid 1990s, India shifted from asking people what they consumed in the past month to what they consumed in variety of time periods -- from as short as one week to as long as a year. Virtually overnight, the official number of people in poverty fell by about 200 million, a result that many analysts challenged. Even in the United States, scientists often fret anytime the U.S. Census Bureau debates or discusses changing the questions it asks, for fear that it will jeopardize useful data. Filling in the gaps Confronted with missing data, Dabalen and his colleagues have a few workarounds that can help in some places. Numbers for an entire nation’s economy, its gross domestic product, are generally available. Dabalen said you can use GDP trends to estimate household consumption, and from that, derive a poverty level. "Such a method has its issues, but it is used widely and under certain assumptions, it predicts reasonably well," Dabalen said. But it’s not perfect. Branko Milanovic, senior scholar and specialist in global inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center, said the most you can learn from GDP is how things changed on average. If most of the economic growth flowed to the wealthy, the poor might gain little. (The income gains of the top 1 percent to 5 percent in the United States in recent years is a good example.) "A change in the mean does not tell us anything about the change in the distribution," Milanovic said. Dabalen told us about other techniques that derive missing numbers from a range of surveys that can tie economic well-being to other measures such as spending on food, housing conditions or education levels. On a large scale, looking at an entire region, this statistical alchemy can at least show the direction of change. This World Bank chart tracks results for 48 Sub-Saharan nations. The blue line is based only on countries with solid, comparable data. The other lines rely on something less than that. So policy makers can have a sense of the trends in poverty, even if they can’t say for sure what the poverty level is. But again, that’s from a regional vantage point. For any single country with very limited data, these techniques get dicey. According to the World Bank, the use of alternative surveys to fill in missing information sometimes showed poverty going down, when based on more reliable numbers, it was actually going up. Steps are under way to deal with the larger data problem, but a lot of work remains. Oddly, the lack of hard data doesn’t necessarily mean that poverty is worse than we think. Dabalen and his colleagues wrote that a number of crosschecks of all the information "support the notion that poverty reduction may have been larger than assumed." Our ruling Jerven said that for 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, "we simply do not have data to say anything about trends in poverty." His number comes directly from a careful vetting of poverty surveys by the World Bank. That analysis described in detail the holes in the information needed to track poverty. Jerven pushed his point a bit too far by saying that we can’t say anything about trends. Alternative methods give a reasonably reliable picture of overall trends, even if they can’t tell policy makers what the actual poverty rate might be. But at the end of the day, the consensus among the experts we reached is that the gap Jerven talked about is real and rather than use workaround techniques, everyone would prefer solid data. We rate this claim Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/26108662-dcbd-407b-aabe-b10379895175

Morten Jerven

2016-07-07T14:58:26

2016-06-29

['Sub-Saharan_Africa']

pomt-07493

In 2009, we cut state spending in real terms for the first time in 150 years.

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/12/tim-pawlenty/tim-pawlenty-said-2009-we-cut-state-spending-real-/

As part of his push for the presidency in 2012, Tim Pawlenty makes the case in his book Courage to Stand that he is a tested fiscal conservative. "Contrary to liberal rhetoric, spending cuts are not impossible. Take Minnesota, for example" he writes in his book’s conclusion. "I lowered the average growth of annual spending during my time as Governor to just under 2 percent and balanced the budget without raising taxes. In 2009, we cut spending in real terms for the first time in 150 years." Pawlenty was governor of Minnesota from 2003 to 2011, serving two terms. Here, we’re checking Pawlenty’s statement that he "cut spending in real terms for the first time in 150 years." Minnesota celebrated its 150th anniversary of statehood in 2008, but we should note it’s not possible to look at 150 years of state fiscal data. Minnesota Management and Budget, the state’s fiscal information agency, keeps stats only back to 1960. We asked the Pawlenty campaign whether they had more historical data, but we didn't hear back. Looking at those stats, we can see that the 2010-2011 budget cycle -- a two-year budget referred to as a biennium -- marked the first drop in state spending since 1960, when state spending declined 10.9 percent. Budget figures are available on an annual basis as well. By those numbers, the 2010 general fund budget year (which starts July 1, 2009), was not the first year spending dropped. Spending also dropped in 2009, 2004, 1986 and 1983, although it was up for the two-year cycles that included those years. Finally, we should note that the 2010-2011 budget biennium was helped by a few factors. Minnesota Management and Budget said the state had used several mechanisms to put off state spending. That included $2.3 billion from the federal stimulus and two separate postponements in spending on K-12 education that totaled $1.9 billion and $1.4 billion. Those fixes went away the next budget cycle, and the budget agency projects a significant spending increase of 29.3 percent for the biennium. In rating this statement, we find that Pawlenty did reduce spending for the two-year budget cycle for the first time since 1960. But there were several single-year decreases, two during Pawlenty’s tenure as governor (2009 and 2004), but also two before he was governor (1986 and 1983). The major reduction in the 2010-2011 budget cycle was achieved with a one-time infusion of federal dollars and measures that delayed state spending rather then permanently reducing it. Finally, we don't have 150 years of budget data to check. We only found data back to 1960, and Pawlenty's campaign provided no data to back up the claim covering the 100 years previous when we asked for it. If data emerges, we're willing to review the claim. But given the evidence at hand, we rate Pawlenty’s 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.

Tim Pawlenty

2011-04-12T12:44:34

2011-01-11

['None']

pomt-11313

Fox News accidentally puts up a poll graphic that shows how they are the least trusted network.

false

/punditfact/statements/2018/apr/13/blog-posting/No-Fox-News-did-not-put-up-graphic-showing-it-was/

Did Fox News accidentally put up a graphic showing it’s the least trusted network? That’s what bloggers claimed in a post that leaves out important context and details about the graphic. "Fox News accidentally puts up a poll graphic that shows how they are the least trusted network," said boinboing.net in an April 9 post. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. Bloggers focused on a Fox News segment in which Howard Kurtz, host of Media Buzz, talks with Republican strategist and pollster Frank Luntz about President Donald Trump, the media and public trust. "When host Howard Kurtz asked for a poll to be put up on the screen that asks if the media reports fake news, viewers got a look at the wrong poll – one put out by Monmouth University that asks people which network they trust more, CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News," Boingboing.net’s post said. "Not surprising but a knee-slapper nonetheless, the graphic for the poll showed that people trusted CNN most, at 48%, followed by MSNBC at 45%. Fox came in last place with a mere 30% of those polled thinking that the network was trustworthy." Boingboing.net said Kurtz asked then quickly asked for the graphic to be taken down. Kurtz did request that the graphic be taken down — but the graphic did not indicate Fox News was the least trusted network. In fact, the graphic, based on a Monmouth University poll, asked "Who do you trust more?" But individuals polled were asked who they trusted more as a source of information (CNN or Trump, MSNBC or Trump, Fox News or Trump), or both equally. The Fox News graphic showed that 48 percent of people said they trusted CNN more, compared to 35 percent who trusted Trump more; 45 percent said they trusted MSNBC more, compared to 32 percent who trusted Trump more; 30 percent trusted Fox News more, compared to 20 percent who trusted Trump more. The question was not about the most trustworthy network and was not a direct comparison of CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The Washington Post on April 9 reported that Fox News pushed back on reports that its network was the least trusted among competitors. It said the Associated Press published a story headlined "Fox News mistakenly posts graphic showing it lags in trust." (AP’s new headline says "Fox News host: Graphic posted at wrong point of show.") The newspaper also noted that CNN’s Chris Cuomo tweeted a RawStory.com post headlined, "Watch Fox host Howard Kurtz panic after graphic shows Fox News is least trusted network." RawStory.com added an updated to its story saying it included a response from Kurtz and that the headline had been revised for accuracy. It's new headline reads, " ‘Take that down’: Howard Kurtz surprised after graphic pops up showing Fox News is least trusted network." Boingboing.net also added an update at the top of its post on April 12. The amended post said:"UPDATE 4/12/2018: Yes, Fox did accidentally put up the wrong poll graphic, but Fox has since pointed out that the confusing graphic wasn't actually showing that Fox is the least trusted network. Instead, what the graphic intended to do was to compare CNN, MSNBC and Fox News to Trump. The graphic asks who people trust more, CNN or Trump, MSNBC or Trump, and Fox News or Trump. When looking at it this way, people trust all three networks more than they trust Trump." Kurtz did elaborate on the graphic after his show — not because it was confusing, but because he said the Associated Press ran a story "that utterly distorts what happened." "The AP reported my request to take down the graphic and ended the story there, creating a false impression by not mentioning that I called for the very same graphic shortly afterward," Kurtz wrote in an April 9 Facebook post. "This echoed partisan chatter online that I had somehow panicked or didn’t want to show the poll graphic, which is flatly contradicted by reality." Kurtz wrote that the graphic was mistakenly posted early, while he was discussing fake news, but brought back later in the show. (AP ran a correction about that point.) Our ruling Bloggers said, "Fox News accidentally puts up a poll graphic that shows how they are the least trusted network." The graphic was based on a Monmouth University poll that asked people who they trusted more CNN or Trump, MSNBC or Trump, Fox News or Trump. It wasn’t a graphic for a direct question comparing the three networks. The Fox News graphic showed that 48 percent of people said they trusted CNN more, compared to 35 percent who trusted Trump more; 45 percent said they trusted MSNBC more, compared to 32 percent who trusted Trump more; 30 percent trusted Fox News more, compared to 20 percent who trusted Trump more. We rate the claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bloggers

2018-04-13T13:55:33

2018-04-09

['None']

pomt-03507

The average student comes out of college hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

false

/rhode-island/statements/2013/jun/06/gina-raimondo/rhode-island-general-treasurer-gina-raimondo-says-/

It's not news that college is expensive. This past year, according to the College Board, cost for tuition, fees, room and board for one year averaged $17,860 for an in-state public four-year college, $30,911 for students who went to a public college outside their state, and $39,518 if they attended a private nonprofit college or university. So it's not surprising that some students end up in debt, even before their degree translates to a paycheck. Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo talked about that problem as part of a May 29 story on the 5:30 p.m. newscast on WJAR-TV. The story was devoted to a looming rise in the interest rates for federal student loans. Raimondo said the higher rates would make a bad situation even worse. "The average student comes out of college hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and they can't afford these interest rates to go up," she said. An alert reader who caught the program wrote PolitFact Rhode Island to say, "I don't think it's anywhere near that." We decided to check. We called Raimondo's office to ask for her source. While we were waiting, we went to the College Board website and found its "Trends in Student Aid" report for 2012, which covers the 2010-2011 academic year. It tells a very different story. The average debt among graduates who borrowed to get a bachelor's degree was $25,300. (A second source, the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success, through its Project on Student Debt, calculates a comparable average -- $26,600.) Forty percent of the degree recipients had not borrowed at all, so they had no debt, according to the College Board. If you factor them into the mix, its calculation of the average debt drops to $15,100. Even if you only look at private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, where the costs are higher, the average debt for graduates who had borrowed was $29,900. Thirty-four percent of graduates hadn't borrowed. Among all graduates from these schools -- borrowers and non-borrowers -- the average debt was $19,700. To put this in perspective, 10 years earlier, the average debt for graduates who had borrowed was $23,400, adjusted for inflation. If you include all graduates -- both borrowers and non-borrowers -- it was $14,600. The College Board also followed a group of students who enrolled during the 2003-2004 academic year to see how much graduates owed. Only 1 percent had more than $75,000 in debt. Another 1 percent had a debt level of $50,000 to $75,000. Locally, we also found that as of October 2012, Rhode Island graduates ranked fourth in student debt from public and private nonprofit four-year institutions, according to a state-by-state ranking by the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success. The average Rhode Island debt among students who borrowed was $29,097. Viewed in another way, 69 percent of students in the Class of 2011 in Rhode Island had debt; only seven other states have a higher percentage of students who owed money. When we heard back from Raimondo's office, she acknowledged the error. Said spokeswoman Joy Fox, "Although the Treasurer and her husband personally came out of college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, she misspoke by saying this was the average amount of student loan debt. According to the Project on Student Debt, the average debt is more in the range of tens of thousands." We rate Raimondo's claim False. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)

Gina Raimondo

2013-06-06T00:01:00

2013-05-29

['None']

pomt-12111

Gov. Roy Cooper has "filed nearly one lawsuit a month, with every single one of them an attempt to extend his own power."

mostly false

/north-carolina/statements/2017/aug/22/david-lewis/nc-rep-lewis-says-gov-cooper-has-filed-nearly-one-/

It’s no surprise that a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature are taking some of their fights to court. But it may take a scorecard to keep track of the legal battles between Gov. Roy Cooper and the North Carolina General Assembly, where Republicans hold supermajorities. At least one state lawmaker has lost track. Republican state Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County, upset that one of the lawsuits has stalled the elections process in Carteret County, recently wrote about Cooper’s legal challenges in a blog post on DavidLewis.org. Cooper, Lewis wrote, has "filed nearly one lawsuit a month, with every single one of them an attempt to extend his own power." In the post, Lewis didn’t list the lawsuits Cooper has filed or describe the context surrounding them. Cooper was sworn in Jan. 1, so he’s been governor for nearly eight months. According to his office, he’s filed three lawsuits against legislative leaders since voters elected him – one of those coming before his inauguration. PolitiFact North Carolina searched for additional lawsuits and found none. Lewis said Cooper is trying to extend his power. Cooper’s lawsuits are indeed related to the scope of the governor’s powers. But Lewis fails to mention on his blog that, after Cooper was elected but before he was sworn in, Republican legislators – including Lewis – and former Gov. Pat McCrory enacted new laws that alter or limit the responsibilities and powers of the governor. Lawsuit 1 Cooper filed the first lawsuit on Dec. 30, when he was still governor-elect, to block measures the legislature adopted that merge the state elections and ethics boards and remove Cooper's ability to create a Democratic majority on the State Board of Elections. Cooper amended the lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court on Jan. 10, challenging the legislature's action to make the governor's Cabinet appointments subject to state Senate confirmation. Judges issued a split decision in the case, ruling for Cooper on elections but against him on Cabinet confirmation. Lawsuit 2 Cooper’s second lawsuit, which he filed in April, is a follow-up to his first lawsuit. After the court ruled that the governor’s appointees should control the state elections and ethics board, the legislature passed a new law that allows him to select its members from lists compiled by the two major political parties. Cooper contended that the goal was the same, to hamstring the governor, and filed a new lawsuit. A court sided with the legislature. A panel of judges sided with the legislature. But the governor has asked the state supreme court to review that decision, on appeal. Lawsuit 3 Cooper filed the third lawsuit on May 26, accusing the legislative leaders of trying to strip him of power to appoint state Court of Appeals judges and N.C. Industrial Commission members. Cooper amended the lawsuit on Aug. 8, challenging the legislature’s budget over funding related to school vouchers, a legal settlement with Volkswagen, and more - an amendment that came after Lewis’s statement. Counting lawsuits Cooper’s office says it has filed three lawsuits and two amendments. Lewis’ office, after being questioned about the blog post, said it was counting the number of individual complaints in the lawsuits. Mark Coggins, Lewis’ policy analyst, broke down the lawsuit topics in an email. He said Cooper’s lawsuits touch on: Whether the state Constitution allows the General Assembly to combine the state elections and state ethics boards Who has the authority to dismiss certain state employees Who has the authority to appoint members to the state’s Industrial Commission Who has the authority to distribute certain federal funds Whether the state Senate has the authority to block Cooper’s Cabinet nominees Who has the authority to appoint members to "various boards and commissions." Whether Cooper has "additional authority over the statutory baseline over the position of executive director" of the ethics board. A ‘simplistic’ quote? Cooper is not the first North Carolina governor to sue the legislature. McCrory sued legislative leaders saying they overstepped their authority in trying to establish a new commission to regulate coal ash, and the N.C. Supreme Court ruled in his favor last year. Bob Orr, a former justice on the state Supreme Court, characterized Cooper’s lawsuits as part of power jockeying that’s happened for years. "The litigation we’re seeing by Gov. Cooper is an expansion of that inherent tension and conflict between the executive branch and legislative branch," Orr said. Orr, a Republican, critiqued Lewis’ quote as "simplistic." Cooper’s lawsuits are not frivolous power grabs, he said. "I can’t fault Gov. Cooper for challenging the acts that he feels violates the separation of powers. That’s a core constitutional principle," Orr said. Why make the claim? Rep. Lewis co-chairs the legislative committee leading the effort to redraw districts in the state House and state Senate that federal courts determined were unconstitutional gerrymanders. He’s one of the most influential state lawmakers. Lewis wrote the blog post on July 31 in reaction to a report by the N.C. Insider that elections board vacancies were preventing resolution of an elections complaint involving municipal elections in Morehead City. Lewis pointed out that elections boards are vacant because Cooper is challenging the elections law. Because the issue is tied up in the courts, some county boards can’t fill their vacancies, keeping them from reaching a quorum needed to hold meetings. The state elections board is aware of 16 county elections boards that don’t have a quorum. "Governor Cooper’s lawsuit regarding the Bipartisan Ethics and Elections Board has essentially frozen elections administration in place in many counties," Coggins, Lewis’ policy analyst, explained in an email. "Citizens should care that this lawsuit could undermine the conduct of this fall’s local elections," Coggins wrote. Lewis believes voters should blame Cooper for "filing lawsuits that undermine local elections." Our ruling Lewis said Cooper has filed "nearly one lawsuit a month, with every single one of them an attempt to extend his own power." In fact, Cooper had filed three lawsuits and an amendment over seven months when Lewis made his claim. Lewis gives the impression that Cooper has been wildly filing lawsuits to expand his powers. But the lawsuits primarily respond to reductions in power passed by Lewis’s party shortly before Cooper took office and afterward. We rate his claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

David Lewis

2017-08-22T11:28:38

2017-07-31

['None']

pomt-08544

PolitiFact Texas says "Congressman Edwards' attacks on Bill Flores are false."

mostly false

/texas/statements/2010/oct/02/bill-flores/bill-flores-says-austin-american-statesman-has-cal/

PolitiFact Texas has gone prime time! In Bill Flores' new TV ad in his bid for a U.S. House seat held by Chet Edwards of Waco, titled "Austin Paper" — that would be the Austin American-Statesman — "truth" plays prominently. The narrator starts off: "The Austin newspaper says Congressman Edwards' attacks on Bill Flores are false." Just in case viewers miss that declaration on first pass, the narrator continues: "Edwards is not telling the truth about Bill Flores." Flores makes nearly the same claim in a radio ad posted on his website: "The Austin newspaper investigated Edwards' attack ads and found them to be false." We didn't know we'd done that. To date, Edwards has criticized Flores on a number of fronts, including his views on veterans health care, his voting record and his position on earmarks, most of which we haven't dug into. In April, we rated an Edwards statement to be True — that Flores has never voted in a general election in the House district. In September, we gave a False rating to Edwards' claim that an oil company Flores "helped run laid off over 3,000 workers and then paid off its top executives with millions." To our inquiry — what the hey? — Flores' campaign manager, Matt Mackowiak, counseled against being too picky about the wording of the ads. Mackowiak said Flores' ads don't say that every fact check we've done of Edwards returned a False rating. Mackowiak also said the TV ad clearly refers only to our September item on Flores' employment history, pointing out that the video "has the date of the PolitiFact article." We checked out that detail. At the time that a narrator is evoking "the Austin newspaper," the screen shows the "Austin American-Statesman" nameplate, the PolitiFact url and a date: "September 26, 2010." Oops: Our review of Edwards' statement appeared in print and online Sept. 15. We informed Mackowiak of the date conflict. He later told us that the campaign had fixed the date and sent new copies of the ad to the outlets running the ads. While the Flores campaign is changing the ad, we'd suggest a new line for the narrator: "The Austin newspaper also finds this message to be only 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.

Bill Flores

2010-10-02T06:00:00

2010-09-28

['Texas']

tron-02988

Janna Little Ryan, Paul Ryan’s Wife, Is a Liberal Democrat

truth! & fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/janna-little-ryan-paul-ryans-wife-is-a-liberal-democrat/

politics

['2016 election', 'congress', 'donald trump', 'liberal agenda']

Janna Little Ryan, Paul Ryan’s Wife, Is a Liberal Democrat

Oct 26, 2016

['None']

farg-00327

Are campaign banners for President Trump's reelection campaign being made in China?

not the whole story

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/07/are-trump-2020-banners-made-in-china/

askfactcheck

FactCheck.org

Angelo Fichera

['2020 election']

Are Trump 2020 Banners Made in China?

July 31, 2018

2018-07-31 21:29:36 UTC

['None']

snes-00059

Did Jennifer Lawrence Blame 9/11 on President Trump’s Stealing the Election?

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jennifer-lawrence-911-trump/

Quotes

Dan Evon

Did Jennifer Lawrence Blame 9/11 on President Trump’s Stealing the Election?

20 September 2018

['None']

snes-04104

A woman in Idaho was sentenced to seven years in prison for breastfeeding in public.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/idaho-mother-sentenced-for-breastfeeding/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Idaho Mother Sentenced to Prison After Multiple Citations for Breastfeeding in Public

4 September 2016

['Idaho']

snes-03045

Did Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign Unveil a New Logo That Resembles a Swastika?

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-swastika-logo/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Did Donald Trump’s Campaign Unveil a Swastika-Like Logo?

28 November 2015

['None']

pose-00849

FitzGerald is committed to working to improve public transportation access in our cities.

not yet rated

https://www.politifact.com/ohio/promises/fitz-o-meter/promise/881/improve-public-transportation-access/

fitz-o-meter

Ed FitzGerald

Improve public transportation access

2011-01-20T13:56:11

['None']

goop-01880

Nicole Kidman Urging Keith Urban To Get Plastic Surgery?

2

https://www.gossipcop.com/nicole-kidman-keith-urban-plastic-surgery-botox/

Shari Weiss

Nicole Kidman Urging Keith Urban To Get Plastic Surgery?

10:38 am, January 9, 2018

['None']

hoer-01154

Facebook Award 2016

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/facebook-award-2016-advance-fee-scam/

Brett M. Christensen

Facebook Award 2016 Advance Fee Scam

March 30, 2016

['None']

hoer-01000

Phishing Scams Continue To Target Facebook Page Owners

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/phishing-scams-continue-to-target-facebook-page-owners/

Brett M. Christensen

Phishing Scams Continue To Target Facebook Page Owners

July 8, 2017

['None']

snes-01526

The United States Army will no longer accept lawful permanent residents, also called "green card" holders, as recruits.

mostly false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/army-green-card-enlistment/

Military

Arturo Garcia

Did the United States Military Ban Green Card Holders From Enlisting?

25 October 2017

['United_States_Army']

pomt-09412

St. Pete Beach's experiences are a "fair example" of what could happen if Amendment 4 passes.

half-true

/florida/statements/2010/mar/19/citizens-lower-taxes-and-stronger-economy/st-pete-beach-amendment-4-hometown-democracy/

A group fighting a statewide ballot initiative that would give voters direct say on land use decisions says people need look no further than the disastrous results of a similar initiative in tiny St. Pete Beach. In an Internet advertisement, a political action committee called Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy claims that St. Pete Beach's local version of Amendment 4 has cost the 10,000-person community. "Some people wonder what Florida would be like if Amendment 4 passed, but the people of St. Pete Beach already have the answer. They adopted a local version of Amendment 4 in 2006," says the ad, with sweeping images of St. Pete Beach's shoreline and its famous pink hotel, the Don Cesar. "St. Pete Beach has become a victim of lost jobs, the enormous costs, wasted tax dollars, endless litigation and economic gridlock," the 2-minute, 15-second ad says. "All because they approved a local version of Amendment 4." Amendment 4, which will appear on ballots in November, essentially would give citizens veto power over major development proposals and land use changes. We've previously explored two of the ad's claims about legal fees and property taxes. Now we want to step back and tackle the fundamental question: Are St. Pete Beach's experiences a valid comparison when voters consider Amendment 4? "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. It's a fair example and a damning one," said Ryan Houck, executive director for Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, which was formerly called Floridians for Smarter Growth. The group is being funded by Florida business groups, including Publix, homebuilders and U.S. Sugar. "Ryan's being very disingenuous," responds Leslie Blackner, an environmental attorney and president of Florida Hometown Democracy, the group advocating for Amendment 4. St. Pete Beach's story Blackner, who already has spent almost $750,000 of her own money supporting Amendment 4, says St. Pete Beach's process for dealing with major land use issues and the process proposed in Amendment 4 are significantly different. To start, let's look at what has happened in St. Pete Beach. In 2005, St. Pete Beach's five-member city commission was considering changing the town's road map for growth, the Comprehensive Plan. The commission was debating incentives to lure additional hotels that could increase the density of a development and change the allowed uses. The talk of change didn't sit well with many residents, who formed a group called Citizens for Responsible Growth. They collected enough petitions to get a series of city charter amendments on the city ballot that would require voter approval for height increases and other changes to land use plans. From there it got contentious. The city sued to stop the vote, saying the proposed charter amendments violated state land use law. A developer also sued saying the petition process was costing him money. The city lost its case on appeal, and in November 2006, voters narrowly approved most of the changes to the city charter. The results: St. Pete Beach became the first town in Florida where residents directly controlled development decisions. Voters also elected two members of Citizens for Responsible Growth to the city commission, giving them a majority. That prompted a pro-developer group -- Save Our Little Village -- to start its own petition drive and propose their own amendments to the city's comprehensive plan. The city's elected officials -- who had gone from being largely pro-development to anti-development -- tried to stop them. It got even more contentious. Save Our Little Village sued. The city's attorney resigned under pressure from the commission. Then, another election, another change of power, more lawsuits, and eventually, another referendum. This time, the pro-development side won. The upshot -- four years after city voters decided they wanted control over land use decisions, the entire process has been sidetracked and stymied by lawsuits and politics, petition drives and egos. Taxpayers have paid $734,000 in legal bills associated with the comprehensive plan changes, the city says. The guts of Amendment 4 Like in St. Pete Beach, Amendment 4 seeks citizen control over land use decisions. On that, the proposed constitutional language is clear: "Public participation in local government comprehensive land use planning benefits the conservation and protection of Florida’s natural resources and scenic beauty, and the long-term quality of life of Floridians. Therefore, before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land use plan, or amend a comprehensive land use plan, such proposed plan or plan amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body as provided by general law, and notice thereof in a local newspaper of general circulation. Notice and referendum will be as provided by general law. This amendment shall become effective immediately upon approval by the electors of Florida." Blackner walked PolitiFact Florida through how she believed the new process would work (we say "believe" because her opponents think the process is open to interpretation). Say a developer proposes an amendment to the comprehensive plan to build a condo high rise in the middle of town. Currently, an application would be submitted to the local government that has jurisdiction; the local government would follow its approval process -- two public hearings, etc.; and then the state Department of Community Affairs would be asked to sign off on the amendment. None of that would change. But if the developer gets his approvals, Amendment 4 would add one more step. Voters would either ratify or veto the developer's plans at the next regularly scheduled election. Amendment 4, which supporters also call Hometown Democracy, "is all about process. It is a neutral provision," Blackner said. "I don't claim to know how anyone would vote on any particular referendum. We think we need this added layer of voter accountability because too often elected officials don't represent the interest of citizens." Similarities and differences Let's look at this from each side. Proponents of Amendment 4 say the analogy between the statewide initiative and what's happening in St. Pete Beach is bogus. Yes, both processes deal with voter approval of comprehensive plan amendments. But that's pretty much it, they say. The case of St. Pete Beach is as much about one city's politics as it is a comprehensive plan. Moreover, the entire disagreement began with a citizen petition to change the city's charter -- an option to most any city regardless of Amendment 4's outcome. And what's critical to note in St. Pete Beach's case, supporters say, is that citizens themselves proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan -- an end-run of the development process that was established by state law. Amendment 4 doesn't deal with citizens' proposals to their local comprehensive plans. It allows people to vote on proposals either submitted by their government, or a developer. The counterargument from opponents like Houck focuses on the outcomes, instead of the process, in St. Pete Beach. Every attempt to amend the comprehensive plan via a referendum has so far resulted in a lawsuits. The most recent cases surround opponents claiming that ballot language was unclear. What's to stop a developer, then, from suing the city should its proposal fail via the Amendment 4 process by claiming the ballot language was deceptive? Blackner said she hopes a neutral group -- maybe the state's Department of Community2 Affairs -- would write ballot language to help combat potential lawsuits from unhappy developers. But, "I fully expect there will be fights over ballot titles and summaries," she admits. "Developers are the most litigious people I've ever seen. I'm sure there will be lawsuits over this." Houck also notes that pro-Amendment 4 organizers previously referenced St. Pete Beach as a symbol in their cause. In 2006, Ross Burnaman, vice president of Hometown Democracy, said St. Pete Beach is emblematic of "the broader purpose behind Hometown Democracy that people have at least some control over the long-term land use of their community." Then, there's the position of St. Pete Beach City Manager Mike Bonfield, who believes Amendment 4 is more far-reaching than what St. Pete Beach voters approved. St. Pete Beach's rules exempt some smaller land use changes from voter approval. "When they (proponents) say that Hometown Democracy is different than St. Pete Beach, in a very slight element it is," Bonfield said. "But overall the issue of voting on comprehensive plan amendments and our experience in voting on comprehensive plan amendments is the same, except in Hometown Democracy it's going to happen more often. "So it's not exactly identical," Bonfield said. "It's worse." Our ruling In trying to capsulize what is a complex issue, we read dozens of stories generated by the development brouhaha in St. Pete Beach, watched city commission meetings and spoke with people representing all sides. We unequivocally come to one conclusion: The situation in St. Pete Beach is a mess. After that, the analysis becomes less cut and dried. Here's how we see it. A group of St. Pete Beach residents, unhappy with the direction of their city government, successfully wrestled certain land use decisions out of the hands of elected leaders. The movement produced a backlash from both the government and pro-development forces, who then mounted their own political campaign to wrestle power back. The power struggle has continued for close to four years. That's a different storyline than what is envisioned under Amendment 4, where voters would act as a check on the decisions of local government. The amendment itself isn't designed to go around government the way the situation in St. Pete Beach played out. And it has nothing to do with citizens proposing amendments to the local comprehensive plan, like what has happened in St. Pete Beach. Now, are the same lawsuits and political maneuvering possible? Absolutely. And maybe that's enough to make the analogy valid. But voters should be wary in blindly believing that St. Pete Beach's experiences would be duplicated statewide should Amendment 4 pass. Opponents say St. Pete Beach's experience is a "fair example" of what could happen should Amendment 4 pass. We rate that claim Half True.

Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy

2010-03-19T11:45:26

2010-03-15

['None']

pose-01098

As governor, Gina will: Enact common-sense gun control measures such as a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

stalled

https://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/promises/gina-meter/promise/1181/enact-ban-military-style-weapons-and-high-capacity/

gina-meter

Gina Raimondo

Enact a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines

2014-12-19T07:50:56

['None']

vogo-00208

15 Chargers Fact Checks: Roundup

none

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/15-chargers-fact-checks-roundup/

15 Chargers Fact Checks: Roundup

August 14, 2012

['None']

pomt-01178

More than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment.

mostly true

/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/08/stephen-carter/watch-out-70-us-have-done-something-could-put-us-j/

Conventional wisdom would tell us that most normal folks will never have an interaction with police like the one Eric Garner had that ultimately led to his death. Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter warned that might not necessarily be the case. Citing the work of Rutgers University law scholar Douglas Husak, Carter wrote on Dec. 4 that "70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment." Carter noted that’s in part because there are 300,000 or more federal regulations that may be enforceable through criminal punishment. It's as though, Carter said, lawmakers tack on imprisonment to give a law heft. To paraphrase the old line, we are not just a nation of laws, we are a nation overrun by laws. Carter suggests reigning things in. The fact that 70 percent of people have committed a jailable offense is part of Carter's evidence. We wanted to know if other legal experts thought it was correct. They do. Before we get to their reasons, let’s be clear about what Carter and Husak are saying. By the way, Husak told us that Carter quoted him accurately. For Husak, the question wasn’t whether any court would be likely to put someone behind bars for a particular offense, but whether the law gives them the power to do so. Husak said one need look no further than the laws on prescription drugs. If a doctor gave you a prescription for the common painkiller vicodin and your spouse brings it to you as you lie in bed, "your spouse is dispensing a controlled substance without a license," Husak said. Would that ever be enforced? Not likely. But Husak said that is how the law is written. If that were not enough to get to 70 percent of adults, Husak factored in illicit drug use. According to a 2012 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, over half of the people in every age group born after 1950 said they had used an illicit drug at some time in their lives, primarily marijuana or prescription drugs. That alone comes to about 84 million people, or 37 percent of all people over 20. While some legal experts we reached said they didn’t know how you could come up with an exact number, just about all said it would be no trouble to keep adding more. Sonja Starr at the University of Michigan Law School said many people drink and drive. "The Centers for Disease Control found 112 million self-reported incidences of drunk driving," Starr said, with the caveat that some drivers would report multiple offences. "And that’s just in a single year." Starr said you could easily get to the 70 percent mark. By and large, Starr’s counterparts at other law schools agreed. Bennett Capers, professor of law, Brooklyn Law School "This doesn't give me pause at all. There are thousands of criminal statutes on the books, criminalizing things that some of us do without thinking. This runs the gamut from the serious (in New Jersey, it is technically a crime to have sex without first receiving "freely given affirmative permission to the specific act of sexual penetration") to the routine (fudging tax returns) to the mundane (illegal downloads)." David Gray, professor of law, University of Maryland School of Law "70 percent seems low to me. Once you factor in illegal drug use, crimes of recklessness (which seldom are detected because no harm accrues), downloading, DUI, failures to report income, and the scores of relatively innocuous offenses that just happen to carry the possibility of jail time in some jurisdictions, I’d be surprised if the percentage wasn’t much higher than 70 percent over the course of most adults’ lifetimes." Jeffrey Fagan, professor of law and public health, Columbia Law School Fagan said he didn’t know the right percentage, but he could believe the 70 percent figure. "I’ve violated imprisonable offenses while fishing," Fagan said. Robert Weisberg, professor of law, Stanford Law School "The number is unknowable, but it strikes me as plausible." Laurie Levenson, professor of law at Loyola Law School Los Angeles "It does seem to exaggerate the likely number of Americans who are at actual risk of prosecution and imprisonment," Levenson said. "What we really need to pay attention to is the percent of Americans who commit crimes that are on the prosecutors' radar screens." Levenson’s point gets at a key ambiguity in Carter’s statement. Much depends on the interpretation of "could lead to imprisonment." In his article, Carter made it clear he did not mean that imprisonment was in any way likely. His point was simply that too many laws carry too hefty a penalty and in theory, anyone could become ensnared. Our ruling Carter said that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. Based on a strictly technical reading of existing laws, the consensus among the legal experts we reached is that the number is reasonable. Way more than a majority of Americans have done something in their lives that runs afoul of some law that includes jail or prison time as a potential punishment. That said, experts acknowledged that the likelihood of arrest, prosecution or imprisonment is exceedingly low for many of Americans’ "crimes." As such, we rate the claim Mostly True.

Stephen Carter

2014-12-08T11:34:02

2014-12-04

['United_States']

snes-05668

Photograph shows Hillary Clinton shaking hands with Osama bin Laden.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-meets-osama-bin-laden/

Politicians

David Mikkelson

Hillary Clinton Meets Osama bin Laden

5 June 2015

['Osama_bin_Laden', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton']

hoer-00984

Mercedes Benz Giveaway

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/mercedes-benz-giveaway-like-farming-scam/

Brett M. Christensen

Mercedes Benz Giveaway Like-Farming Scam

November 20, 2017

['None']

chct-00332

FACT CHECK: Is Hurricane Irma The 'Most Powerful' Atlantic Storm On Record?

verdict: true

http://checkyourfact.com/2017/09/07/fact-check-is-hurricane-irma-the-most-powerful-atlantic-storm-on-record/

David Sivak | Fact Check Editor

1:56 PM 09/07/2017

['None']

goop-02151

Matt Lauer, Katie Couric Reteaming To Force Megyn Kelly Out Of The “Today” Show?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/matt-lauer-reteaming-katie-couric-force-megyn-kelly-out-today-show/

Holly Nicol

Matt Lauer, Katie Couric Reteaming To Force Megyn Kelly Out Of The “Today” Show?

4:51 am, November 24, 2017

['Matt_Lauer']

pomt-07291

The Arab and the Muslim nations get twice as much money as Israel.

mostly true

/texas/statements/2011/may/21/ron-paul/us-rep-ron-paul-says-arab-and-muslim-nations-get-t/

Asked during the first debate of the 2012 presidential campaign about his concern that Israel will start a war with Iran, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas shifted the focus to his position that the United States should stop sending money to other countries. "I don't want any of this foreign aid — Pakistan or anybody else — because the principle is wrong and because it doesn't achieve anything," the Lake Jackson Republican said during the May 5 debate. "If we stopped all the foreign aid, you say, ‘Oh, you're going to hurt Israel.’ But, you know, the Arab and the Muslim nations get twice as much money." We looked into Paul’s foreign aid comparison. Paul didn’t respond to our request for evidence, but he’s spoken frequently about his opposition to all foreign aid. Some background: A 2004 Congressional Research Service report lists several objectives of foreign aid, including economic development, poverty reduction and democracy promotion. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States has also established aid programs across the Middle East in an effort to deter radicalism. For our fact-check of Paul’s debate comment, we turned to a database of U.S. foreign assistance, including loans and grants, kept by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The database includes information on assistance that flows from the military, USAID, the State Department and the Agriculture Department. According to the latest year of available data, the United States distributed about $45 billion to more than 180 countries in fiscal 2009, which ran from October 2008 through September 2009. Israel received $2.4 billion, ranking second to Afghanistan, where the United States has ongoing military and reconstruction operations. Not knowing the countries Paul means by "the Arab and the Muslim nations," we zeroed in on those that could be identified as either Arab or Muslim based on entries in the CIA’s World Factbook, which presents information on countries throughout the world. Result: Seven of the top 11 recipients of foreign aid in 2009 can be described as Arab, Muslim or both: Afghanistan ($8.8 billion in aid), Iraq ($2.3 billion), Egypt ($1.8 billion), Pakistan ($1.8 billion), Sudan ($1.2 billion), the Palestinian territories ($1 billion), and Jordan ($816 million). Together, those entities received $17.7 billion. In addition, at least 30 other countries that can be considered Arab or Muslim received U.S. aid, including Somalia ($281 million), Morocco ($244 million) and Indonesia ($226 million). Collectively then, the 2009 aid to these nations was more than seven times the aid to Israel — not much of a surprise considering Paul’s comparison was between 40-plus countries and just one other, though that nation also has long been the prime U.S. beneficiary. From its founding in 1948 through 2004, Israel was the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid, according to a September 2010 CRS analysis. It also was the largest annual recipient from 1976 until it was surpassed in 2005 by Iraq, which the U.S. invaded in 2003. Nearly all of Israel’s current U.S. aid is military assistance. According to a February CRS report, the close U.S.-Israel relationship has been "based on common democratic values, religious affinities, and security interests." Meanwhile, U.S. aid policy toward the Middle East has changed. A June 2010 CRS report says it "has gradually evolved from a focus on preventing Soviet influence from gaining a foothold in the region and from maintaining a neutral stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict, to strengthening Israel’s military and economy and using foreign aid as an incentive to foster peace agreements between countries in the region." Two top Arab recipients have signed peace agreements with Israel: Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Let’s take a closer look at the numbers from the USAID database, calculated in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars: From 2000 through 2009, Israel received $32.3 billion in U.S. assistance — 82 percent of which was military assistance. We compared that figure with the 10-year aid total for the seven major Arab or Muslim recipients. Their take during those years: $136.4 billion, more than four times Israel’s. Their military component: 42 percent. And before 2000? The relative shares of aid look different. From 1990 through 1999, Israel’s U.S. aid totaled $44.2 billion, while the seven Arab or Muslim nations got $35.2 billion. But other Muslim and Arab nations also received U.S. assistance during that decade, including Turkey ($6.1 billion) and Bangladesh ($1.8 billion). All together, the nations’ cumulative total was more than Israel’s but nowhere near twice as much. So where does that leave us? On the face of it, stacking one nation’s foreign aid dollars against 40 others may not be a meaningful comparison. Regardless, based on the most recent decade of U.S. foreign aid data, Paul’s statement is correct: Collectively, the 40-plus Arab and Muslim countries drew far more than double what Israel got. We rate the statement Mostly True.

Ron Paul

2011-05-21T06:00:00

2011-05-05

['Israel', 'Islam']

pomt-11009

Justice Kennedy quit because he and his son helped Trump launder illegal Russian money through Deutsche Bank.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/10/blog-posting/did-justice-kennedy-quit-due-family-ties-trump-and/

The New York Times detailed connections between the Trump White House and Justice Anthony Kennedy, searching for factors that might have inspired Kennedy to retire so abruptly before the November midterms. The newspaper examined a number of connections that the Trump family might have exploited to earn Kennedy’s trust: constant praise for his work, the routine promotion of his clerks, and visits from the president’s family. But some conspiracy-minded bloggers have honed in on two paragraphs, nestled in the middle of the article: Kennedy’s son, Justin Kennedy, had worked with Deutsche Bank when it loaned over $1 billion to Trump, even when other banks had become wary of him. In the New York Times article, this is just one piece of evidence to show that the Kennedy and Trump families were close outside of politics. However, liberal clickbait site Kwotable used the detail to suggest corruption on a much more massive, though unsupported, scale. Its June 30 headline read, "Justice Kennedy quit because he and his son helped Trump launder illegal Russian money through Deutsche Bank." The New York Times report didn’t go that far, so we decided to dig deeper into the Kwotable claim. Deutsche Bank and Trump Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank began in the late nineties when many other major lenders were unwilling to do business with him. Between 1991 and 1992, Trump declared bankruptcy four times, making him unpopular among Wall Street bankers, who referred to making deals with him as "Donald risk." Deutsche Bank opened up to working with Trump after launching its real estate division in 1998. Mike Offit, a newly-hired managing director, gave Trump a loan to renovate his building on Wall Street, and continued to work with him through the 2008 financial crisis. According to a 2017 report by the New York Times, Trump has done more than $4 billion in business with Deutsche since then, including the construction of Trump Tower in Chicago and the Trump National Doral in Miami. Justin Kennedy began working at Deutsche in 1998 as the managing director and global head of Real Estate Capital Markets, a role he held until leaving in 2009. Kennedy oversaw and approved major real estate loans given through the bank, including multiple loans made to Trump for his real estate enterprise. What about Russia? Trump’s connections to Russia are still being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. But Deutsche Bank’s relationship to the country is well-documented, and controversial. In early 2017, banking regulators fined the bank $630 million for its negligence in stopping a Russia-based money laundering scheme, in which Russian clients engaged in illegal "mirror-trading." (One client would purchase stocks in rubles through the Moscow branch, and then a conspirator would sell identical stocks for the same price, but through the London branch and in dollars. This money would be transferred to offshore accounts, effectively allowing traders to illegally transfer billions of dollars out of Russia. According to Reuters, this scheme began in 2011.) Between 2010 and 2014, the bank was also involved in the "Global Laundromat" scandal, which allowed over $20 billion to be funneled from Russia to other countries around the world. The Global Laundromat was a much larger operation than the mirror-trading. It involved top Russian oligarchs and criminals — including Igor Putin, cousin of President Vladimir Putin. The bank’s name has come up in the Mueller investigation as well, but not in the way the Kwotable article makes you think. In December 2017, Mueller’s team subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records connected with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had been indicted in October on suspicion of money laundering, among other crimes. However, there has been no evidence to date that Trump himself was involved with any of the money laundering — or that either Kennedy was involved. Democrats have called for more transparency in Trump’s banking history, but the bank has denied their requests, citing confidentiality concerns. The records would be released only in the event of a formal investigation. As for Justin Kennedy, he left Deutsche Bank in 2009, before investigators say the Global Laundromat or mirror-trading scandals began. He has not been formally investigated or accused of involvement in financial foul play. Kennedy and Deutsche Bank declined to comment for this story. Our ruling Bloggers wrote that Justice Kennedy retired last week because "he and his son helped launder illegal Russian money through Deutsche Bank." This story has all the buzz words to make a good conspiracy theory: Russia, real estate, billions of dollars, coincidence, corruption. But there is no evidence that Trump and Justin Kennedy ever had a relationship beyond Trump’s real estate loans. There is also no evidence that Kennedy was involved in Russian money laundering, as he left the bank before either of the major scandals happened, or that the Trump White House was blackmailing his father because of it. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bloggers

2018-07-10T13:57:38

2018-06-30

['Russia', 'Deutsche_Bank']

snes-02998

Before Super Bowl XXII in 1988, a reporter asked Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, "How long have you been a black quarterback?"

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/quarterback-speak/

Sports

David Mikkelson

Quarterback Speak

22 January 2004

['Washington_Redskins', 'Super_Bowl_XXII']

pomt-05535

Says "at the state level we're spending more on tax expenditures than we are on public safety, health care and education combined."

mostly true

/oregon/statements/2012/apr/10/jefferson-smith/does-oregon-spend-more-tax-breaks-public-safet-hea/

Jefferson Smith has his sights set on the Portland mayor’s office, but state issues seem to pop up in his campaign. Little wonder, given that he’s represented Portland in the Oregon House since 2009. One fact he’s taken to repeating -- first during a candidates’ forum hosted by Family Forward Oregon and Mother PAC and later during a Rotary Club meeting -- is that "at the state level we're spending more on tax expenditures than we are on public safety, health care and education combined." Tax expenditures is government-speak for what most of us call tax breaks. "I think we should think about money beyond tax breaks," he said, just before making his claim. "That is a handy tool. But it is a tool we've been using for years and years and years and years." Sure, tax breaks come in lots of different shapes and sizes -- seniors can deduct medical expenses, businesses can get breaks for green building improvements -- but could they really outweigh the amount the state spends on some of its core programs? We got to checking. Smith’s campaign wasn’t very helpful -- staffers had no source for his claim and his spokeswoman, Stacey Dycus, told us the idea was "a random remark he made when explaining something." We were on our own. Thankfully, we know our way around the state budget. Our first stop was the state’s 2011-2013 tax expenditure report. The report pretty clearly lays out the amount of tax expenditures -- or breaks -- for the current biennium. All told, the state gives about $12 billion in income tax breaks, $19 billion in property tax breaks and just over $100 million in others, for a grand total of $31.3 billion in forgone revenues. Getting those figures was the easy part -- the hard part was figuring out what to compare them to. See, the state’s budget can be diced and parsed in dozens of ways. Generally, though, we talk about the state’s general fund and lottery budget -- this budget deals with the money that the state has the most discretionary power over -- and the total funds budget -- the money that includes cash we get from the feds for, say, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as food assistance programs. Let’s start with the all funds budget. The current budget accounts for nearly $59 billion in total spending -- this is without the tax breaks. Of that, $13.5 billion goes to education and $3.6 billion goes to public safety. The health care figure is a little harder to come by. The best estimate we could dig up is the total funds budget for the Oregon Health Authority -- the executive bureaucracy that does the majority of the state’s health care work. That budget is just over $12 billion. If you add those three budget areas, you get $29.1 billion, about $2.2 billion short of the tax breaks the state gives. By this measurement, Smith is right. Now, the other way to do this would be to look at the general and lottery funds budget. This way might be somewhat fairer, given that so much of the total funds budget is made up of federal dollars. All told, the current general and lottery funds budget includes about $11.7 billion for health care, education and public safety. Obviously, that’s quite a bit less than the $31.3 billion in state tax breaks. The problem here is, you can’t directly compare those two figures. See, we said earlier that there’s a report that pretty clearly lays out the various tax giveaway, but what it doesn’t do is explain exactly how that money would be rerouted if it were being collected by the state. For instance, $19 billion of those giveaways are for property taxes. Most of that money would go to municipalities if it were collected -- not the state. There is an argument to be made that about 40 percent of the property tax revenue would go to local schools -- relieving a burden on the state and freeing up cash, but that’s all indirect. That said, about $12 billion of those giveaways -- the part that comes by way of income taxes -- would wind up in the state’s general fund budget. Again, that’s slightly more than the $11.7 billion the state pays on those three program areas. We wanted to add a little bit of context to all of this because tax policy is never so simple, so we made calls to folks in the state’s legislative fiscal and revenue offices and to the state’s chief economist. Paul Warner from the revenue office explained it the most clearly. Smith is "technically correct," he said, that there’s about $31 billion in lost revenue. But, he cautioned "there would be a lot of steps to try and collect those dollars." The revenue document itself gets at this, too. It notes that the dollar impact listed for tax breaks is not the amount of revenue you could gain if you wanted to repeal all of them. It gets very technical and somewhat boring here, so we’ll give you just one example: Federal land, which Oregon has a lot of, is exempt from property taxes. And, Warner notes, "there's federal law that prohibits us from taxing federal land." Certainly some of these tax breaks are up for grabs if the Legislature decided to mine a few of them for increased revenues. On the books are laws for home mortgage deductions along with tax cuts for green energy, and property tax exemptions for private aircraft. Smith knows that. Last year, he pushed for a package of bills that would have tamped down on some of these credits, including one that would put a sunset date on all income tax credits, subtractions and exemptions. Indeed, the Legislature has since instituted a six-year cycle in which all credits will get reviewed before being renewed. That’s a little beyond the point, though. As for our ruling, Smith’s claim is accurate. The state does spend more on tax breaks than it does on public safety, health care and education. This holds true whether you look at the larger all funds budget, or the smaller general and lottery funds budget. But there is some important context here, including the fact that many of those tax breaks are off limits to state lawmakers. We rate this claim Mostly True -- accurate but it requires some clarification. Return to OregonLive to comment on this ruling.

Jefferson Smith

2012-04-10T16:28:56

2012-03-10

['None']

thal-00128

Claim: Minimum unit alcohol pricing has been proven to reduce health harms, elsewhere in the world

mostly false

http://www.thejournal.ie/minimum-unit-pricing-alcohol-ireland-facts-2932210-Aug2016/

FactCheck: Is minimum unit alcohol pricing "proven" to work?

Aug 21st 2016, 10:15 PM

['None']

snes-01893

Trump referred to white nationalist marchers as "us" during a press conference.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-white-nationalists-us-press-conference/

Uncategorized

Arturo Garcia

Did Trump Call White Supremacists ‘Us’ During a Press Conference?

16 August 2017

['None']

tron-03411

Jefferson vs. Muslim Pirates

none

https://www.truthorfiction.com/jefferson-vs-muslims/

religious

Jefferson vs. Muslim Pirates

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-00944

When did the decline of coal start? It started when natural gas took off … that started to begin in (President George W.) Bush’s administration.

half-true

/virginia/statements/2015/feb/23/scott-surovell/surovell-says-decline-caol-started-under-george-w-/

Del. Scott Surovell has had it with Republicans blaming President Barack Obama of waging a "War on Coal." In a Feb. 4 floor speech, Surovell, D-Fairfax, said Republicans should take blame for the pain in coal country because they’ve taken steps to bolster natural gas, a key competitor to coal. "When did the decline of coal start? It started when natural gas took off," Surovell said. "That started to begin in President (George W.) Bush’s administration." We drilled into Surovell’s claim to see if he was right about the timing and cause coal’s fall as well as his laying the blame on Bush. The relationship of coal and natural gas Among the documents Surovell sent us to back his statement was a 2012 report by the Energy Information Administration that examined the annual use of fossil fuels to generate power. It has a chart showing that the downward use of coal and the upward use of natural gas began during the mid 1990s -- before Bush’s presidency from 2001-2009. In the mid 90’s, about 75 percent of fossil power was generated by coal, 20 percent by natural gas and 5 percent by petroleum. In 2012, about 55 percent was fired by coal, 45 percent by natural gas and a negligible share from petroleum. The report cites several reasons why power companies began replacing coal with natural gas. In the mid 1990s, technology began cutting the cost of natural gas generation and an expansion of pipelines "decreased uncertainties around natural gas availability." The trend escalated in 2005 when fracking -- the process extracting natural gas from shale -- took off. Surovell also pointed to a 2012 report from the Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm, which said lower natural gas prices along with rising coal prices had contributed to coal company decisions to retire some of their older plants. Jonathan Cogan, a spokesman for the EIA, pointed us to figures showing that natural gas production started seeing strong growth in the mid-2000s and natural gas prices began a precipitous drop in 2008. The cost of coal, meanwhile, has been on the rise. Other EIA figures show coal consumption and production has generally trended downward since 2008. So the takeaway is that the recent surge in natural gas production and drop in natural gas prices started during the Bush administration and certainly impacted coal use. But to fully explore Surovell’s claim, we have to dig deeper. Did Bush policies cause the coal slide? There’s no doubt Surovell, in his speech, was holding Bush responsible for the rise of natural gas and the fall of coal. "You want to know who started the war on coal? Take a long good hard look in the mirror folks," Surovell told GOP lawmakers. "The leaders of the Republican Party in the mid 2000s they’re the ones that started this war on coal." Fracking involves fracturing shale with hydraulically pressurized liquid made of water, sand, and chemicals. Surovell pointed us to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which Bush signed, that provided exemptions to the Safe Water Drinking Act for chemicals used in fracking. Several energy analysts told us that law did boost shale oil production, but added there were many other factors that led to the boom. Michael E. Webber, the deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, said the "shale boom" evolved over many decades, propelled by research and development in fracking that began before the Bush II administration. "As one of the presidents during that timespan, George W. Bush deserves partial credit," Webber emailed. "However, taking the long view, the policy contributions from his administration are minimal compared to the policies of other presidents and compared with the role of market forces and technological disruptions." Kenneth B. Medlock III, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University, told us that recent presidential administrations shouldn’t lay claim to the natural gas production boom. "The regulatory environment and laws governing mineral rights and property rights are responsible, and those tenets are more or less as old as the country," Medlock said. "They set the stage for entrepreneurial leadership and risk taking that fosters innovation, hence the shale revolution." On the coal side of the equation, Medlock said any "demise" of coal would have started about a decade ago as new environmental regulations discouraged construction of new coal plants. Dallas Burtraw, associate director of the Resources for the Future Center for Climate and Electricity Policy said the roots of the recent low prices lie in deregulation of the natural gas industry under former President Jimmy Carter. "It would be Carter who gets most of the credit for low gas prices today," said Burtraw, whose group is an energy think tank funded by government, non-profits and energy companies. Regarding coal, Burtraw sent us a chart showing that the number of coal jobs peaked in 1978 and has been falling steadily since, a trend he attributes partly to the emergence of natural gas, but mostly to technological changes in how coal is mined. Our ruling Surovell said the decline of coal "started when natural gas took off … That started to begin in President (George W.) Bush’s administration." No doubt, natural gas has been gaining ground on coal in generating electricity. The trend started in the 1990s but clearly gained speed during the Bush administration when the production of natural gas -- a competitor of coal -- picked up. But analysts give little credit or blame to Bush for that trend. They note that other factors, such as technological innovation, entrepreneurship and policies of previous administrations, had more to do with laying the groundwork for the natural gas boom. On balance, we rate Surovell’s claim Half True.

Scott Surovell

2015-02-23T00:00:00

2015-02-04

['None']

goop-00363

Meghan Markle Fleeing To Los Angeles?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/meghan-markle-fleeing-los-angeles-trip/

Shari Weiss

Meghan Markle Fleeing To Los Angeles?

3:00 am, August 30, 2018

['None']

pomt-15050

The largest low-wage employer "is not McDonalds or Walmart but the U.S. government."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/29/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-says-federal-government-not-mcdonal/

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has been outspoken about his desire to raise the federal minimum wage. Last week, ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to the nation’s capital, the senator from Vermont joined low-wage federal contract workers during a strike to advocate for a higher wages. During his speech to protesters, Sanders compared the government to the two companies with the largest U.S. workforces: Walmart and McDonald’s. "There is no justice in America when the largest low-wage employer is not McDonald’s; it is not Burger King; it is not Walmart; it is the United States government," Sanders said. He later tweeted a shorter version of the statement, mentioning only Walmart and McDonald’s. We wondered whether Sanders was right that the U.S. government is the biggest employer of low-wage workers in the country. While Sanders can find some support in the data, he ignores some important qualifiers. By the numbers When we reached out to Sanders’ camp, policy director Warren Gunnels said the claim is based on this 2013 report from Demos, a liberal economic think tank. The report defines "low-wage" workers as those earning below $12 per hour. More critically, the report counts workers who are employed by federal contractors, not those directly employed by the government. Here is a summary of the report’s estimates, which we double-checked for accuracy. The report estimated the number of low-wage workers at McDonald’s by using the percentage of low-wage workers in the food-service industry more generally, while it used a University of California-Berkeley report to estimate the number of low-wage employees for Walmart. McDonald’s total U.S. employees (includes franchise employees): 859,978 McDonald’s U.S. low-wage employees: 580,485 Walmart total U.S. employees: 1,400,000 Walmart low-wage employees: 901,600 Total workers on federal contracts: 6,791,437 Low-wage workers on federal contracts: 1,992,000 So the number of federal contract workers, at nearly 2 million, exceeds the number of Walmart and McDonald’s workers combined, at 1.48 million. Jonathan Rothwell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the difference is due to how large the government is in comparison with McDonald’s and Walmart. Indeed, if you look at the numbers as percentages, low-wage workers make up less than one-third of the total federal contract workforce. By comparison, the percentages for McDonald’s and Walmart are much higher -- 67.5 percent and 64.4 percent, respectively. "It is quite likely that the federal government is the largest vendor of just about every kind of worker -- high, medium, and low-wage workers included," Rothwell said. The government does not directly pay these workers Another problem with Sanders’ claim is his use of the word "employer." Employees on federal contracts are not directly employed by the U.S. government. Workers under these types of contracts work in a wide array of industries, ranging from construction to food service to health care. "The U.S. government does not employ contract workers in the legal sense of the word," Rothwell said. "(Contract workers) work for a firm, which contracts with the federal government." Multiple federal laws govern the pay of federal contract workers. The Davis-Bacon and Related Acts require federal contract workers involved in the construction and repair of public buildings and other public works to be paid "the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits." More recently, President Obama signed an executive order in February 2014 that raised the minimum wage to $10.10 for all workers on federal construction and service contracts. Obama also signed an executive order in September to make federal contractors give workers up to seven days of sick leave per year. Still, advocates of higher wages for federal contract workers argue these laws aren’t enough. The National Employment Law Project calls federal contract workers "the hidden federal workforce." According to a 2013 report by the NELP, "low-bid federal contracting and exemptions to the Service Contract Act and Public Contracts Act mean that hundreds of thousands of workers paid by the federal government via contractors or similar arrangements work for sub-standard wages in poor conditions." David Neumark, an economics professor and director of the Center for Economics and Public Policy at the University of California-Irvine, agreed that the connection between federal contract workers’ wages and federal government policy is tenuous. "Presumably, the low-wage workers hired by contractors are low-skill workers," he said. "It may suck that low-skill people earn low wages, but that is a problem of the economy more generally. … The claim that we are ‘subsidizing’ low wages is a red herring. We are probably paying market wages. They just happen to be low." Government employees tend to be paid well The federal government directly employs about 2.7 million people, according to Drew DeSilver, a senior writer at Pew Research Center. We couldn’t find any exact statistics on how many of these workers make less than $12 per hour, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, federal government workers with no college degree "earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector." "When we look at those directly employed by the federal government, low-skilled workers tend to be paid more than they would get paid in the private sector," said Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. "The government actually tends to pay less for higher skilled workers." According to occupational employment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 90 percent of workers across all levels of government make more than $12 per hour in half of the 50 states. Our ruling Sanders said that "the largest low-wage employer is not McDonalds or Walmart but the US government." Measured by the raw numbers, more federal contract workers make less than $12 an hour than workers at Walmart and McDonalds combined. But he is incorrect to suggest these workers are directly employed by the U.S. government, as they actually work for private companies. In addition, a much smaller percentage of federal contract workers make less than $12 an hour when compared to McDonald’s and Walmart. In terms of actual government employees, the U.S. government has historically paid low-skill federal civilian workers more than similar occupations in the private sector. We rate this claim Mostly False.

Bernie Sanders

2015-09-29T13:39:45

2015-09-22

['United_States', '[38', '9', '"McDonald\\\'s"']

pomt-08031

Says he "led the effort to build a new (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) engineering campus in Wauwatosa."

false

/wisconsin/statements/2011/jan/06/jim-sullivan/milwaukee-county-executive-candidate-jim-sullivan-/

Innovation Park, a campus the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee plans to build in Wauwatosa, is a proposal worth bragging about. The project calls for a graduate-level engineering campus and research efforts that supporters say could lead to new businesses. So far, UWM has agreed to pay Milwaukee County $13.6 million for land for the project. Wauwatosa, a Milwaukee suburb, has pledged to finance $12 million for improvements to the site, such as roads and utilities. And the federal government has given a $5.4 million federal grant for what would be the project’s first development -- a "business accelerator" that would house university and business research activities. But who exactly should be bragging about all of this? Former state Sen. Jim Sullivan, a Wauwatosa Democrat, hasn’t been shy. In the fall of 2010, during his unsuccessful re-election campaign, Sullivan mailed a flier to voters declaring he "led the effort to build a new (UWM) engineering campus in Wauwatosa." Sullivan is running for Milwaukee County executive in the April 2011 election, which makes his claim about landing a major project in the county all the more relevant. We wanted to know: What role did he play? Here is how the Innovation Park project came together: January 2007: UWM announces it wants to add two campuses, including one at or near the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center and the Milwaukee County Research Park. It would be home to a graduate-level engineering campus and "a collaborative research powerhouse." May 2009: The County Board agrees to sell 88 acres on the County Grounds in Wauwatosa -- near the medical center and research park -- to an affiliate of the UWM Real Estate Foundation, for $13.6 million. UWM says the Innovation Park project will draw more research funding, with business spinoffs creating jobs throughout southeastern Wisconsin. December 2010: The foundation says it has raised the $5 million it needs for the down payment on the land. The foundation also says it will ask the county to postpone for two years, until January 2014, the due date for a $5 million installment payment. Along the way, Wauwatosa approved zoning for the land and agreed to create the $12 million tax incremental finance district to pay for public improvements, such as roads. We asked Sullivan for support for his claim that he led the Innovation Park effort. His Senate staff provided seven documents Sullivan wrote, including letters he sent to city, county and state officials. In an interview with PolitiFact Wisconsin, Sullivan said: "Within the Legislature, I was absolutely the champion for that project. That’s what ‘led’ means." Sullivan also acknowledged that "it is a group effort to get a major project like that done." The state Senate, however, had no direct role in Innovation Park. Those who were involved with the effort characterized Sullivan’s role as supportive. Here is what they said: Tom Luljak, UWM vice chancellor for university relations: Sullivan "was a very strong advocate," but "I don’t think there was any one single person who was the champion" of Innovation Park. Harold Mester, spokesman for Acting County Executive Lee Holloway: Sullivan supported Innovation Park, but was not involved in the land sale negotiations between UWM and the county. Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier: Sullivan was a "very well spoken" supporter, but the major players were UWM and county officials, along with the city. Didier added: "I think, in the world of politics, a lot of people want to take credit. But the reality is it takes a lot of hands to get the job done." Among those taking credit is Holloway, who is also running for county executive in the April election. He said in December that if not for his efforts, the county would have received only $7 million from UWM for the land, instead of $13.6 million. We rated that claim Barely True. We won’t do any bragging. We’ll just give you our assessment. In trying to retain his state Senate seat, Sullivan declared he "led the effort" to put a new UWM campus in Wauwatosa. The major work for Innovation Park, however, was done by UWM, Milwaukee County and the City of Wauwatosa; the state Senate never got involved. Those close to the project said Sullivan played a supportive role but certainly didn’t lead the effort. We rate his claim False.

Jim Sullivan

2011-01-06T09:00:00

2010-11-02

['University_of_Wisconsin–Milwaukee', 'Wauwatosa,_Wisconsin']

tron-00618

Jackie Robinson Refused to Salute the Flag, Stand for National Anthem

authorship confirmed!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/jackie-robinson-refused-salute-flag-stand-national-anthem-authorship-confirmed/

celebrities

['patriotism', 'political correctness', 'sports']

Jackie Robinson Refused to Salute the Flag, Stand for National Anthem

Aug 30, 2016

['None']

pomt-01762

Says Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, "skipped an important VA reform hearing to attend three fundraisers."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/30/concerned-veterans-america/ad-says-bruce-braley-was-raising-money-during-vete/

Attackers say U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, skipped an important Veterans Affairs Committee hearing to raise money for his campaign, but Braley says that’s not true. Braley "skipped an astonishing 79 percent of veterans affairs committee hearings. He even skipped an important VA reform hearing to attend three fundraisers," says the television ad from Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group with funding linked to the Koch brothers. Braley is running against Republican Joni Ernst for the U.S. Senate seat held by Tom Harkin, and veterans affairs are in the news because of delayed access to health care. We looked at whether Braley skipped 79 percent of veterans affairs committee hearings. We rated that Mostly True, because Braley did miss close to that amount. However, Braley said he did not skip a hearing to raise money, so we’re checking that claim here. A matter of scheduling The ad refers to a Sept. 20, 2012, meeting titled, "Reviewing VA’s Performance and Accountability." According to the official record, Braley was not present. The hearing touched on a number of issues within the Veterans Administration, such as mental health and homelessness. The issue of delayed care came up in terms of mental health and acquiring prosthetics, but it was not the focus (though issues with wait times had already surfaced in 2012). We asked Braley’s campaign why he was absent, and they said he was at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Fast and Furious, in which federal agents traced weapons sold and brought into Mexico. The Sept. 20, 2012, hearing examined a report issued by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Braley was then a member of the oversight committee, and the transcript from that day’s hearing says he was present. The two hearings took place at roughly the same time in different buildings. The oversight hearing began at 9:36 a.m., and the VA hearing started at 10:19 a.m. Some have pointed out that footage of the hearing shows Braley’s empty seat during the oversight hearing. And he did not make any comments at the hearing, according to the transcript. In this screenshot of hearing footage, Braley’s seat (bottom, far left of the screen) is empty at 10:17. It’s possible he was there for part of the time, though, because the camera was not always pointed at his seat. Braley’s campaign said he did attend three fundraisers that day, but they did not conflict with the hearings. One took place from 8:30-9:30 a.m., the next a noon luncheon (the Fast and Furious hearing ended at about 12:30) and the last a reception at 6:30 p.m. Even though it was a tight schedule, his fundraisers would not have stopped him from attending one of the hearings for at least part of the time. Our ruling An ad said Braley "skipped an important VA reform hearing to attend three fundraisers." He had three fundraisers the same day, but none overlapped with the veterans affairs committee hearing. He was counted as present at an oversight hearing about Fast and Furious that happened at the same time. We rate this claim Mostly False.

Concerned Veterans for America

2014-07-30T18:05:14

2014-07-25

['None']

pomt-12846

Two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. … It didn't get covered

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/03/kellyanne-conway/fact-checking-kellyanne-conways-bowling-green-mass/

When White House counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared at a town hall event with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, she mentioned "the Bowling Green massacre" -- a terrorist attack that, the social media world would quickly determine, did not exist. This exchange stemmed from her defense of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barring citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya from entering the United States for 90 days and putting Syrian refugee admissions on hold indefinitely. (We go over some of the key issues in this explainer.) Trump’s action inspired protests, but Trump and others in his administration cited as a precedent an action taken by the Obama administration. "My policy is similar to what President (Barack) Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months," Trump said. Specifically, the government instituted new background checks for visa applicants from Iraq and expanded screening for Iraqi refugees who had already settled in the United States. (We largely disagreed that the two actions were equivalent, so we rated Trump’s statement Mostly False.) So what does any of this this have to do with Bowling Green, a city in western Kentucky? The Obama-era action was taken after a failed plot by Iraqi nationals living in Bowling Green to send money, explosives and weapons overseas to al-Qaida. The two men were arrested by the FBI in May 2011 for actions committed in Iraq and trying to assist overseas terrorist groups. That’s the context in which Conway brought it up during a town hall at American University on Feb. 2, 2017. "I bet it's brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," she said. After some cross-talk between Conway and Matthews, Conway added that the incident "didn't get covered." So there was indeed a terrorism-related situation in Bowling Green, Ky., but it wasn’t a "massacre." No one died in Bowling Green. And before long, social media lit up with mockery of Conway, from reminders of a 2013 football blowout of Northern Illinois University by Bowling Green State University to a website for the mythical Bowling Green Massacre Victims Fund. Lots of wags added that it was no wonder that the media didn’t cover the massacre because … it didn’t happen. The next morning, Conway clarified matters on Twitter. She tweeted, "On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say ‘Bowling Green terrorists’ as reported here." She also tweeted that "honest mistakes abound." So Conway has publicly acknowledged her error. Still, we thought it would be important to clear the air about what actually happened and what did not. The account below is largely taken from a fact-check we originally published on Sept. 23, 2014, in which we gave a False rating to the statement that, "In 2011, (the Islamic State) attempted to attack Fort Knox" in Kentucky. That was just one of a number of inaccurate statements circulating at the time about terrorist activities in and around Bowling Green, Ky. On Feb. 3, 2017, we ran our original fact-check by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and he said that our original account remains accurate. The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Iraqi nationals in Kentucky The details of the Kentucky case were indeed alarming. In September 2009, the FBI, based on a tip, launched an investigation into an Iraqi, Waad Ramadan Alwan, who was living in Bowling Green. A confidential source for the FBI started talking with Alwan in 2011. Alwan discussed how he previously worked as a bombmaker in Iraq. He boasted about blowing up American Hummers and targeting U.S. soldiers, claiming he used improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, hundreds of times, according to court documents. The FBI even matched a fingerprint from Alwan to an unexploded IED that was discovered by the military in 2005. (There’s a warehouse outside of Washington, D.C., that houses thousands of bombs found by the military). That enabled investigators to determine that Alwan had likely killed U.S. troops while in Iraq. The confidential source continued to meet with Alwan and recruited him to assist in an operation in the United States to send explosives, firearms and money to al-Qaida of Iraq. Al-Qaida of Iraq later morphed into the Islamic State or ISIS, according to terrorism experts. The sting On five occasions, Alwan helped procure and load money and weapons he believed were going to help al-Qaida of Iraq fight U.S. troops. In January 2011, Alwan recruited a friend to assist him — Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, another Iraqi who had moved to Bowling Green after first living in Las Vegas. Alwan and Hammadi entered the United States as refugees after lying about their past terrorism ties on paperwork. From January to May 2011, the two worked together on five missions to send grenade launchers, machine guns, explosives, sniper rifles, hand grenades, missile launchers and $565,000 to al-Qaida of Iraq. Of course, this was all a sting operation. While Alwan and Hammadi thought they were helping insurgents in Iraq, in reality, the FBI was monitoring all of their actions -- a common tactic for sting operations involving suspected terrorists. The weapons, which the FBI rendered unusable, were merely transferred from one location under FBI control to another. In May 2011, Alwan and Hammadi were arrested. In December 2011, Alwan pleaded guilty to a 23-count indictment, including conspiring to kill U.S. nationals abroad and multiple charges of weapons and terrorist activities. Hammadi pleaded guilty to a 12-count indictment, including attempting to provide material support to terrorists. For cooperating with authorities, Alwan received a reduced sentence of 40 years in prison followed by a lifetime under house arrest. Hammadi was sentenced to life in prison. The charges None of the charges filed against Alwan and Hammadi were for domestic terrorism plots. They were not convicted of any crimes related to domestic terrorism. All of the charges against these individuals were for actions committed while in Iraq or for trying to assist terrorist groups operating overseas. PolitiFact has combed through hundreds of pages of court documents that were available online. The only conceivable reference to any other terrorist activity is in Hammadi’s appeal of his sentence. There, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote: "Hammadi and Alwan also plotted to murder a U.S. Army Captain whom they knew from Iraq." An ABC investigative report had a few more details: "Alwan had been caught on an FBI surveillance tape talking about using a bomb to assassinate an Army captain they'd known in Bayji, who was now back home — and to possibly attack other homeland targets." We should also note that while Alwan and Hammadi thought they were helping a predecessor of the Islamic State, al-Qaida of Iraq had no communication with them. At root, this was a case of two Iraqis with dangerous backgrounds who were duped by the FBI into believing they were helping Islamic insurgents fight Americans overseas. Conway’s statement So how does Conway’s original (and now inoperative) statement stack up? Most importantly, there was no "massacre" in or around Bowling Green that was either carried out or attempted. In addition, while the two men were charged with serious crimes and were sentenced accordingly, it’s important to remember that everything that happened was part of a sting operation by the FBI. This means that the people of Bowling Green were not endangered at any point, and that the entire incident can be viewed as a law-enforcement success. The fact that it was a sting undercuts Conway’s use of the word "masterminds." Conway also said the event "wasn’t covered" by the media. We used the Nexis database to search media reports from around the time of the arrest and found that it wasn’t a huge, newscycle-dominating story. But several major news outlets did cover the story when it broke, including CNN, CBS and the Associated Press. And they also covered the debate that followed — including the call by some members of Congress to send the Iraqis to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the fact that it exposed a gap in the refugee screening process. In her tweet correcting her statement on MSNBC, Conway linked to a news story about the two Iraqis and other refugees, a 2013 article by ABC, headlined, "US May Have Let 'Dozens' of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees." Our ruling Conway said that "two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. … It didn't get covered." Put simply, there was no massacre. While Conway admitted her mistake the following morning -- and we're happy she did -- it's important to make sure the record is crystal clear. We rate the claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/8550f4d4-9408-4f33-899d-ec9ca31437a9

Kellyanne Conway

2017-02-03T13:00:50

2017-02-02

['Iraq']

bove-00218

FactChecking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 8 I-Day Promises Over 3 Years

none

https://www.boomlive.in/factchecking-prime-minister-narendra-modis-8-i-day-promises-over-3-years/

FactChecking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 8 I-Day Promises Over 3 Years

Aug 15 2017 10:56 am, Last Updated: Aug 15 2017 2:05 pm

['None']

snes-05831

Singer Beyoncé Knowles was killed in a car crash.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/beyonc233-knowles-death-hoax/

Inboxer Rebellion

David Mikkelson

Beyoncé Knowles Death Hoax

27 February 2015

['None']

pomt-01874

If you look at the states where soccer is most popular, they're overwhelmingly blue states, and the states where soccer is least popular are red states.

mostly true

/punditfact/statements/2014/jul/10/peter-beinart/soccer-blue-state-game/

Peter Beinart is the anti-Ann Coulter. Responding to the conservative pundit’s assertion that America’s growing interest in soccer is "a sign of the nation’s moral decay," the City University of New York professor argued on the July 6 CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS that World Cup fever actually demonstrates a shift away from America’s sense of superiority. "Ann Coulter may see that as pessimism and defeatism and declinism," Beinart said. "But I actually think what it reflects is a more cosmopolitan temperament, a recognition that America has things to learn from the rest of the world." Beinart pinpoints this shift in three major demographics: immigrants from "soccer-mad nations" in South America, young people and political liberals. Or, as Beinart calls it, the "Obama coalition." "If you look at the states where soccer is most popular, they’re overwhelmingly blue states, and the states where soccer is least popular are red states," Beinart said. "The only difference between the soccer coalition and the Obama coalition is that African-Americans right now are not such big soccer fans." With the World Cup final around the corner, we wondered: Does soccer interest really split along party lines? In Beinart’s original response to Coulter -- a June 30 article in The Atlantic -- he cites an article by Estately, a real estate search site, that aggregates seven different measures of soccer’s popularity in each of the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., including Facebook and Google interest, the number of professional teams and youth soccer clubs per capita. The top-seven "soccer-enthused" states, according to Estately, were all states President Barack Obama carried in 2012, including Maryland, New York, Washington and Massachusetts. Texas -- a particularly Hispanic state full of large urban centers -- and Utah -- America’s youngest population -- were the only states Mitt Romney carried in 2012 to crack the top 13, ranking eighth and 10th, respectively. Regardless where you place the cutoff for "the states where soccer is most popular," seven out of the top seven and 11 out of the top 13 voting Democrat gets close to Beinart’s assertion that the most soccer-mad states are "overwhelmingly blue states." Similarly, out of the 10 states Estately ranked least enthusiastic, only Maine went to Obama in 2012; Alabama, Idaho, Arkansas, and Wyoming rank among both the most conservative and least soccer-enthused. There’s no perfect index, though, when it comes to measuring popularity. Ryan Nickum, who wrote the Estately article, agreed with Beinart that, for the most part, soccer-mad states are blue, and soccer-indifferent states are red, but Nickum attributed this largely to the urban/rural divide. "A good portion of the criteria in our data related to professional soccer teams," Nickum said. And professional soccer teams "are located in large cities, so more rural states will naturally score lower," Nickum said. "Even so, (Beinart’s) argument that soccer fans are made up of liberals, young people, and immigrants is probably accurate. These are also the people who inhabit cities in greater numbers." That’s one of the reasons why Texas and Utah rank high in Estately’s rankings; Utah has a Major League Soccer team, and Texas has two. Only one state without an MLS or National Women’s Soccer League franchise cracks Estately’s top 18. Florida, where two MLS teams folded in 2002 for financial reasons, is the outlier. Although many states that have professional teams also rank highly in several other of Estately’s indexes, it’s a subjective question whether the presence of a professional team indicates popularity. Andrei Markovits -- co-author of 2001’s Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism -- was skeptical of Beinart’s conflation of the public opinion on soccer and America’s sense of superiority, but he corroborated the claim we’re checking here. "I in fact know that soccer has been much more popular in blue states -- meaning on the two coasts and in the affluent but liberal suburbs of metropolises like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles -- than in red states," Markovits said. He added that "this has -- tellingly -- changed during this World Cup where the watching of games has been huge across the land, pretty evenly distributed across red and blue states." "But the World Cup and soccer are two different things," said Markovits. "The World Cup has become Olympianized in the United States, meaning that soccer becomes huge every four years." The World Cup’s increase in popularity may be evenly spread between blue and red states, but, four years ago, overall viewership numbers weren’t. According to the Wall Street Journal, 11 percent of self-described liberals said they watched the 2010 World Cup, compared to 6 percent for conservatives. And even putting aside the World Cup and the presence of professional teams, the percentage of youth playing in soccer leagues is much higher in blue states than red. Seventeen of the 20 states with the highest percentage of youth soccer participation voted for Obama in 2010, and 16 of the 20 states with the lowest percentage of youth soccer participation voted for Romney, the Wall Street Journal found, citing private research by Experian Marketing Services. Our ruling On CNN, Beinart said, "if you look at the states where soccer is most popular, they’re overwhelmingly blue states, and the states where soccer is least popular are red states." Beinart seems to have had in mind a study by real estate website Estately. A variety of their metrics -- youth soccer participation, the presence of professional teams, and online interest -- strongly suggest that states where soccer is more popular were more likely to vote for Obama than Romney in 2012, and visa versa. Estately’s metrics, though, do skew toward larger urban centers that can support MLS franchises, and it’s a legitimate question how best to measure popularity. Experts may disagree on the reasons why liberal states tend to be more soccer-mad than conservative states, but Beinart’s claim accurately represents his source material. With the caveat in mind that measuring popularity is difficult, we rate Beinart’s claim Mostly True.

Peter Beinart

2014-07-10T14:52:43

2014-07-06

['None']

snes-02129

A new tattoo ink changes color depending on a person's glucose levels, meaning people with diabetes can use it to check their blood sugar levels.

mostly true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/diabetes-tattoo/

Science

Dan MacGuill

Does a New Tattoo Ink Allow People With Diabetes to Monitor Their Blood Sugar Levels?

28 June 2017

['None']

pomt-01396

Says Charlie Crist "is embroiled in a fraud case for steering taxpayer money to a de facto Ponzi scheme."

false

/florida/statements/2014/oct/13/republican-party-florida/republican-party-attacks-charlie-crist-digital-dom/

Gov. Rick Scott and his opponent Charlie Crist are having a heyday accusing each other of being corrupt. Crist and the Democrats have repeatedly attacked Scott for the $1.7 billion Medicare fraud fine against Columbia/HCA, a health care company headed by Scott before he stepped down in 1997 amid the federal investigation. Scott and the Republicans have attacked Crist for his friendship with a past campaign donor, Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Rothstein, who went to prison for a $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme in 2011. Crist was not implicated in the Ponzi scheme. A new TV ad by the Republican Party of Florida reminds voters about Crist’s Rothstein connection and then makes this claim: "And now Crist is embroiled in a fraud case for steering taxpayer money to a de facto Ponzi scheme," says the narrator. The text on the screen then states: "Florida lawsuit calls Digital Domain ‘de facto Ponzi scheme,’" citing a July 2014 article in the South Florida Business Journal. Digital Domain is a special effects movie company that took $20 million in state money under then-Gov. Crist before it went bankrupt in 2012. The state did file a lawsuit that called the botched deal a "de facto Ponzi scheme," but the ad omits crucial context about that lawsuit: It was filed recently by attorney William Scherer, a Scott supporter and frequent donor to GOP candidates. Crist’s campaign lawyer, Mark Herron, sent a letter to TV stations calling the ad "false" and urging them not to air it. We decided to fact-check Crist’s role in the Digital Domain deal and whether he was "embroiled in a fraud case for steering taxpayer money to a de facto Ponzi scheme." Digital Domain lawsuit Digital Domain California, created by director James Cameron, animated the scenes in Titanic and the Transformers movies. Despite its creative success, the company had debt problems. (For a thorough analysis of the Digital Domain fiasco, read this Palm Beach Post investigation.) Digital Domain Florida was formed in 2009 with hopes that it would get money here to settle debt from its California company. But that strategy wasn’t known to state officials at the time. After Enterprise Florida rejected a request for Digital Domain to get $20 million, the company sought another avenue. State Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, inserted a budget amendment that included the $20 million. Crist signed off on the budget in June 2009. But in September 2012, the Port St. Lucie company announced it was closing its Florida operations, filing for bankruptcy and laying off more than 300 employees. The state hired Scherer to go after Digital Domain, and Scherer filed his lawsuit in the 19th Judicial Circuit in Port St. Lucie on July 22, 2014. The suit names Digital Domain executives and entities involved with the company as co-defendants, as well as Ambler, who was given a position on Digital Domain’s board in 2011 after he left the Legislature. Ambler’s son also got a job with the company. The lawsuit doesn’t name Crist as a defendant. However, Scherer’s lawsuit repeatedly points the finger at Crist and casts him as a key politician responsible for the state’s end of the deal. In fact, the lawsuit mentions Crist by name 35 times. The lawsuit portrays Crist as being wooed by Digital Domain executives starting years before the company got the state money. Scherer’s account of Crist starts in 2007 when an entrepreneur involved in Digital Domain, Sean Heyniger, invited Crist to a party in order to lobby Crist to give the company state money. Heyniger’s ex-wife, Kelly Heyniger, had been dating Crist at the time. The lawsuit says that Crist went to California to check out the project. A different picture emerges in the state inspector general’s report ordered by Scott after the company collapsed. That report says that no laws or rules were broken by state officials, though it generally raises concerns about the process for companies to get state incentive money. The report shows how several politicians and state officials -- not only Crist -- played a role in Digital Domain walking away with $20 million. It portrays Crist as making sure legislative leaders were involved by sending a letter to Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul asking for them to notify them of the funding before he approved it. (The report also stated that a lack of documentation and conflicting information hampered the ability of the inspector general to make a complete determination. Crist didn’t return a message by investigators.) So Crist did play a significant role in the company getting state money -- but he wasn’t the only political player who made that happen. The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times wrote that the report showed that "several legislative power players said ‘Yes’ to a deal that later cost taxpayers dearly." That included Crist, Ambler, Crist’s economic development director Dale Brill and legislative power brokers, including then state Rep. David Rivera, who chaired the state’s legislative budget commission where the project was discussed before it received state money. Crist told the Palm Beach Post in 2013 that he signed off on the $20 million grant because he thought Digital Domain represented a promising opportunity for the state. "I was really supportive of trying to develop the film industry," Crist said. Was it a ‘de facto Ponzi scheme’? In the lawsuit, Scherer wrote, "Digital Domain California was a de facto Ponzi scheme. It was a serial borrower which constantly replaced old debt with new debt to keep the enterprise going." Digital Domain now faces allegations of fraud in a civil suit, but was it a ‘de facto Ponzi scheme,’ as the ad suggests? We interviewed Andrew Levi, a former federal prosecutor who prosecuted Ponzi schemers in South Florida and is now in private practice. "It definitely is not a classic Ponzi scheme," Levi said. "It's more of a debt scheme." In a classic Ponzi scheme, a business -- which may or may not include a legitimate practice -- solicits money from investors with promises of high returns. When the business can’t deliver on the returns, it seeks money from a second group of investors to pay off the first group. The scheme ultimately implodes when it can’t continue to pay off investors. According to Scherer’s lawsuit, Digital Domain California started up Digital Domain Florida with the intention of soliciting money and covering their debt from the California company. "It doesn’t mean that it’s not a fraud of some kind if the allegations are true, but it doesn’t fit into the common classic definition of a Ponzi scheme," Levi said. "It’s really a stretch to apply the term ‘Ponzi scheme.’ " A campaign spokesman for Crist, Brendan Gilfillan, described Digital Domain as a "business failure, not a crime, and Rick Scott’s own administration has said Gov. Crist did nothing wrong." Crist isn’t alone in handing out state money in exchange for jobs that failed to materialize. A Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times investigation found that under Scott the state gave $266 million in tax breaks and other incentives in return for 45,258 new jobs, but only 5 percent of the jobs materialized. Our ruling The Republicans’ ad said, "Crist is embroiled in a fraud case for steering taxpayer money to a de facto Ponzi scheme," referring to Digital Domain getting $20 million in state incentives and then going belly up. But a state report, ordered by Scott, concluded there were no violations of law or rules by Crist or any other politician. The report also showed Crist was one of many political players who helped the company get the state money. A civil court could find that Digital Domain committed fraud. However, the company’s plan to pay off its debt in another state by getting money from Florida doesn’t meet the definition of a classic Ponzi scheme. Also, while Crist is mentioned in the court filing, he's not a defendant in the case. We rate this claim False.

Republican Party of Florida

2014-10-13T14:53:59

2014-10-08

['Charlie_Crist']

snes-05633

Medicare regulations require that doctors ask patients whether they own guns.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/doctor-know/

Guns

David Mikkelson

Medicare and Guns

26 March 2012

['None']

snes-06041

A Huntley and Palmers biscuit tin included risqué images on its lid.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cookie-nookie/

Business

David Mikkelson

Risqué Images on Biscuit Tin

17 January 2009

['None']

snes-06334

KISS bassist Gene Simmons had a cow's tongue grafted onto his own.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gene-simmons-cow-tongue/

Entertainment

David Mikkelson

Did Gene Simmons Have a Cow’s Tongue Grafted Onto His Own?

10 March 2002

['None']

pomt-02394

The economic "turnaround started at the end of my term."

half-true

/florida/statements/2014/mar/11/charlie-crist/charlie-crist-says-economic-turnaround-started-end/

The Republican Party has tried to boil down the comparison between Florida Gov. Rick Scott and his rival, former Gov. Charlie Crist, with four words: "Crist crash, Scott surge." Crist -- a Republican-turned-independent while serving as governor from January 2007 to January 2011, was indeed in office during the economic downturn. His successor, Scott, has been in office during the recovery. Crist, now a Democrat, wants his old job back -- and he argues that the economic recovery actually started on his watch, not Scott’s. He made that argument in a March 9, 2014, interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley: Crowley: "Can I get you in a yes or no to get you to tell me whether you think the economy is better than it was when the governor (Scott) took office?" Crist: "I think it is, yes. You can. And I'm always comfortable telling the truth but that turnaround started at the end of my term. And one of the reasons is I accepted the stimulus money, saved thousands of teachers’ jobs, law enforcement officers, firefighters, (is that) it was the right thing to do. … President Obama said, I want to help you, and I said yes as a Republican to a Democratic president. Not because it was political, but because it was right." We have previously fact-checked Crist’s claims about the stimulus. But PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter revs up when we hear candidates make a point of saying they’re "telling the truth." Here we will fact-check Crist’s claim that the economic turnaround started at the end of his term. The economy at the end of Crist’s tenure On CNN, Crist didn’t give a specific time period for the end of his term, but we focused on data during his final year in office -- 2010. (He officially left office in January 2011.) We contrasted that with Scott’s first year in office -- 2011. Here are some statistics that will shed light on the Florida economy during that period. The unemployment rate: In January 2010, the unemployment rate in Florida was 11.4 percent. During that year, it started to improve gradually, and by January 2011 it had dropped to 10.9 percent. Then, in 2011 under Scott, the unemployment rate continued to improve, dropping below double digits in October. By December, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, a drop of 1.4 percentage points. This measure provides Crist with some modest support: The unemployment rate did decrease in his final year -- though a decrease of 0.5 points is pretty small. Per capita real GDP: Per capita real GDP measures the inflation-adjusted economic activity per person in Florida. In 2009-2010, per capita real GDP dropped by 0.74 percent. In 2010-11, it continued to drop but by less: 0.23 percent, before climbing in 2011-12 to 1.05. By this measure, Crist is wrong because per capita real GDP continued to drop during his tenure, even though it was a smaller drop than earlier in the recession. Former state Sen. Steve Geller, an informal adviser to Crist’s campaign, told PolitiFact Florida in an email that per capita GDP had "turned around" because the decline had slowed down near the end of his term. However, we'll note that even though the decreases in GDP were smaller near the end of Crist's term, GDP was still shrinking -- not what we'd consider a turnaround. Per capita personal income: Per capita personal income refers to how much income was earned per person in the state. In 2009-2010, per capita personal income grew by 3.09 percent -- a turnaround compared to drops the two previous years. It continued to grow in 2011, by 3.64 percent. This measure gives Crist support, since per capita income growth turned from negative to positive during 2009-10. Payroll employment per month: By this measure, employment rose from about 7,143,900 jobs in January 2010 to 7,230,300 in January 2011. That’s a 1.20 percent increase -- but it came during a period when population in the state grew by 1.25 percent. Since employment growth did not keep pace with population growth, this is not a very strong piece of evidence for Crist. Industrial production: Industrial production is an index that measures the value of manufacturing output, compared to a "base" rate of 100. Under Crist, industrial production rose from 89.94 in January 2010 to 94.29 in January 2011. This measure is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for Crist’s claim. Economists we interviewed noted several caveats about the data: the GDP and personal income data starts mid-year, and personal income includes components such as dividends, which relate to the broader financial markets rather than state policies. Proprietary quarterly estimates by Moody’s also show mixed evidence for Crist’s argument. They show that real income per capita bottomed out in the fourth quarter of 2009 and rose throughout 2010. That’s good for Crist’s argument. By contrast, real GDP per capita, on the other hand, did not begin to recover by the end of Crist’s term. Chris Lafakis, a senior economist at Moody’s, said the evidence gives Crist a leg to stand on. "Taking the preponderance of data into consideration, I would agree with Crist’s claim that the economy started to recover while he was in office," Lafakis told PolitiFact Florida. But Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida, said Florida’s economy in 2010 showed "a very weak pulse. The recovery strengthened slightly in 2011, but we were still limping forward." How much credit does Crist deserve? Another concern with Crist’s claim is whether he has a basis for crediting his own policies for a turnaround. Several economists told us that it is difficult to pinpoint much blame or credit on a governor for shifts in the state’s economy that were reflected in the national economy. While the national recovery officially started in June 2009, they said, Florida's recovery did not begin until some time in 2010, and the initial recovery was slow. "If he is taking credit for the recovery, does he also bear responsibility for the recession? I am not sure you can simultaneously take credit for the good things and eschew any responsibility for the bad," Snaith said. "The reality is that Florida's economic performance is a joint function of global and national factors influenced by national and state economic policies. It is difficult to try and deconstruct and then quantify what role each of these factors played in Florida's economy. But I don't suppose that will stop politicians from trying to do so." The timing of Florida’s recovery had a lot to do with the national recovery as well as a comeback in certain sectors such as tourism, said David Denslow, an economist with the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. However, Denslow did offer Crist "some credit, most importantly for trying to hold the line on government jobs, and accepting federal stimulus funds," Denslow said. While Crist’s decision to accept stimulus funds during the worst part of the recession mitigated the damage, "Scott’s decision to cancel the high-speed rail line from Tampa to Orlando cost the state thousands of jobs," Lafakis said. Mark Vitner, an analyst at Wells Fargo, said though the unemployment rate began to fall under Crist, "it was still extremely high, the recession began on his watch, and Florida’s economy hit rock bottom on his watch." It takes a while to start moving a big state such as Florida in a different direction, Geller said. "There is nothing magical about the inauguration date," Geller told PolitiFact Florida in an email. "Things that Charlie started continued to happen through the end of 2011. I believe that Charlie should get at least part of the credit for the 2011-2012 increase." Though much of the state’s economy is based on national trends, there are a few things governors can do to help the economy -- as Crist did by accepting the stimulus funds, Geller said. Likewise there are other factors a governor can’t control such as the oil spill in April 2010. Our ruling Crist said that the economic "turnaround started at the end of my term." During Crist’s last year in office, Florida’s economy experienced notable gains in personal income and industrial production, and more marginal improvements in the unemployment rate and in payroll employment. But GDP didn’t grow again until Scott took office. Economists say Crist deserves some credit for the economic turnaround because he accepted federal stimulus dollars, but they add that any state is inevitably buffeted by national and international trends far beyond their control. On balance, the evidence for an economic turnaround on Crist’s watch -- and for a significant role by him in a turnaround -- are mixed. So we rate his claim Half True.

Charlie Crist

2014-03-11T15:57:54

2014-03-09

['None']

goop-01469

Catherine Zeta-Jones Furious About Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone Reunion?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/catherine-zeta-jones-michael-douglas-sharon-stone-reunion/

Andrew Shuster

Catherine Zeta-Jones Furious About Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone Reunion?

2:58 pm, March 1, 2018

['None']

pomt-10248

McCain voted 19 times against a minimum-wage increase.

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug/28/joe-biden/the-democrats-counted-correctly/

Team Obama has been trolling through John McCain's voting record in the Senate, and this nugget landed in vice presidential candidate Joe Biden's Aug. 27, 2008, convention speech: "He voted 19 times against the minimum wage for people who are struggling just to make it to the next day." (We'll give Biden a pass for skipping the word "raising," which was in his prepared remarks.) We combed through McCain's minimum wage votes and found that not all of 19 in opposition to increases were pure votes on the minimum wage, and some were procedural, as is the Senate's way. But McCain has voted repeatedly, 19 times, against Democratic attempts to raise the minimum wage. Most recently, McCain voted against a spending bill in March 2007 that included the wage hike. Earlier that year, he voted against stopping debate on a stand-alone wage-hike bill, which in Senate parlance is equivalent to voting no. Let's put an important caveat on this issue, however. McCain has often voted for minimum-wage increases. In 2007, he voted for passage of a bill that would have raised the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25, after it was packaged with business tax breaks designed to soften the blow of the wage increase. And a few months later, he voted for the final version of the bill that made that wage hike into law. It was packaged in a large spending bill with war funding that did not include a goal for withdrawing troops from Iraq, unlike the earlier bill that he voted against. To show how confusing Senate votes can get, Barack Obama voted against the final spending bill and wage hike because of the Iraq policy. Biden was one of 37 Democrats to vote for the bill. McCain has also voted for Republican-sponsored minimum-wage proposals that would have meant smaller increases than what the Democrats wanted. For instance, on June 21, 2006, he voted against an amendment from Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy that would eventually have raised the minimum wage to $7.25. But on the same day, McCain voted for an amendment from Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi that would have raised the wage to $6.25. That sort of conflicting, confusing pile of votes is just the nature of the Senate. McCain has said he opposes Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage and index it for inflation, telling a business group in June that it and other Obama proposals are "a sure way to add to your costs and to slow the creation of new jobs." Let's look at the big picture. Generally, on minimum-wage issues, McCain has been in the middle of the Senate Republicans. He's not one of the few GOP members who regularly vote for Democratic proposals. But he also wasn't one of the three conservatives who voted against the 2007 wage hike, even after the tax breaks were added. Biden, however, never made any claim about McCain's votes for minimum-wage bills or his overall record. All he said was that McCain cast 19 votes against raising the minimum wage, and that's True.

Joe Biden

2008-08-28T00:00:00

2008-08-27

['None']

pomt-08761

The seed of Muslim is passed through the father.

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/26/franklin-graham/graham-said-seed-islam-passes-through-father-obama/

President Barack Obama has declared himself a Christian. He has worshipped in Christian churches, prayed with Christian ministers, and recounted how he knelt beneath a cross and felt God's spirit. And yet, a surprising number of Americans keep telling pollsters they believe he's a Muslim. The Pew Research Center last week reported that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. A Time magazine poll also released last week found even more -- 24 percent - said he was a Muslim. (Read our longer report on this issue.) The evangelical minister Franklin Graham said on CNN that it's because of Obama's background. "He was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim; the seed of Muslim is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim; his father gave him an Islamic name," Graham said, adding later in the interview, "you can be born a Muslim. You can be born a Jew. But you can't be born a Christian." Graham added, however, that he did consider Obama to be a Christian today: "Now, it's obvious that the president has renounced the Prophet Mohammed and he has renounced Islam and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That's what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe the president is what he has said." We wanted to check Graham's statement that "the seed of Muslim is passed through the father." But first, we should note Graham is right that Obama has Muslim ancestors. According to family accounts, Obama's paternal grandfather Onyango Obama was a Muslim. But it's not clear that his biological father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., ever practiced the religion. By all accounts, Obama's Kenyan father was an atheist more interested in economics and government than religion. And the senior Obama had little influence on the future president because he left his American wife, Ann Dunham, shortly after Obama's birth in 1961. Dunham married again, to Lolo Soetero, an Indonesian man who was Muslim, and the family moved to Indonesia when Obama was 6 years old, where he attended a Muslim public school and a Catholic school at different times. But Soetero was not particularly devout, according to his daughter and Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetero-Ng. She told biographer David Remnick that Soetero "never went to prayer services except for big communal events." Obama described his religious upbringing this way: "My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I." But when we looked into Graham's statement that "the seed of Muslim is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother," we found a good bit of evidence to the contrary. We consulted several reference books on the Islamic religion, interviewed academic experts and consulted with Islamic groups. None of the sources we checked endorsed Graham's view as completely accurate. It's true that in Muslim cultures, the children of Muslims are generally assumed to be Muslim themselves, according to our research. But all of the sources we looked at described the Islamic faith as not belonging to any particular race, ethnicity or nation. Most of the sources said that whether one truly is a Muslim or not depends on the belief in Muslim teaching and the following of its practices, not whether one is born into the faith. Blain Auer, an assistant professor of Islamic studies at Western Michigan University, said the most prominent requirement is for believers to recite the shahadah, a statement of faith that affirms "I witness that there is no god but God and Mohammed is his Messenger." "Franklin Graham's statement is incorrect. Islam is an act of faith, not a genetic disposition," Auer said via e-mail. Representatives of Muslim groups in the United States also said Graham's description was inaccurate. "It's not something one inherits automatically or biologically. What is important is the self-identification, (regardless of the) background they may have been born into," said Sayyid M. Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America. Another professor of Islamic studies, Frederick Colby, agreed that people are generally considered Muslim if they affirm that by reciting the shahadah. But it can get complicated, he added. "Defining religious membership is notoriously difficult," Colby said via e-mail. "Does it involve merely what the person believes? Is it what they do (e.g. ritual and practice)? Is it being a member of a particular organization? Many contemporary scholars of religion think that each of these elements plays a role in defining 'religion.'" Indeed, the reference book Islam: A Very Short Introduction, partly supported Graham's contention but it discusses just such complications. It states that the primary definition of a Muslim is someone who surrenders himself or herself to the will of God. "'Islam' in Arabic is a verbal noun, meaning self-surrender to God as revealed through the message and life of his Prophet, Mohammed," writes author Malise Ruthven. A secondary definition is "one born to a Muslim father who takes on his or her parent's confessional identity without necessarily subscribing to the beliefs and practices of the faith, just as a Jew may define him- or herself as 'Jewish' without observing the Halacha." (The Halacha is Jewish religious law.) But this secondary definition "is very far from being uncontested," Ruthven writes, adding, "Generally there is little consistency in the way such labels are applied." And even this definition is problematic since President Obama's father did not identify as a Muslim when Obama was born, said Ken Garden, a professor of religion at Tufts University who studies Islam. "If Obama's father became an atheist, then he would not have been a Muslim at the time of Obama's birth, so Obama would not have been, even technically, a Muslim," said Garden. Garden added that he was troubled that people would consider being a Muslim to be slanderous. "I think that for Graham to muse aloud about him maybe being a Muslim or not throws gasoline on that fire," he said. To be clear, we're fact-checking what Graham said, not whether any religion is any better or worse than another. In looking at most of the scholarly and objective descriptions of the Islamic faith, we found little to support Graham's statement that "the seed of Muslim is passed through the father," absent belief in the tenets of the religion. In fact, the vast majority of sources said that religious faith was based on the affirmation of Islamic beliefs. But we found a secondary definition that said people born to a Muslim father and identify as cultural Muslims could be considered Islamic, even if they don't have Islamic beliefs, though that was considered controversial. So we rate Graham's 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.

Franklin Graham

2010-08-26T19:10:06

2010-08-19

['None']

pomt-06174

Says that according to one economist, $1 of unemployment benefits boosts the economy by $1.61.

mostly false

/texas/statements/2011/dec/15/lloyd-doggett/doggett-says-1-extended-unemployment-benefits-will/

Urging Congress to act quickly, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett recently laid out his case for renewing "emergency" extended unemployment insurance for another year. In a Dec. 8, 2011, opinion piece on the Huffington Post website, the Austin Democrat quoted a little "Workin’ Man" from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and then listed bold-faced "Facts" including, "Fact: One economist estimates that for every $1 we spent on unemployment insurance benefits, we get $1.61 in economic activity back." That rang a bell. We were already checking a nearly identical statement on a Web page posted by the Democrats of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, and we’d found that another PolitiFact writer checked a similar claim in 2010. Were they all the same? Basically, yes, Doggett spokeswoman Sarah Dohl told us: All three statements relied on a single estimate from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. The factoid was used, then as now, as an argument for extending the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, created in 2008 and originally set to expire in a year. It’s been extended eight times, and the current law providing support for up to 99 weeks expires Jan. 3, 2012. If it isn’t extended, most people who lose their jobs after that will get a maximum 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits. During a July 2010 Congressional standoff over renewing the benefits, PolitiFact rated U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s version of the statement Half True. She got Zandi’s number about right, PolitiFact observed, but other experts disputed the economist’s results. Dohl told us the $1.61 estimate came from Zandi’s testimony to the House budget committee on July 1, 2010. Next, we checked with Zandi to see if his $1.61 number still held. He told us that he updates such numbers every quarter and that his most recent figure, for the second quarter of 2011, is $1.55. Why the decrease? Zandi said new data are confirming suspicions that extending unemployment benefits means some workers just stay unemployed longer. "If they are not working, then less is produced and the economy is smaller," he said. This "disincentive" effect includes some fraud, Zandi pointed out. But it isn’t always dishonest -- sometimes the worker uses the time to find a better job, and if that worker is an unemployed rocket scientist who could earn $125,000 a year, it’s much better for the economy if he or she is earning and spending that cash instead of living on the minimum wage. We also asked Zandi how he generates such estimates in the first place. How might handing $1 to an unemployed worker make the nation’s gross domestic product eventually increase by $1.55? The basic idea is that Uncle Sam hands an unemployed person $1, and that person buys, perhaps, groceries with it; the grocery owner in turn will need to order more vegetables, and the dollar continues to change hands, losing a few cents in some transactions, perhaps gaining in others. Some value leaches away into transaction costs, taxes or savings; but the dollar can generate growth, too -- for example, if the grocery store owner has to hire more staff. Zandi said he uses a complex econometric model with hundreds of equations to determine whether a dollar spent on unemployment compensation drives the GDP up or down and how much. Essentially, he told us, you take a certain period of time, figure out how much was spent on unemployment insurance and how much GDP went up, and try to hold all the other factors equal. He also produces estimates on how much bang for the buck the U.S. government gets from many other spending options. That’s part of what he was telling the House committee: which policy options he believes can boost the economy most. A few examples from Zandi’s Aug. 26, 2011 report on the economy: • Spending $1 on unemployment insurance boosts GDP by $1.55. • Cutting corporate tax rates $1 will boost GDP by 32 cents. • Cutting taxes $1 across the board will boost GDP by 98 cents. • Spending $1 to increase food stamps temporarily will boost GDP by $1.71. In its most ridiculously oversimplified form, the equation to get that first number could be written as $1 times X equals $1.55. "X" is the multiplier -- and if the multiplier is larger than 1, your money goes up. If the multiplier is less than 1, your money goes down. So in this chart, Zandi’s stating that the multiplier for corporate tax rate cuts was 0.32; the multiplier for across-the-board tax cuts was 0.98; and the multiplier for increasing food stamps was 1.71. Doggett’s spokeswoman had also sent us a study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor and others, that used Moody’s models (and some of Zandi’s work) to conclude that during the recession that began in 2008, every dollar spent on unemployment insurance boosted the gross domestic product $2. Different results are generated by different time periods, different equations and different data sets, as with the Labor study, but Zandi said the main thing to note here is that each multiplier is not a fixed point. "The multipliers depend on the state of the economy. If the economy is operating full-out, then the multiplier will be low and could even be negative. If the economy is very weak, then the multiplier will be large," he told us. But herein lies the foundation for one objection to Zandi’s models: Some economists believe it’s not realistic to predict any GDP increase. Harvard economist Robert Barro is prominent among them, writing Aug. 24, 2011 in the Wall Street Journal that "this idea — that one can magically get back more than one puts in — conflicts with what I will call ‘regular economics.’" So there’s one fundamental objection. PolitiFact reported more concerns last year, including: • An economist from the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute cited a survey of 10 scholars’ research -- using different methods -- indicating that $1 spent in tax cuts might increase GDP, but $1 in increased government spending would decrease GDP. That is, for tax cuts the multiplier is above 1, but for government spending the multiplier is below 1. • Some researchers say unemployment spending will drag the economy down long-term, because the government will eventually have to raise taxes in order to keep paying out. • Scholars from the conservative Heritage Foundation said it’s invalid to assume the unemployed person will rush out and spend the whole dollar. Zandi agreed that if the unemployment benefits are "financed by a larger deficit, then it will result in weaker long-term growth." But, he said, if it "helps avoid a more severe downturn in the economy now, then it could very well be worth the long-term cost." As to spending the whole dollar, Zandi said his view remains that "most unemployed workers will spend their unemployment insurance very soon after they receive it." If you give a dollar to Bill Gates, he said, the billionaire might not spend it at once, but "many people are living paycheck to paycheck, not thinking 10 years down the road." So, clearly, economists diverge on whether, and how much, spending on unemployment benefits might boost the economy. For more perspective, PolitiFact looked at estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In January 2010, the CBO estimated a dollar in unemployment aid would increase GDP between $0.70 to $1.90 -- so Shaheen’s $1.60 was at the high end, but still in the ballpark. A Nov. 15, 2011, CBO update says that a dollar in unemployment aid would increase the GDP between $0.40 to $1.90. Zandi’s latest estimate of a $1.55 increase in GDP falls toward the high end of that range. But that’s not the amount Doggett cited. He’s repeating $1.61, which makes the outcome look rosier than it might really be -- even setting aside other economists’ concerns with making such a projection. Our ruling Doggett cites an economist’s projection that the country gets a 61 percent return on each additional dollar in unemployment aid. But his "fact" overlooks another fact: Economists are divided over whether unemployment aid increases GDP. Also, Doggett’s statement specifies a figure from mid-2010 that’s been out of date for about a year. A failure to update it is like failing to update the national employment rates. The only certain fact here is that an economist did once estimate $1.61. Our sense is you can’t take Doggett’s statement to the bank. We rate it Mostly False.

Lloyd Doggett

2011-12-15T06:00:00

2011-12-08

['None']

pomt-03365

Says if Texas abortion measure passes, "someone living in El Paso would have to drive 550 miles each way to San Antonio for something as simple as cervical cancer screening."

pants on fire!

/texas/statements/2013/jul/12/gilberto-hinojosa/gilberto-hinojosa-texas-abortion-cancer/

The Texas Democratic Party sent out an email blast July 3, 2013, seeking signatures on a petition calling (ultimately without success) for hearings to be held around the state on a legislative measure tightening restrictions on abortion in Texas. Signed by party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, the letter said, "If this bill passes, someone living in El Paso would have to drive 550 miles each way to San Antonio for something as simple as cervical cancer screening at a clinic." House Bill 2, which a House committee approved the day Hinojosa’s email went out and was awaiting Senate consideration as we posted this article, would ban most abortions after 20 weeks and toughen standards for abortion clinics. Opponents have said a provision that clinics must upgrade to the standards of ambulatory surgical centers could lead 36 of 42 clinics that perform most Texas abortions to shut down. When we contacted the Democratic Party about Hinojosa’s claim, spokeswoman Tanene Allison told us by email that although the chairman’s San Antonio reference could be read as saying no El Paso facility would continue to provide such services, it was not intended that way. Hinojosa "does recognize that there may be other clinics open for these screenings in El Paso," Allison said. "Our intention was to say that if you go to the clinics that are covered under HB2, you would have to drive 550 miles to get some of the services that you normally get locally," Allison said. "We certainly could have been clearer and will be in future emails." Still, we checked on conditions in El Paso for ourselves. El Paso, a city with 672,538 residents as of 2012, is at Texas’ western edge, but it’s not isolated. It’s across the Rio Grande from the more than 1 million residents of Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, and inside the U.S., it’s closer to Albuquerque, N.M. (population 555,417) and the nation’s sixth-largest city (Phoenix, population 1.5 million) than it is to San Antonio. Two El Paso clinics could shutter if the measure becomes law, according to a July 10, 2013, El Paso Times news story. The clinics appear on a Department of State Health Services list of abortion facilities we received by email June 25, 2013. Reproductive Services of El Paso, near downtown, provides cancer screenings and other services, while Hill Top Women’s Reproductive Clinic solely offers abortions and pregnancy tests, according to the clinics’ websites. We called both clinics, but did not hear back. So, if Reproductive Services were to shut down, would El Paso women have to drive 550 miles to get a test for cervical cancer? "That’s unbelievable. That’s not possible. I don’t even know where to start," said Adriana Valdes, co-director of outreach and case management at the Cancer and Chronic Disease Consortium, which manages El Paso clinics’ participation in the state’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program. "There are a lot of organizations and institutions here that can provide access to those services," Valdes told us by phone. Lawmakers "need to put all the facts together" before making decisions that could affect funding for women’s health "coming into needy communities like ours," she said. "Many towns and hospitals are committing their monies to diagnostic screenings and diagnostic services and none of them are providing abortion services." Valdes said she was not aware of the two clinics listed as abortion facilities, but said that any time a facility closes, it has a big impact on the women in the area who rely on its services. "We have central locations," she said. "Those are not long distances." Access to transportation is a concern, she said, but the biggest issue can be making sure women know the services are available, especially with patients who get used to going to a single facility for years and don’t know of other options. Education and advice for such women is a main function of her organization, which subcontracts with 12 to 14 clinics and some private health care providers to help women get breast and cervical cancer screenings at low or no cost, Valdes said, and gives ongoing assistance to women diagnosed with cancer. The clinics do not provide abortions, she said, and so would not be directly affected by the legislation, although it could mean more women would seek their "already overwhelmed" services. Access to cervical cancer screenings in El Paso decreased when Planned Parenthood clinics in El Paso closed, we learned from Valdes and Theresa Byrd, a professor at Texas Tech University’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso. According to the 2013 El Paso Times news story and another from June 27, 2009, all six Planned Parenthood clinics in El Paso closed in 2009 because of financial problems. Byrd, who helped develop a intervention program being tested now in El Paso and other cities to increase the prevalence of cervical cancer screenings among Mexican American women, told us that if the abortion measure became law, "the situation would stay about the same" in El Paso regarding cervical cancer screening. That is, such tests would still be available. Byrd said, "In El Paso, is it easy to get service? No. You might have to wait, and it’s probably not as easy as it would be in other communities" such as Houston. "But can you get them? Yes." For women who have health insurance, Byrd said, the path starts with a visit to the obstetrician/gynecologist or family doctor. "So many women in our community are uninsured that many of them use our federally qualified health centers," she said, naming El Paso’s three major providers in the state program: Centro San Vicente, Project Vida and Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe. Three or more health fairs held each year in El Paso also offer screenings, Byrd said, and cervical cancer tests are available in Juárez as well. Among health care options in El Paso is University Medical Center, which according to an online fact sheet is the largest public hospital on the U.S./Mexico border. Spokesman Jethro Armijo told us by phone that the hospital has seven outpatient clinics offering women’s health care including cervical cancer screenings. The clinics do not offer abortions and are located throughout the county, he said. Our ruling Hinojosa said that if the abortion legislation passed, an El Paso resident would have to make a 550-mile trip to San Antonio for simple services like a cervical cancer screening. That’s not so; such services will continue to be available in El Paso, local experts say. This statement misses the mark so badly, it’s ridiculous. Pants on Fire! UMC-El Paso women’s health clinics Click here for addresses and contact information for the University Medical Center of El Paso Hospital’s seven Women’s Health Centers. Clinics in state Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program This state program has three main providers in El Paso -- Centro San Vicente, Project Vida and Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe -- and several satellite clinics. Click here to map such clinics across Texas. El Paso-area clinics providing health services free or at reduced cost for eligible women through the Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program.

Gilberto Hinojosa

2013-07-12T12:10:59

2013-07-03

['San_Antonio', 'El_Paso,_Texas', 'Texas']

snes-04581

The Department of Homeland Security is secretly moving and releasing crowds of undocumented people into the United States.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dhs-quietly-vanloads-border/

Crime

Brooke Binkowski

DHS Quietly Moving, Releasing ‘Vanloads’ of ‘Illegal Aliens’ Away from Border

20 June 2016

['United_States']

pomt-03732

We have the fewest people employed in this country since 1979.

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/12/cathy-mcmorris-rodgers/rep-cathy-mcmorris-rodgers-says-fewer-now-working-/

During an interview with NPR, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., a member of the House Republican leadership, expressed concern about the state of working America. "We have the fewest people employed in this country since 1979," McMorris Rodgers told host Audie Cornish. "And the current path that the president has outlined ... is not getting people back to work. So it's going to take both parties engaging." It turns out that McMorris Rodgers is on the right track with her statistic, but she described it incorrectly. A look at the numbers According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 89.4 million Americans were working in March 1979, but by March 2013, that number had grown to 135.2 million. This number remains lower than the all-time high of 138.1 million in January 2008, which was around the time the most recent recession hit. But the number of employees nationally is slowly climbing back to that peak. McMorris, however, meant to refer to a different BLS number: the labor force participation rate. This is the percentage of the U.S. population who are considered to be "in the labor force." To qualify as being in the labor force, you have to either be working or actively looking for work. In March 2013, the labor force participation rate was 63.3 percent -- lower than in any month since May 1979. (A similar statistic known as the employment-to-population ratio has also fallen, though it’s at its lowest level since late 1983.) Riva B. Litman, a spokeswoman for the House Republican Conference, told PolitiFact that McMorris Rodgers phrased the statistic incorrectly and meant to refer to the labor force participation rate. "If we adjust for population growth, fewer Americans work than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president," Litman said. What does the statistic mean? Most economists agree that a decline in the labor force participation rate is worrisome. But it’s important to point out some nuances. "The trick is to determine how much of the drop represents the impact of a lagging economy, which is worrisome, and how much is due to non-worrisome factors, such as the aging of the adult population," said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. As more adults begin moving into retirement age, the percentage of Americans who work is bound to decline. And that’s been happening in a big way as the baby boomers age. Using federal data, Burtless has calculated that the percentage of the adult population over 55 has risen from 27 percent in 1999-2000 to 32 percent in the 2011-12. The new retirees are showing up in the data. Burtless has determined that the two employment ratios would have fallen in recent years just on the basis of aging, even if there had been no recession. But the age-related decline has been worsened by high unemployment rates during the recession. Most troubling, economists say, is the decline among the core working ages of 25 to 55. In addition, the tight job market has convinced more people to opt out of the labor market, perhaps by becoming students or stay-at-home parents. Burtless has estimated that half to two-thirds of the recent decline in the labor participation rate has been due to the aging of the population, depending on the time period you look at. In general, economists like to see more people working because it generally helps economic growth, said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist. But it’s also important to keep in mind that leaving the labor force can be a voluntary decision. "Perhaps people would prefer to have more time at home rather than more stuff," she said. Our ruling McMorris Rodgers said, "We have the fewest people employed in this country since 1979." That’s not correct -- far more people are working now than in 1979. But a different statistic that takes into account population growth, the participation rate, is indeed lower now than it’s been since 1979. It’s important to note that a significant portion of this decline comes from the aging of the baby boomers, rather than economic weakness. On balance, we rate her statement Half True.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

2013-04-12T16:23:14

2013-04-10

['None']

pomt-04824

Claims Joe Biden said "coal is more dangerous than terrorists."

mostly false

/ohio/statements/2012/aug/17/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-joe-biden-once-claimed-coal-was-m/

Ohio looms large in this year's presidential race, but Mitt Romney staged an Aug. 14 campaign rally in one of its smallest and poorest places, the village of Beallsville. Its population is about 400, the median household income is about $23,000, or roughly half the state average. It once gained fame for having the highest per-capita number of residents killed in the Vietnam War of any community in the country. Six men were killed, from its then-population of 475. Beallsville is also in the heart of southeastern Ohio's Appalachian coal country. With a group of miners serving as his backdrop, Romney accused President Obama of "waging war on coal" through his energy policies. "His vice president said coal is more dangerous than terrorists," Romney said. "Can you imagine that? This tells you precisely what he (Obama) actually feels and what he's done and his policies over the last three and a half years have put in place the very vision he had when he was running for office." Did Vice President Biden really compare coal to terrorism? PolitiFact Ohio was interested. Romney's campaign told us that the support for Romney's claim was s 2007 interview on HBO’s "Real Time With Bill Maher." The video clip has been making the rounds on the Internet for years. Maher asked Biden, who was then a candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination, what he thought "is more likely to contribute to the death of your average American: a terrorist strike or high-fructose corn syrup and air that has too much coal in it?" Biden responded: "Air that has too much coal in it, corn syrup next, then a terrorist attack, but -- that is not in any way to diminish the fact that a terrorist attack is real. It is not an existential threat to bringing down the country, but it does have the capacity, still, to kill thousands of people. But hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants and because of corn syrup." Biden was not volunteering a comparison between coal-fired pollution and terrorism, nor was he speculating about "danger." He was answering a direct question about likely causes of death. And, his comment about coal and air pollution was accurate. The American Lung Association issued a report last year, "Toxic Air," which documented the range of hazardous air pollutants emitted from coal-burning power plants. It called for the installation of cleanup technology as the most effective way to reduce them. "Coal-fired power plants produce electricity for the nation’s power grid, but they also produce more hazardous air emissions than any other industrial pollution sources," the report said. "Their emissions threaten the health of people who live near these plants, as well as those who live hundreds of miles away." The Lung Association report said, "Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year." A similar report with essentially the same conclusion was issued six months earlier for a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a national nonprofit research and advocacy organization dedicated to air quality and environmental issues. "Fine particle pollution from existing coal plants is expected to cause nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010," the analysis found. "Additional impacts include an estimated 9,700 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks per year." The comprehensive study was the third commissioned by the organization, which maintains that adding pollution control technologies to power plants "is not just good for public health; it is also good for the nation’s economy." Possibly because the latest study found that "coal plant emissions of key particle-forming pollutants like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) have declined significantly over the last several years," its estimate of 13,200 deaths "compares to an estimate of nearly 24,000 deaths per year from existing plants in the 2004 study." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that a proposed air-transport rule to curb sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide from coal-fired power plants would save 14,000 to 36,000 lives a year and help prevent 21,000 cases of bronchitis and 23,000 heart attacks. The lowest of those one-year estimates for the United States is larger than the 2011 worldwide total of deaths, 12,533, that the National Counterrorism Center attributes to terrorism, which U.S. law defines as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), 2,997 people died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. More people died in the 9/11 attacks than in all other U.S. terrorist attacks from 1970 to 2010. Since the 9/11 attacks and through 2010, the most recent year with verified statistics in the GTD, "the total number of individuals killed in attacks in the U.S. is 32," the consortium told us. "Twenty-eight of the 32 were U.S. citizens. The nationalities of the others is unknown. "There were no fatalities (from) 2003 to 2007," the year in which Biden gave his comment. (High-fructose corn syrup is not relevant here. It was not part of Romney's statement, and it was grouped with air pollution as a single unit by the wording of Maher's question, "terrorist strike or high-fructose corn syrup and air.") What does this stack up to? There is an element of truth in Romney's statement. Biden did say -- accurately -- that coal-fired air pollution is more likely to contribute to the death of an average American than is terrorism. But Romney portrayed Biden’s remark as part of "waging war on coal." Rather, PolitiFact found that Biden previously has voiced support for "clean coal," calling for "carbon capture and sequestration technologies that will allow us to use coal cleanly" in the energy plan he released during his presidential campaign in 2007. "Clean coal" is not a type of coal; the phrase refers to a number of technologies, some in use and others early in the development stage, which would allow the burning of coal for energy without the harmful pollution that coal-fired power plants currently emit. Biden's statement was made in response to a question and he was addressing health impacts of coal-fired air pollution -- not making a statement about coal or coal energy. He was not making a comparison between terrorism and coal. Yet, Romney’s comment implies that was the case and portrays Biden’s comment was as part of an administration policy against the coal industry. Those are critical facts that Romney’s claim ignores would give the listener a different impression. On the Truth-O-Meter, that makes it Mostly False.

Mitt Romney

2012-08-17T06:00:00

2012-08-14

['Joe_Biden']

snes-03906

The new supplement InteliGEN can boost brain function.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-the-supplement-inteligen-increase-intelligence/

Fraud & Scams

Bethania Palma

Does the Supplement InteliGEN Increase Intelligence?

30 September 2016

['None']

pomt-09949

Sotomayor thinks "that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench."

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/may/27/judicial-confirmation-network/Sotomayor-comment-Latina-women-versus-white-men/

If you've been following the story of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor via cable news, you've undoubtedly heard this sound bite from a 2001 Sotomayor speech: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." For many conservative detractors, the quote has formed the centerpiece of their opposition. In a released statement, Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative nonprofit, said, "Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench." Previously, we have looked at the issue of Sotomayor's statement about judges making policy . Here we look at the claim that Sotomayor thinks "that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench." A number of Republicans have expressed concern about the statement. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said that due to Sotomayor's comments, the Senate will need to weigh "her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender or political preferences." On his blog, Newt Gingrich wrote this about Sotomayor's nomination: "Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman' Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw." Asked repeatedly about Sotomayor's comments during the daily White House press briefing on May 27, 2009, spokesman Robert Gibbs admonished reporters not to make a judgment on an 8-second sound clip from a 40-minute speech. Gibbs said he was confident that when people looked at the totality of Sotomayor's speech, and the context of the comment in question, they would "come to a reasonable conclusion on this." So we read the whole speech, titled "A Latina Judge's Voice," which was delivered by Sotomayor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 2001, and was later published in the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. The purpose of the speech, she said, was to "talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench." She described herself as "Newyorkrican," a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents, and talked about her close affinity to the Puerto Rican culture as well as her love of America, and how being Latina helped to shape who she is. She then begins to discuss what it will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench. "While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law," Sotomayor said. "Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought." "I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions," Sotomayor said. "The aspiration to impartiality is just that — it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others." Sotomayor spoke briefly about the contributions of women judges and attorneys in race and sex discrimination cases, while acknowledging that Supreme Courts made up completely of white men have made seminal decisions on those issues. It's in that context that Sotomayor made the statement heard round the world via YouTube. "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences ... our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. ... I am ... not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life. "Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown ." Sotomayor later concludes that "personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage. ... I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate." You can read the whole speech for yourself right here . Tom Goldstein, a partner at Washington law firm Akin Gump and the founder of ScotusBlog, a widely read blog on the Supreme Court, read the speech and concluded it amounted to little more than Sotomayor acknowledging that judges, like anyone, are products of where and how they grew up. "Having that context can be valuable for a judge," Goldstein said. "There are some cases, like cases of discrimination, where if you have been in someone's shoes, you can better understand it." By way of reminder, we are fact-checking the statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network that Sotomayor's statement shows that she thinks "that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench." We think the key words in that sentence are "ought to." To the contrary, Sotomayor says several times that she agrees judges should aspire to "transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices." However, she acknowledges that we are all informed by our experiences and that "personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see." And, she concludes, when it comes to things like race and sex discrimination, that kind of diversity of experience can be an asset. In context, it's clear that Sotomayor isn't suggesting the intellect of Latina women is superior to that of white men, only that a greater diversity of experience and thought would be a valuable addition to the court system. And so we rate the Judicial Confirmation Network's statement Half True.

Judicial Confirmation Network

2009-05-27T14:20:33

2009-05-26

['None']

pose-01329

“I’m under a routine audit and it'll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released."

promise broken

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1421/release-his-tax-returns-after-audit-completed/

trumpometer

Donald Trump

Release his tax returns after an audit is completed

2017-01-17T08:35:28

['None']

pomt-09520

President Barack Obama's "initial response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber" was to say that "this was the act of an isolated extremist."

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/15/dick-cheney/cheney-says-obama-initially-said-christmas-day-bom/

In recent weeks, the Obama administration and its Republican critics have been sparring over how to deal with alleged terrorists. The latest round of arguments began Dec. 25, 2009, when a 23-year-old Nigerian national, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly tried to ignite explosives with material hidden in his underwear while sitting aboard a Northwest Airlines plane bound for Detroit. On Feb. 14, 2010, the former vice president and the current vice president -- Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joe Biden -- appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows. Terrorism was a major topic for both. Cheney has often criticized President Barack Obama for not being forceful enough in responding to terrorism, and he has accused Obama of not considering the U.S. to be at war against terrorists (a claim we rated Pants on Fire!). On ABC's This Week, Cheney brought up Obama's initial reaction to the news of the bombing attempt. Cheney charged that the president had at first hastily dismissed the Christmas Day bomb attempt as an "isolated" incident with limited relevance for the broader fight against terrorism: "Well, my reference to the notion that the president was trying to avoid treating this as a war was in relation to his initial response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber up in Detroit, when he went out and said this was the act of an isolated extremist. No, it wasn't," Cheney said. "And we found out over time, obviously -- and he eventually changed his assessment -- but that, in fact, this was an individual who'd been trained by al-Qaida, who'd been part of a larger conspiracy, and it was closer to being an act of war than it was the act of an isolated extremist. It's the mind-set that concerns me, John. I think it's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war." Here we're focusing on whether Cheney was correct to say that Obama's "initial response" to the incident was that it "was the act of an isolated extremist." Cheney was referencing Obama's first official statement after the bombing attempt, delivered to reporters on Dec. 28 while he was vacationing in Kaneohe, Hawaii. In it, the president sought "to take a few minutes to update the American people" on the incident and explain "the steps we're taking to ensure the safety and security of the country." He recounted what had happened on the plane, what his administration was doing to investigate the incident, and what immediate steps would be taken to tighten airport security. Toward the end of his statement, Obama praised the the passengers of the Northwest flight for their quick action in stopping Abdulmutallab. Obama said: "Finally, the American people should remain vigilant, but also be confident. Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans. This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist. As a nation we will do everything in our power to protect our country, as Americans we will never give in to fear or division, we will be guided by our hopes, our unity, and our deeply held values. That's who we are as Americans. And that's what our brave men and women in uniform are standing up for as they spend the holidays in harm's way, and we will continue to do everything that we can to keep America safe in the New Year and beyond." Whether Cheney's claim is accurate or not depends on how you interpret Obama's reference to "an isolated extremist." Is the president explicitly labeling Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "an isolated extremist"? Or is this part of Obama's statement a more general attempt to laud bravery by ordinary Americans who find themselves sitting with an "isolated extremist" in their midst? Cheney clearly argues that it's the former. And it's true that, when read literally, Obama did say that "this incident" -- that is, the one in Detroit -- involved "an isolated extremist." (When Obama refers to several other similar incidents that preceded it, we're assuming he's referring to the passenger-foiled "shoe-bombing" by Richard Reid in 2001 and possibly the fighting back by passengers aboard the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.) Still, we see several pieces of evidence that suggest Obama's point was general and rhetorical, rather than an attempt to characterize the nature of the specific Christmas Day bombing plot. Earlier in the same Dec. 28 statement, Obama indicated that the investigation was still in an early phase. "We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt," he said. This call for caution undercuts Cheney's contention that Obama was using his statement to tell Americans that it was definitively "the act of an isolated extremist." Also, Obama said that "a full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable." The reference to "all who were involved" also undercuts the notion that Obama viewed Adbulmutallab as "an isolated extremist" without connections to terrorist networks. And it's worth noting that two days earlier, an unnamed White House official was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying, "We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism." The White House official said the suspect had informed investigators hat he had been given the device by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, along with detonation instructions. "This guy claims he is tied to al-Qaida, specifically in Yemen," the official said. "He claims he was on orders from al-Qaida in Yemen. Who knows if that's true?" Granted, the White House official expressed uncertainty about whether the claim was true or not. Still, the exchange amounts to an acknowledgment that the White House was considering the possibility that Abdulmutallab was connected to al-Qaida a full two days before Obama made his statement. That would seem to contradict the notion that Obama wanted his listeners to believe that the Christmas Day bomber was simply an "isolated extremist." Ultimately, Cheney is correct that Obama did use the words "an isolated extremist" in his first statement addressing the Christmas Day bombing attempt. But we think it's a stretch for Cheney to say that the phrase signals the president initially believed that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Obama did expressly say that "we do not yet have all the answers," and he reported that an investigation had been launched that would hold accountable "all who were involved." So we find Cheney is right that Obama used those words, but we find he exaggerates their significance by failing to take into account the other things Obama said. We find Cheney's statement to be Half True.

Dick Cheney

2010-02-15T18:45:46

2010-02-14

['None']

pomt-04514

Says Barack Obama "put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they're going to receive."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/04/mitt-romney/romney-says-ipab-board-can-tell-people-ultimately-/

President Barack Obama’s health care law includes a mighty powerful board that will dictate treatment decisions for Medicare patients, said Mitt Romney at the Oct. 3 debate in Denver. When explaining why he opposed the health care law, Romney said Barack Obama "put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they're going to receive." He also said this: "And then he has as a model for doing that a board of people at the government, an unelected board, appointed board, who are going to decide what kind of treatment you ought to have." And later: "In order to bring the cost of health care down, we don't need to have a board of 15 people telling us what kinds of treatments we should have." Obama refuted Romney’s remark, saying, "Let me just point out first of all this board that we're talking about can't make decisions about what treatments are given." For this fact-check, we will focus on Romney’s statement about whether the unelected board -- formally called the Independent Payments Advisory board, or IPAB for short -- can tell people what kind of treatments they can have. We’ve previously checked a whole slew of claims about the health care law and the IPAB. Many of the variations of Romney’s claim have been in false territory -- depending on the wording -- including a Pants on Fire for Pat Boone who said the board "can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments." (That was one of our Top 5 falsehoods on the health care law.) We gave a Mostly False to Paul Ryan who said that the "unelected, unaccountable" board created by the health care law "will lead to denied care for current seniors." We will note up front that Romney used somewhat softer words than some other critics of the board in that he didn’t use the words "ration" or "unaccountable." IPAB can’t ration care or make decisions for individuals We will borrow from our previous items to explain the board and Romney’s claim. Some of our information comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that studies health care, which put out a primer in 2010 about the board and a longer paper in 2011. The health care law directs a new national board — with 15 members who are political appointees — to identify Medicare savings. It's forbidden from submitting "any recommendation to ration health care," as Section 3403 of the health care law states. It may not raise premiums for Medicare beneficiaries or increase deductibles, coinsurance or co-payments. The IPAB also cannot change who is eligible for Medicare, restrict benefits or make recommendations that would raise revenue. What it can do is reduce how much the government pays health care providers for services, reduce payments to hospitals with very high rates of re-admissions or recommend innovations that cut wasteful spending. Some argue that because the IPAB can reduce the money a doctor receives, this could lead to an indirect form of rationing. But the board wouldn't make any health care decisions for individual Americans. Instead, as PolitiFact Georgia reported, it would make broad policy decisions that affect Medicare's overall cost. For this fact-check, a Romney campaign spokesman sent us a 2011 POLITICO article that largely focused on the challenges of filling the spots on the board, which the headline described as "Medicare cost-cutting job could be worst in D.C." The article mentioned that Republicans have portrayed it as rationing care, but that the law prohibits the board from rationing health care. The Romney campaign also cited the New York Times health care blog Prescriptions, which stated in 2010 that the drug industry, hospitals and doctors’ groups want to get rid of the board. "While the board is not supposed to be able to cut benefits, industry groups fear that its actions would result in rationing care," stated the New York Times blog. "The board, known as IPAB, could cut payments to health care providers." Our ruling When Romney was talking about the Independent Payment Advisory Board and Medicare, he said, Barack Obama "put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they're going to receive." He avoided the more inaccurate and harsher wording of some other critics, who have falsely described the board as "rationing" care. But Romney’s claim can leave viewers with the impression that the board will sit around a table and talk about whether grandpa can get his bypass or not, and that’s not the case. The board can reduce how much the government pays health care providers for services, reduce payments to hospitals with very high rates of re-admissions or recommend innovations that cut wasteful spending. And there are questions about whether that could lead to different treatment decisions, but Romney's comments give a misleading impression. We rate his statement Mostly False.

Mitt Romney

2012-10-04T00:12:24

2012-10-03

['None']

pomt-10223

Palin had "executive experience" in the PTA.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/04/john-mccain/palin-was-a-member-but-not-an-officer-of-pta/

It's a line on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's resume that likely resonates with a lot of parents: one-time member, PTA. But we wondered if Sen. John McCain overplayed that credential in the days following the announcement that she was his running mate — particularly as questions were being raised about her experience relative to being vice president of the United States. In an interview on NBC's Nightly News , McCain included Palin's involvement with PTA as one of the examples of her "executive experience." "Well, let me just point out, facts are funny things," McCain said. "She's been in elected office longer than Senator Obama. She's been the chief executive of the state that supplies 20 percent of America's energy. She has balanced budgets. She's had executive experience as governor, as mayor, as a city council member and PTA." And in an interview with People magazine, McCain again cited Palin's experience with the PTA when asked what drew him to selecting her. "Obviously, I found her to be very intelligent and very well-versed on the issues," McCain said. "But I think the important thing was that she's a reformer. She's taken on special interests since she ran for the PTA and the city council and mayor. The courage, I guess, is what most impressed me." While admirable, we wondered how much executive experience Palin could actually claim to have gotten by serving on the Iditarod Elementary School PTA, let alone what special interests she may have taken on. Frankly, we were made to feel petty for even asking. Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign responded to our request for PTA details with this e-mail: "Of all the smears you could look into against Gov. Palin—that she supported Pat Buchanan (we actually ruled that False ), that she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, that her baby was really her daughter's — you all want to investigate her career in the PTA? Don't waste our time." But since it was McCain and other campaign staffers who kept touting that service in the PTA, we felt it was fair to flesh it out. Was Palin a PTA president or treasurer? Did she run a successful fundraiser? We largely met with a wall of silence from school district officials. Iditarod Elementary Principal Raymond Marshall said district policy on student privacy prohibited him from confirming or denying that Palin ever served on the PTA there. To do that would confirm that one of her children attended the school, he said. Nevermind that the Palin for Governor Web site listed "Iditarod PTA" under her service organizations. A spokeswoman for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District was slightly more forthcoming. But only slightly. "She did serve, probably on more than one PTA," said Public Information Officer Catherine Esary. She said she could not be any more specific. So we called a couple of former Iditarod PTA officers. One former secretary of the Iditarod PTA refused to talk about Palin's PTA involvement saying she didn't want the media to distort anything she had to say. Former Iditarod PTA president Mary Van Buskirk says she remembers that Palin served on the school's PTA, but not as an officer. "She was just one of our members," Van Buskirk said. She did not want to say any more. Al Tamagni Jr., president of the statewide Alaska PTA, was at least able to be a little more definitive about Palin's PTA involvement. After tracking down paper records going back more than a decade, he said, they were able to confirm that Palin was a member of the Iditarod PTA for two years, during the time she served as the mayor of Wasilla. There is no record that Palin ever served as an officer, which is typically listed in the records as well, Tamagni said. "We wouldn't know if she chaired a committee or ran a big program," Tamagni said. For her part, Palin has only said that she "got involved in the PTA." And in her closely watched speech at the Republican National Convention she said, "I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA." James Martinez, a spokesman for the National PTA, said that parents serving at any level of PTA might get some executive experience. PTA groups follow parliamentary procedures, he said. They pass resolutions. They oversee budgets. Even rank and file members get involved in fundraisers and other school programs, he said. Besides, he said, "I think they are looking at it more from how she got involved with the community. Her community may have been very important to her, like how Barack Obama was a community organizer. It's grassroots advocacy in terms of public service. This was her window into public service." We agree PTA can be hard, important and often thankless work. And principals often credit parental involvement in PTA as crucial to the success of schools. But since it does not appear that Palin served as an officer in PTA (though we acknowledge it's possible she did and folks just won't say) we think it's wrong to count that as executive experience. Without any evidence to support McCain's statement, we rate this one False.

John McCain

2008-09-04T00:00:00

2008-08-31

['None']

pomt-10590

Mitt Romney previously believed "that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." Now he is "prolife."

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jan/28/john-mccain/romney-has-changed-his-stand-on-abortion/

A new ad from John McCain makes the case that Mitt Romney has not always opposed abortion. Romney has acknowledged that this is the case. When Romney ran for office in Massachusetts — unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 1994 and successfully for governor in 2002 — he often said he supported abortion rights. McCain's ad highlights a few of those statements. "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country," Romney said in a 1994 debate with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. In a 2002 debate, Romney said there was no difference between his views and that of his Democratic opponent, Shannon P. O'Brien. "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard," Romney said. In 2007, Romney said his views have changed. "And I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been prolife longer than I have," he said at a Republican debate on Aug. 5, 2007. ( PolitiFact.com looked at Romney's abortion record previously; check out our stories here and here .) McCain's ad accurately conveys Romney's positions now and during the previous times Romney has run for office. The ad clearly labels which statements were made during which campaign. For this reason, we find the ad's statements True. For more on McCain's ad attacking Romney, see our story here .

John McCain

2008-01-28T00:00:00

2008-01-28

['None']

peck-00036

How Much Of Kenya’s Budget Is Going Towards The Health Sector?

false

https://pesacheck.org/how-much-of-kenyas-budget-is-going-towards-the-health-sector-5ee2040b1f5

George Githinji

How Much Of Kenya’s Budget Is Going Towards The Health Sector?

Jan 15

['None']

pomt-11728

In Missouri, there are still (FEMA) cases pending from floods that occurred in 2013.

mostly true

/missouri/statements/2017/dec/13/vicky-hartzler/open-fema-case-remains-hartzler-exaggerates-amount/

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler, R-Harrisonville, extolled the virtues of her FEMA Relief Improvement Act on Oct. 30 after it was signed into law by President Donald Trump. The bill’s goal is to increase the reliability of services by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after disasters. In a news release, Hartzler gave an example of the problems the bill attempted to prevent: "In Missouri, there are still (FEMA) cases pending from floods that occurred in 2013." Relentless rain ravaged several Missouri counties in August 2013. But are there really still pending cases from four years ago? The disaster The flooding Hartzler is referring to took place from Aug. 2, 2013, to Aug. 14, 2013. Residents across Missouri were hit by pounding rain, wind and flooding. According to the National Weather Service, rainfall levels reached 8 to 10 inches. Three people died and Interstate 44 was closed in both directions between Rolla and Jerome, which is in Phelps County. On Sept. 6, 2013, former President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in Missouri. This made public assistance available for emergency work and repair of facilities damaged by severe storms, straight-line winds, and flooding in 18 counties: Barry, Camden, Cedar, Dade, Dallas, Laclede, Maries, McDonald, Miller, Osage, Ozark, Phelps, Pulaski, Shannon, Taney, Texas, Webster and Wright. FEMA’s summary damage assessment noted that 381 residences were impacted by the storms: 37 were destroyed, 91 had major damage, 134 had minor damage and 119 were affected. Four years later, $18.5 million has been distributed and all of FEMA’s claims have been resolved except for one county: Pulaski. Pulaski County, the outlier Summoned by Gov. Jay Nixon, FEMA began preparing project worksheets to determine the cost of restoring the county’s damaged water crossings to pre-disaster conditions. The work was done between October 2013 and April 2014. FEMA’s Public Assistance Program helps with response and recovery following a disaster. It specifically assists with debris removal, emergency protective measures and permanent restoration of infrastructure. According to Michael Cappannari, FEMA’s external affairs director, Pulaski County appealed several projects originally denied by FEMA. Following the flooding in 2013, FEMA awarded the county $5.9 million. Pulaski County applied for additional funding again in September of that year. At the time, Pulaski County officials said at least 90 percent of roads were damaged by flooding. While other counties experienced 8 to 10 inches of rain, Pulaski saw 15. To begin the process for additional funding, Pulaski County was expected to submit design plans to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for reconstruction of county bridges. The corps denied the plans because they did not meet permitting requirements. So Pulaski County altered its requests. The Corps of Engineers was happy with the changes, but FEMA decided the plans cost too much. From October 2015 to June 2016, Pulaski County appealed the case. FEMA asked for more information and three alternatives to the plans, among other things. That didn’t work, either. FEMA found that Pulaski County had skewed its hydrological and hydraulic analysis and didn’t provide less costly alternatives. Appeal denied. The second appeal began in March 2017. In November 2017, FEMA granted the appeal for $4.4 million in federal share to the state of Missouri to assist Pulaski County in completing physical work such as bridge and road repair. While Pulaski County received additional funding in November, FEMA will continue the case until all physical repair work is completed. "As you can see, projects from 2013 are still being worked on at this time," said Steve Walsh, Hartzler’s press secretary. Our ruling Hartzler said: "In Missouri, there are still (FEMA) cases pending from floods that occurred in 2013." While most counties in Missouri have had their resolutions to their claims involving flooding in August 2013, Pulaski County has had a long battle with FEMA over funding in the last four years. The approval for the last round of funds went out after Hartzler’s news release at the end of October. Pulaski County is awaiting physical repairs, and FEMA does not close cases until physical repairs are completed. Although what Hartzler said is true, there is only one case that was still pending when she made her comment. Hartzler’s statement sounds as though there are multiple cases that FEMA had not responded to. Her statement is accurate but needs additional information or clarification. So we rate this claim Mostly True.

Vicky Hartzler

2017-12-13T20:55:22

2017-10-30

['Missouri']

hoer-00714

Travel Warning - Khas Khas (Poppy Seed) Imprisonment in UAE

true messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/khas-khas-poppy-seed-warning.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Travel Warning - Khas Khas (Poppy Seed) Imprisonment in UAE

23rd September 2010

['None']

snes-03285

Led by President Obama, the United Nations ordered the U.S. to pay reparations to African Americans for slavery.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-led-u-n-pay-blacks-reparations/

Politics

David Emery

Obama-Led U.N. Has Just Made It Official, U.S. to Immediately Pay Blacks ‘Reparations’

21 December 2016

['United_States', 'United_Nations', 'Barack_Obama', 'African_American']

pomt-03572

Buono voted 154 times to raise our taxes -- like the sales tax, the income tax, health care taxes, even small business taxes.

true

/new-jersey/statements/2013/may/19/chris-christie/barbara-buono-voted-increases-taxes-fees-154-times/

The gloves are off. Chris Christie may be more popular than ever, but the Republican isn’t taking any chances with seeking re-election in a majority Democrat state. Witness a new TV ad released Monday by his re-election campaign, Christie for Governor. The ad starts off with pictures of Christie’s Democratic challenger, state Sen. Barbara Buono, as a narrator introduces her as former Gov. Jon Corzine’s budget chair. Buono chaired the Senate’s Budget and Appropriations Committee for two years during Corzine’s tenure. "Buono voted 154 times to raise our taxes -- like the sales tax, the income tax, health care taxes, even small business taxes," the narrator states as text in the commercial states she voted to raise taxes and fees. This ad is a variation on a theme mentioned previously by Christie, and it’s also right on target. First, some background about tax increases. During his State of the State address earlier this year Christie noted that New Jersey saw more than 100 increases in taxes and fees in the eight years before he became governor, which is similar to the new TV ad about Buono, the Democratic challenger in the November gubernatorial race. In addition, state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) made a similar claim in an Oct. 7, 2011 news release when he tied 115 votes for tax increases to jobs leaving New Jersey. Kean’s claim was rated Half True. For both previous fact-checks, Republicans provided us with a list that included tax and fee hikes as well as tax policy changes that occurred between fiscal years 2003 and 2010. Now let’s review the 154 increases. The Christie for Governor camp provided us with a list of the 154 increases they claim Buono supported both in the Senate and when she served in the Assembly. We reviewed each vote and found that the list given us mirrors the previous Republican-provided lists, plus additional votes. Although Democrats sponsored most of the bills in question, a few had Republican support. Democrats held legislative majorities in the eight years before Christie became governor. His predecessors during that time were Jim McGreevey, Richard Codey and Corzine. Among the increases were raising the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent and applying the tax to services such as tanning and limousine rides; increases in the cigarette tax; and allowing towns to impose parking taxes and surcharges. Also, the state twice increased the gross income tax on New Jerseyans with six-figure incomes: in 2004 for those with income exceeding $500,000 and again in 2009 for those incomes above $400,000. In addition to tax increases were hikes in dozens of fees, such as a new $1.50 fee on the sale of new vehicle tires; imposing fees on certain realty transfers; on hotel/motel occupancies; increases in the minimum casino hotel parking charge; and raising the fee to file for divorce. Overall, the lists provided by Republicans showed that there were dozens of increases in taxes or fees or other tax policy changes that could result in individuals or businesses paying higher taxes. We calculated the votes and confirmed that Buono did vote 154 times in favor of higher taxes and fees. After we shared the list with Buono for Governor spokesman David Turner, we received a list back pointing out cuts that Christie has made to various tax credit rebates and programs; legislation the governor signed resulting in assessments on ambulatory care facilities and insurers; and other legislation signed by Christie allowing government authorities to charge fees. "Barbara Buono has spent her life in public service fighting for New Jersey's middle class and working people," Turner said in an e-mail. "Throughout her career she has pushed to make large corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share and reduce the tax burden on New Jersey's working families. And she has consistently voted to hold lawbreakers accountable—if Governor Christie believes it was wrong to stiffen penalties for deadbeat dads, impose tougher fines on tax cheats and force polluters to help pay for damaging our environment and threatening public health, he should say so." Christie for Governor spokesman Kevin Roberts declined comment. Our ruling A Christie for Governor TV ad claims, "Buono voted 154 times to raise our taxes -- like the sales tax, the income tax, health care taxes, even small business taxes." Although a narrator only mentions tax increases, scrolling text in the ad also mentions fee increases. And in this case, the ad is accurate: Buono did vote on 154 bills that would increase fees and taxes on things ranging from the purchase of new vehicle tires to those New Jerseyans earning six-figure incomes exceeding $400,000. We rate the claim True. To comment on this story, go to NJ.com.

Chris Christie

2013-05-19T07:30:00

2013-05-13

['None']

tron-03331

The Crusades Have Finally Started Again

truth! & fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/crusades-finally-started-commentary-truth-fiction/

religious

['foreign leaders', 'international', 'islam', 'national security']

The Crusades Have Finally Started Again Commentary

Jan 17, 2017

['None']

snes-02794

A soldier returning from deployment discovered his wife had died during his absence, and their children had starved to death.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-horrifying-homecoming/

Horrors

David Mikkelson

Returning Soldier Finds Family Dead

1 October 2010

['None']

pomt-03400

When I was growing up as a kid in the city of Milwaukee, if we averaged 4 homicides a year in the entire city that was a record number.

false

/wisconsin/statements/2013/jul/03/david-clarke-jr/milwaukee-county-sheriff-david-clarke-says-4-homic/

At a Milwaukee forum entitled "The Second Amendment and the Black Community," two high-profile African Americans with opposing views on firearms spoke of an earlier time they vividly recall as a safer time. Longtime community activist and radio voice Earl Ingram Jr., a critic of concealed carry laws, said his first question to classrooms of city students is always: "How many of you know someone who’s been shot?" "I’ll tell you, 60 to 70 percent and maybe higher will raise their hand," Ingram told an audience at the Community Brainstorming Conference breakfast meeting on June 22, 2013. "And then I think about that question being asked to my generation. If one person raised their hand we would all look at them in disbelief." Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., who urges citizens to arm themselves to ward off harm, offered his own memories. "When I was growing up as a kid in the city of Milwaukee, if we averaged 4 homicides a year in the entire city that was a record number," said Clarke, 56. "So a lot obviously has gone on since then." A good chunk of the sheriff’s childhood overlapped with the 20-year run of Police Chief Harold Breier as Milwaukee’s top cop. Breier called Milwaukee "the safest city in the nation" just months before retiring in 1984. Clarke went to work in Breier’s MPD as a patrolman in 1978 at the age of 21, and later worked his way up to homicide detective and various command staff positions. He was appointed sheriff in 2002 and has been re-elected since. Is Clarke right that homicides were a rarity when he was growing up? We took a walk back in time through Milwaukee Police crime stats and news stories to get an answer. Clarke declined to discuss his remarks. One of the first news stories we found from the era said that Milwaukee’s 1960 murder rate per capita was lowest of any major city. At the time, Milwaukee was the nation’s 11-largest city (population 741,324). But Clarke’s memory for the frequency of homicides was fuzzy. He recalled "if we averaged 4 homicides a year in the entire city that was a record number." Milwaukee’s lowest annual homicide total in Clarke’s childhood was 12 in 1956, the year he was born. Homicides tallied in the 20s in most of his first 10 years, and then picked up their pace, totaling 36, 46 and 51 before Clarke’s teen years began. And if you include his early teenage years as part of his time as a "kid," the count had risen sharply to 75 in 1973, when Clarke was 17. So, instead of coming in at record-setting lows, as Clarke recalled, homicide was doubling or tripling during his youth. As a point of reference, the figure of 75 was higher than the homicide total in both 2008 and 2009. At the same time, that figure looks low when compared with the early 1990s, when homicides hit 160 as crack cocaine and related violence took hold. The sheriff, we found, would have better made his point about changes in safety by citing per-capita figures and national rankings. PolitiFact Wisconsin ran those numbers in March 2013 when analyzing a dispute over homicide figures used by Clarke and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn. The picture is much-changed compared with 1960, when that study put the city’s homicide ranking as lowest among the largest cities. For starters, the city’s population is now 598,916, a number that dropped it to the 30th-largest U.S. city. And nationally in 2011, Milwaukee’s homicide rate was fifth highestin the country among cities of 500,000 to 999,000 people. And it was 18th-highest of 73 cities, when cities of 250,000 or more were included. Just looking at Milwaukee over time, the city’s homicide rate in 1960 was eight times lower than the 2010 rate, we found. Our rating Speaking about changes in the crime picture over time, Clarke said, "When I was growing up as a kid in the city of Milwaukee, if we averaged 4 homicides a year in the entire city that was a record number." The sheriff’s memory misfired. In reality, homicides ranged from 12 to 75 during Clarke’s pre-adult years, accelerating at a steady clip. We rate his claim False.

David A. Clarke Jr.

2013-07-03T05:00:00

2013-06-22

['Milwaukee']

pomt-08621

Roy Barnes "made Georgia dead last in education" and Georgia "led the nation in job losses."

half-true

/georgia/statements/2010/sep/21/republican-governors-association/tv-ads-clash-barnes-record/

Georgians can watch a new version of grumpy old men on their TV sets. In one version, two gray-haired men are sitting around a table with a red and white checkerboard tablecloth talking about former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes. "Remember how [Barnes] made Georgia last, dead last, in education?" one says. "Yeah," the other man replies, shaking his head affirmatively. "And remember how Georgia led the nation in job losses?" the first man asks. "Yeah," the other man answers. The 30-second video premiered last week, paid for by the Republican Governors Association. The GOP governors obviously don't want Barnes, the Democratic Party's nominee for governor, back in the job. The big question for AJC PolitiFact Georgia: Are the claims the two men discuss in the ad correct? The Barnes camp obviously doesn't think so. It released a 30-second ad Monday that is clearly a response to the RGA. In the Barnes ad, two graybeards are sitting at a table with the same type of tablecloth dishing about Nathan Deal with the same music in the background. This ad contends Barnes "brought in 235,000 jobs as governor." (AJC PolitiFact Georgia ruled the claim he "created" 235,000 jobs Half True in June.) The men say Barnes reduced classroom sizes in an effort to combat the attack their candidate should get an F in education. "So this Washington guy Deal is lying?" one man asks. "He's slippery as a bag of snakes," the other man replies. They both laugh. Now that we've addressed the theatrics, let's look at the claims that prompted such a quick reply from the Barnes camp. Let's start with the first claim, that Georgia was "dead last in education" when Barnes was governor. Barnes was governor from January 1999 to January 2003. RGA communications director Mike Schrimpf said there were two explanations for the first claim. First, he pointed to a Manhattan Institute report published in 2001 that found Georgia had the lowest high school graduation rate of any state. We found the report and, indeed, it found Georgia was last in graduation rates. The report, however, was about students who graduated in 1998, which was the year before Barnes took office. (Note: The study's authors later noted an error in their graduation rate methodology and said it corrected the mistake.) We decided to look elsewhere for graduation rate data. The National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, looked at graduation rates in 2001-02, which included Barnes' last full year as governor. That year, Georgia's rate was 61.1 percent, which ranked 47th, ahead of New York (60.5 percent), Tennessee (59.6 percent) and South Carolina (57.9 percent). Schrimpf noted that Georgia and Florida were tied for the lowest graduation rate among students who graduated in 2001, according to Manhattan Institute research. The RGA's second argument for claiming Georgia was "dead last" in education focuses on SAT scores. In 2002, Barnes' last full year as governor, Georgia ranked last among the nation's 50 states in the average SAT score. Some education scholars said at the time that there are several explanations for Georgia's woeful ranking. Other states had a higher percentage of their best students who took the exam, Gregory Marchant, an educational psychology professor at Indiana's Ball State University, wrote in an op-ed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Marchant and others also noted warnings that state comparisons using SAT data are invalid. The College Board, which administers the SAT, told PolitiFact Georgia as much when we looked at a candidate's claim that Georgia's SAT scores were lower than neighboring Alabama. "Not all students in a high school, school district or state take the SAT. Since the population of test-takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT scores to compare or evaluate schools, districts, states or other educational units is not valid, and the College Board strongly discourages such uses," the College Board said in a statement. On the ACT, the other test frequently used as an indicator of college potential, Georgia ranked near the bottom during Barnes' term, which began in 1999 and ended in January 2003. The Peach State was ahead of other Southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina in each full year of Barnes' term. We gave outgoing Attorney General Thurbert Baker a Half True rating in June when he used Georgia's SAT scores to claim they "are right at the bottom." So what about the other claim, that Georgia led the nation in job losses? A front-page article in the AJC on Dec. 22, 2001, had the headline "Georgia leads nation in job losses." The story reported that Georgia lost nearly 80,000 jobs during a 12-month stretch, more than any other state, including New York, which suffered through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The bulk of Georgia job losses were in the service industry and manufacturing. So are the two men in the RGA commercial right? They were correct about the job losses. The claim about Georgia being "dead last" in education is more troubling. The RGA ad needs more context, such as the College Board's warning, to understand the importance of the SAT rankings. The ACT must also be considered when looking at Georgia's education standing. We rate the RGA commercial on Barnes as Half True.

Republican Governors Association

2010-09-21T06:00:00

2010-09-14

['Georgia_(U.S._state)', 'Roy_Barnes']

pomt-12617

A New York man has allegedly infected 240 people with the HIV virus by sleeping with men and women.

pants on fire!

/new-york/statements/2017/apr/02/blog-posting/story-about-man-spreading-hiv-more-200-people-fake/

A blog post widely shared on social media claims "a New York man has allegedly infected 240 people with the HIV virus by sleeping with men and women." We found the post on Obnoxioustv's Blog but it has appeared on other websites, too. The post says the New York City Police Department seeks to arrest Isaac Don Burks. "Burks, a black gay man from West New York, N.J., just outside Manhattan, who police say may have started his ‘mission to infect as many people as possible’ with HIV as far back as ten years ago, was described as ‘sick in the head’ by one alleged victim, who notes that Burks alluded to having possibly infected as many as 300 victims," according to the post on Obnoxioustv's Blog. "The victim, who did not wish to be publicly identified, recalls that Burks has been on a ‘downward spiral’ since the death of his mother, and plies his prey with drugs and alcohol, to ‘bring their guard down.’ " The post says authorities in New York City are offering up to $100,000 for anyone with information leading to an arrest. The post also claims the New York City Department of Health called this case "the first time a HIV infected individual has spread HIV to so many victims." The story has been shared on several different websites. Facebook flagged a link to the story on Obnoxioustv's Blog as a potential fake news story. The post, first published in 2013, has appeared again recently on social media sites. We could not find any coverage of the story on reputable news sites, and the website’s owner did not reply to our inquiry. Is the post correct that a man has infected as many as 300 people with HIV? The New York City Health Department The post quotes the New York City Health Department urging anyone who may be affected to seek help. We reached out to the department about the story. The department said both the quote and the story are fake. "We can confirm that this story is completely false," the department said in an email. Crime Stoppers The article provided a Crime Stoppers phone number for anyone with information to call. So we called. The number was, indeed, for Crime Stoppers -- but in South Carolina. The operator searched for the name of the alleged offender and his crime for us. A query led to the same article we set out to fact-check, along with a few others. The New York City Police Department runs New York City Crime Stoppers. The Police Department did not respond to our inquiry about the story, so we called the New York City Crime Stoppers line. The operator advised us not to share the article on social media. "We haven’t heard anything about that," the operator said. The New York City Crime Stoppers website has not listed anyone wanted by the name of Isaac Don Burks for at least the last six years. The organization has not sought anyone for a crime similar to the one alleged online. Our ruling A website alleges a man has set out to infect as many people with HIV as possible and has infected up to 300 people already. The article is fake. The New York City Health Department says it is made up. Authorities in New York City are not seeking Burks or anyone for such an allegation. It’s fake news. Pants on Fire! PolitiFact New York examined the origins of this claim as part of the inaugural International Fact-Checking Day, April 2, 2017. Organizers at Poynter.org describe the day as "not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts - and fact-checking - in politics, journalism, and everyday life." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bloggers

2017-04-02T06:00:00

2017-03-29

['New_York_City']

snes-00101

Donald Trump and hundreds of his workers helped search the rubble for survivors after the September 11 terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-searching-911-survivors/

Politics

Bethania Palma

Was Donald Trump at Ground Zero Searching for Survivors Two Days After 9/11 with Workers He Paid For?

11 September 2018

['Lower_Manhattan', 'Donald_Trump']

wast-00073

Kavanaugh, who could be presiding over a case should the Pres be indicted, thinks that the Pres can't stand trial. Trump has nominated a get-out-of-jail free card.

2 pinnochios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/11/does-brett-kavanaugh-think-the-president-is-immune-from-criminal-charges/

Carolyn B. Maloney

Salvador Rizzo

Does Brett Kavanaugh think the president is immune from criminal charges?

July 11

['President_of_the_Philippines']

snes-00872

Jimmy Coyne's grandson was assaulted for refusing to take part in March 2018 walkouts to protest lawmaker inaction over school shootings.

unproven

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/prayer-request-jimmy-coynes-grandson-walkout-attack/

Inboxer Rebellion

Kim LaCapria

Prayer Request for Jimmy Coyne’s Grandson After Walkout-Related Attack?

20 March 2018

['None']

pomt-10781

In 2006, Arizona had four ballot issues that were "very tough on illegal immigration... Forty-seven percent of the Hispanics in Arizona voted for them."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/oct/16/tom-tancredo/well-hes-right-on-one-of-the-four/

Here's full quote from Rep. Tom Tancredo's interview: "In Arizona, in the last election, what we saw was a really amazing thing, that they had four issues on the ballot in Arizona, all of them were very tough on illegal immigration, one was an English only, I think, amendment of some sort. There were four issues, 47 percent of the Hispanics in Arizona voted for them. And by the way, they all passed overwhelmingly. So you cannot say that it is a monolithic voting bloc." The congressman goes beyond the facts at hand to make his point that not all Hispanics vote the same. This much is true. In the 2006 election, there were four issues on the ballot related to immigration. Politifact found that 48 percent of Hispanic voters in Arizona supported Proposition 103, which requires all formal state government action to be in English, with some exemptions. That's according to Edison Media Research, which conducts exit polling for the national election pool, including CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the Associated Press. But as far as the three other immigration measures on the Arizona ballot that fall, we don't know how Hispanics voted. Edison didn't poll on those, and neither did anyone else we could find. "He's taking our number and extrapolating to four propositions," said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research. "We can't support that. . . . He's accurate on the one, but the other three he's guessing." Tancredo is correct that all four measures passed overwhelmingly, each by at least 71 percent of the overall vote. Tancredo's campaign offered no supporting information for his statement about how Hispanics voted on those issues, but suggested we call the Arizona Secretary of State's office. We did. Deputy Secretary of State Kevin Tyne said, "We're precluded from tracking that kind of information." But just to be sure there wasn't another source for Tancredo's numbers, we talked to Quin Monson, assistant director at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University; to John A. Garcia, a University of Arizona political science professor who has done extensive polling of Hispanics; to Earl de Berge, research director at the Behavior Research Center, a public opinion firm in Phoenix; and to Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political science professor and pollster. Not one knew of data to support Tancredo's statement. So, applying one correct statistic to four different ballot questions rates a Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Tom Tancredo

2007-10-16T00:00:00

2007-09-10

['Arizona']