Datasets:

pszemraj

/

multi_fc

like 1

hoer-00602

The Tale of The Lion, Tiger and Bear Rescued from a Drug Dealer

true messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/lion-tiger-bear-rescued-drug-dealer.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

The Tale of The Lion, Tiger and Bear Rescued from a Drug Dealer

January 21, 2014

['None']

tron-01512

George W. Bush Deleted 22 Million Emails from Private Server

truth! & fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/george-w-bush-deleted-22-million-emails-from-private-server/

government

['2016 election', 'barack obama', 'congress', 'hillary clinton']

George W. Bush Deleted 22 Million Emails from Private Server

Oct 31, 2016

['None']

pomt-08217

It’s gotten to a point where the average federal worker makes twice as much as the average private sector worker.

false

/ohio/statements/2010/nov/18/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-federal-workers-make-twice-much-/

House GOP Leader John Boehner talks a lot about the need to create jobs as he prepares to take the U.S. House of Representatives’ helm next year. But the federal government is one entity Boehner thinks shouldn’t create jobs. While talking with reporters Nov. 10, Boehner advocated a hiring and pay freeze on federal workers. "It’s gotten to a point where the average federal worker makes twice as much as the average private sector worker," Boehner said. Boehner’s office says he bases that claim on an August 13, 2010 USA Today article, headlined "Federal workers earning double their private counterparts." The article uses Bureau of Economic Analysis data from the U.S. Commerce Department to conclude that federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009, while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. Although the USA Today statistics back up Boehner’s claim, a BEA spokesman says the newspaper’s numbers don’t account for the different mix of jobs performed by federal and private sector employees. The statistic cited by USA Today also includes benefits, which tend to be higher for federal employees. That’s an important distinction because we think the average person would interpret "makes twice as much" as getting twice the wages. We said as much recently when we examined a claim about federal worker pay by Rand Paul, the Republican senator elect from Kentucky. In that item we found BEA statistics show federal employees earned an average salary of $81,258, when benefits were stripped out, compared with $50,464 for private sector employees. That’s nearly 40 percent short of double. A statement on BEA’s website explains that the private sector workforce includes a broader range of jobs than the federal government, from minimum wage positions to CEOs. Federal civilian jobs focus on professional areas like law, accounting and economics that require higher education. The federal government has also contracted out many of its lower-skilled, lower paid positions to private industry, which makes the federal average go higher. John Berry, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, says it’s untrue that federal workers are paid double the private sector. The USA Today article, he says, compares "apples to oranges." OPM maintains that federal workers actually make 24 percent less than their private-sector counterparts. "The federal workforce today is highly specialized," he says. "Thirty years ago, over 22 percent of our workforce was in blue collar jobs. Now that percentage has dropped by half while the percentage of IT and health professionals has doubled. Data clearly shows that many of these highly specialized workers – doctors, nurses, cybersecurity professionals – are paid less than their private sector counterparts and are making a significant sacrifice in pay to serve their neighbors." OPM spokeswoman Jennifer Dorsey did not respond to repeated requests for data that would show lower federal pay for those workers. She did send an email that said the average federal salary is $65,000, and "the figure that was used by the USAToday reporter was and is inaccurate." So we looked at some federal statistics ourselves, using Bureau of Labor data for mean annual salaries from May 2009. Those statistics list a $43,460 mean yearly salary for the nation’s 130.6 million private sector workers, and a $71,500 mean salary for its 1.9 million federal employees. That’s about 35 percent short of double. Just as the BEA data does, the labor data’s private sector average also incorporates hundreds of jobs for which there’s no federal counterpart. So we looked at some specific examples -- the doctors, nurses and cybersecurity professionals that Berry mentioned. Federally-employed doctors make about the same ($173,400 a year) as their private sector counterparts ($173,860). Federal registered nurses actually make more: $77,830, compared with $66,530. BLS didn’t have a "cybersecurity professionals" category. We found federal "computer specialists" made $88,920, compared to $78,010 for their private-sector counterparts. So where does that leave us? Using the BEA data, the average federal worker salary is considerably short of the "twice as much" level Boehner claimed. Using the Bureau of Labor’s data, the gap is a little wider, but the average federal worker pay still is considerably short of double. That’s why we rate Boehner’s claim False.

John Boehner

2010-11-18T14:31:52

2010-11-10

['None']

pomt-05915

Since President Barack Obama took office, "2 million more Americans are out of work."

half-true

/georgia/statements/2012/feb/01/phil-gingrey/spin-jobs-data-leads-partisans-opposite-conclusion/

Minutes after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week, the Washington chattering class spun like a cartoon Tasmanian Devil. Republicans took to the airways, grumbling that Obama offered no real solutions to the country’s problems. Democrats cheered and said he had the answers. Then came the spin typical of any major political event, whirling with facts and figures. The economy’s better off since Obama took office, said U.S. Rep Hank Johnson, a DeKalb County Democrat. "Unemployment has fallen from 10 percent during the president’s first year in office to 8.5 percent today," Johnson said in remarks posted on Patch.com’s local news site for Stone Mountain-Redan. No, the economy’s worse, said U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Marietta Republican. Three years into Obama’s presidency, "2 million more Americans are out of work," Gingrey said in a news release posted on Rome Newswire, an online news site covering the Rome area. Can these both be true? Is it possible for unemployment to drop as the ranks of people who are out of work grow? Because of this conundrum, we’ll depart from our usual Truth-O-Meter format and do a special doubleheader. We’ll check both stats and tell you whether one of them is wrong or whether it’s possible for both to be correct. First, let’s consider Johnson’s unemployment statistic. In January 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, unemployment stood at 7.8 percent. It peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, eight months later. In December 2011, the rate stood at 8.5 percent. Johnson’s numbers are accurate, but he runs into trouble when he said that "it is remarkable what President Obama has achieved in his first three years." Labor economists have repeatedly told PolitiFact that it’s hard for any political leader to take credit or blame for something as complicated as the economy. Johnson spokesman Andrew Phelan offered proof to bolster the congressman’s claim that Obama deserves credit for lower unemployment. He cited a November report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which reviews bills that will have an impact on the federal budget. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the stimulus legislation that Obama backed, lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.2 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points during the third quarter of 2011, the office determined. Phelan also cited a 2010 report by a Princeton professor and the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics saying the Recovery Act and monetary policy reduced unemployment. Still, other factors are at play. For this reason, Johnson’s statement earns a Half True. Now on to Gingrey’s statement, where he says "2 million more Americans are out of work." Gingrey spokeswoman Jen Talaber pointed us to a July check by our PolitiFact Ohio colleagues. It analyzed a television ad by the Republican National Committee criticizing Obama’s economic policies. Since he took office, it said, "2 million jobs. Gone." PolitiFact Ohio found that the drop in employment was actually more severe than the ad said. The economy lost 2.5 million jobs between January 2009 and May 2011, according to employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks employment and other economic data. But the ad was missing a crucial piece of context. It neglected to mention that the economy gained 1 million jobs in the year before the ad came out. PolitiFact Ohio gave the claim a Mostly True. Six months have passed since PolitiFact Ohio’s story ran, so we checked the latest employment statistics to see whether the figures were still correct. We found that the country’s employment outlook is sunnier. In December, there were nearly 132 million nonfarm employees in the U.S., down 1.66 million from January 2009. This means that Gingrey’s 2 million figure is some 20 percent too high. We found a few other problems with Gingrey’s use of employment data. When the economy loses nonfarm jobs, it does not mean that "2 million more Americans are out of work," as Gingrey said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not design this metric to measure how many people have become unemployed. It’s likely many did get laid off. But others might have chosen to return to school, become stay-at-home parents or leave the workforce for any number of other reasons. It’s also worth noting that while payrolls have declined since January 2009, they’ve been rising since October 2010, according to BLS data. Because Gingrey’s claim cherry-picks unflattering data and his numbers could use some freshening up, we rate his statement Half True. Now we come to the larger issue at hand. Gingrey and Johnson used valid data to give opposite impressions of the state of the economy. Their interpretations had some shortcomings but weren’t wholly incorrect. So how is this possible? Can unemployment decline under Obama if payrolls shrank? Yes. The reason is that Gingrey and Johnson used data from different time periods. Gingrey chose to consider nonfarm payroll numbers starting in winter 2009, while Johnson started his unemployment count in October 2009. The economy didn’t post its worst numbers until the latter half of 2009. Between January 2009 and December 2011, the economy lost jobs. Nonfarm payrolls decreased by some 1.7 million jobs. As you’d expect, unemployment increased during the same time period from 7.8 percent to 8.5 percent. But from October 2009 to December 2011, the economy gained jobs. Nonfarm payrolls actually rose by about 2.4 million. Unemployment dropped from 10 percent to 8.5 percent. It’s easy to cherry-pick data that give opposite impressions of the nation’s economic health. With statistics, the devil’s in the details.

Phil Gingrey

2012-02-01T06:00:00

2012-01-25

['United_States', 'Barack_Obama']

thal-00170

CLAIM: Job activation schemes are masking the actual pace of economic recovery

half true

http://www.thejournal.ie/ge16-election-2016-ireland-fact-check-job-activation-unemployment-2601799-Feb2016/

FactCheck: What effect does JobBridge and other schemes have on our unemployment rate?

Feb 14th 2016, 6:00 PM

['None']

snes-01570

A photograph shows a coyote being given a bath after it was mistaken by a dog by an Ohio family in October 2017.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coyote-given-bath-mistaken-dog/

Fauxtography

Dan Evon

Was This Coyote Given a Bath After Being Mistaken for a Dog?

17 October 2017

['Ohio']

pomt-07077

There is a Republican "plan to end Medicare."

false

/ohio/statements/2011/jun/27/sherrod-brown/us-sen-sherrod-browns-campaign-warns-there-republi/

Some claims are so popular that no matter how often they get debunked, politicians or their campaigns can’t stop using them. A current favorite: Republicans plan to end Medicare. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re-election organization, Friends of Sherrod Brown, is the latest group to utter this claim. In a fund-raising solicitation sent by e-mail June 20 on behalf of Brown, Sarah Benzing, campaign manager for the Ohio Democrat, said exactly that: there is a Republican "plan to end Medicare." In fairness, this was but one small part of her e-mail to potential donors. Benzing spent far more time criticizing Josh Mandel, the Ohio treasurer who has filed candidacy papers to run against Brown. She noted that Mandel, a Republican, recently had a private fund-raising reception with Washington lobbyists. Mandel avoided talking with the press on this trip, as he has on other occasions, and this was the gist of Benzing’s fund-raising e-mail. Writing in a guy-walks-into-a-bar style, she began her pitch: "A guy walks into a DC lobbying firm... While he’s in town, he stands up an Ohio reporter and continues to refuse to discuss his position on the Republican plan to end Medicare or allegations that he used taxpayer money to campaign." By the end of her e-mail, she said, "Ohioans won’t stand for his stonewalling, and when he tries to drown out their concerns with attacks bought and paid for by these shadowy operatives and DC lobbyists, we’ll be ready to respond." She asked for "$5 or more to help us fight back against Josh Mandel’s corporate lobbyist friends." Perhaps we should be flattered that Benzing based much of her e-mail on our reporting about Mandel. The Plain Dealer provided details of Mandel’s Washington trip in its political blog on Cleveland.com, and Benzing repeated them and credited the newspaper. The Plain Dealer also operates PolitiFact Ohio, and in the interest of full disclosure, the reporter writing this very PolitiFact item is the same reporter who wrote the Cleveland.com piece on Mandel. We’re just calling ‘em as we see ‘em. And we see a problem with the Brown campaign’s claim, because Republicans have not said they want to end Medicare. PolitiFact has noted this several times, and many political operatives are aware of the issue and its broader debate. About that debate: House Republicans and many in the Senate support a proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to convert Medicare into a "premium-support payment" program starting in 2022. In other words, people retiring then would sign up for private health insurance plans, with Medicare paying those plans to provide coverage. There would be a middle man rather than direct payment from the government to the doctor, as Medicare is currently structured. Proponents and critics disagree as to whether a voucher system would be good or bad and about the perils of doing nothing. The Congressional Budget Office says the Ryan plan would end up costing seniors more out-of-pocket for health care than they pay now. But we are dealing here with the more basic issue of Benzing’s claim: that Republicans plan to end Medicare. If you are 55 years or older already, it would not change. And if you are younger, the Ryan plan would leave you with a different Medicare system, but one in which the government still played a big role in your health coverage. This has been rehashed repeatedly. From our colleagues at PolitiFact Wisconsin on June 10: "Moreover, we’ve established that, although it’s expected that senior citizens would pay more for health care under Ryan’s plan, they would still have health care." From PolitiFact Virginia on June 9: "Would the plan really end Medicare? The Republican plan would be a huge change to the current program, and future seniors would have to pay more for their health plans if it becomes law. But to say it would end Medicare, as the DCCC e-mail does, is a major exaggeration. All seniors -- current and future -- would continue to be offered coverage under the proposal, and the program’s budget would increase every year." From the national PolitiFact on May 25: "Seniors would continue to be offered coverage under the proposal, and the program’s budget would increase every year although at a rate not expected to match the rise in medical costs. The government would still play a critical role in directing the program and setting standards." From PolitiFact Wisconsin on April 11: "To be sure, the plan would change Medicare, significantly, starting in 2022. But for those who turn 65 before then, there would be no changes at all, even after 2022. And for the others, Medicare would change -- dramatically -- but it would still exist." Why, then, did the Brown campaign say that the Republican plan would end Medicare? Benzing sent us three sources for the statement. The first was a Wall Street Journal article on April 4 that, according to Benzing, said the Ryan plan "would essentially end Medicare." The Journal article, however, didn’t quite say that. It said: "The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans, as a program that directly pays those bills." Changing the payment method is not the same as ending the entire program. Her next source was a Kaiser Health News article from April 4 that said, "A premium support model would fundamentally change the way that Medicare works by limiting the amount of money the federal government spends on medical services for seniors and the disabled. Currently, Medicare is an entitlement program, which means that the government must help finance every doctor visit and medical service that an individual needs." There’s little question about a fundamental change -- but that, too, is not the same as killing Medicare, especially since the program would remain unchanged for people who retire before 2022. Finally, she listed a Kaiser Health News article from April 5 that said seniors would pay sharply more for their Medicare coverage under Ryan’s plan. It provided estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. "For example, by 2030, under the plan, typical 65 year olds would be required to pay 68 percent of the total cost of their coverage, which includes premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs, according to CBO. That compares with the 25 percent they would pay under current law, CBO said." Benzing cited the article accurately. It should be mentioned, however, that Medicare trustees don’t see the current rate, generous though it may be, as sustainable past 2024. Some other form of savings, cost sharing or revenue-raising methods may be inevitable. "Ask anyone who will pay twice as much out-of-pocket under the Republican plan if it's still Medicare," Benzing told us when we asked about the plan-to-end-Medicare claim. "Ask anyone who thought they were going to have guaranteed coverage and now won't if it's still Medicare." Those are questions of degree. Change of some kind is likely -- so will that mean death to Medicare? Certainly not for millions of current retirees and baby boomers now over age 55. For everyone else, the Ryan plan might better be defined by using another political chestnut, namely, the end of "Medicare as we know it" -- a cliche, perhaps, but one with enough qualification to keep the claim out of the hot seat. The Brown fund-raising pitch had no such qualification. No matter how often it's said, this still remains true - that the unqualified end-of-Medicare statement is not accurate. And on the Truth-O-Meter, that means the statement still garners a rating of False.

Sherrod Brown

2011-06-27T06:00:00

2011-06-20

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

pomt-02967

I never was in favor of shutting down the government. … (I) voted to fund the government fully.

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/oct/23/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-he-never-favored-government-shutd/

Now that the federal government shutdown is over, the blame game is well under way. On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., emphasized that he didn’t favor a government shutdown even though many observers have accused his party of instigating the shutdown as a way of defunding or delaying President Barack Obama’s health care law. On Oct. 20, 2013, host Chris Wallace asked Rubio whether he was "really prepared to keep the government shut down" when he voted against the final deal to re-open the government and avoid hitting the debt ceiling. "Well, let me be clear," Rubio responded. "I never was in favor of shutting down the government. I was never in favor of defunding the government. I was in favor of funding the government fully, voted to fund the government fully, made efforts to fund the government fully." Later in the interview, Rubio reiterated, "I never wanted there to be a government shutdown. … The people who shut down the government were the president and the Democrats in the Senate, who basically said that unless you fund … Obamacare, we are unwilling to fund the entire government. They took that position, and they forced this situation that we've just gone through." Rubio has a point that Democrats, including Obama, ought to shoulder some of the responsibility for the government shutdown. Democrats decided that voting to continue funding the government on the Republicans’ terms was too bitter a pill to swallow, and ultimately that turned out to be a successful negotiating position. But that doesn’t absolve them of all responsibility for the government closure. In this item, however, we are looking at the flip side -- namely, whether Rubio is right that "I never was in favor of shutting down the government. … (I) voted to fund the government fully." We’ll take the two parts of this question separately. (Rubio’s office did not respond to inquiries for this story.) "I never was in favor of shutting down the government." It’s true that on multiple occasions, Rubio stated publicly that he didn’t want to shut down the government. On Sept. 27, 2013, he told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News that "I don't know of any Republicans in favor of a government shutdown. … The truth is, this isn't about shutting down the government. This is about shutting down Obamacare." In a Capitol hallway interview with reporters the same day, Rubio said something virtually identical. He has frequently deflected blame on Democratic leaders for pushing a shutdown. However, we found two examples of Rubio stating support for positions that made the shutdown possible, even inevitable. • At a July 11, 2013, Washington breakfast sponsored by the Concerned Veterans for America and The Weekly Standard, Rubio advocated stripping Obamacare funding from the next temporary government spending measure, known as a "continuing resolution." "We should not pass a continuing resolution, and I will not vote for a continuing resolution unless it defunds Obamacare for the period of time of the continuing resolution. I'd like to see it permanently repealed, but at a minimum, we should agree to do that." Preventing passage of a continuing resolution would deny operating funds for the federal government and effectively shut it down. • Along the same lines, Rubio was quoted in the Washington Times on July 24, 2013, as saying, "The argument I’ve made to my colleagues is that there are some issues that are so fundamental that we have to be willing to go all the way on them. I think Obamacare is one of them." In this context, going "all the way" meant opposing a continuing resolution. We know this because the set-up to that quote in the Washington Times paraphrased Rubio as saying, in the Times’ words, that "Republican opposition to President Obama’s health care law is so integral to the party’s principles that his colleagues should be ready to reject any spending bills that fund the reforms." So these two sets of comments show that Rubio said he was comfortable pursuing a strategy that could lead to a government shutdown. Rubio "voted to fund the government fully" In numerous Senate votes immediately before and during the shutdown, Rubio sided with Republicans in opposing Democratic bills that would have implemented a "clean" continuing resolution -- that is, a bill to resume funding the government that didn’t include other conditions, particularly those backed by Republicans that would have defunded or delayed Obamacare. • Senate votes 206, 207, 208 and 209 on Sept. 27. In each of these votes, including both procedural and substantive votes, Rubio joined most Republicans in voting against a "clean" continuing resolution. He did so because the measure in question continued to fund Obamacare, a policy he opposed. Still, had he voted for these bills, they would have funded the government "fully." • Senate votes 210 and 211 on Sept. 30. In both votes, Rubio sided with Republicans in opposing a Senate Democratic move to strip anti-Obamacare provisions from a continuing resolution that had been passed by the House and that would have otherwise funded the government. • Senate vote 216 on Oct. 12. Rubio voted against another Democratic effort to pass a "clean" continuing resolution. The vote failed to reach the required 60-vote threshold because the Democrats couldn’t persuade any Republicans to break ranks. (Senate votes 213, 214 and 215 were not directly related to the shutdown.) • Senate vote 218 and 219 on Oct. 16. Senate leaders from both parties crafted a deal designed to end the shutdown, and it passed, 81-18. But Rubio was one of the Republicans who voted against it, both on a procedural vote and on the measure itself. (Senate vote 217 was unrelated to the shutdown.) The Rubio vote that comes closest to qualifying as one to "fund the government fully" was Senate vote 212 on Oct. 1. Rubio joined Republicans in voting against tabling (that is, setting aside and ignoring) a House request to convene a joint House-Senate conference committee to consider the bill the Senate had rejected on Sept. 30. The House-backed bill that failed in the Senate would have funded the government but delayed the individual mandate in the health care bill, eliminated employer premium cost-sharing for congressional workers forced to purchase plans on the Obamacare marketplace, and requested the bicameral negotiating conference. By voting not to table this request, Rubio did effectively keep alive a legislative vehicle that would have ended the shutdown, only with conditions that Democrats considered unacceptable. So that’s one vote that might be used to support this half of Rubio’s claim. But it’s outweighed by nine other votes in which Rubio opposed measures to re-open the government or opposed advancing such a bill through the legislative process. We shared our findings with Rubio's office and asked for their comments, but we didn't receive a response. Our ruling Rubio appears to be making the case that he would have liked to have achieved his goals without having to shut down the government, and that he would have been happy to fund the government fully if doing so was paired with provisions defunding or delaying Obamacare. He may have felt that way, but both of the specific claims he makes are problematic. His claim that "I never was in favor of shutting down the government" is undercut by two separate comments in which he supported a strategy of opposing Obamacare even if that meant rejecting a bill that would have kept the government open. And on the question of whether he "voted to fund the government fully," he arguably may have done so once, but took the opposite position nine times. Given the political realities of the budget battle, Rubio's words and actions suggest he wanted Obamacare defunded more than he wanted to keep the government open. As we noted, where responsibility for the shutdown is concerned, it takes two to tango. But in this case, there’s very little to support Rubio’s twin claims. We rate his claim Mostly False.

Marco Rubio

2013-10-23T10:30:27

2013-10-20

['None']

tron-01582

New Way of American Life Email

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/email-explains-how-to-get-75k-in-benefits-for-you-and-your-girlfriend/

government

['Trending Rumors']

New Way of American Life Email

Apr 13, 2015

['None']

pomt-07711

In 2011, "the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools system will exceed $100,000."

true

/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/04/maciver-institute/maciver-institute-says-average-annual-salary-and-b/

Tea party Republican Rand Paul raised some eyebrows in February 2011 when he said in two national TV interviews that the average public school teacher in Wisconsin "is making $89,000 per year." But the claim by the U.S. senator from Kentucky, which we ruled to be False, was not as surprising as one made nearly a year earlier by the conservative MacIver Institute. Speaking about Milwaukee public school teachers, the Madison think tank declared in a March 3, 2010, news release: "For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools system will exceed $100,000" in 2011. In light of Paul’s comments, which were made during the heat of the nationally watched Wisconsin budget debate, we decided to take a closer look at MacIver’s claim. It has resurfaced in the budget debate in comments on websites such as the Huffington Post and TheNation.com. In announcing the $100,000 figure, the institute produced a video that included brief clips of an MPS administrator reciting salary and fringe benefit numbers during a school board meeting the previous day. The average total compensation figure for teachers exceeded $100,000. We asked MacIver spokesman Brian Farley if he had any additional evidence. He cited a February 2011 posting from the School Zone blog on JSOnline.com, which reported slightly different numbers than those in MacIver’s video. The posting quoted MPS’ budget manager as saying that in 2011-2012 (the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2011), the average MPS teacher would receive total compensation of $101,091 -- $59,500 in salary and $41,591 in benefits. We double-checked with MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin and she confirmed the figures. We wanted to compare the $101,091 for MPS teachers to other teachers, but the latest figures compiled by the state Department of Public Instruction are for 2009-2010, two years earlier. Those figures show for 2009-2010, MPS teachers earned, on average, $56,095 in salary plus $30,202 in benefits, for a total of $86,297. That was lower than eight other school districts in Milwaukee County, including Greendale, Greenfield, Shorewood, Cudahy, Fox Point, South Milwaukee, Franklin and Nicolet, which was highest at just over $103,000. Let’s return to the MacIver Institute claim. The conservative think tank said the average annual compensation for a Milwaukee Public Schools teacher would exceed $100,000 in 2011. As of July 1, 2011, according to the school district, that figure will be $101,091. MacIver’s claim is True.

MacIver Institute

2011-03-04T12:00:00

2010-03-03

['None']

pomt-06121

On instances when abortions should be allowed.

half flip

/texas/statements/2011/dec/28/rick-perry/has-rick-perry-toughened-his-abortion-stance/

At a Rick Perry presidential campaign event in Iowa on Dec. 27, 2011, a pastor told the Texas governor that he saw a contradiction in Perry's abortion stance. Pointing to a conversation he had with Perry at an October event, the Rev. Joshua Verwers of Full Faith Christian Center in Chariton, Iowa, said the governor had characterized his position as in favor of banning abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman's life is in danger. "But just about a week ago, you signed the Personhood USA pledge, which ... states that abortion and the innocent killing of all life should always be prohibited and that it's never acceptable," Verwers said. "So to me it seems kind of like a contradiction (from) where you were a month ago." Perry responded by telling the pastor that he had undergone a transformation. Afterward, many news outlets reported that Perry had shifted his position on abortion rights. We decided to put that question to the PolitiFact Flip-O-Meter. Has Perry toughened his stance on abortion? First, we checked whether Verwers had accurately characterized Perry's established position on abortion. We should note that Perry said, "Yes, sir," several times while Verwers was speaking to him at the Iowa event, including after the pastor's statement that Perry had previously expressed support for the three exceptions to any abortion ban. In a search of news articles, we found support for Verwers' description of Perry's position going back to 1997. An Aug. 31, 2011, Texas Tribune story said Perry "opposes abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother's life is in danger." A Jan. 12, 2007, Austin American-Statesman article reported that Perry, in an interview with a reporter, said he was amenable to a proposal that would trigger a state ban on abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court were to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Perry told the reporter that he favored exceptions to the ban to save a woman's life and in cases of rape and incest. A year earlier, when Perry was running for re-election, the Dallas Morning News published responses from the candidates to questions about abortion issues and contraception. Among the questions was: "Should abortion be legal in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the woman?" Perry's response was listed as "yes." Jumping back nearly 10 years, a June 19, 1997, news article by the American-Statesman — reporting on the announcement that Perry, then the state agriculture commissioner, would run for lieutenant governor — said Perry told reporters that he was opposed to abortion except in cases involving rape, incest or a threat to the life of the woman. So, has Perry's position on "exceptions" changed? On Dec. 27, 2011, during the Iowa event, Perry told Verwers that his transformation came after watching the film Gift of Life, whose website says it "looks at the lives of individuals who were nearly the victims of an abortion," and talking with Rebecca Kiessling, a woman who was conceived during a rape. "I really started giving some thought about the issue of rape and incest," Perry said. Later that night, Perry participated in a teleconference sponsored by Personhood USA, the group behind the pledge that Verwers mentioned in his question to Perry, and other anti-abortion organizations. Perry acknowledged that his position had changed. "This is something that is relatively new," Perry said, again citing his conversation with Kiessling. "We had a fairly lengthy and heartfelt conversation about how she was conceived in rape, and looking in her eyes, I couldn’t come up with an answer to defend the exceptions for rape and incest," Perry said. In a phone interview, we asked Verwers how he had interpreted Perry's response to his question. Verwers said he believed that Perry was telling him that he no longer believed in any of the three exceptions he had expressed support for previously. "My interpretation is that he is wholeheartedly in support of the Personhood USA pledge that says there is never an acceptable case for abortion," Verwers said. "I think he's truly committed to that, no matter the case, no matter the exception." The pledge, which Perry signed Dec. 15, says: "I believe that in order to properly protect the right to life of the vulnerable among us, every human being at every stage of development must be recognized as a person possessing the right to life in federal and state laws without exception and without compromise." However, it also says this, suggesting some ambiguity when it comes to the "life of the mother" exception: "I recognize that in cases where a mother's life is at risk, every effort should be made to save the baby's life as well; leaving the death of an innocent child an unintended tragedy rather than an intentional killing." On Dec. 28, a day after talking about his transformation with Verwers, Perry told reporters outside a restaurant in Indianola, Iowa, that he continues to support one exception to an abortion ban: in cases in which a woman's life is threatened. "So the lone exception is now for the life of the mother?" a reporter asked. "That's correct," Perry said. Our ruling Perry has long maintained his opposition to most abortions while supporting exceptions in cases of rape, incest and when a woman's life is threatened. Now, he says he is in favor of only one exception. That's a change in position, but it's short of a Full Flop. We'll call it a Half Flip.

Rick Perry

2011-12-28T18:54:07

2011-12-27

['None']

afck-00390

“W Cape has best delivery record in SA: 99.1% of households access piped water, 93.4% electricity & 96.9% have toilet facilities. #DAdelivers”

mostly-correct

https://africacheck.org/reports/does-south-africas-democratic-alliance-really-deliver-we-assess-their-claims/

Does South Africa’s Democratic Alliance really deliver? We assess their claims

2014-03-25 08:47

['None']

pomt-14182

I earned more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York.

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/25/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-says-he-won-more-votes-wisconsin-donald-t/

Ted Cruz got whomped by Donald Trump in the New York primary. But in remarks in Borden, Ind., Cruz tried to take some solace by looking at the numbers a different way. "I earned more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York," Cruz said. Is that right? We took a closer look. Here’s the final results of the April 5, 2016, Wisconsin Republican primary, according to the Associated Press: Candidate Wisc. votes Percentage Delegates Ted Cruz 531,129 48.2 percent 36 Donald Trump 386,370 35.1 percent 6 John Kasich 155,200 14.1 percent 0 Marco Rubio 10,569 1 percent 0 Ben Carson 5,608 0.5 percent 0 Jeb Bush 3,153 0.3 percent 0 And here are the final results of the April 19 New York Republican primary: Candidate N.Y. votes Percentage Delegates Donald Trump 524,932 60.4 percent 89 John Kasich 217,904 25.1 percent 4 Ted Cruz 126,151 14.5 percent 0 So Cruz did win more raw votes in Wisconsin (531,129) than Trump did in New York (524,932). It’s a modest edge -- Cruz won about 1.1 percent more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did in New York -- but an edge nonetheless. The discrepancy owes much to two factors: Wisconsin’s turnout rate, which was two and a half times higher than New York’s, and the Republicans’ greater strength in purplish Wisconsin than in solidly blue New York. In Wisconsin, about 24 percent of the voting-age population cast a Republican primary ballot. In New York, it was just 5.6 percent. That helps explain why Cruz eked out more raw votes than Trump even though Trump won the much bigger state and almost three times as many delegates. Our ruling Cruz said, "I earned more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump did in New York." This is certainly a glass-half-full way of looking at the results, but factually, Cruz is on target. We rate his statement True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/54262b32-5a45-42e8-beaf-187ce92f7272

Ted Cruz

2016-04-25T16:46:13

2016-04-25

['Wisconsin', 'New_York_City', 'Donald_Trump']

tron-02734

President Obama Awards Himself Medal for Distinguished Public Service

mostly fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/president-obama-awards-himself-medal-for-distinguished-public-service/

obama

['barack obama', 'liberal agenda', 'patriotism']

President Obama Awards Himself Medal for Distinguished Public Service

Jan 6, 2017

['None']

goop-00156

Brad Pitt’s Kids ‘Trapped’ In Angelina Jolie’s ‘Prison,’

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-angelina-jolie-kids-custody-battle-prison/

Andrew Shuster

Brad Pitt’s Kids NOT ‘Trapped’ In Angelina Jolie’s ‘Prison,’ Despite Report

12:21 pm, October 10, 2018

['Angelina_Jolie', 'Brad_Pitt']

snes-00265

Did Wild Dogs Kill a Two-Year-Old Boy at a Zoo?

outdated

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wild-dogs-zoo-kill-boy/

Viral Phenomena

Bethania Palma

Did Wild Dogs Kill a Two-Year-Old Boy at a Zoo?

2 August 2018

['None']

snes-03542

After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Ford decided to move production of their vehicles from Mexico to Ohio.

mostly false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ford-from-mexico-to-ohio/

Ballot Box

Kim LaCapria

Trump Win Prompts Ford to Move Manufacturing from Mexico to Ohio

15 November 2016

['Mexico', 'Ohio', 'Ford_Motor_Company', 'Donald_Trump']

vogo-00183

Statement: Pension bonds have “been off the table since the voters voted on Prop. B,” Bob Filner, a mayoral candidate, told NBC 7 San Diego in an interview Oct. 8.

determination: huckster propaganda

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/mayor-2012/fact-check-filners-pension-bond-backpedaling/

Analysis: Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio and his supporters held a press conference Monday to attack his opponent Bob Filner for supporting borrowing money to pay down the city’s pension debt. This financing is known as pension obligation bonds. DeMaio highlighted the risks of bonds, and compared them to “taking out another credit card.”

Fact Check: Filner's Pension Bond Backpedaling

October 11, 2012

['Bob_Filner', 'San_Diego']

pomt-03036

Says her actions as Wisconsin commerce secretary brought the state "84,000 more Wisconsin jobs than we have today."

half-true

/wisconsin/statements/2013/oct/09/mary-burke/mary-burke-says-wisconsin-had-84000-more-jobs-when/

Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s bashing of his predecessor’s record on job creation was on Mary Burke’s mind when the Madison Democrat officially announced her 2014 gubernatorial candidacy. Unsurprisingly, Burke was not content to let Walker tag her as responsible for the 133,000 jobs lost during Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s second term. The former Trek Bicycle executive was Doyle’s commerce chief from February 2005 to November 2007, overlapping Doyle’s two terms. In her announcement, Burke pointed to where Wisconsin stood at the end of her Commerce tenure compared to where it stands now, after two years with Walker at the helm. "After Trek, I spent a few years as Wisconsin’s Commerce secretary, focused every day on creating jobs," Burke said in a video on Oct. 7, 2013. "We reopened the mill in Park Falls, brought Uline to Kenosha and helped entrepreneurs and new businesses start up and grow." She concluded: "All in all it meant 84,000 more Wisconsin jobs than we have today." Burke brought up the number to claim that politicians in Madison (she didn’t name Walker) are more hung up on arguing than solving problems. As she begins a campaign that no doubt will focus on Walker’s promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs, let’s examine her 84,000-job claim. To check state employment figures, we’ll use the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a thorough jobs count used by economists and state and federal jobs officials. The figures are gathered by the state, then adjusted and published by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. A technical note: Because the quarterly jobs data is not seasonally adjusted, it’s not useful to compare the jobs picture for Burke’s last month (October 2007) to the latest-reported Walker month (March 2013). But we can look at three different apples-to-apples measurements. --The annual averages for 2007 (Burke’s last year) and 2012 (the most recent full year under Walker) show Wisconsin’s total employment was 85,520 persons higher in 2007 than in 2012. Note: Burke used total public and private employment, while Walker’s pledge is for private-sector jobs, but that distinction made little difference in this instance, we found. -- Comparing December 2007 to December 2012, the gap is 81,912. -- The gap when comparing October 2007 (Burke’s last month) to the same month in 2012 is 79,436. So Burke’s 84,000 figure fits in that range. How is it possible that 133,000 jobs were lost in Doyle’s last term, but the total employment figure in 2012 under Walker is lower than the 2007 figure cited by Burke? The answer lies in what happened in the last three years of Doyle’s term, which essentially ended in December 2010. Until mid-2008, monthly employment in Wisconsin was rising, as it had for years. In June 2008, seven months after Burke departed, the total employment count started a big slide that was part of the Great Recession that swept the United States. The slide ended in mid-2010 in Doyle’s final year, and the monthly gains that started then have generally continued under Walker. Who gets the credit? Part of Burke’s claim is that her actions as Commerce secretary and those of the Doyle administration explain why employment was higher then than now. Burke highlighted two major instances when her agency provided state help in adding jobs. The paper mill in Park Falls she mentioned, Flambeau River, reopened in 2006 with millions in aid from Burke’s Commerce Department under Doyle. It had closed earlier in the year, a victim of the digital era that has meant hard times in the printing business, the Journal Sentinel reported. Historical note: As the Journal Sentinel reported, the loans to Flambeau River were the largest among more than $12 million in loans to state businesses that Walker’s new jobs agency failed to track systematically, forcing major changes at the agency. The other firm Burke mentioned, Uline Inc., was offered millions in incentives and aid from Wisconsin to move its headquarters from northern Illinois and build a major new distribution center in Pleasant Prairie. There were other factors, though, behind both success stories. The paper mill was rescued by a local buyer with high financial incentive to rescue the plant. At Uline, a company official said at the time that Wisconsin got the nod because it had a "huge shovel-ready site" that was close to an expressway and to Uline's existing Waukegan headquarters. Burke campaign aide Joe Zepecki told us that Burke deserves credit for economic success because her job was to focus on creating jobs. As we’ve noted in past items, though, a chief executive such as a governor has influence over jobs, but so do a host of other factors, such as national trends, that are beyond a governor’s control, much less a Commerce secretary’s. "The economy is a big thing and it is ridiculous for one person to take sole credit, or to be assigned sole blame, for anything that happens," Brian Jacobsen, an economist at Wells Fargo Bank and lecturer at Wisconsin Lutheran College, told us. "They can help or hurt matters, but we should really evaluate the merits of the policies they propose to implement." Looking at the numbers, Wisconsin’s private-sector grew more slowly than the nation’s under Doyle before the recession, including in the 2005-2007 period Burke refers to, the Journal Sentinel reported. So that further limits how much credit Burke can claim. Similarly, the 2012 jobs total under Walker was necessarily affected by the same recession that dragged job growth well into negative numbers in Doyle’s last term. Subsequent growth under Doyle in 2010 beat the U.S. average, while the growth rate has lagged that mark under Walker. Finally, we note that in 2007, shortly before announcing she would resign, Burke issued a harsh criticism of her agency. She said the Commerce Department, which ought to be among the state’s most influential economic players, has sat on the sidelines while other states vie to recruit new businesses. "We are not out there selling the state and attracting the companies," Burke said in 2007. Our rating Burke said her years as Wisconsin commerce secretary meant the state brought "84,000 more Wisconsin jobs than we have today." The numerical part of the claim is on target -- Burke’s tenure was pre-recession and despite gains Wisconsin has not yet rebounded to 2007 levels. But Burke overstates the credit that she and Doyle deserve for the 2007 figure, and skips past the recession that helps explain the statistical truth. We rate her claim Half True. To comment on this item, go to the Journal Sentinel's web page.

Mary Burke

2013-10-09T05:00:00

2013-10-07

['Wisconsin']

pomt-06167

Says King Street Patriots held a fundraiser featuring an author who believes that registering the poor to vote is un-American.

true

/texas/statements/2011/dec/16/boyd-richie/texas-democratic-leader-says-author-who-believes-r/

In an email, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie appealed to supporters for donations so the party could continue "fighting against the King Street Patriots," a Houston tea party group that the Democrats sued last year. The Nov. 15, 2011, email blast added to the party’s charges against the Patriots: "Yesterday, in an almost gleeful admission that folks who tend to vote Democratic should be denied their fundamental right to vote, this tea party group held a Houston fundraiser featuring Matthew Vadum. Yes, the ultra-right-wing author who believes that 'registering the poor to vote is un-American.' " We wondered whether Richie was right: Did the King Street Patriots throw a fundraiser featuring an author who espouses such a view? Some background: The King Street Patriots was launched in 2009, according to its website, "to battle the most brazen attempt by liberals in the last 50 years to further an agenda which Patriots consider diametrically opposed to the welfare of all Americans." The Patriots are "committed to freedom, capitalism, American exceptionalism, constitutional governance and civic duty," the site says. The group has made voter fraud its signature issue and launched an initiative in 2010 called True the Vote that trains poll-watchers. The state Democratic Party and the Patriots group have been embroiled in a legal dispute since October 2010, when the party accused the Patriots of illegally aiding Republicans — through its poll-watcher training — without registering as a political committee. In a countersuit, the Patriots denied the allegations and challenged some state election laws cited by the party, including the limits on corporate campaign contributions. Back to Richie's Nov. 15 email. To back up the first half of its claim — that Vadum spoke at a King Street Patriots fundraiser — party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña sent us the online invitation to the third installment of the Patriots' "visiting author series." According to the invitation, the Nov. 14, 2011, luncheon was to feature Vadum talking about his 2011 book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Vadum is an editor at the Washington-based Capital Research Center, whose website says it "analyzes organizations that promote the growth of government and identifies viable private alternatives to government regulatory and entitlement programs." The price of admission to the luncheon was listed as $100, which the invitation said would entitle attendees to a four-course meal and an autographed copy of Vadum's book. Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the King Street Patriots and a resident of Richmond, southwest of Houston, confirmed that the event was a fundraiser, telling us that about $40 out of every $100 ticket sold for the author series went to the Patriots. The invitation also included a blurb about Subversion Inc.: "America is under siege by radicals who are determined to pulverize the U.S. Constitution, deliberately bankrupt the nation, destroy the electoral system, and drive the economy into the ground. Subversion Inc. isn’t just the story of ACORN. It’s the story of how community organizers just like President (Barack) Obama are undermining American from within — and it’s a story we must understand if we are to save our nation." ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, dissolved in March 2010 after a video sting showed ACORN employees telling people posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to conceal their criminal activities. The 40-year-old, liberal-leaning group, which sought more affordable housing options, a universal health care system and increased voter access, was also accused of committing fraud in voter registration drives. In his book, Vadum says that "rumors of (ACORN's) death have been greatly exaggerated" and that the group's leaders have acknowledged that they are building a network of activist groups to continue ACORN's work. As backup for the second part of its claim — that Vadum believes registering the poor to vote is un-American — the Democratic Party pointed us to an opinion article by Vadum that was posted Sept. 1, 2011, on the conservative website American Thinker. The headline: "Registering the Poor to Vote Is Un-American." Vadum begins his piece by writing that "left-wing activist groups" are eager to register the poor to vote because they always support politicians who want to expand government benefits — which Vadum objects to and views as a coercive redistribution of wealth. Besides the headline, the word "un-American" appears in the piece's third paragraph: "Registering (welfare recipients) to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly anti-social and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country." Later, Vadum expands on his point: "Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. … It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers." In his article, Vadum attacks the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the "motor voter" law, for encouraging more poor people to register to vote, saying the law "turned welfare offices into voter registration centers and encouraged nonprofit groups to conduct registration drives." According to a summary on the Justice Department's website, the 1993 law required most states to give citizens the opportunity to register to vote at offices that provide public assistance and when they apply for or renew their driver's license. In an email, Vadum told us that he stands by his article but has had regrets about his wording. "In retrospect, I believe that calling it 'un-American' to register the poor to vote was rhetorical overkill," Vadum said. "I continue to believe that actively encouraging welfare recipients to vote to enlarge the existing welfare state apparatus and move America farther down the road to European-style socialism is a terrible idea. It is, in the American context, anti-social in that it promotes dependency and the social pathologies associated with it." According to a video posted on the Patriots' website, Engelbrecht asked Vadum about the article at the Nov. 14 event. She said: "You wrote an article for American Thinker, and I'm not sure if any of you (the audience) have seen this, but the left has already come out swinging against the fact that you wrote the article, that we had you here after you wrote the article. And, you want to speak to that?" Vadum responded: "I wrote an op-ed, perhaps indelicately worded, called 'Registering the Poor to Vote Is Un-American,' but I wasn’t saying that people shouldn’t have the right to vote if they’re poor. I was talking about the — and I’ll just be a little bit more careful when I write op-eds in the future; it's mostly the tone that some conservatives objected to, and I can appreciate that." He went on to criticize the motor-voter law. Engelbrecht told us in an interview that Richie's statement — that her group held a fundraiser featuring an author who believes that registering the poor to vote is un-American — was not true. Engelbrecht said that she was unaware of his American Thinker article at the time that Vadum was invited to speak and that the point of his appearance was to discuss his book. In his email to us, Vadum said his American Thinker article was drawn from material in his book. We checked Subversion Inc., and although we didn’t find the title of Vadum's American Thinker article in the text, Vadum makes essentially the same argument as he does in the article. On page 102, he writes: "There's no way to overstate just how profoundly anti-social and un-American the Cloward-Piven voter registration strategy is. It is akin to the government handing out taxpayer-purchased burglary tools." In that sentence, Vadum is referring to Richard Cloward, a Columbia University social work professor who died in 2001, and his wife, Frances Fox Piven, a professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York. They have been described as driving forces behind the 1993 motor-voter law; Cloward’s obituary in The New York Times noted that he and his wife were invited to the White House when President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law. The Times story also mentions a 1966 article that the pair wrote for the Nation magazine calling for a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the voter rolls as a means of forcing radical welfare reform. The Times describes the article as "perhaps (the couple's) most controversial writing," saying it "helped to foster the emergence of a more militant welfare rights movement, including the occupation of welfare offices in many cities and other acts of civil disobedience." Our ruling: The guest speaker at the Nov. 14 King Street Patriots event wrote an article suggesting that registering the poor to vote is un-American, further likening the registration of welfare recipients to offering burglary tools to criminals (though Richie did not mention this aspect). We rate Richie’s statement True.

Boyd Richie

2011-12-16T06:00:00

2011-11-15

['None']

pomt-00244

For decades, Madigan kept property taxes high and made a fortune helping cronies like Pritzker dodge them.

mostly false

/illinois/statements/2018/oct/07/bruce-rauner/rauner-ad-rewrites-property-tax-history/

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has run numerous re-election ads attempting to tie Democratic rival J.B. Pritzker to high taxes, public corruption and powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. In Rauner’s telling, Madigan is the ultimate puppet-master of Illinois politics, controlling Pritzker and everyone and everything the governor deems bad. Now Rauner has yet another ad that not only hits on the same themes but dispenses with all subtlety by using actual puppets to deliver his points. "For decades, Madigan kept property taxes high and made a fortune helping cronies like Pritzker dodge them," the talking puppets claim as they ask viewers to take it from them that Madigan is pulling Pritzker’s strings. Madigan, a Chicago Democrat who has served as speaker for all but two of the past 35 years, undeniably wields considerable power. On the side, he also is a partner in a law firm that, like many others, does lucrative work contesting appraisals for commercial and industrial property to secure real-estate tax reductions for clients. So the ad’s reference to the money he’s made in the field is clear. But property tax levies are set at the local level, not by lawmakers in Springfield. That makes the main beat of Rauner’s contention a head-scratcher. How could Madigan, as a state lawmaker, take action to ensure local property taxes remain high? And what about his work suggests his clients are "cronies" out to game the system? A property tax primer Understanding the thrust of the ad’s claim requires a brief journey into the weeds of property taxes in Illinois. The state itself stopped taxing property a decade before the 76-year-old Madigan was born. Since then, the taxing of property has been largely a local affair, with municipal and county officials determining assessments, tax rates and levies. The state isn’t totally divorced from the process, however. During Madigan’s lengthy tenure as speaker, lawmakers and the governor imposed a cap on how much most local governments in the state could raise property tax levies in a given year. Last decade, Springfield responded to soaring home values in Cook County by temporarily imposing limits on the growth of assessments for tax purposes. Despite that history, Justin Giorgio, a Rauner campaign spokesman, said Madigan had "consistently" opposed legislation that would prevent local officials from increasing their levies. During a two-year state budget standoff between Rauner and Madigan’s Democrats, both backed property tax freeze plans, though the speaker’s was not as sweeping. Neither plan became law. But the biggest impact the state has on the size of property tax bills is what it doesn’t do. Few states chip in as little to cover school costs as does Illinois, forcing school districts to rely on local revenue streams to cover more than 60 percent of education costs. "In just about every other state in the union, the state itself puts more into local public schools than we do in Illinois," said Charles N. Wheeler III, a state budget expert and director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois-Springfield. That practice has been reinforced for decades by the spending policies set by state Republicans and Democrats alike, despite a goal laid out in the Illinois Constitution for the state to assume "primary responsibility" for funding K-12 schools. Two decades ago, then Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, pushed to change that. He proposed a "tax swap" that would increase the state income tax, using the extra funds to support schools and provide property tax relief. That plan passed Madigan’s chamber with the speaker’s support, but was spiked in the Senate by members of Edgar’s own party. Commonplace practice The ad also accuses Madigan of capitalizing on high property taxes in order to line his pockets by helping "cronies like Pritzker" avoid them. Madigan has been elusive about his personal wealth, but he once said that he makes at least $1 million "in a good year." And in 2015, his practice ranked second among law firms for total property tax refunds in Cook County, according to a Reuters report. Giorgio, Rauner’s spokesman, pointed us to county records showing a lawyer from Madigan’s firm has represented a company owned by the investment group Pritzker co-founded, securing reductions in its property value assessments. But there are tens of thousands of property assessment appeals filed in Cook County each year by a multitude of law firms, so it is unclear what makes the clients of Madigan’s firm "cronies." When asked, Giorgio pointed only to why the campaign pinned the term on Pritzker. "It has been shown that Madigan's law firm has received a large number of tax reductions from (Cook County Assessor Joseph) Berrios. Berrios is the head of the Cook County Democratic party, former Democratic State Rep. and an ally of Madigan," Giorgio wrote in an email. "Pritzker has been a donor to Madigan and Berrios. Pritzker has received successful reductions through hiring Madigan's law firm from Berrios. That's clearly a ‘crony’ connection." That’s besides the point, however, because state lawmakers do not set property assessments. Our ruling A recent Rauner ad stars puppets that declare "for decades, Madigan kept property taxes high and made a fortune helping cronies like Pritzker dodge them." That claim suggests Madigan, the powerful House speaker, took action as a lawmaker to ensure Illinois property taxes remain some of the nation’s highest. For support, Rauner’s campaign said Madigan has kept property taxes high by "consistently" opposing legislation to provide property tax relief, even though Madigan’s record says otherwise. The claim also ignores the reality that state lawmakers play no direct role in the assessment process, which takes place at the local level. There is a glimmer of truth in the ad’s contention that Madigan is a partner in a law firm that conducts property tax appeals work for those who can afford it, including a Pritzker-owned company. And it’s a lucrative business because property taxes are extraordinarily high in Illinois. But skyrocketing property taxes are part of a long and bipartisan legacy in Springfield of foisting the lion’s share of public school funding on to local property tax payers. The responsibility for that phenomenon is broadly shared by decades of governors and lawmakers, Madigan included. We rate the ad’s claim Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bruce Rauner

2018-10-07T18:44:22

2018-10-01

['None']

pomt-01044

The Texas leg of the Keystone pipeline "has already created 4,800 jobs in just the year it's been up and running."

false

/texas/statements/2015/jan/23/john-cornyn/cornyn-says-keystone-pipeline-through-texas-create/

After a Republican senator revisited his disagreement with President Barack Obama on the government permitting completion of the Keystone XL pipeline to deliver crude oil from Canada to Southeast Texas, a reader called for the Truth-O-Meter. In a Jan. 20, 2015, post on his Senate website, John Cornyn of Texas noted the newly majority-Republican Senate was starting the year by taking up "bipartisan legislation, like the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. But the President has already threatened to veto this economy-boosting bill and prevent it from becoming law," Cornyn said. The White House earlier announced Obama’s veto threat, saying congressional intervention would circumvent a required federal review to determine if the project crossing an international border serves the national interest. Cornyn continued: "It’s unfortunate that the President would shut down this bipartisan legislation. In Texas, we’ve seen the direct positive impact of the pipeline on the local and state economy. The Texas leg of the project, which delivers more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil from Cushing, OK to Southeast Texas each day, has already created 4,800 jobs in just the year it's been up and running." That many jobs since the pipeline started flowing oil through Texas? Cornyn cites TransCanada To our inquiry, Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie said the senator’s jobs count came from the owner of the pipeline, TransCanada. A December 2013 Associated Press news story said the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, was built and would begin shipping oil Jan. 22, 2014. The story quoted TransCanada spokesman Davis Sheremata saying construction of the leg began in August 2012, ultimately involving more than 11 million hours of labor by 4,844 U.S. workers. Sheremata said the number of workers employed in the operational phase of the leg had not been established, the AP reported. According to an October 2013 TransCanada press release, the 4,844 workers who helped build the southern leg included heavy equipment operators, welders, laborers, transportation operators and supervisory personnel (including environment, safety and quality control inspectors). TransCanada confirms construction jobs gone With construction ended more than a year ago, we wondered how many jobs on the Oklahoma-through-Texas pipeline remain. Brandewie suggested we ask TransCanada whose spokesman Matthew John answered our inquiry in part by saying Cornyn separately made a clear reference to the "4,800 individuals who found work as a result of its construction" at a January 2015 celebration of the pipeline held in Beaumont, near Nederland, which is where the pipeline ends. That said, none of the jobs mentioned by Cornyn remained in place after the pipeline was built, John told us. Generally, John said, laborers "work themselves out of a job every time they clock in. Like any infrastructure project, the majority of jobs are created during construction. This doesn’t mean those jobs never existed or didn’t have any lasting impact on the economy or the lives the American men and women that work those jobs to support their families." Asked how many people were employed by the pipeline in Texas at the time Cornyn made his statement, John emailed: "TransCanada has approximately 6,000 employees in North America; about a third are located throughout the U.S. across 32 states. In-service pipelines require maintenance, monitoring and operations jobs that may be directly supplied by TransCanada. However we spend millions of dollars every year with third-party contractors that provide services, (road repair, snow removal, inspectors etc.) in the communities where our infrastructure exists." We asked for a precise count of jobs created after the pipeline was up and running. TransCanada spokesman Shawn Watson said by email: "We have almost 750 employees and full-time contractors based in Texas alone – and many of them will provide some level of support to our oil operations and maintenance there. That doesn’t include people in other parts of the U.S. who would provide support or expertise to pipeline operations in Texas, or who may be considered ‘corporate overhead.’" A national analysis If the entire pipeline is built, the U.S State Department has said, the result would be 3,900 jobs in place for two years and a total of 42,100 positions, PolitiFact in Washington, D.C. has noted, though the definition of a job in this sense is a position filled for one year. This total reflects both jobs created directly as a result of construction and manufacturing for the pipeline -- about 3,900 annual positions over two years -- as well as spin-off jobs supported by construction workers who purchase materials for the project or spend their wages in the economy. Much of the construction work would come in four- or or eight-month stretches. After full construction, the pipeline would employ a lesser number, primarily for maintenance. The total number of projected long-term jobs: about 50. Finally, we asked Cornyn if it makes sense that the jobs he described as resulting from the pipeline's first year of operations existed only during construction. Via Brandewie, Megan Mitchell, Cornyn’s communications director, said: "Our office was correct in noting that 4,800 jobs were created as a result of the Gulf Coast leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Unfortunately, we erred in the timeframe." Our ruling Cornyn said the Texas leg of the Keystone pipeline project "has already created 4,800 jobs in just the year it's been up and running." We didn't learn how many jobs were created in the pipeline’s first year of operations. But Cornyn’s figure reflected the workers who built the pipeline’s southern leg over 15 months--and those jobs no longer existed by 2014. We rate this claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.

John Cornyn

2015-01-23T17:42:29

2015-01-20

['Texas']

pomt-14914

Says Ohio Gov. John Kasich "got lucky with a thing called fracking," which "is why Ohio is doing well."

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/02/donald-trump/donald-trumps-fracked-claim-shales-economic-impact/

In the third Republican debate, Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich got into a fracas over fracking. It started when debate moderator John Harwood asked Kasich whom he was talking about when Kasich said he’s been hearing "crazy" things on the campaign trail. Kasich didn’t name names but listed proposals from the two outsiders leading the GOP field, specifically Trump’s plan to deport 10 million people and Ben Carson’s tithe-based tax policy. "Folks, we’ve got to wake up. We cannot elect somebody who doesn’t know how to do the job," Kasich said on Oct. 28. Trump fired back that Kasich’s record in Ohio wasn’t so good. "First of all, John got lucky with a thing called fracking, okay?" Trump retorted. "He hit oil. He got lucky with fracking. Believe me, that is why Ohio is doing well." "Ohio does have an energy industry, but we’re diversified," Kasich said in response. Who was right? We reached out to the Trump camp but didn’t hear back. The data suggests and experts told us, however, that Trump is grossly exaggerating fracking’s role in Ohio’s economy. The numbers To refresh, fracking or hydraulic fracturing is the process of blasting pressurized water, sand and chemicals to extract natural gas from shale rock miles underground. Ohio, the birthplace of Standard Oil and the leading producer of crude oil a century ago, sits on parts of two major shale formations. Drilling began in the Utica and Marcellus shales in eastern Ohio in 2010, when the state was facing a projected budget shortfall and when Kasich was elected to office. Ohio is now running a $2 billion surplus. Statistics show that fracking contributed to both jobs and tax revenues in Ohio, but the numbers aren’t overwhelming. Kasich’s spokesperson Rob Nichols pointed to data showing that fracking was responsible for just 2.6 percent of the 278,150 total jobs created in the state during that time period. As for revenue, Nichols said data from Ohio’s Department of Taxation shows that oil and gas industry brought 0.017 percent ($19.89 million) of all state revenue ($118.3 billion) between fiscal years 2014 to 2015. Our own analysis produced similar results. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we found that fracking accounted for 2.3 to 2.5 percent of all jobs created in Ohio between 2010 and 2014. Factoring in jobs created in related industries (i.e. petrochemical engineering or pipe manufacturing) brings up the figure up to 6.9 to 7.9 percent of all jobs. As for revenue, we looked at Ohio Department of Taxation’s annual reports and found that the severance tax imposed on the oil and gas industry contributed to less than 1 percent of tax revenue in Ohio from 2010 to 2014. Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland-based liberal think tank, estimates a slightly lower impact. According to their analysis of BLS data, shale jobs represented about 0.26 percent of total employment in Ohio in the first quarter of 2015, and about 2 percent of total jobs added between 2010 and 2015. By comparison, the auto industry added about three and a half times more jobs. "I’ll admit that I tweeted in outrage at (Trump’s) statement since both parts of it are inaccurate and not borne out by the data," said Amy Hanauer, the think tank’s executive director, who also contends that Ohio is actually not doing well. Shale dreams deferred At the beginning of the fracking boom, the oil and gas industry hailed it as "the biggest thing economically to hit Ohio since maybe the plow," in the words of one executive. Shale development, according to industry officials, would bring an estimated $500 billion and 200,000 jobs to the state. But fracking wasn’t as profitable in Ohio as expected, thanks to a slump in the oil prices coupled with low production. "I would say the growth has been slower than we originally anticipated," an oil refinery official acknowledged in 2012, according to Reuters. "Nothing like those numbers had been seen," said Hanauer. "Employment even in the drilling counties was, at that time, below pre-recession levels. Sales tax revenue was up significantly, a good thing, but many of those who have found jobs were from out of state." A 2012 economic analysis sponsored by pro-industry entities — the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and the Ohio Shale Coalition — estimated that shale development would, by 2014, result in an additional 65,000 jobs and just a 1 percent improvement to the state GDP. The 1 percent estimate was "pretty much on target," according to report co-author Douglas Southgate, a professor emeritus of environmental economics and public policy at Ohio State University who says he’s pro-fracking. The overall employment impact, meanwhile, "has been small enough that not even OOGA — the Ohio Oil and Gas Association — has been talking about it," Southgate told us. Even if oil prices pick up again and fracking’s impact grows, its role in Ohio’s economy wouldn’t be as large as Trump is trumpeting it to be. "Ohio has a far more diverse economy than, say, North Dakota or Oklahoma," said Andrew Thomas of Cleveland State University’s Energy Policy Center, the principal investigator of the 2012 report. "I am skeptical that all growth in the state can be attributed to the oil and gas industry alone." Kasich’s campaign forwarded us a report from JobsOhio, the state’s privatized economic development agency, to that point: For the record, not even the drillers themselves back Trump’s claim. Here’s a statement Shawn Bennett, the executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, provided to PolitiFact: "While we appreciate Mr. Trump acknowledging the significant and positive economic impacts that oil and gas development has had on Ohio, we can not take credit for all of the economic growth that has taken place during Gov. Kasich's tenure." Our ruling Trump said, "John (Kasich) got lucky with a thing called fracking," which "is why Ohio is doing well". Though Ohio underwent a fracking boom in recent years, Trump is overstating its impact on Ohio’s economy. By all estimates, fracking jobs account for 2 percent of those added in the state during Kasich’s tenure. Shale development has improved GDP by about 1 percent and contributed to less than a percent of the state’s tax revenue. Not even the drillers themselves back Trump’s claim. We rate it False.

Donald Trump

2015-11-02T15:00:00

2015-10-28

['Ohio', 'John_Kasich']

pomt-09509

The current (agriculture) commissioner allowed tainted beef to be sent to school cafeterias.

false

/texas/statements/2010/feb/19/kinky-friedman/kinky-friedman-says-texas-agriculture-commissioner/

Kinky Friedman, seeking the Democratic nod for state agriculture commissioner, suggests the Republican incumbent, Todd Staples, let down his guard a couple years ago. Responding to a question from the League of Women Voters of Texas, Friedman said: "The current commissioner allowed tainted beef to be sent to school cafeterias." His stomach-churning charge drew our attention. The candidate’s campaign pointed us to a February 2008 press release issued by Staples giving clearance to school districts to comply with a nationwide recall of more than 765,000 pounds of tainted beef. The release states: "Currently, 462 Texas school districts and other entities enrolled in the school breakfast and lunch programs have reported to have meat on hold and now can begin the disposal process." The release doesn’t say if or how Staples allowed the tainted beef get to Texas schools. But Friedman spokesman Jason Stanford said it shows "this was allowed to happen on Staples’ watch." We wondered what role the Texas Department of Agriculture plays in determining what foods get delivered for school meals. Staples’ spokesman Bryan Black confirmed that the Texas department distributes food commodities purchased by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Black conceded too those deliveries would have included the beef that was later targeted for disposal. Yet Black insisted that nothing in state law permits the commissioner to tell districts what foods to order or not. His point: Staples couldn't have stopped--or disallowed--schools from taking the beef; the state department is responsible only for ensuring that food ordered through the USDA's commodity program--whatever the foods are--gets delivered. Spokeswoman Jean Daniel of the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, which administers USDA's food nutrition programs, echoed Black's claim. Daniel said state officials such as the Texas agriculture commissioner don't determine which suppliers provide food either through federally purchased commodities, which account for 15 to 20 percent of the food in school meals nationwide, or local purchases from commercial suppliers, handled by school districts. Daniel said she didn't know of any instance of a state-level official intervening in school district food purchases unless they were alerted to a recall. In 2008, Black said, Staples acted because the federal government told states that the beef was unfit for human consumption. The state agency helped ensure the disposal of the beef and reimbursements to districts. It's true that the Texas agriculture commissioner is responsible for overseeing the distribution of federal commodities for school meal programs. But we found no evidence that Staples had the authority to allow districts to get the bad beef. We rate Friedman's statement as False.

Kinky Friedman

2010-02-19T17:39:16

2010-02-12

['None']

huca-00003

"The prime minister has broken two promises, two direct promises that put us in this position. One was breaking the promise to renew the environmental assessment process with the (National Energy Board) and secondly a promise to end fossil fuel subsidies. He's broken two promises."

some baloney

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/06/01/jagmeet-singh-liberal-environmental-jab-is-some-baloney_a_23448861/?utm_hp_ref=ca-baloney-meter

Jagmeet Singh

Jagmeet Singh's Liberal Environmental Jab Is 'Some Baloney'

06/01/2018 12:27 EDT

May 23

['None']

pomt-12662

Says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said, "It’s better for our budget if cancer patients die more quickly."

pants on fire!

/punditfact/statements/2017/mar/21/blog-posting/fake-quote-tom-price-did-not-tell-cancer-patients-/

A fake news story pegged to a real forum with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price falsely quotes him as saying it’s better for cancer patients to die than to waste taxpayer money. "Tom Price: 'It's better for our budget if cancer patients die more quickly,' " reads the headline on a March 16, 2017, post on USPOLN.com. The post was flagged by Facebook users as potentially being fake news, but it still has been shared on the site more than 75,000 times. USPOLN.com is a site that we’ve written about in other fact-checks, and identifies itself as "a US Political News and hybrid News/Satire platform on the web." Other than that, there’s no indication the story is almost entirely fabricated. The domain is registered to an address in Kosovo. The site didn’t respond to our attempts to contact them via email. The story — which again, is fake — is actually from a March 16 post on Politicops.com, a different fake news site. That site is related to the site Newslo.com, which refers to itself in a disclaimer as "the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web." The Politicops.com site is registered to an administrator named Eli Sompo, at an address in Israel. What makes Newslo.com-related stories especially confusing is that they use a small piece of real news or quotes by real people and build fake stories around them. They feature a pair of buttons that allow readers to highlight the true parts of their stories, so readers can conceivably know the difference. But on other sites without the buttons, there’s no way to know. In this case, the disorienting details are compounded because the "facts" of the Politicops.com story are plagiarized directly from a news article on RawStory.com. That piece recounted an exchange about Medicaid between Price, who is a former GOP congressman from Georgia, and a man at a CNN town hall event. Brian Kline, who said he voted for President Donald Trump, noted he was using Medicaid, the federal health program for the very poor, to be treated for cancer. Kline asked Price why he wanted to stop the expansion of Medicaid as outlined in the Affordable Care Act. Price said he considered the entire program to be riddled with problems. The back-and-forth illustrated that Price does want to draw back access to Medicaid. The fake comments in the made-up story, however, echo a real accusation made in 2009 by former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, during debate on the Affordable Care Act. Grayson admonished GOP opposition to the bill by saying on the House floor that "If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly." But Price did not use the words Politicops.com attributed to him by saying the budget would benefit more from cancer patients who gave up and died. We rate the statement Pants On Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bloggers

2017-03-21T12:57:35

2017-03-16

['None']

wast-00213

I have nothing to with Russia."

4 pinnochios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/27/trumps-claim-that-i-have-nothing-to-do-with-russia/

Donald Trump

Glenn Kessler

Trump's claim that \xe2\x80\x98I have nothing to do with Russia'

July 27, 2016

['Russia']

pomt-09292

The Banking Committee voted a 1,336-page bill "out of committee in 21 minutes with no amendments, with the understanding that before the bill came to the floor, we would reach this bipartisan agreement."

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr/25/bob-corker/corker-claims-financial-regulation-had-speedy-vote/

Financial regulation reform was the topic of the day on the latest edition of ABC's This Week. Among the guests was Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who has played a key role in negotiating the Senate version of a bill meant to crack down on Wall Street. Corker said that, before the bill goes to the Senate floor, lawmakers still need to work out some major disagreements over the details of the legislation. "So if there is no bipartisan agreement, Republicans will block the motion to proceed to debating this bill?" This Week host Jake Tapper asked Corker on the April 25, 2010, show. "I think that's very likely," Corker responded, adding that the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs voted the 1,336-page bill "out of committee in 21 minutes with no amendments, with the understanding that before the bill came to the floor, we would reach this bipartisan agreement." In a chamber notorious for being slower than molasses, a 21-minute committee passage for a major bill is unheard of. Could Corker be right? Indeed, news reports of the March 22 Banking Committee vote all noted its unusual speed. According to Congressional Quarterly, the panel "approved the legislation in less than 30 minutes." A Fox Business article noted that debate "lasted less than 20 minutes." And a reporter for the Atlantic wrote that consideration started at 5 p.m. and ended at 5:22 p.m. So, Corker's pretty accurate with 21 minutes. And he's right that the Democratic leadership promised to negotiate further with Republicans before the legislation hits the floor. Sticking points include new regulatory authority over consumer financial products, such as credit cards and mortgages, as well as regulation of derivatives. Here's what Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd had to say the day his committee passed the bill: "The legislation I present today contains bipartisan ideas and is the result of a bipartisan effort. It does not, as of yet, enjoy bipartisan support. And so, while I will continue to work with my colleagues to build support and make the case for reform, I am moving forward today. " Sen. Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the committee, also acknowledged further bipartisan work, according to Congressional Quarterly. "By coming out today, working in a spirit of, down the road, a bill we can both be proud of, we’re not polarized," he said. (He didn't exactly complete his thoughts in that sentence, but his point was clear that he expected more bipartisan talks.) In fact, on the same day Corker appeared on This Week, the Associated Press reported that bipartisan talks were continuing on Capitol Hill. So, Corker is on solid ground when it comes to his claim that the mark-up was short and that he and other Republicans were promised another attempt at a bipartisan bill before the Senate takes up the legislation. But Corker's comment that the bill passed with "no amendments" is not entirely true. When it came time to actually debate the bill in committee, panel members first approved something called a "manager's amendment," shorthand for an updated version of the bill that serves as a legislative blueprint for lawmakers to discuss and amend. That version included some important changes. For instance, Dodd scrapped his original idea to create an entirely new agency to regulate consumer financial products. Rather, he opted to establish a new regulator inside the Federal Reserve. Furthermore, the manager's amendment included more than 20 Democratic amendments. One, for instance, would give a new council looking for emerging threats to the financial system the authority to decide what events are likely trigger a liquidity crisis. It's also important to note that Republicans had many amendments of their own in addition to the ones in the manager's amendment. GOP members "had queued up hundreds of amendments before abruptly withdrawing them," said an account in Congressional Quarterly. Dodd said his committee "held an open markup. 401 amendments were filed with the committee, but my Republican colleagues did not bring up a single amendment and declined my offer to include some of their amendments in the manager’s amendment." So, while it's unclear why GOP members decided to withdraw their amendments, it appears they had the opportunity to offer them. For his part, Corker lamented his leadership's decision not to offer amendments, telling the Huffington Post it was "a very large strategic mistake. We had an opportunity to pass out a bill out of our committee in a bipartisan way, and then stand on the Senate floor and hold hands and say that we would keep amendments that were unnecessary and improper from coming onto this bill." Corker's spokeswoman, Laura Herzog, told PolitiFact that in his comment on This Week, Corker wasn't trying to insinuate that the Republicans were somehow blocked from offering amendments but simply saying that he expected bipartisan talks after the bill passed the committee. But to say that no amendments were adopted at all is incorrect. So Corker is correct that it only took the committee about 21 minutes to debate and vote on the bill, and he's also right that Democratic leaders promised more bipartisan negotiation before the legislation comes to the Senate floor. But he's wrong that the bill was passed without amendments. Dodd rolled more than 20 Democratic amendments into the final version of the bill. And Republicans had the opportunity to offer their own, but declined to do so. As a result, we find Corker's statement to be Mostly True.

Bob Corker

2010-04-25T16:21:27

2010-04-25

['None']

snes-04092

Phyllis Schlafly once said, "There will be a woman president over my dead body."

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/phyllis-schlafly-woman-president-over-my-dead-body/

Questionable Quotes

David Emery

Phyllis Schlafly Said, ‘There Will Be a Woman President Over My Dead Body’?

6 September 2016

['None']

abbc-00219

Australia's new Prime Minister and Treasurer have both been keen to trumpet good news about the economy in the wake of recent political turmoil.

in-between

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-24/fact-check-are-profits-growing-five-times-faster-than-wages/10287356

There is more to the story than Dr Chalmers's claim suggests. A commonly quoted measure of wages included in the National Accounts — average compensation per employee — increased 1.6 per cent over the year to the June quarter in seasonally adjusted terms (a widely-used adjustment to iron out standard seasonal influences). Using the bureau's trend measure (which applies a rolling average to smooth out statistical volatility), average compensation per employee increased 1.7 per cent over the year. A commonly used measure of profits included in the national accounts — gross operating surplus of private non-financial corporations — grew 9.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms (or by 8.8 per cent in trend terms). The National Accounts figures showed gross operating surplus of private non-financial corporations grew more than five times faster than average compensation per employee over the year to the June quarter. However, the claim requires context. First, as experts contacted by Fact Check pointed out, profits tends to be more volatile than wages. This is partly a function of the fact that profit — a measure of what is left from revenue after costs — is critically influenced by fluctuations in input prices, commodity prices, exchange rates and consumer demand, all of which can fluctuate significantly. In the face of such volatility, comparing a single quarter of data has the potential to paint a misleading picture. Second, the measure of profits in the national accounts provides a snapshot of the total pool of profits across the economy. This pool grows over time as the economy and output expand. As a consequence, Dr Chalmers is comparing an economy-wide pool of profits, with a per capita measure of wages. As one expert noted, this is not a "like-for-like" comparison. A "like-for-like" comparison involves examining the total pool of profits against the total pool of wages. According to the bureau, the total pool of wages — referred to as total compensation of employees — grew by a seasonally adjusted 4.8 per cent over the year to the June quarter, partly reflecting rising employment. On this measure, profits grew at roughly twice the rate of wages.

['business-economics-and-finance', 'work', 'alp', 'australia']

['business-economics-and-finance', 'work', 'alp', 'australia']

Fact check: Are company profits growing five times faster than Australians' wages?

Mon 24 Sep 2018, 12:23am

['None']

pomt-08819

Kathryn Starkey "only attended half of those meetings."

mostly true

/florida/statements/2010/aug/13/committee-protect-florida/kathryn-starkey-missed-just-over-half-meetings/

A new political mailer from the Committee to Protect Florida attacks State House District 45 candidate Kathryn Starkey of New Port Richey for her record on taxes, citing her role on a water district board and her support of the Penny for Pasco, a 2004 increase in the county sales tax. The committee is headed up by Rockie Pennington, a political consultant for Richard Corcoran, one of Starkey’s two opponents in the Aug. 24 Republican primary. (Fabian Calvo is also on the ballot.) "Taxin’ Kathryn," says the mailer sent in early August 2010. "With Kathryn Starkey’s record on taxes here at home, how can we trust her -- or afford her -- in Tallahassee?" We wondered, can you trust the mailer’s claims? We looked at three claims, and this Truth-O-Meter item tackles her attendance at meetings. Other items are here on her voting record for river board tax rates, and here on her actions involving the Pasco sales tax. We looked at the claim that "As a member of the Pinellas-Anclote River Basin Board, Kathryn Starkey had the opportunity to fight for lower taxes in 14 separate budget meetings between 2002 and 2008. But ... She only attended half of those meetings!" Pennington said he based that claim on minutes from the basin board’s meetings. We took a look, too. We looked at two budget meetings each year: June, when the basin board typically sets its preliminary tax rate, and August, when it takes a final vote. (In 2007, the final vote was taken in July.) Starkey served on the board from June 2002 through April 2008, so we looked only at the 12 budget-related meetings that fell within that period. (Pennington, who put together his mailer a month ago, said he wasn’t sure why we came up with different counts for the meetings.) Of 12 budget meetings she could have attended, Starkey attended seven (five of those seven were the final votes). That attendance record is more than half — by a hair. We rate this claim Mostly True.

Committee to Protect Florida

2010-08-13T19:41:24

2010-08-02

['None']

pomt-08744

The IRS filed an $11,000 lien against (Allen) West for back taxes. Three liens were placed on his home for unpaid bills, and a judge ordered West to pay over $5,000 for past due credit card bills.

mostly true

/florida/statements/2010/aug/30/ron-klein/ron-klien-says-allen-west-late-paying-bills/

Primary election night was barely over when U.S. Rep. Ron Klein released his first general-election campaign ad against Republican challenger Allen West in the heated race for Florida’s 22nd congressional district. In the 30-second TV spot, Klein juxtaposes a video clip of West at a public appearance talking about "individual responsibility and accountability," with claims that West has faced numerous liens for unpaid taxes. (Check out the ad here.) "The IRS filed an $11,000 lien against West for back taxes." In the ad, West says: "Individual responsibility and accountability is the No. 1 cultural problem we have in America." A narrator then says: "If so, then Allen West is part of the problem." The ad goes on to list the following claims against West: "The IRS filed an $11,000 lien against West for back taxes." "Three liens were placed on his home for unpaid bills." "A judge ordered West to pay over $5,000 for past-due credit card bills." We decided to check out all three claims, but focused most of our attention on the $11,000 lien. Not only was it the largest debt listed, but it was the one charge that West’s camp immediately challenged. The other two have not been refuted by West campaign manager Josh Grodin in interviews withMiami Herald political reporter Amy Sherman. We asked Klein’s camp to provide us with documentation supporting their claim, and they provided us with a copy of an IRS Notice of Federal Tax Lien filed against "Allen B West & Angela M Graham West." The document, filed on Nov. 17, 2005, with the Marion County Recorder’s office in Indianapolis shows an "Unpaid Balance of Assessment" for $11,081.05. The Marion County Recorder’s office was able to provide us copies of the same document, showing the lien was against the couple’s personal income, not against a home. The recorder’s office also provided a copy of an IRS Certificate of Release of Federal Tax Lien issued to the couple on March 22, 2006, about four months later. The certificate shows that the lien was removed following a payment on the complete balance of the lien. Almost immediately after the ad was released, Grodin released the following statement: "Allen West, and his wife Dr. Angela M. Graham-West have never resided, nor owned property in Marion County, Ind., and there was never a valid IRS lien placed upon them." Still, West’s residency or whether he owned property in Indiana was not in question, since the lien was not against a property but the couple’s personal income. The paperwork was filed in Indianapolis because the IRS paperwork lists West’s address as "DFAS-IN", which stands for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, based in Indianapolis. DFAS handles military payroll for servicemen like West, who is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Grodin said West was working in Afghanistan at the time, training Afghan soldiers as a private contractor. West’s campaign said that they would release documents proving that the IRS lien was an error, but later backtracked. Grodin told The Palm Beach Post on Aug. 26, 2010: "I spoke a little too soon as far as having all the documents. I jumped the gun. I’m still confident that was a mistake by the IRS." As for the other claims listed in the advertisement -- liens being placed against West’s home and being ordered by a judge to pay more than $5,000 in credit charges -- we checked court and county tax records for proof of those claims. West had the following liens placed on his Plantation, Fla., home according to documents from the Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury Division. The liens -- we found five, not three as the ad says -- were brought forward by his Homeowner’s Association (Fountain Spring Master Homeowners Association, Inc., and Fountain Spring II Homeowners Association, Inc.). We list them according to the date they were filed with the Broward County Clerk of Courts, and subsequently when they were paid off. May 5, 2010 - $964.50 for overdue maintenance fees and attorney costs. * lien released on June 22, 2010 March 13, 2009 - $611.66 for overdue maintenance fees and attorney costs. * no release record found on file Feb. 19, 2007- $995.00 for overdue maintenance fees and late charges. * lien released on March 30, 2007 Sept. 14, 2004 - $295.00 for overdue maintenance fees and late charges. * lien released on Nov. 16, 2004 Sept. 7, 2004 - $366.00 overdue maintenance fees, late charges and attorney fees * lien released on Sept. 13, 2004 On the credit card issue, according to documents from the Broward County Clerk of Courts and the Broward County Tax Collector’s Office, a judge ordered West to pay $5,541.43 on Sept. 1, 2006, to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. On June 12, 2009, he was ordered to pay $ 2,832.26 to Midland Funding LLC, a representative of Citibank. We searched Broward County records for "Satisfaction of Judgment" documents that normally indicate a debt has been paid in full, but none came up. However, that does not automatically mean the debt hasn’t been paid, even though those documents are not on file, said Lloyd Comiter, an attorney who serves as the chairman of the Palm Beach County Bar Association’s small claims committee. "Just because there is no Satisfaction of Judgment on file, it doesn’t necessarily mean it hasn’t been paid," Comiter said. "As an attorney, if my client paid their full judgment I would make sure to file the Satisfaction of Judgment so it’s recorded. But there are cases where people do not." West campaign manager Grodin said that the candidate’s financial woes stemmed from his time overseas. He gave this explanation on Aug. 25 in an interview posted on the Miami Herald’s Naked Politics blog: "Allen West was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. [His wife] Angela was putting herself through grad school and caring for two young daughters. Like countless young families, the Wests found themselves with a financial burden." West himself released the following statement on Aug. 26, 2010, regarding his finances, acknowledging struggling with "financial hardship." "...like many of you, my family has struggled with financial hardship," West wrote. " And also like many of you, we have honestly resolved every issue, and both my wife and I are working hard every day to honor all of our obligations, while ensuring our daughters' future." So back to the question: Did the IRS file "an $11,000 lien against West for back taxes" as Klein’s ad states? It's important to remember that income tax records are private and we won't know what the IRS dispute involved. West says the lien was filed in error, but his campaign isn't able to provide us with any documentation showing that. If the campaign offers it later, we will review this item then. What we do know is that an IRS lien was filed, so Klein's ad is accurate on that score. The Broward liens and the credit card accusations also are accurate descriptions of public records. But we think the ad lacks context because Klein fails to mention that the IRS lien was settled within a few months, as were most of the other judgments filed in Broward County. So we rate this claim Mostly True.

Ron Klein

2010-08-30T18:16:47

2010-08-24

['None']

chct-00237

FACT CHECK: Wolff Book Claims Kellyanne Conway ‘Had Never Been Involved In A National Campaign’

verdict: false

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/01/05/fact-check-wolff-book-claims-kellyanne-conway-had-never-been-involved-in-a-national-campaign/

Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter

8:04 PM 01/05/2018

['None']

hoer-01039

Who Viewed Your Profile in 2017

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/scam-who-viewed-your-profile-in-2017/

Brett M. Christensen

Scam Who Viewed Your Profile in 2017

February 6, 2017

['None']

pomt-04385

Says he "is the reason we do not pay a toll every time we pass over the bridge at MoPac and William Cannon."

mostly false

/texas/statements/2012/oct/19/gerald-daugherty/gerald-daugherty-says-he-reason-mopac-drivers-dont/

For many South Austinites in 2004, a proposal to charge a toll on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) at William Cannon Drive was a bridge too far. Gerald Daugherty, then commissioner for Travis County’s Precinct 3, heard from quite a lot of those folks. And in his bid to retake that job Nov. 6, 2012, he has said he served them well: Daugherty "is the reason we do not pay a toll every time we pass over the bridge at MoPac and William Cannon," according to a campaign flier. That bridge was at the center of debate over the region’s 2004 toll road plan -- a debate so heated it launched an effort to recall two Austin City Council members and the mayor. Road wrangling in Precinct 3 hasn’t calmed down much since then; the fight over Texas 45 Southwest underpinned a fact-check we recently wrote about Daugherty’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Karen Huber. In fact, Daugherty bumper stickers in his 2012 race read, "Want SH 45 SW built? Vote for Gerald Daugherty." So we wondered: Was he the reason the toll at William Cannon didn’t happen? It’s a "bold" claim, Daugherty said when we called him. "We probably shouldn’t have used that definitive a position versus saying, ‘I was one of the people that led the charge against’ " the toll, he said. Campaign manager Kathy Pillmore told us by email that the flier was mailed out May 10, 2012, in advance of the May 29 primary vote. Daugherty bested two fellow Republicans in the primary and now faces Huber, who defeated him for the seat in 2008, and Libertarian nominee Pat Dixon. Pillmore said the campaign stands by the statement. Daugherty’s website features a slightly different version: "William Cannon Toll Bridge - working with State Representative Terry Keel we were instrumental in stopping TxDOT from tolling the overpass at Loop 1 South and William Cannon Road." The Texas Department of Transportation was in a fix at the time, Daugherty said, lacking sufficient money to build new roads while maintaining existing roads. Tollways were one option. A Dec. 27, 2004, Austin American-Statesman transportation column recapped the opening salvos of "The Great Turnpike War of 2004": (I)n April, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and Bob Daigh, the Austin district engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, unveiled a toll road plan of eye-popping scope: ... a $1.8 billion, seven-road plan. … The reaction locally was subdued at first, and even a well-attended public hearing in May was relatively low-key. But then state Rep. Terry Keel of Austin and Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, Republicans with a history of supporting roads, unexpectedly came out against parts of the plan, especially levying tolls on a short stretch of MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) at William Cannon Drive. "Double taxation," they called it, because the project, already under construction, was being built with (state) gasoline tax dollars. … (Circle C neighborhood resident Sal) Costello began a recall petition campaign against Austin Mayor Will Wynn and two other council members who voted for the plan … (B)ehind the scenes, talks continued about how to change the plan and quell the uproar. A Sept. 20, 2004, Statesman news story referring to the uproar said, "The spark that lighted that still out-of-control blaze was the state's plan to charge people a half-buck to stay on MoPac and avoid the light at William Cannon Drive." Daugherty said, according to a Statesman news story from May 4, 2004, and transportation column from May 31, 2004, that he got 600 phone calls in three days objecting to the toll plan and more than 200 messages in the first week and a half after it was announced. What got Austin drivers hopping mad was the fact that a toll was going to be charged on a road that had already been paid for. Drawing on state gas tax revenues, work had started on the 1.45-mile overpass earlier in 2004. Until MoPac traffic could sail above William Cannon, drivers were funneled through the stoplights there. Daugherty recalled: "They were just about ready to lay the columns across those pillars that had been there forever, and we all knew that, ‘Wow, we’re just about to get this road, this bridge put across. And man, won’t that be great, because everyone’s not going to have to get off.’" The plan unveiled April 24, 2004, included a toll there precisely because the overpass was incomplete. Daigh, the TxDOT engineer who drafted the plan with the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, told us in a recent telephone interview that few Austin roads were eligible for tolls because tolls could not be charged on an existing road or a road that had no alternative route. The 2004 plan, he said, included every option in the area. When the plan was announced, Daugherty recalled, "You talk about people coming unhinged." He said he heard opposition from both residents and businesspeople in his precinct, which covers southwestern Travis County and contains the overpass site. A Nov. 28, 2004, Statesman transportation column said Keel and Daugherty had held a press conference in May of that year condemning the toll road plan. The column said residents’ opposition and elected officials’ work got the William Cannon toll dropped. Daugherty told us, "I think I probably was the lead person on it. But Terry and I did the press conference together and said, ‘OK, well, hey, we’re just not going to be supportive of this.’ " He said he believes his opposition was influential in part because "I was so well-known for being supportive of roadways." But yes, he said, it was not a one-man show: "I guess if someone wants to say technically, you weren’t the only guy... Anybody that knew anything about it knew that I was the energy behind fighting this like the dickens." The toll plan was added to the region’s long-range transportation plan by a July 12, 2004, vote of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board. At that meeting, we learned via email from CAMPO assistant director Bubba Needham, Daugherty moved to delete the toll from the MoPac overpass after he and other members of the board (which is composed mostly of local elected officials) spoke against the plan. His motion failed 17-6, according to the minutes. Voting with him to delete the toll were Keel and fellow Republican state Reps. Todd Baxter and Jack Stick; Democratic state Rep. Elliott Naishtat; and Austin City Council Member Daryl Slusher. Afterward, according to the minutes, the board voted 16-7 to add the toll proposals to the long-range plan; the seven opposed were those who voted for Daugherty’s motion plus Democratic state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez. Six months later, the board reversed course by adopting a resolution to remove the overpass from toll consideration. According to the minutes of the board’s Jan. 24, 2005, meeting, board chair Gonzalo Barrientos told the board that although that toll had been seen as an essential source of money to improve MoPac, he, Mayor Will Wynn and Precinct 2 commissioner Karen Sonleitner had gotten financial backing from the Texas Transportation Commission to go ahead with the MoPac work without those toll revenues. Barrientos said, according to the minutes, that an engineering concern with the overpass had come up. Asked to explain that issue, Daigh said that the mobility authority had decided drivers would end up in a traffic jam. According to the minutes, Barrientos moved to "de-toll" the overpass, citing the traffic jam concern and noting the toll revenue was no longer an issue. The motion passed. We called Barrientos to get his take on who was most responsible for getting the overpass toll dropped. No single person makes such a decision happen, he told us, but Daugherty was key. The commissioner’s consistent opposition to the overpass toll, "speaking up every time the issue came up," surely helped, he said. Barrientos characterized the discussion that he, Wynn and Sonleitner had with the Transportation Commission as the type of negotiations needed to reach any agreement and said "there might have been others" helping to reach the agreement. "I think probably everybody" gets credit, he said, "but Daugherty was in the forefront." Daigh, who is now senior director of infrastructure for Williamson County, told us he believes there would be a toll on that road if not for Daugherty. "He was the leader of the effort not to have MoPac tolled," Daigh said. Our ruling Daugherty told us he overstated in claiming that he "is the reason we do not pay a toll every time we pass over the bridge at MoPac and William Cannon." He was an early and prominent opponent. But his claim leaves out the many residents and public officials who spoke, lobbied and voted against the overpass toll and worked to find an alternative. No one person was the reason there’s no toll at the bridge. We rate his statement Mostly False.

Gerald Daugherty

2012-10-19T06:00:00

2012-05-10

['None']

pomt-01893

A statewide poll showing 76 percent support and other surveys are a "strong indicator" of broad public support in Milwaukee County for a $10.10 minimum wage

half-true

/wisconsin/statements/2014/jul/07/chris-abele/chris-abele-says-polls-show-strong-support-milwauk/

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele backs an increase in Wisconsin’s minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. But he thinks it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars to ask Milwaukee County voters whether they agree. The County Board voted 13-4 on June 26, 2014 to place a non-binding referendum question on the Nov. 4 ballot to gauge support for the state to enact a $10.10 minimum wage. Some board members say a referendum will drum up support for that level at the state and federal levels. Critics say the referendum is aimed more at driving up turnout on the left in order to help Democrats running in November. Days before the County Board vote, Abele was lobbying supervisors against the move, saying that, when combined with three other referenda, it could cost the county $75,000 to $120,000 in administrative costs. In a June 24, 2014 email and letter posted the next day on Facebook, Abele wrote: "I am worried that we are spending much needed tax dollars on a question that we already know the outcome. One poll conducted by UWM earlier this month shows broad support for raising the minimum wage." According to that poll, Abele wrote, "76% of registered voters support raising the state’s minimum wage. That poll is another strong indicator of what citizens think and it does not require us to dip into our emergency fund to pay for it." Statewide polls, including the one Abele cited, clearly have shown broad support for some increase in the minimum wage. But what do these survey say specifically about $10.10, and about the opinions of Milwaukee County residents? To the numbers As one piece of backup, Abele cited the UWM Wisconsin Economic Scorecard poll, which found the 76 percent statewide figure. And he pointed us to a Marquette Law School poll in March that found 63 percent support statewide for the general notion of an increase, vs. 33 percent opposed. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee poll was conducted by the university’s Center for Urban Initiatives & Research from June 2 to June 5 with a statewide sample of 569 registered voters. It also polled on the issue in March 2014. The Marquette Law School polls on the issue were conducted in January and March 2014, also among registered voters. There is a strong suggestion in the June UWM statewide poll result that a strong majority of Milwaukee County residents would back some increase. A raise won support from 61 percent of Republicans statewide, 70 percent of independents and 94 percent of Democrats. Milwaukee County tilts strongly Democratic. Still, the results Abele references from those polls weren’t specific to $10.10, or to Milwaukee County. Peeling back the layers So let’s peel back a few layers in those and a couple other polls to get to the core. More than three-quarters of Milwaukee County respondents (77 percent) backed some bump in the wage in the UWM June poll, according to Joseph Cera, survey center director at UWM. The margin of error for the county subsample is 10.7 percent. In the MU poll, 69 percent in Milwaukee County supported an unspecified raise. The margin of error there was 6.2 percent. And here’s the key finding: Among Milwaukee County respondents, the March UWM poll found that 56 percent of registered voters would support a state minimum wage of $10.10, according to Cera. The margin of error is large (11.6 percent), however, due to a small sample size. That result mirrors the statewide picture. In the March UWM poll, 57 percent supported $10.10 when asked specifically about that amount. We found two polling questions that asked about increases in the minimum wage within certain ranges. In June, the UWM survey asked an open-ended question asking what the minimum wage should be. The answers were reported in 25-cent groupings. Among Milwaukee County respondents, the single most common was in the $9.76-$10.00 range; the median response for Milwaukee County fell in the $9.26-$9.50 range. Here’s the breakdown for Milwaukee County: -- 44.5 percent said $9.76-10.01, or higher (including 17.1 percent over $11.00) -- 35.4 percent said $8.01 to $9.75 -- 6.9 percent said $7.26 to $8.00 --12.6 percent said $7.25 or less A January MU poll showed a similar result for Milwaukee County: 49 percent want an increase of about $10 or more. While those results show a big majority for a sizeable boost in the wage, they don’t suggest a majority for $10.10. How is it that 56 percent supported $10.10 in one UWM poll, but in another UWM poll and in the MU poll, when asked to pick the ideal increase, less than 50 percent chose the $10 or higher range? Cera wasn’t surprised at the apparent contradiction. Many of those who ideally would want an increase to something less than $10.10 still back $10.10 when that is the only option presented, Cera said. That, of course, is the situation in the referendum question, so the March UWM poll result is instructive, Cera said. Cera told us that as a statistician, his conclusion is that it’s very likely a majority of Milwaukee County voters would support $10.10. He offered an additional caveat beyond the large margin of error: A referendum is not a survey. Election turnout can vary depending on the intensity of races on the ballot. It can also skew to wealthier residents, who might be less inclined to favor a large bump in the wage. That could slightly bring down the numbers in favor of $10.10 when voters cast ballots on the question, Cera said. Our rating Abele said a statewide poll showing 76% support for a minimum wage hike is a "strong indicator," along with other surveys, of deep public support in Milwaukee County for a $10.10 wage. The poll number he cites is out of context because it’s a statewide result and didn’t refer specifically to $10.10. If given a choice to set the wage wherever they want it, a majority might not back $10.10, two polls of county residents show. But there’s some survey evidence that in a referendum specifically on $10.10, a solid majority in Milwaukee County would back that idea. Foolproof conclusions can’t be drawn because of the small size of the sample at the county level. On balance, we rate Abele’s claim Half True.

Chris Abele

2014-07-07T05:00:00

2014-06-24

['Milwaukee_County,_Wisconsin']

tron-02814

Video of President Obama Saying That He Was Born in Kenya

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-kenya-birth-videos/

obama

Video of President Obama Saying That He Was Born in Kenya

Mar 17, 2015

['Barack_Obama', 'Kenya']

hoer-00516

'NASA Confirms 6 Days of Total Darkness'

statirical reports

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/fake-news-nasa-6-days-darkness.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

HOAX - 'NASA Confirms 6 Days of Total Darkness'

October 27, 2014

['None']

pomt-10454

Obama thinks the national anthem should be "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing."

pants on fire!

/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/30/chain-email/obama-e-mail-its-not-the-real-thing/

(Published April 30, 2008) Opponents of Barack Obama seem to have found a new reason to dislike him: he wants the national anthem to be an old Coca-Cola jingle. Well, not really, but that's the rumor that's going around. Although it seems ridiculous on its face, we heard from enough PolitFact readers who wondered if it was true that we decided to do a little digging. What we found was another example of satire being mistaken for the truth. A widely circulated chain e-mail attributes the following quote to Barack Obama: "As I've said about the flag pin, I don't want to be perceived as taking sides," Obama said. "There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all? It should be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing.' If that were our anthem, then I might salute it." (You can read the full text of the e-mail here .) But Obama never said it. It's satire written by syndicated columnist John Semmens, whose columns are posted on the Web site The Arizona Conservative. The above quote was part of a short item Semmens wrote in October 2007, imagining a rationale for the oft-emailed photo of Obama not having his hand over his heart during the national anthem . ( We wrote about the anthem issue previously here, which was part of a chain email falsely claiming Obama refused to say the pledge of allegiance .) The song "I'd like to teach the world to sing," ought to be a tip-off that the email isn't for real, but credibility can get pretty elastic in the Internet age. The song actually started as a TV jingle for Coca-Cola commercials during the 1970s. They lyrics are: I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love, Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. It's the real thing, Coke is what the world wants today. The song first appeared in a Coke ad called "Hilltop" that aired in 1971, and again in a Christmas ad aired in 1978. The jingle was so popular that eventually it was re-written to omit the Coke references, and versions were recorded by the musical groups the Hillside Singers and the New Seekers. The copies of the email we've collected have a familiar trick: They claim to be forwarded from a retired military officer. But the unattributed quote is clearly taken from Semmens' column. This is not the first time a conservative commentator's make-believe quote has been attributed to Obama in emails as if he really said it. In February, we reviewed this one, in which Obama was supposed to have said he liked America but wanted to change it. We asked Semmens what he thought about his work taking on a new life on the Internet. "The quotes are a creative take on possible unexplained rationales for public actions," he wrote in an email to us. "They are not actual recountings of what Sen. Obama has publicly said. Whether they do or don't reveal an inner truth is a matter of opinion." A spokesman for the Obama campaign called the chain email "clearly false." We call it Pants on Fire!

Chain email

2008-04-30T00:00:00

2008-04-23

['None']

pomt-12181

California and New York are "the two biggest polluting states in the country."

mostly false

/new-hampshire/statements/2017/jul/28/chris-sununu/nh-governor-calls-new-york-california-biggest-poll/

Gov. Chris Sununu says he’s proud of his state’s record of environmental stewardship. The Republican says New Hampshire will take care of its natural resources with or without a demand from Paris or Washington, D.C. When he was asked whether he’d sign onto the United States Climate Alliance – a state-level agreement to uphold the objectives of the Paris climate accord developed after the U.S. withdrew from the latter – he bristled. In an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio, Sununu said the climate alliance is "quasi-meaningless" and "more of just a political statement than anything." He specifically called out its founders, the governors of California and New York, saying their motive in championing the U.S. Climate Alliance was to distract from their states’ shortcomings. "That piece of paper that folks wanted me to sign – think about where it came from," Sununu told the public radio station. "It came from the governors of New York and California, the two biggest polluting states in the country." PolitiFact New Hampshire decided to take a closer look at the biggest polluting states in the country. Clarifying the statement Sununu made the statement in response to a listener’s question about climate change and the Paris accord, which suggests that his "biggest polluting states" remark was a reference to carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions. But he also discussed other types of pollution. Before he was the CEO of a ski mountain or the governor, Sununu received a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in civil and environmental engineering and worked as an environmental engineer cleaning up waste sites. He said he brings "more environmental experience to the governor’s office than any governor in the history of the state." His work cleaning up hazardous waste sites in California showed him first-hand, he said, "It’s deplorable what they’ve done in parts of that state – or New York up in some of those rivers." So what exactly is the measure he’s using to define the "biggest polluting states?" Carbon dioxide? Greenhouse gases in general? Other air pollutants? Water pollutants? We asked his press secretary, Ben Vihstadt, for data to support the claim. Vihstadt cited a study by the Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, that specifically looks at energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. The data The study that Vihstadt cited shows state-by-state data collected as recently as 2014. In his email, he softened the governor’s original claim, saying instead that the study showed California and New York "are two of the top polluting states in the country" – not the top two. With its 642 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted in 2014, Texas is head and shoulders above the rest of the country. It was responsible for 11.9 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions covered in the study. And Texas had nothing at all to do with the Climate Alliance letter. California, one of our subjects, comes in at No. 2 with 358 million tons, or 6.6 percent of the total. New York is No. 9 with 170 million tons, or 3.1 percent. By comparison, New Hampshire is 46th on this list, with a measly 15 million tons that represent less than 0.3 percent of the total. It’s worth noting that California and New York have been effectively reducing their carbon dioxide emissions over time, according to the EIA study. Texas’s annual emissions are 14 percent higher than they were in 1990, but California and New York each emitted lower amounts of carbon dioxide in 2014 than they did in 1990. New York’s 2014 emissions were 21 percent lower than the state’s 2004 peak. So both the states we’re investigating are near the top on this scale. But we reached out to a handful of researchers and professors in environmental science who urged us to consider the question in other ways. "In general, California and New York are among the largest states, so the absolute numbers will be large for them," said Sergey Paltsev, a senior research scientist for the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Brian Soden, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami, suggested analyzing carbon dioxide emissions per capita or per gross domestic product to equalize population and production differences between states. Per capita The same Energy Information Administration study also breaks down the data on a per-capita basis, as the scientists recommended. In this view, California and New York – the first and third most populous states – are at the complete other end of the spectrum. Of the 51 states, including Washington, D.C., California and New York have the second and third lowest per-capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. The EIA study notes: "Many factors contribute to variation in the amount of emissions per capita, including climate, the structure of the state economy, population density, energy sources, building standards and explicit state policies to reduce emissions." Wyoming earns its No. 1 per-capita rank by being the least populous state and the second-largest energy producer, the EIA study says. New York, on the other hand, had fewer than one-tenth the carbon dioxide emissions per-capita compared with Wyoming. "A large portion of the population is located in the New York City metropolitan area where mass transit is readily available and most residences are multi-family units that provide efficiencies of scale in terms of energy for heating and cooling. The New York economy is oriented towards low-energy-consuming activities such as financial markets," the study says, adding, "New York's energy prices are relatively high ... which in turn encourages energy savings." In addition to being low carbon dioxide emitters per capita, California and New York are also among the lowest carbon dioxide emitters relative to gross domestic product. New Hampshire, by comparison, is the 12th lowest emitter on a per-capita basis and 11th lowest relative to GDP. Our ruling Sununu said California and New York are "the two biggest polluting states in the country." His press secretary tried to soften the claim, but no matter how you look at it, that’s not accurate. In terms of absolute carbon dioxide emissions, California and New York rank No. 2 and No. 9. Texas is No. 1. Adjusting for population and GDP, California and New York are actually among the most effective states at reducing their impact on the atmosphere – beating even Sununu’s home state of New Hampshire. It turns out, Sununu was just blowing smoke. We rate his claim Mostly False.

Chris Sununu

2017-07-28T15:38:59

2017-07-10

['California', 'New_York_City']

pomt-03609

On support for gay marriage

full flop

/florida/statements/2013/may/09/charlie-crist/after-voting-ban-crist-now-backs-gay-marriage/

Charlie Crist, Florida’s once (and future?) governor, posted a note on his Facebook page congratulating two states for legalizing gay marriage. "Some great news: On Tuesday, Delaware became the 11th state to allow marriage equality. And just a few days ago, Rhode Island adopted a similar measure, which followed victories last fall in Maine, Maryland and Washington. I most certainly support marriage equality in Florida and look forward to the day it happens here," he posted on Facebook on May 8, 2013. That doesn’t sound like the Crist we’ve always known. He’s a former Republican who turned independent who turned Democrat. He backed John McCain in the 2008 presidential contest but last year endorsed Barack Obama’s re-election. In other words, flip-flopping is in his past. At PolitiFact, we put politicians’ consistency on issues on our Flip-O-Meter, rating them from No Flip to Full Flop. The meter is not intended to pass judgment on their decisions to change their minds. It’s simply gaging whether they did. So what’s the history of Crist’s position on same-sex marriage? Crist, who is believed to be planning another run for governor in his new party, "most certainly" supports it now. Let’s see whether he always has. 2006 governor’s race Back when Crist was a "Ronald Reagan Republican," he led a field of GOP candidates vying to be governor. (He went on to win.) During that race, an effort was gaining steam to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot defining marriage as a union between "only one man and one woman." Early in the campaign, Crist said he thought such an amendment was unnecessary because state law already forbids gay marriage. But as the primary rolled on, Crist signed the petition for the ballot initiative and sent mailers declaring his support for traditional marriage. By the time the measure went to voters in 2008, Crist was a popular governor whose more socially conservative election opponents were in his rear-view mirror. Crist made it clear he wouldn’t stump for the cause. "It's not an issue that moves me," he said in late 2007, when it was clear the effort had enough signatures to get on the ballot. "I'm just a live and let live kind of guy." And yet... On Election Day 2008, Crist supported the ban. "I voted for it," he said. "It's what I believe in." The measure passed with 62 percent of the vote. 2010 Senate run When one of Florida’s U.S. senators decided not to seek re-election, Crist, who probably would have cruised to re-election as governor, pounced on the Washington opportunity. He ended up in a bare-knuckles battle that forced him to leave the Republican Party and run as an independent. He lost to Republican Marco Rubio. During that campaign, he released a position paper on issues affecting gays and lesbians. There, he declared support for civil unions that "provide the full range of legal protections" including "access to a loved one in the hospital, inheritance rights, the fundamental things people need to take care of their families." He also expressed support for anti-discrimination laws that protect gay people, repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military and gay adoption. He did not mention same-sex marriage in the statement. 2014 run for ... ? Crist’s exuberant Facebook post, which looks forward to "the day it happens" in Florida, certainly isn’t unique among Democrats this year. Notably, Florida’s Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson recently pledged his support for gay marriage. And Crist, as a newly minted Democrat, has been under pressure from advocates for gay rights to "come to amends with LGBT Floridians." Our ruling We’re considering whether Crist has flip-flopped on his position on gay marriage. Looking back through his political career in Florida, we found that Crist’s opinion has traversed the spectrum. As a Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2006, Crist signed a petition to help get a gay marriage ban on the Florida ballot and said he supported "traditional marriage." While governor, he appeared to soften on the subject, saying he was a "live and let live" kind of person. But he voted for the ban nonetheless. As a Senate candidate, he stopped short of endorsing gay marriage, saying he supported civil unions that afforded the legal benefits of marriage. Now, out of office but potentially eyeing a comeback, Crist has made his flip-flop complete, offering full-throated support for gay marriage. That’s what we call a Full Flop.

Charlie Crist

2013-05-09T17:44:06

2013-05-08

['None']

tron-02896

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Legalizes Sharia Law in United States

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/9th-circuit-court-appeals-legalizes-sharia-law-united-states-fiction/

politics

['fake news', 'sharia law', 'supreme court']

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Legalizes Sharia Law in United States

Dec 8, 2017

['None']

pomt-00882

Says Hillary Clinton "sent a memo" to all State Department staff that said "you should not do State Department business on personal email."

mostly true

/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/10/joe-scarborough/scarborough-clinton-told-state-department-staff-no/

The furor over Hillary Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state has only grown since the New York Times reported she used a personal account for official business. At a press conference at the United Nations March 10, 2015, Clinton said she wished she had handled her email differently but that she complied with federal rules. Clinton’s office has turned over more than 55,000 pages of emails and documents to the State Department for review and ultimately some type of public release. Meanwhile, details on those government rules concerning email continue to emerge. Joe Scarborough latched on to one recent disclosure -- a 2011 State Department memo that went out under Clinton’s name. "She sent out a memo that says ... you should not do State Department business on personal email," Scarborough said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on March, 9, 2015. "She sent that memo out to every employee at the State Department." For this fact-check, we wanted to dig into the details of Scarborough’s claim that Clinton sent this sort of memo across the entire department. Scarborough’s staff sent us links to several articles. Fox News posted the actual memo dated June 28, 2011. It was sent to diplomatic and consular staff worldwide in response to a warning from Google that hackers had targeted the Gmail addresses of government workers. It began with "Department of State users are encouraged to check the security settings and change passwords on their home email accounts because of recent targeting of personal email accounts by online adversaries." Under the heading "What can you and your family members do?" the memo covered such familiar steps as changing your password and making sure you choose a strong one. It also said, "Avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts." This memo had a bit of history. In 2005, a department manual covered transmitting information that is "sensitive but unclassified." That is a broad category that covers anything from meeting schedules, to visa applications, to ordinary emails to other federal agencies. The manual basically said that department-related email should go through servers authorized by the department. As a point of reference, we don’t know if the State Department had signed off on the private server that carried Clinton’s emails (she didn’t use Gmail or Yahoo! or another commercial provider) or if the server met government security standards. Caveats to Scarborough’s claim Scarborough twice said Clinton sent the memo, which ascribes a more personal touch than was actually the case. In the strictest literal sense, Clinton neither wrote nor sent the memo in question. In a March 6 briefing, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said this was a routine memo, or cable. "Her name is at the bottom of the cable, as is practice for cables coming from Washington," Harf said. "Some people think she wrote it -- which is not accurate." Steven Aftergood directs the project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, a group that promotes transparency in government. "It seems unlikely that the secretary of state would have written or even seen this kind of housekeeping memo," Aftergood told PunditFact. "Still, it went out over her name and she is in some sense responsible for it," he said. Scarborough also summarized the memo as saying "you should not do State Department business on personal email." That is a bit off target. There’s a difference between a guideline and a requirement. The memo itself makes the distinction, Aftergood said. In the list of things staffers can do, the final point used stronger language. It said, "Do not auto-forward department email to personal email accounts, which is prohibited by department policy." "It's interesting that the memo says that employees should ‘avoid’ conducting official business via personal email, but it says that auto-forwarding department email to a private account is ‘prohibited’," Aftergood said. "The clear implication is that use of personal email for conducting official business is discouraged, but not strictly prohibited." In that light, Scarborough's term "should" goes a little further than the memo. Security vs. retaining records Clinton was secretary of state before there was a law that would have required her to use a government email address or share copies of her communications with the government. That came in 2014. Two significant topics remain unresolved. First, it would make a difference if any of her emails contain classified information. We don’t know if they do. Second, there is a long-standing state department policy on using email for sensitive but unclassified information. That policy speaks to the need to send email through a server that meets department standards. At her U.N. press conference, Clinton said the server she used was set up for former President Bill Clinton’s office and that it had "numerous safeguards." That said, we don’t know the security protections in place on that server. If that server passed muster by government standards, security would not be as important as concerns over retaining official records and ensuring full access to Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary. Our ruling Scarborough said that Clinton sent a memo to State Department staff that said they should not use personal email accounts for department business. Scarborough pushed a bit too far on two points. Clinton had no direct role in sending the memo, even though it went out under her name. And while the memo encouraged staffers to avoid using personal email accounts, it fell short of prohibiting their use. These points diminish the accuracy of Scarborough’s statement, but not critically. We rate the claim Mostly True. Update: We’ve added some additional context provided by Clinton at her March 10, 2015, U.N. press conference.

Joe Scarborough

2015-03-10T12:21:23

2015-03-09

['United_States_Department_of_State']

pomt-08589

State government spending will be increase 10.7 percent this year.

mostly false

/ohio/statements/2010/sep/24/john-kasich/john-kasich-accuses-strickland-administration-rais/

Ohios first gubernatorial debate of the campaign season focused heavily on the state budget and which candidate would best manage it. Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, said he has been prudent with the states money, cutting taxes and spending for the current two-year cycle. Republican challenger John Kasich, however, repeatedly declared that the current budget actually increased spending by 10.7 percent this year. The charge prompted Strickland to call for the fact checkers to examine Kasichs statement. PolitiFact Ohio couldn't pass up the invitation. When lawmakers and wonks around Capitol Square talk about the state budget, they are almost always referring to the general revenue fund budget, or the GRF, which contains virtually all of Ohios tax revenues. The GRF is on pace to be $50.6 billion for the 2010-11 fiscal years, according to state spending reports available through mid-July. Thats down from $52.5 billion for the 2008-09 budget, a reduction of about $1.9 billion. So Strickland is correct when he says spending is down. Kasich, however, instead was talking about the states all-funds budget, which includes the use of billions in federal stimulus dollars outside the GRF. The all-funds budget is estimated at $112.3 billion in the current budget, up from $102.1 billion in 2008-09. Thats an increase of about 9.9 percent from Stricklands first budget to his second budget. The all-funds budget also includes general revenue fund money, billions in pass-through money for state and local governments such as the piggy-back sales tax that counties are allowed to add to the state tab plus state and federal fees that are slated for specific programs. The all-funds budget also includes some double-counting, as money is shifted within line items in a state agency. So how does Kasich get to that 10.7 percent figure? With an apples to oranges comparison. He uses actual all-funds spending in 2010 compared to projected all-funds spending in the 2011 fiscal year, which is only about three months old right now. The state did not spend $3.3 billion that was appropriated for use in fischal 2010. But by using actual spending for that year, Kasich's comparison actual makes that count against the administration because it inflates the percentage greatly. While Strickland says thats an inaccurate and misleading way to look at the budget, Republicans argue that the all-funds budget is becoming more relevant because the GRF is shrinking, representing about 54 percent of the entire budget a decade ago and about 45 percent in the current fiscal year. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, for example, was moved from the GRF budget to the all-funds budget under Gov. Bob Taft. Strickland chose to move the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Commerce completely out of the GRF budget during the most recent budget. And the current all-funds budget does include several new fees attached to it, including a new hospital assessment fee worth $708 million and $390 million worth of new nursing home franchise fees. So let's cut to the chase: Kasich is picking something other than the usual budget figures by choosing an all-funds number to make his claim. And by comparing actual spending in 2010 to proposed spending in 2011, he gets a result that punishes the Strickland administration for doing what taxpayers want -- not spending $3.3 billion that had been allotted for 2010. That seems misleading especially since if he were to compare apples to apples -- all-funds proposed spending in 2010 to all-funds proposed spending in 2011 -- the figure would rise only 1.7 percent. As a consequence, we rate his statement to be Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

John Kasich

2010-09-24T14:00:00

2010-09-14

['None']

pomt-07749

We don’t have bars on campus in Texas. It’s against the law... no alcohol allowed.

pants on fire!

/texas/statements/2011/feb/26/jeff-wentworth/state-sen-jeff-wentworth-says-texas-universities-d/

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, played hardball with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last week, when the pair scuffled over whether suds are allowed on college campuses. Wentworth, discussing his legislation that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses, balked when Matthews wondered whether "booze and guns" are a healthy combination. "We don’t have bars on campus in Texas," Wentworth said on the Feb. 22 segment. Matthews: "You don’t?" Wentworth: "It’s against the law in Texas. That’s exactly right." Matthews: "It is?" Wentworth: "Yes, sir. No alcohol allowed." Wentworth went on to clarify that he was limiting his characterization to public colleges and universities. When Matthews said he knew a lot of colleges that have campus bars, Wentworth said: "They don’t in Texas. We’re talking about Texas." We decided to check whether bars and alcohol are allowed on college campuses in Texas. When we asked Wentworth for backup, he pointed us to a section in the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Code about alcohol sales near schools. According to the code, a county commissioners court or the governing body of an incorporated city or town can prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages within 300 of a private or public school or within 1,000 feet of a public school at the school district’s request. Carolyn Beck, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, told us that the code doesn’t specifically define "public school" so "there are some cities that interpret schools to include colleges and universities." The Alcoholic Beverage Code also cites a section of the Education Code, which requires a school district’s board of trustees to prohibit alcoholic beverages at "school-related or school-sanctioned activity on or off private property." Yet Andy Kesling, a spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, told us that the words "school district" in the Education Code indicate that the provision is limited to public schools through high school. Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, later agreed that the law does not apply to higher education. Next, we contacted some Texas universities to gauge whether they have campus bars. Rhonda Weldon, a spokeswoman for the University of Texas at Austin, told us the university’s Texas Union building houses both the Cactus Cafe, which has a liquor license, and the Underground, which is licensed to serve beer and wine. She said other campus venues where alcohol can be served, such as the Frank Erwin Center and the AT&T Executive and Education Conference Center, are run by contractors who are licensed to sell alcohol. Wentworth called UT-Austin an exception. He said too that alcohol was prohibited on campus when he attended the Texas Tech University School of Law. Wentworth earned his law degree there in 1971. Texas Tech spokesman Chris Cook confirmed that students aren’t allowed to have alcohol on campus and no campus establishments serve alcohol. But, Cook said, alcohol is sold in suites and club areas where university donors often sit in the football stadium and basketball arena, and is available during special events, such as receptions. Next we tried Wentworth’s undergraduate alma mater, Texas A&M University. Spokesman Jason Cook said: "We don’t have bars on campus, in the common term, but alcohol is allowed on campus and is served on campus under special circumstances." The University Club, a campus dining facility, hosts a happy hour; the 21-and-older crowd can enjoy a $2 scotch or $3 sangria, among drink specials, from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, according to A&M’s web page about the club. Cook said too that the Zone Club, an exclusive seating area in the football stadium, serves alcohol. According to A&M’s athletic department’s website, the Club includes a full-service bar. In San Marcos,Texas State University spokesman Jayme Blaschke told us that George’s, in the student center, serves beer. When we asked whether George’s is a bar, he said it’s "an establishment that serves alcohol" that isn’t a full-service restaurant. Next, we looked north, learning that The Pub on the University of Texas at Dallas campus serves wine and beer during certain hours Monday through Friday — with a limit of two drinks per person, according to the university’s website. John Walls, a UT-Dallas spokesman, said the university doesn’t consider The Pub to be a bar because it has a full food menu. Lastly, we looked for a legal definition of a bar. Beck told us that as far as she knows, none exists in state law. For what it’s worth, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary slaps the "bar" label on "a counter at which food or especially alcoholic beverages are served." Time to close our tab. We found two Texas universities that have bars on campus while other schools we contacted routinely serve alcohol in campus facilities. Wentworth’s claim appears to have no legal or on-the-town grounding. It’s not just wrong — it’s Pants on Fire.

Jeff Wentworth

2011-02-26T06:00:00

2011-02-22

['Texas']

pomt-11458

Florida is one of only 10 states that totally prohibit a (firearm) registry.

mostly true

/florida/statements/2018/mar/08/perry-thurston/does-florida-prohibit-gun-registry-law-yes/

In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, a Florida senator called for the reversal of a key restriction in current law over gun purchases. Florida's ban on a statewide gun registry "leaves law enforcement in the dark" as they try to figure out if a threatening person has a weapon or not, said Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale. "Florida is one of only 10 states that totally prohibit a registry," Thurston said at Senate Rules Committee meeting where members discussed a school security and gun safety bill. PolitiFact Florida wanted to look into his statement. Florida law does prohibit a firearm registry, based on Florida Statute 790.335: "No state governmental agency or local government, special district, or other political subdivision or official, agent, or employee of such state or other governmental entity or any other person, public or private, shall knowingly and willfully keep or cause to be kept any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms or any list, record, or registry of the owners of those firearms." The rule was added in 2004 when former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush signed HB 155 into law. Then-Rep. Lindsay Harrington, R-Punta Gorda, sponsored the bill because of concerns from the National Rifle Association, according to a July 2004 St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) article. The story said Harrington was troubled when he heard that law enforcement agencies were collecting data on gun transactions at pawn shops, saying "I don't think we, in America, want that type of thing." The law echoes this concern. It says such a registry could "become an instrument for profiling, harassing, or abusing law-abiding citizens based on their choice to own a firearm." The statute also says if a registry fell into the wrong hands it could be a "shopping list" for criminals. The rollout of the law, however, was a bit shaky the summer after it passed. Spokesmen for law enforcement agencies in Tampa Bay told the Times they had many questions about the broad ban on any "list, record or registry," and said they may need to hire additional workers to go through various paper and electronic records for deletion. The law required agencies to delete electronic data of pawnshop sales within 60 days, which could also make searches for gun information more onerous. "It's a mess," Sherman Smith, the St. Petersburg Police Department's legal adviser, told the Times. "This has really got me flummoxed." There are exceptions to the gun records ban. Records can be kept on firearms used in a crime or people who have been convicted of crimes. Aaron Keller, a Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesperson, wrote in an email these records would likely be kept by local law enforcement. Even in cases where firearm records are kept by dealers, those records are prohibited from being compiled into any list by any state employee or private person, according to the statute. So how does Florida’s ban on private firearm records compare to the rest of the country? A Thurston spokeswoman said his information came from the Giffords Law Center. The center, which supports gun restrictions, says seven states, including Florida, prohibit any registry of private firearms. The seven states are Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont. Pennsylvania prohibits registries of long guns. Only one state, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia require registration of all firearms. Our ruling Thurston said, "Florida is one of only 10 states that totally prohibit a registry." Florida law does explicitly say a registry of firearm purchases cannot be maintained. Thurston was close but not precise about the number of other states that prohibit registries. It’s seven, not 10. We rate this statement Mostly True.

Perry Thurston

2018-03-08T12:06:10

2018-02-26

['None']

pomt-04564

Says Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson "supports massive tax cuts for corporations that outsource Wisconsin jobs."

half-true

/wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/26/afscme/afscme-says-thompson-backs-big-tax-cuts-companies-/

Employment boomed in Wisconsin during Tommy Thompson’s 14 years as governor, ending in early 2001. But as the Republican tries a political comeback in his bid for the U.S. Senate, his opponents want voters to look at Thompson’s post-gubernatorial career when evaluating his job-creation proposals. That’s the focus of a TV ad funded by the political arm of AFSCME, a major public-sector labor union. It features an animated bobble-head motif. "Tommy Thompson’s changed all right," the ad says, making a series of allegations after a short video snippet. Among them: "Tommy even went to work for companies that ship American jobs overseas," the spot says, showing a smiling "Thompson" shoving a boatload of jobs off shore from the California coast. The ad’s kicker: "Now Thompson supports massive tax cuts for corporations that outsource Wisconsin jobs." AFSCME wouldn’t talk to us about the ad. But the spot cites two pieces of evidence in the footnotes to support the claim that Thompson "supports massive tax cuts for corporations that outsource Wisconsin jobs." That’s the claim we’ll evaluate here. One is Thompson’s speech at the GOP state convention on May 12, 2012. The other is a March 22, 2012, analysis by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice of the budget plan pushed by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. Let’s start with the Ryan budget plan, which has received greater scrutiny since Mitt Romney elevated Ryan to the GOP presidential ticket. In analyzing Ryan’s budget, Citizens for Tax Justice touches on two issues that, as best we can tell, AFSCME is relying on to back up the ad. Ryan, the group notes in its analysis, wants to cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, and exempt the offshore profits of multinational American corporations from the income tax. (Romney does too.) This, the group contends, would "increase the existing incentives for U.S. corporations to move their operations offshore or use accounting gimmicks to make their U.S. profits appear to be ‘foreign’ profits generated in offshore tax havens." OK. But what does this have to do with Tommy Thompson? In the May 2012 convention speech cited by the ad, Thompson endorsed Ryan’s budget plan as a whole, unequivocally. That plan does contain those tax proposals. "I will pass Paul Ryan’s budget plan in the U.S. Senate," he said. "It is the right plan, at the right time, for America." Let’s take a closer look at AFSCME’s claim. First, the terminology in the ad needs clarification. The AFSCME ad depicts cartoon Tommy as supporting tax cuts for "outsourcers" in Wisconsin. But, the Citizens for Tax Justice report makes no mention of "outsourcing." The group’s report focuses on "offshoring," which the National Academy of Public Administration defined as "U.S. firms shifting service and manufacturing activities abroad to unaffiliated firms or their own affiliates." "Outsourcing" can involve offshoring, but it often refers to firms contracting out service and manufacturing activities to unaffiliated firms in the United States, according to the academy. The two terms, we should note, are sometimes used interchangeably despite the key differences. We asked academic experts about the potential effect of exempting offshore profits from taxation, an approach known as "territorial" taxation. We found little dispute of the increased incentive to move jobs overseas under a territorial system, but a very unsettled debate over the ultimate effect on jobs of such a change. A scholar cited by Citizens for Tax Justice, James Repetti, professor at Boston College Law School, is in the camp that believes more production will move overseas, but said that the real-world impact of such a change is very hard to predict. William McBride, chief economist at the business-backed Tax Foundation, cites studies to show that investment abroad is associated with investment domestically. "So it is not a zero-sum game, it is additional growth, and some of the benefits come back to the U.S. in the form of dividends and high-paying management and R&D jobs, for instance," McBride told us in an email. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have cited a July 2012 study by Reed College economist Kimberly Clausing. She calculated that low-tax countries would gain 800,000 jobs under the incentives in a "territorial" tax system. (Clausing noted the number would fall if the U.S. corporate tax rate was cut -- as Ryan has proposed -- and that in a good economy, jobs abroad need not displace jobs at home). At the same time, a bipartisan commission appointed by Obama recommended a territorial tax system in 2010. "The U.S. is one of the only industrialized countries with a hybrid system of taxing active foreign-source income. The current system puts U.S. corporations at a competitive disadvantage against their foreign competitors," said the report of the commission popularly known as Simpson-Bowles. Overall, we found no dispute that the tax rewards from a rate cut and exemption of offshore profits could be very significant for corporations. Currently, companies can defer taxation until returning those profits to the United States -- and studies estimate those profits at more than $1 trillion. That approach has been criticized as providing a disincentive for firms to bring profits back home. Firms, as Ryan’s plan notes, have to pay foreign taxes on income earned abroad, then U.S. taxes when they "repatriate" those profits -- bring them back home. There’s a final factor here. Thompson has put forward his own specific proposal on corporate taxation, as part of his "Restore America" plan. He says it’s his attempt to address the "perverse incentives that cause companies to reinvest foreign profits oversees (sic) rather than repatriating those profits." His campaign declined to discuss it, but Thompson’s plan calls for a permanent tax break on profits "repatriated" to the U.S. He wants zero taxation on those profits -- a lower rate than in some similar plans by conservatives -- but attaches the condition that they must be used for investment in plant and equipment, job training or research and development. Thompson’s plan pertains to future profits -- but he also wants to encourage companies to repatriate, at zero taxation, that $1 trillion in foreign profits that have built up over time. The impact of that approach is uncertain, but Thompson is in the camp that believes injecting some of that money back into the U.S. would create jobs back home. Our rating AFSCME contends that Thompson "supports massive tax cuts for corporations that outsource Wisconsin jobs." Despite the confusing use of "outsourcing," the claim is partly on target, in that Thompson would completely exempt from taxation U.S. companies’ profits from overseas operations under certain conditions. There are two important caveats here. Researchers differ on whether U.S. employment would decline under this "territorial" tax approach, with some arguing that businesses would invest more at home as a result of the tax break. And part of Thompson’s plan provides incentives that could convince companies to bring profits back home. This rates a Half True.

AFSCME

2012-09-26T09:00:00

2012-09-04

['Tommy_Thompson', 'Wisconsin', 'United_States']

pomt-02756

Oregon leads the nation in number of jobs per capita in manufacturing.

false

/oregon/statements/2013/dec/13/econorthwest-economics-finance-planning/does-oregon-lead-nation-number-jobs-capita-manufac/

It’s been nearly six years since the start of the Great Recession and, finally, hiring is on the rise. But with more Oregonians living in poverty now than before the bottom dropped out, politicians around the state are debating how best to create new jobs. Talk of jobs was on everyone’s mind at the 10th annual Oregon Leadership Summit Dec. 9 at the Oregon Convention Center. The Oregon Business Plan -- a collaborative effort involving business leaders, business associations and the state’s elected leaders -- commissioned a paper called "Path to Prosperity," which was released at the daylong session’s opening. The paper, written by ECONorthwest, an economic consulting and planning firm, focused on four strategies aimed at reducing poverty. One, touching on the need to bolster manufacturing, included this statement: "Oregon leads the nation in number of jobs per capita in manufacturing." It’s an impressive claim but seemed at odds with a 2012 finding by PolitiFact Wisconsin, which awarded that same honor to the Badger State. In hopes of heading off any inter-state squabbling, PolitiFact Oregon decided to check. We called Josh Lehner, a senior economist with the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis. "I saw that, too," he said. "Let me check some numbers and I’ll call you back." Lehner’s own calculation took Oregon’s annual Census Bureau population estimates and divided them by the number of manufacturing jobs in Oregon, as represented by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Things did not compute. "Our manufacturing jobs per capita actually rank 22nd nationally,’’ Lehner said. He said he respects work done by ECONorthwest, but added, "As for us being number one in that category, the math just doesn’t add up." (Asked about Wisconsin, he said his figures show that state does, in fact, lead the country in manufacturing jobs per capita.) We called John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest and co-author of the paper, to ask about the apparent discrepancy. He immediately cleared up any confusion. "You caught a flaw in our report," he said. "In the same way newspapers have to run corrections sometimes, we need to run one with this." Two words, Tapogna added, turned the claim from true to false. "We said Oregon leads the nation in the number of jobs per capita in manufacturing," he said. "What we should have said is that Oregon leads the nation in manufacturing output per capita. It was just a mistake. There’s no other way to say it." Lehner verified that Oregon does indeed lead in manufacturing output per capita. Tapogna went on to provide information with which many Oregonians may be unaware. It all started, he said, with Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder, who predicted in 1965 that semiconductor industry innovations would enable twice as many transistors to be crammed onto an integrated circuit every two years or so. Known as "Moore’s Law," the prediction has proved true. In the real world, it’s continued to dramatically increase the value of the output, thus allowing Oregon to rank first nationally in manufacturing output per capita. David Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added a cautionary note in an email. "Not all manufacturing jobs are great jobs, and certainly not all great jobs are manufacturing jobs. But if Wisconsin or Oregon have manufacturing industries in which they have the skills, expertise and productivity needed to compete on the national and international market, that’s a valuable thing -- something many states would surely like to emulate." The Oregon Business Plan, in aiming to reduce the state’s poverty rate from the current 17.2 percent to 10 percent by 2020, makes job creation a centerpiece of pursuing that goal. Public- and private-sector leaders, at last week’s Oregon Leadership Summit, said building on existing strengths such as manufacturing will be critical to long-term success. ECONorthwest, in preparing a paper delineating that success, wrote that "Oregon leads the nation in number of jobs per capita in manufacturing." The sentence needed to be rewritten to say the state leads the nation in manufacturing output per capita. That would have made the claim true. But regardless of the correction that followed, PolitiFact Oregon makes its rulings based on original claims. Not to detract from the success Oregon is having in semiconductor manufacturing, but we rate the original claim False.

ECONorthwest

2013-12-13T17:44:02

2013-12-09

['None']

pomt-04965

The health care law includes "a 3.8% sales tax" on "all real estate transactions."

pants on fire!

/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/25/chain-email/3-8-percent-tax-real-estate-transactions-health-ca/

Did you get the chain email that claims the health care law will institute a new tax on home sales? Here’s the email many readers have forwarded to us: "Under the new health care bill — did you know that all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? The bulk of these new taxes don’t kick in until 2013 (presumably after Obama’s re-election). You can thank Nancy, Harry and Barack and your local Democrat Congressman for this one. If you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax. This bill is set to screw the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Is this Hope & Change great or what? … "Oh, you weren’t aware this was in the Obamacare bill? Guess what, you aren’t alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren’t aware of it either (result of clandestine midnight voting for huge bills they’ve never read). AND, there are a few other surprises lurking." The email’s claims are wrong, but that hasn’t stopped people from pressing the forward button. We’ve received copies of this email regularly since 2010. We’ve debunked it before, but since it’s still out there, we’re going to review the facts again now. The distortion sprouted from Section 1402 of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, titled "Unearned income Medicare contribution." Legislative wonks might remember that this was the second part of the health care bill, passed via reconciliation so that it only required 50 votes. Democrats had to do it that way after they lost their 60-seat majority due to a special election for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. It is a new tax, but it’s not on real estate transactions. Let us explain. Right now, workers pay Medicare hospital taxes on wages. Workers and employers split a 2.9 percent tax; the self-employed pay all of it. The health care law imposes a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income, but it only applies to couples who make more than $250,000 or individuals who make more than $200,000. That investment income could include the profits from real estate transactions. But it would only apply to those high earners, who make up less than 5 percent of all taxpayers. The new tax marks the first time investment income will be subject to Medicare taxes, said Clint Stretch, the managing principal for tax policy at Deloitte Tax LLP, when we asked him about in 2010. We should point out that the government currently taxes investment income in various ways and could have simply raised current rates. But lawmakers wanted to link the new revenues to health care, Stretch said. "The point of doing it as a Medicare tax was to have the money go to the Medicare trust fund and have it act like a tax that is paying for health care. So there is additional complexity," he said. We’re not sure why the email extrapolates this tax to all real estate transactions, but that’s the only 3.8 percent tax we could find in the new law. We ran this by two tax policy experts who confirmed our analysis. If you’re an empty-nester of any means, and you’re thinking of downsizing, part of your profits are already tax-free thanks to long-standing tax exemptions on the profits from home sales. In general, if you sell your own home, individuals are not taxed on the first $250,000 of profit and married couples are not taxed on the first $500,000 of profit. Again, that’s profit, not the sales price. If you’re wealthy and sell your home at a substantial profit, it’s possible you might get hit with the new 3.8 percent tax on investment income. Most Americans won’t have to worry about this, though. The chain email doesn’t acknowledge any of those pesky facts. It says that a 3.8 percent tax applies to all real estate transactions as a sales tax. That is not the case. The email seems intended to scare people, particularly older Americans thinking of downsizing. For that, we award this chain email a Pants on Fire!

Chain email

2012-07-25T08:51:23

2012-07-24

['None']

goop-02764

Blue Ivy Playing “Nurse” During Beyonce Delivery,

2

https://www.gossipcop.com/blue-ivy-nurse-beyonce-delivery-twins-birth/

Shari Weiss

Blue Ivy NOT Playing “Nurse” During Beyonce Delivery, Despite Report

2:20 pm, May 30, 2017

['None']

pomt-07261

Less than two years ago, we made a commitment to repay the U.S. . . .taxpayers in full, and today we made good on that promise.

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/26/sergio-marchionne/ceo-says-chrysler-group-now-square-american-taxpay/

In an announcement reminiscent of one made by GM around this time last year, Chrysler Group LLC boasted this week that it had paid back money lent to it by the American government, with interest, six years ahead of schedule. President Barack Obama, who is expected to highlight the milestone in a visit to a Toledo, Ohio, Chrysler plant on June 3, called the repayment "a significant milestone for the turnaround of Chrysler and the countless communities and families who rely on the American auto industry." He and other Democrats adopted an I-told-you-so stance, with some Democrats taking the opportunity to remind the public that many Republicans opposed the auto bailouts. In a press release from Chrysler Group LLC announcing the loan repayment, the company's Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne stated, "Less than two years ago, we made a commitment to repay the U.S. and Canadian taxpayers in full, and today we made good on that promise." For this item, we're going to focus on whether the company repaid U.S. taxpayers. Chrysler Group LLC repaid $5.1 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) loans and formally terminated its ability to draw from a remaining $2.1 billion line of credit extended through TARP. Together with interest and fees, Chrysler Group has now paid $6.5 billion to the U.S. Treasury. It borrowed $5.1 billion from the U.S. government when it began operations under new ownership in June 2009. In addition, the U.S. Treasury still holds a 6.6 percent common equity stake in Chrysler Group. So is Chrysler now really square with the American taxpayer? The press release doesn't mention it, but there's more to the government's investment in Chrysler than the loans to Chrysler Group LLC. In its own press release about Chrysler's loan repayment, the U.S. Department of Treasury lays out a more complete picture of taxpayer support of Chrysler: "Treasury committed a total of $12.5 billion to Chrysler under TARP’s Automotive Industry Financing Program (AIFP)," the release states. "With today’s transaction, Chrysler has returned more than $10.6 billion of that amount to taxpayers through principal repayments, interest, and cancelled commitments. Treasury continues to hold a 6.6 percent common equity stake in Chrysler. As previously stated, however, Treasury is unlikely to fully recover its remaining outstanding investment of $1.9 billion in Chrysler." In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on May 24, 2011, Ron Bloom, assistant to President Obama in charge of manufacturing policy, broke it down more plainly: "Today, Chrysler is reducing their obligation to the U.S. taxpayer by $8 billion. They have previously provided us with $2.6 billion of funds. So, that $10.6 (billion) stacks up against $8.5 billion that the president invested in Chrysler and $4 billion from the prior administration. So, that's over 100 percent of all monies that this administration invested and about 85 percent of the total invested funds by the United States government." So how can the Chrysler Group LLC claim to have squared its obligation to the American taxpayers when only 85 percent of the taxpayers' investment in Chrysler has been recouped? Notice how we keep writing Chrysler Group LLC. There's a reason for that. That's the "new" Chrysler company that emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. We'll let Gualberto Ranieri, head of communications for the Chrysler Group LLC, explain. Ranieri likened the generic use of the word "Chrysler" to a fruit salad, which is made up of lots of different fruits: apples, strawberries, blueberries...you get the idea. When you talk about Chrysler, there's not just one company. There's the "old Chrysler," the company that was liquidated in bankruptcy. There's the "new" Chrysler, aka Chrysler Group LLC, the newly formed company that purchased most of the assets of Old Chrysler in a bankruptcy sale. There's also the financing firms Chrysler Financial and GMAC. "We are not responsible for the old Chrysler," Ranieri said. "We are not responsible for Chrysler Financial. I am not responsible for my brother's loans, even though we have the same last name." Chrysler Group CEO Marchionne can only speak for the new company, Ranieri said, and the government money extended to Chrysler Group has been fully repaid, with interest. That's technically true, Edward Niedermeyer, editor-in-chief of The Truth About Cars website wrote this week. "It does, however, fail to account (again) for the $1.9 billion Debtor-in-Possession 'loan' which financed Chrysler during bankruptcy and was conveniently left to die with the remains of 'Old Chrysler.' Nor does it account for the $1.5 billion loaned to Chrysler’s suppliers to keep them afloat amidst the bailout chaos." Chrysler and its "political bedfellows" should be "forgiven for a little cheering," Niedermeyer wrote. The loan repayment is a positive sign of hope for a once seemingly doomed company. "It’s just that taxpayers still deserve a full and transparent accounting of 'every penny' (to borrow a phrase) that actually went into Chrysler, not just 'loans made in the last two years' or 'loans made by the Obama Administration' or other weasel-wordings employed to make the bailout seem more successful than it is," Niedermeyer wrote. "Though bailout supporters will doubtless argue that 'it doesn’t matter' because Chrysler is alive today and 'that’s what matters,' this doesn’t justify a lack of transparency. In fact, if the bailout was successful because GM and Chrysler survived, that’s all the more reason to not fear the truth about what the bailout actually cost." James Gattuso, a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said there was nearly $2 billion in taxpayer money that "went down with the ship with the old shell" of Chrysler. Technically, he said, Chrysler Group LLC is a different company. But from a taxpayers' perspective, there's little distinction. "If the taxpayers were a bank, they wouldn't stay in business very long," he said. "The taxpayers took a loss, or they are still in the red at least." Now, the U.S. Treasury still owns a 6.6 percent common equity stake in Chrysler Group. That has an undetermined value, as the company has not yet gone public. But as the Treasury itself acknowledged, "Treasury is unlikely to fully recover its remaining outstanding investment of $1.9 billion in Chrysler." We asked Lawrence J. White, a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University what he made of Marchionne's statement. "This certainly appears to be another instance of careful language, where all of Chrysler's statement is focused on loans to Chrysler but not the other Treasury investments," White said. "Yes, this appears to be an incomplete statement." As we noted earlier, the statements made by Marchionne were similar to those made by General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre last year. But the situations are different. For one, the government took a much larger equity stake in GM. For more details, see our fact-check related to Whitacre's claims last year. Again, there may be cause for celebratory comments from Chrysler. But Marchionne's statement, while technically accurate, doesn't tell the full story. Yes, Chrysler Group LLC has fully repaid the loans made to it two years ago. But that's not the full measure of the American taxpayers' investments to try to save Chrysler, including $2 billion to "old" Chrysler that was wiped out in bankruptcy. We doubt taxpayers care much about the distinctions in corporate titles. The government has now gotten most of its money back, but not all of it. Not yet anyway. We rate the claim Half True. UPDATE: The original version of this article mentioned Canadian taxpayers in the quotation. But since we are focusing on U.S, contributions, the reference to Canada was removed from the statement.

Sergio Marchionne

2011-05-26T13:20:09

2011-05-24

['United_States']

hoer-01085

JB Hi-Fi Facebook Page Claims You Can Win MacBooks

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-jb-hi-fi-facebook-page-falsely-claims-you-can-win-macbooks-like-farming-scam/

Brett M. Christensen

Fake JB Hi-Fi Facebook Page Falsely Claims You Can Win MacBooks Like-Farming Scam

October 17, 2016

['None']

faan-00010

“In total, this week’s trip has yielded more than $1 billion in investment between Canada and India.”

factscan score: false

http://factscan.ca/justin-trudeau-1-billion/

The agreements totaling $1 billion did not happen because of Justin Trudeau’s week-long trip to India. Some investment announcements coincided with the trip, but the deals behind the majority of the investment figure were signed or proposed weeks to months before. Plus, attributing long-term investment to a single state visit is shaky logic.

Justin Trudeau

2018-03-11

uary 22, 2018

['Canada', 'India']

pomt-07296

Department of Education officials investigating Virginia Tech shootings "have not once gotten into the car and driven down to Blacksburg to talk to the police chief or the university president or to anyone else."

true

/virginia/statements/2011/may/20/ken-cuccinelli/cuccinelli-says-doe-officials-never-visited-virgin/

Announcing Virginia Tech’s appeal of a fine linked to the 2007 massacre there, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took the U.S. Department of Education to task in late April, calling its investigation and decision "appalling." After a four-year probe into the tragedy -- in which student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 25 before taking his own life -- the DOE fined Tech $55,000 for failing to issue a timely warning during the shootings and not following school policies. The penalty is the stiffest allowable under the federal Clery Act, which requires rapid reporting of crimes on college campuses. But officials also sharply rebuked the school, writing "Virginia Tech's violations warrant a fine far in excess of what is currently permissible under the statute." Cuccinelli plans to appeal the fine. In a scathing written response, the Republican took exception to the department’s ruling and painted the investigation as shoddy. "It is not just that federal bureaucrats are engaging in Monday-morning quarterbacking — it is that they have had four years’ worth of Monday mornings," Cuccinelli said in a news release. "Yet, in all that time, they have not once gotten into the car and driven down to Blacksburg to talk to the police chief or the university president or to anyone else who had to deal with these events in real-time. Their investigation — if you can call it that — appears deeply flawed, and their indifference to the facts on the ground is shocking." Is it true that no department officials visited the scene of the massacre before reaching their decision? We decided to check. Asked how the attorney general came to make such a claim, spokesman Brian Gottstein said that University Counsel Kay Heidbreder was the only member of the school’s policy group to speak who to anyone from DOE. "It was over the phone and DOE did not visit the campus or speak to anyone else," Gottstein said in an email. "All Kay and the DOE representative discussed were procedural investigative issues. He asked no questions about what happened [on April 16, 2007]." The easiest way to get started was to ask the Department of Education if anyone had visited Blacksburg during the investigation. We did that on April 29. Two weeks later, after asking a second time, we got a response. "We had several conversations, interviews and email exchanges with school officials in the process of conducting this review, and there were numerous opportunities throughout the process for Virginia Tech to provide input – most notably as the school did in its official 72-page response to our draft report," wrote Sara Gast, a spokeswoman with the DOE. "The lines of communication were certainly open, and they had multiple chances to respond and communicate with us throughout the entire process. However, because of the sensitive and legal nature of the proceedings, we did not meet with officials face-to-face," she added. Called for comment, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said that school officials did contribute to the report submitted to the DOE, but added that they were never asked to be interviewed or even submitted questions relating to the incident. We should note that a state commission investigating the shootings interviewed 34 Tech officials before releasing a 2007 report that also concluded the university failed to issue a timely campus alert about the violence, which occurred over 2-1/2 hours. Virginia reached an $11 million settlement with many of the victims’ families. Two families have filed a $10 million suit against Tech officials that is scheduled for trial this fall. Let’s review. Cuccinelli said DOE officials never visited Virginia Tech while probing the university’s response during the 2007 shootings that left 32 dead. He said the DOE investigators never conducted face-to-face interviews with the Tech officials making decisions that dreadful day. A DOE spokeswoman acknowledged both points, although she said it did not taint the examination. She said there was plenty of communication via email and telephone. We’ll let others debate Cuccinelli’s opinion on the integrity of DOE’s probe. But his claim that DOE investigators never visited Tech to conduct interviews is True.

Ken Cuccinelli

2011-05-20T08:12:02

2011-04-27

['None']

pomt-14159

Kelly Ayotte "has voted to defund Planned Parenthood" six times.

mostly true

/new-hampshire/statements/2016/apr/29/maggie-hassan/maggie-hassan-says-kelly-ayotte-has-record-voting-/

Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte faces a competitive reelection bid in New Hampshire and Democrats are already taking aim at her record on abortion and women’s health. Gov. Maggie Hassan, the only Democratic candidate in the race, is one of the latest to lob those criticisms. "She has voted to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides healthcare to about 12,000 Granite State women," Hassan said in a recent interview with the Concord Monitor, referring to Ayotte. "She’s voted to defund them six times." Planned Parenthood, a women’s health care provider that also offers abortions, has become a lightning rod in recent years as elected officials in Washington and in New Hampshire have taken steps to cut the organization’s funding. The organization is no fan of Ayotte: Planned Parenthood’s political arm took out its first ad of the 2016 cycle this month targeting New Hampshire’s junior Senator. We decided to take a closer look at Hassan’s claim. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England runs five health centers across New Hampshire -- in Manchester, Claremont, Derry, Exeter and Keene. And roughly half of the patients who visit a Planned Parenthood clinic across the border in Vermont -- in White River Junction -- are from New Hampshire. The Planned Parenthood centers in New Hampshire all provide contraception, annual exams, STI testing and treatment, and pregnancy testing. The Manchester location, which saw 4,779 patients in 2014, provides surgical and medical abortions. The Keene location, visited by 1,871 patients in 2014, offers medication abortions, according to Kayla McCarthy, with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Altogether Planned Parenthood clinics in New Hampshire served just over 11,000 patients during 2014, according according to Vice President for Public Policy Jennifer Frizzell. Another 1,750 were seen in the White River Junction, VT clinic. That would mean Planned Parenthood clinics together saw roughly 12,000 New Hampshire patients in 2014, in line with Hassan’s claim. Now let’s look at how many times Ayotte has voted against Planned Parenthood funding. Ayotte, elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, has been a consistent opponent of abortion and critic of Planned Parenthood. We checked with Hassan’s campaign and they pointed us to six votes. Three votes took place all on the same day, Dec. 3, 2015. 1) That day the Senate voted 52-47 to block federal funding to Planned Parenthood and repeal the Affordable Care Act in one bill. Ayotte voted for it. 2) Ayotte voted against an amendment that would have stripped a provision from the bill to defund Planned Parenthood. (The amendment was defeated.) 3) Another amendment, proposed by Democrats, sought to continue federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but it was tabled (that is, set aside) and Ayotte voted in favor of tabling it. (President Obama ultimately vetoed the bill.) 4) Ayotte voted to advance a bill last August that sought to prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood. But the legislation failed to get the 60 votes it needed to move forward. 5) Ayotte voted in April 2011 for a resolution to prohibit federal dollars from funding Planned Parenthood. It failed, 42 to 58. 6) And in March 2011 Ayotte voted for a bill to fund the federal government, that included dozens of other spending items, but blocked federal funding to Planned Parenthood. The bill failed, 44 to 56. Ayotte said at the time: "Our country is in a fiscal crisis… Everyone is going to have to make sacrifices, including many private organizations that have relied on federal resources," according to her office. In all, these six votes show some level opposition to funding for Planned Parenthood. However, some of them were procedural, and not all offered a clean up-or-down funding decision, as Hassan’s statement suggests. Ayotte’s office said she supported several other government spending bills that did not defund Planned Parenthood. And in September 2015, Ayotte voted not to move forward with a temporary government spending bill that sought to block federal funds for Planned Parenthood. Ayotte said at the time she supported defunding Planned Parenthood, but didn’t want to shut the government down to do it. "Kelly Ayotte has voted to direct federal funding away from Planned Parenthood in an effort to better use federal dollars to fill gaps in women's health services for low-income women and preserve access to women’s health services," spokeswoman Liz Johnson said. Our ruling Hassan said Ayotte voted six times to defund Planned Parenthood. Ayotte has been a consistent critic of Planned Parenthood and has shown support for defunding the organization or opposition to continued funding in at least six votes. It’s worth noting that some were procedural votes and several were much larger bills that included a provision on Planned Parenthood funding. Hassan’s claim is accurate, but needs clarification. We rate her statement Mostly True.

Maggie Hassan

2016-04-29T14:00:32

2016-04-08

['Kelly_Ayotte']

snes-02317

Google Earth helped locate a woman who had been stranded on an island for years.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/this-island-google-earth/

Junk News

David Mikkelson

Google Earth Discovers Man Trapped on Desert Island for 9 Years?

19 March 2014

['None']

abbc-00376

Bringing a National Broadband Network to Australians "sooner" was a key commitment made by the Coalition in the lead up to the 2013 federal election.

in-between

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-27/nbn-complete-by-2019-promise-check/5546884

['information-and-communication', 'federal-government', 'liberals', 'australia']

['information-and-communication', 'federal-government', 'liberals', 'australia']

Promise check: Complete the National Broadband Network by the end of 2019

Sun 8 May 2016, 7:37am

['Coalition_(Australia)']

snes-04792

President Obama issued an order for abortions to be celebrated on Mother's Day.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-mothers-day-abortions/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Did President Obama Order Mother’s Day Be Used to Celebrate Abortions?

9 May 2016

['Barack_Obama']

pomt-06851

There’s actually 600 abortions done after the 20th week of pregnancy every year in Ohio.

true

/ohio/statements/2011/aug/04/peggy-lehner/state-sen-peggy-lehner-abortion-foe-says-600-year-/

Abortion rights have been among the top priorities so far this year for the GOP-controlled Ohio legislature -- the governor recently signed a late-term abortion ban and several other abortion-related bills are under consideration. Republican lawmakers’ focus on the issue has drawn criticism from Democrats and others who say the bills do nothing to create jobs, the very platform Republicans across the state campaigned on last year. A pair of Republican lawmakers appeared on a Cleveland radio program recently to discuss the abortion bills and why they are important. Ohio Sen. Peggy Lehner, a Republican from the Dayton area, sponsored the late-term abortion ban requiring doctors to test whether a fetus can live outside the womb when a pregnancy is at least 20 weeks’ along. An abortion is prohibited if tests determine the fetus is viable. "There’s actually 600 abortions done after the 20th week of pregnancy every year in Ohio," Lehner said July 18 on "The Sound of Ideas," a program that airs on 90.3 WCPN. With numerous abortion-related bills pending in the legislature, including the controversial "heartbeat bill," which bans abortion as soon as six weeks into a pregnancy, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check out Lehner’s claim. When we contacted Lehner, she directed us to statistics from the Ohio Department of Health. Lehner also pointed out that the late-term abortion ban, if it had been in effect in past years, would’ve prevented about 200 abortions – the number of abortions in Ohio when the woman was at least 23 weeks’ pregnant, the length of a pregnancy when viability typically sets in. The Ohio Department of Health produces a report each year on abortions in Ohio. The report is based on forms doctors are required to file with the state when an abortion is performed. The forms are confidential; they contain no identifying information about the women who receive the abortions. The report backs up Lehner’s claim. When a pregnancy was at least 20 weeks along, there were 613 abortions in Ohio in 2009, the most recent year data is available. In 2008, there were 603 abortions; there were 690 in 2007, and 694 in 2006. From 1997 to 2005, the number was between 731 and 961. We also checked Lehner’s follow-up point and it also was accurate. In 2009, there were 216 abortions when the pregnancy was at least 23 weeks along. Lehner slightly understated the number of abortions that occurred in the timeframe she referenced during the radio program. Still, her understatement does not undercut the argument she is trying to make. We rate the statement True.

Peggy Lehner

2011-08-04T06:00:00

2011-07-18

['Ohio']

pomt-07162

The average person "will pay $6,000 more a year" under Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal.

true

/ohio/statements/2011/jun/13/tim-ryan/rep-tim-ryan-says-rep-paul-ryans-medicare-proposal/

Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Niles, Ohio, shares a last name with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, but the pair don’t share the same vision for Medicare, the U.S. government’s health insurance program for the nation’s elderly and chronically disabled. Republican Paul Ryan’s budget blue print suggests retaining the current Medicare system for people who are currently over age 55 but giving future retirees a "premium support payment" they could use to purchase private insurance, prompting Democrats to accuse the GOP of attempting to dismantle Medicare. Those on the House Energy and Commerce Committee even put out a report that purports to outline the amount of extra Medicare costs that the new program would require taxpayers in every congressional district to pay. Tim Ryan, whose office frequently gets phone calls meant for the other Ryan, took to the House floor on May 24 to denounce the GOP plan. He argued that the value of the proposed vouchers would not keep pace with heath care costs because they’d be linked to the Consumer Price Index, which hasn’t risen as fast as health care costs. "The average person going into this Medicare proposal will pay $6,000 more a year," Ohio’s Ryan said in his speech. Would the GOP plan escalate yearly out-of-pocket health care costs for the elderly as significantly as Tim Ryan claims? The budget by Wisconsin’s Ryan -- which he dubbed "The Path to Prosperity" -- argues that Medicare won’t be able to meet the needs of current seniors or future generations without reforms. It aims to balance the federal budget by slicing $5.8 trillion in government spending over 10 years, reforming taxes and trimming the growth of entitlement programs including Medicare. An analysis from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Ryan’s plan would accomplish its budget balancing goals, putting the budget into a surplus by 2040, and reducing federal debt to about 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2050. Much of that would be accomplished by reducing the government’s costs for Medicare. Currently, Medicare is a "fee for service" program, which pays health care providers for each procedure or visit. Instead, Paul Ryan wants the government to issue a subsidy that will pay part - but probably not all - of the cost of a person’s health insurance. The size of that subsidy would depend on the beneficiary’s income and health status. Ryan’s GOP "Path to Prosperity" document calls Medicare a "top-down, government-run system" marked by unnecessary tests, redundant treatment and an inefficient bureaucracy that bungles billings and misplaces records. It contends the system’s "open-ended blank-check commitments to reimburse health-care providers for services" creates incentives for them to bilk the government. Such flaws drive up costs, threatening to "bankrupt the system - and ultimately the nation," the budget document says. Starting in 2022, Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint calls for enrolling new Medicare beneficiaries in a program that would pay "a Medicare premium-support payment" to an insurance plan "chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost." Existing Medicare beneficiaries could stay in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare plan, or enroll in the new program. The age for Medicare eligibility would ratchet up by two month increments each year, until it reached 67 in 2033. Analyses by the Congressional Budget Office, which does budgetary analysis for both parties in Congress, and by the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that Medicare beneficiaries coming into the system after 2022 would spend significantly more for health care under the proposal from Wisconsin’s Ryan. Pegging the growth of the federal government’s Medicare payments to the Consumer Price Index will save the federal government money, but "expose beneficiaries to increasingly larger out-of-pocket costs and risks over time," the Kaiser report says. "First, private plans would cost more than traditional Medicare because of the net effect of differences in payment rates for providers, administrative costs, and utilization of health care services," said CBO’s report on Paul Ryan’s plan. "Second, the government’s contribution would grow more slowly than health care costs, leaving more for beneficiaries to pay." The CBO estimates the net federal premium support payments for a typical 65-year-old would be $8,000, or 39 percent of Medicare spending per enrollee, under the program that would be established by the GOP’s "Path to Prosperity." That means the total cost of providing health care benefits (premium and other costs) to a typical 65-year-old in such a plan would be about $20,500 in 2022. The beneficiary would pay $12,500 in out-of-pocket costs. Using CBO projections, the folks at Kaiser did the math, and determined that if a person who turned 65 in 2022 were to remain in the traditional Medicare system, the out-of-pocket costs would be just $5,630 - a full $6,870 less than it would be under the new program. Kaiser explains it would cost more money to provide benefits under the Republican proposal "because private plans have higher administrative costs and typically pay higher fees to providers than Medicare." "While private plans may be able to achieve lower utilization through tighter costs and care management practices, the CBO believes the total costs of providing a similar benefit package would be higher under private plans than Medicare, and that the differential between the costs under traditional Medicare and the costs under private plans would widen over time," the Kaiser report says. Paul Ryan’s proposal would reduce federal spending for Medicare by providing future beneficiaries with a fixed amount of money they could put towards an insurance premium, leaving them on the hook for significantly greater out-of-pocket payments than they’d pay under the current Medicare system. In his speech, Tim Ryan said said that those new out-of-pocket costs would amount to $6,000 each year, a bit of less than what the CBO calculated. So although perhaps undersold, Tim Ryan’s claim is accurate with nothing significant missing for an understanding. On the Truth-O-Meter, that rates as true.

Tim Ryan

2011-06-13T12:35:28

2011-05-24

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

snes-03990

Jennifer Aniston went on an angry tirade on the 'Today Show' after she was asked about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's divorce.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jennifer-aniston-delivers-angry-response-to-brangelina-breakup/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Jennifer Aniston Delivers Angry Response to ‘Brangelina’ Breakup

20 September 2016

['Brad_Pitt', 'Jennifer_Aniston', 'Angelina_Jolie']

tron-03436

The Navy Seal who responded with force to the atheist professor

unproven!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/gods-helper/

religious

The Navy Seal who responded with force to the atheist professor

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-06374

Says Mitt Romney flip-flopped on gun control.

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/02/jon-huntsman/jon-huntsman-accuses-mitt-romney-flip-flopping-gun/

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman uses a wind-up monkey to make fun of Mitt Romney for flip-flopping in a new Web ad. In another item we checked whether the ad's claim that Romney had flip-flopped on abortion was accurate. In this one we're checking the claim that he has switched his position on gun control. In one side-by-side video comparison, the ad shows video of Romney first saying, "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them," and then saying, "And I would protect our Second Amendment rights to bear arms." Clearly, the ad is charging Romney with flip-flopping on gun control. So we decided to see whether the charge is accurate. First, let’s look at some of the things Romney has said about gun control. • In 1994, when he was challenging Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, Romney supported two gun control measures -- the Brady Bill, which required background checks for gun purchases, and a ban on certain types of assault weapons. Both were strongly opposed by most gun-rights advocates. In a July 1994 question-and-answer session with voters arranged by the Boston Herald, Romney "reaffirmed" his support for both measures, the newspaper said. "I don't think (the waiting period) will have a massive effect on crime, but I think it will have a positive effect," Romney said. In a subsequent interview published on Sept. 23, 1994, Romney said, "I don't want special-interest groups making this their campaign. I don't want their money. I don't want their help. This is my race." In the interview, Romney specifically mentioned gun-rights advocates, acknowledging that his stands on the two gun-control measures would put him at odds with such groups. "That's not going to make me the hero of the NRA," he said, referring to the National Rifle Association. "I don't line up with a lot of special interest groups." • Then, in his 2002 race for governor, Romney said during a debate against against Democrat Shannon O'Brien, "We have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them." Fast-forwarding to the present, we couldn’t find much on Romney’s 2011 positions on gun control. The issues section of his website has nothing about it, and the one time the topic came up in a debate -- an attack by Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. -- Romney didn’t take the bait. Perry said, "I think Americans just don't know sometimes which Mitt Romney they're dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment?" But Romney instead chose to respond to Perry’s subsequent charge about his position on health care. So we turned to statements Romney made during the 2008 presidential campaign, when he ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination. • Addressing a group of National Rifle Association members by video on Sept. 10, 2007, Romney said, "Let me speak very directly and candidly about where I stand. I support the Second Amendment as one of the most basic and fundamental rights of every American. It's essential to our functioning as a free society, as are all the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights." He repeated that message later that month at a meeting of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. • In a candidate questionnaire published by the Washington Post during the 2008 primary campaign, Romney said this: "Q: Do you think gun control has an impact on crime rates in the United States?" "Romney: The Second Amendment protects the individual right of lawful citizens to keep and bear arms. I strongly support this essential freedom, and I applaud the recent federal appeals court decision in Washington, D.C., which concluded that the Second Amendment protects an individualized right to keep and bear arms. As president, I will support that interpretation and protect the right of every law-abiding American to keep and use firearms. With respect to gun control laws, I believe we need to distinguish between law-abiding gun owners and criminals who use guns. Those who use a firearm during the commission of a crime must be punished severely. The key is to provide law enforcement with the resources they need and punish criminals, not burden lawful gun owners." "Q: Do you think tighter restrictions should be in place for those buying a firearm?" "Romney: No. I believe we need to focus on enforcing our current laws rather than creating new laws that burden lawful gun owners. I believe in safe and responsible gun ownership, and that anyone who exercises the right to keep and bear arms must do so lawfully and properly. I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all federal approach to gun ownership because people keep and use firearms for different reasons. Law-abiding citizens have a right to protect their homes and their families and as president, I will vigorously defend that right." • According to the Boston Globe, Romney appeared on an Internet podcast, "The Glenn and Helen Show," and said that he hoped states would ease regulations on gun owners. He also expressed enthusiasm for guns and hunting. "I have a gun of my own," he was quoted as saying. "I go hunting myself. I'm a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms." • On the Oct. 21, 2007, edition of CBS’ Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer challenged Romney on the evolution of his gun-control position. Schieffer said, "You once said, ‘We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts, I support them, I won't chip away at them. I believe they protect us.’ Now you say you are a gun owner. You have joined the National Rifle Association, after saying at one point, ‘I don't line up with the National Rifle Association.’ Why would you join that group?" Romney began by stating that he had the endorsement of the National Rifle Association during his run for governor, a claim he later had to back away from. He continued, "I support the NRA. I support Second Amendment rights, but I don't line up 100 percent with the NRA. They take some positions that are different than mine. But my positions are the same as my positions have been with regards to guns for a long, long time, and that is that I respect the right of people to bear arms, and whether that's for hunting or personal protection. ..." It’s worth noting that between his 1994 and 2002 campaigns and the 2008 presidential campaign, Romney served a four-year term as governor of Massachusetts, during which he signed a major firearms-related bill. A bill he signed in 2004 enacted a permanent ban on assault weapons -- reportedly the first such state law in the country. "These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense," the Globe quoted Romney as saying. "They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people." Despite that provision -- usually a deal-breaker for gun-rights groups -- the measure received support from pro-gun groups because other provisions lengthened the terms of firearm ID cards and licenses to carry firearms. The Globe reported that during the 2008 campaign, Romney described the bill as a "consensus measure" and a "positive step." Our ruling The evidence largely supports the contention that Romney has flip-flopped on gun rights, particularly in his tone. Romney’s message during the 1994 and 2002 campaigns was that he was a strong supporter of gun control measures, while in the 2008 president campaign, he played up his pro-Second Amendment credentials and actively sought support from the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups. Substantively, the gap -- at least as of the 2008 campaign -- was somewhat narrower. He’s been vague about specific legislation he’d support, and in the interview with Schieffer, Romney acknowledged that "I support Second Amendment rights, but I don't line up 100 percent with the NRA. They take some positions that are different than mine." Still, between his early campaigns and his 2008 presidential run, Romney does appear to have shifted his views. On balance, we rate Huntsman’s claim Mostly True.

Jon Huntsman

2011-11-02T17:33:58

2011-10-28

['None']

pomt-05906

We got [the Quonset Business Park] for free and we’re getting zero dollars out of it into the state coffers … other than the fact that it produces the jobs.

half-true

/rhode-island/statements/2012/feb/03/joseph-trillo/rhode-island-state-rep-joseph-trillo-says-quonset-/

State Rep. Joseph A. Trillo wants someone to build a "super-casino" in the Quonset Business Park. It’s a can’t-miss proposition, the Warwick Republican says. Cruise ships could dock at the Port of Davisville, bringing visitors from afar to a 7.5-million-square-foot facility that would include such amenities as an indoor amusement park and an aquarium. In recent weeks, Trillo, the House Minority Whip, has been touting his plan through the media, arguing that developing a casino at the former Navy base would maximize the potential of what he sees as an under-performing state asset. During a debate with state Sen. James Sheehan on Rhode Island PBS’ "A Lively Experiment" -- a portion of which aired Jan. 20 -- Trillo voiced his criticism of the state-owned business park. "We put $45 million into Quonset Point," Trillo said. "We got the place for free and we’re getting zero dollars out of it into the state coffers." "That’s not true," said Sheehan, a North Kingstown Democrat who opposes a casino in Quonset. "Zero dollars other than the fact that it produces the jobs," Trillo countered. "We don’t get any money or any profit from 3,300 acres of land that we got given to us." We wondered whether Trillo’s claim was true. Does the general fund -- what Trillo refers to as "state coffers" -- really get no revenue whatsoever from Quonset? When we called Trillo, he said he was referring specifically to the operation of the business park, which is actually 3,204 acres and is managed by the Quonset Development Corporation, a quasi-public agency under the authority of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. "There is no profit," he told us. "Every dollar they take in goes into operating the industrial park." We checked the QDC’s annual financial statements to see for ourselves. For the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2011, the QDC had revenues of $8,314,944 and expenditures of $8,310,750 for a net gain of $4,563. The bulk of revenues -- $5.2 million -- came from rental income on 403 acres that the QDC leases out to private companies. Another $1.9 million was raised through utility sales to tenants of the park. That includes water and sewage treatment services. Earnings for the 2010 fiscal year and the three prior fiscal years followed a similar pattern. The QDC had either a small net gain ($369 in 2010 and $4,347 in 2008) or a small net loss ($50 in 2009 and $2,713 in 2007). In other words, expenditures and revenues have been nearly equivalent in recent years. No profits were channeled into the state’s general fund in all those years -- except one. In 2008, the General Assembly required the QDC to pay $3.5 million into the general fund to cover debt service on $48 million in bonds for road projects and other capital improvements that were approved in 2004. (The amount of the bond issue was incorrectly referred to as $45 million by Trillo in the debate with Sheehan.) That was the only year that the legislature made the QDC contribute to the general fund. We contacted David Preston, spokesman for the QDC, who said that the agency generally pours any profits back into improving the park with better roads, railways and piers. For example, in 2011, the agency spent $1.3 million on capital projects. He also pointed out that in terms of operating expenses the QDC is self-sufficient. It has, however, received taxpayer support for capital projects in the form of the 2004 bond issue and a $22.3-million federal stimulus grant in 2009. Preston also said there is a reason why the QDC does not generate profits: that’s not its purpose. "The mission of the QDC is to create jobs and their record of creating jobs is unmatched in the state," he said. Under the 2004 legislation that created it, the QDC is defined as a "real estate development and management company" whose objectives are encouraging business development, attracting jobs and promoting "the economic development of the state and the general welfare of its citizens." If the agency does what it’s supposed to do, companies are brought into the business park, jobs are created and revenue flows to the state in the form of taxes. That’s not money coming from the QDC itself but it’s money nonetheless. According to a five-year progress report released by the QDC in 2010, there are now 168 companies operating in the business park. They include Electric Boat, Toray Plastics America, Ocean State Job Lot and Hexagon Metrology. The 168 companies collectively employ 8,800 workers. A third of those jobs were created between 2005 and 2009. In the same period, $142.6 million was invested in the park by private companies. The businesses at Quonset pay corporate income tax to the state and their employees pay personal income tax. Preston said that no studies have been done totaling those revenues, but there are snapshots of the amounts of money that come in through taxes. When the Gateway project -- a retail and hotel development at Quonset -- was approved in 2007, construction was expected to generate $9 million in sales tax revenue and $3 million in payroll tax revenue for the state, according to the Economic Development Corporation. In 2008, a consulting firm hired by the QDC estimated that the businesses and workers at the 290-acre Port of Davisville, which is situated inside the park, annually pay the state a total of $3.7 million in corporate income tax, personal income tax, sales tax and excise tax. When Galaxy Nutritional Foods moved to Quonset from Florida in 2009, the EDC projected that the personal income tax revenue to the state for 26 of the company’s positions would total $261,558 between 2010 and 2012. Our ruling During the debate with Sheehan, Trillo was very specific in his criticism of the Quonset Business Park. He said the state doesn’t get "any money or any profit from 3,300 acres of land." On that point, he is technically correct. While the Quonset Development Corporation does collect rent on land in the park, it uses that money for operating expenses and passes none of it on to the state. Trillo also qualified his statement about the business park by adding that the state gets "zero dollars other than the fact that it produces the jobs." That’s a huge qualification. Although the QDC does not contribute directly to the state’s general fund, the state does benefit financially from the businesses in the park. Quonset is home to 168 companies that employ a total of 8,800 people. Those companies and their employees pay millions of dollars in taxes to the state. Trillo chose his words carefully in criticizing the performance of the Quonset Business Park, but he left out important information about its benefits to the state. Because the claim fails to give those details and because it takes things out of context, we rule it Half True. (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.)

Joseph Trillo

2012-02-03T06:00:00

2012-01-20

['None']

para-00050

When Abbott was Health Minister there was a shortage of GPs because he put a cap on GP training places.

false

http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/27/tanya-plibersek/did-abbott-create-gp-shortage/index.html

['Health', 'Workforce Planning']

Tanya Plibersek

Flynn Murphy, Peter Fray

Did Tony Abbott create a GP shortage?

Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 10:27 a.m.

['General_practitioner']

faly-00011

Claim: India ranked 9th on the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 2016 – World Investment Report 2017.

partly true

https://factly.in/fact-checking-claims-on-indias-global-standing-in-fdi-inflows/

Fact: It is true that India is ranked 9th in the list for 2016. However, FDI inflows decreased in the 2017 and India slipped to the 10th rank in 2017. Hence the claim is PARTLY TRUE.

Fact Checking claims on India’s global standing in FDI inflows

['Foreign_direct_investment']

snes-00146

Did Google Fail to Promote President Trump’s State of the Union Address?

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-sotu-promotion/

Politics

Dan Evon

Did Google Fail to Promote President Trump’s State of the Union Address?

30 August 2018

['None']

abbc-00012

Federal MP Bob Katter's response to a question about the same-sex marriage survey has turned heads across the nation, and around the world.

in-the-red

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-30/fact-check-does-a-crocodile-kill-someone-every-three-months-/9202902

Mr Katter is wrong. Experts told Fact Check there was no evidence to support the claim that crocodiles were killing people every three months in Queensland. Long-term figures from the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection show a rate of one fatal crocodile attack every three years from 1985 to now. These figures accord with data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which is only available to 2016. The department's data shows fatal crocodile attacks in Queensland have increased in recent years, but not to the rate Mr Katter claims. In the past 10 years there were six deaths, a rate of one every 20 months. There was one death per year in the past three years. And even if Mr Katter was only considering very recent deaths in making his claim, the two most recent fatal attacks occurred in March and October of this year, seven months apart.

['crocodile', 'bob-katter', 'qld', 'brisbane-4000', 'townsville-4810', 'cairns-4870']

['crocodile', 'bob-katter', 'qld', 'brisbane-4000', 'townsville-4810', 'cairns-4870']

Fact check: Is a person torn to pieces by a crocodile every three months in north Queensland?

Thu 12 Jul 2018, 2:14am

['Bob_Katter,_Sr.']

pomt-05523

Sen. Sherrod Brown’s vote helped pass "Barack Obama’s job-killing health care law, which slapped small businesses throughout Ohio with a $500 billion tax increase."

pants on fire!

/ohio/statements/2012/apr/12/national-republican-senatorial-committee/national-republican-senatorial-committee-says-heal/

With Congress out for its Easter-Passover break, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown started making the rounds with constituent and factory visits in early April. One of those stops was at the Nucor steel plant in Marion, where the Democratic freshman discussed what he calls the unfair trade practices of China. The National Republican Senatorial Committee meantime had a list of other subjects it thought Brown, who faces reelection in November, should discuss during his local visits. Making suggestions in a pointed news release, NRSC spokesman Jahan Wilcox said, "One of the things we expect that Brown will not be discussing is his 60th vote for Barack Obama’s job-killing health care law, which slapped small businesses throughout Ohio with a $500 billion tax increase." This single statement had several elements that made us say, "Huh?" Was Brown the 60th vote for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? That’s a point of dispute, because the NRSC had already said that Montana Democrat Jon Tester had that honor (though Tester’s staff debunked it with a videotape showing him as the 52nd "yes" vote, Politico reported). The NRSC or its affiliates have also accused Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Claire McCaskill of Missouri of casting that crucial vote. Taking heat for being the 60th senator to actually commit that he would vote "yes," thus assuring passage regardless of the order in which the actual roll call went, was Ben Nelson of Nebraska. But Brown certainly voted for the health care bill, so let’s not get hung up on which senator had the ultimate vote. More intriguing than that was the NRSC’s claim that the bill "slapped small businesses throughout Ohio with a $500 billion tax increase." That would be a heck of an increase, were it true. But it is not. Every piece of information the NRSC sent us to back up its $500 billion claim pertained to a national figure, not a figure for a single state. And it applied to all taxes and fees associated with what both parties are now calling Obamacare, not just the portion that would be paid by small businesses. The NRSC’s sources for this included testimony and supporting documents from the Congressional Budget Office, submitted to the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee on March 30, 2011. PolitiFact recently examined another claim based on this figure and its supporting documents, after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce used the number in an ad criticizing Tester. There’s no need to repeat that examination at length, but we’ll note that PolitiFact found that the $500 billion number was "a fair number for total revenue raised by the 2010 health care law as estimated when Tester voted — but the number for just taxes is lower, likely between $400 billion and $465 billion." The rest was for various other fees and revenue enhancements, which opens a debate as to whether they should be called taxes. But there’s no need for that here. Yes, some businesses will pay higher taxes if the law is upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The NRSC sent us plenty of examples from news stories as well as a recent editorial from the Columbus Dispatch. Among the companies already preparing for this are medical device manufacturers like Invacare, based in Elyria, which has estimated a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices could cost it anywhere from $12 million to more than $20 million annually. Backers of the health care law suggest that medical device companies will make up at least some of the revenue because more people will have health insurance and buy medical products. Industry officials are skeptical. Invacare is a global company, however. There are certainly small, Ohio-based companies that will be taxed more under the law. But will these small Ohio businesses be slapped with a $500 billion tax hike, thanks to Brown and others who supported the bill, regardless of their order? No. We are not aware of a good analysis to show the exact share that small Ohio businesses would pay of that $500 billion in new revenue that the government will raise, or whatever the figure will prove to be. We could try to extrapolate, but what’s the point? The NRSC figure is off by a factor of, well, we can’t tell you. We just know that there are 50 states and the CBO figure was for all new revenue nationwide, not just for the share to be paid in taxes by small businesses in Ohio. The NRSC conceded this when we talked it over. Plenty of people dislike the Affordable Care Act. That is a fact. Brown voted for it, and that’s a fact, too. But to pick a national number and apply it to one segment of one state is not accurate and is simply ridiculous. On the Truth-O-Meter, ridiculous claims get a rating of Pants on Fire!

National Republican Senatorial Committee

2012-04-12T06:00:00

2012-04-04

['Ohio', 'Barack_Obama']

pomt-10920

Even the CBO numbers show now that the entire $1.5 trillion tax cut is virtually paid for by higher revenues and better nominal GDP.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/31/larry-kudlow/wh-economic-chief-kudlow-wrongly-says-cbo-agrees-t/

With the economy growing at 4.1 percent in the last quarter, the White House sees vindication of its policies ahead of the midterm elections. Larry Kudlow, top economic adviser to President Donald Trump, pressed a point about the Republican tax cuts in the closing seconds of a CBS interview Sunday. "Even the CBO numbers show now that the entire $1.5 trillion tax cut is virtually paid for by higher revenues and better nominal GDP," Kudlow told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan on July 29. "These are all good things, Margaret." In light of the Congressional Budget Office’s forecast that deficits will continue to grow, Kudlow’s statement that CBO now projects that the tax cuts will pay for themselves bears a closer look. Key takeaways When the CBO looked at the impacts of the tax cut law, it found that it increased the deficit by a total of $1.8 trillion between 2018 and 2028. That included the economic growth effects of the tax cuts. The CBO’s latest long-range forecast predicted lower revenues than it had before passage of the tax cut law. In the 2018-28 period, the government would collect $884 billion less than the CBO previously forecast. Economists, including a member of CBO’s Board of Economic Advisers, could not identify the source in CBO reports that supported Kudlow’s claim. Tax cuts and tax revenues The central argument for tax cuts is that with lower rates, companies will invest more in plants and equipment, which will make workers more productive. And individuals will have more incentive to work because Uncle Sam will get a smaller slice of their paychecks. A growing economy will, the argument goes, make up for the money the government would have collected through higher tax rates. It would be a big deal if the CBO agreed with this argument. The agency is the nonpartisan budget arm of Congress. The problem for Kudlow is that the CBO hasn’t. "I am quite familiar with the CBO analysis and have no clue what Larry Kudlow is talking about," said Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California Berkeley and a member of CBO's board of economic advisers. The CBO pointed to its April 2018 report. It devoted an appendix to the tax law alone. In this key table below, the section on "macroeconomic feedback" is where the CBO puts its estimate of how higher economic growth from the tax cuts is expected to increase revenues. Tax analyst Nicole Kaeding at the conservative Tax Foundation said Kudlow had exaggerated. Citing the table, she said the CBO expects the tax cuts to reduce deficits by a total of $461 billion over 11 years. "This is well below the $1.5 trillion in static cost of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," Kaeding said. The foundation ran its own analysis that assumed the economic impact would be greater than the CBO predicted. It still came up short. "We estimated a net cost of approximately $450 billion," Kaeding said. Overall, the CBO estimated that the tax cuts would add $1.8 trillion to the nation’s debt. Harvard University economist Greg Mankiw, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, told us, "I do not know what numbers Larry (Kudlow) is referring to." "A reasonable rule of thumb, in my judgment, is that about one-third of the cost of tax cuts is recouped via faster economic growth," Mankiw told PolitiFact in 2017. That is pretty much what the CBO estimated. It’s not as though the tax cuts don’t juice the economy. The CBO said they would boost growth by 0.3 percent in 2018 and by 2022, the level of GDP would be a full 1 percent higher than it would have been. The trouble is, the growth alone doesn’t close the revenue gap, and with deficits higher than they would have been, interest rates would also edge up as government borrowing rose. Higher interest rates means Washington will pay more for its borrowed money. That further undercuts the ability of tax cuts to pay for themselves. We reached out to the White House and did not hear back. Our ruling Kudlow said the CBO agreed that "the entire $1.5 trillion tax cut is virtually paid for by higher revenues and better nominal GDP." The CBO reports do not reach that conclusion. The CBO pointed to its analysis showing the growth impact of the tax cuts reducing deficits by a bit less than a third of the cost of the tax cuts themselves. Economists who know the CBO’s work told us the congressional budget forecasters did not say what Kudlow asserted. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Larry Kudlow

2018-07-31T07:00:00

2018-07-29

['Congressional_Budget_Office']

pomt-11312

Obama Announces Bid To Become UN Secretary General

pants on fire!

/punditfact/statements/2018/apr/13/blog-posting/no-barack-obama-did-not-announce-bid-un-secretary-/

A website calling itself USA NEWS uses outdated and unfounded information to falsely claim that former President Barack Obama has announced a bid to become the United Nations’ secretary-general. An April 12 post on the website usanews24h.tk said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "reportedly is planning payback for President Obama’s dismissing Mr. Netanyahu’s objections to the Iran nuclear deal last year." "Mr. Netanyahu is said to be rallying moderate Arabs to thwart Mr. Obama’s bid to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations after he leaves the White House next year," said the story posted in April, more than a year after Obama left office. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat online hoaxes. Several other elements in the story show that the post is not rooted in current events or facts, including a line that says "U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s term expires in early 2017, making Obama’s bid for the position a possibility." Ban, the UN’s eighth secretary-general, ended his term Dec. 31, 2016. The claim that Obama sought to or intended to become the UN’s secretary-general has been around for several years. USA NEWS’ post includes several sentences that first appeared in a Jan. 8, 2016, post on the Washington Times. That 2016 story attributes its information to a Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Jarida. A Jan. 12, 2016, editorial in the Washington Times also references the Kuwaiti newspaper, adding that "rumors are floating back from the Middle East" that Obama "is sounding out Democrats, Republicans and friends of the United Nations in the United States to help him get the job of secretary-general of the U.N." The editorial acknowledges that the rumors "might be just another imaginative fairy tale of the Arabian night. The Arab media is addicted to such tales. But Mr. Obama was once described by Bill Clinton as a fairy tale, too, and here he is, completing his second term, and Mr. Obama does not suffer excessive modesty." In January 2016, Israeli media also reported on the Kuwaiti newspaper’s claim, but not without casting doubt on the information. "The report, which admittedly appears somewhat far-fetched, has not been confirmed by any other news outlets and does not name any of its sources," israelnationalnews.com reported. The UN General Assembly appoints its secretary-general, on the recommendation of the Security Council. Any of the Security Council’s five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) can veto the selection. António Guterres, the UN’s ninth secretary-general took office Jan. 1, 2017. The term is for five years. Our ruling USA NEWS claimed, "Obama Announces Bid To Become UN Secretary General." The post includes outdated information and is based on unfounded claims. We rate USA NEWS’ statement Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bloggers

2018-04-13T13:58:42

2018-04-12

['None']